ISIS TARGETS AMERICA...
Is Mexico the Islamic State's next frontier? A suspect in Minnesota has revealed to law enforcement officials that he had helped the terrorist group to plan a route for militants to travel from Syria to the U.S. via Mexico. The man, Gulen Ali Omar, is one of five Somali-Americans from Minnesota who are believed to have been conspiring to join ISIS. Audio recordings of the interrogations of Omar and his associates document an ISIS plot to carry out multiple attacks within the United States. (Fox News Latino, April 22,2016)
...AS COALITION EFFORT MAKES GAINS
U.S. officials are striking a triumphalist tone on the heels of significant coalition advances in Iraq and Syria. The progress made in recent weeks includes a series of airstrikes that destroyed $500 million of the group's cash reserves and cut its oil revenue in half. The group now also faces a manpower crisis as a result of coalition operations, with up to 2,000 of its fighters being killed each month, and a dwindling pool of foreign fighters to serve as replacements.
Progress against ISIS is being made in another domain as well. The White House has officially confirmed that the United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) is carrying out "cyber operations" against the Islamic State, ranging from targeting the computers of individual ISIS members to gathering intelligence and implanting malicious software in ISIS systems. (The Daily Beast, April 17, 2016; CNBC, April 22, 2016)
AFGHANISTAN: BACKWARD FROM PEACE
The notional peace talks between Afghanistan's government and the Taliban appear to be over before they have even begun. On the heels of a massive terror attack in Kabul earlier this month that killed 64 and wounded hundreds more, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has vowed to "execute" enemies of the state and to pursue a harsher confrontation with the resurgent militant movement. Ghani has also turned his ire on neighboring Pakistan, which he has demanded turn over Taliban leaders that it is shielding. (Washington Post, April 25, 2016)
THE ISLAMIC STATE'S SWELLING CENTRAL ASIAN COHORT
The ranks of the Islamic State contain a growing number of militants from Central Asia, one of Russia's top law enforcement officials has warned. According to Sergei Afansiev, the deputy head of the GRU, Russia's domestic security service, some 4,500 Central Asian radicals have pledged allegiance to the terror group to date.
That figure could be just the tip of the iceberg, however. This is because - as Azhdzar Kurtov, the editor of the journal Problems of National Strategy, notes - "now GRU officers can collect information only in Syria and Iraq but not in Central Asia," leaving significant gaps in understanding among Russia's intelligence and security services about the true state of Islamist militancy in the "post-Soviet space." Those conditions, meanwhile, are worsening. As Kurtov notes, "the situation in Central Asia is [now] very similar to the one which preceded the appearance of ISIS in the Middle East" because of economic privation, authoritarian governance and mass disaffection. (Moskovsky Komsomolets, April 27, 2016)
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