An Afghan man who faced the death penalty in his homeland for converting from Islam to Christianity says he was certain he would have been killed if he had remained in Kabul. Speaking in Italy, which has granted him asylum, Abdul Rahman said in an interview with Italian journalists he also wanted to thank the pope for intervening on his behalf. "In Kabul they would have killed me, I'm sure of it," said Rahman, 41, who is under protection in a secret location in Italy. "If you are not a Muslim in an Islamic country like mine they kill you, there are no doubts." He said his case was to serve as an example "to others who dared rebel."
That's precious few of them, but that's because the holy men will kill them.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/01/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Still is. Italy is hardly out of reach to Dir al Islam.
#2
Glad to hear that this man made it out ok. Problem doesn't end there, though. What do we do with the next 10, 100, 1000 Afghanis who decide they no longer wish to be part of a death cult?
Glad to be back on rantburg. Back in the Midwest-couldn't take moonbat-land any longer.
Charles Taylor once broke out of a prison in Massachusetts and nearly slipped away this week before Nigeria could hand over the former Liberian president to an international court.
Now, Taylor is being carefully guarded to make sure he doesn't escape again, his chief prosecutor told The Associated Press on Friday.
Prosecutor Desmond de Silva also said security concerns had prompted officials to request that Taylor's trial be moved to Europe, where it would remain under the auspices of the Special Court established in Sierra Leone to try those believed to bear the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed during this country's 1991-2002 civil war.
Taylor is accused of backing Sierra Leonean rebels notorious for raping and maiming civilians by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips. He is charged with 11 counts of crimes against humanity.
Taylor's 1989 insurgency in Liberia, which eventually killed 200,000, helped tilt West Africa into crisis.
Charles Taylor has been a regional warlord at the epicenter of the destabilization of the whole region, de Silva said, noting that new Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had expressed concern in a speech about her predecessor's supporters using the trial as a pretext to launch an uprising.
If the security and peace of Liberia is imperiled, it could well spill over into Sierra Leone, and thereupon all trials would come to an end, de Silva said.
De Silva, who once called Taylor an escapologist, said the court complex where he has been held since his arrest Wednesday was guarded by Mongolian troops. He called in an extra contingent of Irish troops and could call in more.
I take the view that at this moment in time, the detention facility in the court is secure, and I think Mr. Taylor would find it extremely difficult to escape, de Silva said.
De Silva also said it would be difficult for anyone who might want to harm Taylor to get to him. De Silva dismissed concern expressed by Taylor's relatives about his safety in custody, noting, We don't go around killing people.
While Special Court officials have requested the trial be moved to The Hague, his first appearance before judges was to be in Sierra Leone's capital Monday. De Silva said Taylor would be read the charges against him 11 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes and be asked to plead.
If he pleads guilty, trial will be fairly short, de Silva said. If he pleads not guilty, it could take months.
Officials were working out the logistics of moving the trial to The Hague.
The Dutch government has said a resolution by the U.N. Security Council would give a solid legal basis for changing the venue. Britain circulated a draft resolution, drawn up in consultation with Dutch diplomats, later Friday.
Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Dirk-Jan Vermeij said officials also were discussing where Taylor would be held during the trial and if he is convicted.
Taylor was accused in 1983 of embezzling nearly $1 million and fled to the United States, where he was detained on a Liberian arrest warrant. He escaped from a Massachusetts jail in 1985 cutting through bars with a hacksaw to launch Liberia's civil war.
Taylor fled to exile in Nigeria in 2003 as part of a deal to end fighting in Liberia. Nigeria, under pressure from the United States and others, said last week it would hand Taylor over to the U.N. court but made no move to arrest him, and he fled.
Nigerian police captured him trying to slip across the northern border into Cameroon. He reportedly had two 110-pound sacks filled with dollars and euros.
While the Sierra Leone tribunal's charges refer only to the war there, Taylor also has been accused of backing rebel fighters elsewhere in West Africa and of harboring al-Qaeda suicide bombers who attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing more than 200 people.
His son, Charles McArthur Emmanuel, was arrested Thursday by U.S. authorities in Miami. According to an affidavit filed in federal court in Miami, Emmanuel, a U.S. citizen, led Liberian forces who were responsible for Taylor's security until he went into exile in 2003. Emmanuel, 29, also known as Charles Chuckie Taylor Jr., was on a United Nations list of Liberians whose travel was restricted.
Emmanuel appeared in federal court Friday on a charge of passport fraud, said Barbara Gonzalez, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/01/2006 00:17 ||
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Mecca (Rantburg News Service): A series of meetings of the Learned Elders of Islam will be held at Muslim World League headquarters in Makkah with the participation of prominent Learned Elders from around the world to discuss ways and means of attaining World Domination. Abdullah Al-Turki, secretary-general of MWL, said his organization has completed preparations for the three-day secret meeting set to begin today. Many Learned Elders and heads of Islamic centers and organizations worldwide have already arrived in Makkah, eager to take part in the conference.
Al-Turki said four secret sessions will be held to deal with key Protocols. The first secret session will cover imposing religious and cultural unity. The second workshop will focus on subverting economies. Social unity will be the main theme of the third workshop. Political unity will be the focus of the fourth workshop. We established this association to coordinate activities of Islamic organizations and centers, especially in matters such as introduction of Islam, protection of Islamic identity of Muslim minorities and formulation a joint stand on contemporary issues, Al-Turki said. "Our eventual goal is the eradication of non-Arab cultures and languages, to include, of course, religions, and the rule of a divinely appointed Caliph from Riyadh. Or maybe Mecca. Not that I have myself in mind for the job, of course. But if asked..."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/01/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Can we glass them now? Please? Pretty Please?
With sugar on it?
Speaking of glass, I think wearing such infidel devices as glasses must be haram - those look like Sergio Tacchini frames. So the is Niagara Spray Starch used to give his kaffiyeh that crisp jaunty crease. He's obviously holy cuz he doesn't wear a fanbelt.
Saudi Arabia yesterday denied a German magazine report that it was working on a secret nuclear program with the help of Pakistani experts. The report is totally unfounded, a Defense Ministry spokesman told the Saudi Press Agency, adding that Riyadh advocates imposing nuclear non-proliferation in the (Middle East) region.
"Nope. Nope. Never happened."
Pakistan also rejected the report. It is a fabricated story and motivated by vicious intentions, Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
"Trust us on that!"
Posted by: Fred ||
04/01/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Saudi paid for the Pak bomb and hid the payments in the mess call BCCI. (blast from the past... Dem leaders, rice gate, bank failures of the 80s...)
#3
The Saudis are probably very keen on getting their hand in the nuclear cash register, but for reasons other than what might be supposed. They fear Iran in a big way, and righly so. If something doesn't change drastically, Iran is going to make a bomb someday and the Sauds are scared shitless of the idea.
#4
Ah, yes, BCCI, Bank for Crooks and Criminals International. HERE is a link to the executive summary of the Senate investigation of them. Multi-layered bunch into everything, including the US banking system.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/01/2006 10:56 Comments ||
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If the Saudi nukes work as well as the rest of the Saudi military, and there's no reason to believe they don't, we have nothing to fear.
The US secretary of state has defended the US invasion of Iraq and hinted that the US will not release prisoners from Guantanamo Bay until it is certain they pose no threat. "I know we have made tactical errors, thousands of them, I'm sure," Condoleezza Rice told a gathering of 200 foreign policy experts, local officials and journalists organised by England's Chatham House foreign policy institute on Friday. "This could have gone that way, or that could have gone that way. But when you look back in history, what will be judged is: Did you make the right strategic decision?"
Also on Friday, Rice said her country harbours no desire to be the world's jailer. Speaking at a football stadium, Rice said: "We want the terrorists that we capture to stand trial for their crimes. But we also recognise that we are fighting a new kind of war, and that our citizens will judge us harshly if we release a captured terrorist before we are absolutely certain that he does not possess information that could prevent a future attack."
Jack Straw announced last week that Britain would take up the case of a British resident held at the Guantanamo. He said the government would intervene on behalf of Bisher al-Rawi, 37, a native Iraqi and British resident who was arrested in Gambia three years ago.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/01/2006 00:00 ||
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The Swiss banking giant, UBS, may have helped Iran develop its nuclear program, may have held an account for Al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden, and could find itself investigated as part of Congress's ongoing inquiry into the United Nations oil-for-food scandal, lawmakers said yesterday. During an intense grilling on Capitol Hill, the bank was also accused of engaging in a pattern of resistance to congressional inquiries, as lawmakers cited years of non-cooperation with congressional probes into improper transactions between the bank and terrorist regimes. One lawmaker disclosed that UBS had provided a witness for yesterday's hearing only under threats of subpoena, and another accused the bank's representative at the hearing of using "weasel words" to dodge tough questions.
Yesterday's hearing of the House International Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight, chaired by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, was a long-awaited public examination of UBS's alleged money laundering for state sponsors of terrorism, including Cuba and Iran. It is the latest in a series of inquiries spawned in 2003 when American soldiers liberating Iraq discovered $762 million in American currency stashed in hideouts belonging to Saddam Hussein. The serial numbers on the banknotes were traced to UBS, which distributed the currency as part of the Extended Custodial Inventory Program run by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The Federal Reserve program, in cooperation with international banks, allowed clients to exchange old American banknotes for new ones. One condition of the program was that the international banks were not allowed to accept cash from countries against which America maintains sanctions. They also were not allowed to transfer cash to such countries. When American investigators probed the $762 million that emerged in Iraq, they found that UBS had also provided $3.9 billion in American currency for Fidel Castro's Cuba, $1 billion for Iran, and $30 million for Libya. Cuba, Iran, and Libya appear on the State Department's official list of state sponsors of terrorism. As a result of an investigation by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in cooperation with the Department of the Treasury, UBS was censured by the Swiss Banking Commission, and paid a $100 million fine to the Federal Reserve in spring 2004.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/01/2006 00:21 ||
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#1
Interest rates are so bad at Swiss banks you just know the money is dirty.
#3
fuckin swiss, neutral my ass... they support anyone and have a terrible track record to prove it, self righteous pigs.
Posted by: bk ||
04/01/2006 10:05 Comments ||
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BK, they support anyone with the cash, Nazis, Saddam, Hezbullah, etc... They are probably hoping to bankroll the Bil Ladem construction company. What bothers me in this report is the Bin Laden family's open and financial support to their terrorist brother. The US should roll up the whole damn family and put them at Gitmo until UBL is captured. We have played around enough with this ass, time to get close to what counts and run him down in a manner like they did Pablo. Lets put anyone who ever supported or dealt with him on our list and let them share a cel at Gitmo.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
04/01/2006 18:41 Comments ||
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#5
The Swiss whoring themselves out to bad guys with cash - wotta surprise!
#6
Dana R's a straight guy. Orange County's finest, if you ask me. BTW, slightly OT - nobody in southern california really calls it the "O.C." - that's for TV
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/01/2006 19:16 Comments ||
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#7
*shrug* If UBS can't keep their American currency under control, perhpas it would be best not to let them have any more. Separately, I don't imagine we'll do anything about the bin Laden siblings until we are ready to go after Saudi Arabia -- bin Laden paterfamilias was the previous King's favourite builder, after all. Besides, most of what the family are getting for their money is dead jihadis and blown up supplies, thanks to our brave men and women around the world. The more they throw away now, the less they'll have later.
#8
The Swiss have a lot to answer for. Their past actions have been tantamount to crimes against humanity. Just watch Frontline's "Nazi Gold" program if you have any doubts.
#9
The lady with whom I studied German before we moved across the pond was Swiss German. The sleep of her childhood was ever interrupted by the Nazi trains rumbling through the Swiss countryside. She was so disgusted by her countrymen's hypocracy that she left as soon as she reached adulthood, and never looked back. And don't let's forget that the Nazis put the identifying J for Jew on passports at the request of the Swiss authorities, who wanted to make sure they were keeping out the right people.
#1
Violence at a Berlin school dominated by Arab and Turkish youths and the nearby slaying of police officer, shot in the head while trying to arrest muggers, has fuelled alarm that troubled parts of the German capital are lurching out of control.
Don't know if it's the same school, but I've recently read an article about a german teevee documentary on the woes of girls in islamized schools, focusing on the example of one ethnic german teen who was gangraped and then forcibly prostituted for weeks at her school by muslim (iranian and turkish IIRC) school"mates", or one other pregnant german teen who was kicked to death by her turkish boyfriend 'coz he didn't want to be involved with a non-turkish wimman (non-muslim are good enough for screwing around, not for marrying or something).
Response of the public education was said to be very weak to say the least, keeping their head fully buried in the sand, and local response was even lamer (such as an school headmaster locking the rape-prone school toilets, and only allowing girls after they've come pick up the keys and noted their name...).
Three weeks of testimony and dozens of documents released in the sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui have offered an eerie parallel view of two organizations, al-Qaida and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and how they pursued their missions before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Al-Qaida, according to the newly revealed account from the chief plotter, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, took its time in choosing targets - attack the White House or perhaps a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania? Organizers sized up and selected operatives, teaching them how to apply for a visa and how to cut a throat, a skill they practiced on sheep and camels. Despite the mistakes of careless subordinates and an erratic boss, Osama bin Laden, Mohammed tried to keep the plot on course.
Mohammed, a Pakistani-born, American-trained engineer, "thought simplicity was the key to success," says the summary of his interrogation by the Central Intelligence Agency. It is all the more chilling for the banal managerial skills it ascribes to the man who devised the simultaneous air attacks.
If Mohammed's guiding principle was simplicity, the U.S. government relied on sprawling bureaucracies at feuding agencies to look for myriad potential threats. The CIA had lots of information on two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, but the FBI did not know the men had settled in San Diego, where Mohammed had instructed them to "spend time visiting museums and amusement parks" so they could masquerade as tourists.
At the FBI, a few agents pursued clues that would later prove tantalizingly close to the mark, but they could not draw attention from top counterterrorism officials. A Minnesota FBI agent, Harry M. Samit, warned in a memo that Moussaoui was a dangerous Islamic extremist whose study of how to fly a Boeing 747-400 seemed to be part of a sinister plot.
"As the details of this plan are not yet fully known, it cannot be determined if Moussaoui has sufficient knowledge of the 747-400 to attempt to execute the seizure of such an aircraft," Samit wrote on Aug. 31, 2001. He had already urged Washington to act quickly, because it was not clear "how far advanced Moussaoui's plan is or how many unidentified co-conspirators exist."
But to high-level officials, the oddball Moroccan-born Frenchman in Minneapolis was only one of scores of possible terrorists who might be worth checking out. An FBI official in Washington edited crucial details out of Samit's memos seeking a search warrant for Moussaoui's possessions and said that pressing for it could hurt an agent's career, Samit testified.
The picture of a large and lumbering bureaucracy trying to defend against a small and flexible enemy is striking, said Timothy J. Roemer, a member of the national Sept. 11 commission.
"It's like the elephant fighting the snake," said Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/01/2006 00:29 ||
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But why did al-Qaeda carry out the 9-11 attacks? Their cause was: polarization of Muslims and Westerners, in context of the West's engorgement on multi-cultural poison. Islamofascists are strong everywhere, including in your town.
#2
Why did al Qaeda attack? Polarization? Engorgement on multi-cultural poison? In your town?
Such original brilliance.
Welcome back, Man Bites Dog.
Yes, I finally remembered where I'd heard that point of view before. I'd ask how your therapy's coming along, but your posts tell the story.
The FBI is an organization which, other than perhaps forensics - and that is not a given anymore, time has passed by. A bureaucratic dinosaur totally immersed in PCism, decades behind other agencies in every relevant respect, and ultimately a dangerous legacy as it sucks up resources and exists mainly to self-propagate.
Any organization which uses unconventional means for communications and finance can leave the FBI tied up in knots at square one. DIA and NSA, however, are another matter entirely. I'll leave the state of the CIA to OS.
Seafarious gave notice that desperate ad hominem attacks are not welcome here, presumedly because said attacks are all noise and no substance. Yahoo has all sorts of forums that I avoid because they vent spin-envenomed control freaks. I don't want to be banned like you were, so I am going to obey the rules and keep posting timely articles on subjects that interest open-minded Rantburgers.
As for substance, 2 days ago Condi admitted that "tactical" errors were made in the counter-terror war but defended the "strategic" plan. Maybe she was hinting that al-Qaeda's successful polarization scheme could have been better countered. To me that is an open-minded and flexible approach, and I support her.
.com:
Try to be nicer and people will like you.
Seafarious, et al:
This might be sinktrap material but .com's unmanaged rage and lack of substantive posting, will probably have to be addressed pro-actively at some time. I am sorry if you find that now is not the right time, and chose to sinktrap this. Let's fight terror, and not terror fighters.
#6
Listen to Dogs, dear, .com does not choose to be patient or tactful, but he has never visited Rantburg anonymously. I assume that the reason we haven't seen much of him lately has to do with a lovely -- and likely not at all sweet -- thing keeping him busy in the wilds of Las Vegas, where he's lived since moving back from Saudi Arabia not all that long ago. I realize you and he are not fond of one another, but the moderators and the old timers like him, so you are not going to win that one. And remember, we who come here are quite clear who the bad guys are, and don't need to be pursuaded. Truly! ;-)
#8
trailing wife:
Whiny obsession and all trump Bridge-play can indicate only 1 presence. He was banned until yesterday according to Seafarious, and he signalled the second coming by regurgitating outdated Hannrity stock. With all the material available to Rantburgers, it should be obvious that the White House is sharpening pre-emption, so it is not wise to stay angrily rooted in the 2002 worldview like the Maglite wielding security guard.
#16
whining is unattractive. LOTP answered before I could, but I echo her comments
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/01/2006 16:08 Comments ||
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#17
I had to go back to the beginning, when I first started visiting. MBD was one of the premier TROLLS infesting Rantburg - fairly hard to forget. Multiple agendas is (still) the game. Bush hatred, Muslim hatred, VDH hatred, LOL. Above all, nothing negative happens in the WoT World that isn't Bush's personal fault. Reading recent posts it's there, but generally more circumspect than in the glory daze. Back then, the comments were deleted, but I and many others got to see them before they were. This time, MBD has survived because it has been careful.
Here, refresh your memories. A number after the link indicates the number of its TROLLED comments on that particular article.
#20
lotp:
Forums tend to attract obsessive-compulsives. Trust me: they are always in attack mode and if Moderators muss their sandboxes, you become their target. Dollars for dimes says that they come here in both friendly and hostile guises, and work toward pathological equilibrium on both levels. I have a good rapport with those who come here only for info, and I will treat subjective posts like wallpaper. The WOT is about to change. Rantburgers should be better able to adapt.
#24
ironic, huh, N Spemble? But I repeat myself :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/01/2006 18:45 Comments ||
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#25
LtD, I've been around the Internet since before it WAS the internet, ie since the ARPANET days when people in British Columbia, like you, were not online.
Don't presume to teach your elders about online culture. ;-)
#29
Just 2 days ago (comment #20) MBD reached its pathological equilibrium.
Every US President has forsworn the first-strike use of nuclear weapons - for 60 years. Painting this as another of Carter's legacies, which are already numerous and odious, is prejudicial logical fallacy, such fallacies are something at which MBD excels. Much of it is cut and pasted from other sources, I'm sure. You can tell when it decides to add original thoughts... I've noticed the oddness in some of your constructs - and you've obliged with another:
"Rantburgers should be better able to adapt."
Perhaps what's said in BC should stay in BC. Don't need you here, that's a certainty.
Once upon a time, as the links I gave above indicate rather clearly, Fred knew what to do with MBD - and did it repeatedly - that was only about a month's timespan. That a real nuke 'em first post didn't raise but one eyebrow must (please) be because it came late... I hope.
#30
For the record...yesterday I sinktrapped LtD's off-topic, personally insulting sneak attack on another poster. I sinktrapped the reply to LtD's comment to prevent the thread from devolving into a food fight. I then poop-listed whichever smartypants changed its name and posted to stir the pot. I don't like calling out individual posters, but LtD, you're on the list. Keep your commenting focused on the War on Terror, and not on the other RB participants.
#31
Guess you'd better whack me, then, Seafarious. I object to this sick fuck's posts going unchallenged.
Ah, well, it doesn't matter. The moderators redact clearly innocent comments on lame grounds and skip right over insane bombs. It used to be exciting, wild, fun, interesting; you could just lurk and enjoy the hard edged banter and the heavenly snarking. Lucky, TGA, AC, and others would leaven the mix with laughter, facts, and insight. Terribly missed, those are gone, now. I'd guess it's lonely on the ramparts for the stalwarts remaining, stalked by the sinktrap.
Pass the cucumber sandwiches, please. Mon Dieu! Sans croûtes, naturellement! Barbares! Ah, et passent les nukes, svp.
#34
Seafarious gave notice that desperate ad hominem attacks are not welcome here, presumedly because said attacks are all noise and no substance.
Pot -> Kettle -> Black
I have a good rapport with those who come here only for info, and I will treat subjective posts like wallpaper.
Riiiiiiight. Here's a hint kiddo. .com outclasses you before the devil can get his shoes on. If you're wondering why he's not here, I'd wager it's because he probably refuses to get into a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
Respectfully, as I said, I am tactfully ignoring you know who no matter what name he goes under. OCD is a problem. Howie Mandel gets an anxiety attack when someone asks to shake his hand. I was stating a fact when I said that OCD types - at least 3 - are here. Lotp and yourself will probably have cause to agree with me at some time, if you don't already. I have apologized for breaking the rules. OCD control types could not.
VASCO: India and France will carry out joint naval exercises off the Goa coast from tomorrow where aircraft carriers, fighter aircraft and submarines would display their prowess and tone up compatibility between the forces of the two countries.
French multi-mission aircraft Rafale and Modernised Super Etendards (MSE) will test its skills against Indian Navy's Sea Harriers and Air Force's Jaguar maritime fighters in seven-day exercises in which French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and Indian aircraft carrier Viraat would participate.
The French navy has despatched its nuclear submarine Saphir, and a fleet of 25 aircraft including multi-mission Rafale, MSEs, Dauphin and Lynx helicopters, Advanced Airborne Warning and Air Control Systems (AWACS) Hawkeye and air surveillance aircraft Atlantique II for the exercises.
Besides Viraat, the Indian task force would comprise guided-missile destroyers Mumbai and Gomti, tanker Aditya and submarine Shankul.
The two navies would tone up compatibility with a special stress on improving communications during the exercise conducted 200 nautical miles off the Goa coast which would also include air-to-ground bombing.
A senior French Naval officer said there were some problems on account of communication between the two navies which were being corrected very fast.
"We have been following the NATO and Western systems of communication, while India has been using the Russian systems," he said adding there was "fast improvement" on this front.
"Otherwise, the compatibility between the two navies is very perfect. They have been able to work together. Indian Navy is very professional," he said.
The officer said language was not a problem during the joint exercises as French officers and sailors now speak English as per the requirement.
The advanced exercises, the seventh of the series, would involve various air manoeuvres including dissimilar air combat, fleet air defence, intermediate and advanced anti-submarine warfare and maritime inderdiction operations.
During the exercises, the Navy's Sea Harriers would operate sorties from the French carrier.
Posted by: john ||
04/01/2006 18:29 ||
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#1
India might actually sink a French ship on accident.
Posted by: Charles ||
04/01/2006 22:35 Comments ||
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NWFP Governor Khalilur Rehman presided over a high-level meeting to review the law and order situation in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas at Governors House, Peshawar. Chief Secretary Ejaz Ahmad Qureshi, Frontier Constabulary Inspector General Maj General Mohammad Alam Khattak, FATA Secretary Muhamad Shahzad Arbab, Governor Secretary Arbab Mohammad Arif, Khyber Agency Political Agent Fida Wazir participated in the meeting. The meeting also reviewed the situation in Bara and proposed measures to tackle the situation. The Khyber Agency political agent informed the meeting about government action taken so far. Rehman said the government would take action against all defying its authority, whether such people were in Bara, North and South Waziristan or in the settled districts of the province. He directed authorities concerned to show no mercy to miscreants.
This was after he said all was well, no Taliban here, move along...
Posted by: Fred ||
04/01/2006 00:00 ||
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from the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com. Free, but registration required. Ms. Rosett calls on the man whose nemesis she is. Read the whole thing -- a nice thing to read on the weekend. If you don't like registering for sites, use BugMeNot.com.
'I Am Not Running Away' Meet Benon Sevan, the man at the center of the Oil for Food scandal.
NICOSIA, Cyprus--"Medium or sweet?" asks Benon Sevan. He is inquiring how much sugar I would like in the Turkish coffee he's boiling up for us on his kitchen stove, and I am torn between thanking him for his hospitality and wondering if he might poison the refreshments. For the past three years, we have had a somewhat fraught connection, via a shared interest in the biggest corruption scandal ever to hit the United Nations--he as a star suspect, and I in writing about it. So when, together with a traveling companion, I paid a surprise visit on a recent Sunday afternoon to Mr. Sevan's current home--here in the capital of his native Cyprus--I really had little hope that he would do anything but slam the door on me.
This city of old sandstone walls, street cafés and orange trees is where the former head of the U.N. Oil for Food program has been living quietly since he slipped out of New York last year, shortly before he was accused by Paul Volcker's U.N.-authorized investigation of having "corruptly benefited" from the graft-ridden U.N. aid effort for Iraq. Since then, Mr. Sevan's name has been in the news, but the man himself has been all but invisible. He has refused to talk to the press, and he turned away a group of visiting U.S. congressional investigators who knocked on his door last October. The U.N., while paying Mr. Sevan his full pension, has deflected almost all questions about him. He has not been brought before any court of law. As a citizen of Cyprus, he is safe on the island from U.S. extradition, and there is no sign the Cypriot authorities are planning to bring charges against him.
Yet the questions abound. It was with trepidation that I approached the nine-story white building where Mr. Sevan now lives... knocked. The tall, bespectacled 69-year-old answered, wearing a gray-and-blue T-shirt, warm-up pants, slippers and a thin gold watch. He recognized me instantly, and protested: "I don't want to talk to you. I have nothing to say." We stared at each other, and he volunteered: "I am not ashamed to look in the mirror when I shave myself." Then: "I am closing the door now."
But he didn't...After some more dickering, I finally offered the compromise that I would not ask him to answer questions on the record about Oil for Food. With that, he ushered us into his living room for what turned into a 2 1/2-hour chat.
It is a strange limbo in which Mr. Sevan now lives, apparently alone and with a lot of time on his hands. Just three years ago, he was running a multibillion-dollar U.N. operation in Iraq, and together with his wife, Micheline Sevan (who also worked at the U.N.), was renting a midtown Manhattan apartment for $4,370 per month, owned a house in the Hamptons, and was jetting around the world on U.N. business. Today, if Mr. Sevan wishes to remain out of reach of various criminal investigations spawned by Oil for Food, he is basically confined to self-imposed exile on Cyprus.
#3
She must be likeable to have such rappor with him. I find it interesting he realizes the spiritual and moral nature of the scandal; these are the guys that turn into key witnesses and turn over evidence when their conscience gets them. She needs to wine and dine him next.
BERLIN -- Six world powers came to Berlin seeking unity in their bid to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions. But by the time they left, their common front had sprung new leaks, leaving a delicate diplomatic road ahead.
The meeting on Thursday of ministers from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China had been aimed at keeping up pressure on Tehran after a milestone statement by the UN Security Council.
Yet more than three hours of talks ended with Washington and its European allies still struggling to convince Russia and China to crack down on Iran for its suspected efforts to build a nuclear bomb.
The Western countries were upbeat about the talks a day after the Security Council capped weeks of haggling and adopted a non-binding statement urging Iran to halt all uranium-enrichment activities.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the meeting sent "a very strong signal" on international unity. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that Tehran had "miscalculated" in counting on divided world opinion.
But at a post-meeting news conference, the Russians and Chinese were conspicuous in singing a different tune on Iran, which maintains its nuclear program is for strictly peaceful purposes.
Both went out of their way to insist on a peaceful solution to the row, in contrast to the Americans who will not take any option off the table and have occasionally hinted at possible military action.
"The Chinese side feels that there has already been enough turmoil in the Middle East," said Chinese deputy foreign minister Dai Bingguo. "We do not want to see new turmoil being introduced to the region."
While the United States pushed to at least brandish the threat of sanctions against Iran if it keeps up its sensitive work on uranium enrichment, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov took a different view.
"Russia doesn't believe that sanctions could achieve the purposes of settlement of various issues," he said. "We believe that there must be a balanced approach of the international community."
A wide gap appeared even in the perception of the threat posed by Iran.
The Americans branded Tehran the world's "central banker" for terrorism and an undemocratic, destabilizing element in the Middle East on top of a potential nuclear menace. But the Russians were buying little of it.
"Before we call any situation a threat, we need facts, especially in a region like the Middle East where so many things are happening," Lavrov told reporters.
He said that it was up to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which referred Iran to the UN Security Council, to provide facts on the alleged Iranian threat and "so far they have not been provided".
Reluctance by Russia and China clouded chances for further action by the Security Council where they hold a veto along with the other three permanent members, the United States, France and Britain.
The statement adopted by the 15-member council on Wednesday essentially gives Iran 30 days to comply with demands that it halt its controversial nuclear activities but does not say what would happen if it did not.
A senior US State Department official, who asked not to be named, said that the "next logical step" would be a resolution under chapter seven of the UN charter that could pave the way for sanctions.
The official said that Rice and some other ministers on Thursday urged such a course. But he added, "I am not saying that there is unanimity about this. There was not an agreement among all the parties."
But the Americans could take comfort that they had made significant process over the last year in whipping up international support to challenge Iran's nuclear activities.
A year ago the United States was struggling to get the Security Council involved and now it is. At that time the Europeans were balking at US calls for possible sanctions and pressing negotiations; now they are on the same page.
If the Russians and Chinese were trying to put brakes on the process, their vote for Wednesday's statement and presence at Thursday's meeting were welcome signs for the US administration.
"We're pleased where we are right now," said the State Department official.
#1
This is nothing but a ritual dance. Everybody but perhaps the Iranians knows what will happen next. Diplomats have long been discussing "what ifs..." and telling each other "then...", for months.
And yet they will turn up at the UNSC and go through all the motions, as if nothing had been mentioned before. And they will submit endless motions they know will fail before they make the one that everyone has already agreed to.
#3
Time to leave the table, and tell what the Chinese and Russians have gained by selling out world/regional security for power and money. Embarrass them: name names
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/01/2006 18:55 Comments ||
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#4
Short of actually attacking Iran itself, I could not agree with you more, Frank. Russia and China are facilitating international terrorism and the world needs to hear it loud and clear.
Senior members of Iraq's ruling Shi'ite Alliance bloc called publicly for the first time on Saturday for Ibrahim al-Jaafari to step down as prime minister to break months of deadlock over a national unity government. Other senior Alliance officials, speaking anonymously, confirmed that four of seven main groups within the bloc wanted Jaafari to give up the nomination for a second term if, as is all but certain, he fails to persuade minority Sunni and Kurdish parties to drop their refusal to serve in a cabinet under him.
"There is a broad trend inside the Alliance who want Jaafari to do this (step aside) and we expect him to do so," Daoud said. "We have stood behind him for 50 days and today we have reached the conclusion that there should be a prime minister for all Iraqis, not just one group."
Alliance officials said the seven key groups inside the bloc had met on Thursday and Friday and concluded by a four to three majority to give Jaafari just days to persuade the Kurds, Sunnis and secular leaders to drop their opposition to him. That seems highly improbable but a committee of three Alliance officials was holding meetings with the Kurds and Sunnis today. A Kurdish political source said: "Our position regarding Jaafari is clear and has not changed."
It was not clear what mechanism might be used to choose a new nominee for prime minister nor who that might be. A favorite may be the defeated SCIRI candidate, Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. Jaafari continued to have the support of his own Dawa party, its Dawa-Iraq allies and the movement of Iranian-backed cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr. SCIRI and its Badr allies, the independents and the Fadhila party were against Jaafari.
U.S. diplomats deny accounts from SCIRI and other Alliance officials that Washington has pressured Hakim to drop Jaafari. However, a U.S. diplomat said on Saturday that it was Washington's analysis that any prime minister must be both competent and able to unite Iraqis -- and that Jaafari did not score well on those criteria. The United States, however, had no preferred candidate in mind and would not impose its views.
A leading Iraqi Shia cleric demanded on Friday that the United States sack its ambassador, accusing Zalmay Khalilzad of siding with his fellow Sunni Muslims in the sectarian conflict gripping the country. In a sermon read out at mosques for Friday prayers, Ayatollah Mohammed al-Yacoubi said Washington had underestimated the bloody conflict between Shias and the once dominant Sunni Arab minority, which many fear threatens to trigger a civil war. By this, they are either misled by reports, which lack objectivity and credibility, submitted to the United States by their sectarian ambassador to Iraq ... or they are denying this fact, Yacoubi said in the message, later issued as a statement. It (the United States) should not yield to terrorist blackmail and should not be deluded or misled by spiteful sectarians. It should replace its ambassador to Iraq if it wants to protect itself from further failures.
After the imam of Baghdads Rahman mosque read that line, worshippers chanted Allahu Akbar - Holy Shit God is Greatest.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/01/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Right, demand away. Muslims. The only ones they hate more than each other are everyone else. There's nothing to underestimate, they're from another world, another time, that Arab alternate reality. Separate them or let them slow-burn to the end.
Newly-installed Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar said the United States is biased towards Israel, guilty of crimes against the Muslim and Arab world and is widening the rift between the American people and those of the Middle East. Zahar, considered one of the more hardline officials in the Palestinians' new Hamas-led government, also said his group would not cave in to international pressure to change its ways and that it had no plans to negotiate with Israel.
Responding to a statement by US President George W. Bush, that Washington would provide no aid to a Palestinian government headed by Hamas unless it changes its extremist policies, Zahar said Bush's comments were in line with American support for Israel in the United Nations, and its massive aid to Israel. "America is committing big crimes against the Arab and Islamic countries," Zahar told the Associated Press late Wednesday at his Gaza home. "This new decision, will intensify the gap between the American people, American interests and the Middle East in general," Zahar said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/01/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Of course since he is Hamas he is a fricking terrorist so his word ain't worth shit.
#2
Why do they have so many ministers when they all speak with the same voice? What a waste of human resources! If you read Hamas Covenant, you don't need to listen to their ravings anymore!
New Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said Palestinians were "sick and tired of the West's racist approach" to the Middle East conflict in an article published in a British newspaper on Friday.
I guess he's just trying to hit all the buttons, to see which ones might work.
The Hamas government leader said Israel's unilateralism was a formula for conflict and asked if Western policymakers ever felt "ashamed of their scandalous double standards" in an article entitled "A good peace or no peace" in The Guardian daily. He wrote that the West had piled demands on Hamas since they won the Palestinian general election in January, while equivalent demands had not been directed towards the parties in Israel's general election, held Thursday.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/01/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
We are sick and tired of racist islamo-facists who kill innocent people all the fricking time.
FOAD Ismail
#2
Oh, I get it - he mean's we're anti-semitic, right? Oh, no, wait, the Jews are semites and we support them, but then again so are the Palestinians. So, if I understand him right, he's declaring that the Palestinians are a heretofore undiscovered racial class...Caucasoid...Negroid...Mongoloid...Palestinoid (?)
#9
Just before 9/11, there was thre Durban conference, I'm sure Mr. Gromgoru remembers how well "antiracism" had morphed into hatred of the israeli, USA, and West, in that order.
They hate us, and tell us it's because we're "racist" (hey, they're not, of course!), and since it fits in our white men/westerners guilt-driven worldview (because of suicidalism), we fall for it, and let them go away with it. They're playing us like violins, hitting all the right buttons.
Osama Bin Laden has no intention of being taken alive and has designated a special gun to be shot with in the event of imminent capture, one of the Al Qaeda chiefs former bodyguards told the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes.
"What kind of gun?"
"It's a special gun!"
Abu Jandal, who was with Bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2000, said that his old boss had given strict instructions on what should happen if he was cornered. If he was going to be captured, Sheikh Osama prefers to be killed, Jandal said in the CBS interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
"Aaaarrrr! Y'll never take me alive, coppers!"
Jandal, who lives in Yemen, said he believed Bin Laden was hiding out in Afghanistan rather than Pakistan and warned that his most recent threats of another terror strike on the United States should be taken extremely seriously. When Sheik Osama promises something, he does it, he said. So I believe Osama Bin Laden is planning a new attack inside the United States, this is certain.
Thailand on Sunday holds its second general election in a year, with embattled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra set to win again in a polls marred by boycott by the main opposition parties and a call by an anti-Thaksin group for voters to tick "no vote" or abstain from voting.
Under Thailand's election process, voting is mandatory and about 45 million people of the country's 64 million population are eligible to vote to elect members to the House of Representatives which is made up of 500 members of parliament (MPs). Up to 400 of them are elected on a constituency basis and 100 from party lists, with the number appointed depending on the total number of votes obtained by the contesting parties.
Although TRT is expected to romp home in most constituencies due to the declared boycott by the main opposition parties -- the Democrat, Chat Thai and Mahachon -- the Election Commission (EC) pointed out that the election was unlikely to return the 500 MPs required to form a new parliament. There are nearly 200 constituencies in nearly 60 provinces across the country where TRT candidates will stand unchallenged, but to win they need to get at least 20 per cent of the votes cast, which looks impossible especially in the Democrat Party's stronghold in the restive southern provinces. Last year, TRT only won one seat compared to 52 by the Democrats in the south where more than 1,000 people have been killed in violence in the past two years.
In the capital, street demonstrations organised by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) to oust Thaksin had been taking place almost daily but Thaksin has vowed to carry on and leave his fate to the voters. The 56-year-old billionaire reiterated that he would step down if the ruling party did not receive half of the votes in tomorrow's election. Speculation has been rife that Thaksin will hand over the post to a trusted TRT figure before coming back in another election within a year after amendments are made to the constitution and to cool down the current political tension.
TRT's standing shot up ahead of the election after news emerged that his staunch critic and PAD leading figure Sondhi Limthongkul went to China yesterday, sparking rumours that he fled the country to avoid being charged for offending the king in an interview with a local newspaper.
Tension has been running high ahead of the election, with pro- and anti-Thaksin demonstrators venting their anger at various establishments in the capital, including newspaper outlets, the Election Commission and the Singapore Embassy, which came under fire following the Thaksin family's sale of Shin Corp to Singapore's Temasek Holdings.
Whatever the outcome tomorrow, the political crisis looks unlikely to end soon as PAD has scheduled another rally on April 7 to keep its pressure on Thaksin to leave for good.
But the biggest loser could be the Thai economy as the signs are already there, especially in terms of foreign direct investment and the lucrative tourism sector which saw 60,000 tourists from China and Singapore cancelling their visits to the kingdom due to the current turmoil.
Australia has warned of a possible terrorist attack against Western interests in Indonesia this weekend, and the US government issued a new security alert to its citizens for the country.
The advisory by the Australian government urged citizens against travelling to Indonesia, including the resort island of Bali, "due to the very high threat of terrorist attack".
"We continue to receive a stream of reporting indicating that terrorists are in the advanced stages of planning attacks in Indonesia against a range of targets, including places frequented by foreigners," it said.
"These reports include information about potentially heightened risk of attack on particular dates - recent reports suggest Sunday, April 2, 2006, (tomorrow) could be a potential date for attack but we emphasise that attacks could occur at any time, anywhere in Indonesia."
The dpa news agency reported this morning that the US Embassy in Jakarata has alerted its citizens, and said Westerners and Western interests in Indonesia remain under threat by terrorists.
"Recent reports suggest that Sunday April 2, 2006 could be one potential date for an attack; however, terrorist attacks can occur at any time, anywhere in Indonesia," the message said.
It warned especially of possible attacks on places where Americans and other Westerners live, congregate, shop or visit.
Western countries including Britain have issued frequent warnings about possible attacks in Indonesia.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/01/2006 00:18 ||
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It should be stressed that contrary to the impression given by the media and some analysts in the West concerning its so called diffuse independent networking character, al-Qa'ida began life and long continued its operations with the support of states:[1]
* 1980s, phase one: Activity in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.
* 1990-96, phase two: To work alongside the Islamist revolutionary regime in Sudan to export revolution to Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Eritrea.
* 1996-2001, phase three: Operations from Afghanistan, as an ally of the Taliban government.
Even today, the organization is "state-centered" in the sense that its goal is to take power in specific Islamic states and establish a new form of authoritarian government, a caliphate. The significance of a reliable base in Muslim territory is reflected in al-Qa'ida's return to Arab land, and its attempts to destabilize at least one regime and achieve a new safe haven. Ayaman al-Zawahiri, bin Ladin's deputy, explains the importance of the quest for a "fundamentalist base":[2] "Victory for the Islamic movements against the world alliance cannot be attained unless these movements possess an Islamic base in the heart of the Arab region." He notes that mobilizing and arming the nation will not yield tangible results until a fundamentalist state is established in the region:
The establishment of a Muslim state in the heart of the Islamic world is not an easy or close target. However, it is the hope of the Muslim nation to restore its fallen caliphate and regain its lost glory... We must not despair of the repeated strikes and calamities. We must never lay down our arms no matter how much losses or sacrifices we endure. Let us start again after every strike, even if we had to begin from scratch.
It is in this framework that we must see the concentration of al-Qa'ida's operational efforts on the Iraqi front. At the end of 2004, the US State Department assessed that the role of key Islamist groups in Iraq makes it "the central battleground in the global war on terrorism."[3]
Since the demise of the Taliban regime and al-Qa'ida "solid base" in Afghanistan three phases can be distinguished in the operational activity of the organization and its affiliates and supporters in the Muslim world: (1) After the demise in Afghanistan, the strategy of destabilizing Muslim countries by attacks against soft targets; (2) after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, concentration on the Iraqi arena against the US army and the coalition forces with the hope of a victory on the 1980s Afghanistan model; (3) since the fall of 2004, an extension of the fighting to most of the Middle East, an increased effort in Europe, but the appearance of the first strategic splits in its ranks.
Al-Qa'ida is Weakened after the Demise in Afghanistan
The goal of the World Islamic Front (WIF) for the Struggle Against Jews and Crusaders proclaimed by bin Ladin on February 22, 1998 was to form an international alliance of Sunni Islamist organizations, groups, and Muslim clerics sharing a common religious/political ideology and a global strategy of Holy War (jihad). It was replaced in the spring of 2002 by a new name, or perhaps framework-Qa'idat al-Jihad (The Jihad Base)-and WIF virtually disappeared.[4]
After the war in Afghanistan and until the Madrid bombings in March 2004, in spite of bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri, and other al-Qa'ida spokes persons' repeated threats to hit devastatingly at the heart of the United States and the Western world, all successful terrorist attacks have targeted Muslim countries (and Muslim communities such as Mombassa, Kenya). Local or regional groups affiliated with al-Qa'ida were primarily responsible for these operations. They include the Salafi factions in Tunisia and Morocco; Yemeni Islamists; or the Indonesian Jemaa Islamiyya (in fact a group led from Indonesia by Abu Bakr Bashir but with Malaysian, Philippine, and Singaporean branches striving to form a new regional Islamic state).[5] It seems that only the suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia in May 2003 were directly related to al-Qa'ida militants.[6] Interestingly, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, the economies of all these countries or communities (Djerba, Bali, Casablanca, Istanbul, Mombassa) are heavily dependent on tourism.
The campaign by al-Qa'ida terrorists and associates against Arab and Muslim regimes may be explained by a shift in the ideological and strategic thinking of those Islamists who now occupy the vacuum left by bin Ladin and his deputy. The targeting of the tourist infrastructures calls to mind the strategy of the Egyptian jihadist groups in the mid-1990s. One might speculate that this strategy results from the growing influence of al-Zawahiri, bin Ladin's deputy.[7] Yet this is also the result of the decline in al-Qa'ida's operational capabilities following the quick demise in Afghanistan, the unremitting campaign of harassment against its leaders, and the capture or elimination of many of its central commanders.[8]
On February 11, 2003, just before the US-led war in Iraq, bin Ladin distributed two audiocassettes. One addressed the Iraqi people while the other (at 53 minutes his longest to date) was directed to Arab governments and clerics. The main focus of his speech was not the United States, but rather the Arab governments and the Islamic clerics that supported them and gave them legitimacy. The conflict with these Arab governments was presented as eternal and insolvable.[9]
Focus on the Iraqi Arena
Bin Ladin's February 2003 message to the Iraqi people sought to encourage their morale and guide them as to how they should face and defeat the incoming American invasion of their country. In an attempt to convince the Iraqis that the United States was not invincible, bin Ladin explained how he and his followers, numbering only about 300, had frustrated the American action against them at Tora Bora in Afghanistan. He stressed the importance of the Iraqi people fighting united against the Americans, irrespective of whether they were Arabs or non-Arabs (Kurds), Sunnis, or Shi'a.[10] Religious scholars from the Islamic Research Academy at Egypt's al-Azhar university also declared on March 10, 2003 that a US attack on Iraq would require Arabs and Muslims to wage a jihad in Iraq's defense against "a new crusade that targets its land, honor, creed, and homeland."[11]
At the height of the war, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan declared that Saddam Hussein's government was ready to meet the overwhelming military superiority of the United States by resorting to widespread suicide attacks against Americans and British troops "and all who support them," both inside Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. At a news conference on March 29, 2003 he claimed that the Iraqi soldier who killed four Americans in a suicide attack outside the holy city of Najaf was the first in a wave of Iraqis and other Arab volunteers ready to become "martyrs." Arabs outside Iraq, he said, should help "turn every country in the world into a battlefield." [12]
Upon the fall of Baghdad, al-Nida, al-Qa'ida's website posted a series of articles which stated that guerilla warfare was the most powerful weapon Muslims had, the best method to continue the conflict with the "Crusader Enemy." It mentioned that it was with guerilla warfare the Americans were defeated in Vietnam and the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, "the method that expelled the direct Crusader colonialism from most of the Muslim lands, with Algeria the most well known."[13]
Despite American warnings Damascus permitted the passage of thousands volunteers, many of them Syrians, wishing to join the Iraqis in their war against the Americans. It started with a few dozen volunteers, mostly from the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. This went on until a missile from an American plane hit one of the buses of volunteers in Iraq, killing five passengers. [14]
Thus, the scenario for the insurgency and terrorist campaign in Iraq was built already in the weeks and possibly the months before the war, involving an "objective" coalition of ex-Ba'thists and army and intelligence officers, Iraqi Sunni Islamists delivered from Saddam's yoke, Muslim volunteers from Arab and European countries, and with the tacit support of Syria and probably Iran.
Due to some major American strategic errors and in spite of the swift and stunning US military campaign in Iraq, this scenario developed into "a continuum of violence and uncertainty": the lack of a quick Iraqi political alternative to the Saddam regime (contrary to what happened in Afghanistan), the disbanding of the regular army and police forces, and the lack of a clear planning for the immediate aftermath of the war.[15] In the words of a known American military analyst, "the US chose a strategy whose post-conflict goals were unrealistic and impossible to achieve, and only planned for the war it wanted to fight and not for the "peace" that was certain to follow."[16]
A short description of the Iraqi insurgency is necessary in order to understand and evaluate its use by al-Qa'ida and other global jihadist groups in order to expand the fight to the whole of the Middle East and beyond:
During the summer and fall of 2003, Iraqi insurgents emerged as effective forces with significant popular support in Arab Sunni areas, and developed a steadily more sophisticated mix of tactics. In the process, a native and foreign Islamist extremist threat also developed which deliberately tried to divide Iraq's Sunni Arabs from its Arab Shi'ites, Kurds, and other Iraqi minorities. By the fall of the 2004, this had some elements of a low-level civil war, and by June 2005, it threaten to escalate into a far more serious civil conflict.[17]
Iraqi insurgents, terrorists, and extremists exploited the media focus on dramatic incidents with high casualties and high publicity. They created "alliances of convenience and informal networks with other groups to attack the United States, various elements of the Iraqi Interim Government and elected government, and efforts at nation building." Then insurgents increasingly focused on Iraqi government targets, as well as Iraqi military, police, and security forces and tried to prevent Sunnis from participating in the new government, and to cause growing tension and conflict between Sunnis and Shi'a, and Arabs and Kurds. By May 2005, this began to provoke Shi'a reprisals, in spite of efforts to avoid this by Shi'a leaders, contributing further to the problems in establishing a legitimate government and national forces.[18]
Although from the beginning of the war and its immediate aftermath many Islamist groups were involved in the fighting against the US and coalition forces, the Jordanian-Palestinian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was considered to be the most dangerous leader of the most dangerous group connected with al-Qa'ida.[19] He was presented by the US and Western intelligence agencies as the former director of a training camp in Afghanistan and a close associate of Usama bin Ladin. He was believed to have escaped to Iraq during the US invasion. He was reportedly in Baghdad from May-July 2002 to undergo medical treatment, while establishing a network of approximately two dozen members who moved about freely throughout Baghdad for over eight months, primarily conducting transfers of money and materials.[20] He coordinated terrorist activities in the Middle East, Western Europe, and Russia from his base in Iraq, and his connections stretched as far as Chechnya and the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia. Al-Zarqawi was considered to be the leader of the terrorist group al-Tawhid, which first gained public attention in Germany when a number of its members were arrested in that country in April 2002.[21] Zarqawi was also presented as the leader of the Arab contingent within Ansar al-Islam linked to al-Qa'ida plots in Jordan during the millennium celebration, as well as to attempts to spread the biological agent ricin in London and possibly other places in Europe.[22]
At some point, most likely after the occupation of Iraq in April 2003, he split from Ansar al-Islam and created his own organization, which he called al-Tawheed wal Jihad (Monotheism and Jihad). This organization first came to world attention when US citizen Nicholas Berg was beheaded in April 2004, allegedly by Zarqawi himself, and the event was videotaped and posted on Islamist websites. Al-Tawheed wal-Jihad lacked a solid base of operation, and therefore the group decided to use Fallujah as "a safe haven and a strong shield for the people of Islam-'the Republic of Al-Zarqawi.'"[23]
The radical Sunni Islamist insurgents, like those belonging to the Zarqawi group, called also "neo-Salafis" or "Takfiries", believe they are fighting a region-wide war in Iraq to create a Sunni puritan state, a war that extends throughout the world and affects all Arab states and all of Islam. Foreign volunteers are one of the most dangerous aspects of the insurgency involved in the cruelest sectarian terrorist attacks against civilians-mostly suicide bombings, kidnappings, and beheadings. Some clerics and Islamic organizations recruit young Arabs and men from other Islamic countries for Islamist extremist organizations and then infiltrate them into Iraq through countries like Syria. There is the danger that some will probably survive and emerge as new cadres of expert terrorists building a new generation of trained radical young men and jihadists outside the country.[24]
Zarqawi's group is composed mostly of non-Iraqi Arab volunteers who originate from countries bordering Iraq-Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, and Syria-due to the ease with which jihadists from these countries can infiltrate Iraq. According to some researchers, the multi-national nature of the two groups could also explain the alliance between Zarqawi and bin Ladin.[25]
The successes of the Zarqawi group during the two and a half years of terrorist and guerrilla activity and the continuation of their painful strikes against the coalition forces and primarily against the officials and security forces of the new Iraqi government has attracted more and more groups and volunteers to his ranks. Although for a long time he was considered the representative of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, it was only in December 2004 that his allegiance to bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida materialized. This was due to growing strategic and tactical disagreements between the various leaders of the jihadist movements.
Expanding in the Middle East, Increased Effort in Europe, First Strategic Splits
The disagreements are a result of the need to achieve at any cost a quick visible victory in the fight against the US-Western coalition and its Arab allies and relate to three main issues: (1) With the growing strategic and political status of the Shi'a in Iraq and the potential threat they represent in the entire Gulf area, the Shi'a have been designated as the Sunni jihadist movement's main enemy. (2) The growing number of innocent Muslims killed in terrorist attacks due to the increasing violence in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, have produced negative reactions among Arab public opinion and the need to delineate tactical "red lines." (3) With the beginning of the terrorist jihadist activity in Saudi Arabia in May 2003, there has become a need to define the main struggle front-Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or possibly Egypt. The need to score a strategic victory on the Iraqi and Middle Eastern fronts, to attract greater participation of new young levees in the struggle, and solidarity from the Arab masses have also pushed the jihadist leaders to bandwagon the Palestinian intifada and to increase their operational efforts in Europe in the hope of disrupting the US coalition.
The Sunni-Shi'a Divide
From the September 2003 assassination of Ayatollah al-Hakim and to present, Zarqawi has made the utmost effort to provoke the Shi'a of Iraq to retaliate against the Sunnis and thus trigger a civil war. This strategy, reflecting the common Wahhabi doctrine, became obvious after US authorities leaked a letter written by him in January 2004. The Shi'a were described as "the most evil of mankind...the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy, and the penetrating venom." Their crime was "patent polytheism, worshipping at graves, and circumambulating shrines."[26]
Zarqawi's position contradicted bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida's views concerning the Shi'a. It should be noted that in his audio message of February 2003, bin Ladin stressed the importance of the Sunnis and Shi'a fighting united against the Americans. He even cited Hizballah's 1983 suicide bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut as the first "American defeat" at the hands of Islamist radicals.[27]
The victorious image in the Arab and Muslim world achieved by the Shi'a Hizballah movement and its leader Hasan Nasrallah after the Israeli unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 and, more recently, the exchange of prisoners (including many Palestinians) between Israel and Hizballah in January 2004, created much resentment and criticism in Saudi jihadi-Salafi elements. Moreover, the presentation of Nasrallah as the "New Salah al-Din" put the role of the global vanguard of Islam played by Qa'idat al-Jihad at risk for a takeover by the Hizballah. Since the process of establishing a new government in Iraq, with a clear Shi'a majority, Salafi web sites and forums have stepped up their attacks against the Shi'a, Iran, and Shi'a doctrines.[28]
It is interesting to note that it was bin Ladin who accepted the strategy of Zarqawi and the Saudi jihadists, recognizing the predominance of the leaders who continued the fight on the ground rather than that of the nominal leadership which was hiding somewhere in Pakistan. This process took a whole year and resulted in the nomination of Zarqawi as the "emir" of al-Qa'ida in Iraq.
Bin Ladin did not respond to Zarqawi's first letter sent to him in December 2003 (the one leaked in January 2004 by the Americans). On October 17, 2004, "with the advent of the month of Ramadan and the need for Muslims to unify ranks in the face of the enemy," Zarqawi announced that "Tawhid and Jihad Group, its prince and soldiers, have pledged allegiance to the shaykh of the mujahideen Usama bin Ladin."[29] He changed the name of his organization from al-Tawheed wal Jihad to Tandhim Qa'idat al-Jihad fi bilad al-Rafidain (The al-Qa'ida Jihad Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers). Interestingly, the announcement mentioned that "[t]here have been contacts between Shaykh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi_with the brothers in Al-Qaida for 8 months," but "a catastrophic dispute occurred." The contacts resumed, however, and in the end, "the brothers from Al-Qaida" understood "the strategy of the Tawheed wal-Jihad Movement in Mesopotamia..." and "their hearts" were "pleased by the methods [al-Zarqawi] used."[30]
Al-Qa'ida indeed reprinted and acknowledged the statement, responding favorably to the new development in their online magazine Mu'askar al-Battar.[31] On December 27, 2004, bin Ladin designated "honored comrade Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi" as the "commander [Amir] of al-Qaida organization in the land of the Tigris and the Euphrates," and asked "the comrades in the organization" to obey him.[32] In a video aired on al-Jazeera, in what appears to be a response to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's call on his Shi'a followers to vote en masse and decree that those who boycott the elections are "infidels," bin Ladin warned against the participation in elections: "Anyone who participates in these elections_ has committed apostasy against Allah." He also endorsed the killing of security people "in Allah's name."[33]
However, this important issue has continued to trouble the relations between the al-Qa'ida leadership and al-Zarqawi, as evidenced in the letter sent to the latter by Ayman al-Zawahiri in July 2005. In this major document Zawahiri acknowledges "the extent of danger to Islam of the Twelve'er school of Shiism... a religious school based on excess and falsehood," and "their current reality of connivance with the Crusaders." He admits that the "collision between any state based on the model of prophecy with the Shi'a is a matter that will happen sooner or later." The question he and "mujahedeen circles" ask Zarqawi is "about the correctness of this conflict with the Shi'a at this time. Is it something that is unavoidable? Or, is it something can be put off until the force of the mujahed movement in Iraq gets stronger?"[34]
Moreover, Zawahiri reminds Zarqawi that "more than one hundred prisoners-many of whom are from the leadership who are wanted in their countries-[are] in the custody of the Iranians." The attacks against the Shi'a in Iraq could compel "the Iranians to take counter measures." Actually, al-Qa'ida "and the Iranians need to refrain from harming each other at this time in which the Americans are targeting" them.[35] This is indeed a new kind of real-politik on the part of al-Qa'ida leadership.
The Killing of Innocent Muslims
The jihadist fighters in Iraq were enraged when in July 2004 Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Zarqawi's former prison mentor, posted an article on his website criticizing "blowing up cars or setting roadside explosives, by firing mortars in the streets and marketplaces, and other places where Muslims congregate." Al-Maqdisi stated that the "hands of the Jihad fighters must remain clean so that they will not be stained by the blood of those who must not be harmed even if they are rebellious and shameless," and warned against attacks on Christian churches, as this would strengthen the will of the infidels against Muslims everywhere.[36] A year later, al-Maqdisi criticized "the extensive use of suicide operations" in which many Muslims were being killed and expressed reservations about the extensive killing of Shi'a in Iraq. Moreover, he opposed declaring the Shi'a as non-Muslims, which in effect permitted their blood.[37]
In a 90-minute audio recording released in May 2005, Zarqawi relied on Muslim jurists to justify and legitimize the collateral killing of Muslims in the act of killing infidels, as the evil of heresy is greater than the evil of collateral killing of Muslims.[38] In the same recording, Zarqawi announced the beheading of the chief of intelligence of the Shi'a Badr, "the brigade of perfidy, the brigade of apostasy and the brigade of agents for Jews and Crusaders." Some Islamist Saudi writers, such as Abd al-Rahman ibn Salem al-Shammari, also praised the beheading of captives. This then became one of Zarqawi's preferred tactics in his attempts to threaten and expulse the foreign presence in Iraq, and he was proudly named the "Shaykh of the Slaughterers."[39]
In a July 2005 audiotape, Zarqawi claimed that it was a duty to wage jihad against the Shi'a, because they were apostates (murtadoon) and had formed an alliance with the Crusaders against the jihad fighters. In July 2005, Zarqawi published a third statement in which he rejected al-Maqdisi's accusations and attacked him, saying that ulama who were not participating in the jihad in Iraq had no right to criticize the actions of the fighters, thereby even serving Crusader interests.[40]
A small number of Sunni shaykhs and organizations urged Zarqawi to withdraw his anti-Shi'a statements on the grounds that they ignite fitna (internal strife), thus serving the interests of the occupation. So did the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, the Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Shaykh Abd al-Aziz al-Shaykh, and the Syrian Islamist Shaykh Abd al-Mun'im Mustafa Halimah. Moreover, five "resistance organizations"-the Army of Muhammad, al-Qa'qa Brigades, the Islamic Army in Iraq, the Army of Jihad Fighters in Iraq, and the Salah al-Din Brigades-stated that "the call to kill all Shi'ites is like a fire consuming the Iraqi people, Sunnis and Shi'ites alike" and proclaimed that the resistance targeted only Iraqis "connected to the occupation."[41]
Define the Main Struggle Front: Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt?
Throughout bin Ladin's public statements and declarations runs one fundamental and predominant strategic goal: the expulsion of the American presence-both military and civilian-from Saudi Arabia and the entire Gulf region.[42]
According to Cordesman and Obaid, Saudi Arabia only began to experience serious internal security problems when bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida actively turned against the monarchy in the mid-1990s and began to launch terrorist attacks in an effort to destroy it.[43] However, these attacks remained sporadic until May 2003 when cells affiliated with al-Qa'ida began an active terror campaign directed both at foreigners-especially Americans-and the regime.[44]
According to this analysis, an organization that called itself the al-Qa'ida Organization in the Arabian Peninsula set up an infrastructure that included safe houses, ammunitions depots, cells, and support networks. However, in Afghanistan there were disagreements among the leadership of al-Qa'ida regarding the timing and potential targets of attack in Saudi Arabia, and the then local leader Yousef al-Uyeri maintained that al-Qa'ida members were not yet ready for it. This group was responsible for the May 2003 attacks which indicated that al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula had become a major threat. Since the May 2003 attack, Saudi Arabia has remained a prime target for bin Ladin. [45]
This analysis does not explain why al-Qa'ida did not anything serious to attack its major target and the loathed Saudi royal regime until after its demise in Afghanistan. It seems more realistic to evaluate that there was a kind of unwritten agreement between the Saudi rulers and bin Ladin not to touch Saudi interests and soil. This could also explain why Saudi Arabia was one of the only three countries (with Pakistan and the UAE) that recognized the legitimacy of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, supported it financially, and maintained diplomatic relations with it until the last moment.
According to Dr. Sa'ad al-Faqih, a widely acknowledged expert on al-Qa'ida, the jihadists have abandoned their previous tactics of targeting Westerners and the security forces in Saudi Arabia and are now focusing all their attention on the royal family. They "believe that the prevailing opinion in Saudi Arabia-and probably in the wider Muslim world-is that the royal family is infidel and deserves harsh treatment_ [and they] have overcome their fear of a secular takeover in the event of the sudden downfall of the House of Saud." According to al-Faqih, it seems that in the late 1990s, bin Laden thought that if the House of Saud were removed, the country would fall into the hands of secular forces. Al-Qa'ida has reached the conclusion that, as they learned from the Iraq theater, the sudden collapse of the regime would either invite foreign interference or lead to chaos. An American invasion would therefore provide a massive recruitment opportunity for them and a certain victory.[46] It is of interest to note that according to al-Faqih, the local Saudi leadership has made "quite a few clumsy decisions" in the recent past and "at the operational level there is now a very tenuous link between bin Laden and his advisers and the local al-Qaeda leadership in Saudi Arabia."[47]
According to Reuven Paz, an Israeli expert on Islamist organizations, the attacks in Saudi Arabia marked an important change in the jihadist strategy and a return from the distant Afghanistan to the Arab land. This shift became even more evident after the first jihadist attacks in Sinai, on October 7, 2004, after seven years of a de facto timeout from terrorist operations conducted on Egyptian soil.[48]
In an article written by the Saudi Abu Abbas al-Aedhi, the Sinai attack is presented as the first of several forthcoming attacks in Egypt as part of a clear strategy approved by the mujahideen in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt. The jihad in Iraq and Egypt are viewed as "the ropes to strengthen the Jihad in Arabia"[49] The next steps should be the beginning of jihad in Yemen and Kuwait on the one hand, and the unification of the North African jihadist groups in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, and the Sudan, on the other hand. The main theme of al-Qa'ida's strategy, however, is to place the jihad groups in Saudi Arabia at the center, coordinating the Islamist activity with the two "branches" in Iraq and Egypt as part of this central goal. This strategy was devised among others by the late Yousef al-Uyeri, killed in June 2003 by the Saudi police. According to this analysis, al-Uyeri marks the shift of the younger generation of the dominant scholars of global jihad to Saudi hands and should be viewed as the architect of global jihad in Iraq.[50]
Another jihadist analysis, seemingly based upon the 1601 page book on jihad by Abu Mus'ab al-Suri relates to the Sinai attacks of October 2004, the consequent Cairo (April 2005) attacks, and the Sharm al-Shaykh (July 2005) attacks. According to al-Suri the most important jihadist target in this phase must be attacks against tourists. The attacks in Sinai were, therefore, a highly successful example of this strategy, both against the Egyptian government and in terrorizing the Westerners.[51] This also seems to be an attempt to identify new fronts in the Arab world-apart from Iraq-to conduct the struggle. Paz believes there is a high likelihood that we are facing two separate strategies and even two different competing parties of global jihad, with Zarqawi in the Iraqi arena and al-Suri stationed in other parts of the Arab world.[52]
Furthermore, it is important to note that the Saudi involvement in the Islamist insurgency in Iraq is significant, as they represent some 61 percent of Islamists killed and some 70 percent of Arab suicide bombers. It seems that thus far, Saudis are not only the group most affected by the insurgency in Iraq, but also help feed it. One significant explanation for this could be the Wahhabi hostility towards the Shi'a, who are perceived as infidels, and the notion of the need to support the Sunni minority in Iraq.[53]
Apparently, the new strategy proposed by the new ideologues of global jihad is implemented on the ground.
In January 2005, eight Kuwaiti soldiers, five of them officers, were arrested after a tip from Saudi Arabia that an al-Qa'ida cell was operating in Kuwait and planning attacks against US troops. The subsequent round-up of suspects included the detention of an imam said to be the cell's mastermind. [54] On March 19, 2005, a car bomb driven by an Egyptian suicide bomber in Doha, the capital of Qatar, demolished a theater packed with Westerners and damaged an English speaking school, leading to one fatality and up to 50 people injured. The attack was the first in the country, which hosts the US Central Command that directed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, [55] and came two days after the suspected al-Qa'ida leader in Saudi Arabia urged militants in Qatar and other Gulf states to wage holy war against "crusaders" in the region. [56]
The Brigades of Martyr Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, a previously unknown group apparently named for a Saudi al-Qa'ida leader killed in a 2004 shootout with security forces, issued a website statement threatening to carry out further attacks in Kuwait. Clear Saudi ties also have emerged in militant crackdowns in the Gulf island state of Bahrain. In 2004, at least six Bahrainis were arrested on suspicion of planning to bomb government buildings and foreign interests and collaborating with foreign terrorist groups. In January 2005, Omani authorities arrested at least 100 Islamic extremists suspected of planning to carry out attacks at a popular shopping and cultural festival.[57]
Playing the Palestinian Card
Until his demise in Afghanistan in the winter of 2001/2 bin Ladin gave Palestine low priority. For him, the heart of the matter was the US presence on the holy soil of Saudi Arabia, which he saw as the bridgehead of a corruptive non-Muslim culture. Throughout bin Ladin's public statements and declarations is one fundamental and predominant strategic goal: the expulsion of the American presence-both military and civilian-from Saudi Arabia and the entire Gulf region. Bin Ladin and the WIF he created did not forget what they saw as crimes and wrongs done to the Muslim nation: "the blood spilled in Palestine and Iraq.... the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon_ and the massacres in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, the Philippines, Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnia, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina." Yet it is worth noting that the Palestinian issue was given no special prominence. According to Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, bin Ladin "has been criticized in the Arab world for focusing on such places as Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and [he] is therefore starting to concentrate more on the Palestinian issue."[58] Following the demise of Afghanistan, the hiding al-Qa'ida leaders bin Ladin and Zawahiri mentioned Palestine more and more as a top priority and in parallel there was a sharp increase in attacks by jihadist groups against Jewish and Israeli targets.
The first major attack after the war was the suicide bombing on April 11, 2002 outside a historic synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia. The 16 dead included 11 Germans, one French citizen, and three Tunisians. Twenty-six German tourists were injured. The Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites claimed responsibility.
On May 16, 2003, 15 suicide bombers attacked five targets in Casablanca, Morocco, killing 43 persons and wounding 100. The targets were a Spanish restaurant, a Jewish community, a Jewish cemetery, a hotel, and the Belgian Consulate. The Moroccan Government blamed the Islamist al-Assirat al-Moustaquim (The Righteous Path), but foreign commentators suspected an al-Qa'ida connection.
On November 15, 2003, two suicide truck bombs exploded outside the Neve Shalom and Beth Israel synagogues in Istanbul, killing 25 persons and wounding at least another 300. The initial claim of responsibility came from a Turkish militant group, the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front, but Turkish authorities suspected an al-Qa'ida connection.[59]
On November 28, 2002, at least 15 people died in the first suicide attack by al-Qa'ida against an Israeli target: an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombassa, Kenya. A large part of the Paradise Hotel was reduced to rubble and nine Kenyans and three Israelis were killed. A parallel attempt to fire two missiles at an Israeli holiday jet (an Arkia airline plane-a Boeing 757 carrying 261 passengers) that had taken off from the city's airport failed.
The reason for this sudden interest in Jewish and Israeli targets was most likely the result of al-Qa'ida and associates groups' attempts to bandwagon what was considered at that stage a very successful violent al-Aqsa intifada by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and other Palestinian groups. On the one hand, it permitted them to claim their support to the Palestinian people, but at the same time it created an anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli terrorist campaign which would attract more solidarity and support from the Arab and Muslim masses and possibly attract more young recruits to their ranks. More recently in August 2005, four Israeli cruise ships carrying a total of 3,500 tourists scheduled to dock in the Mediterranean Turkish resort of Alanya were rerouted to the island of Cyprus by the Israeli authorities due to fear of a terrorist attack. A Syrian citizen named Louai Sakra was arrested for plotting to slam speedboats packed with explosives into the cruise ships filled with Israeli tourists.
Al-Qa'ida in Palestine?
A new radical Muslim terrorist group with close ties to al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, has started operating in the Gaza Strip, according to PA security officials. Jundallah, or "Allah's Brigades," consists mostly of former Hamas and Islamic Jihad members. It launched its first attack on IDF soldiers near Rafah in mid-May 2005. The group is especially active in the southern Gaza Strip. Jundallah's emergence in the Gaza Strip confirms suspicions that al-Qa'ida has been trying to was trying to establish itself in the area before Israel's planned withdrawal.[60]
On August 2, 2005, a posting on the forum al-Mustaqbal al-Islami (Islamic Future) included what it termed the "First Declaration of al-Qa'ida from the Land of the Outpost, Occupied Palestine," specifically the "military wing" of a group calling itself "Alwiyat al-Jihad fi Ard al-Ribat" (The Jihad Brigades in the Land of the Outpost). The declaration described a rocket operation undertaken on July 31, 2005 against the settlements of Neve Dekalim and Ganne Tal:
... In the context of the Islamic Jihad by our mujahideen brothers of al-Qa'ida's World Organization against the Jews and Crusaders. We declare that the Brigades are not a new or passing organization on the land of Palestine, but a [true] believer spirit that urges on the mujahideen to make themselves into a single rank.
Some observers, however, believe that the new group is merely a split from Fatah or an operational pseudonym that will disappear after a few uses, as was the case with the Tanzim Jundallah group.[61]
In September 2005, Mahmoud Waridat, a West Bank Palestinian arrested in July the same year, was charged by IDF prosecutors with undergoing training at an al-Qa'ida camp in Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, though it was said the defendant later declined an offer to join bin Ladin's global network.[62] A leaflet distributed in Khan Yunis in October 2005 by al-Qa'ida Jihad in Palestine announced that the terrorist group had begun working towards uniting the Muslims under one Islamic state, the only way for Muslims to achieve victory over their enemies. The leaflet is the latest indication of al-Qa'ida's effort to establish itself in the Gaza Strip after the Israeli withdrawal from the area. On the eve of the disengagement, a number of rockets were fired at the former settlements of Neveh Dekalim and Ganei Tal. An announcement claiming responsibility on behalf of al-Qa'ida members in the Gaza Strip was made by three masked gunmen who appeared in a videotape. Al-Qa'ida's new on-line television channel branded PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas a "collaborator with the Jews," accusing him of assisting Israel in its war on Hamas.[63]
Nine Katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel on the night of December 27, 2005. Four rockets hit the town of Kiryat Shmona, another hit the Western Galilee town of Shlomi, and four landed in open areas. IDF intelligence estimated that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, headed by Ahmed Jibril-was responsible for the Katyusha fire, most likely in coordination with Hizballah. As a result, on December 28, 2005, Israel Air Force fighter jets fired two missiles at a PFLP-GC training base at Na'ameh, about seven kilometers south of Beirut, slightly wounding two fighters.[64]
On December 29, 2005, al-Qa'ida's Committee in Mesopotamia (Iraq), led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the rocket attack. According to its statement:
[After] careful planning and intelligence gathering, a group of al-Tawheed lions and Al-Qaida operatives put their faith in Allah and launched a new attack on the Jewish state_ [with] ten Grad rockets from Muslim territory of Lebanon toward selected targets in the northern part of the Jewish state_. This blessed attack was carried out by the mujahideen in the name of Mujahid Shaykh Usama Bin Laden, the commander of al-Qa'ida_ With the help of Allah, what is yet to come will be far worse."[65]
Sources in the IDF said it was difficult to determine the reliability of the announcement.
It should be noted that there is an al-Qa'ida affiliate in Lebanon, Usbat al-Ansar, comprised of radical Sunni Palestinians from the Ayn al-Hilwah refugee camp in southern Lebanon. On August 19, 2005 an al-Qa'ida affiliate calling itself the Abdallah Azzam Battalions fired three Katyusha rockets from Aqaba, Jordan. One of the rockets landed near Eilat's airport, the second narrowly missed an American ship in the Aqaba harbor, and another hit a group of Jordanian soldiers.
Although it is possible that Hizballah or one of its Palestinian allies were behind the December 27, 2005 bombing of northern Israel, the claiming of responsibility by Zarqawi's al-Qa'ida Committee in Mesopotamia should be taken seriously. It is possible that the stage of al-Qa'ida and Iran refraining "from harming each other" has already passed and the moment has arrived when the Iranian regime, in coordination with Assad's regime or Hizballah, have decided to give a free hand to al-Qa'ida to do their "dirty work."[66]
Increased Effort in Europe
Although the vast majority of Muslims in Europe are not involved in radical activities, Islamist extremists and vocal fringe communities that advocate terrorism exist and reportedly have provided cover for terrorist cells. It must be stressed that there was a serious Islamist terrorist threat in Europe long before 9/11. On December 24, 1994, four terrorist members of the Algerian GIA hijacked Air France flight 8969 at Algiers airport bound for Paris. The terrorists assassinated an Algerian policeman. In addition, during the intense standoff, authorities learned that the aircraft was laden with more than twenty sticks of dynamite and that the GIA planned to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower in Paris, blowing it up. The plane was diverted to the Marseille International Airport and there French commandos managed to overcome the terrorists.[67]
In the 1990s, the NATO, EU, and US decision to support Bosnia's independence practically neutralized bin Ladin's plan to use the Bosnian front-and later Kosovo and Albania-to penetrate Europe. Still, some ex-mujahideen remain in Bosnia and seem recently to be active.
In December 2000, the arrest of four suspected al-Qa'ida members by German police foiled a plot to attack the Strasbourg Cathedral. An Islamist preacher named Abu Qatada was arrested for the attack but was released on a lack of evidence. December is the twelfth and last month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ... This article is about the year 2000. ...Also, in September 2001, US, European, and Middle Eastern efforts foiled a plot to blow up the US embassy in Paris. The same month, a plot was uncovered to bomb a NATO air base in Kleine Brogel, Belgium, home to 100 US military staff. Germany (the Hamburg cell) and Spain (the wide infrastructure in Madrid and some provincial cities) were identified as key logistical and planning bases for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Moreover, the Milan Islamic Center in Italy has served since the mid-1990s as a base and support for several Egyptian, Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan al-Qa'ida affiliated cells, which did not reach the stage of conducting terrorist attacks before their arrests.
The March 11, 2004 attack on the trains in the Atocha station in Madrid was the first successful operation in Europe by an al-Qa'ida affiliated group. It was followed by the July 7 and 23, 2005 series of four suicide bombings in the London underground, the second one a failed operation. The March 2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid have been attributed to an al-Qa'ida-inspired group of North Africans. UK authorities suspect the four young British nationals who carried out the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks on London had ties to al-Qa'ida as well.
These attacks were presented as retaliation for the participation of Spanish and British troops in the US-led coalition in Iraq. The Madrid attack executed just three days before elections in that country indeed brought down the Aznar government and imposed a socialist government that decided to withdraw its troops from Iraq. However, the arrest of some 130 Islamist activists preparing new major attacks in Spain after the March 2004 bombings and the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq prove that the war is only a good pretext.[68] The goals of the Islamists are much larger and they are not willing to compromise. And the Islamists have no intentions of stopping after one victory, and most likely not stop before the liberation of Andalusia from Spanish "occupation."
Since the war in Iraq, attacks and threats have also targeted the "minor" US allies in the framework of the international coalition: Poland and Norway, South Korea, Italy, and Denmark. Moreover, police operations in Germany, Italy, Ireland, and the UK have led to the arrest of terror suspects and the dismantling of an Islamic network centered in Italy that recruited fighters for the insurgency in Iraq. This network, possibly involving Ansar al-Islam in Italy and al-Tawhid in the UK and Germany, also had a foothold in Norway, France, Spain, and the Netherlands.
The preferred option and long-term goal of al-Qa'ida is therefore not a concept different from "transnationalism." The Muslim world is not, nor has it ever been, defined wholly or mainly in terms of the umma or transnational linkages and identities. To be sure, forms of solidarity over Muslim-related political conflicts and issues-such as Palestine, Kashmir, and now Iraq-do exert a hold on many people and inspire some to radical activism.[69]
Zarqawi Taking the Lead?
According to a serialized book published in July 2005 by a Jordanian journalist, the future strategy of Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi is based on expanding the conflict with the United States and Israel and involving new parties in it. Simultaneously, a broad-based Islamic jihadist movement will assume responsibility for changing the circumstances that have long prevailed in the region and for establishing an Islamic caliphate state in seven stages with Iraq as its base.[70]
Turkey, which is located north of Iraq, is viewed as the most important Islamic state because of its great economic and human resources and significant strategic location. Abu-Mus'ab and al-Qa'ida believe that Turkey lacks self-determination and freedom because "the Jews of Dunma" control the army and the economy and are the real powerbrokers in the country. Therefore, Turkey's return to the ranks of the nation "will not happen unless a powerful strike is dealt to the Jewish presence in that country." Al-Qa'ida's current strategy is to infiltrate Turkey slowly and postpone major operations there until major gains are made in Iraq.
Iran is the second country that al-Qa'ida seeks to involve in this conflict. Iran expects that the United States and Israel will strike a number of nuclear, industrial, and strategic Iranian facilities. Abu-Mus'ab thinks that the US-Israeli confrontation with Iran is inevitable and could succeed in destroying Iran's infrastructure. Accordingly, Iran is preparing to retaliate by using the powerful cards in its hands. The area of the war will expand, pro-US Shi'a in Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer embarrassment and might reconsider their alliances, and this will provide al-Qa'ida with a larger vital area from which to carry out its activities.[71]
However, according to al-Faqih, "al-Qaeda secretly thinks it might have made a mistake by appointing Zarqawi as its leading representative in Iraq," because he is "too decisive as a commander" and is driven by arrogance. According to some rumors, "the jihadi circles are trying to reach bin Laden in order to convince him to remove Zarqawi as the local al-Qaeda commander in Iraq." The jihadist leaders in Iraq are not at all happy with Zarqawi's conduct and "begrudge his arrogance and recklessness." Basing himself on Zawahiri's letter to Zarqawi, al-Faqih concludes that Zawahiri remains al-Qa'ida's main strategist.[72]
Conclusion
It is clear from this succinct presentation and from the events on the ground that the current situation in the Middle East is both complex and volatile and that developments in one country or region are influencing neighboring countries and conflicts. Therefore, the war on terrorism will require a long and intricate campaign. The danger of the Islamist networks can be neutralized in the long run only by preventing the formation of a "liberated fundamentalist territory"-the concept of Ayman Zawahiri-in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Central Asia, Indonesia or elsewhere in the Muslim world.
The existing danger is not that of a united World Islamist Front and its victory, but rather of a politically and socially destabilized Middle East and of an increasingly paranoid and undemocratic global society (especially if WMD terrorism succeeds). On the strategic-military level, only political, intelligence, and operational cooperation between the great international players-the United States, Europe, Russia, China, and India-can overcome this dangerous perspective. On the ideological and political level, the radical trends in the Muslim societies can be defeated only by the moderate Muslims.
The words of a famous moderate Muslim leader of a moderate Muslim country, Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia, speak for themselves:
An effective counterstrategy must be based upon a realistic assessment of our own strengths and weaknesses in the face of religious extremism and terror. Disunity, of course, has proved fatal to countless human societies faced with a similar existential threat. A lack of seriousness in confronting the imminent danger is likewise often fatal. Those who seek to promote a peaceful and tolerant understanding of Islam must overcome the paralyzing effects of inertia, and harness a number of actual or potential strengths, which can play a key role in neutralizing fundamentalist ideology. These strengths not only are assets in the struggle with religious extremism, but in their mirror form they point to the weakness at the heart of fundamentalist ideology...
Muslims themselves can and must propagate an understanding of the "right" Islam, and thereby discredit extremist ideology. Yet to accomplish this task requires the understanding and support of like-minded individuals, organizations and governments throughout the world. Our goal must be to illuminate the hearts and minds of humanity, and offer a compelling alternate vision of Islam, one that banishes the fanatical ideology of hatred to the darkness from which it emerged.[73]
*Ely Karmon is Senior Research Scholar at The Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and also Research Fellow at The Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel. He lectures on terrorism and guerrilla in modern times at IDC, at the IDF Military College, and at the National Security Seminar of the Galilee College. Karmon is the author of Coalitions of Terrorist Organizations. Revolutionaries, Nationalists and Islamists (Leiden, Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2005).
[1] Fred Halliday, "A Transnational Umma: Reality or Myth?," October 7, 2005, at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization/umma_2904.jsp.
[2] Ayman al-Zawahiri, Knights under the Prophet's Banner, published as a serialized book by the London Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. English translation available at: www.fas.org/irp/world/para/ayman_bk.html.
[3] US Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Country Reports on Terrorism 2004, Department of State Publication 11248, April 2005, pp. 61-62.
[4] Reuven Paz, "Qa'idat al-Jihad. A New Name on the Road to Palestine," ICT website, May 7, 2002, at: www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=436.
[5] April 11, 2002, a blast at Tunisian synagogue kills 17 people. A fuel tanker is blown up outside a synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba killing 19 people, including 14 German tourists. An al-Qa'ida spokesman later says the organization was behind the suicide attack.
October 12, 2002, bomb attacks on Bali nightclubs kill 202. Two bombs rip through a busy nightclub area in the Balinese town of Kuta killing 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. The Indonesian authorities believe the attacks were carried out by the South East Asian militant network Jemaa Islamiah which is said to have links to al-Qa'ida.
November 28, 2002, Israeli targets come under attack in Kenya. Sixteen people including three suicide bombers are killed in a blast at an Israeli owned hotel in Mombassa. A missile fired at an Israeli plane misses its target. A message on a website purporting to come from al-Qa'ida says the group carried out the attack.
May 12, 2003, dozens killed in Saudi bombings. At least 34 people are killed in a series of bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh. The targets were luxury compounds housing foreign nationals and a US Saudi office. Washington and Riyadh say al-Qa'ida is the prime suspect. It is the first in a string of attacks over successive months in Saudi Arabia.
May 16, 2003, Morocco is rocked by suicide attacks. Bomb attacks in Casablanca kill 45 people including 12 attackers. Targets include a Spanish restaurant, a five star hotel, a Jewish community center, and the Belgian consulate. Four men later sentenced to death for the attacks are said by the Moroccan authorities to be members of the Salafia Jihadia widely believed to be linked to al-Qa'ida.
December 15, 2003, suicide bombers hit two Turkish synagogues. At least 23 people are killed and more than 300 injured in two devastating suicide attacks on synagogues in Istanbul. The government blames al-Qa'ida for the attacks.
December 20, 2003, two bomb attacks on British interests in Turkey. Attacks on the British Consulate and the HSBC bank offices in Istanbul leave 27 people dead and more than 450 wounded. There are separate claims of responsibility from two allegedly al-Qa'ida connected groups.
See BBC News, Timeline: Al-Qaeda, at: http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.%20co.uk/1/hi/world/3618762.stm.
[6] "Saudis arrest suspects in Riyadh bombings," ICT website, May 28, 2003, at: http://www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=901.
[7] Ayman al-Zawahiri audiocassette, October 9, 2002; September 2003: Parts of the 105-minute tape broadcast by al-Jazeera satellite television showed Bin Ladin with al-Zawahiri, who urged supporters to bury Americans in "the graveyard of Iraq." Although bin Ladin had not appeared on a videocassette for many months, remaining silent, he allowed al-Zawahiri to speak.
[8] As of May 2005 the list included, among others: Ramzi bin al-Shibi (the reputed recruiter for the 9/11 attacks); Mohammed Atef, Abu Zubaydah, and Khaled Shaykh Mohammad (all senior operational planners); Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirih (bin Ladin's alleged point man on the Arabian Peninsula and chief organizer for maritime attacks such as the USS Cole suicide strike in 2000); Riduan Isamuddin (also known as Hambali, al-Qa'ida's main link to Southeast Asian militant groups and the accused mastermind of the 2002 Bali attacks in Indonesia); Ahmed Khalfan Ghilani (one of the FBI's 22 most wanted terrorists, believed to be a key figure behind the 1998 U.S. embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania); Abu Faraj al-Libbi (thought to be al-Qa'ida's third most senior leader in 2005 and main coordinator for operations in Pakistan); Haitham al-Yemeni (described as a central figure in facilitating the international dissemination of jihadist communications and supplies).
List taken from Peter Chalk, Bruce Hoffman, Robert Reville, Anna-Britt Kasupski, Trends in Terrorism: Threats to the United States and the Future of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, RAND Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy, 2005.
[9] Two bin Ladin supporters developed this critical analysis of Muslim governments in their articles. They present the Arab League and the Muslim Conference as "two paralyzed associations." Moreover, Arab Islamic movements are also criticized, and the weak leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, for instance, was compared with the strong figures of Hassan al-Bana and Sayyid Qutb.
[10] B. Raman, "The Iraq War & Terrorism," South Asia Analysis Group, Paper no. 647, March 30, 2003.
[11] Iraq Report, Vol. 6, No. 10, March 14, 2003.
[12] John F. Burns, "Iraqis Threatening New Suicide Strikes against U.S. Forces," NYT, March 30, 2003.
[13] "Al-Qa'ida on the Fall of Baghdad," MEMRI Special Dispatch-Jihad and Terrorism Studies, No. 493, April 11, 2003.
[14] Ze'ev Schiff and Nathan Guttman, "Thousands cross Syrian border to fight for Iraq," Haaretz, April 1, 2003. See also Jonathan Schanzer, "Foreign Irregulars in Iraq: The Next Jihad?," Analysis of Near East Policy from the Scholars and Associates of The Washington Institute, PolicyWatch No.747, April 10, 2003.
[15] On the lack of planning for the immediate aftermath of the war see Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (London: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 413.
[16] See Anthony H. Cordesman, with the assistance of Patrick Baetjer, Iraq's Evolving Insurgency, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Working Draft: Updated as of June 23, 2005. Cordesman gives an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of the Iraqi insurgency and the strategic and tactical errors of the Bush Administration in dealing with it.
[17] Cordesman, Iraq's Evolving Insurgency, pp. 11-12.
[18] Ibid.
[19] For an in-depth analysis of his career see Nimrod Raphaeli, "The Sheikh of the Slaughterers: Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi and the Al-Qa'ida Connection," MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis Series, No. 231, July 1, 2005.
[20] King Abdallah of Jordan told the press that in 2002, Jordan had asked Iraq to extradite al-Zarqawi following the murder of the U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley, but the Saddam regime had ignored the request. Most agree that al-Zarqawi was definitely in Iraq at the end of 2002 and that he was given shelter by the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam (see below), which operated from northern Iraq. Ibid.
[21] Ulrich Schneckener, "Iraq and Terrorism: How Are ' Rogue States' and Terrorists Connected?," Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik Comments, March 2003.
[22] Kenneth Katzman, "Iraq : U.S. Regime Change Efforts, the Iraqi Opposition, and Post-War Iraq," Congressional Research Service Report, March 17, 2003.
[23] Raphaeli, The Sheikh of the Slaughterers.
[24] See Anthony H. Cordesman, New Patterns in the Iraqi Insurgency: The War for a Civil War in Iraq, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Working Draft, Revised: September 27, 2005.
[25] Reuven Paz, "Arab Volunteers Killed in Iraq: An Analysis," Project for the Research of Islamist Movements (PRISM) Series of Global Jihad, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 2005).
[26] See Raphaeli, The Sheikh of the Slaughterers.
[27] See Reuven Paz, "Global Jihad and the Sense of Crisis: al-Qa'idah's Other Front," PRISM Occasional Papers, Vol. 1, No. 4 (March 2003), at: www.e-prism.org/pages/4/index.htm.
[28] Reuven Paz, "Hizballah or Hizb al-Shaytan? Recent Jihadi-Salafi Attacks against the Shiite Group," PRISM Occasional Papers, Vol. 2, No. 1 (February 2004), at: http://www.e-prism.org/images/PRISM_no_1_vol_2_-_Hizbullah_or_Hizb_al-Shaytan.pdf.
[29] See National Terror Alert, at: http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/index.php?p=297.
[30] "Communiqu? from Al-Tawheed wal-Jihad Movement (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) in Iraq ," October 17, 2004, at http://www.globalterroralert.com/zarqawi-bayat.pdf.
[31] "Zarqawi's Pledge of Allegiance to al-Qaeda: From Mu'asker al-Battar, Issue 21," Translation by Jamestown Foundation Researcher Jeffrey Pool, Terrorism Monitor, Vol. 2, No. 24, December 16, 2004.
[32] Islamist sources in Britain criticized bin Ladin's designation of Zarqawi as leader of the group, because it was smaller than other terrorist organizations operating in Iraq, such as Jaysh Ansar al-Sunna or al-Jaysh al-Islami. See Raphaeli, The Sheikh of the Slaughterers.
[33] Nimrod Raphaeli, "Iraqi Elections (III): The Islamist and Terrorist Threats," MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 202, January 18, 2005.
[34] See Ayman al-Zawahiri, Knights under the Prophet's Banner, published as a serialized book by the London al-Sharq al-Awsat, the English translation at: http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/ayman_bk.html.
[35] "Letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi," ODNI News Release No. 2-05, October 11, 2005, at http://www.dni.gov/letter_in_english.pdf. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the letter dated July 9, 2005, obtained during counterterrorism operations in Iraq.
[36] Raphaeli, Iraqi Elections (III).
[37] See Y.Yehoshua, "Dispute in Islamist Circles over the Legitimacy of Attacking Muslims, Shi'a, and Non-combatant Non-Muslims in Jihad Operations in Iraq: Al-Maqdisi vs. His Disciple Al-Zarqawi," MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 239, September 11, 2005.
[38] "The [collateral killing] is justified under the principle of dharura [overriding necessity], due to the fact that it is impossible to avoid them and to distinguish between them and those infidels against whom war is being waged and who are the intended targets. Admittedly, the killing of a number of Muslims whom it is forbidden to kill is undoubtedly a grave evil; however, it is permissible to commit this evil _ indeed, it is even required _ in order to ward off a greater evil, namely, the evil of suspending Jihad." See "Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi: Collateral Killing of Muslims is Legitimate," MEMRI, Special Dispatch, No. 917, June 7, 2005.
[39] Raphaeli, The Sheikh of the Slaughterers.
[40] Yehoshua, "Dispute in Islamist Circles over the Legitimacy of Attacking Muslims, Shi'a, and Non-combatant Non-Muslims in Jihad Operations in Iraq."
[41] "Sunni Sheikhs and Organizations Criticize Al-Zarqawi's Declaration of War Against the Shi'ites," MEMRI Special Dispatch Series, No.1000, October 7, 2005.
[42] According to the "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places"(its full title), "the latest and the greatest of [the] aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet_ is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places-the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims-by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies." The declaration is presented as the first step in the "work" of "correcting what had happened to the Islamic world in general, and the Land of the two Holy Places in particular.... Today.... the sons of the two Holy Places, have started their Jihad in the cause of Allah, to expel the occupying enemy out of the country of the two Holy places." See Ely Karmon, "Terrorism a la Bin Ladin is not a Peace Process Problem," PolicyWatch, No. 347, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, October 1998.
[43] Cordesman and Obaid claim that the Kingdom was the first target of al-Qa'ida when in November 1995, the US-operated National Guard Training Center in Riyadh was attacked, leaving five Americans dead. This subsequently led to the arrest and execution of four men, purportedly inspired by Usama bin Ladin. However, bin Ladin who denied involvement praised the attack (see Washington Post, August 23, 1998) and according to other analysts the terrorists were inspired by the Jordanian jihadist ideologue al-Maqdasi.
[44] See Anthony H. Cordesman and Nawaf Obaid, "Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia: Asymmetric Threats and Islamist Extremists," Center for Strategic and International Studies, Working Draft: Revised January 26, 2005.
[45] Ibid. Again according to Cordesman and Obaid, at the beginning, al-Ayeri was the chief of al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula and reported directly to bin Ladin (al-Ayeri's was the only regional al-Qa'ida operation to report directly to OBL). Al-Ayeri's lieutenants, in turn, reported directly to him. They were responsible for setting up five autonomous cells focusing exclusively on operations within Saudi Arabia.
[46] See Mahan Abedin, "New Security Realities and al-Qaeda's Changing Tactics: An Interview with Saad al-Faqih," Spotlight on Terror, Jamestown Foundation, Vol. 3, No. 12 (December 15, 2005). Dr. Saad al-Faqih heads the Saudi opposition group, Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA).
[47] Ibid.
[48] Reuven Paz , "From Riyadh 1995 to Sinai 2004: The Return of Al-Qaeda to the Arab Homeland," PRISM Series of Global Jihad, Vol. 2, No. 3 (October 2004).
[49] The article, entitled "From Riyadh/East to Sinai," was published on several Islamist Internet forums.
[50] According to Paz, two of his Saudi associates, are trying to fill his place-Shaykh Ahmad al-Zahrani, alias Abu Jandal al-Azdi in Saudi Arabia, and Shaykh Abu Omar Seyf in Chechnya, who is the leading Islamic scholar of the Arab battalion of volunteers there. Another individual to be noted is Shaykh Hamed al-Ali, a Saudi who lives in Kuwait.
[51] The analysis was published on September 25, 2005 by a known al-Qa'ida supporter, nicknamed Abu Muhammad al-Hilali. It appears to be the first analysis of this kind to be based on the 1601 page book on Jihad by Abu Mus'ab al-Suri which was published via the internet in January 2005. See Reuven Paz, "Al-Qaeda's Search for new Fronts: Instructions for Jihadi Activity in Egypt and Sinai," PRISM Occasional Papers, Vol. 3, No. 7 (October 2005).
[52] According to Paz, al-Suri is probably the most talented combination of a scholar and operative of global jihad. He was one of the chief al-Qa'ida explosive trainers in Afghanistan, but also gave many lectures about jihadist strategy, religion, and indoctrination. Many of his lectures from Afghanistan are posted on his web site in the form of video and audiotapes, and much of the material there appears in his monumental book. His call for a "Global Islamist Resistance" could be part of global jihad, but also a call for a new form of al-Qa'ida loyal to the doctrines of Abdallah Azzam, but not necessarily to the Saudi form of jihadist Tawhid. Interestingly, al-Suri has a European background. He is a Spanish citizen as a result of marriage, and lived in the 1990s in Spain and London. He is well familiar with the European arena and Muslim communities there, primarily that of North Africans. Ibid.
[53] Reuven Paz, "Arab Volunteers Killed in Iraq: An Analysis," PRISM Series of Global Jihad, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 2005).
[54] 12,000 US civilians live in Koweit, while 25,000 US troops are based in there, using it as a launch pad for operations in Iraq. See Robin Gedye, "Soldiers in 'anti-US plot' held by Kuwait," Daily Telegraph, January 15, 2005.
[55] Sean Rayment and Peter Zimonjic, "One dead as blast demolishes Qatar theatre packed with westerners," Daily Telegraph, March 20, 2005.
[56] Reuters, March 25, 2005.
[57] Paul Garwood, "Terror wave spreads across Mideast, raising concerns over regional links," Associated Press, February 1, 2005.
[58] Karmon, "Terrorism a la Bin Ladin is not a Peace Process Problem."
[59] See Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003: A Brief Chronology, Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State, March 2004, at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/5902.htm.
[60] Khaled Abu Toameh, "Al-Qaida-linked terrorists in Gaza," The Jerusalem Post, May. 20, 2005.
[61] Stephen Ulph, "Al-Qaeda expanding into Palestine?" Terrorism Focus, Jamestown Foundation, Vol., 2, No. 15, August 5, 2005.
[62] "IDF prosecutors charge West Bank Palestinian with Al-Qaida link," Reuters, September 8, 2005.
[63] Khaled Abu Toameh, 'Al-Qaida raises its head in Gaza," Jerusalem Post, October 10, 2005.
[64] See Amos Harel, 'Iraq al Qaeda claims Tuesday's missile attack on northern Israel,' Haaretz, December 29, 2005.
[65] See the Communique at http://www.globalterroralert.com/pdf/1205/zarqawi1205-9.pdf.
[66] "Letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi."
[67] See "Air France Flight 8969" at: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/%20Flight%20AF%208969%20Alger-
Paris%20hijacked.
[68] See "El n?mero de presos por terrorismo isl?mico en Espa?a ha crecido un 59% en el 2005," Barcelona La Vanguardia, December 25, 2005.
[69] Halliday, "A Transnational Umma."
[70] Fuad Husayn, The Second Generation of Al-Qa'ida (Part 13), a serialized book on Al Zarqawi and Al-Qa'ida published by the London al-Quds al-'Arabi, July 11, 2005. See also Yassin Musharbash, "What al-Qaida really wants," Spiegel Online, August 12, 2005, at: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,369448,00.html.
[71] Ibid.
[72] See See Mahan Abedin, "New Security Realities and al-Qaeda's Changing Tactics: An Interview with Saad al-Faqih,"
[73] Abdurrahman Wahid, "Right Islam vs. Wrong Islam," WSJ.com Opinion Journal, December 30, 2005, at: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007743.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/01/2006 00:33 ||
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#3
True, 3dc, but that does not mean he is a nazi sympathizer. OTOH, lama and camel are related. ;-)
Of course, he's sooooo relevant! He's been out of Tibet for almost half a century. He found his base of adherents within moonbat community, and thus he is sort of catering to them.
As for 10 Osamas springing from one dead... they would soon fatwa each other, so I'd say it may have some positive aspect, not mentioning that being visible, they may offer nice targets. I am more worried about the damage the 'closet jihadis' may do, incrementally, taking minute steps that are hardly noticed.
#4
The Dalai Lama is out of touch with reality. He loves publicity and plays PC politics. In the past he has called(asserted foolishly)that death cult as a RoP(lost that URL unfortunately). For that I've long junked him as any sort of Sipiritual guide completely despite being a nominal(but very adequately well-read) Buddhist.
There is a provision in Buddhism teachings that allows one not to speak if the words though true are not helpful or pleasant in any given context. He spoke invertedly and falsely to please the bad guys. He should simply have STFU and no stigma would have been attached.
#5
No, I think DL is on to something there...If 10 proto Bin Ladens spring up and we kill them then 100 will spring up in their passing, then 1000, 10000, etc. Soon we will have cleaned out the whole nest of Jihadi nuts. Brilliant!
#7
Hah! Love the "separated at birth" photos. Notably HST looks the less brain-addled.
Posted by: regular joe ||
04/01/2006 9:23 Comments ||
Top||
#8
He got this part right. Wonder if he made it up himself?
"It is fascinating. In the West, you have bigger homes, yet smaller families; you have endless conveniences - yet you never seem to have any time. You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don't bother to cross the road to meet your neighbours," he said.
"I don't think people have become more selfish, but their lives have become easier and that has spoilt them. They have less resilience, they expect more, they constantly compare themselves to others and they have too much choice - which brings no real freedom."
#9
2b, I agree he did get that part correct. And I think he probably did make that up himself.Just like Einstien said, great minds will always be attacked by lesser minds, and when it comes to it, not many are more intellegent and thoughtful than the DL. perhaps not any, certainly not the moroons who supposedly run the show worldwide these days.
Posted by: bk ||
04/01/2006 9:58 Comments ||
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#10
Hello Dolly, too late since Generals Pelosi and Reid have declared war (yesterday).
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/01/2006 10:01 Comments ||
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#11
on second thought - it's all just a cute little word play. I'd write one running it backwards that takes our many choices, which most in the world don't have, and keep us busy doing things we want to do, rather than being stuck inside some societal caste of rich or poor, and allows the ordinary hard working working stiffs to rise up from the fields and share in some of that wealth usually hoarded by a very small few, such as the Dali Lama himself, and become successful in life, able to travel and afford conveniences. Further more, we have bigger homes because we have more conveniences and smaller families
...etc. but I don't want to spend the time. Actually I have time to do that, if I so choose, but I choose not to because there are other things that I'd rather be doing right now.
I'd choose my lifestyle, he describes above, over life in Tibet any day. I'm sure 99.9999% of people in Tibet would make that same choice, if they had it.
#12
sorry bk - I changed my mind. What he says is right and thoughtful, but life is about balance, not absolutes. So he makes the same mistake on evaluating our lives, as he does about being humane to terrorists - he is dealing in fantasy absolutes ideals and ignores the reality of the need in the real world to work towards achieving balance.
#13
FWIW: Tibet was a backwards hellhole when the Lamas ruled it (visions of Lost Horizon notwithstanding) - >50% of the population were serfs, little better than slaves. It's easy being a ruler-in-exile; you don't have to do anything.
Not justifying the ChiCom's invasion, just sayin'.
#14
Yes, #13, There's this story of a Christian Sikh by the name of Sadhur Sandar Singh(I believe) who was severely tortured by the Tibetan authorities then when he went a preaching there. They(the Tibetans) weren't so pristine that they carried no bad Karma to frutify.
#15
Carl Spackler: So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/01/2006 13:05 Comments ||
Top||
#16
I've never understood the D Lamas thing about Garnet and Gold - BC or FSU fan?
#20
I seem to remember reading that Afghanistan was like totally Buddhist once, big Buddhist statues and all. Then along came the religion of peace. The Buddhists tried appeasement. Didn't work very well. Now there are no Buddhists or Buddhist statues left in Afghanistan
#21
The Dali Lama neglects to note how not killing bin Laden could easily result in the death of millions. Inaction frequently incurs far more deleterious consequences than does action. If you need an example, just look at Europe's Muslim problems.
#22
"You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don't bother to cross the road to meet your neighbours,"
I wonder how many times he crossed the road to meet his neighbors when he was growing up in the 1,000-room Potala Palace.
"they have too much choice - which brings no real freedom"
A robe and a begging bowl brings real freedom, I suppose, but I'm not ready to become one of his monks.
#23
People with robes and begging bowls are parasites off the productive members of society. Reminds me of the German/Austrian artist/architect Hundertwasser, who permitted his friends to share their food with him, let him bed on their furniture, use their facilities, and take him out for little treats. A thoroughly unpleasant and essentially abusive person, although very talented in his chosen fields. At least he made lovely paintings and produced wonderful buildings. What do begging monks provide?
And we should believe this man ... why? It's not like his boss would let a former employee who Knows Too Much address the international press without getting a visit from Big Mahmoud if any of this were true.
The possibility exists that Canadian troops stationed in southern Afghanistan could come across the world's most well-known fugitive, Osama bin Laden, according to one of his former bodyguards.
Abu Jandal told the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes bin Laden is hiding in Afghanistan, where Canadian troops are currently stationed, not Pakistan, where he was reputedly being sheltered in the lawless tribal lands.
As part of Task Force Afghanistan, about 2,300 Canadian Forces personnel are deployed in Afghanistan with the majority of them operating in the former Taliban stronghold of southern Afghanistan.
Jandal worked as bin Laden's personal bodyguard in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2000.
In the interview, which airs Sunday, Jandal dispels the commonly held notion that bin Laden has taken refuge in the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.
"Not Pakistan," Jandal told the newsmagazine. "I know the Pakistani tribes along the border very well. They can be very trustworthy and faithful to their religion and ideology, but they are also capable of selling information for nothing."
Bin Laden's last confirmed hiding place was in southeastern Afghanistan, when U.S. forces in 2001 intercepted radio messages of him directing troops in the mountainous region of Tora Bora.
Since then the trail has grown cold with the exception of the occasional statement by him condemning U.S. interventions in the Islamic world.
In the interview, Jandal, who now lives in Yemen and remains a fervent supporter of bin Laden, also said he is certain an attack on the U.S. is being planned.
Under a deal with the Yemeni government, which arrested him after the attack on the USS Cole, Jandal has promised the government there that he would remain in Yemen.
Jandal also told the show the closest the Americans ever came to killing bin Laden was before the 9/11 attacks.
That was when the Americans fired missiles at an Al Qaeda training camp near Khost, Afghanistan to retaliate against the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
According to Jandal, sheer luck saved bin Laden, because the night before the attack, at the very last minute, he decided at a fork in the road to go to Kabul rather than the training camp. The next day, the camp was flattened by U.S. missiles.
Jandal also dismissed as untrue reports that bin Laden was sick with a kidney problem that required dialysis. But he confirmed earlier reports that bin Laden had ordered his bodyguards to kill him rather than allow him to be captured alive.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/01/2006 00:15 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
An Afghan man who faced the death penalty in his homeland for converting from Islam to Christianity says he was certain he would have been killed if he had remained in Kabul. Speaking in Italy, which has granted him asylum, 
Mecca (Rantburg News Service): A series of meetings of the Learned Elders of Islam will be held at 
Saudi Arabia yesterday denied a German magazine report that it was working on a secret nuclear program with the help of Pakistani experts. The report is totally unfounded, a Defense Ministry spokesman told the Saudi Press Agency, adding that Riyadh advocates imposing nuclear non-proliferation in the (Middle East) region. 
The US secretary of state has defended the US invasion of Iraq and hinted that the US will not release prisoners from Guantanamo Bay until it is certain they pose no threat. "I know we have made tactical errors, thousands of them, I'm sure," Condoleezza Rice told a gathering of 200 foreign policy experts, local officials and journalists organised by England's Chatham House foreign policy institute on Friday. "This could have gone that way, or that could have gone that way. But when you look back in history, what will be judged is: Did you make the right strategic decision?"
The Swiss banking giant, UBS, may have helped Iran develop its nuclear program, may have held an account for Al Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden, and could find itself investigated as part of Congress's ongoing inquiry into the United Nations 
NWFP Governor 
Senior members of Iraq's ruling Shi'ite Alliance bloc called publicly for the first time on Saturday for Ibrahim al-Jaafari to step down as prime minister to break months of deadlock over a national unity government. Other senior Alliance officials, speaking anonymously, confirmed that four of seven main groups within the bloc wanted Jaafari to give up the nomination for a second term if, as is all but certain, he fails to persuade minority Sunni and Kurdish parties to drop their refusal to serve in a cabinet under him.
A leading Iraqi Shia cleric demanded on Friday that the United States sack its ambassador, accusing 
Newly-installed Palestinian Foreign Minister 
New Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said Palestinians were "sick and tired of the West's racist approach" to the Middle East conflict in an article published in a British newspaper on Friday.
Osama Bin Laden has no intention of being taken alive and has designated a special gun to be shot with in the event of imminent capture, one of the Al Qaeda chiefs former bodyguards told the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes. 
Thailand on Sunday holds its second general election in a year, with embattled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra set to win again in a polls marred by boycott by the main opposition parties and a call by an anti-Thaksin group for voters to tick "no vote" or abstain from voting.
