Free Republic

New light is being shed on the 2001 anthrax attacks in a fascinating open letter to Ayman al Zawahiri of al Qaeda, written by a jihadi living in London. Numan Bin Uthman, a former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, provides yet more evidence that the global Islamic jihad movement is losing its resolve.  But the letter contains a startling admission. Uthman tells us of a conversation he had with al Qaeda leaders before the 9/11 attacks in which he urged them not to use WMD. From AKI News: Uthman also said that he had taken part in...

A former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, Numan Bin Uthman, has written a letter to al-Qaeda second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri telling him that Jihadi groups in Arab countries have failed and that the strategy of using nonconventional WMD to deter an invasion of Afghanistan was a misguided and failed strategy. The letter needs to be understood in the context of the fact that the microbiologist that Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef used to infiltrate US biodefense, Ali Al-Timimi, had a stern warning not to invade Iraq hand-delivered to every member of Congress on October 6, 2002...

Please forgive the vanity post, BUT I just had a terrible thought....I just heard that the hijacked airliner has landed in of all places, Aftganistan.... Is that not the home turf of Osama Bin Laden?? Remember the movie a few years back where terrorists hijacked a 747 with the intentions of crashing it into New York city or some other big city??? If Bin Laden wanted to creatate a major catastrophe, that would surely do it. I suppose the military could shoot it out of the sky, but how do they insure where it is going to land, or that...

August 16, 2012: Seven American soldiers were killed Thursday when their helicopter crashed in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter, although the insurgency often exaggerates its victories and is quick to claim responsibility for any incident involving foreign troop deaths. The area where the helicopter went down is an insurgent hotbed and supply route, lying north of Kandahar city near volatile Zabul and Uruzgan provinces. This story is still developing. R.I.P.

The mass murder in Afghanistan was predictable. Twice in the past three weeks, I published that it was coming. Why was I able to write this with sad confidence? I’ve spent more time with combat troops in these wars than any other writer: about four years in total in country, and three with combat troops. About 200 coalition members have been killed or wounded from insider attacks. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is tantamount to being Taliban and has not bothered to apologize. Instead, Karzai whips up anti-U.S. fervor at every opportunity. Twice, Karzai has threatened to leave politics and join...

EXCLUSIVE: Captain Katherine Jenerette Gives A Woman’s View From AfghanistanAbout Katherine: Katherine Jenerette is Captain in the US Army Reserve and a paratrooper from North Myrtle Beach, SC. She is serving with the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division ‘Task Force Arctic Wolves’ in the Horn of Panjwa’i in one of the most volatile districts in Kandahar Province (and Afghanistan). She is a former U.S. Congressional Field Representative for South Carolina’s First District and a North Myrtle Beach Planning Commissioner and was a Candidate for US Congress in 2010. Katherine was recently name as one of THE 45...

The mayor of Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan that was the birthplace of the Taliban, was killed in a suicide bombing on Wednesday, police said. Ghulam Haidar Hameedi died when a suicide bomber set off explosives hidden in his turban when the mayor was addressing citizens in the courtyard of the city hall, police General Abdul Raziq told AFP.

The half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been killed in an assassination attempt, officials say. Ahmad Wali Karzai, the younger half-brother of the Afghan president and leader of the Kandahar Provincial Council, was shot dead, presidential spokesmen Waheed Omar told the BBC. Initial reports suggest he was shot by his bodyguard in his house in Kandahar. A controversial politician, some saw him as a defender of Pashtun rights. Critics said he was a warlord mired in corruption who was openly involved in the drugs trade and had a personal militia at his disposal. The president repeatedly defended him, denouncing...

SNIPPET: ""If these attacks were aimed at seizing control of Kandahar city, as the Taliban proclaimed, they failed," a senior official from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told Reuters, on condition of anonymity. Shooting erupted after the first explosion hours earlier and insurgents opened fire from a five-storey shopping mall toward the governor's fortified compound, from where security forces returned fire as black smoke rose over the city."

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – More than 400 inmates — many of them Taliban insurgents — escaped from the main prison in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar overnight through an underground tunnel, an official said Monday. The massive jailbreak in Kandahar, the focus of much of the international military effort to defeat the insurgency, is a reminder that the Afghan government is still weak and easily thwarted in the south, despite an influx of international troops, funding and advisers. The escape comes after years of security upgrades and tightened procedures at the 1,200-inmate Sarposa Prison following a brazen 2008 Taliban attack...

Taliban attack Kandahar police station Saturday, February 12, 2011 1:33 PM Feb. 12, 2011 (United Press International) -- Taliban fighters and suicide bombers attacked Kandahar police headquarters Saturday and killed 15 officers, Afghan officials said. The attack began around noon with car bombs and the battle raged for hours, the BBC reported. "Fifteen people were killed and 45 others suffered injuries, and some of the wounded are in a critical condition," said provincial Gov. Tooryalai Wesa.

KANDAHAR: Taliban insurgents armed with bombs, automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the Kandahar police headquarters Saturday during a bloody assault on the southern Afghan city that killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens more. The bold afternoon raid showed insurgents are still able to launch deadly strikes on heavily fortified government institutions despite the past year's influx of US troops into Kandahar province, the Taliban's birthplace. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Fifteen of those killed were Afghan police officers, said provincial Governor Toryalai Wesa. Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said three Afghan soldiers, two civilians and...

MOSCOW (AP) - A Muslim cleric formerly held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba said Tuesday U.S. guards there regularly desecrated the Qur'an by putting it into a toilet, although he added he never witnessed it himself. Airat Vakhitov, who described himself as a former imam of a mosque in Tatarstan, a majority Muslim republic in southern Russia, is one of seven men released from Guantanamo in 2004 and returned to Russia. He and the six others were held in Russia for three months, then released a year ago. Vakhitov said at a news conference organized by the state RIA-Novosti...

Bound, masked and surrounded by heavily armed U.S. Marines, 20 of the most dangerous al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners arrived for indefinite incarceration at this remote Caribbean naval base. The prisoners' arrival Friday came four months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The prisoners face intense interrogation, especially concerning the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, accused by the United States of orchestrating the attacks. "These are people who would gnaw through hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, ...

Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera has broadcast a tape that appears to show one of the 11 September hijackers reading his last will and testament. The channel also aired a brief clip of wanted Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden, who is shown kneeling beside his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, as al-Zawahri praises the actions of the bombers. The channel identifies the hijacker as Ahmad al-Haznawi al-Ghamdi, a name which closely resembles that of Ahmed al-Ghamdi, who was on Flight 175 that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Al-Jazeera said the footage - which it says it checked...

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATO commanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said. A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had...

(CBS) A German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that Americans tortured him in many ways - including hanging him from the ceiling for five days early in his captivity when he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Even after determining he was not a terrorist, Murat Kurnaz says the torture continued. Kurnaz tells his story for the first time on American television this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Kurnaz, an ethnic Turk born and raised in Germany, went to Pakistan in late 2001 at age 19 to study Islam and...

My eyes broke through the dried crust between my lashes. I was freezing, curled in the fetal position on my cot with an Army-issue sleeping bag wrapped around my body. I didn’t know where I was. I had never woken up here before. I tried to gain a sense of my surroundings using only my peripheral vision. The room was dark and damp. I looked at the indigo light on my digital watch. 0608. Where was I? … “Gah!” I shuddered like a little girl as a fat drop of arctic water fell on my face from the leaking roof....

OUTPOST NOLEN, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Elite U.S. special forces soldiers are relieving insurgent pressure on American outposts in the volatile Arghandab Valley with a series of night attacks on suspected Taliban hideouts. The raids, backed by a "Spectre" C-130 gunship and Afghan commandos, began four days ago in the village of Khosrow Sofla, and followed weeks of near-daily attacks by insurgents on American bases near the town of Jelawar. "We considered it an area of Taliban sanctuary, or at least of tacit or semi-permissive support," said U.S. Army Major Brendan Raymond, of Woodbridge, Virginia. Last month, the U.S. military said...

WASHINGTON, June 16, 2010 – Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban, is the key to success in Afghanistan and the U.S. military is working with Afghan forces to turn the tide against the insurgents, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee today. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates testified on the fiscal 2011 Defense Budget request. Mullen told the senators that Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan, is the birthplace of the Taliban. Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar ruled Afghanistan from a palace in Kandahar. Today,...