Pentagon CFO’s Chief of Staff Has Family Ties to Islamic Terrorism

In 2019, Yousra Fazili addressed a congressional hearing to complain about the arrest of her cousin by Indian authorities. The woman who now serves as Chief of Staff for the Pentagon Comptroller claimed that her cousin was the innocent victim of oppressive Indian authorities.

According to the daughter of Kashmiri Muslim immigrants, her cousin Mubeen Shah had been arrested under India’s Public Safety Act even though he was “not a politician or a dissident, he isn’t a freedom fighter, or even a kid in the street throwing stones. He’s just a businessman. His life’s work has focused on bringing economic opportunity to Kashmir.”

In reality, as the Hindu Post noted, Shah had “lionized Kashmiri jihadists, agreed with a description of convicted terrorists as ‘inspirations for the youth,’ and promised that ‘we all are ready to spill our blood’” to keep the region Muslim. On Facebook, Shah appeared to have posted a picture describing Mohammad Afzal Guru, an Islamic terrorist tied to the ‘The Army of Muhammad’, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda, as the “Pride of Kashmir”. Guru had been executed for his role in a December 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.

Fortunately for Shah, he had his Fazili family deeply embedded in America’s political establishment. Yousra’s sister, Sameera Fazili had been brought in as a senior policy advisor to Obama’s National Economic Council. And when Biden took office, she became the deputy assistant to the president and the deputy director of the National Economic Council.

When Shah was arrested, Sameera and Yousra Fazili “dialed friends in the State Department” and the State Department demanded information about him from the Indian government. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a radical leftist sympathetic to Islamic terrorists, agitated for his release.

Soon Shah was out and Yousra Fazili was in, joining her sister in a high-level position in the Biden administration. Where Sameera had worked on the economic side of things, Yousra became the Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs three years after agitating on behalf of a terrorist supporter.

It was incredible even by the standards of an administration that seemed to have abandoned even the most elementary forms of background checks and security screenings.

But worse was to come.

Yousra Fazili had studied Islamic religious law or sharia at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University before receiving a Master’s degree in Islamic Studies from Harvard. She was recorded showing up at the UN Economic and Social Council representing the International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations known as a Muslim Brotherhood operation. The IIFSO was co-founded by figures tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden.

But before long, Yousra Fazili appeared to be providing materials on Islam to federal contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton and then to the Defense Intelligence Agency. She made the leap to the Department of Defense, first serving as the Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs and now serves as the Chief of Staff to the Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer of the Pentagon.

But before that she was working for the state sponsor of Hamas.

Rep. Jack Bergman, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general, wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Austin, expressing his concern “about the security clearances and responsibilities entrusted to Yousra Fazili, the Chief of Staff for the Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer of the Pentagon” due to her past work as “‘strategic’ advisor to Meshal Al-Thani, the Qatari Ambassador to the U.S., for over three years.”

Qatar is a close ally of Iran, hosts Hamas leaders and has ties to Islamic terrorist groups all over the world. Reports link the Qatari royal family to Al Qaeda. The Islamic terror state harbored 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who escaped when Qatari officials allegedly tipped him off and he left on a “a specially equipped government executive jet, complete with blacked-out windows.”

Furthermore, as Rep. Bergman points out, Qatar was engaged in covert hostilities against the United States. Fazili worked for the “Qatari Ambassador at the time that her client was targeting prominent Americans in an effort to silence Qatar’s critics, including the then-Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, and the former acting head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Morell.”

How does someone go from working for an ally of Iran and Hamas to a prominent position at the Pentagon in a matter of years?

The failure by the Biden administration and the Pentagon to perform even the most elementary vetting of Yousra Fazili is a massive national security failure. Yousra Fazili had testified on behalf of her cousin, while lying about his support for Islamic terrorists, and had publicly supported Islamic terrorists linked to Al Qaeda. The efforts by the Fazili sisters to rally support for him in the State Department should have made that public knowledge in D.C.

Yousra’s sister Sameera, despite her role in the Obama and the Biden administrations, also had a troubling past with extremist groups.

When Biden brought her into the National Economic Council, it was revealed that Sameera was a member of Stand With Kashmir (SWK) “which was founded by her cousin, Hafsa Kanjwal” and which had “praised and defended the actions of a number of violent Islamists” including Asiya Andrabi who had “met with Al Qaeda officials and told them that if ‘you belong to Sheikh Osama’s Al-Qaeda then you are very welcome because he was a legitimate leader of Jihad.’”

Her cousin, Hafsa Kanjwal appeared at a pro-Hamas rally and at foreign conference led by a former Palestinian Islamic Jihad board member, and called for Muslims operating in America to “put a check on American exceptionalism.” Finally she’s an instructor at The People’s Forum: an organization funded by a Chinese Communist based operation whose offices face a “red banner that reads, in Chinese, ‘Always Follow the Party’ and a “plate depicting Xi.”

How exactly does someone a few degrees of separation from Al Qaeda go on to serve as Chief of Staff for the Pentagon Comptroller?

The exposure of Yousra Fazili comes only a few weeks after it was revealed that Ariane Tabatabai, the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, had worked with an operation set up by the Iranian government and coordinated her congressional testimony with them. Despite published emails between Tabatabai and Iran, the Pentagon allowed her to keep her position and her security clearance.

“We have confirmed that Ms. Tabatabai’s employment and clearance processes were carried out in accordance with all appropriate laws and policies,” a Department of Defense official replied to Sen. Joni Ernst.

Two Muslim Pentagon Chiefs of Staff were shown to have worked with enemy nations. And the Defense Department and the Biden administration has chosen to keep them on the job.

When associates and employees of enemy governments that are tied to Islamic terrorism can waltz in and take high-ranking positions in the Department of Defense, national security no longer means anything. The Pentagon has been infiltrated by political hires who would have been disqualified from even being considered twenty years ago on the basis of their associations, their views and their links to enemy governments.

Now Iran and Qatar can plant their employees and catspaws at key positions throughout the Pentagon. And we wonder why our intelligence and our operations are so badly compromised.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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