Tam Hussein

1 week ago | newlinesmag.com | Tam Hussein

On Oct. 1, 2024, gunfire cracked near the Israeli Embassy in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm. Later that day, two hand grenades exploded near the Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen, the Danish capital. The attacks were carried out by young men, reportedly aged between 15 and 20, with ties to Swedish organized crime. Swedish and Israeli investigators blamed Foxtrot, a cold and violent Swedish transnational crime syndicate that has dominated the northern European underworld.

4 weeks ago | tamhussein.substack.com | Tam Hussein

A few days after the fall of the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad, I was in Damascus reconnecting with old friends. The capital was in a state of revolutionary euphoria and nation-building. There were activists on the steps of the historic Ottoman-era Hijaz Railway Station talking about the country’s future. Among the faces of the dead and missing Syrians plastered on the wall was the gaunt, boyish face of activist Mazen Al-Hamada. He had been killed just ten days before the regime fell.

Dec 31, 2024 | newlinesmag.com | Tam Hussein

The murder of two British businessmen turns a once-quiet seaside port into a symbol of unbridled gangland criminality I didn’t quite understand what the fuss was about as I sat in a cafe in the heart of Malmo, a city at the southern tip of Sweden, savoring some Syrian sweets and getting up to speed on press coverage of the city.I was in town to investigate the brutal murders of two British businessmen, Farooq Abdulrazak and Juan Cifuentes.

Sep 15, 2024 | unherd.com | Tam Hussein

AfghanistanJihadi JohnjihadismPoliticsRadicalisationrowSomaliaTerrorism On 14 July 2024, as football fans gathered to watch the Euro 2024 final, a fireball ripped through a café in Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, later claimed responsibility for the blast and the five lives it extinguished. It was a message to the Somali government — and to the West as a whole — that the past decade’s attempts to defeat the terror group had stalled. But it was also a threat.

Jun 19, 2024 | unherd.com | Tam Hussein

Al QaedaISISISIS-KKabulrowTalibanWar On 26 August 2021, shortly after the Taliban conquered Kabul, Abdur Rahman Logari detonated his suicide vest near the Abbey Gate in the city’s airport, killing 170 men, women and children who were trying to flee the country. Two days later, a US drone strike killed an entire Afghan family in the mistaken belief that the target was Logari.