Month: September 2020

Special Analysises

4 Member IS Wilayat Kavkaz Returning Foreign Fighter Cell Killed; Drone and other weapons seized in Dagestan, Russia

On 22 August, the Russian Air Force announced that it had destroyed Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) underground drone facility in Idlib, Syria. Organizations such as Islamic State, Jund al-Aqsa, Houthi Movement (Ansarallah) and HTS are among non-state actors who use weaponized drones. Mexican drug cartels have been experimenting with weaponized drones too but to date they have yet to do so successfully. Besides the organized groups who have been utilizing drones, of particular concern are the small cells and lone wolf reports of modifying commercially available drones for attacks. One recent example occurred on 29 July 2020, when Hisham Muhammad, modified the “release mechanism” of a commercial drone to plot attacks in the name of Islamic State in Manchester, England. As commercial drones become more advanced and the use of drones as delivery mechanisms for retail purchases become more commonplace, so the do the opportunities for malicious actors to transform them into weapons of terror.

Confruntări şi lupte între SUA şi Rusia în Siria: morţi, răniţi şi şicanări ale forţelor armate

Un război surd are loc în Siria în această perioadă în care trupele ruse şi americane au intrat în contact şi în confruntări directe în numeroase zone pe teren. Flancaţi de companiile militare private controlate de GRU şi de trupele guvernamentale siriene, ruşii au declanşat o campanie de şicanare şi atacuri directe asupra trupelor americane din nord-estul Siriei, pe care doresc să le împingă afară din Siria.

Antonov owned by Haftar militias lands in Sirte

The Spokesman for the Sirte Al-Jufra Operations Room, Abdel Hadi Drah, confirmed the landing of an Antonov military cargo plane, which belongs to Haftar’s militia groups, at Al-Qardabiya base in Sirte on Sunday.

Mapping Hezbollah’s Worldwide Activities

n August 3, The Washington Institute held a virtual Policy Forum with Matthew Levitt, Kash Patel, and Juan Zarate to debut the Lebanese Hezbollah Select Worldwide Activity Interactive Map and Timeline, the first-ever publicly available interactive multimedia tool charting the group’s history of terrorist plots, attacks, logistics, and financial activities, as well as actions taken against it. Levitt, the map’s creator, is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow at the Institute and director of its Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. Patel serves as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. Zarate served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism in the George W. Bush administration. The following is a rapporteur’s summary of their remarks.