Category Archives: Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda, Arab Counterrevoltion, Egypt, Iran, Israel

Iran, al-Qaeda, and Israel to Invade Egypt! Asharq Alawsat and Ignatius……….

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You won’t see an English translation of this junk analysis piece from the Saudi semi-official daily Asharq Alawsat. There are many pieces like this one in the same paper and they are never shown on the English website, only in the Arabic version in order to keep the faithful, faithful. The stupidity of the story is just too breathtaking (or rather the implied and assumed stupidity of the Arab reader is breathtaking). It is a wild story written by a Lebanese chick named Huda al-Husseini who is a regular on the daily and its sister Alarabiya website. She specializes in outlandish stories. It tells of how the Iranian mullahs have made a deal with al-Qaeda to take over Egypt! Yes, Wahhabi Saudi al-Qaeda, that same al-Qaeda.
 
But wait, there is more: according to  the story either Israel or Iran will sooner or later attack the “Arab world”, wtf that be (Saudi? Egypt? Syria? Algeria? Somalia? All of the above?). Unfortunately you need to read it in Arabic and it is too long for me to bother translating now: maybe the weekend during the Cowboys-Seahawks game. If you thought the Saudi embassy plot was ‘fanciful’, this one will knock your socks off, provided you wear socks.
“Al-Qaeda returns to Egypt under an Iranian cover…”
Now all we need to confirm this story and make it legitimate and credible is a corroborating column by David Ignatius quoting the usual “high Saudi official” that all this is true. We know these people never lie, not when they are overseeing the holy places.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Espionage, Middle East, Pakistan, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

Decimating Jihadists: America’s Secret Muslim President Succeeds where Cheney, Talk Radio, and Fox News Failed …………

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“Osama bin Laden, hunted as the mastermind behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, has been killed, President Obama announced tonight……..”

“Same US military unit that got Osama bin laden killed Anwar al-Awlaki. Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born al-Qaeda leader linked to terrorist plots in the UK and US, has been killed in a drone strike in central Yemen, the country’s military has announced…….”

“A senior leader of the militant Haqqani network, Haji Mali Khan, has been captured in Afghanistan, the Nato-led international force Isaf has said. He was detained during an operation by Afghan and coalition forces in Paktia province on Tuesday, Isaf said. He was heavily armed but did not resist, it added……”

So this “Manchurian” American president with a Jewish-sounding first name, an African last name, and a decidedly Muslim middle name has bested Dick Cheney in the war against al-Qaeda. I wonder what the Cheneys are up to these days.
Cheers
mhg


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9/11, Al-Qaeda, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Iran, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

From the Middle East to the Caribbean: It was the week of “Stupid”………

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Al-Qaeda calls Ahmadinejad ‘stupid’. They advised him to be “logical” not “ridiculous”. The Salafi terrorist group is pissed at the Iranian president for disseminating conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks at the UN. Ahmadinejad was probably just trying to needle the U.S. government with his talk, but he also got an unintended benefit by pissing off the Salafi terrorists.

Castro calls Obama ‘stupid’
. Castro maybe at least half right about that. The whole Cuban blockade by the United States is stupid. It has nothing to do with freedom for the Cuban people; it has to do with winning elections in Miami and some other congressional districts. If freedom was the goal of these boycotts, Saudi Arabia would be the first country on the American boycott list (and Bahrain would have NATO planes bombing it).
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda

Red Sea as Mare Nostrum of al-Qaeda? Saudis and Yemen……………….

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“These days, drone strikes that kill al-Qaida chieftains, along with civilians, are rarely questioned by the U.S. political establishment. The new UAV bases are reportedly in the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off East Africa; Ethiopia, a U.S. ally that sent troops into Somalia in December 2006 to crush an Islamist regime; and on the Arabian Peninsula. French intelligence sources cite Saudi Arabia as the host country. The United States withdrew its forces from the kingdom shortly before the Iraq invasion in 2003 because their presence triggered al-Qaida attacks on the monarchy. For that reason, it would seem unlikely that Saudis would permit even small U.S. units to deploy there again. But Riyadh’s extremely concerned that neighboring Yemen, where al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is making big gains while the country’s torn by political upheaval, will become a springboard for renewed jihadist attacks on the kingdom. So helping the Americans by providing a Reaper base to hammer al-Qaida in Yemen makes some sense. Washington suspects AQAP is moving toward an operational alliance with the al-Shabaab Islamist group in Somalia and it seems prepared to pull out a lot of stops to prevent that………………”

They make it sound like the Red Sea is about to become a Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) of the Salafi terrorists. Just like the Mediterranean was called “Mare Nostrum” by the Romans after the defeat of Carthage.
Yemen is truly a failed state now. The Saudis have no choice now but to try and block any cross-border influence, which sounds ironic since Salafi terrorism has its roots in Saudi Arabia from whence it spread to Yemen and Iraq and other places. Yemen can be as destabilizing to the Saudis and possibly to Oman (again) as Afghanistan has been to Pakistan, and ironically the Pakistani ISI was also responsible for the growth of the Taliban, as were the Saudis themselves. The best outcome for Yemen may be to split again into two states, whereby the South with its capital at Aden would regain the independence it lost in 1990. That would still leave al-Qaeda and other extremist Salafi groups to deal with. But it is interesting that after the semi-public fanfare of expelling the U.S. Central Command from Saudi Arabia some years ago, the American military/intelligence are back. Maybe that indicates the Saudis are not as worried about their local al-Qaeda branch as they used to be.
On the other hand, fear of instability from Yemen is an old historic thing for the Arabian peninsula and precedes the Saudi rule. The expansionist Saudis did bite off a large chunk of Yemen after a war in the 1930s, as they did bite chunks off other GCC states. They have worried since about Yemeni claims to their lost territories, which partly explains their mistake in interfering in the last Huthi War tow years ago, an intervention that apparently cost them dearly.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear wepoans, Pakistan, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

The Next Nuclear Failed State………….

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“Shi’ites, who make up over a quarter of Pakistan’s population, are deemed “apostates” by many extremist sectarian Sunni groups. Responsibility for the attack on the long-suffering Hazaras of Baluchistan was claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) — a group also suspected of a devastating attack earlier in the week on the home of a senior police officer in Karachi who has a record of taking on the militants. Though little known in the West, LeJ, a sectarian extremist outfit linked to al-Qaeda and to the Pakistani Taliban, is now widely considered Pakistan’s most dangerous terrorist group…….. The army is reluctant to confront its bases with force; the police have failed to protect those it threatens; the judiciary is unable to successfully prosecute its leading members; and some politicians have sought to appease it with shady deals. While al-Qaeda has suffered a series of setbacks after CIA drone strikes killed successive leaders based in Pakistan’s tribal areas, its local affiliate remains unimpeded. LeJ began life as a particularly vicious offshoot of the banned anti-Shi’ite Sipah-e-Sahaba organization. The sectarian group, with its cells seeded throughout the country, held both doctrinal and organizational appeal for al-Qaeda, which used LeJ’s deep and pervasive network to expand its own presence into Pakistan. While al-Qaeda had operational command, LeJ supplied foot soldiers to carry out attacks…………..”

“Admiral Mullen accuses Pakistan’s ISI of treachery, but says let’s keep talking…….The chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff said to the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that Pakistan’s
intelligence agency was in the background of the recent attack on our embassy,
as well as a bunch of other assaults. But he seems happy to keep on chatting
with them……….” Media (Sept 23, 2011)

What was all the ‘Western” talk about the dangers of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands through “extremist” states?
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Salafi, Terrorism

Post-Abbottabad: Salafi Blood-fest Continues in Pakistan and Iraq………

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“Gunmen in the southwestern province of Baluchistan attacked a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims to Iran on Tuesday, killing at least 25 people and wounding 6 more, local police officials said. The bus driver said that 8 to 10 attackers ordered the pilgrims off the bus and opened fire on them, the police said. Hours later, the extremist Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jangvi claimed responsibility for the attack. The group, which the authorities say carried out previous attacks against Shiites in Baluchistan, is believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. ……… Attacks on Shiite pilgrims traveling to Iran through Baluchistan have been frequent over the last decade. Two such attacks occurred last month. A year ago, 57 people at a Shiite rally in Quetta were killed by a suicide bomber. Shiites are a minority in mainly Sunni Pakistan. Most of the Shiites in Baluchistan belong to the Hazara ethnic group ….….”

I see that the Pakistani Salafis, like their Salafi brothers on my Gulf, are still busy spreading the message of brotherhood and love. Just like their imported virgin-inspired suicidal brothers are still doing in Iraq. If these horny fellows can’t get to their allotted ‘untouched’ virgins by killing Americans, then there are others, more vulnerable fellow Pakistanis or Iraqis or others. The execution of their shaikh of the hashasheen, the master terrorist in Abbottabad has not slowed this bunch down.
Cheers
mhg


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an>

Al-Qaeda, Islamophobia, Lebanon, Middle East, Muslims, Racism, Religion, WTF

United States of Paranoia? Imported Baggage, “Native” Baggage, Pakistani Beaver Hunters……………..

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“Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, America’s Muslims have become the country’s internal enemy. Conservative forces have seized upon the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” as a rallying point. Amid all the hate, Americans have lost sight of the real problem: the fact that their country has become paranoid………. Indeed, Gabriel, who emigrated to the US years ago from Lebanon, is America’s siren on all things Islamophobic……… Gabriel’s position can be summarized as follows: The US is suffering from terminal cancer and is infected with rampant Islamist cells that are eating away at the country, its liberties and its constitution. “Our enemy,” writes Gabriel, “is not an organization of people living overseas plotting to attack. Our enemies are the neighbors next door, the doctors practicing in our hospitals, and the workers who share our lunch break. Our enemies are terrorists driven by a dangerous ideology and clothed in deception who operate under cover and laugh about the advantages our sensitivity training, gullibility, and political correctness give them.” Some 300,000 copies of Gabriel’s first book, which contains these sentences, have been distributed. TV stations now set aside ample airtime for her and her ideas. She has been invited to give presentations to US Senate committees, the FBI, the US Special Operations Command, the Joint Forces Staff College, the Republican Party, the Tea Party movement and Christian conferences…………….”

This Lebanese right-wing chick represents the imported half of American paranoia. She arrives on these shores (well, lands at an airport) with more than one kind of baggage. We all do so, or most of us who arrive from our baggage-rich Middle East. We carry our racial, ethnic, sectarian, and historical prejudices and sometimes hatreds. Whether we come to settle, to study, to medicate, or just to visit. Most of us move on “into America”. Some of us hang on to the old baggage, urged on by ongoing events back home. You can see, hear, and read our baggage, our sectarian and confessional and ethnic prejudices, in our actions and our statements (and our blogs, like this one). That applies to many of us, to this lady and to me, but to different degrees. It seems she is re-fighting a lost Lebanese civil war, re-fighting a lost demographic war, living a Lebanon that did not exist for most Lebanese outside the capital region. But that was a war that also pitted Muslims against Muslims and Christians against Christians. It was a war of the warlords and before it ended it gave birth to Hezbollah.

Besides, there are many benefits to doing the right-wing talk and conference circuit: Sarah Palin isn’t doing bad on the circuit, nor is Glenn Beck and many others who peddle fear-mongering to simple worried folks. Fear-mongering is the gold rush of these people and they have discovered their own mother lode and are milking it for all its worth.

Remember
that old commercial for Salem cigarettes that said “You can take Salem out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of Salem”? We are like that Salem cigarette. Sometimes the baggage and the ghosts await a new generation to throw them in the dumpster.

(Okay,
 that was our excuse, but what is behind all these crazy native Americans going paranoid? And I don’t mean “real” native Americans; just the new arrivals of the past three centuries. It takes many born natives to create this mad frenzy and fear by millions of a few hundred ragtag shaggy mountain men, dare I say beaver trappers, in the allied states of Pakistan and Afghanistan.)
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Iraq, Salafi, Terrorism

Terrorism in Iraq: a Love-Hate Relationship with America, a Repossessed SOFA……..

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““The terrorists stopped the bus at gunpoint and killed 22 men,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Hadi Rizayig, the provincial police chief. The highway is protected by the Iraqi Army, he said. Shiite pilgrims have been a frequent target for Sunni insurgents who are trying to revive the sectarian violence that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war just a few years ago. The attack on Monday came less than four months before the remaining United States troops, who surged into Iraq in large numbers in 2007 to stem the sectarian violence, are scheduled to leave the country. In Anbar, a province with a heavily Sunni Muslim population, insurgents have launched many attacks while posing as soldiers or security guards. And on Monday, one of the women who was forced off the bus told officials that four gunmen dressed in military uniforms had stopped the bus at a fake checkpoint……………”

At some point a few years ago, Salafi (and perhaps Ba’athis remnant) terrorists in Iraq discovered the joys of leaving American forces alone. Possibly the fact that these terrorists, also called “insurgents” by more genteel Western people and some delusional Arabs, were defeated in almost every direct military confrontation had something to do with that. Or maybe it were the severe retaliations that ensued. Or maybe they discovered the ease with which to kill Shi’a (and often Sunni) civilians: getting more bang for their bucks donated by neighboring Arab Salafi potentates. Most likely it was a combination of both. And also the fact that many Iraqis stopped sheltering, feeding, and providing them with women.
Now their goal seems odd: on the verge of realizing one of their old ‘stated’ goals, getting rid of the Americans, they are escalating the violence. As the prospects of a renewal of SOFA fade, their attacks get fiercer and bloodier. It is as if they want the American forces to remain in Iraq. If it didn’t sound so ridiculous, I’d suggest that some uber-hawkish U.S senators like McCain, Lieberman (Joe not Avigdor, and wtf is he nowadays?) and Graham are behind these baboons.
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Arab Politics, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria

Al Qaeda in Lebanon: Who Killed Hariri? Who Really Knows? Who Really Cares?…………

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“In focusing entirely on the alleged links between four Hezbollah activists and the 2005 bombing that killed Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the indictment issued by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon earlier this month has continued the practice of the U.N investigation before it of refusing to acknowledge the much stronger evidence that an Al-Qaeda cell was responsible for the assassination. Several members of an Al-Qaeda cell confessed in 2006 to having carried out the crime, but later recanted their confessions, claiming they were tortured. However, the transcript of one of the interrogations, which was published by a Beirut newspaper in 2007, shows that the testimony was being provided without coercion and that it suggested that Al-Qaeda had indeed ordered the assassination. But the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) was determined to pin the crime either on Syria or its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and refused to pursue the Al-Qaeda angle…………”

An interesting angle introduced about the Hariri assassination. This adds yet more “parties of interest” to the whole tedious boring saga. Let’s see what we have now:


  • Originally Syria was accused and convicted in (some) media of the assassination in 2005. That created pressure on the Syrian regime to evacuate its forces from Lebanon (they had overstayed their welcome anyway). For some time the Syrian angle was the one pushed by the March 14 right-wing Lebanese bloc and by the Saudi and Israeli and Western media. Hariri allies went all over Western media swearing that the Syrians were behind the assassinations.
  •  
  • In 2006 the war between Israel and Lebanon (actually Hezbollah) erupted. The Israelis, who usually trounce regular Arab armies easily, were humiliated for the second time in six years by an Arab guerrilla army.

  • The West started to cozy up to the Assad regime in Syria in recent years (before the Arab Spring and Summer). The Saudi King visited Damascus and he and Assad flew together into Beirut.  They looked almost sweet together.

  • Lo and behold, suddenly news leaked that in fact it was not Syria that was being suspected, not anymore. It was Hezbollah or more accurately some Hezbollah officials who were suspected of the assassination of Hariri. Some reports in Middle East right-wing media even threw in the names of Iranian leaders like Khamenei and others as possible suspects.

  • Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah hinted, nay strongly suggested, that the Israelis may have been behind the assassination. He noted that Israel stood to gain the most from it (getting the Syrians out of Lebanon, dividing the Lebanese, dividing the Arabs to the extent that some regimes supported Israel in the war of 2006).

  • Now al-Qaeda is being introduced as yet another suspect.

  • Most Lebanese seem to have lost faith in the Hariri tribunal and think, probably quite rightly, that it is being used as a political tool. Now where would they get this idea?

  • Most Arabs, those who care at all, look at the tribunal through the prism of their own political (and sectarian) inclinations. These are the Arabs of the East, of the Asian side: Lebanon, Syria, and the Gulf GCC states. These are the Arab regions were sectarian passions are strong.

  • The other Arabs (Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, North Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti) don’t give a rat’s ass about the whole Hariri STL thing.

  • Who killed Hariri and so many others who were nearby in 2005? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But I do suspect one thing: the STL tribunal may not know anymore than I do. Possibly only the killers know.
  • (No, Hugo Chavez had nothing to do with it).

Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Libya, North Africa, Qatar, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Muslim Brotherhood Colors: Qatari, Saudi, Iranian, Chinese……….

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“The Islamists seem to have the upper hand, enjoying the patronage of Qatar, the boiling-rich little Gulf emirate that hosts Yusuf Qaradawi, an influential mentor of the global Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Jazeera, the satellite-television channel that shapes perceptions across the Arab world. Qatar, some surmise, could yet play the part in nurturing Islamists in Libya that Pakistan played in Afghanistan. Mosques are already influencing the new order—often for the good. Within days of the rebel victory in Tripoli, imams broadcast calls for gunmen to stop firing in the air. They have used Friday prayers to tell looters to register their weapons with local offices answerable to the national council and have distributed reminders to be pinned to lampposts. In many districts the mosque is the seat of the new local council, receiving alms to subsidise its activities. Many have wells, and the national council has declared that supplying fresh water is a top priority. Tripoli’s new military commander, Abdel Hakim Bel Haj, once belonged to the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, regarded as an affiliate of al-Qaeda, which he subsequently renounced. His deputy, Mehdi Herati, sailed with a fiercely Islamist Turkish group in last year’s flotilla to break the siege on Gaza. Ali al-Salabi, a Muslim Brotherhood scholar, has returned from Qatar. Assorted Islamists are suspected of killing Abdel Younis Fattah, the rebel commander who died outside Benghazi in late July in mysterious circumstances……………..”

I told you so about two weeks ago. All Arab uprisings (none are true revolutions yet) end up with more power for the Islamists. That is the natural order now, if only because the dictators and despots had made sure there is no real political life other than in exile or in prison. That leaves out the mosque, in most Arab countries the only place where people can gather without police violence being visited upon them. Unfortunately for the regimes, they could not close down the mosques (most Arab regimes are not nearly as good in controlling the mosques as, say, the Saudis are).
The Qataris have for years had their own favorite Islamists, and they usually tended to be the ones the Saudis disliked: branches of the Muslim Brothers in various places like Egypt and Gaza. The Saudis mistrusted the Egyptian MB, the “Mother of all Muslim Brothers”, especially, partly because they were against Mubarak and partly because they did not think much of the Saudi system as an example to follow (unlike the Salafis).
That is a far cry from some years ago, when Egyptian MB’s found refuge and support in Saudi Arabia against the secular leftist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser. This is not to say the Saudis don’t have their own favored Muslim Brothers: they do, especially in the Gulf region and parts of Iraq and Syria. Hell, even the Iranian (Shi’a) mullahs have managed to have their own (Sunni) Muslim Brothers in Gaza. (No, I don’t think the Chinese have their favorite Muslim Brothers, not yet, although I suspect that the West does).
Cheers
mhg


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