Free Republic

In a further sign that Syria’s civil war is increasingly becoming a theater of battle between Shi’ite and Sunni extremists – under the respective flags of Hezbollah and al-Qaeda – a group of Sunni radicals in Egypt is citing the Syrian situation in its appeal to Sunnis everywhere to support a jihad against Shi’ites. Twenty Egyptian Salafists including Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged Sunnis to target Hezbollah and others involved in the fighting in the Syrian town of al-Qusair (al-Qusayr)... thousands of Shi’ite fighters from Hezbollah, Iran and Iraq have been involved in the fighting...

A banner showing al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and former emir Osama bin Laden is placed outside the French Embassy in Cairo, Egypt during a protest organized by Mohammed al Zawahiri. Image from Euronews. Within the past few days, Mohammed al Zawahiri, the younger brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, has threatened France and the West while condemning the intervention in Mali. The younger Zawahiri promised that if France and its allies continue to fight in Mali, then Westerners will be the "first to burn." During an interview broadcast by Euronews on Jan. 22, Mohammed al...

The Washington Post reports that “the CIA and other intelligence analysts have settled on what amounts to a hybrid view” of September 11, 2012, “suggesting that the Cairo protest sparked militants in Libya, who quickly mobilized an assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi.”  What the Post doesn’t say is that the Cairo protest was itself an al Qaeda-infused, if not outright orchestrated, event.The “hybrid” explanation is a compromise, of sorts, between two competing narratives. The first suggested that a protest against an anti-Islam film in Benghazi led to a “spontaneous” assault on the US consulate there. We know that version...

I don’t get it. Why would the Foreign Policy President, who supported the revolutions in Libya and Egypt, not want to talk about that? I thought he likes talking about foreign policy. Weeks before the presidential election, President Barack Obama’s administration faces mounting opposition from within the ranks of U.S. intelligence agencies over what career officers say is a “cover up” of intelligence information about terrorism in North Africa.Intelligence held back from senior officials and the public includes numerous classified reports revealing clear Iranian support for jihadists throughout the tumultuous North Africa and Middle East region, as well as notably...

On and around September 11, 2012, al Qaeda attacked multiple American assets around the world. The attack that has received the most attention is the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But the U.S. consulate in Libya was not the only diplomatic facility assaulted by al Qaeda-affiliated groups in September. Terrorists with ties to al Qaeda’s senior leaders, including al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri, were involved in at least three other U.S. embassy sieges in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, and possibly elsewhere. A timeline of these assaults is...

Anti-US protests against an American-produced film which allegedly insults the Prophet Mohammed, took a violent turn in the Middle East as the US Embassy in Cairo was attacked and its consulate at Benghazi in Libya was set on fire reportedly killing one American consular official. US officials were however were reluctant to establish any link between the two incidents yesterday in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, and Benghazi, the Libyan city. "We cannot confirm any connection between these incidents," a senior State Department official said in response to questions linking the two incidents. Multiple American media outlets said that one US...

The September11 terror attacks in the US were staged to overcome disunity in al-Qa'ida, confidential computer records reveal. Alan Cullison reports on what happened after his laptop was wrecked while he was covering the combat in Afghanistan IN the autumn of 2001, I was one of scores of journalists who ventured into northern Afghanistan to write about the US-assisted war against the Taliban. After losing use of my computer in an accident, I scrawled stories by candlelight with a ballpoint pen and read dispatches to my editors at The Wall Street Journal over a satellite phone. When the Taliban's defences...