Russia's Involvement With Terrorism

[Ryan Ruck]

Today has been a laid back day so I decided to put on a video I've been meaning to watch for a while, especially with the recent passing of Larry Grathwohl. It's the documentary No Place to Hide - Strategy of Terrorism. It is the same documentary that famous 3 minute clip of him discussing the Weather Underground comes from.

It is a really great one hour documentary that discusses the Communist/Russian roots of leftist and Islamic terrorism and ties together a lot of stuff. Tons of information packed into that one hour.

Here it is. I can't speak for the specific uploader I'm linking to but this is the whole thing. I definitely recommend watching it:

[vector7]

Thanks for sharing Ryan, I'll put that video on my watch list!!!

[Avvakum]

What with the 'Islamic State' and 'Boko Haram' running around these days, it would be useful to bump this thread up and take a look.....

[Ryan Ruck]

AP: Nuclear Smugglers Tried Selling Materials To ISIL

October 7, 2015

In the backwaters of Eastern Europe, authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists, The Associated Press has learned. The latest known case came in February this year, when a smuggler offered a huge cache of deadly cesium — enough to contaminate several city blocks — and specifically sought a buyer from the Islamic State group.

Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB’s successor agency, are driving a thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished Eastern European country of Moldova, investigators say. The successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling, AP found.

Moldovan police and judicial authorities shared investigative case files with the AP in an effort to spotlight how dangerous the nuclear black market has become. They say the breakdown in cooperation between Russia and the West means that it has become much harder to know whether smugglers are finding ways to move parts of Russia’s vast store of radioactive materials — an unknown quantity of which has leached into the black market.

“We can expect more of these cases,” said Constantin Malic, a Moldovan police officer who investigated all four cases. “As long as the smugglers think they can make big money without getting caught, they will keep doing it.”

In wiretaps, videotaped arrests, photographs of bomb-grade material, documents and interviews, AP found a troubling vulnerability in the anti-smuggling strategy. From the first known Moldovan case in 2010 to the most recent one in February, a pattern has emerged: Authorities pounce on suspects in the early stages of a deal, giving the ringleaders a chance to escape with their nuclear contraband — an indication that the threat from the nuclear black market in the Balkans is far from under control.

Moldovan investigators can’t be sure that the suspects who fled didn’t hold on to the bulk of the nuclear materials. Nor do they know whether the groups, which are pursuing buyers who are enemies of the West, may have succeeded in selling deadly nuclear material to extremists at a time when the Islamic State has made clear its ambition to use weapons of mass destruction.

The cases involve secret meetings in a high-end nightclub; blueprints for dirty bombs; and a nerve-shattered undercover investigator who slammed vodka shots before heading into meetings with smugglers. Informants and a police officer posing as a connected gangster — complete with a Mercedes Benz provided by the FBI — penetrated the smuggling gangs. The police used a combination of old-fashioned undercover tactics and high-tech gear, from radiation detectors to clothing threaded with recording devices.

The Moldovan operations were built on a partnership between the FBI and a small team of Moldovan investigators — including Malic, who over five years went from near total ignorance of the frightening black market in his backyard to wrapping up four sting operations.

“In the age of the Islamic State, it’s especially terrifying to have real smugglers of nuclear bomb material apparently making connections with real buyers,” says Matthew Bunn, a Harvard professor who led a secret study for the Clinton administration on the security of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

The Moldovan investigators were well aware of the lethal consequences of just one slip-up. Posing as a representative’s buyer, Malic was so terrified before meetings that he gulped shots of vodka to steel his nerves. Other cases contained elements of farce: In the cesium deal, an informant held a high-stakes meeting with a seller at an elite dance club filled with young people nibbling on sushi.

In the case of the cesium, investigators said the one vial they ultimately recovered was a less radioactive form of cesium than the smugglers originally had advertised, and not suitable for making a dirty bomb.

The most serious case began in the spring of 2011, with the investigation of a group led by a shadowy Russian named Alexandr Agheenco, “the colonel” to his cohorts, whom Moldovan authorities believe to be an officer with the Russian FSB, previously known as the KGB. A middle man working for the colonel was recorded arranging the sale of bomb-grade uranium, U-235, and blueprints for a dirty bomb to a man from Sudan, according to several officials. The blueprints were discovered in a raid of the middleman’s home, according to police and court documents.

Wiretapped conversations repeatedly exposed plots targeting the United States, the Moldovan officials said. At one point the middleman told an informant posing as a buyer that it was essential that the smuggled uranium go to Arabs.

“He said to the informant on a wire: ‘I really want an Islamic buyer because they will bomb the Americans,’” said Malic, the investigator.

As in the other cases, investigators arrested mostly mid-level players after an early exchange of cash and samples of radioactive goods.

The ringleader, the colonel, got away. Police cannot determine whether he had more nuclear material. His partner, who wanted to “annihilate America,” is out of prison.

[Ryan Ruck]

Russia, Iran Supporting Taliban to ‘Undermine’ U.S. Mission in Afghanistan

Moscow working to 'publicly legitimize' Taliban

February 9, 2017

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday that Russia and Iran are supporting the Taliban in part to undermine the U.S. and NATO mission to attain peace and stability in the nation.

Army Gen. John Nicholson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran is providing the Taliban in western Afghanistan with military and logistical support.

Tehran also is recruiting Shiite fighters in Afghanistan to fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, raising concerns that these militants will return and destabilize the nation, Nicholson testified.

Nicholson said Russia's involvement in Afghanistan has become "more difficult" over the past year, as Moscow has worked to "publicly legitimize" the Taliban.

Russian officials argue the Taliban is fighting the Islamic State while the Afghan government has done nothing, inaction they say threatens greater turmoil in the country. Nicholson said this is a "false narrative" intended to give the group credibility.

A report published last month by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction noted the Afghan government lost control or influence of 15 percent of its territory from Nov. 2015 to Nov. 2016.

"Russia, Iran, and al Qaeda are playing significant roles in Afghanistan—this wasn't the case a few years ago," Nicholson testified. “I believe [these actions] are in part to undermine the United States and NATO, and prevent this strong partnership that we have with the Afghans in the region.”

In December, Russia hosted a trilateral meeting in Moscow with the top foreign ministry officials from Pakistan and China to review the growing threat of ISIS in Afghanistan. The discussions drew ire from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who questioned Russia's motives because it did not invite his government.


Nicholson said Afghanistan's exclusion from the meeting undercut U.S. and NATO efforts to hand over full authority to the Afghan government to map out a peace agreement. Nicholson said an Afghan-led peace process would be more enduring than one crafted by external actors.

Russian Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov announced Tuesday that the Kremlin had extended to Afghanistan an invitation to another round of talks set to begin later this month. Senior officials from China, Iran, India, and Pakistan will attend the talks. The United States has not been involved in the Russian-led discussions.

Nicholson's testimony came as congressional leaders ramp up pressure on President Donald Trump to consider a new course for the 15-year war in Afghanistan. Trump has said little of the war since his inauguration last month, and hardly mentioned it while on the campaign trail.

Nicholson said U.S. and coalition efforts in Afghanistan are now at a "stalemate." With nearly 12,500 American and NATO forces on the ground in the country, Nicholson said he needed a "few thousand" more troops for the train, advise, and assist mission. He said the troop additions could come from the United States or its allies.

[Ryan Ruck]

Russia May Be Helping Supply Taliban Insurgents: U.S. General

March 23, 2017

The top U.S. general in Europe said on Thursday that he had seen Russian influence on Afghan Taliban insurgents growing and raised the possibility that Moscow was helping supply the militants, whose reach is expanding in southern Afghanistan.

"I've seen the influence of Russia of late - increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban," Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, who is also NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

He did not elaborate on what kinds of supplies might be headed to the Taliban or how direct Russia's role might be.

Moscow has been critical of the United States over its handling of the war in Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union fought a bloody and disastrous war of its own in the 1980s.

But Russian officials have denied they provide aid to the insurgents, who are contesting large swaths of territory and inflicting heavy casualties, and say their limited contacts are aimed at bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table.

According to U.S. estimates, government forces control less than 60 percent of Afghanistan, with almost half the country either contested or under control of the insurgents, who are seeking to reimpose Islamic law after their 2001 ouster.

Underlying the insurgents' growing strength, Taliban fighters have captured the strategic district of Sangin in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, officials said on Thursday.

The top U.S. commander in the country, General John Nicholson, said last month that Afghanistan was in a "stalemate" and that thousands more international troops would be needed to boost the existing NATO-led training and advisory mission.

Scaparrotti said the stakes were high. More than 1,800 American troops have been killed in fighting since the war began in 2001.

"NATO and the United States, in my view, must win in Afghanistan," he said.

Taliban officials have told Reuters that the group has had significant contacts with Moscow since at least 2007, adding that Russian involvement did not extend beyond "moral and political support."

[Ryan Ruck]

Russia Is Sending Weapons To Taliban, Top U.S. General Confirms

April 24, 2017

The general in charge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan appeared to confirm Monday that Russia is sending weapons to the Taliban, an intervention that will likely further complicate the 15-year-old war here and the Kremlin’s relations with the United States.

When asked by reporters, Gen. John Nicholson did not dispute claims that the Taliban is receiving weapons and other supplies from the Russians.

“We continue to get reports of this assistance,” Nicholson said, speaking to reporters alongside Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “We support anyone who wants to help us advance the reconciliation process, but anyone who arms belligerents who perpetuate attacks like the one we saw two days ago in Mazar-e Sharif is not the best way forward to a peaceful reconciliation.”

A senior U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence on the issue, said the Russians have increased their supply of equipment and small arms to the Taliban over the past 18 months. The official said the Russians have been sending weapons, including medium and heavy machine guns, to the Taliban under the guise that the material would be used to fight the Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan. Instead, the official said, the weapons were showing up in some of Afghanistan’s southern provinces, including Helmand and Kandahar — both areas with little Islamic State presence.

“Any weapons being funneled here from a foreign country would be a violation of international law unless they were coming to the government of Afghanistan,” Mattis said, speaking during his first visit to Afghanistan as defense secretary. He added that it would have to be dealt with as such.

In the past, Nicholson has criticized Russia’s contact with the Taliban, saying that it has given “legitimacy” to a group that has undermined the elected government in Kabul.

In the 1980s, Russia fought its own war in Afghanistan, losing thousands of troops to insurgents supplied with advanced U.S. weaponry, such as shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. In March, when the commander of U.S. forces in Europe, Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, told lawmakers that Russia was providing support to the Taliban, the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the allegations as “a lie” and said the charge was being promulgated to disguise Washington’s own policy failures in Afghanistan.

Mattis and Nicholson’s remarks come just days after the Taliban pulled off the single deadliest attack against Afghan security forces since the beginning of the war.

On Friday, roughly a dozen militants infiltrated a sprawling Afghan base near the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif. Using suicide vests and small arms, the militants — disguised as Afghan soldiers — wreaked havoc at the installation and, according to some reports, killed at least 140 Afghans and wounded 60.

The six-hour assault began as Afghan soldiers were leaving their weekly prayers or ambling to the base’s dining facility. The Taliban fighters were eventually killed by a response force led by Afghan commandos. Nicholson praised the elite but overworked unit’s actions for bringing the “atrocity to an end.”

It is unclear how the attack will affect Afghan forces’ recruitment efforts, already strained by high casualties and low retention rates among the ranks. The Taliban has pledged that the attack is just the beginning of its annual spring offensive. However, since U.S. combat troops mostly withdrew in 2014, the pace of Taliban attacks has remained consistent across the country year-round.

Currently, there are 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan split between performing two roles. One contingent helps advise the Afghan security forces while the other carries out unilateral and partnered counterterrorism operations against groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. In addition to the U.S. troops, roughly 5,000 NATO troops are in Afghanistan, split among various areas of responsibility.

Nicholson and the chief of U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. Joseph Votel, have both agreed that roughly 3,000 additional troops are needed to help prop up the Afghan security forces and break what top U.S. officials have called a “stalemate” in the country. At the height of the war, more than 100,000 U.S. troops were in the country.

Mattis said Monday that he is still deciding whether to ask President Trump to send more troops.

[Ryan Ruck]

I've come across a couple other documentaries by Trevor Loudon related to the last one I posted, America Under Siege: Antifa.

This one is titled America Under Siege: Soviet Islam. Haven't had a chance to watch it yet.