FDD

Undermining Arab Feminism? (CM)

Nonie Darwish says too many American women “unknowingly undermine the cause of Arab feminism and can even be seen as lending tacit support to radicals.”

More here.

Jonathan Snow Discusses Al-Aqsa TV

The Coalition Against Terrorist Media ran the following op-ed on Hamas's al-Aqsa television network in Sunday’s Providence Journal. It argues that “a major element” of Al-Aqsa’s programming is aimed at mobilizing children for holy war.

The War for Lebanon (CM)

Is Syria using a Palestinian front group to start a war inside Lebanon? Barry Rubin says it is. More here.

Lebanon Update (ML)

The Lebanese army hit the Palestinian area at Nahr al-Bared outside Tripoli again yesterday. In my piece on this Wednesday, I wondered whether operations against the Fatah al-Islam militia in the camp would have much effect on the sleeper cells outside the camps. In my conversations with Lebanese friends today, the relation between the two — and the Lebanese army's strategy against them both — became clearer.

For the terrorist sleeper cells (al Qaeda, etc.) now implanted throughout Lebanon, the headquarter of the Fatah al-Islam militia and similar groups inside the Palestinian camps are critical bases of support. Hit those bases, and the sleeper cells are rendered less effective militarily, and more vulnerable to intelligence. In this connection, there are signs that the Bush administration has taken a high-level decision to buttress the Siniora government in the current crisis, and in keeping with the policy of strengthening the Lebanese army's capabilities in general, will be flying several large shipments of ammo and other supplies to it between today and tomorrow. This indicates a certain level of coordination and strategy, because American supplies would not be airlifted without some rational and convincing explanation of what they will be used for — i.e., something a lot more convincing than "we're going to pound those camps until they're sorry."

The picture on the ground in the camps also became clearer today. The head of the Paletinian Fatah organization in Lebanon (the real one, I mean) today released a statement pledging to whipe out the Fatah al Islam terrorist group, and claiming to have mustered some 300 heavily-armed fighters for an operation inside the camp at Nahr al-Bared. The statement, which was translated and read to me over the phone by a friend in Beirut, said that Palestinian civilians in the camp had been warned to leave because the battle against Fatah al Islam inside the camp is going to start tomorrow. Most appear to have left.

Beirut remains a ghost town, with little traffic or other activity on the streets. Since Sunday night, there has been a car-bombing every night except Tuesday — and on that day, security forces nabbed two car bombers on their way to targets. Expectations are high for another car-bombing any minute, although having stuck in Christian, Sunni, and Druze areas — the three pillars of the anti-Syrian and anti-Hezbollah government majority — the terrorists have already made their statement.

Images of Al-Qaeda Torture (CM)

BRIAN TODD, CNN:  “Wolf, they were found in an al Qaeda safe house during recent raids in and around Baghdad. U.S. Military officials say these images that they just declassified show the true nature of what the Iraqi people are facing and they reinforce in the minds of American military commanders why U.S. Forces are there.

“Torture at the hands of al Qaeda. Victims suspended upside down and whipped, drilled through the hands, suspended from a ceiling and electrocuted. U.S. military officials say these cartoons are part of an al Qaeda training manual complete with how to use a blowtorch on a victim's body.

“These drawings given to CNN by the U.S. military in Iraq were found on a computer captured during recent raids of al Qaeda safe houses.”

GEN. WILLIAM CALDWELL, MNF-I:  “They made it in a cartoon manner so that no matter what your literacy rate or what nationality you are, all you've got to do is look at this picture to understand how to conduct tortures of innocent people.”

TODD:  “Methods like taking a hot iron to the skin, and others too grotesque to show.”

CALDWELL:  “This is the nature of the enemy that the Iraqi people are facing in Iraq.”

Download al_qaeda_torture_2007_05_23.pdf

Loyola on Lebanon

Last summer the world watched in shock as Hezbollah initiated a deadly war with Israel. With the aftershocks of that conflict still rippling throughout the region, it appears Lebanon could be in for another bloody summer.

In an article today on National Review Online, FDD Visiting Fellow Mario Loyola argues that:

The Lebanese army is overburdened and understaffed, and must re-focus its efforts on routing out Hezbollah with the help of the international community.

Most of the suicide bombers — including those from Fatah al-Islam — belong to al-Qaeda sleeper cells operating outside of the refugee camps.

If approved by the U.N. Security Council, an expanded UNIFIL force would stop the flow of foreign fighters coming in from Syria.

Al-Qaeda Regrouping (RWC)

An article by Kevin Whitelaw in US News & World report says that al Qaeda’s top leaders, once on the run, have regrouped

U.S. intelligence agencies have completely revised their assessment of al Qaeda the article says.

And they have reached an alarming conclusion: Bin Laden has a safe-haven in Pakistan and he may be stronger than ever.

The shift is dramatic. Two years ago, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, described al Qaeda leaders to Congress as battered and isolated.

Now, the DIA says, "Al Qaeda retains the ability to organize complex, mass-casualty attacks and inspire others,"

“Al Qaeda has consistently recovered from losses of senior leadership."

Officials now privately concede they overestimated the damage they had inflicted on al Qaeda's network. revitalized Taliban.

Pakistan has been an American ally against al Qaeda, but U.S. officials are increasingly frustrated by its inability-or unwillingness-to crack down in the tribal regions.

Terrorists on the Internet (RWC)

A report presented to Congress a couple of days ago says that Islamic radicals now value the internet as much as a Kalashnikov rifle.

Terrorists are using the Internet more and more because it is cheap and fast and you can make it secure.

They use it for training, for fund-raising, for recruitment, for research, for classic “dead drop” messaging, for training information –and obviously they use it for propaganda.

This view came from a panel of experts assembled by George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute and the University of Virginia’s Critical Analysis Group and was delivered to Congress.

Interesting quote from the report:

The 'killer application' of the Internet is not so much its use as a broadcast tool but its function as a communications channel that links people in cyberspace, who then meet and can take action in the physical world.

The AP’s account of the report lists examples of Internet-driven Islamic radicalization.

One example is Paul Hall, a US sailor who changed his name to Hassan Abujihaad.

He was arrested in last month and charged with delivering classified information about the location of US Navy vessels to terror groups.

Prosecutors said he had been in contact with radical Islamists he met on-line. 

Using the Internet, Hall had ordered videos promoting violent jihad.

Another example from the report: The train bombings in Madrid of March 2004.

They were committed by terrorists from North Africa. They were not directly linked to al-Qaeda though they shared its ideology which they seemed to have garnered through the Internet.

The report says the Internet has speeded the Islamic radicalization of young people.  They offered as an example the disrupted plot last summer to bomb airliners bound for the United States from the UK.

The men involved devolved in a short time from what appeared to be ordinary lives to a willingness to kill thousands of people, and themselves,  much as had the group of six men –three of them of them illegal aliens from Albania, who wanted to murder US soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey for which they were recently arrested.

Fatah al-Islam

Lebanese troops continued their siege of a Palestinian refugee camp today, as new signs emerged that their target — Fatah al-Islam, a militant group that follows al-Qaeda ideology — has been training fighters inside the camp for attacks in Europe, Iraq, and elsewhere. The fighting marks the bloodiest internal conflict since Lebanon's civil war ended in 1990.

Two experts from FDD, both natives of Lebanon, argue that Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni Muslim group which emerged late last year, receives financial support from the Syrian regime and is a direct threat to the democratically elected government in Lebanon.

Senior Fellow Walid Phares:

Fatah al-Islam aims at creating an ‘Emirate’ (Islamist principality as in the Taliban model) in the Sunni areas of Lebanon, and is planning on conducting operations similar to the ones in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq. But according to the Lebanese government and terrorism experts the group is being secretly supported by the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad.

Research Fellow Tony Badran:

The group Fateh al-Islam, while made up of jihadists of different nationalities, is a group that has been smuggled through Syria, and which was born out of a Syrian-controlled proxy Fateh al-Intifada. The Syrian regime has long sent the message to the West that only it could control Islamists in Lebanon (which it has cultivated and sent there), if the West acquiesces to its renewed control over Lebanon. It is a classic case of the arsonist playing fireman.

Security Council Resolution Calling for Tribunal in Hariri Assassination (ML)

The United States, Britain and France on Thursday formally introduced a resolution in the U.N. Security Council that calls for the establishment of an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. The resolution mandates the creation of a tribunal outside Lebanon with international judges and an international prosecutor under Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter, which addresses threats to international peace and security. I've attached the full text of the draft resolution below.

MEND's Threat to Nigeria

Since May 7, a militant group called the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has bombed three pipelines in Nigeria — Africa's biggest oil producer — disrupting the flow of nearly 100,000 barrels a day for the Italian oil company Eni. The disruptions helped push oil prices in New York to $63.17, up 71 cents a barrel.

MEND has said that it plans to escalate attacks in the weeks leading up to the inauguration of Nigeria’s president-elect, Umaru Yar’Adua. In an e-mail message to Western news organizations, the group vowed to “destroy the Nigerian oil export industry and compel the government to address the injustice in the Niger Delta.”

FDD Adjunct Fellow Dr. Peter Pham was one of the first to link MEND to Middle Eastern terrorism. A former diplomat in Africa, he visits the region frequently and has written numerous articles. His latest, in today’s World Defense Review, analyzes MEND’s threat to the region.

Tony Blair on Iraq (ML)

What you are seeing in Iraq is an attempt by al Qaeda -- through these appalling suicide bombs and also, particularly, down in the south, through the improvised explosive devices by Iranian-backed elements -- to try to disturb any prospect of Sunni and Shia coming together and delivering what the people of Iraq want to see.

The forces that we are fighting in Iraq -- al Qaeda on the one hand, Iranian-backed elements on the other -- are the same forces we're fighting everywhere.

The enemy we are fighting is an enemy that is aiming its destruction at our way of life and anybody who wants that way of life.  And in those circumstances, the harder they fight, the more determined we must be to fight back. If what happens is, the harder they fight, the more our will diminishes, then that's a fight we're going to lose.  And this is a fight we cannot afford to lose.

More excerpts of his remarks are here.

Lieberman on Iraq (CM)

If we stand united through the months ahead, if we stand firm against the terrorists who want to drive us to retreat, the war in Iraq can be won and the lives of millions of people can be saved.

But if we surrender to the barbarism of suicide bombers and abandon the heart of the Middle East to fanatics and killers, to Al Qaeda and Iran, then all that our men and women in uniform have fought, and died for, will be lost, and we will be left a much less secure and free nation.

That is the choice we in Washington will make this summer and this fall. It is a choice not just about our foreign policy and our national security and our interests in the Middle East. It is about what our political leaders in both parties are prepared to stand for. It is about our very soul as a nation. It is about who we are, and who we want to be.”

The full text of his speech is here.

What's New about the New Iraq Czar? (ML)

Maybe there really is a newsworthy story in the appointment of General Lute as special assistant to the President for Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the story is both more mundane and more interesting than that implied by the Washington Post's sales-generating abbreviation of the position title when it broke the story a few months ago. 

To start with, the position is not new.  With a few important modifications, it is essentially the same as that previously occupied by Meghan O'Sullivan. But as the original Post story explained, Meghan O'Sullivan reported only to national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, and did not have "tasking authority" over the agencies. The new position will report both directly to the president and Hadley and will therefore need some of Hadley's tasking authority -- which is really just the president's tasking authority delegated in the usual manner to a special assistant.

Unlike O'Sullivan, General Lute will therefore share some of the power of Hadley's pen.  But there's certainly no new there. Many principal-deputy relationships in the government are structured that way. And for Hadley, it makes sense: There is a whole world out there – from Iran and North Korea to China and India -- that needs his attention, but his office has tended to be "all-Iraq all-the-time." This administrative calibration in the National Security Council staff system may be overdue, and may have been delayed only by Hadley's reluctance (predictable, for a classic Washington bureaucrat like him) to share any of his tasking authority.

Notes & Comments

I'm writing this edition of Notes and Comments from Istanbul. FDD COO Mark Dubowitz and I have both been speaking at the Bahcesehir University Global Leadership Forum. Also here: Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum and Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council. Among the topics under discussion: Conflict and peace in the Middle East, Islam and Europe, Turkish-American relations.

Continue reading Clifford May's most recent Notes & Comments.

Can You Give Me Sanctuary...(AM)

More news on the Fort Dix Six. The three Duka brothers, all illegal aliens, not only should not have been in the United States; they should have been deported from the United States before they had the chance to plot jihad against our troops.  Except...local law enforcement (a) frequently does not check the immigration status of arrestees, and (b) often does not notify the immigration authorities even if upon learning that an arrestee is in the U.S. illegally. WNBC News in New York reports:

Suspect Dritan Duka has past arrests on charges of disorderly conduct and possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. He also has six separate speeding and driving with a suspended license infractions, records show.

Shain Duka has past arrests on charges of obstruction of justice, hindering apprehension and making physical threats. He also has five separate traffic infractions. Eljvir Duka has past drug counts and at least two motor vehicle infractions.

The three brothers are accused of helping lead the plot to shoot soldiers at Fort Dix. They are being held without bail. The fact that at least three of the suspects had past run-ins with the law and are in the United States illegally was brought up on Capitol Hill Thursday.

California congressman Elton Gallegly pointed out Mohammed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was stopped by police for a traffic violation weeks before the attacks. Atta was also in the United States illegally, having overstayed his visa. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the panel that many local law enforcement agencies do not check the immigration status of a driver during traffic stops....

A traffic stop is one thing, but an arrest is quite another.  A judge can't set bail responsbily without being advised of a person's immigration status since it is relevant to assessing the risk of flight (i.e., the likelihood that the person will return to court as directed until charges are resolved).  If these guys were arrested multiple times, it would be hard to believe that the authorities did not know they were illegal aliens.

Progress in Iraq? (CM)

Fredrick Kagan writes:

The strategy now under way in Iraq — we are providing an increased number of American forces, working closely with Iraqi troops, to establish and maintain security in Baghdad as a precondition for political, economic and social progress — will change the situation in Iraq significantly, whether or not it succeeds in its aims.

In fact, it has already done so, and for the better: the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has apparently fled to Iran; American and Iraqi forces have killed or captured more than 700 key leaders and allies of his Mahdi Army, causing the movement to fragment; sectarian killings in Baghdad in April were about one-third of the level in December.

There have been gains outside the capital as well. Nearly all of the two dozen or so major tribal leaders in Anbar Province have joined the new Anbar Salvation Council, which is committed to fighting Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists; Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, along with his defense and interior ministers and national security adviser, met with these sheiks and the provincial council in Anbar’s capital, Ramadi, in March to discuss reconstruction; reports in the American press suggest that even some Sunni Baathist insurgents formerly allied with Al Qaeda are now fighting the foreign terrorists in Anbar and elsewhere.

More here.

James Woolsey Testifies on Iran Divestment Bill

On Thursday, May 3, James Woolsey, co-chair of the Committee on the Present Danger and an FDD Distinguished Advisor, testified before the Ohio House of Representatives in favor of a new bill that would prohibit the state's public investment funds from investing in foreign companies that have business ties or operations in Iran. Similar terror-free investing bills have gained momentum in Florida, Maryland, Texas and Colorado. Mr. Woolsey’s prepared testimony is available at www.fightingterror.org.

Book Review

In the March/April issue of The New Leader, Yehudit Barsky of the American Jewish Committee reviewed FDD Senior Fellow Walid Phares' recent book, The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy.

Download newleaderpdf.PDF

Benchmarks (CM)

The debate over timetables for Iraq is over. Now the debate over benchmarks begins.

USA Today has an editorial this morning supporting benchmarks "with consequences for failure to meet them."

They gave me space for an op-ed making the opposing argument which boils down to this: The last thing Gen. David Petraeus needs: 535 micromanagers thousands of miles away on Capitol Hill. Ditto for our new ambassador, Ryan Crocker. Their jobs are tough enough.

It will be necessary for Petraeus and Croker (and Bush and Gates and Rice) to demonstrate persuasively to the American public that they are making progress (assuming they do). But benchmarks linked to inflexible or arbitrary deadlines based on political imperatives in Washington rather than realities in Iraq would signal our enemies how best to twist the United States into a knot from which retreat and defeat would provide the only escape.

Tastes Great or Less Filling? (CM)

Take a look at this story by the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank.

Why is it that so many reporters can’t conceive that there may be more than one conflict taking place in Iraq?

Yes, we’re fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq: All those foreign suicide-bombers blowing up Iraqi mothers and children in the market places probably are not secular Iraqi nationalists protesting the U.S. occupation.

And yes, there also is the problem of sectarian violence — which both al-Qaeda and Iran are attempting to fuel for their own purposes.

Is this really beyond the capacity of all these Ivy League-educated reporters to understand?

Cliff May on Petraeus

In an article today in USA Today, FDD President Clifford May argues that U.S. commanders and diplomats in Iraq need more flexibility to do their jobs.

George Tenet and Those 16 Words (ACM)

In his 60 Minutes interview regarding his new book, former CIA Director George Tenet was asked by the CBS's Scott Pelley why the CIA had not objected prior to President Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address to the assertion that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime had sought uranium in Africa. Tenet made a point of accepting responsibility for this error -- implicitly agreeing that the assertion was incorrect.

I criticized him in this NRO piece since later investigations have indicated the claim was probably true, albeit not backed by strong enough proof that it should have been in a presidential speech of that magnitude. Today, in NRO, William F. Buckley Jr. accepts the CBS version, faulting Tenet not for failing to defend the administration but for failing to keep the claim out of the speech. What is the truth: Was Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger or not? This study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania is probably as good as any analysis.

What Motivates Terrorists (CM)

Ed Husain writes:

I recall my Islamist days when my mind was closed to an alternative argument: there was only one way -- my group's way. All others, including fellow Muslims, were wrong and heading  for hell. To argue that dialogue will win over extremist Islamists is a myth; theirs is a mindset that is not receptive to alternative views, and does not recognise the sacred nature of all  human life.

Wahhabism and segments of Islamism are defined by their rejection of mainstream Muslim teachings and age-old spiritual practices, literalist readings of scripture devoid of scholarly  guidance, and a hell-bent commitment to confronting the West. Moderate Muslims have common cause with the West to extinguish extremism in our midst.

More here.