Neither France nor the US has learned from the Afghanistan War that aerial warfare won’t defeat al Qaeda – certainly not when they are highly-trained ...

The Algerian hostage disaster was the outcome of French anti-terror intervention in Mali which in turn developed from the messy ending of the Libyan war. By carrying out two counter terror operations – in Somali and Mali – on one day, France and the US brought together the most ...

French President Francois Hollande placed the country on high domestic terror alert Saturday, Jan. 12, in case of retaliatory attacks by al Qaeda for French operations against two of its African wings: a failed mission to rescue a French hostage from the Somali Shabaab, and air and commando aid for the Mali army’s drive to stop advancing Islamists.  The Islamists threatened to execute at least eight French hostages, one by one, unless French forces pulled out of Somalia and Mali at once.

Zawahiri has evacuated his al Qaeda jihadists from Afghanistan and Pakistan and relocated them in Egypt, Sinai and Syria, out of range of US drones and special forces, which he judges are the two prongs of the incoming CIA chief John’ Brennan’s counterterrorism strategy.

The evidence is piling up that the US, Russia, the European Union and even China are luring al Qaeda and affiliated jihadists to Syria to vent their trouble-making capabilities on its killing fields in the hope that they will not return.

The US, Russia and Israel fail to prevent Assad depositing chemical weapons in Hizballah’s Lebanese strongholds. Not enough is being done to keep them out of al Qaeda hands either.

The Qatari rulers have again swung like a pendulum for and against President Obama’s Middle East goals, joined now by Egyptian President Morsi. Qatar is shifting is focus towards a radical solution of the perennial Palestinian problem, junking standing peace accords and processes.

Some of the chemical weapons pushed north by the Assad regime may have been sent  from Syrian bases at Jabal Kalamon to Hizballah’s Lebanese Beqaa Valley strongholds, to keep them out of rebel hands, including al Qaeda, debkafile reports. Hizballah is thought to have split up the consignment among different bases to make them harder to attack. Assad is believed to have directed his troops to use chemical weapons if the rebels are near to seizing part of Damascus international airport.

Obama is keen on Muslim Brotherhood collaboration in the war on al Qaeda and other terrorists, including those sponsored by Tehran, and offered to build a hi-tech security radar fence to defend the Suez Canal from the terrorists and smugglers infesting Sinai.

CIA director David Petraeus arrived in Cairo to lead a new anti-terror campaign against al Qaeda in cooperation with Egyptian security. It was launched after the discovery that Ayaman al-Zawahiri has set in motion a new wave of terror after reconstituting his old Egyptian Islamic Jihad and turning Sinai ...

Because the powers concerned about Syrian bloodshed stick to a hands-off policy Assad and al Qaeda win a free field to fight it out.

Israeli, US, Egyptian and Jordanian counterterrorism agencies are on elevated alert since Oct. 25, debkafile reports: Salafi and al Qaeda cells in Egyptian Sinai are said poised to unleash coordinated terrorist attacks on US and Egyptian targets in Sinai and in Israel to avenge Israel’s targeted killing of two senior commanders of the Salafi-al Qaeda Sinai-Gaza network. Perpetrators of the Benghazi murders of 4 US diplomats are among the jihadi reinforcements coming in from Libya.

US President Obama wants a settling of accounts with the terrorists who murdered four diplomats in Benghazi before his next debate with Mitt Romney orbefore the Nov. 6 election at latest. Counter-terrorism and intelligence chiefs explain the operation requires time-consuming planning for coordinated attacks on multiple targets in several ...

Al Qaeda’s Ayman Zuwahiri is preparing a string of terrorist attacks in the five weeks up to the presidential election as the sequel to the Sept. 11 Benghazi murders, says US intelligence. He seeks to influence the poll’s results, while building up his reputation as master of spectacular terrorist operations. debkafile: The Benghazi attack exposed al Qaeda networks' striking expansion across a broad region - Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Mali and Egypt (Sinai) - from which most US personnel have been quietly lifted out.

The Kenyan army has captured Somalia’s Indian Ocean port of Kismayo, driving Al Qaeda’s Somali franchise Al Shabaab from its last stronghold in a year-long ground, sea and air operation, aided by the US, France and Israel. Kismayo is key to controlling southern Somalia. DEBKA: It was the first time Israel’s military, police, intelligence and counterterrorism forces had taken part in an anti-al Qaeda offensive outside its borders. This outstanding success should also help block Iran’s push toward the Indian Ocean and East Africa.

As the US tenses for more al Qaeda terror in Africa in the wake of the murders of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, our researchers have turned up information indicating that the ambassador was running members of the group which murdered him as penetration agents against al Qaeda.

All three terrorist attacks last week in Libya, Afghanistan and Sinai followed the same new al Qaeda modus operandi which uses small, highly-trained special ops units striking their targets in two or three waves with heavy weapons.

By shunning the “terrorist’ label, denying al Qaeda was still alive and kicking, and espousing the Muslim Brotherhood, Barak Obama exposes the United States to one strategic debacle after another.

Al Qaeda-led Salafi Bedouin bands Sunday, Sept. 16, expanded their Sinai offensive to three Egyptian bases along a 70-kilometer front three days after they overran the US-led Multinational Force base in northern Sinai. Heavily-armed Islamist gunmen struck Egyptian bases at El Arish, Rafah opposite the Israeli border and Sheikh Zuweid, where they used local schoolchildren as human shields and shot down an Egyptian helicopter. Egypt has imposed a blackout on all three episodes. Hundreds of US MFO officers remain trapped in their Sinai base.

First reports of at least 4 peacekeepers hurt when scores of Salafi Bedouin linked to al Qaeda stormed the Multinational Force’s camp in northern Sinai with grenades, mortars and automatic guns Friday, Sept. 14. The 1,500 mostly US troops are posted in Sinai to monitor the Egyptian-Israeli 1979 peace accords. This was the second al-Qaeda-instigated assault on a primarily American target in the Middle East in four days after the murder of four US diplomats in Benghazi Tuesday. The incident is still ongoing…