Free Republic

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought death, destruction and debate over historical analogies. Is this the summer of 1914, with great powers stumbling into a horrific global conflict? Or is it the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939? What about Moscow’s 1939-40 Winter War against Finland? Will Vladimir Putin’s gambit end like the Soviet Union’s 1979-89 misadventure in Afghanistan? Matt Pottinger has been thinking of another conflict. Mr. Putin’s attempted conquest, and his burgeoning partnership with China’s Xi Jinping, reminds Mr. Pottinger of the Korean War. “In 1950, Stalin and Mao and Kim Il Sung badly miscalculated how easy the...

A core group of top US officials — including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State and interim national security adviser Marco Rubio, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — had been closely monitoring the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan when on Friday morning, the US received alarming intelligence, Trump administration officials told CNN. While they declined to describe the nature of the information, citing its sensitivity, they said it was critical in persuading the three officials that the US should increase its involvement. Vance himself would call Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The vice president briefed...

...The Turkish foreign ministry called on both parties to "exercise common sense and refrain from unilateral actions."They added, "We expect that measures will be taken to reduce tensions in the region as soon as possible and that the necessary mechanisms, including in the field of counter-terrorism, will be put in place to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents. We also support Pakistan's call for an investigation into the 22 April terrorist attack."...Azerbaijan also issued a statement soon after the attack, condemning violence against Pakistan.In their statement they said, "The Republic of Azerbaijan expresses its concern over the further escalation of...

Barely a month before the 9/11 terror attacks, two Pakistani nuclear scientists, said to be close to disgraced Abdul Qadeer Khan, met up with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and offered to supply him with atomic weapons, according to a newly released book. Chaudiri Abdul Majeed and Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who held a series of senior posts in Pakistani nuke programme, went to Taliban [Images] headquarters in Kandahar in mid-August 2001 and spent three days with bin Laden who was keen on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, the book says. In fact, Mahmood was said to be more close to...

The horrors of Islamic war rage in Syria. A young Alawite girl, Mira, was kidnapped and married to an Afghan jihadi fighter. Her father was threatened with death if he did not keep quiet and the government forces protected the Afghan man who raped the Alawite girl. The government forces also fabricated a false story to justify this marriage and that the girl had run away with this Afghan man. ... The young woman Mira Jalal Thabat (20 years old), the only child of her parents from the village of Al-Makhtabiyah in Talkalakh, went missing inside the Teacher Training Institute...

A top diplomat representing the Taliban terror organization ruling Afghanistan demanded representation for the group at the United Nations this week, insisting the Taliban’s participation in the global organization was a “necessity and a right.” Suhail Shaheen, who has represented the Taliban in negotiations with the U.N. in the past and now runs the group’s embassy in Qatar, noted that the Taliban has been the uncontested government of Afghanistan for nearly four years and insisted that the group deserves some say in the operations of the United Nations. “The presence of a representative from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan at...

All the narratives are wearing off. Vietnam was a pointless war and we lost. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Afghanistan was a waste. And we gained nothing from any of those wars. Saudi Arabia has nuclear weapons and the 19 terrorists from 9/11 were all Saudis. Did we go to war with them? Nope. North Korea has nukes. Little rocket man hasn’t blown us all up yet but we were told he was going to. Pakistan and China have nukes as well. And big bad Russia has nuclear weapons. We were told Putin was going to...

Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over past year, boosting cash supply in wake of Biden admin's Afghan withdrawal ... The Taliban took in $3.4 billion in revenue over the last year, boosting its cash supply by 14 percent amid the return of Afghanistan as a central safe haven for terrorist organizations across the Middle East, according to a U.S. government watchdog group. The repercussions of the Biden administration’s disastrous 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan continue to reverberate across the war-torn country, with multiple al Qaeda affiliates accessing American-supplied "weapons seized from the former Afghan National Army," according to...

Kyrgyzstan may be a landlocked country with a population of less than 5.5 million, but it still looms large in the regional calculations of China, Russia and the United States. The Kyrgyz Republic is the only country to host both a Russian and a US military base. The Russian base at Kant symbolises Moscow’s preeminent security role in the region, while the US base at Manas plays a vital role in sustaining NATO military operations in Afghanistan. And Kyrgyzstan also borders Xinjiang, prompting concerns among Chinese policymakers over infiltration by terrorists and narcotics smuggling into this sensitive province as well...

In a Friday Notice of Filing, Navy veteran Zachary notified Florida’s 14th Judicial Circuit in Bay County, that he would be seeking upwards of $453 million in damages through his defamation suit against The Associated Press. The wire service allegedly falsely accused Young of committing a felony while rescuing nearly two dozen women and a baby from Afghanistan.

The O’Keefe Media Group on Wednesday released undercover video of a Defense Department Branch Chief attacking President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Nicolas Turza, a Department of Defense Branch Chief, called President Trump “illegitimate” and vowed to “resist him, everything he does.” Turza also attacked Hegseth and said the 44-year-old is “insanely young” and unfit to lead. “The same guy who tried to overthrow an election is just, like, truly setting us down a path of dictatorship. He’s illegitimate. He’s terribly immoral, breaking every norm. We’re going to resist him. Everything he does,” Turza said about Trump.

What you don't know that you NEED to know. The Gathering Storm is a groundbreaking initiative addressing the critical gaps in our nation’s preparedness for emerging terror threats following the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Through an unprecedented public-private partnership, this project fosters collaboration across federal, state, and local levels to identify threats and implement best practices. We have partnered with the top Global War on Terror intelligence professionals and special operations veterans to inform YOU on the potential for a terrorist attack in YOUR community. The mission of The Gathering Storm is not to create fear as happens in legacy media...

<p>WASHINGTON — After a bombing killed 19 U.S. airmen at a barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the Clinton administration struck back by unmasking Iranian intelligence officers around the world, significantly disrupting Iranian-backed terrorism, according to a high-level U.S. official and a former top official who was serving at the time of the operation.</p>

Four men accused of murder were executed by gunfire last Friday in crowded sports stadiums across Afghanistan. The Taliban leader defended these public killings as necessary under sharia law. That night, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem announced that the Trump administration would revoke temporary protected status (TPS) for Afghans who evacuated to the United States after their country fell to the Taliban in 2021. This sets the stage for more than 9,000 people to be deported, beginning May 20. A DHS spokeswoman says Noem made this decision based on a “review of the conditions in Afghanistan.” To claim...

Half a million weapons obtained by the Taliban in Afghanistan have been lost, sold or smuggled to militant groups, sources have told the BBC - with the UN believing that some have fallen into the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates. The Taliban took control of around one million weapons and pieces of military equipment - which had mostly been funded by the US - when it regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, according to a former Afghan official who spoke to the BBC anonymously. As the Taliban advanced through Afghanistan in 2021, many Afghan soldiers surrendered or fled, abandoning their weapons...

A Pakistani marketplace known for selling weapons to interested buyers, including terrorists, bustled with activity in the immediate aftermath of the Biden administration’s botched pullout from Afghanistan, The Washington Post reported Monday. The market in Darra Adamkhel, near Peshawar, Pakistan, saw its busiest days in recent memory in the wake of the chaotic 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after two decades at war as leftover American military gear sold like hotcakes, the Post reported. Years later, American machine guns, rifles and night vision goggles are turning up in the hands of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) and Pakistani Baloch separatist fighters...

The Trump administration appears to be continuing its previous policy of engagement with the Taliban, which led to the 2020 Doha Agreement that paved the way for the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Last week, the US State Department erased Sirajuddin Haqqani’s $10 million bounty, while former American Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalizad, the architect of the Doha Agreement, returned to the Afghan stage. In late March, Khalilzad and hostage envoy Adam Boehler flew to Kabul on behalf of the Trump administration. During his brief visit, Khalilzad secured the release of George Glezmann, an American tourist who was detained...

ELON: U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE TRIED TO DELETE TALIBAN FUNDING RECORDS—DOGE RECOVERED IT.. Elon says the U.S. Institute of Peace deleted 1TB of financial data linking them to funding Taliban and Iraqi leadership—but DOGE wasn’t fooled. According to Elon, the agency attempted to scrub the records, but DOGE engineers recovered the entire archive thanks to “their shocking incompetence with tech.” The data reportedly includes detailed financial transfers tied to groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. ... The names government things are always the opposite of what they actually do. "United States Institute of Peace"? Of course it was full of treason,...

I've never heard anything good about the United States Institute for Peace. It's been in bed with neocons, coupmeisters, and the Soros color revolution crowd for years. The quasi-government agency that runs like a private NGO is always sneaky and non-transparent. So it didn't surprise me a bit to learn that USIP showed unusual resistence to anyone poking into their spending from DOGE. Did you hear how the staff as USIP acted when DOGE showed up? They literally BARRICADED themselves in their offices, cut the phone lines and power to elevators, sabotaged office equipment and the Head of USIP had...

One of the delights of the last couple of months has been watching the Democrats and their regime media adjuncts running their decades-old political playbook and seeing them completely outflanked by the Trump administration running its modern playbook. Check your calendars, guys. It’s 2025, and what used to work doesn’t work anymore. You guys haven’t changed, but we Republicans have. The fact that we are no longer reacting as you expect and demand us to, along with the revolution in media that has allowed us insurgents to evade the regime media gatekeepers, has made all your old go-to moves utterly...