Welcome! Our goal is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Today's "Winds of War" is brought to you by Dan Darling. of Regnum Crucis.
TOP TOPICS
- Terrorist attacks are at their lowest level in 30 years according to the new State Department report.
- Jemaah Islamiyah leader Abu Bakar Bashir has been rearrested in connection with the Bali bombing, leading to clashes between hundreds of his supporters and Indonesian police. Megawati has fired the South Sulawesi police chief in response to the clashes.
- A terrorist attack against a Saudi-US oil company has left 7 Westerners dead and dragging their bodies through the streets. 3 of the 4 terrorists all worked at the compound that was attacked.
ClownCrown Prince Abdullah, meanwhile, is blaming Zionism for any terrorist attacks inside theMagicKingdom.
Other Topics Today Include: Iraq Briefing; Iran Reports; Thai troops deployments; Thai separatist info; Jordanian anti-terrorism demonstration; another 3/11 arrest; LeT member disgruntled with Western life; Taliban poisoning girls in Khost; former Indonesian-backed militia stockpiling weaponry; Macedonian police admit killings staged; al-Zawahiri is the real al-Qaeda supremo; Mullah Krekar goes nuts in Norway; Pakistan releases Waziri prisoners; al-Fadl videotapes valuable to US understanding of al-Qaeda; al-Qaeda/PRC link; GSPC update; and Arnold's bubblehead dolls.
IRAQ BRIEFING
- The story of the abuses at Abu Gharib prison have already made rounds across the blogosphere by now. This Seymour Hersh story in the New Yorker appears to be the story to read on the issue of prisoner abuses in Iraq. You can read my thoughts on the subject here. The general in charge of Abu Gharib has been suspended.
- The US-backed Arabic TV channel al-Hurra is doing remarkably well, being watched by 29% of satellite-equipped households in 7 Arab countries. Considering it just got off the ground only a few months ago, this is nothing short of amazing.
- The US is showing pictures of Iraqi insurgents storing weapons inside mosques.
- US troops are pulling out of Fallujah and placing the city under the control of the Fallujah Protective Army, though there appears to be some questions as to the exact nature of former Iraqi army (with more ambiguity as to whether or not he served in the Republican Guard) general Jasim Mohammed Saleh's relationship to the new Iraqi force. Most analyses paint a fairly bleak picture, though the Belmont Club has a series of interesting analyses as to the nature of US strategy in this regard.
- Brigadier General Kimmit says that the US will continue to maintain a military presence in and around Fallujah despite the creation of the Fallujah Protective Army.
- The majority of the Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah appear to be carried out by former Mukhabarat operatives who made plans to continue to fight the US even in the event of the fall of Saddam Hussein.
- Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi is denying reports that he planned to use chemical weapons against Jordan, but as Alphabet City notes, Zarqawi appears to be flip-flopping on this issue.
- Sadr aide Adnan al-Anbaky has been killed with 4 associates during a US raid in Hillah.
- Despite the rise of the Thulfiqar Army and resistance from the An Najafi tribal leaders, the Mahdi Army is fortifying itself for seige in An Najaf.
IRAN REPORTS
- Iranian president Khatami is refusing to meet with his Argentine counterpart until Argentina ceases charging Iranian diplomats in connection with the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994.
- Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi, the head of the Iranian judiciary, says that has no political prisoners because the law does not mention such offenses. How nice of him to clear that up for us ...
- MEMRI provides a look at the recent Iranian documentary al-Sameri wa al-Saher, which is based along the lines of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
THE WIDER WAR
- Thailand is sending troops to deal with its southern provinces following recent violence involving Muslim separatists linked to JI.
- As for the Thai separatists themselves, they are led by Ustadj Masae Usae and trained by JI.
- Jordan's Queen Rania led anywhere between 250,000-20,000 people in an anti-terrorism demonstration in which pictures of bin Laden and Zarqawi were burnt.
- Spain has arrested another Algerian in connection with 3/11.
- Australian Lashkar-e-Taiba member Izhar ul-Haque joined the group out of dissatisfaction with the Western way of life.
- The Taliban are poisoning female students in Khost as part of a bid to sabotage efforts at women's education in southeastern Afghanistan.
- One of the Indonesian-backed militia groups that caused so much death and destruction in East Timor is stockpiling weapons, an indication that someone may be up to no good.
- Macedonian police have admitted that the killing of 7 immigrants back in 2002 was staged for the purpose of gaining international backing.
- US anti-terrorism authorities are becoming increasingly certain that Ayman al-Zawahiri is the real al-Qaeda leader from an operations and strategic perspective.
- Mullah Krekar seems to have lost his cool in Norway.
- Pakistan has released 78 prisoners, most of them Waziri tribesmen captured during the recent fighting in the tribal areas. With this kind of return rate, it's difficult to understand why al-Qaeda even bothers with plotting prison breaks to begin with.
- The videotapes of Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, the first high-level al-Qaeda defector, have given the US valuable insight into the network.
- Is al-Qaeda laundering billions with the help of Chinese intelligence? Xu Junping, a Chinese defector, believes this to be the case, though I have a hard time believing this given how insistent the Chinese have been on other nations with regard to the crackdown of Islamists in Xinjiang.
- 4 Algerian peasants have been murdered by the GSPC, which killed 30 in April alone. Niger, meanwhile, killed 4 GSPC and took another 4 prisoner near the Malian border.
- We try to end on a lighter note if possible. It seems that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening a lawsuit over the sale of bubblehead dolls in his likeness.
I heard on NPR this morning that the Cairo Times is launching an Arabic edition. Good news.
Also interesting to note that Al Qaeda seems to be realizing that attacks on Muslims are not popular. And yet it's strange that Abdullah wouldn't be using these latest attacks in Saudi Arabia to press his advantage. One wonders what he truly believes.
Dan:
Don't know if you've picked up on this one yet.
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish police have detained 16 suspected members of a group linked to Al Qaeda (search) who were believed to have been planning a bomb attack during a June NATO (search) summit in Istanbul (search) that President Bush is expected to attend, police said Monday.
Police detained the 16 in an operation in the northwestern province of Bursa, a police statement said. It said the suspects were members of the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Islam (search), but gave no further details.
Additional details I heard in the radio report in which I first heard about this are particularly confusing. The report said that those apprehended were ethnic Turks. It was my understanding that Ansar al-Islam was a Kurdish organization!? Same name, different organization?
You can't tell the players without a scorecard.
Good luck on your finals.
Dave:
I saw it this morning, which was unfortunately after WoW was already published. There are a couple of other interesting stories out there today, including an MSNBC/Newsweek story claiming that Chalabi is selling us out to Tehran.
As far as Ansar al-Islam is concerned, it's a largely Kurdish organization as far as the cannon fodder is concerned, though its "officer corps" was made up of Arab al-Qaeda members. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein and Ansar's exodus into Iran, racial tensions between the Arab and Kurdish wings of the group have forced it to subdivide into Ansar al-Islam and Ansar al-Sunnah. My understanding is that neither group had any Turkish members of any note.
In this case, however, I suspect that the group being referenced is al-Tawhid. Most al-Qaeda leaders also run their own terrorist organizations that operate under the network's aegis and Zarqawi's is al-Tawhid. Al-Tawhid, which is frequently confused with Ansar al-Islam in the Western press for reasons I do not entirely understand, helped to incorporate 2 domestic Turkish extremist groups, the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders Front and the Turkish Hezbollah, into bin Laden's International Front. Given how incestuous these groups are, I suspect that those apprehended by the Turks were members of al-Qaeda, al-Tawhid, and one of the two homegrown Turkish groups and that they worked for Zarqawi.
asdf:
Al-Qaeda has been killing Westerners in Saudi Arabia for years in a series of car bombings that have been routinely covered up by the Saudi authorities and blamed on a mythical Western alcohol smuggling ring. My own view is more or less that the Saudi royals and al-Qaeda are more or less playing an elaborate and rather Machiavellian game chess right now - al-Qaeda's operatives in the National Guard (which protects the royal family) haven't killed any princes yet and Safar al-Hawali, the Supreme Council of Global Jihad, and the Golden Chain remain in operation. So far the only people who are being killed are relatively speaking small fry for either side given the players involved.
Dan:
Thanks for the explication. Sometimes I wonder if there are more terrorists or terrorist organizations.
Al-Qaeda has been killing Westerners in Saudi Arabia for years in a series of car bombings that have been routinely covered up by the Saudi authorities and blamed on a mythical Western alcohol smuggling ring.
Although as you have pointed out, Crown Prince Abdullah has straightened everything out for us and we now know that Zionists are to blame.
Yesss ... though interestingly enough the Arab News version of the story got a "stealth edit" (a la BBC) and now reads to say that Abdullah merely claimed that a foreign hand was involved in the attack.
Though I suppose that previous attacks could have been the work of Jewish alcohol runners, one should never under-estimate the Saudi propensity for dissimulation in this regard. Anybody care to guess at how many actual Zionists there are running around Saudi Arabia?
The new stealth edit is that he said it was an "act of madness."
A term that might well be applied to the entire Saudi system of governance ...
I saw a few minutes of Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign ministerof Saudi Arabia, on the Charlie Rose show, talking about women's rights. He joked that he had to watch what he said because his wife would see the show. That's when I changed the channel.
These guys are as multi-faced as they come. They have one personality for American Liberals, another for their fellow Arabs, another for their royal relatives at home, and another for the Wahhabis at home.
Abdullah is probably just confused about which face he was supposed to have on.
The state department report excludes domestic terrorism and attacks on on-duty military. If those are included, is terrorism really down? Or does the flypaper thesis really help deflate the terrorist activity?