The lost girls of Nigeria

After two years of fruitless search for over 200 girls [most of them must be women now] abducted from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria, there is little hope they would be united with their loved ones ever again. May their parents be comforted – I don’t expect them to read this anyway. But I know they, too, must have given up hope. At least a dozen of them have died of heartbreak.

The failure of the #BringBackOurGirls crusade is Nigeria’s failure and the Nigerian government’s failure. The Nigerian people have failed. Mankind has failed. It’s a big shame. Shame on all of us! Nobody should ever claim victory over Boko Haram – the terrorists have won the war they waged on Nigeria. How can anyone claim victory when over 22, 000 people are dead, almost 3million homeless and 100 million others traumatised? What happened to all the technologies ever invented? Where have the “advanced” nations that promised to help us locate and rescue the Chibok girls gone? What has Nigeria’s security votes achieved?

Before Chibok, there was Buni-Yadi where almost 60 students were slaughtered in their hostels like chickens at night. Hours before the Chibok abductions on April 14, 2014, Boko Haram bombs had killed over 150 innocent people at Nyanya, 8km from Aso Villa. After Chibok, there was Agatu – over 400 people were killed. Nowhere else in the world is life cheaper than in Nigeria. In fact, a campaign for population control is not necessary here; evil people are doing the job nicely. In Nigeria, it seems, government exists for the few rich and powerful and cares little about the poor. There is no law or order. It’s everyone for himself.

Whenever I remember the Chibok girls/women, my heart skips several beats. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been a victim of violence too. I lost one of my parents to thugs in military uniform. The following year, dozens of healthy-looking young men from my community were rounded up like the Chibok girls and taken away; they never returned. On the night of April 22, 1991, I narrowly escaped death (but some relations and friends did not or lost their property) in Bauchi during the Tafawa Balewa crisis. When I noticed the presence of armed bandits in my residence, three years ago, I called the police but nobody showed up; the robbers shot us and escaped with our belongings; nobody is looking for them. In each of those cases, the government of my country simply failed me – it acted as if it didn’t exist or I didn’t matter.

When people like Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State say the Chibok kidnap never happened and that it was arranged to achieve a political objective, they provide a soothing balm to souls living outside Chibok. Indeed, I get some relief on hearing such, for it’s better to believe it never happened. Perhaps, the girls and the school authorities were briefed in advance. The girls were then moved in the dead of night to a nearby airfield where a large plane was waiting. Then, they were taken to a comfortable guest house in Mali or Libya or Chad. When all the noise had subsided, they were quietly returned to their parents and warned to not divulge what happened. After all, in war times, the first casualty is the truth.

How I wish that’s what happened! For anyone who has not met a Chibok parent (like me), such fiction could serve as a tonic. Yes, many had some doubts at the beginning: How could several buses or trucks have entered the school and taken 276 girls undetected even by soldiers of the JTF? Which houses did the terrorists build inside Sambisa Forest to accommodate so many girls? A woman who wasn’t a parent of any of the girls was the first to present herself at Aso Villa. Even President Jonathan and his wife were said to have disbelieved the story until three weeks later.

But what is the reality? Whatever doubts I had were cleared when I learned that the area known as Sambisa Forest is the size of Benue, Enugu and Ebonyi states put together! This is a very vast country, and that partly explains why many places are neglected. And those neglected areas are often the breeding grounds for all manner of criminals. Shouldn’t Sambisa Forest now be leased to serious farmers from Israel, India or Singapore so they could transform it to a huge agric site?

The “Bring Back Our Girls” (BBOG) campaign group really worked to bring the Chibok abductions to the world’s attention. It’s a pity the organisers have not, and may never, succeed in their crusade. However, we cannot disregard the patriotism shown by Mrs Maryam Uwais, the originator of BBOG. She brought in Hadiza Bala Usman and Laila Jean St. Matthew Daniel, who coined the hash-tag #BringBackOurGirls. Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, the presumed leader of the campaign, was later contacted in order to make BBOG look national. Then followed Rabi Musa Abdullahi, Fatima Wail-Abdurrahman, Ejike Oji, Nene Lanval, Nguyan Feese, Rabi Isma, Aisha Kabir Mukhtar, Chidi Odinkalu, Auwalu Anwar, Aisha Oyebode, Yusufu Pam, Mata Abdurrahman, Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, Saida Sa’ad, Toberu [Lanval] Dada, Mairo Mandara, Rabia Shak, Dianne Marcus, Yemisi Ransome-Kuti, Hadiza Aminu, Hannatu Musawa, Khadija M. Asuquo, Ndidi Nwuneli, Muftah Baba Ahmed, Josephine Anenih, Yaiya Talib-Sani, Ireti Kingibe, Asmau A-Alhaji, Halima Khabeeb, and Mairamu Isma. Those who helped them with finance deserve kudos also.

Will the BBOG mark the second anniversary this Thursday? What is left is for the crusaders to persuade government to build a monument in honour of the lost or missing girls somewhere in Chibok. Mock coffins, each bearing the name and picture of a stolen Chibok girl, scattered in a well-maintained park would provide one more tourist site in the country. For years to come, visitors to the site would be told the heart-rending story of 219 innocent girls that Boko Haram snatched from their school while they were taking their final exams on April 14, 2014.

That the tragedy happened at all and that the girls were not rescued convicts all of Nigeria’s security and intelligence agencies. I have said it before: any kobo spent as security or defence vote here is wasted. Just as policemen don’t respond to distress calls, our SSS men hardly leave their air-conditioned offices to gather useful intelligence. Yet, if we accept that Sambisa Forest and hundreds of other neglected places are within Nigerian territory, they should be protected and catered for. There is need to take government to the grass roots. We can’t concentrate all amenities in a few cities – no city is well-served anyway – and then claim that all is well with Nigeria.

One woman helped the mastermind of the Paris attacks. The other turned him in.

All of Europe was looking for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the planner of the Paris attacks, when two women approached his roadside hiding place, guided by the voice of someone secretly watching from a distance and giving directions by phone.
“Go forward. Walk. Stop,” the voice said. “He can see you. He’s coming.”
It was 9:30 p.m., two days after the bombings and shootings in November that left 130 people dead. France had closed its borders and launched a massive manhunt. But Abaaoud emerged from behind a bush and strolled toward the women as if there were nothing unusual about this rendezvous.
One of the women, Abaaoud’s cousin, jumped into his arms, saying, “Hamid, you’re alive!”
But her companion, who had come without knowing who they were to meet, felt a shudder of recognition. “I’d seen him on TV,” she later told police, referring to videos from Syria that showed Abaaoud dragging dead bodies behind a truck.
The meeting, which is described in French investigative files obtained by The Washington Post, set in motion a three-day sequence that culminated in a raid on an apartment in Saint-Denis, north of Paris. Abaaoud, 28, was killed in that operation by authorities who subsequently learned that he was plotting additional attacks.
His plans were derailed largely because of his decision to involve two women whose impulses when faced with the choice of trying to help him or stop him were immediately at odds.
His cousin, a troubled, 26-year-old woman named Hasna Ait Boulahcen, helped Abaaoud elude authorities for days and died with him in the Saint-Denis apartment, where one of the cornered militants detonated a suicide bomb.
The other woman, who had served as a surrogate mother to Ait Boulahcen for several years, secretly called and met with police, providing information that probably helped authorities stave off another wave of attacks.
The relationship between the two women in many ways reflects broader tensions in Muslim communities across Europe over interpretations of their religion, degrees of loyalty to their countries and the insidious appeal of the Islamic State.
In a Nov. 18 news conference, François Molins, the Paris prosecutor, said that a key witness helped identify Abaaoud on French territory and that investigators “were led to this apartment” by that crucial source. French police declined to elaborate or comment further on the case.
But until now, the public has been unaware that the critical tip in the hunt for Abaaoud came from a Muslim — one of millions who now face a backlash in Europe fueled by anger over the attacks in Paris and Brussels, as well as fear and resentment of a rising tide of refugees.
“It’s important the world knows that I am Muslim myself,” the woman said, citing that as a reason for being willing to speak to The Post. “It’s important to me that people know what Abaaoud and the others did is not what Islam is teaching.”
The case also provides insights into the Islamic State’s haphazard approach to exporting terror. Abaaoud taunted Western security agencies about his ability to move between Syria and Europe for two years without getting caught. He led the planning of a multistage attack, using cellphones to coordinate the strikes and to make sure that his subordinates followed through. He is believed to have fired his own weapon into packed Paris restaurants before taking the subway to witness the carnage at the Bataclan theater.
But for all of his preparations, he appears to have had no plan for the aftermath and no misgivings about pulling family members into his violent wake. After hiding among roadside shrubs, he enlisted Ait Boulahcen, long enamored of him, to help procure food, clothes and a better place to plot his next move.
This account is drawn from dozens of French investigative documents obtained by The Post. The surviving woman, in her 40s, discussed her involvement in the case but asked not to be identified, citing concern for her safety as security officials across Europe continue searching for Islamic State operatives.
Abaaoud told the women that dozens of Islamic State militants had accompanied him into Europe by hiding among streams of refugees. Another of his accomplices in the Paris attacks, Abrini, was arrested by authorities in Belgium on Friday.
The attacks in Brussels last month were carried out by remnants of a network assembled by Abaaoud. A Belgium native, he is believed to have been a key figure in the Islamic State’s external operations branch, recruiting and grooming new arrivals in Syria for attacks against the West.
From cocaine to the niqab
Abaaoud and Ait Boulahcen came from similarly checkered backgrounds. By his late teens, Abaaoud had been expelled from a prestigious school, become involved in neighborhood gangs and convicted of a series of small-time crimes.
Ait Boulahcen spent much of her childhood in a foster home that provided an escape from an abusive mother and absent father, according to the French files. Her brief adulthood was marked by binges on drugs and alcohol, offset by halting attempts to adhere to strict interpretations of her Muslim faith.
“She lived with me from 2011 to 2014, on and off,” the woman who sheltered Ait Boulahcen said in an interview. “She would run away for two weeks, come back a month, over and over again. She took a lot of drugs, mostly cocaine, and drank too much.”
But Ait Boulahcen could also be endearing. She helped with chores, expressed heartfelt gratitude to her adopted family and entertained them with stories about her Paris night life. “She would always make us laugh,” the friend said.
In 2014, Ait Boulahcen’s turbulent life appeared to take a new turn. She began expressing more strident views about religion and took to wearing a niqab — a garment worn by Muslim women to cover all but their eyes.
She also began “chatting with someone in Syria” using the smartphone application WhatsApp, according to transcripts of the friend’s interview with French counterterrorism investigators. Ait Boulahcen didn’t reveal the identity of her correspondent to her friend, but her affection for her cousin and the timing of his trips to Syria make it likely that the messaging exchanges were with Abaaoud.
The two — whose mothers are sisters — grew up in separate cities but appear to have shared a romantic attachment. Ait Boulahcen told friends at times that she expected one day to marry Abaaoud, who was two years older, although it’s not clear that the prospect of such a marriage ever moved beyond daydream status.
Abaaoud made his first trip to Syria in 2013 along with six other militants from Belgium, part of a wave of thousands of foreign fighters who left Europe to fight alongside al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.
Abaaoud had no special military skill but was propelled up the Islamic State’s ranks by a brash personality and sadistic streak that seemed perfectly suited to the ultra-violent and image-obsessed militant group.
In March 2014, Abaaoud posted a video on Facebook that showed him on the front lines of a battle in Syria, saying, “It gives me pleasure from time to time to see blood of the disbelievers run.”
Weeks later, a more disturbing video surfaced that caught the attention of French authorities. It showed him driving a truck and dragging mutilated corpses across a dusty field.
“Before, we towed jet skis, motorcycles and trailers filled with gifts,” he said from the truck’s cabin, looking into the camera. “Now, thank God, we are following his path while towing disbelievers who are fighting us.”
Ait Boulahcen reacted with apparent pride when the footage aired on French news, and she searched for the full video online to show it to her surrogate family, telling her older friend that her Belgian cousin was in Syria “waging war.”
“I’m meant to marry him,” she said, according to the files.
Although Ait Boulahcen often talked of planning a trip to Syria, she never went. Instead, she spent four months last year in Morocco, where she said she met another marriage prospect, before returning to France in October and abandoning those wedding plans.
By then, Abaaoud was back into Europe and in the final stages of plotting the Nov. 13 attacks on a Paris stadium, concert hall and crowded restaurants. There is no indication in the documents that he had any contact with his cousin.
After Paris
Ait Boulahcen seemed unfazed by the bloodshed that Friday evening in the fall. Amid mass public mourning, as medical teams were still treating victims and collecting bodies, Ait Boulahcen asked her friend to help straighten her hair so that she could go out.
“They’re all unbelievers,” she said of the victims, her friend recalled. “Nothing can happen to me.”
Her detached manner remained intact until Sunday evening, when Ait Boulahcen and members of her surrogate family returned home after a walk through Saint-Denis. About 8:30 p.m., Ait Boulahcen’s cellphone lit up with an unfamiliar number prefaced by the country code 32, which corresponds to Belgium.
She asked who had given the caller her number. When the caller replied that he was calling on behalf of her cousin, Ait Boulahcen at first scoffed and hung up, only to watch the phone light up again.
“I’m not going to explain everything: You saw what happened on TV,” the caller said, telling her that her cousin needed help finding a place to hide “for no more than a day or two.”
Suddenly, Ait Boulahcen seemed elated. “Tell me what I have to do,” she said, according to the account her friend gave to authorities. “She was happy. She was saying, ‘I hope it’s not a joke!’ ”
Although the importance of that call seems obvious in hindsight, the friend told police that in that moment she and Ait Boulahcen were not sure which relative was reaching out for help. In early 2014, Abaaoud abducted his 13-year-old brother and took him to Syria. Given how much attention Abaaoud attracted among European security services, both women thought it unlikely that he could have entered France and that perhaps it was the younger cousin who needed to be rescued.
That scenario unraveled when Abaaoud stepped out of the bushes and into the dim streetlight. He told Ait Boulahcen that he would give her 5,000 euros to help him find a place to hide and to pay for new suits and shoes for himself and an accomplice who remained hidden and was probably the voice on the phone.
As initial fear gave way to anger, the friend said she began pressing Abaaoud to admit his involvement in the attacks and to explain why he had harmed so many innocent people. Abaaoud seemed not to mind the questions, saying that his religion compelled him to tell the truth.
“He said we were lost sheep and that he wanted to blow us all up,” the friend said in the interview with The Post, which took place last week in France. He said dozens of others from the Islamic State had returned to Europe with him and that the violence Paris had just witnessed “was nothing” compared with what would come next.
The three walked toward the car, where Abaaoud appeared to reach for a weapon when he saw a male figure — the friend’s husband — behind the wheel. After being reassured, Abaaoud then climbed into the rear seat and rode with the group for about 150 yards. Then, abruptly, he changed his mind and asked to be let out.
As the others drove off, Ait Boulahcen’s phone rang again. “You can tell the little couple that if they talk, my brothers will take care of them,” the voice said. When Ait Boulahcen laughed while relaying the threat, the friend’s husband slapped her across the face.
One of Abaaoud’s suspected conspirators in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, also seems to have had no escape plan on the night of the attacks and sought help from relatives. A cousin he called refused and asked whether he had heard about the attacks and citywide lockdown.
Abdeslam answered, “Oh yeah, attacks, huh?” The cousin then turned her phone off.
When they returned from the roadside meeting, the friend poured glasses of wine for Ait Boulahcen in an attempt “to get her drunk so that she would call the police,” the friend said. But the plan didn’t work, and the others in the house were too frightened to act on their own.
“I was scared because I thought if the terrorist knew I’d come forward, they’d kill me,” she said.
But the next day, when Ait Boulahcen briefly left the house, the friend called an emergency number posted by the French authorities. Although she made the call about 2 p.m., it took more than three hours for her to hear back from France’s counterterrorism squad, the SDAT.
The friend spent much of that Monday evening at the unit’s headquarters providing a detailed account of the encounter with Abaaoud, a conversation detailed in a transcript obtained by The Post. When she returned home, she told Ait Boulahcen that she had been out to dinner and a movie.
For the next 24 hours, the pursuit of Europe’s most wanted terrorism suspect seemed to enter an eerily suspended state. No arrest or high-profile raid followed the friend’s visit to police.
But French security services were quietly mobilizing. The documents indicate that they were already monitoring Ait Boulahcen’s phone and caught her “actively seeking accommodation” for Abaaoud and his accomplice. Vehicles with eavesdropping equipment passed through Saint-Denis, where Ait Boulahcen found a landlord willing to rent an apartment on short notice for 150 euros.
Abaaoud was still at large Tuesday night as Ait Boulahcen left her surrogate family for the final time. She bought the shoes and suits her cousin wanted and indicated that she also needed to deliver 750 euros in cash.
As she departed, “it seemed like she was saying goodbye,” the friend said in the interview. “She told me that she loved me, that I’d been a great mother to her, that I would go to heaven.”
But the friend asked whether she could retrieve Ait Boulahcen later that night, and in a measure of the trust that remained between them, Ait Boulahcen gave an address in Saint-Denis — coordinates the friend then relayed to the police.
As Ait Boulahcen and the two fugitives arrived at the apartment about 10 p.m., they told the landlord they had been tossed out of their home by their mother, asked for water and the direction of Mecca, and said they just wanted “to sleep two or three days.”
Video of the Tuesday raid captured a female voice pleading, “I want to leave” and “Can I come out? Let me out!” before an explosion ripped through the apartment. French authorities initially said that Ait Boulahcen detonated a suicide bomb, but they later abandoned that claim.
Her body had been pierced by a bolt, according to a detailed description of the scene in the French files. But “that does not explain the death,” investigators wrote. Instead, authorities concluded that Ait Boulahcen’s death was “due to mechanical asphyxia chest compression,” meaning she was crushed after the explosion inside the collapsed apartment.
She left a small collection of belongings at her friend’s house, including clothes, handbags and photos. The friend said she and her husband have struggled with guilt and feel responsible for Ait Boulahcen’s death.
The woman was placed in protective custody after the Saint-Denis raid, but she said she worries about her safety. “I no longer feel safe when I walk around,” she said as she made her way toward her car after the interview. Abaaoud “said they had many operatives. . . . It could be anybody around here.”
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Paris attacks suspect Abrini arrested -Belgian media

BRUSSELS, April 8 (Reuters) - Mohamed Abrini, wanted over November's Islamic State attacks in Paris, has been arrested in Brussels, Belgium's public broadcasters said on Friday, adding that he was probably involved in last month's Brussels bombings.
Public prosecutors confirmed in a brief statement only that police had made several arrests related to the Brussels attacks.
Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian, was "more than likely" the "man in the hat" seen on security camera footage at Brussels airport on March 22 with two suicide bombers, VRT and RTBF said on their websites, citing unidentified sources.
If confirmed, the arrests could mark a success for Belgian security services which have faced fierce criticism at home and abroad since Brussels-based militants organised the attacks that killed 130 in Paris on Nov. 13.
They took place a day after police issued new images and detail on the "man in the hat" and follow the arrest in Brussels three weeks ago of the prime surviving suspect in those attacks.
Four days after the March 18 arrest of Salah Abdeslam, with whom Abrini was seen driving towards Paris two days before the Paris attacks, brothers Brahim and Khalid El Bakraoui and a third local man Najim Laachraoui killed 32 people at Brussels airport and on a metro line running under EU institutions.
VRT and RTBF said Abrini was probably the man disguised in heavy glasses and a floppy hat who was pictured with Brahim Bakraoui and Laachraoui moments before the other two blew themselves up at the airport.
A second suspect held on Friday was believed to be a man seen with Khalid Bakraoui at a metro station shortly before the latter blew himself up on a train on the same line downtown.
VRT named the second man as Osama Kraiem. Broadcasters said he had also been caught on CCTV buying holdalls at a downtown mall which were later used in the Brussels bombings.
Abrini was arrested in the borough of Anderlecht, VRT said, next to the western district of Molenbeek which has been at the heart of Belgium's troubles with Islamist militants.
He had been on Europe's most wanted list since being seen on a motorway service station CCTV video driving with Abdeslam towards Paris from Belgium in a car used two days later in the attacks in which Abdeslam's elder brother was a suicide bomber.
The "man in the hat" left the airport shortly after the twin suicide bombings and was tracked on CCTV for several miles into the city centre. On Thursday, investigators released new video footage of him and urged people to look for his discarded coat.
Wearing glasses and a hat, he had been very difficult to identify from the footage showing him pushing a laden luggage trolley alongside the two who blew themselves up with similar bags. A third bomb was later found abandoned at the airport. 

Boko Haram:Military Arrests Shekau's Deputy In Kogi

 Military sources on Saturday confirmed the arrest of the leader of the Ansaru Islamic Sect, Khalid Albarnawi, who was described as the second in command to Abubakar Shekau in the hierarchy of the Boko Haram terrorists group.

A report by an online portal, The Cable, had quoted Ahmad Salkida, a journalist, known for his access to some of the leaders of the Boko Haram as having said that Albarnawi was arrested by operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) in Lokoja, Kogi State and moved to Abuja on Friday.

He is regarded as the most influential member of Nigeria’s terror network with contacts to other Jihadi groups in North Africa and the Middle East. Salkida said Albarnawi is believed to have reconciled with the leader of Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), also known as Boko Haram.The Ansaru leader, Albarnawi, who reportedly trained in the North African country of Algeria, is believed to highly be influential in the nation’s terror network.

Ansaru was formed as a splinter group of the Boko Haram in January 26, 2012 and it claimed responsibility for the November 2012 attack on the Special Anti Robbery Squad Headquarters, Abuja.

Boko Haram says ‘No negotiations, No surrender’ in New Video

Boko Haram released a new video Friday denying any suggestions it would surrender, just over a week after their shadowy leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a rare message looking dejected and frail.

Shekau, who was not seen on camera for more than a year, released an unverified video late last month and said his time in charge of the Nigerian jihadist group may be coming to an end.

If the video indeed depicts Shekau, he appears thin and listless, delivering his message without his trademark fiery rhetoric.

It prompted speculation from the army that the Islamist group was on the verge of collapse in the face of a sustained military counter-insurgency.

However, in Friday’s message, Boko Haram maintained it was a potent fighting force, with fighters posing with AK-47s in front of Toyota Hilux pick-up trucks and a lorry mounted with a military cannon.

“You should know that there is no truce, there is no negotiations, there is no surrender,” an unidentified masked man wearing camouflage said in a prepared script in Hausa, in the video posted on YouTube.

“This war between us will not stop.”

The video, which was of markedly better quality than Shekau’s and included Arabic subtitles, featured nine masked Boko Haram fighters standing on sandy ground in an undisclosed desert location.

It is unclear if the masked people in the video include the Boko Haram leader.

Shekau was still the head of the “West African wing”, said the masked man in the video, likening Boko Haram to the Islamist insurgencies in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

In March 2015, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, another of the world’s most deadly terror organisations.

But there were few signs Boko Haram — now styled as Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) — has so far benefited from the partnership.

Nigeria’s army has since then won back swathes of territory from the militants, liberating thousands living under Boko Haram control.

An estimated 20,000 people have been killed since Boko Haram began its campaign of violence in 2009 to carve out a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.

More than 2.6 million people have fled their homes since then but some of the internally displaced have begun returning.

Europe Prepares to Deport Refugees

On Monday, the European Union and Greece are scheduled to begin sending migrants, including Syrians, from the Greek Isles to Turkey under a deal reached two weeks ago between the Turkish government and the EU. 

The agreement aims to ease Europe's migrant crisis, but human rights advocates and leftists in Europe have protested the deal, saying it arises from xenophobia. Nationalists and others on the continent are also condemning it, saying it does little to stop the arrival of migrants and will, in effect, open up new channels for them to enter. 

European Council officials say authorities will begin putting those deemed to be new, irregular migrants on ferries to Turkey as scheduled Monday as part of a deal that grants Turkey more than $3 billion in aid, eases visa restrictions for Turkish nationals, and opens new possibilities for Turkey to join the European Union.

For every Syrian refugee returned to Turkish territory, Turkey will send one Syrian refugee to the European Union for resettlement.

But the reality for thousands of migrants now living in camps on the islands of Lesbos and Chios is the prospect of never reaching Western Europe, where many hoped to build new lives far from the war and poverty they intended to escape.

'Trading human beings'

The deal has drawn strong criticism from human rights groups. Oxfam's migration policy head Sara Tesorieri said the agreement not only "fails to respect the spirit of international and EU laws, but may amount to trading human beings for political concessions."

Amnesty International and other groups say the migrants will be put in danger by being sent to Turkey, a country with a poor human rights record.

“In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have willfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day,” John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s director for Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement released Friday.

Last September, when photos showed the body of 3-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach, Europeans rallied in support of helping the refugees. Seeing the slow responses of their governments, private citizens in Hungary, Austria and Germany showed up at camps and train stations with bags of donated clothes and food for the refugees.  

German Chancellor Angela Merkel led calls for Europe to help deal with the crisis, pressing EU nations to accept quotas and absorb 160,000 new arrivals.

But the welcome turned quickly into suspicion and anxiety when migrant arrivals swelled to 1 million in 2015 alone. Sweden, long known for its liberal immigration policy, was overwhelmed by the influx and closed its doors, saying it would accept only the minimum number of people set by EU mandates.

Then came the terrorist attacks in Paris in November, and scenes of a mob of men — including some migrants — sexually assaulting German women in Cologne on New Year's Eve, fueling further anxiety among Europeans. That anxiety has only grown since the attacks in Brussels, which happened four days after the EU-Turkey agreement was reached.

"The heightened security concerns surrounding the Paris and Brussels attacks has understandably led to Europeans feeling far more uneasy about the migrant issue," Tom Wilson, a Middle East analyst at the Henry Jackson Society research organization in London, told VOA.

Knowledge that some of those involved in the attacks were known terrorist fighters who had reached Europe among the migrants, he said, "raises a lot of concerns about how European authorities appear to have lost control of monitoring who is actually entering the continent right now."

Slow start to deportations

The deportations from Greece are off to a slow start. Officials on Thursday told VOA many of the 2,300 EU security and migration officials who are supposed to help carry out the operation had yet to arrive in Greece. Observers expect the first ferry departures Monday will be largely symbolic and the vessels will be carrying mostly Pakistani men who are classified as economic migrants ineligible for asylum.

With a number of nations rebuffing Merkel's proposals for resettlement and governments acting swiftly to enact border control, the message that Europe is no longer open has spread home. The number of refugees arriving in Greece has dropped considerably, and officials say fewer than 5,000 migrants remain in camps in Greece.

Despite a provision in the agreement that bars those arriving after March 20 from applying for asylum, some have continued to make the dangerous journey. Of the 143,000 arriving in Greece this year, the International Organization for Migration says 460 have been killed.

In early March, at least 25 migrants drowned trying to reach Greece from Turkey. Their deaths only briefly made the news in Europe.

Somalia: Death Toll From Suicide Attack in Galkayo Rose to 6

At least six people, including an accounting officer working for Puntland's finance ministry have been killed in a huge suicide explosion in northern Galkayo town on Thursday morning.

Reports from Galkayo suggest that man with a bomb strapped to his waist blew up himself near the car of the accountant Said Ali Yusuf (Gada-yare) and killed six, including security guards and pedestrians.

The attack occurred near a hotel in the city, with reports that senior other official was among the dead. Local forces cordoned off the scene and launching probe into the blast.

Al shabaab has claimed responsibility for the attack in the north-eastern semi-autonomous state of Puntland, saying its target was the accounting chief.

Puntland forces have battled Al shabaab militants at the coast last week, and claimed it killed more than 100 fighters and capturing scores of combatants as prisoners of war.

Explained: strategy behind the battle to rescue the ruins of Palmyra

Paul Rogers, University of Bradford
Syrian Army units have taken back the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State. The units are now also trying to extend their control to include al-Qaryatain, to the south west of Palmyra, and Sukhnah, to the north east.
There are indications that the damage done to the ancient world heritage site which lies just outside Palmyra has been much less than feared. It may even have been limited to the destruction of two or three individual ruins – certainly important in their own right but just a small part of a huge complex that stretches over scores of hectares.
It is already becoming clear that the entire operation would not have been possible without considerable air support from Russia. It also gives the lie to president Vladimir Putin’s claim that the Russian air force has largely completed its operations.
Despite very public proclamations that Russian pilots have been withdrawn from Syria, the reality is that operations continue. Only about a third of Russian front-line strike aircraft have been withdrawn so far – and the size of the Russian helicopter force has actually been increased.
There is clear evidence that Russia has been directing its most recent airstrikes at opponents of the Assad regime in north west Syria, rather than targeting IS. This is not surprising given that IS has scarcely been involved in the opposition to Assad. One major effect of the Russian campaign has been to strengthen the regime as a prelude to a negotiated settlement. This would have significant Russian involvement which, from Moscow’s standpoint, would ensure that post-war Syria would have considerable Russian influence.
Now that Putin has seen that policy reasonably on track, the Russian forces have had time to turn their attention to supporting Assad’s advance on Palmyra, an IS outpost since May 2015.
Its loss was a major symbolic blow. Within a short time, IS fighters made a great show of wantonly destroying ancient ruins in the town.
In taking the city back, Putin can now claim to be doing the west’s job for it. The Palmyra triumph is further proof of Russia’s power and influence – a message that will go down very well with domestic audiences. Russia Today is already reporting that experts from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg have offered their services in the restoration process.

The Syrian army approaches Palmyra. EPA

Assad, meanwhile, will now say that he has been right all along in his claim that he has been facing a terrorist threat for the past five years. He will remind the world that he has been fighting terrorists rather than genuine protesters and that he, and only he, can defeat IS in Syria. What makes it even sweeter for him is that western capitals, including Washington, have welcomed the retaking of Palmyra from IS.
This is an extraordinary change for the west to digest. Less than four years ago, Barack Obama was on the point of bombing the Assad regime, and now he is giving a guarded welcome to the Syrian advance.

Where next for IS?

The loss of Palmyra is a setback for IS – particularly since it also has had to cede control of the important city of Ramadi in Iraq. But we should be careful about saying that IS is beginning to face defeat.
For one thing, it took five months for Ramadi to fall, and there are reports that IS paramilitaries are still active in and around the city, harrying Iraq troops. The Iraqi government has done little to engage with the country’s Sunni minority, meaning there is still support for IS. The radical group appeals to people who fear the consequences as the largely Shi’a national army and its Iranian-backed militia associates take over large Sunni towns and cities.
IS now also has at least 5,000 paramilitaries in northern Libya, and is preparing to expand its war with western states with the influence gained there.
Meanwhile, the west mistakenly assumes that recent attacks in Europe are a sign that IS is facing defeat in the Middle East and suddenly feels the need to show force. But it is now becoming clear that these attacks had been planned for some time. They may even have been developed as a tactic as long as two years ago.
The idea that IS was fixated on controlling territory to establish a caliphate may have been a misreading of its strategy. A second element as important as territorial presence seems to be its determination to take the war to the “far element”, a determination reinforced by the 20-month coalition air war in Syria.
Brussels, Paris and probable future attacks – which will almost certainly include incidents in Russia – are aimed at exacerbating community tensions and heightening anti-Muslim bigotry to Islamic State’s advantage. As the group is restricted in Syria and Iraq, so it expands the war elsewhere, seeking to weaken its enemy from within.
With all this in mind, the retaking of Palmyra is still significant, but it is part of a much more complex process.

Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies, University of Bradford
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Mississippi woman who attempted to join ISIS pleads guilty to terror charge

She tried to trade in her pom-poms for suicide bombs.
Former Mississippi State chemistry major Jaelyn Young – who had been a high school cheerleader, honor student and homecoming maid – pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to one count of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS. She’ll be sentenced at a later date.
The Vicksburg beauty turned her back on her teenage pageantry after she converted to Islam in March 2015, when she began wearing a burqa and distancing herself from non-Muslim friends. Prosecutors said she “began to express hatred for the U.S. government” and expressed “support for the implementation of Shariah law in the United States.”
Young, whose father is a police officer and Navy veteran, sought to travel to Syria with her fiancé, Muhammad Dakhlalla, in order to become a medic for a terrorist group infamous for its cruel treatment of women and non-members. Dakhlalla pleaded guilty to a similar charge on March 11 and is also awaiting sentencing.
But far from a case of a love-stricken young girl following her beau to a Middle Eastern fantasy, Young agrees with prosecutors who say she was the primary driver of the intended move to Syria and continually prodded Dakhlalla to speed up their passport approval so they could leave.
“I found the contacts, made arrangements, planned the departure,” prosecutors said she wrote to her family in a “farewell letter” last August. “I am guilty of what you soon will find out.”
The couple was arrested Aug. 8 before boarding a flight from Columbus, Miss., with tickets for Istanbul that Young had purchased using her mom’s credit card without permission.
Authorities began tracking Young and Dakhlalla in May when the couple contacted undercover federal agents for help traveling to Syria.
Aside from her own admissions and actions, prosecutors cited prior online statements from Young expressing support for ISIS and ISIS-inspired terror attacks. Prosecutors said Young approvingly cited a video of a man accused of being gay being thrown off a roof to his death by militants. She also expressed joy at the shooting of five members of the military in Chattanooga, Tenn., by an Islamic militant in July.
“What makes me feel better after watching the news is that an akhi carried out an attack against US marines in TN! Alhamdulillah, the numbers of supports are growing…” she’s said to have written.
In her “goodbye” letter, she told her family not to look for her.
“Do not alert the authorities,” Young wrote. “I will contact you soon. I am safe. Don’t look for me because you won’t be able to retrieve me if you tried. I am leaving to become a medic.”

Khamenei says missiles, not just talks, key to Iran's future

Iran's top leader on Wednesday said missiles were key to the Islamic Republic's future, offering support to the hardline Revolutionary Guards that have drawn criticism from the West for testing ballistic missiles.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei supported last year's nuclear deal with world powers but has since called for Iran to avoid further rapprochement with the United States and its allies, and maintain its economic and military strength.
"Those who say the future is in negotiations, not in missiles, are either ignorant or traitors," Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state, was quoted as saying by his website.
"If the Islamic Republic seeks negotiations but has no defensive power, it would have to back down against threats from any weak country."
His comments may have been directed at former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the de facto leader of a more moderate political alliance, who last week tweeted "the future is in dialog, not missiles."
Iran's Revolutionary Guards conducted ballistic missile tests earlier this month, in what they said was a demonstration of Iran's non-nuclear deterrent power.
AMBIGUOUS RESOLUTION
The United States and several European powers said the tests defied a U.N. Security Council Resolution that calls on Iran not to test nuclear-capable missiles, in a joint letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday.
However, Washington has said that a fresh missile test would not violate a July 2015 accord under which Iran has restricted its disputed nuclear program and won relief from U.N. and Western financial sanctions in return. That agreement between Iran and six world powers was endorsed in Resolution 2231.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that Iran's ballistic missile had caused "alarm" and it would be up to the major powers in Security Council to decide whether fresh sanctions should be applied.
But Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, said the tests did not violate Resolution 2231.
"You may like it or not that Iran launches ballistic missiles - but that is a different story. The truth is that in the 2231 resolution there are no such bans," Interfax cited Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the ministry's department for non-proliferation and arms control, as saying.
Iran has consistently denied its missiles are designed to carry nuclear weapons.

When fear is a weapon: how terror attacks influence mental health

Daniel Antonius, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Editor’s note: This article was updated on March 23, 2016 with information from the terrorist attacks in Brussels.

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Only four months after a series of coordinated attacks in Paris left 130 people dead, Europe was once again the target of chilling acts of terrorism when yesterday, March 22, 2016, two explosions rocked the airport in Brussels and another ripped through a subway station in the Belgian capital. At least 30 people were killed and several hundred others were wounded in the attack.
The media is naturally reporting extensively on any news related to the terrorist attack, and one can easily spend several hours a day watching, reading and listening to these reports. This exposure can significantly influence your worldviews and how you live your life.
The aftermath of a terrorist attack can make people feel more vulnerable. And as cities go on alert because of the threat of future attacks, fear can color our daily routines and world views.
With my colleague S. Justin Sinclair at Harvard Medical School, I have been studying the complexity of terrorism fears, and how fear can affect and motivate people.
It is probably not a surprise that a terror attack can have a major impact on people’s mental health. But what sort of effects are common, and how long do they last?
To answer that question, we can turn to a growing body of research examining the psychological aftermath of terror attacks.

Increases in PTSD symptoms are often seen after terror attacks

In 1995 and 1996, France experienced a wave of bombings that killed 12 and injured more than 200. A 2004 retrospective study examined post-traumatic stress disorder rates in the victims and found that 31 percent experienced post-traumatic stress disorder.
Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (or PTSD) can include flashbacks, nightmares or intrusive thoughts about the event. People may also avoid situations that remind them of the trauma, or have intense feeling of anxiety they didn’t have before.
Research has also found an increase in psychiatric symptoms among people living in a city when it is attacked.
For instance, a survey of Madrid residents one to three months after the attacks on a commuter rail line in 2004 found an increase in post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
Further research suggests that this increase is temporary.

After the July 7, 2005 attacks in London, some city residents were wary of taking public transit. In this photo, the number 30 bus stops during the two-minute silence on the first anniversary of the bombings, on the Euston Road in central London, on July 7, 2006. Stephen Hird/Reuters

In a 2005 study of London residents conducted a few weeks after the July 7 attacks, 31 percent of respondents reported a significant elevation in stress levels and 32 percent reported an intention to travel less. A follow-up study conducted seven months later found that the elevated stress levels were significantly reduced. But, the study also noted that a residual level of worry remained. Many people reported relatively high levels of perceived threat to self and others, and a more negative world view.
We would expect to see an increase in psychiatric disorders among people who were directly affected, or who lived in the city at the time of the attack. But this can also happen in people who weren’t living in a city when it was attacked.
A survey conducted soon after the September 11 attacks found that 17 percent of the U.S. population living outside of New York City reported symptoms related to post-traumatic stress disorder. Six months later, that dropped to 5.6 percent.
A 2005 review of psychological research about the effect of September 11 highlighted the uptick in psychiatric symptoms and disorders immediately after the attacks and the relatively quick normalization in the following 6-12 months. However, people living closer to the area attacked, and thus more directly exposed, were more vulnerable to developing post-traumatic stress disorder than people living farther away.
Why do symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder increase in people who weren’t directly exposed? The explanation might be the intense media coverage of terror attacks.
In the aftermath of September 11, a U.S. study of more than 2,000 adults found that more time spent watching television coverage of the attacks was associated with elevated rates of post-traumatic stress disorder.
In essence, a media-related contagion effect is created where people live and relive the attacks when they watch or read stories about them. This overexposure may, as argued by some, produce a subjective response of fear and helplessness about the threat of future attacks in a minority of adults.

Fear changes behavior, at least for a little while

Fear is a natural response to events like the attacks in Paris or Brussels. While everyone feels and reacts to fear differently, it can push people to make different decisions about employment, whom to socialize with, using public transportation such as buses and trains, congregating in public and crowded places, and traveling on airplanes.
If you look at these changes across an entire population, you can see how fears of terrorism can have significant consequences on both the national and global economy. Tourism and shopping may be particularly vulnerable. For example, airlines suffered major economic losses after 9/11 and were forced to lay off large numbers of employees.
While stock markets in New York, Madrid and London dropped after the attacks, they rebounded relatively quickly.
Similarly, after the recent attack in Paris, there was reportedly a limited impact on the nation’s stock market.

A September 14, 2001 file photo shows President Bush with retired firefighters at the scene of the World Trade Center disaster. Win McNamee/Reuters

Attacks can change how people relate to government

Terrorists use fear as a psychological weapon, and it can have serious psychological implications for individuals and whole countries.
An underlying sense of fear can linger for years after an attack. In prolonged conflicts with multiple attacks, such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland or the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, chronic fear and anxiety have arguably resulted in a high levels of segregation and suspiciousness.
This underlying fear may also affect political engagement and trust in government policymaking.
People generally tend to place larger degrees of trust in their government’s ability to keep them safe from future violence following large-scale terrorist attacks. For example, prior to the September 11 attacks, the public’s trust in the US government was in decline, but the attacks primed people’s fears, and trust in the US government to protect and keep the public safe from future attacks rose to a level not seen in decades.
However, increased trust in the government may also come without fear. In countries where there already are high levels of trust in the government, fear has been found to play a less important role.
A study examining the association between fear and trust in Norway right before, right after and 10 months after the 2011 terror attack found that high levels of existing trust may actually buffer against the negative effects of terrorism fears, while still creating a rallying effect around governmental policies.
The threat of terrorism does not, of course, have the same effect on everyone. Most people arguably respond to threats of future terrorism in a rational and constructive manner. For instance, very compelling research suggests that anger may actually function as a protective factor. In the context of feeling angry, people tend to have a larger sense of being in control, a preference for confrontation and feeling optimistic; whereas with fear comes a greater sense of not feeling in control and pessimism.
The paradox of the fear that terrorism inspires is that while it can negatively affect people and societies, it can also serve to strengthen resilience.

Daniel Antonius, Director, Division of Forensic Psychiatry, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Brussels attacks: how radicalization happens and who is at risk

Frederic Lemieux, George Washington University

Two bombings in Brussels have killed dozens of people and injured over 100, only days after one of the Paris attackers was arrested in the city’s Molenbeek suburb. The Islamic State (ISIS) has reportedly claimed the attack.
As they recover from the shock of the attacks, people are asking why this happens, and who the people carrying out these suicide missions are.
That such attacks could be launched from inside a European country once again calls attention to a serious crisis: the radicalization of citizens outside the Middle East by extremist groups.

A willingness to embrace violence

The actions of the shooters like those in San Bernardino, Paris and very probably Brussels are difficult for most people to understand. But the work of scholars specializing in extremism can help us begin to unravel how people become radicalized to embrace political violence.
Security experts Alex Wilner and Claire-Jehanne Dubouloz define radicalization as a process during which an individual or group adopts increasingly extreme political, social or religious ideals and aspirations. The process involves rejecting or undermining the status quo or contemporary ideas and expressions of freedom of choice.
Newly radicalized people don’t just agree with the mission and the message of the group they are joining; they embrace the idea of using violence to induce change.
And some members of these groups become radical enough to actually get involved in violent operations personally.
So how often does this radicalization process happen in the U.S.?
A recent report published by the Program on Extremism at George Washington University provides troubling statistics on Islamic State (ISIS) support in America:

As of the fall of 2015, US authorities speak of some 250 Americans who have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria/Iraq to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The report goes on to say there are some 900 active investigations against ISIS sympathizers in all 50 states. As a result of these active investigations, 71 suspects have been charged for terrorism-related activities – and those charged share some interesting characteristics.
The average age of the suspects is 26 years, and the vast majority of them (86 percent) are male. About 27 percent were involved in a plot to carry out violence on U.S. territory. The suspects are diverse in terms of race, social class, education and family history. Forty percent of those arrested are converts to Islam. A large majority – 58 out of 71 – are American citizens.
Countries in the Arabic Peninsula have the highest rate of ISIS sympathizers, but the number on U.S. soil is higher than many would expect.

Twitter census

A group like ISIS attempts to grow its number of supporters from the mass population by using propaganda. Here social media plays a crucial role.
Take the example of the Australian physician who now serves in a hospital run by IS in Raqqa, and serves as a recruiter on YouTube.
Other facilitators like this doctor might provide different types of support – such as financial, logistical, technical or material.
A Brookings Institute report, The ISIS Twitter Census, uses social media metrics to map the geographical distribution of IS supporters. It also reveals tweeting patterns, follower ratio and the number of accounts followed.
The most interesting finding shows that the U.S. is fourth in the world and the U.K. 10th for IS-supporting Twitter users who can be located.
While these numbers are small set against the total number of Twitter accounts connected with ISIS (46,000), they still indicate a surprisingly strong online support base for ISIS in these two countries, which are clearly high up ISIS' target list.

The top locations claimed by IS-supporting Twitter users. Brookings Institute

The findings from these two reports also highlight some of the key recruitment and radicalization mechanisms use by ISIS.

Who is susceptible?

The work of psychologists Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko provides a good model for understanding the types of people who are most likely to be attracted to the message ISIS is selling.
Like Sunnis in Syria or Iraq who have been victimized by those countries' governments, among the key targets for radicalization are individuals whose political grievances can’t be channeled into an existing political system. One example is the Canadian citizen who left his country to be part of what he views as a utopia: the restoration of the Caliphate.
Once they’ve joined up, individuals may stay engaged in terrorism activities because of the power of love between individuals. The Paris attacks were undertaken by two brothers and two cousins. The attackers in San Bernardino were husband and wife. The Boston bombers were brothers.
The suffering of marginalized people under particular regimes is another key factor.
Between 2011 and 2013, Iraq saw a serious rupture between the Sunni and Shiite communities. The government of Nouri Al-Maliki, who is Shiite, had Sunni political leaders arrested and Sunni soldiers removed from the army. Excluded from the institutions of the Iraqi state, which did little to keep them safe, many Sunnis decided to join ISIS, which was filling a security vacuum.
Meanwhile, in Western countries like France and the U.S., the isolation of still-excluded Muslim communities makes disenfranchised youth ripe for radicalization.
Competition between terrorist groups can further increase radicalization inside violent groups, leading to more and deadlier attacks.
Over the past several years, for example, ISIS has stood up against al-Qaida, defying its leadership and competing for support from the same demographics.
Immediately after the Paris attacks, which were planned and perpetrated by ISIS, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for an attack on a hotel in Mali.
The direct competition between the states of Iraq and Syria and ISIS for the control of territory and oil resources leads only to more violent struggles and the need to attract more fighters from foreign countries.

At the mass level

Violent groups like ISIS use jujitsu-style strategies, exploiting the reaction of their adversaries to their advantage when they attack Western targets.
Governments in countries such as Belgium, France, the U.K., Russia and the U.S. play into their hands by ordering large-scale military retaliation and stirring hostile anti-Muslim political rhetoric. These reactions help extremist groups improve cohesion in their ranks and rouse support from their target audiences.

The Brussels suburb where some of the Paris attackers lived. EPA/Stephane Lecocq

Addressing the rank and file, ISIS uses hate discourse to dehumanize its opponents and devalue their lives. This perception of Westerners and nonbelievers justifies acts of extreme violence such as beheading foreign hostages such as Japan’s Kenji Goto, persecuting of Coptic Christians and burning alive prisoners such as Jordanian pilot Moath al-Kasasbeh.
When their own followers die, ISIS uses martyrdom as powerful tool to convince the target audience that the cause is worth suffering and dying for. Martyrs become heroes who are publicly celebrated and recognized on the Internet.

Overwhelmed

So, can we expect ever more people around the world to be radicalized to join ISIS? The outlook is mixed.
Despite the successes of its recruitment and radicalization campaign since 2011, recent media reports show that IS is struggling to integrate different groups of foreign fighters into its combat forces in the Middle East and North Africa, raising the prospect that competing loyalties could fracture the group and undermine its ability to project an appealing recruitment message.
As far as the fight against IS recruitment goes, this is a ray of hope. But there’s plenty of bad news too.
Counterpropaganda strategies deployed by the US on the Internet have been criticized as ineffectual. According to the Rand Corporation, deradicalization programs have had mixed results.
And as the recent attacks in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere sadly demonstrate, the resources to fight radicalization are often simply not there.
As a Belgian counterterrorism official confessed only a week before the March 22 attacks,

Frankly, we don’t have the infrastructure to properly investigate or monitor hundreds of individuals suspected of terror links, as well as pursue the hundreds of open files and investigations we have.

Frederic Lemieux, Professor and Program Director of Bachelor in Police and Security Studies; Master’s in Security and Safety Leadership; Master’s in Strategic Cyber Operations and Information Management, George Washington University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Syria forces retake Palmyra in major victory over IS

Syrian troops backed by Russian forces recaptured the famed ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State group on Sunday in a major victory over the jihadists.
Army sappers were defusing mines and bombs planted by IS in the city's ancient ruins, a UNESCO world heritage site where the jihadists sparked a global outcry with the systematic destruction of treasured monuments, a military source said.
IS lost at least 400 fighters in the battle for the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. On the government side, 188 troops and militiamen were killed.
"That's the heaviest losses that IS has sustained in a single battle since its creation" in 2013, the director of the Britain-based monitoring group, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.
"It is a symbolic defeat for IS comparable with that in Kobane," a town on the Turkish border where Kurdish fighters held out against a months-long siege by IS in 2014-15, he added.
IS, behind a string of attacks in the West including last week's Brussels bombings, is under growing pressure from Syrian and Iraqi military offensives to retake bastions of its self-proclaimed "caliphate".
On Thursday, the Iraqi army announced the launch of an offensive to recapture second city Mosul, held by the jihadists since June 2014.
"After heavy fighting during the night, the army is in full control of Palmyra -- both the ancient site and the residential neighbourhoods," the military source told AFP.
IS fighters pulled out, retreating towards the towns of Sukhnah and Deir Ezzor to the east.
Troops also captured the airport southeast of the city, the source added.
The Observatory said the pullout had been ordered by IS high command.
"A handful of IS fighters are refusing to leave the city and seem to want to fight on to the bitter end," Abdel Rahman said.
IS overran the Palmyra ruins and adjacent modern city in May 2015.
It blew up two of the site's treasured temples, its triumphal arch and a dozen tower tombs, in a campaign of destruction that UNESCO described as a war crime punishable by the International Criminal Court.
The jihadists used Palmyra's ancient amphitheatre as a venue for public executions, including the beheading of the city's 82-year-old former antiquities chief.
UNESCO chief Irina Bokova on Thursday welcomed the Syrian government offensive to recapture the city.
"Palmyra has been a symbol of the cultural cleansing plaguing the Middle East," she said.
- Strategic prize -
The oasis city's recapture is a strategic as well as symbolic victory for President Bashar al-Assad, since it provides control of the surrounding desert extending all the way to the Iraqi border.
Russian forces, which intervened in support of longtime ally Assad last September, have been heavily involved in the offensive to retake Palmyra despite a major drawdown last week.
Russian warplanes conducted more than 40 combat sorties in just 24 hours from Friday to Saturday, targeting "158 terrorist" positions, according to the Russian defence ministry.
Elsewhere in Syria, a ceasefire in areas held by the government and non-jihadist rebels has largely held since February 27, in a boost to diplomatic efforts to end a five-year war that has killed more than 270,000 people.
The recapture of Palmyra sets government forces up for a drive on the jihadists' de facto Syrian capital of Raqa in the Euphrates valley to the north.
"The army will have regained confidence and morale, and will have prepared itself for the next expected battle in Raqa," a military source said on Saturday.
With the road linking Palmyra to Raqa now under army control, IS fighters in the ancient city can only retreat eastwards towards the Iraqi border.
Palmyra was a major centre of the ancient world as it lay on the caravan route linking the Roman Empire with Persia and the east.
Pledging Russian support for the offensive to retake the city earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin described it as a "pearl of world civilisation".
Situated about 210 kilometres (130 miles) northeast of Damascus, it drew some 150,000 tourists a year before it became engulfed by Syria's devastating civil war.

Change, global terrorism and security BY DAYO SOBOWALE

Literature on the concept of change show that change management is an oxymoron like ‘ holy war ‘ as change cannot be managed. The experts thus concluded that the best way to confront change is to be prepared for any eventualities by continually improving one’s self or organization. Change they concluded can be faced by learning, growth and development. They illustrate this historically with the example of American President Abraham Lincoln who fought the American Civil War to free slaves and became one of the most successful and impactful US president after a life dogged by failures and personal difficulties and mishaps. Lincoln famously took change and difficulties he faced with the famous statement – I will prepare myself and my time must come.

It is from the perspective of this Lincolnian statement that I look at the topic of today in terms of the events that happened this week which we will focus on. The first is the killing of over 35 people in the Airport and Metro in Brussels the capital of Belgium and that of the European Union and the statement issued by Turkey that it warned Belgium when it deported one of the suicide bombers involved when he was deported in July last year. Yet the man found his way to Belgium to kill innocent people this week.

The second was the visit of the US President Barak Obama to Cuba, a very historic one for that matter and the import of his speech to an audience in Cuba during which he tried to sell American market economy, human rights and gay rights to the people of Cuba. The third is the reported kidnapping of over 100 women and some girls by Boko Haram in Adamawa state and the reported suspicion of people in the area that some security officials could be aiding and abetting the terrorists presumably for a fee . The fourth is the reported Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Lagos state government with Kebbi state to buy rice and other agricultural produce from that state and sell in Lagos state which has the largest market for such produce not only in Nigeria but in the entire ECOWAS region. The fifth is the statement credited to the GMD of NNPC Dr Ibe Kachikwu that the fuel queues giving Nigerians nightmares nowadays will not go away till May 2016, a statement that has fuelled a mad rush for fuel, hoarding, and escalated the black market price of the scarce commodity. Let us now examine how the statement credited to Lincoln could be applicable in all the situations and events identified this week.

First let us look at the intelligence gaffe that made the Belgians to ignore the Turkish warning. Was it ought of incompetence, ignorance or arrogance or all of these?. Obviously the Belgians could have downgraded the Turkish warning because Turkey is not yet a full EU member which has proved to be a costly and murderous mistake. Turkey has always been at the heart of Europe even though it is Muslim. But it is not an inferior nation to any EU member including Belgium. Turkey founded by Kemal Ataturk in 1923 was an offspring of the Ottoman Empire that ruled Europe for centuries and its security and intelligence institutions are efficient especially in fishing out the sort of people that the Belgians ignored to their own peril last week. So for the Belgians they did not prepared themselves to face change like Lincoln did and the result was the bomb disaster that claimed innocent lives this week. The same can be said of the kidnapping of the women in Adamawa state by Boko Haram and the fears expressed on intelligence lapses or sabotage by those expected to protect fellow Nigerians. The government must investigate and bring such intelligence or field officials to book. They are treacherous to say the least as they are running with the hunted and shooting with the hunters and benefiting from the awful carnage This should not be allowed as it is the duty of the Nigerian government to protect all Nigerians no matter where they live from any insurgency especially that of the infamous and blood thirsty Boko Haram. It is not enough to say terrorism is a global problem not peculiar to Nigeria and sit back. Our intelligence community must be on their toes to foil Boko Haram notoriety and mayhem and not only be reacting to them when the harm was done or closing the stable doors when the horses have bolted from the.

Next, let us look at the Obama visit to the US and its import for world peace and security especially at this point in time. Obviously President Obama would have prepared himself immensely for the Cuban visit like Abraham Lincoln thought and Lincoln is indeed Obama’s favorite US president, but has Obama’s time come on this visit ? I honestly think the answer is no which is unfortunate but I will show why. First except for making history as the first US president to visit Havana in decades the visit is simply ceremonial and does not create any economic opportunities for the US or even Cuban citizens who view it with suspicion . I watched the US president trying to compare the American way of life – free speech, human and gay rights to a socialist nation where the gap between the rich and poor is shorter and where the basics of life -education, shelter and employment are available and affordable without the luxuries associated with American life and I really felt the US president lost his way to Havana and should quickly return to the White House in Washington. He dared to incite Cuban youths and bravely too by referring to President Ronald Reagan’s speech in Berlin – Tear this wall down- at the Berlin Wall which was believed to have been part of the reasons for the collapse of the Cold War but he asked Cuban youths to build new things rather than tear anything down. I am sure the wily old man of Cuba and unrepentant socialist Fidel Castro will be wondering if American presidents ever learnt anything new in their dealings with Cuba except to think of it as part of the US backyard, a notion that the US president’s speech has cemented even more than anything else.

Anyway, Cuban youths are well educated and know what Obama said in his Cairo speech that led to Tahrir Square revolution in Cairo Egypt in 2011 and know how the same US president abandoned Egyptian youths and their new found democracy to their plight when the Army came to wipe them out and take over.

In addition President Obama is a lame duck president under whose watch someone like Donald Trump has become a front runner for the presidential candidacy of the Republican Party in the US. Trump has already thrown the typical Trump verbal bomb by laughing at Obama that the Cuban president was not on hand to receive him in Cuba which is true. More importantly Trump has said Obama is a security risk in the way he has handled ISIS and the fact that the Brussels bombing happened when Obama was on a visit to Cuba has not helped matters as it portrayed US president as fiddling in Cuba like the ancient Roman Emperor Nero while Rome and this time Europe and Brussels were burning which is not a good analogy at all.

Lastly we look at the efforts of the Lagos state government to create food security and the NNPC attempt at transparency that backfired. Actually both are good preparations except that one achieved its objective and the other backfired which means its time has not really come. In the case of Lagos state the state can be said to be following the moral of the Chinese statement which said – Dig a well before you are thirsty. This is because food insecurity puts Lagos state in a perilous security situation as the recent Mile 12 riots showed that even security forces can be partisan when it comes to food matters. So one can salute the effort of the Lagos state government which would create jobs for Lagos youths and unleash a new breed of Ibile rice distributors to ginger the busy economy of the state.

In the case of the NNPC MD’s forecast of the truth of regularization of the availability of fuel; the former Mobil executive probably thought he was in the US. He was even reported to have said he was not a magician to produce fuel from the blues which has led to the Unions calling for his head or resignation . Obviously he should know better now or go for a refresher course with a former Mobil executive now the ultimate Nigerian politician and former governor of Lagos state, Asiwaju Dr Bola Ahmed Tinubu on how to play politics in Nigeria. Unavailability of fuel can lead to social upheaval and political instability and insecurity and the GMD of NNPC must look before he leaps and also know that a stitch in time saves nine especially when tempers are frayed at the fuel stations where Nigerians spend the better part of their days looking for fuel to take them to work to eke out a precarious experience even as they expect a change for the better. Again long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.