Tag: the war of terror

Treasury to probe whether Somali terror group al Shabaab receiving Minnesota welfare money: Bessent

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced an investigation into Somali terror group al Shabaab allegedly receiving Minnesota welfare money,

“At my direction, @USTreasury is investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans’ tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab,” Bessent posted on X on Monday.

“Thanks to the leadership of @POTUS @realDonaldTrump, we are acting fast to ensure Americans’ taxes are not funding acts of global terror. We will share our findings as our investigation continues.”

Bessent reposted a City Journal article from last month that alleged millions of dollars from Minnesota state welfare programs had “ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab,” citing law enforcement sources, CBS News reported.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s (D) office directed the news outlet to remarks last week in which the governor said he welcomes an investigation into where defrauded welfare money went and would work with investigators.

In 2019, a report by Minnesota’s Office of the Legislative Auditor said it was “unable to substantiate” allegations that Child Care Assistance Program funding is going to terrorist groups, but it didn’t rule it out, saying it’s “possible” that state funds may have been sent overseas and eventually found its way to terrorists.

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ICE Deports Dallas Muslim ‘Leader’ Over Hamas-Linked ‘Donations’

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deported a prominent Dallas Muslim leader for funneling donations to a Hamas-linked nonprofit, marking another strike in the Trump administration’s war on terror financing amid broader immigration overhauls. 

The move targets Jordanian national Marwan Marouf, a well-known community leader at the Muslim American Society (MAS) of Dallas-Fort Worth, believed to have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, who allegedly solicited funds for terror groups.

Marouf, who entered the U.S. 30 years ago, was charged with lack of a valid entry document and providing ‘material support’ for terrorism, was ordered deported after a federal judge revoked his green card for immigration violations and ties to Hamas-linked entities.

The DHS notes that “this individual presented a threat to public safety and national security,” citing Marouf’s donations to the Holy Land Foundation, a group that was designated as a “terrorist organization” by the Bush Administration in 2001.

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US Designates Non-Existent Cartel as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization’ To Justify Attacks on Venezuela

The US State Department on Monday formally designated the Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, a group that doesn’t actually exist, as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” providing a pretext for a potential attack on Venezuela.

The term “Cartel of the Suns” was first used in the 1990s to describe two Venezuelan military generals with sun insignias on their uniforms who were involved in cocaine trafficking. According to a 60 Minutes report that aired in 1993, one of the generals was working with the CIA at the time.

Today, the term is used to describe a loose network of Venezuelan military and government officials allegedly involved in drug trafficking, but the Cartel of the Suns doesn’t actually exist as a structured organization.

According to InSight Crime, a think tank that receives grants from the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, recent US sanctions mischaracterized the Cartel of the Suns, which InSight described as “a system of corruption wherein military and political officials profit by working with drug traffickers.”

Despite the reality, the US is now calling the Cartel of the Suns a terrorist organization and claims that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is its leader, a push being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long sought regime change in Caracas.

President Trump has claimed that the terror designation would allow him to target Maduro or his assets, but any US attack on Venezuela would be illegal without congressional authorization. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in an interview last week that the designation gives the Pentagon “new options” to go after the “cartel,” meaning the Venezuelan government.

The real allegation against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, according to InSight Crime, is that he allows lower-level officials to profit from the drug trade to keep them content. InSight said that the Venezuelan officials aren’t necessarily directing drug shipments but rather use their “positions to protect traffickers from arrest and ensure that shipments pass through a territory.”

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US Bombs Somalia for 100th Time This Year

US Africa Command announced on Sunday that its forces have launched two more airstrikes in Somalia, bringing the total number of US bombings in the country this year to at least 100, an unprecedented number.

AFRICOM said that the airstrikes were launched on November 21 and November 22 about 37 miles southeast of the Gulf of Aden port city of Bosaso, where US-backed forces have been fighting against an ISIS affiliate in the Caal-Miskaad Mountains.

The command offered no other details about the strikes as it stopped sharing casualty estimates and assessments on civilian harm earlier this year. “Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM said.

The Puntland Counter-Terrorism Operations claimed on Saturday that a US airstrike killed “five fleeing ISIS terrorists” and also said its forces detained a Moroccan national, who it said was the “head of GPS navigation systems” for the ISIS affiliate. The US supports local Puntland forces in the region because the US-backed Federal Government, based in Mogadishu, doesn’t control the region.

Garowe Online, a media outlet based in Puntland, reported that Puntland officials said their forces took control of one of the last known ISIS positions in the Balade Valley, the area of the Caal-Miskaad mountains where recent fighting has been focused.

The Puntland government has come under criticism recently over reports that the UAE has been shipping weapons to Sudan to arm the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been accused of committing genocide and recently committed massacres against civilians after it took the city of El Fasher in Sudan’s western Darfur region. According to a report from Middle East Eye, the US has also been using the airbase in Bosaso to support its military operations in Somalia.

The Trump administration has continued to provide support for the Federal Government’s fight against al-Shabaab in southern Somalia and provided heavy air support for an offensive in Somalia’s southern Jubaland region earlier this month. According to local media reports, a suspected US airstrike on the town of Jamame in Jubaland over the weekend killed 12 civilians, including eight children.

AFRICOM told Antiwar.com on Friday that its forces launched a total of 98 airstrikes in Somalia so far in 2025, making the two latest airstrikes the 99th and 100th of the year.

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Trump’s New Islamic Extremist “Allies” — Syrian and Qatari Regimes

Is the ghost of Dick Cheney (CFR) haunting the Trump administration? During the George W. Bush administration, Vice President Cheney and a coterie of CFR neocon war hawks known as “The Vulcans” (Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Stephen Hadley, Robert Gates, and Paul Wolfowitz) dragged America into a series of “forever wars” and “regime change” interventions. Accompanying these misadventures was the continuation of the policies of previous Democratic and Republican administrations’ musical-chair alliances, in which yesterday’s “terrorist” becomes today’s “noble ally” (and then tomorrow turns on us and is again designated a terrorist).

Donald Trump pledged that he would cease these disastrous policies. However, his recent policies with regard to Syria and Qatar call that pledge into question. Are Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth channeling the Cheney/Vulcan spirit? It seems so.

The recent White House reception for Syrian “President” Ahmed al-Sharaa was odd, to say the least. Our government had previously designated him as a terrorist, with a $10 million bounty on his head.

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Texas governor declares Muslim civil rights group a terrorist organization

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared one of the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy groups in the U.S. a “foreign terrorist organization” under a proclamation that he said allows the state to try shutting them down.

He also designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations “a transnational criminal organization” and said it would not be allowed to buy land in the state. The proclamation also included the Muslim Brotherhood.

Neither the CAIR nor the Muslim Brotherhood are designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.

CAIR told Abbott in a letter that his announcement had no basis “in law or fact.” The group accused his office of stoking “anti-Muslim hysteria.”

“You do not have the authority to unilaterally declare any Americans or American institutions terrorist groups, nor is there any basis to level this smear against our organization,” wrote Robert S. McCaw, CAIR’s government affairs director.

Months ago, Texas Republicans moved aggressively to try to stop a Muslim-centered planned community around one of the state’s largest mosques near Dallas. Abbott and other GOP state officials launched investigations into the development tied to the East Plano Islamic Center, saying the group is trying to create a Muslim-exclusive community that would impose Islamic law.

EPIC City representatives called the attacks about Islamic law and other assertions misleading, dangerous and without merit. Earlier this year, the Justice Department closed a federal civil rights investigation into the planned community without filing any charges or lawsuits.

In his proclamation, Abbott cited a law he signed this year that he said prohibits “foreign adversaries” from purchasing or acquiring land. The Republican author of that bill praised the governor’s declaration.

“Today proves exactly why that law was needed,” Republican state Rep. Cole Hefner posted on X.

The Muslim Brotherhood was established in Egypt nearly a century ago and has branches across the world. Its leaders say it renounced violence decades ago and seeks to set up Islamic rule through elections and other peaceful means. Critics, including autocratic governments across the Mideast region, view it as a threat.

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State Dept Labels Four Antifa-Linked Cells As Foreign Terrorist Organizations As Fight Against Radical Left Goes Global

The Trump administration expanded its crackdown on far-left violent extremist networks Thursday, as the State Department designated four far-left militant groups as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) and announced plans to formally add them to the Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list next Thursday.

The four radical left groups include:

Antifa Ost

  • Antifa Ost (also known as Antifa East and Hammerbande) is a Germany-based militant group. Antifa Ost conducted numerous attacks against individuals it perceives as “fascists” or part of the “right-wing scene” in Germany between 2018 and 2023 and is accused of having conducted a series of attacks in Budapest in mid-February 2023.
  • On September 26, 2025, Hungary declared Antifa Ost to be a terrorist organization and added the group to its national anti-terrorism list.

Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/FRI)

  • FAI/FRI is a militant anarchist group that primarily operates in Italy with historical self-proclaimed affiliates across Europe, South America, and Asia. FAI/FRI declares the necessity of the revolutionary armed struggle against nation states and “The Fortress Europe.”
  • Since 2003, FAI/FRI has claimed responsibility for threats of violence, bombs, and letter bombs against political and economic institutions, including a courthouse and other “capitalist institutions.”

Armed Proletarian Justice

  • Armed Proletarian Justice is a Greek anarchist and “anti-capitalist” group that has attempted and conducted improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against Greek government targets.
  • Armed Proletarian Justice claimed responsibility for planting a bomb near the Greek riot police headquarters in Goudi, Greece on December 18, 2023.

Revolutionary Class Self-Defense

  • Revolutionary Class Self-Defense is a Greek anarchist and “anti-capitalist” group. The group links its actions to broader political and social issues and cites opposition to “capitalist structures,” “state repression,” and solidarity with Palestine.
  • Revolutionary Class Self-Defense claimed responsibility for two IED attacks targeting the Greece Ministry of Labor (February 3, 2024) and the Hellenic Train offices (April 11, 2025).

The designations remove these radical leftists from the U.S. financial system, block their assets under U.S. jurisdiction, bar U.S. persons from doing business with them, and criminalize providing material support.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) commented on the State Department’s news release, indicating, “It’s a major step in our fight against Antifa’s terror network.”

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US Bombs Somalia for the 90th Time This Year

US Africa Command said in a press release on Monday that its forces launched an airstrike in Somalia on November 8, marking at least the 90th time that the US has bombed the country this year.

AFRICOM said the strike targeted the ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region and that it was launched about 40 miles southeast of the Gulf of Aden port city of Bosaso, a remote area of the Cal Miskaad mountains. The command offered no other details about the strike, as it had stopped sharing casualty estimates and assessments on civilian harm earlier this year.

“Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” the command said.

The US backs local security forces in Puntland, as the US-backed Federal Government, which is based in Mogadishu, doesn’t control the territory. In 2024, the Puntland government withdrew from the federal system in response to President Hassan Sheikh’s move to amend the constitution.

The Puntland government has come under criticism recently over reports that the UAE has been shipping weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan through an air base in Bosaso. The RSF has been accused of committing genocide in Sudan, and its fighters committed atrocities against civilians after it took the city of El Fasher in Sudan’s western Darfur region in October.

The US has been providing Puntland with significant air support in its war against Somalia’s ISIS affiliate. At the end of October, AFRICOM conducted airstrikes in Puntland’s Caal-Miskaad mountains for three consecutive days.

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Dick Cheney’s Legacy Is One of Brutal Carnage

On March 15, 2006, the United States was nearly three years into its second Iraq war. After over a decade of brutal sanctions and continuous bombing, in spring 2003, the US had launched a full-scale invasion of the oil-rich Middle Eastern nation. The invasion was a flagrant violation of international law. After toppling Iraq’s Ba’athist government, a former on-again, off-again ally of Washington, the United States and its allies began a protracted military occupation of Iraq. The neocolonial affair was particularly brutal. Such is the nature of seeking to impose your presence by military force on a people who do not wish it and are willing to use force to oppose it.

That day, March 15, soldiers approached the home of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma’ee, an Iraqi farmer . Allegedly they were looking for an individual believed to be responsible for the deaths of two US soldiers and a facilitator for al-Qaeda recruitment in Iraq. In the version told by US troops, someone from the house fired on the approaching soldiers, prompting a twenty-five-minute confrontation. Eventually the soldiers entered the house, killing all of the residents.

This included not just Al-Majma’ee, but his wife; his three children, Hawra’a, Aisha, and Husam, who were between the ages of five months and five years old; his seventy-four-year-old mother, Turkiya Majeed Ali; and two nieces, Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf, who were five and three years old. An autopsy performed on the deceased “revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.” After slaughtering the family execution style, US soldiers called in an air strike, destroying the house. The presumed reason for the bombardment was to cover up evidence of the extrajudicial killings.

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Syria’s ISIS-Aligned Government May Join the U.S.-Led Coalition Against ISIS – Kurds Skeptical

Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani), is scheduled to visit Washington on November 10, 2025, where he is expected to formally sign an agreement for Syria to join the U.S.-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. The visit will mark the first time a Syrian head of state has ever been received at the White House, a move that many observers find deeply counterintuitive given that al-Sharaa’s regime is composed of extremist factions linked to both al-Qaeda and ISIS.

“The U.S. had a five-million-dollar bounty on al-Julani’s head,” said Charbel, a Syrian Christian who fought ISIS for four years alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). “And now he is invited to the White House?” he asked, visibly shaken. “How can this be?”

Al-Sharaa, who led a coalition of Islamist groups that overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s government in late 2024, has been designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist since 2013, and his organization, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), remained on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list until July 2025.

For the Kurds and Christians of the semi-autonomous region of Rojava, northern Syria, Washington’s outreach to al-Julani feels like another betrayal. “Yes, he wants to join the coalition because of pressure from the Americans,” remarked one Kurdish woman in Qamishli, “but how will he fight ISIS, his own people?” A man who fought ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, and watched several of his close friends die on the battlefield, laughed bitterly. “That would be strange,” he said. “Julani’s group joining the coalition to fight ISIS—oh my goodness. I have no idea how that would work.”

Another Kurdish veteran put it even more succinctly: “Al-Julani is ISIS. How can he join the coalition?”

Charbel expressed what many Kurds, Christians, and other minorities feel about the al-Julani government: “This government is not good. It’s not safe for anyone. No one can live there.” By “there,” he meant areas now controlled by the Damascus regime, a government that has integrated former al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates into its ranks. For many observers, it represents jihadists rebranded as statesmen.

In March 2025, more than 800 civilians, mostly from the Alawite minority, were massacred across Latakia, Tartus, and Hama by militias aligned with the new government, including factions of the Syrian National Army. Weeks later, hundreds of Druze civilians were killed in similar sectarian attacks. In both cases, it was difficult to distinguish whether the perpetrators were government troops, ISIS cells, or extremist militias, the lines between them have all but disappeared.

Rojava, the Kurdish-led autonomous zone, remains relatively safe under the protection of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and U.S. troops, but ISIS-linked attacks are rising, especially in Deir ez-Zor and the Raqqa countryside, where sleeper cells are increasingly active. Though ISIS no longer controls territory, an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria continue operating as a highly adaptable insurgency targeting soldiers, civilians, and infrastructure.

Their tactics include assassinations, ambushes, and improvised explosive devices aimed at destabilizing both SDF- and government-held areas. The threat is compounded by more than 8,000 ISIS detainees and 38,000 relatives held in overcrowded camps like al-Hol and Roj, where radicalization runs rampant.

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