Category Archives: ISIS ISIL Islamic State Caliphate

San Bernardino to New York: Deobandi Courtesy of Barack and Hillary

Posted on by

Ahmad Rahami Posted Radical Videos in 2010, Went to Syria: Sources

   

Ahmad Khan Rahami spent time at Pakistan seminary tied to Taliban

Guardian: Exclusive: Suspect in New York and New Jersey bombings spent three weeks in 2011 at Kaan Kuwa Naqshbandi madrassa, source says, amid questions of terrorism links

Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man suspected of placing bombs in New York and New Jersey last weekend, spent time in a religious seminary in Pakistan closely associated with the Afghan Taliban, according to a government official.

The 28-year-old, who was born in Afghanistan but became a US citizen, spent time at the Kaan Kuwa Naqshbandi madrasa on his two visits to Pakistan, a security official working for the government of Balochistan province told the Guardian.

Rahami spent three weeks in 2011 receiving “lectures and Islamic education” at the school in Kuchlak, a dusty cluster of villages 20km north of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, he said.

Kuchlak is a well-known hub for the Taliban, the Islamist movement that has waged a 15-year insurgency against local and Nato forces in nearby Afghanistan. It is home to many madrasas, the seminaries intimately linked with the Taliban, originally a movement of religious students.

US officials have revealed basic details about Rahami’s two visits to Pakistan, the first in 2011 when he spent a couple of months in Quetta and got married and almost a year in 2013 when he also made a car journey to Afghanistan.

But very little information has emerged from inside Pakistan about what Rahami did during his visits.

Related reading: U.S. State Dept/Pakistan Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

The government official, who did not wish to be named because he was speaking about a highly sensitive subject, said Pakistani security agencies have tried to “hide all the details of his visits to Quetta” and keep as much information as possible out of the media.

Rahami, he said, also visited other sensitive areas in the province, including Surkhab and Nushki, where former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor was killed by a US drone in May.

Pakistan has long been accused of playing a “double game” with the US, both supporting the Nato counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and allowing the Taliban to use its territory a vital rear base.

A western expert on the Taliban said Abdul Samad, the Afghan owner of the Kuchlack madrasa, was an important local figure.

“The madrasa is a place where you have multiple Afghan Taliban going there and hanging out in [Samad’s] court, as well as active ISI officers,” he said, referring to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, an army-run spy agency.

“Samad is the kind of person who should have been shut down long ago but enjoys a high degree of protection,” he said.

Despite being part of the mystical, Sufi strain of Islam, which many hardliners abhor, Samad is highly respected by the movement, he said.

A Karachi-based cleric told the Guardian the school was a sizeable operation, with more than 200 students.

Despite several attempts to reach Samad for comment, the Guardian was unable to make contact with the madrasa.

Although the Taliban’s leadership is often described as the “Quetta Shura” many analysts consider Kuchlak to be the actual command centre for many senior members of the movement.

The Taliban’s white flags have been reportedly seen flying in the town’s graveyards and Shahbaz Taseer, a Pakistani kidnapped by militants in Lahore in 2011 and held for more than four years, was released in Kuchlak in March by the Taliban.

Rahami’s father Mohammad Rahami has said his son had grown increasingly interested in Islamist movements, watching Taliban and al-Qaida videos, and listening to their poetry. Rahami had also shown sympathy towards the Taliban, a former employer said.

Related reading: San Bernardino/ The Islamic Center of Riverside or Brooklyn

Given the Taliban has long avoided entanglement in international jihad, insisting it is interested only in forcing foreign troops out of Afghanistan, it is unlikely Rahami was operating under instruction when he planted his bombs. A notebook found on Rahami when he was captured after a shootout on Monday suggests he may have been inspired by the Islamic State group.

But the claim Rahami attended an important Taliban-sympathising madrasa could be embarrassing for Pakistan at a time the country is under intense international criticism, not least from India, which accused Pakistan this week of hosting “the Ivy League of terrorism”.

Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said that because more than 1 million Afghan refugees lived in the province it was “difficult to know what sort of activity is being conducted by some individuals”.

“Filtering out the terrorist influences in such a huge community is a very difficult task,” he said.

Nor could the government be expected to be aware of a US traveller such as Rahami, who has “deep links in the host community”.

“If he was not spotted by the CIA and FBI or Homeland Security, then this shows that it is really global problem,” he said.

*** The basis for the swap of the Taliban 5 out of Guantanamo for Bowe Bergdahl? It all seems Qatar was the core and interlocutor for the Taliban. Clinton and Obama managed the failed process.

Negotiations with the Taliban initiated by the United States were for getting all factions to talk to each other.  Why bother talking to the Taliban? The answer is that, as both President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made clear while I served as special representative, the war in Afghanistan is going to end politically and we would either shape that end or be shaped by it. If there is ever to be peace in Afghanistan, Afghans will need to talk to other Afghans about the future of Afghanistan. Since the Taliban today officially refuses to talk to Kabul’s representatives, getting to these talks might require a US effort to help open the door.

Those US-Taliban talks, which lasted from mid-2011 to March 2012, ultimately failed. While many details rightly remain classified, here are three of the lessons I learned sitting across the negotiating table from the Taliban that may be helpful to those who may seek to reopen the dialogue with them or others who need to talk to an insurgent group in some present or future conflict:

Set clear conditions and moral guidelines and stick to them. These need not be preconditions. Indeed, before talks with the Taliban began, Secretary Clinton made clear that while the US had no preconditions for talking to them, Washington would support reconciliation with only those insurgents who met three important end conditions: Break with al Qaeda, end violence, and live inside an Afghan Constitution that guarantees the rights of all individuals, especially women. Force must be backed by diplomacy, and diplomacy must be backed by force. Talking with the Taliban was part of the larger “diplomatic campaign” Secretary Clinton launched in 2011 to complement the military surge President Obama had ordered in 2009. This diplomatic campaign tried to harness all of the instruments of non-military power to support Afghanistan, such as development assistance, private-sector investment and support for civil society. As part of this effort, we organized international meetings in Istanbul, Bonn, Chicago and Tokyo, at which nations and international organizations pledged future political and material support for Afghanistan. These conferences were also designed to send the Taliban clear messages that the international community was committed to supporting Afghanistan beyond 2014. More here.

Last item of note: In part from Newsweek: The groups targeting the state follow the Deobandi interpretative tradition of Islam. This is important because this means that they share a significant common organizational infrastructure. For example, they rely on mosques and madrassas that adhere to the Deobandi tradition of Islam. When 9/11 happened and Pakistan was forced to work with the Americans, these Deobandi groups were furious. Many of these groups came to know Al-Qaeda through their association with the Taliban in Afghanistan. [The Afghan Taliban emerged from Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan.] And these Deobandi groups were furious that the Pakistani state was aiding the overthrow, not only of the Taliban government, but the only government in the world that was exercising a Deobandi version of Sharia [Islamic law]. After 9/11…[some] of these Deobandi groups began fracturing and disobeying the [Pakistani] state. That’s when the insurgency began. Over time these Deobandi organizations began calling themselves the Pakistani Taliban.

ISIS moving into Tunisia and the Indo-Asia-Pacific

Posted on by

This is precisely how the civil war in Syria began, with a protest. And so much for that Obama Asia pivot.

Escalating Protests Threaten Instability in Tunisia

AEI: Key Takeaway: Economic protests resembling those that sparked the 2010 Jasmine Revolution are spreading throughout Tunisia and may grow into nationwide civil unrest. The protests may escalate if security forces respond with violence or officials prove unwilling or unable to meet protestors’ demands. Widespread civil unrest provides an opportunity for Salafi-jihadi groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) and al Qaeda, to attack government or economic targets and further destabilize the Tunisian state.

The Situation as of September 15, 2016

Major economic protests began in two Tunisian cities on September 5 and September 7.

  • Protestors blocked roads and burned a business in the town of Ben Guerdane on September 5 after Tunisian security forces shot dead a suspected smuggler. Ben Guerdane is located on the Mediterranean coastline near the Libyan border. Its economy depends on smuggling. Trade unions plan to strike in Ben Guerdane on September 21 to protest administrative gridlock.
  • A café owner set himself on fire in Fernana, a town in northwestern Tunisia, on September 7 after being denied a request to negotiate a fine. Protestors responded by burning tires, closing a major road, striking, calling for the resignation of local officials, and attempting to disrupt the water supply to Tunisia’s capital. Demonstrations intensified on September 11 after the café owner succumbed to his injuries. Additional security forces deployed to Fernana on September 12. Protestors released a series of demands, including calls for anti-corruption measures, an industrial zone, and improved public health and energy infrastructure on September 13. Demonstrations quieted on September 15, but government buildings and schools remain closed.

Protests are spreading to other cities in Tunisia in a manner that resembles the beginning of the 2010 Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia that overthrew the Zine el Abidine Ben Ali regime.

  • Labor union members marched in Makthar, western Tunisia on September 13 to protest overdue development projects. Demonstrators demanded the removal of a corrupt official in El Mida, a town on Tunisia’s northeastern coast, on September 14. National Guard officers intervened to protect the official. Teachers and professors marched in Beja, north central Tunisia and Tozeur, southwestern Tunisia on September 14 to demand the implementation of a labor agreement and development plans. A farm worker in Reguib, central Tunisia attempted to self-immolate after a dispute with a local official on September 15.
  • These protests resemble the wave of civil unrest triggered by the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi in late 2010 that ousted longtime Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. The Jasmine Revolution sparked the Arab Spring.

The Tunisian government is attempting to respond to protestors’ demands, but its response may be insufficient.

  • Tunisian authorities had promised on September 12 to send a ministerial delegation to Fernana to hear protestors’ grievances. Local activists reported on September 14 that the promised delegation never arrived. A regional council is now set to convene to discuss Fernana’s development on September 18. The Tunisian Ministry of Industry and Trade announced plans to develop a free-trade zone in Ben Guerdane on September 13, possibly in an effort to placate protestors.
  • The Tunisian public’s expectations that life would improve after the 2010 Jasmine Revolution have not been met. Continued economic failure and successive corruption scandals underpin widespread discontent with the government, especially in marginalized regions, where the unemployment rate hovers around 30 percent. Clashes between security forces and local residents, as well as corruption, drive popular resentment against the police.

 

Context

Tunisia’s new unity government is vulnerable to economic and political backlash.

  • Newly appointed Prime Minister Youssef Chahed is preparing to announce austerity measures that will include new taxes and limits on public sector jobs. Parliament ousted former Prime Minister Habib Essid for his failure to resolve the country’s economic and security challenges. Chahed’s government faces the same challenges, as well as allegations of nepotism.

Tunisian security forces have violently repressed popular protests in the post-revolution period.

  • Protestors demonstrated nationwide in January 2016 after an unemployed young man electrocuted himself. Tunisian police responded with violent crackdowns.
  • Tunisian security forces may crack down on protestors. Tunisia’s security sector, including key leadership, has not changed since it responded violently to demonstrations in January 2016. Security forces have used states of emergency and unlawful force to break up peaceful demonstrations and detain suspects multiple times in recent years.

Tunisia is surrounded by unstable neighbors.

Tunisia is a target for global Salafi-jihadi groups.

  • Thousands of Tunisian militants are fighting for ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Waves of returning foreign fighters will attempt to re-enter their country, bringing with them plans to break the Tunisian state.
  • The al Qaeda network, composed of a core group and an array of associates and affiliates that pursue al Qaeda’s objectives, has grown stronger since 2011. This network includes Ansar al Sharia Tunisia and the Tunisian Uqba Ibn Nafa’a Brigade.

 

Complications

Salafi-jihadi groups may be positioned to infiltrate or attack Tunisia in the event of unrest.

  • Tunisian has limited security resources. The government would probably re-allocate these resources from counter-terrorism operations to quell unrest should there be widespread protests.
  • Tunisian ISIS militants operating in Libya may be preparing to return to Tunisia. ISIS could exploit unrest to penetrate Tunisia’s border at Ben Guerdane, where it attacked in March 2016. ISIS militants moving westward from the group’s former stronghold in Sirte, Libya are a growing threat on Tunisia’s eastern border.
  • Al Qaeda’s strategy includes embedding itself within and co-opting movements. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Uqba Ibn Nafa’a Brigade, an AQIM affiliate, may be positioned to infiltrate a movement against the Tunisian state.

A crackdown by security forces would strengthen the Salafi-jihadi base in Tunisia.

  • A violent crackdown would exacerbate existing popular grievances and reinforce a Salafi-jihadi popular support base in Tunisia. This base will remain a source of strength for local and global Salafi-jihadi groups.

 

Implications

Instability in Tunisia could greatly exacerbate regional instability and threaten U.S. interests in the region.

  • The destabilization of Tunisia would remove one of the few remaining semi-stable states in North Africa.
  • The U.S. relies on Tunisia as the host of diplomatic efforts for neighboring Libya. U.S. Africa Command works closely with Tunisian security forces in counterterrorism operations and may seek to base from Tunisia for future operations.

A stronger Salafi-jihadi base in Tunisia would threaten the security of the U.S. and its allies in the long term.

  • Salafi-jihadi groups with global objectives, including ISIS and al Qaeda, will continue to draw on a Tunisian support base for resiliency and strength.
  • This base will continue to threaten Tunisia and provide foreign fighters to regional conflicts. It will support Salafi-jihadi groups with the intent and capability to attack the American and European homelands.

Popular protests in Tunisia may spread throughout the country. In the most dangerous scenario, the Tunisian state will weaken or collapse and the country’s Salafi-jihadi base will grow stronger.  

*****

SanDiegoUnionTribune: The commander of American military forces across Asia, Adm. Harry Harris, said the jihadist group — commonly called ISIS — is seeking new territory as it gets squeezed out of Iraq and Syria.

“It’s clear to me that [ISIS] is also “rebalancing” to the Indo-Asia-Pacific,” said Harris, speaking during a meeting of the San Diego Military Advisory Council on Wednesday in Point Loma.

Using a cancer analogy, the four-star leader of U.S. Pacific Command added: “Through multinational cooperation, we can eradicate this [ISIS] disease before it metastasizes.”

But the U.S. alliance with the Philippines hit choppy waters recently after comments by President Rodrigo Duterte — something that Harris also addressed Wednesday with lightly veiled criticism of Duterte’s statements.

“We have been allied with the Philippines for a long time. We have shed our blood with them. … We fought side by side during World War II. I consider our alliance with the Philippines to be iron-clad,” Harris said. He also mentioned U.S. aid to the Philippines, budgeted at $120 million this year, and the dispatch of American troops to help after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

“So when the leader said, ‘Only China supports us,’ I don’t know what he means,” Harris said, answering a reporter’s question toward the end of his presentation.

Duterte started making headlines last week when, speaking in Tagalog, he called President Barack Obama a son of a bitch.

Since then the Philippines president has said his government would shop for weapons in China and Russia and would halt joint U.S.-Philippines patrols in the South China Sea to avoid appearing hostile to China.

He also called for the departure of U.S. special-operations troops from the southern Philippines, saying their presence could complicate the fight against the ISIS-linked terrorist group Abu Sayyaf.

One analyst said it appears that nationalism and a desire for “outsider” status are driving the Filipino president’s current tone.

“I don’t really think this is as much about the U.S. as it is about domestic politics — and just his personality. We are a very useful whipping boy,” said Thomas Sanderson, director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “I think this is largely about someone who is a rebel … he’s an outsider and he’s broken through into an area that outsiders typically didn’t get to.”

Sanderson said the Philippines would do an about-face if Islamic terrorism becomes a more widespread problem for Filipinos.

“[Duterte] comes right back to us, there’s no doubt about it,” he said. “Because the center of gravity for counter-terrorism knowledge and skill is the United States.”

Harris outlined the signposts of the ISIS advance on new turf in the Pacific Command theater, an area that’s home to 700 million Muslims. That means more Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region than in the Middle East.

“Population numbers alone have forced [Pacific Command] to think ahead about what’s next in the fight against [ISIS],” Harris said. “The vast majority of these people are peaceful citizens who seek to live lives free from the scourge of terrorism, but we know that a small band of fanatics can produce deadly results.”

He pointed to ISIS-inspired terrorism in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines so far in 2016. Those events include the July 2 attack on a Bangladeshi restaurant by ISIS-aligned militants. In May and June, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines released video showing the beheadings of two Canadians after their families didn’t pay ransoms.

Hundreds of jihadists have traveled from Asia to the main ISIS battlegrounds of Iraq and Syria to join in the group’s violent vision of creating an Islamic caliphate, according to published accounts.

The tally is about 700 from Indonesia, 100 from Malaysia, 100 from the Philippines, 200 from the Maldives, 300 from China and 120 from Australia, according to a December report by The Soufan Group. These recruits make up a small portion of the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 fighters ISIS can claim or has been credited with over time.

But as they tire of warfare, the danger is that they may return home and try to continue the fight — and recruit others.

Sanderson said Indonesia has the highest vulnerability to ISIS despite its strong security forces, because of the number of ISIS fighters already hailing from there and because of Indonesia being a string of islands with lots of places to hide.

All of this comes as the United States is finishing its own “rebalance,” with the Navy shifting 60 percent of its fleet to the Pacific by 2020. That move, announced late in Barack Obama’s first term, was seen as a hedge against North Korean saber-rattling and the growing economic and military might of China.

Academics differ on how big the ISIS threat is becoming in the Pacific and Asia.

Eli Berman, a UC San Diego economics professor, said he thinks “rebalancing” is too strong a term for the jihadist group’s foothold in Asia. ISIS isn’t on the verge of controlling territory anywhere in the Pacific Rim, said Berman, who is a research director at the university’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.

Asia expert Denny Roy at the East-West Center in Honolulu agrees with Harris that the basic ideas represented by ISIS won’t die if the Islamic State is geographically erased.

“The purveyors of those ideas are already trying to transplant them into other regions and are finding some interest,” Roy said.

But several observers pointed out that Asia has major differences that may hinder ISIS if it tries to expand there.

Governments there are generally more intact than in the Middle East.

“What’s missing is the ultra-weak states in which locals are ready and chomping at the bit to sign up for something to do,” said Sanderson at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There are far fewer people who would want to sign up for a battle inside of Indonesia, as opposed to those who would want to sign up to battle inside Libya, Tunisia, Yemen or Syria — where the majority of young men would say, ‘Give me a gun and let’s go.’ They have nothing to lose.”

Roy sees South Asia, which includes Bangladesh, as fertile ground for extremism.

“Southeast Asia is less so, because the sense of grievance and the (routine practice) of mass political violence are less strong than in the Middle East or South Asia,” he said.

 

ISIS suspected of mustard attack against US and Iraqi troops

Posted on by

First on CNN: ISIS suspected of mustard attack against US and Iraqi troops

Washington (CNN)ISIS is suspected of firing a shell with mustard agent that landed at the Qayarrah air base in Iraq Tuesday where US and Iraqi troops are operating, according to several US officials.

The shell was categorized by officials as either a rocket or artillery shell. After it landed on the base, just south of Mosul, US troops tested it and received an initial reading for a chemical agent they believe is mustard.
 
No US troops were hurt or have displayed symptoms of exposure to mustard agent.
One official said the agent had “low purity” and was “poorly weaponized.” A second official called it “ineffective.”
A US defense official said troops had gone out to look at the ordnance after it landed. Based on seeing what they thought was a suspect substance, two field tests were conducted.
The first test was positive and the second was negative, the official said. The substance is now being sent to a lab for further examination.
Iraqi forces push towards Mosul as refugees wait for aid
US troops involved in the incident went through decontamination showers as a precaution. No troops have shown any symptoms of exposure, such as skin blistering. CNN has reported on previous instances where ISIS has fired rounds with mustard agents in Iraq and Syria.
The officials said they “had expected” that ISIS might try use chemical weapons as US and Iraqi forces push towards Mosul in an effort to take the city back from ISIS. Several hundred US troops are using the base as a staging area for supporting Iraqi forces.
All of this has led the Pentagon to assess on a preliminary basis that it was ISIS that fired at the base, since the terror group has been making mustard agent for some time.
In the course of its air campaign against ISIS, US airstrikes have hit several locations the US believes are production sites for mustard agent.
US officials emphasized that mustard agent is relatively easy to produce, and they continue to hit suspected manufacturing sites when they find them. US troops are routinely outfitted with protective gear in the event of a chemical weapons attack.
Qayyarah Airbase. File Photo

(IraqiNews.com) Nineveh – The Qayyarah air base, which the Iraqi forces hoped to use as a staging area to take Mosul back from ISIS, was almost completely destroyed by the retreating ISIS militants, raising new doubts over whether the long-awaited operation will begin this year or not.

Iraqi army commanders stationed at the base said that it will take months of reconstruction before it is ready to receive cargo planes and house the tens of thousands of troops needed for the march on Mosul.

Col. Karim Rodan Salim said, “ISIS began destroying Qayyarah base from the moment they took it over, no less than 95 percent of the base has been destroyed,” adding that, “What we see here was an organized destruction but we were expecting it, ISIS never leaves anything behind.”

“It will take at least six months of rebuilding before the base is ready for the 50,000 troops that will be needed to retake Mosul,” Salim added.

ISIS captured Qayyarah air base in 2014, when it swept across much of northern and western Iraq and drove Iraqi troops out of Mosul.

The coalition hopes to transform the base into a logistics center ahead of the Mosul operation. The Pentagon announced earlier this month that about 400 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division will deploy to Iraq as part of that effort.

Meanwhile, US commander of coalition land forces in Iraq Major General Gary Volesky said, “The seizure of this base is important because it demonstrates the Iraqi security forces’ ability to maintain momentum as ISIS gets weaker and continues to lose territory.”

ISIS has retreated from areas around Mosul in recent days, including the nearby city of Qayyarah, but it has sabotaged infrastructure on its way out, leaving behind a destruction that in the short-term is hindering further advances by Iraqi forces and in the long-term will require great reconstruction effort.

Ineligible Individuals Have Been Granted U.S. Citizenship

Posted on by

Sheesh….fingerprints eh? And those migrants, refugees and asylees don’t have any reference database for fingerprint history much less any travel documents applications.

As citizens they can vote, seek and hold sensitive jobs and more. Don’t you just wonder what DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson has to say on this? Oh wait….more money from Congress will solve it all.

Summary of the Inspector General’s report:

USCIS granted U.S. citizenship to at least 858 individuals ordered deported or removed under another identity when, during the naturalization process, their digital fingerprint records were not available. The digital records were not available because although USCIS procedures require checking applicants’ fingerprints against both the Department of Homeland Security’s and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) digital fingerprint repositories, neither contains all old fingerprint records. Not all old records were included in the DHS repository when it was being developed. Further, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has identified, about 148,000 older fingerprint records that have not been digitized of aliens with final deportation orders or who are criminals or fugitives. The FBI repository is also missing records because, in the past, not all records taken during immigration encounters were forwarded to the FBI. As long as the older fingerprint records have not been digitized and included in the repositories, USCIS risks making naturalization decisions without complete information and, as a result, naturalizing additional individuals who may be ineligible for citizenship or who may be trying to obtain U.S. citizenship fraudulently.

As naturalized citizens, these individuals retain many of the rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship, including serving in law enforcement, obtaining a security clearance, and sponsoring other aliens’ entry into the United States. ICE has investigated few of these naturalized citizens to determine whether they should be denaturalized, but is now taking steps to increase the number of cases to be investigated, particularly those who hold positions of public trust and who have security clearances.

****

In July 2014,3 OPS provided the Office of Inspector General (OIG) with the names of individuals it had identified as coming from special interest countries or neighboring countries with high rates of immigration fraud, had final deportation orders under another identity, and had become naturalized U.S. citizens. OIG’s review of the list of names revealed some were duplicates, which resulted in a final number of 1,029 individuals. Of the 1,029 individuals reported, 858 did not have a digital fingerprint record available in the DHS fingerprint repository at the time U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was reviewing and adjudicating their applications for U.S. citizenship.  

USCIS checks applicants’ fingerprint records throughout the naturalization process. By searching the DHS digital fingerprint repository, the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) digital fingerprint repository, the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system,5 USCIS can gather information about an applicant’s other identities (if any), criminal arrests and convictions, immigration violations and deportations, and links to terrorism. When there is a matching record, USCIS researches the circumstances underlying the record to determine whether the applicant is still eligible for naturalized citizenship.

If USCIS confirms that an applicant received a final deportation order under a different identity, and there are no other circumstances to provide eligibility, USCIS policy requires denial of naturalization. Also, USCIS may refer the applicant’s case to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for investigation. Likewise, if a naturalized citizen is discovered to have been ineligible for citizenship, ICE may investigate the circumstances and refer the case to the Department of Justice for revocation of citizenship. Read the complete report here.

 

U.S SOF are Back in Al-Rai, Accompanied by FSA units

Posted on by

Operation Noble Lance: Barack Obama has authorized up to 300 Special Operations Forces to be deployed to Syria. It was not clear if the Americans accompanying the Turkish military had been re-assigned from other locations in northern Syria or were part of a new contingent. More here.

***  Getty Images

        Getty Images

State Department Daily Briefing Secretary of State John Kerry made brief remarks to reporters on the agreement between the U.S. and Russia to bring about a ceasefire in Syria. Spokesman John Kirby then continued the daily briefing. Secretary Kerry said that if Syria did not comply with the cease-fire agreement, then the arrangement would “not go forward.” He acknowledged the doubts that still existed regarding the agreement and said he expected challenges in the days to come. He also said the plan had a chance to work. He later said that Syria was one of the “most complicated places in the world” and responded to a news report that said the U.S.-Russia plan was “flawed and full of caveats.” He concluded his statement saying he had “never seen a more complicated or entangled political, and military, sectarian, somewhat religiously over-toned issue than what exists in Syria today.

****

Fighting steadily escalating in Syria – reports of heavy combat around Damascus, Hama and  Aleppo. Aid still being blocked by regime too. US Special Ops forces in Tell Abyad Syria put up US flag to show identity as they came under fire.

NYT/WASHINGTON — American Special Operations forces have arrived in northern Syria to work alongside Turkish troops fighting the Islamic State, the Pentagon said on Friday, stressing that the approximately three dozen Americans would serve in an “advise and assist” capacity.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an email that the American Special Operations forces “are accompanying Turkish and vetted Syrian opposition forces as they continue to clear territory” from the Islamic State near Jarabulus and al-Rai.

The decision to send the American forces into northern Syria with the Turkish military came last week, one American official said, shortly after a meeting between Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and President Obama during the G-20 summit meeting in China.

American officials described details of the deployment on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic and national security sensitivities of the mission.

****

Bloomberg: “Denying ISIL access to this critical border cuts off critical supply routes in and out of Iraq and Syria,” Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement, using an alternate acronym for Islamic State. There are about 40 special operations troops in the operation, said a U.S. official who asked to remain anonymous because the details aren’t public.

Earlier Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned his Russian counterpart that the U.S. was prepared to walk away from plans to coordinate strikes unless delays in aid deliveries are resolved. The United Nations is ready to deliver the aid but says it hasn’t received the necessary permission from the Syrian government to proceed.

“Secretary Kerry expressed concerns about the repeated and unacceptable delays of humanitarian aid,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Friday after Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone. Russia must “use its influence on the Assad regime to allow UN humanitarian convoys to reach Aleppo and other areas in need,” Kirby said.

“The Secretary made clear that the United States will not establish the Joint Implementation Center with Russia unless and until the agreed terms for humanitarian access are met,” he added.

****

CBS: The fighting has stopped in Aleppo, but Syrian troops are still holding up on humanitarian aid that the city desperately needs, said United Nations officials.

Samantha Power, United States ambassador to the United Nations, blamed the Syrian regime.

But she also added that Russians had a “significant” influence and that it was “incumbent” on Moscow to deliver on Syria. The war-torn country is now in its fourth day of the U.S.-Russian cease-fire, which Secretary of State John Kerry called “a last chance to be able to hold Syria together.” Power emphasized the significance and potential impact of the deal — one she said was the first of its kind –with “this level of granularity and specificity.”

“It can be a very important deal because it can prevent the regime from flying over opposition areas, it can prevent barrel bombing, chemical attacks, the kinds of things we’ve seen the regime do for so long. It can also turn the Russians to doing what they were supposed to do all along, which was actually fight terrorists instead of civilians,” Power said.

“Don’t you believe that’s what’s happening again today in Syria?” O’Donnell asked. “Well, Syria is a very complex picture,” Power answered. “There are thousands of armed groups. The question again of what military intervention would achieve, where you would do it, how you would do it in a way where the terrorists wouldn’t be the ones to take advantage of it — this has been extremely challenging. But the idea that we have not been doing quote anything in Syria seems absurd. We’ve done everything short of waging war against the Assad regime and we are – I should note – having significant success against ISIL on the ground.”