Army Col. Sean Ryan, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, spoke to Pentagon reporters about progress being made against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He spoke via satellite from Baghdad.
“In Iraq, operations continue to secure areas across the country, as Iraq security forces locate, identify and destroying ISIS remnants,” Ryan said. “Last week alone, … operations across Iraq have resulted in the arrest of more than 50 suspected terrorists and the removal of 500 pounds of improvised explosive devices.”
Progress in Iraq’s Anbar Province
Iraqi forces are moving in Anbar province, in the Hamrin Mountains and Samarra. Reconstruction efforts are ongoing with roads reopening in the north. Iraqi engineers “cleaned the main road between Salahuddin and Samarra of IEDs, making travel safer between the two cities,” he said.
In the Baghdad area, the ISF established central service coordination cells, a program designed to use military resources to enable local communities to restore basic infrastructure and services. “Initial efforts by the coordination cells include trash collection, road openings, maintenance of water facilities,” Ryan said.
Syrian Democratic Forces are preparing for the final assault on ISIS in the Middle Euphrates River Valley. The SDF is reinforcing checkpoints and refining blocking positions ahead of clearance operations in Hajin, Ryan said.
Military Operations, Reconstruction in Syria
In Syria, too, reconstruction efforts go hand in hand with military operations. “In Raqqa, the internal security forces have destroyed more than 30 caches containing 500 pounds of explosives discovered during the clearance operations in the past weeks,” the colonel said.
ISIS remains a concern in both countries, the colonel said. “Make no mistake: The coalition is not talking victory or taking our foot off the gas in working with our partners,” he said.
Defeating ISIS, he said, will require a long-term effort.
“We cannot emphasize enough that the threat of losing the gains we have made is real, especially if we are not able to give the people a viable alternative to the ISIS problem,” Ryan said. “We continue to call on the international community to step up and ensure that conditions that gave rise to ISIS no longer exist in both Syria and Iraq.”
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(UNITED NATIONS) — The Islamic State extremist group has up to 30,000 members roughly equally distributed between Syria and Iraq and its global network poses a rising threat — as does al-Qaeda, which is much stronger in places, a United Nations report says.
The report by U.N. experts circulated Monday said that despite the defeat of IS in Iraq and most of Syria, it is likely that a reduced “covert version” of the militant group’s “core” will survive in both countries, with significant affiliated supporters in Afghanistan, Libya, Southeast Asia and West Africa.
The experts said al-Qaeda’s global network also “continues to show resilience,” with its affiliates and allies much stronger than IS in some spots, including Somalia, Yemen, South Asia and Africa’s Sahel region.
Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Iran “have grown more prominent” and have been working with the extremist group’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, “projecting his authority more effectively than he could previously” including on events in Syria, the experts said.
The report to the Security Council by experts monitoring sanctions against IS and al-Qaeda said the estimate of the current total IS membership in Iraq and Syria came from governments it did not identify. The estimate of between 20,000 and 30,000 members includes “a significant component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters,” it said.
While many IS fighters, planners and commanders have been killed in fighting, and many other fighters and supporters have left the immediate conflict zone, the experts said many still remain in the two countries — some engaged militarily “and others hiding out in sympathetic communities and urban areas.”
IS fighters swept into Iraq in the summer of 2014, taking control of nearly a third of the country. At the height of the group’s power its self-proclaimed caliphate stretched from the edges of Aleppo in Syria to just north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
With its physical caliphate largely destroyed, the Islamic State movement is transforming from a “proto-state” to a covert “terrorist” network, “a process that is most advanced in Iraq” because it still controls pockets in Syria, the report said.
The experts said the discipline imposed by IS remains intact and IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “remains in authority” despite reports that he was injured.
“It is just more delegated than before, by necessity, to the wider network outside the conflict zone,” the experts said.
The flow of foreign fighters to IS in Syria and Iraq has come to a halt, they said, but “the reverse flow, although slower than expected, remains a serious challenge.”
While the rate of terrorist attacks has fallen in Europe, the experts said some governments “assess that the underlying drivers of terrorism are all present and perhaps more acute than ever before.” This suggests that any reduction in attacks is likely to be temporary until IS recovers and reorganizes and al-Qaeda “increases its international terrorist activity or other organizations emerge in the terrorist arena,” they said.
The experts looked at the threats posed by IS and al-Qaeda by region:
—ARABIAN PENINSULA: Al-Qaida’s leaders recognize Yemen “as a venue for guerrilla-style attacks and a hub for regional operations.” Yemen’s lack of a strong central government “has provided a fertile environment for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” Its strength inside Yemen is estimated at between 6,000 and 7,000, compared with only 250 to 500 IS members in the conflict-wracked country.
—NORTH AFRICA: Despite the loss to IS of the Libyan city of Sirte and continued airstrikes, the extremist group “still has the capacity to launch significant attacks within Libya and across the border, reverting to asymmetric tactics and improvised explosive devises.” Estimates of IS members vary between 3,000 and 4,000, dispersed across Libya. Up to 1,000 fighters in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula have pledged allegiance to IS leader al-Baghdadi. Al-Qaeda is also continuing a resurgence in Libya.
—WEST AFRICA: An al-Qaeda-affiliated coalition has increased attacks on French, U.S., U.N. and other international interests in the Sahel. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has urged attacks on French private companies. The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara is active mostly at the Mali-Niger border and has less of a footprint. “Member states assess that terrorists are taking advantage of territorial control and ethnic conflicts to radicalize populations.”
—EAST AFRICA: The al-Shabab extremist group in Somalia, an al-Qaeda affiliate, “remains the dominant terrorist group” in that country, with improvised explosive devices “its weapon of choice.” Despite sustained military action against al-Shabab, “the group has enhanced its capabilities as it retains its influence and appeal.” Member states said IS in Somalia “is fragile and operationally weak,” but “it still presents a threat” because the country remains a focus for possible future operations.
—EUROPE: During the first six months of 2018, “the threat in Europe remained high” but “the tempo of attacks and disrupted plots was lower than during the same period in 2017.” Much activity involved individuals with no prior security records or deemed low risk. IS used the media to urge sympathizers in Europe to conduct attacks in their home countries. Member states expressed concern that returnees could disseminate knowledge and skills related to making drones, explosive devices and car bombs.
—CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA: According to an unidentified U.N. member state, IS poses an immediate threat in the region but al-Qaida is the “intellectually stronger group” and poses a longer-term threat. Some leaders of the al-Qaida “core,” including al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza, are reported to be in Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas. IS continues to relocate some key operatives to Afghanistan. One unidentified government reported newly arrived IS fighters from Algeria, France, Russia, Tunisia and central Asian states.
—SOUTHEAST ASIA: Despite last year’s heavy losses in the Philippines, IS affiliates in the country “are cash rich and growing in membership.” Intermediaries facilitated financial transfers from the IS “core” to Philippines affiliates and arranged bomb-making and firearms training for recruits from Indonesia at camps in the Philippines. Attacks in Indonesia by an IS-linked network using families as suicide bombers could become “a troubling precedent.”
Category Archives: ISIS ISIL Islamic State Caliphate
New Mexico Compound was Training for School Shooting
Timeline:
TAOS, N.M. (AP) — The Latest on 11 children found living in a filthy, makeshift compound in New Mexico (all times local):
12:30 p.m.
Prosecutors say in court documents that the father of a missing Georgia boy was training children at a New Mexico compound to commit school shootings.
The documents filed Wednesday say Siraj Ibn Wahhaj (see-DAHJ’ IBN wah-HAJ’) was conducting weapons training at the compound near the Colorado border where 11 hungry children were found in filthy conditions.
Prosecutors filed the documents while asking that Wahhaj be held without bail.
Wahhaj was arrested last week with four other adults. They are facing child abuse charges.
Authorities say the remains of a boy also were found on the compound but have not been positively identified by a medical examiners.
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9:30 a.m.
New Mexico officials investigating a makeshift compound where 11 children were found hungry plan to ask a judge to hold the father of a missing boy without bail.
New Mexico 8th Judicial District Attorney Donald Gallegos said Tuesday that prosecutors are putting together evidence to ask a judge to hold Siraj Ibn Wahhaj (see-DAHJ’ IBN wah-HAJ’) without bond.
A warrant from Georgia seeks the extradition of Wahhaj to face a charge of abducting his son from that state last December.
He is scheduled to appear in a Taos County court on Wednesday. Wahhaj and four other adults also face felony child abuse charges after a raid by authorities found the 11 children living in filth.
The missing boy was not among the children found in that initial search but authorities say they found the remains of a child that they are working to identify.
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12 a.m.
The father of a missing boy is due in court Wednesday as authorities work to identify a child’s remains uncovered in an isolated New Mexico compound where he was arrested last week.
A warrant from Georgia seeks the extradition of Siraj Ibn Wahhaj to face a charge of abducting his son from that state last December.
Wahhaj and four other adults also face felony child abuse charges after a raid by authorities revealed 11 hungry children living in filth.
The missing boy was not among the children found in that initial search.
The district attorney said he would withhold comment on the potential for additional charges until investigators identified the remains found on the site.
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CORRECTS LAST NAME TO MORTON, NOT MORTEN – This photo provided by the Taos County Sheriff’s Department shows Lucas Morton, left, and Siraj Wahhaj. Morton and Wahhaj were arrested after law enforcement officers searching a rural northern New Mexico compound for a missing 3-year-old boy found 11 children in filthy conditions and hardly any food. (Taos County Sheriff’s Department via AP)
AMALIA, N.M. (AP) — For months, neighbors worried about a squalid compound built along a remote New Mexico plain, saying they brought their concerns to authorities long before sheriff’s officials first found 11 hungry children on the lot, and then the remains of a small boy.
Two men and three women also had been living at the compound, and were arrested following a raid Friday that came as officials searched for a missing Georgia boy with severe medical issues.
Medical examiners still must confirm whether the body found at the property in a second search on Monday is that of Abdul-ghani Wahhaj, who was 3 in December when police say his father took him from his mother in Jonesboro, Georgia.
The boy’s father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, was among those arrested in the compound raid that has since resulted in the series of startling revelations on the outskirts of Amalia, a tiny town near the Colorado state line marked by scattered homes and sagebrush. Authorities said they found the father armed with multiple firearms, including an assault rifle.
Siraj Ibn Wahhaj was scheduled to appear in court Wednesday on a warrant from Georgia that seeks his extradition to face a charge of abducting his son from that state last December. He had expressed wanting to perform an exorcism on his son, the warrant said.
The group arrived in Amalia in December, with enough money to buy groceries and construction supplies, according to Tyler Anderson, a 41-year-old auto mechanic who lives nearby.
He said Tuesday he helped the newcomers install solar panels after they arrived but eventually stopped visiting.
Anderson said he met both of the men in the group, but never the women, who authorities have said are the mothers of the 11 children, ages 1 to 15.
Anderson did not recall seeing the Georgia boy who was missing. But he said some of the smaller children from the compound turned up to play with children at neighboring properties after the group first arrived.
“We just figured they were doing what we were doing, getting a piece of land and getting off the grid,” said Anderson, who moved to New Mexico from Seattle with his wife seven years ago.
As the months passed, however, they stopped seeing the smaller children playing in the area. They also stopped hearing guns fired off at a shooting range on the property, he said.
Jason Badger, who owned the property where the compound was built, said he and his wife had pressed authorities to remove the group after becoming concerned about the children. The group had built the compound on their acreage instead of a neighboring tract owned by Lucas Morton, one of the men arrested during the raid.
“I started to try and kick them off about three months ago and everything I tried to do kept getting knocked down,” said Badger said.
A judge dismissed an eviction notice filed by Badger against Morton in June, court records said. The records did not provide further details on the judge’s decision.
After the raid, Anderson went over and looked at the property for the first time in months.
“I was flabbergasted from what it had turned into from the last time I saw it,” he said.
Authorities said the compound shielded by old tires, wooden pallets and an earthen wall studded with broken glass had been littered with “odorous trash.”
The 11 children found living at the encampment — described as a small trailer embedded in the ground — had been without clean water and appeared to have not eaten in days, according to Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe.
At a news conference in Taos, Hogrefe described FBI surveillance efforts in recent months that included photographs of the compound and interviews. He said the images were shared with the mother of Abdul-ghani but she did not spot her son, and that the photographs never indicated the boy’s father was at the compound.
“I had no probable cause to get a search warrant to go onto this property,” the sheriff said.
He said FBI officials were invited to the news conference but declined to attend. An FBI spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Hogrefe said the “breaking point” in seeking a search warrant came when Georgia authorities received a message that may have originated within the compound that children were starving inside.
It was not clear who sent the message or how it was communicated. Georgia detectives forwarded it to the Taos County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities returned to search the compound after interviews on Friday and Saturday led them to believe the boy might still be on the property.
“We discovered the remains yesterday on Abdul’s fourth birthday,” Hogrefe said, appearing to fight back tears.
Aleks Kostich, managing attorney in the Taos County public defender’s office, said the office was gathering information and assigning attorneys to the defendants. He declined to comment on their behalf, saying the case was in its early stages.
However, he questioned the “legal sufficiency” of the criminal complaints filed against the men and women, saying they were vague.
“I’m not sure how much investigating has been done,” he said. “I’m not sure how much law enforcement knows and how long they’ve known it for.”
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AP writers Kate Brumback in Jonesboro, Georgia, contributed to this report. Hudetz reported from Albuquerque.
Iran’s Actions in the Middle East, Where’s the Money?
Obama admin secretly used the Federal Reserve Bank to move $8.6 million to Iran for nuclear-related material. Then they circled back and tried to use the Fed to move several billion dollars more for Iran. Note from State Dept meeting with Oman bank:
It is getting more nefarious since the Kerry/Obama team are gone and left lots of unfinished business behind, or just ignored it.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps are employing German companies to disguise their illicit funding of the war against the pro-US government in Yemen.
Time Magazine reported on Thursday: “For several years, Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had been using German front companies to buy advanced printing machinery, watermarked paper and specialty inks in violation of European export controls.”
According to interviews with US Treasury Department officials, Time added: “The IRGC had then printed counterfeit Yemeni banknotes potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars and used the bogus rials to fund its proxy war against the beleaguered pro-US government in the capital of Sanaa. German companies were being used as a cover by the Iranians to finance the world’s worst humanitarian conflict.”
The report said that US officials, who uncovered the Iranian counterfeiting operation, met with their German counterparts at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin last April.
The Jerusalem Post reviewed intelligence agency reports from German states covering Iran. The reports document Iran’s strategy of using front companies to engage in illicit procurement of nuclear and missile technology in Germany during 2017.
According to Time: “The evidence, uncovered by US illicit-finance investigators, was meant to sway the Germans, but not just in hopes of countering Iran’s moves on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula” but also “to convince Berlin that Tehran cannot be trusted and that the Germans should join the Trump Administration in imposing economy-crippling sanctions on Iran.”
US President Donald Trump issued an executive order in 2017 extending the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. But Germany has declined to outlaw the IRGC as a terrorist entity. The mass circulation Bild reported on Thursday that Germany will permit former IRGC member Hadi Mofateh to run the Iranian regime-controlled Islamic Center of Hamburg.
Time wrote that weeks after the initial meeting in the German finance ministry, “American officials presented their hosts with one last set of documents: detailed blueprints on how the Trump Administration was preparing to unleash financial warfare on the Iranian economy.”
Germany is widely considered the least cooperative of the US’s European allies in confronting Iran’s bellicose activities, according to two sources familiar with US-German talks on the Iran nuclear deal. German exports to the Islamic Republic of Iran climbed to €3.5 billion in 2017, up from €2.6b. in 2016.
A German intelligence report from the city-state of Hamburg in July said Iran’s regime is continuing to seek weapons of mass destruction.
The Post reviewed the 211 page document that says: “some of the crisis countries… are still making an effort to obtain products for the manufacture of atomic, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction (proliferation) and the corresponding missile carrier technology (rocket technology).”
The Hamburg report added: “The current main focus points of countries in the area of relevant proliferation activities are: Iran, Syria, Pakistan and North Korea.”
***
The Trump administration said in December that it believed 80 percent of the manpower supporting the Syrian regime was made up of “Iranian proxies,” including foreign Shiite fighters. Israel has accused Iran of sending as many as 80,000 fighters to Syria.
It is impossible to know the exact number of Afghan recruits in Syria, because many slip back and forth between Iran and Afghanistan, do not tell their families where they are, and hide their military service for fear of being sent to prison in Afghanistan for fighting on behalf of another country. Yet for some, especially those from the long-persecuted Hazara minority, it seems to be a secret badge of honor.
“Nobody forced us to go fight, but it gives you a kind of pride,” said Hussain, 26, a muscular Hazara man in Herat with scars on his face and hands from old shrapnel wounds. He has served in four deployments in Syria since 2014, earning upward of $600 a month, and returned again two months ago from the front. He said he originally decided to enlist while he was working as a carpenter in Iran and saw a video of Islamic State fighters chopping off victims’ heads. More details here.
London’s Crime is Surging and 80 Terrorists to be Released
London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan is under fire for the growing crime in his city. How can the murder rate be higher than in New York?
As of March, London accounted for 17 percent of all recorded crime in England and Wales in the year prior, as well as 42 percent of all recorded robberies. A third of all knife crime took place in London as well.
London temporarily overtook New York in the number of murders in early 2018. In February, London’s police investigated 15 murders while New York saw 11 homicides. In March, the Metropolitan Police murder numbers increased further to 22, while the NYPD’s jumped to 21. New York has since recorded more murders.
Remember those Beatles, ISIS suspects? Well, Britain’s Home Office has suspended cooperation with the United States in extraditing them mostly due to the death penalty.
A combination picture shows Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, who the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) identified as British nationals, in undated handout pictures in Amouda, Syria, released February 9, 2018 by the Syrian Democratic Forces.HANDOUT/REUTERS
Dozens of convicted terrorists are about to be released
BRITAIN is bracing itself, with 80 terrorists expected to be free to walk the streets by Christmas — and that’s not all the bad news.
AS MANY as 80 convicted terrorists will be free to roam British streets by the end of the year, including an Islamist preacher who urged people to join the Islamic State.
The extraordinary situation has arisen because about 40 per cent of the sentences for terrorism issued between 2007 and 2016 will have ended by Christmas — meaning police are powerless to stop them walking free.
Police and the government have admitted more resources will have to be pumped into keeping a close eye on the terrorists, at a time when resources are already stretched coping with a crime wave that has seen 80 killings in London so far this year.
UK Security Minister Ben Wallace said police would focus on getting them to “disengage” from extremism, but that would require a different approach than trying to prevent them being radicalised in the first place.
“It is a concern because what we are seeing nowadays is a large group of people who have effectively crossed the Rubicon to becoming radicalised. That is the mindset that they have now accepted or adapted,” he told BBC Radio.
To deal with the influx, police would be putting resources into efforts to “to try and make them disengage — that is slightly different from ‘deter them in the first place’ … and into how we effectively supervise them if they are released back into the community”.
That meant monitoring the terrorists, which inevitably would come at a cost both financial and through rediverting staff from other duties.
The actual number released could even be higher than 80, as some prisoners are eligible for release halfway through their sentences.
Those eligible for parole include Anjem Choudary, an Islamist preacher, who was jailed for five years in 2016 for inviting people to support Islamic State.
All the sentences given to people for financing terrorism, having terrorist information, or not disclosing information about terrorist acts, will have expired by the end of the year. Another two dozen will have lapsed by next year.
The discovery of the end of the sentences for 40 per cent of those issued between 2007-2016 was made by The Guardian last month. A former head of counter-terrorism, Richard Walton, told the paper the release of so many convicted terrorists was “worrying” — and any attempt to monitor them was “time-intensive” especially when the individuals knew they were being watched, so “often lie low for a period”.
Terrorist prisoners released on licence place a resource burden on both specialist counter-terrorism detectives and on mainstream policing. A risk-management process is used to monitor those released on licence and the monitoring of high-risk offenders is extremely resource-intensive.”
He went on to say: “Intelligence is often insufficient to gauge whether they have any intent to reoffend owing to their recent incarceration.”
That made monitoring them after their release even more difficult, especially as they were aware of the close attention security agencies were paying to them.
A program already exists to try to integrate terrorists back into the community, but so many returning to the community means extra vigilance will be needed.
To add to the problem the probation union has already warned its resources were stretched, while a 2016 review found extremism in British jails — where 700 inmates are considered to have extremist views — meant there was a real risk prisoners could be radicalised while they were behind bars.
News.com.au asked police what steps were being taken to ensure public safety given Mr Walton’s view and that of Mr Wallace, who believed there were challenges ahead.
A spokesman from the Met Police would only say they and intelligence agencies were working “tirelessly and at pace” to keep the public safe from terrorism.
“This includes monitoring and assessing existing and emerging threats and risks, including the release of convicted terrorists, and putting into place actions to mitigate them through a range of operations and activities.”
A Home Office spokesman told news.com.au national security would always be the government’s “main priority”.
“Terrorists released on licence are closely managed by the National Probation Service. They are subject to very restrictive licence conditions including, for example, living in approved premises; restrictions on movement and stringent curfews. Failure to adhere to conditions results in enforcement action, including prison recall.”
Terrorists are managed by multiple agencies and preparations begin months before their release. But the Home Office would not discuss specifics, and refused to say how many were being released.
“All offenders of extremist or terrorist concern are managed actively as part of a comprehensive counter-terrorism case management process. It would not be appropriate to release figures for how many of those offenders due to be released this year are deemed to be high risk.”
Since March last year there have been 12 terror plots thwarted and four other extreme far-right plots, and there can be up to 500 active investigations at any one time.
Meanwhile, this week a UK think tank urged the Government to replace laws surrounding treason that date back to 1351.
In a statement, Policy Exchange said a new treason law updated for modern times was needed, and argued a workable law of treason would mean offenders could be convicted and jailed for much longer.
“Many of them will … have betrayed this country. If they had been convicted of treason and imprisoned for life, the UK would be considerably safer,” the statement said.
About that Time Obama Gave an AQ Affiliate Grant Money
There has been lots of chatter about removing the security clearance access of John Brennan and a few others. No one has asked about Hillary’s or…..Obama’s. There has been lots of chatter of impeachment, traitor and treason….but when it comes to aiding and supporting the enemy….check this out.
Grant money is a gift….by the way.
story and photo, more detail here.
The Middle East Forum has discovered that the Obama administration approved a grant of $200,000 of taxpayer money to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Sudan — a decade after the U.S. Treasury designated it as a terrorist-financing organization. More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization.
The story began in October 2004, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), as a terror-financing organization. It did so because of ISRA’s links to Osama bin Laden and his organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the precursor of al-Qaeda.
According to the U.S. Treasury, in 1997 ISRA established formal cooperation with MK. By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help “relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas suicide bombings.
The 2004 designation included all of ISRA’s branches, including a U.S. office called the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA). Eventually it became known that this American branch had illegally transferred over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including, reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2010, the executive director of IARA-USA and a board member pled guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and several other charges.
ISRA’s influence also spread to Washington. Former U.S. congressman Mark Siljander (R., Mich.) pled guilty in 2010 to obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent after prosecutors found that IARA-USA had paid him $75,000 — using misappropriated USAID grant money — to lobby the government, in an attempt to remove the charity from the government’s terror list.
Despite this well-documented history, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in July 2014 awarded $723,405 to World Vision Inc., an international evangelical charity, to “improve water, sanitation and hygiene and to increase food security in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.” Of these funds, $200,000 was to be directed to a sub-grantee: ISRA.
Responding to a Middle East Forum (MEF) inquiry, a USAID official explains that World Vision had alerted it in November 2014 to the likelihood of ISRA being on the terror list. USAID instructed World Vision to “suspend all activities with ISRA” and informed the State Department, OFAC, and USAID’s Office of the Inspector General. USAID and World Vision then waited for OFAC to confirm whether ISRA was designated or not.
USAID emails obtained by the Middle East Forum reveal that in January 2015, World Vision was growing unhappy while waiting for OFAC’s assessment. Mark Smith, World Vision’s senior director of humanitarian and emergency affairs, wrote to USAID, stating that the Islamic Relief Agency “had performed excellent work” for World Vision in the past, and that “putting contractual relationships in limbo for such a long period is putting a significant strain” on World Vision’s relationship with the Sudanese regime. Smith also revealed that World Vision had submitted a notice to OFAC indicating its “intention to restart work with [ISRA] and to transact with [ISRA]” if OFAC did not respond within a week.
World Vision’s statement stunned USAID officials, who complained that World Vision’s behavior “doesn’t make sense.” USAID official Daniel Holmberg emailed a colleague: “If they actually said that they wanted to resume work with ISRA, while knowing that it was 99% likely that ISRA was on the list then I am concerned about our partnership with them, and whether it should continue.”
On January 23, OFAC confirmed that ISRA was a sanctioned entity and denied World Vision “a license to engage in transactions with [ISRA].” Mark Smith and World Vision’s country program director in Sudan expressed their disappointment, stating that they were in discussions with ISRA as well as the Sudanese regime’s Humanitarian Aid Commission, which regulates the activities of international charities in Sudan.
Despite OFAC’s ruling, in February, World Vision wrote to OFAC and Obama-administration official Jeremy Konyndyk (who then served as director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance) to apply to OFAC for a new license from USAID to pay ISRA “monies owed for work performed.” According to Larry Meserve, USAID’s mission director for Sudan, World Vision argued that if they did not pay ISRA, “their whole program will be jeopardized.”
While World Vision waited for a decision, on February 22, a pro-regime Sudanese newspaper, Intibaha, reported that the Sudanese political leaders had requested that World Vision be expelled from Sudan’s Blue Nile state. USAID disaster operations specialist Joseph Wilkes and World Vision’s Mark Smith speculated that this was “punishment” for the cancellation of the grant with ISRA, which a USAID official noted is “well connected with the [Sudanese] government.”
Then, incredibly, on May 7, 2015 — after “close collaboration and consultations with the Department of State” — OFAC issued a license to a World Vision affiliate, World Vision International, authorizing “a one-time transfer of approximately $125,000 to ISRA,” of which “$115,000 was for services performed under the sub-award with USAID” and $10,000 was “for an unrelated funding arrangement between Irish Aid and World Vision.”
An unnamed World Vision official described the decision as a “great relief as ISRA had become restive and had threatened legal action, which would have damaged our reputation and standing in Sudan.” Senior USAID official Charles Wanjue wrote to colleagues: “Good news and a great relief, really!” In August 2015, USAID official Daniel Holmberg even told a State Department official that he had been approached by the executive director of ISRA, and requested guidance on helping ISRA remove itself from the U.S. government’s terror list.
Obama-administration officials knowingly approved the transfer of taxpayer dollars to an al-Qaeda affiliate, and not an obscure one but an enormous international network that was often in the headlines.
How was this prominent terror funder initially approved to receive American taxpayer funds ten years after it had been placed on the “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” terror list?
Existing measures to prevent the payment of government monies to designated terrorist organizations include: first, a requirement that all grantees and sub-grantees of U.S.-government grants register for a Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number; and second, a requirement that all government vendors register with the government’s System for Award Management (SAM) database. A designated organization should not be able to acquire a DUNS number, and any designation is explicitly recorded in the SAM database with a note that the designated organization is excluded from government grants.
However, ISRA was in fact assigned a DUNS number — as recorded at the government’s USAspending.gov website — which matched no organization in the government’s SAM database. The only listings for “Islamic Relief Agency” or “ISRA” in the SAM database are the designated Sudanese al-Qaeda affiliate and its branches.
Whoever approved this grant to ISRA either failed to check the government’s database of designated groups or did so and then chose to disregard it. Both explanations are alarming. And neither answer explains how ISRA acquired a DUNS number.
Most important: Now we know that the government deliberately chose to transfer at least $115,000 to ISRA after confirming that it was on the terror-designation list. In other words, an al-Qaeda front received taxpayers’ money with the apparent complicity of public officials.
It is no secret that the Obama administration sought to downplay the threat of Islamism, and even to coopt some Islamist movements to promote its agenda. In its foreign policy, the administration expressed support for Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, while domestically, the White House invited Islamists to design the government’s Countering Violent Extremism program. It is difficult to argue that these efforts were the product of anything but great naïveté and political dogma. Is it possible that this combination extended to deliberately funding an al-Qaeda affiliate?
Congress must investigate this question and, more broadly, where USAID is sending taxpayers’ money, for ISRA might not be the only example. The House’s Foreign Affairs, Oversight, and Financial Services Committees, along with the Senate Finance Committee, must examine how a designated group came to qualify for government monies, why OFAC and the State Department authorized the transfer of funds after learning of ISRA’s terror ties, and which bureaucrat or political appointee was responsible for this mess.
Asked to comment, current State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told National Review: “As this occurred under the prior Administration, the current Secretary of the State, Secretary of Treasury, and USAID Administrator had no involvement in decisions surrounding this award or subsequent license.”
The American people need to know how their dollars funded an al-Qaeda affiliate. They need to know how deep this problem runs.
*** Millions upon millions come to mind shrink-wrapped on pallets on un-marked airplanes to Tehran comes to mind actually.