Yemeni authorities announced that a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who apparently rejoined “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula” has turned himself in to the authorities.
Author William Dalrymple weighs in with a defense of Sufism and the “Ground Zero Mosque” on the Times op-ed page—but in terms that smack of a neocon strategy to groom domesticated “good” Muslims.
The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced that they have temporarily halted their campaign against ISIS after they were bombarded for the second time in four days by Turkish forces. With Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an promising to "wipe out" the Kurdish YPG militia, calling them "terrorists," his forces in northern Syria attacked YPG positions east of the Euphrates River. The YPG, or People's Protection Units, constitute the central pillar of the US-backed SDF, which Washington continues to support with some 2,000 embedded troops. At least 10 YPG fighters were reported killed in the Turkish shelling of territory in the Kurdish autonomous canton of Kobani. The SDF said in a statement: "Turkish attacks in the north and ISIS attacks in the south against our troops had forced us to stop our current operation temporarily against ISIS in its last pocket… We call upon the international community to condemn the Turkish provocations." The statement claimed that YPG fighters responded to the shelling with artillery and machine-gun fire, destroying a Turkish military vehicle and border post. (Image of SDF fighters via Rudaw)
Riot police blocked a convoy of Kurdish lawmakers from entering Dortyol district in southern Turkey, where there has been a wave of ethnic violence following a deadly PKK ambush of an army patrol.
Five Yemeni soldiers were killed in in a suspected al-Qaeda ambush in the south, while in the north dozens of pro-government tribesmen were killed in clashes with Shi’ite Houthi rebels.
A Syrian military court sentenced lawyer and activist Haitham Maleh to three years in prison for campaigning against the emergency rule under which Syria has been governed since 1963.
Separatists launched a deadly attack on a military convoy in South Yemen one day after “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” killed 11 in an assault on the intelligence headquarters in Aden.
Amnesty International released images of a US-manufactured cruise missile apparently taken following an attack on an alleged al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen that killed 41 local residents.
Violence is rising in eastern Turkey since imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan decided to abandon peace efforts and leave local commanders in charge of the conflict.
Yemen now faces multiple converging crises—with al-Qaeda and allied tribal militants in the Hadramout, with Shi’ite Houthi rebels in the north, and with armed separatists in the south.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights called for the release of nine adherents of the Ahmadiyya sect detained under a controversial emergency law just extended by parliament.
An officer of the Saudi religious police, patrolling a park for unmarried couples illegally socializing, met physical resistance after he stopped a young couple walking together.
