September 2006 Archives

On the latest video address by Dr Zawahiri, the "Prime Minister" of Jihadism..

By Walid Phares

In its latest video, As Sahhab TV production featured “Prime Minister” Dr Ayman Zawahiri addressing the Umma on matters of Jihad and aqida (doctrine). Or at least this was the image the sophisticated field-studio wanted to project to the viewers. A very relax chief executive of al Qaeda, reviewing the various files on the “Caliphate agenda” of the month, responding to the infidel world leaders and providing an update of the various battlefields around the globe. “He seems very relax, in some cave-castle, said Druze leader Walid Jumblat on al Jazeera few weeks ago when asked about the al Qaeda leader. Indeed, for someone on the run, he looked well seated and secure, even though one technical mistake could change that whole situation. The setting is not the essence of the video tape released today to the Salafis web site, but still, it is part of the whole package delivered to the “customers” on many continents. In this tape, it is very likely that the “Prime Minister of Jihadism” was reading from a type of a teleprompter system, indicating that he was operating from or sitting in a "professionally equipped" studio, at least for the first part of the taping, although some experts believe that the background can be created by online techniques. Intriguingly, and just for curiosity, there was that cricket chirping captured by the audio. However, it wasn’t clear why Dr Zawahiri was taped in another setting to deliver the second part of his “state of the Jihad address.”? It looked as a "quasi" outdoor setting but during a thunder storm. In that setting too, Dr Ayman was “reading” from a "quasi" teleprompter. But these aren't the beef of the matter. We’ll leave these technical questions to the specialists: Now, to the content.

Zawahiri started with a long “Bush-bashing” tirade centered on the al Qaeda prisoners in U.S and “allied” jails. He particularly focused on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which showed the importance of his loss from al Qaeda’s field operations. He increased Khalid Sheikh “stature” by reminding his audience that whatever “is being done to him,” doesn’t equate what Sheikh Mohammed has “achieved,” meaning the 3,000 and more victims of 9/11. Zawahiri elevated his “jailed” commander to a historic figure in the Jihadi movement by reminding everyone that the chief organizer of 9/11 had “fought the Russians and then after the Americans,” confirming an analysis I advanced in Future Jihad, that the struggle against the infidels was a linear one, from the Soviets to the U.S, and thus not really a reaction to American Foreign Policy exclusively, as argue the dominant academic establishment in the West.

Interestingly, the “Prime Minister” of al Qaeda, Dr Zawahiri proceeds in his speech from argument to argument as if he was given the points to raise, from “within” the American debate. His “advisors” picked and chose “hot potatoes” from the beltway’s most striking issues. One, he talks about the detainees, a highly discussed subject on these shores. Two, he blasted President Bush (calling him a liar) for misleading the American public regarding the “reasons for invading Iraq;” barely a Jihadi argument of interest, but certainly an “American political issue.” Zawahiri, out of the blue is very concerned how the American President “lied on his people about the nukes –never found- and the links with al Qaeda –never proved. Goodness, if Dr Ayman changes his dress code and stated these questions in English, he would have surely found a spot in American politics. For since when the “Caliphate’s Prime Minister” is so worried about the infidels domestic debate? And noting all these interesting new PR gadgets, another micro matter raised my eyebrows. As he was mentioning the War on Terror for the first time in the speech, the As Sahab translation running below put the words in English between quotes, in the same manner al Jazeera’s news marquee and anchors protocol goes by: “What is called War on Terror:” Very indicative of al Qaeda’s integration of the al Jazeera standards of rhetoric.

But going back to the detainee issue, it was noticeable that he has openly warned that an action to “bring back” the prisoners could be planned.

As for his second segment of the tape, it addressed the issues of the Pope, the “vast Crusader conspiracy against Islam,” Darfur and the Arab and Muslim Governments whom he abhors.

1 - The Pope: Calling him the dajjal (end of times liar or charlatan), Zawahiri unleashes theological attacks against the Church not referred to by the Muslim authorities that responded to the Pope over the past few weeks. Very revealing, these massive arguments haven’t been heard in public for decades and perhaps more than a century, but they have been taught at Madrassas around the world. He severely attacked almost the entire dogma of the Christian faith from the nature of Christ, the sanctity of Church, the crucifixion, the resurrection, the Holy Spirit, and many more theological basis of Christian faith, in a manner that was never uttered openly before. He stated that all the characteristics advanced by Christians about Christ are false and only his view of Jesus as Prophet Issa, is the valid one, etc. In doing so, Zawahiri expressed on the international stage, the theological agenda of al Qaeda and the Jihadists: A matter that indicates as of today, the ideological intentions regarding future “coexistence” with the Christians but also what the Jihadists have in mind to impose on moderate Muslims. The deputy of Usama Bin Laden went on to “connect the dots” for his audiences. He claimed that the whole thing is a “Crusader conspiracy.” He brings back the Salman Rushdie’s affair from the 1980s, the Hijab affair in France, the Koran’s (alleged) desecration in Guantanamo, the Cartoons “offenses,” and mixes them up with the Wars and Afghanistan and Iraq, all in one big “War on Islam.”

Then traveling back in time he rages against another Pope from the 11th century, Urban II who “ignited the Crusades” and began a retroactive quarrel with him on the nature of religions; before coming back to this century and reminding the world how the Crusades ended in a crushing defeat. From that conclusion he invites Pope Benedict and all Christians to convert to Islam, repeating what his “disciple” Adam Gadahn asked of all Americans few weeks ago. In short he has just reassured the public in the West of al Qaeda’s (non-related-to-US-Foreign Policy) agenda.

2 – Darfur: Reaffirming the al Qaeda standing orders on Sudan, Zawahiri (one more time) tell the world and particularly the academic and analyst community in the West and the United States that the Jihadists are not exclusively dedicated to “run” to Iraq only. He called the followers inside the Darfur area to prepare for a “popular Jihad;” a statement which should convince the hesitant viewers and listeners that al Qaeda’s agenda isn’t only about fighting America in Iraq but waging holy war anywhere in the Muslim world and beyond, including against UN led humanitarian initiatives. He described the United Nations as “Crusaders-in-disguise,” shattering any difference between American, European, Russian, Indian or African led UN missions. In short, Zawahiri’s calls for war in this speech broke the myth that this is indeed a reaction to U.S foreign policy, but instead as I argued in Future Jihad, it is a “policy” of itself.

3. “Bad” Arab regimes: Zawahiri criticizes the bad Arab regimes, including the “Islamist” Government of Sudan for not doing enough and chickening in front of southern Sudan’s rebellion. He mentions the Saudis and the principalities, only indirectly as “those of the Peninsula,” probably not to enter the challenge of dealing with the Qatari regime, the host of al Jazeera. But he blasts Egypt, Pakistan and other countries by name. Interestingly he names several fields of criticism:

a. “Your governments,” he told Arabs and Muslims, “are incapable.” Stunningly to many he accuses them of being members of the United Nations, a matter that should tell more about the real world agenda of the Jihadists: No United Nations.

b. He criticizes the Muslim religious leaders who are obstructing the path of al Qaeda. He accuses them of covering up for the "Crusaders," signaling to the international community the difficulties in which these moderate Imams are in.

c. Interestingly he calls on followers to reject all UN resolutions, including the one that created two states in Palestine in 1947 and the most recent Resolution 1701 voted to end the summer conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. A hint that al Qaeda could target UN forces in Lebanon as well.

d. Zawahiri called for a popular Jihad, i.e. instigating urban -and long term- holy wars: And reemphasized the centrality of both Iraq and Afghanistan as battlefields for Jihad, underlining that it is not just Iraq that is central, but any existing or future battlefield.

In short, Zawahiri’s “Jihadi cabinet” is very much up to date regarding world politics and domestic politics in each of the countries they are targeting. And as with Adam Gadahn’s videotape, doubts are now growing that while the “studios” of As Sahhab may have been built in Pakistan or in a secure location in the Greater Middle East, the “speech writers” are possibly located in the many infidel countries Zawahiri is fighting against, and highly likely inside the United States as well.

****
Dr Walid Phares, is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, its Future Terrorism Project director; a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy as well as the author of Future Jihad. Phares@walidphares.com

« Close It

For Hizballah, Post-War Politics are Local

By David Schenker

Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s coming out (of hiding) rally on September 22 made big headlines. Most of the attention in the West was focused on Nasrallah’s revelation that Hizballah still possessed some 20,000 rockets and missiles. But a closer reading of the speech highlights other equally troubling developments on the Hizballah front. Primary among these developments is Hizballah’s new focus on domestic issues. Nasrallah’s speech highlights Hizballah’s strategy for coping with the expanded UNIFIL and LAF presence in the South. This development poses new challenges for Washington and the moderate government of Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora.

I wrote an article on this the Weekly Standard Online (The Daily Standard). It’s called Hezbollah's New Mission:
The "resistance" takes aim at the Lebanese government.

New Video Released With Al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri

By Andrew Cochran

The new video, promised earlier this week, is out, in which Zawahiri attacks Pope Benedict XVI and President Bush a "lying failure" and "deceitful charlatan." You can see it thanks to Laura Mansfield. Rita Katz of SITE Institute has a one-minute clip for non-subscribers, the picture below, and this analysis: "As-Sahab, al-Qaeda’s multimedia production arm, issued today, Friday, September 29, 2006, a 17:51 minute video speech featuring Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and titled: “Bush, the Pope of the Vatican, Darfur, and the Crusader Wars”. He appears in two scenes: one, subtitled in English, with an office-setup background with a lamp, flag bearing “No God, but Allah”, and a cannon; the other is without a background, and depicts Zawahiri dressed entirely in white, without subtitles. To U.S. President George W. Bush, Zawahiri questions: “why don't you tell them how many million citizens of America and it's allies you intend to kill in search of the imaginary victory and in breathless pursuit of the mirage towards which you are driving your people’s sons in order to increase your profits?” He also addresses the capture of Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and questions that if it helped in the "war on terror" then “why are your troops retreating in secrete from the south and east of Afghanistan?... Bush...be aware that the liberation of our captives is a debt on our shoulders which we must fulfill”."

Zawahiri also names other important captured Al Qaeda leaders: "You’ve captured Ramzi Yousef, Umar Abd al-Rahman, Wali Khan, Ibn al-Shayhk, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khalid al-Shaykh, Abu al-Faraj al-Libi..." This finishes a busy month of September for Al Qaeda central, which began with the Zawahiri video with American Adam Gadahn, then two 9/11-related videos, one with Zawahiri and another video with clips of Osama Bin Laden.

Picture courtesy of SITE Institute:

Hugo: Gunning for Africa

By Aaron Mannes

I recently posted about the regional danger posed by the new Venezuelan license to produce Kalashnikov assault rifles. However, I underestimated the Venezuelan Colonel. I was worried about the region, but Venezuela's President has even wider ambitions. A leading Caracas daily, El Universal reports:

President Hugo Chávez warned that "as long as imperialism exists and threatens to annihilate entire peoples and impose their views, we have to open up our plant to manufacture rifles, buy (Russian-made) Sukhoi warplanes and other military equipment."

At the closing ceremony of the first meeting of Venezuelan and Russian businesspeople, in the Presidential Palace of Miraflores, Caracas, Chávez stressed that bilateral technical military cooperation is moving forward at a steady pace.

"We have received messages from Latin American, Caribbean and even African countries asking about the production capacity of our rifle manufacturing plant. My dear Russian friends, I am sure you will agree, this is a platform for integration in other fields."

Chávez once again insisted that his US counterpart George W. Bush "smells sulfur. Nobody should have doubts about it."

Even Africa

Africa has long been a play ground for dictators with global ambitions such as Libya's Gaddhafi. Latin America may not be a big enough stage for Chavez. Africa has been among the stops on Hugo's peregrinations and in July he called upon African leaders to collaborate with Venezuela in resisting American hegemony and better leveraging their natural resources. In particular he urged African leaders to increase the taxes they charge on oil companies.

This is typcial of Chavez's populist cant. However, disseminating guns in Africa is a serious matter. Africa has suffered terribly from civil strife for decades and the infusion of more firearms will only expand that continent's misery.

There are also implications for the international terrorist-criminal nexus - already strong in Latin America and Africa. Africa is a well-established trans-shipment point for Latin American drugs. Hezbollah is well-established in West Africa and is particularly strong in the illicit diamond trade. Considering the warm relations between their respective patrons - assuming FARC-Hezbollah collaboration in Africa is no leap of imagination.

As a matter of high policy, Hugo is attempting to curry favor among African states to back his bid for a UN Security Council Seat, raise oil prices, and fulfill his vision of a multi-polar world. Cheap oil and cash are one set of incentives - cheap firearms with no strings attached are another. However, with its weak states, insecure borders, and poverty Africa is an appealing base for terrorism and transnational crime. These networks could be useful to Hugo's ambitions, not only within Africa, but as a conduit for distributing weapons, cash, and influence worldwide.

Finally, I would be remiss in writing on this if I did not mention my Douglas Farah who is a leading expert on trans-national crime and terrorism in Africa and has done a great deal of excellent writing on these topics in this blog.

Cross-Posted to the TerrorBlog.

Some Reasons Tariq Ramadan Was Denied A Visa

By Douglas Farah

There has been some outcry and dismay over the U.S. government decision to deny a visa to Tariq Ramadan, one of the new generation of leaders of the international Muslim Brotherhood, who has achieved near superstar status among Muslims in Europe.

While consistently presenting a moderate face of Islam in public, his ties to more radical groups are several. As is usual in these cases, there is no smoking gun, but the persisent nature of the contacts and references to him by those engaged in Islamist violence gives rightful pause to those deciding on visas.

Earlier this month Jean-Charles Brisard first revealed the following Ramadan ties. to the less than moderate elements of Islamist structure. European intelligence sources had privaely told me of the contents of the Swiss report on Ramadan's arrangement of a 1991 meeting with Zawahiri and the "Blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel Rahman. Since the information is already in the public domain, I am reprinting some of the ties outlined by JCB, from his blog, that may be useful in understanding the decision even if one does not agree with it. My full blog is here.

It takes two to tango. Why the coup in Thailand may not lead to an improvement in the insurgency

By Zachary Abuza

One of the justifications for the Thai coup was Thaksin’s mishandling of the Southern insurgency, which has claimed some 1,700 lives in the past two-an-a-half years. The general chafed at the political interference of Thaksin and his deputy Chidchai, their rotations of generals, failed policies, and blatant dismissal of the National Reconciliation Council’s findings. People looked to General Sonthi, himself a Muslim, to solve the insurgency. With Sonthi there should be three steps to improving a dismal situation:

First, there will be more consistency in personnel and policies. Counter-insurgency takes time and will not be resolved when leaders are constantly shuffled.

Second, Sonthi will implement many of the findings of the National Reconciliation Commission. While they alone will not quell the insurgency, they will go a long way in improving relations with the restive Muslim majority in Thailand’s deep south. The Muslims severely mistrust the government, and without improved cooperation, human intelligence will remain abysmally poor.

Third, Sonthi has announced that he is willing to negotiate with insurgents. The problem here is that there is no one to negotiate with. Warring sides only negotiate only when there is nothing else to be gained by fighting. That is clearly not the case with the insurgents. There have been no meaningful arrests, their network is in tact, their technical proficiency and experience are improving by the day, they can attack at will, and the government’s policies continue to alienate the population. They have nothing to gain from negotiation. Only the old, exiled leaders of PULO, living abroad in Europe have expressed any interest in negotiating, though they control none of the insurgents. Offers to negotiate are simply leverage their exceptionally weak hand.

The empirical evidence bears this out. Though there were no attacks in the first two days after the coup, right now they are launching attacks at their pre-coup rate (which were some of the highest in the course of the insurgency). A review of some of the larger attacks in the week since 23 September:

• Four police were wounded in a bombing in Pattani
• A bomb placed in a Buddhist temple in Yala killed a soldier on guard
• A 10kg roadside IED in Narathiwat killed three including one soldier and severely wounded five others.
• In separate attacks, gunmen killed three in Yala and one in Pattani
• In one shooting, a 10Kg bomb was left, and set to go off when police came to investigate, though it was defused

In post-coup Bangkok, everyone expects changes in government policy towards the insurgency; and in that vain, assumed that it will lead to changes in the insurgent’s tactics and operations. What if in their analysis, nothing has changed: one set of elites has simply replaced another set of elites? And with everything going their way in the insurgency, what do they have to gain by stopping and negotiating?

In other news, the US government announced that they had imposed sanctions on the Council on Democratic Reform that will impact some $24 million in security and counter-terrorism assistance to Thailand. Thailand is a major non-Nato ally and diplomatic partner. It has played an important role in the US "war on terror" following the 11 September 2001 attacks, including the capture of Hambali in August 2003 and serving beriefly as a "black site" for the interrogation of some highlevel al Qaeda detainees.

A Patient Enemy: On 9/11 America entered a war that the Terrorists had already begun

By Walid Phares

(Text of an essay-assessment at the fifth anniversary of September 11)

As we have marked the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, and we review the half a decade of war on terror since, the central question that comes to the minds of both experts and policymakers is this – who is winning the war and where are we in its prosecution? And to refine, is al Qaeda on the retreat, is Afghanistan working, is Iraq surviving the challenge, and is Lebanon’s Cedars Revolution on the rise or has it been defeated? Is Hezbollah’s war changing the U.S. strategy regarding Iran and Israel? And finally, is the U.S. homeland secure, or is it penetrated and threatened?

All of these are issues of great importance to Americans, Westerners and societies determined to struggle for democracy and freedom. For even though 9/11 was a benchmark in the history of the U.S., it also became a rallying date in the eyes of the Jihadists for more lethal future attacks, not just in America, but also in Europe, India, Africa and other parts of the world that have tasted the wrath of terror since 2001.

The widening of the war on terrorism and the multiplication of its battlefields has critics claiming Americans have been led in the wrong direction, and that the decision to fight the terrorists on their ground was erroneous. Are the critics right? Or are they wrong? Five years after the attacks which sparked this long war, a proper review is in order – a review not only of the enemy we face, but of the war we are engaged in and what the future holds in this regard.

The Road to 9/11

It is first important to understand that the road to 9/11 was the result of a patient and perseverant march by the Jihadists Salafists (including al Qaeda), at least since the end of the Cold War, to first test and then engage the United States head on.

In the decades after World War II, the bulk of the Sunni Islamists concentrated on the Soviet Union and communism as a prime enemy, not because they supported a free market economy and NATO, but because they perceived atheist socialism as a competitor to be eliminated first. Wahabism offered to work with the U.S.-led West against the Soviets, and Washington extended its support to the Mujahidin in Afghanistan.

But as soon as the U.S.S.R. collapsed, the Jihadists regrouped and took aim at the U.S. Their perception of the crumbling of communism in Russia was based on the idea that once they implemented their Salafi form of Sharia and Jihad, “Allah would do the rest.” The 1990s witnessed their deliberate ascendancy and repetitive attacks: the first attack on the twin towers in 1993; the attack on the Khobar towers in 1995; the rise of the Taliban in 1996; the Algerian civil war, the Chechnya Jihad, and the Sudan massacres; the 1998 U.S. embassies attacks in Africa; the penetration of the U.S. by terror cells; and finally the September 11, 2001, terror strikes, aimed initially at provoking a Madrid-like collapse in America.

Meanwhile, the other Jihadi powers, Iran and its extension Hezbollah, as well as their Baathist ally in Syria, moved on two fronts – controlling Lebanon and developing nuclear power. In parallel, Hezbollah built a network of cells within the West, while al Qaeda was building theirs.

The Road Since Then

In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. led a coalition to remove the Taliban from Afghanistan and root out al Qaeda from its sole real estate. After the battles of Tora Bora, statesponsored Salafi Jihadism was gone (for the time being). A debate then took place within the U.S. government with regard to the next stages in the war against terror. A strategic choice was made to prosecute the war on the grounds of what are essentially police goals – finding terrorist cells, dismantling them, and bringing them to justice, both within the U.S. and worldwide.

This choice was based on the fundamental premise that there is, for the lack of a better term, a “mother ship” out there. It is a ship that is primarily ideological and deeply incrusted in the organizations, regimes, and networks of radical clerics. Al Qaeda is the product of a wider, deeper pool of Wahabism, Salafism and Muslim Brotherhood movements within the greater Middle East and beyond. The political culture they have produced for decades has allowed military dictatorships to espouse their final objectives, obstruct democratization and sink all attempts for peace processes in the region.

Hence, a second strategic choice was also made to intervene internationally within the sphere of influence of the Jihadists. This intervention occurred on two tracks. The first track was geared toward assisting civil societies endangered by violent regimes. The second track was geared toward delivering a war of ideas to delegitimize the ideologies promoting Jihadism and other forms of radicalism. At the same time this was being done internationally, the U.S. embarked on a course to strengthen its homeland security within its own shores.

The Iraq Campaign

The debate about the Iraq campaign has signaled a lack of national consensus in the U.S. and the West as to what the danger we face actually is and how we should confront it. While many elites, still unengaged in the war on terror and still swayed by the oil influenced political culture of the 1990s, looked at the invasion of Iraq as a strategic mistake because of what they perceived as a lack of legitimate claims (regarding the widely reported presence of weapons of mass destruction and the possible link of the Hussein regime to al Qaeda), the real aim of the campaign was the liberation of a segment of Arab and Middle Eastern society ruled by a ruthless dictator.

As I argued in my book Future Jihad, the U.S. intervention – which should have taken place a decade earlier – intercepted the rise of a giant Jihadi bloc stretching from Afghanistan to Lebanon equipped with non-conventional arms. Historians will see it clearly. The prosecution of the liberation could have been much better, but the freeing of the Kurds, Shiites and non pro-Saddam Sunnis opened the path for a dynamic to bear fruits to be understood and seen years from now.

Elections and Democracy

Al Qaeda has been stopped as a geographically-based regime, but it has still been able to wage terrorist attacks from Indonesia to London. The measurement of its success and its failures is not through the numbers of strikes, but by analyzing the global and future growth of the movement. The arrests of terrorists and break-up of terror cells in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere over the past years and recent months indicate that a second generation of Jihadists is spreading and readying to target American stability.

Let there be no doubt -- the Jihadists are a patient enemy. They are recruiting wider in their indoctrinated pool. However, let there also be no doubt that as a result of U.S. actions abroad, the pool’s future is now in doubt. If one observes the far reaching effects of the Afghanistan elections and the three Iraqi votes, the sociological consequences are revolutionary. In short, there is no return backward.

Despite all the bloody and barbaric slaughter by Zarqawi and his equivalents across the region, the younger generations and women who were given the opportunity to taste and test the democratic process have leaped into their future. It will take time before the culture of democracy takes root in the civil societies liberated so far, and in those hoping to be later.

But it is now proven through al Qaeda and other totalitarian movements and regimes that the lethal enemy of Jihadism is democracy.

On another front, and after 32 years of Syrian occupation and Hezbollah terror, Lebanon’s Cedars Revolution in 2005 demonstrated that in previously democratic societies, the roots of freedom can redevelop.

Thanks to the U.S.-introduced United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which was approved in 2004 and called on Syria to withdraw and Hezbollah to disarm, Lebanese masses from various communities showed the world and their occupiers that popular democracy movements can face off with military power, if backed by the international community.

But the semi-success of Lebanon’s revolt triggered a counter attack by the “axis” of the Syrian and Iranian regimes this year. After a series of assassinations of Lebanese politicians, the axis is provoking a war with Israel, in an attempt to take back the small country and bring back Iranian power onto the Mediterranean.

Iran and Syria

Concerned with the regime changes in Afghanistan and in Iraq and with the Cedars Revolution in Beirut, Iran President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad decided to counter these developments in two ways.

First, he announced his intention to acquire nuclear capabilities, thereby signaling that Tehran would use nuclear weapons as a shield against future international support to domestic democratic uprisings. Secondly, Ahmedinijad ordered Hamas to sink the peace process among Palestinians and Israelis and instructed Hezbollah wreak havoc in Lebanon by attacking Israel.

Forced from Lebanon and threatened by the Hariri assassination investigation, the Assad regime converged with Tehran and Hezbollah on a regional terror plan. But both regimes in Iran and Syria and their allied organizations in Gaza and Lebanon have disclosed their plans early in the process, just as Bin Laden did on September 11. They’ve attacked civil societies while democratic movements are on the rise. In Damascus and Tehran, youth, women and reformists have understood the message of the war of ideas. Despite terror and bloodshed, the future is for them to struggle for.

War of Ideas

To experts and historians alike, it is clear that the war on terror is centering on the war of ideas. The ability of societies ruled by terror regimes and ideologies to realize the essence of the war and what it means to them is critical. But just as critical is the ability of the members of these societies to understand that when the U.S. and its allies intervene in a post 9/11 era, it is not to rule over them and govern their way of life. Rather, it is to free them so that they can make the choices they deem appropriate.

It is the ability to make choices that will defeat terrorism, be it Jihadi or Baathist. The struggles in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon today are about new democracies, freed by the U.S. and its coalition, attempting to grow, while forces of fascism and Jihadism are attempting to keep them down.

The debate in Washington needs to grasp and aggressively emphasize that dimension of the conflict, for without this understanding, U.S. support for the real war on terror will fade.

And then we would be playing into the hands of an enemy that is not only extremely patient, but ideologically deadly, as well.

Dr. Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington. He is the author of Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against America.

« Close It

Al-Qaeda Iraq Leader Calls For Kidnapping, Bio/Rad Weapon Attacks on US Bases in Iraq

By Jeffrey Imm

Update to previous blog: Al-Qaeda's Iraq leader issued a message today calling for kidnapping of Christians during Ramadan and for scientists to join the Jihadists in using radioactive or biological weapons against USA bases in Iraq. (Audio can be downloaded here.)

Al-Qaeda Leader in Iraq Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (aka Abu Ayyub al-Masri) issued a 20-minute long audio message today "Come to a Word that is Just Between Us and You," which is taken from the Qur'an, Surah al-Imran, verse 64 that was posted on Jihadist web sites by the Mujahadeen Council, an umbrella group of eight Iraqi armed Salafite formations, including al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The message is dated from the first day of Ramadan (September 23) and calls for kidnapping of Christians: "I call on every holy fighter in Iraq to strive during this holy month (Ramadan)... to capture some dogs of the Christians so that we can liberate our imprisoned sheikh" referring to sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman. Omar Abdul Ramhan has been in prison in the US since 1995 for the attack two years earlier on World Trade Center.

The audio message also called for experts in "chemistry, physics, electronics, media and all other sciences -- especially nuclear scientists and explosives experts" to join the Jihadists. "We are in dire need of you," he said. "The field of jihad (holy war) can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them."

The audio message also claimed that "The blood has been spilled in Iraq of more than 4,000 foreigners who came to fight" in Iraq.

Cross-Border Raids into Afghanistan Accelerate

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

I have previously written about Pakistan's dangerous peace treaty with factions sympathetic to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. My most comprehensive treatment of this issue is the article that I co-authored with Bill Roggio in the most recent edition of the Weekly Standard, "Pakistan Surrenders." However, the dangers of this agreement aren't universally recognized -- at least not at an official level. When presented with Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf's claim that this was somehow an anti-Taliban deal, President Bush replied, "I believe him." And assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher has claimed that the peace treaty "really has the potential to work," and that it gives Pakistan a chance "to get a political handle on this and enlist its citizens in the fight against terror."

Theories about this agreement are one thing, but it's hard to deny what is actually happening on the ground. To that extent, there is an important new report from the Associated Press:

A U.S. military official said Wednesday that American troops on Afghanistan's eastern border have seen a threefold increase in attacks since a recent truce between Pakistani troops and pro-Taliban tribesmen that was supposed to have stopped cross-border raids by the militants. The peace agreement, which followed a June 25 cease-fire, also has contributed to the Taliban's resurgence, the U.S. official said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Since the truce, ethnic Pashtun rebels are no longer fighting Pakistani troops but are using the North Waziristan border region as a control hub for launching attacks in Afghanistan, the official told The Associated Press.

This gives lie to the claim that the agreement will actually decrease cross-border incursions. The reports from the ground indicate that the opposite is true; they also indicate that Taliban-style religious law is being imposed in the tribal areas. If you want to understand the effect of the Waziristan Accord, don't look to the politicians for answers.

New Audio from Leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

New audio tape from Abu Hamza al-Muhajir - Laura Mansfield has the original tape here. Rita Katz of the SITE Institute has an analysis: "The speech, 20:31 in length, is titled: “Come to a Word that is Just Between Us and You,” which is taken from the Qur’an, Surah al-Imran, verse 64. On the occasion of the month of Ramadan, al-Muhajir calls upon every “free Mujahid” to come to Iraq and engage in jihad, which the emir hopes to increase in ferocity. He states: “It pleases me at the end of my speech to announce the beginning of a great militaristic campaign by the name of the clear conquest, by it we will eradicate the limb of the infidel and the apostate”. In the middle of the speech, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir reminds of the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdul Rahman, and encourages the Mujahideen to capture some of the “Roman dogs” so as to secure his release from the “darkness of his prison, gratitude, loyalty and love.” He then calls upon the sheikhs of the Sunni tribes in Iraq to not slacken in their support for the Mujahideen and thanks them for their public stance, finance and men."

Al Qaeda has lost a number of key operatives recently and is under attack by a group of Sunni leaders, so this could be a pep talk to his forces. It could also be timed to coincide with the next tape from Al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri (UPDATE: That release appears imminent as of noon ET).

MERC, MERC, MERC

By Zachary Abuza

Today, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank denied that it had funded the Southeast Asian affiliate of Al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, through its dealings with the Indonesian NGO, the Medical Emergency Relief Charity (MERC). Yesterday, The Australian Financial Review reported that MERC was soliciting donations through its account at the bank’s Jakarta branch. MERC is neither on the UN Security Council’s 1267 Committee list nor on the US Government’s SDN list as per Executive Order 13224, but it has a long history of working along side various organs of Jemaah Islamiyah.

The Medical Emergency Relief Charity (MERC) was established on 14 August 1999 as a result of sectarian fighting in Indonesia’s outer islands, much of which was being led and perpetrated by two paramilitaries, the Laskar Mujihidin and the Laskar Jundullah, run by JI leaders, Mohamad Iqbal Abdurrahman (Abu Jibril) and Agus Dwikarna, respectively. From late 1998 until 2001, some 6-9,000 people died in these conflicts.

While MERC members were not implicated in directly supporting Laskar Jundullah and Laskar Mujihidin paramilitary operations in the Malukus and Central Sulawesi, to the degree that another Indonesian charity KOMPAK was, its one-sided approach to the Malukus conflict, as well as the actions of some individual members raised suspicions. We don’t have firm evidence or a paper trail linking MERC to JI, but the circumstantial evidence is not insignificant.

In 2000-2001, MERC produced two well-publicized videos for fund-raising purposes: “Pasir Hitum Teluk Galela” (“The Black Sand of Galela Bay”) and “Dan Kesaksian Pun Menangis” (“And the Witnessing Despite the Crying”). Both are available from the MERC website: http://www.MERC.org/vcd_01.htm. Like other Jihadi videos produced by KOMPAK and Reda Seyam, an Egyptian-German film-maker for Al Qaeda, these are horrifically graphic and biased, portraying only Muslims as victims of the bloodletting. MERC’s videos do differ in one important way however, they do not explicitly support violence. The jihadi videos from Southeast Asia tend to be very formulaic: the first two thirds Muslims are being slaughtered, mosques are being desecrated, Kaffirs are running amok, and the state security forces are doing nothing to defend the Muslim community, thereby justifying Islamic vigilantism. The final third often shows poorly armed Muslims fighting back. The message is clear: join or support the cause so that these brave Mujihidin can defend themselves. The MERC videos don’t have that final third. Instead they show open air triage and surgery. Gory, to be sure, but not explicitly advocating violence.

I have some evidence that MERC received funding from the Indonesian branch of the Saudi charity the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), which was, along with the Philippine branch, designated by the US Treasury Department under Executive Order 13224 and by the UN 1267 Committee on 3 August 2006. The IIRO funded also funded KOMPAK, a charity explicitly tied to JI and sectarian militancy. KOMPAK and the Indonesian office of Al Haramain were headed by Aris Munandar, a senior JI leader, now on the lamb. Munandar was put on the 13224 and 1267 listings on 5 September 2003. Designated at the same time was Agus Dwikarna who ran the KOMPAK and al Haramain offices in Sulawesi, in addition to JI’s paramilitary force. Both Munandar and KOMPAK had some dealings with MERC.

MERC now has 12 offices in Indonesia, concentrated in the regions most directly affected by sectarian violence (Sulawesi, Malukus and Kelimantan). MERC was very active in relief efforts in Aceh following the 26 December 2004 tsunami that killed some 165,000 Indonesians. According to a separate English language website, MERC established for Acehnese relief efforts, they have used donations to buy medicine and basic foodstuffs as well as rent tractors and bulldozers to clear rubble and vehicles to distribute food. They have dispatched “mobile polyclinics” staffed by some 50 doctors. MERC’s goal was to quickly raise some Rp700,000,000 to establish an emergency field hospital in Meulaboh. In Aceh, it was working alongside with Jibril’s Laskar Mujihidin and Abu Bakar Ba’asyir’s Majelis Mujiheddin Indonesia.

MERC’s operations abroad, in particular in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, have also raised some concerns about it being a conduit for terrorist funding. Indeed the MERC website previously stated that they operate in the tribal areas of Pakistan with the support and permission of the Taliban.

MERC clearly has an Islamist and virulently anti-Western agenda. There is no crime in that. Its relationship with the IIRO, KOMPAK and JI-affiliated organizations is greater cause for concern. The Indonesian authorities have a responsibility to fully investigate MERC’s financial dealings with the IIRO and Al Haramain, both of whose Indonesian branches were proscribed by the US and UN as terrorist financiers. The Commonwealth Bank should probably do a better job in knowing its customer. If nothing else, it would be a prudent commercial decision, knowing the raw emotional feelings of the Australian public towards anything that remotely comes close to Jemaah Islamiyah.

Terrorism Defense Attorney Runs Off At Mouth, Loses to Expert

By Andrew Cochran

Another set of terrorism defense attorneys tried to disqualify Evan Kohlmann as an expert witness in his client's trial and met the same fate as their peers in other trials, failing miserably. In the meantime, one terrorism defense attorney from another case grossly misrepresented Evan's stellar credentials and thereby also insulted a number of federal judges who have certified Evan's expert qualifications.

Evan was asked to testify in the Albany, NY case of two Muslim men charged with conspiring to launder $50,000 from the sale of a shoulder-fired missile in an FBI sting focused on plans to assassinate Pakistan's U.N. ambassador in New York. The defense attorneys filed a motion to disqualify Evan, which led a reporter covering a case to ask Marvin Miller, one of the defense attorneys in the multi-defendant "Virginia jihad" case, about Evan. Miller aimed his best verbal volley at Evan and, indirectly, every federal judge before whom Evan has testifed: "He is young. He doesn't have experience. He's never done any original research... He runs off at the mouth and a lot of judges won't control him the way they will other witnesses."

If you follow terrorism trials, you'll understand why Mr. Miller is a little hyper-sensitiive about Evan. In the "Virginia jihad" case of Ali Chandia this year - the one in which Mr. Miller lost, with his client going to jail - the government presented a 12-page document opposing Miller's motion to exclude Evan, and the judge agreed with the government.

Naturally, the judge in the Albany case gave short shrift to the motion to exclude, and Evan testified on Wednesday on the defendants' ties to the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK) and Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed. I say "naturally" because every single judge who has reviewed Evan's credentials has found him qualified as an expert witness. Other terrorism-centered cases in which he has testified include the Paracha case involving aid to Al Qaeda, the Ali al-Timimi case associated with the "Virginia jihad" cases, the Jose Padilla case in Florida, and cases in Bosnia and the UK. In the al-Timimi case, Judge Brinkema announced, ""(T)his court has watched him testify and he is in my view well qualified to testify."

Mr. Miller should stop slandering expert witnesses in the press. I doubt he will win many points from the judges who keep certifying Evan as an expert.

Some Thoughts on the NIE

By Douglas Farah

Admittedly, we have only a few declassified pages of the National Intelligence Estimate, so there are clearly issues that remain classified, and some of these might be addressed there.

But it is striking that the "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" does not discuss financial issues at all. Nor does it discuss the role in radicalization provided by the massive flow of Saudi and Arab Peninsula dollars into radicalization efforts.

It is this fundamental base of Salafist teachings that allow for the spread of radical, decentralized Islamist network described in the findings. There is a basic playbook being taught around the world, with funding by governments that claim to be allies in fighting jihadist movements. With the teachings from early childhood, coupled with corrupted teachings on the Koran spread at Wahhabi mosques around the world, a global community is built.

The lack of recognition of the "pull" factors in Islamist radicalization is surprising. My entire blog is here.

DNI Releases Declassified "Key Judgments" of National Intelligence Estimate (available here)

By Andrew Cochran

Under orders from President Bush, the Director of National Intelligence has released an declassified version of the key judgments from the April NIE, from which one conclusion was leaked to and reported by the "New York Times."

Here is the declassified section titled "Key Judgments" released today (Acrobat file, four pages only). A few key quotes:

"United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qa’ida and disrupted its operations; however, we judge that al-Qa’ida will continue to pose the greatest threat to the Homeland and US interests abroad by a single terrorist organization. We also assess that the global jihadist movement—which includes al- Qa’ida, affiliated and independent terrorist groups, and emerging networks and cells—is spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts.

• Although we cannot measure the extent of the spread with precision, a large body of all-source reporting indicates that activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion.
• If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide.
• Greater pluralism and more responsive political systems in Muslim majority nations would alleviate some of the grievances jihadists exploit. Over time, such progress, together with sustained, multifaceted programs targeting the vulnerabilities of the jihadist movement and continued pressure on al-Qa’ida, could erode support for the jihadists.

We assess that the global jihadist movement is decentralized, lacks a coherent global strategy, and is becoming more diffuse. New jihadist networks and cells, with anti- American agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge. The confluence of shared purpose and dispersed actors will make it harder to find and undermine jihadist groups.

• We assess that the operational threat from self-radicalized cells will grow in importance to US counterterrorism efforts, particularly abroad but also in the Homeland.
• The jihadists regard Europe as an important venue for attacking Western interests. Extremist networks inside the extensive Muslim diasporas in Europe facilitate recruitment and staging for urban attacks, as illustrated by the 2004 Madrid and 2005 London bombings.

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

Today’s St. Petersburg Times reports that convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative, Sami Al-Arian, has been brought to Northern Virginia to possibly testify before a grand jury investigating an area Islamic think tank, presumably, according to the St. Pete Times, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). The article states that Al-Arian’s ex-lawyer claims this move is “a ploy to further punish Al-Arian, who will likely not testify and will be held in contempt,” but a look at al-Arian’s Palestinian Islamic Jihad affiliated organizations in Tampa reveals a long standing financial and ideological history that he has had with IIIT, thus making him an obvious valuable witness.

Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, Secretary General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad since the mid 90’s, was brought in by Al-Arian a few years earlier to be a director of Al-Arian’s Tampa-based think tank, the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE). In 1991, the University of South Florida (affiliated with WISE at the time) asked WISE to provide an account of their funding sources. Ramadan Abdullah (Shallah) wrote in response that their “largest contributor is the Washington-based Islamic Institute for International Thought (IIIT).”

By Andrew Cochran

Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Michael R. Fedarcyk, who recently retired from the FBI after 24 years of service. His last assignment was as the Special Assistant to the FBI's Deputy Director, where he was responsible for strategic planning and resource allocation. He is currently employed as Director, Intelligence Sector, at BearingPoint Consulting. The views and assertions in this post are Mr. Fedarcyk's.

It has been said that policy without resources is rhetoric. Five years removed from the worst terrorist incident on American soil, it is appropriate to ask whether improvements to our national security posture are rhetoric or real. As the former head of the FBI’s strategic planning office, I know the FBI is committed to real change by aligning its limited resources consistent with its national security priorities through a threat-based planning strategy. However, given the emergence of the terrorist homegrown threat, the additional national security responsibilities placed upon the FBI by Congress and the Office of the National Director of Intelligence (ODNI) and the impact of the shift in the management structure at FBI Headquarters, the question is whether the FBI has the necessary resources, personnel and funds, to address its national security responsibilities while maintaining its outstanding law enforcement capabilities.

Countering terrorism has become more difficult and now requires a broader investigative strategy because of changes in the nature and sources of the threat. Al-Qaeda, for example, has morphed from a loosely directed organization into an ideological movement which requires no membership but rather a common goal to direct violence against the United States. The FBI must adapt its highly successful enterprise-based investigative strategy designed to target the organization into a strategy which counters an ideological movement that lacks visible leadership, organizational structure, and sources of material support but is nonetheless self-motivated, extremely resourceful and equally dangerous. The impact of the homegrown terrorist threat for the FBI requires an increasing dedication of valuable, limited Agent and analytical resources to a much broader-based, resource-intensive investigative strategy of “casting nets” in order to successfully interdict the homegrown terrorists before they can carry out their acts of violence.

A classic example of the homegrown threat dilemma for the FBI can be found in the recent arrests in Miami of individuals who were planning acts of violence. While the arrests were characterized by FBI Deputy Director, John S. Pistole, as “more aspirational than operational” others in the media labeled the group, after the fact, as “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight” and derided the threat. The FBI (and the American public) can ill afford anything less than a zero tolerance when it comes to terrorism. Timely preemption, utilizing all the available means, is the most effective response to the homegrown threat albeit a costly one.

Yet another external factor which impacts the FBI’s limited resources is the significant expansion of the ODNI. From an originally perceived staffing level of 80 to its current staffing level of over 1,500 (and growing) personnel, the ODNI will fuel the demand on the FBI, which is the primary collector of foreign and counter intelligence within the United States, for more collection and dissemination. The added pressure of future ODNI tasks will severely test the limits of the FBI’s intelligence program and, if the FBI is unable to meet the challenge, it could revive previous discussion of a new domestic intelligence agency.

Internally, at the FBI, process changes put in place by the Director in the aftermath of 9/11 which had a substantial unintended consequence regarding Agent resources. The transition of the FBI from a decentralized, field office-centered operation to a nationally managed, headquarters-driven oversight of cases caused a major growth in the number of new Supervisory Special Agent vacancies at headquarters. To illustrate the point, there are fewer Agents “on the street” today than there were prior to 9/11 despite the overall growth in Agent resources. While the re-structuring of headquarters was necessary, the unintended impact upon field Agent resources requires corrective action from Congress.

The Congress and the FBI should partner in a three step strategy to address the resource gap in the following manner:

1. The Congress will provide additional Agent, analyst and funds to continue the development of the FBI’s National Security Branch. This will remedy the resource gap created by the external and internal pressures outlined above.

2. The FBI will ensure resources are aligned consistent with the Director’s Priorities and distributed among the field offices based upon the threat. This will hold the FBI accountable as to the effective utilization of its resources with its mission and efficiently deployed to where the threats are.

3. The Congress and the FBI will engage in a dialogue regarding the appropriate balance of resources between the criminal and national security mission of the FBI. This is critical to the FBI’s transition to a world class intelligence/law enforcement agency.

This clear-cut three step strategy will hold the principals accountable to the American people to ensure a real change in our national security posture.

« Close It

Comments on the death of Umar Faruq

By Kenneth Conboy

Indonesian security officials privately welcomed news that Umar Faruq had been killed in Iraq on 25 September, as there has been a lingering concern the al-Qaeda terrorist might attempt to return to Southeast Asia after his July 2005 escape from an Afghan prison. Some comments on Faruq:

* After his June 2002 capture in Indonesia, Faruq proved to be one of the most prolific sources of information regarding foreign extremists in Southeast Asia. As was the case with Hambali, he began talking almost immediately after his arrest, and went on to provide details of his activities during questioning that lasted for more than a year. Faruq apparently did not need to be coerced into talking; he was reportedly proud of his role in extremist activities.

* Faruq was questioned by Indonesian police investigators in 2003 in order to obtain information for the trial of militant Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir. In order to abide by Indonesian law, Faruq's testimony would only be valid in court if it was given on Indonesian territory. The Indonesians reportedly came up with a pragmatic solution: an Indonesian flag was unfurled and Faruq's cell temporarily was declared Indonesian soil. In the end, his comments were of little value: Faruq had only a couple of fleeting encounters with the cleric, and most of his information about Ba'asyir was hearsay.

* Indonesians are often game for a good conspiracy, and after Faruq escaped from an Afghan prison in July 2005, rumors circulated that he had actually been doubled by U.S. authorities and released on a mission to infiltrate al-Qaeda cells elsewhere in Afghanistan. These rumors would now appear laid to rest.

* It has long been suspected that Faruq, who was born of Iraqi parents, would attempt to join the insurgency in Iraq. This speculation was supported by reports in recent months that his Indonesian wife had been receiving frequent cell phone calls from unidentified persons in Iraq. It is not known if these calls played a role in tracing his whereabouts.

Col. Chavez: Send Money, Guns and Doctors

By Aaron Mannes

When the outgoing Southcom chief General Bantz Craddock called Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, "bigger than a nuisance," he was vastly understating the problem. Chavez is a major overlooked danger on the international stage. He is by no means the most murderous figure on the world scene, nor does he have a nuke. But he does have the potential to turn back the clock for Latin America, with disastrous results both for the region and world.

Over the last few decades Latin America has made important strides in constructing democratic governments that promote liberty. The region is by no means done, much of this progress has been of the frustrating two steps forward, one step back variety - and the region remains impoverished. Nonetheless, it is difficult to ignore the predominance of democratic institutions throughout Latin America.

However, important social and economic faultlines still exist throughout Latin America and Chavez - with his oil wealth - is well positioned to exploit them and extend his own radicalism throughout the region.

Chavez's financial support has been key to supporting extremist allies from Argentina to Cuba and everywhere in between. Venezuela has received thousands of Cuban doctors, sports trainers, and other operatives. When Bolivia, under new President Evo Morales, allied with Venezuela and Cuba, Boliva too began receiving Cuban doctors. No doubt some of these programs do some good (they are also a safety valve for Castro - doctors use the trip to Venezuela or Bolivia to slip Castro's grasp.) However, it appears the Cuban agents are mostly organizing citizen militias that Chavez and Morales can rely on in a civil conflict.

But the biggest worry is the guns. Over the summer Hugo went on an arms buying spree in which he purchased high-performance jets and helicopters (not terribly useful for a nation with no real enemies) and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. Chavez also obtained a license so he could manufacture his own assault rifles. The first client for these weapons will probably be Chavez's own Bolivarian Circles (his citizen militia) and the second will be the FARC. But beyond that there are numerous latent, and not so latent, conflicts that could erupt throughout the region. In Peru, defeated Presidential candidate and Chavez ally Ollanta Humala, is founding a movement which is best described as Inco-fascist. A few months ago, Sao Paulo, Brazil was wracked with massive gang violence which left over two dozen dead. Highly organized and extremely violent Central American gangs operate across national borders and into the United States. The combination of financial support, technical know-how, and tens of thousands of easy to use, extremely deadly, assault weapons could turn these low-level conflicts into civil war and insurgency.

Chavez has, in General Craddock's words, been "exporting instability." If Chavez's vision prevails, decades of work could be undone and Latin America could again become the realm of dictatorships and strife.

It is worth noting that this sort of arms transfer is not new to Latin America. Former Peruvian intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison for selling 10,000 assault weapons to the FARC. (Although he was a "right-winger" because of his efforts against leftist Sendero Luminoso, Montesinos spent a year in hiding in Venezuela - under the protection of the leftwing Chavez.)

For more on Venezuela and Chavez visit my blog.

Tariq Ramadan Denied US Visa

By Bill West

Tariq Ramadan, the controversial Swiss Muslim professor previously denied entry into the United States after he was offered a teaching position at Notre Dame two years ago, has officially been denied another US entry visa according to published media reports today as well as a release on Ramadan’s own Web site. Ramadan’s version seems to exculpate him from any links to supporting terrorism. He says the State Department denial letter claims the visa was not issued because he gave a small amount of money to a charity in France that helped Palestinians and this is evidence the US Government believes he does not support terrorism (and that he does not engage in “double-speak”). The media reports indicate a statement from the State Department noting otherwise; that the visa denial was in fact, "based solely on his actions, which constituted providing material support to a terrorist organization."

It is possible the US Government gave the most "publicly releasable" reason in its denial letter. Especially for visa adjudication purposes under US immigration law, contributing money to a charity determined to be a funding funnel for Hamas could constitute support for terrorism no matter how Ramadan and his supporters might try to spin it. And for visa denial purposes, proof need not be anything close to criminal standards nor even court-use standards...it's all administrative action with virtually no due process rights accorded the foreign-based alien...something that still drives those apologists crazy. And this may be only one item of evidence the Government has against him. If so, it is merely what they chose to publicly release in the official denial document because in these visa adjudication proceedings all it takes is one such basis. Something else that drives the apologists nuts.

Perhaps before the United States grants every person on planet earth that is involved in every and any legal proceeding that in any way involves the United States the full panoply of Constitutional and civil rights enjoyed by US citizens and residents living within the borders of America, “We the People” of the United States should grant our Government officials some degree of latitude in dealing with issues like keeping some foreign nationals out of this country. Ironically, at times the hue and cry over uncontrolled immigration seems to have been turned on its head in the Ramadan case.

"Political Islam," Islamists and the War on Terror

By Douglas Farah

The U.S. intelligence community has only a single office devoted to understanding political Islam. That is one of the stunning nuggets contained in the recent House Intelligence Committee Report on threats to the United States.

That information, coupled with an interview in Harper's Magazine of Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh, the former director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program at the CIA, seems to me to point a fundamental, residual problem in the government and intelligence community's approach to Islamists.

The House report, while disputed in its timing and presentation by Democrats, nonetheless presents some interesting findings, some that are particularly critical of the administration. The report found "significant shortfalls" in the government's knowledge of Islamist militancy at home or abroad. It concluded that there are "still gaps in our understanding of Islamist extremist groups, which leave America vulnerable."

At the same time, Nakhleh is saying that political Islam "is not a threat." What does political Islam mean? Can you possibly say that and ignore the political decision of the rulers of Saudi Arabia to put billions of dollars into teaching children to hate the wider world, everyone who is not a Salafist and non-religion based knowledge? The Pakistani decision to allow madrasas to continue to funtion as educational institutions when they teach the rote memorization of the Koran, accompanied only by the teachings of hatred. Does political Islam not embrace the (fundamentally political) international Muslim Brotherhood and its broadbased support of armed Islamist movements? The sharia movements in Northern Nigeria? Somalia in its current state? Sudan? My entire blog is here.

British Kill Omar al-Faruq, Key Al Qaeda Operative, in Basra (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

British troops have killed Omar al-Faruq, major Al Qaeda operative, in Basra. Al-Faruq, a Kuwaiti, has been described as the most senior Al Qaeda figure in southeast Asia and a key link to Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiah. He was captued in Indonesia in 2002 and was one of four terrorists who escaped from the Bagram air base prison near Kabul in June 2005. Al-Faruq set up the first Al Qaeda training camp in Southeast Asia in Mindinao (Philippines) with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 1994. In 1998, he went to Indonesia and later took credit for the 1999 bombing of a mosque there (to trigger Christian attacks against Muslims) and the Philippine ambassador's house in Jakarta. The al-Faruq arrest has been described as one of the outgrowths of the arrest of high-ranking Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah in March 2002.

On March 31, 2005, Zachary Abuza wrote here that, "The links between the MILF and Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional affiliate of Al Qaeda that is responsible for three major terrorist attacks in Indonesia since October 2002, are clear and convincing. MILF offered JI training facilities in its camps in the 1990s; and several hundred JI members were trained by Al Qaeda operatives including Omar al-Faruq, Omar Al-Hadrani and al-Mughira al-Gaza'iri. The number of Indonesians in MILF camps, however, has decreased dramatically in the past few years."

This is a significant kill for which the British deserve lots of credit. The fact that al-Faruq was killed in Basra, presumed center for Iraq's Shiites and where Sunni insurgents are definitely not welcome, is fascinating and troubling. Hopefully British, Iraqi, and American intel are working overtime to learn why he was there, how he traveled there, and his means of support. It's not difficult to imagine that his presence in the area was discovered by Shiites and passed to the British, which would explain why they used 200 troops in the pre-dawn raid in which they killed him. The British Major in charge of the operation is quoted as saying, "We tracked this terrorist down to Basra, where we identified that he was in a particular house in the center of Basra and we launched the operation in the early hours of this morning." The BBC reports that al-Faruq "had been tracked across Iraq to Basra." The AP reports that "al-Farouq entered Iraq three months ago, was known to be an expert in bomb making and went by the name Mahmoud Ahmed while in Basra." Sounds like they had lots of help from inside and possibly outside Iraq, perhaps from a variety of intel sources.

The AP quotes Ken Conboy from an interview last year about al-Faruq.

By Lorenzo Vidino

Today's Boston Globe ran an op-ed I wrote about spreading democracy in the Muslim world:

IN RECENT WEEKS, President Bush has delivered a series of major speeches outlining his strategy against terrorism. We have come a long way from the nebulous rhetoric of the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.

The foe is no longer defined as ``terror," which is simply a tool used by a well-defined adversary. The new ``National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" acknowledges that America's enemy is a ``transnational movement of extremist organizations . . . which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends." The report then outlines measures to confront that challenge. While short-term measures such as denying terrorists sanctuary or tracking their funds seem logical , the administration's long-term strategy is less straightforward.

The obvious cure to the problem is tackling radical Islam, the ideology that motivates terrorists. But the administration believes firmly -- almost blindly -- that democracy is the right medicine. According to the report, democracy ``diminishes the underlying conditions terrorists seek to exploit." Promotion of democracy is, therefore, the key element in the administration's long-term approach.

Yet democracy does not always have these healing powers. The administration contends that individuals who enjoy political participation and can freely express themselves are less likely to embrace fundamentalist messages. The truth is that today democratic societies are spawning terrorists no less than dictatorships are.

The core Sept. 11 hijackers grew up under autocratic Middle Eastern regimes, yet embraced radical Islam only when they went to study in Germany. The young terrorist suspects arrested in London and Toronto, the vast majority of whom were second-generation Muslim immigrants in the West, shunned the values of their native societies and planned attacks against them. A recent round of routine Al Qaeda threats against the United States were delivered on tape by Adam Gahdan, who grew up in democratic Southern California.

Aside from not guaranteeing results, spreading democracy in the Muslim world is a monumental effort that requires changing cultures and overcoming entrenched skepticisms. Some oppose the concept because it clashes with their divinely ordered vision of government. For Islamists, a small but vocal minority in the Muslim world, the only source of legislation is God and his will is set in the Sharia; parliaments and other democratic institutions are illegitimately trying to replace God's will with man's. Others look at democracy with suspicion, as a form of government imposed by foreign forces.

A word often abused by local autocrats who cloaked themselves with it, democracy is viewed as just one of the ideologies that failed the people of the Middle East. Moreover, its difficult application (see Iraq) only increases the doubts of skeptics. At this point in time democracy is far from the magic bullet against fundamentalism. Spreading democracy to the Muslim world is an extremely difficult task whose achievement does not guarantee the end of radicalism.

Confronting the enemy on its own ideological ground seems to be a better option. Rather than simply calling it brutal and tyrannical, the administration needs to directly challenge Islamist ideology. The task is not easy, but some of the enemy's ideological weaknesses can be exploited.

The main one is the intellectual poverty of its offer. Al Qaeda and other such groups are crystal clear about what they oppose, but they have made no argument to prove they could offer a better tomorrow to ordinary Muslims. If they ever achieved their lofty dreams of avenging Muslim pride and re establishing the caliphate, how would they make it work? Do they have an economic plan? And how about fixing potholes and collecting garbage? Only few in the Muslim world would sign up for a Taliban-style state that lacks everything except public executions.

Islamist ideology is powerless when confronted with the basic duties of governance. Look at the Palestinian territories, where Hamas's recent unpopularity is derived from its inability to pay salaries and deliver basic services. Promotion of democracy is an ambitious goal whose prospects for success are unclear. What can produce immediate gains is a head-on challenge of the enemy's ideological shortcomings.

This Round of Negotiations on Iran's Nuclear Program May Lead to Suspension or to Sanctions

By Victor Comras

The United States, the European Union and Iran are now engaged in a serious game of three-way hardball over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, used his visit to the UNGA in New York to suggest that Iran might be willing to suspend enrichment, under what he termed “fair and just conditions.” This, he intimated further, would entail a change in US attitudes toward his country, and, in particularly US renouncing any support for ‘regime change’ in Iran. His statements, and more moderate comportment than usual, were enough to convince the EU to hold back on the US push for sanctions and to undertake a new round of negotiations to convince Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.

For its part, the US has signaled to both the EU and Iran, that US patience with the EU-Iran negotiating process is already severely strained. Recognizing that the August 31, 2006 deadline for Iranian Enrichment suspension has come and gone without consequences, we are pushing our EU brethren to now set a new firm three week deadline (until October 15th) to get an Iranian commitment to suspend its enrichment activities. Barring such a commitment we want agreement from the EU, Russia and China, to go ahead with first stage sanctions on Iran. These would concentrate measures against Iran’s government, military and scientific communities. Such targeted measures would include a travel ban and a suspension of all trade, and technical, financial and business support for any sector even remotely associated with Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

Russia has already begun to stake out its own position in these negotiations and will put maximum pressure on the United States for concessions to Russia, if Russia is to play ball with us in the Security Council. High on their list is getting the US to back off from its newly imposed sanctions on the Russian company, Sukhoï. The US imposed a new export control ban under the 2000 Iran Non-proliferation Act against Sukhoi based on a finding that Sukhoi had engaged in providing sensitive missile and defense technology to Iran. This followed a deal signed by Moscow last year involving surface-to-air missiles for Iran reportedly worth some $750 million.

Chief EU Negotiator Javier Solana is scheduled to meet with Iran’s negotiator, Ali Larijani in Tehran early this coming week. Larijani failed to show for an initial meeting that had been planned in New York this past week, giving rise to speculation that Iran’s leaders are engaged in their own “grand internal debate” over whether to concede on enrichment “if the price is right.” In the meantime Iran continues to reach out to China in hopes that it can further ward off UN sanctions, if necessary.

9/11 Commission Members Should Review and Report on Controversial Intel Estimate

By Andrew Cochran

The "New York Times" report on the the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, completed in April, is quickly fueling another ugly political argument over the value and accuracy of the intelligence in the report and whether the news story fairly represents the entire report. The NYT story reported that "A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." Senior Democrats rushed to issue statements claiming the report "should put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush's phony argument about the Iraq war" and have injected the issue into the midterm Congressional elections. The White House countered that the NYT account is "not representative of the complete document."

The claim in the NY report would echo judgments of some of our Contributing Experts, notably Evan Kohlmann as early in May 2005, that the Iraq war has been an "engine of international terrorism." But it's also true the NIEs have certainly included some major blunders. The 1997 NIE, the last one before the 9/11 attacks on global terrorism, mentioned bin Laden in only three sentences as a "terrorist financier" and didn't reference al-Qaeda at all. And of course, it was the October 2002 NIE which was a significant factor in the decision to use force against Iraq by famously asserting, "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

SO FOR GOD'S SAKE, let's not turn this NIE into another partisan political battle over intelligence. The American people deserve to know, to the maximum extent possible, the actual findings and conclusions in this NIE and not depend on partial reports and leaks, which could be driven by all sorts of hidden agendas. The White House and DNI Negroponte should ask the members of the 9/11 Commission to independently review the NIE and release an unclassified version or summary of the report as soon as possible.

The Islamization of Morocco

By Olivier Guitta

I wrote a piece for the Weekly Standard on Morocco's dangerous path to Islamization.
Here's an excerpt:

A LITTLE MORE THAN three years ago, Morocco experienced Islamic terrorism firsthand. On May 16, 2003, Casablanca was hit with four simultaneous attacks that left 45 people dead and hundreds injured. The attacks were perpetrated by Moroccan citizens who were members of the al Qaeda-affiliated Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (known by its French acronym, GICM).

Needless to say, the kingdom was stunned that its sons had turned violently against it. Now, the dismantling of another extensive Islamist cell in Morocco confirms that extremism is spreading inside what has long been viewed as one of the most moderate countries in the Arab world.

In a series of arrests over the past month, Moroccan authorities have seized 59 people and over 30 kilograms of TNT, more than was used in the 2003 attacks but of the same type. The alleged targets were political and military leaders, along with locations in Marrakesh, Morocco's premier tourist destination, the air force base of Salé, and the U.S. embassy in Rabat.

But the most troubling aspect of this cell by far is its membership. While the suicide bombers of 2003 came from the slums around Casa blanca, the newly arrested suspects are from all walks of life. They include five members of the military, three policemen, a Domestic Security officer, two imams, and four society women. Two of these women, the wives of Royal Air Morocco pilots, had volunteered for suicide missions in Iraq and Israel.

The full article is here.

The Coup in Thailand: Causes and Implications

By Zachary Abuza

It was the 18th coup in Thailand since 1932, but the first since 1992. Before Tuesday, the Thai military had extricated itself from politics and coups seemed passé, as democracy took root. What led to such a reversal and what are the domestic, regional and geopolitical implications?

For the full story click here.

Weekly Standard: Pakistan Surrenders

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Bill Roggio and I have an article in the new (Oct. 2) Weekly Standard that explores Pakistan's remarkable retreat from the global war on terror. This retreat can be seen in the Waziristan Accord, which cedes the North Waziristan tribal region to the Taliban and al-Qaeda; and also in Pakistan's release of 2,500 foreign fighters linked to these groups. An excerpt:

Since the Waziristan Accord will facilitate rather than hinder the cross-border movement of Islamic fighters, security and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan will be hampered. The Taliban and al Qaeda now have a new safe haven, and with it the freedom to train, arm, and infiltrate foot soldiers and suicide cells into Afghanistan with little fear of reprisal from the Pakistani government. Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has admitted that the Taliban "are crossing from the Pakistan side and causing bomb blasts in Afghanistan," yet his solution is to cede government authority over the tribal areas.
Internationally, Waziristan will serve as a training base for al Qaeda operatives of all stripes, as well as jihadists who want to attack their home countries. The 9/11 Commission Report notes that catastrophic terror attacks require sanctuaries that provide "time, space, and ability to perform competent planning and staff work." Al Qaeda has gained a new sanctuary in Waziristan.

The Taliban and al Qaeda will operate with impunity. They have already repeatedly broken their brand new agreement with Pakistan without facing consequences. Since September 5, a number of anti-Taliban clerics and tribal leaders have been shot and beheaded in Waziristan. A government official in Waziristan was kidnapped, and a reporter was murdered in the city of Dera Ismail Khan. Bombings and other attacks have taken place on military outposts in North and South Waziristan, and bombings have occurred in Peshawar and Bajaur.

Adding to the peril of this surrender, Musharraf has reiterated that the U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan won't be allowed into the tribal areas covered by the peace deal. "On our side of the border there will be a total uprising if a foreigner enters that area," he said. "It's not possible at all, we will never allow any foreigners into that area. It's against the culture of the people there."

Read the whole article here.

Missouri CDL Case Demonstrates Feds Are On The Job

By Bill West

Yesterday the Department of Justice announced the indictment of fifteen defendants in Federal Court in Springfield, Missouri on a sixty-two count mail fraud, false document and conspiracy indictment. The case stemmed from a multi-agency Federal, State and local investigation targeting several business entities training and testing persons for the purpose of obtaining Commercial Driver Licenses (CDLs). The indictment alleges the defendants were involved in a scheme to fraudulently provide CDL testing to unqualified Somali and Bosnian immigrants and those efforts allowed those immigrants to unlawfully obtain CDLs. As many as seventy to eighty such immigrants may have received such licenses, according to the press release and indictment.

An AP report in the Kansas City Star yesterday noted one of the principal defendants is a previously convicted felon who was also a "prison convert" to Islam while serving time for robbery and was one of the owners of a truck driver training school called the "Muslim Brothers and Sisters." This particular defendant was also charged with being a convicted felon in illegal possession of a firearm.

Federal authorities have indicated they do not believe there are any terror connections to this case at this time. However, given the Somali and Bosnian nationalities of the CDL recipients, persons from war-torn countries known to produce radical Muslim extremists and known to have al-Qaeda presence, a principal defendant who is already a convicted felon and believed to be a prison convert to Islam (interestingly this on the heels of the just released report from George Washington University and the University of Virginia about US prison radicalization, especially among Muslim inmates and converts, and US Congressional hearings on this same topic), and the significant threat potential for misuse of CDLs, this case was ripe for investigation by the authorities.

In fact, given the apparent scope of the investigation and indictment, it seems the Federal authorities did precisely what they should have done in this matter. Even if no terror connections are developed in this particular case, given the circumstances, the aggressive, innovative, preemptive and cooperative multi-agency investigation and prosecution of the case is exactly the kind of post-9/11 law enforcement action Americans expect and of which they can be proud. Congratulations to the law enforcement professionals who have brought the case to this point.

Somalia and the Establishment of the Islamist Caliphate

By Douglas Farah

The situation is going from bad to worse in Somalia, as the Islamist leaders become more and more like the Taliban and less and less the moderates they pretended to be. A population beaten down by years of abuse and civil war welcomes the initial stability and removal of armed groups. Then the hammer comes down. Nuns are assassinated. Theaters closed, radios censored, dress codes imposed.

This matters on more than just a humanitarian level or from the vantage point of a spreading conflict in a region that is fragile at best. It is important to understand that Islamists view the holding of a territory, virtually any territory, as vital to the re-establishment of the Caliphate. It does not really matter where the banner is raised. It is more important to raise the banner.

This was clear in Afghanistan, when Azzam, backed by many leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, agreed that the Afghan struggle took precedence over the Palestian struggle because it would give them an Islamist state. Lawrence Wright points this out in detail in "The Looming Tower." My whole blog is here.

Speak of the Devil: Chavez as Terror Master

By Aaron Mannes

Although Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has never had as large an audience as he did earlier this week at the UN, he regularly gives bizarre grandiose speeches with eschatological overtones. In August he gave an interview to al-Jazeera in which he said the way to the Kingdom of Heaven is to create a multi-polar world. In his Christmas Eve speech last year he called for building Utopia on earth.

Perhaps nothing highlights how bizarre Chavez can be than this joint press conference he gave with Iran’s President. Ahmadinejad is no slouch in the international rabble-rousing department, but here he comes off as quite sober compared to the voluble Chavez.

It would be easy to dismiss Chavez as a buffoon. But he has substantial resources. Riding high on inflated oil prices (his government’s mismanagement of Venezuela’s oil industry has been an important contributing factor to high oil prices) Chavez has been buying influence throughout Latin America with cheap oil and cash. He is funding Telesur, a Latin American satellite TV network, nicknamed “La Jazeera” to distribute the message of the global south. He is also keeping his mentor Castro’s Cuba afloat with grants of cash and fuel, and he is buying expensive weapons. But he also has another tool of regional influence – a major terrorist ally.

Next door, the Columbian government has begun to turn the tide against the narco-terrorist FARC. In the 1990s the Columbian government engaged the FARC in a peace process that gave FARC a Switzerland sized area within Columbia as a safe haven. In 2002 Alvaro Uribe, who campaigned promising to restore internal security, was elected President of Columbia. Given the opportunity, the Columbian military quickly pushed the FARC from its bases. Terrorists and insurgencies, no matter how wealthy, need land to operate. Threatened by the Colombian military, the FARC, a classic far-left insurgency, turned to Hugo Chavez, their ideological ally, for help. Chavez doesn’t give them money – FARC is so heavily involved in the drug trade – money is the least of their concerns. Chavez has allowed the FARC to use the Venezuela-Columbia border zone as a safe haven.

The FARC has formidable capabilities and tendrils throughout the region. The FARC has been linked to the 2005 kidnapping and murder of the daughter of Paraguay’s former President, and to the recent resurgence of the Maoist Sendero Luminoso in Peru. Most significantly, the FARC transports tons of cocaine to the United States annually.

As the FARC allies more closely with Chavez and becomes more dependent on him, it could become a tool of his policies. Further, as Chavez tacks closer to Iran (the leading sponsor of Hezbollah and the Palestinian terrorist groups) the FARC may expand its links to Middle Eastern terrorists – particularly Hezbollah and Iran’s Palestinian proxies. At the same time, if they become less able to conduct insurgent tactics in the Columbian countryside they may come to rely more heavily on bombings and urban terror attacks.

In evaluating terrorist groups it is important to look at both ambitions and capabilities. It is not certain that FARC desires to turn to international terror or targeting the U.S. homeland (they have already targeted Americans in Columbia). But there is little doubt that it has the capability. However, equally dangerous is the possibility that the FARC’s skills and resources will be used to facilitate Middle Eastern terrorists.

Cross-posted to The TerrorBlog.

As Predicted Here, There's a Gitmo Deal

By Andrew Cochran

Big Surprise: As I predicted on June 29, two hours after the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision, and again on September 6, there's a deal to pass legislation enabling trials of the Gitmo terrorists. The lesson here is that if you stay in Washington long enough (e.g., 23 years), you'll see and take advantage of numerous situations just like this, in which the news media shouts "the President is defeated," when in fact the President who holds a majority or near-majority in Congress holds almost all the cards.

I wish football games were so easy to predict.

U.S. House Intelligence Committee Releases Al Qaeda Report

By Andrew Cochran

Yesterday, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a 40-page report, "Al Qaeda: The Many Faces of an Islamist Extrmist Threat" (large Acrobat file). The report labels Al Qaeda "the single most important terrorist threat to U.S. national security" and discusses some of the major Sunni extremist groups allied with Al Qaeda. Among the exhibits are maps, provided by Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism, of worldwide radical Islamist cells since 1996, of sources of Al Qaeda financing, and of terrorist groups in the U.S.since 1991. I will post those maps here today and save the report on our CT Library page.

Thailand's Coup and the Insurgency in the South

By Zachary Abuza

In the evening of 19 September, the Thai Army commander, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, seized power in a bloodless coup from caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. It was the first coup in Thailand since 1992, when General Suchinda Kaprayoon attempt was thwarted by massive street demonstrations by Bangkok’s emerging middle class. What are the implications for Thailand’s growing Islamist insurgency?

While some commentators have focused on the fact that the coup came days after insurgents staged six bombings in the southern Thai city of Hat Yai, beyond the three predominantly Muslim provinces that have seen the brunt of the fighting, the coup is firmly rooted in elite politics. There has always been criticism of Thaksin’s handling of the insurgency, but that alone was not what put the tanks on the streets of Bangkok.

The policies of Thaksin and his closest ally Deputy Prime Minister Chidchai as well as their constant political interference and personnel exacerbated the situation in the south. In June 2006, Thaksin gave army chief Sonthi Boonyaratglin full control over the south but in reality southern policy was still being very much controlled by Chidchai. Sonthi seemed to be the scapegoat for the failed policies. On paper, he had full control, and in reality he had limited power. He was the fall guy for Thaksin who has taken no responsibility at all for an insurgency that has left 1300 people dead, and unfolded during his tenure. By early September Sonthi and other officers had publicly lashed Thaksin and Chidchai for political meddling.

Will the coup lead to improvements in counter-insurgent operations? This is to be seen. The coup leaders have announced that they will soon turn over power to civilians. Hopefully they will, unlike Thaksin, implement the recommendations of the National Reconciliation Council. Though the NRC’s recommendations alone will not quell the insurgency, they will have an important impact in regaining the trust of the Muslim community. Yet, many in the military establishment, including Sonthi, himself a Muslim, have publicly refused to see the insurgency for what it is; denying it any religious overtones or secessionist goals. The generals should now have a freer hand in dealing with the south, but counter-insurgent operations are really going to have to improve, as is the collection of human intelligence.

Nor is the political situation likely to alter the campaign of the insurgents. If anything they may step up attacks in an attempt to provoke a heavy-handed government response. The Muslim provinces have been under martial law already for over two and a half years, with little to show for it, but an alienated and angry populace.

Hamas and Fatah Look to Unite: Implications for Funding the Palestinian Authority

By David Schenker

Talks between Hamas and Fatah aimed at forming a National Unity government in the Palestinian Authority (PA) are currently at an impasse. According to PA President (and Fatah leader) Mahmoud Abbas’ office, discussions stalled because Hamas reneged on its pledge to recognize previous agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This pledge—along with renouncing violence and recognizing Israel—comprise the Quartet’s three conditions on which a resumption of funding to the PA is contingent. To date, Hamas has neither agreed to renounce violence nor recognize Israel.

No doubt, Hamas and Fatah will eventually come to terms, as this is the easiest route to a resumption of international funding to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, the increasingly difficult economic situation in the PA has implications for Hamas. A September 18 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research (PSR) found 54% of Palestinians were “dissatisfied with the overall performance of the Hamas government.” The level of dissatisfaction jumped to 69% when those surveyed were asked about Hamas’ performance on economic issues.

The economic crisis is so bad that on September 18, a group of protestors and striking workers attacked the motorcade of the PA (Hamas) Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyyeh near the parliament offices in Gaza. In the resulting melee, Haniyyeh’s personal security detail discharged approximately 1000 rounds of ammunition to protect themselves and the Hamas PM.

By Andrew Cochran

On September 8, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was effectively shutting out Bank Saderat, one of the largest Iranian-owned banks, from the U.S. financial system due to the bank's involvement in financing terrorism. Thereafter I posted comments from a senior Treasury Department official on the positive impact of U.S. terrorist designations. If you're wondering what difference the September 8 announcement makes, Iran has one answer - a lot, according to the head of the Iranian central bank: "This move may cause us to distance ourselves from (the dollar), and I'm sure other countries are looking at us. Even now we are using other currencies, and this encourages us to get away from the dollar. We also have very good relations with European banks." They wouldn't consider those measures unless the U.S. actions hurt.

You can also measure the impact by the actions of Japan and Israel, which have now openly followed up with actions of their own. Three Japanese major banks with branches in the U.S. will refrain from doing business with Bank Saderat, and other banks in Japan are expected to follow suit.

Last night, Israel raided a Jordanian-owned bank and 14 foreign exchange brokers in the West Bank to cut the transfer of Iranian funds to Palestinian militants. "The Israeli forces confiscated 5 million shekels ($1.15 million) and 170,000 Jordanian dinars ($240,000) in the operation and seized hundreds of documents." An Israeli spokeswoman said the brokers "had been transferring money from Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah group to Hamas and Islamic Jihad to finance attacks on Israelis, purchase explosives and manufacture rockets" (quoting the article, not the spokeswoman). The targets included the single largest foreign exchange broker in the West Bank.

One response to the West Bank raids indicates how willing Palestinian brokers and bankers are to enable terrorists to transfer funds through their institutions. "I don’t ask my customers about their political background. They come and go. All I do is change money from one currency to another.” There's no Bank Secrecy Act/USA Patriot Act-like requirement to identify the customer, as there is in the U.S. and all other countries with major banking institutions.

Critics of the BSA and Patriot Act should keep that response in mind before complaining about costly regulatory requirements.

Steven Emerson & Walid Phares Testify on Domestic Implications of Radicalization (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

Steven Emerson and Walid Phares testify today before a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, at a hearing titled, "The Homeland Security Implications of Radicalization.” The hearing will be at 1 pm ET in room 2212, Rayburn House Building. Other witnesses include senior officials from the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI, and DHS.

UPDATE: You can read Steve's testimony here, and here is Walid's testimony (Acrobat files).

Two interesting comments from early in the hearing: Rep. Peter King, chairman of the full committee, said that police in New York have conducted surveillance of certain mosques and found that they are hiring released prisoners who converted to Islam in prison as security guards. And the Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division at the FBI said that the Justice Department has made a concerted sweep of federal prisons in recent years to remove extremist literature. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross discussed the literature at length in his testimony before the Senate yesterday.

An Important Step at the CIA

By Douglas Farah

In an interview published in today's Washington Post CIA director Michael V. Hayden made a small but extremely important comment on how he plans to change the agency, particularly the analysis side. He said expertise and "time on target" would be rewarded, rather than just moving analysts around from one area to another, prizing generalists over specialists.

Within the intelligence community culture, those who specialized in a region or topic have traditionally had a limited career track and a slim chance of moving up the ladder. Now, said Hayden, rewards "could now go to someone who has been looking at Iran for 14 years."

This is a vitally importance paradigm shift, one that almost every reform commission on intelligence has recommended. In an era where the primary collection targets-radical Islam and China-require extensive language and cultural skills and knowledge, the routine rotation after a few months or years often simply served to perpetrate ignorance. My full blog is here.

The UN's New Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy Has Some Serious Deficiencies

By Victor Comras

The UN General Assembly’s 60th Session was supposed to lay the foundation for a new Counter-Terrorism Strategy to re-enforce, and better coordinate international efforts against terrorism and terrorism financing. Secretary General Kofi Annan put forth a plan of action earlier this year that was intended to reform and better focus UN efforts in this regard. These measures were based, in turn on the recommendations of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change which issued its report in December 2004.

The culmination of this effort is a new UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and “plan of action” adopted by the General Assembly on September 8th, 2006. It lays out admirable objectives that need to be addressed and achieved. But it provides really little that can be deemed a “plan of action.”

The document focuses on what the UN can and should do best – providing an international basis for criminalizing terrorism and terrorism financing and support for, and legitimizing bilateral and multilateral efforts to deal with terrorism. What is lacking is a framework for accomplishing these goals. These details are apparently being left to Kofi Annan during his final months as Secretary General. Nevertheless the document is quite interest for what it says and doesn’t say.

The first objective set forth in the document is a renewed call for adoption of a clear definition of terrorism. The absence of such a definition has undercut the effectiveness of so many measures already adopted by the General Assembly and Security Council since it leaves each country free to pick and choose who they wish to deem terrorists and who they prefer to call ‘freedom fighters.(see my previous blog) Also high on the list of priorities are calls for greater efforts to encourage compliance with UN counter-terrorism resolutions and to build States' capacity to prevent and combat terrorism. In this regard Kofi Annan is expected to push for some sort of consolidation between the activities of the UN’s Counter Terrorism Committee and Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee.

Missing from the Strategy are plans to enhance accountability and consequences for State failure to implement and enforce previously adopted Chapter VII measures against al Qaeda and terrorism. These measures include prohibition on terrorism financing, freezing assets, denial of economic resources, and the ban on travel. The UN needs to reconstitute an independent watchdog or monitoring group to oversee what countries are actually doing, or not doing, to implement effectively these measures. Such a group would bring increased transparency and credibility to the sanctions enforcement process. It would also place increased pressure on countries to comply with the sanctions measures.

There is also some corridor talk of giving the Counter Terrorism Committee and the CTED an increased role in terrorism sanctions enforcement. In my view the group is ill-suited to taking on such a role. The UN Secretariat has little grounding in counter-terrorism expertise. And secretariat hiring procedures may not be conducive to putting together the needed secure expert human resource base. Few countries are willing to channel sensitive intelligence and investigative information through such a group. Enforcement is better left to more discrete national and regional operations.

Combating terrorism and terrorism financing takes more than strategies and plans of action. It requires a dogged determination to implement these strategies and to go after those that support terrorism. That requires political will to act against those who commit or support terrorism, even if there might be support their ultimate goals. Whatever the UN can do to fortify such action and political will is a positive step in the right direction. But action will speak louder than words.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross' Testimony on Prison Radicalization (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross testified today at a U.S. Senate committee hearing on prison radicalization; his testimony is posted there. Daveed discussed his experience with the Al Haramain Foundation and its prison program:

Nor was the Wahhabi/Salafi translation of the Qur’an the only piece of radical literature that Al Haramain distributed to prisons. Another widely-distributed volume was Muhammad bin Jamil Zino’s Islamic Guidelines for Individual and Social Reform. Like the translation of the Qur’an that Al Haramain distributed, one of the themes in Zino’s book was jihad... Zino instructs his readers that children should be indoctrinated in the glories of jihad from an early age: Teach your children the love of justice and revenge from the unjust like the Jews and the tyrants...On a page headed “Act upon these Ahadith,” the hadith being sayings and traditions attributed to Muhammad, Zino’s very first injunction reads: “The Last Hour will not appear unless the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.”

(Emphasis mine.)

Daveed will discuss this issue on Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto" today and on the morning "Fox and Friends" on Wednesday.

A MSNBC story discusses a new study on this issue quotes him and discusses a new study which will be released at the hearing - an excerpt:

U.S. prisons are becoming major breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists, but state and local authorities are too cash-strapped to prevent or track recruiting, a new report concludes. The report, to be released Tuesday, found there aren’t enough legitimately trained Muslim religious leaders to counsel an estimated 9,000 U.S. prison inmates who want Islamic services. That allows Islamist extremists to target their vulnerable prison-mates with distorted versions of the Quran and other Muslim readings that urge radicalization and violence.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism consultant, said “chilling” interpretations of the Quran were given to prison inmates when he worked for the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, an international charity that served as a major al-Qaida financier. The readings urged Muslims “to wage war against non-Muslims who have not submitted to Islamic rule,” Gartenstein-Ross said in prepared testimony to the Senate panel, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

Major Iraqi Al-Qaida Merger Rumored in the Works

By Evan Kohlmann

As-yet unsubstantiated reports have begun circulating on radical Arabic-language Internet chat forums that a major effort is now underway to bring the notorious Ansar al-Sunnah Army in Iraq officially under the umbrella of Al-Qaida's Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC). Active since at least mid-2003, Ansar al-Sunnah is one of the few Iraqi insurgent groups other than Zarqawi's Al-Qaida to openly advocate a pro-Bin Laden platform, to carry out suicide bombing attacks, and to distribute beheading videos on the Internet. According to the reports, discussions and "planning sessions" are currently being held in the restive western Al-Anbar province between representatives of Al-Qaida and Ansar al-Sunnah, with the ultimate objective of announcing their would-be merger during the coming month of Ramadan (approximately September 24 to October 23, 2006).

Such a possible merger could hold very dark implications for the future of Iraq. While Ansar al-Sunnah and Al-Qaida certainly have worked together previously on occasion, a unified coalition of these Salafist extremists (both local and foreign) will present a stiff challenge to secular democratic forces who are desperately seeking to end the ongoing sectarian killings between Shiites and Sunnis. It will also present a further barrier to the U.S. military's effort to uproot tenacious networks of Al-Qaida cells from northern and western Iraq.

Daily Standard: Practice Makes Terror

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

I have a new article in the Daily Standard today that examines the rash of "false alarms" on airlines since authorities announced that they foiled the transatlantic air terror plot on Aug. 10. In it, I argue that some of these false alarms may not have been false, and that open societies like the U.S. will inherently find it difficult to guard against casings and dry runs. An excerpt:

ALTHOUGH THERE WAS AMPLE REASON before the transatlantic plot to believe that flights were being cased, none of these incidents were remembered as casings. Likewise, the various incidents that have occurred since then may well be remembered as a rash of false alarms.
But some of these alarms may not have been false. In any dry run or casing, terrorists will engage in aberrant behavior similar to that displayed by the passengers aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 42 (or United Airlines Flight 925, for that matter). If terrorists engaged in a dry run or casing have a modicum of foresight, they'll have reasonable explanations for their travel and their behavior. They may in fact not even have to do that much: by August 25, the New York Times declared that the 12 Northwest Airlines Flight 42 passengers were "possibly unaware of international flight rules and security concerns." This seems overly assuming. Is it likely that a dozen international passengers were unaware that they shouldn't use cell phones after takeoff and walk in the aisles with the seatbelt sign still on?

If the terrorists have reasonable stories and don't possess weapons or the means to blow up a flight, their dry run or casing will likely be remembered as nothing more than a false alarm. Actions of this kind are fairly low-risk ventures for terrorists from which they derive two distinct advantages. One is that they can test the limits of our tolerance, determining what behavior will raise red flags and what will not. The second advantage is that, as an increasing number of law enforcement sources suspect, terrorists or their sympathizers may be trying to catch the Federal Air Marshals' attention in order to determine who the marshals are.

THE LIKELIHOOD THAT TERRORISTS can offer plausible excuses and walk away unscathed when caught in the midst of a casing or dry run points to an inherent point of vulnerability for open societies.

Read the whole article here.

Congressional Terrorism-Related Hearings Include Testimony by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Steven Emerson, & Walid Phares (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

The schedule of open terrorism-related hearings this week includes testiomony by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross on Tuesday at 10 am ET before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at room 342 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The hearing topic is "Prison Radicalization: Are Terrorist Cells Forming in U.S. Cell Blocks?", one of Daveed's specialties. UPDATE: Steven Emerson and Walid Phares will testify before a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday at 1 pm in room 2212 Rayburn House Office Building at a hearing on the topic, "Radicalization; Homeland Security Implications." Here is the full hearing schedule, subject to update:

Senate Committees
September 19, 2006
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Response to Iran's Nuclear Ambitions
Full committee hearing on "Responding To Iran's Nuclear Ambitions: Next Steps."
Location: 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building. 9:30 a.m. (September 19, 2006)

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
Terrorist Cells in U.S. Prisons
Full committee hearing on "Prison Radicalization: Are Terrorist Cells Forming in U.S. Cell Blocks?"
Witnesses: Frank Cilluffo, associate vice president for homeland security and director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University; Gregory Saathoff, executive director of the Critical Incident Analysis Group and associate professor of research and the School on Medicine at the University of Virginia; Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, senior consultant of Gerard Group International and co-chairman of the Counterterrorism Foundation; John Vanyur, assistant director of the Correctional Programs Division at the Federal Bureau of Prisons; Donald Van Duyn, deputy assistant director of the Counterterrorism Analysis Branch, Criminal Division, FBI; and Javed Ali, senior intelligence officer, Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Homeland Security Department
Location: 342 Dirksen Senate Office Building. 10 a.m. (September 19, 2006)

By Douglas Farah

I am neither Catholic nor Jewish, but it strikes me as obscene that Islamists would respond with pre-arranged violence to the Pope's recent comments on the nature of Islam and the acceptability of forced conversions, or conversions by the sword. For a look at the historical context of the original remarks, see Andrew Bostom's article here.

Wahhabism, and many branches of Shi'ite Islam not only preach death to Jews and Christians and other unbelievers, they have, for decades, placed such teaching in the textbooks of school children, starting from their entrance into school.

The routine teaching of Jews as pigs and monkeys, the multiple references in the Koran to killing unbelievers and the extensive role of Islam in conquering and enslaving entire peoples (thus, eventually, spreading Islam), all bear out the comments made six centuries ago in the discussion the Pope referenced. That the Pope's decision to discuss this debate in an academic setting led to violence in the name of Islam seems to only confirm those who practice that violence accept that interpretation of the Koran. My full blog is here.

Six Bombs Rock Hat Yai, Southern Thai Commercial Center

By Zachary Abuza

Saturday night saw a series of six bomb attacks in the southern Thai city of Hat Yai. Martial law has been imposed in the region since January 2004, including the provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala. It also includes three districts of Songkhla province, but not the city of Hat Yai, which has a Buddhist majority. The bombing of Hat Yai is important in that it is such an important commercial and financial center for the entire south; and attacks there do provoke a greater response from the government in Bangkok.

The attacks on Saturday night, began around 9 PM, killed at least five people and wounded at least 50. Bombs were detonated five minutes apart, ialong the main commercial street causing widespread panic. Significantly, the bombs took place on the 21st anniversary of the founding of the Gerakan Mujahideen Islami Pattani (GMIP) one of the groups most responsible for the attacks, though as with the entire insurgency, no group has claimed any responsibility. The targets included three department stores, a marketplace, massage parlor, and a hotel. One Westerner, a Canadian, a Chinese and three Thais were among the dead. The thoroughfare has some 10 hotels on it with roughly 1,000 people checked in according to the Thai police. The bombs were detonated by cell phones, despite counter-measures put in place last November.

On 3 April 2005, insurgents exploded simultaneous bombs at Hat Yai’s international airport, a hotel and a department store.

State Department Endorses Pakistan's Retreat

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

I have previously written about the major blow inflicted on the U.S. by Pakistan's peace deal that cedes Waziristan to terrorist factions, and the Pakistani government's subsequent decision to release 2,500 foreign prisoners. Both of these are serious developments that do major damage to U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Yet assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher endorsed the deal in a speech at the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.:

Noting that the [Pakistani] government had carved out a new strategy to deal with the cross-border activities of Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathisers, Mr Boucher said: “The agreement really has the potential to work.” He said he believed the deal created an opportunity for local leaders to get hold of the problem of terrorism and it could enable the government “to get a political handle on this and enlist its citizens in the fight against terror”. The US, he said, understood that to effectively control the Afghan border, Pakistan needed “cooperation from local tribes and they are really trying to get in.” Mr Boucher said the US hoped that the agreement would leave a positive impact on the situation in the regions that are run by local tribal chiefs since the British days. “Instead of challenging the tribal chiefs, Pakistan has signed an agreement with them and we believe that it is a good effort,” he said. The official said the agreement would allow the local administration and the tribal chiefs to play a positive role in the development of their areas and also in restoring peace and security to the region. The agreement, he said, would restrict the movement of Taliban and would not permit the presence of Al Qaeda and its sympathisers in the tribal belt. “Talibanisation will not be allowed, in the area or in the cities near the tribal region,” he said. Mr Boucher said the government had made the tribal chiefs accept all these conditions before signing the agreement.

All arguments that Boucher advanced in favor of the Pakistani deal are so weak that they border on disingenuous. Some will take this as another sign of the State Department's general cluelessness on terrorism -- a cluelessness that often cannot be denied.

But I have a somewhat different interpretation of Boucher's statements. I think he probably understands that recent developments in Pakistan spell nothing but danger for the U.S., but is more concerned about seriously embarrassing Musharraf and thus further undermining his grip on power. (This is the same reason that U.S. and British leaders immediately hailed Pakistan's contributions when they announced that the transatlantic air plot had been foiled on Aug. 10; these contributions were exaggerated, but politicians felt that it would be counterproductive if Pakistan came under fire for the plot's connection to that country.) The view of Boucher and other officials who refuse to publicly condemn the developments in Pakistan is that, bad as Musharraf has been of late, things would be far worse if he lost power. In a critical Muslim nation with nuclear weapons, it would be disastrous if a pro-Western military dictator were replaced by al-Qaeda-linked fundamentalists.

Zawahiri threatens France and announces merger with GSPC

By Olivier Guitta

Further to my recent post on the threat on France, the recent September 11 video message of Zawahiri confirms this. Zawahiri again denounced France for the 2004 law on religious signs but this time also blames France for its active participation in UNIFIL forces in Lebanon. Indeed Zawahiri asks to hit the interests of the Jews and the Crusaders and forcefully condems all those who support UN Resolution 1701 on Lebanon.
Importantly, even though since 2003 the GSPC had pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, Zahawiri being the messenger of Osama Bin Laden only announces now Al Qaeda's official merger with the GSPC. In fact, last year Zawahiri originally refused the GSPC's help. But it sounds like as of now GSPC's assets are important to Al Qaeda. In fact, GSPC's extensive networks in Western Europe especially France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Britain is a godsend for Al Qaeda and allows them to really boost up their operations in that region of the world. In practical terms, Zawahiri instructs his European operatives to work hand in hand with the GSPC.
This does not bode well especially for France since it is GSPC's number one enemy.
In light of these new developments, it seems only logical that French authorities are worried about that "merger".

Pakistan Releases 2,500 Prisoners Linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

On Friday, the Telegraph published a distressing story that my intelligence sources have confirmed. Pakistan's descent into chaos (see my coverage of the government's surrender of the Waziristan region) is apparently continuing apace, with the latest incident being the release of 2,500 foreign fighters linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda who were "detained by Pakistan after fleeing the battleground in Afghanistan." My intelligence sources indicate that this is a "done deal," as the prisoners were released early Friday morning.

Some of these foreigners were released to Islamic welfare organizations, such "the al-Khidmat Foundation, a welfare organisation run by the hard-line Islamist party Jamaat-i-Islami." Al-Khidmat's officials make no secret of the fact that many of the released prisoners will return to the jihad. Field officer Hazrat Aman told the Telegraph: "If they react like that [by returning to jihad] it is a natural phenomenon. Some of these people spent two to three years in jail. Some of them will live peacefully and others will join jihad again."

My intelligence sources indicate that this latest incident further demonstrates the weakness of Musharraf's government. Several of the released prisoners were reportedly linked to past assassination plots against Musharraf, so letting them go free is unlikely to buy the Pakistani president the security that he apparently desires. He is "running scared" according to my sources, and is putting very little thought into the various concessions that he's making to militant factions.

Indeed, the released prisoners reportedly represent a broad cross-section of the jihadist movement, including computer experts, WMD experts, and low-level grunts. (See Bill Roggio's excellent post detailing the senior and mid-level Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives who were released.) The only faction that the government did not release is reportedly Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, out of concern that they would carry out attacks inside Pakistan. Another sign of the Musharraf government's blind concessions is my intelligence sources' belief that when militants demanded the release of 2,500 foreign fighters as part of a "prisoner exchange," that was probably a high-ball offer. The militants likely expected to be bargained down, but instead of doing so the Pakistani government immediately agreed to their demands.

The Telegraph does provide some sob stories about foreigners who were unjustly imprisoned, but my intelligence sources believe that many of these stories collapse upon a careful reading. For example, the Telegraph reports, "A third former prisoner, a 37-year-old Algerian, had come to fight the Russian-backed government in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. He married a Pakistani woman and claimed to have settled down and worked in the honey business when he was arrested last year." In fact, my sources believe that this "honey business" was run by high-ranking al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah, and is the same honey business that the U.S. government has tried to shut down. (See the Christian Science Monitor's discussion of al-Qaeda's involvement in the honey business.)

This is the second significant al-Qaeda victory in Pakistan in recent weeks. As one source told me, "This nullifies five years' worth of work in one fell swoop."

House Border Bill a Solid Start

By Michael Cutler

A Washington Times article today encourages me because an enforcement-only bill the House of Representatives passed finally deals with helping to secure our nation's border with Mexico. Clearly far more than that needs to be done to really get the immigration crisis under control, but this bill demonstrates that more members of Congress are yielding to the demands of their constituents by making the security of our nation's borders their priority. It is also interesting that because of this growing awareness, members who just one year ago would not have supported such legislation have come on board, regardless of party affiliation. The article makes note of Democrats who oppose the legislation, but it is clear that some Democrats are no longer marching in lock-step with their party, demonstrating an apparent understanding that their political careers are on the line. Rep. Loretta Sanchez is right in noting that the bill does not address the northern border and that situation also needs to be effectively addressed, as does the issue of the enforcement of the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States that I have been advocating at every opportunity.

I find the argument that the fence would force illegal aliens and terrorists to take a more dangerous path in attempting to enter the United States illegally to be utterly outrageous! It is the equivalent argument that someone might make about a home owner who secures his home against intruders with stronger doors and stronger locks because then a burglar might have to climb through a back window, thereby endangering the burglar's safety! Those politicians, and open border advocates, make it sound as though any alien who wishes to enter the United States should be able to do so regardless of the fact that every nation is defined by its borders and has the absolute right to securing its borders against illegal intruders. To say that this legislation represents hostility towards immigrants is another one of those outrageous statements that cannot go unchallenged. This is not about stopping immigrants but about stopping illegal aliens and terrorists. It is time to be honest with our language where immigration is concerned. Immigrants who have been lawfully admitted for permanent residence have the right to petition the government to permit their spouses and minor children to join them in the United States. They have the right to work at virtually any job they are qualified to do. They are able to travel freely around our country and across our nation's borders. They are, in fact, on the path to become naturalized citizens of the United States. As I have said on many other occasions, the difference between an immigrant and an illegal alien is the difference between a houseguest and a burglar.

The ridiculous comparison of the border fence with the Berlin Wall also needs to be addressed. Communist Germany erected that infamous wall in an effort to keep its own citizens from fleeing the oppressive government under which they suffered. In effect they converted their nation into a huge prison. Their citizens who fled across that infamous wall often paid for their efforts to flee that totalitarian regime with their lives. America does not prevent anyone from leaving. We simply have the right to make certain we can control who enters our country. The barbed wire fence that surrounds a prison is not designed to keep people out but rather prisoners from escaping. Just as the citizens of East Germany risked everything to flee their home country, Mexicans and others are doing much the same thing today.

Much work remains to be done. As I have often said, immigration is a system and the entire system, including the bureaucracy at USCIS that adjudicates applications for various immigration benefits. That needs to be given an 'extreme makeover' including a massive infusion of resources and leadership to deal with the rampant fraud and lack of security that plagues that component of the administration and enforcement of the immigration laws.. The Visa Waiver Program that enables aliens from some 27 nations to apply for admission into the United States needs to be terminated. I could go on about all of these issues that this legislation does not address, but it is important that the tide seems to be changing. I have made the comparison that the immigration system is not unlike a boat with many holes in its bottom. Only patching one or two holes will not keep the boat afloat. However, I am encouraged that the House passed the Border Fence Bill that represents a good first step in plugging one of the big holes. I am also encouraged that 64 Democrats voted for that bill. Border security and the effective administration and enforcement of our nation's immigration laws are neither a Republican issue nor a Democrat issue, it is an American issue.

I commend the members of the House of Representatives who, by voting for the border fence, have demonstrated a willingness to listen to their constituents. That is how democracy is supposed to work! I hope that the members of the United States Senate are paying attention to this practical lesson in civics! Now it is their turn to follow the initiative taken by the House of Representatives and vote for a similar bill to get the process of securing our nation's borders rolling and ultimately taking the other steps that will help protect our nation and our citizens. There is a breeze blowing, I hope it is the beginnings of the 'wind of change' blowing across the political landscape!

Lead, follow or get out of the way!

« Close It

Speech Tape Compounds Questions on Hathout’s Human Relations Award

By Steven Emerson

Add one more item to the list that makes Maher Hathout’s selection for a major human relations award so mind-boggling: His spirited defense of an accused -- and later convicted -- cop-killer.

Hathout, president of the Islamic Center of Southern California and a senior advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), already has a lengthy record of hate speech to his credit. He has called Israel a nation of butchers and accused the United States of state terrorism; he has justified the actions of Hizbollah and defended terrorist financiers.

Despite these seeming disqualifiers, the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations announced recently that the Muslim activist would receive its prestigious John Allen Buggs Award in ceremonies next month. The award is given annually for what the commission describes as “outstanding human relations work.” I wrote about the award on "New Republic Online" on August 31 (reprinted with permission) and will discuss the issue again on the Fox News Network.

And despite his long record of vitriolic statements, he has maintained -- as recently as a September 7 appearance on the Fox News Network, in which he tried to refute documentation of his extremism presented by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) -- that he is a moderate who condemns both Hizbollah and Hamas. More about that record below.

But now IPT has uncovered the tape of a speech that Hathout gave at a benefit dinner held to raise defense funds for Jamil Al-Amin at his trial on charges of shooting one Georgia sheriff’s deputy to death and seriously wounding another.

No fewer than a half-dozen times in the speech Hathout referred to Al-Amin as “our brother.” He said he would always take Al-Amin’s word over that of supposedly untrustworthy police. And he veered off into generalized charges of racism against the United States, and even piggybacked on the Al-Amin case his standard charges of “apartheid racial slaughtering” of Palestinians by Israel.

The man now known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin first came to public attention as the 1960s black militant H. Rap Brown, serving then as so-called Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party. Among his best-known statements from that period: “Violence is as American as cherry pie,” and “If America don’t come around, we’re going to burn America down.” Brown converted to Islam while imprisoned on a robbery conviction in the early 1970s, later adopting his Islamic name.

In the case in which Hathout defended him, he was charged with shooting two Fulton County, Georgia, sheriff’s deputies who had sought to arrest him in connection with earlier charges of impersonating a police officer and accepting stolen property. One of the two officers -- both of them African-Americans -- died within hours.

A jury found Al-Amin guilty after only brief deliberations. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Speaking before the trial, Hathout had said, “There are two stories for this case. One story, told by our brother Imam Jamil Al-Amin; the other story is a different one, told by the police of Atlanta. It just happened that we believe the story of Imam Jamil Al-Amin, and we don’t believe the story told by the police of Atlanta.”

The reason, he explained in his September 9, 2001 speech at the “Justice for Imam Jamil Al-Amin Benefit Dinner" held at the University of California’s Irvine campus, was that “The track record of our brother is one of integrity and straight-forward speaking and a bold stance.”

The Atlanta police, on the other hand -- like police “in so many other places” including New York and Chicago -- have “not a very good track record,” he charged.

"Let us face it,” Hathout continued. There are so many sugary talks about court, about justice, about legal system, etc. but we know and we can prove it, that in America, the legal system is not color blind and is not money blind.”

Nor did the efforts on Jamil Al-Amin’s behalf by MPAC and its senior adviser, Hathout, end with his conviction on the charges he faced.

MPAC was a member -- indeed, MPAC political advisor Mahdi Bray served as chairman -- of a “Support Committee for Imam Jamil Al-Amin,” which took issue with the trial outcome. In a statement issued March 9, 2002, after the largely African-American jury reached its verdict, the support committee said:

"We do not believe the facts presented in court warranted a guilty verdict against Imam Jamil. His defense team offered credible evidence indicating that he was not the person who shot the deputies. We believe Imam Jamil will be exonerated on appeal.”

"Because the death penalty has been disproportionately applied to minority defendants in America,” the committee statement added, “we oppose its use in this, or any other trial.”

MPAC then cosponsored a Los Angeles “Rally for Justice” in support of the convicted killer on March 24, 2002. An advertisement for the rally declared that “Despite inconsistencies and lack of evidence, Imam Jamil was convicted of these crimes on March 9 …(and) is now faced with life in prison without parole.”

The ad urged readers to “Join us in support of Imam Jamil!”

Hathout, for his own part, argued that the issues went beyond the Al-Amin case itself to “the situation in America in general and we have to be very aware about that.”

“There is an organized system of injustice. It is intact. It is effective. It is viable, vibrant, and strong, and it depends on a triangle. That triangle, three-limb triangle, is racism, exploitation, blinding propaganda,” Hathout continued.

“You take that satanic triangle and you apply it to any case, and justice is sacrificed. To any case, to Imam Jamil Amin, to Malcolm X, to Martin Luther King, to anybody that can be subject to that malignant triangle and you can destroy that person, unless the voice of conscience within the people and within the public can object and can reject that,” he said.

The exploitation, Hathout argued, is supported by “a blinding propaganda machine and industry, to put a spin on everything, to make the victim looks like the criminal, and to make the criminal looks like the angels and the innocent and the shy and the poor and the besieged. To make the falsehood looks like right, and right looks like false.”

Expanding his thesis further, Hathout complained that the United States had “behaved shamefully” at a conference held in South Africa weeks before. At that meeting, he said, U.S. officials lacked "the mere willingness to accept any more responsibility for reparations of the victims of racism here in America” or, he added -- getting in his customary digs at Israel -- “to stop the apartheid racial slaughtering of the people in Palestine.”

The conference to which Hathout referred so favorably: “The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” in Durban on the eve of 9-11 -- a set of meetings whose most memorable outcome was passage by non-governmental organizations of an infamous resolution that accused Israel of “racist crimes against humanity including ethnic cleansing [and] acts of genocide.”

Hathout complained that this resolution “against the apartheid racist regime in Israel and for reparation of the victims of slavery,” had not been similarly approved by governments in attendance -- purportedly under U.S. pressure.

“…We find that all European governments took the side of America, so they came beside America and the Muslim and other Arab governments did not come beside America, they came under America. And we ended up by a very tragic and shameful resolution that did not mention reparations and did not mention the state of Israel. That is racism,” he declared.

In sharp contrast to Hathout’s denunciations of the United States for failing to join in the Israel-bashing lynch mob, leading newspapers across the country applauded the U.S. action in quitting the conference.

An editorial in the Washington Post on September 9, 2001 declared that “Arab negotiators tried to turn the proceedings into a propaganda exercise against Israel” and that their “efforts to equate Zionism with racism, interspersed with promises of moderation that subsequently proved empty, gave the U.S. delegation ample reason to walk out.”

The Los Angeles Times had similarly editorialized on September 5, “The United States and Israel were right to walk out of the United Nations conference on racism now underway in South Africa. Washington provided plenty of warning that unless language branding Israel a racist state was removed, the U.S. would leave.”

Returning to Hathout’s protestations of being a voice for moderation, a look at numerous other statements he has made over the years -- well beyond those previously chronicled by IPT -- gives the lie to that self-characterization.

Consider these examples:

● Asked during a 1998 debate to clarify his views on Hizbollah, a group already at that time on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations, Hathout responded, “[W]hat we said and what we say and what we will be saying that any group who is fighting on their own territory against a military occupation, fighting only military who are armed, are actually a movement of liberation. Whether this group is this group or that group, under this name or that name, this particular action [Hizbollah’s activity in Lebanon] is very American, is what America did in the beginning against the colonizing of the British, is what all honorable people in the world are doing.”

● Speaking at a “United for Al Quds” -- the Islamic name for Jerusalem -- conference in 2002, Hathout talked of “a junction that joins us to Christians, those Christians who are not being fooled by Jerry Falwell and their likes, and with Jews who have not been Zionized, and also with large numbers of oppressed people all over the world, who understand how the hegemony of the elite of the world can violate what is sacred and what is important to the masses.” Presumably, in Hathout’s view, the “Zionized” Jews were in league with those oppressive elites.

He invoked anti-Semitic phrases, akin to those uttered by David Duke: “This is an Israeli occupied territory,” Hathout declared. “And it is more Zionist than the Knesset.”

● Hathout spoke on March 12 of this year at a fundraiser in Anaheim, California for former University of South Florida professor Sami Al Arian, alleged by the government to have served as North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Said the Muslim activist on that occasion, “We still, as Muslim Americans, we believe in the integrity of our justice system, and we believe in our jurors who really did a marvelous job in the case of the hour, and cleared the mess of the accusations against Sami Al-Arian.”

(Hathout’s statement was not exactly correct. A jury acquitted Al Arian of eight of the 17 charges against him and deadlocked on nine. In the course of the trial, tapes and documents were introduced showing that Al Arian had called for death to Israel, lauded terrorist attacks on Israelis, raised money for the Islamic Jihad, and served as a senior member of Islamic Jihad. He ultimately pled guilty to conspiring to provide services to PIJ, and agreed to be deported after completing his prison sentence on that charge.) Interestingly, in the case of Jamal Al Amin, Hathout claimed that the justice system was “satanic.” But when it came to Al-Arian, who admitted to being a member of Islamic Jihad, Hathout praised the justice system because Al Arian was “cleared.”

● Earlier, in a speech on emerging Islamic trends that he delivered at the State Department in 1997, Hathout praised a group of individuals he described as Islamic “reformists.”

An article on the speech in the July/August 1997 Minaret reported his comments this way: “In his view the reformists, represented by leaders like Jamaluddin Afghani, Muhammad Abdu, Mohammad Iqbal, Hassan al-Banna and Maududi, Ghannoushi, Erbakan and Turabi, have advocated a pluralistic society that would work for peace and justice for all. They have, however, according to Dr. Hathout, been ignored, despite the fact that they represent the masses and speak their language.”

In this litany, Hathout labels people “reformists” who are, in reality, extremists. Hassan Al Banna was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fierce proponent of Jihad, and whose movement gave rise to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other radical Sunni movements. Rashid Al Ghannoushi was the head of Tunisia’s banned Islamic fundamentalist Al-Nahda Party and was convicted by a Tunisian court of responsibility for a bomb blast that blew the foot off a British tourist.

Additionally, prominent Muslim Brotherhood member Hasan al-Turabi was the head of the National Islamic Front, which the U.S. government has condemned for supporting terrorism, launching a genocidal war in southern Sudan, and for continued human rights violations. Turabi also gave Osama bin Laden sanctuary in Sudan.

● In 1996, when Israel opened an entrance to an ancient tunnel that ran near the Western Wall and the Al-Aqsa mosque, Hathout delivered a khutba (sermon) alleging Israel—and the United States—were engaged a massive conspiracy to “eliminate” Islam. This incendiary allegation was designed to incite; it was similar to the conspiratorial delusions alleged by Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Under the protection of military armed to the teeth, the mayor of Jerusalem, the Jewish mayor, the Zionist Jewish extremist racist mayor of Jerusalem decided to resume digging up tunnels that they believe they that they started some time ago and should be continued,” Hathout declared.

Once again Hathout implicated the United States in what he portrayed as a nefarious plot to undermine Islam. “Are we that stupid? Are we supposed to assume that really we are upset because in the Israeli state they built a tunnel?” he asked. “Or is it making it clear, the whole plan and the whole plot to eradicate Islam and its symbols and to humiliate Muslims all over the world to the point of demoralization and helplessness and hopelessness so that they cease to be participants in shaping the human civilization and converting the atrocities and the injustices that are taking place all over the world, on the hands of Israel supported by the military and political power of the greatest power on Earth which is the United States of America.”

● At an “Interfaith Rally for Peace and Justice in Los Angeles” in 2000, to cite one more example of his invective, Hathout delivered a khutba (sermon) in which, The Minaret reported, he characterized Israel as a “criminal apartheid regime, doing what it does best -- stealing land and killing people.”

And now, on October 5, the self-styled moderate Hathout will be picking up his human relations award.

« Close It

Measuring the Collapse of Traditional States

By Douglas Farah

The latest World Bank study on failed and failing states (now called "fragile states") shows just how rapidly the global situation is deteriorating. As reported in the Washington Post by Karen DeYoung, the number of states that could provide logistical bases and ungoverned spaces for terrorists, transnational criminal organizations and other armed non-state groups has jumped from 17 in 2003 to 26 this year.

The growth of "black holes" and stateless regions is even more alarming when compared to a similar study done by the Bank in 1996, when only 11 states fell into the category of failed states.

Hurdles facing these countries include "weak security, fractured societal relations, corruption, breakdown in the rule of law, lack of mechanisms for generating legitimate power and authority" and limited investment resources to meet basic needs, the report said.

This, in a uni-polar world where the Islamists are seeking to exploit the lack of government control, alliances with transnational criminal groups and rear guard areas to train and begin the caliphate, is extremely dangerous. My full blog is here.

Pictures of Hezbollah Tunnels in Lebanon

By CTB Special Correspondent

Editor's Note: "Karim" is a special correspondent for the Counterterrorism Blog in Lebanon who posted on August 28, July 24, and September 6. He submitted pictures of Hezbollah tunnels found by Israeli soldiers upon entry into Lebanon. I don't know if these have already been published elsewhere on an English-language site (a quick search turned up none of these pictures). Here is an excerpt from an August 28 Reuters report on the tunnels:

Hizbollah's fortified underground structures proved a major stumbling block for the 34-day Israeli offensive that ended in a truce on Aug. 14. At least a dozen commandos died storming them, and guerrillas used them to shell northern Israel from cover. Footage of the site showed tunnels high enough to walk in, with ventilation and lighting systems, bathrooms, painted walls and reinforced ceilings. Hatches to the outside were screened by trees and shrubs. A mortar launcher was shown tucked, half concealed, in an open-air trench nearby. Lieutenant-Colonel Ghassan Alyan, the Israeli mission commander, said the underground network covered an area of 2 square km (0.8 square miles). "Dozens of command bunkers were built inside the network, divided into two or three rooms each," he told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. "They enabled the terrorists to come out of the bunkers, fire mortars at Israel, and re-enter the bunkers without being discovered by anyone." Israeli television said the military believed there were about 10 more similar networks in southern Lebanon.

More pictures on continuation page

By Andrew Cochran

First piece of good news from Iraq: "Iraq's Interior Ministry says its forces have killed a senior figure of the Al Qaeda militant group in Baghdad. The ministry described the slain militant, Abu Jaafar al-Liby, as the number-two leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, behind Abu Ayyub al-Masri who succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed by US forces this year." I would caution that the Interior Ministry sometimes exaggerates its successes and the rankings of those terrorists killed and captured.

And another leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq has been captured: U.S. forces captured the leader of the assassination, kidnapping and bomb making cells in Baghdad. The man, not identified by U.S. forces by name, is described as a "personal associate" of the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (or "Abu Ayyoub al-Masri" according to the U.S. military there). The Iraqi Defense Ministry describes the captured man as the fourth-ranking leader of al Qaeda in Iraq and named him as Thamer Mohsen al- Jibouri, a.k.a. Abu Ayman. The Ministry said he was arrested in the same area in which Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed.

UPDATE: Here is the official DOD press release on the capture, and you can watch video of the announcement here. The release notes, "During the past two weeks, more than 150 focused operations resulted in 66 terrorists killed and 830 terror suspects detained."

More on these events later as we obtain more confirmation of the killing claimed by the Iraqis.

Nasrallah is fast losing popularity even in its own ranks UPDATED 9/15

By Olivier Guitta

Indeed a recent poll shows that the majority of Lebanese, actually 51% want Hezbollah disarmed. Le Figaro cited that 47% of Lebanese do not think that Hezbollah won the war over Israel.

While one could have expected the reversal of fortune of Nasrallah's movement among Christians and Sunnis what's the most surprising is that he is attacked by two major figures in the Shia community.

The first one is a very well respected Sayeed Ali Al Amin ( a descendant of the prophet like Nasrallah is) who has been very vocal attacking Nasrallah for his illegal war against israel. His views are now little by little being followed in the Shia community.

The second one is none other than President of the parliament and spokesman for Nasrallah during the war Nabih Berry, the head of the Amal movement the rival Shia movement to Hezbollah which was near extinction. Amal is now getting traction among Shias and their views are much more moderate than Hezbollah's.

It looks like that for the first time Nasrallah inded committed a major mistake...

Is Al Qaeda Changing Strategies?

By Douglas Farah

Al Qaeda (meaning the core group led by bin Laden) seems to be adjusting its strategy in the wake of the relative success of Hezbollah in its recent war with Israel. Rather than letting Hezbollah and Shi'ite groups operate there alone with such greatly enhanced stature, the core al Qaeda leadership is working hard to regroup with an eye toward moving into more direct attacks on Israel and corrupt Islamic regimes.

The al Qaeda leadership appears to be concerned that Hezbollah's ability to frontally attack the "Great Satan" of Israel and not only survive, but prosper politically around the Arab world, will undermine al Qaeda's standing and that of its leadership.

As the Asia Times reports, the recent decision by Pakistan to negotiate a truce with the Taliban in several provinces has helped faciliate this by unblocking the flow of money to bin Laden and his network. While the Taliban may not be militarily active in those regions, in technical compliance with the terms of the agreement, the cessation of hostilities has made it far easier for bin Laden to regain his financial footing and project control further than he has been able to in some time. In fact, this consolidation has been going on for several months, taking advantage of the easing of Pakistani pressure during the negotiating process. My full blog is here.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross the New Co-Chairman of The Counterterrorism Foundation

By Andrew Cochran

I am pleased to announce that Daveed Garstenstein-Ross has agreed to become Co-Chairman of the Counterterrorism Foundation, effective immedately. Daveed is one of the brightest young stars in the counterterrorism community, and we've worked together several times to inform Congressional staff on selected issues. Daveed converted to Islam in his early twenties and worked during the late 1990s for the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, an international Wahhabi charity that secretly served as a major al-Qaeda financier. Prior to the 9/11 attacks, Daveed left the Islamic faith for Christianity and assisted the FBI in its investigation of Al Haramain, which led to its shutdown and designation by the Treasury Department. Daveed's experience is detailed in his first book, My Year Inside Radical Islam, which will be released in February 2007. Daveed received his law degree from the New York University School of Law and clerked for a federal appellate judge in Washington. He has also worked as an attorney at the famous law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, and as a senior analyst for Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism. He is currently a a senior consultant for the Gerard Group International, a Massachusetts-based counterterrorism and homeland security firm.

I met Daveed when he was working for the IPT, and I set up a briefing for Congressional staff on the growing problem of the infiltration of prisons in the U.S. by Islamic militants. Daveed convincingly described the ways in which inmates are being brainwashed into accepting radical Islam, leading the staff to inquire into practices at the federal Bureau of Prisons. So it is fitting that Daveed's first appearance as Co-Chairman will be as a witness at a hearing next week of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee on this issue.

In the coming weeks, we will announce projects to be conducted under the auspices of the Counterterrorism Foundation and will ask for your support.

France on elevated alert

By Olivier Guitta

A September 1 report of the French Anti terrorism Unit leaked to Le Figaro stated that France was next as a target of Islamist terrorism. Indeed France has been one of the countries most mentioned in Al Qaeda and affiliates tapes and messages as one of the Crusaders. This really started after France voted in 2004 a law banning all religious signs including the hijab in public schools. Also the Algerian GSPC considers France as its #1 enemy.
In light of this, French authorities are closely monitoring a dozen individuals with connections to cells linked to Iraq, Afghanistan/Pakistan and the Maghreb. They are also watching around 50 mosques attended by radical elements. But most than anything French counter terrorism officials are worried about the young French jihadis who traveled to fight in Iraq and could come back anyday to France well trained and motivated to attack the "Infidel nation".
Last reason of concern is the Lebanese situation and France's involvement on the ground. Hezbollah could decide to attack French targets around the world or Jewish targets in France.

I have been writing at length about the potential future terror attacks executed by Hezbollah against France in the style of the 1986 wave of terror in Paris.

Syria on the offensive again

By Olivier Guitta

I agree with my colleague Walid Phares on the likely implication of Syria in the latest attack against our embassy in Damascus. It sounds very plausible.
Assad like his father is famous for playing the arsonist/fireman strategy. For instance when Western citizens were kidnapped by Hezbollah in the 80's on the orders of Damascus and Tehran, Syria would pretend to help Western nations free their citizens. Nobody was really fooled but everybody played along and thanked the Syrians for their help.
Also, back in April 2004 there was an attack against a UN office in Damascus that our own State Dept deemed most likely done by Syrian authorities.
Syria is hosting lots of terrorist organizations and the Secret police is really watching the country quite extensively.
There's no way really for Al Qaida to stage such an attack which actually does not at all have the hallmarks of AQ.
The timing of this "attack" is not coincidental. Assad is on the offensive: the recent attempted murder of one of the top Lebanese investigators of the Hariri murder, Lt-Col Samir Chehade is one example of this. In particular since the UN Brammertz report is soon going to be released. Indeed Assad is behind the assasination of the ex Lebanese PM. On Saturday, the main witness in the Hariri case an ex Colonel from Syrian Intelligence, Mohamed Al Sadiq declared to Al Arabiya TV network that " Bashar Al Assad and Emile Lahoud gave the order to murder Hariri". He added that the rigged car used in the attack was prepared in a Zabadini camp, near Damascus and that he took pictures of it and gave them to ex UN investigator Mehlis.

Also the recent fast degradation of the situation on the Lebanese political scene does not bode well for a calm future. Indeed Hezbollah has been verbally attacking politicians of the March 14 movement (opposed to Syria) in the past few days. Just today Nasrallah speaking in an interview on Al-Jazeera television has heaped scorn on the Lebanese premier for receiving British Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying the move was aimed at provoking and humiliating his Shiite militant group.
Also yesterday an Hezbollah MP, Ali Ammar, violently attacked the March 14 forces: "The March 14 forces have from the beginning aligned themselves with the Israeli enemy. They have planned the murder of the Resistance in conjuction with the Americans and the Israelis."
In response Druze leader Walid Jumblatt declared that " the attempted murder on Chehade is just the beginning of the excution of the threats of the destruction of Lebanon." He added that Assad's recent speech on the "betrayal" of the March 14 forces was a true call to murder. Incidentally, lots of Lebanese ministers and political leaders have been told to stay put and watch their backs carefully because of credible death threats.
Unfortunately once again one can expect a campaign of violence orchestrated by Syria and most likely executed by Hezbollah to hit Lebanon. All this in the midst of rumors of a civil war or a Hezbollah coup d'etat to seize power.

Does the Treasury Department's Designation of a Terrorist Financier Make a Difference?

By Andrew Cochran

After the Treasury Department targeted Hezbollah's and Iran's financial institutions last week, I was interviewed about the designation and asked whether (a) a singular action by the U.S. makes a real difference, and (b) whether other countries, particularly in Europe, will follow suit. Treasury Department officials today testified about those and other questions before a U.S. Senate committee (statements and testimony available there), while senior Treasury officials are traveling to Europe and the Middle East this week to seek collaboration on last week's deisgnations. One Treasury official, the Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which technically issues the designation, provided the official answer to question (a) above (the same answer I gave to the reporter):

As it turns out, even when we initially act alone, we can have a dramatic impact. There are two main reasons for this. First, the United States is the world's leading banking and financial center; to paraphrase an old saying, "all financial roads lead to New York." When a designated party in Afghanistan tries to send money to Southeast Asia, that transfer will often pass through a United States bank, if only for an instant. The result is typically that these funds are frozen and we are notified by a call to our hotline or the filing of a blocking report. In addition, it is important to remember that U.S. persons and U.S. branches situated abroad are subject to U.S. law, and must comply with OFAC's regulations as if they were in the United States.

Our second "force multiplier" is that international financial institutions frequently implement our sanctions voluntarily, even when they are under no legal obligation from their host countries to do so. We have seen this time and again, in countries from Kuwait to Latvia. These financial institutions may do so because they don't want to be hosting the business of terrorist organizations, even if it is legally permissible. They may cooperate because of reputational risk. Or, perhaps they do so because of fears of litigation or U.S. action. Whatever the cause, the "OFAC list," as it is known, is on the computer screens of bank compliance officers the world over. As a result, our "unilateral" actions are anything but and can have a decisive impact against terrorist supporters, narcotraffickers, and WMD proliferators.

Of course, our designations are not always followed by allied action elsewhere (see Victor Comras' post on Europe's foot-dragging with resepct to Hezbollah), but every designation raises the cost of terrorist operations just a little more, even if it forces them to use nonbanking mechanisms which can take more time and are less reliable. Foreign policy veterans will remember the debate over the utility of export controls during the Cold War. As a Reagan Administration appointee at the Commerce Department, I participated in some of those discussions with American industries. I would assert that the export control regime raised the cost of national defense for the old Soviet Union and contributed to its demise. We aren't at that point on anti-terrorist financing, but we haven't been at it for 40 years, either.

US embassy: Assad allows attack, offer "protection" and aim at confusion

By Walid Phares

According to well informed Syrian sources, today's Terrorist attack against the US embassy in Damascus is one of the "Machiavellian" Assad operations. Let's remind ourselves that the Syrian regime's senior strategists and intelligence officers were trained by the sophisticated "intox" schools of the former Soviet's KGB. One of the main tactics of this old school, refined by Hafez Assad during his rule of Syria is based on the following concept: If the equation is to your disadvantage, create a new problem, offer to solve it, obtain recognition; and by that you'd change the equation.

The strategic objective of the Assad regime today is to deter Washington from further pressures against Syria, in the form of the Hariri investigation, the US pressure through the Security Council to deploy forces along the borders with Lebanon and the American ongoing support to the anti-Syrian Government in Beirut. Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis is in dire need to "contain" Washington's pressures and gain time, as much possible of time. Why would they need time? Because they have to rearm Hezbollah, crumble the Lebanese Government, and face off with UN pressures on the nuclear. Syria has the marching orders to disorient the United States, and hence it adopted a twin approach:

a. "Allow" a Jihadist-type terror attack to take place against a US interest in Damascus. And how can that be possible? The seasoned experts on Syria knows all too well that the Assad Mukhabarat are in control of, or have "access" to the overwhelming Terrorist organizations in Syria and Lebanon. They've had thirty years of deep involvement to accomplish this take over. In addition to Shiia Hezbollah, Syria has a control, a remote-control of, or an access to Sunni Salafists groups, including networks that connects with al Qaeda. In short, Syria's intelligence services can prepare the ground to "persuade" Jihadists to strike at some point. The Jihadists have an ideological and strategic enmity with the US; the Assad regime has the ability to have the "mob" unleash attacks, in the same way the Baath regime of Syria has "allowed" thousands of Jihadists to cross the border to Iraq to kill US and coalition troops. Assad the father also "allowed" Jihadis to attack U.S and French interests in Lebanon during the 1980s. More recently, Assad "allowed' violent demonstrations to attack embassies in Damascus. Knowing that Syria's State police controls the country with an iron hand, these precedents are too bright to ignore. In today's apparatus two men dominate the Terror web from their security intelligence positions: Mohammed Nassif, the director of State Security and Ali Yunis, the assistant of Asaf Shawkat, the regime's security commander. Nassif and Yunis are the team that controls and connects with the Jihadist underworld in the Levant.

b. Stage the "protection" : After the operation happens, the regime allows some of their men to be killed in action against the "Terrorists." Obviously, this move will be hard to absorb by Western and American public psychologically. Maybe Hollywood movies writers can. In short (as an analytical projection) the regime "allowed" the operation to happen, "knew" it would happen, and let the security guards on the ground sacrifice themselves in the line of diplomatic duty.

The Dividends:

1. Sending a message to the U.S as follow: al Qaeda can strike you in our midst (Syria and Lebanon) and we can't do much about, except the classical protection once the "cells" would be about to engage or have already engaged. In short we are extending the measures under international laws, not more.

2. "But, can stop them." Meaning that our "powerful" intelligence and security agencies can go after these Terrorists (who aren't Syria's friends to start with) and "offer them to you," as we used to do in the good old days: We'd send Hezbollah to kill your Marines in Lebanon and allow the Salafists to kill the Marines again in Iraq, but at the same time we can do business with you and "protect your" embassies from the Terrorists we are harboring anyway. Yes a good Levantine maze.

3. Your public, via international media, "saw" that we are defending your embassy and have "lost" security guards while defending it. So what are you going to tell your public? That we, the Syrian regime, "are" the terrorists? It will look bad when after we sacrificed our men for your diplomats, your diplomats would call us Terrorists.

4. Secretary Rice "had" to issue a statement to "thanking" Syria. In Assad's mind, it would be an embarrassment for the U.S to attack Syria for being a harbor to Terrorism when Damascus has just being thanked for fighting those Terrorists. This, basically, would gain some more "time" for Assad. Enough time needed to:

5. Rearm Hezbollah, prepare attacks against UN and other multinational forces to come closer to the Syrian borders, and of course to allow the other pressures to recede.

6. Extra dividend: Unleash the school that supports "dialogue and friendship" with the Syrian regime in Washington to advance its arguments in this regard.

A question has been fusing in the media about Zawahiri's calls for the Levant Jihadists, including the Jund al Sham to attack targets in Syria and Lebanon. Are these video messages coordinated with Syria and Iran. While no evidence is surfacing yet, but these are two Jihadi wars taking place against the US and its allies at the same time. In the midst of an Al Qaeda war and of a Khumeinist-Baathist campaign, both directed against democracies in the region, overlapping actions aren't impossible. Otherwise, how to explain that al Qaeda waited so long before it issued a direct Jihad-guideline on Lebanon and Syria after 14 years of war on the US and three years war in Iraq? Why would the no 2 of al Qaeda suddenly develop an interest in the Lebanese-Syrian battlefield, immediately after the cease fire was concluded between Hezbollah and Israel? Who needed whom to begin the next stage in troubles after the issuing of UNSCR 1701?

Let's call it the quiz of the month: you'd find your answer in Machiavelli's writings.

Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow and the director of Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a visiting fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy and the author of Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America

« Close It

Attacks on US Embassy in Damascus Foiled

By David Schenker

Reports today indicate that Syrian security forces foiled an attempted car bomb attack against the US Embassy in Damascus. At present, it’s unclear as to whether these reports are entirely true. Indeed, according to some eyewitness reports, four armed men attacked the embassy with automatic weapons and grenades, and one of the men blew himself up with an explosive belt, igniting a nearby car. Two of the remaining attackers were killed and one was injured and detained by Syrian authorities. Several Syrian civilians were wounded and three Syrian security officers were killed. No US embassy personnel were reported killed or wounded.

The Embassy in Damascus has almost no setback from the street, and is among the most vulnerable US diplomatic facilities in the region.

Syria under Bashar Asad is a world class authoritarian state—but internal security is not quite what is was during the tenure of Hafiz. Indeed, in April 2004, a firefight erupted in downtown Damascus between security forces and alleged Islamic militants associated with Al Qaida. Few details of the incident have emerged. If this attack was perpetrated by Islamists, however, it would be an ominous sign.

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Although they're nominally independent of each other, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) have each launched a recent series of attacks in Turkey that serve the same purpose: inflicting damage on the Turkish economy. At the very least, the fact that the two groups' attacks serve a common purpose means that the Turkish economy is a matter of concern. Moreover, the common purpose of these groups' attacks raises the question of whether there is a hidden hand behind the scenes coordinating their actions.

The two groups' attacks have hit two different facets of the Turkish economy. As I wrote on Aug. 31, the TAK has targeted Turkey's tourist industry:

[J]ust after midnight, the Aegean Sea resort town of Marmaris experienced three blasts. According to the Turkish Daily News, the first of these bombs "ripped through a shuttle bus ferrying tourists along one of the resort's main streets" after being placed under one of its seats. Subsequently, two other bombs stashed in garbage bins exploded, causing no injuries, "though some reports suggested those had not detonated properly." Later on Monday, a bomb exploded in the coastal resort city of Antalya. Two people were killed in the explosion, and a third died later in the hospital. And another blast in the port city of Mersin injured a twenty-year-old woman. Although the PKK has been the main perpetrator of recent attacks against Turkey, these blasts have been claimed by another group, the Teyrbazen Azadiya Kurdistan (TAK), also known as the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks or Kurdistan Freedom Falcons.

Attacks on Turkey's tourist industry are economically significant; the Washington Times describes the tourism industry as "one of the pillars of [Turkey's] economy."

Meanwhile, the PKK has launched a string of attacks on Turkish oil and gas pipelines. As Zaman Online reports, there have been six PKK-related pipeline sabotages in the past seven months.

At the very least, the combined effect of these and future attacks may do significant damage to the Turkish economy. They also give rise to the question of the degree of coordination between the PKK and TAK. The PKK has a motive to target the tourist industry in order to weaken Turkey's economy -- but it fears the political ramifications of targeting European tourists. This is where the TAK enters the picture. Although not much is clear about the TAK's origins, my sources in Turkey and the U.S. believe that the TAK is likely an outgrowth of the PKK that now may or may not operate independently of the PKK. If the TAK isn't wholly independent, there is at least enough of a question about how this shadowy terrorist group functions that it gives the PKK plausible deniability for lethal terror attacks against Europeans, while the PKK claims responsibility for non-lethal attacks on pipelines.

By Andrew Cochran

Committees in the U.S. Congress will hold a number of open terrorism-related hearings this week on a variety of topics:

September 12, 2006
Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee
Treasury's Role in Combating Terrorist Financing
Full committee hearing on "Examining Treasury's Role in Combating Terrorist Financing Five Years After 9/11."
Witnesses: Assistant Treasury Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes Patrick O'Brien; Robert Werner, director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) at the Treasury Department; Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department; and Eileen Mayer, director of the Fraud/Bank Secrecy Act of the Small Business/Self Employment Division at the Internal Revenue Service
Location: 538 Dirksen Senate Office Building. 10 a.m.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
Homeland Security Outlook
Full committee hearing on "Homeland Security: The Next Five Years."
Witnesses: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Sheriff Leroy Baca of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department; Richard Falkenrath, deputy commissioner for counter terrorism, New York City Police Department; Steven Simon, senior fellow for middle eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Daniel Prieto, senior fellow and director of the Homeland Security Center at the Reform Institute
Location: 342 Dirksen Senate Office Building. 9:30 a.m.

House Appropriations Committee
Afghan Drug Eradication and Rebuilding Programs
Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Subcommittee hearing on "Afghanistan Interdiction/Eradication of Illegal Narcotics and U.S. Lead Rebuilding Programs."
Witnesses: TBA
Location: 2359 Rayburn House Office Building. 10:30 a.m.

House Judiciary Committee
FISA Reform
Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing on H.R.5825, the "Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act."
Witnesses: Steve Bradbury, acting assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department; Vito Potenza, deputy general counsel at the National Security Agency; Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies; and Bruce Fein, principal of Bruce Fein and Associates
Location: 2141 Rayburn House Office Building. 4 p.m.

September 13, 2006
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Lebanon Cease-Fire
Full committee hearing on "Lebanon: Securing a Permanent Cease-Fire."
Witnesses: Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch; Carlos Pascual, vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution; Paul Salem, director-designate of the Carnegie Middle East Center, Beirut, Lebanon; and Augustus Richard Norton, professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University
Location: 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building. 9:30 a.m.

Senate Judiciary Committee
Foreign Surveillance Overhaul/Pending Business
Full committee markup of pending business including S.2453, the "National Security Surveillance Act of 2006."
Location: 226 Dirksen Senate Office Building. 9:30 a.m.

House Energy and Commerce Committee
Cyber Security
Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee hearing on "Cyber Security: Protecting America's Critical Infrastructure, Economy, and Consumers."
Witnesses: TBA
Location: 2123 Rayburn House Office Building. 10 a.m.

House Government Reform Committee
Iraqi National Reconciliation
National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations Subcommittee hearing on "Part II: What Will it Take to Achieve National Reconciliation?" This hearing is the second in a series of three hearings focusing on "Iraq: Democracy or Civil War?"
Witnesses: Qubad Talabani, representative of the Kurdish Regional Government; Hajim Hassani, former speaker of the Iraqi Parliament and a Sunni member of Parliament; Karim Almusawi, representative of the largest political party in Iraq, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Sh'ia party; and David Satterfield, former deputy to U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad in Baghdad and currently Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's senior adviser on Iraq
Location: 2154 Rayburn House Office Building. 10 a.m.

House Homeland Security Committee
DHS Cyber and Telecommunications Security
Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Cybersecurity Subcommittee hearing on "The Future of Cyber and Telecommunications Security at DHS (Homeland Security Department)."
Witnesses: Homeland Security Undersecretary for Preparedness George Foresman; David Powner, director of information technology management issues for Government Accountability Office; Paul Kurtz, executive director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance; William Pelgrin, director of the New York State Office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure; Guy Copeland, chairman of the Information Technology Sector Coordinating Council; and David Barron, chairman of the Telecommunications Sector Coordinating Council
Location: 2212 Rayburn House Office Building. 3 p.m.

House Homeland Security Committee
Homeland Security Information Network
Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment Subcommittee hearing on "The Homeland Security Information Network"
Witnesses: TBA
Location: 2212 Rayburn House Office Building. 1 p.m.

House Science Committee
Border Security Technology
Full committee hearing on "How Can Technologies Help Secure Our Borders?"
Witnesses: Homeland Security Undersecretary for Science and Technology Jay Cohen; Gregory Giddens, director of the Secure Border Initiative Program Executive Office at the Homeland Security Department; Gregory Pottie, associate dean for research and physical resources at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA; Gervasio Prado, president of Sentech, Inc.; Dan Tyler, head of the National Security Technology Division at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; and Peter Worch, independent consultant
Location: 2318 Rayburn House Office Building. 2 p.m.
September 14, 2006

Senate Appropriations Committee
U.S.-British Systems to Catch Terrorists
Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing on "Catching Terrorists: the British System versus the U.S. System."
Witnesses: Richard Posner, federal judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School; John Yoo, professor at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley; and Tom Parker, CEO, Halo Partnership Consulting, former officer in the British Secret Service (MI5)
Location: 192 Dirksen Senate Office Building. 9:30 a.m.

House Appropriations Committee
FBI Transformation
Science, State, Justice, and Commerce, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing on "FBI Transformation."
Witnesses: TBA
Location: 2359 Rayburn House Office Building. 1:30 a.m.

House Homeland Security Committee
Nuclear and Biological Attack Prevention Science
Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack Subcommittee hearing on "The Science of Prevention."
Witnesses: White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger; Homeland Security Undersecretary for Science and Technology Jay Cohen; Vayl Oxford, director of the Domestic Nuclear Detention Office in the Homeland Security Department; William Happer, physics professor at Princeton University; and Ronald Atlas, past president of the American Society of Microbiology
Location: TBA. 2 p.m.

House International Relations Committee
U.S.- Middle East and Central Asia Policy
Middle East and Central Asia Subcommittee hearing on "Is There a Clash of Civilizations? Islam, Democracy, and U.S.- Middle East and Central Asia Policy."
Witnesses: Tony Blankley, editorial editor at The Washington Times; Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Hillel Fradkin, director of the Center for Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World at The Hudson Institute; and Steven Simon, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
Location: 2200 Rayburn House Office Building. 10 a.m.

September 15, 2006
House Government Reform Committee
Consequences of U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq
National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations Subcommittee hearing on "Part III: What Are the Consequences of Leaving Iraq?" This hearing is the last in a series of three hearings focusing on "Iraq: Democracy or Civil War?"
Witnesses: Fouad Ajami, director of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies; James Fearon, professor of political science at Stanford University; and Peter Galbraith of the faculty of the National War College
Location: 2154 Rayburn House Office Building. 10 a.m.

« Close It

Thanks to the Dedicated Public Professionals Who Keep Us Safe

By Dennis Lormel

On this somber date, five years after the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11, we should stop and recognize the dedicated professionals who strive to keep us safe.

• First and foremost, the military personnel who so valiantly defend our freedom at the expense of their personal safety

• The federal law enforcement, intelligence, regulatory and diplomatic personnel who work countless and thankless hours, often under stressful circumstances, to minimize the threat of terrorism

• The state and local law enforcement, firefighters and first responders who protect us on a daily basis and who are prepared to respond to any challenge

It’s remarkably easy to criticize, which we all too frequently do. It seems we’re a culture that must find fault at every turn. Regardless of whether we agree with the Administration concerning policy, or take issue with specific government agencies, one fact is irrefutable…we are served by a cadre of dedicated public professionals who deserve our gratitude and unwavering support.

I for one believe the government has made good strides in the last five years to improve operational methodologies, information sharing, interagency working relationships and coordination. There is still room for improvement but the enhanced levels of cohesiveness and transparency have contributed to making America safer.

Something Good From the Visa Waiver Program?

By Bill West

On this fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it is reflective of how immigration law enforcement has changed since that fateful day relative to national security and counter-terrorism matters. Pre-9/11, immigration enforcement was a low-key albeit important support component of the Nation’s counter-terrorism arsenal, generally found within the limited investigative elements of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Special Agents assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the reactive border lookout systems found within the INS Inspections Division, systems completely dependent on outside agencies for background and input.

Notwithstanding specific criminal and civil provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) dealing with national security and terrorism issues, seemingly an open and shut basis for involving immigration law enforcement personnel in such matters in a substantial way, incredibly, most senior INS managers pre-9/11 viewed such efforts as merely ancillary to what INS was supposed to do. Indeed, even a former INS Commissioner was said to have commented during a staff meeting that counter-terrorism was “FBI work.” It was against that “bury the head in the sand” management perspective that a handful of INS law enforcers around the country, including a few at INS Headquarters at the time, struggled to try to do the right thing.

The 9/11 attacks, of course, dragged the INS (and later its DHS replacement ICE) into the mainstream of counter-terrorism and with it the concept of immigration enforcement being a key component of national security. Controversial as that may be in some left-wing circles, the vast majority of Americans strongly support secure borders and strong immigration law enforcement as part of keeping America safe from terrorist attacks.

Rather amazingly, within the swirling immigration reform debate over the past few years since the 9/11 attacks, the Visa Waiver Program that has been commented about extensively in this Blog by both Mike Cutler and me, has managed to survive intact. That is surely a tribute to the power of commercial enterprise and foreign policy over security concerns. The Visa Waiver Program allows citizens of some 27 countries, mostly Western and Northern European countries, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, to enter the US as temporary visitors for up to 90 days without a visa...with only a valid passport. Reciprocity allows US citizens to enter those countries without a visa.

The program eliminates the visa application process. From a security perspective, this is a disaster. US Consular and security officers are unable to pre-screen foreign travelers as they could via the normal visa issuance process. That extra layer of security protection is stripped away in the Visa Waiver Program. Additionally, when such foreign travelers apply for visas and lie to obtain them, and they subsequently enter the US and get caught for that or other reasons (like being suspected of terrorism activities), the false statements on a visa application make for ready felony criminal prosecution in the US on “sterile” charges that allow for time and detention to make a larger case. The Visa Waiver Program disallows this, since there is no visa application process.

All that said, there is a silver lining within the Visa Waiver Program. Anyone entering the US as a Visa Waiver entrant agrees, by signing a legally binding document, to waive all due process rights in removal (deportation) proceedings should they violate their status while in the United States. This amounts to agreeing to summary deportation if they break immigration law...and, it works if they are caught. Detention, no bond, no hearings, no appeals, quick removal. Actually, it’s the way most Americans believe the deportation system should work in all cases...but, the way it actually works in only a few.

Therein lies a partial answer on this fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to the problem of how to make immigration law enforcement more effective within the counter-terrorism arena. Why it hasn’t happened sooner is surely a mystery surrounded by political enigma. Our political leaders could quite simply extend the Visa Waiver enforcement provisions to all nonimmigrant visa entrants. If this required changing Federal statute, then Congress could so act. If it could be done by a change in the Code of Federal Regulations, all the better.

Essentially, this would mean that all foreign nationals seeking to enter the US as temporary visitors, including those seeking tourist, business or student visas, would need to agree to waive any due process rights in removal proceedings and, as with Visa Waiver entrants, agree to summary removal should they violate their status within the US. If they do not agree to those terms, they would not get the visa. It is likely some die-hard left-wing radicals would object to this, as it conflicts with their vision of extending US Constitutional and civil rights protections to every citizen of every country on the planet. But, so what?

Given that upwards of 40% of the illegal alien population originally entered the US on some form of valid temporary visa, such change in enforcement approach would potentially have a dramatic positive effect on how immigration law enforcers are able to conduct their business. And, since removal (deportation) proceedings are civil in nature, such changes can apply retroactively to violations that occurred before the enactment of the change. Some theoretically heady potential in all that. Even focusing on the smaller population of terror and terror-supporting targets, such a legal change would significantly enhance the abilities and flexibilities of the good guys. This is one of those relatively easy “out of the box” changes that should have been contemplated circa 9/12/01. It is still not too late.

« Close It

My Lessons in Five Years

By Douglas Farah

Like most people who cover terrorism issues, I have had a steep learning curve since 9-11. I, like many, was forced to go from knowing almost nothing to trying to make sense of the new world and the new (to me, but not to the smarter ones) threat. Here are some of the main lessons I have learned:

1) The wahhabis and other radical Islamists of both Sunni and Shi'ite beliefs have a long-terms strategy for dealing with us (U.S., Israel, Europe-the Big Satans), as well as the each other (Little Satans-apostate regimes, and the other sects of Islam).

2) One of the traditional backbones of these plans has been the international Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders provide vision, money, strategic thinking and tactical advise to the Islamist groups across the board. The role and nature of the Ikwan is still rarely understood in intelligence, diplomatic and law enforcement circles. The role is to establish a Muslim caliphate by whatever means necessary.

3) After an initial shock, things tend to go back to the way they were. In the U.S., this has meant an unhealthy return to a lack of intelligence sharing, a creation of larger and less responsive bureaucracies, a return to dealing with "moderate" Muslim groups often tied to the Ikwan who we do not know or properly identify, and a continued inability to understand and develop a strategy for dealing with stateless areas and non-state actors. The concept of networks and how to attack them, while part of academic debates for several years, is only now being revisited by DOD and the DNI. My full blog is here.

CT Blog Experts' Columns on This Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks

By Andrew Cochran

The Contributing Experts of the Counterterrorism Blog have had columns and interviews published in various media about this anniversary and the Global War on Terror:

Steven Emerson on the GWOT in Fall 2006 issue of Journal of Counterterrorism and Security International: "While genuine moderates certainly exist, and while jihad can mean spiritual struggle to some, the stark reality is that jihadists have been in control of Muslim hierarchies and religious institutions throughout the Muslim world, and for that matter, many Muslim institutions in the West."

Walid Phares: "Projecting Future Jihadi Terrorism Five Years After 9/11" before the U.S. House International Relations Committee last week: "(T)he United States and its allies are delivering an up hill battle against an enemy that has prepared for and declared a universal war against free societies and democracy, decades before America decided to respond."

Aaron Mannes: "Black September - How terrorism got its start" on National Review Online: "Black September’s operations foreshadowed 9/11: in targeting airplanes, in bloodthirsty viciousness, and in holding the gaze of the international media."

Stephen Sloan: "'New mind-set': Expect the unexpected - Meeting the enduring threat of terrorism" in September 10 "Orlando Sentinel": "There is painful recognition that unfortunately in the "battle of ideas," terrorists and their supporters have seized the initiative." He participated in an international conference sponsored by the University of Central Florida, which has graciously authorized us to post a White Paper from that conference, "A Global Assessment of Terrorism" (Acrobat file).

You can hear Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Walid Phares discuss the GWOT, along with others, during the Global Crisis Watch Podcast. An excerpt from Daveed: "The fact that [al-Qaeda] have now been given a great base of operations in the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan indicates that they can plot and plan much more. One of the big reasons that 9/11 was able to be carried out as smoothly as it was, was that they had Afghanistan as a great base of operations where they could plan. Now they have a similar situation in Waziristan."

Additionally, Steven Emerson and a number of IPT staff, Zachary Abuza, and Victor Comras are scheduled to participate in one of the world's largest counterterrorism conferences, titled "Terrorism's Global Impact," sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Center's Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) in Israel this week.

A Response To Jeffrey Imm on the Media

By Douglas Farah

I differ with my colleague Jeffrey Imm's recent post on the so-called "mainstream media" and the war on terrorism, for several reasons. I would argue that it is not the job of the media, "mainstream" or otherwise, to devote all of its resources all the time to covering terrorism. The quality of reporting is certainly uneven (as demonstated by the the series in my old employer, the Washington Post on Muslims in the Washington area), but to think any news organization (from Fox to Air America) is going to cover every story about terrorism everywhere is simply unrealistic and wrong.

I like to read other things in the newspaper, despite making my living from terrorism issues. I guarnatee that people do not want to read every day about attacks in faraway places where people die. We do have upcoming elections, Supreme Court decisions, legislative battles, China, Africa, AIDs, other areas of the world and countless other competing and valid new interests and priorities. Having been in the business for 20 years, I feel it makes more sense to take several events and wrap them into a context people can understand and learn from. Reporting on a bombing in India every time it happens tells the readership vitually nothing. An occassional piece on the growing Jihadi influence in these movements and increased level of sectarian violence does.

But, like I said, there are other things going on in California, Montana and Maryland that people want to know about. Budgets, newsholes and and air time are finite commodities.

If people are interested and want to know there are countless sites on the web that provide that information. That is the beauty of the Internet age. The London bombing attempt has led to some really good and really awful looks at radical Islam in Europe. Every twist and turn of the legal battles now are not news here, and stories blowing open the current investigations there would lead to us all yelling about wrongful use of intelligence. It can not be all ways all the time.

Another factor: If the president or leaders of Congress and elsewhere seriously tried to educate the American public on this, it would be covered.

Could the media do a better job? Absolutely. All of it, from crackpots on the web spreading lies and disinformation to the Washinghton Post and New York Times who can ignore history and serious analysis, to television (both cabel and network) who cheapen stories, cut budgets and make a hash out of reality. But it is not the quantity of coverage that will change anything, it is the quality. So would intelligent political discourse aimed at teaching people what the threat is, where it comes from and why it is a threat. The unwillingness of the political class of almost all persuasions (mainstream political parties?) to define wahhabism, taught with billions of dollars flowing from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, as an enemy. The madrasas that teach hate and how to kill, are the enemy. Those that tolerate that or advance that agenda here and in Europe are the enemy, not moderates adept at using the English language. But no one says that, and therefore reporting on the public discourse yields little of this to the general public.

Finally, I don't understand the much-used term mainstream-does it apply to Fox, O'Reilly and Rush and others who are now dominant in their catagories, or just newspapers who tend to be viewed as more liberal? Is it print, radio and networks, or cable? How is mainstream measured-viewership and listenership-then the conservatives dominate it. If it is the newspapers, then it tends to be pretty much down the middle. Or is the phrase a shorthand for writing that is disliked that appears in a place where others are likely to read it?

See What the Terrorists Did to Us on September 11, 2001 (links to graphic photos)

By Andrew Cochran

Numerous exhibits relating to the 9/11 attacks were released to the public for the first time at the Zacharias Moussaoui trial this summer. The exhibits enable us to remember, for all time, the scale of the horror perpetrated upon us by Islamic terrorists under direct orders from Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. On this fifth anniversary of the attacks, we should confront the reality of that horror. Accordingly, some of the photos linked in this post are graphic in nature and are not for the squeamish. You can see all of the prosecution's exhibits from the Moussaoui case here.

P200003 Map of the World Trade Center area depicting the paths of Flights 11 and 175
P200006 Two photographs of the North and South Towers after Flights 11 and 175 struck the towers
P200007 Photograph of the World Trade Center complex before the attacks on September 11, 2001
P200008 Photograph of the World Trade Center complex taken after the attacks on September 11, 2001
P200009 Diagram depicting the damage to the buildings in the World Trade Center area as a result of the attacks on September 11, 2001
P200037 Photograph of the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed into the building
P200038 Photograph of the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed into the building
P200039 Photograph of the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed into the building
P200040 Photograph of the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed into the building
P200041 Photograph of the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed into the building
P200042 Photograph of a body part found inside the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed into the building [Viewer discretion is advised]
P200045 Photograph of a body found inside the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed into the building [Viewer discretion is advised]
P200047 Photograph of bodies found inside the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed into the building [Viewer discretion is advised]
P200048 Photograph of a body found inside the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed into the building [Viewer discretion is advised]

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

On Sunday, the excellent Global Crisis Watch posted its new podcast, a roundtable discussion analyzing our position in the global war on terror as well as vital strategic trends five years after the 9/11 attacks. Guests include myself, CT Blog Contributing Expert Walid Phares, and Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail. The discussion was wide-ranging, including analysis of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. There is a link to the discussion off GCW's main page.

Broader Implications of the Malegaon Bombing

By Aaron Mannes

So far information about the September 8 bombing in the Indian city of Malegaon, which killed at least 31 and injured several hundred, leads in few clear directions. However, the handling of the investigation and aftermath of the bombing could have important broader implications for India and the world.

The town of Malegaon is a predominantly Muslim town a few hours from Mumbai (which was struck by a massive terror attack on July 11). Initial reports suggest that the explosive in the four Malegaon bombs were RDX, the same as in the Mumbai bombs. (Some police officials have claimed the devices were exactly the same as the Mumbai bombs.) In a raid in Malegaon earlier this year police found RDX and AK-47s. This might lead to the conclusion that there is a link between the Mumbai bombings and the Malegaon bombings. But the Mumbai bombings were believed to be the work of radical Islamists, possibly tied to Lashkar-e-Toiba. The victims of the Malegaon bombing were predominantly Muslim worshippers at the Shab-e-Barat ceremony (in which Muslims pray for departed souls) and the town is actually pro-Islamist. The town was the site of protests against the U.S. on behalf of the Taliban when the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan in 2001. Twelve were killed by Indian security forces when the protests turned violent.

Alternately other reports state that the bombs were crudely built and most of the casualties were from the post-detonation stampede – although some eyewitness reports contradict this. (If this is true it is an interesting new terror tactic that we may see more of by groups that lack the sophistication to build effective explosives.)

None of this absolutely rules out Islamists, but Hindu extremists seem more likely. Although it could have been a Muslim rival sect, or it could have been a cynical attack by Islamists intended to increase ethnic strife. Unfortunately the level of distrust between much of India’s Muslim community and the police is very high. Even if a Muslim group is behind the attack, the broader Muslim community is likely to interpret it as a cover-up. One indicator of this distrust is that when security forces attempted to go to the bombsite they were pelted by an angry mob with rocks.

Nonetheless, so far the situation in Malegaon is tense but not violent. National and communal leaders from every sector have condemned the bombing and are calling for calm.

Much is at stake in maintaining this calm. India is a rising democracy with tremendous potential to become a force for freedom and prosperity in the world. Terrorists and other enemies of freedom have every interest in seeing India’s project fail. India’s greatest vulnerability is the contentious relationship between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority. Communal violence has wracked India in the all too recent past. In February 2002 Indian Muslims set fire to a train carrying Hindus. Hindus responded with riots in which hundreds of Muslims were killed. The success and integrity of the bombing investigation has issues beyond justice for the victims.

« Close It

Second Al Qaeda 9/11 Video Coming Soon (UPDATED, 9/11 - Video Released)

By Andrew Cochran

On the heels of the now-released 9/11 commemorative video with Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda figures, the As-Sahab media site has announced yet another tape "soon, God willing," this time from #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri. Laura Mansfield had the scoop on that announcement and sent us the banner below from As-Sahab. More as the video this news develops.

UPDATE, 9/11: The video is out - see a picture of al-Zawahiri below from that video. Al-Zawahiri warns us of more attacks in the future: "I tell them your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster which will shick you. And the days are pregnant and giving birth to new events with Allah's permission and guidance." You can see an excerpt with highlights courtesy of Rita Katz's SITE Institute.

Rita Katz also has a partial transcript (Acrobat file), and here is part of her analysis: "The topics covered during the course of the interview range from jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recent conflict between Lebanon and Israel, Muslims who collaborate with Western governments, the denial of leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Group (al-Gama’a al-Islamiya) about the joining of an “important section” of the group with al-Qaeda, in addition to the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) in Algeria joining al-Qaeda. Zawahiri also reiterates words made by Usama bin Laden regarding jihad in Somalia, calling upon the Muslim Somali people to “reject the American Crusader presence in Somalia to strike with strength America’s underlings in Somalia, and to see help from Allah”."

9/11, Religious Faith, and Ignorance

By Jeffrey Imm

In the September 10 Washington Times article "Unanswered Questions of September 11", one of the apparent "mysteries" of 9/11 is "What motivated 19 relatively well-off Arab men, all Muslims, to become such horrific suicide bombers?" In an interview with the Washington Times, "Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the national September 11 commission, says motivation was the 'big question' the panel could not answer. 'We were never able to answer why the 19 were willing to kill themselves. What was the motivation? I am talking in a very personal way,' Mr. Hamilton, a Democrat who represented Indiana's 9th District in the House for 34 years".

There is no mystery behind the 9/11 Jihadists' motivation at all. It has been clearly and unambiguously spelled out by the Jihadists and their successors - it is "Death to America", death to the infidels, and the establishment of a global Islamist caliphate - what Jihad is all about.

Counterterrorism that does not understand the role of Islamist extremism religious faith in Jihadist terrorism is no more than blindly groping in the dark -- focusing on logistics, groups, bombs, timelines, targets -- but completely incapable and ignorant of WHY Jihadist terrorism exists.

The motivation of the 9/11 Jihadists may (disturbingly) be a mystery to vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, but it is certainly not a mystery to Walid Phares, Robert Spencer, Steve Emerson, and countless others over the past five years who have clearly and unambiguously tied Jihadist terror attacks to the religious faith of the Jihadists, who acted based on their faith.

Even considering that the mainstream media only presents a portion of the global Jihadist war, how can Americans be ignorant of the role of religion in Jihadism - five years after the 9/11 attacks? Wasn't it just eight days ago that an Al Qaeda video was released to the American people warning them to convert to Islam - or else? And the motivation of Jihadists is still an "unanswered question"?

In this world war, are the Jihadists the only ones acting based on their faith? Clearly, the above-mentioned scholars of Jihadism have described the threat and religious basis. They have explained why Jihadist terrorists hate us. And the constant calls by Jihadists for a global Islamist caliphate are frequently repeated in report after report. The Jihadists are acting on their religious beliefs - they believe that their terrorist goals are Allah's goals.

Jihadists rightly understand that faith without action is nothing. The challenge to Americans of faith and others in world religions is to rise to challenge the Jihadists' religious and totalitarian worldview of an Earth dominated by an Islamist caliphate. Ignoring the role of religion in Jihadist terrorism allows the fires of Jihad to burn with no visible way of truly countering them. Counterterrorism is about countering terrorism - not simply countering individual terrorist attacks.

So if an honest analysis of counter-Jihadist-terrorism requires an understanding of religion, does it not also demand that others of religious faith speak out and actively stand against the Jihadists? In the current issue of the Futurist, Professor Thomas McFaul warns of the threats of exclusivity in religion and the global future civilization, which he expands on in his book, calling for a more inclusive future between religions.

To reach this goal in counter-Jihadist-terrorism of pluralism among religious groups, it is imperative that those of faith, other than Jihadists, speak out and stand up against the Jihadist global threat. Tolerance of intolerance will not spread peace or pluralism among the religions of the world, but only emboldens the totalitarian vision of the Jihadists.

And where do we stand on this? We remember the symbol of St. Peter's Church near NYC's Ground Zero as a place for WTC rescue efforts. But what about the ongoing faith of Americans after 9/11 and how that faith is being used to counter Jihad? We are told of how "Americans used religion as Band-Aid" after the 9/11 attacks and threw it away. We have reports of religious faith was abandoned after the attacks. Some grew in faith, and some lost their faith. Members of some religious groups became radicalized and spread Jihad. Some members of other religious groups sought to appease Jihad - such as those Presbyterians who supported Hezbollah and used Presbyterian publishing houses to print 9/11 conspiracy screeds blaming USA.

And the sad truth is that the overwhelming majority of religious leaders have done little to stand up against Jihadism. I remember listening to "Restoring Faith - America's Religious Leaders Answer Terror with Hope" on the Washington DC subway and hearing more appeasement than hope. I remember hearing Desmond Tutu demanding that we forgive the Jihadist terrorists as "they are children of God". But religious leaders actually challenging people of faith to condemn Jihadism around the world and its religious tenets? Many religious leaders are either too afraid of being branded "Islamophobic", afraid of Jihadists, or unwilling to face the totalitarian threat of Jihadism to step up and speak out about it. And many more just hope that Jihadism will go away, or that "someone else" will deal with Jihadism. "Tolerance and understanding" of Jihad will not stop the next 9/11 attack on America.

Last week, the Washington Post reported on Islamic Salafists as victims of 9/11 whose "theology and practices were suddenly suspect", ignoring that the theology of Salfism "is a clear, straightforward statement of belief that calls on the faithful to carry out jihad." Clearly, there is not an understanding here that acting in faith against Jihadist terrorism means to actively reject those philosophies of Jihadism. Nor will false "fatwas" by Islamic groups that refuse to condemn Jihadism.

Small achievements have been made in reformist and moderate Islamic groups, with individual leaders such as Irshad Manji. Reformist Muslim Irshad Manji has challenged "Muslim Myopia", urging Muslims to seek reform of Islam and take accountability for the actions of Jihadists, and not to use the crutch of foreign policy, economics, etc., to ignore the obvious that the Jihadists are acting on their faith. Small Muslim protest marches against Jihad in Washington DC and Arizona have happened. Those acting in faith against Jihad need to be encouraged and supported. But we have not yet seen a "Million Man" march of peace-loving Muslims condemning Jihadism in Washington DC, and five years after 9/11, this is long, long overdue.

We need to see more faith in action in fighting Jihadism. Members of all religious groups need to also act in faith against Jihad. This is a responsibility for all Muslim and non-Muslim religious leaders who seek peaceful co-existence. People of faith need to roll up their sleeves in action to seek the survival of their religion and their people from Jihadist totalitarianism.

Because in addressing counter-Jihadist-terrorism - it is all about RELIGION. And 5 years after 9/11, it is past time that people with faiths -- other than the Jihadists -- ACT based on their faith.

« Close It

Full Version of Al Qaeda's 9/11 Commemorative Video Released (updated 9/10)

By Andrew Cochran

Laura Mansfield has obtained all of the long Al Qaeda video released in part on September 7. You can see an excerpt here. UPDATE 9/10: You can see Part 1 of the video here and Part 2 here from her site. Here's an excerpt from her analysis:

The Bin Laden footage, although more than five years old, removes any lingering doubts that conspiracy theorists have about Al Qaeda’s responsibility for 9/11. The terror leader makes it clear that he was responsible for the planning and execution of the attacks. The 9/11 hijackers are shown in the video. Several, include Hamza al Ghamdi and Wael al Shehri, read poems, and make statements which they clearly hope will etch their memories in the hearts of future jihadis. It’s readily apparent from this video, and from last week’s video, that Osama Bin Laden and company are focusing their recruitment efforts for Jihad on persons in the west. The de facto appointment of California-born Adam Gadahn, who has taken the nom de guerre of Azzam the American, as the Al Qaeda spokesman for the west makes this clear.

UPDATE, 9/10: Rita Katz has the entire tape too. You can see the first half on the SITE Institute website, and the second half here. You can read her analysis of that part, and here is an excerpt:

The documentary then shows 9/11 hijacker Wa'el al-Shihri reading a portion of his will. The narrator of the documentary argues that the Blind Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman is wrongly imprisoned, and in his will, hijacker Hamza al-Ghamdi makes mention of the Blind Shaykhl, as well as the some of the imprisoned perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot and the 1998 East African Embassy bombing plot. Shaykh Hamood bin Uqla al-Shu'aybi, a jihadist shaykh, appears in the video, maintaining that jihad and the sword is a necessary obligation in order to support and establish Shari'ah and Islam.

9/11 and News Reporting on Jihadist Terrorism

By Jeffrey Imm

Five years after 9/11 - the mainstream media refuses to consistently report who is at war with USA and the world and why. And at best, only 10% of the news on Jihadist terrorism is reaching the American public on a regular basis. In America, the battle for the minds of the public to understand the Jihadist threat continues to be lost due to conscious efforts of the mainstream media to not report or under-report the news about Jihadist terrorism.

I have been collecting news on Jihadist terrorism every day for the past 4 years on a series of websites, but mostly on a news group for UnitedStatesAction.com, and for Counterterrorism Blog for the past year - scanning an average of 30 news sources per day for reports of Jihadist terrorism. When I first got started in September 2002, I found around 2000 stories per year by September 2003. By September 2004, this increased to 6400 stories per year, and by September 2005, this was 5460 stories per year. By September 2006, this is well over 7000 stories per year. Look for yourself on the website with these stories.

For the past year, September 2005 to September 2006, for the 7000 Jihadist terrorist stories, the titles, weblinks, and few word description alone for the stories on Jihadist terrorism represent nearly 900 pages - it is highly improbable that most Americans have seen or heard even 10% of these stories.

How many of these stories are actually reported by the mainstream media and television news? And by "reporting", I don't mean a small paragraph buried on "page A40" of the Washington Post or Internet news wire services. And this also doesn't include doctored "news" photos by terrorist sympathesizers in Reuters or other news organizations to make Jihadist terrorist groups seem like "victims".

Lets be "optimistic" - and assume that the mainstream media and television news actually REPORTS an average of two terrorist stories per day: 712 stories. Then based on just the news stories I have found in the past year since the last anniversary of 9/11, the majority of the American public is only hearing about 10% of the news about Jihadist terrorism.

And we wonder why many Americans are in a state of denial regarding Jihadist terrorism? The "shaped" reality by the mainstream media is that such Jihadist terrorism as a global threat - simply does not exist. The mainstream media and television news reports focus on Iraq and Afghanistan - reporting a small fraction of the news of the Jihadist threat.

The ongoing near daily Jihadist terrorism stories in India, Indonesia, Israel, Thailand, Pakistan, Phillipines, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, etc., are barely, if ever "reported" by the mainstream media and television news. Even with dead bodies in the streets or bombs in the hands of such terrorists, Jihadist terrorism is vastly under-reported about in such areas by the mainstream media. Do Americans know of the thousands of people in India and in Indian Kashmir, who have died due to terrorism attacks?

The consistent stories of Jihadist threats in UK, Germany, France, Europe, and the rest of the world also are vastly under-reported as well. The British Jihadist attempt to hijack 10 jetliners to kill untold THOUSANDS of Americans? To the USA mainstream media, it is "old news" -- less than a month after the first arrests. The latest political debates and the latest celebrity gossip is a greater priority to the mainstream media than an attempt at a disaster much worse than 9/11.

So in considering this 9/11 anniversary, and how much still needs to change to protect Americans, we need to keep in focus the fact that one of the reasons why so little has changed is because the American public -- five years after 9/11 -- is still woely uninformed by the mainstream media on Jihadist terrorism. The valiant efforts of numerous bloggers to try to the "fill the vacuum" are laudible - but they don't change a fundamental fact - that untold MILLIONS of Americans still have no concept about the Jihadist world war, because the mainstream media refuses to effectively report the news about it.

What the mainstream media is comfortable with is treating the Jihadist terrorist threat as "history" - as we will see this weekend as 9/11 attacks from five years ago are regurgitated. But the latest attempt by British Jihadists to kill many thousands of Americans, the latest bombing in Pakistan, Philippines, India, Israel, etc? The latest activities by Jihadists in Europe and other parts of the world? Don't expect to hear about that - after all, that is "news" about the current and continuing Jihadist terror threat.

Regarding "history", however, the mainstream media should be looking at the history of its own reporting on Jihadist terrorism. On August 23, 1996, when Osama Bin Laden made his first declaration of war on the USA - the mainstream media news story was the "War on Tobacco" by President Clinton. On February 23, 1998, when Osama Bin Laden made his second declaration of war on the USA - the mainstream media news story was "Starr Searches for Source of Staff Criticism" regarding the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. When did mainstream media like the Washington Post report the 1998 Bin Laden declaration of war? September 21, 2001 - 10 days AFTER 3,000 Americans were killed by Bin Laden's Al Qaeda - and of course 3 years after it was news. What has changed? What has the media learned? Obviously nothing.

If there was only one issue that we could fix about America's security in this latest anniversary of 9/11 attacks - it would be to get the public INFORMED about the GLOBAL Jihadist terrorist threat. Because as long as most of the public is only getting 10% of the news about Jihadist terrorism, the terrorists are WINNING. And winning big time.

Weekly Standard: Movie Stars vs. Islamists

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

I have an article in the new issue of the Weekly Standard detailing the role that the Indonesian entertainment industry is playing in that country's high stakes culture war against forces dedicated to the implementation of sharia. The article is currently available to subscribers only on the Standard's web site, but I reprint it in full below.

Movie Stars vs. Islamists
The Indonesian culture wars.
by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
Weekly Standard, 09/18/2006

INDONESIA is currently embroiled in a high-stakes culture war between forces dedicated to Islamic law and more secular-minded citizens devoted to the freedoms and rights enshrined in the country's constitution. While Islamic conservatives have made significant gains, the entertainment industry is emerging as a major arena of opposition to their highly restrictive vision for society.

This opposition is sometimes subtle, sometimes bold. One entertainer who positively courts political controversy is pop singer Inul Daratista, whose suggestive dancing has gotten her banned from several Muslim-dominated towns and earned her the ire of the Indonesian Ulemas Council. Meanwhile, singer Ahmad Dhani of the popular rock band Dewa has released several hit songs whose lyrics aim to undercut the allure of Islamic militancy among Indonesian youth.

One of the most fascinating figures to watch is filmmaker Joko Anwar, who views Indonesian filmmaking in a political context. "We always try to push the envelope," he says, "either politically or on romantic things." They often succeed.

Anwar first came to prominence as a screenwriter for the 2003 comedy Arisan!, which swept the national and international film awards and has been spun off into Indonesia's top-rated TV sitcom. Arisan! (the word has no direct equivalent in English; it's the name of a monthly female social gathering) challenged censorship laws established by dictator Suharto's "New Order" regime, under which Islamic political activity was narrowly restricted. Since Suharto's ouster in 1998, Islamic political movements have operated more freely--and they've learned to use the film censorship laws to promote Muslim mores.

While working on Arisan!, Anwar discovered a loophole in the ban of on-screen kissing: It prohibited kissing between a man and a woman. Anwar refashioned his script to center the movie around a likable gay character who falls in love and is ultimately accepted by friends and family. The resulting same-sex kissing scenes became a national sensation. As a political gesture, celebrities started jokingly declaring they were gay. The film censorship board subsequently tightened the law to cover same-sex kissing.

The board itself seemingly is motivated not by Islamic sentiments, but by fear of retribution from devout Muslims. In 2005, Anwar submitted his directorial debut, Joni's Promise, to the censorship board with a modest male-female kissing scene. The board removed the scene and told Anwar this was for his own protection: They claimed the scene would cause the film to lose money because theaters showing it would be at risk of arson and Anwar would be attacked.

Anwar's current project is arguably his most ambitious, and is a response to the rise of radicalism. "It's getting pretty scary," Anwar says, "because we don't know what next they'll say is wrong according to them." He is convinced that the majority of Indonesians don't share the Islamic movement's values, but that the movement is gaining momentum because, in any controversy, the radicals are always the most vocal.

This has been true since the early post-Suharto days, when criminal charges were dropped against a number of radical clerics, including the suspected head of Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Bakar Bashir. At the local level, political Islam was fostered by violent militias; nationally, by such parties as the Prosperous Justice party (PKS), linked with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In making full use of the right to free expression enshrined in the constitution, the forces seeking to spread political Islam have succeeded in substantially undermining this right. With the PKS pulling strings in parliament and radical groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Islamic Defenders Front operating on the ground in provincial cities outside of Jakarta, sharia has been adopted in Aceh territory, the city of Padang, and the Jakarta suburb of Tangerang. There are bold calls for the adoption of a national "anti-pornography" law that would constitute a de facto implementation of sharia by criminalizing public displays of affection between a husband and wife and legislating what women are allowed to wear.

Against this backdrop, Anwar is making a groundbreaking film called Dead Time, which is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's Brazil: It's a gritty movie about a future Indonesia that is balkanizing under the weight of dictatorial laws. Although the movie doesn't specify what the oppressive laws are, it clearly targets current efforts to establish sharia.

"It's going to be a noir film," Anwar says of Dead Time, which is based on the prophesies of the twelfth-century figure Jayabaya, sometimes described as the "Indonesian Nostradamus." Jayabaya predicted that Indonesia would go through a period of deep crisis before a leader would arise to reunite the nation and lead it into an era of peace and prosperity. Anwar says that Dead Time will deal with "who can be the one that Jayabaya predicted."

Nick Grace, an Indonesian-language political commentator who met Anwar through Grace's podcast, Global Crisis Watch, applauds the work of the Indonesian entertainment industry. "They are filling a role that the government should be playing: battling against extremism," he says. "The filmmakers are directly involved in this culture war. For now, the radicals may be winning the battles by paying people to rally for their causes, but the war will ultimately be won by the filmmakers whose films not only have staying power but are filling cinema seats."

Indonesia is a critical bellwether in the long war against Islamic extremism because it is the world's most populous Muslim country and has extremely porous borders. In practice, it has been home to a relatively moderate form of Islam, which is now being challenged. If Indonesian society is transformed into an authoritarian state governed by a strict version of Islamic law, the blow will be felt not only by the country's entertainment industry, but also by all who cherish freedom.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior consultant for the Gerard Group International. His first book, My Year Inside Radical Islam, is due out in February 2007 from Tarcher/Penguin.

« Close It

Report: 3 Spanish Muslims Recruited for Jihad Every Month

By Lorenzo Vidino

Today the Spanish newspaper El Periodico published an interesting report based on extensive interviews with Spanish counterterrorism officials. According to the report, each month an average of 3 Spanish Muslims are recruited by jihadi networks either for suicide bombings in Iraq or for training in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Yemen and Somalia.

The pattern is not new and similar to those reported in other European countries. Over the last few years Spain has dismantled various recruting networks, located mostly in the the southern regions and in the greater Barcelona area, some of them linked either to Zarqawi or to various Pakistani jihadist groups. And in May 2005, Mohammed Afalah, a member of the Madrid cell that carried out the March 11 train bombings, reportedly died in a suicide attack in Iraq.

What has changed over the last few months is the profile of the average recruits. While in the past they were mostly recent immigrants to Spain (immigration is indeed a recent phenomenon to Spain, having started on a large scale only in the early 1990s, coinciding with the economic boom), today's recruits tend to be mostly second-generation immigrants (mainly of Moroccan descent) and as young as 13. This confirms the trend seen in most European countries, where, unlike 5 years ago, the majority of individuals involved in jihadist activities are European-born.

Iran Sanctions: A Necessary Step in a Difficult Situation

By Victor Comras

Time has run out on a negotiated settlement with Iran on its nuclear enrichment program. The latest responses from Iran are no more than ploys to extend the August 31 deadline set by the UN Security Council for possible imposition of sanctions. Some reports now speculate that Iran, if it continues on its present course, may be able to achieve nuclear weapons capability by as early as 2009. The geopolitical implications of this are staggering! But, getting the Security Council to impose effective sanctions against Iran still appears doubtful. Iran accounts for about 5% of the world’s oil exports. And with international spot oil prices over US$65.00 a barrel, there is concern in Europe and elsewhere that even threatening to cut off Iranian crude from the market would cause international oil prices to spike back over $75 a barrel. .

EU negotiators are already out on a limb with offers that would allow Iran some type of closely monitored enrichment activity. And the United States has indicated a willingness to join the talks with Iran, if Iran accepts the EU's proposed compromise. But Iran’s answer, which came August 22nd., and has been repeated since, continues to leave out the key element necessary for further negotiations – a commitment to halt further uranium enrichment pending these negotiations.

Barring military action, can the West force Iran to back down? The answer depends on our ability to put together a credible mix of coercive measures and incentives that can serve to convince Iran that it really has no other choice.

Iran’s economy is quite fragile and vulnerable to trade restrictions. Oil accounts for around 80 to 90 percent of Iran’s total exports and 40-50% of the government’s budget. Despite high oil prices, Iran’s economy has softened considerably since President Ahmadinejad took office. Unemployment is rampant and new investment in Iran’s industry and infrastructure has stalled. Substantial new foreign capital investment is also needed to modernize its petroleum infrastructure and to meet growing domestic energy demands while maintaining revenue producing oil exports. Iran's leaders can ill-afford to aggravate Iran's economic distress further.

But, getting the Security Council to move beyond limited financial sanctions will not be easy,. China is a major importer of Iranian oil and traditionally reluctant to impose sanctions measures. Russia also has developed a lucrative market as a supplier to Iran's nuclear reactor program and for Iran's oil industry. Yet, both countries must share the same deep concerns as the West about Iran's gaining nuclear weapons status. Russia is now suggesting that it may be willing to consider some sanctions on Iran as a way of defusing possible future military action. But it is still unclear whether they would be willing to agree to anything more than a limited asset freeze and travel ban. Targeting Iran’s Mullah’s with financial sanctions and travel bans, as now contemplated by Russia and some of the other Security Council members, certainly won’t be enough to convince Iran to change course. Broader measures, including clear threats to cut off Iranian oil exports, are required.

The P-3 (US, UK and France) must, at a minimum, press the Security Council for accelerating sanctions aimed at isolating Iran and cutting off its access to goods and services, including, but not limited to, financial services. Technical support and supplies for Iran's overall nuclear program and investment and technical support for its oil production, exploration and development projects must be halted immediately. Iran’s overseas accounts must be frozen and targeted Iran business entities and regime supporters cut off from participating in international transactions. And Iran must be put on notice that further restrictions on Iran’s oil exports will follow unless Iran complies with UN Security Council Resolution 1696. The Security Council should also now call on all other oil producing countries to act to rationalize the oil market in anticipation of future international restrictions on Iran’s oil exports.

Alone the United States has little sanctions leverage left on Iran. The US has barred most trade and investment with Iran, including the purchase of Iranian oil since 1995. This gives us few options. We must either press Europe and our other friends and allies to act with us together to bring home to Iran our opposition to its uranium enrichment program, or consider more forceful unilateral measures. Working with our European allies, Japan and other countries, stringent trade sanctions, even in the absence of a Security Council Resolution, can have a substantial impact. Iran's business community is heavily dependent on goods and services from Europe and Japan. In fact, imports from Europe and Japan have more than offset oil export’s to them two out of the last five years.

Concerted action on such sanctions now, may still dissuade Iran from its current course. In the face of real sanctions, Iran might choose to re-think its position, suspend enrichment, sit down and talk, and eventually accept the very attractive incentives being offered by Europe. Further debate and delay will only encourage Iran to move ahead with its enrichment program, leaving no options other than military action. And, that, undoubtedly, will also have its impact on the world oil market and on international peace and security.

Commentary on “Azzam the American’s” Diatribe

By Jeffrey Cozzens

Following every significant (or markedly different) statement or video issued by al-Qa'ida (AQ) personalities, American media and government officials grapple with myriad concerns such as whether cryptic signals were included in the message to encourage specific attacks, whether the AQ core was simply trying to “maintain relevance,” whether it was trying to “soften its image” and play politics, etc. This overwhelmingly Western, tactical, and self-reinforcing mode of approaching global jihadi discourse distracts us from the typically strategic content of al-Qa’ida’s commentaries, and the myriad audiences to which it is directed. This is the type of mirror imaging we need to replace with more sophisticated understanding of these messages’ content. Michael Scheuer framed this argument well in a recent Jamestown’s Terrorism Focus article.

Few statements from the AQ core have a tactical application; they generally reflect long-term strategic imperatives and focus (sometimes implicitly) on the belief-based parameters of their conflict with “apostates” and “Zionist-Crusaders.” Besides laundry lists of Western “crimes” against the ummah (global Muslim community), the theme of religious obligation to fight jihad is discussed most often. The statements inextricably fuse these current geopolitical issues and grievances (and perceptions thereof) with the deeply personal and often mystical nature of jihadi contention. But in light of the hour-long 2 September video allegedly made by Adam Gadahn (aka, “Azzam al-Amriki,” translated as “Azzam the American”), does this paradigm hold, or is there something more ominous in his statement suggestive of imminent attack? While we cannot know with certainly, analysis of the video’s intended audiences may at least point us in the right direction.

In agreement with Scheuer, besides the offers of conversion made to non-Muslims, this video is directed primarily at different Muslim listeners. This is the singularly most important aspect of the video, and the sub-themes that emerge from Azzam’s message to these audiences are worthy of critical analysis if the threat from the video is to be accurately assessed.

The first point for analysis suggests that Azzam’s video is a continuance of long-time AQ efforts to satisfy the evidentiary standards for attack required by Salafi scholars, whose blessing (or simple lack of condemnation) is crucial for the global jihadi movement to secure in order to both frame their fight as defensive and expand movement participation. Scheuer notes this implicitly, but he focuses more on the aspect of da’wa (call to Islam) than on AQ’s equally crucial efforts to frame its fight defensively. This is why “Azzam” enumerates in the video a series of perceived injustices which, as a whole, suggest that Christians and Jews are battling Islam itself, not just its jihadi vanguard—a long-time theme of previous AQ diatribes that has accrued wider currency since 2003. Dr. Bruce Hoffman calls this the “prescience of bin Laden’s narrative.” The logic goes that “anyone” can see that “these events [the Iraq invasion, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Israeli military activities in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, the Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo scandals, etc]…showcase a seething animosity [towards] and definite ignorance of the religion of Islam and the nature of its followers.” Apart from the explicit or implicit approval of these scholars—or simply their silence—AQ engages in “forbidden” warfare against “illegitimate” targets using proscribed means, as many Salafi scholars have determined since 2001 (chiefly because AQ marks other Muslims for violence, a practice known as takfir, and employs suicidal tactics against civilians). As self-appointed “spokesmen” for the global jihadi movement satisfy these evidentiary standards with increasing success (measured by the increase in global jihadi plots and attacks worldwide since 2003) owing to their “prescient” analysis of world events, more individuals participate in one way or another in the movement. However, it must be stated emphatically that this is not a new trend.

True, the statement is in many ways unique. Unlike past AQ statements, which offer some criticism of “Christian” Western nations for not living-up to the tenets of their faith, Azzam rather uncharacteristically (at least for statements linked to the AQ core) attacks the substance of Christianity at great length, adding a new, radical degree of polarity between the “camps of belief and disbelief.” However, the message is aimed primarily at Muslims; it is not so much an offensive tactic of “psychological warfare,” even if the purveyor of the message (Azzam) does have the simultaneous effect of sowing fear in Western audiences as an American jihadi. This is very much in keeping with AQ’s preferred theme of overt religious warfare, which forces “real Muslims” to take sides—especially if the kuffar (unbelievers) have been invited (according to the Prophetic Model) to profess shahada (the declaration of faith) and refuse. As an American convert to Islam who fought with Arab forces in the Soviet jihad told me, AQ’s jihad is about “separating the wheat from the chaff” within the Muslim community; thus, Azzam’s message could be summarized as “Christians, by nature of their corrupted beliefs and actions, are not only misguided but also implacably hostile to Islam, and true Muslims should fight them everywhere as a defense against their schemes unless they repent and convert.” This message should be widely denounced by Muslims globally as it contradicts the “exceptional” Qu’ranic standing of “People of the Book” (Jews and Christians).

Finally, it is important to realize that Azzam’s statement was pointedly aimed at Western Muslims—especially recent converts—in addition to those in the West he summons to embrace Islam:

I can't tell you how delighted I was to receive news of the embracing of Islam by a number of U.S. soldiers at the hands of the Muslim mujahideen imprisoned at some of the American concentration camps, which blacken the globe. And I ask God to benefit Islam and Muslims with them, and that He make them a role model for their comrades. (MEMRI translation)

The clear implication here is that these soldiers should “benefit Islam” by becoming “role models” in the jihad in a manner reminiscent of the Egyptian jihadis within Sadat’s army who turned against the state. This analysis is bolstered by Azzam’s later statement:

I don't think a freedom struggle could wish for a better endorsement, to have its cause picked up by a courageous group from within the oppressor nation itself. Well, you shouldn't be surprised, because, after all, it is the duty of every Muslim to fight evil and oppression, wherever he finds it and no matter who the evil-doers might be. (MEMRI translation)

Moreover, with apparent reference to Western Muslims who are “sitting on the fence” and only interested in the propagation of Islam apart from jihad (which, in Azzam’s worldview, is the “apogee of Islam”) he said: “But what really is surprising is that some among us want to suffice with invitation alone, without resorting to self-defense, when the enemy insists upon aggression and wanton destruction” (MEMRI translation). Azzam’s message is simple: Western Muslims must embrace jihad, especially since their countrymen are waging war against their religion and their brethren at home and abroad. Quit prevaricating and fight.

Do these and other messages contained within the video suggest an imminent attack? While we cannot say with certainty, they appear to be a unique variation on the theme of framing the global jihad defensively and “awakening” Western Islamic activists from mere da’wa to jihad as an individual obligation. True, the video is full of disturbing, generally original features, including (among others):
•A rant against Christianity by an American jihadi convert
•Al-Zawahiri’s endorsement of this individual by name, who appears in a nearly one-hour English da’wa video, complete with American colloquialisms
•The singling-out of specific “enemies” beyond the political leadership (including some Counterterrorism Blog experts)
•An implied appeal to American soldier converts to rise-up and fight jihad

However, these do not necessarily suggest an attack is imminent. As Michael Scheuer himself wrote, the video is likely “part of an al-Qaeda effort that began early in 2002” to fulfill the stipulations of Salafi just war theory. The threat implied in the video might be tomorrow, or it might be in five years’ time. This makes it more a strategic than tactical problem. Moreover, those who eventually carry-out the operation may not be connected other than ideologically to bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and/or Azzam the American. All we can say with certainty is that the video adds yet another brick to the al-Qa’ida project for legitimizing global violence against “Islam’s” enemies; attributing too much tactical weight to the video makes it all the more effective.

Jeffrey Cozzens is Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), University of St Andrews.

« Close It

Projecting Future Jihadi Terrorism Five Years After 9/11

By Walid Phares

I testified yesterday before the U.S. House International Relations Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation, which held a hearing titled, "Five Years Later--Gauging Islamist Terrorism." You can read the prepared statements of the chairman, Rep. Ed Royce, and the other esteemed witnesses at that website. Here is the text of my prepared statement (here is the statement in a file):

Chairman Royce, Ranking Member Sherman, Members of the Committee, It is a privilege and an honor to appear before you today to discuss the theme “9/11: Five Years Later, Gauging Islamist Terrorism.” My contribution is titled: “Projecting Future Jihadi Terrorism, five years after 9/11.”

1. Who is the enemy?

The first question to be addressed is the identification of the enemy. Who are they and how do we identify them? For one analytical mistake made at this level would send the United States and its allies fighting either the wrong war or against the wrong enemy: America’s efforts may be derailed by an enemy deflecting our attention from the real objectives, or deflected from engaging the enemy’s most vital assets he has against us.

a. The issue of the name:

The enemy who flew airliners against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the one the US defeated in Tora Bora and are still engaging in the Sunni triangle in Iraq; and that enemy which is still striking against Democracies and allies around the world has a name for itself: Jihadists (al jihadiyun). It uses an ideology with a name, Jihadism (al jihadiya); it recruits with a very specific set of doctrines and operates under ideologically-grounded strategies: Hence, the U.S needs to be specific in calling the enemy with its real name. U.S leaders shouldn’t be vague in their description of the enemy as Terrorists-only or to be dragged into the enemy’s trap as to alleged distortion of “what Jihad could mean.” U.S leaders can surely use a variety of descriptions, such as Islamists, Islamo-Fascists, Islamic-Terrorists, but the US Government and the allies in the War on Terror should define the enemy officially as Jihadists.

b. The two trees

The Jihadists are of two ideological types: Salafist, who are radicals who developed within Sunni societies, and Khomenists, who are radicals who developed within Shiia communities. The Salafists have various ideological and political branches: Wahabis, Muslim Brotherhood, Tablighi and others. From this “tree” came al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Jemaa Islamiya, Salafi Combat Group, and dozens of smaller groups around the world. The Khomeinists are the radical clerics in control of Iran. They have created Hezbollah in Lebanon, and along with the latter expanded cells around the world. The head of Salafi Jihadists today is al Qaeda; the head of Khomeinist Jihadism is the Iranian regime.

2. The Jihadi wars against the US leading to 9/11

It is strategically important to reassess the history of the Jihadi campaigns against America leading to 9/11. The first Terrorist engagement against U.S presence was by Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah as of 1983 in Beirut. The Khomeinist direct Terror campaign lasted till 1990 before it entered a second stage of regional expansion, and strategic penetration and preparation worldwide and within the United States for the future. The Salafi Jihadists before 1990, were concentrating on the Soviet Union, but preparing against America and the West. Since 1990, they refocused on the US, on its allies and within the Arab World.

During the 1990s, the Salafi Jihadists waged Terror in multiple countries, including in Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Russia, Kashmir, Sudan, the Philippines, and beyond. Their international network, al Qaeda concentrated on the United States. Al Qaeda and its allies penetrated Democracies and America since the 1990s. The major strategic failure of the U.S and of its allies was their inability to identify or to counter the Jihadi penetration and action both internationally and nationally. The 9/11 Commission Final Report of 2004 covered a significant aspect of these historical failures throughout the 1990s, but missed two major ones: First, the fact that the U.S and its allies didn’t identify the ideology of Jihadism as the producer of Terrorists and Terrorism; and second, the fact that the Jihadi strategic penetration of the Homeland was in fact a threat to national security. A “September 11” was possible because the enemy counted on the poor perception by the Government, little mobilization by the public, and more importantly, the possibility that the Jihadi factory within America will be able to produce Future Terrorism.

3) War with Jihadism since 9/11

a) Is there a progress in the struggle against “Islamic Terrorism?”

There has been a significant progress in the conflict with Jihadi-Terrorism, both internationally and within the U.S Homeland.

Internationally: al Qaeda lost the one regime that provided a state-sponsoring of its worldwide activities, Afghanistan. It wasn’t able to reclaim any other regime yet. While it has recruited larger numbers of militants from the Islamist pools around the world, anti-Jihadist energies were also freed in many countries such as in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as in other areas. More countries are putting minimal energies against the rising Jihadi efforts, which is a better global situation than before 9/11. This is progress in the war but the turning point –in either direction- didn’t occur yet.
Within the US: Al Qaeda lost the ability of a strategic surprise war since 9/11, but not its ability for strikes yet. By creating the Homeland Security Structure and maintaining a minimal mobilization of the public, the US Government has been making progress on the domestic front, in comparison with regression before 9/11.
But this progress, both internationally and domestically, is hanging on the ability of the United States and its allies to move forward, faster and with a strategic mutation in the next stage of the War with al Qaeda, while also preparing for the possibility of the engagement by the “Khomeinist” threat abruptly. If the US stops, waiver, or confuse its vision of its enemies and their plans, the entire progress can be reversed to the advantage of the Jihadi Terrorists.

b) Was “Islamic Terrorism” weakened?

In summary: The Islamists have been weakened in ways they haven’t understood yet, but they would soon realize and act accordingly; but at the same time they have empowered themselves in the US in ways Americans haven’t fully grasped yet, but they can still reverse. By thrusting into their areas of production and spreading, the US-led coalition opened spaces for counter-Jihadi forces to rise. Al Qaeda and its allies, and the Iranian regime and its allies feel the danger but they can’t assess the long term challenge they will be facing. Unfortunately, the international coalition also doesn’t seem to realize that with few more initiatives, it can turn the tide on the Jihadists. However a number of strategic shortcomings are stopping the coalition from turning that tide. If the US-led campaign is not given the opportunity to redirect some of its resources into engaging the War of Ideas successfully, the future of this War on Terror is at risk. The Islamists-Jihadists have also penetrated Democracies, including the US, in ways that aren’t fully comprehended yet among the public and large segment of Government. They have been weakened in their pre-9/11 classical abilities to infiltrate. But their second generation is growing in recruitment and thus in Terrorism potential, until a higher level mobilization takes place in America.

c) Are there deficiencies in the struggle against “Islamic Terrorism?”

Yes there are three types of deficiencies:

1. A war of ideas is still been waged against the American strategic perception of the enemy. Ideological efforts are ongoing to blur the vision of Americans in general, media and Government in particular with regards to the identity of the enemy, its aims, its strategies and the strategies needed to defeat it.
2. One result of the misperception of the enemy is granting the Jihadists more time and capacity to further infiltrate and penetrate the country.
3. Another result of the misperception of the enemy is failing to empower potential allies in the Greater Middle East, particularly civil society entities.

d) How has Jihadism evolved since 9/11

Inside the US and its allies in Europe, the Jihadist movement is absorbing the counter terrorism pressures, analyzing the measures and is mutating to bypass them. It has designed two stages in its warfare: One is the development stage. It covers the spread of the ideology, the recruitment from the indoctrinated pools of militants, and the penetration of the national systems. The second stage occurs when the strikes are prepared and launched. U.S systems are countering them only at the final stage that is, in their preparation for Terror activities.

e) From where are they drawing support?

The Jihadists inside the United States are drawing their support from the reality that their space of indoctrination, recruitment and mobilization is not under legal or public sanctioning or pressure. They can operate up to 90% of their strategic growth under the current laws.

f) Are Americans complacent in considering the terrorist threat?

Since 9/11, the subsequent conflicts, and the Terror horrors around the world, the American public in general is developing a greater concern regarding the Jihadi Terror threat. Most Americans, by instincts and through images, understand that the threat is real and great. But the public is submitted to diverging final analysis on the War on Terror on behalf of its officials, politicians, media and academics. Thus the full talents of society are not mobilized yet.

g) What does the recent Hezbollah/Israel conflict mean for the broader struggle against terrorism?

Hezbollah’s initial trigger of the War with Israel in July 2006, regardless of the current consequences, indicated that the Iran-Syria axis has reached a point of non return with the international community and has decided to wage a wider Terror war to deflect the immediate pressures: The UN Nuclear crisis with the Ahmedinijad regime and the UN investigation in the assassination of former Prime Minister Hariri regarding Syria. In fact the greater concerns of Tehran and Damascus are the democracy experiments in the region and across their borders, from Afghani and Iraqi elections to the Cedars Revolution in Lebanon. The course of events in Lebanon and Iraq shows, despite the UN resolutions 1559 and 1701, that the intelligence-Terrorist apparatus of the Iranian and Syrian regimes, of Hezbollah and other organizations including Hamas and PIJ, are moving to position themselves to act not only to confront Israel, but to renew the Terror war in Lebanon, increase Terror involvement in Iraq, trigger additional Terror action from Gaza and the West Bank, and threaten moderate Arab countries. A more dangerous move on behalf of this regional axis would be to use its assets and networks around the world and within the US for Terror activities, when decision in that sense is made. But the most dangerous threat to be faced by American and Western security, if not international security, would be in the next five years, actions taken simultaneously by both “trees,” even without direct coordination, and eventually using unconventional weapons.

4: General recommendations

Five years after, learning from the road to 9/11, and reading in the strategies of the Jihadists from both “trees,” I would offer the following recommendations, some of which I have advanced in my book Future Jihad.

A: The U.S and its allies must deliver and win the battle of identifying, defining and naming the enemy. Legislative branches in America and within Democracies worldwide must have the political courage, the right knowledge and the wisdom to address this challenge. The current state of national and international laws is not able to provide a historic basis for Governments, media and public to mobilize fully against an enemy living and thriving within these societies.

B: Counter Terrorism strategies must be designed to intercept the Jihadists before they engage in Terror acts, and intercept the ideological threat before it produce the Jihadists. To do so, the public must be granted the knowledge and provided with the right information. With a higher level of national talents, Homeland Security’s capacities will meet the growing challenge before it reaches irreversible trends.

C: From other countries one could learn from components of successful experiences: Jordan and Morocco in the Muslim confrontation of Islamist extremism, the UK and Australia in their counter Terrorism tactics; but also learn from the resistance of civil societies to Terrorist ideologies in the Greater Middle East.

D: The nation is facing the challenge of what is being described as a choice between Civil Liberties and National Security: It is a false choice that shouldn’t be imposed on the citizens of America and Democracies worldwide. For by educating, informing and preparing citizens, legislators, judges and public servants regarding the nature of the enemy, a common understanding of its ideology, plans and tactics, would bring together the various components of US national security and justice, without even having to weaken liberties. A better informed judge (known as Counter Terrorism Judges in Europe) would work faster and easier with Law enforcement, and better informed citizens wouldn’t feel that the choice is even to be made between security and rights.
From that perspective “Monitoring” will be directed at the Terrorists and citizens would be excluded systematically from discrimination. The real resistance against Terrorism will be achieved when citizens will be part of that effort to isolate the Terrorists.

E: To better “attack the ideology fueling Terrorism” the United States must first pin it down, explain it, name it and expose it. The US Congress, representing the American People must enact laws that would equate the Jihadism of al Qaeda and Hezbollah with racism and Terrorism. Once the public at home and civil societies overseas can see the ideology of the enemy, then they can isolate it and reject it as is the case of Fascism, Nazism and Racism. Salafist and Khomeinist Jihadism are the pillars of Jihadism. They should be denounced and rendered illegal: Militant ideologies, that renders segments of humanity vulnerable to violence, murder and genocide cannot be allowed to recruit within civil societies.

In conclusion, the United States and its allies are delivering an up hill battle against an enemy that has prepared for and declared a universal war against free societies and democracy, decades before America decided to respond. However to reach the turning point in the War on Terror, the War of Ideas has to be won: The American public has to be granted real knowledge of the enemy and civil societies overseas have to be granted real support. This is how Jihadi Terrorism can be defeated historically.

In closing, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony today. I look forward to responding to any question that you might have.

« Close It

Treasury Department Targets Hezbollah's and Iran's Financial Institutions

By Andrew Cochran

In actions announced yesterday and today, the Treasury Department makes it clear that the U.S. will pursue the financial institutions which assist Hezbollah and the Iranian regime. Today, Treasury cut off access to the U.S. financial system by Iran's Bank Saderat, one of Iranian-owned banks, by making it impossible to conduct "U-turn transactions," which allow U.S. banks to process payments involving Iran that begin and end with a non-Iranian foreign bank. The Treasury statement asserts, "The bank is used by the Government of Iran to transfer money to terrorist organizations, including Hizballah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A notable example of this is a Hizballah-controlled organization that has received $50 million directly from Iran through Bank Saderat since 2001." Stuart Levey, the senior Treasury anti-terrorist financing official, said, "Bank Saderat facilitates Iran's transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to Hizballah and other terrorist organizations each year."

This follows yesterday's designation of two financial companies and one individual that provide financial support to Hizballah. The action prohibits any transactions between U.S. persons and the designated entities and also freezes any assets those entites may have under U.S. jurisdiction. From the Treasury press release:

Bayt al-Mal is a Hizballah-controlled organization that performs financial services for the terrorist organization. Bayt al-Mal operates under the direct supervision of Hizballah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah. As Hizballah's main financial body, Bayt al-Mal serves as a bank, creditor, and investment arm for Hizballah. The central headquarters of Bayt al-Mal was located in Hizballah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs. Bayt al-Mal utilizes the Yousser Company for Finance and Investment to secure loans and finance business deals for Hizballah companies.

Husayn al-Shami, the head of Bayt al-Mal, is a senior Hizballah leader who has served as a member of Hizballah's Shura Council and as the head of several Hizballah-controlled organizations, including the Islamic Resistance Support Organization. Shami is also responsible for foreign donations to Hizballah fundraising organizations.

Under Secretary Levey discussed these actions today at a 9/11-related event in Washington. "It is remarkable that Iran has a nine-digit line item in its budget to support Hizballah, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations at the expense of investing in the future of its young people."

Indonesian Bombers Get Sentenced

By Kenneth Conboy

There was a flurry of judicial activity in Indonesia this week as several terrorists received varying prison sentences. Among them:

* Mohammad Cholily was given an 18-year sentence for assisting with the Bali II bombings in October 2005. Cholily was hardly repentent, calling his sentence "the sweetest birthday present ever." He was found guilty of purchasing batteries, digital timers, and other materials to make 21 bombs under the guidance of the late Jemaah Islamiyah bomb expert Azhari Husein.

* Abdul Aziz, 30, was given an 8-year sentence for his role in the Bali II bombings. Aziz was described as polite and behaved at his trial.

* Dwi Widiarto was also jailed for 8 years for transferring footage from a camcorder showing fugitive JI mastermind Noordin Top making a fiery speech (in which he threatened nationals from the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Italy). Widiarto knew Top was a fugitive and had advance knowledge of the Bali II bombings, but did not inform the authorities.

In other news:

* A police officer in Solo was arrested on 5 September for deserting his post three years ago. He allegedly acted as a paramilitary instructor for radicals under Noordin Top.

* The police made progress in the laptop scandal involving convicted JI bomber Imam Samudra. Samudra is on death row for his involvement in the 2002 Bali bombing that took 200 lives. Last month it was revealed that a laptop was smuggled to him in 2005 while in prison on Bali. On 28 August, the police arrested a prison guard, Beny Irawan, who reportedly delivered the laptop. It is now known that Samudra frequently visited a chatroom called "cafeislam" where he communicated with an as-yet unknown sympathizer the police have dubbed "Mister X." Another suspect, Agung Setyadi, has already been arrested for purchasing the laptop on Samudra's behalf. The police have backtracked from the earlier claim that Samudra was in touch with those planning the Bali II bombing, but they have yet to piece together exactly who he contacted and what he discussed.

Aaron Mannes & David Schenker Join Us As Contributing Experts

By Andrew Cochran

We are very pleased to announce that Aaron Mannes and David Schenker are joining us as Contributing Experts.

Mr. Mannes, author of the TerrorBlog (http://www.profilesinterror.com/) and Profiles in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations (Rowman & Littlefield-JINSA Press 2004), researches terrorism at the University of Maryland’s Semantic Web Agents Group (profilesinterror.mindswap.org). He has written numerous articles on Middle East affairs, terrorism, and other international security issues for publications including Policy Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, National Review Online, The New York Post, Weekly Standard, and The Journal of International Security Affairs (full list on his website). From 1998 to 2001, Mr. Mannes was the Director of Research at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), where he wrote numerous papers and helped to establish MEMRI as the English speaking world’s leading source of translations and analysis of the Middle East media.

Mr. Schenker is a senior fellow in Arab politics at The Washington Institute. Previously, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Levant country director, the Pentagon's top policy aide on the Arab countries of the Levant. He was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service in 2005. Prior to joining the government, Mr. Schenker was a research fellow at The Washington Institute, focusing on Arab governance issues. Fluent in Arabic, he served as the Institute's in-house expert on Arab politics. In addition, he authored two Institute books: Dancing with Saddam: The Strategic Tango of Jordanian-Iraqi Relations (copublished with Lexington Books, 2003) and Palestinian Democracy and Governance: An Appraisal of the Legislative Council (2001). His writings on Arab affairs have also appeared in a number of prominent scholarly journals and newspapers, including Middle East Quarterly, the Los Angeles Times, and the Jerusalem Post (full list from the Institute's website).

We look forward to Aaron's and David's numerous upcoming contributions.

Pakistan's Peace Deal with Terrorist Factions a Major Blow to U.S.

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

The past week witnessed one of the most significant recent developments related to the global war on terror -- a development that garnered surprisingly little attention from the media and analysts. As Pakistan's Dawn newspaper explains, the Pakistani government has entered into a peace agreement with the Taliban insurgency that essentially cedes authority in the North Waziristan tribal region to the Taliban and al-Qaeda:

Militants in the restive North Waziristan tribal region on Tuesday signed a peace agreement, pledging to halt cross-border movement and stop attacks on government installations and security forces. “There shall be no cross-border movement for militant activity in neighbouring Afghanistan,” read a clause of the three-page agreement signed by seven militants on behalf of the Taliban shura (advisory council). On its part, the government pledged not to undertake any ground or air operation against the militants and resolve the issue through local customs and traditions.

The importance of this agreement cannot be overstated. My colleague Bill Roggio, who is currently providing the best analysis of this peace deal available on the Internet, today addressed the strategic implications: "With the threat of the Pakistani Army removed in North and South Waziristan, the Taliban and al-Qaeda can now consolidate power and focus their efforts on attacking coalition forces in Afghanistan, as well as expand further into the greater North West Frontier Province." Moreover, with this geographic base to operate from, we may see greater coordination from al-Qaeda's central leadership -- something that the transatlantic air plot shows us they had already been moving toward.

By Andrew Cochran

Al Qaeda has released two "9/11 anniversary tapes." The new video shows Osama bin Laden with his former lieutenants Mohammed Atef (killed in Afghanistan in 2001) and Ramzi Binalshibh (a planner of the 9/11 attacks and captured 4 years ago), and supposedly with several of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Laura Mansfield reports that "the tape is over 5 years old but contains previously unseen footage." You can see the banner advertisement from Al Qaeda's As-Sahab media site below, thanks to Rita Katz.

And a new audio has been released by Zarqawi's successor as head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. You can hear the audio in Arabic from Laura Mansfield's site or from Rita Katz's SITE Institute (MP3 files). Rita Katz has made a translation available to us (Acrobat file).

Laura reports, "The tape, which is 18 minutes, 22 seconds long, begins with quotes from the Qu'ran. Al Mujahir's words are introduced by the same disembodied echoing voice from previous Zarqawi messages. (This is expected since al Muhajir is the heir to Zarqawi as Amir of Al Qaeda in Iraq.) It is impossible to authenticate the voice since there is no record of Mujahir's voice; however, the voice on this tape bears striking similarities to that heard in a similar tape shortly after Zarqawi's death, where a spokesman read a prepared statement from Muhajir. This tape ends with the names "Abu Hamza al Muhajir" and "Abdul Moneim al Badawi". We are trying to determine whether the voice on the tape is actually Muhajir or is his spokesperson."

Here is Rita Katz's translation of the announcement earlier today of the audio message:

"We announce to the Ummah the good news of an upcoming audio message from Sheikh Mujahid Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the Emir of al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers, and a member of the Mujahideen Shura Council. The message will be released by al-Fajr Media Center, and in a little while, with Allah's will."

Recall the controversy over whether al-Muhajir is "Abu Ayyub al-Masri," with Evan Kohlmann among those who said they are not the same person (as is Rita Katz).

Banner Announcing OBL Video:

The Islamists Have a 20-year Plan: Do We?

By Douglas Farah

This week's New Yorker should be required reading for those interested in the Islamist jihadi movements. The reason is simple. It gives us, in al Qaeda's own words, the 20-year plan of the group and its different iterations to wear away the West's resolve: plunge the United States into wars that will over extend its military, focus on a few key concepts (use of the internet, building a single narrative of itself and the West to give a unified vision of the war, drastic decentralization of command and control structures etc.) and a specific timetable in which different phases of the plan will be completed.

Author Lawrence Wright does not write this based on a huge intelligence coup or the ability to place a mole inside the jihadi camp. He wrote his story based on publicly-available, but little read, jihadi documents, which a few scholars and analysts have taken the time to read and analyze.

Tragically, he notes that, while some analysts, particularly in the military, study these prolific jihadi texts, the analysis is seldom filiters up to senior policy makers because, as one official says, "decision-makers are not looking for that kind of information. They think they know better." My full blog is here.

Southeast Asia Update

By Zachary Abuza

Abu Sayyaf: Fighting on the Island of Jolo continues. The 5,000-man contingent of Philippine armed forces (AFP) is being reinforced by a battalion of 300 men. The AFP announced that 2 more soldiers had been killed and made an unsubstantiated claim that 80 Abu Sayyaf had been killed in the past 3 days. The AFP claims that Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani and a high-level JI operative Umar Patek were wounded in the fighting. This still has not been confirmed.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front, (MILF): Unsurprisingly, the latest round of peace talks between the Philippine government and the MILF that resumed on Monday broke down in Malaysia today. The talks centered on the issue of ancestral domain, and in particular, what would constitute the autonomous area under MILF control. The government has offered to give the Moros 613 villages on top of the 5 provinces that are already nominally autonomous; the MILF have demanded over 1,000 and contiguity.

Jemaah Islamiyah: A Balinese court sentenced three people in the past two days for their roles in the September 2005, triple suicide bombings in Bali that killed 20 and wounded nearly 200. Abdul Aziz, a high school computer teacher, was sentenced to 8 years in prison for his role in supporting Noordin Mohammad Top and Dr. Azahari bin Husin and running a website for JI. Mohammad Cholily, 28, was found guilty of supplying equipment and materiel for the bombs. Dwi Widyarto, 33, was sentenced to 8 years for providing computer and internet assistance to JI. The fourth person to be charged in the attacks is expected to be sentenced soon.

In other JI news, a bomb exploded in Tangkura, Sulawesi, a Christian village, killing one man on Tuesday. Central Sulawesi has been the scene of renewed sectarian fighting, and is seen by many as an attempt by JI to rebuild its depleted ranks.

What Has Changed Since Last Year on 9/11?

By Andrew Cochran

As we approach the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it's informative to recall what our Contributing Experts said last year at this time and compare their statements with the events and disclosures of the past year (we don't mind being held to account for what we say). We held a live panel on Capitol Hill at that point titled, "Are We Safer?" Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, was our keynote speaker, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, provided a statement. You can read the presentations of the Experts and the Congressmen at that panel here (punctuation anomalies are due to thte transfer of the post from the old website). Here is an excerpt from each Expert's statement last year and a link to their recent posts on the same subject - I admit that this is the pessimistic view:

Dennis Lormel: "In fact, U.S. investigative, intelligence and regulatory agencies have achieved noteworthy successes in the disruption of funding flows. Unfortunately, most of these successes cannot be made public because of investigative or intelligence considerations." (Remember the SWIFT program disclosures this year?)

Michael Cutler: "(I)t is my belief, that at least where the immigration component to the issue of national security is concerned, we are at least as vulnerable today as we were on September 10, 2001." (See his testimony last week on continued immigration vulnerabilities.)

Victor Comras: "Most countries have failed to take any action against tangible assets supporting terrorism, including businesses and other income-producing assets..." (Europe still hasn't designated Hizbollah as a terrorist group.)

Douglas Farah: "A second example is the slow nature of the response to the crucial role that leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood have played in the radical Islamist financial infrastructure, including that of al Qaeda." (Nothing has changed.)

Zachary Abuza: "The radical Abu Sayyaf have regenerated from a group of kidnappers into a bonafide terrorist organization, who have stepped up ties to JI (Jemaah Islamayah) and hence improved their technical proficiency." (No change here either.)

Michael Kraft: "(W)hen it came to the hard work of providing the actual funding for key counterterrorism programs, both the Executive Branch and Congress have fallen short." (Guess what - no change here either.)

I really hope we're not writing the same stuff on September 11, 2007.

The "Azzam-Zawahiri" tape: a longer reading..

By Walid Phares

PS: I've posted a quick analysis of the "Azzam al Amriki" (AKA, Adam Gadhan) few days ago. This is the longer version reading of the 45 minutes tape. It include the short one plus additional thoughts. Because of web links, I will leave the two versions. A short note will be posted later analyzing the "reaction" of media and analysts. W.P.

It includes: Who is behind the message, who is it destined to, the ideological paltform, argumentation tactics, the enemies of Jihad in America, the friends of al Qaeda, the al Qaeda offer.

The video tape issued by al Qaeda’s “as-sahhab” production, in which Ayman Zawahiri introduces Jihadist Adam Gadahn to the world as a senior speaker (in English) to the American people on behalf of the movement, should be taken seriously. Not necessarily at the level of detecting the next Terror attack but at the level of understanding this prelude to Future Jihad both in America and within the West. I wasn’t surprised at all by the 45 minutes elaboration by convert Gahdan regarding all of the issues he raised. For “Azzam al Amriki” is the clearest specimen of Jihadism’s second generation within the US, in as much as the 7/7 videos revealed the type of future Jihadists for Great Britain’s second generation. However, when one would listen carefully to the taped video, you’d find a treasure of knowledge and indicators for the current state of thinking of al Qaeda and its ideologues. In short it is a sample of what is on the mind of Salafi Jihadists for the United States and the West. Following are few of the issues I noted:

1) The hand behind the message

When Arabic and English languages experts listen to the speech and compare his debit and shifting from one idiom to the other, they would conclude that M Adam Gadahn has been under an intense linguistic program to learn the Arabic language. He attempts to speak it rather like Bin Laden’s Peninsula accent then Zawahiri’s Egyptian intonation. Besides, he has also developed significant skills in Koranic citations as well as media training. However, when it comes to the logic of the arguments as presented in English, and compare them with literature disseminated in North America, or with online chats in English, or even with speeches by radical clerics touring US and Canadian cities, the “language” is amazingly one. For any seasoned analyst of Jihadi rhetoric in English, or even North American English, it is a fact that the level and type of arguments, the chain of issues cited, and other details, if anything could indicate that the “speech writer” may well be a well-versed leading militant in Jihadi affairs with academic training and American political know how. In short, Azzam’s videotaped message is indeed “American.” Experts have heard it in US and Canadian cities and on internet.The bones of the speech are Jihadi but its beef is American. Whether Gadahn was reading from a prompter or not –and I believe he was with great skills- I tend to believe that such a speech –rather than being dismissed as mere propaganda- is a message coming to us from what’s already inserted inside America, which leads me to the second point

2) Who is it destined to?

Many commentators rushed in multiple directions to determine the target audience of Gadahn’s video. Some argued that it is basically to boast about al Qaeda as a way to compete with other groups, such as Hezbollah. Others said it is “mere propaganda.” More focused analysis projected a direct link with upcoming Terrorist strikes. Let me admit, with the deplorable state of our Jihadism studies in North America, reading the mind of al Qaeda in terms of strategy is still a real challenge. In fact, the speech is a little bit of all what was mentioned. Yes, it brags, it competes, it is propaganda and it is a warning for what is to come. And surely, a classical interpretation of the Jihadi doctrine could interpret Gadahn’s message as “convert or we strike,” or also “this is your last chance before we strike.” But in the center of “Azzam’s” 45 minutes there is a road map with some side paths. It is basically addressed to those who will carry a “Jihad in America,” possibly asserting Adam Gadahn as their leader. Also, this is a very intelligent move to pierce the linguistic shield of America’s media and reach US citizens directly, as a way to spread confusion at least among those who have a hazy understanding of the Jihadists. By the way, expect this speech to be aired on al Jazeera’s English Channel in the near future, repetitively.

3) The ideological platform

“Azzam” lays out the ideological and political pillars of Jihad against America and the West, in English. In a summary, as he clearly assert, the essence of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and other religions are false and against Allah’s will. In his words, “Islam is the only true religion,” and not following it as prescribed, “will lead to fire afterlife,” but also to defeat to infidels in this world. Gadahn reveals the extent of his group’s hatred against Christianity and Judaism and against the other (what he coin as “Pagan”) religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Al Qaeda’s speeches in the past included attacks against other religions but rarely was the whole speech dedicated to that effect. Besides, Gadahn attacked the Muslims who believe in coexistence with other religions and who do not follow Jihadism. In short, the “Azzam” video reconfirms clearly (in an English language what "academic translators" won’t be able to distort and camouflage) that al Qaeda’s movement worldwide and in the United States is seeking total annihilation or conversion of the enemy: American and other democracies.

4) Argumentation tactics:

“Azzam’s” speech exposes the streams of ideologies he is attempting to merge. While his rhetoric is pure Jihadist, he uses many arguments produced by radical anti-American intellectuals, mixing American politics with Islamist concepts. The “speech writer,” emulating many commentators on al Jazeera or al Manar, hopes to rally many among those who “hate Bush and Blair” but stops short of stating that Jihadism will hate all future US Presidents and British Prime Ministers “if they do not convert.” The California convert mixes all the historical dramas worldwide from Crusades, Inquisition, Hiroshima, Concentration camps, with killings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously, the “writer” skips the Genocides of Sudan, and the massacres of Algeria, the Kurds, Shiites perpetrated by Salafists or Baathists.

5) The enemies of Jihad in America

All citizens-taxpayers are legitimate targets for al Qaeda, repeats Gadahn after Bin laden and Zawahiri. But now Americans can hear it in an American accent not through the translations offered by the networks. Only those who are actively fighting the enemy are to be spared. Otherwise the wrath of al Qaeda will punish the infidels at large and the American and European “Crusaders” in particular. In addition to the traditional threat against the chief executives of the two worse enemies, the US and British Governments, George W Bush and Toni Blair, sensationally but not unexpectedly, an al Qaeda spokesperson –American for the circumstance- “name” a number of intellectual-enemies in this country: Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, Robert Spencer and Michael Sheuer. In my observation of the movement, this is a crossing of a red line. Rarely Jihadi Terrorists at this high level media exposure, named symbols of their enemy’s intelligentsia. But more troubling is the fact that scholars Pipes and Spencer, and journalist Emerson have been consistently “marked” for political attacks by US-based Islamist organizations and web sites. A simple internet search (you may google it instantly) would show readers that these three leading critics of what they have always described as “radical Islam” have been already portrayed by lobbies in this country and under its laws, as “Islamophobes.” The convergence of qualification between al Qaeda and these American organizations of US intellectuals is certainly disturbing. As far as the naming of Michael Sheuer on that list, it could be analyzed as a reminder of his past role as a chief of the Usama Bin Laden unit at the CIA years ago. And in addition to “experts” named in the tape, Gadahn goes on a ferocious attack against American “Tele-Evangelists” and their media (you can easily figure out who) showing the other type of foes al Qaeda is very upset with.

6) The “friends” of al Qaeda?

“Azzam” performs another unusual move in this speech. He names “sympathetic” personalities for whom he has messages for action because of –what he considers- good deeds or sympathy to al Qaeda’s cause. Regardless of what would this identification leave as political consequences in the US and Britain, the “American” voice of al Qaeda, M Gadahn, calls on well known journalist Seymour Hirsh to “reveal more” than what was published in a New Yorker article on the War: Obviously an open call by al Qaeda to M Hirsch to resume the verbal attack against the present US War on Terror. Then “Azzam” turn to two British journalists and thank them for their “admiration and respect for Islam” and encourage them to do the final step: Convert. He names British MP George Galloway and journalist Robert Fisk. M Galloway has been very vocal in his support of the Jihadist causes worldwide and has accused the West of planning on “destroying the Arab and Muslim peoples,” including on al Jazeera, few days ago. M Fisk is a long time critic of Western policies and has for many times sided with the arguments of radical regimes and organzations against their opponents in the region. But more troubling in Gadahn’s tape was his direct call to Jihadists within the US Armed forces to work patiently till the time comes. He reveals that “they” have been involved in a large number of “conversions”, and that they “should continue to aggregate while escaping the surveillance of their military authorities.” This theme, which I covered briefly in Future Jihad, is of great concern to US national security. The “Azzam” speech brings further concerns as to the credibility of this threat.

7) The Al Qaeda offer: Conversion or fire

“Azzam”’s mission in this tape was to deliver a message. His bottom line is this: We –the Jihadists- have you cornered everywhere and you are not going to win this war. He seems to say that the US led coalition won’t win the War in Iraq, Afghanistan and no where else. And he announces that war will ravage this country (America) as well. He tells Americans that the Jihadi hand is already inside the US and “Azzam” is the kind of voice you will be hearing in the future. His central message is typically Jihadic: “Surrender, convert or the fire:” Meaning war on Earth, all of it, and Hell fire after death.

This fascinating and revealing taped-speech bring the American public even closer to what lays ahead for this generation and the next one as long as the Jihadist ideology is spreading inside America and worldwide. For what turbaned Adam Gahdan said inside that professional studio other “Azzams” are hearing inside American and worldwide madrassas.

Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a visiting Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. He is the author of Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America. Phares@walidphares.com

« Close It

Why were Israelis bombed? Ask General Barak

By CTB Special Correspondent

Editor's Note: "Karim" is a special correspondent for the Counterterrorism Blog (he posted on August 28 and July 24) and is currently in Lebanon. He submits an article written by Retired Colonel Charbel Barakat of Lebanon, now terrorism advisor to the World Council of the Cedars Revolution in Canada, and posted on "Lebanon Wire."

During the war with Hezbollah, worldwide networks were showing live the Katiyusha rockets blasting houses and apartments in Haifa and beyond. Commentators were stunned to see the only nuclear power in the region and the winner over five Arab armies receiving wave after wave of rockets from a “mere Terrorist” organization, named Hezbollah. Analysts are scratching their heads wondering about the reasons why Hezbollah has been able to create a state in the state in Lebanon and transform southern Lebanon into a fortress threatening northern Israel into Haifa and “beyond Haifa” as Hassan Nasrallah enjoys repeating in his video-taped speeches. Surely, these images of destruction in Israel and Lebanon are troubling, particularly to those who lived similar days in both countries during the last two decades if not more. But the question today deserves an answer: Why were Israelis being bombarded and obviously why were Lebanese being submitted to air raids?

The question is not about the motives of Hezbollah, but about the fact that Israel, whose power is supposed to balance that of Iran and Syrian combined – in addition to Hamas- is now being cornered in a narrow balance of power with an organization across its northern borders? Well the short answer is simple: ask Former Prime Minister General Ehud Barak. As he engineered the post Security Zone policies of Lebanon and was the supreme commander in the withdrawal from that area in 2000, he is the one to question. Most Israelis and many Lebanese have forgotten the dilemma in the late 1990s when Israel was considering the surrendering of an area comprising about 15% of Lebanon, defended then by the South Lebanon Army, which was supported and supplied by Israel. The demonizing of the SLA during the last decade by Hezbollah, Syria and Iranian propaganda made it into a horrible “pro-Israeli militia,” accused of all misdeeds. This was not different from the accusations driven against the northern alliance in Afghanistan at the time when the Taliban where in control. International Jihadi propaganda raped the image of the SLA putting pressure on Israel’s political establishment and its media elite to do the same.

While the SLA was composed of Shiia, Druze, Sunni and Christians, it was the only force in Lebanon other than the inefficient Lebanese army at the time, to be multiethnic and multi-religious. Besides, and against all the self serving reports written by Israeli politicians to legitimize the demise of the group, the SLA had withstood all Hezbollah attacks since 1984 with the same courage that its predecessor the Free Lebanon Army FLA of Major Saad Haddad had practiced. The FLA and the SLA later were not “created” by Israel. They were formed at the request of the local populations, which resisted fiercely the onslaught of the PLO then of Hezbollah with their backs on to Israel. The areas defended by the SLA with Israeli support were stretching from Mount Hermon to the East to the south of Tyre on the coast. Its most northern tip was covering the top of the Jezzine Mountains overlooking the Bekaa and the south and cutting off Hezbollah in two. The so-called “security zone” with its 120,000 people and 3,000 soldiers was a free area of Lebanon, fighting the War on Terror with its villages and youth, and faithful to its ally Israel. Twenty three years of alliance stopped the Terrorists from the north to achieve full control of Lebanon, reach the depth of Israel and eventually blast their bombs inside the West and the US.

But as of 1999, Israeli bureaucrats decided to play with history and the fate of nations. So-called researchers and academics proposed to the Israeli Government of Mr. Netanyahu then to pull out from the Jezzine summits, only to allow Hezbollah to join forces from the Bekaa to the south, all the way up to Southern suburb of Beirut. In one day, the "bright elites" of paper analysis opened a path between the Mediterranean and Tehran overlooking Israel. Haifa’s fate was already sealed that day. I remember meeting with representatives from the Ehud Barak government months after and suggesting to leave the Lebanese resistance in south Lebanon to withstand Hezbollah. The SLA knows their language and sociology. Hezbollah, in all of its frontal attacks against the southern villages failed at the footsteps of the enclave. All what Israel had to do was to withdraw and keep the border open for logistical support for its northern neighbors. Barak’s coordinator for Lebanon railed the proposal and said: “we are leaving, the SLA will be dismantled and good luck for your people.” A southern Lebanese delegation told the Knesset, the Defense Ministry and many pro-Lebanon politicians that if Israel would dismantle the security zone, nothing or anyone will stop Hezbollah from reaching the borders and “in time” paralyzes northern Israel with rockets. Not to avail, for politicians, talking heads and other academics were full of themselves and their intelligence. Only a few brave Israeli men and women and a couple professors warned their Government and the elite that the “wrath” of abandoning the SLA will be huge. “Blood will spill in Haifa and beyond,” warned a southern Lebanese merchant as he left in exodus into Israel. The prophecy materialized in July 2006.

In May 2000, Ehud Barak, proud to dismantle the SLA and cut off the borders from the allied villages in the south of Lebanon, said he was faithful to an electoral promise made under international pressure. In a myriad of interviews he said he was keeping the Peace of Israel by evacuating the south of Lebanon. Ignoring history, geopolitics, and playing arrogance, he triggered the process to bring fire and death into the Galilee and way beyond in the early 21st century. By playing with the fate of the two peoples then, he was responsible for the drama today. By bending over to Hezbollah and abandoning his allies he was to Israel what US politicians were to America in the 1990s: No vision. Many so-called intellectuals in Israel railed the SLA, despite the brave attitude by good experts on Lebanon. They too bare responsibility in this bloodshed. I am sure they will deliver long speeches about how right they were and how inefficient was the SLA. Yes, they can do that, but we’re not in the pre-9/11 era anymore. Americans, Europeans, Indians, Russians, moderate Arabs and now Israelis have learned what we are all up against: Lethal Jihadists. And with the latter you don’t play politics. Today’s international policies and the US in particular want to support civil societies to resist terrorism. M Barak and his elites failed south Lebanon society and Israelis as well. Today, the IDF has hard time moving few inches in the once friendly security zone, why? Today the people of Nahariya and Haifa are tasting what the people of Marjeyun and Rmeish have felt and were accepting to live under: why? Because no one like the indigenous people can get rid of the Terrorists among them. The Cedars Revolution showed what the Lebanese people really want. Unfortunately it was failed, as one commentator wrote, by its own politicians and by the international community.

But as Israel and Hezbollah are at war again, we take the opportunity to alert decision makers in the campaign against Terrorism to the deep reality of the Middle East and Lebanon. Yes the Israeli army can eventually push Hezbollah away from its borders, and yes Hezbollah will rearm and strike back despite UNSCR 1701. But Terrorism can only be eradicated from Lebanon when its people would be enabled to take the control of its destinies. When the new generation of Israelis would realize, what were the consequences of General Barak’s condescending decisions towards Israel’s closer allies and admit it publicly, then Israel will have partners in Peace and maybe even allies in the future.

« Close It

Peace Talks Resume as Cease-Fire Comes Under Strain in the Philippines

By Zachary Abuza

Monday, September 4 saw the resumption of formal peace talks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The government had announced a major breakthrough in the talks with the MILF in April 2005 and in her July 2006 state of the nation address, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo asserted that the talks were "80 percent completed" (The Sun-Star, August 8). Yet talks stalled in 2006 over the thorny issue of "ancestral domain," and the MILF made clear that there would be no peace agreement signed by the end of the year as the government had announced (The Sun-Star, August 8).

To read the full report click here.

Hambali Goes to Gitmo

By Zachary Abuza

Today President Bush formally acknowledged the existence of the CIA’s secret prisons abroad, and stated that he had ordered some 14 top-level Al Qaeda operatives to be moved to Guantanamo Bay. This raises an interesting issue regarding whether these suspects should in fact be tried in the United States, or in their home countries.

A perfect example of this is the case of Riduan Isamudin, better known as Hambali, an Indonesian national. Hambali was a member of Al Qaeda’s shura – the highest ranking non-Arab in the organization as well as the operations chief for Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been responsible for some of the most consistently lethal attacks in the world: the October 2002 Bali night club bombings that killed 202 people; the August 2003 bombing of the JW Marriott; the September 2004 Bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta; and the September 2005 triple bombings in Bali that killed 20.

The Indonesian government has long wanted Hambali, and has used the American Government’s refusal to give direct access to him as an excuse for the lax prosecutions of people such as JI’s spiritual leader Abu Bakar Ba’asyir who is now out of prison. As Indonesia’s chief of Counter-terrorism Ansyad M’Bai told the Antara News Agency, "Therefore, Indonesia until now continues to insist that the US send back Hambali for trial at home in order to uncover various terror acts and other criminal acts perpetrated by Hambali in the country.”

Yet, Indonesia has done little to instill confidence that they would prosecute Hambali effectively. Ba’asyir served less than four years. His colleague and one of JI’s founding members, Abu Jibril, served only a few months in an Indonesian jail (after serving three years in Malaysia) for an immigration violation. Yet this author has video footage of Jibril holding an automatic weapon, imploring followers to wage sectarian violence; fighting that led to the death of 8-9,000 people in 1999-2001. Two days ago an Indonesian court sentenced Abdul Aziz, a high school teacher, to 8 years in prison - two-less than what the prosecution had asked for - for his direct role in supporting the Bali II bombers and for running a website which JI leaders used to communicate and post messages.

Meanwhile the government continues to give light sentences to those who have had only limited roles in the attacks. In August, as part of an annual national independence day amnesty, 10 of the 33 individuals arrested in conjunction with the 12 October 2002 Bali bombing had their sentences reduced and one, Puryanto, who was arrested for harboring some of the bombers, walked free as a result of his three month remission. Three of the Bali bombers, Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra remain on death row, though they are now all appealing their sentences.

Yesterday an Indonesian court announced that some six Australian drug smugglers, part of the “Bali Nine,” would face the death penalty for their roles in the multi-million dollar heroin ring. In making his ruling, Chief Judge Iskander Kamil said "Indonesia has been stamped as a nation not prepared to give the death sentence to foreigners, but the law doesn't recognize skin color - and that's consistent with the law as it's enacted here.” It seems though that Indonesia is far more willing to prosecute foreign nationals for drug smuggling than it is willing to prosecute its own nationals for crimes that kill Indonesians and foreigners indiscriminately and whose acts have drained the Indonesian economy. Tourist arrivals to Indonesia in first half of 2006 were down7.54% to 1.89 million, mainly in Bali, where foreign arrivals at the Denpassar airport fell 19.11%.

Until Indonesia takes its responsibility to prosecute not only those directly involved in planning and executing terrorist acts, but also those who support terrorism financially and materially, Hambali will likely remain in US custody.

Outstanding Coverage of Conflict Zones Resumes at "Fourth Rail"

By Andrew Cochran

We wish Bill Roggio all the success in the world on the resumption of his solo blogging effort, and we heartily endorse his outstanding coverage of the hottest conflict zones. His contributions to CTB during since April have been outstanding, and his posts and his embed files from Iraq and Afghanistan will remain in our archives for your use. We look forward to trading information again, as we did before the merger of the sites in April.

We will add new Contributing Experts and announce a new direction for the Counterterrorism Foundation (and a new Co-Chairman) this week.

Moving

By Bill Roggio

If you have been looking for me, I have returned to my website, The Fourth Rail (http://billroggio.com/). I want to thank my good friend Andy Cochran for the opportunity to write here at the Counterterrorism Blog, which is the premier resource on counterterrorism issues. I will remain on board to help out with the site behind the scenes.

I've redesigned the site to add some additional resources (brief updates of conflict zones and news of the day), and plan on making more changes in the near future. I also plan on embedding in Djibouti sometime in October and then head back to Iraq sometime in the winter.

Bush Administration Will Challenge Congress to Hold or Release "Gitmo Terrorists" (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

On June 29, after the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case that the Gitmo detainee trials are illegal under U.S. law and international Geneva, I wrote,

The decision is actually a huge political gift to President Bush, and the detainees will not be released that easily. The President and GOP leaders will propose a bill to override the decision and keep the terrorists in jail until they are securely transferred to host countries for permanent punishment....They will challenge the "judicial interference with national security" and challenge dissenting Congressmen and civil libertarians to either stand with the terrorists or the American people. The Pentagon will continue to release a small number of detainees as circumstances allow. The bill will pass easily and quickly.

Starting today, we'll see if I was right or wrong; the President will propose a new plan to try the detainees.

UPDATE: In my June 29 post, I also predicted, "The Administration and its allies will release plenty of information on the terrorist acts committed by the detainees for which they were detained (see this great ABC News interview with the Gitmo warden). They will also release information about those terrorist acts committed by Gitmo prisoners after they were released." President Bush is doing just that during his speech announcing the proposed legislation; obviously the White House has been gathering this information for this purpose since the Hamdan decision. He also announced that 14 Al Qaeda leaders have been moved to Gitmo to face trial, and no suspects remain in CIA custody.

I'll stick with my prediction that the bill will pass.

White House CT Strategy Paper: Proof in the Funding

By Michael Kraft

The White House today released an updated “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism” that provides a sweeping outline of the problems and some of the necessary countermeasures. But the proof will be in the implementation.

The real test will be whether the rhetoric is backed up by the hard work needed to make sure that the tactics are properly implemented. Setting aside the issue of whether the Administration has it right in its overall analysis of the problem, there are down- to- earth issues. For example, will such relatively straight forward goals of strengthening international coalitions and enhancing U.S. interagency collaboration receive the necessary funding and leadership?

The “indicators” to borrow a phrase from the annual performance reports required by Congress of government agencies but usually ignored, are poor.

For example, take the recent arrests in Britain of a group of British-born Muslims suspected of plotting to use liquid explosives to blow up a dozen U.S.-bound airliners. Reporters did some investigating and learned that funding for the Department of Homeland Security’s counterterrorism research and development program had been deeply cut and had organizational problems. Efforts to develop effective ways of detecting liquid explosives -- admittedly a difficult problem -- had been on the back shelf.

Besides cutting funding, the Senate Appropriations Committee sharply criticized the R&D program as “a rudderless ship” and cut the Fiscal Year 2007 funding request from $1.3 billion to $712 million. The House cut even deeper, appropriating just $668 million for FY 2007.

Meanwhile the Administration is still working out the DHS relationship with the interagency Technical Support Working Group (TSWG), led by the Departments of State and Defense, which has been coordinating counterterrorism R&D programs for two decades.

The new White House Strategy paper has a section called “Enhance government architecture and interagency collaboration.” This is an important and perhaps impossible goal. The paper presents an upbeat picture but as everyone in Washington knows, DHS itself is still trying to get its act together and coordinating and information sharing problems still exist within the intelligence community and the FBI.

Another section labeled “Strengthen Coalitions and Partnerships” says “we are building the capacity of foreign partners in all areas of counterterrorism activities“ through the provision of training and other forms of assistance. Yet, as I have written previously, the White House’s OMB has consistently cut the State Department’s funding request for its Antiterrorism Assistance training program and Congress has inflicted further cuts.

The Administration requested $135.6 million for the program. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the full amount but the House cut it to $122.5 million. The final figures will be resolved in conference committee sometime this autumn.

The White House paper talks about the need to counter terrorist networks and “hinder their movement across international boundaries.” The State Department’s Terrorist Interdiction Program provides other countries with a sophisticated computer-based system to do just that. But even that program has been cut at the OMB and Congressional levels, down to $8 million in the House bill.

The situation in Afghanistan is another example. The new strategy paper talks about denying sanctuary to terrorists, but the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly. The Taliban movement is reviving and the U.S. assistance program is badly faltering.

The new Strategy paper did not mention Bin Laden, whose capture or elimination had been a high priority. The paper says “we are working to prevent terrorists from exploiting ungoverned and under-governed areas as physical safe havens.” Just how this goal will be implemented in Afghanistan, let alone Iraq was not mentioned.

Setting aside the thorny problems of Iraq, a test of the strategy paper will be in other counterterrorism arenas, such as implementing the already existing programs for curbing terrorism finance and providing more and better training to the many friendly nations that need to boost their counterterrorism capabilities.

This is the time of year when Congress works out the current fiscal year funding packages for the various agencies. Autumn also is the season when the government budget gurus start work in earnest on the FY 2008 budget

They and the leadership in the White House will determine whether the Strategy Paper means anything or will be just a one day headline, a possible campaign issue and another administration spin and spam document gathering dust on the shelves and taking up hard drive space.

« Close It

Salafism in the Washington Post

By Douglas Farah

I seldom critique my former colleagues at the Washington Post, but want to point out several crucial things that were, either for lack of space or understanding, passed over in today Washington Post story. Particularly stiking is the lack of explicit statements about what Salafists and Wahhabis really teach, rather than the softened down version of that is often dished out for public consumption. This unwillingness to state what they state about themselves is always baffling to me.

Ms. Murphy is striking with her passing mention that after 9-11, Salafists in the United States found their "theology and practices were suddenly suspect." It is not noted that for decades, as the Saudis poured hundreds of millions into the spread of Salfism here and elsewhere, that the message was to kill all of us considered infidels. It was only "suddenly suspect" because we had not listened to them until they attacked us.

The theology of Salfism, in fact, is not suspect at all-it is a clear, straightforward statement of belief that calls on the faithful to carry out jihad. The hijackers of 9-11, faithful to that call, did so. To pretend that Salafism itself preaches something different is a disservice.
My full blog is here.

Congressional Terrorism-Related Hearings Include Testimony by Walid Phares

By Andrew Cochran

This week's open terrorism-related hearings in the the U.S. Congress include a hearing of the U.S. House International Relations Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation on the subject, "Gauging Islamist Terrorism." Walid Phares will testify at that hearing on Thursday, September 7th, at 2 pm in 2172 Rayburn House Office Building. Details of the other open terrorism-related hearings are as follows:

September 6, 2006
House Judiciary Committee
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Update
Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing on "Legislative Proposals to Update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (H.R.4976, H.R.5223, H.R.5371, H.R.5825, S.2453, and S.2455)."
Location: 2141 Rayburn House Office Building. 1 p.m.

September 8, 2006
House Government Reform Committee
9/11 Public Health and Safety
National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations field hearing on federally funded programs that register, screen, monitor and treat individuals who were in the vicinity of the World Trade Center (WTC) following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Location: District Council 37, 125 Barclay St., auditorium, New York City, 10:30 a.m.

[UPDATED] The Danish Mohammed Cartoons and the Failed German Train Bombings

By Lorenzo Vidino

With the attention focused on Great Britain and the disturbing number of operations Scotland Yard has carried out over the last three weeks, few have paid attention to the alleged plot to detonate explosives on German trains. On July 31 German authorities discovered two suitcases filled with explosives on two commuter trains leaving Cologne, coming to the conclusion that only a defect in the detonators prevented a tragedy like those of Madrid or London. Thanks to images captured by surveillance cameras inside the Cologne station, one of the men who had left the suitcases, Youssef Mohamad El Hajdib, was picked up on August 19 in the northern German city of Kiel, while the other, Jihad Hamad, was arrested a few days later in Lebanon.

German authorities began to investigate (with, so far, conflicting results) whether the two young Lebanese students acted alone or were part of a group/network. Moreover, what motivated them? Clearly Germany, a NATO country with troops in Afghanistan and a solid friendship with the United States (see recent reports that German intel helped the US during the invasion of Iraq, despite Berlin's official opposition to the conflict) represents a potential target of jihadist groups. Yet the failed attack puzzled most Germans, leaving them wondering what drove the two Lebanese exchange students to such an act.

Just two days ago Jihad Hamad told interrogators in Lebanon that the main motivation for the attacks were the cartoons published by Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands Posten last September, something the two interpreted "as an attack of the Western world on Islam." The man also mentioned the war in Lebanon and Zarqawi’s death as reasons, but indicated the cartoons as the main one (one is left to wonder why the two targeted Germany and not Denmark, despite the fact that the Danish border is only a few dozens miles away from where the bombers lived).

But the links between the failed attacks and the Danish cartoons seem to go beyond that. Today Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet reported the news that one of the bombers, El Hajdib, was linked to the Danish imam Abu Bashar. According to the German BKA, when El Hajdib was arrested he was found in possession of a train ticket to the Danish city of Odense, where Bashar lives, and the cleric’s phone number. The BKA suspects that El Hajdib was supposed to hide in Odense with Abu Bashar's help before reaching relatives in Sweden. Contacted by journalists, Abu Bashar denied any knowledge of the case.

But who is this Abu Bashar? Unknown to most outside Denmark, he is well known to Danes for having led the first delegation of Danish imams that toured the Middle East (specifically, Abu Bashar went to Egypt, while others went to the Levant) with the infamous dossier containing the original 12 cartoons and other that had been fabricated by the imams. Together with Abu Laban and Raed Hlayhels, Abu Bashar headed the efforts of the radical imams to internationalize the cartoon controversy, and even appeared on BBC with one of the fabricated cartoons.

A train ticket and phone number are not enough to prove a link. The case will be further investigated and, in all likelihood, no charges will be filed against Abu Bashar (even if the link between the two is established it would be quite difficult to prove Abu Bashar's involvement in the attack). Yet it is another indication of the milieu from which those who created and manipulated the Danish cartoon controversy originate.

EDIT: Late last night Danish police arrested nine men in Odense, suspecting they were planning a terrorist act. Police claim to have physical evidence that the suspects were attempting to build a bomb and that surveillance information indicated a terror action was imminent. According to Danish authorities, the arrests have no connections to the German train bombings.

Michael Cutler: 1993 World Trade Center Bomber the Beneficiary of Immigration Vulnerabilities

By Andrew Cochran

On Friday, September 1, Michael Cutler testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee at a hearing held in Dubuque, Iowa on the subject, "Is the Reid-Kennedy bill a repeat of the failed amnesty of 1986?" Other witneses included Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley. You can read Michael's entire testimony here, and here is an excerpt:

A nation’s primary responsibility is to provide for the safety and security of its citizens and yet, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, the members of the Senate who voted for S. 2611 are seemingly oblivious to the lessons that the disastrous amnesty of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) should have taught us. That piece of legislation lead to the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our nation. Fraud and a lack of integrity of the immigration system not only flooded our nation with illegal aliens who ran our borders, hoping that what had been billed as a “one time” amnesty would be repeated, but it also enabled a number of terrorists and many criminals to enter the United States and then embed themselves in the United States.

A notable example of such a terrorist can be found in a review of the facts concerning Mahmud Abouhalima, a citizen of Egypt who entered the United States on a tourist visa, overstayed his authorized period of admission and then applied for amnesty under the agricultural worker provisions of IRCA. He succeeded in obtaining resident alien status through this process. During a 5 year period he drove a cab and had his license suspended numerous times for violations of law and ultimately demonstrated his appreciation for our nation’s generosity by participating in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 that left 6 people dead, hundreds of people injured and an estimated one half billion dollars in damage inflicted, on that iconic, ill-fated complex. America had opened its doors to him so that he might participate in the “American Dream.” He turned that dream into our worst nightmare. The other terrorists who attacked our nation on subsequent attacks, including the attacks of September 11, 2001, similarly exploited our generosity, seeing in our nation’s kindness, weakness, gaming the immigration system to enter our country and then, hide in plain sight, among us.

FATF GIVES US HIGH MARKS ON ITS ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING AND COUNTER TERRORISM FINANCING PROGRAM: But Some Problems Remain

By Victor Comras

Last Spring FATF sent a team to the United States to evaluate American compliance with the FATF40+9 recommendations to combat money laundering and terrorism financing. This was part of a general program adopted by FATF and cooperating countries to undergo a FATF assessment of their AML/Terrorism Financing programs. The report was published at the end of June but it got much less attention in the US press than it deserved. It provides some valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of our overall AML/CTF program. Overall, the US got a very favorable report, and the statistics related to US AML/CTF enforcement are impressive. But, there is still room for improvement.

The FATF Evaluation Team found that the US had come a long way since its last assessment in June 1997 in strengthening its AML/CTF program. The most impressive developments stem, in large part, from the enactment and implementation of the Patriot Act and the Bank Secrecy Act. The team was impressed by the "results in the terms of prosecutions, convictions, seizures, asset freezing, confiscation and regulatory enforcement actions.” It also gave the US very high marks with regard to its active assistance to, and cooperation with, other countries with regard to AML/CTF judicial and administrative proceedings.

Nevertheless, the report found that there were still several areas where improvements needed to be made. Several of these related to banking and non banking due diligence and oversight particularly concerning beneficial ownership arrangements and correspondent accounts. Perhaps the most important criticisms related to, what the team describes as continuing ‘fragmention” and “duplication” in the US law enforcement arena dealing with AML/CTF issues. The report found that “at the operational level, there is much overlap between the jurisdictions of the various law enforcement agencies,” which complicates coordination between these agencies. While resources were generally viewed as adequate and well distributed, there was some concern that the IRS Criminal division was too understaffed to carry out its myriad AML/CTF responsibilities.

The FATF report gave the US kudos for its aggressive implementation of UN sanctions under S/RES/1267(1999) and S/RES/1373(2001). According to the FATF report, the U.S. had frozen/blocked, as of August 2005, some USD 281.4 million of which 264.9 million was attributable to the Taliban (However these figures don’t seem to jive with the more modest figures reported by the US government elsewhere) One criticism in the report was that the US had failed to list the specific names of Taliban members designated by the UN, choosing rather to only designate the Taliban as an “entity.”

The report also found shortcomings in the ability of US authorities to handle complex issues associated with the extensive overseas presence of US financial and other corporate institutions. For example, the report notes that while US legislation has effectively criminalized almost all of the 20 FATF designated categories of offenses, only 12 out of these 20 offenses are covered by US law if they occur in another country.

The FATF team felt that Fincen and other US agencies charged with evaluating and investigating suspicious transactions were overwhelmed by the vast amounts of information provided by US financial institutions. FinCEN receives some 14 million reports annually, including over 600,000 suspicious activity reports (SARs). Only about a third of these are filed electronically. The group also felt that US agencies, particularly OFAC, faced a real “challenge” in effecting compliance given “sheer number of persons and entities affected by the (various OFAC designations and other “suspicious persons” lists. Monitoring of compliance by the less or non-regulated sectors and the state-regulated industries of persons on these lists was also problematic, it found

The statistics contained in the report are quite interesting. During fiscal 2005, for example, the report notes some 1,075 defendants were convicted of ”18USC1956/1957 money laundering violations. An additional 54 persons were convicted of terrorist financing with an additional 72 cases reported as pending. The amounts seized and forfeited with regard to these prosecutions and parallel administrative actions amounted to some USD 767.4 million. It also reported that ICE, which investigates financial crime related to cross-border activities made some 1,569 arrests in 2005 for money laundering-related offences, 248 of which were for violation of 18 USC 1956/1957. The Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) which also has investigative jurisdiction for money laundering crimes and currency reporting violations conducted about 1,600 money laundering investigations.

The Complete "FATF Mutual Evaluation Report" on the United States can be found here.
FATF 'Mutual Evaluation Reports" on other countries are also available by clicking here. .

The "Azzam" Threat: A prelude to Future Jihad in America

By Walid Phares

(EDITOR's NOTE, 9/3/06: The transcript of the video is on Laura Mansfield's website.) The video tape issued by al Qaeda’s “as-sahhab” production, in which Ayman Zawahiri introduces Jihadist Adam Gahdan to the world as a senior speaker to the American people on behalf of the movement, should be taken seriously. Not necessarily at the level of detecting the next Terror attack but at the level of understanding this prelude to Future Jihad both in America and within the West. I wasn’t surprised at all by the 45 minutes elaboration by convert Gahdan regarding all of the issues he raised. For “Azzam al Amrikee” is the clearest specimen of Jihadism’s second generation within the US, in as much as the 7/7 videos revealed the type of future Jihadists for Great Britain’s second generation. However, when one would listen carefully to the taped video, you’d find a treasure of knowledge and indicators for the current state of thinking of al Qaeda and its ideologues. In short it is a sample of what is on the mind of Salafi Jihadists for the United States and the West. Following are few of the issues I noted:

1) The hand behind the message

In short, Azzam’s videotaped message is indeed “American.” Experts have heard it in US and Canadian cities and internet is flowing with it. Whether Gadahn was reading from a prompter or not –and I believe he was with great skills- I tend to believe that such a speech –rather than being dismissed as mere propaganda- is a message coming to us from what’s already inserted inside America, which leads me to the second point

2) Who is it destined to?

It is basically addressed to those who will carry a “Jihad in America,” possibly asserting Adam Gahdan as their leader. Also, this is a very intelligent move to pierce the linguistic shield of America’s media and reach US citizens directly, as a way to spread confusion at least among those who have a hazy understanding of the Jihadists.

3) The ideological platform

In short, the “Azzam” video reconfirms clearly, in an English language that academic translators won’t be able to distort, that al Qaeda’s movement worldwide and in the United States is seeking total annihilation or conversion of the enemy: American and other democracies.

4) Argumentation tactics:

The “speech writer,” emulating many commentators on al Jazeera or al Manar, hopes to rally many among those who “hate Bush and Blair” but stops short of stating that Jihadism will hate all future US Presidents and British Prime Ministers “if they do not convert.” He reminds us of the Crusades, Inquisition, Hiroshima, and killings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously, the “writer” skips the Genocides of Sudan, and the massacres of Algeria, the Kurds, Shiites perpetrated by Salafists or Baathists.

5) The enemies of Jihad in America

Sensationally but not unexpectedly, he “name” a number of intellectual-enemies in this country: Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, Robert Spencer and Michael Spencer. Rarely Jihadi Terrorists at this high level media exposure named symbols of their enemy’s intelligentsia. And in addition to “experts” named in the tape, Gadahn goes on a ferocious attack against American “Tele-Evangelists” and their media, showing the other type of foes al Qaeda is very upset with.

6) The “friends” of al Qaeda?

“Azzam” names “sympathetic” personalities for whom he has messages for action; He asks journalist Seymour Hirsh to “reveal more” than what was published in a New Yorker article on the War: Obviously an open call by al Qaeda to M Hirsch to resume the attack against the US War on Terror. Then “Azzam” turn to two British journalists and thank them for their “admiration and respect for Islam” encourage them to do the final step: Convert. He names British MP George Galloway and journalist Robert Fisk. But more troubling in Gadahn’s tape was his direct call to Jihadists within the US Armed forces to work patiently till the time comes and they should continue to aggregate while escaping the surveillance of their military authorities. This theme, which I covered briefly in Future Jihad, is of great concern to US national security. The “Azzam” speech brings further concerns as to the credibility of this threat.

7) The Al Qaeda offer: Conversion or fire

“Azzam”’s mission in this tape was to deliver a message. His bottom line is this: We –the Jihadists- have you cornered everywhere and you are not going to win this war. His central message is typically Jihadic: “Surrender, convert or the fire:” Meaning war on Earth, all of it, and Hell fire after death.

****

This fascinating and revealing taped-speech bring the American public even closer to what lays ahead for this generation and the next one as long as the Jihadist ideology is spreading inside America and worldwide.

****

PS: This is a short version posting. The longer version will be posted later.

Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a visiting Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. He is the author of Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America.

« Close It

New Al Qaeda Video Seeks Americans to Convert to Islam

By Jeffrey Imm

As anticipated in Andrew Cochran's previous posting, Al Qaeda released a new video today of Al Qaeda Deputy Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and American Al Qaeda Islamic convert Adam Gadahn (aka "Azzam the American"). The new video by Al Qaeda's production wing As-Sahab features Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and "Azzam the American" is entitled "Invitation to Islam" has been released today on various Arabic language message boards. Laura Mansfield's Strategic Translations web site has the video for download. Gadahn and al-Zawahiri did not appear together in the footage but were each featured on a split screen. Both wore white turbans and robes. "To the American people and the people of the West in general... God sent his Prophet Muhammad with guidance and the religion of truth... and sent him as a herald," al-Zawahiri said in an introduction to Saturday's video. Gadahn spoke with his face uncovered, resembling FBI photos, with his name and Jihadist name "Azzam the American" written in titles in Arabic and English next to him. Gadahn is a 28-year old Islamic convert from California who is wanted by the FBI in connection with possible terror threats against the USA. Gadahn indicated that he wants to change the image that Americans have of Islam "We invite all Americans and unbelievers to Islam," Gadahn said, sporting a long, thick black beard with a computer terminal in the background. Gadahn described the West as "the civilization which enslaved Africa, slaughtered native Americans, fired bombs at... Tokyo and (the Iraqi city of) Fallujah and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Gadahn said America shows more concern for archaeological sites, like statues of Bhudda destroyed by Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers, "than it shows of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq." Gadahn previously appeared in a video with al-Zawahiri in a July 7 video commemorating the anniversary of London tube bombings in which he stated that no sane Muslim should shed tears for them. Gadahn is believed to be a masked figure who appeared in two previous videos not officially from Al Qaeda, given to ABC News in Pakistan in 2004 and a few days before Sept. 11, 2005.

Counterterrorism Blog experts have posted on "Azzam the American":

Evan Kohlmann, "MSNBC: 'American greases al-Qaida media machine'" and "American Al-Qaida Operative Surfaces Again in Bin Laden Video Release"
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, "New al-Qaeda Tape Continues Appeasement Theme"

On the latest video address by Dr Zawahiri, the "Prime Minister" of Jihadism..

By Walid Phares

For Hizballah, Post-War Politics are Local

By David Schenker

New Video Released With Al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri

By Andrew Cochran

Hugo: Gunning for Africa

By Aaron Mannes

Some Reasons Tariq Ramadan Was Denied A Visa

By Douglas Farah

It takes two to tango. Why the coup in Thailand may not lead to an improvement in the insurgency

By Zachary Abuza

A Patient Enemy: On 9/11 America entered a war that the Terrorists had already begun

By Walid Phares

Al-Qaeda Iraq Leader Calls For Kidnapping, Bio/Rad Weapon Attacks on US Bases in Iraq

By Jeffrey Imm

Cross-Border Raids into Afghanistan Accelerate

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

New Audio from Leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

MERC, MERC, MERC

By Zachary Abuza

Terrorism Defense Attorney Runs Off At Mouth, Loses to Expert

By Andrew Cochran

Some Thoughts on the NIE

By Douglas Farah

DNI Releases Declassified "Key Judgments" of National Intelligence Estimate (available here)

By Andrew Cochran

Sami Al-Arian: A Valuable Witness?

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

What the FBI Needs Now

By Andrew Cochran

Comments on the death of Umar Faruq

By Kenneth Conboy

Col. Chavez: Send Money, Guns and Doctors

By Aaron Mannes

Tariq Ramadan Denied US Visa

By Bill West

"Political Islam," Islamists and the War on Terror

By Douglas Farah

British Kill Omar al-Faruq, Key Al Qaeda Operative, in Basra (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

Democracy in the Muslim world

By Lorenzo Vidino

This Round of Negotiations on Iran's Nuclear Program May Lead to Suspension or to Sanctions

By Victor Comras

9/11 Commission Members Should Review and Report on Controversial Intel Estimate

By Andrew Cochran

The Islamization of Morocco

By Olivier Guitta

The Coup in Thailand: Causes and Implications

By Zachary Abuza

Weekly Standard: Pakistan Surrenders

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Missouri CDL Case Demonstrates Feds Are On The Job

By Bill West

Somalia and the Establishment of the Islamist Caliphate

By Douglas Farah

Speak of the Devil: Chavez as Terror Master

By Aaron Mannes

As Predicted Here, There's a Gitmo Deal

By Andrew Cochran

U.S. House Intelligence Committee Releases Al Qaeda Report

By Andrew Cochran

Thailand's Coup and the Insurgency in the South

By Zachary Abuza

Hamas and Fatah Look to Unite: Implications for Funding the Palestinian Authority

By David Schenker

Japan & Israel Follow U.S. Actions Against Iran's Financial Network

By Andrew Cochran

Steven Emerson & Walid Phares Testify on Domestic Implications of Radicalization (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

An Important Step at the CIA

By Douglas Farah

The UN's New Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy Has Some Serious Deficiencies

By Victor Comras

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross' Testimony on Prison Radicalization (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

Major Iraqi Al-Qaida Merger Rumored in the Works

By Evan Kohlmann