Sunni insurgents form political alliance
A new political alliance in Iraq has brought together all the main Sunni-based armed organisations in the country, bar al-Qaida and the Ba'athists. The Office for the Iraqi Resistance has vowed to expel all occupying forces from the country, and denounced al-Qaida for their sectarian killings and suicide bombings against civilians. To receive our daily security briefings, click here.
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the insurgent group the Islamic State in Iraq, is but a fictional character designed to homogenise the Iraqi resistance movement, the United States military announced on Wednesday. He was purportedly created by the Egyptian-born leader of Al Qaida in Mesopotamia to disguise the fact that the bulk of insurgent leaders in Iraq are foreign nationals.
Two US soldiers have been charged with the premeditated murder of an Iraqi last month near the northern city of Kirkuk. The first of eight soldiers accused of conspiring to kill an Iraqi man in April 2006 has also been convicted by a military jury.
Democrats lose withdrawal motion
After a rare all-night session, Senate Democrats yesterday fell short of the 60 votes required to defeat a Republican filibuster preventing a motion which called for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq within 120 days.
US and Iranian officials are to hold a second round of discussions on the future of Iraq, it was announced on Wednesday.
“Looking back over a quarter-century of writing about international affairs”, reflects Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian, “I can not recall a more comprehensive and avoidable man-made disaster” than that witnessed in Iraq.
Mujahideen veteran calls ceasefire
Mujahideen veteran and ally to the Taliban and al-Qaida Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has declared a ceasefire, believing that coalition forces will soon pull out of the country. Afghans must “unite for creating an Islamic system and start our political efforts”, he said in a statement obtained by Reuters, “so that we can provide a tranquil life and everlasting peace for our Muslim countrymen”.
A British House of Commons Defence Committee report has warned that the NATO mission in Afghanistan is receiving insufficient support from member states, while evidence indicates that Taliban strength might be on the up in the country. Concern was also expressed at the training of the Afghan police and armed forces, as well as with the eradication of the country’s opium poppy fields.
Suicide attacks grip Pakistan
Two bomb blasts killed at least 32 people in Pakistan on Thursday. In a market place in the southern town of Hub, on the border between Sindh and Baluchistan provinces, a suicide bomber detonated a device as a convoy of Chinese engineers passed by, claiming as many as 30 lives and injuring 30 others; the convoy was left unscathed.
In a separate incident, seven people were killed and 13 others wounded when a suicide bomber targetted a police training college in Hangu, in the far northwest of the country.
President Pervez Musharraf had commented on Wednesday that he would not impose a state of emergency on the country.
The head of the Jamia Banoria mosque in Karachi, cleric Mufti Muhammad Naeem, has described Musharraf's policy of fighting militancy in the country’s northwest as a "dangerous path", which could “blow up in an all out civil war."
Grand Mufti denounces false teachings of jihad
Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Shaikh has implored young Muslims not to be taken-in by false teachings of jihad, which he says distract people from the path of true faith.
Fatah al-Islam call for peace talks
Islamist militant group Fatah al-Islam has expressed interest in resuming talks with the Lebanese authorities to end fighting at the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared. A military source has dispelled this remark as “media propaganda”, however, saying that the group has merely realised that “the noose is tightening around them”. The military resumed their bombardment of the camp on Thursday.
Despite the Lebanese Defense Minister proclaiming ‘victory’ over Fatah al-Islam weeks ago, the group is yet to be defeated, either in the camp itself or elsewhere in Lebanon, while for the 31,000 displaced residents of Nahr al-Bared, notes Haitham on the Sabbah blog, an end is nowhere to be seen.
Indonesian anti-terrorism unit “harming Islam”
Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has launched a court case in Indonesia to have Detachment 88, the national anti-terrorism police, disbanded for having harmed Islam. It was not, he proclaimed, formed to fight terrorists, “but to fight Islam”. It has branded innocent Muslim activists ‘terrorists’, and has, he insists, carried out the bidding of “infidels”.
Indonesian radical Islamist group, Front Pembela Islam (FPI), have announced the creation of an anti-corruption squad “to drive out the corrupt who are responsible for poverty” in the country. FPI is well known in the capital Jakarta, where they conduct raids on bars and discos during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Read more about this story and keep up-to-date with other news from Indonesia, on the Indonesia News Blog.
N. Korea vows to dismantle all nuclear facilities
Pyongyang yesterday vowed to “declare and disable” all its nuclear facilities by the end of the year, during six-party talks in Beijing. Violence shadows reconciliation talks in Somalia
Violence raged on the streets of Mogadishu on Thursday, during what has been described as the heaviest wave of attacks in 15 days of non-stop fighting between suspected insurgents and Somali forces. Reconciliation talks were set to resume this week.
Ainashe.net disputes the assertion by Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi that “Ethiopia is the number one friend” of Somalia (27 May 2007), exclaiming that Ethiopia would rather see a "weak and fragmented Somali state that it can easily manipulate".
There are fears that violence might erupt in the far northwestern Nigerian city of Sokoto, after a local Sunni cleric died on Thursday from gunshot wounds. He was shot after evening prayers last night.
