Category: moslems & jihadis

Welcome back, Carter………..

By the way, SloJoe’S handlers had this group removed from the list of organizations that President Trump had designated as terrorists. These clowns simply can’t abide anything Trump did, so they’re stupidly trying to erase all of it, no matter the consequences.

Iran-Backed Militants Storm US Embassy in Yemen, Seize Hostages and Equipment
State Department ‘concerned about the breach of the compound,’ demands release of hostages

The State Department is working to secure the release of several kidnapped hostages taken by Iran-backed terrorists just a day after the militant group stormed the U.S. embassy facility in Sana’a, Yemen, U.S. officials told the Washington Free Beacon early Thursday.

A group of Houthi rebels reportedly stormed the U.S. compound on Wednesday seeking “large quantities of equipment and materials,” according to regional reports translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. The raid comes just five days after the Houthis kidnapped Yemeni nationals who work for the U.S. embassy. “The alleged raid comes after the Houthis kidnapped three Yemeni nationals affiliated with the U.S. Embassy from one of the employee’s private residences in Sana’a on November 5,” according to MEMRI. At least 22 other Yemenis were kidnapped by the Houthis in recent weeks, “most of whom worked on the security staff guarding the embassy grounds,” according to MEMRI.

The State Department confirmed to the Free Beacon that the Yemeni staffers are being detained without explanation and that the Iran-backed militants stole property after breaching the American facility in Sana’a, which housed U.S. embassy staff prior to the suspension of operations there in 2015.

“The United States has been unceasing in its diplomatic efforts to secure their release,” a State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon. “The majority of the detained have been released, but the Houthis continue to detain additional Yemeni employees of the embassy.”

Those still being held are “detained without explanation and we call for their immediate release,” the State Department spokesman said.

Among those who were kidnapped and held by the Houthis include a former embassy employee, an economic officer, and a U.S. Agency for International Development employee, according to MEMRI.

The United States is also “concerned about the breach of the compound” and is calling “on the Houthis to immediately vacate it and return all seized property.”

The Biden administration “will continue its diplomatic efforts to secure the release of our staff and the vacating of our compound, including through our international partners,” the State Department said.

The hostage situation is likely to further inflame tensions between the United States and Iran, which arms and funds the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Trump administration designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization, but that designation was removed when the Biden administration took office—a move that was seen as a goodwill gesture to coax Iran into diplomatic negotiations aimed at securing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord.

Just the Beginning: Ten Afghan Evacuees Detained as National Security Risks.

The Biden administration is giving America gifts that will keep on giving for generations to come, and one of the foremost of these gifts is the newly-arrived group of Afghan evacuees: 70,000 are now in the U.S., and the total number is expected to exceed 124,000 before long. One of Biden’s handlers, unnamed in a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report, has admitted that ten of these evacuees have already been detained as risks to national security. Only ten out of 70,000 isn’t bad, right? Sure. But Biden’s handlers’ catastrophic mishandling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan makes it virtually certain that there will be many more.

The reasons for this are clear. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas noted in late September that 60,000 Afghans had been brought to the United States by that time, including nearly 8,000 who were American citizens or residents of the country, and 1,800 had Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) issued to them for aiding the U.S. military in Afghanistan.

What about the rest? Mayorkas explained:

Of the over 60,000 individuals who have been brought into the United States [from Afghanistan]—and I will give you approximate figures and I will verify them, approximately 7 percent have been United States citizens. Approximately 6 percent have been lawful permanent residents. Approximately 3 percent have been individuals who are in receipt of the Special Immigrant Visas. The balance of that population are individuals whose applications have not yet been processed for approval who may qualify as SIVs and have not yet applied, who qualify or would qualify—I should say—as P-1 or P-2 refugees who have been employed by the United States government in Afghanistan and are otherwise vulnerable Afghan nationals, such as journalists, human rights advocates, et cetera.

The upshot of this is that over eighty percent of the Afghan evacuees were neither American citizens nor SIV holders. So who are they? No one knows. Certainly Biden’s handlers don’t. Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) recently discovered that 12,000 of the Afghans who were sent to Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar and then went on to the U.S. were not just “individuals whose applications have not yet been processed for approval,” as Mayorkas put it, but had no identification at all. Issa stated: “They came with nothing. No Afghan I.D., no I.D. of any sorts. Those people were all forwarded on to the U.S., and that’s quite an admission. So many people had no I.D. whatsoever and yet find themselves in the United States today based on what they said.”

This is no reason to be concerned, say Biden’s handlers. Another (or maybe the same one quoted before) unnamed “senior official” in the Biden administration assured the Wall Street Journal that “the use of biometric and biographic data was a robust screening strategy, as the U.S. had decades to build up databases of information related to national security threats and crime. The official said it was sufficient to address the lack of paperwork or other identifying information.” The official downplayed any risk: “In the case of Afghanistan, we had quite a lot [of data] because we’ve spent almost 20 years in the country. It was actually a particularly rich set of information in those various databases.”

National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne added: “The fact that some have been flagged by our counterterrorism, intelligence, or law enforcement professionals for additional screening shows our system is working. Many of the same people criticizing us for bringing in Afghans were on TV calling for us to evacuate as many Afghans as possible in August.”

There are, as you no doubt already realize, not a few flies in this ointment. The Journal also noted that “federal officials interviewed at U.S. bases overseas stated to Republican aides that they didn’t have any training in identifying fraudulent Afghan documents, raising concerns about the validity of documents that were used.” As a result, several Afghans were able to board a flight in Mazar-e-Sharif with fraudulent documents. They were caught, but how many others weren’t? “There were several people who were traveling with fake passports,” the Biden wonk admitted. However, relax: “They did not have Taliban affiliation.”

Great. But the number of evacuees who have already aroused suspicion is greater than the ten who have been flagged as national security risks. The Washington Post reported on September 10 that “the Department of Homeland Security flagged 44 Afghan evacuees as potential national security risks during the past two weeks as the government screened tens of thousands for resettlement in the United States.”

Not only is the potential for deception virtually limitless when dealing with people who have absolutely no identification; it also must be borne in mind that these people have come from a jihadi hotspot and that ISIS, which has a significant presence in Afghanistan, has repeatedly told its operatives in the West to affect Western clothing and a secular outward appearance in order to fool gullible security officials. And Biden’s security apparatus is so very eager to be fooled, it even denies the ideological and theological basis of Islamic jihad terrorism. How, then, can it vet for it? It can’t. And that means that these ten evacuees who have been detained are only the beginning.

Biden’s Folly Armed the Taliban, But He Still Wants Your AR-15

A long the long, dusty roads that connect Afghanistan’s city of Mazar-e-Sharif, capital of Balkh province, to the country’s northern neighbor of Uzbekistan, I saw remnants of Afghan army uniforms, as well as beaten-down Humvees and armored personnel carriers. This was in the immediate aftermath of Balkh province’s fall to the Taliban in August, but within a week, such high-priced goods—courtesy of the United States taxpayer—were simply picked up after being abandoned and shuffled into the new regime’s burgeoning arsenal.

Indeed, members of the brutal outfit wasted no time in recovering the billions-of-dollars-worth of equipment left behind by the fleeing, defeated Afghan National Security Forces. Moreover, the Taliban foot soldiers were quick to start showing off the loot; many even took and sent selfies posing with their new American guns. In Kandahar—the symbolic birthplace of the Taliban—U.S.-funded military hardware was paraded through the streets.

And, according to news reports, in the rare cases a citizen possessed a firearm, the Taliban quickly stripped them of it. “It is terrifying,” one resident in the freshly fallen Kandahar city said to me from his home, which he had barely left for weeks on end. “We weren’t even allowed to buy a single small gun to defend ourselves. Now, this.”

The hard-line Islamic insurgency now has its hands on everything from guns and ammunition to night-vision equipment, helicopters and heavy weapons. It is all courtesy of Washington’s chaotic and hasty withdrawal from a country that was clearly unable to stand on its own feet despite reassurances from the Biden administration, decades of training Afghan military and police forces and gargantuan sums of money tossed its way.

Even more disconcerting is that the Taliban were able to seize and keep their U.S.-financed arms right under the nose of the Americans, with little being done to recapture or destroy the weapons that had tumbled into dangerous hands.

The U.S. military at least disabled some of its high-powered goods just prior to departing Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in one small attempt to make sure they didn’t add to the terrorist stockpile.

Matériel the Biden administration left behind for the Taliban

Meanwhile, law-abiding Americans must ask why the Biden administration did nothing to stop the Taliban—and the terrorists in their ranks—from getting actual “weapons of war,” even as Biden and anti-Second Amendment extremists are doing all they can to take ordinary semi-automatic rifles away from American citizens.

On the campaign trail, both President Joe Biden (D) and Vice President Kamala Harris (D) pledged to enact more onerous Second Amendment restrictions. Now, national security adviser Jake Sullivan has been forced to admit that the Taliban has recovered a “fair amount” of U.S.-provided military equipment and that they “don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone.”

“We don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport,” Sullivan said wearily, prior to the final evacuation of HKIA by American forces.

Intelligence estimates suggest that the Taliban now possesses thousands of armored vehicles and hundreds of aircraft, along with countless guns. Additionally, over the course of the war, the U.S. supplied the now-defunct Afghan forces with hundreds of thousands of small arms and millions of rounds of ammunition. One of the biggest reasons why the Taliban was able to capture key terrain so quickly toward the end of the Afghanistan fall was because they were able to scoop up and use the U.S. weapons.

Yet, the Biden administration doesn’t think Americans can be trusted with the freedom to protect themselves. Instead, Biden thinks American citizens should have to entirely rely on the government to protect them. In June, the Biden team asked the U.S. Senate to “ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.” In stark contrast, no one on the Biden team seems too disturbed by the number of Afghans who will suffer at the receiving end of U.S.-issued weapons inside the beleaguered country.

It should also be stressed that whatever happens in Afghanistan does not stay in Afghanistan. And whatever the Taliban possesses now will not likely remain solely in their bloodied hands. The Haqqani network, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, is considered a branch of the Taliban, and has already been put in charge of running Kabul’s security. Kabul’s new leadership is also closely aligned to the few hundred al-Qaeda personnel still operating in Afghanistan.

Adding insult to injury are the disturbing ground reports and imagery indicating the moving of arms and machinery to Iran, where these weapons could be used against American interests in Iraq.

The region has a robust black market that is used by all sides of the equation; meaning that there is little doubt the weapons will be bought and sold to members of the even-more-brutal ISIS-K affiliate that also operates in the region. In addition, the Taliban is already showing signs of leadership struggles and internal power plays, multiple sources warn, which means that splinter terrorist groups, including elements even more hard-line and vicious than the Taliban, could pose additional international security threats in the weeks and months to come.

Chillingly, the Taliban may now be the first terrorist organization with an air force, and the Biden team is unwilling to do anything about it. Instead, they continue to go after the guns used by law-abiding American citizens to protect themselves and their loves ones.

Can we now have an honest discussion about Islamist terrorism?

Police think the killing of David Amess may have had an Islamist motivation. We need to talk about this. [ya think?]

Another “Known Wolf”. Almost like it’s not a bug, but a feature.

Sir David Amess: MP murder suspect detained under Terrorism Act.

The man arrested by police following the killing of the MP Sir David Amess has been named as Ali Harbi Ali.

The 25-year-old is being held under the Terrorism Act and officers have until Friday to question him.

The BBC understands Mr Ali was referred to the counter-terrorist Prevent scheme some years ago, but was never a formal subject of interest to MI5.

Whitehall officials told the BBC that the man being held was Ali Harbi Ali, a British man of Somali heritage.

Police said a man, who was held on suspicion of the MP’s murder in Essex on Friday, was now being held at London police station after being rearrested under the Terrorism Act. They are not looking for anyone else.

Early investigations revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamic extremism, police said on Friday.

Continue reading “”

Here’s the part that is seen so often
It’s like it’s not a bug, but a feature.
Kongsberg: Bow and arrow suspect known to Norway police

A man arrested over a deadly bow and arrow attack in Norway had converted to Islam and there were fears he had been radicalised, police say.

The 37-year-old Danish citizen is accused of killing four women and a man on Wednesday night in the southern town of Kongsberg.

Police were in contact with the man last year over their concerns.

The suspect has not been identified, and police are working to establish whether it was a terror attack.

Meanwhile, flags were flown at half-mast on Thursday while flowers and other memorials were placed in Kongsberg’s main square.

The victims were all aged between 50 and 70, regional police chief Ole Bredrup Saeverud told reporters.

Residents have told local media that the close-knit community has been deeply shaken by the violence.

Police confronted the man six minutes after the attack began at 18:12 (16:12 GMT) on Wednesday, but he shot several arrows at the officers and escaped. He was caught at 18:47 – 35 minutes after the attack started.

All five victims are believed to have been killed after the police first encountered the man. Officers fired warning shots before he was eventually arrested.

Man armed with bow and arrow kills five people in Norway attacks

OSLO, Oct 13 (Reuters) – A man armed with a bow and arrow killed five people and wounded two others in a series of attacks in the Norwegian town of Kongsberg on Wednesday, local police said.

The suspect was in custody, police added.

“The man used a bow and arrow … for some of the attacks,” police chief Oeyvind Aas told reporters. The police were investigating whether other weapons had also been used, he said.

“The man has been apprehended … from the information we now have, this person carried out these actions alone,” Aas added.

One of the wounded people was an off-duty police officer.

Newspaper VG showed images of an arrow that appeared to be stuck in the wall of a wood-paneled building.

Continue reading “”

Remember this?:
Blinken Admits Most Afghans Were Not Vetted Before Boarding US Evacuation Planes

Assault on female US service member by male Afghan refugees at Fort Bliss under FBI investigation

An investigation is underway into an alleged attack of a female U.S. military service member by several male Afghan evacuees being housed at Fort Bliss.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has confirmed to Fox News it is investigating a referral from a Fort Bliss Afghan refugee housing complex in New Mexico alleging that a woman, whose name and age are unknown at this time, was assaulted on Sept. 19 by a “small group of male evacuees.”

“We received the referral from Fort Bliss and our office is investigating the allegation,” FBI Public Affairs Officer Special Agent Jeanette Harper told Fox News.

Officials at Fort Bliss confirmed the report of the assault to Fox News.

“We can confirm a female service member supporting Operation Allies Welcome reported being assaulted on Sept. 19 by a small group of male evacuees at the Doña Ana Complex in New Mexico,” the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss Public Affairs said in an emailed statement. “We take the allegation seriously and appropriately referred the matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The safety and well-being of our service members, as well as all of those on our installations, is paramount.”

The statement added that counseling and support has been provided to the service member.

“Task Force-Bliss is also implementing additional security measures to include increased health and safety patrols, additional lighting, and enforcement of the buddy system at the Dona Ana Complex,” the statement continued. “We will cooperate fully with the FBI and will continue to ensure the service member reporting this assault is fully supported.”

Rep. Yvette Herrell, a Republican congresswoman who represents New Mexico’s 2nd congressional district, called the news a “vetting failure.”

“My prayers are with the courageous soldier and her family. This is yet another tragic failure in the vetting process for Afghan nationals,” Herrell tweeted. “The American people deserve answers.”

The alleged attack comes on the heels of two Afghan refugees housed at Wisconsin’s Fort McCoy being indicted for federal crimes including sexual assault on a minor and domestic assault.

Bahrullah Noori, a 20-year-old Afghan evacuee, is being charged with attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor using force against that person, along with three other counts of engaging in a sex act with a minor, according to a statement from the Department of Justice. Additionally, 32-year-old Mohammad Haroon Imaad is being charged with assaulting his wife by choking and suffocating her on September 17.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have reacted to the news of violence carried out by Afghan refugees being housed in the United States with demands for answers from the Biden administration.

On Thursday night, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford and four other Republican senators sent a letter to the Biden administration seeking more details on the way Afghan refugees are being vetted.

“How many Afghan nationals are waiting on background checks at a transit site? How many Afghan nationals have been paroled into the United States?” the Republican senators asked. “What specific categories, classes, or criteria constitute the Administration’s definition of ‘vulnerable Afghans’? How many individuals who have been paroled into the United States fall under each category, class, or criteria?”

Earlier this month, an official with the Biden administration categorically denied anyone “of concern” had made it into the country, saying there is a “second layer” of screening once a refugee gets to a U.S. entry point.

“No one has gotten into the United States or entered that is of concern,” the official said. “The administration is working with urgency and with care to enhance the screening and vetting operations to make them more efficient without compromising U.S. national security.”

Finally:
Action on Taliban Hostage Situation With Americans in Mazar-i-Sharif.
But that’s only one (1) of six planes that sitting there.

 

France kills ISIS leader who killed 4 US troops in 2017 Niger ambush

The ISIS leader behind the 2017 Niger attack that led to the deaths of four U.S. troops, was killed in an August drone strike, according to the French military.

Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, the leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, had been killed in a French drone strike. Sahrawi was killed near the border between Mali and Niger.

French President Emmanuel Macron first announced Sahrawi’s death in a Wednesday tweet. “Adnan Abou Walid al Sahrawi, leader of the terrorist group Islamic State in the Greater Sahara was neutralized by French forces. This is another major success in our fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel.”

French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly discussed the strike further in a Thursday press conference.

Makes me wonder what the payoff was.

Taliban Agrees to Let Hundreds of Americans, Other Foreigners Leave Afghanistan

The Taliban will reportedly allow 200 Americans and other foreigners to leave on a flight to Qatar from the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

A U.S. official spoke to Reuters about the departure, which is expected on Thursday and came after pressure from U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad.

The Qatari official said it wasn’t an evacuation flight as all of the passengers hold foreign passports and, if required, visas for their destinations, and have been ticketed by the airline. Qatar facilitated the transportation of the passengers to the airport in a convoy of minibuses parked Thursday morning in a Kabul hotel, one of them with a bullet hole through the windshield. The buses entered the airport shortly after 2 p.m. local time.

At the international terminal, passengers were divided by nationality, with Americans—all of them appearing to be of Afghan origin—mostly too traumatized by the ordeal of recent weeks to speak to a reporter. Qatari soldiers were providing security. (WSJ)

There are still thousands of Afghans who hold Special Immigrant Visas due to having helped the U.S. military and civilian effort that are still stranded.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken finally acknowledged that the Taliban is not allowing chartered flights to leave.

“We’ve made clear to all parties—we’ve made it clear to the Taliban—that these charters need to be able to depart,” he said.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Taliban officials told those arranging charter flights that they could only allow those with valid documentation to leave from Kabul, not Mazar-i-Sharif, prompting U.S. officials to tell Americans in at the Northern Afghanistan airport to come back to Kabul.

The Thirteen-Hundred-And-Eighty-Nine-Year War

During an interview regarding the recent suicide attack on Kabul airport, a former Navy SEAL quipped that no one making military decisions for the United States seems to have read a history book. Lack of knowledge, he implied, is partly why America is suffering a humiliating and unconscionable defeat in Afghanistan.

Here, then, is a short skeletal history of Muslim-Christian relations beginning with Islam’s founding in 622 AD by Muhammad, an Arab military leader intent on unifying the Arab world and conquering the rest. The lessons learned might put us on the right path forward.

Muhammad died in 632 and, soon thereafter, his followers began Muslim military advances into the Christian Levant. In your mind’s eye, if you can picture the Mediterranean Sea on your left, the landmass to its right – Syria, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and part of Turkey—is known as the Levant, which means the place where the sun rises. A great trading center in ancient and medieval times, conquering the Levant was the Muslims’ first great conquest over the Christian Greeks at the Battle of Yarmuk, in 636, only four years after Muhammad’s death. Jerusalem surrendered in 638.

Islam pushed on vigorously after this battle, sweeping over North Africa, uniting Arab countries, and setting its sights on conquering Constantinople, the Greek capital. Today, Constantinople is known as Istanbul and is part of Turkey. In 717, however, at what is known as the Siege of Constantinople, 80,000 Muslim troops and 1,880 galleys laid siege to the city. Possessing the equivalent of napalm, a fire that is very difficult to put out, the Greeks set fire to the galleys and after a year of siege and attack without success, Muslim forces retreated.

This Christian victory is thought to have slowed Muslim conquest of Europe but Islam penetrated Europe by crossing the Gibraltar Strait into Spain. Not content, in 732, Muslim forces moved north into what is now France. At this time France, western Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands were part of the Frankish Empire, led by Charles Martel, or Charles the Hammer, and his victory over the Muslim attack at the Battle of Tours, in France, is credited with reversing Islam’s spread in Europe. Christianity, not fully established in Western Europe at this time, began to unify Western Civilization around the Roman Catholic Church.

So, here is one of the great moments of history. Were it not for Charles Martel, Europe would have been swept up in the advance of Islam instead of the advance of Christianity. One of the differences is Christianity’s mental openness to science and intellectual inquiry – hence the rise of the great universities of Europe and Europe’s eventual influence on America.

The story does not end here. The struggle continued back and forth for another 1,289 years. Muslim Turks defeated the Christian Greeks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Greeks had re-conquered the Levant in the 1100s but lost again at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. Back and forth it went. Muslim victories – then Christian victories – finally ending at the Siege of Acre in 1291 when the last of the Crusader influence was dispelled from the Holy Lands and the Hospitallers moved to Cyprus and Rhodes, where they held out until 1523.

Islam had conquered Spain. Islam had conquered the Holy Lands. Islam had conquered the Levant.

Islam laid siege to the Greek capital, Constantinople, which surrendered in 1453. That surrender marks the end of the Roman Empire and a victory for the Muslim Ottomans.

Painstakingly, Western Civilization began to fight back. Spain was re-conquered at the Battle of Navas de Tolosa in 1212.

[if I may interject, this isn’t correct. While the battle was a major turning point, the final battle of the Reconquista was in 1492 .ed]

A fleet of the Holy League, mostly from Spain and Venice, fought the last rowing naval battle at Lepanto, in 1571, routing the Muslims. Finally, in 1683, the Muslim Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire fought it out literally at the gates of Vienna. The Ottoman defeat there meant that Islam ceased to be a menace to the West, especially with the Ottoman Empire’s and caliphate’s final dissolution on March 23, 1924, after World War I.

America was colonized by Christian Europe, specifically Protestant Christian Europe, beginning in 1607 at Jamestown, Virginia, and Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. Americans take for granted the intense battle for humanity’s mind that this history represents. The notion of natural individual rights through a Creator; the notion of the development of the person (male or female); the notion of personal Liberty; the notion of people as a reflection of the divine—the undergirding of our way of life is the result of being on the Western side of this war.

We are now at the Battle of Afghanistan, 2021. Because our military and political leaders have not read a history book, they deem it a 20-year war, but they are wrong. It is a thirteen-hundred-and-eighty-nine-year war that we will lose because we do not know we are in it.

The Navy SEAL was right. Our political and military leaders make decisions without a clue. We had a stable and neutralized position in Afghanistan, with very few troops, that served as a check on Islamic Jihad and the rise of an Islamic caliphate and harsh Sharia Law.

We do not need to be there to nation-build—something that anyone who knows history knows cannot be successful. We are there because Islam decided to attack the West once again in 2001. We are there to save Western Civilization. We cannot allow a humiliating defeat.

BLUF:
Most people realize [that] people who wish them to be disarmed do so because they wish to do things that would be difficult to accomplish if the people were armed.

Conventional Excuse for Gun Confiscation: The Taliban Will Protect You

The classic case for confiscation of weapons in Western Civilization in the last hundred years, is the government will defend you. You do not need weapons to defend yourself.  The Taliban is reported to have emulated this Western propaganda in Kabul, after taking over in August of 2021.

From Reuters.com:

KABUL, Aug 16 (Reuters) – Taliban fighters in the Afghan capital, Kabul, started collecting weapons from civilians on Monday because people no longer need them for personal protection, a Taliban official said.

“We understand people kept weapons for personal safety. They can now feel safe. We are not here to harm innocent civilians,” the official told Reuters.

The Taliban are following a long tradition of disarming individuals under the pretext individuals do not need weapons because the government will protect them. The Taliban feels the need to add a caveat:

“We are not here to harm innocent civilians.”

As governments became more sophisticated in their need to dissimulate, they often claim the government will protect people, so they do not need weapons.

It is a claim made in the English experience with gun control. Joyce Lee Malcolm documents this in her scholarly book “Guns and Violence: The English Experience”.  On page 176, she documents a significant expansion of the law against the carry of weapons in 1953. Sir Lionel Heald, the Attorney General, is promoting the bill. He says: It is the duty of society to protect them, and they should not have to do that… The argument of self-defense is one to which, perhaps, we should not attach too much weight.

Self-defense was specifically eliminated as a reason to have a firearm in English, Canadian, and later, Australian law.

Gun control laws, and the number of legal, or even illegal firearms, have not shown any correlation to violent crime.

They show an unwillingness of governments to trust their people with weapons.

Most European gun control laws were created after World War I and before World War II, for political purposes, not crime control. Murder rates were essentially unchanged, although, as expected, there was a spike during World War II.

In India, the British instituted weapons control after the Mutiny/uprising in 1857. It was clear the purpose was to prevent uprisings. Most gun control laws were the result of conquest and war.

Misleading the people who are governed in order to disarm them has a long and unpleasant history. Niccoló Machiavelli, known as the father of modern political science, states deception when disarming people is a necessary thing.

“For it is enough to ask a man to give up his arms, without telling him that you intend killing him with them; after you have the arms in hand, then you can do your will with them.”  The Discourses, end of chapter XLIV

In the Koran, it is permissible to lie and deceive in order to gain an advantage to advance the cause of Islam.

Most people realize people who wish them to be disarmed do so because they wish to do things that would be difficult to accomplish if the people were armed.

The Afghan revolt against the Soviet-installed regime started with the puppet government’s attempt to disarm Afghans.

This is not an auspicious start for a new Taliban government. Afghans love their weapons.  Afghanistan is a land of warring tribes.  A man is expected to be able to defend himself and his tribe.

Just to point out

Do you notice the trigger finger discipline in the Taliban pictures?
That’s U.S. military weapon safety doctrine on display.
There is intelligence that many of the ANA (Afghan National Army) trainees were either Taliban or tribal warlord troops, sent to enlist in the ANA to get training, and gain knowledge of US weapons, then desert back to their true allegiances.

These people may be illiterate members of tribes of goat herders, but they are not stupid.

The road from civilian disarmament to tyranny is short.

That was yesterday:

This is today:

Report: Taliban Seizing Personal Weapons Because Afghans ‘Can Now Feel Safe’

Taliban jihadists reportedly began seizing personal weapons from Afghans in Kabul on Sunday, claiming civilians “can now feel safe” and no longer need the firearms because the terrorists had taken over the country.

Taliban officials declared victory and the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan after occupying the presidential palace in Kabul on Sunday.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar appeared in a Twitter video alongside other Taliban leaders, in which he pronounced victory in the battle for Afghanistan.

“We have achieved an unexpected victory. Now is the time to test, to show how we serve our people and ensure their future in the best possible way,” he reportedly said.

The Guardian reports that Baradar is the Taliban’s “political chief and it’s most public face.” He was released from “a Pakistani jail on the request of the U.S. less than three years ago.”

Within hours of Barader’s announcement, Reuters reported, citing a Taliban official, that the group had begun confiscating weapons in the capital. The outlet quoted him as saying, “We understand people kept weapons for personal safety. They can now feel safe. We are not here to harm innocent civilians.”

They noted MOBY Group media company’s Saad Mohseni, a Kabul resident, tweeted that “Taliban soldiers had come to his company compound to enquire [sic] about the weapons kept by his security team.”

The Moby Group is a news and entertainment provider operating in Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia. Moby serves “over 300 million people through its activities in broadcasting, digital and online, production, strategic communications, publishing, music, sports, and research.”

A tweet from TOLONews told the same story:

Opinions from some people with a lot of military experience:

Remember 2010? While the Obama admin was in the process of pissing away the win in Iraq, and giving that place to the Iranians, predictably precipitating the rise both Iran and ISIS, Biden was given the job of deciding what to do with Afghanistan.

Afghanistan was the war the lefties liked. But only to beat up on Iraq. They said all the resources should go to Afghanistan.

But when Petraeus put forward a surge/anti-corruption reform plan for Afghanistan, Biden, directed to look at that, dithered for six months. Or maybe it was nine, I forget. Then he cut the request in half.

Trump had the Taliban at the table. Biden dropped the ball on that.

Trump would not be leaving the people who helped us to be slaughtered by the Taliban.

It’s going to be a blood bath, and all that blood is on Biden’s hands. But whoever is actually running the Biden admin is shrugging about that. All they care about is it will make Biden look like shit.

Their lapdogs in the media will cast it as Bush and Trump’s fault, though. They’ll say Biden just inherited it. So they aren’t too worried about it

They’ll also wring hands and point fingers at their pals in the intelligence community, throw some blame that way.

Hey, in fairness, maybe if those guys hadn’t been so busy cooking up bs vs Trump the last four years …
There’ll be plenty of blame to go around. Go being the operative word.

Locals would have be crazy to cooperate with us in hostile zones, given our track record. That’s like marrying a wifebeater. Going on a carefree roadtrip with a serial killer.

It’s a debacle. But a sure sign that it won’t go well for Biden is that the military brass have already thrown him under the bus with “he didn’t take our advice” leaks.

Multiple things can be true at once:

The decision to stay in AfPak 20 years ago (as compared to punishing those who perpetrated 9/11) was a bad one. This is the first and hardest leason.

Having made it, the Powell Doctrine—“you break it you buy it”—only applies as long as there’s political will.

Afghans cannot be governed the same way as Western traditions hold as a model. Whatever way works isn’t that.

Pretending it can does not help. The mass delusion of everyone thinking it could, the “clap harder if you believe in fairies” model of wishcasting that has dominated the mission there, wasn’t as deadly as Ypres, but is just as dangerous.

The last twenty years show the US intelligence and military communities are led by no one you’d want there. The last year, especially.

Given the decision to stay, having attempted to help the Afghan peoples build a working government and army, at some point the Powell Doctrine expires. A decade was probably enough. I will stipulate “at some point” and leave it there.

So, then, two things can simultaneously be true in the above:

Americans are tired of forever wars, and

Americans assumed that the exit would look less like a complete hiding and defeat in detail, given the assurances to the contrary they heard from those in charge.

Ok, three: it IS a complete hiding and defeat in detail, with the news of mass murder and the usual Taliban slavery reinstated. Plus bonus gifts of an entire war machine given to seventh century mass murderers.

Then, on to the bonus round of things that are true:

There have not been US official casualties for over 17 months in theatre. That’s not to say operators didn’t eat it or that the Vietnamization repeat, echoes of 1971-75, didn’t play out horrifyingly fast. Not even four months, let alone four years. That there was, that it happened exactly that way, shows the mass failure of the USG and the Afghani power structure.

The Taliban didn’t even have to use a mass tank attack to make the Afghan “government” fall, a la Saigon. Does that mean the US should have kept propping up the wretched and corrupt Afghan government forever? I say “no”. Let’s say our lesson is: “insurgencies win when no one opposes them”, for now. What else we might learn from all this blood and treasure, I don’t know yet. But that, at least.

The Taliban’s new buddies are the ChiComs. Belt and Road. Whether they will fare better in the Graveyard of Empires than anyone else in the last 200 years is yet to be determined. But they sure are going to look to make a buck there.

As Africa, the West Pacific, and much of the ME show, the ChiComs don’t have to be world cops. World Ferengi works just fine for them. As HK, the Spratlys and Uighurs show, they don’t much care what anyone thinks or says.

The free people of Taiwan now know the US guarantees aren’t enough. Whether they remain free through the end of the year is yet to be seen.

And, most ominously for anyone who thinks the USG should do better, we know one very troubling thing: those who are willing to fight and die for our freedom will think at least one more time before they enlist.

BLUF:
If people are suspicious of Islam, Rizwan Wadan could fight that by confronting, rather than perpetuating, the perception that claims regarding Islam being peaceful are disingenuous and based on an incomplete reading of the relevant texts. Instead, he has produced yet another deceptive endeavor that is just going to create more of the “Islamophobia,” in the sense of suspicion of Islam, that he claims to be trying to stamp out.

Star Wars Filmmaker Makes Documentary Slamming ‘Islamophobia,’ Ends Up Showing Why There Is ‘Islamophobia’

Here’s something you’ve all been waiting for: A Muslim filmmaker has produced a documentary hitting “Islamophobia.” Rizwan Wadan, who was part of the technical crew for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Churchill and The Favourite, has directed a documentary entitled Error In Terror about “Islamophobia,” and is now traveling around with it, spreading peace and tolerance. The only problem is that Error in Terror itself only reinforces why some people are suspicious of Islam in the first place and wary regarding its growth in Western countries.

The problem starts with the term itself. “Islamophobia” is a fraught word, because while it is thrown around all the time these days, few of those who use it to defame and smear others bother to explain what they mean by it. It is most commonly used for two quite distinct phenomena: vigilante crimes against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which is always necessary. Islamic advocacy groups and their leftist allies have been insisting for years that such analysis, too, constituted “Islamophobia,” and continue to try to drive such analysis outside the bounds of acceptable discourse by conflating it with those attacks on innocent Muslims.

Rizwan Wadan doesn’t appear to take any pains to explain what he means by the term, either. According to a report from Britain’s ITV News Saturday, Wadan is “a talented filmmaker who has worked on blockbusters including Star Wars and The Favourite,” and has now “produced a hard-hitting film which highlights terrorism and Islamophobia in the UK. It is part of his Error In Terror campaign, which he is bringing to different parts of the country to inspire communities and effect change.”

“Growing up as a Muslim, living in the UK,” Wadan explained, “I’ve seen our relationships within the communities deteriorate. And that’s kind of happened – from my perspective – through how Islam and Muslims have been perceived. A lot of that has come through our representation in films, in the news, in newspapers.”

Now come on, Rizwan. Honestly, when did you last see a negative portrayal of Muslims in films, in the news, or in newspapers, except in the case of jihad terror attacks in which the identity of the perpetrator was impossible to conceal? The international media goes to immense lengths to make sure that no one gets a negative view of Islam or Muslims.

One notorious example of this is the fact that in the British media, gangs of Muslims who sexually abused and exploited thousands of British girls for years were universally referred to as “Asians,” despite the protests of non-Muslim Asian groups and the fact, which some of the rapists openly confessed, that this activity was based on Islamic principles.

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