When the Taliban fell, two visions emerged within the Islamist terror movement.
One vision, identified with Osama bin Laden, wants the movement to continue targeting the West, especially the United States. The other, advocated by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2, wants the "holy war" concentrated in Muslim countries, especially Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
The events of the past year or so show that the al-Zawahiri vision is in the ascendancy. Outside the bomb attack in Madrid just over a year ago, the movement has scored no successes in the West, while at least 130 of its operatives have been picked up in half a dozen European countries and the United States.
To be sure, the Madrid attack briefly boosted bin Laden's prestige by triggering a victory for the (anti-Iraq War) Socialists. And the terror underworld has recently been abuzz with rumors of a coming spectacular attack in Britain, to achieve another change of government in a major Western democracy.
Nevertheless, it is clear that majority opinion within the terror movement favors the al-Zawahiri strategy — which aims to seize control of at least one Muslim country to provide the safe haven that the Islamists enjoyed in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. This is why the past two years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of attacks in the four targeted countries.
But even there, things are not going well for the movement.
In Pakistan, two attempts at killing President Pervez Musharraf have failed, and hundreds of terrorists have been killed or captured. In Afghanistan, the movement and the remnants of the Taliban failed to stop the presidential election and has little chance of preventing next September's parliamentary polls. New Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's plan is to bring the insurgency under control before the end of the year, when Iraqis are scheduled to elect a new parliament.
To win in Afghanistan and Iraq, the terror movement would have to defeat not only the local national forces but also the United States and its Coalition allies. To win in Pakistan, al-Zawahiri must crush the Pakistani army, one of the strongest in the world.
All this means that Saudi Arabia is increasingly seen by al-Zawahiri as the softest target for a terrorist take-over.
This is why the terror campaign in the kingdom appears to have moved beyond its initial stage of "propaganda through action" and into a new phase that looks like a military-style effort designed to seize and hold territory which could then be transformed into bases and safe havens.
This was evident in at least three areas (Duwaisar, al-Unaizah and Ras) in the Qassim heartland of Najd, where Saudi forces last week fought regular battles with terrorist forces entrenched in what looked like permanent operational bases. According to Saudi sources, the terror movement had also acquired a number of safe havens in the Jowf province, in northern Saudi Arabia, which also served for the smuggling of fighters and arms into Iraq.
As elsewhere, a majority of the terrorists appear to have spent some time in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. After the liberation of Afghanistan, these individuals poured into the kingdom and went underground until the al-Zawahiri strategy required them to emerge and move onto the offensive. Of the estimated 200 or so terrorists killed or captured by the Saudis since 2002, fewer than a dozen appear to have been new recruits to the cause.
Many are foreign fighters. The Saudis forces have already killed or captured terrorists with Moroccan, Algerian, Canadian, Yemeni and French nationalities. Documents seized from the terrorists also show that they had logistical support centers in a number of Western European cities, including Rotterdam, Brussels, London and Paris.
The groups use tactics similar to those of insurgents in Iraq — such as suicide attacks, and targeting security forces in the hope of demoralizing the government's coercive forces.
Some suicide bombers carried with them a "fatwa" by a certain Abdulaziz Jarbou, a self-styled religious leader who claims he has the authority to cancel Islam's specific ban on suicide in any form and for any reason. (Jarbou bases his ruling on the opinion of the late Sheikh Muhammad bin Ibrahim, once a Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, who authorized suicide for Algerian fighters in the context of the war against France in the late 1950s. Yet bin Ibrahim had limited his authorization to cases where the captured man, under torture, could reveal the identities of other fighters, thus causing the death of many more Muslims. Jarbou extends the ruling into a blanket authorization for suicide while killing others, including civilians.)
Like its '90s counterparts in Afghanistan and Algeria, the Saudi terror movement depends heavily on smuggling, especially of drugs such as heroin and hashish, as a source of revenue.
Because such drugs are specifically banned under Islamic law, the terror groups have used a fatwa by their late "spiritual guide" Abdallah al-Rashoud in which he provided an "exception." His argument was simple: Hard drugs represent a form of weaponry that the true Muslim is authorized to use against the "infidel" nation; the drugs will kill young people in the "infidel" West while providing money for the Islamist groups to buy arms with which to kill more "infidels."
To date, the Saudi terror groups have been unable to make any headway out of the heartland of Najd. More than 90 percent of their native Saudi members come from a few localities in or around Buraida and al-Unaizah and just four villages in the south. With the exception of a few minor attacks in Jeddah, the terrorists have also failed to make an impression in any major city outside the capital Riyadh.
For such reasons, some in Saudi Arabia have presented these groups as nothing but a temporary irritant. Despite the latest setbacks, that is foolish. The terror movement in the kingdom is part of an international network with supporters and sympathizers in dozens of countries across the globe, including Europe and North America. Even the obviously doctored information provided by the Saudi authorities shows that the terrorists have been able to create bases, continue recruiting, ensuring a healthy cash flow and maintaining the initiative in a number of areas.
The beast may have been wounded but is still capable of biting back with deadly effect.
#1
I think he makes the case for his list rather well. He is grinding away on his personal list of gripes, of course, but his view is honestly put from his POV and he's been there / done that - though long ago and in very different circumstances. I would say that there are a few personal grudges cooking within which detract from the results. In the end, however, I can't fault his recommendations regards manpower and derision of the bureaucratic processes that can be deadly at the pointed end of the stick.
I'd like to know more about his view of the importance of cultural knowledge. If he means knowledge so that effective overall and ad hoc strategies can be employed toward effective results, knowing the mindset of the enemy and civilians who might be potential enemy, then amen. The idiotarian notion of cultural sensitivity is quite another thing, especially in combat - it can easily kill as many as it saves. Knowing your enemy is, indeed, important. Especially so is knowing what they respect.
There should be little doubt that we will face more Arabs, in combat, in the future. The lessons taken away from Iraq should be very carefully selected. For the combat variety, I'd rather rely upon the people from squad level down - and resist the leadership penchant for summarizing at each level upstream until there is only vapor that bears no resemblance to what the Lance Corporal and Gunny originally said. Sorry, Ralph, but you aren't the man to write those down - your role is to be a gadfly against inefficiencies in the system and to champion the needs of those squad members as they, themselves, define them. Looks like you're doing a pretty damned good job of it, lol - just can the grudges.
After U.S. troops this week arrested a cameraman employed by CBS who apparently also worked for the Iraqi insurgency, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asked CBS News president Andrew Heyward for "some tips on infiltrating enemy organizations," according to an unnamed source.
"The CIA has not been able to get any reliable human intelligence out of Iraq for years," said the source. "But CBS News has a double-agent on the payroll. Although, working for both CBS and the terrorists might not qualify him, strictly speaking, as a 'double' agent."
In response to the CIA request, the CBS News chief said he would "do what he could, as a patriotic American, to help the CIA. But there's no trick to getting good information like this. It's all about trust."
Retired CBS anchor Dan Rather, who personally interviewed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his palace shortly before the Iraq war, said, "The line between journalists and their sources sometimes gets as blurry as a pair of spectacles smeared with bacon grease. And if you have to curry favor with a tyrant, or put an insurgent on the payroll, well...that's just the price of getting to the truth."
Posted by: tipper ||
04/12/2005 4:39:00 AM ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
