Muslim group erects billboards designed to fight terrorism, Islamophobia
A billboard on Interstate 55 by the Association of Pakistani Americans of Bolingbrook urges Muslims to speak up if they see other Muslims engaging in suspicious activity. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)
A suburban Chicago Muslim group hopes two giant billboards hanging over busy Chicago highways will help to fight terrorism while also combating Islamophobia.
The billboards — which read “Muslims to Muslims: See Something. Say Something. Save Innocent Lives” — went up Sunday, one over Interstate 290, the other over I-55. They were paid for by members of the Association of Pakistani Americans of Bolingbrook, a community group that over the last two decades has brought an annual Pakistan Day celebration, two cricket fields and a Pakistani-flag hoisting ceremony to the southwest suburb. Two billboards with the same message had hung in other locations around Chicago earlier this summer.
“We are trying to tell average Americans this is who we are, and we do not condone (terrorism),” said Talat Rashid, founder of the group, who also is a member of Bolingbrook’s Planning Commission and was the suburb’s 2003 Citizen of the Year. “If we see anyone in our community that is off track, we will let the authorities know.”
But some Chicago-area Muslim leaders question the approach, arguing that the billboards perpetuate hurtful misconceptions about Muslims.
U.S.-led strikes pound Islamic State in Iraq, kill 250 fighters
US led strikes pound Islamic State in Iraq, kill 250 fighters.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S.-led coalition aircraft waged a series of deadly strikes against Islamic State around the city of Falluja on Wednesday, U.S. officials told Reuters, with one citing a preliminary estimate of at least 250 suspected fighters killed and at least 40 vehicles destroyed.
If the figures are confirmed, the strikes would be among the most deadly ever against the jihadist group. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the operation and noted preliminary estimates can change.
The strikes, which the officials said took place south of the city, where civilians have also been displaced, are just the latest battlefield setback suffered by Islamic State in its self-proclaimed “caliphate” of Iraq and Syria.
The group’s territorial losses are not diminishing concerns about its intent and ability to strike abroad though. Turkey pointed the finger at Islamic State on Wednesday for a triple suicide bombing and gun attack that killed 41 people at Istanbul’s main airport.
CIA chief John Brennan told a forum in Washington the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamic State “depravity” and acknowledged there was a long road ahead battling the group, particularly its ability to incite attacks.
“We’ve made, I think, some significant progress, along with our coalition partners, in Syria and Iraq, where most of the ISIS members are resident right now,” Brennan said.
“But ISIS’ ability to continue to propagate its narrative, as well as to incite and carry out these attacks — I think we still have a ways to go before we’re able to say that we have made some significant progress against them.”
On the battlefield, the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State has moved up a gear in recent weeks, with the government declaring victory over Islamic State in Falluja.
An alliance of militias have also launched a major offensive against the militant group in the city of Manbij in northern Syria.
Still, in a reminder of the back-and-forth nature of the war, U.S.-backed Syrian rebels were pushed back from the outskirts of an Islamic State-held town on the border with Iraq and a nearby air base on Wednesday after the jihadists mounted a counter- attack, two rebel sources said.
Don’t Bend the Law to Fight Terror in Nigeria, U.S. urged
Edward McKinney – The National Interest
Earlier this month, the Obama administration revealed that it is poised to sell up to twelve light attack aircraft to Nigeria in a bid to support the country’s fight against Boko Haram.
This might sound laudable at first glance, but in reality, selling arms to Nigeria would mean the United States essentially breaking the so-called Leahy Law. Passed in 1997 by amending the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, it prohibits the United States from exporting arms to “any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”
The Leahy Law’s three-stage vetting process is stringent. It begins with the appropriate U.S. embassy carrying background checks on the individuals or units applying for assistance, by analyzing the Department of State (DoS) International Vetting and Security Tracking (INVEST) system, DoS Country Reports, cooperating with local police forces or even interviewing individual victims where necessary. If any credible information is found, the embassy can bar further support or refer to Washington.
In Washington, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) receives the results of the ambassadorial vetting and conducts investigations of its own. Again, if credible information that the violation or issue is serious enough to prohibit U.S. involvement is found, support is refused and the findings recorded in INVEST. Lastly, if further review of the information is required, then DRL will assemble a broader team of State Department representatives, who may request further information from the embassy in the country in question before a decision is made. With such a meticulous evaluation process, it is puzzling that there is any expectation that the Nigerian military will possibly pass the test.
Indeed, the Nigerian military is currently being investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of illegal killings and unlawful incarcerations. In June of last year, an Amnesty International report claimed that, in the course of Nigeria’s war against Boko Haram, brutal conditions while in government detention have led to the death of at least seven thousand people, while an additional 1,200 have been “extrajudicially executed” by Nigerian security forces. A further twenty thousand have been “arbitrarily arrested.”
Secretary of State John Kerry gestures while he and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari make statements prior to a working lunch at the State Department in Washington, July 21, 2015.
And the man elected to clean up the country, President Muhammadu Buhari, seems to be either thoroughly naive or thoroughly complacent. In June of last year, he called for a lifting of the Leahy Laws, arguing that the “unproven allegations” of Nigerian security forces’ human-rights violations had rendered his forces impotent against the might of Boko Haram. His statement ignored two very crucial facts. The first that, as the later proven human-rights abuses showed, the Nigerian military was certainly not sitting on its hands waiting for U.S. support in the fight against Boko Haram and second, the application of the Leahy Laws, never results in a “blanket ban” on whole countries, it is individuals or units who are assessed before assistance is either granted or refused.
Buhari’s questionable relationship with reality came to the forefront once more in December 2015, when he declared that Boko Haram had been “technically defeated”—a curious statement given the fact that the group’s body count rose by 62 percent in 2015, and in the first quarter of 2016 more than thirty-six attacks that left 422 dead were staged. And worryingly, Muslim herdsmen of the Fulani tribe also seem responsive to the clarion call of Islamic extremism, launching systematic attacks on the people of the largely Christian Benue state in north central Nigeria.
Terrorism and human-rights abuses aside, the country is, in UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s words, “fantastically corrupt.” And despite Buhari’s spokesman Garba Shehu retorting that Cameron “must be looking at an old snapshot of Nigeria,” the evidence suggests otherwise. In a survey of 168 countries carried out by Transparency International in its annual “Corruption Perception Index,” Nigeria ranks thirty-second from bottom. Sambo Dasuki, a former national security advisor in charge of weapons procurement was arrested in 2015 and accused of “stealing more than $2 billion from the military” by awarding phantom contracts to buy twelve helicopters, four fighter jets, bombs and ammunition—they were never delivered.
In a country like Nigeria, adding weapons contracts would only fan the flames of corruption and provide, quite literally, further ammunition to an army that is already making a name for itself for its flagrant disregard of human rights. The Leahy Law is there for a very good reason. The process of vetting individuals and countries is rigorous, and individuals and entities are considered on a case-by-case basis.
If Nigeria’s military keeps failing the assessment, the solution is for it to address the serious issues that permeate the nation, not for the United States to bend the rules.
Court upholds sentences for Boko Haram insurgents in Lagos
The three defendants — identified by the state government as Ali Mohammed Modu, Adamu Ali Karumi and Ibrahim Usman Ali — lodged an appeal against conviction and sentence.
Lagos (AFP) – An appeal court judge in Nigeria’s financial capital, Lagos, has upheld 25-year jail terms imposed on three men found guilty at a secret trial of terror charges linked to Boko Haram.
The Lagos State government said in a statement Sunday that judge Ibrahim Buba at the Court of Appeal last Friday “affirmed the judgement” of the Federal High Court in September 2014.
The trio were found guilty of conspiracy, acts of terrorism, concealing information and possession of firearms and ammunition, it added.
Charges were dropped against 13 others while a fourth defendant was acquitted on the grounds of lack of evidence.
The state justice commissioner at the time said the 17 suspects were arrested in the Lekki and Ijora suburbs of Lagos and found with improvised explosives, firearms and ammunition.
The explosives were “fully primed and ready to be deployed”, Ade Ipaye told reporters.
The original trial was held behind closed doors on the grounds of national security, he added, but human rights groups raised concerns about transparency, due process and a fair trial.
The men were charged in March 2013 with conspiracy, acts of terrorism, concealing information and possession of firearms and ammunition.
The three defendants — identified by the state government as Ali Mohammed Modu, Adamu Ali Karumi and Ibrahim Usman Ali — lodged an appeal against conviction and sentence.
Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency, which has predominantly affected northeast Nigeria, has left at least 20,000 people dead and made more than 2.6 million people homeless since 2009.
But very few fighters detained by the military over that time have been charged and prosecuted.
Angry over lack of progress to resolve one of the highest-profile mass kidnappings in the world, Nigerians march in their country’s major cities
FILE- In this Monday, May 5, 2014 file photo, women attend a demonstration in Lagos calling on the government to rescue kidnapped school girls of a government secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria. A school mate says she cried with joy when she saw a Boko Haram video appearing to show some of Nigeria’s kidnapped Chibok girls, with images of tearful parents recognizing their daughters, who have not been heard from since the mass abduction by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram two years ago. (AP Photo/ Sunday Alamba, File)
By MICHELLE FAUL, Associated Press
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Angry over lack of progress to resolve one of the highest-profile mass kidnappings in the world, Nigerians marched in their country’s major cities on Thursday to demand the safe return of girls who were abducted by Boko Haram extremists two years ago from a school in Chibok.
Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was expected in the northeastern town of Chibok for the anniversary of the kidnappings, said Yakubu Nkeki, leader of a support group of parents of the kidnapped girls. He said the community is angry that their only school remains in ruins. Boko Haram firebombed buildings as they took off with girls.
Some 20,000 children in the town and its surroundings have no school to attend, Nkeki said Thursday as parents gathered at the ruins of the school to pray for the safe return of their daughters.
“Boko Haram has achieved its aim. They say they don’t want us to have Western education and our children don’t,” Nkeki said.
Two years ago, the Islamic extremists seized 276 girls who had gathered for science exams at the Government Girls Secondary School in the northeast town of Chibok. Some managed to escape, jumping off pickup trucks as the Islamic extremists drove them toward the Sambisa Forest. A total of 219 remain missing.
On Wednesday, CNN broadcast parts of a Boko Haram video of girls wearing the Islamic hijab, and CNN also aired its own images of tearful mothers, including one reaching out to a computer screen as she recognized her kidnapped daughter.
The video shows 15 of the girls — one with a mischievous grin, one looking uncompromising, downright defiant, and one downcast. One can feel the pain that shows in the eyes of many of them. They give the date of the video as Christmas, Dec. 25, 2015.
While Boko Haram is thought to have abducted thousands of people over the years, the mass abduction brought the extremist group to the world’s attention. The campaign hashtag #BringBackOurGirls went as far as the White House, used by U.S. first lady Michelle Obama.
CNN reported that the video was sent in December to negotiators trying to free the girls. CNN’s report included Information Minister Lai Mohammed saying the government is reviewing and assessing the video, which it apparently demanded as “proof of life” from Boko Haram.
Sen. Shehu Sani, who has been involved in past negotiations with Boko Haram about the Chibok girls, told The Associated Press he found the video credible. Nkeki, leader of the support group for parents of the Chibok girls, said he briefly saw part of the CNN video, in between power blackouts frequent in Nigeria, and “those are definitely our girls.”
There’s been no word from the Chibok girls since May 2014, when Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said they had converted to Islam and threatened to sell them into slavery or forced marriage with his fighters.
Somalia – Man’s final moments before death by firing squad
Hassan Hanafi Haji, who was extradited from Kenya last year on the request of the Somali government, was killed by firing squad at a police academy in Mogadishu on Monday. Firing squad is the only execution method in Somalia.
In his role as a liaison officer with al-Shabab, Haji was known to threaten journalists and radio stations for any reporting not in favor of the Islamic extremist rebels, forcing many media outlets to practice self-censorship for security reasons. Haji later led al-Shabab’s media unit, inviting journalists to press conferences and giving them tours of battlefields.
He often urged journalists to report according to al-Shabab’s media rules, which included avoiding stories related to the group’s military setbacks.
Journalist-turned-Islamist Hassan Hanafi Haji is tied to a post before being executed by firing squad at a police academy square in Mogadishu, Somalia, on April 11.
Haji was one of the few suspects prosecuted by the Somali government following years of criticism by rights groups who urged authorities to do more to establish the rule of law and end the killings of journalists.
The killings of media workers often happened in government-controlled areas that journalists generally consider safe.
Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries for media workers. At least 18 Somali journalists were killed last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
It’s not entirely clear who has been killing journalists. Al-Shabab rebels, warlords, criminals, and even government agents all could have reasons to see journalists killed in Somalia.
The brutal toll of Boko Haram’s attacks on civilians
ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS SINCE 2011 Circles are sized based on number of fatalitie
As the Islamic State’s attacks in Europe have captured the world’s attention, an ISIS-affiliated group has been waging an even deadlier campaign in Africa.
Hundreds killed when 20 attackers detonated coordinated blasts at police stations around a city. Fifty dead when suicide bombers, including women and children, attacked a market and camps housing people trying to escape the violence. Fifty Christians targeted and killed in a student housing area near a school.
People gather around burnt cars near a Catholic church after a bomb blast in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on December 25, 2011. (Sunday Aghaeze/Getty Images)Young girls fleeing Boko Haram walk past livestock burned by the militants on Feb. 6 in Mairi village, near Maiduguri. (AFP/Getty Images)
These are a few of the hundreds of horrors wrought regularly by Boko Haram, an Islamist militant organization based in Nigeria, over the past six years.
The group’s rise, some experts say, is attributable to government corruption and economic differences between the Muslim northern areas and more populous and prosperous Christian South.
While military forces have had some success regaining territory in the past year, Boko Haram continues to carry out attacks on civilians.
Last year was the group’s deadliest yet, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks civil unrest and political violence in Africa and Asia.
Researchers recorded more than 6,000 fatalities resulting from Boko Haram attacks aimed at civilians. Because the counts below include only attacks on civilians, and not battles over territory, they underestimate what some say is a total of 15,000 people killed by the group.
Deaths in attacks aimed at civilians, by month
Jan. 2015: A multi-day attack in the town of Baga left about 2,000 dead, some estimates suggest.
Conflict in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has spilled over into neighboring nations, including Cameroon, which recently launched a campaign to retake territory from the militants. Chad, Benin and Niger have also contributed soldiers to the fight.
How Boko Haram evolved
A government crackdown in 2009 led the group to turn to violence. In 2010, a jailbreak freed more than 700 inmates. Increasingly in the following years, militants carried out hundreds of attacks, many that killed more than 10, and some that claimed hundreds.
2011
114 dead in 32 attacks
Boko Haram was established in 2002 in Maiduguri, but it was years before it spawned an insurgency. By 2011, its fighters were attacking government officials, police and religious figures. That December, it launched a
suicide attack on a U.N. regional headquarters in Abuja.
2012
910 dead in 148 attacks
The insurgents increased the sophistication of their attacks, with a gunfire-and-bomb assault on government buildings that killed at least 185 people in January in the Northern city of Kano.
2013
1,008 dead in 108 attacks
As Boko Haram’s attacks grew more brutal, President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in three states in the northeast. The U.S. government
designated Boko Haram a terrorist organization.
2014
3,425 dead in 220 attacks
The group gained international attention after its fighters kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls, which prompted the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign. That August, Boko Haram announced it had established a “caliphate” in the expanding territory it controlled.
2015
6,006 dead in 270 attacks
Boko Haram declared its loyalty to the Islamic State. Troops from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger launched an offensive that eventually recaptured many towns from the militants.
2016
422 dead in 36 attacks
Boko Haram has been forced from much of the territory it controlled, but it continues to carry out suicide
bombings in populated areas in northeastern Nigeria.
An aerial view of the destroyed town of Gwoza, Boko Haram’s base in northern Nigeria, recently retaken by the Nigerians, on April 8, 2015. (Jane Hahn for the Washington Post)
As government forces have reclaimed territory, the group’s scorched-earth tactics have been on display.
“The scene was post-apocalyptic, an entire city destroyed. Almost every building, it seemed, had been ransacked or set on fire,” Washington Post reporter Kevin Sieff wrote last year after touring the group’s former capital city, Gwoza. “Schools were in ruin. Bodies decayed in a pile.”
Millions of Nigerians fleeing violence
A girl does laundry in the Dalori camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria, which houses close to 20,000 people. (Jane Hahn for the Washington Post)
Stopping the insurgency is not the only crisis Nigeria faces. More than 2 million Nigerians have been forced to leave their homes to escape the violence. The map below shows the number of internally displaced persons by country, as reported by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center:
Recent estimate from the International Organization for Migration
While it may not draw the attention of the West as frequently as the Islamic State, Boko Haram is one of the most devastating terrorist organizations in the world. Regaining territory from the group will only be the first step in a long process of healing the deep wounds it has inflicted.
Clash over black mosque triggers angry crowd in South Dallas
Krystal Muhammad with a shot gun and other members of the New Black Panther Party stand guard across the Muhammad Mosque in Dallas, Saturday, April 2, 2016. (Jae S. Lee/The Dallas Morning News)
Racial tensions in South Dallas almost exploded at an anti-mosque protest Saturday afternoon before quickly dissolving when the protesters retreated. A few hundred South Dallas residents, mostly black, flooded Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to oppose a planned demonstration by a mostly white group that routinely protests outside mosques.
Both sides were armed. Dallas police stood guard on a funeral home’s roof as black counterprotesters swarmed the parking lot of Eva’s House of Bar-B-Q, vowing to defend their streets and chanting “black power.”
“This is what they fear — the black man,” said activist Olinka Green. “This is what America fears.” The anti-mosque group showed up in camouflage, carrying guns and an American flag, FOX 4 reported. They left soon after and the protests ended without incident. “It’s a people’s victory here in South Dallas today,” said Yafeuh Balogun of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, named for the founder of the original Black Panther Party.
Balogun, who helped organized the counterprotest, added that he wasn’t “surprised” the group withdrew when confronted by the emotional crowd. “Would you come out and face them?”
The Bureau of American Islamic Relations, or BAIR, had planned to protest against the Nation of Islam mosque at 1 p.m.
The group decided to protest at the Nation of Islam on Saturday, accusing the mosque of “promoting violence against Americans openly and publicly,” according to a Facebook page about the event.
A police officer uses binoculars across from the Muhammad Mosque to monitor the situation. (Jae S. Lee/Staff Photographer
“We cannot stand by while all these different Anti American, Arab radical Islamists team up with Nation of Islam/Black Panthers and White anti American Anarchist groups, joining together in the goal of destroying our Country and killing innocent people to gain Dominance through fear!” the event invite says.
The Huey P. Newton Gun Club and the New Black Panther Party were among those to come out in opposition. They, too, wore full gear and carried rifles.
Krystal Muhammad, national chair of the New Black Panther Party, accused BAIR of trying to “intimidate and bully” the mosque. She and others lined Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, armed and dressed in black, because “no one else will protect our people.” Down the street, in the barbecue restaurant’s parking lot, anger at Saturday’s anti-Islamic outsiders quickly bubbled into shouts about racism and classism in America.
A chorus of voices cried out in support of “black power.” They bellowed to shield their home from white infiltration: “Whose streets? Our streets?” One man swore at a white TV reporter and later shouted, to no one in particular, that “we got the right to shoot back” if tensions escalated. Robert Greaves, who lives in South Dallas, said his community owed no explanation for its anger and frustration. “This is the black America that white America made,” he said.
