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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Interesting FT piece on the Iraqi jihadis |
| 2004-03-18 |
| EFL. An Iraqi security official seeking to rebuild Iraq’s dissolved intelligence agency, or mukhabarat, believes some Sunni mosques are acting as local urban bases for jihadis - holy warriors - hiding in the hills across the Syrian border. They can cite Yemenis, Syrians and Iranians caught in Iraq’s cities while trying to launch attacks. "We used to have more than 270 border posts. Now thanks to America’s abolition of our security forces, we have only 11," says AJ Mohie, a retired general advising Ayad Allawi, the head of the Governing Council’s security committee. Traditional Sunni preachers in Iraq say their congregations are increasingly drawn to Wahhabis. Of an adult Sunni male population of perhaps 20,000 in the mixed-Sunni Shia town of Abu Ghaib, 10km from Baghdad, Sheikh Yasseen Zubaie, a Sunni cleric, estimates that as many as 4,000 now worship at Wahabi mosques. Since the capture of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s resistance has acquired an increasingly religious hue, issuing communiqués and daubing walls with graffiti under the name of "Mohammed’s army". This army appears to be a loose of coalition of cells bearing such religious titles as Jihadi Earthquake Brigades, Saladin Brigades and Al-Mutawakkilun [those who rely on God], aimed at restoring "the capital of the caliphate", Baghdad. Another resistance group operating further north, Ansar al Sunna - literally the Members of the Sunna, a name highlighting its sectarian nature - used the internet to claim responsibility for two suicide bombings that killed more than 100 people in the Kurdish capital, Arbil, and has distributed video CDs of what it claims to be its attacks on British, Spanish and Canadian intelligence officers, complete with their passports and identity cards. One of five wills of suicide bombers read out in Ansar al Sunna’s video warned "the brokers of the West" that jihad would continue "until we get back [the Jerusalem mosque of] Al-Aqsa and Andalucia [Spain]". The videos appear to offer some support to claims that al-Qaeda’s ideology is motivating, if not directing, the attacks. In January, Iraq’s embryonic intelligence services uncovered a video CD circulating in Falluja entitled "Hidaya al Eid" (The Holiday Gifts), in which sheikhs bearing Saudi tribal names such as Al Ghamdi and speaking with Saudi accents boasted of their attacks on US troops. A London-based and Saudi-financed magazine, al Majalla, earlier this month ran an email interview with "an al-Qaeda leader", Abu-Muhammad al-Ablaj, who claimed to have received instructions from Osama bin Laden to direct "the Mujahideen yearning for martyrdom" to go to Iraq. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #6 Once the authority is turned over to the Iraqis these guys are going to be in a bad way. The new government/police are not going to tolerate these assholes and they will kill them without compunction. No more hiding in the mosques. No more Imam's spouting off. The vast majority of Iraqis just want a peaceful existence and they will cheer their government cleaning out the assholes. |
| Posted by: remote man 2004-3-18 1:25:40 PM |
| #5 One of five wills of suicide bombers read out in Ansar al Sunna’s video warned "the brokers of the West" that jihad would continue "until we get back [the Jerusalem mosque of] Al-Aqsa and Andalucia [Spain]". Or until the purveyors of his "faith" are burned to a radioactive crisp. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-3-18 10:49:42 AM |
| #4 I read the whole article, and I, for the life of me, can't figure out what this guy is trying to say. He seems to be saying that since the fall of Sadaam, that the Sunni's are converting to Wahhabism and are going to target the Shia as "rejectionists"... and thus...we have created a "homegrown" problem by inspiring the Iraqi Sunni's to convert to Wahhabism. Then he goes on to say that because the damn Americans got rid of their border posts, that anyone can cross the border, but then he says that only 30 non-Iraqi's are in custody, seemingly implying that it's the Sunni's doing the fighting, not foreign fighters. Then he goes on to say how AQ is directing it and encouraging Jihadi's world wide to come to Iraq and join the fight.......so why only 30 in custody then???? So which is it?? Is he trying to say that, thanks to the US, the Sunnis are suddenly becoming Wahhabis, and joining the global Jihad movement, something they would not have done if we'd left Sadaam in power?? Or is he trying to say that AQ is sending foreign fighters to Iraq to rid it of the Americans???? That's hardly a newsflash. Soo...is it homegrown conversion to Wahhabism, or is it foreign inspired??? Does anyone understand this? Because I sure don't. |
| Posted by: B 2004-3-18 10:36:25 AM |
| #3 "until we get back [the Jerusalem mosque of] Al-Aqsa and Andalucia [Spain]". This should be comforting to all those spanish voters who gave the terrorist just what they wanted. Well part of what they wanted. |
| Posted by: Ben 2004-3-18 5:44:45 AM |
| #2 annihilate the religion/para military force--turn mecca into a glass bowl that would make a geiger counter jump out of your hands--soflam and jdamn the wahabbi mosques and break up the saudi entity |
| Posted by: SON OF TOLUI 2004-3-18 4:57:56 AM |
| #1 MOAB-->Saudia Arabia |
| Posted by: anymouse 2004-3-18 1:41:03 AM |