“Lebanon's health minister says thousands have been injured after pagers used by the Hezbollah militia group exploded simultaneously. Hezbollah fighters and medics are among the wounded. Several deaths have also been reported. Hezbollah says it's investigating the cause of the blasts. Security expert Hans-Jakob Schindler told DW that it's "unlikely to be a production mistake or an accident.””

"…Hans-Jakob Schindler sees three main reasons for the increasing violence in the West Bank. ‘On the one hand, Hamas, which has been under enormous military pressure in Gaza for months, is of course trying to activate its networks in the West Bank as well,’ the senior director of the international Counter Extremism Project told the Tagesspiegel. Secondly, attacks by radical settlers in the West Bank have steadily increased since October 2023. ‘This has caused the situation to escalate further.’ And thirdly, it can be assumed that Iran, whose announced retaliatory strike has so far failed to materialize, is trying to operate via the West Bank. ‘The Israeli security services regularly find weapons that Iran is trying to smuggle into the West Bank,’ says Schindler."

“...It is really a tough time for the German government under any circumstances, but it's also coming towards a government that has not found its stride in simply governing," said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former German diplomat and director of the Counter Extremism Project. He said no mainstream party had ‘found a recipe’ to counter the AfD's narrative. An air of constant infighting in Mr. Scholz's coalition ‘gives the impression that it's a really dysfunctional government,’ even if in fact it can point to certain successes such as ending Germany's reliance on Russian gas imports, Mr. Schindler told The National. An explosion of voter anger over migration has sent German politics into a tailspin. Refugee centers have been filling up for months with more than 174,000 asylum claims lodged this year, almost a third of them from Syrians.”

“...The fact that the man wanted to attack soldiers is not necessarily unusual for an Islamist perpetrator, says terrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler from the Counter Extremism Project (CEP): ‘The military is always part of the target spectrum.’ Uniformed soldiers are potentially more capable of defending themselves than average civilians and are therefore a riskier target. But: ‘An act against the military also brings the perpetrator even more 'fame' in terrorist propaganda.’ And: ‘Terrorists naturally also act according to the principle of capacity and opportunity. When an opportunity arises, they strike.’ Attacking soldiers during their lunch break and using the element of surprise could have been just such an opportunity.”

“Wednesday marks 23 years since 3,000 people were killed when terrorists hijacked passenger jets and purposefully crashed them in the worst attack on America in history. It was planned and carried out by al-Qaida, and while the U.S. has killed its founder, Osama bin Laden, and his successor, Ayman al-Zawahri, the militant group is still active. On this week’s episode of The Hunt with WTOP national security correspondent J.J. Green, Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, said two of al-Qaida’s original members are still out there and evidence suggests the group is training and plotting again.”

CEP Senior Advisor Ambassador Edmund Fitton-Brown interviewed: "A special meeting with the former British Ambassador to #Yemen , Edmund Fitton-Brown. The meeting includes many important points about the British and Western position in general on the #Houthi militia , and how the international community is dealing with the Yemeni crisis?"

CEP Senior Advisor Edmund Fitton-Brown writes: "As we pass yet another anniversary of 9/11, let us think back briefly to the eve of that watershed moment: In the 1990s, this author worked on counterterrorism issues in London, Cairo, and Kuwait. There was a lot going on: attacks on tourists in Egypt, the early days of what became al-Qa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula. But international CT efforts were unsophisticated with objectives that were variable and not always clear. In those days, it was the norm (albeit infuriating) for one government to lie to another about in-country terrorist threats and hold back information except in the immediate aftermath of major attacks. State sponsorship of terrorism was also common in those days, and it was difficult to achieve international consensus on how to react in such cases. If all that sounds familiar, it is because we now find ourselves dealing with those same unpropitious circumstances. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 and Hamas’ attack on Israel just under a year ago, international CT cooperation is the weakest it has been in 23 years."

"'You still have a central media service and a central command that directed, for example, the attacks in Russia. But right now I think there is a much more diverse network recruiting these young people,' says Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an analyst who has been researching the IS group for over a decade and also monitors it for the Counter Extremism Project, an international think tank."

"Edmund Fitton-Brown, Senior Advisor to the Counter Extremism Project and former Ambassador of the UK to Yemen, told MailOnline: 'ISIS methodically kept itself alive during the height of military and counterterrorism pressure it faced by creating a global structure of mutually supportive regional networks.'

He said those operating out of Afghanistan, East Africa and West Africa have been 'particularly effective'.

'The regional network structure allows for a formerly "remote province" like Khorasan to step up and enable international attacks if it has the capacity to do so.

'That capacity is partly enabled by funds authorised by the leadership in Syria.

'Khorasan is also important because of diasporas: Uzbek, Chechen, Daghestani and especially Tajik.

'These ethnicities provide networks that link Afghanistan, Turkey, Central Asia, the Caucasus with target venues in Russia, Iran, Germany, Scandinavia, France.'"