http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100929/n_top_news/cnews_us_britain_security
LONDON (Reuters) - Intelligence agencies have disrupted plans for multiple attacks on European cities by a group thought to be linked to al Qaeda, Britain's Sky News said on Tuesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
Militants based in Pakistan were planning simultaneous strikes in London, as well as cities in France and Germany, the channel's foreign affairs editor, Tim Marshall, said.
Asked about the Sky News report, U.S. security officials said they could not confirm that a plot had been disrupted. But they said they believed that the threat of a plot or plots was continuing.
U.S. counter-terrorism agencies are poring over intelligence reports suggesting a major attack plot is currently in the works against unspecified targets in Western Europe or possibly the United States, they said.
Four U.S. security officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that initial intelligence reports about the threat first surfaced roughly two weeks ago, around the time of the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Sky News' Marshall said an increase in drone attacks in Pakistan in the past few weeks was linked to attempts by Western powers to disrupt the plot, which was at an "advanced but not imminent stage."
British security sources declined to comment on the Sky News report.
Britain in January raised its international terrorism threat level to "severe" -- the second highest level of alert in the five-tier system.
The head of Britain's MI5 Security Service, Jonathan Evans, said on September 16 there remained "a serious risk of a lethal attack taking place."
EIFFEL TOWER ALERT
The Eiffel Tower and the surrounding Champ de Mars park were briefly evacuated on Tuesday because of a bomb alert, the fourth such alert in the Paris region in as many weeks, but a search turned up nothing, police said.
French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said on September 20 France faced a real terrorism threat due to a backlash from al Qaeda militants in North Africa, with fears growing of an attack from home-grown cells within French borders.
Citing unidentified intelligence sources, Sky said the planned attacks would have been similar to the commando-style raids carried out in Mumbai by Pakistan-based gunmen in 2008.
The heavily armed militants launched an assault on various targets in Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal hotel and the city's main train station.
The United States appeared to have widened drone aircraft attacks against al Qaeda-linked militants in Pakistan and might have killed a senior leader of the group, Pakistani and U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
U.S. officials declined to comment on specific plots in Europe or elsewhere but acknowledged that targeted drone strikes in Pakistan were meant to disrupt militant networks planning attacks.
"It shouldn't surprise anyone that links between plots and those who are orchestrating them lead to decisive American action," a U.S. official told Reuters.
"The terrorists who are involved are, as everyone should expect, going to be targets. That's the whole point of all of this."
The U.S. national security officials said that most of the threat reporting suggested that the targets of whatever plots were under way were in Europe. One of the officials said, however, that there was particular concern that U.S. interests in Europe might be targeted.
Two officials also said that they could not rule out the possibility that some of the threat reporting could relate to attack plots under way which might be directed at targets inside the United States. One of these officials added that the intelligence reporting was tangled and could mean that more than one plot has been set in motion.
U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper declined to comment directly on any European plot but stressed that al Qaeda remained committed to attacking Europe and the United States.
"We are not going to comment on specific intelligence, as doing so threatens to undermine intelligence operations that are critical to protecting the U.S. and our allies," Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris, Estelle Shirbon and William Maclean in London, and Philip Stewart and Mark Hosenball in Washington; editing by Andrew Dobbie and Frances Kerry.)
Showing posts with label al qaeda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label al qaeda. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
ISLAMIST TERRORISM FOR DUMMIES
FROM: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/10/rings_of_terror
While we will be entering a world where the al Qaeda organization will come to matter less, today it still remains as the central point of reference. A scan of the current jihadi landscape reveals that there are roughly six degrees of al Qaeda affiliation, each of which poses its own threat and requires a different response.
1. Al Qaeda's original leadership. The first group is made up of al Qaeda's original leadership -- and it is shriveling up like the roster of the local VFW. This crew still has a few big names: still-at-large figures like Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Yahya al-Libi. But the original core of al Qaeda is shrinking fast. No one knows the exact composition of this highest-level group, nor its exact whereabouts. But the best intelligence suggests the members live somewhere in the vicinity of Pakistan.
2. Al Qaeda's regional subsidiaries. Next, there are members of al Qaeda's regional subsidiaries, local terrorist or insurgent groups that have declared allegiance to the group. This includes outfits such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Ansar al-Sunnah in Iraq, al-Shabab in Somalia, and segments of the Taliban. These organizations do not take operational direction from al Qaeda's core, but accept broad strategic guidance. They are often critical to al Qaeda's efforts to expand its jihad throughout the globe. Al Qaeda, in turn, exploits these proxy groups, often mired in regional conflicts, to co-opt nationalist struggles into its broader narrative. Often, the senior leaders of these regional insurgent-cum-terrorist groups are in contact with original senior al Qaeda leadership.
3. Associated free agents. Associated free agents are individuals who are not official members of any terrorist group, but still have a connection, such as the radicals who carried out the 2004 Madrid train bombing. Their exact relationship to al Qaeda is often the most difficult to pin down because their affiliation tends to be fluid. Two days after the Madrid attacks, investigators found a video recorded by a man named Abu Dujan al-Afghani, taking credit for the attack and claiming to be al Qaeda's "European military spokesman." But a two-year probe into the plot found little evidence that the Madrid bombers really had al Qaeda support. Their exact relationship to al Qaeda remains clouded, though there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence.
4. Entrepreneurial jihadists. Next, there are groups of entrepreneurial jihadists: radicals from outside conflict zones who nurse simmering grievances and conceive small-bore plots, rather than attempting spectacular attacks. These groups exist mostly in Europe, but also in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Entrepreneurial jihadists do not form organizations out of shared conflict experience or with the help of an al Qaeda associate, though they might try to establish contact with al Qaeda for training and equipment. Virtually any British terrorist cell, the Toronto 18, and the Somali immigrants involved in the recent plot out of Australia can be considered entrepreneurial jihadists. Often, these entrepreneurial jihadists come into violence through gateway groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir or the Muslim Students Association. Former radical Islamist Ed Husain offers an excellent account of this dynamic in his memoir, The Islamist: Why I Became an Islamic Fundamentalist, What I Saw Inside, and Why I Left.
5. Lone wolves. Lone wolves are individuals who share al Qaeda's ideology but have no connection with al Qaeda or any terrorist organization for that matter. Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, is a classic case of a lone wolf terrorist -- someone who was radicalized by jihadi ideology, but who did not take instructions from jihadists. Lone wolves develop their missions on their own; if they managed to connect with like-minded individuals, they could move up to the entrepreneurial jihadist category. Most often, their operations are limited in their scale, scope, and effectiveness.
6. "Armchair jihadists," or jihadist pundits. These individuals share al Qaeda's ideology, but have no operational role in the organization. Still, their threat is insidious; although these individuals do not conduct operations, their ideology is disseminated, often over the Internet, and helps to radicalize others. Radical Yemeni preacher Anwar al-Awlaki is a jihadist pundit who has been responsible for radicalizing not just Nidal Hassan, but others as well.
MS: Then we have Jihadi Ideologues, Jihadi wannabe's, G.I. Jihadi's and so on.
While we will be entering a world where the al Qaeda organization will come to matter less, today it still remains as the central point of reference. A scan of the current jihadi landscape reveals that there are roughly six degrees of al Qaeda affiliation, each of which poses its own threat and requires a different response.
1. Al Qaeda's original leadership. The first group is made up of al Qaeda's original leadership -- and it is shriveling up like the roster of the local VFW. This crew still has a few big names: still-at-large figures like Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Yahya al-Libi. But the original core of al Qaeda is shrinking fast. No one knows the exact composition of this highest-level group, nor its exact whereabouts. But the best intelligence suggests the members live somewhere in the vicinity of Pakistan.
2. Al Qaeda's regional subsidiaries. Next, there are members of al Qaeda's regional subsidiaries, local terrorist or insurgent groups that have declared allegiance to the group. This includes outfits such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Ansar al-Sunnah in Iraq, al-Shabab in Somalia, and segments of the Taliban. These organizations do not take operational direction from al Qaeda's core, but accept broad strategic guidance. They are often critical to al Qaeda's efforts to expand its jihad throughout the globe. Al Qaeda, in turn, exploits these proxy groups, often mired in regional conflicts, to co-opt nationalist struggles into its broader narrative. Often, the senior leaders of these regional insurgent-cum-terrorist groups are in contact with original senior al Qaeda leadership.
3. Associated free agents. Associated free agents are individuals who are not official members of any terrorist group, but still have a connection, such as the radicals who carried out the 2004 Madrid train bombing. Their exact relationship to al Qaeda is often the most difficult to pin down because their affiliation tends to be fluid. Two days after the Madrid attacks, investigators found a video recorded by a man named Abu Dujan al-Afghani, taking credit for the attack and claiming to be al Qaeda's "European military spokesman." But a two-year probe into the plot found little evidence that the Madrid bombers really had al Qaeda support. Their exact relationship to al Qaeda remains clouded, though there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence.
4. Entrepreneurial jihadists. Next, there are groups of entrepreneurial jihadists: radicals from outside conflict zones who nurse simmering grievances and conceive small-bore plots, rather than attempting spectacular attacks. These groups exist mostly in Europe, but also in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Entrepreneurial jihadists do not form organizations out of shared conflict experience or with the help of an al Qaeda associate, though they might try to establish contact with al Qaeda for training and equipment. Virtually any British terrorist cell, the Toronto 18, and the Somali immigrants involved in the recent plot out of Australia can be considered entrepreneurial jihadists. Often, these entrepreneurial jihadists come into violence through gateway groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir or the Muslim Students Association. Former radical Islamist Ed Husain offers an excellent account of this dynamic in his memoir, The Islamist: Why I Became an Islamic Fundamentalist, What I Saw Inside, and Why I Left.
5. Lone wolves. Lone wolves are individuals who share al Qaeda's ideology but have no connection with al Qaeda or any terrorist organization for that matter. Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, is a classic case of a lone wolf terrorist -- someone who was radicalized by jihadi ideology, but who did not take instructions from jihadists. Lone wolves develop their missions on their own; if they managed to connect with like-minded individuals, they could move up to the entrepreneurial jihadist category. Most often, their operations are limited in their scale, scope, and effectiveness.
6. "Armchair jihadists," or jihadist pundits. These individuals share al Qaeda's ideology, but have no operational role in the organization. Still, their threat is insidious; although these individuals do not conduct operations, their ideology is disseminated, often over the Internet, and helps to radicalize others. Radical Yemeni preacher Anwar al-Awlaki is a jihadist pundit who has been responsible for radicalizing not just Nidal Hassan, but others as well.
MS: Then we have Jihadi Ideologues, Jihadi wannabe's, G.I. Jihadi's and so on.
Friday, December 11, 2009
HOW MANY MUSLIMS HAVE WE KILLED TODAY?
Al-Qaeda More ‘Indiscriminate’ in Killing Muslims, Report Says
By Ed Johnson
SOURCE: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aoJoQdeJ_TQo
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Al-Qaeda has become “increasingly indiscriminate” in attacks that kill mostly Muslims in countries including Iraq and Pakistan, according to a study released by the U.S. Military Academy’s counterterrorism center.
From 2004 to 2008, 15 percent of al-Qaeda’s victims were Western, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point said in a report. Only 2 percent were from the West between 2006 and 2008.
The network has “limited capability to strike against its Western enemies” and “maintains its relevance by attacking countries with Muslim majorities,” according to the center. “If history provides a glimpse into the future, the group and its associates will pose the greatest threat to fellow Muslims.”
Al-Qaeda has been criticized in the Middle East over bombings that have claimed Muslim lives and in late 2007 the network’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri participated in an online forum in which he defended such attacks. He blamed the West for using Muslims as human shields and said if innocents were killed it was “either an unintentional error, or out of necessity.”
The study used a database maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center to draw up a list of al-Qaeda attacks and then relied on Arabic news reports for details of fatalities so they would be seen through a “non-Western prism.”
To be included in the survey, the attack had to be carried out by al-Qaeda or a group publicly associated with the network and the perpetrators needed to claim responsibility.
During the period 2004 to 2008, there were 3,010 victims of 313 attacks, according to the survey.
London, Madrid
Al-Qaeda was “marginally successful” in attacking Westerners in 2004 and 2005 with the attacks in Madrid and London, according to the report.
Groups inspired by al-Qaeda planted bombs on commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004, three days before an election, killing 191 people. In London, four bombers killed themselves and 52 other people on three subway trains and a bus during morning rush hour in July 2005.
Excluding the Madrid and London attacks, only 4.4 percent of al-Qaeda’s victims during the four-year period were Western, the survey said.
The study also broke down fatalities after excluding attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, acknowledging it could be argued that Muslim casualties there were “unfortunate martyrs or collateral damage” in the wars.
‘Greatest Threat’
“Outside of the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, 99 percent of al-Qaeda’s victims were non-Western in 2007 and 96 percent were non-Western in 2008,” the study said.
During the online forum, several questions out of the 90 Zawahiri selected to answer challenged him over attacks that killed Muslim women and children, according to IntelCenter, a U.S.-based group that monitors terrorist communications on the Internet.
One participant, identified as an Algerian medical student, challenged Zawahiri over the Dec. 11, 2007, suicide bombings in Algiers, IntelCenter reported in April last year when al-Qaeda’s media production unit released an audio file of him answering the written questions.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the attacks on the United Nations office and the Constitutional Council building that killed more than 60 people, including 17 UN workers.
Those killed were “not from the innocents,” said Zawahiri. “They are from the crusader unbelievers and the government troops who defend them.”
***MS*** Tell me again, O wannabe-jihadi, how this is what Allah ordains? Tell me again what your proof is to slaughter children in Mosques, or on trains, planes and marketplaces - of Muslims and non alike?
Tell me especially, how much closer you are to your imaginary magical Muslim state where every one is a perfect Muslim? In order to be a half-decent Muslim, you need to be a half-decent human being but alas, you cannot even get that right.
"And Allah is swift in His Judgment" remember?
By Ed Johnson
SOURCE: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aoJoQdeJ_TQo
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Al-Qaeda has become “increasingly indiscriminate” in attacks that kill mostly Muslims in countries including Iraq and Pakistan, according to a study released by the U.S. Military Academy’s counterterrorism center.
From 2004 to 2008, 15 percent of al-Qaeda’s victims were Western, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point said in a report. Only 2 percent were from the West between 2006 and 2008.
The network has “limited capability to strike against its Western enemies” and “maintains its relevance by attacking countries with Muslim majorities,” according to the center. “If history provides a glimpse into the future, the group and its associates will pose the greatest threat to fellow Muslims.”
Al-Qaeda has been criticized in the Middle East over bombings that have claimed Muslim lives and in late 2007 the network’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri participated in an online forum in which he defended such attacks. He blamed the West for using Muslims as human shields and said if innocents were killed it was “either an unintentional error, or out of necessity.”
The study used a database maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center to draw up a list of al-Qaeda attacks and then relied on Arabic news reports for details of fatalities so they would be seen through a “non-Western prism.”
To be included in the survey, the attack had to be carried out by al-Qaeda or a group publicly associated with the network and the perpetrators needed to claim responsibility.
During the period 2004 to 2008, there were 3,010 victims of 313 attacks, according to the survey.
London, Madrid
Al-Qaeda was “marginally successful” in attacking Westerners in 2004 and 2005 with the attacks in Madrid and London, according to the report.
Groups inspired by al-Qaeda planted bombs on commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004, three days before an election, killing 191 people. In London, four bombers killed themselves and 52 other people on three subway trains and a bus during morning rush hour in July 2005.
Excluding the Madrid and London attacks, only 4.4 percent of al-Qaeda’s victims during the four-year period were Western, the survey said.
The study also broke down fatalities after excluding attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, acknowledging it could be argued that Muslim casualties there were “unfortunate martyrs or collateral damage” in the wars.
‘Greatest Threat’
“Outside of the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, 99 percent of al-Qaeda’s victims were non-Western in 2007 and 96 percent were non-Western in 2008,” the study said.
During the online forum, several questions out of the 90 Zawahiri selected to answer challenged him over attacks that killed Muslim women and children, according to IntelCenter, a U.S.-based group that monitors terrorist communications on the Internet.
One participant, identified as an Algerian medical student, challenged Zawahiri over the Dec. 11, 2007, suicide bombings in Algiers, IntelCenter reported in April last year when al-Qaeda’s media production unit released an audio file of him answering the written questions.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the attacks on the United Nations office and the Constitutional Council building that killed more than 60 people, including 17 UN workers.
Those killed were “not from the innocents,” said Zawahiri. “They are from the crusader unbelievers and the government troops who defend them.”
***MS*** Tell me again, O wannabe-jihadi, how this is what Allah ordains? Tell me again what your proof is to slaughter children in Mosques, or on trains, planes and marketplaces - of Muslims and non alike?
Tell me especially, how much closer you are to your imaginary magical Muslim state where every one is a perfect Muslim? In order to be a half-decent Muslim, you need to be a half-decent human being but alas, you cannot even get that right.
"And Allah is swift in His Judgment" remember?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
