Entering Canada on a Student Visa -- Welcome!!!!

"Khan's intention was] slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible". 

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland

 

"I can confirm that Muhammed Khan is a Pakistani national."

"We take any security breach in any entry into Canada very seriously."

"Let's not be naive. A determined individual can gain access to this country."

Immigration Minister Marc Miller 

The New York skyline is pictured from a park in Hoboken, New Jersey, U.S. June 23, 2024. REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian/

 

Yes, of course, he's right; any determined person can gain access into Canada. It is widely known internationally that Canada, a wealthy democratic nation, is so obsessed with its welcoming immigration history, hugely valuing the diversity and wealth of cultures, languages, heritage backgrounds, and diversity of religious faiths in its vaunted multiculturalism that under the current Liberal government, the country is hungrily set to absorb a half-million new immigrants a year.

Canada is also, infamously, not too concerned with the quality of immigrants that flood the country; in the past, ingloriously, the intake of Nazi war criminals was known yet governments in succession were disinterested in facing the situation or prepared to ameliorate it. Nothing has since been learned; Iranians associated with the current Islamic Republic, notoriously known to cultivate terrorist groups are able to enter Canada at will, threatening the well-being of Iranian-Canadians who fear and loathe the theocratic Iran.

Several weeks ago a father-and-son duo was arrested by the RCMP who had identified them as members of Islamic State in preparation to launch a murderous assault within Canada for the purpose of killing innocent Westerners in the name of Islamist terrorism. More recently it was a 20-year-old resident of Canada, a Pakistani national, residing in Canada on an easily-obtainable student visa. 

 

International students from India at the site for an indefinite protest in Brampton, Ontario, Canada (Naujawan Support Network)

 

Muhammed Khan had applied for a student visa and was duly issued that visa in May of 2023. A month later, he entered Canada, ostensibly as a student prepared to attend post-secondary institution, not as a terrorist in waiting to plot an act of atrocious criminality. But this is what his expedited intrusion enabled him to do. Not to worry, stated the Immigration minister; Canadian security and police forces are tasked to apprehend such individuals.

Although, presumably, screening such individuals before their entry, prior to issuing visas, would be far more efficient and intelligent, before enabling those with a harm agenda to plan their terrorist projects which might not always be caught before execution. The Immigration minister was loathe to pursue the issue any further stating elected officials should make no comments that have the potential to "compromise the judicial process".

Snappily critical of the Opposition Conservatives who demand the Liberal government respond to questions regarding someone permitted entry to Canada given terrorist associations readily ascertainable on security scrutiny. "It's highly careless of Pierre Poilievre and his team to be firing their mouths off again", he stated of an opposition whose Parliamentary and government duty it is to scrutinize sitting government actions that lead to possible concerns for the safety and security of Canadians.

 

Mostafa Eldidi (left) and Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi appear virtually in a Newmarket, Ont., courtroom on Aug. 28, 2024. The pair face a total of nine charges including one count each of conspiracy to commit murder for the benefit or at the direction of a terrorist group. (Alexandra Newbould/CBC)

 

That same opposition followed up on their concerns through a letter to the chair of the parliamentary committee on public safety to call for a probe, stating a "pattern of ISIS-affiliated terrorists entering and residing in Canada" makes it imperative that the situation be studied for the purpose of tightening up procedures of entry and authorized visa entries for people with troubling background alliances anxious to infiltrate the country for nefarious purposes.

The recent episodes of apprehension within a two-week period of two unassociated groups representing Islamist terrorism attempting to perpetrate atrocities in North America through entry to Canada merited an investigation since these are incidents that "raise serious questions about the government's ability to prevent potential terrorists from entering the country". 

According to statements from both the RCMP and FBI, Khan was arrested while attempting to enter the United States, with plans to mount a terrorist attack against Jewish residents of New York City, coinciding with the first anniversary of the barbaric, sadistic Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7. As U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland stated, Khan's purpose was "slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible".

Khan, who began posting and issuing online statements revealing his ISIS support back to November, planned to use automatic and semi-automatic weapons at a Brooklyn Jewish centre, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

RCMP gather outside a home in Ormstown, Que. where terror suspect Muhammed Khan was arrested last week.  CBC

Islamic State in a Paroxysm of BloodLust

"The fight with Jews is a religious war, not a social or national battle. It is not centred around lands or borders."

"Barge into their homes and kill them using different methods, including gunfire, bombs, grenades and knives."

"Don't differentiate between a civilian or a soldier, as they both should be targeted."

Islamic State spokesman Abu Huthaifa al-Ansari

"And kill them wherever  you find them" is the title of a 30-minute recording calling on ISIS supporters worldwide to attack Jews in response to the Israel Defense Forces hunting down Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, published by the Islamic State media arm Al-Furqan. Al-Ansari instructs the ISIL terrorist cells to strike Israeli and Jewish targets across the United States and Europe. Emphasizing what good targets synagogues, Jewish gatherings and Israeli diplomatic missions make.

At least 95 people were killed after two bombs exploded at an event honouring prominent Iranian general Qassam Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2020. No one has taken responsibility for the attack. Still from video, CBC

Coincidentally Islamic State has taken credit for a deadly attack in Iran that killed close to one hundred Iranians Thursday when two explosions wounded hundreds of people besides those killed, at a memorial for the Iranian Republican Guard Corps al Quds commander, Qassem Soleimani who had been assassinated by the United States in a drone strike in 2020. On its Telegram Channel the Islamic State announced that two of its members detonated explosive belts in a crowd gathering at the cemetery in Kerman the day before.

Unsurprisingly, although Islamic State has taken credit for the bombings the Islamic Republic of Iran accuses Israel and the United States of having perpetrated the bloodshed. Going so far as to assert that the Islamic State group in planning and executing the atrocity, was acting on behalf of Israel, following Israel's orders. The IRGC and Islamic State have much in common; both seek to annihilate Jews and Israel, but the former is Shiite and the latter Sunni, and they detest one another, though not as much as they do Israel.

According to Al-Ansari, the Gaza conflict lays wide open the complicity of a number of Arab nations, including Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, along with some Gulf nations, in what he described as the "Jewish war against Muslims". There is just something about Islamofascism in its embrace of jihad that magnifies the inhumanity of man to man, amplified by their estrangement from reality with their penchant for producing a reality all their very own, a typical pathology of group psychopathy.

According to the Islamic State Amaq News Agency Soleimani had been "involved in dozens of massacres of Muslims in Iraq and Syria". All Islamic State members, needless to say, present in the late and unlamented caliphate that encompassed a third of both Syria and Iraq, before it was liquidated, thanks mostly to the work of the Kurdish military aligned with the United States and its allies. 

"Hamas is ISIS -- this is not a slogan because we found terrorists with ISIS flags. We also found ISIS booklets", said Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, alluding to Israeli security forces discovering an ISIS flag on the body of one of the terrorists that died in Kibbutz Sufa in the wake of the Hamas October 7 attack on southwestern Israel that slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and raped, mutilated and butchered Israeli girls and women, while taking 240 Israeli children, elderly and soldiers, along with foreign farm workers as hostages into Gaza.

Israelis evacuated from northern areas near the Lebanese border due to ongoing cross-border tensions, lift Israeli and a Druze flag during a rally near the northern Amiad Kibbutz, demanding to return home on December 26, 2023. Photo by JALAA MAREY/AFP via Getty Images

ECOWAS Threat of Niger Invasion

"A military intervention with no end in sight risks triggering a regional war, with catastrophic consequences for the vast Sahel that is already plagued by insecurity, displacement and poverty."

Mucahid Durmaz, senior analyst, global risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft 

"What we are witnessing today is both jihadi warring factions, the Islamic State group and [al-Qaeda affiliate Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin] marking their territory because of the security void caused by the coup."

"This definitely should be seen in the context of the ongoing war between the two groups."

Wassim Nasr, journalist, senior research fellow, Soufan Center think tank

Mohamed Toumba, one of the soldiers who ousted Nigerian President Mohamed Bazoum, addresses supporters of Niger's ruling junta in Niamey, Niger, Sunday, Aug. 6, 2023. (Sam Mednick/AP)

 

The standoff between Niger and ECOWAS, the West African regional bloc, and the Niger coup leaders grows more tense day by day. Niger was viewed as one of the final democratic countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert, a partner in the effort to counter growing jihadi violence linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. Until the junta coup led by anti-Democratic forces in the Niger military who unseated the democratically elected Niger President Mohamed Bazoum.

ECOWAS had demanded that the junta, three weeks after the mutiny that ousted the president, release him and allow the country to return to its pre-coup state. The deadline passed, and ECOWAS issued fresh warnings that military intervention represents an option should their demands continue to be ignored. Leaving Nigeriens preparing for a possible invasion by regional countries.

A "standby force" has been activated for the purpose of restoring order in Niger. There are no signs the standoff is anywhere close to being defused, since the coup leaders remain defiant and ECOWAS determined to restore the presidency, although both sides have given signals of an openness to resolving the crisis through peaceful means. After rebuffing the bloc's efforts at talks, the junta claimed to be open to dialogue.

Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum smiles before a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron, Feb. 16, 2023 at the Elysee Palace in Paris.  (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

 

Instead of arriving at a bargaining table, the coup charged President Bazoum with "high treason", and took to recalling its ambassador from Ivory Coast. Should the bloc determine it will proceed with an invasion, it would likely be comprised of several thousand troops. The consequences, according to conflict experts, would have devastating results. Former colonial occupier of Niger, France and the U.S. have some 2,500 military personnel training the Niger military.

France and the United States, since the coup have suspended military operations, resulting in an increase in jihadi attacks. In an extremist ambush in the Tillaberi region, 17 soldiers and nearly two dozen more were wounded on Tuesday afternoon when a military detachment travelled between villages, representing the first major attack against the Niger army in six months; a worrying sign of potential escalation.

According to analysts, the longer the coup carries on, the less likely it is that an intervention will materialize, while the junta cements its grip on power. In the final analysis, forcing the international community to accept the status quo, much as it has done in Afghanistan. The 25 million Nigeriens live in one of the poorest countries in the world where residents hoped the new regime would forge a new path for the nation.

In the event, however, residents in the capital Niamey are being called upon to volunteer in assisting the army in the face of the threat by the West African regional bloc. An initiative spearheaded by locals in Niamey plans to recruit tens of thousands of volunteers from across the country to register for the Volunteers for the Defense of Niger.

Such volunteers would be expected to help with medical care and provide technical and engineering logistics, as well as fight, should the junta require that of them. "It's an eventuality. We need to be ready whenever it happens", Amsarou Bako, one of the volunteer group founders explained to Western media. Any Niger citizen over 18 years of age is asked to register, the list to be given to the junta to call upon volunteers if needed.

"We do not give a damn about ECOWAS. ECOWAS has been tailor-made for the presidents in power. And we do not need it." 

"Whether ECOWAS intervenes or not, Niger is ready for all options. We are ready. Whatever ECOWAS decides, we are ready."

Omar Amadou, Niamey resident

Supporters of Niger’s ruling junta gather at the start of a protest called to fight for the country’s freedom and push back against foreign interference in Niamey, Niger, Aug. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

The Democracy That Is Nuclear Pakistan

"The rising instability and militant attacks provide a window to all militant organizations, including ISKP [branch of Islamic State centred in Afghanistan], to ramp up their attacks."

"These attacks on police, political rallies and security forces have ended the brief illusion of peace in Pakistan."

Zahid Hussain, political analyst

 

"People were chanting 'God is Great' as the leaders arrived."

"[I was standing outside the tent] and that was when I heard the deafening sound of the bomb."

Khan Mohammad, local resident

Relatives and mourners carry the casket of a victim killed in Sunday's suicide bombing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Photograph: Mohammad Sajjad/AP

Violent Islamists have long made a comfortable home for themselves in Pakistan. It is where Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda was given safe haven at Abbottabad, when U.S. troops in Afghanistan were searching for his whereabouts after the mastermind of the 9/11 events publicly celebrated its success. Masquerading as a 'partner' with the West in the campaign against terrorism, Pakistan's military and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency founded, trained and equipped the Afghanistan Taliban, recognized universally as a terrorist group.

Pakistan's leaders appear to have overlooked the growing militancy of its own Taliban in the process of supporting one that would eventually misrule its neighbour. The tribal villages in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan are a never-ending source of vibrant, violent extremism, and a threat to Pakistan itself necessitating that the Pakistan military engage in battles as the tribal extremists made an effort to extend their territory, endangering nearby nuclear weapons depots.

From Pakistan, a terrorist group of extremist Islamists infiltrated and attacked Indian Mumbai in a bloody four-day assault and massacre that succeeded in killing over 160 people, by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) or Army of the Pure, in November of 2008. The country is a breeding ground for terrorist groups. And now the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the latest suicide bombing that killed 56 people attending an election rally for a pro-Taliban cleric.

The bombing took place in Bajur, wounding close to two hundred people, killing at least five children. A reflection of tribal/sectarian antipathies between Islamist groups, present in Kyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan. The ISIL group targeted the Jamiat Ulema Islam party whose chief is cleric and politician Fazlur Rehman, with ties to both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.

An estimated thousand people were crowded within a tent near a market, for a rally preparatory to fall elections. Khan Mohammad, a local resident who stood outside the tent and witnessed the aftereffects of the bomb blast, stated later that he had heard people crying for help. Minutes afterward, ambulances arrived to begin evacuating the hundreds of wounded people.

 

An ambulance is set to transport injured people after a bomb explosion in the Bajur district of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday. (Rescue 1122 emergency service/The Associated Press)

 Investigating police knew well before the statement implicating the Islamic State in the carnage, that an initial investigation led them to believe that the regional affiliate of Islamic State, a Taliban rival, would be the likeliest source to have been involved. This, despite that a Pakistani security analyst pointed to factions that had broken off from the Pakistani Taliban as possible suspects, instead. Pakistan does not lack for any number of viral, vicious Islamist terror groups; they find their natural home there.

By Monday funerals were taking place for the dead. Local customs mandate that female relatives and children at their family homes, cry out loudly in their grief, while beating their chests in anguish. Hundreds of men gathered around to follow caskets to mosques and open areas for funeral prayers and then to trek into the hills for burial services in rituals as old as time itself.

Those that could be treated for relatively light wounds sustained in the blast were released from hospital while the critically wounded were transported to the provincial capital of Peshawar by army helicopters. Some critically wounded people died while in hospital and it is expected that the death count may yet climb again as more succumb to their grievous wounds.

A worker inspects the scene of the explosion in the Bajur district of northwest Pakistan on Sunday. (Rescue 1122 emergency service/The Associated Press)

Retrospective Latent Thoughts

"Our inability, unwillingness to put the hammer down in terms of security in the country allowed chaos to ensue, which gave rise to ISIS."

"]The invasion] might be as big a strategic error [as Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which served to help bring Germany to defeat during the Second World War."

Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, U.S.

"It was worth it because the decision was not simply: 'Does Saddam pose a WMD threat in 2003'?"

"Another question was: 'Would he pose a WMD threat five years later'? To which I think the answer clearly was 'yes'"

"The worst mistake made after the overthrow of Saddam ... was withdrawing in 2011."

John Bolton, Trump administration era National Security Adviser

"We just decided we didn't want to do this stuff anymore. That began ... with president Obama declaring ... he was going to pull all forces out."

"These were U.S. decisions not forced by a collapsing economy, not forced by demonstrators in the streets."

"Our leadership just decided we didn't want to do it any more. And that started the alarm bells ringing ... in the Gulf."

Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador in Iraq

 

"The net result ... has been bad for U.S. leverage, bad for U.S. influence, bad for our ability to partner with countries in the region."

Jim Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, Obama administration

Lesleigh Coyer, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan, lies down in front of the grave of her brother, Ryan Coyer, who served with the U.S. Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia in this March 11, 2013, file photo. Coyer died of complications from an injury sustained in Afghanistan. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/Files UNREST OBITUARY)

 

There was the American withdrawal from VietNam as a national trauma, the withdrawal from Afghanistan as a national shame, and there was the invasion and eventual withdrawal from Iraq that had unforeseen and unanticipated consequences that time has been incapable of healing. American intervention in foreign situations, particularly that of violent conflict has often left it tired and uninspired, demoralized, its determination moribund, leading to inglorious withdrawal. 

 

Hindsight is meant to be helpful in teaching lessons, but some lessons simply fail to resonate, to caution that similar outcomes in dissimilar situations may repeat themselves endlessly. When the United States decided to invade Iraq and remove a tyrannical mass murderer little did the invading forces' executive politicians who made that decision imagine that the ultimate empowering would be to the Islamic Republic of Iran's advantage.

 

And nor did the Bush administration comprehend that in a tribal, sectarian Arab landscape ancient enmities would be violently unleashed with the removal of the tyrant that kept them in check under his clenched fist. And never would any American administration believe that occupying Iraq for no other choice left to them to continue attempting to tamp down Islamist terrorism, would eventually cost them both a loss of face and of influence.

 

When Saddam Hussein's minority Sunni rule came to its final stumbling end to be replaced with a majority Shi'ite government, Iran's Ayatollahs beamed with pleasant anticipation of the removal of an enemy with whom a sustained and deadly war was fought, to be replaced by a regime compatible with its own. Iran's plans to influence states across the Levant was given a good head-start for which they will be eternally grateful, expressed by admiring shouts such as "Death to America!".

 

Iraq war widow Sheryl McIlvaine visits the grave of her husband, U.S. Marine Sgt. James R. McIlvaine, in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, in this October 19, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Larry Downing/Files

 

When U.S troops were withdrawn in 2011 a vacuum was left in Iraq quickly entered by the Islamic State militants who seized a third of both Iraq and Syria for their Caliphate. Gulf Arab states shuddered when they realized with reluctance they could no longer rely on the protective arm of the United States. In 2014 former President Obama returned some troops to Iraq, A year later he deployed to Syria; at present 2,500 U.S. troops remain in Iraq and 900 in Syria. Mired, as good a word as any.

 

There to continue opposing Islamic State terrorists active as well from North Africa to Afghanistan, steeply, deeply entrenched as Islam's most fervent and vicious jihadists. And then there are the considerable, actually massive costs resulting from U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria. Estimates published by the "Costs of War" project at Brown University put the price tag for America for the wars in Iraq and Syria at a whopping $1.79 trillion. That includes Pentagon and State Department spending, veterans' care and interest on debt financing for the conflicts.

American military deaths for the past two decades are put at 4,599, with an estimated total death of Iraqi and Syrian civilians, military, police, opposition fighters, media and others coming in at a total of 5500,000 to 584,000; staggering numbers no price can be placed on. This number does not include indirect deaths from disease, displacement or starvation. 

As for American credibility, the decision taken by President Bush to invade based on exaggerated, ultimately erroneous intelligence of weapons of mass destruction was a grave error in judgment. According to war advocate John Bolton, even though errors were made by Washngton, by failing to deploy sufficient troops and administering Iraq rather than swiftly handing that over to Iraqis, removing Saddam justified the costs.

The 2003 invasion didn't immediately undermine American influence in the Gulf, according to Ryan Crocker, but the 2011 withdrawal pushed Arab states in part to begin hedging their bets. Waning U.S. influence can be seen most latterly in China brokering the re-establishment of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia two bitter regional antagonists in terms of power and sectarian rivalries.

Whether President Obama's decision to withdraw tracking a timeline laid out by the Bush administration, reflected an American inability to secure immunity for American troops backed by the Iraqi parliament is a debate raging still among former officials. According to John Bolton, removing Saddam was value given to the cost. Armitage on the other hand responded "FUBAR", a military acronym standing for "Fouled up beyond all recognition", when he was asked the first word coming to mind relating to the invasion and its aftermath.

U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman HM1 Richard Barnett, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, holds an Iraqi child in central Iraq in this March 29, 2003 file photo. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Britain's Problem with Grooming Girls for Trafficking

"They have effectively been nabbing British children and trafficking them across the Syrian border for delivery to ISIS all in the name of intelligence gathering."

"Britain has lauded ts efforts to stop ISIS and the grooming of our children by sending millions of pounds on the Prevent program and online monitoring. However, at the very same time we have been cooperating with a western ally, trading sensitive intelligence with them [while they worked with Mohammed Al Rashed, claiming to spy for Canada]."

"The calculation here is that the lives of British children, and the risk of their death, is part of the algorithm of acceptable risk that our Western allies have taken."

Tasnime Akunjee, lawyer for Shamima Begum, ISIS 'bride'

"He organized the entire trip from Turkey to Syria ... I don't think anyone would have been able to make it to Syria without the help of smugglers."

"He had helped a lot of people come in ... We were just doing everything he was telling us to do because he knew everything we didn't know anything."

Shamima Begum, former British citizen, ISIS supporter

Shamima Begum made worldwide headlines when, at 15, she left the U.K. with two teenage friends to join ISIS. (Alba Sotorra/Sky Documentaries)

"There is absolutely no doubt that the Canadians worked on this and also it brings into question ... about what role Britain played."

"The only way to get to the bottom of this is to have an enquiry [with access to CSIS documents]."

"For seven years now, this has been covered up by the Canadians. I think the coverup is worse than the offence in many ways here because you would expect human intelligence agencies to recruit members of criminal groups and terrorist groups."

Richard Kerbaj, author The Secret History of the Five Eyes

What?! Canada whete the progressive government remains a trusted member of the Five Eyes intelligence group comprised of Britain, the U.S. Australia, New Zealand and Canada, dedicated to fighting terrorism and promising justice and peace will prevail, has had a hand in child smuggling to provide 'wives' from the U.K. to the Islamic State group? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the self-celebrated 'feminist' involved in pimping young girls for terrorist consumption?

The connections as d tailed by the former security beat reporter for the British Sunday Times from 2010 to 2020 evidently has the evidence required to make those explosive charges. Mind, Canada is accused of being complicit in a tangential way of uniting three determined British Muslim schoolgirls with their self-chosen destination of wifely duties to a brave new cohort of Islamist terrorists in the belief that the brave new world Islamic State's caliphate was creating should include them, as passionate believers.

The book, highlighting western intelligence agencies' intelligence connections contends that even while British police were on the search for three schoolgirls who surreptitiously abandoned their homes in London in 2015 in favour of travelling to Syria to be united with ISIS terrorists, Canadian diplomatic officials and intelligence officers failed to inform Britain what they knew of the girls' location, much less how they happened to arrive there. Further, once the information was divulged to Britain, both countries dedicated themselves to a coverup.

Shamima Begum, languishing in a Kurdish operated detention camp in Syria's Kurdistan was 15 when she absconded to unite with Islamic State warriors as a willing bride. She has fought for years to be returned to Britain, causing British authorities to respond by withdrawing her citizenship and with that move, her compassionate welcome back to Britain. With Begum when she left Britain were two other girls, Amira Abase, 14, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, all three schoolmates.

 

(Left to right) Kadiza Sultana, 16, Shamima Begum, 15, and 15-year-old Amira Abase go through security at Gatwick airport before catching a flight to Turkey on Feb 17, 2015. (Metropolitan Police/The Associated Press)

 

Begum claims to be a victim of human trafficking; her defence against any charges that she intended to join ISIS; rather than that the last segment of her trip having been facilitated by a helpful Syrian man who knew the ropes and was eager to accommodate the girls' agenda. In turn, that man, a Syrian dentist who fled the civil war and made contact with Canada's spy agency as a potential humint ally, was meant to convey information to CSIS about Canadians who entered Syria to fight with ISIS; definitely not to escort schoolchildren into Syria to join the terrorist group.

According to the former reporter, author of the book with this explosive, albeit not new revelations, Canada's role in the situation has been well documented. Prime Minister Trudeau when confronted had a response, as he generally does: "The fight against terrorism requires our intelligence services to continue to be flexible and to be creative in their approaches, but every step of the way, they are bound by strict rules, by principles and values that Canadians hold dear ... and we expect that those rules be followed.

"I know there are questions about certain incidents or operations of the past and we will ensure to follow up on this", he concluded. "Rigorous oversight mechanisms" monitor CSIS operations, but he would consider, if required, "further steps". No other Canadian ministerial officials had any comments; not the public safety minister nor the department of public safety, much less Canada's foreign affairs department. All recommended further questions be addressed to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

 

As for London's Metropolitan police; sensitivity prevented public discussion: "We do not comment on matters relating to intelligence", confided Met spokesman Matthew Russell. Mohammed Rashed, the man behind the smuggling of girls into Syria claims, received focus in 2015 following the disappearance of the three schoolgirls who left their homes to fly to Turkey for the purpose of joining the Islamic State. There, they happened to meet Rashed.

Who helped them enter ISIS controlled territory. For which gesture Turkish police arrested him shortly afterward. Leaving Turkish media to report on Turkish intelligence leaks in 2015, that Rashed carried documents, photos and videos revealing his actions, one video taken by Rashed with a hidden camera showing him escorting the missing British girls near the border between Turkey and Syria. Turkish intelligence was apprised by Rashed while in custody that when he sought asylum in Canada in 2013 he was offered citizenship in exchange for information on ISIS.

Thereafter he worked for CSIS, passing information through the Canadian embassy in Jordan. Rashed claimed during interrogation that he was paid by Canada to investigate the flow of foreign fighters to Islamic State battlegrounds. Rashed. according to The Secret History of the Five Eyes author, sent passport information, luggage details, photos and other information to Canada. Details on Begum and her friends included.

It should perhaps be noted that Britain has a problem with young girls being groomed for prostitution in Britain. For years Pakistani gangs have recruited and groomed young girls to be passed around as sex objects. Neither the British government nor the British press appears to have been much impressed that this has been occurring although it has been well known for many years and not much to help these impoverished and vulnerable girls appears to have been done. The girls sacrificed for fear of being labelled 'racist' in holding Pakistani gangs to account.

Rotherham, a large market town in South Yorkshire, is at the heart of the grooming-gangs scandal. In 2012, The Times revealed that a confidential 2010 police report had warned that vast numbers of children were being sexually exploited in South Yorkshire each year by organised networks of men ‘largely of Pakistani heritage’.  Spiked

Surviving Paris ISIL Terrorism

 

"I hope to be able to put the word 'victim' into the past."

"When things like this happen you have no repair possible. That's why you have justice, [even if] justice can't do everything."

"It puts an exclamation point at the end of it."

Arthur Dénouveaux, Bataclan massacre survivor

"The assassins, these terrorists, thought they were firing into the crowd, into a mass of people,"

"[Hearing the testimony of victims was] crucial to both their own healing and that of the nation."

"It wasn't a mass — these were individuals who had a life, who loved, had hopes and expectations."

Dominique Kielemoes, whose son bled to death at one of the cafes

Families of victims, journalists and lawyers attend the courthouse where the trial took place under heightened security on Wednesday. (Abdulmonam Eassa/Getty Images)

 Salah Abdeslam, chief suspect and the sole survivor among the 2015 terrorist attackers who massacred 130 people -- claiming their massacre was due to the influence of the Islamic State group -- has now been convicted of murder. His sentence was the most severe possible under French law; life in prison without possibility of parole. He denied being a murderer and pleaded forgiveness for his error in judgement.

A special terrorist court had been convened to try the case of the terrorist attack against the Bataclan theatre and a number of other attacks at cafes and a sport stadium in a coordinated night of terror and death in Paris. Abdeslam was found guilty of murder and attempted murder related to a terrorist enterprise. While he had contended a change of mind led him to abandon his explosives vest, in fact the court heard, it was a malfunction in the explosives vest that kept him from detonating it and slaughtering even greater numbers.

 

A courtroom sketch shows Abdeslam as the verdict was read at the courthouse on the Île de la Cité in Paris on Wednesday. (Elisabeth de Pourquery/France Televisions/Reuters)

 

A special French court Wednesday also found twenty men to be guilty of involvement in the Bataclan attack as well as on Paris cafes and France's national stadium. Presiding Judge Jean-Louis Peries read the verdicts surrounded by tight security, to close out the nine-month trial. Eighteen defendants aside from Abdeslam were given terrorist-related convictions.

Harrowing victim accounts were heard in the packed main chamber of the 13th Century Justice Palace aside from the testimony of Abdeslam, the sole survivor of the ten-member attack team that gave Paris a Friday night that would forever haunt the city. There were a dozen overflow rooms and they were fully packed. Of the other defendants six were accused of a direct role in the Mach 2015 attacks in Brussels, claimed as well by the Islamic State group.

 

A court sketch shows Salah Abdeslam standing (far R) alongside the other 13 defendants in court this week   Benoit PEYRUCQ/AFP

 

The remainder of the defendants faced accusations of assisting with logistics or transportation. The most conspicuous change related to that fateful day in March 2015 is armed officers patrolling public spaces constantly. Most of the attackers were born and raised in France and Belgium, which led to soul-searching by authorities while at the same time the lives of those who suffered losses or bore witness were forever transformed. Of the ten-member attacking team, six are presumed to have been killed in Syria or Iraq.

A French police officer stands guard in front of the Bataclan concert venue during a ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the deadly terror attacks in Paris, on Nov. 13, 2020. Chief suspect Salah Abdeslam was convicted Wednesday of murder and other charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole. (Benoit Tessier/Reuters)

 

Islamic State Carnage in Al-Hasakah, Syria

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces patrolling Hasaka, Syria, on Monday.   Credit...Baderkhan Ahmad/Associated Press

"Responsibility for anything that happens to these children also lies at the door of foreign governments who have thought that they can simply abandon their child nationals in Syria."

"Risk of death or injury is directly linked to these governments’ refusal to take them home."

Sonia Khus, Syria director for Save the Children

 

"We help them to construct their prisons, to train their staff, to run as good a prison system as they can, but they are not getting what they need."

"Prisoners are lying on top of each other."

Anne Speckhard, director, International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism

 

"[The siege highlighted the need for international financial support to improve security at the prison]."

"It also underscores the urgent need for countries of origin to repatriate, rehabilitate, reintegrate and prosecute, where appropriate, their nationals detained in northeast Syria."

U.S. State Department

Fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces in Hasaka on Monday.   Credit...Ahmed Mardnli/EPA, via Shutterstock

"On whatever support the Coalition has been given to the SDF as they have dealt with this and continue to deal with this prison break, I can tell you that we have provided some air strikes to support them as they deal with this particular prison break," 

Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby

The Kurdish fighting force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces converted an old technical school comprising three buildings into a prison to hold Islamic State foreign fighters. An estimated 40,000 foreign jihadists from Europe, North America, Australia and the Middle East travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State when it was expanding its 'caliphate' in at least a third of the territory of both Syria and Iraq. Prisoners totalled an estimated 12,000 suspected terrorists representing 50 nationalities.

 

Syria and Iraq have taken their own nationals to stand trial and be dealt with, but very few countries outside the Middle East have seen fit to repatriate their nationals to have them stand trial for war crimes. Some countries have accepted orphan children that lived in Raqqa, the ISIL 'capital' of its 'caliphate', to attempt to restore them to normalcy, but the majority feel that hard evidence to be used at trials is too difficult to obtain to allow them to conduct lawful trials and enact lawful criminal punishment.

 

The Kurdish Peshmerga were at the front lines, backed by the United States, fighting Islamic State most effectively. The Syrian and Iraqi militaries were intimidated and fearful of the grim reputation for gross brutality of medieval-style assaults that exemplified Islamic State terrorists. State military forces had a tendency to melt away, leaving their military equipment, much of it supplied by the United States, to be captured by Islamic State as it terrified communities and took possession of larger swaths of land.

 

The Kurdish forces have for years pleaded with countries abroad to take back their nationals. Not only had the Kurds been in the front lines fighting Islamic State, but they were also left to pick up the pieces once the jihadists had been vanquished, their territorial 'caliphate' recovered, their remaining militias dispersed and in hiding. Over the subsequent years they have slowly been recovering, absorbing new recruits attracted to their message of jihadist supremacy, and enacting brief guerrilla skirmishes now and again.

Some of the 300 ISIS fighters who surrendered on Monday in a photo provided by the Syrian Democratic Forces. Credit...Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, via Associated Press

 The Islamic State attack on the prison holding former fighters, many among them high-echelon commanders, is the most ambitious yet of its attack enterprises, with the intention of releasing all the prisoners held at the Ghwayran jail in the city of Al-Hasakah, Thursday. It was a well-orchestrated surprise event, and leading the way was a suicide-bombing truck crashing the prison gates. Once inside the prison Islamic State members set about executing Kurdish guards, and gun battles between the SDF defenders and the ISIS guerrillas ensued.

Boys as young as 12, including Syrians, Iraqis and some 150 non-Arab foreigners are housed in one section of the prison campus. Once teens are considered too old to remain in the detention camps meant to hold families of Islamic State suspects, they are routinely transferred to the prison. Most children were exposed by their parents to the ISIL-jihadi ideology, had seen and identified with atrocities and had themselves taken part.

 

Non-jihadi sensitivities look on at the presence of children in prisons holding terrorists aghast at the situation. For the Islamic State group the imprisoned children represented a strategic convenience to assert that they were their hostages, and would become casualties should the situation call for such a move. Once the jihadist launched their assault on the prison with the intention of releasing thousands of its former fighters they felt they had the upper hand.

 

The fierce response of the Kurdish forces dictated otherwise, and the aerial bombing of the U.S. in aiding the SDF reflected a situation that would be temporary, if costly in human life. Where over 200 people were killed during the clashes. What the Islamic State terrorists did emphasize in this assault was that the loss of their caliphate three years earlier hadn't demoralized and defeated the ideology; it carries on, and its vicious intentions are still as terrifying as they were before their defeat.

 

An American attack helicopter flies over Hasaka on Monday. The United States has been conducting airstrikes there for four days.  Credit...Baderkhan Ahmad/Associated Press

There was a reported 200 'insurgents' and suicide bombers intent on freeing imprisoned jihadists. On Sunday the jihadis attempted to break up a security cordon of SDF fighters north of the prison with the intention of supporting inmates of the prison who were rioting, taking control of portions of the facility. The jihadi commanders within the prison, there would be little doubt, were taking full advantage of the riotous battles taking place outside the complex.

In the first four days of the fighting, 175 ISIL members died, according to Siamand Ali, a spokesman for the SDF, while 27 members of the SDF were killed in the firing scrimmages. During the fighting, fearful villagers evacuated the area. Fleeing ISIL terrorists were invading homes to serve as hiding places, threatening and killing the inhabitants. Kurdish security forces were also busy aiding the civilians in their flight to safety.

Hundreds of the jihadists have been recaptured while dozens remain at loose, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights. Elsewhere in pretrial detention facilities ten thousand terror group members are being held by the Kurdish militia. As for the Hasaka jail, Kurdish authorities have long warned of insufficient resources to secure that number of prisoners in what amounted to makeshift facilities, while awaiting repatriation. 

This photo provided by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces shows some Islamic State group fighters who were arrested.

That Dilemma

"I stopped eating almost a week ago. My body just can’t take this anymore…this place guarantees you lost your sanity, your dignity, your humanity one way or another…It’s exhausting trying to protect myself all day, all night. I can’t do it anymore."

Kimberly Polman, 49, Canadian Camp Al Hol internee, Syria  

"She was hoping she could go home, she was given reason to believe that that might be the case from someone high up in the camp, especially because of the snap election."

"She’s really devastated [that she can’t come home], she’s been sick for a while, she has broken teeth, she has kidney infections…she’s distraught and says she doesn’t want to live anymore….it’s the last thing she has control over."

"I am all for justice, and the choice she made has consequences beyond anything that she could have ever imagined. But we don’t have our Canadian citizenship on merit…even the most hardened criminals and murderers are granted the rights of a Canadian citizen….they are still human beings, they are still Canadians."

"I hate ISIS and everything that did, they stole my sister. But I believe that everybody can be redeemed if you give them a chance, and that they should face justice when they get back…but that doesn’t mean that they should be left to die out there."

Polman's sister, name withheld

 

"For over two years, dozens of Canadian ISIS suspects and their family members have been unlawfully detained in locked desert camps and prisons in northeast Syria."

"Most are young children who never chose to live under ISIS. It’s deeply troubling that these detainees and their families in Canada would have to resort to taking their government to court to end this paralysis…"

"Prime Minister Trudeau has the power to bring these Canadians home. He just needs to find the moral courage to do so."

Farida Deif, Canada Director, Human Rights Watch

Women and children related to fighters of the Islamic State group wait to board buses and trucks, leaving the overcrowded a an overcrowded al-Hol camp to return to their homes on June 3, 2019, in Hasakeh province, Syria. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Baderkhan Ahmad

Eleven families with Canadian citizenship who have relatives being held at the Al Hol camp for relatives of members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada to order the Canadian government to retrieve their relatives from the squalid camp housing women and children in a repatriation move setting aside their involvement with the Islamist terrorist fundamentalists whose litany of vicious deadly atrocities shocked the world, but evidently not the women who travelled from Canada to Syria to join ISIS and become 'brides' of ISIS.

The families, in the interests of maintaining anonymity, will not have their names and identities published. Using a covering name of "Bring Our Loved Ones Home", they are pursuing a law suit against Canada's government for refusing to act on their appeal. Either to repatriate the Syrian-Canadian men who travelled to Syria for the express purpose of joining ISIS and are incarcerated in the Al Roj prison maintained by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish fighting group that would prefer to have the fighters and the women detainees taken off their hands altogether.

 

The Kurdish fighting groups were the only effective offensive against the Islamic State terrorists. They offered protection to Shiite Muslims whom the Sunni ISIS threatened, to the Christian and Yazidi minorities whom they killed and enslaved, giving them haven in Kurdistan while simultaneously battling the encroaching ISIS 'caliphate'. When their collaboration with U.S. forces eventually led to the overthrow of the ISIS stronghold in Raqqa the Syrian Democratic Forces ended up rounding up and incarcerating ISIS fighters and their wives and children, holding them in separate camps.

 

US-led air strikes helped Kurdish and Arab fighters capture the IS stronghold of Raqqa  Reuters

The group's application describes camp conditions as "horrific", with "a lack of clean water malnutrition, non-existent hygiene measures, an acute shortage of medical care and facilities, violence and abuse". The detainees, they point out, have never been charged with any offences, and no trial dates have been noted. The government of Syria had repatriated their own citizens from the camps and trials are ongoing, the fate of the fighters who had captured a third of Syria for their caliphate will no doubt suffer a fate similar to that they imposed on those they took prisoner and committed atrocities upon from beheading to crucifixion and other imaginative methods of death-dealing.

The Canadian families, most of whom arrived in Canada as refugees escaping persecution in their Muslim home countries, state in their filing: "The Canadian government has the ability to bring the unlawful detention to the end and secure the release of the detained Canadians". Characterizing the incarceration of Islamic State avowed Islamists as 'unlawful' is a bit of a puzzler to begin with. Universality of solutions to rogue mass slaughterers is generally to sequester them to ensure the safety of others rather than permitting them to remain at large to continue their violent depredations.

It's also a little difficult to evoke compassion for the plight of such human rights abusers whose actions shocked the world when propaganda videos were released of ISIS members exulting in the beheading of helpless prisoners whose crimes were that they were not fundamentalist Islamist butchers, but vulnerable outsiders for whom ISIS crimes represented an assault on civilized universal mores of human behaviour. That they now suffer the indignities of mass incarceration under less than hygienic conditions is sad, but no tragedy.

The tragedy is that of the children in the camp. Theirs was a tragedy when they were born to ISIS parents to begin with, and later to be raised and taught the values of fundamentalist Islamist principles of conquest and jihad. They were born abroad, not in Canada. The older children up to age 14 who were taken by their parents to Syria to be part of the brave new world of the Islamist caliphate were raised in the miasmic atmosphere of a brutalized social order, many of them exposed to and urged to take part in atrocities.

Islamic State adherents don't flinch at human butchery. They caused innumerable deaths, focusing on minority groups within their widening grasp as their geographic holdings increased and they created a mass of desperate refugees, anxious to escape death. Their victims include men, women and children. Just as the detainees by the Syrian Democratic Forces represent men, women and children -- who preyed on other human beings. These are people who share a deviant and fundamental lack of social conscience.

Calling now upon the conscience of decent people to come to their rescue.

Children hold water containers in al-Hol camp, Syria, on January 8, 2020. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Degrading Downfall of Afghan Hopes

"He said the Taliban are hiding around these houses, they will open fire, you need to leave."

"I was thinking that the regime has changed. Everywhere I saw the white Taliban flag and armed fighters."

"I asked my husband has the government collapsed and we weren't told?"

Habiba, from Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, Kabul refugee

"The Taliban have recognized that all they need to do is keep the pressure on, wait us out, and launch simultaneous offensives around the country."

"They have broadly achieved their objective without the U.S. getting meaningful concessions in return. 

[The situation is] increasingly dire with each passing week."

"I fear we will look back and regret the decision to withdraw.The onset of what is going to be quite a brutal civil war, considerable ethnic and sectarian displacement, assassination of government officials, millions of refugees flooding into other countries, particularly Pakistan."

"We will see the return of al-Qaida and the Islamic State, though I don't see an immediate, domestic security threat for the U.S. in that regard."

David Petraeus, former U.S. Afghanistan commander, former head, CIA

"There is us and only us to fight the Taliban. That acknowledgement and realization was important."

"It is far from reality that the Taliban will be in a position to force the government to surrender. They may win the battles, but it's impossible to win the war."

Afghanistan government official

Before and after maps of Afghanistan; left Taliban controlled areas in April, right Taliban controlled areas in July ... Council on Foreign Relations

 

Close to 300,000 people have now fled their homes as a result of the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan that gave the Islamist fanatic Taliban the opportunity they have long waited for. Not that they were ever quiescent; they kept the memory of their presence alive and well, from forcing farmers in areas they continued to control in Afghanistan to grow salable poppy instead of edible crops, to threatening the rural population and destroying Western-built schools while launching suicide attacks.

The presence of U.S. and NATO-member troops kept the Taliban from fulfilling their ultimate goal, but now that all are leaving after committing to a two-decade stay resulting in a stalemate, their time has come. Ongoing, relentless attacks are being launched across the country with greater vigour and determination. For that matter, with the certainty of a U.S. withdrawal even while negotiations were taking place in Doha between U.S. special representative to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban delegation leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Taliban attacks on Afghan government installations were rife.

Signals, if any were needed of the pretense of negotiations, illustrated by the Taliban refusal to negotiate directly with the government of President Ashraf Ghani until the U.S. committed to its promised withdrawal, a promise that the Taliban decorated with its pledge to honour the U.S. demand that Afghanistan never again become a springboard for Islamist terrorists to launch attacks against the U.S. Now the Taliban gloat and praise themselves for having vanquished the U.S. to enable them to step up their relentless attacks.

An Afghan policeman keeps watch at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kabul.   Reuters

 

Only the overwhelmingly anxious intention of the U.S. to decamp finally and forever from Afghanistan, the war that would not end, deadened them to the absurdity of 'negotiating for peace' with the fundamentalist terrorists that call them selves the Taliban scholars. The U.S. was so anxious to escape the Kandahar air base without attacks on its personnel in the process, that it failed to alert the Afghan military until the base was emptied of its American personnel.

In the process, leaving armoured vehicles and all manner of other military equipment as a gift to the Afghan military, which not having been alerted, was unable to mount a guard over the base which was then ransacked upon the withdrawal, and tools of war ostensibly meant to benefit the government of Afghanistan fell into the possession of its enemies. An inexcusably botched operation from start to finish, despite American avowals of continued financial assistance to the Ghani government.

A country embattled by the global pandemic, by a crop and food and medicine shortage, which has been placed on siege notice. The residents of Kabul have seen foreign embassies withdraw personnel while others take stock of supplies and try to secure sources of both food and gas, even as streams of Afghan refugees are flooding the city in search of sanctuary from the ravages of conflict pitting the military against the Taliban terrorists.  Severe drought stalks the land adding to food shortages.

The Islamist terrorists take no prisoners; execution is far more efficient and any military who fall into their hands know their abrupt fate. A resistance from the country's warlords against the Taliban ascendancy once again is in the works, a replay of a two-decade-old drama re-enacted. The warlords' reputation is one of greed of possessions, motivated by power and influence and riches, as opposed to the Talibans' single-focus power-grab with influence and financial assets following.

The country's border crossings are in their crosshairs, cutting off the government's source of income through customs revenues. Taliban control is consolidating in spheres previously held by NATO allies in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. The Taliban bombed the home of the acting defence minister on Tuesday at a guarded upscale Kabul neighbourhood, missing the minister but killing and wounding many others. More recently the director of the government's media centre in Kabul was ambushed and killed.

The pretense of peace negotiations that the U.S. and the West uses as a screen to mask their desertion of Afghanistan is laughable. The Taliban is growing its territory and power base in leaps and bounds of military success. They have no reason whatever to negotiate for a shared peace agreement leading to a co-governing solution to the conflict roiling the country. It has always been nothing but a transparent sham, aided and abetted by the Pakistan Interagency Intelligence unit intent on fully destabilizing its neighbour.

The Taliban which swore it was committed to the peace process, assuring the Americans by telling them what they knew was wanted to salve their conscience and enable them to hold up a banner to the world of a promise to power-share, to honour the human rights of Afghans, to ensure the country would never again be used as a base from which to plot and attack the West, is set to reverse that pledge at the earliest opportunity.

The West has been warned time again to remove its blinders and deliberately fails to. Wherever the Taliban has taken control it has restored its medieval theocracy, women have been banned from school and work and public representation. Islamic State and al Qaeda, both firmly ensconced in the country now have an assured place of honour until such time that they too begin to turn against the Taliban with intention of replacing them as marginally more human rights-abusive tyrants and threats against Western interests.

Taliban fighters attend a gathering to celebrate the U.S.-Taliban deal in March 2020. Wali Sabawoon/NurPhoto/Getty Images