 Taliban fighters have staged a series of attacks in the centre of Kabul, with gunfire and several explosions reported at locations across the Afghan capital. Early reports of the attacks, which began on Monday close to the presidential palace, said that at least four people had been killed and that several people had been injured. Farhad Paiker, an Afghan journalist, told Al Jazeera that the strikes had spread to other parts of the city. "A suicide bomber in a car came towards the foreign ministry. Security forces tried to stop it and it hit a shopping centre," he said. "It is really chaotic in the area." Later a car bomb exploded near another shopping centre, close to the education ministry. A security source was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying that a suicide bomber had killed "several police and intelligence officials". The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying that 20 of their fighters were involved in the clashes. Afghan security forces have locked down the centre of the city. Nato's international forces were also reportedly helping to secure the area. "We can confirm that four suicide bombers have been killed," Zemarai Bashery, an interior ministry spokesman, told Al Jazeera. He said that two of the attackers had taken refuge in a building and had been killed by security forces. Qais Azimy, Al Jazeera's Kabul producer, reporting about 200m from the secene of some of the fighting, said: "There are hundreds of Afghan army and police and intelligence officials present. Civilians have completely left the area. "It is a big question mark how they [the fighters] got so close to the presidential palace." David Chater, Al Jazeera's correspondent who was at the Serena Hotel surrounded by the fighting, said: "We've heard four large explosions very close to the hotel. I'm told the fighting is close to the presidential palace. "There is fierce gunfire very close to me ... a heavy gunfight going on at the moment. "It is extraordinary that security has been breached to this extent," he said, adding that it showed the Taliban could act at will. The Serena Hotel, which is frequented by foreign journalists, was reported to be on fire shortly after the attacks began. Chater said there had been recent warnings that opposition fighters had hijacked six armoured cars and were planning an attack on the capital. The attack appears to be the most co-orindinated offensive on the capital since the US-led invasion in 2001 that toppled the Taliban from power. But Afghan politicians insisted the Taliban attack held little significance. "They did attack any important ministry," Mir Ahmed Joyenda, an Afghan parliamentarian, told Al Jazeera. "It does not mean the Taliban is strong. It means they can not target military targets only the Afghan people. It means that they are weak." Even so, the attack comes at a sensitive time in Afghan politics with Hamid Karzai, the president, yet to finalise his cabinet after disputed elections. Chater said that the strikes will bring into question the credibility of Karzai's authority and the military strategy in Afghanistan of Barack Obama, the US president. Obama committed 30,000 extra troops to the country at the end of last year, to be focused on training local security forces, after much deliberation. The attack also comes ahead of the London Conference on Afghanistan hosted by the UK, UN and Afghanistan on January 28 on winning the conflict in the country. Al Jazeera 
 A leading Muslim organisation in Britain has issued a fatwa against suicide bombings and terrorism, declaring them un-Islamic.Minhaj-ul-Quran, a Sufi organisation based in East London which advises the Government on how to combat radicalisation of Muslim youth, will launch the 600-page religious verdict tomorrow.
It condemns the perpetrators of terrorist explosions and suicide bombings.The document, written by Dr Muhammed Tahir-ul-Qadri, a former minister of Pakistan and friend of Benazir Bhutto, declares suicide bombings and terrorism as "totally un-Islamic". It is one of the most detailed and comprehensive documents of its kind to be published in Britain. The fatwa, which was released in Pakistan last month, uses texts from the Koran and other Islamic writings to argue that attacks against innocent citizens are "absolutely against the teachings of Islam and that Islam does not permit such acts on any excuse, reason or pretext". Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri, who is based in Canada and has written more than 400 books on Islamic law, said: "All these acts are grave violations of human rights and constitute kufr, disbelief, under Islamic law."(...) Radical Islamists will dismiss the fatwa but it will be welcomed by many Muslims from the large community of South Asian heritage in Britain, among whom confusion about religious teaching is exploited by extremists seeking to recruit suicide bombers. "Extremist groups start brainwashing the young students from British universities and eventually convince them to oppose integration in British society," said Shahid Mursaleen, a spokesman for Minhaj-ul-Quran.The fatwa would help fight extremist recruitment of young Muslims and was "one of the most comprehensive verdicts on this topic in the history of Islam", he added. Inayat Bunglawala, former spokesman of the Muslim Council of Britain and founder of the new group Muslims4UK, set up to counter the radical message of the newly banned Islam4UK and other extremist groups, welcomed the fatwa. "This adds to the view of many Islamic scholars internationally that terrorism and suicide bombings are unacceptable in Islam," he said. "It is a positive initiative. Anything that helps move young people away from violence and from those who promote violence must be welcomed."
( more) Source: Times OnlineSee also: UK: International anti-extremism youth camp
 The Pakistani Taliban has released an audiotape which it says is proof that Hakimullah Mehsud, ( pictured), its leader, was not killed in a US missile attack earlier this week. The tape, purportedly carrying the voice of Mehsud, condemned the rumours of his death, but made no reference to the raid which killed 18 people in North Waziristan. "Sometimes they [the government] launch propaganda about my martyrdom through media and sometimes they say that the operation has been completed in South Waziristan," the recording, released to media on Friday, said. "This can never happen," it continued, referring to military operations against Taliban strongholds launched last year. Reporters familiar with Mehsud said the voice appeared to be his, but it was impossible to confirm if it was recorded before or after Thursday's raid. Mehsud is know to have recorded a number of similar tapes after an attempt on his life in October. Conflicting reports emerged from intelligence agents and security officials on Friday, with some saying Mehsud was injured, while others said the he and some of his senior commanders were probably killed. "So far we do not have confirmation of him either getting killed or getting injured. It will take a little more time to confirm this or otherwise," Major-General Athar Abbas, a military spokesman, told the AFP news agency. The Taliban has issued a number of statements denying Mehsud's death, and Azam Tariq, one of their spokesmen, said his boss had left the Shaktoi area struck by the missiles "40 to 60 minutes" before the raid. "Hakimullah is alive and safe. I met with him last night, there was not even a scratch on him," Tariq told AFP on Friday. Mehsud took over as leader of the Pakistani Taliban five months ago, after Baitullah Mehsud, his predecessor, was killed in a US drone attack. The Taliban denied Baitullah Mehsud's death for weeks, apparently amid fierce infighting over his successor. The "Mehsud audiotape" was released against a backdrop of continued violence in different parts of Pakistan. A suicide bomber attacked a military vehicle in the southern part of Pakistani-administered Kashmir on Saturday, killing two soldiers, security officials said. The bomber attacked the vehicle as it was travelling near the town of Rawalakot, the officials said. "It was a suicide blast, the target was an army vehicle," Sardar Khurshid, a senior police official, told the AFP news agency by telephone. Chaudhry Raqeeb, a senior administrative official, told AFP: "Two security personnel have been injured. The injured were immediately shifted to the nearby hospital." On December 27, a suicide bomber killed seven people outside a Shia Muslim mosque in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir. The Kashmir bombing followed US drone raids in North Waziristan in which at least five fighters were killed. One of those killed on Friday was on the FBI's most-wanted list, Pakistani intelligence officials said. Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim was reportedly wanted for his alleged role in a deadly 1986
plane hijacking and had a $5 million bounty on his head. The FBI's website identifies him as a Palestinian with possible Lebanese citizenship, who was a member of the armed Palestinian group Abu Nidal. The Pakistani officials called him an al-Qaeda member. Al Jazeera
 IN terms of loss of life, the bombing of the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, may be the most costly mistake in the agency's history. So it's important to look carefully for clues about how it happened, and lessons for the future. CIA veterans cite a series of warning signs that the agency wasn't paying enough attention to the counter-intelligence threat posed by al-Qa'ida. These danger signals weren't addressed because the agency underestimated its adversary and overestimated its own skills and those of its allies. The time to fix these problems is now, not with a spasm of second-guessing that will further weaken the CIA but through the agency's adaptation to this war zone. As the Khost attack made painfully clear, the CIA needs better tradecraft for this conflict. By getting a suicide bomber inside a CIA base, the al-Qa'ida network showed that it remains a sophisticated adversary despite intense pressure from CIA Predator attacks. This shouldn't have been a surprise: CIA sources say that during the past year, two al-Qa'ida allies in Afghanistan - the Haqqani and Hekmatyar networks - have run double-agent operations. That tactic succeeded disastrously in Khost on December 30, when the CIA's defences were penetrated by a Jordanian doctor posing as an informant for the Jordanian intelligence service. Why wasn't the Jordanian debriefed outside the base, or thoroughly searched when he arrived, given the danger he might have been turned by al-Qa'ida? Did the CIA trust its Jordanian ally too much? Those basic questions need answers. The Haqqani and Hekmatyar double agents were uncovered last year through polygraphs and other means, but agency insiders argue that these cases should have prompted tougher countermeasures. Both the Haqqani and Hekmatyar groups have their own intelligence units, and their operatives were expertly trained in the 1980s by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. Muslim extremists are using increasingly sophisticated tools, sometimes the very techniques deployed against them. One example is the software used by Hezbollah to analyse patterns of mobile phone calls and expose an Israeli spy network in Lebanon last year. Iran uses sophisticated pattern analysis to study which of its nuclear scientists might have been recruited by the West. Despite this growing threat, the CIA has devoted only limited resources to defending itself. Within its large Kabul station, the CIA is said to have just two officers working full time on counter-intelligence. There's a similar lack of resources devoted to Pakistani operations against the agency. The 2004 intelligence reorganisation added more layering and bureaucracy but not more muscle. It created a new National Counterintelligence Executive, but this group has focused on traditional targets such as Russia and China rather than new ones. "What good is it?" asks one CIA counter-terrorism veteran. "It's overhead. It contributes little, other than additional tasking and more meetings." The CIA's career track is another troubling part of the problem. The complex penetration and deception operations that could counter al-Qa'ida take time and patience. But agency operations mirror the short, two-year tours of assignment, or the even shorter deployments to war zones. "We live in two-year cycles," says one insider. The rational careerist looks at a penetration or deception plan and concludes: "It's too time-consuming, it won't get me promoted." What's most troubling is that during the past year the CIA has had what this source calls "egregious lapses of counter-intelligence and security at the bases in Afghanistan". Evidence of sloppy procedures is said to have surfaced last late last year at one of the agency's bases in southern Afghanistan. One of its vehicles was stolen but headquarters wasn't notified for several weeks. Someone was caught photographing the entry gate to the base, but he was initially turned over to the Afghan police rather than to agency operatives. An Afghan guard failed a polygraph, raising worries that he might be a double agent. Yet aggressive countermeasures weren't taken. A final obvious problem is training. Case officers need more preparation for high-threat meetings and paramilitary challenges than they're getting. After any calamity, there are always haunting what-ifs. But looking in the rear-view mirror isn't going to make the CIA any stronger or better. The Khost attack shows that al-Qa'ida's network, though badly wounded, remains a wily and resourceful foe. The inescapable conclusion is that the CIA and its allies need to lift their game. David Ignatius is a columnist with The Washington Post. The Australian
 by Khaled Abu Toameh Jordanian citizens learned about the real circumstances in which the intelligence officer was killed from foreign media outlets, first and foremost Al-Jazeera.
It was the first time they were told that the Jordanian General Intelligence Department was working closely with the CIA against Al-Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups. The revelations have since embarrassed the Jordanian authorities, whose spokesmen and media continue their attempts to conceal or downplay the role their security forces are playing in the fight against Muslim terrorists in different parts of the world. In announcing the death of General Intelligence officer Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid, the Jordanian government said that he was on a "humanitarian mission" in Afghanistan. The officer was killed together with seven CIA employees when a Jordanian citizen blew himself up in the eastern Afghan province ofKhost. The suicide bomber, identified as Hammam Khalil al-Balawi, had duped the Jordanian authorities into thinking that he had important information that could lead them and the CIA to Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Why are most of the Arab dictators afraid or reluctant to publicly admit that their countries are at war with Al-Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups? Failure to acknowledge that they are part of this war underscores the state of fear and denial that the Arab dictatorships continue to live in with regards to the threat from Islamic radicals. These rulers and their governments, the majority of whom are unelected, are actually afraid of the Arab and Islamic masses. They are afraid of exposing their connection to the US because, for decades, these dictatorships have been telling the masses that Israel and the US are their real enemies, and not Al-Qaeda and the terrorists who have hijacked Islam. Additionally, these dictatorships are afraid of being accused by Arabs and Muslims of participating in a "war of Crusaders and infidels" against Islam. This is because the majority of the Arab and Islamic regimes have been telling their constituents that this is actually a war waged by the West against Islam. There is also no reason why the US should be helping these regimes in concealing the truth. The battle against Al-Qaeda and Islamic terror groups cannot be won as long as Washington's allies in the Arab and Islamic world continue to hide the truth from their people. It is time for these dictatorships to stop their double talk and to openly admit that moderate Muslims are at war with a tiny minority of thugs and murderers who have hijacked their religion. The Jordanians are not alone in trying to hide the fact that their security services are actively involved in the war against Islamic fundamentalism. The Palestinian Authority, whose security forces are waging a war on Hamas supporters and extremists in the West Bank, has also been doing its utmost to hide its security coordination with Israel. In fact, the Palestinian Authority continues to insist that it never helped Israel during the last war in the Gaza Strip although Israeli security officials have confirmed that such assistance had been provided. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority maintains that the massive crackdown that its forces have been waging against Hamas in the West Bank over the past few years is solely directed against "criminals" and "outlaws." Similarly, the Saudis, Egyptians, Moroccans and Yemenis have also been very reluctant to expose their close ties with the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies involved in the battle against Islamic fundamentalism. Forces belonging to these countries have been involved in the fight against radical Islam on various fronts such as the border between Afghanistan andPakistan and the one between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Hudson New York
 The visit of Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov to Israel this week is a timely reminder that Israel's problems with Islam are not unique. Like Israel, Bulgaria was ruled over by the Ottoman Empire, which exported their population to Bulgaria, oppressed the native Bulgarians, seized their lands and attempted to become the dominant majority. And when the Ottoman Empire lost control over Bulgaria, it left behind a huge Muslim population in Bulgaria.The key difference between Bulgaria and Israel, is that Bulgaria since the 1870's forced much of its Turkic Muslim population to leave. As a result millions of Turkic Muslims left Bulgaria, leaving it a quieter place than neighboring Yugoslavia or Russia, or for that matter modern day France. Muslim clothing was banned, mosques were torn down and lands held by the Ottoman Muslim settlers were returned to native Bulgarians. Today Bulgaria still has a troublesome Muslim minority of under a million, led by Ahmet Dogan, and backed by Turkish intelligence, which under Islamist PM Erdogan has branched out into promoting Jihad, much as Pakistan had. But despite Turkish attempts to intervene in Bulgaria, the country's Prime Minister, Boiko Borissov is a staunchly anti-Muslim leader, who has challenged Turkey's EU bid over its expulsion of Bulgarian in the 1920's.Bulgaria is an example and a warning not just to Israel, but to Europe, Russia, Australia, America and many other parts of the world as well.
Had Bulgaria not made life uncomfortable for Muslims, its fate in the 1990's would have probably resembled that of Yugoslavia, torn apart by foreign backed civil war and then carved up by Clinton and Albright. That same fate is now overtaking Israel and will overtake Europe as well.
That is because Israel's Muslim problem is not unique. Israel, like so many other lands, was overrun by Muslim conquerors who repressed the native Jewish population and settled their own population in its stead. The only unique thing about Israel's dilemma is that when the Ottoman Empire was defeated, Israel did not receive its freedom. Instead a British Mandate that was supposed to create a Jewish state, instead tried to create an Arab client state by expanding Arab immigration to Israel, while restricting Jewish immigration.
Had Israel received its freedom after WW1 when its Ottoman overlords departed, it would have never been overrun by Egyptian and Syrian Arabs who were magically transformed into "Palestinians" in the 70's at the behest of the KGB.
Nor would the Holocaust have claimed a fraction of the lives that it did, had Israel existed as an independent nation capable of taking in refugees, instead of having its ports shut to refugees by a British Empire more interested in appeasing Muslims and using them to establish client states under their control. And the worldwide Jihad and Oil for Terror are the aftereffects of British and American appeasement and coddling of Muslim desert sheiks then.
But the past is in the past. The challenge of the future is to learn from it. The long term effects of Muslim expansionism around the world has embedded Muslim minorities in countries across Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Those minorities have always served as a local powder keg, which is now being lit with the help of Saudi petrodollars. Now a new wave of Islamic expansionism through immigration and Jihad is spreading even into regions that had never known the tyranny of Islam such as Australia, North and South America; as well as Europe where Islam had not succeeded in taking root before.
The toxic brew of religious supremacism and nationalist racism represented by Islamic expansionism is a threat to nearly every country in the world, whether they choose to admit it or not. And while Israel's troubles with Islam are more likely to become front page news, because its presence some 700 miles from Mecca is a perennial thumb in the eye of the Jihad-- it is also the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world.
Islamism insures that Muslims cannot co-exist with non-Muslims except under a harsh dictatorship.
Which leaves free nations with a choice between tyranny and removing the Muslim minority within its borders. The absence of Islam within one's borders does not guarantee peace, but the presence of Islam insures that conflict will come sooner or later. The examples of that are unfortunately all too numerous across the globe, across entire hemispheres where blood is being spilled in the name of Islam.
From suicide bombings to honor killings, from Muslim insurgencies in the countryside to Islamist parties creeping in from within, from Sharia at the point of a sharpened knife to riots in the streets-- where there is Islamism, there can be no peace.
Israel's great mistake was its belief that it could co-exist with Muslims, and for its entire existence has bent over backward to accommodate them. From accepting the UN Partition Plan to sending troops to urge fleeing Arabs to return to Israel, to leaving the Temple Mount in Muslim hands, to the entire disastrous attempt to negotiate a peace with terror by agreeing to the creation of a terrorist state within its borders-- Israel's folly has been to seek peace with an ideology that uses the promise of peace as a lure to convince you to cut your own throat.
Where Islam exists in a nation, it will sooner or later either be suppressed or it will come to dominate. That is a scenario that every nation with a Muslim minority must understand and address, or it will become a Muslim nation with the native population reduced to an oppressed minority or butchered in the night. A totalitarian ideology cannot be made peace with. Either you will defeat it, or it will defeat you.
 The liberal milieu and mainstream media are baffled: What could have possibly led the 23-year-old Nigerian boy Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to attempt jihadi suicide on a passenger plane? How could such a nice, educated Islamic boy, who grew up in a rich and prosperous family, have come under the “radical” and “extreme” influences that set him on his violent course? It’s just all so mysterious. It’s so mysterious that the news anchors on CNN continue to incredulously ask each other and their guests these questions — back and forth, over and over again, in a cyclical circus that has no end and that never produces the most obvious answer staring any sensible person right in the face.
In the liberal imagination, there is just this “extremist ideology” out there somewhere and somehow this unfortunate Muslim boy fell under its spell, but no one can be exactly sure how or why it happened. All one can be sure of is that an adversarial culture or ideology must not be blamed and that America, somewhere, somehow, must definitely be at fault. And so, when it comes to the liberal left trying to digest Abdulmutallab and his suicidal quest, perplexed dismay becomes a much safer hiding place than honesty, because the basic truth threatens the very survival of the liberal faith.
For the liberal to accept the evident reason why Abdulmutallab set off on his suicide odyssey would necessitate him having to completely shed himself of his entire worldview and personal identity.
The much easier route, therefore, is to keep oneself confused and to stay focused on how American capitalism and imperialism must have surely had something to do with it — even though, as is the case with the cause of Islamic terror itself, these factors are so obviously not involved in Abdulmutallab’s suicidal and murderous yearnings (i.e., Abdulmutallab comes from a privileged, wealthy, and educated life, etc.). What the lib-left milieu simply can’t digest is what Islamic terrorists like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab themselves insist motivated them. And these are things like, you know, reading certain religious texts and following a certain religion’s teachings. They are things, sort of like, well, following Islam and reading the Koran and stuff like that. When all is said and done, the true reasons why Abdulmutallab embarked on his murderous mission of suicide are completely understandable — and only to be expected — in the context of his Islamic odyssey. And Abdulmutallab himself clearly points to the influence of his religion in his own personal writings on the internet. To continue reading this article, click here. FPM
Jim Hoft The Taliban released a video today of the Jordanian doctor and Al-Qaeda blogger before he killed 7 CIA officers in a suicide bombing. In the video Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi says the attack will be the first of revenge operations against the Americans and their drone teams outside the Pakistani border. The CIA bomber also says in the video that he can not be bought off by the West before his suicide attack:
The Taliban said that the attack was a revenge operation for drone attacks in the Pakistani border regions ordered by President Obama.
…But weren’t we told they hated us because of Gitmo? The BBC reported on the video: The Jordanian “double agent” who killed himself and seven American Central Intelligence Agency officials in Afghanistan’s Khost province last month must have been very sure of the success of his mission. “This… attack will be the first of revenge operations against the Americans and their drone teams outside the Pakistani border, after they killed the Amir [chief] of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Baitullah Mehsud, may God’s beneficence be upon him,” he apparently said in a video broadcast released on Saturday. The video shows the purported Jordanian suicide bomber sitting next to Baitullah Mehsud’s successor and the new Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, and reading from written text. “We [the Jordanian himself and the Taliban, whom he describes as Mujahideen or the holy warriors] arranged together this attack to let the Americans understand that our belief in Allah… cannot be exchanged for all the wealth in the world,” he says. It would appear that he had already set the trap for the CIA agents at the time he made the video. …The father of the accused Jordanian has said that the man who appears on the video is definitely his son. The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the Khost attack, alongside similar claims by the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda. All of them said that the attack was planned to avenge the 6 August 2009 killing of Baitullah Mehsud in a drone strike. With thanks to Gateway Pundit
 During the Cold War, Westerners consoled themselves in the belief that most people behind the Iron Curtain did not believe in Communism; they were simply entrapped by a morally bankrupt system driven by a moribund ideology. It was not so much the allure of capitalism that ultimately won over the people of Eastern Europe; it was the failure of Communism. What will it take to "turn" vast numbers of Muslims now enthralled with extremist Islam, and convince those uncommitted, not to follow the path of the Islamists?
Much depends on the outcome of the ongoing battle within Islamic civilization between those promoting jihad against the West and those who say Islam does not need to tear down the West in order to thrive. Yesterday, this newspaper carried a Washington Post dispatch, "Jordan emerges as key CIA counterterrorism ally." The story by that paper's national security reporter revealed that a Jordanian agent working in tandem with American intelligence had been killed by the Islamist suicide bomber who struck a CIA base near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border last week. It now transpires that the suicide bomber was a 36-year-old Jordanian physician named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi. He had been "turned" - or so it was thought - during a stint in a Jordanian prison for jihadi activities. According to Al Jazeera, the medical-man-turned-suicide-bomber was in Afghanistan to trap another physician, Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of al-Qaida's two top leaders. Balawi had provided so much reliable information that he was trusted to enter the CIA post without being thoroughly searched. The dead agent, Sharif Ali bin Zeid, was Balawi's handler. King Abdullah II participated in Zeid's funeral, raising the ire of Islamists within his kingdom. This murky story of spycraft and betrayal serves as a metaphor for how the still-nameless war between freedom, moderation and enlightenment against the benighted forces of coercion, fanaticism and medievalism needs to be waged - by pushing Muslims to choose: the way of Balawi or the way of Zeid. The most practical way to overcome the Islamists is for them to be defeated from within. After all, non-Islamists have a profound stake in the outcome. YESTERDAY, President Barack Obama met with his top domestic and foreign national security advisers in the White House situation room. The agenda was two-fold: to unravel what went wrong, both on the systemic and personnel level, that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board Northwest Flight 253; and to take stock of the damage caused by what Balawi did at Forward Operating Base Chapman. Along with Zeid, seven brave CIA agents, with a combined 100 years' of expertise, were lost. This betrayal, like previous acts of perfidy in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, underscored how dependent the West is on human intelligence provided by those who swim in a sea of anti-Western fanaticism. Other lessons emerge. The Islamists must not be underestimated. They are getting good at counter-intelligence and disinformation. Israelis have seen this with Hizbullah. Now Peter Baker of The New York Times has revealed that US intelligence was nearly fooled into thinking that Islamists from Somalia had infiltrated into the US in order to detonate bombs during Obama's inaugural address. Fortunately, John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, deduced that a "poison pen" operation was afoot. One terror group was trying to get the US to take out its rivals. Pretty sophisticated stuff and illustrative of what the West is up against. Another lesson is not to belittle suicide bombers as "sad guys with no self esteem," or risk being surprised by those like Balawi, who are harder to pigeonhole. The doctor had once told an Islamist magazine: "I have had a predisposition for... jihad and martyrdom since I was little. If love of jihad enters a man's heart, it will not leave him, even if he wants to do so." CLEARLY, some Islamists are irredeemable. But others are not. If the West recognizes the scale of the challenge and confronts it effectively, and if there are enough courageous men the caliber of Sharif Ali bin Zeid working to preserve Islam from within, we can be reasonably hopeful that the jihadis will one day find themselves relegated to the dustbin of history. If... JPost
 WASHINGTON: Before detonating a suicide bomb in Afghanistan last week, a Jordanian militant was considered by American spy agencies as the most promising informant in years about the whereabouts of al-Qa'ida's top leaders. US intelligence officials told The New York Times they had been so hopeful about what the Jordanian might deliver during a meeting with CIA officials at a remote base in Khost that top officials at the agency and the White House had been informed the gathering would take place. Instead, the Jordanian double-agent blew himself up, killing seven CIA operatives. The Jordanian militant for months had been feeding a stream of information about lower-ranking al-Qa'ida operatives to his Jordanian supervisor, Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid, to establish his credibility and apparently to help broker a meeting with CIA operatives in Afghanistan. The Americans believed he might provide them with leads to Ayman al-Zawahri, the terrorist group's second-ranking operative. Jordanian officials said the GID detained and interrogated Balawi about a year ago because of concerns he was tied to al-Qa'ida. The GID subsequently released Balawi after concluding he'd become a loyal covert asset of the agency, the officials said. Balawi, who was living in Pakistan, began contacting the GID by email and passing on "credible" information about al-Qa'ida leaders and plots against Jordan, the US and other Western allies, the officials said. The GID turned the information over to the CIA and other Western governments, which maintain close ties to the Jordanian intelligence agency, they said. US intelligence officials are working to verify their belief the double-agent was working with al-Qa'ida. The meeting at the CIA base, one official said, was about "important people" in al-Qa'ida. "It was the most promising lead" the agency had, the official said. "If you've got promising leads brought to you by your friends, coupled with information that checked out . . . It was the agency's duty to meet with this person". The agency has not yet had a chance to do a full review of what happened, but questions it seeks to answer include why the bomber was allowed on to the compound without being checked and why so many officers were near the bomber at the time of the explosion. Jordanian officials said they expected a team of CIA investigators to visit Amman in coming days to seek information about Balawi and the circumstances surrounding the attack. A staunch Western ally in the Middle East, Jordan has long had one of the most effective intelligence operations in the Arab world. But the suicide bombing severely embarrassed Amman, and raises questions over Jordan's vaunted role in helping Western intelligence agencies identify and track down Islamist terrorists. Jordan's GID was set up in 1964 and has built up a reputation for ruthless efficiency at home and abroad. Keeping a very tight grip on internal security and briefing the government on opposition movements within the kingdom, it has forestalled or intercepted several plots to destabilise the country during the 10-year reign of King Abdullah II and his father. Its role overseas is of growing importance and is the key to Western attempts to penetrate Arab jihadist networks. The Australian
 At least six police officers have died and another 16 wounded in Dagestan, in Russia's North Caucasus, after being targeted by a suicide car bomber, according to local police. The attack occurred at the traffic police station on the outskirts of Makhachkala, the republic's capital, just as officers were lining up outside for roll call. Shamil Guseinov, the city's police chief, said the bomber detonated his explosives at the gates to the police station after police stopped him from driving through. All those killed were at the gates and their actions in stopping the car prevented much wider devastation, he said. A similar bombing in a neighbouring republic in August killed 24 people and injured more than 200. In that attack, a man succeeded in crashing a bomb-laden van through the gates of the police station in Nazran, Ingushetia. Russia's predominantly Muslim republics in the North Caucasus have seen a sharp rise in violence in the past year, with many of the attacks targeting police and other officials. Some describe the violence as a civil war between Kremlin-supported local governments and Islamist fighters. Al Jazeera
 WASHINGTON: The suicide bomber who killed eight people inside a CIA base in Afghanistan was a Jordan-born terrorist double-agent who had been invited to the base because he claimed to have information targeting Osama bin Laden's second-in-command. The bomber had been recruited by the Jordanian intelligence service and taken to Afghanistan to infiltrate al-Qa'ida by posing as a foreign jihadi, US officials said. The attacker, a physician-turned-mole, had been recruited to infiltrate al-Qa'ida's senior circles and had gained the trust of his CIA and Jordanian handlers with a stream of useful intelligence leads, two former senior officials briefed on the agency's internal investigation told The Washington Post. His track record as an informant apparently allowed him to enter a key CIA post without a thorough search, the sources said. An Afghan security official identified the bomber as Hammam Khalil Abu Mallal al-Balawi, also known as Abu Dujana al-Khurasani. The Pakistani Taliban also claimed Balawi was the bomber, Arabic-language websites reported. The bomber appears to have been invited to an operational planning meeting on al-Qa'ida, a former senior US intelligence official said. "It looks like an al-Qa'ida double-agent," the former official said. "It's very sophisticated for a terrorist group that's supposedly on the run." The blast on December 30 killed four CIA officers, including the Khost base chief; three CIA contractors; and Mr bin Zeid, officials said. Six CIA employees were wounded in the attack. The Al Jazeera television network reported the bomber had initially been recruited to provide intelligence on the whereabouts of bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri. The CIA's deputy chief of station from Kabul travelled to the meeting at the CIA Khost base, Forward Operating Base Chapman, according to former intelligence officials, pointing to the meeting's importance. The officer was wounded in the attack, according to informed sources. Both the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack. The Afghan Taliban fights alongside an array of militants, including the Haqqani network, an Islamic extremist group that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan and maintains close ties to al-Qa'ida. The US and Jordanian intelligence services have worked closely together for years, said a former senior intelligence official. "There's a confidence level with them," the former official said. Officials said Balawi had been jointly managed by US and Jordanian agencies and had provided "actionable intelligence" over several weeks of undercover work along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. "This is someone they obviously trusted very, very much," a former official said. Balawi was an active recruiter and an "elite writer" on al-Qa'ida's password-protected al-Hisba website, where he went by the name Abu Dujana al-Khurasani, according to the journal of the US Military Academy at West Point's Combating Terrorism Centre. In a posting on the site in May 2007, Balawi sought to persuade people from a variety of backgrounds, including African-Americans, Native Americans, Vietnamese and poor immigrants, to join the fight against their "oppressor", the US, the West Point analysts found. Balawi had studied medicine in Turkey with government funding, according to a translation of the Jordanian website Jerasa News by the Middle East Media Research Institute. He left Jordan about a year ago after being detained for a few months by Jordanian intelligence officers.
The Australian
 PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A former provincial minister and seven others have died in the latest violence in Pakistan, as authorities face growing anger and criticism after a suicide strike on a volleyball match killed 101 people. Authorities rounded up dozens of suspects after Friday's volleyball attack and opened an investigation into poor medical care, while doctors in the remote northwest tried to treat casualties on hospital floors without enough medicine. The attacker rammed a car bomb into a crowd of men, women and children watching the tournament in Shah Hasan Khan village, a pro-government area in the district of Lakki Marwat, reducing the sporting event to carnage. Police said 101 people were killed, making it the third most deadly attack in a nearly three-year extremist campaign in the nuclear-armed Muslim country. "An injured man died in Lakki Marwat and a girl in Bannu hospital. Both were buried this evening. The death toll with us is 101. Some 69 injured are still in hospital," district police chief Mohammad Ayub Khan said on Sunday. Survivors searched for body parts under the rubble of around 20 collapsed homes, as mourners at the cemetery wept over freshly dug graves. "There was nowhere in the whole district to treat the injured.... The provincial health department is responsible for all this," Mannawar Khan, a member of parliament from the district, said. The health minister for North West Frontier Province said that only one doctor out of 10 at the hospital in Lakki Marwat had been on duty, conceding limited health care had "caused more human losses". "After the blast, several hours passed but the other doctors didn't come. I don't know why they were missing. We have opened an inquiry and a committee has been constituted," Syed Zahir Ali Shah said. There was chaos at the hospital in the town of Lakki Marwat, which was short of medicine and beds and overwhelmed with casualties. More at Brisbane Times
 A SUICIDE car bomber has killed at least 88 people in a crowd attending a volleyball game in a northwest Pakistan village in the deadliest strike in more than two months. A man detonated his vehicle, which was packed with explosives, as fans gathered at a field to watch two local teams face off at a volleyball tournament in the village of Shah Hasan Khan, in Bannu district, which borders the Taliban stronghold South Waziristan. Britain immediately condemned the attack as "horrific" and vowed to work with Islamabad to tackle the threat posed by violent extremism. The latest bombing marked a bloody start to 2010 for Pakistan, which has seen a surge in attacks blamed on the Taliban in recent months as Islamist fighters avenge military operations aimed at crushing their northwest strongholds. "The villagers were watching the match between the two village teams when the bomber rashly drove his double-cabin pick-up vehicle into them and blew it up," district police chief Mohammad Ayub Khan told AFP. Six children and five paramilitary soldiers were among the dead, he added. Khan said that more than 20 houses on both sides of the open ground where the match was being played had collapsed, some with families inside. The tournament was organised by the local peace committee, who had supported a government operation to expel militants from the area, Khan said. It was the highest death toll from a suspected militant strike since a massive car bomb on October 28 killed 125 people in a crowded market in the northwestern provincial capital Peshawar. Ramzan Bittani, a 33-year-old driver, told AFP by telephone from a local hospital that he had left the match to take a call. "As I was listening, I saw a huge blue and white spark followed by an ear-piercing blast. When I was able to figure out what had happened, I saw bodies and smoke all around. My hand was fractured," he said. Anwer Khan, 18, a student, said that he had just stepped out of his house and he saw a black pick-up speeding up towards the spectators. "A giant flame leaped towards the sky. There was bright light everywhere, just like a flash, and then a very huge blast shook everything. Two pellets hit my forehead and blood started flowing," Khan said. District police chief Khan blamed the bomb on Islamist extremists who were the target of a military operation in Bannu district last year. Security has plummeted over the last two-and-a-half years in Pakistan, where militant violence has killed more than 2,800 people since July 2007. The northwest has suffered the brunt of the militant campaign, with suicide bombings increasingly targeting civilians. The military is now locked in its most ambitious assault yet on Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan, sending 30,000 troops into battle in the district on the Afghan border on October 17. Washington, however, is urging Pakistan to do more to also stamp out al-Qaeda sanctuaries and dismantle havens of militants who cross the border and attack US and NATO troops stationed in Afghanistan. On Friday in North Waziristan district, missiles fired from a US drone air craft killed three suspected militants 15 kilometres east of Miranshah, the main district town close to the Afghan border. "A US drone fired two missiles, targeting a vehicle and killing three militants," a senior security official in the area told AFP. The official requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the US strikes in Pakistan, which have killed at least 662 people since August 2008 and greatly inflame anti-American sentiment in the Muslim nation. A separate, earlier US drone attack killed four militants in Machikhel village, about 25 kilometres east of Miranshah. Also on Friday, an anti-Taliban tribal leader and four others were killed in a roadside bomb in Bajaur tribal district, the latest in a wave of attacks against respected elders allied with the government against the extremists. The Australian
 A SUSPECTED suicide blast today killed three people and injured 11 others at a volleyball match in a small northwestern Pakistani town, police said. The blast struck in Banu district in the North West Frontier Province, which is plagued by attacks and bombings by Taliban rebels. "The blast took place during a volleyball match and according to initial reports it appears to be a suicide attack," district police chief Mohammad Ayub Khan told AFP. "Three people were killed and 11 others were injured." Police spokesman Shahid Hameed confirmed it was a suicide attack, while another police official said early reports suggested a man drove a car packed with explosives onto the field as people gathered to watch the match. The Australian
 The accused "underwear bomber" made a dramatic final call to his father that he found so alarming, the father approached Nigerian officials who took him directly to the CIA's station chief in the Nigerian capital, sources told ABC News. Current and former officials of the Nigerian government, including a source close to the suspect's family, say Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, called his father from Yemen with the warning that it would be his last contact. It has previously been reported that the man's father, prominent Nigerian banker Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, went to Nigerian and American officials Nov. 19 to warn them that his son had been radicalized by Islamic militants in Yemen. Details have emerged about Abdulmutallab's final phone call that highlight President Obama's statement that there were "systemic failures" of the country's security system. ABC News' sources said that during Abdulmutallab's final call, he told his father the call would be his last contact with the family. He said that the people he was with in Yemen were about to destroy his SIM card, rendering his phone unusable. The next day the embassy sent out a thin report to U.S. embassies around the world warning Adbulmutallab may be associating with extremists in Yemen. The CIA official compiled two more robust reports following the meeting with the suspect's father. One was sent back to CIA's Langley, Va., the other remained in draft form in Nigeria and was not circulated until after the attempted attack on Christmas Day, according to a U.S. official. In what has been seen as a possible failure to stop the bomber from boarding a U.S.-bound plane, the alert prompted counterterrorism officials to put Abdulmutallab's name into a database of more than half a million others that the U.S. suspects of ties to terrorism, but they did not put him on the country's no-fly list. The information also was not shared with Yemeni intelligence officials, the Yemen government has said. The president was expected to receive preliminary reviews on the security failure today. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly indicated details of the review would not be released. He said, however, "Details of embassy Abuja's meeting with Abdulmutallab's father are of the review, and we are not in a position to comment on it at this time." Abdulmutallab told federal officials after his capture that he spent a month at the home of an al Qaeda official in Yemen while he was trained for jihad, officials have told ABC News. He left Yemen Dec. 7 and weeks later was aboard a Northwest Airlines flight that stopped in Amsterdam and then continued on to Detroit. More at ABC
 EIGHT Americans possibly working for the CIA were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up after sneaking into the gym on a US base in Afghanistan yesterday. And four Canadian soldiers and a woman journalist were also killed when a bomb exploded as their armoured vehicle passed by on Tuesday, in one of the deadliest 24 hours for foreigners in the war-torn country. The attacks come as the number of US and NATO-led foreign troops is set to soar to 150,000 to try to halt an increasingly virulent insurgency by the Taliban militia that has made 2009 the bloodiest year for international forces since the 2001 invasion. Pentagon spokeswoman Lt Col Almarah Belk said the eight Americans died when an attacker detonated a vest packed with explosives on Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province - a key Taliban stronghold. “Eight Americans have been killed in an attack on RC-East,” a US embassy official said, using the military term for a region of eastern Afghanistan. But the Washington Post newspaper said that most of the eight probably worked for the CIA, which it said was using the Chapman base. A suicide bomber managed to penetrate the base's defences, detonating an explosive belt in a room described as a base gym. The Post said US sources confirmed that all the dead and injured were civilians, and that most were probably CIA employees or contractors. It said the attack appears to have killed more US intelligence personnel than have died since the US-led invasion in 2001, adding that the agency has acknowledged the deaths of four CIA officers in Afghanistan since then. Suicide attacks are a hallmark of the hardline Taliban militia, who are waging a major insurgency to topple the Western-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and oust the foreign troops. The US said last month it had doubled the number of civilian experts working in Afghanistan and was “on track” to meet its goal of nearly 1000 by the new year. Many are to work in provincial military bases alongside military reconstruction teams. The New York Times said an unidentified NATO official described Chapman as “not a regular base,” suggesting it was used by US intelligence agencies. The five Canadians were killed in a roadside bombing in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southeastern Afghanistan, said General Daniel Menard, the head of Canadian forces in the country. “Yesterday Canada lost five citizens,” General Menard said on Canadian television, adding that a Canadian civilian official was also wounded. “Four soldiers and one journalist were killed as a result of an improvised explosive device attack on their armoured vehicle during a community patrol in Kandahar City.” Public television station CBC identified the journalist as Michelle Lang, a reporter with the Calgary Herald. The deaths raised to 138 the number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Canada has some 2800 troops deployed in the Kandahar region, who are supposed to return home in 2011. The Australian
 Most of the stories that have gone out about Abdulmutallab's Internet postings focused on what a lonely fellow he was. This little tidbit about the great Islamic empire has not been as widely reported. "My jihad fantasy.. Muslims will win and rule the world - UMAR ABDULMUTALLAB," by Andrew Gregory for the Mirror, December 30 Failed suicide bomber Umar Abdulmutallab spelt out his nightmare vision of a world ruled by fanatical Islamic hardliners in a series of rambling internet rants. In one, he said: "I won't go into too much details about my fantasy, but basically they are jihad fantasies. "I imagine how the great jihad will take place, how the muslims will win (Allah willing) and rule the whole world and establish the greatest empire once again."... With thanks to JihadWatch
 On August 28, the Saudi Arabian deputy minister of interior, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, (pictured) survived a bombing attack launched by an al Qaeda cell based in Yemen, Saudi Arabia's southern neighbor. Abdullah Hassan al Asiri, the would-be assassin, a Saudi who had fled to Yemen, posed as a militant willing to surrender personally to Prince Nayef. Because he leads Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism efforts against al Qaeda, the prince is a key target for the terrorist group. Al Asiri concealed the bomb, made of PETN, in his underwear, according to the official Saudi investigation. PETN is a plastic explosive that is not picked up by metal detectors -- through which the would-be assassin had to pass before he was allowed to meet with the prince. Saudi officials believe that the prince's assailant exploded the 100-gram device using a detonator with a chemical fuse, which would also not be detected by a metal detector. When the bomb went off in Prince Nayef's Jeddah home it killed the assassin, but the prince survived the attack, sustaining only minor injuries. Similarly, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to bring down Northwest Airlines flight 253 using a PETN bomb that was not discovered by metal detectors. A federal security bulletin obtained by CNN said Abdulmutallab claimed to investigators that the explosive device used Friday "was acquired in Yemen along with instructions as to when it should be used." A senior U.S. counterterrorism official says it is "rare" for PETN to be used in a terrorist attack. The method of concealment, the use of PETN and the origin of the bomb -- Yemen -- make the Prince Nayef assassination attempt and the Northwest plot an almost perfect match. "I believe that, after the attack on the prince, the fear of using similar techniques against airplanes, which was discussed openly in the media, has encouraged al Qaeda cells to try it," a Saudi counterterrorism official said, PETN was also used by Richard Reid, an al Qaeda recruit known as the shoe bomber.
He concealed a bomb made of PETN in his sneakers when he tried to bring down an American Airlines flight flying from Paris, France, to Miami, Florida, almost exactly eight years ago during the busy holiday travel season. CNN
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Taliban fighters have staged a series of attacks in the centre of Kabul, with gunfire and several explosions reported at locations across the Afghan capital. 
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