The jihad against a non-existent “film” produced by non-existent “Jews” continues to claim lives, with the latest attack launched by militants in Egypt’s Sinai on Israeli border troops.
Both imperialism and political Islam see in the current crisis the opportunity to revive the dystopian dialectic of jihad-versus-GWOT—and reverse the gains of the Arab Spring.
In the wave of protest over a provocateur-produced "film" dissing the Prophet Mohammed, jihadists could be seizing back the initiative from secular revolutionaries in the Arab world.
The eleventh 9-11 anniversary saw riots in Libya and Egypt over an Islamophobic film produced by an Israeli-American real-estate developer.
"Leftists" in the West are waxing paranoid about how the Syrian revolutionaries are a bunch of jihadists. But if the West intervenes in Mali, they will likely be rooting for jihadists—again.
Taliban militants attacked a family gathering where men and women were dancing together at a village in Afghanistan's Helmand province, beheading 17, including two women.
Salafist militants bulldozed a mosque containing Sufi graves in the center of Tripoli in broad daylight, with no interference from authorities. A similar attack was reported in Zlitan.
A deadly suicide attack on the funeral of a police officer killed the previous day in a firefight with militants may signal a new advance of the Chechen insurgency into the Ingush Republic.
Multiple US drone strikes have hit targets in Yemen and Afghanistan during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, killing several—all said to be al-Qaeda-linked militants.
As in the Venezuela crisis, Donald Trump, the great enthusiast for dictators, is making a cynical pretense of concern for democracy in Iran. Fortunately, his latest bit of exploitation of the Iranian protesters has blown up in his face. Noting the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, he issued a tweet featuring a meme with an image of a student protester from the 2017 anti-austerity uprising and the words: "40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure." Now, the courageous photographer who snapped the image at the University of Tehran in December 2017, Yalda Moayeri, comes forward to express her outrage at its co-optation by Trump. Alas, Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-American feminist who last week met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, seems not to get how she is endangering opposition activists in Iran, allowing the regime to paint them as pawns of imperialism. (Image via @realDonaldTrump)
In its latest quarterly report to Congress, the US watchdog for Afghan reconstruction finds that the security situation is at an all-time low since monitoring began. Since the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) began tracking district control in 2015, Afghan government-controlled or "influenced" districts have declined 16% to 55.5%. In the same period, areas of insurgent control or influence rose 5.5% while "contested" districts increased 11%. As of late July, the US military assessed that the Kabul government controls or influences 226 of Afghanistan's 407 districts, while the Taliban controls/influences 49. The remaining 132 districts are identified as "contested." Since the prior quarterly report, Operation Resolute Support downgraded eight districts from "government influenced" to "contested." SIGAR said Afghan security forces "made minimal or no progress in pressuring the Taliban" in the period covered by the report. (Photo via Stars & Stripes)
With China accused of detaining hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims without trial in its western province of Xinjiang, a BBC investigation analyzed satellite data to determine that the detention camp system in the region is rapidly expanding. Reviewing images from the European Space Agency's Sentinel satellite service, the BBC finds at least 40 such facilities across Xinjiang, half built within last two years—with a big thrust of construction just in the past six months. Among the largest is a "massive, highly secure compound" still being built at Dabancheng, about an hour's drive from the provincial capital, Urumqi. It is enclosed within a two kilometer-long exterior wall punctuated by 16 guard towers. (Photo via UNPO)
