Summary: Adam Yahiye Gadahn, AKA Azzam al-Amrikia, the American-born English-language propagandist for al-Qaida, has been captured in Karachi, Pakistan. [It was later reported that this was a case of mistaken identity and that the man in custody was in fact Abu Yahya Majadin Adam.] … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 7, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that with the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq in sight, the cost of leaving had begun to be measured in financial, logistical, and — above all — political terms, with the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq estimated to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

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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: A suicide bomber blew himself up in a market in northwest Pakistan, killing 12 people, including a mayor who had turned against the Taliban; two U.S. pilots have been killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq; Iraq’s parliament has passed a long-delayed law, setting the stage for nationwide elections in January 2010. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on November 8, 2008, Aubrey Immelman reported that Iraqi officials, who saw President-elect Obama’s views on the timing of a U.S. withdrawal as consonant with their own, appeared to be leveraging his election to pressure the Bush administration to make last-minute concessions in negotiations to reach a status-of-forces agreement with the United States; that Iraqi and U.S. officials were concerned about a surge in “sticky bombs”; and that Afghan president Hamid Karzai urged U.S. president-elect Barack Obama to stop the killing of civilians in coalition operations, which he said undermines popular support for the Afghan government and the international mission.

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Summary: Osama bin Laden has released a new tape in which he cites U.S. support for Israel as the reason for the attack of 9/11, saying, “the cause of our disagreement with you is your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine.” … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the fifth 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 on the assassination of a provincial governor in Afghanistan, U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, an assessment by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Bush administration that the U.S. is “not winning the war” in Afghanistan and “running out of time,” and ongoing violence in Iraq.

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