The Taliban militants group is mulling to participate in peace talks days after the Afghan government announced strict military actions against the group as efforts to revive peace process did not yield any positive result.
The announcement by the Afghan government followed a deadly coordinated car bomb attack in Kabul that left at least 64 dead and 347 others wounded.
However, a delegation of the Taliban group representing their political office in Qatar have said the group is willing to resume the stalled peace talks.
The delegation reportedly met with the Pakistani authorities in Islamabad during visit which was originally announced by the group to focus on border issues and condition of the refugees in the country.
According to the Pakistani officials familier with Taliban delegation’s visit to Islamabad, the trip’s objective was to explore the possibility of direct talks with Kabul, local media reports stated.
The Chinese representatives also reportedly participated in the talks between the Islamabad and the Taliban delegation.
“For this purpose, we told the Taliban delegation that they have to agree on cessation of violence inside Afghanistan,” an official privy of the developemnt told The Express Tribune.
This comes as President Ghani asked Pakistan to take actions against the Taliban group leaderships based in Peshawar and Quetta cities of Pakistan.
President Ghani made the call during a gathering in capital Kabul following the deadly attack, specifying the government’s stance towards the peace process and fight against the militant groups.
He warned to take the issue to the international organizations including the UN Security Council if Pakistan failed to take any action against the group in its soil.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Kuwaiti police incarcerated Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! a man in a shopping mall suspected of wearing a boom jacket, local media reported. The only thing was the vest was an exercise jacket packed with weights rather than explosives.
Concerned shoppers at the mall in the Kuwaiti governorate of Hawalli, tipped off police after spotting the man’s chunky attire and assumed he was a terrorist about to blow himself up.
When police approached the man, they arrested him and strapped his hands together behind his back. They carefully removed the vest, expecting to find explosives and a detonator.
Instead all they found were exercise weights designed to add resistance when walking and running to help boost fitness and burn calories.
Witnesses told local press the police dealt with the man "in a professional manner" and they said there was no panic.
Kuwaitis remain on high alert after last year’s deadly suicide kaboom on a mosque in Kuwait city in June, 2015, which left 27 worshippers dead.
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05/03/2016 00:00 ||
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[AnNahar] Police evacuated more than one thousand people from a makeshift migrant camp near a Gay Paree metro station on Monday, the third time the camp has been cleared in as many months.
Shortly after 6:00 am, people who had been staying in the tightly packed tents under an elevated section of the Stalingrad station in the north of Gay Paree began boarding buses to take them to reception centres.
The evacuation passed off largely without incident, authorities said.
Although only around 500 people had been counted at the camp the night before, police said around 1,350 people had gathered there Monday to be re-located to accommodation centres, suggesting that migrants colonists from other parts of Gay Paree had swelled their numbers.
Around 150 coppers were involved in the operation to relocate the migrants colonists, mostly from Sudan and Afghanistan.
"We're happy to leave," said Moustafa, a 24-year-old Afghan who had been at the camp for a month. "There were fights every night at the camp."
Another Afghan, Abdullah, said he hoped to stay in Gay Paree long-term. "That is where the rest of the community is and there is work here."
He said he had given up hope of reaching Britannia, the country which many of his compatriots try to reach from La Belle France.
"It's a good country here," he said.
Flimsy tents were packed into a small area around the station and the overflowing rubbish bins and piles of mattresses indicated that conditions at the camp had deteriorated in recent weeks.
Jean-Francois Carenco, the prefect of the Ile de La Belle France area that includes Gay Paree, said he expected the migrants colonists to request asylum.
"Those who do not request asylum or who behave badly will be expelled," he said. "La Belle France is not a place for disorder and chaos."
Nearly 80,000 people applied for asylum in La Belle France in 2015, but it has been affected less than its European neighbours by the mass influx of migrants colonists over the last 18 months.
The main migrant camp in La Belle France, the so-called "Jungle" in the northern port of Calais, now holds around 5,000 people, according to charity workers, but the government says that figure is vastly inflated.
[AlAhram] The perpetrator of a deadly boom-mobileing that hit the Turkish city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border at the weekend is linked to the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) Lion of Islam group, The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's interior minister said on Monday.
The perpetrator "is a member of a terrorist organization linked to ISIS," Interior Minister Efkan Ala said in televised remarks, using an alternative name for the Lion of Islam group. The kaboom on Sunday killed two coppers and maimed 22 people.
Either they found the miscreant's wallet with IS membership card and decoder ring, or the #4 pliers and barrel of mustache wax were more than usually effective.
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05/03/2016 00:00:00 ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A radical Kurdish Lion of Islam group on Sunday claimed a suicide kaboom in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... ’s former Ottoman capital of Bursa last week, saying the female assailant had failed to reach her intended target.
The attack on Wednesday evening near Bursa’s famed 14th century Grand Mosque maimed 13 people but caused no fatalities other than thejacket wallah'> exploding trollop female suicide bomber herself.
The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) - a radical splinter group of the better-known Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) - said in a statement on its website that one of its members had carried out the attack.
It said the bomber was a 23-year-old woman named Eser Cali and said the attack was aimed at avenging the Turkish government’s current military operation in the Kurdish-dominated southeast.
But the statement added that the bomber had detonated her charge and been killed "due an accident before she had reached the target that was to be brought to account for the massacres against our people."
It did not give details on the nature of the intended target but denied she was planning to attack the Grand Mosque.
The TAK has already claimed two attacks that killed dozens of people in the capital Ankara in February and March.
Its founders are believed to the have broken away several years ago from the PKK, which has waged an over three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.
Commentators suggested at the time that the bomber had detonated her charge prematurely, sparing Bursa an attack which could have caused considerable loss of life.
The Turkish authorities have yet to say which group was behind the attack, although press reports have suggested a link to the PKK.
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05/03/2016 00:00 ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Ruling party and opposition Turkish politicians on Monday exchanged punches and hurled water bottles at each other as a new mass brawl erupted in parliament over changes to the constitution, television broadcasts showed.
Parliament’s constitutional committee was meeting to discuss a government-backed proposal to strip MPs of their immunity, after last week's session also broke up in violence.
Television footage showed politicians from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) fighting in the crammed committee room after a heated verbal confrontation.
The head of the HDP’s faction in parliament, Idris Baluken, dislocated his shoulder in the fighting, reports said.
Several MPs were seen jumping onto tables and then dive-bombing the crowd of opposing politicians on the other side.
Others vaulted onto tables to get a better crack at kicking their opponents from above while some MPs sought to calm the tensions.
Water bottles and other objects were hurled across the room in some of the worst fighting ever seen in the Turkish parliament, in a new sign of the severe political tensions in the country.
The constitutional committee was due to discuss the AKP-backed plan to strip politicians of their parliamentary immunity.
It comes as the government has stepped up efforts to have pro-Kurdish politicians prosecuted over their alleged links with Death Eaters amid mounting tension in the Kurdish-majority southeast.
Government front man Numan Kurtulmus deplored the scenes of fighting in the national legislature.
"No one should hope to push the government into backing out (of its plans) with this kind of behavior," he warned, adding that "whatever happens, the demand to lift the immunity (of politicians)... will be presented to Parliament."
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05/03/2016 00:00 ||
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ISLAMABAD: The military’s top brass approved on Monday the timeline and operational details of countrywide ‘combing operations’ against terrorists and militant groups, which would involve large-scale army deployments.
“A comprehensive plan for carrying out Combing Operations was approved,” the Inter-Services Public Relations said in a media statement after the Corps Commanders Conference at the General Headquarters, which was chaired by Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif.
The army chief had talked about the ‘combing operations’ during his visit to Shawal last month, where he had announced the successful completion of the military action in North Waziristan.
The combing operations are aimed at locating the terrorists, their facilitators and sleeper cells in different parts of the country and neutralising them, besides expanding the reach of civilian law enforcement agencies.
The term ‘combing operation’ is a new addition to the Zarb-i-Azb lexicon. The Zarb-i-Azb started as ‘kinetic operations’ in North Waziristan in June 2014, which were later supplemented by ‘intelligence-based operations (IBOs)’ outside the tribal agency, primarily to pre-empt the then much feared backlash against the counter-terrorism campaign. Military officials say IBOs, during which a large number of terrorists were either apprehended or killed, turned out to be a major success because they helped in improving security situation throughout the country.
Combing operations, it is said, would be different from IBOs, where security forces acted on specific intelligence information about a terrorist threat. Under the combing operations, military would be deployed in potentially troubled areas and the troops would then seek out terrorists, their sleeper cells and facilitators, an official said while explaining the new concept.
“We have to go beyond what IBOs achieved,” the official maintained.
The combing operations would be led by the army, but would involve different security forces, including civilian law enforcement agencies.
Army’s preparations for combing operations, according to a source, are complete and would commence anytime. Although no tentative timeframe is being shared about the completion of these operations, it is generally expected that they would conclude before Gen Raheel Sharif’s retirement in the last week of November.
The military has already done its mapping of trouble spots. “These would be scattered operations involving large force size,” a source said adding they “can be undertaken anywhere in the country”.
“We’ll follow terrorists everywhere and use every strategy to defeat them,” a military official said.
Asked about the terrorists and militants organisations that would be targeted on priority, the official said, the action would be across-the-board and without any discrimination.
The new operations would be conducted under the Zarb-i-Azb framework and no fresh legal cover would be required, a source said.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Anti-government protesters temporarily ended their mass demonstration in Baghdad's Green Zone on Sunday and began an orderly withdrawal a day after tearing down walls around the government district and invading parliament.
Loudspeakers manned by followers of Shiite holy manMoqtada Tater al-Sadr ... the Iranian catspaw holy man who was 22 years old in 2003 and was nearing 40 in 2010. He spends most of his time in Iran, safely out of the line of fire, where he's learning to be an ayatollah... , who has led the protest movement, announced the disbanding of the protests, which had marked the culmination of months of sit-ins and demonstrations demanding the overhaul of a political system widely seen as corrupt and ineffectual.
"We decided to end it now because of the anniversary of Imam (Moussa) al-Kadhim," said Sadiq al-Hashemi, a representative of al-Sadr's office in Baghdad who was present at the protests.
Al-Hashemi said al-Sadr made the decision in order to allow Iraqi security forces to protect the thousands of pilgrims who are expected to walk from across Iraq to the shrine of the 8th-century Imam in Baghdad.
Speaking to Al Arabiya News Channel from Iraq, Awad Al-Awadi, a deputy in the Iraqi parliament representing the Al-Ahrar bloc of the Sadrist Movement, said that a pending solution "depends on the political blocs first."
"A solution depends on the political blocs, first, and depends on the courage of the head of the government, and parliament speaker. The parliament speaker today said he would dot the i's and cross the t's towards reform. To achieve reform, the political blocs should abandon their gains, and quotas, and their ministers," he told Al Arabiya.
Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered authorities to arrest and prosecute those among the protesters who had attacked security forces, politicians and damaged state property after breaking into the Green Zone.
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[AA.TR] Political segregation has deepened inside Iraq’s Shia coalition after followers of holy manMoqtada Tater al-Sadr ... the Iranian catspaw holy man who was 22 years old in 2003 and was nearing 40 in 2010. He spends most of his time in Iran, safely out of the line of fire, where he's learning to be an ayatollah... stormed Baghdad’s Green Zone on Saturday, an analyst has told Anadolu Agency.
Head of the Baghdad-based Iraqi Group for Strategic Research, Wathaq al-Hashimi, said the fate of the country could be jeopardized due the latest incident.
"Iraq now faces dire political risks. The upcoming period will be even more dangerous due to the ongoing chaos," Hashimi warned, pointing out that both the U.S. and UN -- along with other powers -- had condemned the Sadrists’ occupation of the Iraqi parliament.
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Populist Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr flew to Iran on Monday, a top aide said, one day after hundreds of his supporters withdrew from their occupation of Iraq’s highly fortified International Zone in a protest that had paralyzed the country’s government.
Ibrahim Al Jaberi, head of the Sadr office in Baghdad, said the cleric had departed for Iran Monday, but provided no other details on his itinerary.
His departure came as spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, “expressed Iran’s readiness to use all its links in line with paving the way for Iraqi talks,” according to an official statement carried by Iran’s state-controlled news agency.
The cleric’s travel to Iran would provide some indication of how he might turn to Tehran to help resolve the current standoff with the Iraqi government. The Islamic Republic, which provides substantial support to Shiite militia groups who are playing a major role in the fight against Islamic State, already enjoys considerable sway in Iraqi politics. One possibility is that Mr. Sadr hopes to take the Iranians up on their offer to mediate among senior Shiite Iraqi politicians.
Though Mr. Sadr is considered by some in Iran’s political establishment as an unpredictable partner, analysts say he’s unlikely to buck the wishes of a key patron.
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05/03/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Recalled for instructions.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/03/2016 7:39 Comments ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Iran has passed a law allowing the government to grant citizenship to the families of foreigners killed while fighting for the Islamic republic, the official IRNA news agency reported Monday.
"Members of the parliament authorized the government to grant Iranian citizenship to the wife, children and parents of foreign deaders who died on a mission... during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) and afterwards," it said.
Citizenship must be awarded "within a maximum period of one year after the request", IRNA added.
Iran’s outgoing conservative-dominated parliament will serve until late May.
No figures are available on the number of imported muscle killed during the Iran-Iraq war, but Afghans, and even a group of Iraqis, fought alongside Iranian forces against the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The law could apply to "volunteers" from Afghanistan and Pakistain who are fighting in Syria and Iraq against jihadists including the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group and Al-Nusra Front.
Shiite Iran is a staunch supporter of Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Despoiler of Deraa... and provides financial and military support to his regime.
Tehran says its Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised of Afghan recruits, are volunteers defending sacred Shiite sites in Syria and Iraq against Sunni holy warriors like those of IS.
The Islamic republic denies having any boots on the ground and insists its commanders and generals act as "military advisers" in Syria and Iraq.
Iranian media regularly report on the death of Afghan and Pak volunteers in Syria and Iraq, whose bodies are buried in Iran. More than three million Afghans live in Iran, one million as legal migrants colonists.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/03/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Craigslist ad: "Cannon Fodder needed"
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/03/2016 9:48 Comments ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... ’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has said on Sunday that the Syrian regime was committing "war crimes" in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, which has been exposed to heavy shelling over the past nine days despite a "cessation of hostilities" agreement in place.
Jubeir said in a press statement that "what is happening in Aleppo with the Syrian regime and its allies’ air strikes is tantamount to crimes against humanity and war crimes."
According to sources close to Jubair, the Saudi top diplomat had left for Geneva on Sunday night to hold talks on the Syrian file with his US counterpart John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat, conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State... It had been relatively quiet in the city of Aleppo on Sunday after earlier bombings killed since the 253 civilians dead, including 49 children since April 22, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
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05/03/2016 00:00 ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Ahead of the five-year anniversary of the killing of the late Osama bin Laden ... who is no longer with us, and won't be again... , CIA chief John Brennan said Sunday that taking out the head of ISIS would have a "great impact."
US Special Forces killed Al-Qaeda founder bin Laden in Pakistain on May 2, 2011.
As his agency live-tweeted the events as they unfolded five years ago, the CIA director warned that Al-Qaeda remained a threat and that ISIS was not just an organization but a phenomenon.
"We have destroyed a large part of Al-Qaeda. It’s not completely eliminated. So we have to stay focused on what it can do," Brennan told NBC’s "Meet the Press" talk show.
"Now, with the new phenomenon of (ISIS), this is going to challenge us for years to come," he added.
Asked if removing ISIS leader His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us... from action was as important as the Bin Laden get, Brennan, who does not often do interviews, was direct.
"He is important, and we will destroy ISIS; I have no doubt in my mind. We have to remove the leadership that directs the organization to carry out these horrific attacks," he said, using an alternate acronym for the ISIS group.
"If we got Baghdadi, I think it would have a great impact on the organization. And it will be felt by them," he added.
"But this is a large, not just organization, it’s a phenomenon. We see it not just in Syria in Iraq, we see it in Libya, Nigeria, and other countries. We’re going to have remain very focused on destroying all elements of the organization."
Using the hashtag #UBLRaid, the CIA live-tweeted the raid on bin Laden as if it were happening Sunday, tweeting updates that included the famous picture of President Barack Obama We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us... and other high-ranking US officials watching matters unfold from the Situation Room.
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05/03/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
What took so long.
They should have had a kill team on his trail from the day he declared the caliphate in Mosul
#3
AQ is still around. This selective killing is not influencing people not to play. Mass destruction sort of took out the hundreds of years of militarism in the case of Germany and Japan.
#4
Talking about it makes it harder to do it, so if you're going to do it, shut up.
If you're not going to do it, talk may generate some useful misdirection, if done right.
Talk or do.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Ruling party and opposition Turkish 
Moqtada 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
