It may have been a mistake to have said so, but French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was surely closer to the mark than some in the way he characterized the young men burning cars and business around France and now shooting at police in Paris.
They were, he said, "scum" I think that was a misquote and "thugs," which is a better estimate than offered by those who are so understanding, saying that, well, the young men are living miserable lives and are striving to get some attention, to change things for the better. "Through this burning, they are saying, 'I exist, I am here,' " says a man who has worked with some of these youths, as quoted in a Washington Post story.
They couldn't find a better way to say that than by throwing gas on a handicapped woman - setting her ablaze? They couldn't adequately express themselves with means other than fatally beating a man trying to put out one of their fires? Their way of getting noticed is to terrorize children with their ferocity, to destroy the businesses that offer some of them employment, to wound more than 30 police officers?
No, don't anyone excuse this rioting for a minute. What you need is law enforcement that recognizes that crime is crime and is committed by criminals and that rewarding it is a means of encouraging it. Nor does it seem the case that these young people - mostly Muslim youth in the poor, northeast suburbs of Paris - have been ignored, at least not wholly so.
Der Spiegel, 'The Mirror' a German publication, reports in an online article about the socialist mayor of one of those suburbs and how he has joined with others in establishing soccer training for young people there. The suburb, Clichy-sous-Bois, "is an amalgam of schools, daycare centers, welfare offices, parts and a college that looks like something out of an architecture competition," the article says. But there are problems - widespread joblessness is a chief one. And there is, in my view, an obvious culprit: the welfare state.
France has an unemployment rate of about 10 percent - roughly twice the American unemployment rate - which is two and three times as high in some Muslim neighborhoods, according to various reports. Why? Because to sustain the welfare state, France attaches extraordinary taxes and obligations to businesses, such as saying no work week can be longer than 35 hours. Businesses hardly thrive in that environment and there are major disincentives to hiring. Also, the welfare state, in trying to do so much for so many, cannot always do what's needed for those in desperate circumstances.
Another issue is that France and the rest of Europe have not succeeded particularly well in integrating Muslim immigrants into the Western way of life, in large part, it would seem, because many Muslims have no desire to be thus integrated. That is hardly the same as saying most are violently inclined - a number of Muslims have tried to quell the rioting in France. But consequences can include a withering of social cohesion and a long list of disadvantages for those who refuse to adapt to certain requirements for success - none of them religious - in their adopted country.
Americans hardly have a right to be smug about all of this - we have poor neighborhoods and we have had our own riots. But neither do we need to hide our heads in shame when Europeans berate us about an economic system insufficiently socialist. Even on a relatively short, first-time visit to Paris, I saw both the beauty and prosperity of the central city and the contrasting poverty - even ugliness - of certain suburbs. The welfare state does not solve all problems. It has in fact helped create many problems, even though it should not be blamed for the violence of thugs.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies.
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/08/2005 15:34 ||
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We've uh had problems with africans thugs trying to interfere with the Mississipuh way of life too. I know France is at least as pure as Mississipuh.
Posted by: Ted Bilbo ||
11/08/2005 16:20 Comments ||
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Yes, JFM remarked that, there were edits in the tv reportage, one could wonder if that was done deliberately to "demonize" Sarko, possibly within the rivalry with "de Villepin" (who's a man). If that's so, then one of the rationale and talking point of the rioters might be attributed to the french political infighting, that's "funny"...
âArrêt sur Imagesâ (freeze frame), a media-watch program hosted by Daniel Schneidermann is the only French public affairs TV show that ever questions the domestic media on a regular basis. Schneidermann is a career journalist who was fired by Le Monde for having written a book that had criticized their editorial line.
Todayâs subject was, not surprisingly, the recent coverage of the riots.
It appears that Nicolas Sarkozy was deliberately demonized in the TV reports of him using his strong language earlier in the week. In fact, there was footage available showing Sarkozy using the word âracailleâ (riff-raff) while speaking to an inhabitant of Clichy-sous-Bois who herself had just used the word while expressing how fed up she was with local crime.
Sarko answered her using her own words. In politics, thatâs a way of communicating empathy. Her words were edited out and never shown in the insuing days. His werenât. âArrêt sur Imagesâ showed the whole exchange today.
Mr. Sarkozy was filmed quietly and calmly speaking to youths from Clichy who were apparently very deferential toward him (calling him Monsieur), eager to talk to him and seemed impressed that he was willing to leave himself unprotected by bodyguards in order to spend some time with them. In a what amounts to a ghetto thatâs a sincere display of trust.
That footage didnât make the news programs simply because the Provisional wing of the CGT got in the way of honest journalism. It didnât suit their political agenda, and through itsâ heavy ideological editing fanned the flames you might see in your nearest car park or bus depot. Never mind the possible tensions that the press can inflame by reporting too much, worry about what harm is caused by consciously reporting too little.
Schneidermannâs âA vous de le direâ sounds like is comes from the same place and a reaction to the same wall of silence as âWe report, you decideâ.
Just as Hurricane Katrina has exposed the ugliness of America's segregation system, the ghettoes, racism, misery and poverty that lurk beneath the thin surface of economic prosperity and social harmony, the recent riots in Paris have laid bare the darker side of the âcity of lightsâ. You got America pegged, you really don't want to come here.
Paris, the capital which had once mesmerised generations of artists, intellectuals and politicians from around the world, looks today like a city of ghosts, violence, social alienation and economic marginalisation. She said with a huge grin.
Watching the TV scenes of wretchedness, anger and rioting I had to remind myself that this was France, not some poverty ridden, war-stricken third world country. Similar to your own?
The violent riots that have convulsed Paris' banlieus for over a week are not a passing event, or the isolated acts of gangs of delinquent youths, dismissed by the hawkish French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy as "rabble", "scum", "yobs" and "louts", who need to be "cleaned up". Banlieus has been been "convulsive" for years." Note the very appropriate descriptors used above.
These disturbances are a vivid symptom of the profound crisis at the heart of the French social and cultural system, a crisis that has been accumulating for decades, growing like a snowball with the passing of every day in the bleak enclaves of Paris' immigrant suburbs. She used the word crisis, more appropriately a CANCER.
The clashes began when two terrified teenagers, Bouna Traore, 15, and Ziad Benna, 17, desperately clambered the 2m wall of the electricity station on the rundown estate of Clichy-sous-Bois to hide from the police. Bouna and Ziad died promptly, electrocuted by 20,000 volts of electricity and France erupted into urban rioting such as it has not seen for decades. Sourmaya, isn't there some way you can convince more to follow Bouna and Ziad?
Furious youths hurled stones at the police, set light to hundreds of cars and buildings. The mayhem soon swept from the dark suburbs of Paris to become a nationwide crisis.
With Bouna and Ziad's deaths the violent tensions seething in the depths of French society spilled over across its loathsome racial barriers beyond its poor immigrant estates into the spotlight. I remember once asking a group of young men of Arab descent, whose families have been living in France for decades, whether they felt French.
All answered in the negative. "I do not belong here" one of them said. "There is nothing for me. There are jobs. But if your name is Muhammad, Ali, or Rashid, don't even bother to apply. The most I can hope for is a job at the local McDonald's." Another added bitterly: "I was born here, and so was my father. How many generations would it take for me to be considered French?" If you're serious about finding work, it kinda begs the what the hell are you doing here question doesn't it Sourmaya?
Sons of immigrants
The rioters setting nursery schools ad shops ablaze are French by birth, language, education and culture. Yet France still refuses to acknowledge them as its own, still refers to them as immigrants and sons of immigrants. Burning nursery schools, nice touch.
The majority are incarcerated in poor housing estates, where unemployment figures are three times the national average. Those who defy the odds and succeed in gaining a university qualification are five times more likely to end up in unemployment than their white counterparts (26.5% compared with 5%).
Most are trapped in a hopeless downward spiral of joblessness, racial discrimination, and clashes with the police. What the inner cities are to the United States, the banlieus (suburbs) are to France. Yea Sourmaya, you never want to come here, it's really really bad..
France's "beurs", the sons and grandsons of its former colonials have no sense of belonging to the French nation, not because they are intrinsically unpatriotic, or naturally hostile to France, but because this land where they, their fathers, sometimes even grandfathers, were born and brought up continues to deny them a dignified existence, or a sense of respect and recognition. No way you can blame Israel in this paragraph is there?
No one makes more noise about integration than France does. But the gap between France's rhetoric of equality, and abstract citizenship and its policies of systematic discrimination and hostility to its ethnic minorities could not be greater.
Social marginalisation
Beyond Paris' official discourse, the reality on the ground, inside the fenced-off rings of wretchedness and misery that border its affluence, is one of chilling social marginalisation, destitution and profound feelings of forced otherness, and exclusion. With more than 20% of those born in France having immigrant parents or grandparents, France is a land of immigrants. Yet France does not perceive itself as a multicultural country. Excuse me... and your native land does?
Its national identity is founded on the demand for unconditional assimilation into so-called "republican" and "French" values. Prompted by the myth of cultural and racial uniformity, France insists on keeping its immigrants invisible and turning a blind eye to the endemic racism of its socio- political system. Instead of confronting its spiralling crises with a measure of moral and political responsibility, the French government continues to resort to repression and the greater policisation of the poverty-ridden, rundown suburbs, further stigmatising its African and Arab communities and turning them into a scapegoat for its failures and troubles.
Colonial history
The corrosive division in France's heart between "indigenous" and "foreigners" is no doubt an extension of the dichotomy of the "inside" and the "outside", which has governed modern colonial French history.
The dividing walls between the metropolis and its colonies have now migrated to the heart of France itself, between the bleak ghettoes where yesterday's colonials, today's "immigrants", are confined and the forbidden white centres of power and prosperity. Today, the French slogans of integration and equal citizenship ring hollow. They have been buried deep beneath the boots of policemen, the smoke of burnt cars and rubble of ruined buildings.
Of the Revolution's lofty slogans of "egalite, liberte et fraternite" France's colonial victims saw nothing but war fleets, military occupation, economic exploitation and a long trail of blood, suffering and destruction. Their impoverished descendants hear the promises of equality and integration and see nothing but a bottomless pit of voicelessness, weakness and alienation. "War, occupation, exploitation, and a long trail of blood, suffering and destruction"....sounds like Islamaland, they must feel right at home!
What we are witnessing today is the fall of the Jacobin Republican model, with its noisy slogans and radical dogmatism. A model that could not defend itself against crises in the French motherland is neither inspiring nor worthy of emulation, in Europe or elsewhere. So Sourmaya, are you saying put a bullet in it?
Soumaya Ghannoushi is a researcher in the history of ideas at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.
Where she lives comforably in her flat, far from the doom of Islamaland.
The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera. yea, right.
#1
First of all, they don't want to fit into french society, just ask them. They don't want to taint themselves with anything that is not 100% muslim. They want more money, more jobs, more status, more benefits that you have to earn, not be given. Does this sound familiar to any Americans?
The rioting by Muslim youth that began Oct. 27 in France to calls of âAllahu Akbarâ may be a turning point in European history. What started in Clichy-sous-Bois, on the outskirts of Paris, by its eleventh night had spread to 300 French cities and towns, as well as to Belgium and Germany. The violence, which has already been called some evocative names â intifada, jihad, guerilla war, insurrection, rebellion, and civil war â prompts several reflections:
Not a first: The French insurrection are by no means the first instance of a semi-organized Muslim insurgency in Europe ...
Media denial: The French press delicately refers to the âurban violenceâ and presents the rioters as victims of the system. Mainstream media deny that it has to do with Islam and ignore the permeating Islamist ideology, with its vicious anti-French attitudes and its raw ambition to dominate the country and replace its civilization with Islamâs.
Another method of jihad: Indigenous Muslims of northwestern Europe have in the past year deployed three distinct forms of jihad: the crude variety deployed in the United Kingdom, killing random passengers moving around London; the targeted variety in the Netherlands, where individual political and cultural leaders are singled out, threatened, and in some cases attacked; and now the more diffuse violence in France, less specifically murderous but also politically less dismissible. Which of these or other methods will prove most efficacious is yet unclear, but the British variant is clearly counterproductive, so the Dutch and French strategies will probably recur.
Sarkozy vs. Villepin: ...
Anti-state: The riots started eight days after Sarkozy declared a new policy of âwar without mercyâ on urban violence and two days after he called violent youth âscum.â Many rioters see themselves in a power struggle with the state and so focus their attacks on its symbols. ...
The French can respond in three ways. They can feel guilty and appease the rioters with prerogatives and the âmassive investment planâ some are demanding. Or they can heave a sigh of relief when it ends and, as they did after earlier crises, return to business as usual. Or they can understand this as the opening salvo in a would-be revolution and take the difficult steps to undo the negligence and indulgence of past decades.
I expect a blend of the first two reactions and that, despite Sarkozyâs surge in the polls, Villepinâs appeasing approach will prevail. France must await something larger and more awful to awake it from its somnolence. The long-term prognosis, however, is inescapable: âthe sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced,â as Theodore Dalrymple puts it, âby the nightmare of permanent conflict.â
Posted by: ed ||
11/08/2005 07:28 ||
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The French can respond in three ways. They can feel guilty and appease the rioters with prerogatives and the âmassive investment planâ some are demanding. Or they can heave a sigh of relief when it ends and, as they did after earlier crises, return to business as usual. Or they can understand this as the opening salvo in a would-be revolution and take the difficult steps to undo the negligence and indulgence of past decades.
France should remember the old saying about once you start paying the Dane just how do you rid yourself of the Dane eventually. But I think they will try and buy their way out of the crisis for now. The idea that they may have to steal a page from American public policy will be repungant to them but in the long run they may have to. But in the long run one of the symbols of French culture or national pride will be destroyed (the Louvre perhaps) and then the French will wake up to just what they are facing
#3
So true, mhw. The violence will repeat wherever the social programs are sufficient that the "youths" don't need to work to get by - with a little thievery and thuggery to augment the income.
Besides, working people are too damned tired to while away the night burning cars and infidel homes and businesses.
#5
"The riots started eight days after Sarkozy declared a new policy of âwar without mercyâ on urban violence and two days after he called violent youth âscum.â"
Seriously folks, can someone tell me what is so offensive about his comments.
Via DhimmiWatch
Excerpt:
President Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, have been commendably unflinching in their determination to eradicate the pestilence of Islamist terrorism. Other governments are trying a different tack, which smacks of appeasement. Last week in Madrid, I attended a âDialogue between Cultures and Religionâ, organised by a foundation with links to Spainâs ruling socialists. Here, talk of âdialogueâ between faiths effortlessly mutated into the separate notion, promoted by Spain and Turkey, of âan alliance of civilisationsâ spanning the Mediterranean world. Countries can ally; civilisations generally donât. A banquet in the government quarter elicited the intelligence, from a Moroccan diplomat, that not only was âEuropeâ morally superior to a US symbolised by Bushâs Texas, but that a distinctive âfusionâ culture was emerging in the Mediterranean, âdifferent â from that of northern Europe. One doubts whether the Italians feel that way.
The conference opened with protestations of goodwill from Mohammad Khatami, Iranâs former president, delivered by an ambassador who was not among those recalled for failing to reflect the crazed views of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Felipe González, the former Spanish premier, chose to overlook Ahmadinejadâs rant, preferring to contest the notion of a âclash of civilisationsâ, as if this were US policy.
At least Miguel Ãngel Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Minister, managed condemnation of an elliptical sort. He has been a prime mover of the claim that you cannot âfight evil with evilâ, a formula begging many questions about moral equivalences. He favours marginalising extremists through a dialogue with Muslim âmoderatesâ. These included Dr Tariq Ramadan, an Egyptian intellectual, who is on an FBI watch list and banned from France, but welcome in Spain.
Posted by: ed ||
11/08/2005 07:20 ||
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"A banquet in the government quarter ..."
Wonder if wine was served at that banquet?
Maybe with the pork dish?
Why don't Westerners (non-moslems), every time they attend any kind of meal put on by or around moslems, start loudly protesting about how insulted they are that the meal didn't include wine and pork, which non-moslems are accustomed to, and whine about how the moslems aren't "culturally sensitive" to the non-moslems?
That gate should swing both ways. Hopefully it will hit the whiny-assed "we're special" islamonazis in the ass. (Which would cause massive brain damage, but how would anyone know?)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
11/08/2005 12:57 Comments ||
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He favours marginalising extremists through a dialogue with Muslim âmoderatesâ.
Miguel is dead wrong. This nothing more than a child's game. The muzzies always push the "moderates" forward to jabber with the infidels. They know we love to grin and do the diplo-dance thing. Meanwhile they are laughing wildly, whacking their carrots, cutting charges, and preparing for the next round of murder and suicide bombings.
According to its Office du Tourisme, the big event in Evreux this past weekend was supposed to be the annual fête de la pomme, du cidre et du fromage at the Place de la Mairie. Instead, in this charmingly smouldering cathedral town in Normandy, a shopping mall, a post office, two schools, upwards of 50 vehicles and, oh yes, the police station were destroyed by - what's the word? - "youths".
Actually, they're very easy to "recognise": just look out the window, they're the ones torching your Renault 5. I'd wager the "French" "youth" find that headline as hilarious as the Jets in West Side Story half a century ago, when they taunted Officer Krupke with "society's" attempts to "understand" them: we're depraved on account of we're deprived. Perhaps some enterprising Paris impresario will mount a production of West Eid Story with choreographed gangs of North African Muslims sashaying through the Place de la Republique, incinerating as they go.
In fact, "rage" seems the least of it: it's the "glee" and "contempt" you're struck by. And "rage" in the sense of spontaneous anger is a very slapdash characterisation of what, after two weeks, is looking like a rather shrewd and disciplined campaign. This business of car burning, for example. In Iraq, the "insurgents" quickly got the hang of setting some second-hand Nissan alight at just the right moment so that its plume of smoke could be conveniently filmed from the press hotel balcony in time for NBC's Today show and Good Morning, America. For a while, every time you switched on the television in America, there'd be some doom'n'gloom anchor yakking away in front of a live scene of a blazing Honda Civic - as reassuring in its familiarity as that local station somewhere or other in North America (Thunder Bay, I think) that used to show a roaring fireplace as its test card all night. What the Aussie pundit Tim Blair calls the nightly Paris car-B-Q looks great on television, but without being sufficiently murderous to provoke the state into forcefully putting down the insurgency.
As to the "French" "youth", a reader in Antibes cautions me against characterising the disaffected as "Islamist". "Look at the pictures of the youths," he advises. "They look like LA gangsters, not beturbaned prophet-monkeys."
Leaving aside what I'm told are more than a few cries of "Allahu Akhbar!" on the streets, my correspondent is correct. But that's the point. The first country formally to embrace "multiculturalism" - to the extent of giving it a cabinet post - was Canada, where it was sold as a form of benign cultural cross-pollination: the best of all worlds. But just as often it gives us the worst of all worlds. More than three years ago, I wrote about the "tournante" or "take your turn" - the gang rape that's become an adolescent rite of passage in the Muslim quarters of French cities - and similar phenomena throughout the West: "Multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women - combine with the worst attributes of Western culture - licence and self-gratification. Tattooed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of northern England areas are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort." Islamofascism itself is what it says: a fusion of Islamic identity with old-school European totalitarianism. But, whether in turbans or gangsta threads, just as Communism was in its day, so Islam is today's ideology of choice for the world's disaffected.
Some of us believe this is an early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war. If the insurgents emerge emboldened, what next? In five years' time, there will be even more of them, and even less resolve on the part of the French state. That, in turn, is likely to accelerate the demographic decline. Europe could face a continent-wide version of the "white flight" phenomenon seen in crime-ridden American cities during the 1970s, as Danes and Dutch scram to America, Australia or anywhere else that will have them.
As to where Britain falls in this grim scenario, I noticed a few months ago that Telegraph readers had started closing their gloomier missives to me with the words, "Fortunately I won't live to see it" - a sign-off now so routine in my mailbag I assumed it was the British version of "Have a nice day". But that's a false consolation. As France this past fortnight reminds us, the changes in Europe are happening far faster than most people thought. That's the problem: unless you're planning on croaking imminently, you will live to see it.
#1
On the money, yet again. They've challenged the French Govt, and the Govt blinked - several times. Hmmm. Still blinking, I'd say, given the groveling and toothless posturing of de Villepin. Is there some sort of diplomatic academy where they teach how to do both at the same time and make it seem, well, somehow sophisticated? Looks like appeasing and mewling, to me.
This won't end. This will be repeated everywhere they can muster the numbers. Every Govt that fails to crush it will make the list, the 'A' list... for the first wave. I don't want to see European countries fall to "youths", Muzzy or otherwise, but they have to do this hard lifting themselves - and if they can't or won't, well, it's already over, isn't it?
The citizens of Europe are certainly getting, or soon will get, precisely what they voted for.
It will be, clinically speaking of course, fascinating to see just how badly the socialists, who've sneered and jeered and played the people for fools and tools as they set them up for this invasion and revolution, are treated. First against the wall, probably.
#2
When we debated this a couple of years back, I maintained that the end game is you herd all of them into a small number of enclaves and put up a big wall around them - A lot like the Gaza Strip - and let them stew.
I'm a process and trends guy. I look at situation and ask where are the trends taking this? Will it get better or will it get worse?
The trends I see are;
Euro-Muslims populations continue to increase
Said populations become more politicized, islamicized and violent
Native populations become (even) more hostile
Euro-governments continue to worship at their multicultural altars and throw money at the problem
The combination of increasing cost to government combined with increasing costs from the violence results in an economic 'death spiral'
I don't see a way this doesn't end with a solution that no one is prepared to contemplate until the catastrophe is upon them.
#4
When 9-11 hit I worked at the x multinational..
x had a subsidiary in Toulouse.
x had an internal usenet group that didn't leave the company where employees all over the world talked
The Toulouse subsidiary was quite close to an ammonium nitrate warehouse/factory
This factory BLEW UP in the same timeframe.
The Guardian covered the explosion HERE!
Twenty-nine people died and 2,200 were injured, Windows were blown out up to three miles away, Ten thousand homes were damaged, 600 destroyed, and 1,400 families left homeless., a hospital was badly damaged.
Well, the French government went into deep censorship mode covering up what happened from detailed reporting.
The corporate usenet group showed a different story.
People at the subsidiary had relatives who worked there, with emergency services, and with the police.
What happen according to them was:
A certain immigrant worker was fired.
Said worker showed up after a couple of days at a point near a hopper discharge shoot with explosives attached to him and blew himself up.
How do they know this? They found pieces of him and his documents and a letter with explosive contaminates on it. One of the phrases on the letter was: alu akbar
The offical determination was an accident..
The workers on the Usenet group were screaming cover-up.
#6
The central planning dept. of these guys is pretty shrewd, a totally different tack than flying planes into high profile buildings, we must be cautious but decisive when we act, and we ( christian white guys around the world ) must act... this action is directed at us.
Posted by: bk ||
11/08/2005 11:14 Comments ||
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Yes, indeed, bk, it's only you Christian White Guys who are Americans. How foolish of me to think of myself as one of you.
In describing his guerrilla army, Mao Tse-tung used an aquatic analogy: âGuerrillas are the fish, and the population is the sea in which they swim.â He realized that a neutral, if not supportive populace was essential to guerrilla success. Once the majority was swayed to at least tolerate the guerrillas, then only a small portion need be committed to the cause to achieve victory. Todayâs Islamofascist terrorists are ignoring Maoâs dictum in dealing with populations â witness the atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians by terrorists occupying Fallujah and Tal Afar â and in so doing have alienated themselves from the populations in Afghanistan and Iraq. This arrogance will in time contribute to their failure.
But the terrorists have applied his metaphor assiduously to the financial sphere, for the modern Islamofascist terrorist movement swims in the rich waters of international finance. Far from being poor, ignorant peasants as many in the West fancifully envision the terrorists, these men and their organizations are highly sophisticated, technologically aware, and extraordinarily adept at moving money within the intricate web of international financial institutions. Perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of these terrorists is that many of the most virulently anti-Western have matriculated in British and American institutions of higher learning. More than one detainee in Guantanamo has an advanced degree in international finance from schools such as the London School of Economics. Admission standards may have changed, but one does not reasonably expect to find a simple Afghani opium farmer conscripted by the Taliban to be on the roster of distinguished graduates.
So for the modern terrorist money â and lots of it â is the ocean in which they swim and without which they will cease to live. Post-9/11, one of President Bushâs stated objectives was to dry up that ocean and deny the terrorists the funding needed to carry out their horrific attacks. These sorts of financial tracking operations are done by analysts in front of computer screens pouring over endless printout sheets. It is mostly thankless work that is conducted in the back offices of CIA, Treasury, FBI, and Homeland Security. Information is obtained by liaison to foreign countries intelligence agencies and banking establishments â thus bringing in State Department, and though signal and information intercepts - that means the Pentagon and National Security Agency.
The vast majority of money transfers are accomplished by electronic means. In the early days, these systems were relatively unsophisticated and vulnerable. No longer. Todayâs systems are under constant attack, but are protected by sophisticated, complex security software. It is a constant war of bits and bytes as hackers fight guardians in cyberspace. But so far sophisticated technology has been good news for the terrorists and those who support their cause, because it means that transfers are extraordinarily difficult to track. Tom Clancyâs new novel, Teeth of the Tiger, discusses electronic intercept and offers an optimistic view of American capabilities. We are not there yet. Highly encrypted software, multiple accounts in a myriad of international banking and financial institutions, and covert tradecraft, such as use of electronic âcut-outs,â can preclude any but the most persistent, careful analyst from finding the money trail. This is the challenge faced by our financial specialists who try to find walk the cat backwards to the lairs of leading al-Qaeda operational leaders.
Terrorists get funding everywhere imaginable. Some fundraisers are academics or private citizens â the Sami al-Arian case in Florida is one example â but by far the largest contributors are worldwide Muslim charities. These so-called charities are significant providers to al-Qaeda. Some of the largest and most generous are in the U.S. It was only a few years ago that the charities have been identified as the terror support groups they are. They have been legally challenged, investigated, and in some cases prosecuted, for funneling money illegally to al-Qaeda and terrorist accounts. The country behind most of the charities is Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi infiltration of American Islam has been as frighteningly quiet as it has been pervasive. Virtually every imam at an American mosque is a Wahhabi â Saudi trained, funded, and vetted â a religious leader who promotes a virulent brand of fundamentalist Islam with the ultimate aim of imposing Shariâa law upon the non-Moslem world. Even more frightening, our prison system is staffed by Moslem chaplains who are products of Saudi training. As a consequence, anti-American Islamofascist ideology is being taught to some of the most dangerous, unstable, and violent members of American society. Meanwhile, the mosques continue to beat the drums for anti-Israeli causes including fundraising for groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other terror outfits.
Al-Qaeda also has its tentacles into many other fields that generate money: semi-precious gems, opium and heroin, illegal traffic in birds of prey, and money laundering at an international level. Tanzanite, a semi-precious stone originating in East Africa, has been handled by an informal consortium of Muslim African distributors. While Osama bin Laden was based in Sudan and Somalia he and his henchmen moved in on the Tanzanite dealers and pressured them to provide protection money for his organization. Similarly, after relocating to Afghanistan bin Laden took over the lapis lazuli mines (many of which later became the legendary âcavesâ in mountain redoubts) and controlled export sales of the stones. Many of these channels of funding remain open today despite serious setbacks to al-Qaeda.
Similarly, bin Ladenâs gangs, along with the fanatical Taliban, controlled opium production, distribution, and sale outside of Afghanistan. This operation also included manufacture into morphine base and ultimately into heroin. The Afghanistan poppy fields were the origin of much of the worldâs heroin. The local farmers, while ostensibly under the thumbs of regional âwarlordsâ were in effect working for bin Laden and his cronies, helping to fund the terrorists.
Meanwhile, across the Middle East and Central Asia strange, exotic gatherings are taking place. In what the Union for the Conservation of Raptors calls the âmoney camps,â elaborate, ultra-luxurious temporary facilities are periodically set up in remote places in the region for gathering of the rich Arab sheiks from Saudi, the Gulf States, and other Arab countries. These people meet and indulge themselves in many of their favorite activities, including sale of protected species of falcons and eagles that are used in sport hunting. Hunting with birds of prey is a traditional Arab male activity, essential to the macho image they like to portray, along with rhino horn-handled knives, and a bevy of wives and concubines.
At these money camps, huge amounts of money are exchanged for such trinkets, including the birds. Some of these illegal birds bring payments in the hundreds of thousands of dollars into the millions for the very rare. During the social sessions at the camps funding is also arranged for some of the sheiks pet projects, including the promotion of Wahhabi Islam and support for terrorist organizations like bin Ladenâs al-Qaeda. It is a way of both salving their Moslem consciences and paying off the wolf that may turn on them if neglected. Read more of the story at www.savethefalcons.org.
All of these operations â the charities, gems, drugs, payoffs from the money camps, and other shakedown scams â eventually result in substantial sums of money put into terrorist coffers. Even larger than that, however, is the support â direct and indirect â that the terrorists receive from legitimate corporate business interests. These are investors who, according to Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, âhold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stocks in companies that partner with Iran, the other Islamofascist regimes and their friends.â This, in fact, is where huge, below-the-radar support for terrorism is largest.
Gaffney and his Center are sponsoring a âdivest terrorâ initiative modeled on the South Africa divestment campaign that helped bring down apartheid. This is an issue most Americans are unaware of but need to know. By pressuring investment houses and other organizations such as endowments and trusts to divest from organizations that deal with terror states, Gaffney thinks âreal pressure for change can be brought to bear.â
It is time that we accept the fact that our enemies are sophisticated and deadly in more than suicide attacks. We need to fight terrorists and those who support them on all fronts including the financial battles. Responsible Americans â acting as individuals and pressuring larger organizations â can make a critical difference in this war for survival.
Posted by: Steve ||
11/08/2005 14:55 ||
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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.
