|
|
|
Update
from AIJAC
Al-Qaeda
today/ Mideast reform
April
2, 2004
Number 04/04 #01
Today's Updates
concentrates on the latest on what Al-Qaeda is doing now, in the wake
off the Madrid bombing and reports that a Tunisian was responsible.
First, an
investigative piece from the Wall Street Journal look at evidence
that the Madrid attack was carried out by a new generation of "Takfiri"
Al-Qaeda recruits. Takfiris are North African jihadists who believe in
using immigration as a Trojan Horse and blending in until the correct
moment to carry out their holy war. Everyone should be aware of
this new Islamist terror threat, so please CLICK
HERE.
Next, Colonel
Zohar Palti of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy looks at
the current state of Al-Qaeda globally. He says it is a different and
much looser movement that it was before Sept. 11. This makes it less globally
effective, but harder to eliminate as well. For his full analysis of the
where the group is now, CLICK HERE
Finally,
Middle East correspondent Jackson Diehl looks at the cancellation of the
planned Arab League Summit in Tunisia this week, because basically noone
could agree what to about US demands for democratising reforms. Diehl
spoke to the forces of reform which are now springing up in the Middle
East and says what is needed is for the US to push harder and offer more
support. To read what these reformers have to say, CLICK
HERE.
New
Breed of Islamic Warrior Is Emerging
Evidence
in Madrid Attack Points to Takfiris, Who Use Immigration as a Weapon
By KEITH
JOHNSON and DAVID CRAWFORD
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL,
March 29, 2004; Page A16
Evidence in the Madrid train bombings points to the participation of a new
breed of Islamic holy warrior, unfettered by many of the religious and ideological
constraints that defined Islamic terrorism in the past.
These Islamist warriors -- schooled in the North African doctrine known
as Takfir wal Hijra and trained by Afghan veterans of al Qaeda -- think,
recruit and operate differently from traditional Islamist networks. For
Europe, that makes the threat particularly acute. The Takfir movement is
strongest in Morocco and Algeria, the primary sources of Muslim immigration
to Western Europe. Takfiri theorists openly advocate using immigration as
a Trojan horse to expand jihad, or holy war.
Investigators have yet to pin definite blame for the Madrid attacks on any
one group. Attention has focused on the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group as
well as several other al Qaeda splinter groups. Moroccan officials say the
leading suspect in the Madrid bombings, Tangier-born Jamal Zougam, is Takfiri.
Friday, German prosecutors said police in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, raided
an apartment used briefly last October by one of the suspects arrested last
week in Spain. The 28-year-old Moroccan had applied to live and study in
Germany but was turned down. Spanish police on Saturday also found a safe
house outside Madrid where they believe the backpack bombs were prepared;
fingerprints from two jailed suspects, including Mr. Zougam, were found
in the house.
Many elements common to the suspects in custody for the Madrid bombings
so far, investigators say, bear hallmarks of the ultrafundamentalist Takfiris
or their close cousins, the Algerian-based Salafists. These include the
use of petty crime and drug trafficking to raise funds, the recruitment
of women, and operatives who adopt a Western lifestyle to keep a low profile.
The virulent brand of Takfiri Islam makes all-out armed jihad an obligation
for all true believers; even apostate fellow Muslims are fair game.
Some previous al Qaeda attacks also have borne Takfiri signs: Mohammed Atta,
one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, is believed by some European investigators
to have been a follower of the Takfiri creed. He and several others of the
so-called Hamburg cell that organized the attacks on the U.S. led a typical
clean-shaven Takfiri lifestyle in the West and moved around undetected for
years. Now, the Takfiri ideas are spreading throughout North Africa and
into Europe, merged into a deadly combination with leadership by trained
mujahedeen, or holy warriors. Some youths are being taught that the ultra-radical
Takfiri strain is the only true Islam.
As Osama bin Laden's control over terror networks has been disrupted, new
radicals operate at the fringes of his movement. Many of his core beliefs,
especially his anti-American animus, are being superceded by broader interpretations
of global jihad. Instead of just apostate Muslim regimes or U.S. interests,
jihad is being expanded to include virtually everyone outside the sect.
That leads many antiterror specialists to say the Madrid bombings may represent
a change for Islamic terrorism. "This is al Qaeda 2.0," says Jonathan Schanzer,
a terrorism specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Immigration is a key way to extend the radical ideas into Western Europe.
One Takfiri scholar, Abu Basir, wrote in 2001 that "jihad and immigration
go together...the one cannot be achieved without the other."
Fifteen of the 18 suspects jailed for the Madrid bombings come from cities
in northern Morocco that have become front-line recruitment centers for
the ultrafundamentalist message. One senior Moroccan official says "every
country with an Arab or Muslim immigrant population now faces this problem"
of potential sleeper cells. Mr. Zougam, the leading suspect in the Madrid
bombings, was influenced by Mohamed al-Fazizi, a Moroccan preacher who encouraged
Muslim youths to join the jihad and kill all nonbelievers. Mr. Zougam's
half-brother, also arrested in connection with the attacks, told police
he shied away from his clean-shaven, discotheque-visiting brother because
Mr. Zougam was ultrareligious.
Unlike previous generations of radical Islamists, who attracted police attention
by their long beards, public proselytizing and orthodox postures, the newer
generation of holy warrior blends in better. They are encouraged to lead
a double life in the ultimate pursuit of jihad, according a German intelligence
report.
"Outwardly they pretend to lead a modern lifestyle," says terrorism expert
Magnus Ranstorp. "But deep inside they adhere to a pure medieval strain
of Islam." Many Takfiris shave their beards and avoid mosques for security
reasons. "Recruits conceal their true beliefs until the time is right,"
Dr. Ranstorp says.
Takfiris also indulge in petty crime, credit-card fraud and drug dealing
to finance their activities, according to a German intelligence report.
The Madrid bombers bartered 55 pounds of hashish for the explosive they
used to kill 189 people, according to Spanish news reports. Suspects arrested
in Spain were also involved in stealing phones and falsifying phone cards,
Spanish police said.
Groups inspired by the Takfiris also show a willingness to recruit women
for armed jihad. Most Islamist groups, which adhere to strict Quranic interpretations,
shun involvement of women. Naima Oulad, a Moroccan woman, was jailed last
week on suspicion she played a supporting role in the Madrid attacks. Ms.
Oulad is the first woman jailed after more than 60 arrests related to Islamic
terrorism in Spain in the past three years.
Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, the alleged head of al Qaeda's Spanish cell who
was jailed in late 2001 on charges of aiding the Sept. 11 hijackers, asked
for an audience with Spanish investigators days after the Madrid bombings.
"The only group that could have done such an atrocity is Takfir wal Hijra,"
he told investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon, according to Mr. Yarkas's
lawyer. Mr. Garzon has investigated ties between Spanish al Qaeda cells,
including Mr. Yarkas, and Takfiris on at least two occasions in the past
three years, according to court documents.
Takfiri ideology originated in a similarly named sect in Egypt in the 1970s
and burst into notoriety with the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar
Sadat in 1981. The doctrine spread during the Afghan war in the 1980s and
was brought back to North Africa by veteran mujahedeen who preached to young
people.
Although Takfiris espouse a hard-line interpretation of Islam, the ideology
is popular because it encourages followers to reconfirm their faith by breaking
its own rules. That flexibility, coupled with their seemingly deeper integration
into Western life, makes it harder for police to detect them. It also gives
Takfiris an ability to choose soft, civilian targets that will have the
biggest political impact in each country. The Madrid attacks came just three
days before national elections and helped lead to an upset victory for the
Socialists, who want to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.
Moroccan and European investigators say Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian,
runs a terrorist organization according to Takfir principles. U.S. officials
suspect Mr. Zarqawi is behind many of the attacks on coalition troops in
Iraq. Spanish investigators are reviewing evidence linking Mr. Zarqawi to
the March 11 Madrid bombings; one of Mr. Zougam's contacts in Norway, Mullah
Krekar, has worked closely with Mr. Zarqawi, according to Spanish court
documents.
--Karby Leggett in Rabat, Morocco, contributed to this article.
Back
to Top
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AL-QAEDA: A WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL GAME
By Zohar
Palti
POLICYWATCH
#851
March 30, 2004
ANALYSIS OF NEAR EAST POLICY FROM THE SCHOLARS AND ASSOCIATES OF THE WASHINGTON
INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY
Thirty months
after the massive World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, al-Qaeda is
a significantly different organization, thanks to the successful efforts
of the U.S.-led war on terror. It would be wrong, however, to assume that
the threat of "global jihad" posed by al-Qaeda has diminished just because
the organization itself is weakened. More accurately, al-Qaeda has adjusted
to the relentless assault on its leadership structure by devolving into
a set of regional networks -- each with its own political agenda and operational
schedule, as a whole lacking a distinct command center.
Success in the Hunt
The Afghanistan war effectively removed al-Qaeda's safe haven, forcing
it on the run and in search of an alternative operational area. The northern
Iraq-Iran border area, where Ansar al-Islam (a local Kurdish fundamentalist
group closely affiliated with al-Qaeda) was based, might have provided
temporary refuge, but since that area has also been taken over by American
troops, the network is now essentially without a solid footing.
The global hunt orchestrated by the United States (and assisted by many
countries, including Arab states) for al-Qaeda's operational and logistical
leaders has yielded impressive results. Many central members of the organization's
pre-September 11 command have been arrested or killed: Mohamed Atef, Osama
bin Laden's deputy, killed in November 2001; Khaled Shaykh Mohamed, September
11 mastermind and head of al-Qaeda's operational division, arrested in
February 2003; Abu Zubaydah, a senior operative, arrested in March 2002;
Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a central member of al-Qaeda's Hamburg cell, arrested
in September 2002; Abu Yasir al-Jazairi, a senior logistics operative,
arrested in March 2003; and Tawfiq bin Attash, an operative, arrested
in April 2003. Hundreds of additional al-Qaeda activists have also been
arrested or killed, among them Ali Qaed Sinan al-Harthi, head of al-Qaeda
activities in Yemen; Abed al-Rahim al-Nashiri, an operations commander;
Riduan Isamuddin (also known as Hambali), operational head of al-Gama'a
al-Islamiyya in Southeast Asia, also responsible for the October 2002
Bali attack.
Key al-Qaeda operatives still active include Osama bin Laden himself;
his son Saad; Ayman al-Zawahiri, a top al-Qaeda deputy; Fazul Abdullah
Mohamed, operational head of al-Qaeda's East African arena; and Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, a senior operative responsible for the November 2002 assassination
of American diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. Zarqawi is a rising star
in al-Qaeda, even though he was not among the first-tier leadership at
the time of the September 11 attacks. In allowing Zarqawi, once considered
a negligible figure, to gain considerable power, al-Qaeda portrays itself
as an organization under pressure, adjusting to new circumstances. Indeed,
Zarqawi's promotion suggests that anyone capable of carrying out terrorist
attacks against U.S. interests is welcome in the organization and will
be provided with sufficient funds to carry out those objectives.
Current Trends
Despite convincing war-on-terror dividends, al-Qaeda's overall survivorship
poses a real challenge to the United States. The network currently operates
in two parallel trajectories, one dedicated to conducting effective terrorist
attacks on high-priority American or Western targets, and a second focused
on Iraq, an attractive objective because of the strong U.S. presence there.
Although al-Qaeda has failed to carry out a significant attack against
a target in the United States since the hunt for the group's leaders was
set in motion, the network will continue to prepare for major, September
11-style attacks. Al-Qaeda funding is still flowing, and its logistical
activity is still functioning effectively. Given that the network has
lost most of its strategic assets in Afghanistan and other arenas, and
that its operational leadership is now isolated, the group will find it
more difficult to carry out mega attacks. Nevertheless, al-Qaeda remains
capable of producing scenarios such as exploding commercial Western aircraft
or suicide bombing in civilian environments (similar to the recent attack
in Madrid). Moreover, the highly fragmented nature of the organization,
its decentralized leadership, and the elimination of definable targets
will make it nearly impossible for the United States to retaliate militarily.
In the meantime, Iraq is emerging as the main operational arena for international
terrorists, as Islamists around the world are called upon by Osama bin
Laden to join the jihadist crusade against American troops there. Iraq
serves as a relatively convenient arena because of its geography, radicalized
culture, lack of a stable regime, and heavy U.S. presence. Indeed, hundreds
of activists from mujahedin networks associated with al-Qaeda have entered
Iraq to actively participate in terrorist operations alongside the Zarqawi
apparatus and Ansar al-Islam. Additional arenas where the al-Qaeda network
has the potential to flourish are Southeast Asia, Africa, and Chechnya,
mainly because of the preponderance of fragile regimes in those regions;
and Western Europe, where terrorist groups can take advantage of the freedoms
offered by comparatively open societies.
Prospects
Despite U.S. achievements in weakening the structure of al-Qaeda, the
complex realities in Iraq along with other rising threats against the
United States could eclipse those gains. In his February testimony to
the Senate Intelligence Committee, CIA director George Tenet emphasized
that "the steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S sentiment through
the wider Sunni extremist movement, and the broad dissemination of al-Qaeda's
destructive expertise, ensure that a serious threat will remain for the
foreseeable future -- with or without al-Qaeda in the picture." Indeed,
Tenet's testimony suggested that a "growing number of jihadists [are]
interested in attacking the United States . . . [in] the homeland." The
successful American pursuit of al-Qaeda leaders has effectively eliminated
a tier in the organizational chain of command, creating a gap between
Osama bin Laden and lower-level activists. But bin Laden's ideology has
not been vanquished. It is alive and well, spreading to local groups that
seek to carry out the legacy of "global jihad." These groups remain fixated
on destroying America and its Western values -- a reality that will perpetuate
the war on terror indefinitely.
As al-Qaeda continues to serve as an inspirational model, it will, more
than ever, come to depend on local organizations operationally. In addition,
state sponsors like Iran will continue to act by proxy and sponsor sleeper-cell
networks in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other states with American interests.
Iran and Syria possess different strategic options than al-Qaeda or the
Taliban, a reality that would challenge the United States should it decide
to dismantle the weapons-of-mass-destruction or terror infrastructures
of these state sponsors by military action.
The effort to preempt Islamist terror will be strengthened by continued
close cooperation between the United States and other countries. Without
this synergy and dependence on local intelligence and law enforcement
capacities, it will be almost impossible to effectively eradicate the
local terror networks aspiring to grow beyond their indigenous operating
environments.
Col. Zohar Palti (Israel Defense Forces) is a visiting military fellow
at The Washington Institute.
Back to Top
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Listen to the Arab Reformers
By JACKSON
DIEHL
The Washington Post, March 30, 2004
A much-anticipated summit of the Arab League, scheduled to begin today
in Tunis, was abruptly put off Saturday, and for a remarkable reason:
The kings, emirs and presidents-for-life of the Arab Middle East are unable
to agree on a common response to the Bush administration's new policy
of promoting democracy in their region. The younger and brighter rulers,
knowing the stagnant status quo is unsustainable, are pushing a strategy
of co-option, offering halfway, half-baked "reform" programs they have
hastily drawn up. The less enlightened insist on sticking to the excuses
that Arab dictators have offered the world for the past half-century:
a) the first priority must be Israel, and b) foreign tutelage is wrong,
except when applied to Israel.
The summit may now never happen; if it does, it will probably settle on
a murky mix of these two responses. Either way, critics of the pro-democracy
policy -- in Europe, in Washington and inside the Bush administration
itself -- will again proclaim that a neocon attempt to "impose" democracy
on the Middle East "from the outside" has foundered. That this resistance
to elected government comes from a group of kings, emirs and presidents-for-life
doesn't seem to trouble the critics. The assumption seems to be that the
autocrats' objections are those of their own people.
Yet, they are not. The most underreported and encouraging story in the
Middle East in the past year has been the emergence in public of homegrown
civic movements demanding political change. Two years ago they were nonexistent
or in jail. Now they are out in the open even in the most politically
backward places in the region: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria. They are made
up not only of intellectuals but of businessmen, women, students, teachers
and journalists. Unlike their governments -- and the old school of U.S.
and European Arabists -- they don't believe that change should be gradual,
and they reject the dictators' claim that democracy would only empower
Islamic extremists. The delay of change, they say, is the increasing danger.
These people weren't created by George W. Bush. They are the homegrown
answer to a decadent political order, and they ride a powerful historical
current. But they will tell you frankly: The new U.S. democratization
policy, far from being an unwanted imposition, has given them a voice,
an audience and at least a partial shield against repression -- three
things they didn't have one year ago.
"In the Middle East today, you talk about food, you talk about football
-- and you talk about democracy," says Mohammed Kamal, a young political
scientist from Egypt. "For the first time in many years, there is a serious
debate going on in the Arab world about their own societies. The United
States has triggered this debate, it keeps the debate going, and this
is a very healthy development."
Mr. Kamal and another prominent Egyptian political scientist, Osama Ghazali
Harb, were in Washington last week; both attended a groundbreaking meeting
of civic organizations at Egypt's Alexandria Library earlier this month.
The conference, unthinkable a year ago, produced a clarion call for democratic
change -- one that was all but ignored by Western media.
So here is what the Alexandria statement said: "Reform is necessary and
urgently needed." That means: an "elected legislative body, an independent
judiciary, and a government that is subject to popular and constitutional
oversight, in addition to political parties with their different ideologies."
How to get there? The document offers a clear path: reform constitutions
so they provide for periodic free elections and term limits on officeholders;
free all political prisoners and repeal all laws that provide for punishment
of free expression; abolish all the emergency laws and special courts
on which Arab rulers depend.
The White House, at least, took note of the Alexandria declaration. There
is talk of promoting its formal endorsement by the Western democracies
at the upcoming G-8 summit. Arab officials and the diplomatic old school
whisper that such support would only taint and undermine the reformers.
Better, they say, to respond to the Arab League.
Wrong again, says Harb. "If your governments refer to the Alexandria declaration
it will strengthen and promote this trend for reform," he said. The very
idea of it made him grin. "I like this," he added. "This would be very
good."
Back to Top
|
|
|
