Monday Winds of War Briefing

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Friday. Monday's Winds of War briefings are given by Peace Like a River and Security Watchtower.

Top Topics

* More than 40 suspected Taleban militants have been killed in clashes since Monday, the US-led coalition in Afghanistan says. The clashes between militants and Afghan and coalition soldiers took place in Zabul and Uruzgan provinces, a coalition statement said. Separately, three people have been killed in an explosion near the Afghan capital, Kabul on Friday. Canadian troops were involved in the action.

* Islamist militia, days after winning control of Mogadishu, advanced on Friday toward the last stronghold of secular warlords in Jowhar further north. Residents said the militia, who won control of the Somali capital on Monday after driving out a self-styled anti-terrorism coalition of warlords, advanced overnight closer to the warlord stronghold of Jowhar, 90 km (55 miles) to the north.

* Iran has given a mixed response to an international offer of incentives. "We should study the package offered. We should classify it. There are points which are acceptable. There are points which are ambiguous and there are points that we believe should not exist," said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. On Sunday Iran warned the IAEA not to do anything that could harm diplomatic efforts.

Other topics today include: Iran's secret nuclear activities; Extension on Hariri investigation; Jordanian MP's detained over Zarqawi death; Israeli airstrikes; Qassam rocket attacks on Israel increase; Hamas-Fatah feuding continues; U.S. student kidnapped in West Bank; Egyptian bombers trained by Hamas; Syrian plot to destabilize Qatar; Hamas ends truce with Israel; NYPD commissioner warns of homegrown terror threat; Gitmo suicides; Texas border monitoring plan; More on the aftermath of the Toronto plots; Shootings in Chechnya; Protests in the Crimea; Heavy fighting in southern Afghanistan continues; Bombing in India; Militants arrested in Pakistan; Militant compound destroyed in Waziristan; Shootings in Sri Lanka; Bashir to be released from prison; Saudi pilot with 9/11 links deported from New Zealand; German security around World Cup; Swiss thwart attack on El Al Airliner; Protests in Spain over ETA talks; Islamists consolidating power in Mogadishu; U.S. Terror warning in China; the art of aerial assassination; and more.

Iran & the Middle East

* Fresh evidence has emerged that Iran is working on a secret military project to develop nuclear weapons that has not been declared to United Nations inspectors responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear programme. IAEA experts are pressing Iran to make a full disclosure about a network of research laboratories at a secret military base outside the capital Teheran. The project, codenamed Zirzamin 27, is aimed at enabling the Iranians to undertake uranium enrichment for military application.

* Chief United Nations investigator Serge Brammertz is seeking a one-year extension on the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiki Hariri.

* Four Islamist members of the Jordanian parliament have been condemned by other MPs after they paid condolences to the family of slain al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. On Sunday the men were detained and held for questioning by the government.

* An Israeli airstrike on Sunday left two Hamas terrorists dead in the Gaza Strip, after the pair were on their way to launch rockets at Israel. An Israeli citizen was critically wounded in Negev after Palestinians launched a salvo of Qassam rockets from Gaza. Later on Sunday, a second Israeli airstrike destroyed a vehicle and wounded the driver.

* Palestinian terrorists fired more Qassam rockets at the southern Israel city of Sedot, where 54 rockets have been fired since Friday. A debate in the Israeli parliament is taking place about whether or not to retake the Gaza strip, a move Defense Minister Amir Peretz was against.

* No progress was made on a possible referendum following meetings between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. The two Palestinian factions remain at odds over the referendum and the policy towards Israel.

* A 35-year-old Israeli Arab was shot and killed Sunday and two others wounded along a major West Bank highway on the outskirts of Jerusalem, after a gunmen fired on a packed van of Israeli Arabs, then fled back to Ramallah.

* An American student was briefly kidnapped and threatened on Saturday by members of the al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades in the West Bank city of Nablus.

* Egyptian officials indicated on Saturday that they had evidence demonstrating that the suicide bombers who carried out the attacks in the Sinai Peninsula in April were trained in the Gaza Strip by Hamas operatives.

* According to the Kuwaiti daily Al Seyassah, 100 Syrian workers and 5 Syrian intelligence agents were arrested in Qatar last week where they were seeking to destabilize the ruling monarchy.

* On Saturday, Lebanon said it had arrested a man who was a key mastermind in a car bombing that killed a senior Islamic Jihad official, and who has links to Israeli intelligence.

* On Friday, Hamas' military wing announced it would no longer honor a truce with Israel, following a deadly Israeli artillery strike that killed seven civilians.

America Domestic Security & the Americas

* Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, in her first visit to the White House, discussed with President George W. Bush fortifying democracy in Latin America. Bachelet denied that Bush had pressured her to oppose Venezuela's bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Both Venezuela and Guatemala are seeking a Security Council seat representing Latin America and the Caribbean.

* Police commissioner Raymond Kelly has a warning for New Yorkers: Homegrown jihadists pose an increasing risk to the city. Kelly described the dangerous fanatics, during an exclusive interview with the Daily News, as mostly impressionable young men in their late teens and early 20s. "Immediately after 9/11 the first concern was people trying to get into the country," Kelly told The News. "Now there is an equal concern about sympathizers here in the United States taking up the cause."

* Three prisoners at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, hanged themselves, the U.S. military said Saturday. They are the first confirmed suicides at the compound.

* The U.S. Congress wants the Department of Homeland Security to explain where anti-terrorism grants are going. Criticism just keeps coming over money and how it's being doled out, USA Today says.

* The governor of Texas has announced a $5 million plan to install hundreds of night-vision cameras on private land along the Mexican border and put the live video on the Internet, so that anyone with a computer who spots illegal immigrants trying to slip across can report it on a toll-free hotline.

* Extremist internet sites are to blame for terrorists targeting Canada, not Canada's military presence in Afghanistan, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said. "Worldwide, there's a tiny percentage of individuals who, unfortunately, are affected by bizarre and horrendous items on the Internet that lead them to various ideologies," Mr. Day said.

* Critics are warning that some spiritual conferences held by Muslim organizations in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada provide platforms for extremist views that could radicalize young people. One such conference, Reviving the Islamic Spirit, which was held at the CNE grounds in Toronto last December.

* A Canadian court denied a request on Friday to delay the release on bail of an Algerian man found to have engaged in terrorist activities and to have lied about links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

* Two men accused of plotting a terrorist rampage in Canada were convicted last year of smuggling weapons into Canada that they had bought in Ohio, according to a federal agency.

* A Muslim religious leader in Toronto who knows some of those charged in the suspected bomb plot says the young men underwent rapid transformations from normal Canadian teenagers to radicalized introverts.

* The 17 boys and men whom Canadian police are calling "homegrown terrorists" forged their bonds in student clubs and on school soccer fields, chatted on the Internet, and urged each other to be heroes for their faith.

* CNN has an article on the forgotten child warriors of Colombia's largely forgotten guerrilla war. The army seized a video in northwest Colombia in May which gives fresh insight into how the country's largest Communist rebel force (FARC) continues to train children for combat in its decades-old effort to overthrow the state.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

* The Russian Federal Security Service is carrying out a special operation on the outskirt of the settlement of Yandare, where a base of militants was blocked in the woodland. A car was found at the site that was used in assaults of policemen and civilians over the past weeks.

* Gunmen raked a car with automatic fire Friday and killed a top police commander, his three young children and two other people in Ingushetia, a troubled Russian province neighboring Chechnya.

* About 200 US reservists, whose arrival in Crimea in southern Ukraine sparked anti-NATO protests, will leave by Monday, but planned military exercises may still take place. According to a Ukraine weekly publication, the riots were masterminded by the Russian special security services (FSB) on the heels of warnings from Moscow against the expansion of NATO.

* One of Russia’s leading human rights groups, Memorial, has produced what it says is documentary evidence of a secret torture and murder cell in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.

* On Saturday afternoon gunmen opened fire on Russian Defense Ministry troops near the village of Bugaroi in the southern Itum-Kala district of Chechnya, wounding two. On Saturday night, militants attacked interior troops on the outskirts of the village of Niki-Khita in the republic's southeastern Kurchaloi district, killing one soldier and wounding another.

Afghanistan & Southern Asia

* Afghan troops killed 13 suspected Taliban rebels including two Pakistani nationals in an operation in southern Afghanistan, a commander said. The rebels were killed in an army sweep of an area around Tirin Kot city, the capital of restive Uruzgan province which has seen several counter-insurgency operations in the past weeks.

* Afghan Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar says Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death will not weaken efforts against the West in Afghanistan, reports say.

* Gunmen on a motorbike killed two Afghan aid workers and government forces battled Taliban militants in the restive south as 26 people died in violence across Afghanistan, officials said Friday.

* The deadliest three weeks of violence since the fall of the Taliban has left more than 500 people dead, the U.S-led coalition said Saturday. The toll included at least 44 deaths last week.

* A large springtime offensive by Taliban fighters has turned into the strongest show of force by the insurgents since American forces chased the Taliban from power in late 2001.

* A roadside bomb hit a convoy carrying the intelligence chief of the Afghan capital, missing him but killing three others, police said Saturday. Kabul intelligence chief Humayoon Aini was returning from a meeting just south of the capital when the bomb hit his convoy in Musayi district, said Amanullah Ghazar, the Kabul police chief.

* Canadian and coalition forces cut the ribbon on a base deep in Taliban country Saturday to show rural elders their support for the Afghan government. Forward Operating Base Martello is a bleak, dusty fortress gouged deep into the top of rocky ridges that command the El Bak valley about 200 kilometres north of Kandahar.

* At least five people died and six were injured when a bomb exploded in crowded marketplace in Guwahati, the main city in India's northeastern Assam state, police said. "The explosion was very powerful with limbs of victims strewn around all over the place," police chief N. Gogoi told AFP on Friday.

* In India, the anti-terrorist squad (ATS) of the Gujarat Police Friday arrested two youth for their alleged links with militant outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).

* Suspected separatist guerrillas in India’s northeastern state of Assam triggered four explosions, blowing up oil and gas pipelines, hours after a market-place bomb killed five people, police said on Saturday. The militants blew up a pipeline carrying crude oil from a drilling site in the state’s Duliajan area, and a gas pipeline in the town of Digboi, 400 km (250 miles) east of Guwahati, the state’s main city.

* Pakistani police said they had arrested six operatives of a banned Sunni Muslim extremist group who were allegedly planning to carry out a suicide attack on a Shiite mosque. Police arrested the suspects in an early morning raid on their hideout in the rural town of Rahim Yar Khan in central Punjab province.

* A home-made bomb exploded in a restaurant in southern Pakistan today, wounding nine people, police said. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack in Hub, a town about 30 miles west of Karachi. The Balochistan police said they suspected that the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) was behind the act.

* Pakistani security forces have attacked a militant hideout near the Afghan border, killing at least 15 guerrillas, the military says. It says rockets and helicopters were used in Saturday's pre-dawn attack in the tribal region of North Waziristan. Pakistan’s army on Sunday raised the number of militants killed in a raid on a training camp a day earlier to more than 30.

* In Pakistan, police said on Friday that they had arrested six operatives of a banned Sunni extremist group who were allegedly planning to carry out a suicide attack on a Shia mosque. Police arrested the suspects in an early morning raid on their hideout in the rural town of Rahim Yar Khan in central Punjab, the town’s police chief Ahsan Mahboob told AFP.

* Pakistan strenuously denies granting sanctuary to the Taleban, yet their cause still finds succor among local Pashtuns and Islamic hard-liners, fueling suspicions that jihadi leaders may be plotting their campaign of violence from southwestern Pakistan, with militants crossing the long, porous border to launch attacks.

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

* Nepal's rebel leader Prachanda piled more pressure on the country's new government, saying that the political parties who came back into power in April were ignoring Maoist demands. The Himalayan state's parliament was reinstated in April, ending 14 months of direct rule by King Gyanendra.

* At least five people were shot dead in Sri Lanka’s restive northeast port district of Trincomalee and the main city of Colombo at the weekend, military officials said on Sunday.

Far East & Southeast Asia

* Natalie O'Brien has an article in the Australia that focuses on the three Bali bomb leaders still on the run in southeast Asia.

* Japan is seeking to work together with Malaysia in the fight against terrorism and efforts to safeguard the strategic Malacca Strait, according to a senior Japanese official. "Malaysia is our important partner because you are in command of the Malacca Strait. It is an important oil route and a lifeline to the Japanese economy," the official added.

* Three simultaneous bomb explosions rocked the Philippines on Sunday, killing one person and injuring at least four others. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

* Abu Bakar Bashir, the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, is scheduled to be released from prison in Indonesia this week and there are concerns that he may reenergize terrorists in the region. Rohan Gunaratna warned about the release, saying "He will mobilise them, he will politicise them. He has the credentials because he went to prison and he suffered. So people will join him, people will work with him. That's why he must stay in prison forever." Zachary Abuza also offers more insight.

* North Korea says it will punish the U.S., after claiming the US carried out three aerial espionage missions over North Korea in the last week.

* The New Zealand Weekend Herald is reporting on the story of Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, a Saudi pilot who trained with Hani Hanjour in Phoenix, Arizona in the months before Hanjour flew American Airline Flight 77 into the Pentagon. Ali arrived in New Zealand in February from Aucklund on a student visa, and spent four months flying at the Manawatu Aero Club before being identified and deported back to Saudi Arabia as a security risk. On Sunday, Prime Minister Helen Clark voiced her support of the operation.

* Japan's Cabinet has given its backing to new legislation which would create a defence ministry. Japan's armed forces are currently under the control of an agency which reports to the prime minister. This latest proposal, if passed by parliament, would expand the role of the country's armed forces and give the defence minister new powers.

Europe

* Two Muslim brothers arrested in an anti-terrorism raid last week on their home in London, were released without charge. Mohammed Abdul Kahar, who was shot and injured in the dawn swoop, and Abul Koyair had been held for questioning for a week as officers scoured their house, reportedly looking for some kind of chemical weapon. Reports indicate the pair may now bring a lawsuit against the police.

* German authorities have assigned a crack police team of 24 officers to keep track of Imam Saddiq Ayub, a radical Islamist with links to both the September 11 terror attacks and the Madrid train bombings because they lack evidence to detain him.

* The Swiss authorities have arrested seven North Africans on suspicion of planning a rocket attack on an Israeli El Al airliner in Geneva. The attack was due to be carried out in December. One of the suspects, Moroccan-born Mohamed Achraf, also stands accused of masterminding a plot to blow up Madrid's National Court. (Hat tip: Crossroads Arabia)

* Hundreds of people have gathered in Nuremberg to protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ahead of a World Cup match between Iran and Mexico. The protesters, who include local Jewish community and Iranian exile groups, denounced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for casting doubt on the Holocaust. Gateway Pundit has more analysis on the protests.

* Norway said it would continue to act as peace broker between Sri Lanka and Tamil Tiger rebels despite the recent breakdown in talks between the two sides, which had thrown its role into doubt.

* An estimated crowd of 200,000 marched in Madrid on Saturday, opposing government talks with ETA, the Basque nationalist group that recently abandoned its long terror campaign.

* In London, an internal Metropolitan Police report concluded that Asian Muslim officers were more likely to become corrupt than their white counterparts. "Asian officers and in particular Pakistani Muslim officers are under greater pressure from the family, the extended family...and their community against that of their white colleagues to engage in activity that might lead to misconduct or criminality."

Africa

* A symposium at NRO on Somalia examines possible consequences of the violence currently dividing that country, threatening to give Islamic militias control.

* South Sudan announced the launch of negotiations to end more than two decades of fighting in northern Uganda and appealed for the withdrawal of international arrest warrants out against rebel chiefs. Riak Machar, deputy head of south Sudan's autonomous regional government, said Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony had agreed take part in landmark peace talks in the region's capital Juba.

* The head of the UN Mission in Liberia, Mr. Alan Doss says disciplinary action has been taken by the UN Headquarters in six of the 2005 cases involving UNMIL Personnel for sexual exploitation and abuse.

* Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a radical Islamic sheikh linked to Al-Qaeda, was tightening his grip on the devastated capital of Somalia this weekend after the defeat of an alliance of secular warlords. According to reports, the Islamists are calling for holdout warlords to surrender.

* Factions from two Sudanese rebel groups that had refused to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement signed a declaration of commitment to the pact on Thursday, effectively pledging to abide by its terms.

The Global War

* The U.S. government warned Friday of possible terrorist threats to American interests and places where Americans gather in China, particularly in major cities. The notice, posted on the Web site of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and transmitted by e-mail to American citizens, said the warning was based on unconfirmed information.

* The House of Representatives voted Friday to forbid US aid to Saudi Arabia, a statement of far more symbolic importance than economic.

* The G8 finance ministers resolved to step up their efforts to combat financial flows to terrorist organisations at a meeting in St Petersburg. "We confirm our resolve to fight money laundering and terrorism financing and are committed to strengthening our systems for freezing assets and sharing information, and development of multilateral financial tools to disrupt criminal and illicit activities," the ministers said in a statement after two days of talks in this Russian city.

* TCS looks at the art of aerial assassination.

* According to a recent study, kidnappings have a more damaging financial impact on companies than other forms of terrorist attacks. The study, co-written by a Canadian finance professor, examined 75 terrorist attacks of all types between 1995 and 2002 on publicly traded companies.

* Many of the next generation of terror leaders have been killed and the results are replacements that "have fewer connections than the men they are replacing, less training and sparser resources."

* Jason Burke has an editorial in the Guardian on Sunday titled "Why bin Laden is losing his war of terror."

* A new tape release by al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called on Muslims to reject any referendum that would open the path towards recognizing Israel.

* Gulf-News is proliferating the online controversy strummed up by leftwing anti-war blogs over the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and in doing so giving them far more acknowledgment and credibility then they deserve.

* Evan Kolman's paper on "The Afghan-Bosnian Mujahideen Network in Europe" is available now.

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