Summary: An increase in terrorist attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan triggered a sharp rise in the number of civilians killed or wounded there last year, pushing South Asia past the Middle East as the top terror region in the world, according to figures compiled by National Counterterrorism Center. The terror threat to the United States is partly a function of the level of violence worldwide, according to Bernard Finel, senior fellow with the American Security Project. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on April 28, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Staff Sgt. Aaron Larson, who as an 11-year-old boy in St. Joseph was with his best friend Jacob Wetterling when Jacob was kidnapped by a masked gunman on Sunday, Oct. 22, 1989, had returned home to Minnesota after a year-long deployment in Iraq.

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Summary: Thousands of Somali boys and teenagers fleeing war and chaos at home are sailing to Yemen, where officials worry that the new arrivals could become the next generation of al-Qaida fighters. U.S. and Yemeni authorities also fear that Islamist fighters from Somalia could slip into the country among the throngs of refugees, deepening ties between al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen and the particularly hard-line al-Shabab militants of Somalia. … Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a nuclear physics professor who publicly backed Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the disputed June 2009 presidential election, was killed when a bomb-rigged motorcycle blew up outside his home in Tehran. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 12, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that security forces used tear gas and batons to repel anti-Israel protesters who tried to attack a U.S. consulate in Pakistan as tens of thousands of people demonstrated worldwide against Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. He also reported that seven years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan routed the Taliban regime, hard-line Islamic fighters who had scattered under massive bombardment to their villages and rear bases in Pakistan once again govern large swaths of Afghanistan and are dug in across regions that surround the capital Kabul, saying they welcome the U.S. military’s proposal to send as many as 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan by summer 2009 because it will give them more chances to kill “infidels.”

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Summary: U.S. Navy warships fired missiles at suspected al-Qaida training camps in Yemen, with that government’s support, according to Pentagon sources. One U.S. official said President Barack Obama personally ordered the missile strikes in northern Yemen. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 20, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that according to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, Zimbabwe had collapsed and ran the risk of deteriorating into Somalia-scale chaos. He also featured a personality profile of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe that he developed in 2002 with Adam Beatty at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics and reported that for the sixth consecutive year, Iraq was the deadliest place in the world for journalists in 2008.

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Summary: A spike in terrorism cases involving U.S. citizens is challenging long-held assumptions that Muslims in Europe are more susceptible to radicalization than their better-assimilated counterparts in the United States. According to several U.S. and international terrorism analysts, immigration trends, the global spread of a militant Islamism, and controversial actions by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks increase the chances that U.S. Muslims could carry out a domestic attack. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 12, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee found that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He also reported that a suicide bomber struck a crowded restaurant near the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk where Kurdish officials were meeting with Arab tribal leaders, killing at least 55 people and wounding about 120 in the deadliest attack in Iraq in nearly six months.

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Summary: The results of President Barack Obama’s confrontation with Somali pirates — a dramatic and successful rescue operation by U.S. Special Operations forces — left Obama with an early victory that could help build confidence in his ability to direct military actions abroad.

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Summary: U.S. counterterrorism officials have raised concerns that an extremist group called al-Shabab is recruiting young men in Minnesota and elsewhere in the United States. Al-Shabab controls much of Somalia and wants to establish an Islamic state there. The FBI is investigating whether young Somali men are being radicalized in Minnesota and recruited to fight with terror groups in Somalia.

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Summary: Counterterrorism officials and the FBI are investigating whether al-Shabab or other Somali Islamic groups are actively recruiting in the United States. Officials say as many as 20 Somali-Americans between the ages of 17 and 27 have left their Minneapolis homes since 2007, apparently bound for Somalia.

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The terrorism threat to the United States over the next five years will be driven by instability in the Middle East and Africa, persistent challenges to border security, and increasing Internet savvy — with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear [CBRN] attacks considered the most dangerous threats — according to a Homeland Security Threat Assessment for the years 2008-2013.

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Summary: In its annual list of “top 10” humanitarian crises, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) said many of the countries on this year’s list — including Somalia, Pakistan, Sudan, and Iraq — illustrated the growing difficulties aid groups faced. The 2008 list included Somalia, Myanmar (Burma), eastern Congo, Zimbabwe, global malnutrition, Ethiopia’s Somali region, Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan, Sudan (including Darfur), Iraq, and HIV/TB co-infection.

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Summary: On the ninth day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned it into a terrorist training ground for jihadists around the world, with militants converging on Iraq to learn increasingly sophisticated insurgency techniques and then exporting those tactics to other hotspots, including Afghanistan, turning the war against terror “global” in a way not foreseen by the Bush administration.

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