We now have boots on the ground in Yemen

The Pentagon has placed a small number of U.S. advisors on the ground in Yemen to support Arab forces battling al-Qaeda, military officials said on Friday, signaling a new American role in that country’s multi-sided civil war.
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. personnel had been in the country for about two weeks, supporting Yemeni and Emirati forces that are fighting a pitched battle against militants near the southeastern port city of Mukalla.

Remember when Gaddafi was our enemy? Well, that was so 10 minutes ago.

Former henchmen of Colonel Gaddafi are being recruited to join the Western-backed battle to drive the Islamic State from Libya, the Telegraph has learned.
Commanders who fought on Gaddafi's side during the revolution in 2011 have signed up to a coalition now gearing up to push Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) from his home city of Sirte.

As for those Libyan forces attacking ISIS, well, there are complications

From east and west, the forces of Libya’s rival powers are each moving on the city of Sirte, vowing to free it from the hold of the Islamic State group. The danger is they could very well fight each other as well.
Rather than becoming a unifying cause as the United States and Europe have hoped, the fight against the jihadi group threatens greater fragmentation in Libya, which has been torn apart among rival militias, tribes, governments, and parliaments since the 2011 downfall of longtime autocrat Moammar Khadafy in a NATO-backed rebellion.
Each of the rival powers see capturing Sirte from the militants as a way to gain advantage over the other, seize control of vital oil facilities nearby, and gain legitimacy in the eyes of the international community.
One of the two rivals is Khalifa Hifter, the army chief based in the east whose forces have been battling Islamic militias the past two years in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Darna. Backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, he is considered a hero in the east. But he is widely despised in western Libya, where his opponents depict him as a would-be dictator along the lines of Khadafy.
The other power are the militias of Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, which have been the dominant force in the west since Khadafy’s fall and are bitterly opposed to Hifter.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, our enemies are unifying

The closer integration of the feared Haqqani militant network into the leadership of the Taliban is changing the flow of the Afghan insurgency this year, with the Haqqanis’ senior leader increasingly calling the shots in the Taliban’s offensive, Afghan and American officials say.
The Haqqanis have refined a signature brand of urban terrorist attacks and cultivated a sophisticated international fund-raising network, factoring prominently in the United States military’s push to keep troops in Afghanistan. Just last month, the Haqqanis were believed to be behind a truck bomb attack in Kabul that killed 64 people and wounded hundreds.
Now, the group’s growing role in leading the entire insurgency has raised concerns about an even deadlier year of fighting ahead, as hopes of peace talks have collapsed. The shift is also raising tensions with the Pakistani military, which American and Afghan officials accuse of sheltering the Haqqanis as a proxy group.

Party like it's 1999

What remains of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is now working more closely with the Taliban, a spokesman for the U.S. led-mission there told reporters Thursday. If true, the renewed cooperation between the two groups marks another chapter in a relationship that has ebbed and flowed since 2001.
According to U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, al-Qaeda is providing more “capabilities and skills” to the 30,000 strong insurgent group than they have in the past.

Good News! We now know who to blame for ISIS

While experts have been working day and night to figure out what drives extremism, the answer has been right in front of our noses the whole time.
It’s Tom and Jerry.
At least, that’s according to Salah Abdel Sadek – the chairman of the Egyptian State Information Service – who claims the show has so desensitised kids to violence that it has, at least partially, led to the rise of Isis.
Speaking at a conference at Cairo University, he said the children’s cartoon ‘portrays violence in a funny manner and sends the message that “yes, I can hit him… and I can blow him up with explosives”.
‘It becomes set in the mind that this is natural’.
And he’s not the only one who blames the 1940s cat and mouse duo for the region’s civil wars.
After Sadek’s speech, the country’s privately-owned Youm7 newspaper agreed – describing in detail how Tom and Jerry encourages terrorism.