The Terrorist Round-Up for December 15, 2005

[Straight Vermonter]

Doing it for Themselves

The Afghanistan army are trained in the hills of Kabul, Afghanistan, by soldiers from the British Army. They are the latest recruits to undergo a six-week British battle course for junior officers. In the coming months those who graduate will be sent, as part of the Afghan National Army, to fight in the south and east of the country. (AP Photo/Andrew Parsons/PA)	An Iraqi soldier checks the identity of a motorist near a U.S. soldier with a drawn pistol at a checkpoint near a polling center in Baghdad's Sadr city, a day before Iraq's historical parliamentary elections December 14, 2005. (Ali Jasim/Reuters)

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U.S. Steps Up Air Support, Surveillance Ahead Of Iraqi Elections
by Matthew Borghese

The United States has stepped up its level of air support in the skies over Iraq to help secure the country for the upcoming national elections.

U.S. forces flew 54 "close-air-support missions" Wednesday, helping to "deny insurgents access to a bridge," as well as striking an "enemy bunker."

According to U.S. Central Command, Air Force F-16s and F-15s jets "performed air strikes in the vicinity of Baghdad," while U.S. Navy F/A-18s "provided close-air support to coalition troops in contact with insurgents near Balad."

Increased surveillance missions were also carried out by thirteen U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and Royal Australian Air Force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft.

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3 Men With Suspected al-Qaida Ties Charged (Spain)

A Spanish judge filed charges against three men suspected of financing and providing logistical support for an Algerian Islamic extremist group with suspected links to al-Qaida, court officials said Tuesday.

The three Algerians, among seven people arrested last week in Spain's Costa del Sol region, were charged with collaborating with an armed group and ordered them jailed, the court said.

An Algerian woman was released without charge. The three other suspects an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, an Algerian man and a Spanish woman are still being questioned, officials said.

(More..)

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Al-Qaida planned a 12,000-strong army

Men who said they were former al-Qaida members said on Saudi television the network planned to set up a 12,000-strong Islamic army to oust "infidel" regimes.

The men who appeared on Saudi television Tuesday night confessed that their leaders assured them that "an army of 12,000 diehard Muslim believers could not be defeated."

They said they had been misled by al-Qaida preachers who recruited them by exploiting their religious zeal and then dispatched them to Afghanistan through various countries in order to conceal their destination.

(More..)

(The best laid plans of men and Muslims...)

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(Sunni) Insurgents 'shot in arms and legs, then drowned' (By Shi'ite villagers)
By Paul McGeough

This from the mouth of a 14-year-old boy: "They tied the legs and hands of 11 Sunni men and hanged them off the river bridge - head-first. But they still refused to talk, so Sheik Khadum Shibley shot them in the arms and legs and then he cut the ropes."

The schoolboy Munthadar Ishmail Kudair's chilling account of a Shiite village's despatch of suspected Sunni insurgents adds credibility to rising Sunni complaints of a long-delayed but vicious Shiite fight-back after two years of relentless Sunni-backed violence in Iraq.

The summary executions, confirmed by the boy's father and others in the village, come amid anxiety by US and UN officials over widespread reports of rampant torture and killings by freelance death squads and the Shiite militiamen who now dominate Iraq's security forces

(More..)

(I hope that this is not a sign of increasing violence by Shi'ites.  However, I am intrigued by the media's concern over Shi'te violence and their acceptance (even tacit support) of Sunni violence.)

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Iraqi Voter Tells Insurgents, Dems, "Go To Hell"

An Iraqi voter, Betty Dawisha, lumped terrorist insurgents and American Democrats together by saying "Anybody who doesn’t appreciate what America has done and President Bush, let them go to hell," as depicted in video captured by the Political Teen.

Sure, it is one person's opinion, and the likely response by said Democrats would be that is, in fact, one person's opinion, and does not represent the whole. All true, all true. But is not Cindy Sheehan one person? Is not John Murtha just one Congressman?
(More..)

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(Thai PM) Chitchai defends policy to reeducate insurgents
By Ismail Wolff 

Deputy Prime Minister Chitchai Wannasathit yesterday defended a government program to reeducate insurgents and their sympathizers, denying accusations that innocent people had been tricked into attending the course. Chitchai’s comments came amid widespread criticism from human-rights groups and local residents that innocent people were being tricked and harassed into signing up for reeducation.

“There was no setup,” Chitchai told reporters. “It could be propaganda put forward to create an issue and discredit the government’s plan.”

Local residents complained to the media, local MPs and lawyers that they had been tricked into attending a “surrender ceremony” for militant sympathizers in Yala on Saturday. Democrat MP for Narathiwat Je-Ahmin Dodayong said in Parliament yesterday that many of those who attended the ceremony had been lured by local officials under false pretences in order to boost numbers and showcase the government’s reeducation policy.

A letter sent to residents mentioned nothing about reeducation, telling them only that they would be taken on a field trip to Bangkok with free accommodation, food and a daily allowance of 100 baht, he said.

“I have received complaints from many people,” Je-Ahmin said. “Saturday’s ceremony was fixed. Many people went to the town hall but only found out it was a ceremony for the misled to turn themselves in when they arrived.”  However, Chitchai yesterday denied the existence of any such letter and said participants of the program were often taken to Bangkok and Ayutthaya as part of their reeducation.

Chitchai also refuted accusations that local officials had tricked people into attending the ceremony in order to impress their superiors in Bangkok, saying that the vast majority of officials in the embattled South were dedicated to solving the problems in the region. The deputy prime minister said the government was targeting teenagers and children who had been misled into supporting the separatist movement, and that he was personally overseeing the use of the emergency decree in implementing the reeducation policy.

Human rights advocates have said that security forces threatened people, forcing them to sign up for the course.

Somchai Homlaor, chairman of the Law Society of Thailand’s human rights committee, compared the campaign to the government’s 2003 “war on drugs” in which 2,500 people were killed.
 
(Thailand's government seems to be adrift in their part in the WOT.  They are so afraid of offending anyone that they "re-educate" terrorists and sympathisers instead of hunting them down and jailing them. Even this appears to be too harsh for many in Thailand. Wow.)
 

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Israel fires missile at car reportedly used by militants; 4 killed, 4 wounded

The Israeli military fired a missile Wednesday at a car in northern Gaza that it said was packed with militants about to carry out an attack. Four Palestinians were killed and four were wounded, Palestinian hospital officials said.

Witnesses said an Israeli drone was overhead at the time of the attack outside Karni (Qarni), Gaza's main cargo passage. The Israeli military said it targeted members of the Popular Resistance Committees on their way to carry out an attack against Israel. The vehicle was loaded with explosives, the military said.

(More..)

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Military commander of banned Islamic group caught

Security forces nabbed the suspected military commander and the alleged money man of a banned Islamic group blamed for a series of deadly bombings in Bangladesh, claiming a breakthrough today in their fight against the militants.

Investigators were interrogating the men in hopes they could help authorities crack open Jumatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, the group officials say carried out blasts that have killed 22 people and wounded scores since the end of November.

“We hope to get some very important information from them,” said Masuq Hassan Ahmed, a spokesman for the elite Rapid Action Battalion, which includes police and soldiers.

Jumatul Mujahideen Bangladesh wants to establish strict Islamic rule in the country of about 140 million people, which was set up as a secular state when it won independence in 1971 from Pakistan, where Islam is the official religion.

Special agents from the rapid action force caught Ataur Rahman, the group’s reputed military commander, in a raid late yesterday at Tejgaon Polytechnic College in Dhaka, Ahmed told reporters.

(More..)

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Security Forces Claim Top Al Qaeda Agent Killed in Russia

Russian special services have killed the chief representative of al Qaeda in Russia, a mercenary called Dzhaber, head of the regional headquarters of the counter-terrorism operation in the North Caucasus, Col.-Gen. Arkady Edelev, was quoted by the Trud newspaper as saying.

The terrorist was killed in the village of Avtury in the Chechen internal republic at a guerilla winter base.

Dzhaber was described as the mastermind behind recent terrorist attacks in the republic, providing money for them and working out plans.

(More..)

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US takes war on terror into Sahara
Jason Motlagh

THE United States has set aside $500 million over the next five years to secure a vast new front in its global war on terrorism: the Sahara Desert.  Critics say the region is not the terrorist zone that some senior US military officers assert. They add that heavy-handed military and financial support that reinforces authoritarian regimes in north and west Africa could fuel radicalism where it scarcely exists.

The Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) was begun in June to provide military expertise, equipment and development aid to nine Saharan countries where lawless swathes of desert are considered fertile ground for militant Muslim groups involved in smuggling and combat training.  "It's the Wild West all over again," said Major Holly Silkman, a public affairs officer at US Special Operations Command Europe, which presides over US security and peacekeeping operations in Europe, former Soviet bloc countries and most of Africa.

During the first phase of the programme, dubbed Operation Flintlock, US Special Forces led 3,000 ill-equipped Saharan troops in tactical exercises designed to co-ordinate security more effectively along porous borders and beef-up patrols in ungoverned territories.

Maj Silkman said Africa has become the most important concern of the US European Command (EuCom) because of rampant corruption, drug and human trafficking, poverty and high unemployment, which create a significant "potential for instability", particularly in the Saharan region, where 50 per cent of the population is younger than 15.  The head of Special Operations Command Europe, Major General Thomas R Csrnko, said he was concerned that al-Qaeda is assessing African groups for "franchising opportunities," notably the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat - known as GSPC by its initials in French - cited on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organisations.

The Algeria-based GSPC, estimated to have about 300 fighters and said to be linked to al-Qaeda, was accused of kidnapping European tourists in 2003 and has taken responsibility for a spate of attacks in the Sahara this year.  General Csrnko considers the group the main threat to security in the region, and has cited the potential for terrorist camps in the Sahara comparable to those once run by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Eucom officials say there is evidence that 25 per cent of suicide bombers in Iraq are Saharan Africans. Terrorist attacks such as the 11 March, 2004, Madrid train bombings that killed 191 persons have been linked to north African militants.

But some observers say terrorism in the Sahara is little more than a mirage and that a higher-profile US involvement could destabilise the region.

"If anything, the [TSCTI] ... will generate terrorism, by which I mean resistance to the overall US presence and strategy," said Jeremy Keenan, a Sahara specialist at the University of East Anglia.  A report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said that although the Sahara is "not a terrorist hotbed", repressive governments in the region are using the "war on terror" to tap US largesse and deny civil freedoms.

The report said the regime of Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya - a US ally in west Africa deposed on 3 August in a bloodless coup - used the threat of terrorism to legitimise the denial of human rights.

Mr Keenan said the government of Algeria is an even worse offender, misleading Washington about the GSPC threat to acquire modern weapons and shed its pariah status.

Aside from the 2003 kidnapping issue, US and Algerian authorities have failed to present "indisputable verification of a single act of alleged terrorism in the Sahara", Mr Keenan said.  "Without the GSPC, the US has no legitimacy for its presence in the region," he added, noting that an escalating American strategic dependency on African oil requires that the United States bolster its presence in the region.

Maj Silkman, however, said cultivating security, not oil resources, is the prime objective of the TSCTI. She said it is vital that other members of the international community get involved.  "Reducing the threat is not as much about taking direct action as it is in eliminating conditions that allow terrorism to flourish," she said.

(I never cease to be amazed by how many people believe the sentiment "if we do nothing the evil ones will leave us alone".)

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Why al Qaeda Wants Zarqawi Dead
by James Dunnigan

Killing Iraqi terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi could be a defeat in the war on terror. On November 20th, a raid on a house in Mosul, Iraq, resulted in a number of terrorists blowing themselves up rather than be captured. It was thought that al Zarqawi was in the house.

His death would be a mixed blessing.

While he’s certainly been an effective terrorist leader, able to inspire the suicide-happy wackos to some spectacular atrocities, he’s also been, in some ways a liability for al Qaeda, and the Sunni Arab groups fighting their government. Attacks on women, children, mosques, clerics, have been PR disasters. Operations like these appear to have put al Zarqawi on the outs with at least part of al Qaedas more senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden.

So, do we gain more from his death because his organizational and leadership skills are no longer directing the religious elements in the terrorist organization, or do we lose because the al Qaeda leadership asserts more control, and curbs the bloodier attacks on women, children, mosques, etc?

As the old saying goes, “choose your friends carefully, and your enemies even more carefully.” Al Zarqawi's bloody minded attitude towards Shia Arabs (because Islamic conservatives consider Shia to be heretics), and Iraqi civilians in general, has made him the most hated man in Iraq. Because of al Zarqawi’s tactics, al Qaeda has seen its “approval rating” plunge throughout the Arab world.

The recent bombing of a wedding in Jordan, which al Zarqawi took credit for, turned many pro-al Qaeda Jordanians against the terrorists. Al Zarqawi sensed his gaffe a few days later, and released a video of him trying to explain what really happened, and that his suicide bomber actually hit a secret meeting of Israeli and American secret agents. That did not go over well with grieving, and very ticked off, Jordanians.

It’s only a matter of time before Arabs start insisting that al Zarqawi is really an Israeli agent, working from the inside to destroy al Qaeda. Meanwhile, let’s try and keep our guy ali, er, on the run.

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Suicide bomb hits north Afghanistan, no casualties (No virgins for you!)

No virgins for you!

A suicide explosion Wednesday afternoon shook the famous blue mosque of Afghan northern Balkh province, but caused no serious casualties, a local official said.

"This afternoon at about 2 p.m. a suicide bomber blew himself in the garden of the Blue Mosque in Mazar-e-Sharif city. Usually Wednesday is the day for women to go to pray, fortunately there are no persons near him, so there is no casualty except the bomber himself," Shier Durani, the spokesperson for the provincial policedepartment told Xinhua.

"After some suicide attacks, the local police have intensified the security in the area, that is an important reason that the bomber couldn't blow himself in a crowded place. Since the bomber has been blown into pieces, his identity is not confirmed yet," he added.

Taliban militants created attacks around the country, even in the comparatively peaceful northern areas. About two weeks ago, four Swedish soldiers were injured as their vehicle hit a roadsidebomb in Mazar-e-Sharif after watching a buzkashi game.

About 1,500 people, with the majority of them Taliban militants,have been killed in the Taliban-linked militancy since the beginning of this year.

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6 Hizb Men Killed; 2 commanders among the dead

Six militants of Hizbul Mujahideen outfit, including two of its top commanders, a Harkat-ul-Mujahideen militant and a class 8th student were among nine persons killed in separate incidents across the state, officials and reports said Wednesday.  Six militants of frontline militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen were killed by Rashtriya Rifles troops during a fierce gunbattle at Gulab Waji Poshkar Khag Beerwah in district Budgam on Wednesday morning, a defence statement said.

Reports said the troops of 34 RR cordoned off the area on Tuesday night and zeroed in on the house of one Abdul Majeed Wani son of Ghulam Muhammad. The troops asked the militants to surrender, which they declined and tried to break the siege, triggering an encounter.  The troops, reports said, fired indiscriminately on the targetted house and bombarded it with mortal shells. Two of the slain militants have been identified as Hizb’s district commander Showkat Ahmad Ganaie alias Janbaz son of Abdul Gani of Karahama Tangmarg and battalion commander Muhammad Sultan Bhat alias Usman son of Ghulam Rasool of Reezam Kunzer.
The bodies of four other militants have been kept in police station for identification.

In the encounter, the residential house of Abdul Majeed was completely destroyed.

Terming the killing of Hizb’s district commander Showkat Ganai as a blow to the outfit, the defence statement said he was an expert in Improvised Explosive Device (IED).

(More..)

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KASHMIR IMBROGLIO

Follow the link to a good article summarizing the last 25 years or so of the India/Pakistan conflict and it's ties to Islamic terrorism.

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Let your thought and prayers be with the Iraqi people on this important day

[Straight Vermonter]

Election Day ping.

[Springman]

Good morning bump.

[Cap Huff]

Thanks. And a purple finger bump to all.

[Straight Vermonter]

French arrests 'linked to Zarqawi'

French counterterrorism agents on Thursday arrested three suspects believed to have "indirect links" to al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a police spokeswoman said.

(More..)

[Straight Vermonter]

Fairbanks News-Miner reporter Margaret Friedenauer is embedded with 172nd Stryker Brigade in Iraq.

This is definitely worth a read.

[Deetes]

BTTT

[FreedomPoster]

Second that. Nothing like seeing a member of the 4th Estate get b****-slapped by reality, and having the integrity to admit it in print.

[Just A Nobody]

LET FREEDOM REIGN!!!

Thank you SV!

[Stentor]

Bump.

[Valin]

Men who said they were former al-Qaida members said on Saudi television the network planned to set up a 12,000-strong Islamic army to oust "infidel" regimes.

"Infidel" regimes, That would be.....pretty much everyone, now that the Tailiban is gone.

[Valin]

It’s only a matter of time before Arabs start insisting that al Zarqawi is really an Israeli agent, working from the inside to destroy al Qaeda.


I'm suprised they haven't done this yet.

[Coffee_drinker]

Here is a link to the video clip of an Iraqi woman after voting telling people who do not appreciate what Bush has done for them to "go to H*LL"

http://thepoliticalteen.com/video/gotohell.wmv


Lets get this clip spread around to as many people and News agencies as we can, it's good!
cd

[Coffee_drinker]

bump

[Valin]

described a web of links between the alleged network in France -- which police say included both Islamic militants and common criminals

Once again I'm shock!

[Coop]

Great collection of articles, as usual. Thanks.

Eucom officials say there is evidence that 25 per cent of suicide bombers in Iraq are Saharan Africans. Terrorist attacks such as the 11 March, 2004, Madrid train bombings that killed 191 persons have been linked to north African militants.

I remember reading an article probably a year or more ago about the growing Al Qaeda presence in the Sahara. I see it's still on the radar screen.

Concerning whether or not to get Zarqawi, I say it's definitely better to get him. Not only will it be a great boost for morale for our troops and the Iraqi population as a whole, but it will presumably save many innocent lives.

[Coop]

But then I realize it’s not a conflict of interest. If I am truly unbiased, then I need to get used to this one simple fact; that the untold story, might in fact, be a positive one.

It's amazing how few journalists are able to grasp what should be such a simple, yet keystone principle guiding their careers.

[Coop]

Ping to quote in Post #17.

[Just A Nobody]

If I am truly unbiased...

Therein lies the dilemma.

[Coop]

Ding ding ding!

:-) See you this evening.