Iran & the Middle East

• Authorities believe it is likely that among the escaped al Qaeda members in Yemen last week was Jaber Elbaneh, an American citizen wanted in the United States for providing material support to al Qaeda. Elbaneh trained at the al-Farooq terror camp in Afghanistan, along side six others known as the "Lackawanna Six".

• Newsweek has an article this week titled "The Tunnel Rats of Terror" that details the al Qaeda escape in Yemen recently.

• Hamas has decided to name Ismail Haniyeh prime minister in the new Palestinian Authority government, the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat reported Saturday. However, Sheikh Yasser Mansour, number five on the Hamas national electoral list, told The Jerusalem Post that "there has been no official decision to name Haniyeh prime minister."

• Former Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam is certain the current regime in Damascus will collapse and Syria will see a move to democracy this year. On Saturday the regime reshuffled their cabinet.

• Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami warned on Saturday that world oil prices would rise if the United Nations imposes sanctions on Tehran, saying “the price of each barrel of oil is 70 dollars and this high price has created many difficulties for the industrialised world. The first effect of a sanction against Iran will be that this high price will even increase higher.”

• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad implicitly warned on Saturday that the Islamic republic would leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if forced by the West to limit its disputed nuclear programme.

• In comments this weekend, Lebanese Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said al-Qaeda has been trying to settle in Lebanon for the last few months. Appointed to replace Hassan Sabeh, the former youth minister who resigned last week over the cartoon protests in the capital Beirut, Fatfat said, "A short while ago, we collapsed the two groups suspected for affiliation with al-Qaeda network."

• Saad Hariri, son of slain Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri, returned to Lebanon on Sunday and vowed to fight terrorism and "prevent another assassination." Hariri also accused Syria of trying to provoke sectarian conflict in Lebanon.

• U.S. Naval vessels are patrolling the coast of Yemen in an effort to prevent escaped al Qaeda suspects from fleeing the country to Africa or elsewhere. Reports indicate that members of the prison staff may have passed along information and tools to the terrorists in assisting their escape.

• Twenty four hours after being kidnapped in the Gaza strip, Hussam al-Musali, Egypt's military attache, was released unharmed. A previously unknown Palestinian militant group, the al-Ahrar Brigades group, claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

• Dozens of newly recruited Palestinian security forces stormed the finance ministry in Gaza to demand payment of their salaries. According to the reports, they were promised salaries at the beginning of training but three months later still have not been paid, highlighting the financial crisis that grips the Palestinian leadership.

• Israeli and Palestinian diplomats met in Washington D.C. on Friday and outlined their respective cases for moving forward. Israel wants Hamas to recognize Israel, while the Palestinians want an end to "Islamophobia".

• On Friday U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan again called on Hamas to recognize Israel and continue forward with the 'road map for peace'. Declaring that most Palestinians oppose terror attacks on Israeli civilians and support Israel's right to exist, Annan warned the Palestinians that "the international community will be watching very carefully to see how a new government rises to these challenges."

• Some U.S. and Israeli officials believe the secular Shi'ite nation of Azerbaijan could play a role in toppling the theocratic regime in neighboring Tehran, who the Shi'ite in Azerbaijan regard as threatening.

• Israel is considering the idea of issuing biometric cards to West Bank drivers who use crossings into Israel on a regular basis. The card could be swiped from around 100 meters away so soldiers or private security guards would know who is approaching and prepare accordingly. Whether cards would be issued to Israelis, in addition to the Palestinians who are already receiving them at Kalandiya and Erez, had not yet been discussed.

America Domestic Security & the Americas

• Federal prosecutors have released mounds of documents and hundreds of hours of audiotapes to attorneys defending a father and son charged in a terrorism probe, but the defense said the last-minute flood of evidence will not delay the trial. Jury selection is expected to begin Tuesday in the trials of Umer Hayat, 48, and his 23-year-old son, Hamid, both of Lodi, CA. Their trials will run concurrently with separate juries. The Hayats are accused of lying to the FBI about Hamid Hayat attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004. Hamid Hayat also is charged with providing material support to terrorists by attending the camp and returning to the United States last May with the intent to commit terrorist acts.

• A Virginia man convicted of joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President Bush has joined the ranks of those seeking a review of their convictions based on concerns about President Bush's post-9/11 eavesdropping program. Lawyers for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 24, of Falls Church, last week asked a federal judge to order prosecutors to divulge whether Abu Ali was ever a subject of the warrantless eavesdropping program that Bush ordered implemented shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. They also asked the judge to delay Abu Ali's Feb. 17 sentencing.

• Michael Curtis Reynolds says he's a patriot. Federal authorities say he's a terrorist. The FBI believes that the unemployed Wilkes-Barre man tried to conspire with al-Qaeda to wreck the American economy. Agents say Reynolds plotted to blow up the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, a Pennsylvania pipeline, and a New Jersey refinery.

• A company in the United Arab Emirates is poised to take over significant operations at six U.S. ports as part of a corporate sale, leaving a country with ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers with influence over a maritime industry considered vulnerable to terrorism.

• A Canadian national whose father allegedly was an associate of Osama bin Laden was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Boston on charges he supplied the al-Qaida terror network with weapons. Abdullah Khadr, 24, has been held in Canada on an extradition warrant since his Dec. 17 arrest in Toronto.

• The trans-Alaska pipeline looks like it would be an easy target for terrorists intent on destroying a valuable American asset, but those responsible for its safekeeping say looks can be deceiving. Terrorism experts say pipelines in general are easy targets, but tend to be low priority because they can be repaired so quickly. And officials with an intimate knowledge of the pipeline say it's far less vulnerable than it appears — in part because of the difficulty a saboteur would have getting any weapon capable of serious damage into Alaska. The pipeline has state, federal and local agencies keeping an eye on it.

• Two staff members of the medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) detained by gunmen in Colombia have been freed, the organisation says. The British and Dutch men were held on Saturday while assessing health services in a guerrilla-dominated province in north-east Colombia.

• Trinidad launched its first strike to recover a growing $31 million debt owed by Jamaat-al-Muslimeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr and 57 other defendants for the destruction of Police Service Headquarters during the 1990 attempted coup. Akii Bua, who has assumed leadership of the Jamaat since Abu Bakr was incarcerated in November 2005 on five criminal charges arising out of his controversial Eid sermon, told the Daily Express that the Jamaat intends to challenge the State's action.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Militants in the Russian village of Tukui-Mekteb opened fire on security forces, sparking a firefight that stretched over 24 hours and ended with the death of 12 militants and 6 security officers. According to Viktor Barnash, head of the Stavropol territory department for the fight against organized crime, the militants were planning a Beslan style attack.
  
• Russian President Vladamir Putin has angered Israel by inviting Hamas to Moscow for discussions and for stating his belief that Hamas was not a terrorist organization. In response the U.S. State Department reminded Russia of their obligations as a member of the "Quartet". France has come out in support of talks between Russian and Hamas, believing it could help advance the peace process.

• Georgian authorities arrested three Russian peacekeepers in the separatist republic of South Ossetia as tensions continue to mount over deployments in the region by both nations. The trio was released a short time later and ordered out of the country.

• Vlad the appeaser offers a good analysis of the Russian President's decision to invite Hamas to Moscow, which makes little sense and jeopardizes the work other western nations are doing to try to hold Hamas to a greater level of account and responsibility.

• Russian anti-terrorism units killed one gunmen and captured another who had fired on Russian forces at a traffic post in Ingushetia, killing one and wounding three.

• A top Russian prosecutor demanded the death penalty for the man alleged to be the only surviving attacker of the 2004 Beslan school seizure, in which more than 330 people died, most of them children. Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel told a court in the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz that Nur-Pashi Kulayev should be executed.

• In Chechnya, security forces killed one militant in the Itum-Kala district after a firefight erupted. In the past 24 hours, three militant gang members have been captured in Chechnya.

Afghanistan & Southern Asia

• Increasingly, coalition forces in Afghanistan are turning over some of the training to Afghan sergeants. Fresh recruits learn the basics of how to take protective measures and launch counterattacks, skills that will help them hold their positions in a fight. How well they absorb these lesson will be crucial for Afghanistan's ability to stand on its own two feet. Now half-way toward the goal of a 70,000-man force, the Afghan National Army is reaching a crucial testing period: The US military is preparing to draw down its forces in Afghanistan, NATO forces are moving in, and security conditions along the southern border with Pakistan are worsening.

• At least eight Afghan soldiers have been killed and several wounded by two roadside bombs in Kunar province, according to officials. Two soldiers were killed by the first blast and a second device went off as troops rushed to the scene.

• Militants, battling US and government forces have recently launched numerous attacks on schools and teachers in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. Suspected Taliban guerillas set fire to three primary schools in the Nawa district of Helmand in January. The siege on schools appears to be having the desired effect. "We have closed 50 schools where around 10,000 students were studying in Kandahar province due to insecurity and fear of attacks," said Hayat Allah Rafiqi, head of the education department in Kandahar, adding that more than 200 schools in total had been closed in southern Afghanistan due to the violence.

• In Afghanistan, more than 20 suicide attacks have taken place in just four months as one of the most brutal and effective tools of the Iraqi insurgency is being exported to Afghanistan, where newly resurgent militant groups are seeking to regain power. Militants have taken up other Iraqi-style techniques: beheadings, targeting civilians and building the powerful improvised bombs that are the biggest killer of U.S. forces in Iraq. And there are early indications of another worrisome trend -- the presence of al-Qaida-backed Arab and Pakistani fighters coming into Afghanistan to ply these terror tactics, particularly suicide bombings.

• Newsweek has an article saying the Taliban has produced its first fund-raising, recruiting and training VCD shot entirely in Afghanistan.

• Here is the CDI's Afghan update for the month of January. It is a roundup of events from Jan 1 to Feb 7.

• Pakistan's president has confirmed that "a close relative" of al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a US air strike in Pakistan last month. Pervez Musharraf also confirmed for the first time that Zawahiri had been expected to be at the house targeted by the US, a military spokesman says.

• Tribal insurgents have killed two soldiers and injured seven others in an attack on a paramilitary convoy in Pakistan's restive southwestern Baluchistan province, officials said.

• Shia and Sunni Muslims in Pakistan exchanged fire killing at least four people in and around the north-western town of Hangu, say officials.

• Cross-border firing from Afghanistan hit the tent of a nomad family on the Pakistan side of the frontier, killing two women and injuring at least four children, two Pakistani officials said Sunday. The Pakistani officials said four rockets or shells were apparently fired by the U.S. military in fighting with suspected militants in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province late Saturday, and one hit the nomads' tent at Bangi Dar, in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area.

• Here are the daily updates from the South Asia Terrorism Portal for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

• A PINR report on last Wednesday's elections in Nepal says the elections "did little to resolve the tri-polar power struggle in Nepal." A PINR report from a week ago says "Nepal continues to slip further into instability, creating a power vacuum in which regional powers India and China compete for influence. The power struggle in Nepal consists of three domestic players: the king, the major parties of the former government, and the Maoist rebels of the countryside."

• At least seven people have been killed and scores wounded in clashes between government troops and Maoists in Nepal, reports say. The fighting took place on Thursday when the rebels attacked an army convoy in south-western Nepal. The BBC's Sushil Sharma says the clashes appear to be one of the heaviest in recent months.

• Two members of Kashmiri guerrilla outfit Al Badr were nabbed in New Delhi with a large quantity of explosives, were allegedly planning to carry out blasts in busy markets in the national capital, police said.

• A Hindu religious leader and seven of his followers were shot and killed by unidentified attackers in northern India, police said on Saturday.

• Here is a very brief profile of Salahudin alias Bilal alias Hyder Karar, Operations Chief of the Lashkar-e-Toiba in Jammu and Kashmir.

Far East & Southeast Asia

• On Monday, Japanese police raided the headquarters of the Mitutoyo Corporation, a precision instrument maker, amid media reports that the company was exporting machinery to China and Thailand that could be used in uranium enrichment.

• A Malaysian recruited by al-Qaida to become a pilot for a second wave of suicide airliner attacks on the United States pulled out of the plan after he witnessed the carnage of the first assaults according to Asian officials.

• Danish nationals have been urged to leave Indonesia over concerns they may be targeted in attacks over the cartoon controversy. According to Danish intelligence reports, extremist groups are actively seeking out Danish citizens and interests in the country.

• Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, an Islamic scholar, said Osama bin Laden doesn't speak for Islam and warned of a "huge chasm that has emerged between the West and Islam" at a conference in Kuala Lumpur.

• US troops began arriving on the southern Philippine island of Jolo in preparation for a humanitarian mission, just hours after a suspected Muslim extremist gunned down the local head of police intelligence. Roughly 250 American soldiers will take part in the Balikatan exercise, focusing on civic works and humanitarian activities for Jolo’s poor residents, from Feb. 20 to March 5.

Europe

• Sweden's government has expressed concern that a small anti-immigrant party had put cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on its newspaper's website, which could drag Sweden into protests by angry Muslims. The far right-wing Swedish Democrats, who unlike a similar party in neighbouring Denmark where the cartoon row began are too small to have a seat in parliament, invited readers to send in their own cartoons for publishing with the Danish cartoons.

• Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero today said he has a "conviction" that ETA is ready to end its armed campaign for an independent homeland in the Basque region of northern Spain and southern France. The fact that ETA hasn't killed for more than two years suggests the group is open to a settlement, Zapatero said.

• British Treasury Chief Gordon Brown plans to assemble a team of financial experts to end terrorism funding streams -- the equivalent of the intelligence experts who broke the Nazis' Enigma Code during World War II, his office said Friday. In a speech Monday at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies_ a professional forum concerned with national and international defense and security -- Brown is expected to outline a series of measures aimed at cutting off terrorists' cash flow.

• In that same speech, Brown will say that U.K. security forces have thwarted three terrorist attacks since the failed London bombings of July 21.

• In London, militant Muslim protesters could face arrest on charges of incitement to murder after calling for those responsible for publishing offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed to be beheaded, police warned. Ministers gave the clearest signal that they expected the police to act, after a public outcry over their failure to make arrests when demonstrators in London waved placards calling for those responsible for offending their faith to be murdered.

• Unknown to Abu Hamza al-Masri, Mr Hassaine, an Algerian who had been praying at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London since 1996, began acting as an undercover agent for MI5, British counter-intelligence. For two years from 1998 he passed information on activities in the mosque to his handlers. He told them about how the dress code of Hamza's young acolytes changed. "You didn't need to go to Afghanistan. Inside the mosque were people wearing combat clothing; it was like being in an al-Qaeda camp." From the outside, the mosque looked unassuming, set in a residential street close to the Arsenal football ground in Highbury. Inside, the atmosphere was increasingly fervent.

• When worldwide Muslim fury over cartoons of the Prophet spread to Britain, the flag-burning protests outside the Danish embassy in London appeared to be an entirely spontaneous outpouring of anger. Inquiries by the Guardian have shown, however, that a key role in organising the demonstration was played by an Islamist sect whose supporters have repeatedly been linked to violence and terrorism. On Saturday, Denmark also withdrew their ambassador and staff in Syria and Iran due to security concerns.

• Italy has dissolved its parliament, and elections will be held April 9. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said his upcoming electoral campaign gatherings were considered a target for possible acts of terrorism. He said Italy has been doing everything in its power to avoid such acts with special measures. This activity, the prime minister said, has allowed the arrest of more than 200 alleged international terrorists, who have in many cases either been kept in prison in Italy or have been expelled.

• The boycott of Danish goods, propelled by Muslim leaders and imams preaching in mosques, has brought exports of Danish products to the Middle East and North Africa to a virtual standstill. It has scuttled a flow of goods to the region that was worth about $1 billion in the first 10 months of 2005, according to government statistics. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the boycott was not a major threat to Denmark's economy.

• European vice-commissioner Franco Frattini has said media should sign up to a voluntary code of conduct on reporting on Islam and other religions, in a bid to avoid future Danish cartoon-type disputes. In an interview with UK daily The Telegraph on Thursday (9 February), Mr Frattini argued that the cartoons in Danish paper Jyllands-Posten "humiliated" millions of muslims.

Africa

• During a demonstration by Muslims in Nairobi a vehicle the protestors hijacked overturned, killing one. Several others were injured when the driver of the overloaded pick-up lost control of the vehicle that overturned on Waiyaki Way. The demonstrators had hijacked two pick-ups to take one of their colleagues to hospital after anti-riot police shot him on the leg. Kenyan police opened fire at hundreds of people demonstrating against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad on Friday.

• An article by Kurt Shillinger in the Armed Forces Journal looks at the emergence of Al Qaeda in southern Africa. Southern Africa is anchored by South Africa, but otherwise is characterized by weak states. A range of factors makes the region attractive to foreign terrorist groups.

• U.S. Special Forces are teaching Malian soldiers how to fight terrorism in the country's northern desert, a region potentially rich in oil but seen by U.S. military officials as a sanctuary for Islamic militants. More than 300 Malian soldiers in the Saharan towns of Timbuktu and Gao and the capital Bamako will practice parachuting into the desert, marksmanship, operating under fire and other activities over the next 50 days, officials said.

• Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son and advisor of the Libyan leader, has come out in support of President Bush's goals to help spread democracy and reform in the Middle East.

• Opening a three-day tour of North Africa, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Saturday the United States wants to build closer military ties to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco to help combat Islamic extremism and terrorism. Speaking aboard an Air Force plane en route to Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, Rumsfeld called Tunisia and Morocco "long-standing friends and constructive partners in these efforts against terrorism."

• Strategy Page writes about the leader of al Qaeda in East Africa, Harun Fazul (or Fazul Abdullah Mohammed), a native of the Comoro Island with dual citizenship in Kenya. Fazul was a ringleader in the 1998 East African embassy bombings and other attacks in the region. In his early 30s, Fazul has been a member of al Qaeda since the early '90s.

• Kenyan police have arrested five men suspected of plotting a bomb attack on last Friday's African Nations Cup final between Egypt and Ivory Coast where Egypt President Hosni Mubarak was in the 74,000 crowd, a police official has said. The men were detained in separate raids on Thursday and Friday in Nairobi and the northeastern town of Waji.

The Global War

• In Bangladesh on Friday police beat back about 10,000 protesters marching on the Danish Embassy in the capital Dhaka and there were also demonstrations in Egypt, Afghanistan, India, Jordan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Turkey.

• Meeting in Italy on Thursday and Friday, NATO defense ministers expressed the desire for closer cooperation with North African and Middle Eastern nations in fighting terrorism and vowed that "contacts with Hamas" were "out of the question." Other discussions focused on staffing a NATO rapid response force and providing maritime security in the Mediterranean.

• Squeezed between Russia and China, Mongolia increasingly has forged relations with "third neighbors," more distant nations that can offset the influence of Moscow and Beijing. Japan has played the role prominently, becoming Mongolia's largest aid donor, and so have Germany and South Korea. But foremost among the third neighbors is the United States, the superpower that Mongolians have courted as an aid source and a counterweight to Russia's residual status and China's economic tentacles stretching across the Gobi Desert.

• Iraq has suspended dealings with Australia’s monopoly wheat exporter AWB over allegations that it paid bribes to the former regime of Saddam Hussein. The suspension would remain in force until an official inquiry into the charges, under former judge Terence Cole, is complete.

• The Pentagon made tough choices in its once-in-four-years review of military posture, forces and strategy as well as the 2007 budget, said Ken Krieg, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for acquisitions. Krieg said among them were the Pentagon’s decisions to scale back the number of aircraft carriers from 12 to 11, shed several old Air Force systems, terminate production of C-17 airlifters and cancel the Army’s Aerial Common Sensor surveillance program. In September, Krieg said in coming years, the United States was likely to ask more of its military services while budgets remained flat or declined, and such a mismatch would force the country to make tough choices.

• The Air Force officially opened a permanent staging area at Ramstein AFB for wounded troops waiting for flights to hospitals across the United States. The $1.6 million Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility replaces a temporary building built about two years ago.

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