September 2008 Archives

Voices of the Awakening: Local, National, and International Issues

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Today FDD's Center for Terrorism Research brings you the fifth installment of our Voices of the Awakening series, authored by Sterling Jensen. The series is designed to provide Westerners a better understanding of ongoing developments in the Iraqi Awakening movement. This regular feature includes critical translations of Awakening news and documents, Jensen's observations and analysis, and occasional interviews with the movement's leaders.

This week the Awakening's web site reported on a number of local, national, and international issues -- including promoting local sports, encouraging women's education, and reporting on religious matters. An excerpt from our update:

Response to the Fabricated Lies of Omar Al-Baghdadi: The Awakening is the Conscience of Society. Responding to allegations made by Omar al-Baghdadi, the supposed leader of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), that the ISI is supported by the people, the Iraqi Awakening attacks al-Baghdadi's claims. The Awakening says that his imaginary State relies on terrorizing and destroying the people. The Iraqi Awakening is the conscience of the people because it was the people rising with the Awakening against terror that made Iraq more united and secure....
The Mufti of Saudi Arabia Deems Those Who Follow al-Qaeda as Being the Reason of Chaos: In an interview with Asharq al-Awsat the head mufti of Saudi Arabia blames al-Qaeda for chaos and destruction to Muslims. The Mufti asks Muslims to look at the deeds of al-Qaeda to see how they have brought this misfortune to Muslims. He says he completely supports and is satisfied with those who counter al-Qaeda’s ideology....

INSIDER'S PERSPECTIVE: Much of the Awakening’s credibility came from the fact that religious scholars and imams in Anbar supported the tribal movement against al-Qaeda and insurgent activity. Reporting al-Baghdadi’s religious claims and countering them, then reporting the Saudi mufti’s statements against al-Qaeda and his support for those who flight it, is a calculated move by the Awakening to increase their religious credibility. The Awakening wants to fight Al-Qaeda’s message, and will need fellow Arab support to do it. The late Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha would often respond to criticism about allying with the Coalition Forces by saying “al-Qaeda came to our land and has destroyed it more than the Americans. They have used terror to spread their message. That isn’t Islam, that is anti-Islam. We do not only fight with the Americans against these perpetrators, but with anyone who is against their message.” He would say that since it’s not a shame for Saudis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, Qataris and Emiratis to work closely with the Americans for their security, why must Iraqis be blamed and punished for working with the Americans for Iraqi safety?

For the entire Voices of the Awakening, update, click here.

Guest Post: FinCEN Promotes the Use of Section 314(b) of the USA PATRIOT Act

By Andrew Cochran

I am very pleased to post the views below of Mr. James F. McGinnis, Managing Director for Anti-Money Laundering Ethics & Compliance at BNP Paribas, on the use of Section 314 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which authorized enhanced information sharing among financial institutions and with law enforcement. I addressed that section on the day we opened in 2005 and recently discussed whether there is sufficient information sharing with money service businesses.

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James H. Freis. Jr., is the director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) at the Treasury Department. I have just read his remarks to the Florida Bankers Association Town Hall Meeting. It was interesting to note what may be a slightly defensive tone as he emphasizes that FinCEN is not exclusively engaged with fighting money laundering and terrorism but addresses all kinds of financial crime. He goes on to discuss the results of his outreach program in which he has been talking to some of the larger financial institutions. He finds that some firms have expressed concern over the costs of AML efforts. In response, he attempts to make the business case that, in addition to the public benefits of anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering programs, such efforts also combat fraud, which provides direct cost savings to financial institutions.

He suggests that the fact that AML programs of many institutions are run separately from fraud detection units may contribute to the perception that there is little direct cost benefit to AML programs. He goes on to cite efforts of institutions to share fraud related information as a means of preventing and detecting fraud and mentions the 314(b) program as a well received means of sharing information between participating institutions. He promises that FinCEN will be promoting greater use of this program in the future. His remarks go on to include specific examples of his agencies cooperative efforts to combat mortgage and medical fraud in the state of Florida.

Section 314(b) of the USA PATRIOT Act allows participating financial institutions to share otherwise confidential information with each other. It is, in effect, a safe harbor from privacy requirements. Each participating institution must register with FinCEN and designate an individual to send and receive information requests. Participation is voluntary, although most major institutions participate. Even after agreeing to participate an institution is not required to respond to any particular inquiry. This section of the act should be distinguished from Section 314(a), which allows law enforcement agencies to send information requests to financial institutions.

The idea behind 314(b) is that when I discover activity at my bank which I think is questionable, I can contact another participating institution that may have relevant information. I can reach out to their designated 314(b) contact and ask for information which will help my investigation. Let’s say that I notice a series of checks drawn on Bank “X”, deposited in one of my customer’s accounts. I can’t readily explain where the money is coming from. One of my options is to reach out to the 314(b) contact at Bank X and ask what they know, or can find out, about the checks. I, in turn can share information about my client, and the result may be that one or both of us file Suspicious Activity Reports.

That is the way it is supposed to work, and often it does, but the program is probably not used as much as it could be. There are a number reasons for this. One is that some institutions do not maintain their listings with FinCEN current. It is not uncommon to try to contact the listed 314(b) representative and find that they have left the bank. Since sharing information outside the scope of 314(b) is generally prohibited by law, one must take pains to insure that the letter of the rule is being followed. This is also why it was somewhat disingenuous of Mr. Freis to mention 314(b) in the context of fraud prevention. His agency’s rules state that the information received under the program can not be used for any purpose other than identifying and reporting on activities that may involve terrorism or money laundering. While it could be argued that any kind of financial crime could, almost of necessity, result in some form of money laundering, most Compliance officers are probably cautious before invoking Section 314(b).

Lastly, many banks seem reluctant to be really open about sharing. Generally they will send or respond to specific questions but will not volunteer any information. I have seen some 314(b) queries that look like interrogatories written by litigators and ask such detailed questions that few institutions would have the resources or inclination to respond. There is also an open question in the industry as to whether or not it is appropriate for 314(b) participants to share SAR information.

FinCEN could perhaps improve the process by broadening the scope of 314(b) to make it clear that information concerning any potentially suspicious activity, including simple fraud, may be shared and encouraging sharing institutions to coordinate SAR filings. The real problem is, I suspect, the same kind of natural reticence on the part of financial institutions that makes law enforcement reluctant to share information that would improve financial institutions’ monitoring processes. After being rigorously drilled on the need for confidentiality, it is difficult to appropriately shift into sharing mode.

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The Criminal-Terrorist Nexus in Plain View

By Douglas Farah

One of the most fascinating dramas unfolding, apart from the Wall Street meltdown, is the fate of the Ukrainian operated ship, hijacked by Somali pirates and loaded with tanks, anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition.

The hijackers of the ship Faina, a Ukrainian-operated, Belize-flagged vessel, are demanding $20 million ransom for the ship, its crew and contents. Several U.S. ships are maintaining visual contact with the ship to try to insure that none of the 33 T-72 tanks or other high value cargo is offloaded.

"We're deeply concerned about the cargo and we don't want it to go into the wrong hands," a U.S. spokesman said. Well, it seems it is a bit late for that, eh?

The Times of London is reporting that the Somali Islamists are already mobilizing to unload what they can.

“The Islamists have sent pick-ups from Mogadishu to go and collect the gear,” said an analyst with a network of Somali informers. “There's not much they can do with the tanks — they can't get them off — but the rest of the weapons they are trying to move ashore.”

My full blog is here.

Border Security Improvement? No Time Soon

By Bill West

Two weeks ago it was reported GAO determined that DHS would not be able to implement the departure control provisions of the US VISIT system. US VISIT, notably covered in the CTB, is the system DHS uses to track the entry of foreign nationals who come to the United States with visas or under the often controversial Visa Waiver Program (another topic covered at length in the CTB). US VISIT, online for some four years, is supposed to have a departure control half. The departure control element should track those aliens who legitimately leave the United States, when and from where they leave and identify those who have not left by the time their temporary authorized period of stay expires. US VISIT departure control, obviously, is a critically important component of immigration and border control and security; yet, it is this departure control provision that has so befuddled DHS. Implementation of US VISIT departure control is also tied to proposed expansion of the Visa Waiver Program, as questionable as that effort may be. It now appears none of it will happen anytime soon.

General Assembly’s Opening Debate Dampens Hope For UN Progress in Dealing With Terrorism and Nuclear Proliferation

By Victor Comras

As the UN General Assembly ends its final day of principal level debate, the prognosis for its future work remains both murky and morose. As in the past the world’s ills have been laid plain for world leaders (if they are taking any notice) to see. Yet, there is still no sign that the divisiveness of the international community has, or will diminish. Such is particularly the case for the GA’s treatment of the twin challenges of terrorism and nuclear proliferation. As the statements by the principals now comes to an end, hardened battle lines already mark the difficult negotiations on these issues that are about to begin in the hallways and in the GA’s various committees.

While the GA’s new president, Ex-Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, called for a General Assembly session of “Reconciliation,” he did little to set a positive tone for furthering constructive discussions on these issues. Rather, his prescription, in his first remarks as GA President, was to blame the United States, Israel, and other Western countries for these challenges to peace. “Any act of terrorism,” he said, “whether or not it is committed by a Government, engenders more terrorism. Initiatives to stop this vicious cycle must begin at the level of State terrorism.” And he wasn’t talking about the state-supported terrorism of such countries Iran, Syria, Sudan, or other countries that provide direct funding to support international terrorist organizations such as Hizbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He was referring to the coalition forces and efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel’s responses to attacks from Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. His conclusion, “terrorism by powerful States against relatively weak States must stop.”

Brockmann’s opening statement also underscores continued resistance on the part of many countries in the Middle East, and among certain iconoclastic states such as Venuezela and Nicaragua, to achieve a workable consensus definition of terrorism and a Comprehensive Anti Terrorism Convention - efforts that have preoccupied the General Assembly and its Sixth Committee for over a decade. Rather, they reject the approach Western Democracies have taken in these negotiations to concentrate on terrorism as a distinct issue. Instead, they seek to stalemate the issue by including within the definition of terrorism forceful actions undertaken by countries which are now already the subject of the Laws of War and Conventions on Human Rights. They also seek to exempt so-called ‘”freedom fighters,” from a definition of terrorism, even when they employ terrorist tactics.

Brockmann also criticises Western countries that, in the absence of any effective UN action against terrorist groups, use their own national authority to designate terrorists pursuant to the principles laid down in UN Security Council Resolution 1373. He admonishes that :
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No State should appropriate the right to decide on its own which States are terrorists or sponsors of terrorism, and which are not. Less still should States that are guilty of wars of aggression, the worst form of terrorism imaginable, presume to arrogate that right unto themselves, and further, to unilaterally take action against those it has stigmatized.”

Brockmann’s words concerning nuclear proliferation are no less disturbing. The precondition he sets for achieving any success against further proliferation of nuclear weapons (eg Iran, North Korea et al), is for those possessing such weapons to first begin to dismantle and destroy their own nuclear arsenals. This has long been the mantle behind which those states now seeking to develop their own nuclear weapons capabilities usually hide. He says:

“Non-proliferation can not be used by those possessing nuclear arsenals as a ploy to divert attention from and to shrug off their obligation as a State to disarm. Taking steps in this direction would demonstrate to the rest of the world that they are genuine in their commitment to address what is still one of the gravest threats to Humanity’s survival.”

If these are the concepts and positions that are to be carried over to the upcoming Sixth Committee discussions on the definition of terrorism, and the work of the General Assembly on Proliferation, little real progress should be expected from the General Assembly on these issues during this important 63rd Session.

Bombings in Lebanon and Syria are part of a Master Campaign?

By Walid Phares

The chain reaction seems to be set for a wider series of bombings, Terror attacks and security developments in Lebanon and Syria. Today a car bomb killed a number of Lebanese soldiers in Northern Lebanon, just a day after an explosion killed a number of Syrians near Damascus. The pace of deterioration is fast but one can quickly read into the timetable of statements made by the Assad regime regarding these events. As I advanced in an earlier post on CTB, the head of the Syrian regime has been focusing on Northern North for few weeks now. At a meeting with Lebanon's President, Assad ask him to send forces to the north to crush the Sunni opposition to Syria. Read it: "Either you send the Lebanese Army units (friendly to Hezbollah) that can do it, or else." The the blast in Damascus and a fast Syrian accusation of elements coming from across the borders (Lebanon). In an interview with al Hawadeth weekly -which will be published on Friday-- Assad said "North Lebanon became a real base for extremism and constitutes a danger for Syria.” In other words, an all out preparation for intervention in that part of Lebanon, at some point and in some ways. My projection is that we will continue to see terror violence aimed at providing Syria with alibi to break its isolation and concentrate its fire on Northern Lebanon.

Today I had the following conversation with Thomas Smith again published in the World Defense Review on the Tripoli terror attack against the Lebanese soldiers.

BOMBINGS CONNECTED?

A car-bomb targeting Lebanese soldiers exploded in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, this morning. Five people were killed and scores wounded in today’s attack which was carried out less than two months after a similar attack in the same city, and two days following a powerful car-bomb attack in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The attacks - coinciding with the recent strengthening of Syrian Army forces on the northern Lebanese-Syrian border (and various unconfirmed reports of Syrian special operators who have perhaps been crossing into Lebanon since at least early September) - may well be a coordinated effort fitting into a broader plan for Lebanon on the part of the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah axis.

Dr. Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, tells us:

“What we are now witnessing is a rapid unfolding of the Syro-Iranian terror campaign aimed at achieving several interconnected goals.

“The explosions in Lebanon are aimed at intimidating the Lebanese Army, the public, the politicians; and pressure all to accept an increasing role for Hezbollah and Syria within the country’s security apparatus. It is interesting to see the back-and-forth between the terror attacks against the Army and the statements made by Hezbollah and pro-Syrian politicians calling for a defense strategy to ‘protect Lebanon’: As if the message is: ‘You will continue to be attacked until we are in charge of security.’

“On the other hand, security related incidents and bomb attacks inside Syria appear to be sending a parallel message. The regime is eager to call itself a ‘target of terrorism.’ Hence, the accusation is now leveled at so-called factions inside Lebanon, meaning the mostly Sunni anti-Syrian politicians. Which leads to Syria’s so-called legitimate action against an enemy based in Lebanon.

“If you look at the two tracks (the attacks and incidents in Lebanon and Syria) you’ll understand that it is all connected in a master campaign aimed at breaking Syria’s isolation on the one hand and then isolating the Lebanese anti-Syrian factions on the other. All of it is accompanied by a systematic media campaign out of Beirut which is heavily backed by Iranian petrodollars.”

Phares has just returned from a European tour where he briefed members of the European Parliament, counterterrorism officials at the European Union, and various international Defense officials.

W. Thomas Smith Jr

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Syrian Mukhabarat Perhaps Responsible for Today’s Car-Bomb Attack

By Walid Phares

A car bomb, most likely a truck, exploded today in Syria on the highway leading to the Airport killing more than 17 and wounding many others. In the hours following the blast a media blitz came out of Damascus and Tehran accusing mainly (and automatically) Israel, but also hinting at "forces inside Lebanon in collaboration with regional powers -that would be the Saudis- aiming at harming Syrian national security." Commentators backing the Syrian version, including on al Jazeera, hinted at Sunni militants as suspects as well. Interestingly a Syrian group in exile said it was an accident and the truck was prepared for an operation in the region, most likely in Iraq. But experts in Syrian intelligence support to Terror operations said it is less likely that a truck destined to Iraq -or even Lebanon- would be prepared as far as Damascus. It would be too far and too risky.

In a chat with Thomas Smith from the World Defense Review this morning, I advanced another theory: Most likely, it was produced by the Syrian intelligence services, or at least one of these agencies, for strategic reasons: One is to send a message to the West that Syria is also targeted by Terrorists. Two, it could be in preparation for actions to take place against anti-Syrian Sunni sectors inside Lebanon. Here is the short interview as published by World Defense Review today.

PHARES: Syrian Mukhabarat Perhaps Responsible for Today’s Car-Bomb Attack

27 September 2008

By W. Thomas Smith

A powerful car-bomb detonated this morning in the Syrian capital, killing at least 17 and wounding scores. Why, who, or what terrorist entity is responsible has since been the subject of much speculation. But Middle East terrorism expert Professor Walid Phares says one “very possible scenario is that the attack was executed by the Syrian Mukhabarat (intelligence service) or one of these agencies as a prelude to attack Sunni strongholds inside Lebanon.”

Speaking by phone from Paris - where he is currently briefing counterterrorism experts, Defense officials, and others at the French Military Academy - Phares says: “When you connect the dots between Syrian President [Bashar] Assad, who calls on Lebanon’s president to send troops to the heavily Sunni-populated areas of north Lebanon, to the massing of Syrian troops along the northern borders, and then to the statements made by Syrian officials on Arab TV - including this morning on al Jazeera - that factions within Lebanon could be behind the explosion, you cannot but see the big picture: The strategic target of the Syrian regime is to control the Sunni areas in northern Lebanon who are fiercely opposing the pro-Assad Alawite militias in Tripoli and the advance of Hezbollah’s special units across the northern Bekaa towards Akkar in northern Lebanon.”

So the question is, would Syrian Intelligence forces actually detonate an explosive device on Syrian soil as a means of enflaming a situation, framing Lebanon, and creating an excuse to launch attacks across Lebanon’s borders?

Experts know there is no question but that they would. And as Phares explains: “The Syrian regime is desperately attempting to establish a perception of itself within the international community that Syria is engaged in combating Al Qaeda and its ilk inside Lebanon. It is within this perception that Syria hopes to gain some legitimacy from the West in order that Damascus may extend its reach and influence back inside its neighbor. The best way for Syria to accomplish this is to project an image of its being a victim to ‘Sunni radical terror.’ If one or more explosions inside Syrian territory will do it, that shouldn’t be a problem for a regime which is trying to save its skin in an ongoing international investigation and indictment in the Rafik Hariri assassination case.”

However, Phares says he does not expect “a direct Syrian intervention across the border into Lebanon; not immediately. The classical Syrian modus operandi is to see the situation deteriorating fully before they offer so-called ‘help.’”

He adds, “Fact is, the Assad regime is waiting to see who will enter the White House before moving to the next step toward Lebanon. For now the Syrian Mukhabarat is scoring point-by-point trying to regain the status of the regime internationally. That is very important for them.”

We asked Phares for his opinion regarding recent analysis proffered by everyone from Western media to consulting groups and think tanks, many of which contend the incident may well-be the result of increasing tension between Hezbollah and Syria.

“Just the opposite,” he says. “Everything is coordinated between Tehran and Damascus. If it were otherwise, we would have witnessed different types of actions between the two camps and additional statements. Iran and Syria are solidly moving forward to score points against the U.S., Europe, Arab moderates and the UN. Those analysts who propose otherwise are being influenced by the sharp and well-funded Syro-Iranian propaganda and the power of the petrodollar.”

Dr. Phares directs the Future of Terrorism Project for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and is a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels. He is currently on a European tour.

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Identifying the Next National Security Threats

By Michael Jacobson

In January 2009, the next administration will enter office facing a wide range of serious national security threats. At the top of this list will undoubtedly be Iran’s budding nuclear program, the terrorist threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates, and the unstable situation in Pakistan.

While it’s hard to argue that these should be the top priorities, as the last eight years have made clear, in today’s world, the threats to the US can evolve rapidly. New threats can emerge quickly and top-tier threats can fade.

The next administration’s success in the national security arena will certainly be judged in part by its ability to tackle the most obvious threats confronting the US. Equally important, however, will be its ability to accurately identify and appropriately respond to those threats that are emerging as well as those which are in decline. This is not an easy task, particularly for a large, plodding bureaucracy such as the US government, which is often slow to adapt.

The possibilities of what the next serious threat could be are almost endless. Will the threat of a crippling cyber-attack grow, as some experts are predicting? Will a new rogue regime or terrorist group appear on the scene which has the capability to inflict major damage to the US? Will terrorist groups move closer to acquiring WMD capabilities? Could climate change have far reaching national security consequences in the years ahead? And on the flip side, could, as some senior US government officials are predicting, al Qaeda be defeated within a matter of years?

The primary responsibility for getting this right will likely fall to the US intelligence community, as the US national intelligence strategy of 2005 makes clear. One of the five key pillars of the strategy is “anticipating developments of strategic concern,” in part through the newly created strategic analytic unit in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The strategy also states that to succeed in this effort, the IC must have expertise on “every region, every transnational security issue and every threat to the American people.”

For the intelligence community, anticipating the emerging threats - while challenging -- may be easier than mobilizing to address them. The primary responsibility for driving and focusing the sprawling IC against new threats and away from declining threats will fall to the Director of National Intelligence. This will not be an easy task.

If the DNI, for example, becomes convinced that an entirely new threat looms large on the horizon, will he or she be able to order the 16 agencies of the IC, including the Department of Defense agencies, to make the necessary changes in focus and prioritization? And if the DNI determines that an intelligence community agency has essentially ignored his instructions, will he or she take aggressive action to bring the agency into line?

While the DNI possesses far more powers over the IC agencies than his predecessor in that position, the Director of Central Intelligence, the authorities are still limited in scope. This is particularly the case because most of the intelligence offices, such as State, Treasury, and Department of Homeland Security, are located within Cabinet agencies and their primary reporting lines are to a Cabinet secretary, not to the DNI (though a new executive order does give the DNI some additional power over all intelligence agency heads).

Furthermore, mobilizing the IC may be the easy part in comparison to persuading policymakers to dramatically shift course. The resistance that the IC would likely encounter from policymakers would not be without reason. Intelligence is hardly a science, and is often vague, contradictory, difficult to interpret, and sometimes wrong. Making significant policy changes based on this type of incomplete intelligence picture is risky. Devoting resources and time to a threat which turns out to be overstated will divert focus away from the many serious threats facing the US. But not doing so can present even greater risks, as the September 11 story made clear.

So how can the next administration try to get this difficult balance right and make sure that it’s prioritizing the most serious threats, whether existing or emerging? There are a few keys to success. First, the IC must make sure it’s well positioned to identify new threats. As the intelligence strategy outlines, this requires having broad expertise across the board, including personnel with the necessary language abilities and cultural understanding. Beyond the difficulties in finding and obtaining security clearances for people with these unique backgrounds, the IC’s task will likely be made even harder by policymakers pushing the IC to devote additional resources to their respective priorities. Pushing back against this pressure will often be difficult, but necessary.

Second, it is critical for the IC to explain to the policymakers in great detail what they know and what they don’t know - not just on the National Intelligence Estimates, but when presenting any intelligence picture to policymakers. It can sometimes be difficult for the IC to admit its gaps, but this is key for decision-makers to know and understand as they engage in their policy deliberations.

Third, the next administration should resist the urge to centralize intelligence analysis further. While some of the intelligence analysis taking place at the various IC agencies may appear to be redundant or overlapping, it is important for policymakers to hear divergent views and perspectives. The “Groupthink” phenonemenon is much less likely to occur with this set-up in place.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, the IC must maintain its independence from policymakers. This will undoubtedly be difficult, particularly since the DNI reports to the President and is his chief intelligence advisor. It is a tough balancing act for the IC leadership, trying to satisfy policymakers’ demands and needs for intelligence support while at the same time providing them with an unvarnished intelligence picture. Difficult though it may be, it is a balance that must be struck.

One way to make this more achievable might be to make the intelligence leaderships more obviously non-political. Giving the DNI and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center 10 years terms, similar to the FBI Director, specifically so that they are not tied to the Presidential cycles, might be one good step towards achieving that important goal.

HLF Trial Update: Enter the Brotherhood

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

DALLAS - After two days of background, prosecutors in the Hamas-support trial against five former officials at the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) got to the heart of their case Thursday, presenting evidence that the charity was the fundraising arm of a vast Muslim Brotherhood plan to help Hamas and to infiltrate the United States.

In doing so, they showed how two active national organizations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and its parent, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) were both tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and to HLF.

The Brotherhood is an 80-year-old Egyptian religious and political movement that seeks to instill Sharia, or Islamic law, as the controlling basis for society throughout the world.

In court papers filed in July, prosecutors spelled out ISNA's and NAIT's connections to the case:

"During the early years of the HLF's operations HLF raised money and supported HAMAS through a bank account it held with ISNA and NAIT," prosecutors wrote earlier this summer. "ISNA checks deposited into the ISNA/NAIT account for the HLF were often made payable to "the Palestinian Mujahideen," the original name for the HAMAS military wing. From that ISNA/NAIT account, the HLF sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to HAMAS leader Mousa Abu Marzook; Nadia Elashi (defendant Ghassan Elashi's cousin and Marzook's wife), Sheikh Ahmed Yassin's Islamic Center of Gaza, the Islamic University, and a number of other individuals associated with HAMAS."

In court Thursday, FBI Agent Lara Burns pointed to translated bank records showing a letter written in Arabic requesting payments to defendant Ghassan Elashi and Shukri Abu Baker.

ISNA and NAIT have petitioned the court to have their names removed from a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the case. Prosecutors pointed to those bank records and other exhibits in justifying the designation. The original petition was filed in June but U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis has not ruled on the request.

Burns also explained that HLF was part of an alliance of Brotherhood-connected groups in America, called the Palestine Committee, which was created to advance the Hamas agenda in the United States.

For the entire story, click here to visit the IPT's website.

The Truly Alarming News From Afghanistan

By Douglas Farah

Perhaps the single biggest deterrent to a successful insurgency or armed movement is the civilian population. If they are with the insurgency, the armed group will endure, if not necessarily prevail. Without popular support, or at least tolerance, the group will wither.

So it is really alarming to read the Washington Post story about the growing nostalgia for the Taliban in Kabul and other areas under government control in Afghanistan.

Much has been written about how the Taliban is gaining ground, the role that the poppy/opium trade plays in financing the group, the help received from Pakistan's ISI etc. But none to me indicates the depths of the problem there as this changing attitude in what should be the progressive areas where radical Islamism is not a popular concept.

"The government is weak, and it has an enormously high level of tolerance for crime, abuse and corruption," said Nader Nadery, an official of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. "If you have power and money, you don't have to account for your actions. Instead of the rule of law, there is a state of impunity, which is one of the factors contributing to the growth of the Taliban."

It is unlikely the dithering and debate in NATO and among U.S. agencies will be the answer.

It is a testament to how badly botched the Afghanistan project is (the weak Karzai government, the rampant corruption, the uncontrolled crime, and, of course, the soaring drug trade) that it would cross people's mind to wax nostalgic for the Middle Ages. My full blog is here.

HLF Trial Update: Digging in the Dirt

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

DALLAS - Like any new homeowner, Marcial Peredo had some ideas on landscaping his new house in Falls Church, Va. And, like a lot of homeowners, he hired a crew to do the heavier work.

That home improvement project became an issue Wednesday in the Hamas-support trial of five former officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). Workers working in a corner of his property with a Bobcat tractor unearthed some black tapes, Peredo said. He collected nearly three dozen in all, tossing them in a trash bag.

"I was going to throw them out," Peredo testified. "I was speaking to my neighbors and heard the house [had been] under surveillance."

Peredo bought the house from a man named Fawaz Mushtaha, an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF case, identified by prosecutors as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee in America. He didn't know that, but after hearing the house was being watched, Peredo said he pulled the bag out of the garbage can and "decided to call a friend of mine in Homeland Security to ask what I should do."

He took two tapes to his friend and then heard from FBI agents a few weeks later. They took the rest of the videos as well as finding some more. Agents also seized things from old grill on the property, including "cases, a burnt cell phone, a packet of half burnt maps and money," Peredo said.

Defense attorneys had no questions for Peredo.

For the entire story, visit the IPT's website.

On Reports of Infighting Within the Awakening Movement

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Yesterday I noted that Sterling Jensen, who has been providing excellent translations and analysis for the Voices of the Awakening series, would be addressing recent media reports of infighting within the Iraqi Awakening movement, as well as conflict between the Awakening and the government of Iraq. (See, for example, this Sept. 23 UPI report). Today he has authored an intelligence briefing for FDD's Center for Terrorism Research addressing the distinction between the two major Awakening initiatives. An excerpt:

These media reports tend to blur the distinction between two main Awakening initiatives, one Iraqi and the other American. Understanding the differences between the two, and their relationship with the Government of Iraq (GOI), is important to adequately assess their impact on security.

THE IRAQI AWAKENING. The Awakening credited for the decrease in violence in Iraq began as an Iraqi initiative that was supported by the GOI. In mid-2006 the Anbar Awakening, led by Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, was an Iraqi attempt to create an emergency provincial government to replace the one that had been undermined by al-Qaeda and insurgents. In doing so, the Anbar Awakening promoted Iraqi police and Iraqi army recruitment, and worked closely with both Iraqi and coalition forces in bringing security to the province. While the Anbar Awakening did not succeed in creating an emergency government, it was partially integrated into the existing provincial government, and established a relationship with the GOI....
THE SONS OF IRAQ. The other initiative, which is actually the group being discussed in a large portion of media coverage, was led by coalition forces in mid-2007 as an attempt to copy and paste the success of the Anbar Awakening into Sunni areas of Baghdad, Salahideen and Diyala. This American initiative became known as the Sons of Iraq program--where basically marginalized Sunnis, including former insurgents, were recruited, equipped and paid by the Americans, and called Concerned Local Citizens (CLCs). CLCs manned security posts and worked with coalition forces in security operations. CLCs were basically coalition forces employees, and most had little contact with the Government of Iraq. Many of these CLCs informally organized themselves, and were later called Awakening councils. However, these Awakening councils were not necessarily affiliated with the Anbar Awakening. Some of these Awakening councils had no intention of reconciling with the GOI; as a result, the GOI has been cautious to fully integrate them into the Iraqi security forces....
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Saying that the GOI has bad relations with the Awakening, and that this threatens its successes, is misleading. While the Sons of Iraq program employs nearly 100,000 CLCs whose jobs may be in jeopardy once the GOI takes over the program, this has little bearing on the GOI's relationship with the Awakening. It is true that the Iraqi Awakening and other Sunni politicians are trying ensure that the CLCs be given adequate employment opportunities, whether in security or public service, as they transfer from the American to the Iraqi payroll. But the Iraqi Awakening and other Sunni parties are doing so largely out of a desire to gain constituents, rather trying to defend themselves from a GOI threat to the Awakening's existence.

For Jensen's entire intelligence briefing, click here.

Henry Jackson Society discussion of the Confrontation in London: Independence from Petro Dollars is Key

By Walid Phares

During this summer lectures-tour in Europe, I have discussed my most recent book The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad at the invitation of the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based Project for "Democratic Geopolitics." In one of the discussion themes I argued that in the end, there are strong Jihadi lobbies which are derailing international and US efforts to defeat the Terrorist forces. I advanced a summary of a number of strategy recommendations among them: Identify the threat doctrine clearly; achieve energy independence; create wider alliances with countries suffering from the same threat even if they are not part of the Iraq or even Afghanistan coalitions; grant significant support to democracy forces within the Arab and Muslim world.

The summary of the round table which included think tanks representatives as well as members of several Government ministries was filed by the Henry Jackson Society as follow:

Introduction:

Today I would like to summarise my new book - The Confrontation: Winning the war against future jihad - which is the third in a trilogy. A few years ago I was invited to London by my esteemed colleagues to discuss the first book - The Future Jihad - which is not a discussion of jihad as a concept, but rather a discussion of the strategies of specific jihadist movements, and there is a big difference. One has to begin by defining what these strategies are, and then how far we can go with the definition. However what is more important and more relevant to homeland security or to national security is how the jihadists think. It is not what we scholars in the classroom think about jihad that is important. What is very important is how the jihadists interpret it. Therefore we must examine the strategies for reaching jihadists and this is where most governments - our government in the US and European governments as well - fall into the trap of over discussing issues that are not really relevant in terms of theology. They may be linked to socio-economic issues which may be useful in the future, but in terms of countering the jihadist movement, it’s really about understanding their strategies and then devising the right strategies to defeat them.

That book was followed by my second book, The War of Ideas, which is a reflection on the conclusion of the first book. The first book described who the jihadists are, whilst the second book is concerned with how are they able to carry out jihad. This is relevant because one of the major debates on both sides of the ocean has been based on the fact that we don’t know much about their ideology and strategy, but also how they operate. Not just major operations such as 9/11, 11/3, 7/7, and today is the anniversary of that tragic date, but also in addition to these, how they are able to create that wide corps of jihadists around the world.

Root causes of Jihadism:

The root causes of the jihadist movements that I analyse here are of two classical genres, and I try to push towards a third that is more functional. The two classical genres are promoted by governments, on campuses and in the media around the free world. These are: the socio-economic disenfranchisement theory; and the foreign policy theory. Now, more recently in the States and I’m sure here as well, you have the new theory of social psychological conditioning. According to that theory, apart from foreign policy and apart from other objective theories, the frustration of being an immigrant and not being fully assimilated into a community can lead to the adoption of jihadism. However, I have counter-argued that although these three explanations of the root causes are objectively present, they are flawed because:

With regard to foreign policy, we must remember that the majority of the jihadists had been in action and had developed their theory way before most of liberal democracies they targeted had specific foreign policies towards the Middle East, including the United States. The Salafis and the Wahabis were born before not only the Arab-Israeli conflict, but before Israel was established. That alone is important. Probably the most important issue here is that the jihadists themselves in their agenda do not claim this as their specific objective. There is an objective to be achieved, with or without the Arab-Israeli conflict, with or without what the US did in Vietnam and then everything else aggregates. As a result, this research can fool many who do not have a real understanding of the ideology.

The socio-economic theory is interesting because now we are receiving a lot of additional European research, especially from Germany and elsewhere, that contradicts this argument. It is not that the argument is not solid, but that it is in a sense disconnected. Many immigrants who have dealt with socio-economic stress do not become jihadist suicide bombers, so mathematically speaking, that is an issue to deal with. So, are those who have been impacted by specific ideologies the ones that have produced that kind of violence in response to socio-economic stresses? The analysis shows that stresses do not lead to suicide bombings; stresses plus the ideology leads to the strategies that gives us suicide bombings. This is of course laid out in an over simplified way and could raise a lot of questions, but I am trying to summarise the most recent findings on these issues.

With regard to socio-psychological stresses, these are real factors, but they are not unique to the jihadists. If it were, then every case of pressure, whether it is because of racist reasons or non-racist reasons like divorce, would lead to jihadism. So again, we look at all these cases and we realise that those that have stresses and were impacted by any form of jihadist ideology produced almost the same type of violence. The others produced different kinds of violence, unconnected types of violence, or no violence, but frustration expressed in other ways.

The ideological development of Jihad.

In my second book - The war of ideas - I tried to make the case that what we are dealing with here is a two way ideological development. One in the 1920s with the Salafi movement that broke into all of the families that we know - Wahabi, Muslim Brothers (MB), Deobandi, and other sub-branches that were not successful. But then I moved to look at mutations of these movements and we are now dealing with the second and third generation of Salafi Jihad, and in that tree, the second and third generation which has mutated into what we call Al-Qaeda is a marriage of experiences between the MB and the Wahabis. So the MB and Wahabis are not really Al-Qaeda. They do have long term goals and the ideology is very clear, but what prompted that mutation, is what I call the jihadi debate of the early 1990s in Khartoum.

At Khartoum most of the representatives of these tendencies met and those who were classical Wahabis and classical MBs decided to move forward in what they called the ‘penetration strategy’ of the Arab and Muslim world, widening the pool of supporters as much as they could. Indeed, with regard to the West, their theory is to infiltrate from the bottom up, so that within each liberal democracy, the real, long term objective of that classical school is to carry out terror attacks on the one hand and on the other, to paralyse the capacity of liberal democracies to respond to external developments in the Muslim world. Thus the force that the jihadists have developed in the West is basically a part of putting pressure on Western potential reactions to what is actually happening there in the Muslim world. The objective is not to conquer or create a coup d’état - at least not at this stage because of the reality of the situation - but it is to make sure that the state apparatus in the West is not going to respond to two things: political change in the Arab and Middle Eastern world towards the jihadists; and foreign policy, for instance in Iraq, Afghanistan and also Somalia. So in a sense that would be the classical jihadi political strand. However the layers are different in Europe, the United States, India, or Africa.

The second strand, which I have coined as the ‘hot headed’ is Al-Qaeda. In the 1990s they adopted the philosophy: we were able to defeat the Soviet Union, so we can defeat the other side. From an oversimplified perspective it seems to be strangely logical, but it has sparked debate between the ideologues of Al-Qaeda and the clerics sent by the Saudis, the Egyptians or Moroccans and Jordanians to counter argue with them. Al-Qaeda basically believes that engaging in the confrontation will deliver victory even without holding the balance of power, although remember that the Wahabis and the Muslim Brotherhood are keen to make sure they always have the balance of power. Indeed, because of the hyper-ideological, doctrinal and theo-doctrinal paradigms in which they believe, Al-Qaeda is certain that by engaging the enemy, somehow the Divine will continue the battle. This is how they explain it to their followers.

Of course there are strategists in Al-Qaeda who believe that if you carry out strikes such as 9/11 or 7/7 and you do not get dividends in foreign policy, you will receive huge dividends in recruitment, by spreading the notion that they were able to strike at infidel powers . Thus all those people who have been ironically indoctrinated by the Wahabi and the Muslim Brotherhood, are the ones that Al-Qaeda recruit, which is causing a lot of problems for the governments that are dealing with it. The reason is that we are fighting Al-Qaeda, but they are recruiting from pools that they are not creating - Al-Qaeda’s infrastructure is not responsible for the madrasas or production factories where they get their recruits. These external pools produce 80% of the intellectual process that creates the jihadists, meaning that history, theology, indoctrination, the division of the world into the categories that we know are all contributors, but what is missing in the equation is that Al-Qaeda’s operatives convince them that they can succeed. Thus ironically, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wahabis and the less hot headed Salafists from whom the jihadist recruit, oppose Al-Qaeda and say that they cannot engage in warfare with the infidel powers, and additionally that they cannot continue to treat fellow Muslims as enemies through the concert of fear. On the other hand, Al-Qaeda the same pool of recruits to justify their view that the process that they have begun has created enlargement in the support of the jihadist movement.

Spreading democracy:

As I see it, democracy is not simply a question of holding elections. For democracy to triumph in Middle Eastern countries, the West is only a small player in the process and this is what our public opinion does not understand. We can only provide support for the foundation of democracy. In the case of Iran, researchers have predicted on the basis of sociological analysis of the Persian majority, that even if left unassisted, they will have their own revolution in favour of democracy in 20 years or so. If therefore Iran was not a threat to national security in terms of its nuclear proliferation, it may well be the case that the Iranian people would be left to find democracy on their own, like the French and the Italians have done. But if the Iranian regime is going to cause a security threat to its own people: genocide, which could happen, or to the region, then international intervention is warranted, actually, it is warranted under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, to speed up the process.

The case of Algeria, which was under the authoritarian FLN regime for so long, is a model which is applicable elsewhere. It is a model within which authoritarian regimes have been able to fully surppress liberal democratic forces and have been able to contain but not suppress the Islamist forces, because one thing they cannot suppress is the ideology. Why were the FLN or the Egyptian government, even Saudi Arabia, not able to go the full way against radical jihadist forces? Because they have not themselves engaged in ideological reform. So obviously when Algeria held its first election, who was going to win? The ideologues: those who are most organised in the vacuum of those who are not organised. In Egypt those who are organised are the Muslim Brotherhood and the others are going to be defeated. In Gaza, Hamas won. This is not a surprise. Hamas is a highly militarised, organised, and financed organisation with exclusive control.

The impact of the US Presidential election on the fight against Jihadism:

The team working with John McCain on the issue of terror and Jihadism will continue the policy of today. There will be a second battle of the experts however, on the next steps in this process. If Barak Obama wins, I don’t think anything dramatic will happen in first six months because the bureaucrats will be the same bureaucrats. What I would expect after that is that there will be some spectacular moves, depending on the size of the Democrat majority in Congress, and the possibility of him meeting with Chavez and Ahmadinejad. I think that an Obama administration will not engage in overdramatic change in his first term because he would want to enact a more ambitious agenda for a second term. For example in Iraq, he will certainly plan a long term withdrawal. With regard to Palestine and Israel, I don’t think he is going to change much, because that has to do with the culture in the US. Where his advisors may recommend balancing his negatives elsewhere, is Darfur. Hollywood is pushing ‘save Darfur’ and Hollywood is a big constituency for Obama. But he will have his limitations. He will have to explain to the nation who the battle in Darfur is against. He is trying to save Darfur from genocide. However, to assign blame, they have to target the regime and the ideology, and that is a no go area in terms of effective action.

Advice to policy makers:

My third book is centered around advice to policy makers. In this regard it is more than analysis - it is a proposition for a change of management direction. If we look at 2008 compared to 2001 and what has been achieved strategically during this period, we can see that Western countries have been engaged with Iraq and Afghanistan; they have been containing the Arab-Israeli conflict; putting pressure on the Darfur situation, and have been engaging with what we in the US call the war of ideas. The military in the US use strategic communications, the state department uses the battle of ideas, and in Europe there are 27 interpretations according to where you are. However, the essence of the matter is that Western democracies and their allies need to impact on the societies where jihadism is coming from with various strategies. One of these strategies is to use clerics - in other words use the resources that the jihadists use - in order to beat them. A second strategy is to use theology - there is a range of support from theologians to counter Al-Qaeda. But the problem with this approach is that the authorities believe that to tackle extremism you must tackle the theology. To tackle theology is to tackle Islam, which will cause problems and consequences both domestically and abroad.

The other solution is dialogue. Though it is the rational position, entering into dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood could take you on an endless promenade: these are the chief engineers of strategy in the world. What they don’t tell you is that in Muslim communities the likes of Al-Qaeda are still a numerical minority and therefore you have not even begun the real intellectual warfare until this is recognized. Western European governments are sitting down with official Muslim federations but the federations have already been infiltrated so they are already sitting down with the jihadists. What we are not bringing to the table are the counter-jihadists. My suggestion is that for every jihadist we bring in to dialogue, we must also talk to the non radical elements of the Islamic community. I would like to see the real Muslim community engaged in debate. To have the policy makers understand the sociological nature of the Muslim community which, at the moment, they don’t.

The other strategy which I am involved with encourages forces of democracy in the Arab and Muslim world. The term ‘spreading democracy’ by itself is very scientific - you cannot ‘spread’ it. But you can open a space for freedom, either by military intervention when a regime for example is committing acts of genocide; or by applying political, economic and social diplomatic pressures in a way that we have experienced in different levels in the case of Eastern European dissidents. A very eminent case of such diplomatic pressure is in South Africa, where the international community supported the anti-apartheid regime and was successful in changing behaviour. However the comparisons are always difficult as situations do not automatically translate.

So, my first suggestion is that in order to engage in support for democratic forces, so that these democratic forces can fight the battle within their native communities, we need to have a public opinion in liberal democracies that understands the purpose of our actions. At the moment we are at minus 20 - meaning that in order to engage with any policy, whether British, European, or US, governments have to do it with the support of populations. Then also in democracies you have the very dangerous infiltration and penetration by these jihadi lobbies, supported by petrodollars. So we are not talking about ideas versus ideas. It is in fact hundreds of millions of petrodollars versus almost nothing on the other side, reaching out to universities, centres, even agencies within government. Thus the warfare is very real in liberal democracies. Again, if that happens and we don’t have a public which is educated and informed about the issue, then the whole war of ideas and the so called war on terror will go in different directions. I think we are now witnessing the era of strategic defeat or maybe relative defeat in the war of ideas, because we have not produced on either side of the ocean, public opinion which understands the extent of the threat and can therefore support legislative and executive initiatives in that regard.

The second recommendation, with which I’m sure you are all familiar, is to continue a Western trend to provoke economic independence, in particular economic independence from oil producing regimes. Economic independence does not mean solving all the problems of energy today. However, it does mean some measure of diversification particularly in where we get our energy from. However, if we want to have strategic independence in 18 to 20 years as the experts are claiming, we needed to have begun eight years ago! So we are already eight years late on any process that would achieve results. This is because the jihadi use of oil producing revenues is a 30 year old investment already. If you quantify that, it means not that a prince threw $30 million at Harvard or Georgetown University (this is public information), and therefore might be influencing and impacting the way that Middle Eastern or Islamic Studies are taught - that is the most visible part of it which is used in the US as an example. What we are talking about is that from around 1979 onwards, the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in the West has had the goal not of reforming medical studies or agrarian studies for example, but to influence the teaching of Middle Eastern Studies, which provides the expertise to governments which becomes our foreign policy, or the resistance to further changes in our foreign policy. For example the idea of engaging with human rights support in the Middle East is a black hole. This idea is fiercely fought by the lobbies that are the result of this long term investment.

Let me conclude by stressing that the very essence of winning this war of ideas, the war on terror and the confrontation with terrorists is-after the very important opinion of public opinion in the West- to win the democracy battle in the Arab and Muslim world or at least to engage in it. I doubt that we will see real results in one generation, but if we do not engage with it, we will have a recipe for the continuation of clashes. At the moment the policy is the postponement of clashes. However, if this generation is not able to address it then unfortunately the next generation will have to address it with more lethal consequences.

Professor Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow and the director for Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

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Voices of the Awakening: Focus on Upcoming Provincial Elections

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Today FDD's Center for Terrorism Research brings you the fourth installment of our Voices of the Awakening series, authored by Sterling Jensen. The series is designed to provide Westerners a better understanding of ongoing developments in Iraq's Awakening movement. This regular feature includes critical translations of Awakening news and documents, Jensen's observations and analysis, and occasional interviews with the movement's leaders.

This week the Iraqi Awakening's reporting focused on two main issues related to the upcoming provincial elections: the Awakening's relationship with the Government of Iraq (GOI), and leadership principles that should guide a new democratic Iraq. An excerpt:

In three separate reports, the Iraqi Awakening clarifies its relationship with the GOI. First, in "The Iraqi Awakening: an Objective Position," the Awakening differentiates itself from the Sons of Iraq program. It states that while those in the program have not been adequately treated by Iraqi politicians, the Sons of Iraq program is not the same as the Iraqi Awakening. The Iraqi Awakening grew out of the Anbar Awakening, where it played an important role in strengthening the Iraqi army, police, and security agencies. It is not a group of militias, as some Iraqi politicians have claimed. Only the Iraqi Security Forces are in charge of security, and not extrajudicial armed groups. The Iraqi Awakening is a registered political party and encourages political participation....

In a second article entitled "The Awakening: Deserving the Vote," the Iraqi Awakening explains to voters why it believes it deserves their vote. It says that the Awakening will be one of the many parties participating in the upcoming provincial elections, elections that they hope will be fair and transparent for all parties or individuals running. A rhetorical question is asked: "who made not only Anbar secure, but all of Iraq?" The answer: "The sons of the tribes as represented in the Iraqi Awakening. The Iraqi Awakening should not be regarded only as an organization that became a political party, but rather as the essence of those who stood up against injustice and brought back life, law, and institutions. Parties should join the list with the Iraqi Awakening because had the Awakening not brought back life and security, there would be no elections for everyone to compete in." ....

INSIDER'S PERSPECTIVE: While the details of the upcoming elections are still not set, the Iraqi Awakening has started its campaign to solicit voters. The Awakening in Anbar has regular tribal leader visits not only from Sunnis from Baghdad, Salahideen or Diyala, but also regular visits from Shia tribal leaders from Southern Iraq. Arab tribes and former regime elements are the Iraqi Awakening's targeted base. They believe that combining a strong traditional Iraqi identity with educated nationalist technocrats will transcend sectarian lines, and resonate with voters. The Iraqi Awakening leadership is convinced that the political parties running Iraq are heavily influenced by regional interests and not Iraqi interests. More importantly, however, the Awakening believes that change will come through political reform, and not by violence. For the Iraqi Awakening, it is paramount that the coming elections be fair and without regional influence. These themes are often repeated in the Awakening's reporting.

For the entire Voices of the Awakening update, click here. Tomorrow Jensen will provide analysis of the recent media reports about infighting within the Awakening movement, such as this article that was noted in the CT Blog's Newslinks.

Last week's attack against the U.S. embassy: a sign of a troubled situation in Yemen

By Olivier Guitta

Jihadists greatly encourage their followers to perpetrate suicide attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. That is why numerous Muslim countries were fearing attacks in September.
Unsurprisingly, al-Qaida pulled off three major attacks in the last week: one in Mauritania that killed 12, one in Yemen against the U.S. embassy and one in Pakistan against the Marriott hotel.
I wrote an article for Asia Times on Yemen.

Here is an excerpt:
In 2003, the Yemeni regime concluded a non-aggression pact with al-Qaeda. But it seems that the deal has been off since the beginning of this year. Appearing officially in January under the label "Al-Qaeda in the south of the Arabian Peninsula - Brigades soldiers of Yemen", the local al-Qaeda branch has already claimed numerous attacks against security forces.

The Italian Embassy was attacked in April, and since then most Western countries have decided to "bunkerize" their buildings in Yemen. The US has reduced its presence in the country to a bare minimum, and the French ambassador has permanent bodyguards, like in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Tourists are strongly advised not to travel to Yemen. Some expatriates are not allowed to venture out of the capital or go to certain neighborhoods, except when they have a specific task and an armed guard.

In the past month, Yemeni authorities have been more aggressive in fighting al-Qaeda's resurgence. In August al-Qaeda leader Hamza al-Quayti, who was one of a gang of 23 that escaped from prison in February 2006, was killed by security forces in eastern Yemen. Other members of his cell were killed during the operation.

The Yemeni Defense Ministry said the activists had formed a cell that "planned to carry out terrorist attacks in Yemen and abroad". Police found explosives, documents and Arab passports (including two Saudi ones). This cell was responsible for an attack that killed eight Spanish tourists and two Yemeni guides in July 2007.

You can read the full article here.

Noorsai Conviction Shows Merger of Criminal and Terrorist Organizations

By Douglas Farah

Yesterday a New York jury convicted Bashir Noorsai, a Taliban-linked drug trafficker of being part of an international conspiracy to sell heroin around the world, including the United States.

The case is noteworthy because Noorsai had developed strong ties to the Taliban, and was a pioneer in forging the drug trafficking alliance that now funds the Taliban's rapid expansion.

Prosecutors said Mr. Noorzai developed a relationship with the Taliban, paying it 10 percent of his drug profits and turning over arms and fighters in return for being allowed to continue his drug operations even after the Taliban banned opium production in 2000.

Noorsai was close to the Taliban's Mullah Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Islamist movement that sheltered Omama bin Laden and then allied with him. It was this alliance between Omar and Noorsai that has helped the Taliban rearm, replenish its worn-out weapons stocks, upgrade it communications systems and greatly improve its logistical operations. My full blog is here.

CT Blog Expert Matthew Levitt Testifies in HLF Trial

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

DALLAS - For jurors in the Hamas-support case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) who likely know nothing about the terrorist group, or about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the first full day of testimony Tuesday was dominated by a lesson in Hamas 101.

Matthew Levitt, a former deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, and now the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, walked jurors through everything from Middle East geography to the Hamas charter to the way non-violent social branches feed the group's overall terrorist agenda.

The testimony lays a foundation for why the United States outlawed transactions with, and support for, Hamas in the mid 1990s. The five defendants, who lost an earlier court battle to prevent Levitt from testifying, are accused of breaking those laws by routing money to Hamas' social arms through a series of charities, known as zakat committees, in the West Bank and Gaza.

For the full article, visit the IPT's website: HLF Jury Schooled on Hamas Terror, and for a report on yesterday's opening statements, see: HLF Prosecutor: Think Like a Terrorist Organization.

NEFA Foundation: The Bitter Divide Within Al-Qaida's Last Remaining Ally in Iraq

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated two recent statements issued respectively by the Ansar al-Islam Organization in Iraq (formerly known as the Ansar al-Sunnah Army) and a breakaway faction which refers to itself as the “Shariah Committee of the Ansar al-Sunnah Army.”

In response to allegations from Ansar al-Islam accusing their dissident brothers of conspiring with the Americans against Al-Qaida, the "Shariah Committee" fired back with a detailed 32-page breakdown of criminal behavior and atrocities committed by Al-Qaida's forces in Iraq without any apparent objection from Ansar al-Islam. The “Shariah Committee” warned their former comrades, "[our leaders] know much about you, and if they were to publicize it, it would be a major and shameful humiliation… Isn’t it rather hypocritical for you to flatter others and act courteously towards the killers responsible for murdering many of you out of fear of their power, while you simultaneously assault your brothers and lie to them… Who killed your men in Al-Ramadi, in Al-Yusufiya, in Nineveh, and in various other areas more than two years ago, and yet you forgave them? …Was it not you who used to say that the greatest action that Shaykh [Usama] Bin Laden could perform today would be to declare the disbanding of the Al-Qaida organization in Iraq, because it has fallen into disgrace and it has become a cover for anyone with twisted goals in order for them to achieve these goals through this infiltrated organization. The only treatment for its condition is to disband it… You sent messengers to Afghanistan—among whom was Abu al-Darda’a, may Allah have mercy upon him, who was dispatched in order to explain to [Usama] Bin Laden and [Dr. Ayman] al-Zawahiri the massive corruption of Al-Qaida in Iraq. When Abu al-Darda’a returned, he indicated that a delegation would be sent by al-Zawahiri to Iraq in order to confirm whether these reports were true. Then you told us that Abu Musab [al-Zarqawi], may Allah have mercy upon him, was impeding the arrival of this delegation in order to prevent the truth from being revealed. It should be noted that the era of Abu Musab should be considered to be a golden era when compared to what happened afterwards.”

Translated excerpts of both statements are available on the NEFA Foundation website.

New NEFA Paper on the FARC's International Network

By Douglas Farah

Almost all terrorist organizations seek to establish international support networks that allow them to operate in countries and regions outside their home bases. The FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) are no exception.

In this new NEFA Foundation report, using internal FARC documents and interviews with former FARC leaders and others in Colombia, I outline the unusual and unexpectedly broad network the guerrillas had established. This paper is the third I have done on the political and military demise of the FARC, which, despite recent setbacks, remains the hemisphere's oldest and largest insurgency.

As I have noted before, the FARC, a designated terrorist entity by the United States and the European Union, is largely a rural-based group, but in many ways is the prototype of terrorist groups we are likely to see as state sponsorship for such groups is cut back.

The size and sophistication of the FARC international network was one of the biggest surprises of FARC documents that have been captured. It had long been assumed that, while the group had some times, it was a relatively isolated entity. That, however, is not true.

The FARC (along with the Taliban) are pioneers in the use of massive drug financing for their political ends. At the same time, the FARC is developing a (so far) unique model of support networks that includes state sponsors (Venezuela and Nicaragua, most notably), non-state supporter networks, and a concerted effort to share tactics, technology and experiences with other terrorist groups (the ETA of Spain and the P-IRA of Ireland, in particular). My full blog is here.

Islamabad Bombing I: Brute Force Tactics

By Aaron Mannes

In the span of week, there were two attacks against hard targets, the September 17 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, and Saturday’s strike on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates still face difficulties launching attacks in Western countries, due to the difficulty of transporting the necessary experienced operatives to the West in the face of diligent and capable Western security services.

But these attacks highlight growing capabilities within the greater Middle East, where security forces are not as skilled and the operatives move with greater ease. Both of these attacks were against targets with formidable security, and the success of the Marriott attack indicates the limits inherent in hardening targets and the potential for enormous quantities of explosive to overcome security measures. This tactic will become more widespread where terrorists possess the necessary logistical and technical capabilities.

Brute Force

The attack on the Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen was a sophisticated, multi-pronged strike that included two carbombs and gunmen (a State Department briefing describing the attack is here. Although the attack took ten lives, it did not penetrate the Embassy itself. There may be lessons learned from this semi-successful attack that can be incorporated into future strikes - but Embassy security will also adapt. However, the fortress-like status of American Embassies around the world exacts a high price on U.S. efforts to conduct effective public diplomacy. The Marriott is a hotel. While Embassies can adopt extensive security procedures at some cost to their effectiveness, hotels cannot pay that same price.

What the Yemen attack attempted to achieve by guile, the Islamabad attack managed by sheer brute force. Marriott security appeared to have worked.

Read the complete post here.

Indonesian Cleric Ba'asyir Launches New Hard-Line Group

By Kenneth Conboy

After a falling out with the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (which he previously headed), militant Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir formally inaugurated a new hard-line organization in Bekasi, West Java, on 19 September. The new organization is called Jamaah Anshorud Tauhid (JAT), which roughly translates as “Savior Community.” The paramilitary Islamic Defender's Front sent several busloads of members from its chapters in Jakarta, Solo, and Indramayu to attend this inaugural ceremony.

If JAT is anything like the Indonesian Mujahidin Council Ba'asyir previously led, it will be extremely anti-West in outlook. There are fears that the rhetoric of Ba'asyir, as well as other conservative clerics, will go more shrill if and when the three convicted Bali bombers are executed (which is likely to take place after the Idul Fitri holiday in early October).

Hizbut-Tahrir Bangladesh: Islamist Movement under Terror Scanner

By Animesh Roul

Lately though, Bangladesh authority have cracked down upon Islamist group Hizbut-Tahrir-Bangladesh (HT-B) and arrested 11 members, including Syed Golam Moula, Professor at the Dhaka University and HT’s coordinator and Ahmed Jamal Iqbal, Professor at the South East University. They were arrested along with 9 others (mostly teachers and students of Universities and colleges that shows the intellectual and elitist backing of the HT) on Thursday in Rajshahi city. The leaders and activists were distributing HT’s ‘provocative’ and ‘anti state’ leaflets at the time of the arrest. The leaflet reportedly urged all Muslims to take oath for establishing the rule of Caliphate in this holy month of Ramadan and showed the democratic norms and the government in bad light.

Tokiuddin Al Nakhani’s Hizb ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation, est. 1953 in Jerusalem) is a proscribed Islamic ideological movement in many countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, but operating freely in Bangladesh since 2000. HT believes in Ummatic concept. As its website declares that :

It aims to revive the Islamic Ummah from the severe decline that it had reached, and to liberate it from the thoughts, systems and laws of Kufr, as well as the domination and influence of the Kufr states. It also aims to restore the Islamic Khilafah State so that the ruling by what Allah revealed returns.

HT’s Bangladesh unit has been under scanner for quite some time, though not branded as banned outfit and presently Bangladesh authority is probing HT-B’s suspected involvement with proscribed Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and any other forms of terrorism in the country and elsewhere. Following September 18 arrests, Hizbut threatened to oust the government by launching a countrywide movement. The threat was issued at a HT-B meeting in Dhaka in clear contravention of the state of emergency in the country.

The outside world witnessed HT-B rise to prominence in 2004 and again in last year’s Muhammad cartoon controversy. The counterterror unit, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) find the statements of HT-B and JMB are similar in nature, even though RAB is yet to trace HT’s link or involvement in terrorist activity in Bangladesh.

Vowing to establish Caliphate rule in Bangladesh, HT’s Chief Coordinator Mahiuddin Ahmed openly threatened that HT-B activists will “stomp the city streets and no one will be able to live in peace on the soil of Bangladesh if […] leaders are not released in 48 hours.”His speech was definitely full of rhetoric and very much in the line of Hizbut’s global Islamic agenda. Mahiuddin Ahmed’s speech was clearly in tandem of HT’s Ummatic agenda and its believe in God’s government. He affirmed, We always want to oust all governments in all Muslim countries in the world to establish Khelafat (Caliphate) states. We have been asking for establishing Khelafat rule in the country instead of the present servile government since our first procession in the country. He also took the opportunity to blame the media for not branding the USA as a terrorist state.

By Walid Phares

As shown by world networks, the hellish flames ravaging the Mariott Hotel in Islamabad seemed like a vision of the Apocalypse. That's at least how many survivors of the Terror attack that massacred more than 60 and wounded hundreds have described it: "The end of the World." But beyond the barbaric bloodshed and the human suffering ensuing, the heavy question fuses fast: How to read this Jihadi mayhem and what is the message behind the bombing?

When a war is raging, as is the case in Pakistan for the last years, analysts won't wait on the procedural investigation to determine the identity of the perpetrators of this attack. Local police and security forces will get somewhere sometime. The graver question is about the big picture. What is al Qaeda and their Taliban herds up to, by terrorizing the people and Government of the second largest Muslim country in the world and -more important- the first Islamic nation to possess nuclear weapons? According to many Pakistani sources commenting to media after the explosion, including Lt General Talaat Massud the Terror attack has a "loud and clear message." He asserted that those behind the operation "wants to tell the Pakistani Government to stop sending the Army into their (Taliban) areas and to oppose any intervention (against al Qaeda) inside Pakistan by the United States." Massud comments, aired on BBC were firm: "This is a mega explosion and it needs mega decisions in the country, more will come."

AFP Photo of Devastated Islamabad Marriott After Bombing

In terms of targeting, indeed the blast ravaged a very prominent land mark in the capital where foreigners and Pakistani personalities often swing by. Moreover, the Jihadists hit hard in the city's nervous center. In the vicinity of the Parliament -where the new President just finished an acceptance speech- of the house of the Prime Minister and of many ministers, of the judiciary and other significant headquarters, this strike is heavy with a multi pages message.

Undoubtedly the first page is addressed to the new President and his cabinet. The War between the "Jihadi Islamists" of all kinds and the secular coalition led by the "People's Party" formerly headed by the late Benazir Bhutto is on. Indeed, while many in the US and the West doubted former President Musharraf's ability or political will to take the fight comprehensively to the tribal areas, newly elected President Aif Ali Zardari and his Prime Minister Yosaf Raza Gilani have repetitively committed to confront the "fundamentalists and terrorists." A one year long reading of this "struggle" shows that the Taliban have targeted the secular "People's Party" since its chances to come to power were increasing. After a failed attempt at her life, the Jihadists finally assassinated Bhutto. But the come back of her party in the last elections brought her widow to the top office. The "Bhutto leadership" reaffirmed their intention to take on the Jihadi Terrorists. Strong with a popular support, including among women and youth, the secular political coalition was considered as top danger by the armed Islamists. Hence, the logic of the Mariott attack. It was chiefly to strike at the forthcoming ideological advance against the Jihadists. In short this was a preemptive blow against a Government which may not hesitate in engaging a battle of ideas against the medieval forces in Waziristan and against the circles of Jihadophiles in Islamabad. From their hideouts, Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Mullah Umar have urged their Pakistani brethren to smite the head of the secular establishment in the country. Pakistan could be the biggest prize ever, if it falls into the hands of the Taliban and their urban allies. But to do so, the current democratically elected Government and the President must be removed. And prior to this, the Armed forces have to stop their raids into the north western valleys.

But the second page of the message is about US role. This is a warning to Pakistani civilian and military authorities to break all ties to the American-led campaign against Terror. But more precisely to reject NATO incursions after al Qaeda inside Pakistan. Already the new public agenda of the current Administration in Islamabad openly warns against US raids across the borders for domestic political reasons. The new President pledged, few hours before the explosion, that he will carry the campaign against the Terrorists but at the same time he will refuse American military interventions on his national soil. The Jihadi bloodshed in the city is a "mega-warning" that al Qaeda and the Taliban will respond inside the country against pressure coming from across the border.

In the end, the Jihadist plan can be summarized as follow:

1. Intimidate the Government into a pull back position
2. Containing the Pakistani military efforts against Waziristan
3. Create a wedge between the Army and the Government
4. Trigger a crisis between Washington and Islamabad

But a more daring investigation of the propaganda goals sought by the Jihadists may project that by enflaming the situation in Pakistan and by ripple effect in Afghanistan, the architects of international terror wants to heat up the debate in the US Presidential election as well. The war room of al Qaeda has demonstrated in the past years that it also aim at manipulating public opinion "behind enemy lines" as well. By fueling the violence inside Pakistan the propagandists would demonstrate that US attention to that country was minimal in contrast to American involvement in Iraq. Well manipulated by operatives in the region's media, this snowball argumentation can stir the debate into a desired shift in public opinion. The days ahead may show additional evidence as to the complex game played in this most dangerous place on the Planet.

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Dr Walid Phares is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels. He is the author of this year's released The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.

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Fire as a Tool of Terror

By Aaron Mannes

Co-blogger Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Kyle Dabruzzi recently co-authored an interesting report on how firefighters can play an enhanced counter-terror role. His report reminded me of some preliminary research I had done on terrorist use of fire in the wake of the 2007 forest fires in Greece that killed 63 people and did hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage. Putting these two items together suggests another possible counter-terror role for fire-fighters.

Fire Next Time?

Fire is certainly capable of causing substantial damage either to specific targets and, if the conditions are right, as a virtual WMD. Several of the worst disasters in U.S. history were fires, including the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 and the fires triggered by the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 destroyed entire cities. As recently as 1991 a firestorm in Oakland killed 25, did $1.5 billion in damage, and decimated 1520 acres within a major American city. Additionally, fire has the potential to trigger a cascading disaster. A fire might also lead to utility outages or reach new dimensions of scale if it reaches a sensitive site.

Fire has some advantages as a tool for terrorists. First, it is a basic mantra among TV newspeople, “The camera loves fire.” As a means of garnering media attention, fire has tremendous potential. (Consider the endless footage of the fire at the Glasgow airport from the summer 2007 terror plot.)

Fire is also technically easy. Although it is conventional wisdom that bomb-making techniques can be gleaned off of the Internet - the actual record of self-starting cells as bomb-makers is not very good. The successful plots have had links to real world training.

Interestingly, in light of its apparent ease of use, based on these graphs from the Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland’s Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (with which I have no affiliation), fire does not appear to be the terror weapon of choice.

Read the complete post here.

Russia's New Efforts to Arm State Sponsors of Terrorism

By Douglas Farah

I am not a Russia expert, but it is clear that the Putin-led government is going out of its way to antagonize the United States and its allies. One of the primary, and most dangerous methods, is the sale of billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry to state sponsors of terrorism, particularly Iran and Venezuela.

These just happen to be the two states most intent on inflicting as much harm as possible on the United States and its allies, as well as the two governments funding the unrest that has pushed Bolivia to the brink of civil war and actions that are turning Nicaragua into the pariah state.

As the Times of London notes,the sales include anti-aircraft missiles and top of the line fighter jets, due in production in 2010.

It is interesting to note that Russia's deputy prime minister, Igor Sechin, one of the closest allies of Mr Putin, the Prime Minister, visited Venezuela and Cuba this week. Sechin is widely reported to be the main backer of Viktor Bout, the notorious weapons trafficker in prison in Thailand, awaiting an extradition hearing next week to determine if he will be handed over to the United States to stand trial.

(In an ominous sign that Bout's extradition will not be approved, the Thai appellate court, for the first time this week, rejected a U.S. extradition request. This one was for Jamshid Ghassemi, an Iranian indicted in the United States for acquiring dual-use equipment and accelerometers for Iran's nuclear program. The court ruling gave no reasons for its decision, which is unappealable, and foul play is suspected.

There are several parallels to the Bout case, where the Russians have been offering large financial inducements, oil deals and preferential weapons deals in exchange for Bout's freedom. Another terrorist supplier under Russian protection.)

The justification for Russia's behavior seems to be that it is now threatened by U.S. and Western European involvement in former Soviet republics. The general deterioration in the U.S.-Russia relationship is likely to have widespread impact.

That may explain Russia's desire to project force into the Western hemisphere, as it did by flying two TU 160s, the world's largest supersonic bomber, to Venezuela. It does not, however, explain the desire to arm regimes with a history of violence and state sponsorship of terrorism against their neighbors. My full blog is here.

Al-Qaida's 9/11 Anniversary Video Release Delayed Due to Technical Problems, Human Errors

By Evan Kohlmann

For those who follow the workings of Al-Qaida's As-Sahab Media Foundation, it is no secret that As-Sahab has recently been suffering a series of embarrassing technical problems relating to the delayed publication of Al-Qaida's 9/11 seventh anniversary video, titled "Results of 7 Years of the Crusades." The video--which features speeches by (among others) Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, and Abu Yahya al-Liby--appeared set for release on September 11, exactly in the same manner as last year and 2006. Excerpts were handed over to Al-Jazeera for airing over Arabic-language satellite news networks.

Yet, a crippling network outage for Al-Qaida appears to have played a role in thwarting As-Sahab's efforts at completing the distribution process. One of the primary Internet discussion forums used by Al-Qaida and its global network of affiliates to distribute their propaganda and recruit supporters--known as "Al-Ekhlaas"--was suddenly knocked offline on approximately September 10. Next on the chopping block were a series of domains used by another competing extremist forum "Al-Hesbah." The ultimate reason for the outage is unknown, however there have been some reports attributing the action to independent efforts aimed at combating Al-Qaida's online activities. For nearly a week, with the "Ekhlaas" website still offline, there has been no word from As-Sahab--resulting in avid speculation among Al-Qaida supporters on the remaining discussion forums.

Today, As-Sahab finally seems to have recovered from its paralysis, and announced the belated distribution of packaged copies of the video "Results of 7 Years of the Crusades." Ironically, this time, the problem would not be technical, but rather the result of human error. Much to the chagrin of Al-Qaida's media gurus, the announcement from As-Sahab (care of the Al-Fajr Media Center) included the wrong password for the packaged video--meaning that users can download but not actually view the film. The solution is as simple as re-publishing the correct password--but nearly 12 hours after the announcement was first issued, As-Sahab still has yet to correct its error. Dozens of users, writing in Arabic, English, and other languages, have flooded extremist chat forums to discuss their frustrations over the password issue. After several hours passed and no response came from As-Sahab or the Al-Fajr Media Center, one user complained impatiently, "We are still waiting..."

Given an organization like As-Sahab which prides itself in its consistency and professionalism, these technical glitches are a reminder of how crude and tenuous the links that bind together Al-Qaida's global media machine actually can be.

Transnational Drug Bust Shows Power of Cooperation

By Douglas Farah

Today's DOJ announcement of a major, multinational bust of the Gulf Cartel shows that cooperation across agencies and international borders can yield significant results.

With the growing nexus of the drug trade and terrorist activities, it is no longer possible to view the drug trade as separate from the merging organized crime/terrorist pipelines that we are seeing across Latin America and Asia.

The 15-month "Project Reckoning" operation stretched from Mexico to Italy, yielding 175 arrests, the seizure of $60 million and other benefits. It touched sections of the transnational criminal pipeline in Colombia, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, the United States.

There is no question the results are particularly good news for Mexico, where the Calderon government is fighting for its survival and the survival of the Mexican state in the face of renewed drug cartel violence.

It is hard to understand why more such operations are not undertaken. Part of the reason is the lack of sustained focus by previous attorneys general on the issue of transnational crime and its long-term impact on the societies in which it operates, including creating conditions that foster an alliance with terrorist organizations (the FARC in Colombia, the Taliban in Afghanistan/Pakistan, the Tamil Tigers etc.)

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has gone a long way toward remedying that oversight and neglect, and I hope it continues, regardless of who wins the elections. My full blog is here.

To contain Jihadism you need Pluralism

By Walid Phares

Prague, September 16, 2008

As part of my current European lectures and briefings tour in Europe which began this week at the European Parliament in Brussels I presented a lecture to the Center for International Security in Prague on the war of ideas and global strategies of the Jihadist movements and regimes. I will be reporting on this tour in the near future. Following is an interview with the editor of the news center at (the US-funded) Radio Free Europe based in Prague based on a discussion centered on the ideological confrontation with the Jihadi forces worldwide. The exchanged was edited and sent to news desks in several languages to be broadcast. Below, find the interview and the link to the site.

DISCUSSION ON RADIO FREE EUROPE IN PRAGUE
Copyright (c) 2008. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

If choosing excerpts from an article, we require that you note that the material is an excerpt.

The U.S. change of command in Iraq this week comes with violence levels at four-year lows and a slight reduction planned in U.S. troop figures. Although large-scale attacks remain a concern, many observers regard a weakening of Al-Qaeda in Iraq as a major reason for the reduction of bloodshed.

Walid Phares, a visiting fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, talks to RFE/RL correspondent Charles Recknagel about Al-Qaeda's setbacks in Iraq and the future of its ideology.

He says young Muslim minds must be offered "a model of pluralism and democracy" as an alternative to a "fighting caliphate."

RFE/RL: After many battles between Al-Qaeda and its former Sunni insurgent allies, and after the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq, terrorist attacks are markedly down. Now some U.S. commanders are speaking of reaching the end-game of the conflict. What has caused Al-Qaeda, which initially made such rapid progress in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, to lose so much ground?

Walid Phares: Well, No. 1, there were two stages in what seems to be a decline but not yet the end of Al-Qaeda. The first stage was that it lost its enclave and the first battle really was in Fallujah. Al-Qaeda's not being able to establish similar Fallujah-like enclaves was its first defeat. Then, it was able to survive through its networks and the foreign jihadists who poured through the borders and, of course, it was able to survive a longer period of time because of some of the support the local Salafist networks in Iraq have provided. The reason for why Al-Qaeda is on the decline today is first of all its own behavior, its own savagery with civil society, and that is a hallmark of the Salafi combat doctrine, which in Algeria in the 1990s also had similar activities and lost the trust of Muslim constituencies.

But again, the real Al-Qaeda defeat today is because of the surge that has operated over the past year, denying Al-Qaeda the initiative. But having said all that, I agree with the commanders on the ground that this is the endgame, but only of this stage. The big question would be if, after a redeployment of U.S.-led coalition forces, Iraqi forces would be able to deliver the same blow to Al-Qaeda. And the jury is still out on that.

PHARES SEES "TWO STAGES IN...A DECLINE BUT NOT YET THE END OF AL QAEDA"

RFE/RL: The level of violence Al-Qaeda is ready to use against civilians is, indeed, so horrific that it often is very hard to understand the movement's appeal at all. Yet, jihadists are able to recruit new members, partly because they claim to be working for the goal of a peaceful and just, almost utopian, world. Their stated goal is to liberate people from existing exploitive governments and recreate the harmonious society that existed in the earliest days of Islam between the Prophet Muhammad and his immediate followers. Does this appealing vision give jihadism an enduring appeal and perhaps assure that -- despite the setbacks in Iraq and Algeria -- jihadism will never entirely disappear?

Phares: That's what the jihadist message says in its propagandist dimension, meaning for soft eyes and ears before they are indoctrinated in the classroom, in the madrasahs. What they are talking about really is to bring down 21 Arab governments as we know them. They are not always democratic or efficient, but what the jihadists want to establish instead -- and I wouldn't say only 21 but 52 Muslim states if they can -- is the Taliban model. If you ask a Salafi jihadist or an Al-Qaeda supporter what is your ideal regime, they would say the Taliban, which means no rights for women, no rights for minorities, no religious rights -- remember what they have done with the Buddhist statues and with Shi'a or with Sunni who will not go by their ideals -- plus establishment of a very tightly interpreted Shari'a law, meaning blocking progress and liberalization within the Muslim world. If you ask a Salafi jihadist or an Al-Qaeda supporter what is your ideal regime, they would say the Taliban, which means no rights for women, no rights for minorities, no religious rights.

With all of that, obviously, the real message is going to be understood by the public only if there is an alternative thinking, meaning: In order to contain and reverse the agenda of the jihadists you have to have pluralism, you have to have the ability for young minds to get another message and let them make their choice. If they listen to a message that says, well, the future is for a "fighting caliphate," and at the same time they see a model of pluralism and democracy, then the choice will be theirs. I do not believe that reversing or defeating the jihadists intellectually is only by crushing their message. It is by offering another alternative and the choice will be a free choice.

RFE/RL: If jihadism has the potential to recruit people as a liberation theology, or liberation ideology, let's look more specifically at where that potential comes from in the Middle East. Is it due to great public disappointment with the region's self-named republican leaders who led the struggle against colonialism? Is there a sense that Western democracy does not offer the East a workable model? Is it due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? These are all reasons that are sometimes cited.

Phares: All these reasons are valid, or have some validity. But that alone does not explain the choice for another as oppressive, as suppressive movement. Meaning, that if young minds were able to choose they would choose to be away from oppression and not to choose one form of oppression over another one. The only way is for young minds, those who have not been indoctrinated, to see that there is a difference. And if you take societies where Al-Qaeda has been thriving, these are societies where the segments have been conditioned. Meaning, young people go to madrasahs because they don't have another opportunity. And once they are in the madrasah, don't blame them if they get only this one dominant ideology. It all goes back to providing a space for freedom -- democracy will come as a result of that. You cannot impose democracy, but you can open a space for freedom.

RFE/RL: An Arab analyst once remarked to me that the reason for the "war on terror" is, in his words, that "our fundamentalists are at war with your fundamentalists." That's a provocative way of saying the West shares blame for the "war on terror" due to the pursuit of its own interests in the Middle East, including making profitable alliances with autocratic regimes rather than making greater efforts to promote democratic groups. How do you react to this notion? We have seen what happened with many liberal elements in the Middle East who have been suppressed by authoritarian regimes allied with the West.

Phares: Yes, of course, U.S., Western, European foreign policies have made tremendous mistakes and among those most important mistakes in the past were to ally themselves with autocratic regimes in the region. We have seen what happened in Iran. We have seen what happened with many liberal elements in the Middle East who have been suppressed by authoritarian regimes allied with the West. Yes, I do accept partially that criticisms can be leveled against foreign policies.

But the only difference is that the West can correct itself. Not just the West, democracies can correct themselves. That's why there are opposition movements, that is why there are hearings in congresses and parliaments, that is why there are demonstrations and free press. If the Arab and Muslim world can reach the level whereby an opposition is tolerated, whereby women can vote and drive in some places, I think that would be a good agenda to follow.

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NEFA Foundation: Video of a "Terrorist Training Camp" in Canada

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained exclusive footage of a would-be "terrorist training camp" that took place in a rural section of Canada in 2006. The camp, directed by CSIS confidential informant Mubin Shaikh, included members of the alleged “Toronto 18” terror cell, who are accused of conspiring to carry out a large-scale terrorist attack in southern Ontario, including plans for truck bombings and storming local buildings such as the Canadian Parliament and the headquarters of the CSIS. The video features footage of the men receiving instruction on the use of handguns, sniper tactics, and basic calisthenics. Crudely edited by its creators to include nasheed music, the video also shows the men practicing evasive driving maneuvers at night in an abandoned parking lot.

Voices of the Awakening: One-Year Anniversary of Abdul Sattar's Death

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Today FDD's Center for Terrorism Research brings you the third installment of our Voices of the Awakening project, authored by Sterling Jensen, which is designed to provide Westerners a better understanding of ongoing developments in Iraq's Awakening movement. This regular feature includes critical translations of Awakening news and documents, Jensen's observations and analysis, and occasional interviews with the movement's leaders.

The most significant news this week was the commemoration of the one-year anniversary of Sheikh Abdul Sattar's death, and Sheikh Ahmad Bezia's trip to Baghdad to visit such national leaders as prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, Sayed Ammar al-Hakim, and national security adviser Muafaq Rubaie. An excerpt:

In three separate articles, the Awakening reported the one-year anniversary of the martyrdom of Sheikh Abdul Sattar Bezia Abu Risha. Commemoration of the event included a eulogy of Sheikh Abdul Sattar, interviews with his brothers Sheikh Ahmad Bezia and Abdul Jabbar Bezia, videos of him, a visit to the site of his assassination by locals and the General Secretariat of the Iraqi Awakening, a ceremony in honor of Sheikh Abdul Sattar and all other victims of terror, and an iftar feast (breaking the Ramadan fast) in their honor. Among the many things mentioned about Sheikh Abdul Sattar's life and impact on Iraq was the fact that his memory is recorded in Iraq's national history. His name is mentioned whenever the Iraqi, Arab and Western media talk about the end of terrorism in Iraq, or reconciliation and national unity. In Anbar, his name is honored at every provincial dedication and ceremony. Sheikh Abdul Sattar will be remembered as a national hero.

INSIDER'S PERSPECTIVE: The content's focus in remembering Sheikh Abdul Sattar was positive: he was an inspiration, and the Awakening will continue his legacy. In an area of the Middle East where it is common to wail and weep in memory of the dead for centuries, this commemoration of Abdul Sattar's martyrdom is being presented in a way to lift Anbaris and Iraqis to a better future. Abdul Sattar's brother, Sheikh Abdul Jabbar, gave a speech about national unity saying that only by working together with national government institutions in the spirit of unity would Iraq awake to a better, more secure future. The lack of pessimism and divisiveness in the ceremonies, interviews, and reporting is projecting the Awakening's goal of an optimistic era for the new Iraq.

For the entire Voices of the Awakening update, click here.

'Airline' Plotters Trained In FATA

By Paul Cruickshank

Last night NBC aired a one hour documentary on the 2006 'Airline Plot', widely regarded as Al Qaeda's most ambitious plot since 9/11.

Following on from the documentary, Richard Greenberg and Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC and myself have just published this in-depth report on the genesis of the plot and the unprecedented international investigation that thwarted it.

The article is part of a special web extra section on the plot on the MSNBC website, which includes a video profile of a former jihadist recruit, who knew several of the alleged airline plotters, and now works to combat Al Qaeda's recruiting efforts in east London.

The article contains new information on Al Qaeda's alleged role in the 'airline' plot and new detail on the links between the 'airline plot' ringleaders and the leaders of several other Al Qaeda-linked terrorist conspiracies in the UK.

A senior Bush administration official and two U.S. intelligence officials told Dateline that intelligence shows that some of the men convicted in this case - though the officials did not identify them by name - traveled to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, widely believed to be home to al-Qaida’s leaders, where they received explosives training “from al-Qaida specialists.”

The revelation comes at a time when there is mounting concern in Western capitals over Al Qaeda's safe-haven in the tribal areas of north-western Pakistan. It is widely recognized that Al Qaeda's foothold along this part of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has grown stronger since the 2006 'Airline plot' was broken up.

Al Qaeda and the U.S. agree on... Mauritania

By Olivier Guitta

While Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb made good on its promise to attack Mauritania, killing yesterday 12 soldiers in an ambush, I looked for the Middle East Times at how the West's assessment of the situation on the ground is seriously flawed. In fact, both Al Qaeda and the U.S. are vocally opposed to the new regime that emerged after the August 6 coup.
For an extensive coverage of Al Qaeda in Mauritania, please view The Croissant (available to subscribers only for a small fee).

For the details, please read my entire piece here.

Here is an excerpt:
Al-Qaida and the United States are not usually on the same side of an issue. One exception though: Mauritania. After the bloodless military coup of Aug. 6 in this North African country, both al-Qaida and the U.S. were quick to denounce very vocally the new regime.

While it is true that this coup puts a stop to the recent democratization process, it would have been wise for the West to read between the lines and assess that one of the major reasons for this event was to stop the Islamists.

Mauritania has a history of coups: The country has had 31 coup attempts since 1978; some were successful. Sheikh Sidi Ould Abdallahi, the president that was unseated, was the first democratically elected leader of Mauritania in 2007. He was a civilian and a democrat but had been contested within his own majority and the country had witnessed a major political crisis in the three months preceding the coup.

Abdallahi made mistakes that made him unpopular with the population and the very powerful military. He opened up the prisons, freeing at the same time dangerous Islamists. According to a Mauritanian intellectual: "This was a mistake because, in a country with an oriental mentality where the despotic [need] remains very strong, this democratic concession was seen as a sign of weakness." Thus the Islamists have been all the more active for the past two years. Furthermore, the president made several gestures to please the Islamists, such as re-establishing the Muslim week-end (Friday and Saturday), building a mosque in the presidential palace, allowing the creation of an Islamist political party that legitimized Islamists.

Wall Street's Collapse Enhances Influence of "Islamic Finance" Vehicles (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

One impact of the collapse of a number of major institutions on Wall Street this year (a trend which will continue into next year) will be to enhance the influence of "Islamic finance" (or "shariah finance") vehicles which have arisen in the past five years. The prime mover of capital into these vehicles has been the high price of crude oil, which has moved hundreds of billions of dollars of capital towards the Islamic world. I posted on the potential risk of the development of these vehicles in a post here on June 30:

"Financial institutions are especially keen on reaching new markets, and others in the audience foresee the opportunity to engage in outreach and peace-building efforts. But they should take a breath and first survey that subject more deeply before diving into it... (I)t is painfully obvious that Wall Street mavens who lust for better connections and expanded markets in the islamic world often have no clue to the backgrounds, connections, ideologies, or ultimate goals of some of the central officials and organizations involved in many "Islamic finance" or "shariah finance" vehicles. Neither does Wall Street, nor K Street in Washington for that matter, realize that shariah finance vehicles are seen by Islamists as perfect indirect mechanisms for funding the implementation of extremist shariah law and/or violent jihad."

The opportunites and risks were also discussed in the report, "Dealing With Today’s Asymmetric Threat to U.S. and Global Security," which resulted from a seminar in which several of us participated in May, co-sponsored by the National Defense University and CACI International.

"In addition, Islamic finance structures are growing, redistributing the world’s wealth and economic power. In order to regain our status and compete with the Islamic world, the U.S. and the Western World must do business in the Middle East. To be able to help these countries build their infrastructures, and also to avoid shutting out U.S. businesses, it is critically important that the U.S. start thinking about entering this non-traditional marketplace. Other industrialized nations, such as Japan, Korea, and Great Britain, are already working in the Middle East and, in some cases, accepting Islamic financing. While this model is different for us, we must look at it as a good move from a trade perspective, with a potential side benefit of creating U.S. jobs... However, there is growing concern within the U.S. Department of Treasury and elsewhere that Islamic financing vehicles are contributing a portion of funds to other groups that are intent on using radical Islamist approaches and enabling the gradual subversion of Western culture. Therefore, the U.S. must be attentive to sources of Islamist financing in order to establish whether they contribute, directly or indirectly, to money laundering, terrorist financing, or the enforcement of strict Sharia law."

I personally wrote the last two sentences above based on information in May from sources, but last week I was told that senior Treasury Department officials seem to have little current concern about "Islamic finance" vehicles. We'll find out whether they are right soon. The permanent demise of Wall Steet as the preeminent center of finance and capital in the world will lead to more reliance on these recently vested centers of capital, with political capital shifting with it.

UPDATE, Sept. 16: For a concurring opinion, see Frank Gaffney's op-ed in today's Washington Times, "Wall Street, what's next?"

New Information on U.K. Airline Plot

By Paul Cruickshank

Please tune in tonight at 10pm to Dateline NBC with Chris Hansen for a one hour documentary, which I co-produced with Richard Greenberg, that sheds new light on the Al Qaeda connection in the 2006 Airline Plot.

Editor's Note: "Inside the terror plot that 'rivaled 9/11'" broadcast tonight on NBC. The article includes photos of the evidence and details on each defendant. An excerpt:

"Prosecutors did not produce any evidence explicitly linking the plot to al-Qaida, but privately, British officials have suggested that al Qaida’s number three at the time, Abu Ubaidah al Masri, authorized the alleged airline plot. Al Masri reportedly died last year of natural causes. A senior Bush administration official and two U.S. intelligence officials told Dateline that intelligence shows that some of the men convicted in this case - though the officials did not identify them by name - traveled to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, widely believed to be home to al-Qaida’s leaders, where they received explosives training 'from al-Qaida specialists.'"

Paul Cruickshank will participate in the upcoming September 23 panel on the jihadists' revolt against Al Qaeda, to be conducted on Capitol Hill and co-sponsored by New America Foundation and the Counterterrorism Foundation.

Hezbollah and Sudan's Salafi Regime Converge

By Walid Phares

The convergence between Jihadi Khomeinists and Jihadi Salafists seems to be developing as strategists and terrorism analysts are debating the near future of the global jihadi movement.

Moving fast to reach out to the Islamist regime in Khartoum, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization openly declared its backing of Omar Bashir's government as the latter in turn solidified its alliance with Hezbollah. This development, which surfaced as of the end of July, comes in parallel of an attempt by the Khomeinist-inspired organization to sign a collaboration agreement with Salafist factions in Beirut a few weeks ago. But the Hezbollah-Sudan exchange of declarations of support is by far the most significant convergence of Jihadi forces from the two branches of Islamism since Iran began funding Hamas and Islamic Jihad more than a decade ago.

On July 31, Lebanon Now reported that as he was welcoming the Sudanese presidential envoy Qutub al-Mahdi, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary general, called the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of President Bashir for genocide as "part of the international conspiracy to strike elements of force in the Arab and Islamic nations, and to destabilize internal stability."

It is worth noting that the ICC had issued a warrant for the arrest of the head of the Sudanese regime for his responsibilities in the mass murder of Black African tribes in Darfur. As I wrote in an op-ed titled "Brotherhood against Democracy" last July, a surge in the region bringing together authoritarian forces and regimes, all of them opposed to international efforts, U.S.-led or not, to back democracy in the region. Within this expanding jihadi-authoritarian axis, Lebanon-based Khomeinists have been playing a significant role in the rapprochement with Salafist movements and regimes.

As reported in the independent Beirut daily an-Nahar on Aug. 1, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said "international meddling in Sudan's affairs has reached dangerous levels."

According to an-Nahar, Nasrallah declared he is backing the Sudanese regime and Bashir "in this fateful confrontation."

The pro-Syrian daily al-Akhbar (Aug. 1) quoted Nasrallah as saying the "conspiracy (against Bashir) aims at striking the elements of strengths in the Arab and Islamic Umma."

The leader of Hezbollah committed to fight back against "what is called international community with determination," asserting that this conspiracy targets the Arab and Muslim states one after the other, especially those whom he called the "obstructionist forces" (al-qiwa al-mumania).

The pro-government daily al-Mustaqbal quoted Nasrallah accusing the United States and some groupings in America with links to Zionism of "working on dividing Africa and spread chaos on the continent."

Responding to Hezbollah declarations of collaboration, Sudan's regime declared its solidarity with the Iranian-funded militia, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and a number of Western countries. According to the Chinese News Service Xinhuanet (Aug. 12) Bashir expressed his "admiration for Lebanese (based) Hezbollah and for its secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah."

His statement came during a visit by a Hezbollah delegation, led by Lebanese MP Hassan Hajj Hassan to Khartoum to express solidarity. Hassan said that his organization repudiate the demands of the prosecutor general of the ICC and "as a resistance in Lebanon we will be together with the Sudanese to confront the conspiracy of the 'arrogant American' against the interest of our Umma in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Sudan."

The ties between Hezbollah -- and regionally the Iranian regime -- and the Islamist establishment in Sudan are neither new nor a surprise. For observers have long noted the back and forth movement between the Tehran Khomeinist networks and Khartoum's Salafi Islamists. Already, in the early 1990s a delegation from the Pasdaran attended the all out Jihadi Conference in Sudan organized by Dr. Hassan Turabi, one of the main Islamist ideologues of the late 20th century. But in the past few years, especially as the Darfur crisis emerged in international relations, reports asserted that "Hezbollah has sent military trainers to Sudan to train elements of the militia movement there that Sudanese President Bashir has recently established to deal with the 'American campaign' against his regime," according to Stratfor an intelligence newsletter (Aug. 28).

But reality may be even more critical. Sources in the region believe Hezbollah has already established permanent basis in Sudan around Khartoum, in the Darfur areas controlled by the Janjaweed militia and close to the southern Sudan districts managed by the SPLA. The Iranian regime has dispatched the Arabic speaking Hezbollah trainers to Bashir a while ago, in the framework of collaboration against the U.S., Europe and the Arab moderates. The direct mission of the Hezbollah "expeditionary corps" is more strategic than Western analysis has already absorbed. First, the "advisors" will be training Sudanese regime militias to strike at the forthcoming "international force" to be deployed in Darfur. Second, they will coach the Khartoum Islamist forces in a potential return of hostilities with the southerners. Hezbollah will practically help Bashir's Jihadists to crush any move towards self determination in the south. Last but not least, a Hezbollah base in Sudan, will offer Tehran an ideal launching pad for potential terrorist operations against U.S. targets in the entire region including the Red Sea, the African Horn and provide a sea shore for Iranian activities south of the Suez Canal.

This tremendous geopolitical opportunity was not even considered by many experts and analysts advising Washington and Brussels as they refused even to consider the mere possibility of cooperation between Sunni Salafism and Shia Khomeinism. This is another troubling example of how academic apology can lead to future strategic catastrophe in the real world.

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Walid Phares is the director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a visiting professor at the European Foundation for Democracy and the author of "The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad."

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Promoting Charity while Reducing Risks of Terror Financing

By Matthew Levitt

The following book review on the theme of Islamic charity apears in the Fall 2008 volume of Middle East Quarterly

The Price of Fear: The Truth behind the Financial War on Terror by Ibrahim Warde (University of California Press, 2007); Understanding Islamic Charities, edited by Jon B. Alterman and Karin von Hippel (CSIS 2007).

"Terror networks often use compromised or complicit charities and businesses to support their objectives."[1] Such were the findings of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) -- the 34-member multilateral body that aims to set global standards for preventing money laundering and counterterror financing regimes -- in its recent report on terrorist financing. In fact, FATF warned that "the misuse of nonprofit organizations for the financing of terrorism is coming to be recognized as a crucial weak point in the global struggle to stop such funding at its source."[2]

The findings of this technocratic, nonpartisan, multilateral body must come as an unwelcome surprise to Price of Fear author Warde, adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. In Warde's parallel universe, the financial war on terror is a farce, and governments -- especially the U.S. government -- are not to be believed when they point to successes in either stemming the flow of funds to terrorists or following financial trails to ferret out terrorist networks. According to Warde, the myth of a financial front in the war on terror is but a facade erected to create the illusion of victory in an otherwise set of failed policies. The Price of Fear flies in the face of the extensive available evidence and simply falls flat. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in Warde's treatment of the abuse of charities for terrorist financing, which he dismissively describes as a "reflexive equation of Islamic charities with terrorism." Tell that to British authorities who found that during "2006 a significant proportion of investigations into the financing of terrorism included an assessment of links to charitable organizations."[3]

Unlike Warde's book, Understanding Islamic Charities is a serious study. A policy monograph, it approaches the issue from the perspective of aid organizations and gives credence to the idea that there are critical needs that Islamic charities are best situated to address for geographic, cultural, or religious reasons. The chapters share a thematic focus on the need to highlight opportunities to facilitate aid, and while thoughtful and well-reasoned, the monograph is largely unsatisfying -- like a short story that ends too quickly. Its flaws lie in two critical misunderstandings.

First, the authors assume that promoting opportunities for charitable giving is incompatible with reducing the risks that those opportunities will be abused for illicit purposes. They inform us, for example, that due diligence on the part of charities is difficult, costly, and has limited value. The real question, in fact, should be how to streamline due diligence and make self-regulation more cost effective. Second, the authors repeatedly conflate the financing of extremist ideologies with the financing of terrorism. Arguably, charities -- Islamist or otherwise -- should not be financing extremist ideologies in the first place. But the real debate is over a completely different threshold: violence. Balancing the risk of violence and the opportunity for charity, the authors display a disquieting level of comfort with erring on the side of charity.

That said, Understanding Islamic Charities raises several significant issues worthy of further research. Can governments take a more surgical approach to designating charities, weeding out bad actors in those cases when the entire charity is not corrupted? Could European governments better use intelligence to drive their financial investigations as agencies do in the United States? How can government outreach to the charitable sector be improved, and can the rules governing nongovernmental organization activities be more transparent?

There can be no doubt that charity is a value of paramount importance to donors and recipients alike. Recognizing, as illicit actors already have, that the charitable sector is vulnerable to abuse and devising policies that protect charities from abuse even as they promote charitable giving is the true challenge. Understanding Islamic Charities makes an effort to start addressing these questions even if it leaves the reader largely unsatisfied. The Price of Fear makes no such effort.

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A Useful Reminder of the Enemy's Efforts

By Douglas Farah

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting story on the ongoing efforts of al Qaeda to carry out a high-profile strike, particularly in Europe.

Several things stand out in the article. One is the amount of evidence that could not be introduced in British court in the recent mixed verdict, despite the fact that "intercepts and other evidence indicate that leaders of the plots had contact with each other, converged in Pakistan and were trained by Al Qaeda bosses, officials said."

It is always striking to me how much information, after it is gathered and often held for a significant period time-far past the time it would compromise sources and methods-is simply unusable in court.

A second thing is that the plotters were apparently all getting together in Pakistan and training with the old-guard al Qaeda core group. It is interesting that, despite the conflict in Iraq and many other places where these groups could train-including in Great Britain, they still go back to the "homeland" of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

I suspect this considerable time, risk and expense is viewed as worthwhile because the blessing and knowledge of old guard al Qaeda is still viewed as something to be sought at almost any cost, at least among certain groups of _jihadis._

This, in turn, speaks to the great appeal and moral authority still exercised by bin Laden and his immediate circle. Clearly there is a decentralization and franchizing out of the broader radical Islamist network, but to me this undercuts some of the appeal of the argument that we are dealing almost exclusively with a leaderless network. Yes, there are leaderless networks, or segmented groups that operate, but it seems the blessing of the old guard is still valuable to significant groups. My full blog is here.

Two More Counterterror SEALs Die in Afghanistan

By James Gordon Meek

Two more Navy SEALs from an extraordinarily elite and supersecret counterterrorism unit have been killed in Afghanistan, following the death two weeks ago of a SEAL from the same clandestine unit.

Details were - not surprisingly - vague. There is no direct evidence they died fighting in the new CIA-led offensive against Al Qaeda and the Taliban along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But their loss in Afghanistan is certainly significant and a real blow to their fellow operators in the Joint Special Operations Command, which includes the Army’s Delta Force.

The two SEALs were killed September 11 somewhere “in Afghanistan,” according to military press releases, and were part of the shadowy Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the elite counterterrorism force once known as SEAL Team 6. Typically, the military identifies which Afghan town, district, city or province where American troops perish. But for the third time since August 30, when Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Thomas Harris, a Bronze Star recipient, was reported killed after being swept away during a combat river crossing, the precise location of the latest “DEVGRU” combat casualties is unknown.

Killed last week were Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator John Wayne Marcum, 34, and Chief (select) Special Warfare Operator Jason Richard Freiwald, 30, the Navy said. Each man had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was a highly decorated SEAL. Before Harris, no DEVGRU SEAL had fallen in Afghanistan since March 2002, according to a review of Operation Enduring Freedom deaths at iCasualties.org.

Marcum earned four Bronze Star medals with the combat “V” distinguishing device, as well as the Joint Service Commendation medal, four Combat Action ribbons and a chestful of other decorations in his career. The younger Freiwald had also earned a Bronze Star and Combat Action ribbon, the Navy said.

Sadly, both SEALs leave behind a wife and daughter. The Naval Special Warfare Foundation, which accepts donations, will likely provide support for each family.

Diplomatic Explusions Highlight Need for US to Re-Engage with Latin America

By Jonathan Winer

The expulsions last week of the U.S. Ambassadors to Venezuela and Bolivia, and the U.S.'s reciprocal response should not have been unexpected. They illustrate the current condition of long deteriorating relations between the U.S. and those countries, as well as with Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, over the course of the Bush Administration. They are also an unsurprising result of systemic neglect of the U.S. relationship with Latin America more generally.

It’s difficult to imagine any Administration having a happy relationship with Hugo Chavez, who is the most difficult (and obnoxious) Latin American leader the U.S. has encountered since Fidel Castro. Chavez has combined cheesy domestic populism, socialistic and anti-Yankee rhetoric, Machiavellian uses of burgeoning oil revenues, corruption, and outright support for terrorists in neighboring countries to create a problem for the region that the U.S. cannot solve alone.

The need for a more inclusivist, collaborative U.S. strategy to combat Chavez’s excesses, and to minimize the harm he can do to such critical policies as combating narcotics and terrorism, has been evident for years. To date, that strategy has been largely Colombia focused, and largely law enforcement focused, and to that extent, it has been largely successful, as the capture of the FARC documents in the Raul Reyes computers last March demonstrated.

But the failure of the Bush Administration to put in place a wider diplomatic and development strategy, by which the U.S. would be able to make common cause with the many governments in Latin America who are infuriated and even threatened by Chavez, is striking. Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, have each recalled their own ambassadors from Chavez's Venezuela in previous years, and merely constitute the starting places for partners in such a strategy. The U.S. will need separately to redevelop its relationships over time with Chavez's erstwhile allies in Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua, irrespective of its issues with Chavez. Figures such as Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega may find provocative behavior towards the U.S. helpful in the short-run, but are likely to find that longer-term political survival is facilitated by rapprochment with a post-Bush United States.

The newfound Russian and Iranian interest in the region highlights the weakness of the U.S. position in the region after two terms of President Bush. Neither country has natural strategic reasons to be involved in Latin America. Each is responding to the opportunity presented by Chavez’s hostility to the U.S., and the U.S. incapacity to date to respond effectively.

The opportunities for the two Presidential campaigns would seem obvious, at least in substantive terms, while U.S. politics remains focused on bridges to remote places in Alaska.

What might such a strategy include?

The substance of the strategy - as opposed to its actual implementation - has already been developed, and is laid out very well in the draft communiqué prepared this past July for next April’s fifth Summit of the Americas to be held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

It states what is needed with remarkable clarity:

“Deep and persistent inequalities continue to exist, especially in education, income levels, health and nutritional status, exposure to violence and crime, and access to basic services. In response, we will continue to develop and implement social protection programs that are specifically targeted to the poor and vulnerable groups in our societies, in order to ensure equal access for all men and women to basic social services such as water, housing, healthcare, food and sanitation.”

The draft Summit of Americas statement goes on to acknowledge that “to eliminate poverty and hunger, create jobs, and raise the standard of living all our people, we must achieve higher levels of continuous economic growth with equity.” It then reaffirms the region’s commitment to open trade, economic integration, and “the necessary policies and regulations to facilitate and promote the movement of enterprises and workers from the informal to the formal sector.”

This is an agenda that bridges right and left, and includes an anti-money laundering and regulatory reform component, as the movement of people, businesses and money from the informal sector requires a reduction in the kinds of taxes and regulations that push economic activity into the grey area, even as it requires documentation of economic activity, and the payment of taxes to governments, which in turn can be used to deliver actual services to people who need them. It needs to be followed with the concrete efforts at implementation, country by country, facilitated by regional institutions and when needed, external assistance and aid. Its urgency is likely to increase, given rising energy and food costs, which are likely to intensify the economic challenges facing many governments in the Americas in the months to come, while prompting intensified efforts to create new means for delivering food and energy close to home through greater use of renewables. There is already a great deal taking place on the ground in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and each of the Central American countries on initiatives to move beyond hydropower and ethanol to biodiesel and solar. It is the kind of territory where practical opportunities have the potential to promptly trump ideological pet rocks.

This does not mean that the U.S. should stop efforts to go after drug traffickers, terrorists, and those who collaborate with them in the region. The publication in full of the documentation in the Raul Reyes computers, and continued designations of those who collaborated with FARC drug trafficking or terrorist activities are necessary cleansing actions, to ensure that are consequences for facilitating criminality, even if it done by state officials as a matter of state policy.

It will not be easy to proceed constructively on the development and economic agenda, while continuing to expose corruption and criminality in Latin America even when it is inconvenient for Hugo Chavez and his ambitions. Both strands will be necessary to crawl out of the deepening hole in the U.S.-Latin American relationship that Chavez has bulldozed while relevant U.S. policymakers appear to have been otherwise occupied.

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Serial Terror Blasts Strike Indian Capital, Indian Mujahedeen Claims Responsibility

By Animesh Roul

A series of explosions (at least six as per the latest inputs) have rocked Indian capital New Delhi within a span of half an hour on Saturday evening, (Sept. 13). The first explosion was reported in crowded Gaffar Market (near Karol Bagh). The second blast followed in Central Park of Connaught Place, another major hub for Delhites as well as foreigners. This was followed by two consecutive blasts in Greater Kailash-I’s M-Block market. The last couple of blasts took place on Barakhamba Road, near the Connaught Place in Central Delhi.

High alert has been sounded in other metros (e.g. Mumbai, Kolkata) after Saturday evening blasts. Police sources confirmed 15 deaths and nearly 100 people have been injured. Meanwhile, the so called Indian Mujahedeen (needless to say that IM is a front outfit of SIMI-LeT-Jaish and HuJi combine) claimed responsibility for the serial blasts which came close on the heels of similar synchronized attacks in major Indian cities Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmadabad this year.

Sept. 23 Panel: "The Jihadists' Revolt Against Al Qaeda" (edited Sept. 16)

By Andrew Cochran

The Jihadists’ Revolt Against Al Qaeda: Why Some of Al Qaeda’s Old Allies Have Turned Against It

Tuesday, September 23, 10 am, 2255 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC

Co-sponsored by New America Foundation and The Counterterrorism Foundation

Participants:

Peter Bergen, Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation

Paul Cruickshank, Fellow, Center on Law and Security, New York University School of Law

Evan Kohlmann, Senior Investigator, NEFA Foundation

(EDIT, Sept. 16: Stephen Coughlin cannot participate due to a scheduling conflict.)

Andrew Cochran, Moderator
Co-Chairman, Counterterrorism Foundation and Founder & Site Editor, Counterterrorism Blog

Guest Commentator: Maajid Nawaz, Director, Quilliam Foundation

In May, terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank (a Contributing Expert to this website) released an article titled, "The Unraveling: The jihadist revolt against bin Laden." The article was republished in media outlets around the world and became the subject for discussions on the current state and future of Al Qaeda. In this panel discussion, Messrs. Bergen and Cruickshank will discuss their continued research into the issue, with additional perspectives from panelists Contribuing Expert Evan Kohlmann and Stephen Coughlin and special guest commentator Maajid Nawaz.

Seats are limited. Please RSVP to me here.

Exclusive Translation: Intercepted Letters from al-Qaeda Leaders Shed Light on State of Network in Iraq

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Yesterday, Center for Terrorism Research (CTR) adjunct fellow Bill Roggio posted an important report at the Long War Journal. He noted that a series of letters intercepted by Multinational Forces-Iraq—letters that chronicle the communications between al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Islamic State of Iraq leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi—sheds light on how “Al Qaeda’s senior leadership has lost confidence in its commander in Iraq and views the situation in the country as dire.” These communications highlight divisions in the organization, the failures in its leadership, and problems with communications and propaganda efforts.

Today the Center for Terrorism Research provides an exclusive translation of these important documents, courtesy of CTR research fellow Tony Badran. We believe that this translation constitutes an important primary document for understanding the current state of the al-Qaeda network inside Iraq. To see the translation, click here.

Latin America Heats Up: Is There a Policy?

By Douglas Farah

The news that both Bolivia and Venezuela, whose presidents are staunch allies and friends, have chosen to expel the respective U.S. ambassadors is the most visible evidence of the frayed relations the United States now has with much of Latin America.

As my colleague Andrew Cochran wrote the United States then immediately took the step of designating the three most visible Venezuelan officials whose ties to the FARC were clearly established.

What is amazing is that, until this blow-up, U.S. officials in different departments of the government, have been minimizing the well-documented alliance, as well as other issues discussed below, that have made Latin America a far different place than it was five years ago.

Unfortunately, with the exception of Colombia policy, there has been virtually no policy toward Latin America, and the festering issues there have been left to fester.

As a friend said after recently sitting through a 50-minute briefing by a senior government official on security issues facing Latin America without once mentioning Venezuela, Iran or Russia, the presentation was a true "tour de force."

This was because the official managed to never mention any of the burning issues, instead painting a relatively upbeat picture of the regions as a free trade, democratic region in the full flower of health.

Much of the evidence against the three designated Venezuelans: Hugo Armando Carvajal (head of military intelligence); Henry de Jesus Rangel (director of intelligence); and Ramon Emilio Rodriguez Chacin (former minister of defense and interior) comes from the computer of Raul Reyes, the FARC's deputy commander killed in Ecuador by Colombian forces on March 1.

The Reyes documents (which I have analyzed in this NEFA Foundation paper clearly outline the role of the three in protecting the FARC, meeting regularly with FARC leadership and discussing weapons shipments with the rebels.

The FARC moves its some 250 kilos of cocaine, largely Europe-bound, through Venezuela, and internal FARC documents show that the shipments are often escorted by Venezuelan military or intelligence officials to the ports from which they are embarked, in order to insure the drugs' safe transit. My full blog is here.

U.S. Treasury Department Designates Senior Venezuelan Officials For Assisting FARC

By Andrew Cochran

This morning, after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez publicly ran the U.S. Ambassador out of the country, the U.S. Treasury department announced that two current and one former senior Venezuelan officials will be designated under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (the “Kingpin Act”). The designation indicates that the U.S. has proof that the Chavez officials are playing a siginifcant role in international drug trafficking on their own or providing material support to another person designated under the Act for drug trafficking - in this case, the FARC in Colombia. In short, the United States caught the Chavez government red-handed helping the worst narco-terrorists in the Western Hemisphere. From the press release:

“Today’s designation exposes two senior Venezuelan government officials and one former official who armed, abetted, and funded the FARC, even as it terrorized and kidnapped innocents,” said Adam J. Szubin, Director of OFAC... Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios is the Director of Venezuela’s Military Intelligence Directorate (DGIM). His assistance to the FARC includes protecting drug shipments from seizure by Venezuelan anti-narcotics authorities and providing weapons to the FARC, allowing them to maintain their stronghold of the coveted Arauca Department... Carvajal Barrios also provides the FARC with official Venezuelan government identification documents that allow FARC members to travel to and from Venezuela with ease... Henry de Jesus Rangel Silva, the Director of Venezuela’s Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services or DISIP... has materially assisted the narcotics trafficking activities of the FARC. He has also pushed for greater cooperation between the Venezuelan government and the FARC... Ramon Emilio Rodriguez Chacin, who was Venezuela’s Minister of Interior and Justice until September 8, is the Venezuelan government’s main weapons contact for the FARC. The FARC uses its proceeds from narcotics sales to purchase weapons from the Venezuelan government... Rodriguez Chacin has held numerous meetings with senior FARC members, one of which occurred at the Venezuelan government’s Miraflores Palace in late 2007. Rodriguez Chacin has also assisted the FARC by trying to facilitate a $250 million dollar loan from the Venezuelan government to the FARC in late 2007. We cannot confirm whether the loan materialized."

Treasury also released an Adobe Acrobat file with the links between the three officials designated today and specific FARC leaders.

This is the most serious official measure by the Bush Administration against the Chavez government, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more designations of Venezuelan, and perhaps Bolivian, officials. Obviously this has been in the works for some time. I would surmise that the level of investigative work and the interagency discussions which led to to this announcement gave Chavez just enough intel upon which to make a pre-emptive strike and dismiss our ambassador.

This site has been among the leaders in the coverage of Chavez's assistance to the FARC in posts by Douglas Farah (see his archives); Jonathan Winer (see his archives); and Aaron Mannes (see his archives).

CIA Hammers Al Qaeda, Haqqani Network Inside Pakistan

By James Gordon Meek

The CIA has begun waging an aggressive offensive inside Pakistan's tribal areas to kill Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, the New York Daily News reported today. The effort has picked up steam in recent weeks - which is obvious to anyone reading wire service reports of missile blasts from unmanned drones in the remote, mountainous badlands along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Osama Bin Laden's old Pashtun pal Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj, the Taliban's military masterminds and close allies of Al Qaeda, are among the top targets, U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism sources told me.

The CIA declined to comment on the operations. A plan for cross-border strikes by special operations forces was authorized by President Bush months ago, according to the Associated Press, but it has become increasingly public as targets became available - and were quickly attacked - in late summer.

However, CIA Director Michael Hayden may have hinted at the new effort - which is unhindered compared to the geopolitical red tape of just a year ago - in a message he sent to agency employees today to mark the September 11 anniversary.

"To see America under attack, as it was then, is something none of us can ever forget," Hayden wrote in the statement, according to a source. "There can be no finer way to honor the victims of 9/11 than to continue working with that full dedication to protect our country and uphold its values of freedom and decency in the world."

A Bad Deal on Libya

By David Schenker

Earlier this week, I published an op-ed in the Daily Standard about the August deal between Washington and Libya that paved the way for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Tripoli on September 5 and the normalization of bilateral ties.

The US-Libyan agreement establishes a mechanism to compensate the Lockerbie and La Belle disco victims of Libyan state-sponsored-terrorism. It also includes a provision to compensate the Libyan victims of the US counterstrike on Libya (codenamed El Dorado Canyon) in response to the La Belle disco attack.

It’s a remarkable agreement. As I noted in the Daily Standard piece:

On the face of it, the quid pro quo implicitly equates the intentional targeting of civilians (i.e., terrorism) with unintentional collateral damage incurred during a legal act of self defense. The administration's embrace of moral equivalency to seal the deal is stunning. In a surreal twist of events, Libyan leader Muamar Qaddhafi--who ordered the attack on the La Belle--could be eligible for compensation for the death of his adopted daughter, who was said to have been killed in the U.S. counterstrike.

The deal conflates the victims of terrorism and counterterrorism operations. Making matters worse, there’s been surprisingly little coverage of the egregious details of the agreement in the press. While the victims of Libyan terrorism are no doubt entitled to compensation, the Administration's deal comes at a high moral and political cost.

Google Surrenders to Sen.Lieberman, Changes YouTube to Bar Terrorist Incitement

By Andrew Cochran

On June 3, I posted about Google's hypocrisy in taking down a YouTube clip in Thailand because it "offended" the King, while continuing to enable terrorist organizations to post videos inciting violence. In May, Sen. Joseph Lieberman had urged Google to remove Internet videos produced by terrorist organizations, such as Al-Qaeda, from YouTube subsidiary. "Islamist terrorist organizations use YouTube to disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers, and provide weapons training. YouTube also, unwittingly, permits Islamist terrorist groups to maintain an active, pervasive, and amplified voice, despite military setbacks or successful operations by the law enforcement and intelligence communities." At that point, Google would not tighten its guidelines, citing free speech concerns. I commented that Google was risking litigation in the event of an attack by terrorists with a YouTube presence.

Today, Sen. Lieberman released a victorious press release, announcing Google's decision to strengthen the standards for videos on YouTube to bar those that incite violence. According to his release, the revised guidelines bar "predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people's personal information, and inciting others to commit violent acts..."

Congratulations to Sen. Lieberman for his perseverance and to Google for changing its policies.

The Inside Story of the 2006 Airline Plot

By Paul Cruickshank

I have spent the last several months co-producing a documentary for "Dateline NBC," along with Richard Greenberg of NBC News, on the 2006 Airline terror plot, widely considered Al Qaeda's most ambitious plot since 9/11. The program will air this coming Monday the 15th on NBC at 10pm Eastern.

The plan, authorities alleged, was to explode up to seven airliners en route from Heathrow airport to North American cities. Based on interviews with key officials from the US, Britain, and Pakistan, the documentary will shed significant new light on the genesis of the plot and the unprecedented international investigation that thwarted it. Please tune in!

Here is the NBC Press Release:

CHRIS HANSEN REPORTS ON THE ALLEGED PLOT AND THE INVESTIGATION INTO WHAT AUTHORITIES SAY COULD HAVE BEEN THE WORST TERRORIST ATTACK SINCE SEPT. 11

"Inside the Cell" to Air on Monday, Sept. 15 at 10 PM on "Dateline"

(New York) - Sept. 11, 2008 - A jury in Britain delivered a verdict this week in the case authorities say could have been one of the biggest terrorist attacks since Sept. 11. Three men were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, but, the jury was deadlocked on the more specific charge - the alleged plot to blow up planes. The verdict surprised a lot of people and left many to question: What exactly were those men planning? And how close did they come to success?

Now, in an in-depth report, "Dateline's" Chris Hansen reports from the streets of London on the alleged plot, the men being accused of the crimes and the international investigation that stopped it. The hour-long broadcast, airing on Monday, Sept. 15 (10:00-11:00 PM/ET), includes interviews with senior government officials from the United States and Great Britain who reveal details about the investigation from the inside not previously reported, explores the potential threat to aviation and takes a unique look at one man who reveals how al Qaeda nearly recruited him, and who makes it his mission to stop others from being recruited by terrorist groups.

When asked if he thinks a British citizen or citizens will launch an attack on the United States from the UK, Andy Hayman, who was the top Scotland Yard official overseeing counterterrorism at the time, says to Hansen: "Well, this particular plot gives you an insight to that. If we've got one plot that's been hatched with that ingredient, and it's unsuccessful, I would assume that objective still remains in place."

Richard Greenberg is producer of "Inside the Cell"; Paul Cruickshank is co-producer.

David Corvo is the executive producer of "Dateline NBC."

Ignoring the Elephant in the Room in Afghanistan

By Douglas Farah

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has sounded the alarm on Afghanistan, correctly pointing out that the danger of losing there is real and the hour is late.

It is fitting, on this day, to remember that our collective inability to get Afghanistan right once before helped give our enemies the opportunity to plan and execute the 9/11 attacks that are being remembered today.

What is striking about the published reports of Mullen and Defense Secretary Gates is the absence of any discussion of one of the driving forces of the Taliban's mounting success: its access to tens of millions of dollars in opium and poppy money. The UN conservatively estimates the Taliban makes between $50 million and $70 million a year from the drug trade.

Talk about ignoring the elephant in the room! Here is the prototype of future terrorist and insurgent movements deriving its income from non-state sources, and combating that figures into the policy at best in a marginal way.

In the 1980s the mujahadeen relied on U.S., Saudi and Pakistani aid, and became, over time, a largely state-sponsored, though non-state, actor. Now there is far less state sponsorship (with the exception of Pakistan's ISI), and the revenue is derived from criminal activity, an MO we will see more and more frequently in coming years.

The other multiple issues listed by Mullen are correct. There is a severe shortage of manpower and airlift capability. There is a terribly disjointed chain of command among the NATO forces and between NATO and the U.S. forces. The intelligence sharing infrastructure hardly exists. All of these are crippling weaknesses, and weaknesses that simply adding more troops will not resolve. My full blog is here.

Firefighters' Developing Role in Counterterrorism

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Seven years ago, the 9/11 attacks sounded an alarm in fire departments across the country: suddenly, they would need to decide whether they had a role to play in preparing for, and preventing, terrorist attacks. A growing number of fire departments concluded that they did, and are now leveraging their existing capabilities to enhance the effectiveness of local counterterrorism operations.

My colleague Kyle Dabruzzi (formerly of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies) and I have just published a new paper with the Manhattan Institute's Center for Policing Terrorism arguing that state and local political leaders should encourage this trend: rather than relinquishing counterterrorism to local law enforcement and the federal government, they should seek to integrate their fire departments into overall security planning. The paper explores how many of the core competencies that fire departments draw on in responding to, mitigating, and preventing natural or man-made disasters can be directed toward preventing terrorist incidents. At the same time, fire departments must be wary of encroaching on traditional law-enforcement functions, in order to avoid violating citizens' civil liberties and ensure that they retain the trust they now enjoy. Thus, we also examine parameters for doing so. An excerpt:

At first glance, fire departments are focused on the core competencies of prevention, protection, and response to natural and man-made disasters and other emergencies. For example, in a recent strategic document, the FDNY identified its core competencies as fire suppression, pre-hospital emergency medical care, structural evacuation, search and rescue, dealing with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear hazardous materials (CBRN/hazmat), life safety, decontamination, and arson investigation—all of which it characterizes as response-oriented.
However, a closer inspection reveals that these core competencies also position fire departments to perform preventive functions. These include building community awareness, identifying signs of terrorist activities, information sharing, and providing relevant subject-matter expertise. Most career fire departments, for example, have teams of highly trained hazardous-materials and explosives experts. These firefighters can inform public-awareness campaigns focusing on signs of improvised explosive or incendiary devices, and they can develop programs to train fellow firefighters and public safety officers to notice warning signs. They can also improve pre-incident planning by articulating and listing potential threats in order of seriousness and likelihood, and aligning collective capabilities accordingly.
In exploring the application of a fire department's core competencies to prevention-oriented counterterrorism, fire departments must guard against drifting into law-enforcement activities—namely, investigating crimes and apprehending criminals. This division of responsibilities should not preclude fire departments from strengthening their role in counterterrorism. As a general rule, to the extent that counterterrorism involves investigating and apprehending dangerous people, it is the province of law enforcement; to the extent that it involves identifying, preventing, and protecting against dangerous situations, it is the firefighters'.

You can find the full report here.

Remembering 9/11 - “The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them”

By Victor Comras

It has become customary for commentators on terrorism to mark the anniversary of Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack against the United States as an occasion to review and assess the progress we have made in combating terrorism. Our government and other governments around the world have expended enormous efforts to isolate Al Qaeda’s senior leaders, reduce their appeal, and to better secure our safety. Much of our confidence has been restored as we go about our normal daily business; although we have had to acclimate ourselves to new restrictions, airport inspections, a diminution of our civil liberties, and a massive invasion of our privacy. But, the fact is that terrorism has not abated. And while Al Qaeda may well be on the run, terrorism has morphed from being an “Al Qaeda thing,” into a tactic of choice for a growing number of disaffected groups and insurgency movements around the world. Funding for terrorism, and the number of those recruited to carry out suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks, has increased.

Seven years after 9/11, Coalition forces are still fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan; and Al Qaeda, Sunni and Shiite terrorists in Iraq. Bin Laden and Zawahiri remain well hidden among friends somewhere in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. Hizbollah holds sway in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza. Well-funded terrorist groups remain well entrenched in the Caucasus; Kashmir; North, East and West Africa, and throughout much of South East Asia. ETA is still active in Spain, and the FARC strong in and around Columbia. European and American security and police forces remain on alert. And, China contends with separatists using terrorist tactics in Xinjiang province. The latest State Department’s counter-terrorism report, confirms that state support for terrorism remains strong and that private source funding for terrorism remains substantial.

Just yesterday a special UN forum hosted by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the plight of victims of terrorism suffered untoward acrimony with members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference protesting the selection of Israeli victims of terrorism invited to speak at the meeting. In their view, Israeli’s killed or injured by suicide bombers do not fit their definition of terrorism. That brings us to the continuing failure of the United Nations to define terrorism. This failure manifests the continuing lack of political will in large parts of the world to hold accountable those who employ terrorist tactics in furtherance of political aims with which they might agree.

The UN’s failure to reach consensus on a definition of terrorism has also seriously hampered the international community’s ability to stem terrorism financing. In the absence of an agreed definition of terrorism every country remains free to interpret its own obligations and to define for itself which groups they will consider terrorists and which they will support as “freedom fighters.” For too many countries terrorism is defined not by the use of terrorist tactics, but, rather by whether or not they agree with the group’s political objectives or aspirations.

We simply cannot be satisfied with these results. So, as we remember those who died from, and suffered from, 9/11, we here on this counterterrorism blog will remain committed to reminding all who read what we write that there is still so much that needs to be done.

The Case of Belal Khazaal and "Essential Provisions in the Rules of Jihad"

By Evan Kohlmann

Yesterday, at the Supreme Court of New South Wales (NSW) in Sydney, Australia, former Qantas Airlines baggage handler Belal Khazaal was convicted by a jury of "knowingly making a document connected with assistance in a terrorist act" in violation of S101.5 of the Australian Commonwealth Criminal Code. The charges were filed in relation to a book published by Khazaal under the alias "Abu Mohammed al-Tawhidi" titled "Essential Provisions in the Rules of Jihad." The book, dated September 2003, was written in Arabic and included large sections directly appropriated from the raw writings of known terrorist leaders -- such as Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri's book "Knights Under the Prophet's Banner." According to an introduction to the book signed by "Abu Mohammed al-Tawhidi" (a.k.a. Khazaal):

"This is but a short document I hastily prepared in response to a request from brothers working to support this religion. I was requested to prepare it, in this fashion, to serve as a reference to all brothers or small cells desiring to support this religion. With Allah’s help I set on its compilation and I completed it in few days. I am however convinced that had I sufficient time and had I been settled in my residence I would have produced a better job than this work which has been conceived in haste. However, better 'haste' than never... I seek the Almighty’s reward and I seek martyrdom for his sake. I do so running towards it not away from it. I beseech my brothers who read this message to pray that I may attain martyrdom."

Khazaal's 102-page "master guide" to the "essential provisions in the rules of jihad" included both theoretical and ideological material--as well as detailed, explicit instructions on how best to exterminate "Americans and Jews." The book includes an entire step-by-step manual on conducting assassinations (originally written by Saudi Al-Qaida commander Abu Jandal al-Azdi), as well as directions on "remote control detonation devices", "letters and letter bombs", "booby trapping a car", "detonating a car from a distance", "sniping", "smothering", "hitting with a hammer", and "martyrdom operations." Among other things, the book emphasizes to readers that "small groups can cause havoc among Americans": "Pursuing Americans and Jews is not an impossible task. Killing them with a single shot, a stab or a pack of a popular mix or with an iron rod is not a difficult deed. Neither is burning their properties with a Molotov bottle. Small groups with small available means can cause horror to American and Jew alike."

One of the final sections of Khazaal's book is titled, "Recommendations to the Mujahideen: Examples of Jihad During Weaker Times to Emulate." According to this section:

"The impressive success of the conquest of New York is but a reminder that today’s mujahideen are no less than their forefathers. They are young, very professional men who can fly and maneuver planes. They are so disciplined to follow instructions to the letter and are ready to sacrifice themselves to regain the dignity and glory of the Muslim nation. Friend and foe alike acknowledge that today Mujahideen are technologically-savvy and employ sophisticated communication technology such as satellite telephones and use the Internet through a coded manner including steganography and other forms of technology... Of the unique examples that attracted my attention in the last two decades are legends that need no introduction. But it is the quality of men that needs emphasis. The famous 'Engineer' Yahya Ayyash and another unknown and unrecognized man yet he is no less heroic, Ramzi Yousef... His original plan was to destroy the entire [World Trade Center] inflicting maximum damage and casualties in the vicinity of a quarter of a million as punishment for America‘s frequent bloody interventions in Islamic affairs... I can only imagine his glee in his captivity (may Allah break his chains) as he was listening to the news of the Conquest of New York and the success his comrades were able to carry out what he started."

Khazaal's conviction in what has been a landmark legal case in Australia represents a major victory for the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP). It should also be taken as a stern warning to those--not just in Australia, but around the world--who believe that they can continue to use the Internet to incite the murder of innocent civilians in terrorist acts without facing serious consequences for their own actions.

Qatanani Deportation Case - Something Dis’d and Missed

By Bill West

Last week, the Immigration Court removal (deportation) case in New Jersey against Mohammad Qatanani, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, ended when the Immigration Judge ruled against the Government and in favor of Qatanani, granting him permanent resident alien status in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had sought Qatanani’s removal from the U.S. for allegedly having made false statements in his application for residency concerning his detention in Israel for having been affiliated with the terrorist organization Hamas. The Immigration Judge, according to media reports, ruled the ICE prosecutors had failed to present sufficient evidence supporting their case.

Qatanani, in his defense, had several senior law enforcement officials testify on his behalf, including a representative of the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey. This seeming divergence of law enforcement posture in a terrorism-related deportation case, even within the Federal Government, is almost bizarre. ICE legal personnel have yet to state if they intend to appeal the Immigration Judge’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, as they may. What really happened in this case? A fine article appears today at IPT News that covers what likely did occur in this case. This may be one for solid Congressional inquiry.

Where We've Come since 9/11

By Michael Jacobson

My colleague Matt Levitt and I wrote two op-eds this week taking stock of the US counterterrorism efforts as we approach the seventh anniversary of 9/11. We also assess what the terrorist threat is likely to look like and what counterterrorism environment the next administration will inherit in January 2009. As we noted in one of the pieces, despite the steps that has been made, this area is still very much a work in progress.

Here is an excerpt from our op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle:

As the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, and with the Bush administration entering its final months, it's worth pausing to reflect on how much progress we've made these past seven years against the terrorist threat to the United States. Yet the next administration will face an evolving terrorist threat and inherit a counterterrorism regime that is still a work in progress.

While the United States has overhauled its counterterrorism structure to face this new, ever-evolving enemy, keeping up with the adapting threat is a serious challenge for the often plodding government bureaucracy.

At the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, al Qaeda was a centralized, hierarchical organization that directed international terrorist operations from its base in Afghanistan. By 2004, al Qaeda appeared to be in disarray, with its capabilities dramatically diminished. That picture has changed substantially over the past few years, as al Qaeda's center has grown stronger once again, with its new safe haven in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where it can train and recruit operatives, and direct its global propaganda efforts.

To read the entire piece, click here:

Our other piece appeared in the Camden Courier-Post this past Sunday. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

Despite setbacks, al-Qaida remains a potent threat. In mid-August, the U.S. intelligence community's senior ranking terrorism analyst concluded that while increased counterterrorism efforts worldwide have constrained the ability of al-Qaida to attack the United States and its allies, the group "remains the most serious terrorist threat to the United States."
As recently thwarted terrorist plots in Britain, Germany and elsewhere make clear, seven years after 9/11 we remain in a heightened threat environment. But the nature of the transnational threats facing the world today is far different than the ones the United States and its allies faced on 9/11.

While al-Qaida itself remains a formidable opponent -- particularly with its recent resurgence and secure safe haven in northwest Pakistan -- its affiliates and homegrown cells pose a growing threat as well. As of 9/11, al-Qaida was the main threat facing the United States. At the time of the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaida was a centralized, hierarchical organization directing terrorist operations around the world from its base in Afghanistan.

The Unites States now faces a different -- and in some ways more complicated -- threat than it did on 9/11. This is a threat -- and an enemy -- that continues to evolve rapidly, often in response to U.S. and international pressure. Today, the United States and its allies face a three-fold threat. The first is from the core al-Qaida. While al-Qaida was on its "back foot" from 2004 to 2007, it has now "regained its equilibrium," according to a senior Homeland Security official.

To read that entire piece, click here:

The Airline Bomb Plot & the Visa Waiver Program

By Michael Cutler

ABC Nightline aired a news story last night about the conviction of the British citizens who were involved in a conspiracy to carry out terrorist attacks to bring liquid explosives on board a number of airliners that were destined to arrive in the United States. This plot is the reason that we are restricted to bring no more than 3 ounce bottles of shampoo and other fluids on airliners. It is the reason that so many seemingly bizarre measures have been taken by TSA officials, such as when nursing women were reportedly required to drink their own breast milk brought to feed their infant children.

The timing of this news story is coincidental but it is certainly worth remembering that this week our nation will mark the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. What is, in my judgement, utterly unacceptable is that fact that even with all of these concerns about potential future devastating terrorist attacks, our nation still permits aliens from some 27 countries to seek to enter the United States without first applying for and receiving a visa.

Those British terrorists, not unlike Richard Reid, the so-called "Shoe Bomber," would not require visas in order to board an airliner destined for the United States. The point is that while far from perfect, the visa requirement could well have kept Richard Reid off the airliner he had planned to destroy by detonating explosives secreted in his shoes. The point is that these British terrorists could have sought to board an airliner they were intent on destroying without first securing visas. The visa requirement also provides other significant benefits to law enforcement and hence, represent a vital, additional layer of security that is being ignored by our government, even as the administration pushes forward with plans to expand the Visa Waiver Program to include additional countries.

Last year I was interviewed by Mike Ahlers of CNN for a news report he was writing about the Visa Waiver Program and the fact that the executives of the travel and hospitality industries advocating that our government expand the Visa Waiver Program. As you read these articles and my commentaries you should be asking yourself, "Are we safer today than we were on September 10, 2001?" Our government is supposed to represent the best interests of We the People and the best interests of our nation. That our government would ratchet up security at airport and other vulnerable venues makes good sense, if those measures are truly effective and enhance our safety and the security of our nation. These measures must make a "real world" difference and not simply create an illusion of addressing vital national security issues.

Distinguished Experts to Discuss Saudi Penetration Into U.S. Institutions

By Andrew Cochran

Tomorrow at 10 am ET, I will join other distinguished experts on a special panel to discuss the effects of Saudi penetration into our nation’s financial, legal and educational infrastructure. The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) will host the panel in room 2255 of the Rayburn House Office Building, and the other experts participating are as follows:

Dr. Ali Al Ahmed, Director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, who will address the Saudis' culture of corruption and intimidation and how it made its way into the United States;

E.J. Kimball of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, who will talk about U.S. Muslim organizations connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi royal family;

Reed Rubinstein, Attorney at Greenberg Traurig, who successfully prevented CAIR from suing Andrew Whitehead;

Ilan Weinglass, Editor of the Terror Finance Blog, on Saudi use of foreign courts to sue American writers and journalists in order to suppress their freedom of speech;

Frank Gaffney Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy, who will highlight Saudi infiltration into our nation’s financial infrastructure;

Winfield Myers, Director of Campus Watch, who will address the issue of Saudi funding of American college campuses and its inhibitive effect on objective scholarship;

Dr. Sandra Alfonsi, Chair, Curriculum Watch, on Islamist revisionism in American textbooks; and

Anne Korin, Co-Director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, who will tackle our dependence on foreign oil and the state of alternative energy research and development.

I will discuss the Islamic Saudi Academy of northern Virginia, about which I've written numerous posts as an example of the Kingdom's continued export of radical Islamist propaganda and as a case study in homegrown radicalization.

To find out more about this seminar and EMET, please e-mail Sarah Stern, EMET President.

Voices of the Awakening: Transfer of Anbar Security and Other News

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Today FDD's Center for Terrorism Research brings you the second installment of our Voices of the Awakening project, authored by Sterling Jensen, which is designed to provide Westerners a better understanding of ongoing developments in Iraq's Awakening movement. This regular feature includes critical translations of Awakening news and documents, Jensen's observations and analysis, and occasional interviews with the movement's leaders.

The Iraqi Awakening has reported an eventful first week of September, including the transfer of Anbar provincial security responsibility to the Iraqi security forces (ISF), an official letter from the Awakening to the prime minister conveying Ramadan blessings, and a visit from the head of the Sunni Endowment of Iraq. An excerpt from this week's news:

[A]s a message to the government of Iraq (GoI), Sheikh Ahmad [Bezia] said that Anbaris accomplished this heroic fight against international terrorists by joining the ISF. The Awakening thought that by joining the ISF and helping the national government to eliminate extremism, terrorism, and sectarian violence, the justification for Iraq's de-Baathification laws would end. However, the Iraqi Awakening was surprised when the GoI announced they had prepared a list of former Iraqi officers, soldiers, and members of the Baath Party [there is no indication in the speech as to the purpose of the list, but the context is a GoI list of "irreconcilable" former regime elements]. Sheikh Ahmad asked the GoI to take into consideration the sacrifices and efforts of those who were once covered under the de-Baathification laws, but who supported the GoI and fought al-Qaeda from 2006-2008--and to re-evaluate them so long as they have not shed innocent Iraqi blood....

INSIDER'S PERSPECTIVE: The Iraqi Awakening is approaching the GoI diplomatically on the issues of transfer of security responsibility, and former regime element reconciliation and integration. It was the GoI that wanted the transfer of the security responsibility to happen sooner rather than later, even though the Iraqi Awakening and provincial government would have preferred to postpone it because of autonomy issues. However, the Iraqi Awakening thought it was in their best interest to support the GoI initiative. Sheikh Ahmad Bezia wants to show the GoI that this tribal-movement-turned-political party is law abiding, patriotic and subservient to Baghdad.

For the entire Voices of the Awakening update, click here.

Algeria minimizing Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's threat

By Olivier Guitta

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was just in Algeria to talk mostly about terrorism. Indeed Algeria has been witnessing regular and numerous terror attacks perpetrated by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
For one of the most exhaustive coverage on AQIM, please visit The Croissant.

I wrote a piece for the MIddle East Times last week on how the Algerian government is minimizing AQIM's threat. You can read it here.

Here is an excerpt:

Several spectacular and bloody suicide attacks have been perpetrated by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Algeria in recent weeks. The high number of deaths has attracted much publicity, but these are far from being isolated events. Indeed, AQIM has been targeting, murdering, kidnapping or maiming law enforcement personnel, regular citizens and foreigners on an almost daily basis. The situation is dire, yet the Algerian government goes on pretending that everything is under control. Clearly it is not.

AQIM aims to pull-off spectacular attacks that make the international headlines. For example, at the end of July a car bomb targeted President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika' s convoy in Bouira. Fortunately, security services thwarted this attack - AQIM's second on the president. In September 2007 a suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of the crowd that was awaiting the president's arrival, after being spotted by a police officer who lost his life during the attack.

While it is true that Algerian security forces have been relatively successful in fighting off AQIM terrorists, the organization remains very active, carrying out attacks sometimes on a daily basis. On average AQIM is successful in two out of three times. Its members are mostly quite professional, and the trend has been toward an "Iraqization" of its tactics. Car bombs and suicide attacks are the new modus operandi of AQIM. But this switch in tactics has resulted in a huge decline of AQIM's popularity among Algeria's population, especially since they are also very much targeting civilians.

But AQIM is not the only organization that has lost credibility; the Algerian government has too. And for a few reasons.

First, the authorities continue to downplay AQIM's capacity to hit Algeria. The declaration from Interior Minister Zerhouni after each attack repeating that AQIM is dying off and that the latest attack was proof of its weakness and despair is ringing very hollow. Zerhouni also sounds like a broken record when he keeps on repeating that AQIM has only 400 militants.

The Success of the Fusion Strategy in Counterterror Operations

By Douglas Farah

After a few years in the wilderness, the U.S. military and its allies in other parts of the world have honed the cutting edge of a significant series of steps that are yielding highly successful results in combatting non-state armed groups-including terrorists, not just in Iraq but in Colombia and elsewhere.

The Washington Post's recent story on the "fusion cells" gets at the core of the program: The integration and blending of field intelligence (human and signal) with the ability to act rapidly on that information.

The NSA targeted its listening operations, the Treasury Department began tracing anything to do with money and Special Operations Forces, with the help of the latest technology and imaging capabilities, carry out the operations. This website was the first media outlet to discuss the operations of the joint DoD-Treasury "threat finance" cell unit in Baghdad in posts last November 2 and again on November 20, and the first publicly available monograph or study of terrorist financing by the Defense Department was released on October 12 of last year. "Threat finance" units are now operational in each of the military commands.

"To me, it's not just war-fighting now but in the future," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the newspaper. "It's been the synergy, it's been the integration that has had such an impact."

One of the keys has been the ability, over time, to force the sharing of a range of skills in a single unit, so that the traditional segregation and stove pipes have ended. The value of tracing even useless-looking information, particularly from the "pocket litter" of those captured or killed, has proved itself on many occasions.

While this is integration is a fact at the level of these small task forces, it remains far from accomplished on broad level. In fact, much of the upper tiers of the intelligence community are just as resistant to change and perhaps less inclined to share intelligence than 9-11.

But the success of fusing all elements of intelligence and force to capture often elusive enemies is not just evident in Iraq. In its own way, the Colombian military and policy have been on the cutting edge of the program in combatting the FARC. My full blog is here.

Mainstream Media Diverting Terrorism Reporters Into Political Investigations

By Andrew Cochran

I see one after another of the mainstream media outlets which have made important contributions to the factual underpinnings of the counter-terrorism effort dropping off that beat. Editors in the print media are shifting terrorism experts on their staffs towards investigations of political candidates. At least three such reporters at three major papers are now chasing Sarah Palin stories (I haven't had time to chase down everybody in "the business"). The move away from terrorism investigations started over a year ago as the print media entered into a long-term decline in ad revenues, but the trend has been accelerated in this election year. It is an unfortunate coincidence that true experts, with some of the best contacts and intel in the private CT community, are being moved out of their chosen fields just as we approach the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. It's especially disconcerting to see this trend at the very moment when President Bush is committing more counterinsurgency resources to capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and/or Ayman al-Zawahiri before he leaves office, a strategic decision with serious ramifications for relations between the U.S. and Pakistan and other nations in South Asia.

A number of veteran reporters in the mainstream media have broken important stories using sources and methods that the intelligence community could not or chose not to exploit. The broad CT community would suffer a serious loss if these bona fide experts leave the field for any length of time. In the meantime, nonprofit organizations and dedicated blogs have the opportunity and capability to inform the public.

Russia's War Leads Administration to Drop One Objection to Iran Sanctions Bill

By Andrew Cochran

The Associated Press reports this morning that Secretary of State Rice has announced that the Administration will not pursue the U.S.-Russia civil nuclear cooperation agreement in light of Russia's invasion of Georgia. As the AP notes, Congress was probably unlikely to approve the agreement before it adjourns later the month and President Bush leaves office. But the action could move a new Iran sanctions bill one step closer to passage in Congress and approval by the President. As I posted on June 12, the agreement was the basis of one of two official Administration objections to a version of a new Iran sanctions bill which barred entry by the U.S. into the agreement. As Congress left for the August work period, there were two Senate versions of the bill, one of which did not include the bar objected to by the Administration.

Now that the Administration has dropped the attempt to pass the agreement, an Iran sanctions bill is one step closer to approval. But the Administration is still be opposed to bill language imposing extra-territorial sanctions on firms from other nations. Even if that objection were resolved soon, a final Senate bill would have to be reconciled with one or more House bills, and that's difficult given the shortened Congressional schedule due to the November elections.

Ten Questions about al Qaeda and its Jihadi nebulous

By Walid Phares

At the eve of the this year's anniversary of 9/11, World Defense Review (WDR) conducted an interview with me on the current debate about al Qaeda and its Jihadi nebulous. The conversation took place with Thomas Smith, military expert and writer, based on themes raised by an article published in el Publico, a daily in Portugal and in other publications. The Ten questions asked by WDR focused on the central issue of how to analyze the war with al Qaeda, hence on the conclusions drawn in the ongoing debate within the expert, academic and political communities. My answers to the Ten Questions are certainly not exhaustive but tried to address the general directions of the current studies provided by a number of think tanks and colleagues in the field. Based on my more comprehensive analysis covered by my last three books, the points addressed the essence of the conflict with the Jihadists, the accuracy of identification of the ideology and the movement, and the strategic reasons for dissidence within the Jihadi realm. These remarks are a contribution to the discussion which is taking place during this 7th anniversary of the attacks of September 11. Following is the text of the interview.

Ten Questions about al Qaeda and its Jihadi nebulous

Less than two weeks from the 7th anniversary of the most horrific terrorist attack on American soil, Middle East terrorism expert Dr. Walid Phares shares his thoughts on recent reports issued by a variety of analysts and think tanks, which are suggesting - among other things - the global war on terror should be prosecuted not as a war, but as an international campaign against criminals: An approach Phares believes is a recipe for failure.

Phares also describes and explains the evolving strategic trends within the Jihadist movement worldwide, as well as the present state of Al Qaeda, the Jihadist ideology, the terror forces that subscribe to that ideology, and the approaches Phares believes may be taken by the next U.S. president.

Director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Phares is a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy and an advisor to the TransAtlantic Legislative Group on Terrorism. He is the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad, the third book in his series examining international terrorism and the dynamics that fuel it.

Phares has been following and analyzing the rise of the Salafi and Khomeinist movements for nearly 30 years, and has been predicting the strategic rise of Jihadism since the end of the Cold War.

Our Q&A follows:

W. THOMAS SMITH JR.: Over the past two-plus months, analysts and commentators have posited that Al-Qaeda (both the command-and-control nucleus and the - often disconnected elements of the - broader network) has been significantly weakened, perhaps to the point of insignificance. Do we have substantive intelligence indicating such?

DR. WALID PHARES: Al Qaeda has been weakened, but not to the point that it has been defeated or driven from the battlefield. Remember it took only a handful of Al Qaeda terrorists to strike at the heart of New York, Washington, Madrid, and London. Al Qaeda as it presently exists, continues to retain the capacity to conduct these kinds of operations. The organization continues to focus on its ongoing, asymmetric operations such as those in Iraq and Pakistan. Let me be clear as regards Iraq: If American forces were to pull-out abruptly, Al Qaeda would return to the Sunni triangle. And regarding Pakistan, if the Jihadists are able to further penetrate the army and the intelligence services they may be able to shift the ground in Pakistan, and perhaps penetrate the nuclear system of that country.

The analysis and commentary we’ve seen which claims Al Qaeda has been significantly weakened, suggests that the organization has had their objectives denied for the present in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we must remember, all of this is based on the reliance of a strong U.S. and NATO presence. The question remains: would the local governments continue to defeat Al Qaeda after withdrawal, and would they have any chance of defeating it ideologically. In my estimation, no. Not yet. The pre 9/11 Al Qaeda has been weakened to be sure. but the post-9/11 Al Qaeda has mutated into a different type of network which is capable of regrouping more rapidly and re-emerging when the balance of power shifts on the ground.

SMITH: Some - like author and terrorism researcher Marc Sageman - contend the greatest danger comes from young radicalized Muslims with virtually no connection to Al Qaeda and its leadership. Is this an accurate assertion?

DR. PHARES: There is no such thing as a “greatest” or real danger as opposed to a lesser or false danger. There is one global ideological movement: Part of it is Al Qaeda. Other elements of the movement are local Jihadists. In my assessment, there is no such thing as “radicalized Muslims,” but indoctrinated Jihadists among Muslims and those who are opposing them. The term “radicalized Muslims” is used to imply that Jihadism is a reaction to Western policies. In reality, the rise of the Jihadists is produced by a vast ideological indoctrination. Hence the so-called young “radicalized Muslims” as stated by other experts are Jihadists who were indoctrinated by the same ideologues who have fed Al Qaeda with these views of the world. Ideologically, it is the same global Salafist movement. Al Qaeda is a centrally controlled organization, and there are many self-established groups that hope to emulate Al Qaeda or eventually link with it. Those Jihadists who emerge outside Al Qaeda are indeed a great danger. And in the end, they will merge.

SMITH: Professor Bruce Hoffman and others talk about Al Qaeda resurging along the Afghan-Pakistan border as evidence that the central element stills exists, and that it still matters. Others argue that this is a more of a Pashtun fight, not Al Qaeda. Do we fully understand how much of what’s happening there has to do with Al Qaeda?

DR. PHARES: The fight led by the Taliban, Al Qaeda and many Jihadists from around the world is not a local “ethnic” fight for power. For Arabs, Chechens, Europeans, Africans and Asians to be fighting along with the Taliban and Al Qaeda means that the movement is transnational, not local, even though it has vast support among the Pashtun; because it also has support in other parts of the world among other ethnicities.

In short, the combat Jihadi movement is now international, has Al Qaeda as its epicenter, and has affiliated groups around the region and worldwide. But many experts and academics still try to portray it in such a way - and with so many different faces — so that it is not defined as a global movement. For if it is defined as such, there will be policy consequences such as identifying its ideology, that is Salafism and Wahabism. For it is a fact that while Al Qaeda recruits from various pools, the organization is not the one that is creating and feeding those pools ideologically. There are oil-producing regimes that are responsible for the expansion of the ideology. Thus we have been seeing plenty of petrodollars invested in the West to shield the ideology of Jihadism while claiming that al Qaeda is weak, benign, and that we shouldn’t be very worried about it.

SMITH: The recent RAND study by Seth G. Jones and Martin C. Libicki tell as that “terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors,” and so should be fought through law enforcement and intelligence agencies, not with armies. If so, what should be the strategy? And how is it different from what’s being done?

DR. PHARES: I disagree with the RAND conclusions. This is precisely why the U.S. and the greater West have been surprised and hit by the Jihadists and al Qaeda, as we saw on 9/11. And this is because the academic elite of the 1990s said then that the Jihadists were just criminals and that they did not form a legitimate movement. The intellectual establishment failed Western governments with their wrong advice. And we saw the consequences on 9/11. The argument that terrorists are criminals is not adding to the debate. Of course they are criminals. The statement that the Jihadists aren’t holy warriors has to be made by Islamic religious authorities, not by NGOs and think tanks. In the eyes of their constituencies, the Jihadists are indeed perceived as legitimate. In the same way that in the eyes of many German citizens in the 1930s, leading to - and during - World War II, the Nazis were perceived as nationalist fighters. The Nazis seized power and waged war. The answer to their action was a world campaign, a world war by democracies against them. The argument then wasn’t that Nazism was a good or bad thing, but that the followers of Hitler were criminals! Just the opposite I would argue. The Jihadi terrorists have to be confronted with all means, neither just armies nor just law enforcement or intelligence services. I’ll even argue that the most powerful weapon against the Jihadists is none of the latter. It is the prosecution of a war of ideas, with soft powers.

SMITH: There has been some discussion that the term, “war on terror,” may fall into disuse. Will the next president of the United States continue to use the term to describe the war in which we are clearly involved?

DR. PHARES: There are efforts in Europe to do away with the term, and there are some efforts in the U.S. to follow suit. But the alternatives will be much different. If Obama is the next U.S. president, I believe he will end the war-on-terror doctrine and replace it with a Clinton-like police effort against criminals. If McCain is the next president, I believe he may also abandon the term and replace it with the current term he is using “war with radical Islamic extremism,” or with the much clearer concept of “war with global Jihadists”. The term “war of ideas” was a middle ground between two schools. Soon, one of the two schools will prevail.

SMITH: In the years since 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, we’ve been talking about Al Qaeda as if it were a global force, with a reach extending from South Asia to the Maghreb and beyond. Then we’ve heard about Al Qaeda “the label” and “Al Qaedism.” From what we now know, how many of the ideologically sympathizing terrorist groups, from the Philippines to Algeria actually have connections to Al Qaeda and its leaders?

DR. PHARES: Again, many experts - unwilling to accept the reality that Jihadism is a global ideology and movement - went in different directions trying to explain the phenomenon away from its real and historic roots. Perhaps the little linguistic and cultural knowledge that was available pushed these analysts to adopt conclusions alien to the essence of Al Qaeda. In the Arab political debate there is not such thing as “Al Qaedism.” There is no such thing as Al Qaeda’s label or branding. The reality is simple: Beyond Al Qaeda and all similar organizations there is a one global ideology called Jihadism. If we compare this with the “Lord of the Rings” tales, Jihadism is the “ring,” a strong force that lords and leaders use in their quest for expansion. These lords such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri come and go. But the “force” - or ideology — remains and produces more leaders. So, Al Qaeda is a central organization for Jihadists, but there are Jihadi groups around the world, most of whom look at Al Qaeda as the great center. But again, this constellation, if you will, is the product of an ideology and of doctrinaires. If we fail to understand this, we fail to properly analyze the future.

SMITH: Twenty-or-so years after the birth of Al Qaeda, does it make sense to speak of winners? And is Al-Qaeda winning - even if we’re talking in terms of ideology and not pitched battles - or losing?

DR. PHARES: Al Qaeda will win if the West fails to understand what makes Al Qaeda strong and capable of evolving. The West has been able drive Al Qaeda from two major battlefronts, but it has yet to win a war of ideas against Jihadism. The real battle is within the West between those who want to quit the conflict and those who want to press forward until Jihadism, not just Al Qaeda, is defeated. Al Qaeda will lose if we recognize that there is an ideology to defeat it and that the best allies in this confrontation are those anti-Jihadist Muslims. Short of this happening, this is a back-and-forth battle without end.

SMITH: Did the war in Iraq - as did the Jihad in Afghanistan - produce another generation of fighters?

DR. PHARES: It is not the battlefield, but the Jihadi factories that produce the generations of fighters. The attack on Serbia did not produce suicide bombers. The campaign against Haiti’s military didn’t create a generation of Haitian terrorists. And China’s occupation of Tibet is not generating violent armed militias. The point is the Jihadists who are heading towards Iraq or Afghanistan are already followers of Jihadism. They have already been indoctrinated by the Madrassas. If not Iraq, it would be Somalia, Algeria, Chechnya, London or Madrid. They aren’t a reaction to, they are a force “sui generic,” with a world view and strategies. Going to Iraq or not is a different discussion. Iraq didn’t create Jihadism, just the opposite the Jihadists are prolonging the war in Iraq.

SMITH: What about the increasing recruitment of women?

DR. PHARES: This is a new strategic trend. The Jihadists - including Al Qaeda - are innovative, and retooling with all their resources. First, they are trying to use non-Arab Jihadis instead of Arabs. Then more European-looking than Middle Eastern-looking recruits. Also women, as many as they can bring into the fold. This is a war. They know it. And they are trying to use all their resources to develop new weapons to win the war. Again, if we do not thwart them with their most powerful tool - their ideology - we won’t be able to determine from which direction and in what way they will come. But if we do identify this ideology and counter it, their resources will be isolated and their power reversed.

SMITH: There are some signs of dissension within the ranks of Al Qaeda, as well as indications that Al Qaeda and their leaders enjoy lessening-support in Muslim countries. Did the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s cruelty and indiscriminate killings contribute?

DR. PHARES: No. The killing of Muslims is not the primary factor weakening Al Qaeda in the eyes of the Jihadists. It is the inability of Al Qaeda to defeat the infidels as they promised. If you read what the dissidents are saying, you’ll understand that they are somewhat the realists who are arguing that the reckless strategies of bin laden have not been in the interest of long-term Jihad. As for Muslim public opinion, it is divided. Those who support Jihadism haven’t changed their minds massively but some are criticizing the management of the effort by bin laden. And those among the Muslims who oppose the Salafists, haven’t changed their mind and are still very much opposed to Al Qaeda. We in the West we try to find signs of weakness in Al Qaeda because many aren’t able to provide answers as to the nature of the ideology and are dodging that hard reality.

W. Thomas Smith Jr

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The War on Drugs Hits Some Severe Snags

By Douglas Farah

The almost-forgotten war on drugs has taken some serious hits recently, particularly in Latin America. This cyclical war waxes and wanes with the political will of each country involved and the consumption habits of drug users.

I take it seriously in large part because drug money is rapidly replacing state sponsorship for terrorist organizations that have reaches far beyond the world of drug trafficking. As I have written earlier, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) links 19 of the 43 designated terrorist organizations to drug trafficking activities at various levels.

These include Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, Tamil Tigers, ETA, as well as the FARC and United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

A Washington Post story yesterday captured the paradox of the drug war, a paradox I have been pondering since my recent trip to Colombia.

It is this: The law enforcement community (particularly the DEA and Colombian National Police, along with the Colombian military) has made unprecedented strides in both dismantling drug trafficking organizations (in the case of Colombia, these include two designated terrorist organizations, the AUC and FARC rebels).

For the first time in 25 years there are no clearly identifiable drug kingpins running the cocaine trade from Colombia. The FARC and AUC are both seriously degraded.

Yet, production has not diminished, and, according to Colombian and U.S. officials, the amount of cocaine moving out of the Andean region (Colombia, Peru and Bolivia) has showed almost no variation despite the tactical successes against the organizations. My full blog is here.

Al-Arian Released On Bail

By Bill West

Sami Al-Arian, convicted of supporting the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), who has served a 57-month federal prison sentence for that offense is now under what is believed to be a final removal order (deportation order) requiring his departure from the United States. That removal order stems from his felony conviction relating to the support of a foreign terrorist organization. That support included assisting an alien relative who was a PIJ operative with immigration matters. Al-Arian continues to face federal criminal contempt charges in the Eastern District of Virginia due to his refusal to testify before a federal grand jury investigating northern Virginia Islamic organizations with whom he and his Tampa, Florida PIJ-affiliated front groups were associated and did business.

As reported by various media outlets, including the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Al-Arian was just released from the custody of immigration authorities to await further proceedings on the criminal contempt charges. His release by immigration authorities was likely because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was caught between a legal "rock and a hard place."

U.S. immigration law and court decisions, particularly the 2001 Supreme Court decision, Zadvydas v. Davis, allow the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to detain aliens who are under final removal orders only as long as it takes to make reasonable arrangements to physically deport them but generally no more than 90 days. There are certain limited exceptions, including aliens who are involved in terrorism activities, who could be detained for longer periods including an indefinite time if actual removal is not possible. Arguably, Al-Arian could fall into that category.

However, if ICE is ready to physically deport Al-Arian, having finalized all the arrangements of that process, yet the Department of Justice wants to keep Al-Arian in the U.S. for the pending contempt prosecution, there may have been no legal recourse but to release him under the conditions imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema.

On the other hand, if there is still some genuine pending, time-consuming arrangements left in the deportation process for Al-Arian, ICE would have legitimate cause to further detain him as a terrorism-related convicted alien felon and could have so argued before the Court. So far, neither ICE nor DHS has publicly commented on the specifics of Al-Arian's release.

Ironically, in late 2000, Al-Arian's brother-in-law Mazen Al-Najjar (the PIJ operative Al-Arian assisted with his immigration case), had been similarly detained by then INS for several years pending deportation action while he appealed his deportation order, a deportation order that was issued by an Immigration Court after several weeks of public, open due process hearings wherein Al-Najjar was fully represented by legal counsel (hardly the "never charged" posture represented by most media and apologists at the time). INS, working with the FBI, attempted to keep Al-Najjar detained while he appealed that deportation order because the agencies knew he, like Al-Arian, was involved with the PIJ. Al-Najjar, however, had already been charged in U.S. Immigration Court and had a deportation order issued against him. The custody matter in his case was based, in part, on classified information. That, of course, stirred a hornet's nest with much of the media and Al-Najjar's supporters and apologists. The debate about using "secret" evidence in immigration proceedings became widespread and ultimately, because of the Al-Najjar case and the negative publicity, as misrepresented as it was, the utilization of classified information in immigration removal proceedings has been greatly curtailed, even after the 9/11 attacks and the so-called war on terror.

More ironically, during the Al-Najjar detention proceedings, then Attorney General Janet Reno ultimately authorized his release on a meager $8,000 bail after three and a half years of detention, knowing fully his terrorism support background, when she had the option of overriding an Immigration Judge's release order. That Reno release authorization was ordered, coincidentally, at the end of her tenure as the Attorney General and during a presidential election season. Al-Najjar ultimately lost his appeal, was re-arrested in November of 2001, detained and deported in 2002. Reportedly, he currently lives in Cairo.

We now have Sami Al-Arian similarly released from immigration custody. No doubt, due to the high profile nature of this case, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has been involved in the custody decision-making process. Notably, this occurs at the end of his tenure and during a presidential election season.

So, Al-Arian's release from custody really could be either a rock and a hard place decision or a cave-in as far as DHS is concerned.

Now the U.S. Is Chasing OBL to His Cave

By Andrew Cochran

The U.S. has taken the gloves are off: In a first, senior U.S. officials acknowledged that U.S. ground forces entered Pakistan to pursue high-value Al Qaeda targets, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden is moving at full speed before President Bush leaves office. "(A) small team of commandos crossed the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan to go after an al Qaida cell operating out of a village less than a mile from the border. The officials said the cell was using the village as a base to plan and conduct cross border raids into Afghanistan. The leader of the cell - whose name the officials did not release - was reported killed along with several women and at least one child." The reactions from the Pakistanis include not just the usual official protests, but also a column from the chairman of the PPP, Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of assassinated ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and the leading candidate for President. Writing in the Washington Post, Zardari didn't explicitly criticize any U.S. raid into Pakistan. "It is important to remember that Pakistan, too, is a victim of terrorism. Our soldiers are dying on the front lines; our children are being blown up by suicide bombers. We stand with the United States, Britain, Spain and others who have been attacked. Fundamentally, however, the war we our fighting is our war."

Two days ago, Jonathan Winer discussed the need for a broad counterinsurgency effort in the FATA and the Administration's recent determination to now rely on Zardari as a partner in the pursuit of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Pakistanis publicly claimed credit for an attack designed to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, a positive sign of such cooperation. But for the U.S. to attack and admit it just days from the presidential vote appears to be a statement that, with or without Zardari's assistance, the U.S. will attack specific terrorist targets inside Pakistan with sufficient force. I assume that we will mount other such attacks, perhaps frequently, in President Bush's remaining term in office. That's a strategic direction of major consequence which the next President will have to review, but I cannot imagine either of the current candidates putting the gloves back on and withdrawing that capability.

Hurricane Gustav Success Shows Improvements in Attack Readiness

By Andrew Cochran

Three years ago, as the Hurricane Katrina disaster unfolded, we were the first site in the counterterrorism niche to point out the obvious negative implications for our ability to protect the homeland from terrorist attack or to recover from one (see Bill West's and Walid Phares' observations at that time). Since then, we've read numerous government reports and hearings indicating continued trouble in DHS operations and homeland security planning, including several just last month. So as Hurricane Gustav approached, it was reasonable to wonder if FEMA, DHS, and the states could pull off a mass evacuation in time and then recover quickly. The evacuation proceeded smoothly, the recovery efforts are underway with efficiency, and all parties involved deserve our congratulations for a job well done. It helped that Gustav weakened to the point that the New Orleans levees weren't breached, but everyone seemed prepared for that possibility. While DHS is still not capable of protecting the U.S. against important threats, it looks like FEMA is ready for whatever comes.

One sector about which I had no concerns was the financial services sector, which has been the best at protecting and recovering its critical infrastructure in this decade. In this post on November 30, 2006, I discussed in detail the quick reaction by the sector to several disasters, from the 9-11 attacks to the great Northeast blackout of 2003. The sector made still more improvements in the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina. So we shouldn't be surprised that no one suffered any inability to gain access to their financial assets during Hurricane Gustav.

Voices of the Awakening

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

FDD's Center for Terrorism Research, which I direct, is proud to introduce an important new regular feature, our Voices of the Awakening project. Iraq's Awakening movement, which originated in the Anbar province, was one of the keys to the turnaround that the country has experienced since January 2007. This collection of Sunni tribesmen, Iraqi nationalists, ex-Baathists, and others, took great risks to help drive al-Qaeda from their country; many members of the Awakening, and their families, lost their lives in the struggle. Though the Awakening—which remains a potent force in Iraq—is often discussed by Western analysts, often the voice of the movement itself is absent from the discussion.

Thus, the Center for Terrorism Research is introducing a new feature by Sterling Jensen, a foremost expert on the Awakening. Jensen, who is currently enrolled in a Master's program at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, worked as an Army contract linguist from the spring of 2006 to June 2007. He was heavily involved in the U.S. government's tribal engagements as the Anbar Awakening formed in the fall of 2006. He then returned to Anbar in February 2008 as the Marines' first ever civilian Foreign Area Officer, tasked with facilitating the First Marine Expeditionary Force's relations with Awakening leadership, religious leaders, and foreign regime elements. Jensen's contacts in the Awakening are unparalleled, as is his knowledge of the movement. The Voices of the Awakening project will feature his observations and analysis, which will include critical translations of Awakening news and documents, as well as occasional interviews with the movement's leaders.

The first installment of the series can be found here, featuring discussion of Iraqi defense minister Abdul Qadr Jassim al-Obeidi's visit with Awakening leader Sheikh Ahmad Bezia; statements on the government of Iraq's supposed crackdown on Awakening councils in Baghdad; and information about the second conference of Anbar tribes.

An excerpt:

It is important to differentiate between two different types of Awakening councils. First, Mutammar Sahwat al-Iraq, or the Iraqi Awakening, is a registered national political party that began as the Anbar Awakening tribal movement mid-2006 in Ramadi, Anbar. By early 2007, the Anbar Awakening's popularity grew into other Sunni areas in Baghdad, Salahideen, and Diyala, at the same time coalition forces started recruiting tribal-oriented Sunnis into its Sons of Iraq programs. Many Sons of Iraq program participants organized themselves into self-proclaimed Awakening councils, even though they might not have any official affiliation with the Anbar Awakening. In early 2007, as the Anbar Awakening transitioned into the Iraqi Awakening, many of these other Awakening councils either joined the Iraqi Awakening organization, or just continued operating under their own ad hoc organizations.
Today the GOI [the government of Iraq] has good relations with the Iraqi Awakening, and recognizes it as a legal political entity. However, GOI is weary of self-proclaimed Awakening groups not integrated into the Iraqi Awakening, because some of these groups do not operate according to new Iraqi laws and are not seen as subservient to GOI. Some of these ad hoc Awakening councils/Sons of Iraq are basically former nationalist insurgents whose reason for turning against AQI was purely tactical. The Iraqi Awakening would not necessarily be against GOI cracking down on these groups that work against the party's platform principle of recognizing GOI's authority and allowing only ISF [Iraqi security forces]-approved groups to use weapons.

Terrorist Threat and US Response: A Changing Landscape

By Michael Jacobson

The Washington Institute published a monograph that my colleague Matt Levitt and I edited, on the lecture series we've been hosting at the Institute since December 2007. Speakers have included Juan Zarate, the Deputy National Security Advisor, Mike Leiter, the director of NCTC, Don Kerr, the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Charlie Allen, DHS Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis. The monograph includes the prepared remarks of the first seven of the senior US government counterterrorism officials who spoke at the Institute, as well as an assessment that Matt and I wrote on the themes that emerged from the series.

While the series covered a broad spectrum of terrorism-related topics, ranging from terrorism financing to the threat of nuclear terrorism, three major themes emerged: how the threat facing the US has evolved, how the US has adapted its counterterrorism approach, and how the US has revised its governmental structure to address these threats.

As the lecture series made clear, the next administration will have many serious challenging in confronting the rapidly evolving threats posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, as well as Hizballah, Hamas and others. The next administration will also inherit and bureacratic structure still very much in transition. As Mike Leiter acknowledged, "the single, overarching challenge -- and the one that I believe looms larges -- is institutionalizing all of the progress we have made in working across the US government on counterterrorism." The next administration will also have to decide whether to continue to established approach of the current administration, including the fairly recent shift in communication strategy and the more complete integration of all elements of power into counterterrorism efforts.

EU High Court Invalidates Sanctions Against Al Qaeda

By Jonathan Winer

In a devastating blow to existing international financial sanctions against terrorist groups, the EU's highest court has today overturned the sanctions program imposed by the European Union on Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The ruling by the European Court of Justice annulled the EU's freezing of the funds of Yassin Al-Kadi, a Saudi businessman who has been on terrorist financier black-lists since his listing as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" by the U.S. Treasury in October 2001.

The ruling only immediately affects Al-Kadi and the charity Al Barakaat, also alleged to have funded Al-Qaeda, and defers the release of their assets 90 days to give the EU the opportunity to come up with a new sanctions regime that provides the due process rights which the Court were not present in the existing EU regulation. But at first reading, it appears essentially to end the ability of the EU to impose economic sanctions against terrorists -- or anyone else -- in the absence of providing the designated person the opportunity to be heard in some kind of contested proceeding, followed by a process of judicial review. What would be required in such a proceeding to make an asset freeze lawful in the EU, and the extent to which assets may be held temporarily prior to such a hearing or process is not spelled out.

The allegations against Al-Kadi are very serious. He has been alleged to have financed Osama bin Laden, Hamas and other terrorist groups by funneling funds through the charities, and has been described in formal testimony by U.S. officials as a key terrorist financier and facilitator. At the request of the U.S, and supported by Saudi Arabia, the United Nations Security Council placed Al-Kadi on its global terrorist list in 2001. In turn, the EU imposed the UN sanctions on Al-Kadi on the basis of the UN Security Council resolution. It is that process that the EU's high court has now invalidated, stating that before the EU may impose sanctions that take away someone's property, the EU must afford the person "a reasonable opportunity fo putting his case to the competent authorities."

How much "due process" is due an alleged terrorist before assets may be frozen is not articulated by the court. But the Court said the EU did not need to unfreeze the funds immediately, as giving the ruling immediate effect could "seriously and irreversibly prejudicing the effectiveness of the restrictive measures imposed by the regulation" by allowing Al-Kadi and Al Barakaat to move their funds out of the EU. Accordingly, it invited the EU to develop a new sanctions regulation that provides due process to the targets within the 90 day period, acknowledging that on the merits of the case the EU might have the right to impose sanctions on Al-Kadi and Al Barakaat.

The ruling was not unexpected. It follows closely the logic and reasoning of the recommendation made by the EU courts Advocate General, Poiares Maduro, in January. The result, however, represents a damaging outcome for efforts to curtail terrorist financing, in practice, wiping out the existing international sanctions regime, not only against Al Qaeda, but against any and all individuals subject to economic sanctions. The EU (and the UN) will need to act urgently to develop a system capable of meeting the court's due process tests. The U.S., for its part, should have seen this coming, giving last January's ruling. A new system needs to be developed to provide an efficient, effective, and legally sustainable way on a global basis of combining a vital couinter-terrorism objective with sufficient oversight and process to meet the baseline human rights and rule of law requirements now demanded throughout the EU as the result of this decision.

The immediate practical impact of this ruling remains fuzzy indeed, even if the medium-term implications are clear. Each EU member state has independent obligations to enforce UN Security Council Resolutions. Despite the Court of Justice ruling breaks, the UN order continues to require U.N. member states to freeze assets of people and entities designated by the UN for funding terror groups. The contradiction between the UN resolution requiring asset freezes, and the EU ruling, finding the EU sanctions invalid given the lack of due process, provides a further reason the countries that are part of the EU will need to develop a process solution promptly.

NEFA Foundation Report: "Anatomy of a Modern Homegrown Terror Cell: Aabid Khan et al." (Operation Praline)

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has published a new report that I have written, titled "Anatomy of a Modern Homegrown Terror Cell." The report focuses on the recent criminal trial of Aabid Hussain Khan at the Blackfriars Crown Court in London, as told through the actual evidence seized by U.K. authorities and the detailed testimony of Khan himself. According to Karen Jones, the reviewing lawyer in the case from the U.K. Crown Prosecution Service, "The evidence showed Khan was a committed and active supporter of Al-Qaida ideology… He preyed on vulnerable young people and turned them into recruits to his cause, using internet chat to lure them in then incite them to fight. He arranged their Pakistan for terrorism training, and talked about a 'worldwide battle.'"

During an online chat session with co-conspirators, Khan boasted of his desire “to take out” as many people as possible, even innocent civilians: “attacks are permissable through out this world, so the world a battlefield in my vision, everything, almost, is a target… so if you can find a big target and take it out, say like a military base in uk, then alhamdulillaah.” In another similar conversation, Khan confessed, “you dont know how much fury i have towards these american dogs.” Khan was remarkably forthright in laying out his larger plan: “what i want to do is cause trouble for kuffar [infidels] by hit and runs[,] everywhere[,] cause fear and panic in their countries[,] make them nervous so they make mistakes… insha’allaah commando training. i was all ready[sic] reported to the airport and police by my parents… [but it is] too late, the terrorists have brainwashed us.” When Khan insisted to another prospective cell member “our duty is to cause damage to the kuffar [infidels] in each and every place possible”, the recruit joked that Khan might not be patient enough to actually reach his chosen target: “the way u talk it seems like ur planning out a fidayee [suicide commando] attack on the plane lol.” Grinning, Khan responded, “if it does not come to that, then we wont insha’allaah.”

The 21-page report includes an additional 3-page Appendix with highlights from the evidence seized from Khan--including still images from reconnaissance videos allegedly filmed by Atlanta, Georgia residents Ehsanul Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed; and, from a video Khan himself recorded in July 2006 in a remote region of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Aafia Siddiqui Indicted For Charges Including Attempted Murder and Assault

By Andrew Cochran

Aafia Siddiqui has been indicted by a federal grand jury in New York City and will appear in court on Thursday in connection with this new indictment, which you can download from here. She is charged with: (1) one count of attempting to kill United States nationals outside the United States; (2) one count of attempting to kill United States officers and employees; (3) one count of armed assault of United States officers and employees; (4) one count of using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence; and (5) three counts of assault of United States officers and employees.

The DOJ press release and the indictment provide details of the incident in question:

"On July 18, 2008, a team of United States servicemen and law enforcement officers, and others assisting them, attempted to interview Aafia Siddiqui in Ghazni, Afghanistan, where she had been detained by local police the day before. The United States interview team included, among others: three officers and employees of the United States Army; two officers and employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and two United States Army contract interpreters.
The interview of Siddiqui was to take place at an Afghan police compound in Ghazni. In a second-floor meeting room at the compound -- where Siddiqui was being held, unbeknownst to the United States interview team, unsecured, behind a curtain -- Siddiqui obtained one of the United States Army officer’s M-4 rifle and attempted to fire it, and did fire it, at another United States Army officer and other members of United States interview team. Siddiqui repeatedly stated her intent and desire to kill Americans.

Siddiqui then assaulted one of the United States Army interpreters, as he attempted to obtain the M-4 rifle from her. Siddiqui subsequently assaulted one of the FBI agents and one of the United States Army officers, as they attempted to subdue her."

The indictment supercedes the criminal complaint filed against Siddiqui in August; a copy of that is available on the NEFA Foundation website. The indictment also cites written notes and computer files taken from Siddiqui when she was captured. For instance, handwritten notes referred to a "mass casualty attack" and listed locations in the U.S., including Plum Island, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Other notes referred to the construction of "dirty bombs" and chemical and biological weapons, and discussed using reconnaissance drones, underwater bombs, and gliders. Her computer thumb drive contained correspondence referring to "cells," "attacks" by certain "cells," and "enemies."

Siddiqui is also believed to have been in Liberia receiving al Qaeda diamonds in 2001. Douglas Farah wrote recently that "a woman had arrived to collect diamonds from al Qaeda operatives in Monrovia, and had returned, with two men, to Karachi, Pakistan, and then moved on to Quetta, where police and intelligence lost her trace. It was not clear to me at the time of the reporting that the woman was Siddiqui. Perhaps the New York trial will help clarify the issue."

The Urgent Need for a Broader Counterinsurgency Approach in the FATA

By Jonathan Winer

Asif Ali Zardari, imminently to become Pakistan’s President, faces a resurgent Taliban, ongoing terrorist attacks and a fractured political environment which makes effective responses all the harder. President Pervez Musharraf’s resignation as President on August 18 could have provided an opportunity for a coalition government to take charge on security issues. But the withdrawal on August 25 of Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) from the coalition has left Zardari’s Pakistan People's Party (PPP) weakened. Immediate political challenges include the Islamist party Jamaat-i-Islami’s efforts to have the PML-N to join its All Pakistan Democratic Movement in opposition to the secularist PPP, making it all the harder for the PPP government to take the aggressive military steps needs to combat the Taliban and al-Qaeda where they are operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and South Waziristan.

Located along Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan, FATA consists of seven tribal agencies and six frontier regions with more than 3 million people. The FATA continues to be administered by Pakistan along an administrative scheme developed more than a century ago by the Colonial British. The people of the FATA have limited civil rights, and even more limited social services, with high poverty, high unemployment, low literacy, and an infrastructure that could charitably be called underdeveloped. Many areas remain barely subject to Pakistani rule, providing territory for criminals as well as extremists. The porous border is a narcotics smuggler’s paradise, exploited by the Taliban among others. It is also among the world's primary terrorist safe-havens, despite ongoing U.S.-Pakistani military efforts there, and the center of cross-border Taliban and al-Qaeda destabilization efforts in Afghanistan.

In the best of times, any civilian leader would have his hands full trying to gain control of the FATA, as well as of Pakistan’ two strongest institutions, the Pakistani military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), both of whom have long-standing ties to extremist groups, including the Taliban, recurrent involvement in drug trafficking, and well-documented histories of corruption.

But these are among the worst of times in Pakistan. Hostilities between Pakistan’s security institutions and the Taliban are intensifying. On August 25, Pakistan banned Pakistan’s most important Taliban organization, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), based in South Waziristan. The government froze its bank accounts and assets, and announced rewards for the arrest of its leaders. This move was prompted after serious assaults by militants on Pakistani governmental installations and officials. These included a bloody suicide assault on a government arms factory located in Wah, just 18 miles from Islamabad, which killed an estimated 100 Pakistani civilians, a bombing of a senior police official in Karachi, and an attack on a container truck carrying two armored personal carriers out of Karachi port leaving for a mission with NATO in Afghanistan. In the same period, Taliban militants operating in Peshawar blew up homes of a senior local official of the Awami National Party, as well as a college for women operated by the government.

According to Pakistani press accounts, the suicide attackers who blew themselves up at the Pakistan Ordinance Factories at Wah were just 15 to 16 years old, and had been trained at a terrorist camp in South Waziristan and transported up to Islamabad for the bombings. The TTP took credit for the attacks, and then promptly offered the government a cease fire, to which the government responded with the bans. According to Pakistan’s Ministry of the Interior, the TTP had been responsible for many of the other suicide bombings that have taken place in Pakistan over the past two years, which collectively have been estimated to have killed more than 4,000 Pakistanis.

This represents a strategy on the part of the Taliban to undermine government control of the FATA. Since 2004, the Taliban have reportedly killed more than 300 tribal leaders or maliks, so that many of those remaining now march to the Taliban’s drummer.

Evidence of the Taliban’s growing political confidence is the announcement in made August 26 that it had banned foreign journalists from being present anywhere in FATA or North Waziristan. Ahmadullah Ahmadi, spokesman for Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadur, said in a statement that entry of all the journalists belonging to Western electronic and print media had been banned as “harmful for Islam, Muslims and the country.” The Taliban spokesman warned that journalists who ignored the ban would be punished.

In the region around Peshawar, the Pakistani military has been fighting militants in rural areas such as Bajur, said to house some 3000 insurgent forces training for combat in Afghanistan. About 400 insurgent fighters have been reported killed in these operations in August, which is also causing a substantial refugee migration estimated at involving between 50,000 and 200,000 people who have now reportedly fled Bajur and the nearby Mohmand tribal region.

There are differing views of how substantial a presence al-Qaeda and the Taliban have in FATA. In August, Ted Gistaro, the U.S. national intelligence officer for transnational threats, said that Al Qaeda had achieved safe haven status in FATA equivalent to that it had achieved prior to 9-11 in Afghanistan by making local alliances with tribal leaders and pushing government authority from the area. He also warned that they were using their space and time to plan further attacks on the west. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates disagreed, taking the point of view that Al Qaeda had limited ability to communicate or travel in FATA. Regardless of the doctrinal disputes, the fact remains that terrorists continue to be successful at regularly blowing up government facilities throughout the area.

Both the U.S. and Pakistan have an interest in maintaining day-to-day military and intelligence cooperation against terrorist targets of mutual interest, as well as between Pakistan and NATO with regard to operations in Afghanistan. The U.S. has clearly placed its interests in strengthening and stabilizing Zardari, viewing him as the U.S. once did Musharaff as the best help we can get under the circumstances.

How well is that working? On September 2, Pakistan's security forces announced they had just missed the opportunity to capture al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. According to Rehman Malik, the adviser to Pakistan's prime minister on security affairs, Pakistani forces recently stormed a residence where al-Zawahiri was supposed to be, and killed his wife in his absence. No information as to whether the result was due to bad intelligence, poor operational security, poor military execution, or bad luck. Significantly, Malik emphasized the close cooperation between Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan, describing the Taliban as an extension in Pakistan of Al Qaeda.

Longer term, a new American President will have to come to grips with the reality of the findings of the GAO in its April 2008 and May 2008 reports to the Congress. The GAO found that the United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA, in large part because it had relied principally on the Pakistan military to address U.S. national security goals. The GAO found al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States from a safe haven it created in the FATA. And it found the U.S. had failed to develop a comprehensive plan for ending terrorist safe havens in the FATA, a need identified by the 9-11 Commission in 2004 and legislatively mandated in 2007. The GAO identified one reason for the failure the simple fact that no one had yet been put in charge of developing a U.S. strategy to destroy terrorist enclaves in the FATA and close the safe haven there.

The GAO reflected the reality that the U.S. and Pakistan's existing approach in the FATA, which has been almost entirely military, has failed. In recent months, Pakistan's civilian government has sought to negotiate with some tribes to end combat, withdraw the army and only use it on last resort, while promoting economic development in theory, but in practice, ceding the territory to the Taliban. An alternative would broaden U.S. and multilateral assistance to the FATA with buy-in on the Pakistani side, to provide social services and rule of law on the ground, results never before achieved in the FATA by anyone. Assistance programs can’t eliminate the injuries brought on any population by armed conflict. But they can mitigate them, and play a transformative role in giving people a stake in an alternative to Talibanism.

In July, Senator Joe Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (and since then the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee), introduced legislation with his Republican counterpart on the Committee, Richard Lugar (R-IN), under which the U.S. would triple non-security aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion annually, for a ten year period, to build schools, clinics, and roads, especially in the FATA. That aid would be unconditional, and was reported favorably out of the Foreign Relations Committee in the final days before Congress adjourned for summer recess. Security aid, by contrast, now at $1 billion a year, would be tied to performance. Senators Biden and Lugar would also seek a broader engagement with the Pakistani people, not just the Pakistani government. As former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin testified before the Foreign Relations Committee, in June, the non-military aid program the U.S. previously put into place “is at best having little impact, or worse, breeding resentment among the population” given its miniscule size in relations to military support.

The Pakistan-Afghanistan border is and will remain a formidable counter-insurgency challenge for the long-term, a term measured in many years, not many months. The Biden-Lugar initiative, ideally supported by many other countries, could bolster moderate political forces in the FATA and help the government of Pakistan build some popular support in the FATA for the Pakistani state itself through the novel mechanism of providing the area with a steady stream, over a decade, of non-narcotics revenues. To continue with the past military approach alone, unsupported by other activities, is to court catastrophe.

Yet to ignore the urgent military realities, and the existing safe haven is also suicidal. As the Los Angeles Times reported in late August, some senior U.S. military officials are debating "whether the U.S. should act on its own against extremists operating in Pakistan's northwestern tribal regions." If there is anything riskier than relying on Pakistan officials to carry out effective military action without the U.S., it could only be trying to operate in the foreign, ungoverned badlands of the FATA unilaterally. Efforts to rebuild mutual trust remain ongoing. They are certainly needed.

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Navy SEAL From Supersecret Unit Falls in Afghan War

By James Gordon Meek

(UPDATED) There were two unrelated developments today in Afghanistan, but each open the door a crack on highly secret aspects of the nearly seven-year-old war.

The first was the Defense Department announcement that Navy SEAL Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Thomas Harris, 36, of Lexington, N.C., was killed last week during an Afghanistan combat operation.

"Harris was temporarily forward deployed from his assignment at Naval Special Warfare Development Group, Dam Neck, Va.," the Pentagon said in a statement released late Monday night.

The Development Group, also known as "DEVGRU," may seem like a peculiar name for one of the military's most secret counterterror units. Formerly called SEAL Team 6, the unit is charged with carrying out many of the nation's most classified missions, such as top tier kill-or-capture missions targeting senior Al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan, Iraq and other exotic destinations.

A Navy statement said Harris, who had received the Bronze Star with Combat "V" device and other decorations in multiple Afghan and Iraq tours, "drowned after being swept away by turbulent waters while conducting a river crossing during combat operations in Afghanistan."

"Josh was clearly one of the best of the best. He was just an incredible guy," Navy Cmdr. Kent Paro, who commanded Harris when he was in SEAL Team 10, told me tonight.

Harris had a master’s degree but chose to be an enlisted seaman, Paro said.

"He was humble, quiet and extremely capable," he recalled. "He was a junior guy but we gave him a lot of responsibility. He was the kind of guy you'd want your sister to marry."

Another informed source said Harris's grieving family will be supported by the Naval Special Warfare Foundation, which accepts public donations.

In an unrelated story, the U.S. military command in the wartorn country reported this morning on a probe into claims of civilian deaths, which they said had been exaggerated. But the statement from Bagram Airfield revealed some interesting details of enemy spycraft and their surveillance of an American firebase they planned to strike near Heart, close to the Afghan-Iran border.

Investigators collected evidence that "included weapons, explosives, intelligence materials, and an access badge to a nearby base as well as photographs from inside and outside of the base."

Mashal to Leave Damascus? Not Likely.

By David Schenker

Haaretz reported this morning that Hamas politburo head Khalid Mashal is leaving Damascus to take up residence in Sudan. The left-leaning Israeli paper picked up the story from the Kuwaiti daily Al Rai’. Mashal last visited Sudan in early August, where he met with President Omar Bashir.

According to Haaretz, “Israeli sources believe that the move signals a serious desire on Syria’s part to advance the negotiations.”

Meanwhile, reports of Mashal’s imminent departure come the same day as Yoram Turbowitz—Israeli PM Ehud Olmert’s chief of staff and the chief negotiator in the Turkish brokered Israeli-Syrian “negotiations”—announced his resignation.

Hamas today denied that Mashal would be relocating to Sudan. In a press statement issued from Damascus, portions of which appeared on the Hamas website, the organization “call[ed] on the media to strive for the truth in its news.”

Radicals Continue Pressure on Ahmadiyah in Indonesia

By Kenneth Conboy

Due to pressure from radical Islamic groups, the South Sumatra provincial government officially banned the Ahmadiyah sect on 1 September. They are the second province after West Sumatra to impose such a ban.

Earlier, several hard-line Muslim organizations under the Islamic People's Forum, such as Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, the Islamic Defender's Front, and the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, demanded the dissolution of Ahmadiyah due to its heretical teachings that its founder, Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet after Mohammad.

The South Sumatra ban is set to affect an estimated 600 Ahmadiyah followers. There are nine Ahmadiyah mosques in the province.

Monday's ban is yet the latest in a series of government decisions seen as appeasing Muslim radicals ahead of next year's national elections. One of the most glaring waffles has been the continued delays in carrying out the death sentence against three of the masterminds behind the 2002 Bali bombings. The bombers have lost all of their legal appeals, and the government had earlier stated that the three would face a firing squad before the onset of this year's Ramadhan. But as the fasting month started yesterday, this window has obviously been missed, leaving many to wonder whether the current Indonesian administration does not want to risk being perceived as bowing to Western pressure ahead of their 2009 polls.

Iran’s Fantasy: A Renewed Cold War between "Infidels" Russia and America

By Walid Phares

Following is a short commentary I wrote about the Iranian regime strategic opportunity to dodge the international sanctions and the rise of its own opposition, seized through the ongoing tensions between the Russian Federation and NATO. The main point in this article is the Khomeinist Strategic thinking as it pushes hard to widen these international tentions and take advantage of the possibilities of a return of a kind of a Cold war. Evidently Counter Terrorism experts in the US and across the Atlantic have different views on the crisis with Russia and how to address it. But in view of the opportunity given to Iran and other Jihadists, the new East-West tensions may have to be addressed with this reality in mind. Following is my commentary, initially posted in the Cutting Edge News today

Iran’s Fantasy: A Renewed Cold War between "Infidels" Russia and America

Walid Phares

The post-Soviet world has never been closer to what we knew as the Cold War than right now. Iran is pleased. We should all be concerned. New proxy conflicts may soon emerge.

The starkest reminder of the new chill came after Russian forces recently executed a military operation inside South Ossetia in Georgia. Ostensibly, the Georgian incursion was to bring back constitutional order. But Russia’s massive reaction has their forces entrenched just miles away from Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital.
Recent statements by Russian and Western leaders, the flights of long range Russian bombers across international skies, and the cruising of Russian battleships on the high seas are all images from the past months. But they are also a chilling reminder of what were four dangerous decades of the past century.

Moscow and NATO still stockpile thousands of nuclear heads. So any significant confrontation between the two camps is potentially lethal to the planet even though the ICBMs are no longer pre-targeted at major cities around the world. Targeting can change. Dangers emanating from these tensions—Cold War or not—are real and must be addressed seriously by the leaderships at the White House and the Kremlin.

Almost two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Democratic Revolution against Communist dictatorship in the Soviet Union, neither the United States nor Russia has any interest in reviving this tumultuous past. First there is no ideological component for such a conflict. The Communist Party does not rule Moscow, and the USSR exists no more. Both powers are capitalist and both are super armed, even if not technically equal. Their arsenals can finish humanity in a few hours. Second, even if the governmental elite in the Russian Federation seem to act in an authoritarian manner and gesticulate in a pre-1990 mindset, the Russian people and especially the youth are not too excited about a war with the West, particularly with America. All sociological data and observation from Russia’s current popular mood and culture does not show a high support for the return to a Cold war, even if President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin proffer tough words toward the United States and its allies.

Yes, Russia will be determined to play hardball in situations involving the future of Russian-speaking or pro-Russian Slavic populations around its borders. But it is hard to see a come-back of Russian forces to areas where populations would resist them, such as Poland. The mood of the local peoples is more deterring to Moscow than any U.S. or European measures, and that is the real insurance against a Soviet reenactment in Europe. Currently, Russia cannot replay the role of military occupier of alien populations even if many experts and think tanks in the West claim otherwise. Hence, the kind of Cold War which may resurface, or is already showing its hallmarks, is about regions remote from the old Iron Curtain.

That brings us to the greater Middle East and parts of Africa with some, but limited, possibilities in Latin America. It is this type of Russo-American tension and proxy conflict that pleases many rogue regimes and forces in those parts of the world. For sure, one among these excited players is undoubtedly the Iranian regime.

Indeed, Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad have been mobilizing all resources possible, as early as 2005, to break Iran’s isolation since the pressures mounted seriously on the Pasdaran-dominated country. From Tehran’s perspective, cataclysmic geopolitical changes have been taking place in its neighborhood since the events of Sept 11. NATO has deployed in Afghanistan, a US-led Coalition has seized Iraq and American Task Forces have been cruising in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s Mullahs are feeling strategically encircled at a time when more sectors of the Iranian society are shifting to the opposition: Additionally, in 2005, two major allies of the Ayatollahs have been put under pressure: First, Assad’s Baathist regime, which was indicted in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri; and second, Hezbollah which was singled out by UN Security Council Resolution 1559 to surrender its weapons. Add to these pressures a mounting UN request for stopping the military nuclear program of Iran. If you were the men of the regime in Tehran, only a miracle or some sort of massive change in international relations can get you out of this pit. And indeed that salvation shift came in the form of Russo-American tensions.

In fact, only a nation holding veto power at the Security Council and strong enough to accompany its threats with action on the ground is able to save the Khamenei elite from complete isolation. And that giant is, as we see, an angry Russian leadership. The Iranian regime read very well the slowly faltering relations between the entourage of Putin and Bush despite the apparently good personal relations between the two leaders.

Throughout the 1990s under Yeltsin and immediately after 9/11 under Putin, Russo-American partnership against Terrorism seemed to discourage the Jihadists worldwide—both Salafists, that is, the Sunni Islamists, and the Khomeinists. Both Iranian camps hoped for an “infidel-versus-infidel” confrontation that would save the day. Jihadi ideologues such as Sheikh Yussuf Qaradawi, al Jazeera’s major doctrinal figure and master inspiration for the Muslim Brotherhood networks often lamented that today’s Kuffar (infidels) seem to be united against the Umma (the Islamic nation). Iranian-backed thinkers also hinted at the deadlock in international context. Sheikh Mohammed Fadlallah, Hezbollah’s ideological mentor repeatedly indicated that as long as Moscow and Washington were not at odds, it was difficult for the Jihadi forces to achieve a critical change in the balance of power in the region.

In Iran, strategic planners knew all too well that even though it was the United States which threatened the regime’s ambitions, it was in fact the passive entente between the old foes of the Cold War that allowed Americans to come so close to Iran’s borders. Hence, in order to reverse the Western advance in the Middle East and, more importantly, in order to escape a democratic revolution against the regional tyrannies, the Russo-American entente would have to crumble. Therefore, the current escalation into what looks like—but is not exactly— a return to the Cold war is a “gift from heaven” to the Iranian regime. For even if these tensions do not climax into a full fledge comeback to the post-WWII era, they will and have already allowed Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to break loose from the containment and isolation processes. Here is how.

In the past years after 9/11, Russia worked cooperatively with the West to pressure Iran and its allies in the region at the UN Security Council with the passing of UNSCR 1559 and its subsequent resolutions regarding Syria and Lebanon. Moscow still walked with the international community in pressuring Tehran to cooperate on the nuclear crisis. But in the last few years, Russian-Iranian, and to a lesser degree Russian-Syrian, cooperation began to grow and the attitude of the Kremlin towards U.S. policies in the region became more and more rigid.

Historians and maybe contemporary experts in Russian-Western relationships will sooner rather than later explain why the cordial relations rapidly deteriorated. Scores of Cold War and hard-core partisans in the West claim the politico-military establishment in Russia never really changed from the old Soviet Union to the current Russian Federation. But anti-Western Communists are today on the margins of politics in Russia. Who then is pushing for tensions and to achieve what goals? There is plenty of cash in Moscow and oil is providing unprecedented revenues. Critics of Moscow accuse the old Russian nationalism of provoking a non-Marxist return to the empire. The argument is valid, but Russian youth are more into rock, travel and job search than into chauvinism. So what is it that pushed the Russian bear to roar and show its anger over the secessionist provinces in Georgia after a decade and a half of status quo in the Caucuses? Is it the anti-missiles shield to be deployed in Eastern Europe? Is it the treatment of Russia by American diplomacy which, according to Moscow, acts unilaterally and ignores the second greatest power on Earth as U.S. forces roam the planet? Is it the stretching of NATO around the old Soviet borders? Or is it a combination of all of the above complicated by a slow process of democratization in an ex-superpower which is witnessing a sudden flood of cash revenues? It may be all of that.

Unfortunately, this transformation was certainly missed in Western capitals. Russia was too important to let slip back into enmity. Washington and Brussels should have seen the signals of frustrations much earlier and acted accordingly. In the couple years following the Jihadi onslaught of September 11, a window of opportunity was open wide. Bush and Putin were very comfortable with each other. Russians suffered from terrorism in their capital and in Beslan as much as the Spaniards and the British did in their capital cities. As suggested in a whole chapter of my most recent book, The Confrontation, the US and the West should have jumped immediately at this opportunity and brought Russia by all means to a world alliance against Jihadi terrorism. This convergence with Russia against the Terror forces should have been a priority for NATO, but apparently it didn’t happen.

Worse, a reverse policy was applied by Western foreign policies. In the Balkans, where ethnic conflict can explode the delicate balances, a straw broke the back of the Russian-Western equation. Neglecting Russian concerns over Kosovo’s separation from Serbia, Euro-American chanceries slapped the bear in the face while their troops were fighting the most lethal enemy of the international community in Afghanistan, Iraq and at home. From that day on, Russia was on its own looking for its own Kosovo, and the rest of the story is now being played in the Caucuses and more specifically in Georgia.

Ironically, it was the West that wanted to please the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) by rushing the Kosovo process without a real reconciliation with Serbia, Russia’s cousin. The move led to the alienation of the Russians and didn’t extract a massive Muslim support to the United States. Ironically, this is where Iran seized the opportunity.

Using all its energies and clout, the Iranian regime blocked the Arab League and the OIC from siding overwhelmingly with the West while Tehran further invited the Russians to exercise a counter balance in the region. Maneuvering admirably, Iran acted swiftly on the ground as the Russian-Western crisis was mounting. As soon as Moscow expressed its open anger about Kosovo last winter, the Ayatollah understood that from that day on Putin would not grant his green light for any UN action against Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah. In May, the Iranian-backed militia took over Beirut and the United States didn’t lift a finger. A new balance of power was now acting to the advantage of Tehran.

An angry Russia is naturally in the interest of Iran’s regime. A Russia that clashes with US allies in the Balkans is a magnificent gift to the Syro-Iranian axis in the region. A return to the Cold War, any form of Cold war, is a fantasy that would break the isolation of Tehran and allow the Islamist power to achieve even more victories.

Evidently, it is not in the long-term interest of today’s Russia, regardless of the plans of Medvedev and Putin, to see Jihadi regimes like the Ayatollah’s undermining international order and taking advantage of Russian-Western tensions. Iran is building a powerful third force in the world, bringing together Islamist Salafists and Khomeinists. Hezbollah is operating in Sudan and has ties to Sunnis radicals. The movements constructed by the Ayatollah in parallel to the Wahabis can eventually reach deep inside Russia and could be threatening to the Russian population in a disproportionate way with a supposed Western threat. Hence, the Russian-Iranian alliance is, first, against the nature of what Russia’s society wishes to accomplish and, second, will cause harm to democracies.

But one must expect that Tehran and its axis will attempt to exploit the crisis between both infidel powers as much as possible. This is an opportunity, perhaps the last chance, for the totalitarian regime in Iran to survive the rise of democracy in the region. Indeed, not only Iran but other authoritarian circles in the region are happy about the return of a Cold War of any temperature.

Such a reality should compel Western democracies to create more focused international strategies. Political transformations within Russia are tough and complex, but the United States and Europe have the ability to be assertive regarding the defense of their small allies, like Georgia, while redirecting Russian muscles to confront a common enemy, Jihadi terrorism. Obviously, such a talent needs visionaries both in Washington and in Brussels. Unfortunately, the developments of the past year shows that Iran’s regime was able to outmaneuver the West, escape isolation and watch with immense pleasure infidel powers at each other’s throats.

*******

Dr. Walid Phares is the Director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy and the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.

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A Hidden Grain of Truth That Should Resonate

By Douglas Farah

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting feature on the late Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah and his rather mysterious death on Feb. 12 in Damascus.

Mughniyah, of course, was one of the true pioneers in the use of terrorist tactics by radical Islamists against the West. Among the interesting details the report has is that, on the night his car blew up, incinerating him inside, Mughniyah was on his way to meet Syrian president Bashar Assad.

But there was one Mughniyah quote buried deep in the story that I thought was perhaps the most important in looking at what Hezbollah, Iran and Syria are up to. This should particularly resonate for those looking at Hezbollah in Latin America.

In an interview that he gave just before his death, and which was published afterward, Mughniyah was quoted as saying the following:

"The Americans are making up stories about me and hold me responsible for a lot of attacks against them that happened around the world," he told Ibrahim al-Amine of Lebanon's Al-Akhbar. "Sometimes they think of me as if I have the key to the universe. It is difficult for them to understand that I am part of an institution that patiently plans and designs its moves." My full blog is here.

Voices of the Awakening: Local, National, and International Issues

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Guest Post: FinCEN Promotes the Use of Section 314(b) of the USA PATRIOT Act

By Andrew Cochran

The Criminal-Terrorist Nexus in Plain View

By Douglas Farah

Border Security Improvement? No Time Soon

By Bill West

General Assembly’s Opening Debate Dampens Hope For UN Progress in Dealing With Terrorism and Nuclear Proliferation

By Victor Comras

Bombings in Lebanon and Syria are part of a Master Campaign?

By Walid Phares

Syrian Mukhabarat Perhaps Responsible for Today’s Car-Bomb Attack

By Walid Phares

Identifying the Next National Security Threats

By Michael Jacobson

HLF Trial Update: Enter the Brotherhood

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

The Truly Alarming News From Afghanistan

By Douglas Farah

HLF Trial Update: Digging in the Dirt

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

On Reports of Infighting Within the Awakening Movement

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Henry Jackson Society discussion of the Confrontation in London: Independence from Petro Dollars is Key

By Walid Phares

Voices of the Awakening: Focus on Upcoming Provincial Elections

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Last week's attack against the U.S. embassy: a sign of a troubled situation in Yemen

By Olivier Guitta

Noorsai Conviction Shows Merger of Criminal and Terrorist Organizations

By Douglas Farah

CT Blog Expert Matthew Levitt Testifies in HLF Trial

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)

NEFA Foundation: The Bitter Divide Within Al-Qaida's Last Remaining Ally in Iraq

By Evan Kohlmann

New NEFA Paper on the FARC's International Network

By Douglas Farah

Islamabad Bombing I: Brute Force Tactics

By Aaron Mannes

Indonesian Cleric Ba'asyir Launches New Hard-Line Group

By Kenneth Conboy

Hizbut-Tahrir Bangladesh: Islamist Movement under Terror Scanner

By Animesh Roul

Jihadi Hellish message to Pakistan

By Walid Phares

Fire as a Tool of Terror

By Aaron Mannes

Russia's New Efforts to Arm State Sponsors of Terrorism

By Douglas Farah

Al-Qaida's 9/11 Anniversary Video Release Delayed Due to Technical Problems, Human Errors

By Evan Kohlmann

Transnational Drug Bust Shows Power of Cooperation

By Douglas Farah

To contain Jihadism you need Pluralism

By Walid Phares

NEFA Foundation: Video of a "Terrorist Training Camp" in Canada

By Evan Kohlmann

Voices of the Awakening: One-Year Anniversary of Abdul Sattar's Death

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

'Airline' Plotters Trained In FATA

By Paul Cruickshank

Al Qaeda and the U.S. agree on... Mauritania

By Olivier Guitta

Wall Street's Collapse Enhances Influence of "Islamic Finance" Vehicles (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

New Information on U.K. Airline Plot

By Paul Cruickshank

Hezbollah and Sudan's Salafi Regime Converge

By Walid Phares

Promoting Charity while Reducing Risks of Terror Financing

By Matthew Levitt

A Useful Reminder of the Enemy's Efforts

By Douglas Farah

Two More Counterterror SEALs Die in Afghanistan

By James Gordon Meek

Diplomatic Explusions Highlight Need for US to Re-Engage with Latin America

By Jonathan Winer

Serial Terror Blasts Strike Indian Capital, Indian Mujahedeen Claims Responsibility

By Animesh Roul