Gadhafi’s Son, Saif al-Islam Freed in Libya After Death Sentence Vacated
Al-Islam, the dictator’s second son, was held by a militia in Libya’s northwestern region of Zintan for five years before being freed in April under an amnesty agreement.
Moammar Gadhafi’s son Saif al-Islam has been freed after facing a death sentence for his part in killing protesters during the Arab Spring uprising in 2011 that led to his father’s overthrow and death.
Al-Islam, the dictator’s second son, was held by a militia in Libya’s northwestern region of Zintan for five years before being freed in April under an amnesty agreement, according to Newsweek. In 2015 he was sentenced to death in absentia by a court in the capitol, Tripoli.
But the militia that held him opposes the regime in Tripoli, which may have prevented the sentence from being carried out.
Since 2011, two governments have emerged: one in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj and backed by the United Nations, and considered the central government; and an independent parliament in Tobruk to the east. The Islamic State terrorist group took advantage of the instability, seizing control of the city of Sirte in February 2015.
The disarray and general upheaval in the North African country raised questions about the court’s ability to conduct a fair trial of al-Islam and his co-defendants.
“This trial has been plagued by persistent, credible allegations of fair trial breaches that warrant independent and impartial judicial review,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. “The victims of the serious crimes committed during the 2011 uprising deserve justice, but that can only be delivered through fair and transparent proceedings.”
Human Rights Watch covered al-Islam’s trial, and last July they determined that the proceeding, which also convicted more than 30 Gadhafi government officials, “was undermined by serious due process violations.” Al-Islam, former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi, and two ex-prime ministers, al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi and Abuzaid Dorda, were all sentenced to death after the trial. But at least for Gadhafi’s son, the punishment was never carried out.
“He’s been released from Zintan detention. The release, I’m told, was on 12 April — there was an order from the central government,” Islam’s lawyer, Karim Khan, told The Guardian. “He’s in Libya, he’s in good health, he’s safe and he’s well.”
Although the Libyan government set him free, Islam is still wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
“There was a trial, there was a conviction, he was sentenced to death. After that there was an amnesty,” Khan continued. “I’m going to be filing an application that the case is inadmissible at the ICC under
Bombing near one of Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi kills 4
Muslim worshippers gather after a suicide bomber detonated a device near the security headquarters of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, July 4, 2016. PHOTO: TWITTER/@nbbrk
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A suicide bombing outside one of Islam’s holiest sites killed four Saudi security forces on Monday, and similar attacks outside a Shiite mosque and a U.S. Consulate in two other Saudi cities raised fears of a coordinated assault aimed at destabilizing the Western-allied kingdom.
The Interior Ministry said five others were wounded in the attack outside the sprawling mosque grounds where the Prophet Muhammad is buried in Medina. Millions of Muslims from around the world visit the mosque every year as part of their pilgrimage to Mecca.
The ministry said the attacker set off the bomb in a parking lot after security officers raised suspicions about him. Several cars caught fire and thick plumes of black smoke were seen rising from the site of the explosion as thousands of worshippers crowded the streets around the mosque.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for any of the attacks.
Altayeb Osama, a 25-year old Sudanese visitor to Medina and resident of Abu Dhabi, said he heard two large booms about a minute apart as he was heading toward the mosque for sunset prayers. He said police and fire trucks were on the scene within seconds.
“It was very shocking that such a thing happens in such a holy place for Muslims, the second holiest place in the world. That’s not an act that represents Islam,” Osama said. “People never imagined that this could happen here.”
The ruling Al Saud family derives enormous prestige and legitimacy from being the caretakers of the hajj pilgrimage and Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina. The attack may have been an attempt to undermine the Saudi monarchy’s claim of guardianship.
In 1979, extremists took over Mecca’s Grand Mosque, home to the cube-shaped Kaaba, for two weeks as they demanded the royal family abdicate the throne.
The Prophet Muhammad’s mosque was packed Monday evening with worshippers during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in the kingdom on Tuesday. Local media say the attacker was intending to strike the mosque when it was crowded with thousands of worshippers gathered for the sunset prayer.
Qari Ziyaad Patel, 36, from Johannesburg, South Africa, was at the mosque when he heard a blast just as people were breaking their fast with dates. Many at first thought it was the sound of traditional, celebratory cannon fire, but then he felt the ground shake.
“The vibrations were very strong,” he said. “It sounded like a building imploded.”
State-run news channel al-Ekhbariya aired live video of the mosque filled with worshippers praying hours after the explosion. It also showed footage of Saudi King Salman’s son and the Governor of Medina, Prince Faisal bin Salman, visiting security officers wounded in the blast and the site of the explosion.
Also Monday evening, at least one suicide bomber and a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, several hours after a suicide bomber carried out an attack near the U.S. Consulate in the western city of Jiddah.
Saudi Arabia has been a target of Islamic State attacks that have killed dozens of people. In June, the Interior Ministry reported 26 terror attacks in the last two years.
The possibility of coordinated attacks across different cities in Saudi Arabia on the same day underscores the threat the kingdom faces from extremists who view the Saudi monarchy as heretics and enemies of Islam. Saudi Arabia is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
The attack in the eastern region of Qatif did not appear to cause any injuries, said resident Mohammed al-Nimr. His brother, prominent Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, was executed in January after a court found him guilty of sedition and inciting violence for his role in anti-government protests — charges his supporters reject.
Qatif is heavily populated by Shiites, who are a minority in the Sunni-ruled kingdom. Al-Nimr told The Associated Press the blasts there happened when most residents of the neighborhood were at home breaking the daily Ramadan fast.
The Interior Ministry said it was working to identify the remains of three bodies at the site of blast, suggesting there may have been three attackers.
IS and other Sunni extremists consider Shiites to be apostates deserving of death, and have previously attacked Shiite places of worship, including a suicide bombing on a Shiite mosque in Qatif in May 2015 that killed 21 people.
Earlier Monday, near the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives after two security guards approached him, killing himself and lightly wounding the two guards, the Interior Ministry said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said the guards noticed the man was acting suspiciously at an intersection on the corner of the heavily fortified consulate, near a hospital and a mosque. The Interior Ministry did not say whether the bomber intended to target the U.S. diplomatic compound.
No consular staff were wounded in the attack.
The ministry said the bomber was not a Saudi citizen, but a resident of the kingdom. It gave no further details on his nationality. There are around 9 million foreigners living in Saudi Arabia, which has a total population of 30 million.
Al-Ekhbariya said security forces detonated six explosive devices found at the scene of the attack near the consulate.
A 2004 al-Qaida-linked militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah killed five locally hired consular employees and four gunmen. The three-hour battle at the compound came amid a wave of al-Qaida attacks targeting Westerners and Saudi security posts.
U.S.-led strikes pound Islamic State in Iraq, kill 250 fighters
US led strikes pound Islamic State in Iraq, kill 250 fighters.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S.-led coalition aircraft waged a series of deadly strikes against Islamic State around the city of Falluja on Wednesday, U.S. officials told Reuters, with one citing a preliminary estimate of at least 250 suspected fighters killed and at least 40 vehicles destroyed.
If the figures are confirmed, the strikes would be among the most deadly ever against the jihadist group. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the operation and noted preliminary estimates can change.
The strikes, which the officials said took place south of the city, where civilians have also been displaced, are just the latest battlefield setback suffered by Islamic State in its self-proclaimed “caliphate” of Iraq and Syria.
The group’s territorial losses are not diminishing concerns about its intent and ability to strike abroad though. Turkey pointed the finger at Islamic State on Wednesday for a triple suicide bombing and gun attack that killed 41 people at Istanbul’s main airport.
CIA chief John Brennan told a forum in Washington the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamic State “depravity” and acknowledged there was a long road ahead battling the group, particularly its ability to incite attacks.
“We’ve made, I think, some significant progress, along with our coalition partners, in Syria and Iraq, where most of the ISIS members are resident right now,” Brennan said.
“But ISIS’ ability to continue to propagate its narrative, as well as to incite and carry out these attacks — I think we still have a ways to go before we’re able to say that we have made some significant progress against them.”
On the battlefield, the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State has moved up a gear in recent weeks, with the government declaring victory over Islamic State in Falluja.
An alliance of militias have also launched a major offensive against the militant group in the city of Manbij in northern Syria.
Still, in a reminder of the back-and-forth nature of the war, U.S.-backed Syrian rebels were pushed back from the outskirts of an Islamic State-held town on the border with Iraq and a nearby air base on Wednesday after the jihadists mounted a counter- attack, two rebel sources said.
All Signs Point to ISIS in Istanbul Attack That Left 36 Dead, Turkish PM Says
Ambulances arrive at Turkey’s largest airport, Istanbul Ataturk, Turkey, following a blast June 28, 2016.
At least 36 people were dead and 147 others injured following a terrorist attack at an international airport in Istanbul, and all signs point to ISIS as being responsible, according to Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.
The attack drew swift condemnation from officials in Turkey as well as the White House.
“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today’s heinous terrorist attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport in Turkey, which appears to have killed and injured dozens,” said a statement from White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. “We remain steadfast in our support for Turkey, our NATO Ally and partner, along with all of our friends and allies around the world, as we continue to confront the threat of terrorism.”
According to Yildirim, three attackers carrying weapons arrived in a taxi to Ataturk airport, one of the world’s busiest aviation hubs. Further details about the attack were not immediately available.
Foreign nationals and police officers were among the wounded, according to Yildirim. Saudi Arabia’s Embassy in Turkey said at least seven Saudis were injured in the attack and all are in stable condition.
Yildirim also insisted there was no security lapse at the airport.
Paramedics push a stretcher at Turkey’s largest airport, Istanbul Ataturk, Turkey, following a blast June 28, 2016.
The airport has since been reopened, and flights between the U.S. and Istanbul have resumed. Airports in the United States have beefed up security in the wake of the attack, around 10 p.m. local time, a busy time for the airport, with flights arriving from Europe and leaving for the Persian Gulf and other parts of the region.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement condemning the attack that “has no objective.” The president also said the attack shows “terrorism strikes with no regard for faith and values,” since it occurred during the holy month of Ramadan.
“We expect the international community, especially the Western countries including their administrations, parliaments, media organs and civil societies, to take a firm stand against terrorism,” Erdogan said.
The attack comes one day after the U.S. State Department updated its travel warning for Turkey, advising that “foreign and U.S. tourists have been explicitly targeted by international and indigenous terrorist organizations” and mentioning “aviation services” along with other targets for extremists. In March the U.S. ordered the departure of family members of U.S. government personnel posted to the U.S. Consulate in Adana and family members of U.S. government civilians in Izmir province through July 26, 2016.
Turkey is one of the main European tourist destinations for Americans. A total of 181,298 U.S. tourists have arrived in Turkey so far this year, with 60,000 arriving last month alone.
All U.S. Chief of Mission personnel have been accounted for, according to the U.S. State Department, and the government is “making every effort to account for the welfare of U.S. citizens in the city.” Turkey has been dealing with multiple security threats from the Kurdish separatist group the PKK, as well as ISIS.
Earlier this month, a car bomb attack on a police bus killed seven officers and four civilians in central Istanbul. Today’s attack was the fifth major one so far this year in the city, Turkey’s largest.
Jordan’s King Abdullah dissolves parliament, names caretaker prime minister
Jordan’s King Abdullah II appointed veteran politician Hani Mulki as caretaker prime minister Sunday after dissolving parliament as its four-year term nears its end and charged him with organizing elections by October.
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan’s King Abdullah II appointed veteran politician Hani Mulki as caretaker prime minister Sunday after dissolving parliament as its four-year term nears its end and charged him with organizing elections by October.
The king accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour before appointing Mulki by royal decree. Mulki has held senior government posts in successive administrations. Under the constitution, the election must be held within four months.
“The kingdom faces grave economic difficulties due to the volatile situation in this region, which has had an adverse impact on growth levels,” Abdullah said in a letter appointing Mulki. “Therefore we have to take exceptional and innovative measures that help us overcome these challenges and obstacles.”
Jordan is struggling to cope with at least 1.2 million Syrian refugees who have fled the conflict in their country.
Mulki has held senior government posts in successive administrations. Under the constitution, the election must be held within four months.
The king also told Mulki that he hoped the election would pave the way for a prime minister emerging from a parliamentary majority rather than one handpicked by the monarch, a main plank of the reformist agenda of a mix of Islamist and tribal figures.
Jordan traditionally votes according to tribal and family allegiances, but parliament amended the electoral laws in March in a move that analysts say will lead to more candidates from political parties vying for votes.
The analysts say the tribal lawmakers who dominated the last parliament had tried to resist changes that might undermine their influence, under a system that still favors sparsely populated tribal areas.
Jordan’s main political opposition comes from the Muslim Brotherhood movement, but it faces increasing legal curbs on its activities, leaving mostly pro-monarchy parties and some independent Islamists and politicians to compete in these elections, analysts say.
The Brotherhood wants sweeping political reforms but stops short of demanding the overthrow of the monarchy.
Its political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, represents many disenfranchised Jordanians of Palestinian origin, who are in the majority in the population of 7 million and live mostly in urban areas.
Analysts say it could be difficult for the Brotherhood, which has operated legally in Jordan for decades, to participate in the election after authorities closed many of its offices and encouraged a splinter group to legally challenge the main movement’s license to operate.
Western diplomats and independent politicians say the absence of the group, which has strong grass-roots support in urban centers, could undermine the legitimacy of the election.
Western donors have pushed Jordan’s authorities to widen political representation to stem radicalization among alienated and unemployed young people. Hundreds of them have joined extremists in Syria and Iraq.
Hurray – Iraq forces push into streets of IS-held Fallujah
Baghdad (AFP) – Iraqi forces thrust into the city of Fallujah from three directions on Monday marking a new and perilous urban phase in the week-old operation to retake the jihadist bastion.
The drive to recapture the first city to be lost from government control in 2014 came as fighting also raged in neighbouring Syria, leaving huge numbers of civilians exposed.
Led by the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS), Iraq’s best trained and most seasoned fighting unit, the forces pushed into Fallujah before dawn, commanders said.
“Iraqi forces entered Fallujah under air cover from the international coalition, the Iraqi air force and army aviation, and supported by artillery and tanks,” said Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the commander of the operation.
“There is resistance from Daesh,” he added, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
The forces have not yet ventured into the city centre but they recaptured some areas in a southern suburb after crossing a bridge, and took up positions on the eastern and northern fringes.
The involvement of the elite CTS marks the start of a phase of urban combat in a city where in 2004 US forces fought some of their toughest battles since the Vietnam War.
The week-old operation had previously focused on retaking rural areas around Fallujah, which lies just 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.
It had been led by the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force, which is dominated by Tehran-backed Shiite militias.
They were still in action Monday, attempting to clear an area northwest of Fallujah called Saqlawiya, officers said.
– Civilians trapped inside –
Only a few hundred families have managed to slip out of the Fallujah area ahead of the assault on the city, with an estimated 50,000 civilians still trapped inside, sparking fears the jihadists could try to use them as human shields.
The only families who were able to flee so far lived in outlying areas, with the biggest wave of displaced reaching camps on Saturday night.
“Our resources in the camps are now very strained and with many more expected to flee we might not be able to provide enough drinking water for everyone,” said Nasr Muflahi, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Iraq director.
“We expect bigger waves of displacement the fiercer the fighting gets.”
In Amriyat al-Fallujah, a government-controlled town to the south of the jihadist stronghold, civilians trickled in, starving and exhausted after walking through the countryside for hours at night, dodging IS surveillance.
“I just decided to risk everything. I was either going to save my children or die with my children,” said Ahmad Sabih, 40, who reached the NRC-run camp early on Sunday.
A senior police commander said his forces had assisted 800 civilians fleeing areas north of Fallujah on Monday.
Fallujah is one of just two major urban centres in Iraq still held by IS jihadists.
They also hold Mosul, the country’s second city and de-facto jihadist capital in Iraq, east of which Kurdish-led forces launched a fresh offensive on Sunday.
The jihadists holed up in Fallujah are believed to number around 1,000.
– Syria’s Aleppo bombarded –
It is not yet clear what resources IS is prepared to invest in the defence of Fallujah, which has been almost completely isolated for months, but the city looms large in modern jihadist mythology.
Fallujah is expected to give Iraqi forces one of their toughest battles yet but IS has appeared weakened in recent months and has been losing territory consistently in the past 12 months.
According to the government, the organisation that has sewn havoc across Iraq and Syria over the past two years now controls around 14 percent of the national territory, down from 40 percent in 2014.
However, as the “caliphate” it declared two years ago unravels, IS has been reverting to its old tactics of bombings against civilians and commando raids.
A fresh wave of bomb attacks claimed by IS struck the Baghdad area on Monday, killing 11 people in three separate blasts.
In northern Syria, clashes raged around the flashpoint town of Marea as IS pressed an assault on non-jihadist rebels.
The IS onslaught has threatened tens of thousands of people, many of them already displaced from other areas, who have sought refuge in camps near the Turkish border.
Gerry Simpson, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told AFP 165,000 civilians were now stuck between IS fighters, Kurdish forces and the border.
“What more does the US, EU and UN need to call on Turkey to give these people refuge,” he asked.
In divided Aleppo city, 15 people, including two children, were killed in the rebel-controlled eastern neighbourhoods in heavy bombardment on Monday morning, the civil defence said.
Islamic State sex slaves apparently being sold on Facebook for $8,000
A Yazidi who had been held by Islamic State militants as a slave for several months sits in a tent outside Duhok, Iraq. (Alice Martins, For The Washington Post)
The woman is young, perhaps 18, with olive skin and dark bangs that droop onto her face. In the Facebook photo, she attempts to smile but doesn’t look at her photographer.
“To all the bros thinking about buying a slave, this one is $8,000,” begins the May 20 Facebook posting, which was attributed to an Islamic State fighter who calls himself Abu Assad Almani. The same man posted a second image a few hours later, this one a pale young face with weepy red eyes.
“Another sabiyah [slave], also about $8,000,” the posting reads. “Yay, or nay?”
The photos were taken down within hours by Facebook, and it is unclear whether the account’s owner was doing the selling himself or commenting about women being sold by other fighters. But the unusual posting underscores what experts say is an increasingly perilous existence for the hundreds of women who are thought to be held as sex slaves by the Islamic State.
As the terrorist group comes under heightened pressure in Iraq and Syria, these female captives appear to be suffering, too — sold and traded by cash-strapped fighters, subjected to shortages of food and medicine, and put at risk daily by military strikes, according to terrorism experts and human rights groups.
Social-media sites used by Islamic State fighters in recent months have included numerous accounts of the buying and selling of sex slaves, as well the promulgation of formal rules for dealing with them. The guidelines cover such topics as whether it’s possible to have sex with prepubescent prisoners — yes, the Islamic State’s legal experts say — and how severely a slave can be beaten.
But until the May 20 incident, there were no known instances of Islamic State fighters posting photographs of female captives being offered for sale. The photos of the two unidentified women appeared only briefly before being deleted by Facebook, but the images were captured by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington nonprofit group that monitors jihadists’ social-media accounts.
“We have seen a great deal of brutality, but the content that ISIS has been disseminating over the past two years has surpassed it all for sheer evil,” said Steven Stalinsky, the institute’s executive director, using the common acronym for the Islamic State. “Sales of slave girls on social media is just one more example of this.”
Almani, the apparent owner of the Facebook account, is thought to be a German national fighting for the Islamic State in Syria, according to Stalinsky. He has previously posted to social-media accounts under that name, in the slangy, poorly rendered English used by many European fighters who can’t speak Arabic. Early postings suggest that Almani is intimately familiar with the Islamic State’s activities around Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital in Syria. He also regularly uses his accounts to solicit donations for the terrorist group.
In displaying the images of the women, Almani advised his Facebook friends to “get married” and “come to dawlah,” or the Islamic State’s territory in Iraq and Syria. Then he engaged with different commenters in an extensive discussion about whether the $8,000 asking price was a good value. Some who replied to the postings mocked the women’s looks, while others scolded Almani for posting photos of women who weren’t wearing the veil.
“What makes her worth that price? Does she have an exceptional skill?” one of his correspondents asks about woman in the second photo.
“Nope,” he replies. “Supply and demand makes her that price.”
The Islamic State’s leaders have historically used U.S.-based social media such as Facebook and Twitter to attract recruits and spread propaganda, but in the past year American companies have sought to block jihadist accounts and postings whenever they are discovered.
Facebook in particular has garnered high marks from watchdog groups for reacting quickly to terrorists’ efforts to use its pages. But at the same time, the militants also have become more agile, leaping quickly from one social-media platform to another and opening new accounts as soon as older ones are shut down.
Displaced Iraqi women from the Yazidi community, who fled violence between Islamic State jihadists and Peshmerga fighters in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, gathering around their tents at a refugee camp set up on Mount Sinjar in Jan. 2015. (Safin Hamed / AFP/Getty Images)
The Facebook incident comes amid complaints from human rights groups about waning public interest in the plight of women held as prisoners by the Islamic State. The organization Human Rights Watch, citing estimates by Kurdish officials in Iraq and Syria, says the terrorist group holds about 1,800 women and girls, just from the capture of Yazidi towns in the region. After initial denials, the Islamic State last year issued statements acknowledging the use of sex slaves and defending the practice as consistent with ancient Islamic traditions, provided that the women are non-Muslims captured in battle or members of Muslim sects that the terrorist group regards as apostates. At least three Somali families in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have female relatives who have gone missing in…
A report last month by Human Rights Watch recounted the ordeals suffered by three dozen Iraqi and Syrian women who escaped from terrorist-held towns in recent months. Among the women were former Yazidi sex slaves who described abuses that included multiple rapes by different men as they were sold and traded.
The problems faced by such women appear to be growing worse as military and economic pressure against the Islamic State increases, the report said.
“The longer they are held by ISIS, the more horrific life becomes for Yazidi women, bought and sold, brutally raped, their children torn from them,” said Skye Wheeler, women’s rights emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Meanwhile, ISIS’s restrictions on [non-enslaved] Sunni women cut them off from normal life and services almost entirely.”
Young Muslim American women try to succeed in politics in ways their fathers couldn’t
Raaheela Ahmed, 22, speaks with Lindsey Adva, 17, at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Md. Ahmed, who is running for a seat on the Prince George’s County Board of Education, is one of several young Muslim women getting involved in local politics. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
By Pamela Constable/WP – When Raaheela Ahmed knocks on doors to meet potential voters, she covers her black headscarf with a floppy hat so people won’t be distracted from what she has to say. She greets high school students as “y’all” and confides, with a disarming laugh, that she sometimes sneaks to her office gym to pray.
Poised and self-confident at 22, Ahmed is one of a group of young Muslim women, all children of immigrants, who are entering electoral politics in the Maryland suburbs. Eager to help counter the anti-Muslim rhetoric that has been part of the 2016 presidential contest, they say they feel emboldened by their American upbringing and the encouragement of male Muslim mentors.
“My dad was always involved in politics. I remember carrying signs for him in parades,” said Ahmed, who grew up in Bowie and is seeking a seat on the Prince George’s County Board of Education.
Her father, Shukoor Ahmed, 53, an engineer from India, ran unsuccessfully five times for the Maryland House of Delegates and is managing her campaign. “He tried so many times, but he was forever an outsider,” Raaheela Ahmed said. “I speak with less accent, so people take me more seriously.”
Prince George’s and Montgomery counties have diverse and growing Muslim immigrant populations, from Pakistani doctors in Potomac to Somali cabdrivers in Riverdale. In Montgomery, community leaders estimate there are 98,000 Muslim residents, though no official statistics are available.
Members of the Muslim Democratic Club of Montgomery County meet in Silver Spring. From left: Hamza Khan, Hasan Mansori, Aminda Kadir, Rida Bukhari-Rizvi and Nadia Syahmalina. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
While some affluent Muslims have become important political donors, most maintain a low profile. Few have run for office in the state, and almost all who have are men. There is one Muslim city council member in College Park and one in Takoma Park, one Muslim member of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee and one Muslim state delegate, Democrat Hasan Jalisi of Baltimore County.
But a younger generation of Muslim American women is testing the political waters, urged on by ambitious men like Shukoor Ahmed and Hamza Khan, 28, a Democratic activist who chairs the Muslim Democratic Club of Montgomery County.
This spring Khan managed the campaigns of Rida Bukhari-Rizvi, 32, a policy analyst from Burtonsville who ran for the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee, and Nadia Syahmalina, 34, an Indonesian American financial manager from Rockville who ran in the Maryland primary to become a delegate for Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention.
Both women narrowly lost, and Syahmalina said she will focus her efforts for the rest of this year on turning out the vote for Clinton in the general election. In interviews, both she and Bukhari-Rizvi said they were energized by their first forays into partisan politics and eager to do more.
Rida Bukhari-Rizvi, left, jokes with Nadia Syahmalina during a gathering of the Muslim Democratic Club of Montgomery County. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
“I was reluctant at first, but Hamza urged me to run, and it became more than a seat on a committee,” said Bukhari-Rizvi, a Pakistani American who wears a white headscarf and is part of the Shiite sect of Islam. “We have never been given a voice before, but I’m part of a new crop of Muslim American women who are well-educated and well-spoken. We can help combat Islamophobia, and we can carve out a future for others. If no one gives us the mantle, we will take it.”
Shiites are a minority in the U.S. Muslim population of about 3 million. There are many more Sunni Muslims in Maryland, too, with subdivisions along ethnic, political or linguistic lines. There is a also a smaller population of U.S.-born Muslim converts.
Khan, a Pakistani American, grew up in Montgomery County and said the Muslim elite there has long been dominated by South Asian entrepreneurs. He is actively working to open the political arena to other Muslim groups, and especially to women.
“We have nearly 100,000 Muslims in the county, from many countries and walks of life, but their political influence is zero,” he said. “Few of them have faith in the democratic process, and many come from patriarchal societies. This is a battle to empower Muslim women.”
Syahmalina, the Clinton supporter, comes from a moderate Muslim community and does not wear a headscarf. Although active in Indonesian culture and causes, she said she had thought of politics as “dirty” and was nervous when Khan persuaded her to run.
When the results of the April 26 primary were announced, she was astounded to have finished fourth among eight candidates.
“I was way down on the bottom of the ballot, and I have a long name,” she said. “I thought I might get a few hundred votes, but I got 37,000!”
Syahmalina said she has a “passion for change”and wants to “bring a different face” to the national conversation about Muslim Americans, reflecting her Indonesian heritage. “We are not all South Asian and Middle Eastern,” she said.
Raaheela Ahmed, Bukhari-Rizvi and Syahmalina all said they want to offer voters a reasonable, appealing image at a time when they say U.S. politics has become poisoned by anti-Muslim fears. As professional middle-class women, Hamza and others said, they may seem less threatening to voters than their male peers.
“With women, there is a trust factor. People tend to open up more to them,” said Zainab Chaudry, who is Maryland state director for the Council on American Islamic Relations, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Although she is younger than Bukhari-Rizvi and Syahmalina, Ahmed has more political experience. She ran for the Prince George’s school board in 2012, when she was a college student, and was appointed to the University of Maryland Board of Regents for 2014-2015.
A financial consultant, she presents herself as a mainstream liberal despite her conservative attire. Her campaign fliers call for better school safety, parental engagement and financial accountability.
At her recent meeting with immigrant high school students in Hyattsville, Ahmed delivered a pep talk on how to overcome self-doubt and succeed in life. Asked whether she had felt threatened or insulted in public, she shrugged.
“This is the [Donald] Trump era. There is a lot of ignorance, and people make judgments,” she said. “I am a U.S. citizen with a good education. I am also a Muslim, and I wear the hijab. . . . I don’t want people to see just my faith when they look at me. I want them to see the real me.”
In an interview at her home in Bowie, with her parents beaming nearby, Ahmed said she had grown up surrounded by South Asian relatives, with everyone speaking Urdu. But she also described herself as an American girl, born and raised in Prince George’s, who connects easily with black and white voters alike.
In 2012, she ran a close second behind the school board chairwoman, Jeana Jacobs. This year she won the April 26 primary, coming in ahead of Jacobs and another candidate; she will face off in the November general election against Cheryl Landis, 61, a career school system employee.
“Nobody thought I would win in the primary, not even my parents, but I got twice as many votes as I did the last time,” Ahmed said. “A lot of people remembered me when I knocked on their doors. I think they feel like I am home-grown.”
What’s Going On In Iraqi Offensive to Retake Fallujah From ISIS
LUIS MARTINEZ,ABC News
The Iraqi ground offensive to retake the ISIS-held city of Fallujah began early Monday with Iraqi military forces pressing outside the city located 40 miles west of Baghdad.
Retaking the city in Anbar Province has been a priority for the Iraqi government since it was one of the first places in the country seized by ISIS in early 2014. According to American military officials, the number of ISIS fighters in the province has fallen to 1,000 as ISIS has sustained battlefield defeats in recent months.
The Fallujah military operation was announced late Sunday night by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi who said Iraqi forces are “approaching a moment of great victory” against ISIS in the wake of recent victories in the far western town of Rutbah and other towns in the Euphrates River Valley.
WHAT IS THE IRAQI MILITARY DOING IN FALLUJAH?
Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said Monday that the Iraqi military had begun to conduct “shaping operations” on the outside of Fallujah and had not entered the city proper. “Fallujah is important,” said Davis. “It’s the last remaining stronghold within Anbar Province. It’s the ISIS position closest to Baghdad and a place we’re going to be working very closely with Iraqi partners to retake.”
The Fallujah operation involves forces from the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police. “Those forces have already begun to move on the city where they’re encountering some resistance,” said Davis. The shaping also involves striking at targets inside the city and “dropping leaflets meant to inform civilian populations to avoid ISIS areas,” Davis said. “They’ve been asking people to place white sheets on their roof to market their locations.”
While the U.S. is supporting the Iraqi military offensive in Fallujah, it is still not cooperating with the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, known the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), arrayed north of the city.
Davis said he did not know what the role of the Shiite militias would be in Fallujah though “they have a largely a relationship of coexistence with Iraqi forces and are aligned against ISIS”.
The coalition has supported the ground operation with airstrikes before the offensive, 21 in Fallujah since May 17, according to Davis. Iraq has not requested the use of American Apache helicopters based in Iraq as part of the Fallujah operation though they remain available if needed.
WHY AN OFFENSIVE NOW?
Fallujah was the first Iraqi city seized by ISIS in early 2014, as the group found early support among the dominant Sunni Muslim population that resented the policies by the Shiite-led government of former Prime Minister Maliki.
Since then, retaking the city has been a priority for the Iraqi government, even though it may not be as tactically important as it once was.
The U.S. military believes about 1,000 ISIS fighters remain in Anbar Province with ISIS numbers decreasing as the result of recent Iraqi military victories in Rutbah and Hit in the Euphrates River Valley. Davis said many ISIS fighters had already left Anbar and particularly Fallujah which he described as “a distant outpost for them” that has been “hard to sustain over time.”
Two Iraqi Army brigades have been encircling the city for months in anticipation of a planned offensive which seemed to await the slow progress of the Iraqi military in retaking Ramaadi to the southwest.
IS FALLUJAH IMPORTANT FOR RETAKING MOSUL?
ISIS still controls significant area of Iraqi territory in the northern part of the country including Mosul, the country’s second largest city. Much of the American-led training effort of Iraq’s military has been geared towards generating the forces needed to retake Mosul in a future offensive.
Two weeks ago, Col. Steve Warren, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said retaking Fallujah was not a military prerequisite for an offensive towards Mosul and that doing so would be an Iraqi “political decision.”
He anticipated that retaking the city would be “a tough note for the Iraqis to crack” given that the city had been under ISIS control for more than two years.
The pace of the Iraqi-led operation and sequencing of the operation will be up to the Iraqis, similar to the effort to retake the much larger city of Ramadi which lasted for months.
This photo shows the incredible firepower of the US-led coalition against ISIS
In the photo, soldiers and airmen from the international coalition to thwart ISIS stand in front of some of the most powerful military aircraft in the world. From left to right, we see a U-2 spy plane, a KC-10 tanker, an F-15 Eagle, an F-18 jet in front of an E-3, a KC-30A tanker, an F-22 Raptor, and an RQ-4 Global Hawk drone. From left to right, we see a U-2 spy plane, a KC-10 tanker, an F-15 Eagle, an F-18 jet in front of an E-3, a KC-30A tanker, an F-22 Raptor, and an RQ-4 Global Hawk drone.
Colonel Steve Warren, the US-led coalition’s Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman, said the recent attacks by militants of the Islamic State (ISIS) against the Kurdish Peshmerga front lines in northern Iraq last Tuesday that also killed one US serviceman, was to gain attention after suffering “several defeats in a row”.
“This enemy [ISIS] has been getting slapped around now by both the CTS, the Iraqi security forces and the Peshmerga for weeks,” Colonel Warren told a press conference on Wednesday. “They’re being pressured, their noses have been bloodied and they’ve continued to become battered around Makhmur. They were out of Bashir [village] by the Peshmerga,” he added.
“It’s an area [Bashir] that they used to launch indirect fire attacks against Kirkuk, it’s an area that they used to launch chemical weapons attacks against Taza that killed three children several months ago and the Peshmerga came in and took it away from them, unceremoniously took it away from them in a relatively quick fight. It took about 24 hours,” he said.
“This enemy has suffered a string of recent defeats. They were kicked out of Hiit, they’ve been cleared out of the roadway between Hiit and Dulab, they’re being pressured into Dulab,” Warren stated.
“So this enemy has suffered a string of defeats recently, and one of the things that we’ve noticed that what ISIL [ISIS] likes to do is when they have suffered several defeats in a row, when they’re back on their heels, often they will try one of these more high-profile, high-visibility attacks in an effort to gain some attention,” he said.
“This enemy wanted to stage a relatively high-profile, high-visibility attack that would distract peoples’ attention away from the beatdown that they’ve been taking everywhere else. Luckily for us, it won’t work,” he said, suggesting that ISIS is on the back foot, and that the latest attacks have no “lasting operational value to this enemy”.
The US-led coalition spokesperson also referred to the ISIS-led complex attack on December 16, 2015, near the town of Tal Aswad against Kurdish Peshmerga forces, that included hundreds of ISIS fighters and several VBIEDs.
“It was, we believe, in reaction to the fact that they were in the process of losing Ramadi. What this enemy likes to do is when they’re — when they’re taking a beatdown, they like to try and stage some noticeable event that would distract the press, particularly the Western press who are very vulnerable to distraction in their view,” he stated.
Moreover, Warren said that when ISIS suffers setbacks, it carries out attacks on civilians in other parts of the world. In November, when the Kurdish forces took Sinjar, the ISIS operatives attacked Paris.
“We also know that when this enemy is on its heels, when it’s suffered several setbacks, they’re likely to try and lash out, you know, through terror attacks, perhaps in Baghdad, perhaps elsewhere in Syria, perhaps elsewhere in the world,” the coalition spokesperson added.
