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| Terror Networks & Islam |
| one quarter of foreign jihadis are sub-Saharan Africans |
| 2005-06-14 |
| The Counter Terrorism Blog: Well, someone is finally paying some attention to an extremely important story. The New York Times today has a nice piece on the growing number of sub-Saharan Africans now turning up as jihadis in Iraq. What is truely alarming is that about one quarter of the 400 foreign fighters captured are from that region. While the pipeline has been known to be open for the past couple of years, drawing militants from Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania, the intelligence community often dismissed or downplayed the information in my discussions with them. The belief was that EUCOM, the military command responsible for Africa, was hyping its reporting in order to have a terrorist threat in its theater of operations, thereby justifying increased military spending. That sort of small minded thinking kept more attention from being focused on what is now being recognized as not only a problem but a potentially-grave threat in Iraq as well as West Africa. It is also the same small-minded thinking that led the FBI to dismiss out of hand public statements by Gen. Charles Wald, EUCOM's deputy commander, supporting my findings and more on al Qaeda's presence in West Africa and its use of diamonds. For the rest of the blog, go here. |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #11 Arab is as much a cultural affiliation and language group as a racial category. My point was that the article is claiming this is new development, whereas I am saying this just more of the same, i.e. Arab Jihadis going to Iraq. If a dark skinned 'african looking' Arab could pass unremarked in Iraq, then this substantiates my argument. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-06-14 18:36 |
| #10 wow. Iraqi bloggers actually giving facts about Iraq, instead of our speculations. Yeah for Iraqi bloggers. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2005-06-14 16:14 |
| #9 lib: one of the Iraqi bloggers mentioned that some Basrans can and do get confused for black Africans, and Somali expat workers confused for Basrans. As I understand it, the southern Shia areas have a lot of genes left over from the centuries when the Arabs imported east African slaves to work the sugarcane. The blogger noted that the gentlemen in question were doing construction work in his Baghdad neighborhood, but everybody was suspicious that they were al Queda jihadis or something. So the locals do make that assumption, although they were wrong in this case. This was in 2003, I seem to remember... |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2005-06-14 16:11 |
| #8 japan of course lived in an incredible degree of isolation for over a thousand years - and probably long before that. To a lesser extent Korea and Viet Nam. Im just thinking that Mesopotamia, for long the seat of empires, importer of slaves, drawer of migrants was more of a melting pot. I could be wrong. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2005-06-14 15:27 |
| #7 Assumptions, liberalhawk. I just meant that the bone struckture and body type of the sub-saharans is likely to be visibly different than that of the Iraqis. To the accustomed eye, these things jump out, like the difference between Japanese, Korean and, say, Vietnamese. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-06-14 15:20 |
| #6 Sub-Saharan is kind of a sloppy term. The area of the Sehal (I probably misspelled that) is "sub-Sahara," but includes quite a few non-blacks (lots of Arabs, some Berbers and similar). It's majority black, but not to the extent of the more southern states. Northern Nigeria (where the sharia states are), and a swath of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan (remember them?) are all Sahel. I can more easily believe those people are ones referred to here. But I've never actually been to Africa, so it really could be islamified blacks. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-06-14 12:18 |
| #5 "Sub-Saharan? They should be easy to spot in a crowd of Iraqis, then" Im not sure what to say. last time we had this discussion it was east africans in Pakistan. I went on and on about migration patterns, diversity in the Islamic world etc. Turned out the guy was just well hidden, and had folks delivering food for him. Damn, I looked pretty foolish, didnt I? Well I'll repeat. There WERE migrations around and across the arab world through history. Including the movement of slaves, who were later released. I point again to Jericho, a Palestinian town where most the (Sunni Muslim, arab, Palestinian) inhabitants are black, which I assume must be related to a local concentration of of African slaves. Iraq is a lot closer to Africa than Pakistan, and was once the wealthy center of the Islamic world, and must have had huge numbers of slaves. And other migrants. Anyone here whos actually BEEN to Iraq? Ex-GI maybe, or an Iraqi? |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2005-06-14 11:46 |
| #4 Phil_b, remember that there were anti-US marches in Nigeria after 911. There are plenty of non-Arab Muhammadans. |
| Posted by: James 2005-06-14 11:29 |
| #3 ...ethnically related groups like Tuaregs. They're driving Volkswagens? /rimshot |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-06-14 11:06 |
| #2 Sub-Saharan? They should be easy to spot in a crowd of Iraqis, then. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-06-14 10:20 |
| #1 Dollars to donuts these 'subsaharan Africans' are Arabs or ethnically related groups like Tuaregs. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-06-14 04:48 |