Free Republic

U.S. President Barack Obama has started reaching out to some of Pakistan's most fervent Islamist and anti-American parties, including one that helped give rise to the Taliban, trying to improve Washington's image in the nuclear-armed state. Obama's special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, is initiating dialogue between the United States and religious parties previous administrations had largely shunned, both sides said. John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Bush presidency, questioned Holbrooke's timing for trying to engage Taliban sympathisers on the eve of elections in neighbouring Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are battling the hardline Islamic group. "As a general...

(CNSNews.com) - An American Muslim group under federal investigation is actually the U.S. division of a Pakistan-based faction with ties to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, according to notes from an official meeting that were posted on an obscure Middle Eastern website and obtained by Cybercast News Service. Members of that U.S. division -- the New York City-based Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) -- have publicly denied any connections to Jama'at-i-Islami (JI), Pakistan's most influential Islamist organization. But notes from a forum ICNA sponsored in New York City in 2000 contradict those denials. "Jama'at-i-Islami's supporters in America have...

On Tuesday the federal authorities struck another serious blow against the toleration of Islamist terrorist activities on American soil, by arresting five former leaders of the so-called Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which, as I have previously argued, would be better called the Holy War Foundation.   HLF is, after all, a front for the Palestinian suicide terror gang Hamas, which is mainly funded by Saudi Arabia. < -snip- > HLF long functioned as the nerve center of the “Wahhabi lobby” in the U.S., headquartered in Texas, with branch offices in Paterson, N.J., Bridgeview, Ill., and San Diego.  Established...

The confusion that prevailed in Pakistan following the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, an alleged kingpin of al-Qaeda, has now somewhat cleared. Consequently, a more meaningful analysis is possible despite there still being some unanswered questions. The confusion gave rise to two kinds of speculation: He was killed during an encounter in Karachi on September 11, 2002 during which Ramzi Binalshibh, another al-Qaeda operative, was captured, and hence there had been a wrong identification. This has been proved wrong by his being handed over to US custody by Pakistani officials. He was actually captured on September 11, 2002, but the...