Wednesday April 8, 2009
An In-Depth Look at Why the FBI and Others Should Cut Contact with Muslim Brotherhood Groups
While the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Islamist groups debate whether to cut off contact with the FBI and other US government institutions, the Hudson Institute has just published a comprehensive report that makes it clear why such ties are not healthy.
It is worth remembering that the FBI, as the Investigative Project reported, cut off contact with CAIR, the primary MB legacy organization amid mounting concern about the Muslim advocacy group's roots in a Hamas-support network.
The decision to end contacts with CAIR was made quietly last summer as federal prosecutors prepared for a second trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), an Islamic charity accused of providing money and political support to the terrorist group Hamas, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
CAIR and its chairman emeritus, Omar Ahmad, were named un-indicted co-conspirators in the HLF case. Both Ahmad and CAIR's current national executive director, Nihad Awad, were revealed on government wiretaps as having been active participants in early Hamas-related organizational meetings in the United States. During testimony, FBI agent Lara Burns described CAIR as a front organization.
The FBI cutoff badly hurt CAIR and other legacy groups, because their main currency in collecting money and portraying themselves as the voice of the Muslim community in the United States, depends almost entirely on trumpeting its access to the U.S. government.
Now, Steven Merley's piece explores both the origin of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, as well as its ties to the European Brotherhood.
It is a good and timely reminder (and should be widely read by policy makers in the Obama administration, as well as gatekeepers across the government) of why cutting off CAIR's access was long overdue.
Any group (or network of groups, as is the case with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations) that advocates hollowing the U.S. out from within, the establishment of global Caliphate that grants Allah, through Muslims, ultimate temporal power to impose divine law, and has given birth to groups like Hamas (an integral part of the Muslim Brotherhood), should not be granted the status of the voice of the Muslim community.
While past works ( including my report for the NEFA Foundation have examined the court documents from the Holy Land Foundation trial, the Hudson piece draws on a broader array of documents, interviews and historical information to place the MB groups in the United States in a broader context.
In conclusion, Merely notes clearly the most important elements that give lie to the MB leaders' defence that the current groups have no ties to the Brotherhood structure:
(A)lmost all of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations continue to exist in their original form, often led by their founders and/or family members. No attempt appears to have been made to "clean house" by bringing in new and untainted leadership. Second, no public attempt appears to have been made by any U.S. Brotherhood organization or leader to acknowledge the history of the Brotherhood in the U.S. Only disingenuous denials have been issued when damaging documents come to light such
as those examined in this report. Finally, where detailed investigations have been made of U.S. Brotherhood organizations, they have revealed an extensive history of support for Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and support for terrorism that has included ideological, financial, and legal support, particularly for Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations. For example, many of the individuals and organizations identified in this report have either been convicted or named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terrorism financing case. Given the stated intent of the U.S. MB to conduct an organizational jihad" in order destroy the U.S. from within and the extensive Brotherhood infrastructure existing within the U.S., the burden of proof must shift to the Brotherhood to prove it is anything other than what it says it is.
It is worth remembering that the FBI, as the Investigative Project reported, cut off contact with CAIR, the primary MB legacy organization amid mounting concern about the Muslim advocacy group's roots in a Hamas-support network.
The decision to end contacts with CAIR was made quietly last summer as federal prosecutors prepared for a second trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), an Islamic charity accused of providing money and political support to the terrorist group Hamas, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
CAIR and its chairman emeritus, Omar Ahmad, were named un-indicted co-conspirators in the HLF case. Both Ahmad and CAIR's current national executive director, Nihad Awad, were revealed on government wiretaps as having been active participants in early Hamas-related organizational meetings in the United States. During testimony, FBI agent Lara Burns described CAIR as a front organization.
The FBI cutoff badly hurt CAIR and other legacy groups, because their main currency in collecting money and portraying themselves as the voice of the Muslim community in the United States, depends almost entirely on trumpeting its access to the U.S. government.
Now, Steven Merley's piece explores both the origin of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, as well as its ties to the European Brotherhood.
It is a good and timely reminder (and should be widely read by policy makers in the Obama administration, as well as gatekeepers across the government) of why cutting off CAIR's access was long overdue.
Any group (or network of groups, as is the case with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations) that advocates hollowing the U.S. out from within, the establishment of global Caliphate that grants Allah, through Muslims, ultimate temporal power to impose divine law, and has given birth to groups like Hamas (an integral part of the Muslim Brotherhood), should not be granted the status of the voice of the Muslim community.
While past works ( including my report for the NEFA Foundation have examined the court documents from the Holy Land Foundation trial, the Hudson piece draws on a broader array of documents, interviews and historical information to place the MB groups in the United States in a broader context.
In conclusion, Merely notes clearly the most important elements that give lie to the MB leaders' defence that the current groups have no ties to the Brotherhood structure:
(A)lmost all of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations continue to exist in their original form, often led by their founders and/or family members. No attempt appears to have been made to "clean house" by bringing in new and untainted leadership. Second, no public attempt appears to have been made by any U.S. Brotherhood organization or leader to acknowledge the history of the Brotherhood in the U.S. Only disingenuous denials have been issued when damaging documents come to light such
as those examined in this report. Finally, where detailed investigations have been made of U.S. Brotherhood organizations, they have revealed an extensive history of support for Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and support for terrorism that has included ideological, financial, and legal support, particularly for Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations. For example, many of the individuals and organizations identified in this report have either been convicted or named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terrorism financing case. Given the stated intent of the U.S. MB to conduct an organizational jihad" in order destroy the U.S. from within and the extensive Brotherhood infrastructure existing within the U.S., the burden of proof must shift to the Brotherhood to prove it is anything other than what it says it is.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday April 6, 2009
Remaking the Pentagon For The Future
It is clear that the current debate over the future configuration of the military is a divisive and extremely important one.
While Secretary Gates, bowing to the budget realities of the Obama administration, is cutting programs while moving toward a stronger focus on irregular warfare and special forces,the clear resolution to the debate is that both sides have considerable merit. Some common ground must be found, and it is a question of focus, not a question of either or. The recent North Korean missile challenge also serves as a reminder that traditional state actors and threats cannot be ignored.
There is no doubt that non-state armed groups are occupying more space around the globe, both in areas of obvious strategic concern to the United States, and those that may not seem to be of particular concern but contribute to overall instability. Most of these groups are irregular, fragmented and more similar to the movements in Afghanistan/Pakistan than regular movements.
While it is often difficult to see the specific security challenge these groups pose, the overarching threat of radical Islamists operating in this manner is not. All the major Islamist terrorist attacks against the United States (1998 US Embassy bombings in East Africa, 2000 USS Cole, 9/11) were all carried out by a non-state actor operating from what was conventionally described as a failed state (Afghanistan). That threat was underestimated by successive administrations, and the price paid has been horrific.
But the groups that will form the most pressing threats in the future, I believe, will be modeled on Hezbollah, able to mass troops, deploy advanced weapons systems and fight for territory, while remaining outside of direct state control.
This is because Hezbollah (like the FARC and somewhat similar to HAMAS), have the resources and state backing to be the hybrid forces that are the future.
Hezbollah is not a state actor, nor is the FARC. But they both enjoy two things that set them apart: state support (for Hezbollah, Iran and Syria; for the FARC, Venezuela and Ecuador) and the ability to generate independent funding for their operations. In the case of Hezbollah, it is a wide array of criminal and contraband activities. For the FARC it is drug trafficking and kidnapping.
In many ways, this is the ideal situation for any irregular force, and presents a whole different set of challenges to states. The asymmetrical aspects of the conflict take on added dimensions.
The non-state groups can operate from the sanctuary of a friendly state, but are not wholly dependent on it. The state they are attacking (Israel, Colombia) cannot effectively move against them unless they are willing to go to war with another state, something that is often too high a price to pay.
If the terms of the alliance were to become too onerous, the irregular force can survive because it is not entirely dependent on the state. The state can use the non-state force for specific actions that it would not carry out as an internationally-recognized government.
As groups like the Taliban and others move more heavily into drug trafficking and other economic adventures (see the Guardian story on the Taliban's use of emeralds now and see if reminds you of the blood diamond trade in West Africa), they will become more like Hezbollah, particularly if they can gain state sanctioned sanctuary in Pakistan.
The stakes are high and the challenges are multiple. The hybrid groups that can fight both ways make it imperative that the United States also retain the capacity to fight both types of wars. It is not an either/or proposition. It is, unfortunately, a double threat.
While Secretary Gates, bowing to the budget realities of the Obama administration, is cutting programs while moving toward a stronger focus on irregular warfare and special forces,the clear resolution to the debate is that both sides have considerable merit. Some common ground must be found, and it is a question of focus, not a question of either or. The recent North Korean missile challenge also serves as a reminder that traditional state actors and threats cannot be ignored.
There is no doubt that non-state armed groups are occupying more space around the globe, both in areas of obvious strategic concern to the United States, and those that may not seem to be of particular concern but contribute to overall instability. Most of these groups are irregular, fragmented and more similar to the movements in Afghanistan/Pakistan than regular movements.
While it is often difficult to see the specific security challenge these groups pose, the overarching threat of radical Islamists operating in this manner is not. All the major Islamist terrorist attacks against the United States (1998 US Embassy bombings in East Africa, 2000 USS Cole, 9/11) were all carried out by a non-state actor operating from what was conventionally described as a failed state (Afghanistan). That threat was underestimated by successive administrations, and the price paid has been horrific.
But the groups that will form the most pressing threats in the future, I believe, will be modeled on Hezbollah, able to mass troops, deploy advanced weapons systems and fight for territory, while remaining outside of direct state control.
This is because Hezbollah (like the FARC and somewhat similar to HAMAS), have the resources and state backing to be the hybrid forces that are the future.
Hezbollah is not a state actor, nor is the FARC. But they both enjoy two things that set them apart: state support (for Hezbollah, Iran and Syria; for the FARC, Venezuela and Ecuador) and the ability to generate independent funding for their operations. In the case of Hezbollah, it is a wide array of criminal and contraband activities. For the FARC it is drug trafficking and kidnapping.
In many ways, this is the ideal situation for any irregular force, and presents a whole different set of challenges to states. The asymmetrical aspects of the conflict take on added dimensions.
The non-state groups can operate from the sanctuary of a friendly state, but are not wholly dependent on it. The state they are attacking (Israel, Colombia) cannot effectively move against them unless they are willing to go to war with another state, something that is often too high a price to pay.
If the terms of the alliance were to become too onerous, the irregular force can survive because it is not entirely dependent on the state. The state can use the non-state force for specific actions that it would not carry out as an internationally-recognized government.
As groups like the Taliban and others move more heavily into drug trafficking and other economic adventures (see the Guardian story on the Taliban's use of emeralds now and see if reminds you of the blood diamond trade in West Africa), they will become more like Hezbollah, particularly if they can gain state sanctioned sanctuary in Pakistan.
The stakes are high and the challenges are multiple. The hybrid groups that can fight both ways make it imperative that the United States also retain the capacity to fight both types of wars. It is not an either/or proposition. It is, unfortunately, a double threat.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday April 6, 2009
Some Healthy Developments in Mexico's Drug War
As today's Washington Post makes clear, Mexico and the United States now recognize what is happening in Mexico as a narco-insurgency, with all that implies. Not simply drug trafficking. Not pockets of isolated violence. But a direct insurgent challenge to the state.
That recognition, which has been a long time coming, accepts the seriousness of the challenge and the resources that will be necessary to combat the forces arrayed against the state.
This recognition is coupled with another important and heartening public statement by Secretary Clinton that the demand for drugs in the United States and elsewhere, and the flow of weapons, are primary factors in giving the Mexican (and Colombian and Central American etc.) cartels the resource they need to wage this insurgency.
As Clinton said, "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," Mrs. Clinton said, using unusually blunt language. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians."
Accurately assessing the problem is the first step toward developing a joint strategy that marshal and channel the available resources in the most effective way.
While the military is playing a lead role in Mexico, it is a role that is dangerous to the state. The necessity of replacing the corrupted police force is akin to what Colombia faced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Medellin and then the Cali cartels systematically bought the political protection and police cooperation that was needed. Colombia cleaned up the police because, at that time, the military was an even worse bet. The Mexican government is betting that the military is less corruptible than the police. A dicey proposition, and we won't know if that is the correct decision for some time.
The looming challenge is not just the vast resources the cartels can draw on for military training, personnel and equipment, and the ability to effectively outgun the police and military.
It is that the narcos, like all insurgent groups, will make alliances across traditional boundries. This happened with the FARC, with al Qaeda, with Hezbollah and other non-state armed groups who feel their survival could be threatened.
One must look at who the potential allies are.Given the swelling Iranian presence in the region, particularly Nicaragua and Central America, and the appetite that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has for creating chaos and instability, it seems to me those are two places one must look to.
The cartels are not religious or even political in nature. They are economic interests that seek the survival of their own enterprises. They will ally with state and non-state actors that can further that goal.
Mexico has its hands full in the war, and the Calderon government has shown admirable staying power in pressing the cartels, correctly viewing the drug traffickers as a threat to the state multiple levels (local, municipal and national, through the corruption of the political, judicial and law enforcement structures at each level), and a threat to the survival of nascent democratic structures.
Unfortunately, it has to watch its back in the neighborhood. Success against the cartel will breed alliances that can spread the conflict even further.
That recognition, which has been a long time coming, accepts the seriousness of the challenge and the resources that will be necessary to combat the forces arrayed against the state.
This recognition is coupled with another important and heartening public statement by Secretary Clinton that the demand for drugs in the United States and elsewhere, and the flow of weapons, are primary factors in giving the Mexican (and Colombian and Central American etc.) cartels the resource they need to wage this insurgency.
As Clinton said, "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," Mrs. Clinton said, using unusually blunt language. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians."
Accurately assessing the problem is the first step toward developing a joint strategy that marshal and channel the available resources in the most effective way.
While the military is playing a lead role in Mexico, it is a role that is dangerous to the state. The necessity of replacing the corrupted police force is akin to what Colombia faced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Medellin and then the Cali cartels systematically bought the political protection and police cooperation that was needed. Colombia cleaned up the police because, at that time, the military was an even worse bet. The Mexican government is betting that the military is less corruptible than the police. A dicey proposition, and we won't know if that is the correct decision for some time.
The looming challenge is not just the vast resources the cartels can draw on for military training, personnel and equipment, and the ability to effectively outgun the police and military.
It is that the narcos, like all insurgent groups, will make alliances across traditional boundries. This happened with the FARC, with al Qaeda, with Hezbollah and other non-state armed groups who feel their survival could be threatened.
One must look at who the potential allies are.Given the swelling Iranian presence in the region, particularly Nicaragua and Central America, and the appetite that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has for creating chaos and instability, it seems to me those are two places one must look to.
The cartels are not religious or even political in nature. They are economic interests that seek the survival of their own enterprises. They will ally with state and non-state actors that can further that goal.
Mexico has its hands full in the war, and the Calderon government has shown admirable staying power in pressing the cartels, correctly viewing the drug traffickers as a threat to the state multiple levels (local, municipal and national, through the corruption of the political, judicial and law enforcement structures at each level), and a threat to the survival of nascent democratic structures.
Unfortunately, it has to watch its back in the neighborhood. Success against the cartel will breed alliances that can spread the conflict even further.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday April 6, 2009
Finally, Getting Serious About Drugs in Afghanistan: Is it too Late?
First of all, please note an RSS feed is now available for this site.
Finally, the world, from the United States to Iran, is recognizing their own self interest in taking on the opium and heroin traffickers in Afghanistan. Iran, for the first time, seems to understand that it's own self-interest to curb its rapidly-growing internal consumption of the drugs that have passed through its territory fairly freely.
As the Associated Press reports, the DEA is gearing up in the region as well, seeking to implement a model similar to the one used to dismantle the Colombian cartels
The surge of narcotics agents, which would boost the number of anti-drug officials inside Afghanistan from a dozen to nearly 80, would bolster a strategy laid out last week by the Obama administration to use U.S. and NATO troops to target "higher level drug lords."
Detailed plans described to members of Congress behind closed doors earlier this month suggest the effort will be modeled after the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's campaign against drug cartels in South America.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who chairs the House Armed Services terrorism subcommittee, said the DEA's effort is aimed at crippling the Afghan narcotics networks by driving up the costs of the opium trade.
"Any financing effort is really going to focus on the drug trade and the DEA is going to have to play a key role," Smith said.
But the issue is much more complex than just getting rid of the poppies, because so much time has elapsed and the traffickers have such a huge head start.
In a brilliant book that will be published in May, Gretchen Peters outlines how the Taliban and others in the heroin trade have such a surplus of opium that the short-term effect of any crackdown will drive prices up sharply, allowing the criminal organizations to unload their surplus while raking in massive amounts of cash.
The question is, will there be enough staying power for the cycle to come around far enough to actually have an impact on the production cycles. That we won't know for some time.
Her book, Seeds of Terror:Heroin and the Financing of the Taliban's and Al Qaeda's Master Plan, Peters chronicles the history of the rise of the new round of heroin trafficking and how high the drug corruption goes in the government itself.
This complicity, and the willingness to let warlords rule the most lucrative regions in the country, will surely complicate the task far beyond what it seems at first glance.
To make a significant dent, Iran and other players in the region, acting out of enlightened self interest rather than any desire to help the United States, will have to become actively engaged. The porous borders through with the drugs flow are close to the United States, and the heroin largely is consumed in Russia, the Stans, and Europe.
The U.S. interest is to cut the flow of funds to terrorists. Others will have other interests. But maybe the danger is now enough to get everyone on the same page, at least in the interest of survival.
Finally, the world, from the United States to Iran, is recognizing their own self interest in taking on the opium and heroin traffickers in Afghanistan. Iran, for the first time, seems to understand that it's own self-interest to curb its rapidly-growing internal consumption of the drugs that have passed through its territory fairly freely.
As the Associated Press reports, the DEA is gearing up in the region as well, seeking to implement a model similar to the one used to dismantle the Colombian cartels
The surge of narcotics agents, which would boost the number of anti-drug officials inside Afghanistan from a dozen to nearly 80, would bolster a strategy laid out last week by the Obama administration to use U.S. and NATO troops to target "higher level drug lords."
Detailed plans described to members of Congress behind closed doors earlier this month suggest the effort will be modeled after the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's campaign against drug cartels in South America.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who chairs the House Armed Services terrorism subcommittee, said the DEA's effort is aimed at crippling the Afghan narcotics networks by driving up the costs of the opium trade.
"Any financing effort is really going to focus on the drug trade and the DEA is going to have to play a key role," Smith said.
But the issue is much more complex than just getting rid of the poppies, because so much time has elapsed and the traffickers have such a huge head start.
In a brilliant book that will be published in May, Gretchen Peters outlines how the Taliban and others in the heroin trade have such a surplus of opium that the short-term effect of any crackdown will drive prices up sharply, allowing the criminal organizations to unload their surplus while raking in massive amounts of cash.
The question is, will there be enough staying power for the cycle to come around far enough to actually have an impact on the production cycles. That we won't know for some time.
Her book, Seeds of Terror:Heroin and the Financing of the Taliban's and Al Qaeda's Master Plan, Peters chronicles the history of the rise of the new round of heroin trafficking and how high the drug corruption goes in the government itself.
This complicity, and the willingness to let warlords rule the most lucrative regions in the country, will surely complicate the task far beyond what it seems at first glance.
To make a significant dent, Iran and other players in the region, acting out of enlightened self interest rather than any desire to help the United States, will have to become actively engaged. The porous borders through with the drugs flow are close to the United States, and the heroin largely is consumed in Russia, the Stans, and Europe.
The U.S. interest is to cut the flow of funds to terrorists. Others will have other interests. But maybe the danger is now enough to get everyone on the same page, at least in the interest of survival.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Friday March 20, 2009
Is Bin Laden Worried About His Relevance?
The two most recent statements by Osama bin Laden, after a long silence, seem to me to indicate he is worried about how relevant he remains in the global jihadist movement. They also make clear that the core al Qaeda leaders still want nothing less than a global revolution and uprising.
The NEFA Foundation's recent translations of bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri show the two leaders, whose most notable achievement in recent years has been to survive (and that is no small achievement, but stops making headlines after a while) are trying desperately to interject their thoughts and leadership over conflicts and groups that are out of their orbit of direct influence.
The most recent one, "Fight on, Champions of Somalia," is, in effect, a lambasting of the current Somali leadership of Sheikh Shareef as too moderate, and a hand-wringing over how any serious Islamist could engage in negotiations with non-Islamists.
How can intelligent people believe that yesterday’s enemies on the basis of religion can become today’s friends? This can only happen if one of the two parties abandons his religion. So look and see which one of them is the one who has abandoned it: Shaykh Shareef or America? ...These sorts of presidents are the surrogates of our enemies and their authority is null and void in the first place, and as Shaykh Shareef is one of them, he must be dethroned and fought."
This clearly someone who has no real influence on the ground and is reduced to watching from the sidelines, shouting instructions that no one feels obligated to listen to.
This is not to imply there is not a strong ideological/theological affinity among these groups, only to point out that bin Laden and Zawahiri are trying to become relevant in theaters of operations where they are no longer the guiding lights, and least in an operational sense.
Just a few days earlier, bin Laden had released a statement called "Practical Steps to Liberate Palestine," which of course are not practical at all, and regard a conflict in which al Qaeda has been notably absent (and has lost out to the Muslim Brotherhood).
Like Zawahiri's statements a few days before that, it consisted largely of lamenting the state of Palestine while trying to place that conflict in the context of global jihadist movements.
We are standing with them, and we are avenging them in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Algeria by confronting the ongoing crusader campaign stretching from Chechnya to Somalia, and from Afghanistan to the Islamic Maghreb. I give them the good news that while Israel was bombing resolute Gaza, the treacherous Pakistani Government was forced to cut-off the NATO supply route between Karachi and Jalalabad under the pressure of your brothers, the mujahideen in Pakistan.
This looks like an attempt to make the other jihads relevant to what is happening in Palestine, as it is the one conflict that the outside world is still paying attention to. However, it is not owned or directly influenced by the core al Qaeda leaders, who have paid lip service but little else to the Palestinian cause. It is also surprising how little Afghanistan and Pakistan are discussed with any depth.
It is not too long ago that al Qaeda would have considered the current Somali situation a triumph, but, in the never-ending conflict there, now backs the most hard-line faction. This is, in fact, an encouraging sign which al Qaeda has demonstrated in several conflicts-the complete unwillingness and inability to build coalitions on anything less than their own terms.
This was true in Iraq, where the al Qaeda forces systematically denounced their supposed allies (and were denounced by them), greatly weakening the Islamist movement.
This rigid inflexibility, as students of revolution know, often cost the "vanguards" a victory that would be possible had they been prepared to be less pure in their orthodoxy. And often revolutions triumph because of the ability, at least for a time, to embrace more moderate elements and deferring the conflict over lesser issues until the most important changes are made.
The Sandinistas under the Ortega brothers in Nicaragua and Castro in Cuba are examples of rigidly-orthodox leaders able to pretend to be flexible in order to achieve victory. Then they imposed their agendas ruthlessly.
It is true the world is moving on, and there are now freshmen entering college here who were only 10 years old when 9/11 occurred. The same is true for al Qaeda-there is a generation now maturing to whom they are names, but little more. The flurry of communiques in recent weeks by bin Laden and Zawahiri seem to be more cries for attention than the threat they have posed in the past.
This is not to minimize the threat by radical Islamists, it is there and growing. But the old generation is having a hard time going quietly into the night.
The NEFA Foundation's recent translations of bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri show the two leaders, whose most notable achievement in recent years has been to survive (and that is no small achievement, but stops making headlines after a while) are trying desperately to interject their thoughts and leadership over conflicts and groups that are out of their orbit of direct influence.
The most recent one, "Fight on, Champions of Somalia," is, in effect, a lambasting of the current Somali leadership of Sheikh Shareef as too moderate, and a hand-wringing over how any serious Islamist could engage in negotiations with non-Islamists.
How can intelligent people believe that yesterday’s enemies on the basis of religion can become today’s friends? This can only happen if one of the two parties abandons his religion. So look and see which one of them is the one who has abandoned it: Shaykh Shareef or America? ...These sorts of presidents are the surrogates of our enemies and their authority is null and void in the first place, and as Shaykh Shareef is one of them, he must be dethroned and fought."
This clearly someone who has no real influence on the ground and is reduced to watching from the sidelines, shouting instructions that no one feels obligated to listen to.
This is not to imply there is not a strong ideological/theological affinity among these groups, only to point out that bin Laden and Zawahiri are trying to become relevant in theaters of operations where they are no longer the guiding lights, and least in an operational sense.
Just a few days earlier, bin Laden had released a statement called "Practical Steps to Liberate Palestine," which of course are not practical at all, and regard a conflict in which al Qaeda has been notably absent (and has lost out to the Muslim Brotherhood).
Like Zawahiri's statements a few days before that, it consisted largely of lamenting the state of Palestine while trying to place that conflict in the context of global jihadist movements.
We are standing with them, and we are avenging them in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Algeria by confronting the ongoing crusader campaign stretching from Chechnya to Somalia, and from Afghanistan to the Islamic Maghreb. I give them the good news that while Israel was bombing resolute Gaza, the treacherous Pakistani Government was forced to cut-off the NATO supply route between Karachi and Jalalabad under the pressure of your brothers, the mujahideen in Pakistan.
This looks like an attempt to make the other jihads relevant to what is happening in Palestine, as it is the one conflict that the outside world is still paying attention to. However, it is not owned or directly influenced by the core al Qaeda leaders, who have paid lip service but little else to the Palestinian cause. It is also surprising how little Afghanistan and Pakistan are discussed with any depth.
It is not too long ago that al Qaeda would have considered the current Somali situation a triumph, but, in the never-ending conflict there, now backs the most hard-line faction. This is, in fact, an encouraging sign which al Qaeda has demonstrated in several conflicts-the complete unwillingness and inability to build coalitions on anything less than their own terms.
This was true in Iraq, where the al Qaeda forces systematically denounced their supposed allies (and were denounced by them), greatly weakening the Islamist movement.
This rigid inflexibility, as students of revolution know, often cost the "vanguards" a victory that would be possible had they been prepared to be less pure in their orthodoxy. And often revolutions triumph because of the ability, at least for a time, to embrace more moderate elements and deferring the conflict over lesser issues until the most important changes are made.
The Sandinistas under the Ortega brothers in Nicaragua and Castro in Cuba are examples of rigidly-orthodox leaders able to pretend to be flexible in order to achieve victory. Then they imposed their agendas ruthlessly.
It is true the world is moving on, and there are now freshmen entering college here who were only 10 years old when 9/11 occurred. The same is true for al Qaeda-there is a generation now maturing to whom they are names, but little more. The flurry of communiques in recent weeks by bin Laden and Zawahiri seem to be more cries for attention than the threat they have posed in the past.
This is not to minimize the threat by radical Islamists, it is there and growing. But the old generation is having a hard time going quietly into the night.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH