Homeland Security News

Foreign jihadists showed their gathering strength in Syria's civil war with the capture of a military air base in northern Syria.  Foreigners fighting with an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq—called the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS—led the capture of the Minigh air base north of Aleppo early Tuesday, according to local activists and some rebel commanders.  The seizure offers Syria's rebels a strategic victory after eight months of failed advances on the base.  But it has been viewed nervously by more moderate opponents to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who characterize ISIS as the most extremist Islamist faction operating in the country.

Tuesday's advance came just days after ISIS fighters led a deadly assault on a string of villages in Latakia province to the west, in what local activists say is an attempt to sideline more moderate rebels allied with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army there.

Read more:  Wall Street Journal

Nasir al Wuhayshi, the emir of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has recently been appointed to also serve as al Qaeda's general manager, an important position that has been held by some of the group's top leaders. The appointment of al Wuhayshi as general manager discredits the widespread claim that al Qaeda's "core" is based solely in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area.

Al Wuhayshi "had recently been appointed into the role by al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri," CNN reported...Al Wuhayshi is thought to be at the center of the latest al Qaeda plot.

...Al Wuhayshi is especially well-positioned to coordinate the activities of al Qaeda's robust affiliates in the heart of the Middle East and Africa.  And given AQAP's plotting against the US homeland, al Wuhayshi is an ideal candidate to make sure that the regional affiliates continue to devote some of their assets to targeting the West -- just as bin Laden specified in his letter to Atiyah.

Read more:  Long War Journal