http://citypages.com/databank/28/1394/article15776.asp
Everything We Know
About Security Is Wrong
So says counterterrorism contrarian Bruce Schneier.
And the transportation security administration is listening.
* 1.
Burglars strike North Fond du Lac truck business Open this result in new window
Fond du Lac Reporter - Aug 23 4:42 AM
For the second time this week, burglars have hit a Fond du Lac-area business, stealing a truck and making off with a significant amount of merchandise.
* 2.
Burglars strike NFdL truck business Open this result in new window
Fond du Lac Reporter - Aug 22 9:07 AM
For the second time this week, burglars have hit a Fond du Lac area business, stealing a truck and making off with a significant amount of merchandise. This time, the burglary took place late Sunday/early Monday at Fond du Lac Truck Sales, 355 N. Pioneer Road, North Fond du Lac, according to a North Fond du Lac Police Department report. An employee arrived at the business at 5:10 a.m. Monday and ...
* 3.
Fond du Lac Business Hit By Burglars Open this result in new window
CBS 5 Green Bay - Aug 22 11:59 AM
This is the second time in a week that burglars have stolen from a Fond du Lac business - stealing a truck and making off with a significant amount of...
* 4.
Ashland Police & Fire Reports Open this result in new window
Ashland Daily Tidings - Aug 20 1:21 PM
Sunday 6:39 p.m. — Ashland police assisted Oregon State Police on Interstate 5 after a semi truck from Colorado was a victim of a hit and run accident.
* 5.
Man’s Truck Stolen During Test Drive Open this result in new window
Fox 12 Oregon - Aug 15 12:14 PM
WOODBURN, Ore. — A Woodburn man had his pickup truck stolen after he allowed another man to test drive the truck, Marion County deputies said.
* 6.
Vital ZIPs Open this result in new window
The State - Aug 22 9:07 PM
ZIP CODE 29006 LEXINGTON SHERIFF Bridgewater Road, 500 block, between 1 p.m. Aug. 13 and 2 a.m. Aug. 14. Someone broke into a home and stole firearms and other items worth $630. ZIP CODE 29016 RICHLAND SHERIFF
* 7.
Five charged with stealing Ashley furniture Open this result in new window
Jackson County Chronicle - Aug 22 5:34 PM
Five people are accused of stealing thousands of dollars worth of newly manufactured merchandise from Ashley Furniture in Arcadia, Wis.
* 8.
PUBLIC SAFETY LOG Open this result in new window
Albany Democrat-Herald - Aug 20 1:33 PM
People arrested are innocent unless proved otherwise in court. Initial charges often change as a case progresses. Semi loses load — Benton County deputies responded about 2 p.m. Friday to a report of a semi upside down in a ditch in the 9900 block of N.W. Spring Hill Drive.
* 9.
Police Blotter Open this result in new window
Daily Record - Aug 21 4:03 PM
The following are some of the calls received by Kittcom from Aug. 17-20. • An attempted burglary was reported on Westside Road in Cle Elum where the residence’s garage doors were pushed in.
* 10.
Monday’s Sentinel police reports Open this result in new window
The Sentinel - Aug 21 5:12 AM
Here are Monday’s Sentinel police reports: Woman charged with assault, harassment
http://www.fergusfallsjournal.com/news/2007/aug/14/model-plane-parts-stolen/?print
Model plane parts stolen
By Susan Larson (Contact) | The Daily Journal
Published Tuesday, August 14, 2007
A burglary at Screaming Eagles Flyers Club west of Perham was reported to the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Department. Entry was gained between Aug. 12 and 13 by prying the door open. A fuselage of a remote control airplane valued at $400 was taken.
[That is all the story, makes me want to ask what they are building?]
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/131180.html
Boat-theft ring suspected
JEREMY PAWLOSKI; The Olympian
After recovering a 34-foot boat that was stolen from Olympia, Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies are investigating whether they have uncovered a boat-theft ring that might be responsible for as many as six boat thefts in Western Washington this year.
Deputies expect to make at least one arrest after finding Steve Boone’s $180,000 pleasure boat at a rural Jefferson County residence Thursday. Deputies also found a second boat worth about $75,000 that was reported stolen from Milton this year.
Undersheriff Tim Perry said the investigation “appears to be getting larger than just these two boats.”
“We have a number of other people that are being investigated,” he said.
Deputies found the boats after Boone, who was searching for his boat in an airplane and spotted it at a marina south of Quilcene, directed them.
Boone’s boat was towed from the marina to a residence in rural Jefferson County on Thursday afternoon, Perry said. As Boone offered updates from the air, officers from several law enforcement agencies converged on the boat’s destination, Perry said.
“They had no idea they were being followed,” he said of the those towing the boat.
The two people have cooperated with authorities, Perry said. They said they were towing the boat for a friend and had no idea it was stolen, he said.
The pair helped officers locate the second stolen boat and “seem to be telling the truth,” Perry said.
Jefferson County authorities expect to charge one person who is in jail with possession of stolen property, and Thurston County prosecutors will charge him with theft, Perry said.
Boone’s boat, the boat that was stolen from Milton and a third boat stolen out of Port Townsend last month all were taken under similar circumstances, Perry said. All were stolen by people who drove into a marina, pulled the boat onto a trailer hitched to a truck and drove away, he said.
Investigators are looking at whether boats stolen from Tacoma, Everett and Bellingham also might be related.
The boat that was reported stolen from Milton was being stripped, and its identification tag number was gone, Perry said.
Investigators think the suspects were stripping the boats and selling parts online, and what they couldn’t sell was being sold as scrap, he said.
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=4512
DEBKAfile reports: Fatah-al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades revokes Israeli amnesty deal offered 178 members for renouncing terror
August 22, 2007, 3:38 PM (GMT+02:00)
Their commanders announced they were reverting to their old routines, namely terrorist attacks on Israelis.
Tuesday morning, Aug. 21, three days after Israel’s internal security minister Avi Dichter disclosed that 40% of the group which took the pledge to give up terrorism had not turned in their weapons, the IDF rounded up two purportedly reformed al Aqsa Brigades members in a camp near Nablus.
Both had appeared on the wanted list of Fatah terrorists until they surrendered their weapons and pledged to give up violence in return for an Israeli promise to stop pursuing them. The two men arrested, Iyad Basharat and Ahmad Abu Jalal, were found with guns and explosive devices. Their promise had held up for less than a month.
Nevertheless, al Aqsa Brigades chiefs demanded that Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad intercede with Israel to obtain their two members’ release. Neither responded. The al Aqsa chiefs then announced that the deal with Israel was null and void.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s explanation for offering the amnesty was that it would strengthen Abbas and persuade former Fatah terrorists to fight Hamas on the West Bank. But this never happened. The Fatah terrorists never joined the campaign to secure the West Bank against Hamas influence; nor did they turn in their guns, only rusty rifles of First World War vintage.
List of Islamic Terror Attacks for the Past 2 Months (back)
August 21, 2007
Date Country City Killed Injured Description
8/21/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 Muslims kill a man elected to replace another official who was slaughtered along with his family.
8/21/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 5 An Islamist walks into a restaurant and shoot a civilian to death.
8/21/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A Buddhist security guard is murdered by Mulslim extremists.
8/21/07 Thailand Pattani 1 0 A Buddhist official is gunned down by Islamic radicals.
8/21/07 Pakistan Mohallah 1 4 A woman is killed when fundamentalists toss a grenade into a brothel.
8/20/07 Iraq al-Rumeitha 4 2 Shiite militants assassinate a provincial governor.
8/20/07 India Shopian 1 0 A farmer is shot to death by the Mujahideen.
8/20/07 Pakistan Hangu 4 18 A woman passerby is among four killed when a Fedayeen suicide bomber rams into a military vehicle.
8/20/07 Iraq Baghdad 20 36 Two Jihad bombings and random shootings leave over twenty people dead.
8/19/07 Iraq Baghdad 31 51 A Jihad mortar attack and various shootings leave more than thirty people dead, including children.
8/18/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 4 An elderly man and a woman are killed in separate attacks by Islamic militias.
8/18/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 4 3 A Taliban suicide bomber targets a road construction crew, killing four guards.
8/18/07 India Doda 1 0 The body of a 26-year-old woman is found murdered days after she was taken by the Mujahideen.
8/18/07 Iraq Khalis 7 35 A baby is among seven people killed when Holy Warriors pump mortars and rockets into a residential neighborhood.
8/18/07 Afghanistan Ghazni 2 2 Religious extremists kill two Afghan cops with a roadside bomb.
8/18/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 15 26 Fifteen Afghans, mostly civilians, are blown to bits by a suicidal Sunni along a highway.
8/18/07 Pakistan Bannu 1 5 A cop is killed in a hand grenade attack by Islamic militants.
8/18/07 Pakistan Miran Shah 1 2 A suicide bomber detonates at an army checkpoint, killing at least one Pakistani.
8/18/07 India Rajouri 1 0 The Mujahideen kidnap a civilian and kill him in captivity.
8/18/07 India Kandi 1 0 The Mujahideen chop out a 70-year-old man’s eyes and behead him.
8/18/07 Pakistan Bajaur 1 0 Taliban militants shoot a man to death in his home.
8/18/07 Pakistan Jandola 1 0 al-Qaeda militants kidnap and behead a teacher.
8/17/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 1 Islamic militias rocket a house, killing a woman.
8/17/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 4 2 Three young children under the age of 10 are slaughtered along with their father by a Fedayeen suicide bomber.
8/17/07 Iraq Kirkuk 3 42 Two separate bombings by Sunni radicals kill three civilians and injure over forty.
8/17/07 Iraq Haditha 3 0 Three people are kidnapped, tortured and shot to death by sectarian rivals.
8/17/07 India Baramulla 2 0 A policeman and his elderly father are brutally murdered inside their hom by Islamic militants.
8/17/07 India Rajouri 1 0 A civilian is kidnapped and killed in captivity by radical Muslims.
8/17/07 Pakistan Khyber 7 0 Seven people are killed in clashes between radical Islamist groups.
8/17/07 India Pulwama 5 3 Mujahideen use an IED to kill five Indian soldiers traveling along a road.
8/16/07 Iraq Baghdad 10 20 Ten Iraqis are blown apart when Islamic terrorists detonate a car bomb on a public square.
8/16/07 Iraq Baghdad 19 0 Nineteen victims of sectarian Jihadis are discovered by police.
8/16/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 0 Islamic gunmen shoot two civilians to death at a market.
8/16/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 3 Two Somalis are killed in a mine attack by Islamic militias.
8/16/07 Pakistan Spinwara 2 4 Two soldiers are killed in an al-Qaeda IED attack.
8/16/07 Pakistan Bajaur 2 2 A tribal elder and his guard are killed in a bombing by Islamists.
8/15/07 Chechnya Avturi 1 0 A government official is killed when the Mujahideen attack his vehicle with grenades.
8/15/07 Afghanistan Kabul 3 1 Religious extremists kill three German police officers with a roadside bomb.
8/15/07 Somalia Mogadishu 6 1 Islamists kill six Somalis in two separate attacks.
8/15/07 Somalia Afgoye 2 12 Militant Muslims throw a grenade into a market, killing two people.
8/15/07 Chechnya Grozny 1 0 A policeman is killed in a drive-by attack from militant Muslims.
8/15/07 Iraq Kirkuk 5 30 Islamic terrorists car bomb a marketplace, killing five people.
8/15/07 Iraq Hilla 5 12 A suicide bomber kills five people inside a judge’s home.
8/15/07 Paksitan Swabi 2 0 A teacher and student are killed when Islamists bomb a house.
8/15/07 Iraq Baghdad 22 4 Jihad attacks leave twenty-two Iraqis dead.
8/14/07 Iraq Sinjar 500 375 Five separate suicide bombings by al-Qaeda militants targeted at a religious minority group kill five hundred innocents.
8/14/07 Afghanistan Zhari 7 0 Six Aafghan civilians and their guard are killed in an al-Qaeda rocket attack on their minibus.
8/14/07 Pakistan Jandola 1 0 Islamic radicals kidnap and behead a Pakistani soldier.
8/14/07 Iraq Khalis 15 0 Fifteen Iraqi men are kidnapped and murdered by Islamic extremists.
8/14/07 Iraq Suwayra 3 0 Sunni extremists invade the home of a policeman and shoot his pregnant wife, son and brother to death.
8/14/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 2 A 26-year-old man is shot to death by Muslim militants.
8/14/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 Muslim radicals stab a 56-year-old man to death at his rubber plantation.
8/14/07 Iraq Ghraiya 4 0 Jihadis kill three women and a man, who are sleeping on the roof of their home.
8/13/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A 38-year-old trader is murdered by Islamic gunmen.
8/13/07 India Bandipore 4 11 Four civilians are killed when Mujahideen militants hurl a grenade into a crowded street.
8/13/07 Afghanistan Spin Boldak 5 3 Religioius extremists kill five Afghan police with a roadside bomb.
8/13/07 Iraq Samarrah 3 0 Three civilians are shot and killed by Islamic terrorists.
8/13/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 12 Three civilians are killed when Islamic militants bomb a passenger bus.
8/13/07 Iraq Khanaqin 5 4 Radical Shiites kill five policemen with a bomb.
8/13/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 2 A young boy is killed when Islamic militias assault a police station.
8/13/07 Lebanon Nahr al-Bared 1 0 A Fatah al-Islam sniper murders a Lebanese soldier.
8/13/07 Pakistan Swat 4 6 Four people are killed when Islamic terrorists detonate a roadside bomb against a passing vehicle.
8/13/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 0 A man sitting in a tea shop is assassinated by Muslim radicals.
8/13/07 Russia Novgorod 0 60 A militant Islamic group derails a commuter train with a bomb, injuring sixty people.
8/12/07 India Doda 1 0 The Mujahideen shoot a policeman to death as he is walking home.
8/12/07 Pakistan Peshawar 1 0 A Sunni is gunned down by Shia radicals.
8/12/07 Algeria Amdjoudh 3 0 Islamic fundamentalists kill three members of a security patrol with a bomb.
8/12/07 Iraq Hilla 3 0 Two women are among three people killed by Islamic terrorists.
8/12/07 Iraq Baghdad 20 22 Sectarian Jihadis rack up twenty Iraqi scalps.
8/12/07 Pakistan Miranshah 1 0 Two Afghan civilians are kidnapped and beheaded by Muslim radicals in separate incidents.
8/11/07 Iraq Qadisiya 6 0 Jihadis kille six Iraqis with a roadside bomb.
8/11/07 Iraq Baghdad 14 17 Fourteen people are killed in sectarian violence within the Religion of Peace.
8/11/07 Iraq Ishaqi 4 0 Islamic extremists kill and dismember four people.
8/11/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 2 A journalist is killed by Islamic militias as he is returning from the funeral of a colleague murdered dies earlier.
8/11/07 Pakistan Hangu 3 2 Three police are murdered by Islamic militants.
8/10/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 0 Three civilians are killed when Islamic militias attack with mortars and heavy machine guns.
8/10/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 1 Two men are shot by Muslim radicals. Only one survives.
8/10/07 Iraq Kirkuk 8 45 Islamic terrorists bomb a market, killing eight patrons.
8/10/07 Afghanistan Badghis 7 0 Seven Afghans are killed when Taliban extremists ambush a security patrol.
8/10/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 0 Three government officials are assassinated by Muslim militants as they are walking home.
8/10/07 Iraq Ein Zala 4 14 Four Kurds are killed in a suicide bomb by Sunni fanatics.
8/9/07 Pakistan Mir Ali 2 0 Two tribesman are murdered by Taliban loyalists.
8/9/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 0 A woman dies from shrapnel injuries following a Religion of Peace grenade attack in a commercial district.
8/9/07 Iraq Baghdad 22 8 A man and his wife are among two dozen people killed by sectarian Jihadis in various attacks.
8/9/07 Turkey Kars 2 0 A 19-year-old boy beats his sister and divorced mother to death at the request of his father to ‘clean the honor of his family.’
8/9/07 Thailand Narathiwat 5 0 Five people are gunned down by Islamic radicals in separate drive-by attacks.
8/9/07 Philippines Maimbung 21 2 Abu Sayyaf terrorists ambush a security patrol, killing nine members. A dozen more are cut down in the ensuing firefight.
8/8/07 Iraq Baqubah 4 4 Four members of a family are murdered inside their home by Islamic terrorists.
8/8/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 A 66-year-old man is brutally shot to death by Islamists as he is walking in his orchard.
8/8/07 Iraq Samarra 8 2 Jihadis kill eight Iraqis with mortars.
8/8/07 Iraq Baghdad 15 19 A little girl is among those killed by Freedom Fighters in various attacks on civilians.
8/8/07 Thailand Pattani 2 0 Muslim gunmen storm a medical clinic and murder two Buddhist workers.
8/8/07 Iraq Hawija 2 6 An infant and one other person are killed by Muslim terrorists.
8/8/07 Thailand Yala 2 0 Muslims decapitate two elderly Buddhists, then set fire to their houses.
8/8/07 Pakistan Chargano 5 10 The Taliban lay siege to a village, killing five and wounding ten.
8/8/07 Somalia Mogadishu 4 0 Four people are shot to death by Islamic militias in separate attacks.
8/8/07 Thailand Yala 2 0 Two men are shot to death by Muslim radicals.
8/8/07 Iraq Baqubah 5 10 A fundamentalist bomber detonates himself in a barbershop, killing five innocents.
8/7/07 Chechnya Grozny 2 0 Two Russians are shot to death in a Mujahideen ambush.
8/7/07 Thailand Pattani 2 2 A roadside bombing by Muslim radicals leaves two Thai soldiers dead.
8/7/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 A man is murdered and his body burned by Islamic separatists.
8/7/07 Pal. Auth. Gaza 2 5 Two Gaza children, ages 6 and 8, are killed by a rocket fired at Israel by a Palestinian Islamic group.
8/7/07 Iraq Baghdad 21 9 Sectarian Jihadis rack up twenty-one dead Iraqis in various attacks.
8/7/07 Iraq Muqdadiya 1 1 Muslim gunmen open fire on children, killing one.
8/7/07 Pakistan Banda 1 0 A security patrol member is blown apart by Islamists while fetching water from a stream.
8/7/07 Somalia Banadir 2 4 A mother and her 11-year-old daughter are killed when Islamists detonate a roadside bomb.
8/7/07 Iraq Salah al Khalaf 7 8 Seven civilians are killed in a Mujahideen car bombing at a market.
8/7/07 Iraq Samarra 5 2 Three women and two children are killed in a Jihad mortar attack.
8/6/07 Iraq Karbala 1 0 Islamic terrorists shoot the chairwoman for a humanitarian organization two times in the head.
8/6/07 Iraq Qabak 33 54 A suicidal Sunni manages to kill thirty-four innocents in a Shiite neighborhood, which include seventeen children and ten women.
8/6/07 Iraq Baghdad 34 32 Thirty-four people are killed in various Religion of Peace attacks around the city.
8/6/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 Muslim terrorists shoot a man to death in his home.
8/6/07 India Pulwama 1 0 A civilian is abducted four days earlier and murdered by the Mujahideen.
8/6/07 Iraq al-Aameryia 36 0 Thirty-six Iraqi heads are liberated from their bodies by Islamic Freedom Fighters.
8/6/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 Muslim terrorists gun down a 61-year-old civilian on his way home.
8/5/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 2 0 Taliban extremists kill two civilians with a roadside blast.
8/5/07 Chechnya Tsa-Vedeno 3 0 Three people, including a child, are burned to death in their car by Holy Warriors.
8/5/07 Iraq Baghdad 32 14 Sectarian Jihadis rack up over thirty Muslim rivals in various attacks.
8/5/07 Iraq Mahmudiya 2 5 A suicide bomber slays two innocents at an auto repair shop.
8/5/07 Iraq Mosul 6 0 Two children are among six people kidnapped, tortured and executed by Islamic terrorists.
8/5/07 Afghanistan Kunar 5 6 Five Afghan police are murdered in two terror attacks by religious extremists.
8/5/07 India Doda 1 9 The Mujahideen gun down a cop and throw a grenade into a market, injuring nine civilians.
8/5/07 Thailand Narathiwat 2 0 Two Thai soldiers on motorcycles are shot and killed by Muslim radicals.
8/4/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 2 0 Two civilians are killed by a Fedayeen suicide bomber.
8/4/07 Pakistan Miranshah 4 6 Four Pakistanis are killed when Taliban militants attack a check-point.
8/4/07 Pakistan Parachinar 8 43 At least eight people, including two young children, are killed when a suicide bomber attacks a car showroom and taxi stand.
8/4/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 3 Islamists recruit a teenager to throw a grenade into a funeral procession, killing one.
8/4/07 Iraq Baghdad 26 13 A doctor is among over two dozen people killed by sectarian Jihadis in various attacks.
8/4/07 Dagestan Sergokala 1 2 A police officer is gunned down by Islamic militants.
8/4/07 Thailand Pattani 1 0 A 45-year-old guard is shot to death at point-blank range by Muslim radicals.
8/4/07 Somalia Suuq Baad 2 6 Two people are killed when Islamic militants hurl grenades into a crowded market.
8/4/07 Afghanistan Kabul 3 2 A religious extremist kills three civilians in a suicide blast.
8/4/07 Afghanistan Logar 4 3 Four Afghan police are killed when Sunni terrorists rocket their vehicle.
8/4/07 Saudi Arabia Riyadh 2 2 Two maids are beaten to death by seven familiy members who accuse them of practicing ‘black magic.’
8/4/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 4 0 Four civilians are blown to bits when Holy Warriors target their vehicle with a roadside bomb.
8/4/07 Thailand Yala 3 0 Three civilians in a pick-up truck are ambushed and murdered by Islamic terrorists.
8/3/07 Iraq Muhbabiya 17 0 Seventeen women, children and elderly Iraqis are found in a mass grave following an al-Qaeda massacre.
8/3/07 Iraq Diyala 4 9 Muslim gunmen murder two children and two adults in a brutal attack on a home.
8/3/07 India Banihal 0 24 Two dozen people are injured when Islamic terrorists toss a grenade into a crowded marketplace.
8/3/07 Afghanistan Kunar 3 5 The Taliban kill three Afghan police with a bomb attack on their vehicle.
8/3/07 Iraq Baghdad 13 0 Thirteen victims of sectarian violence are found scattered throughout the city.
8/3/07 Pakistan Swat 2 6 A suicide bomber kills two people and injures six from the same family.
8/3/07 Philippines Koronadal 1 12 A Christian pastor is killed in a bus bombing by a group linked to the Moro Islamic terror group.
8/3/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 0 Islamists force their way into a home to shoot a government official to death.
8/2/07 Pakistan Sargodha 1 1 A Fedayeen fires at police, killing one in a suicide bid.
8/2/07 Somalia Mogadishu 8 20 A mother and her two daughters are among eight killed when Islamic militias rain down mortars on a neighborhood.
8/2/07 Iraq Balad 1 6 A young girl is killed in a mortar barrage by Muslim terrorists.
8/2/07 Iraq Kirkuk 5 0 Five brothers who worked as day laborers are kidnapped and executed by Muslim terrorists.
8/2/07 Iraq Hibhib 15 17 Fifteen people are killed when a sucide bomber detonates along a city street.
8/2/07 Thailand Pattani 2 8 Two Thai soldiers are killed in separate bombing and shooting attacks.
8/2/07 Iraq Baghdad 30 8 Sectarian Jihadis shoot or blast thirty Iraqis to death in various attacks.
8/2/07 Somalia Balad 1 4 An grenade attack on Ethiopians leaves one dead.
8/1/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 6 A young boy is killed when Islamists throw a grenaded into a market. Two other bodies are found nearby.
8/1/07 Iraq Baghdad 15 25 At least fifteen people are blown to bits when a suicide bomber detonates in a city square.
8/1/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 11 A Buddhist woman is blown to bits when Muslim radicals bomb a shopping district.
8/1/07 Lebanon Nahr al-Bared 1 0 A Fatah al-Islam sniper kills a Lebanese soldier.
8/1/07 Iraq Baqubah 25 40 Islamic terrorists bomb a marketplace, killing twenty-five patrons.
8/1/07 Afghanistan Kabul 1 5 A suicide bomber kills an Afghan truck driver.
8/1/07 Iraq Baghdad 12 20 A dozen civilians are killed in various Religion of Peace attacks around the city.
8/1/07 Iraq Hibhib 14 0 Fourteen villagers are kidnapped and executed by Sunni militants.
8/1/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 A 62-year-old man is shot to death by radical Muslims.
8/1/07 Thailand Narathiwat 2 0 A father and son are murdered by Islamic terrorists at their home.
8/1/07 Pakistan Bannu 1 0 Talibanis murder a Pakistani soldier taken hostage.
8/1/07 Thailand Yala 2 1 Islamists ambush a group guarding a train station, killing two members.
8/1/07 Iraq Baghdad 50 60 A Fedayeen suicide bomber detonates at a petrol station, killing at least fifty innocents.
8/1/07 Lebanon Nahr el-Bared 4 0 Four Lebanese soldiers are killed by Fatah al-Islam snipers and bombers.
7/31/07 Iraq Baghdad 12 12 A teacher and an engineer are among a dozen people shot and killed in various Jihad attacks around the country.
7/31/07 Somalia Mogadishu 5 3 Islamic terrorists blow up a minibus, killing five civilian passengers that included a woman.
7/31/07 Afghanistan Kabul 1 0 The Taliban murder a 29-year-old Christian man taken hostage.
7/31/07 Ingushetia Magas 1 3 Muslim gunmen attack a bus carrying police officers, killing one.
7/31/07 Pakistan Bannu 1 4 Religious extremists ambush a group of soldiers, killing one.
7/31/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 4 A 4-year-old child is among three people killed in a brutal rocket attack by Islamists shouting ‘Allah Akbar.’
7/30/07 Iraq Baghdad 12 47 At least a dozen Iraqis are killed in three bomb attacks by Islamic terrorists.
7/30/07 Pakistan Miranshah 7 1 Four civilians are among seven killed by Taliban militants in two separate attacks.
7/30/07 Iraq Balad 4 6 A suicide bomber kills six people with a loaded fuel truck.
7/30/07 Iraq Kirkuk 4 0 A woman is among four people shot to death by Islamic radicals.
7/30/07 India Ramban 1 0 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen members kidnap and behead a government teacher.
7/30/07 India Pulwama 2 6 Two children (ages 12 and 14) are killed when Islamists throw grenades at a tourist vehicle.
7/30/07 Pakistan Punjab 1 0 A Christian man is shot to death by two Muslims.
7/30/07 India Kishtwar 1 0 A civilian is abducted and mudered by the Mujahideen.
7/29/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 5 Two civilians are killed when Islamic radicals throw grenades into the electronics area of a market.
7/29/07 Thailand Narathiwat 2 0 Two men, one a work-placement employee, are shot to death by Muslim radicals in separate attacks.
7/29/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 0 Two guards at a market are shot to death by Islamic militants.
7/29/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 13 8 Taliban extremists attack a private aid convoy, killing thirteen guards.
7/29/07 Iraq Balad 6 1 Jihadis lob mortars into a residential neighborhood, killing six people.
7/29/07 Iraq Tuz Khormato 7 6 Sunnis gun down six soccer fans celebrating the country’s recent win.
7/29/07 Iraq Balad Ruz 3 25 Islamic terrorists kill three people with multiple bombs at a market.
7/29/07 India Srinagar 7 19 Seven people, including two young girls, are killed when Islamic radicals bomb a bus.
7/28/07 Pakistan Islamabad 14 60 A Fedayeen suicide bomber kills at least fourteen in an attack on a hotel.
7/28/07 Iraq Baghdad 5 22 Sunnis set off a car bomb in a commercial district, killing five people.
7/28/07 Pakistan Maidan 3 0 Three policemen are brutally murdered by Islamic militants in an ambush.
7/28/07 Pal. Auth. Al Bureij 1 0 A young woman is stabbed to death over ‘immoral behavior.’
7/28/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A 38-year-old mother of three succumbs to her injuries three days after a Religion of Peace bomb attack.
7/27/07 Ingushetia Magas 1 0 Muslim separatists stage a deadly rocket attack on a government building.
7/27/07 Dagestan Makhachkala 2 1 Islamic terrorists kill an anti-terror cleric and his brother by bombing their car.
7/27/07 Thailand Yala 1 1 A man is shot twice in the head by militant Muslims.
7/27/07 Iraq Samarrah 7 0 Seven Iraqi policemen are killed in a Sunni bombing.
7/27/07 Iraq Baghdad 10 2 An engineer and his wife are among ten people murdered by Jihadis in various attacks.
7/26/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 Islamic terrorists attack two groups of teachers with roadside bombs and shoot a 44-year-old man to death.
7/26/07 Iraq Tal Abta 6 13 A suicide bomber detonates outside a police station, killing six others.
7/26/07 Iraq Baghdad 61 94 Jihadis murder at least sixty Iraqis with a parked car bomb at a busy market.
7/26/07 Pakistan Tiarza 1 2 A Pakistani soldier is killed when Taliban militants fire a rocket into a base.
7/26/07 Iraq Kirkuk 25 85 Sunni terrorists explode a massive bomb next to a kabob shop, killing over two-dozen innocent people.
7/26/07 India Ramban 1 0 A civilian is kidnapped from his home and murdered in captivity by the Mujahideen.
7/26/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 3 Two civilians are killed by a landmine planted by Islamic militias.
7/26/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 0 A local official is gunned down by Islamic militants while walking home.
7/26/07 Pakistan Lahore 1 0 A Muslim woman is shot in the head by her son, who suspected her of ‘illicit relations.’
7/26/07 Somalia Mogadishu 4 3 Islamists hurl a grenade into a coffee shop, killing four civilians.
7/25/07 Iraq Baghdad 23 14 Various Jihad bombing and shooting attacks leave about two dozen Iraqis dead.
7/25/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 1 0 The Taliban shoot a Christian man to death.
7/25/07 Iraq Diyala 9 0 Nine young men are kidnapped and beheaded by Sunni terrorists.
7/25/07 Iraq Kirkuk 2 0 Two farmers are shot to death by Muslim radicals.
7/25/07 Iraq Baghdad 58 125 Islamic terrorists stage two massive car bombings that slaughter over fifty Iraqis celebrating their country’s soccer win in the street.
7/25/07 Somalia Mogadishu 5 9 At least three civilians are killed when Islamists bomb an intersection.
7/25/07 India Doda 1 0 A civilian is abducted and murdered by the Mujahideen.
7/24/07 Iraq Hillah 32 68 A suicide bomber detonates in a marketplace across from the maternity ward of a hospital, killing over thirty innocents.
7/24/07 Pakistan Bannu 10 40 Muslim terrorists fire rockets into a village, killing ten civilians.
7/24/07 Pakistan Dattakhel 4 0 Islamic militants attack a security post, killing four members.
7/24/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 0 A pregnant woman is among three civilians killed when Islamists toss a grenade into a market.
7/23/07 Somalia Mogadishu 7 0 A woman is among seven victims of an Islamic grenade attack in a commercial district.
7/23/07 Iraq Khanqeen 5 3 Five truck drivers are murdered by Islamic terrorists.
7/23/07 Thailand Yala 1 1 A 46-year-old construction worker is shot to death by Muslim militants.
7/23/07 Iraq Baghdad 26 6 Violence in the name of Allah leaves over two dozen dead in various attacks.
7/23/07 Iraq Baghdad 17 49 Three separate car bombings by Muslim terrorists end the lives of seventeen Iraqi civilians.
7/23/07 Iraq Ramadi 7 0 A female suicide bomber murders seven Iraqi policemen.
7/23/07 Iraq Muqdadiyah 2 1 Muslim gunmen take down two electrical workers.
7/23/07 Algeria Boumerdes 1 8 An Algerian security personnel is killed in a bomb attack by Islamic fundamentalists.
7/23/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A 35-year-old is shot to death while fishing in a pond.
7/23/07 India Anantnag 1 1 Islamic militants ambush a security patrol, killing one member.
7/23/07 Pakistan Kagai 2 0 Two men are abducted by al-Qaeda militants and executed by having their throats slit.
7/23/07 India Kishtwar 1 0 The Mujahideen kidnap and execute a 22-year-old man who was collecting firewood.
7/22/07 Pal. Auth. Gaza 3 0 Three sisters are brutally tortured and stabbed to death over suspicion of ‘immoral’ activities. Two are teenagers.
7/22/07 Iraq Khanqeen-Buhriz 6 0 Six delivery truck drivers are murdered by the Religion of Peace.
7/22/07 Iraq Jurf al-Milih 5 12 A Fedayeen truck bomber takes out five Sunni leaders for talking peace with Shiites.
7/22/07 Iraq Baghdad 22 20 A bombing and several shooting attacks leave twenty-two Iraqis dead at the hands of Freedom Fighters.
7/22/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 3 A civilian is killed when Muslim militants throw a grenade in a marketplace.
7/22/07 India Ramban 1 0 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists kidnap and kill a former member who wanted out.
7/22/07 Lebanon Tanbourit 1 4 Shiites shoot Christian villagers who complained of harassment.
7/22/07 Afghanistan Kabul 1 0 The Taliban kill a German hostage, abducted four days earlier.
7/21/07 Algeria Crete 1 2 Islamic fundamentalists attack a group of soldiers, killing one.
7/21/07 Thailand Pattani 0 6 A 10-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl are among the casualites when Islamic radicals bomb a rice shop.
7/21/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 3 Two civilians are murdered when a terrorist throws a grenade into a marketplace.
7/21/07 Iraq Mosul 26 6 A café showing a soccer match is one site among several Jihad targets as twenty-six people are killed.
7/21/07 Iraq Baghdad 28 31 Islamic ‘insurgents’ rack up twenty-eight dead Iraqis in several bombing and shooting attacks.
7/21/07 Ingushetia Karabulak 1 0 Muslim gunmen assassinate a government official in charge of ‘ethnic relations’.
7/20/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 3 0 Taliban militants murder three civilians with a roadside bomb.
7/20/07 Pakistan Miran Shah 4 6 Four innocents are killed by a suicide car bomber.
7/20/07 Afghanistan Helmand 2 2 Two civilians are killed by a car bomb.
7/20/07 Iraq Baghdad 16 0 Sixteen victims of sectarian violence are found scattered around the city.
7/20/07 Iraq Baghdad 2 2 A ruthless attack by Mujahideen leaves two Australian civilians dead.
7/20/07 Nigeria Sokoto 5 0 A man is burned to death in his home is among five killed in sectarian clashes between Sunni and Shia.
7/20/07 India Rajouri 1 15 A civilian is shot to death outside his home and Islamic terrorists throw a grenade at Hindu pilgrims in a separate attack.
7/20/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 0 Islamists gun down a drug store owner in his shop.
7/19/07 Pakistan Kohat 18 19 Fedayeen suicide bombers hit a mosque inside an army base, blasting eighteen people to death.
7/19/07 Pakistan Hangu 8 22 At least eight are killed when suicide bombers ram their vehicle into a police training facility.
7/19/07 Pakistan Hub 30 28 Thirty people are slaughtered when Sunni bombers target Chinese engineers along a road.
7/19/07 Iraq Khalis 5 4 Islamic gunmen attack a village, killing five residents.
7/19/07 Chechnya Assinovskaya 2 3 Two policemen are killed when Mujahideen attack their post.
7/19/07 Somalia Mogadishu 6 3 Children playing soccer are hit by mortars fired by Islamists. Six are killed and three injured.
7/19/07 Iraq Baghdad 20 4 A man killed in front of his wife and children is among twenty victims of Jihad sectarian violence around the city.
7/19/07 Somalia Baruha 1 0 Islamists shoot a civilian in the head as he is holding a child.
7/19/07 Afghanistan Helmand 6 2 Religious extremists ambush a police car, killing a dozen Afghans at point-blank range.
7/19/07 Afghanistan Fayzabad 1 25 Women and children are among the casualties of a suicide bombing.
7/19/07 Nigeria Sokoto 1 0 A Sunni mob beats a Shia to death.
7/18/07 Iraq Baghdad 4 4 Four electrical workers are killed when Jihadis target their minibus with a truck bomb.
7/18/07 Iraq Baghdad 22 12 Random sectarian attacks leave twenty-two Iraqis dead.
7/18/07 Philippines Lamitan 1 0 A Sunni missionary is dismembered by Abu Sayyaf militants on suspicion of spying.
7/18/07 Russia Kizilyurt 4 3 Islamic separatists are suspected in the bombing of a school playground that kills four policemen.
7/18/07 Afghanistan Zabul 7 4 Seven Afghan police officers are murdered in a brutal ambush by religious extremists.
7/18/07 Iraq Baghdad 17 18 A series of Sunni bomb attacks kills at least seventeen innocents.
7/18/07 Pakistan Miranshah 16 14 al-Qaeda backed militants ambush an army convoy with rockets, killing sixteen Pakistanis.
7/18/07 Afghanistan Khost 3 0 A suicide bomber blasts three Afghans to Allah.
7/18/07 Pakistan Bajaur 1 0 Islamists kidnap and behead a civilian.
7/18/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 2 0 Taliban extremists murder two police officers riding bikes.
7/18/07 Iraq Khalis 7 0 Seven bus passengers are brutally shot to death by Islamic gunmen.
7/18/07 Nigeria Sokoto 1 0 A Sunni cleric is assassinated by a rival Shiite militia.
7/18/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 3 Two people are killed when radical Muslims shell a market.
7/17/07 Thailand Yala 1 31 A double bomb attack by Islamic radicals at a railway station leaves at least one person dead and thirty-one injured.
7/17/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 4 At least one person is killed when Islamic militants throw a grenade into a market.
7/17/07 Iraq Baghdad 31 10 Jihadis ring up over thirty dead Iraqis in various shooting and bombing attacks.
7/17/07 Iraq Samarra 1 3 A hospital director is gunned down by militant Muslims.
7/17/07 Iraq Baghdad 20 20 Sunnis send a suicide bomber into a Shia residential neighborhood to blast twenty innocents to death.
7/17/07 Lebanon Nahr el-Bared 4 0 Fatah al-Islam snipers pick off four Lebanese soldiers.
7/17/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 1 Islamic radicals shoot a soldier to death by the side of a road.
7/17/07 Pakistan Islamabad 13 45 A suicide bomber detonates in a crowd a political rally. Thirteen innocents are killed.
7/17/07 Pakistan Mir Ali 5 0 A suicide bomber murders five people at a checkpoint.
7/17/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A man is shot to death outside a school by militant Muslims.
7/17/07 Iraq Dulayiya 29 4 Nearly thirty men, women and children gathered for a soccer game are hacked and shot to death by radical Sunnis.
7/17/07 India Baltal 1 17 Islamists toss a grenade into a crowd of Hindu pilgrims, killing one.
7/17/07 India Poonch 2 8 Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists attack a security patrol, killing two members.
7/17/07 Pakistan Khar Banda 1 0 A civilian is abducted and beheaded by the Taliban.
7/17/07 Lebanon Nahr el-Bared 4 0 Four Lebanese troops are killed by Fatah al-Islam snipers.
7/17/07 Iraq Muqdadiya 14 0 Twelve members of one family are massacred by Islamic terrorists in their home. Two women are gunned down elsewhere in the city.
7/16/07 Iraq Baghdad 39 45 Muslim terrorists rack up forty dead Iraqis in various sectarian attacks.
7/16/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 1 0 A Taliban attack leaves one Afghan dead.
7/16/07 Pal. Auth. Gaza 1 0 Hamas militants kidnap and suffocate a 45-year-old man.
7/16/07 Iraq Samarrah 5 0 Armed Jihadis shoot five people in the head.
7/16/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 4 Two civilians are among three killed by Islamic militants in two attacks.
7/16/07 Ingushetia Ordzhonikidzevskaya 3 7 A Christian woman and her two children are murdered in their home by Islamic gunmen. Seven mourners are injured when their funeral is bombed two days later.
7/16/07 Iraq Baghdad 2 5 Two sisters are killed when they are taken hostage by Muslim terrorists and forced into a explosives-laden car.
7/16/07 Philippines Tugas 2 1 Abu Sayyaf militants ambush a security patrol, killing two members.
7/16/07 Iraq Kirkuk 85 180 Sunni suicide truck bombers massacre eighty-five Iraqi civilians near a Kurdish political office.
7/16/07 Afghanistan Helmand 3 2 Five Afghans are killed in a roadside bombing by Taliban extremists.
7/15/07 Pakistan Swat 17 47 Civilians are among seventeen people blasted to death by a suicide bomber on a highway.
7/15/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A 52-year-old railway worker is shot to death by Islamists on his way to work.
7/15/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 0 Two civilians and a government official are killed when an Islamist hurls a grenade into a municipal office.
7/15/07 Thailand Yala 1 1 A Muslim who ‘switched sides’ is shot to death at a market. His wife is seriously injured.
7/15/07 Pakistan Dera Ismail Khan 25 61 Twenty-five innocents are blown to bits by a Fedayeen suicide bomber on foot.
7/15/07 Iraq Baghdad 22 0 Twenty-two victims of sectarian violence are found, including several women.
7/15/07 Iraq Aziziya 2 0 A woman and her 8-year-old son are brutally gunned down by Muslim terrorists.
7/15/07 Afghanistan Paktika 1 3 One person is killed when Islamists fire a rocket into his home.
7/15/07 Afghanistan Paktika 5 2 Religious extremists kill five highway construction workers with a bomb.
7/15/07 Iraq Baghdad 10 25 Sunnis kill ten with a car bombing along a city square.
7/14/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 1 Islamists kill a woman and injure her 8-month-old baby in a grenade attack.
7/14/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 Muslim terrorists shoot a 66-year-old farmer to death.
7/14/07 Thailand Songkhla 2 0 Two civilians are ambushed and murdered by Islamic radicals.
7/14/07 Iraq Baghdad 28 12 Jihadis manage to kill twenty-eight Iraqis in various shooting and bombing attacks.
7/14/07 Pakistan North Waziristan 23 27 A Fedayeen suicide bomber sends twenty-three Pakistani soldiers to Allah.
7/14/07 Iraq Baghdad 7 15 Sunnis bomb a gas station, killing at least seven people lining up for fuel.
7/14/07 Iraq Hillah 9 3 Jihadis barge into a house and murder nine members of a family, including women and children.
7/14/07 Pakistan Essa 1 0 A Pakistani soldier is shot to death by an Islamic militant at a checkpoint.
7/14/07 Afghanistan Paktia 2 0 Two men are gunned down by religious extremists.
7/14/07 Iraq Suwayra 6 0 Six people are murdered by Islamic radicals and thrown into a river.
7/13/07 Somalia Huriwa 2 0 Two men are shot to death by suspected Islamic militias.
7/13/07 Lebanon Nahr al-Bared 11 50 Fatah al-Islam terrorists kill eleven Lebanese soldiers with rockets and sniper fire.
7/13/07 Pakistan Miranshah 3 0 Three tribal leaders are shot to death at a market by Islamic militants.
7/13/07 Iraq Muqdadiyah 12 0 Sunni gunmen massacre a family of twelve Shia in their home.
7/13/07 India Reasi 1 0 Police recover the body of a man abducted from his home by militants a month earlier.
7/13/07 Iraq Baghdad 5 9 Jihadis gun down five policemen in an attack on their checkpoint.
7/13/07 Iraq Baghdad 2 6 Sunnis kill two Shia civilians with a car bomb.
7/12/07 Iraq Karbala 4 2 Islamic terrorists attack a family car, killing four members.
7/12/07 Iraq Mosul 5 15 Jihadis car bomb and shoot five Iraqis to death.
7/12/07 Iraq Baghdad 28 0 Twenty-eight victims of sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni are found executed.
7/12/07 Thailand Narathiwat 2 0 Muslims shoot an elderly Buddhist couple to death as they are riding to a market.
7/12/07 Pakistan Miranshah 3 3 A Religion of Peace suicide bomber strolls into an office and kills three workers.
7/12/07 Lebanon Nahr al-Bared 4 9 Islamic militants kill four Lebanese soldiers.
7/12/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 9 Three Somali civilians, including two construction workers are killed in separate attacks by Islamic grenade throwers.
7/12/07 Afghanistan Khost 6 0 Six Afghans are slaughtered when religious extremists attack their patrol.
7/12/07 Pakistan Swat 5 3 Five Pakistanis are killed in a suicide attack on a police vehicle.
7/12/07 Pakistan Spin Wam 1 0 al-Qaeda backed militants cut the head off of a civilian.
7/12/07 Thailand Pattani 1 0 Islamists slash the throat of a 29-year-old man and throw him into a river.
7/12/07 Iraq Tal Afar 7 4 A suicide bomber attacks a wedding, killing seven guest who try and stop him.
7/12/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 Muslim radicals shoot a man, then set him on fire under a bridge.
7/11/07 Iraq Baghdad 32 17 Thirty victims of sectarian hatred within the Religion of Peace are found executed.
7/11/07 Iraq Garma 21 50 Two al-Qaeda suicide bombers attack a reconciliation meeting at a residence, then two others kill emergency responders.
7/11/07 Afghanistan Paktia 4 0 Religious extremists ambush and kill four Afghans.
7/11/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 Islamists murder a rubber worker on his plantation.
7/11/07 Algeria Lakhdria 10 35 At least ten people are killed when a teenage suicide bomber detonates near a sports venue.
7/11/07 Somalia Mogadishu 7 4 Islamists kill civilians and police by throwing grenades into a market.
7/11/07 Philippines Al-Barka 1 0 Abu Sayyaf terrorists murder a civilian.
7/11/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A Buddhist civilian is murdered in a drive-by shooting attack by Muslim radicals.
7/11/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 0 Two people are killed by an Islamist mortar attack.
7/11/07 Thailand Patani 1 0 A 58-year-old man is murdered by Muslim radicals as he tends his garden.
7/11/07 Algeria Tigzirt 1 1 Fundamentalists kill a security guard with a bomb.
7/10/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A village chief is ambushed and killed on the road by Muslim terrorists, as he is driving home football players.
7/10/07 Iraq Nasariyah 3 1 Three children die in separate Jihad attacks.
7/10/07 Iraq Tikrit 12 0 A dozen people are shot to death by Islamic terrorists.
7/10/07 Iraq Sherween 18 40 Eighteen villagers are killed when al-Qaeda militants stage an assault.
7/10/07 Philippines Basilan 14 9 Abu Sayyaf militants kill 14 members of a search party looking for a kidnapped priest. At least ten are beheaded.
7/10/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 5 Two civilians are killed when a grenade is thrown into a busy marketplace.
7/10/07 Iraq Baghdad 26 15 Twenty-six people are killed in sectarian violence within the Religion of Peace.
7/10/07 Pakistan Kohat 1 11 Islamic militants kill one soldier at a checkpoint.
7/10/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 A 48-year-old Buddhist man is shot to death in his car by Muslim radicals.
7/10/07 Pal. Auth. Gaza 1 0 Hamas militants strangle a 31-year-old man.
7/10/07 Afghanistan Deh Rawud 17 30 A suicide bomber detonates at a market, killing seventeen innocents, including children.
7/9/07 Afghanistan Heart 4 12 A religious extremist opens fire inside an Afghan army camp, killing four people.
7/9/07 Iraq Baghdad 31 24 Various bombing and shooting attacks by Jihadis leave over thirty people dead.
7/9/07 Iraq Balad 9 20 A roadside bombing leaves nine Iraqis dead.
7/9/07 Pakistan Peshawar 3 1 Three Chinese motorcycle workers are shot to death by Islamic radicals.
7/9/07 Iraq Mada’en 12 0 A dozen workers at a Pepsi plant are abducted and slaughtered by Shia terrorists.
7/9/07 Somalia Beledweyne 1 0 Muslim gunmen kill a Doctors Without Borders physician.
7/9/07 Chechnya Vedeno 3 5 Mujahideen stop a Russian vehicle with a landmine, then shoot the occupants.
7/9/07 Iraq Ghazaliya 4 0 Four members of a family are kidnapped and strangled by Islamic terrorists.
7/9/07 Somalia Mogadishu 3 8 At least three civilians are killed when Islamists lob grenades into a market.
7/8/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 0 Islamic gunmen shoot a policeman three times in the head.
7/8/07 Iraq Baghdad 2 0 The bodies of a husband and wife, kidnapped by al-Qaeda, surface with slit throats.
7/8/07 Iraq Baghdad 29 0 Twenty-nine bodies are found, victims of sectarian hatred within the Religion of Peace.
7/8/07 Iraq Baghdad 15 33 Three Jihad car bombings leave fifteen civilians dead.
7/8/07 Iraq Haswa 23 27 Two dozen young Iraqi police recruits are killed when Fedayeen suicide bombers ram into their truck.
7/8/07 Iraq Samawa 3 0 A woman and two children are killed when Islamic terrorists lob a mortar into their home.
7/8/07 Pakistan Islamabad 1 0 A Pakistani solider is killed by an Islamist sniper outside a mosque.
7/8/07 Pakistan Bajur 1 7 Islamic militants detonate a bomb under a police vehicle, killing one officer.
7/8/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 2 0 Two civilians are beheaded by the Taliban.
7/8/07 Pakistan Bannu 1 3 Islamic militants attack a security patrol with grenades.
7/7/07 Iraq Baghdad 19 0 Nineteen people are kidnapped and executed by Islamic terrorists.
7/7/07 Iraq Kirkuk 5 0 Five civilians are murdered by the Mujahideen in two separate attacks.
7/7/07 Iraq Mashahidah 8 0 Eight Iraqi soldiers are killed in a brutal and senseless attack on their checkpoint.
7/7/07 Iraq Tuz Khurmatu. 156 255 Sunnis launch a very successful attack against Shia civilians, blasting to death over one-hundred and fifty at an open-air market.
7/7/07 Iraq Khanaqeen 22 15 A Fedayeen suicide bomber kills two dozen innocents at a funeral.
7/7/07 Chechnya Grozny 2 1 A police officer and an engineer are killed in separate attacks by Jihadis.
7/7/07 Afghanistan Kunar 1 8 A 10-year-old boy is killed when Islamic terrorists fire a rocket into his home.
7/7/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 6 0 Six Afghan police are ambushed and killed by the Taliban.
7/7/07 Afghanistan Uruzgan 1 0 Religious extremists kidnap a man from his home and then shoot him to death.
7/6/07 Iraq Ahmad Maref, 26 33 Islamic terrorists send a suicide bomber into a market, killing over two dozen shoppers.
7/6/07 Pakistan Dir 4 1 A suicide bomber on a bicycle kills four Pakistani soldiers.
7/6/07 Pakistan North Waziristan 2 4 An attack by radical Islamists leaves at least two tribesmen dead.
7/6/07 Pakistan Islamabad 2 0 Two students are executed by mosque radicals over their plans to surrender to police.
7/6/07 Iraq Mahmudiya 3 0 Two people are tortured to death by the Mujahideen. A child is killed in a separate attack in Umm Hilayil
7/6/07 Iraq Tikrit 7 9 Sunni gunmen attack the home of a peaceful Sheikh, killing seven members of his family.
7/6/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 0 A government official is assassinated by members of an Islamic militia.
7/6/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 An elderly rubber worker is murdered by Muslim extremists.
7/6/07 Somalia Afgoi 1 0 A bus station guard is shot to death by Islamic gunmen.
7/6/07 Iraq Mosul 2 0 A Kurdish married couple is shot to death by Sunni terrorists.
7/6/07 Somalia Huriwa 4 6 Islamists kill four more children with a roadside bomb.
7/6/07 Somalia Mogadishu 5 0 Five children are killed when a landmine planted by Islamic militias explodes.
7/6/07 Thailand Pattani 1 0 A 50-year-old Buddhist woman is shot to death by Islamists in her store.
7/5/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A 32-year-old rubber worker is shot to death by Islamic militants.
7/5/07 Afghanistan Zherai 2 0 Religious extremists hang two men ‘before the public.’
7/5/07 Iraq Baghdad 24 4 Sectarian Jihadis kidnap and execute two dozen dead Iraqis.
7/5/07 Somalia Bossaso 1 0 A government employee is gunned down at a restaurant.
7/5/07 Iran Takestan 1 0 Authorities stone a man to death for adultery.
7/5/07 Algeria Tizi Ouzou 1 0 An Algerian soldier is killed by a remote-controlled bomb planted by fundamentalists.
7/5/07 Afghanistan Spin Boldak 8 11 A suicidal Sunni rams an Afghan convoy with an explosives-laden car, killing eight.
7/5/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A civilian is gunned down by militant Muslims.
7/5/07 Iraq Baghdad 18 30 Eighteen people at a wedding party are blown to bits by Sunni car bombers.
7/4/07 Iraq Baghdad 23 9 A woman and her daughter, and two journalists, are among two dozen people murdered by Islamic terrorists in various attacks.
7/4/07 Pakistan Bannu 11 6 Two children are among eleven people killed when a suicide car bomber rams into a group of vehicles.
7/4/07 Pakistan Swat 1 4 Pro-Taliban militants fire a rocket into a police station, killing one officer.
7/4/07 Pal. Auth. Gaza 1 0 A civilian is killed in a shootout between two Islamist groups.
7/4/07 Iraq Baiji 7 18 Sunnis bomb a restaurant, killing seven people.
7/4/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 7 0 Six Canadians and one Afghan are killed by a roadside bomb planted by religious extremists.
7/4/07 Pakistan Swat 4 2 Four civilians are killed when a Muslim terrorist tosses a grenade onto a city street.
7/4/07 Pakistan Charbagh 1 0 al-Qaeda militants gun down a policeman on his way to work.
7/4/07 India Kupwara 1 0 A man is killed in a Mujahideen landmine attack.
7/4/07 Iraq Mosul 2 0 Islamists abduct and murder two members of a religious minority sect.
7/4/07 Iraq Ramadi 14 17 Fourteen innocents are blown to bits by Jihadi car bombers.
7/3/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A young woman is shot to death by Muslims as she is picking up food for her mother.
7/3/07 India Rajouri 1 1 Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists attack a security patrol, killing one member.
7/3/07 Iraq Baghdad 18 40 Sunni bombers send eighteen market-goers straight to Allah, while leaving another forty in agony.
7/3/07 Iraq Baghdad 24 4 Three sewer workers and two gardeners are among two dozen people killed in random Jihad attacks.
7/3/07 Pakistan Islamabad 3 0 A Pakistani soldier, businessman and a cameraman are shot to death by student radicals at a madrassah.
7/2/07 Iraq Baghdad 26 18 Sectarian terror attacks between Sunnis and Shias leave over two dozen dead.
7/2/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A 28-year-old villager is shot to death by Islamists.
7/2/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 Muslim radicals murder a 47-year-old rubber tapper on his way to work.
7/2/07 Pakistan Mir Ali 1 1 al-Qaeda backed militants kill a Pakistani who resists kidnapping.
7/2/07 Iraq Baghdad 9 33 Sunni radicals car bomb a Shia neighborhood, sending at least nine innocents to Allah.
7/2/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 7 0 Seven Afghan cops are blown to bits by a Taliban roadside bombing.
7/2/07 Yemen Marib 10 8 Eight Spanish tourists and their two drivers are murdered by an al-Qaeda suicide bomber, who rams into their convoy.
7/2/07 Somalia Horuwa 1 0 Two militant Muslims corner and gun down a government official.
7/2/07 Afghanistan Khost 1 1 An education director is gunned down by religious extremists.
7/1/07 Chechnya Grozny 2 2 A landmine attack kills two Russians.
7/1/07 Iraq Baghdad 18 12 A suicide bombing and other Jihad attacks account for fifteen dead Iraqis.
7/1/07 Iraq Mosul 19 0 At least nineteen bodies surface around the country of civilians kidnapped and executed by the Mujahideen.
7/1/07 Afghanistan Helmand 1 4 A British soldier is killed by a suicide bomber.
7/1/07 Thailand Pattani 1 2 A woman is killed, and two other people injured when Islamic gunmen fire into a Buddhist tea shop.
7/1/07 Thailand Pattani 1 2 Muslim terrorists fire on a group of young students, killing a 58-year-old teacher and injuring two boys, ages 9 and 11.
7/1/07 Iraq Ramadi 7 20 Seven Iraqi police are killed in separate suicide attacks by Fedayeen.
6/30/07 Iraq Asiriya 2 12 Two children are killed, and a dozen more injured, when Jihadis mortar a soccer field.
6/30/07 Iraq Baghdad 16 8 Sixteen Iraqis are murdered in various sectarian attacks.
6/30/07 Iraq Ferris 40 0 Children are beheaded as al-Qaeda massacres an entire village of Iraqis .
6/30/07 Chechnya Vedeno 1 2 Holy Warriors ambush a security patrol, killing one member.
6/30/07 Iraq Fallujah 4 0 Four people are beheaded by Islamic terrorists.
6/30/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 Islamic militants murder a 53-year-old man.
6/30/07 Scotland Glasgow 0 5 Hoping for mass casualties, Islamic radicals ram a car filled with gas canisters into the main entrance of an airport.
6/30/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 0 Islamic militias assassinate a government official.
6/30/07 Iraq Muqdadiyah 25 22 A suicidal Sunni sends over two-dozen innocent people to the grave with a market blast.
6/30/07 India Pulwama 1 0 A civilian is abducted and murdered by the Mujahideen.
6/29/07 Pakistan FATA Region 1 0 An Afghan civilian is kidnapped and beheaded by Islamic militants.
6/29/07 Afghanistan Khost 1 0 Religious extremists kidnap and behead a language interpreter.
6/29/07 Iraq Mishada 8 5 A Fedayeen suicide bomber murders eight Iraqis.
6/29/07 Iraq Baghdad 15 11 At least three women are among fifteen people shot to death or blown up by Muslim terrorists.
6/29/07 Iraq Kut 11 1 A university professor is shot several time in the head and neck. Ten others are also murdered by Muslim terrorists.
6/29/07 Pakistan Larkana 2 0 A man shoots his wife and sister-in-law to death in an ‘honor killing.’
6/29/07 Pakistan Tirah 1 0 Laskhar-i-Islam militants stone a man to death.
6/29/07 Iraq Mosul 3 0 Three women are murdered by Islamic gunmen.
6/28/07 Afghanistan Paktika 1 8 An 18-year-old Afghan civilian is killed by a Fedayeen suicide bomber.
6/28/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 4 Islamic terrorists target a security convoy along a busy road, killing two members.
6/28/07 Afghanistan Kabul 3 8 Two American civilians and an Afghan woman are killed by a Fedayeen suicide bomber.
6/28/07 Thailand Yala 2 0 Two teenagers are shot to death by Muslim terrorists.
6/28/07 Iraq Baghdad 30 34 Several mortar attacks and shootings leave thirty Iraqis dead at the hands of Islamic terrorists.
6/28/07 Thailand Songkhla 1 0 A 51-year-old village guard is shot to death by Jihadis as he is returning home.
6/28/07 India Pulwama 1 16 Lashkar-e-Toiba militants attack a security patrol, killing one member.
6/28/07 India Ramban 1 0 A civilian is abducted and beheaded by the Religion of Peace.
6/28/07 Iraq Baghdad 25 50 Sunni radicals blow twenty-five innocent people to Allah at a bus stop.
6/27/07 Thailand Yala 3 17 Muslims kill three people at a market, by hiding a bomb in a basket.
6/27/07 Iraq Mosul 2 0 Two Christians are murdered by Sunni radicals.
6/27/07 Somalia El-Berde 2 0 Two humanitarian workers, one a doctor, are brutally gunned down.
6/27/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 2 Two civilians are killed when Muslim terrorists toss a grenade into a market.
6/27/07 Somalia Bardhere 1 1 The driver of a vehicle is killed in a bombing attack by Muslim militants.
6/27/07 Iraq Al Khalis 19 28 Islamic terrorists barrage a residential area with mortars, killing at least nineteen innocents.
6/27/07 Iraq Baghdad 21 0 Twenty-one victims of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia are found bound and executed.
6/27/07 Iraq Baghdad 10 24 Islamic terrorists set off two car bombs, killing ten people.
6/27/07 Iraq Samarrah 11 6 Eleven Iraqis are killed in at least two separate Jihad attack, here and in Kirukuk.
6/26/07 Somalia Mogadishu 6 9 Five cleaning women are among six killed by an Islamic bomb.
6/26/07 Iraq Basra 1 0 A religious cleric is gunned down by Muslim rivals.
6/26/07 India Pulwama 1 0 Militant Islamists abduct a constable from his home and behead him.
6/26/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 3 Islamists detonate a roadside bomb, killing one bystander.
6/26/07 Thailand Pattani 1 4 A Muslim radical calmly fires into a Buddhist tea shop, killing at least one patron.
6/26/07 Bangladesh Nilphamari 0 10 Ten Christian converts from Islam are savagely beaten by a Muslim mob.
6/25/07 Iraq Baghdad 12 21 A Fedayeen bomber blasts a dozen people at a peace and reconciliation conference to death.
6/25/07 Lebanon Nahr al-Bared 2 0 A soldier and a civilian are killed by a Fatah al-Islam sniper.
6/25/07 Iraq Baghdad 16 3 Jihadis rack up sixteen dead Iraqis in various attacks.
6/25/07 Thailand Narathiwat 2 0 Two middle-aged men are gunned down in separate attacks by Muslim radicals.
6/25/07 Iraq Baiji 27 62 Suicide bombers ram an explosives-laden truck into a gate, killing over two dozen innocents in the blast.
6/25/07 India Doda 2 14 The Mujahideen toss a grenade into a bus stand, killing two people.
6/25/07 Somalia Hurwa 2 2 A woman and a man are killed when Islamic militias slam a rocket into their house.
6/25/07 Iraq Mosul 3 42 Three civilians are killed when Islamic terrorists bomb a residential area.
6/24/07 Lebanon Dardara 6 2 Militant Islamists kill six UN Peacekeepers with a powerful suicide bomb.
6/24/07 Thailand Pattani 2 0 Two elderly Buddhist brothers are murdered by radical Muslims, who then burn their bodies.
6/24/07 Iraq Baghdad 14 6 The head of a children’s hospital is among fourteen people murdered by Islamic terrorists.
6/24/07 Thailand Narathiwat 2 0 Two Thai rangers are shot by Islamic terrorists while riding motorcycles.
6/24/07 Iraq Balad 1 0 Fundamentalists assassinate a feminist.
6/24/07 Somalia Mogadishu 2 0 A man and a woman are shot to death by a suspected Muslim militant.
6/24/07 Iraq Khalis 3 3 Islamic terrorists kill three girls and injure their mother and father in a bomb attack on the family vehicle.
6/24/07 Iraq Mosul 2 0 Two women, including a female journalist, are gunned down by Muslim radicals.
6/24/07 Afghanistan Kandahar 3 2 Religious extremists attack a police station, killing three Afghans.
6/23/07 Afghanistan Helmand 2 0 Two Estonian mine-sweepers are killed in a Taliban rocket strike.
6/23/07 Pakistan Karam Kot 4 1 Four Pakistani troops are killed when terrorists bomb their vehicle.
6/23/07 Iraq Baghdad 18 2 Sectarian Jihadis rack up eighteen dead Iraqis in various attacks.
6/23/07 Iraq Hillah 2 18 Two people are killed in an Islamic terrorist car bombing.
6/23/07 Lebanon Nahr el-Bared 3 0 Three Lebanese troops are killed by a Fatah al-Islam bomb.
6/23/07 Thailand Narathiwat 1 0 A 42-year-old Buddhist laborer is brutally killed and then set on fire by Muslim terrorists.
6/23/07 Somalia Mogadishu 1 0 A off-duty cop is gunned down by an Islamist.
6/23/07 Iraq Kufa 2 0 Muslim terrorists shoot a married couple to death.
6/22/07 Algeria Bouira 2 1 Two security guards are killed by two homemade bombs.
6/22/07 Pakistan Bannu 1 30 Radical Muslims attempt to attack a religious festival with small-arms fire and a grenade. One guard is killed.
6/22/07 India Doda 1 0 The Mujahideen abduct and kill a civilian.
6/22/07 Thailand Yala 2 5 Muslim bombers target a Buddhist-owned teashop, killing three innocents.
6/22/07 Thailand Yala 3 10 Three young boys are shot full of holes in the name of Allah at a tea shop.
6/22/07 Thailand Yala 1 0 A 16-year-old Buddhist girl is shot to death by radical Muslims.
6/22/07 Pakistan Khar 1 0 Islamic extremists behead a man, then attach a note to the body.
6/22/07 Iraq Fallujah 5 57 A store bombing and a suicide attack on a telecom company net five dead Iraqis for freedom-fighting terrorists.
Stop apologizing to Muslims.
Tell them to take responsibility and stop the violence.
Previous Years:
Islamic Terror Attacks for First Half of 2007
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2006
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2005
Islamic Terror Attacks for 2004
Islamic Attacks from September 11th, 2001 through 2003
Source: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Woman Killed in Grenade Attack on Brothel (back)
August 20, 2007
A woman was killed while four others were injured seriously in a grenade attack on their houses in Mohallah Green Town here on Monday. It is alleged that some women were running brothels near railway track behind the Wapda House. Some attackers threw hand-grenades at the houses which exploded with a bang. One of the two houses was totally demolished.
Razia, wife of Maqbool, died on the spot while Sughra, Haleema, Abida and Rabia Basri wounded seriously. They aged between 40 and 45 years.
Edhi ambulances ferried the injured to local THQ Hospital .
An injured woman claimed that one of her ‘clients’ had left in her house a bag containing explosives that caused the blast and the same man also went to the other house with another bag in his hand.
But the area people asserted that blasts occurred after unidentified people tossed hand-grenades at the houses.
The police said they were weighing up the circumstances and give their word only after a thorough investigation.
Jhang DPO Amjad Saleemi rushed to the site along with a heavy police contingent.
Source: www.dawn.com/2007/08/21/top16.htm
14 Injured in Bomb Blast in Philippines (back)
August 21, 2007
A powerful bomb exploded in a city square in the southern Philippines on Tuesday, injuring at least 14 people, police said.
The bomb was placed under a concrete bench that was demolished by the 7:32 p.m. (1132 GMT) blast, said Zamboanga city Police Director Sr. Superintendent Manuel Barcena. The windows of a nearby department store were shattered.
The injured were taken to at least two area hospitals, and police were checking others. Barcena said the blast may be connected with ongoing military offensives in the south aimed at the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group.
``The threat is always there due to what is happening in other places,’’ Barcena said. ``We are ready for that, but we cannot stop this type of activity.’’
The bomb went off about 150 meters (yards) from City Hall, near a public transport stop busy with shoppers and employees from malls in the area.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo warned earlier in the day that the military offensives on nearby Basilan and Jolo islands could spark terror attacks and said she had instructed the military and police to bolster security around the country.
She ordered the crackdown after the Abu Sayyaf, listed by Washington as a terrorist organization, was implicated in the July 10 beheadings of 10 marines after a clash in Basilan’s al-Barka township.
Source: www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200708211921.htm
Muslim Terrorists Kill 3 In Southern Thailand (back)
August 21, 2007
Suspected Muslim Insurgents killed three people in separate attacks in violence-plagued southern Thailand and attempted to behead one of the victims, police said Tuesday (August 21st).
An unknown number of assailants shot and killed a Buddhist man in a security guard uniform in Narathiwat province’s Waeng district Tuesday (August 21st), said police Lt. Prakit Meekam, adding that the attackers then attempted to behead the victim before fleeing but failed.
In a separate violent incident, a Muslim man who was recent elected village chief was killed Tuesday (August 21st) in a drive-by shooting in Yala’s Raman district.
Police Lt. Col. Somprad Kankanon said the victim was elected a village chief two months ago to replace a previous village head who was also shot and killed along with his wife and child in May.
‘The man is known to be against the Muslim insurgency movement,’ said Somprad.
Also on Tuesday (August 21st), a Buddhist government official was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in Pattani’s Muang district, said police Col. Somjit Nasomyon.
More than 2,400 people have been killed in the predominantly Muslim provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat and some parts of Songkhla since early 2004, when a separatist movement flared up after a lull of more than two decades.
Along with attacks on soldiers and police, insurgents have targeted Buddhist civilians and government workers in what is believed to be an attempt to drive them from the area.
The insurgents also target Muslims seen as collaborators of the government, including Muslim soldiers, police, informants and civilians.
In the more than three years since an Islamic insurgency flared up in Thailand’s southernmost provinces, rebels have generally tried to avoid direct battles with the authorities performing to employ bombings, ambushes and hit and run attacks on individuals or small groups.
Bombings and drive-by shootings have become virtually a daily occurrence.
Source: http://e.sinchew-i.com/content.phtml?sec=2&artid=200708210009
Philippine National Police on Nationwide Alert (back)
August 21, 2007
The Philippine National Police on Tuesday placed all units in six regions in Mindanao on full alert because of ongoing operations in Sulu and Basilan.
Police have likewise been placed units on heightened alert in the rest of Luzon and the Visayas for the same reasons.
The country’s police force was also placed on alert in the National Capital Region because of the ongoing 39th ASEAN Economic Ministers’ summit in Makati City .
The PNP earlier said its forces nationwide were on red alert amid intensified fighting between the military and al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf extremists in Mindanao .
Chief Superintendent Samuel Pagdilao Jr., PNP spokesman, said the country’s police force was placed on alert after the New People’s Army declared that it is renewing offensives against the government.
The full alert status was declared after President Arroyo’s meeting with the security cluster of her Cabinet in Malacañang.
During the meeting, Mrs. Arroyo ordered the police and the military to work with local government units in strengthening the government’s campaign against terrorism.
Mrs. Arroyo gave specific orders to the police and the military to prevent the hostilities in Mindanao from reaching Metro Manila and other key cities.
Deputy Director General Avelino Razon, PNP deputy chief for administration, said the police and the military are doing all they can to prevent a spillover of violence to other parts of the country.
‘Wala pong dapat ipangamba ang ating mga mamamayan (The public should not be afraid). The [PNP] is doing all it can to prevent terrorism,’ Razon said.
He said police immediately secured all vital installations in Metro Manila and other key cities in the country after the military started pursuing suspects in the murders of 14 Philippine Marines in al-Barkah town on July 10.
The military suffered another blow on August 18 when 15 Marines - including five junior officers - were killed while attacking an Abu Sayyaf jungle camp in Basilan. The military said 42 bandits were killed in the battle - including two suspects in the July 10 beheadings of the Marines in Barangay Guinanta in al-Barkah town.
Weeks before the bloody clash, a total of 26 Army personnel and Marines were killed in a series of clashes in Sulu. The military claimed it is fighting not only Abu Sayyaf bandits, but also Moro National Liberation Front rebels, in the province.
Reports on Monday said the military has sealed off all exit points in Basilan to prevent the bandits from fleeing the island province.
Source: www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=89358
The Coming Urban Terror (back)
August 22, 2007
For the first time in history, announced researchers this May, a majority of the world’s population is living in urban environments. Cities—efficient hubs connecting international flows of people, energy, communications, and capital—are thriving in our global economy as never before. However, the same factors that make cities hubs of globalization also make them vulnerable to small-group terror and violence.
Over the last few years, small groups’ ability to conduct terrorism has shown radical improvements in productivity—their capacity to inflict economic, physical, and moral damage. These groups, motivated by everything from gang membership to religious extremism, have taken advantage of easy access to our global superinfrastructure, revenues from growing illicit commercial flows, and ubiquitously available new technologies to cross the threshold necessary to become terrible threats. September 11, 2001, marked their arrival at that threshold.
Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning. The arc of productivity growth that lets small groups terrorize at ever-higher levels of death and disruption stretches as far as the eye can see. Eventually, one man may even be able to wield the destructive power that only nation-states possess today. It is a perverse twist of history that this new threat arrives at the same moment that wars between states are receding into the past. Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists’ likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city.
Cities played a vital defensive role in the last major evolution of conventional state-versus-state warfare. Between the world wars, the refinement of technologies—particularly the combustion engine, when combined with armor—made it possible for armies to move at much higher speeds than in the past, so new methods of warfare emphasized armored motorized maneuver as a way to pierce the opposition’s solid defensive lines and range deep into soft, undefended rear areas. These incursions, the armored thrusts of blitzkrieg, turned an army’s size against itself: even the smallest armored vanguard could easily disrupt the supply of ammunition, fuel, and rations necessary to maintain the huge armies of the twentieth century in the field.
To defend against these thrusts, the theoretician J. F. C. Fuller wrote in the 1930s, cities could be used as anchor or pivot points to engage armored forces in attacks on static positions, bogging down the offensive. Tanks couldn’t move quickly through cities, and if they bypassed them and struck too deeply into enemy territory, their supply lines—in particular, of the gasoline they drank greedily—would become vulnerable. The city, Fuller anticipated, could serve as a vast fortress, requiring the fast new armor to revert to the ancient tactic of the siege. That’s exactly what happened in practice during World War II, when the defenses mounted in Leningrad , Moscow , and Stalingrad played a major role in the Allied victory.
But in the current evolution of warfare, cities are no longer defensive anchors against armored thrusts ranging through the countryside. They have become the main targets of offensive action themselves. Just as the huge militaries of the early twentieth century were vulnerable to supply and communications disruption, cities are now so heavily dependent on a constant flow of services from various centralized systems that even the simplest attacks on those systems can cause massive disruption.
Most of the networks that we rely on for city life—communications, electricity, transportation, water—are overused, interdependent, and extremely complex. They developed organically as what scholars in the emerging field of network science call ‘scale-free networks,’ which contain large hubs with a plethora of connections to smaller and more isolated local clusters. Such networks are economically efficient and resistant to random failure—but they are also extremely vulnerable to intentional disruptions, as Albert-Laszlo Barabasi shows in his important book Linked: The New Science of Networks. In practice, this means that a very small number of attacks on the critical hubs of a scale-free network can collapse the entire network. Such a collapse can occasionally happen by accident, when random failure hits a critical node; think of the huge Northeast blackout of 2003, which caused $6.4 billion in damage.
Further, the networks of our global superinfrastructure are tightly ‘coupled’—so tightly interconnected, that is, that any change in one has a nearly instantaneous effect on the others. Attacking one network is like knocking over the first domino in a series: it leads to cascades of failure through a variety of connected networks, faster than human managers can respond.
The ongoing attacks on the systems that support Baghdad ’s 5 million people illustrate the vulnerability of modern networks. Over the last four years, guerrilla assaults on electrical systems have reduced Baghdad ’s power to an average of four or five hours a day. And the insurgents have been busily finding new ways to cut power: no longer do they make simple attacks on single transmission towers. Instead, they destroy multiple towers in series and remove the copper wire for resale to fund the operation; they ambush repair crews in order to slow repairs radically; they attack the natural gas and water pipelines that feed the power plants. In September 2004, one attack on an oil pipeline that fed a power plant quickly led to a cascade of power failures that blacked out electricity throughout Iraq .
Lack of adequate power is a major reason why economic recovery has been nearly impossible in Iraq . No wonder that, in account after account, nearly the first criticism that any Iraqi citizen levels against the government is its inability to keep the lights on. Deprived of services, citizens are forced to turn to local groups—many of them at war with the government—for black-market alternatives. This money, in turn, fuels further violence, and the government loses legitimacy.
Insurgents have directed such disruptive attacks against nearly all the services necessary to get a city of 5 million through the day: water pipes, trucking, and distribution lines for gasoline and kerosene. And because of these networks’ complexity and interconnectivity, even small attacks, costing in the low thousands of dollars to carry out, can cause tens of millions and occasionally hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Iraq is a petri dish for modern conflict, the Spanish Civil War of our times. It’s the place where small groups are learning to fight modern militaries and modern societies and win. As a result, we can expect to see systems disruption used again and again in modern conflict—certainly against megacities in the developing world, and even against those in the developed West, as we have already seen in London , Madrid , and Moscow .
Another growing threat to our cities, commonest so far in the developing world, is gangs challenging government for control. For three sultry July days in 2006, a gang called PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital, ‘First Command of the Capital’) held hostage the 20 million inhabitants of the greater São Paulo area through a campaign of violence. Gang members razed police stations, attacked banks, rioted in prisons, and torched dozens of buses, shutting down a transportation system serving 2.9 million people a day.
The previous May, a similar series of attacks had terrified the city. ‘The attackers moved on foot, and by car and motorbike,’ wrote William Langewiesche in Vanity Fair. ‘They were not rioters, revolutionaries, or the graduates of terrorist camps. They were anonymous young men and women, dressed in ordinary clothes, unidentifiable in advance, and indistinguishable afterward. Wielding pistols, automatic rifles, and firebombs, they emerged from within the city, struck fast, and vanished on the spot. Their acts were criminal, but the attackers did not loot, rob, or steal. They burned buses, banks, and public buildings, and went hard after the forces of order—gunning down the police in their neighborhood posts, in their homes, and on the streets.’
The violence hasn’t been limited to São Paulo . In December 2006, a copycat campaign by an urban gang called the Comando Vermelho (’Red Command’) shut down Rio de Janeiro , too. In both cases, the gangs fomenting the violence didn’t list demands or send ultimatums to the government. Rather, they were flexing their muscles, testing their ability to challenge the government monopoly on violence.
Both gangs had steadily accumulated power for a decade, helped in part by globalization, which simplifies making connections to the multitrillion-dollar global black-market economy. With these new connections, the gangs’ profit horizon became limitless, fueling rapid expansion. New communications technology, particularly cell phones, played a part, too, making it possible for the gangs to thrive as loose associations, and allowing a geographical and organizational dispersion that rendered them nearly invulnerable to attack. The PCC has been particularly successful, growing from a small prison gang in the mid-nineties to a group that today controls nearly half of São Paulo ’s slums and its millions of inhabitants. An escalating confrontation between these gangs and the city governments appears inevitable.
The gangs’ rapid rise into challengers to urban authorities is something that we will see again elsewhere. This dynamic is already at work in American cities in the rise of MS-13, a rapidly expanding transnational gang with a loose organizational structure, a propensity for violence, and access to millions in illicit gains. It already has an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 members, dispersed over 31 U.S. states and several Latin American countries, and its proliferation continues unabated, despite close attention from law enforcement. Like the PCC, MS-13 or a similar American gang may eventually find that it has sufficient power to hold a city hostage through disruption.
The final threat that small groups pose to cities is weapons of mass destruction. Though most of the worry over WMDs has focused on nuclear weapons, those aren’t the real long-term problem. Not only is the vast manufacturing capability of a nation-state required to produce the basic nuclear materials, but those materials are difficult to manipulate, transport, and turn into weapons. Nor is it easy to assemble a nuke from parts bought on the black market; if it were, nation-states like Iran, which have far more resources at their disposal than terrorist groups do, would be doing just that instead of resorting to internal production.
It’s also unlikely that a state would give terrorists a nuclear weapon. Sovereignty and national prestige are tightly connected to the production of nukes. Sharing them with terrorists would grant immense power to a group outside the state’s control—the equivalent of giving Osama bin Laden the keys to the presidential palace. If that isn’t deterrent enough, the likelihood of retaliation is, since states, unlike terrorist groups, have targets that can be destroyed. The result of a nuclear explosion in Moscow or New York would very probably be the annihilation of the country that manufactured the bomb, once its identity was determined—as it surely would be, since no plot of that size can remain secret for long.
Even in the very unlikely case that a nuclear weapon did end up in terrorist hands, it would be a single horrible incident, rather than an ongoing threat. The same is true of dirty bombs, which disperse radioactive material through conventional explosives. No, the real long-term danger from small groups is the use of biotechnology to build weapons of mass destruction. In contrast with nuclear technology, biotech’s knowledge and tools are already widely dispersed—and their power is increasing exponentially.
The biotech field is in the middle of a massive improvement in productivity through advances in computing power. In fact, the curves of improvement that we see in biotechnology mirror the rates of improvement in computing dictated by Moore’s Law—the observation, borne out by decades of experience, that the ratio of performance to price of computing power doubles every 24 months. This means that incredible power will soon be in the hands of individuals. University of Washington engineer Robert Carlson observes that if current trends in the rate of improvement in DNA sequencing continue, ‘within a decade a single person at the lab bench could sequence or synthesize all the DNA describing all the people on the planet many times over in an eight-hour day.’ And with ever tinier, cheaper, and more widely available tools, a large and decentralized industrial base that is hiring lab techs at a double-digit growth rate, and the active transfer of knowledge via the Internet (the blueprints of the entire smallpox virus now circulate on the Web), biotech is too widely available for us to contain it.
In less than a decade, then, biotechnology will be ripe for the widespread development of weapons of mass destruction, and it fits the requirements of small-group warfare perfectly. It is small, inexpensive, and easy to manufacture in secret. Also, since dangerous biotechnology is based primarily on the manipulation of information, it will make rapid progress through the same kind of amateur tinkering that currently produces new computer viruses. Terrorists also have a growing advantage in delivering bioweapons. The increasing porousness of national borders, size of global megacities, and volume of air travel all mean that the delivery and percolation of bioweapons will be fast-moving and widespread—potentially on several continents at once.
It is almost certain that we will see repeated, perhaps incessant, attempts to deploy bioweapons with new strains of viruses or bacteria. Picture a Russian biohacker who, a decade from now, designs a new, deadly form of the common flu virus and sells it on the Internet, just as computer viruses and worms get sold today. The terrorist group that buys the design sends it to a recently hired lab tech in Pakistan, who performs the required modifications with widely available tools. The product then ships by mail to London, to the awaiting ‘suicide vectors’—men who infect themselves and then board airplanes headed to world destinations, infecting passengers on the planes and in crowded terminals. The infection spreads quickly, going global in days—long before anyone detects it.
It’s very possible that many cities will fall in the face of such deadly threats. Megacities in the developing world—which often, because of their rapid growth, widespread corruption, and illegitimate governance, aren’t able to provide security or basic services for their citizens—are particularly vulnerable. However, cities in the developed world that properly appreciate the threats arrayed against them may devise startlingly innovative solutions.
In almost all cases, cities can defend themselves from their new enemies through effective decentralization. To counter systems disruption, decentralized services—the capability of smaller areas within cities to provide backup services, at least on a temporary basis—could radically diminish the harmful consequences of disconnection from the larger global grid. In New York, this would mean storage or limited production capability of backup electricity, water, and fuel, with easy connections to the delivery grid—at the borough level or even smaller. These backups would then provide a means of restoring central services rapidly after a failure.
Similarly, cities may combat networked gangs by decentralizing their own security. Cities have long maintained centralized police forces, but gangs can often overwhelm them. Many governments are responding with militarized police: China is building a million-man paramilitary force, for example; and even in the United States, the use of SWAT teams has increased from 3,000 deployments a year in the 1980s to 50,000 a year in 2006. But militarized police may too easily become an army of occupation, and, if corrupt, as they are in Brazil, they may become enemies of the state along with the gangs.
A better solution involves local security forces, either locally recruited or bought on the marketplace (such as Blackwater), which can be powerful bulwarks against small-group terrorism. Such forces may become a vital component in our defense against bioterrorism, too, since they can enforce local containment—and since large centralized services, like the ones we have today, might actually accelerate the propagation of bioweapons. Still, if improperly established, local forces can also become rogue criminal entities, like the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia and the militias in Rio de Janeiro. Governments need to regulate them carefully.
In the future, we probably won’t know exactly how we will be attacked until it happens. In highly uncertain situations like this, centralized solutions that emphasize uniform responses will often collapse. Heterogeneous systems, by contrast, are unlikely to fail catastrophically. Moreover, local innovation—supplemented by a marketplace in goods and services that improve security, detection, monitoring, and so on—is likely to develop responses to threats quickly and effectively. Other localities will copy those responses that prove successful.
In June 2007, the FBI and local law enforcement halted a plot to blow up the John F. Kennedy International Airport’s fuel tanks and feeder pipelines. This was another great example of how police forces, if used correctly, can defuse threats before they become a menace [see ‘On the Front Line in the War on Terrorism’]. However, our current level of safety will not last. The selection of the target demonstrated clearly that future attackers will take advantage of our systems’ vulnerability to disruption, which will sharply increase the number of potential targets. It also showed that these threats can emerge spontaneously from small groups unconnected to al-Qaida. More and more attempts will come, with higher and higher rates of success. Our choice is simple: we can rely exclusively on our current security systems to stop the threats—and suffer the consequences when they don’t—or we can take measures to mitigate the impact of these threats by exerting local control over essential services.
Source: www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_urban_terrorism.html
Kosovo: ‘Bloody and Destabilising Conflict’ if Independence Denied (back)
August 21, 2007
Europe risks a new bloody and destabilising conflict unless the EU spearheads breakaway Muslim-majority Kosovo’s drive to supervised independence by April/May 2008, a Brussels-based think-tank warned in a report published on Tuesday.
‘The EU has a ticking time-bomb in its own backyard’, said Alexander Anderson, the International Crisis Group’s Kosovo Project Director.
‘The sooner the EU, or a significant majority of its member states, declares itself ready to back an independent Kosovo, the better the chances of forestalling disaster,’ he added.
The comments accompanied ‘Breaking the Kosovo Stalemate: Europe’s Responsibility’, the latest report from the International Crisis Group. The report analyses the key role of the EU in protracted international efforts to resolve the future status of Kosovo, which has been under United Nations control since 1999.
Four more months of have been mandated by France, Germany, Italy, Britain and staunch Serb ally Russia, after Serbia’s refusal to accept a UN plan backing independence for Kosovo - an outcome demanded by its 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority.
The talks are due to resumed in Vienna later this month.
‘The preferred strategy of bringing Kosovo to supervised independence through the United Nations Security Council has failed, following Russia’s declared intention to veto, and a new round of negotiations between Pristina and Belgrade will most likely lead nowhere,’ said the report.
‘This leaves the EU - with the most to lose from renewed violent conflict in the Balkans - before crucial decisions.’
‘Europe tragically failed the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Now it has a second chance to show it can be an effective actor in the Balkans,’ said Sabine Freizer, Crisis Group’s Europe director.
‘If it is incapable once again, it would almost certainly lead to bloodshed and renewed regional chaos that would blow back into Central and Western Europe in the form of refugees and stronger organised crime networks.’
The think-tank recommended that if no agreed solution emerges ‘as is overwhelmingly likely,’ EU, US and NATO need begin implementing need to be ready to start coordinated action with the Kosovo government to implement top UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s blocked independence plan, including its recommended 120 transition period.
‘That period should be used to accumulate recognition of the conditionally independent state from many governments; to adopt and set in place the state-forming legislation and related institutions foreseen by the Ahtisaari plan,’ it said.
‘In April/May 2008, Kosovo would be conditionally independent, under EU and NATO supervision,’ the think-tank said.
‘Not all EU member states need to recognise Kosovo during the transition or even in April 2008,’ it added.
Source: www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=1.0.1222001119
U.S. Fears Overseas Funds Could ‘Buy up America’ (back)
August 21, 2007
For years, the Bush administration has shrugged off concerns about the trillions of dollars that the United States owes to China, Japan and oil-producing countries in the Middle East, arguing that these debts give no undue leverage to foreign governments.
But at a time of global financial instability, the administration has started to worry.
U.S. concerns - like those of many European policy makers - focus on a growing but little understood trend of foreign governments converting their debt holdings into ‘sovereign investment funds’ that are acquiring assets in the United States and elsewhere - and could influence the markets when they buy and sell.
In response, the Bush administration is pressing the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to examine the behavior of these funds, which control as much as $2.5 trillion in investments, and to develop possible codes of conduct for them.
Among the proposed rules would be an obligation to disclose their investment methods and to avoid interfering in a host country’s politics.
Officially, the United States welcomes all investments - except those that could compromise national security.
But a note of caution can be heard regarding investment by foreign governments as opposed to companies. Some officials warn of a possible political backlash as the trend grows.
‘Money is naturally going to gravitate toward dollar-based assets because of the strength of our economy,’ the Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., said in an interview. ‘I’d like nothing more than to get more of that money. But I understand that there’s a natural fear that they’re going to buy up America.’
One of the American concerns is over philosophy. The United States has for years preached the gospel of privatization, calling on other countries to sell their government-owned industries.
Now, with sovereign wealth funds, many experts are asking whether cross-border investment is evolving into something new that could be called cross-border nationalization, raising the specter of government interference in free markets - only this time, in other countries’ markets rather than their own.
Another concern is the sheer size and potential growth of these funds. Their estimated $2.5 trillion in assets exceeds the sum invested by the world’s hedge funds. Also, Morgan Stanley, in a widely cited study, projects that these investment funds could grow to a staggering $17.5 trillion in 10 years.
Though sovereign wealth funds do not appear to have played a role in the recent turmoil of global markets, experts say they could in the future, in favorable or unfavorable ways - by selling assets abruptly and precipitating a crisis, or by bailing out funds or companies that are in trouble.
‘They could become either the source of the problem or part of the solution,’ said Edwin Truman, senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. ‘When you have foreign governments holding stocks and bonds, not just Treasury securities, you have to ask whether they will be a stabilizing force or a destabilizing force.’
Truman said that it would be easy to imagine that in a future global crisis, Paulson might be calling not just central bankers but also the directors of sovereign wealth funds.
‘He may be calling them right now, for all we know,’ he added.
The political furor over these funds so far has been limited. Efforts this year by China and Singapore to buy stakes in Barclays Bank in Britain, and by Qatar to take over the J Sainsbury supermarket chain in Britain, have caused little stir among British leaders.
Neither Dubai’s bid for Barney’s, the American retailer, nor China’s purchase of nearly a 10 percent stake in Blackstone earlier this year has produced an outcry in the United States, although there have been some repercussions in China over the Blackstone investment’s recent losses.
But in Germany, where there is concern about Russia buying up pipelines and energy infrastructure and squeezing Europe for political gain, Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that purchases by foreign governments or government-controlled companies pose a risk.
‘How do we actually deal with funds in state hands?’ Merkel said at a news conference in July. ‘This is a phenomenon which until now has not existed on such a scale.’
Probably the most political turbulence caused by a sovereign wealth fund occurred when Temasek Holdings, the state-owned investment branch of Singapore, purchased a stake in the company owned by the prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. The deal fed anti-government demonstrations that led to his ouster in a military coup in 2006.
The worry is that, beyond the possibility of foreign funds pushing up prices on bonds, stocks and real estate, they might exercise inappropriate control politically or in the private sphere.
Truman, of the Peterson Institute, is one of many experts urging the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to draw up codes of conduct that would keep politics out of investment decisions and require the funds to share information about the composition of their portfolios and their investment strategies.
‘A government is a different type of animal in the investing world,’ he said. ‘We call them sovereign wealth funds, but once you’re operating outside your own borders, you’re not sovereign in the same sense.’
Others favor requiring the funds to place their investment decisions in the hands of nonpolitical managers.
‘As Asian countries and petro states get rich, they certainly have the money to try to exert influence,’ said Kenneth Rogoff, professor of politics and public policy at Harvard University.
‘We don’t want that influence to be channeled in a reckless way. There has to be transparency in company governance and financial governance to protect against it,’ he said.
Paulson and the deputy Treasury secretary, Robert Kimmitt, have traveled to China, Russia and the Gulf to urge top financial officials to adopt greater disclosure of their investment practices and to ban government subsidies or other forms of incentives for their overseas investment activities.
The administration is also telling these countries that they must open their own properties to American investments if they want to invest in the United States.
Kimmitt said in an interview that sovereign funds appeared to be adhering to sound financial practices and not political motivations, at least so far.
‘When I was in China and Russia, I was struck by the degree to which, although I was talking to government officials, it was like talking to asset managers,’ he said.
With $300 billion in its fund, Norway is seen by many financial experts as a model for disclosure of its portfolio strategy, holdings and methods. But it is also unabashedly political, recently pulling its investment out of Wal-Mart, citing accusations that it has violated child-labor laws and scuttled efforts by employees to unionize.
But China and Middle East countries have a long way to go before they are as transparent about their activities as Norway is.
Some experts wonder what would happen if China took over a U.S. pharmaceutical company and pressed for changes in prescription drug programs. Likewise, what would the reaction be if an Arab government demanded a bailout or tax break for its company in return for supporting peace talks in Iraq or Israel?
‘If these funds buy into a big Fidelity mutual, they make standard kinds of investments that the Yale endowment makes,’ said Lawrence Summers, the economist who served as Treasury secretary and president of Harvard. ‘But if they make more direct investments, they become meaningful actors in the economy, and that raises many more questions.’
President George W. Bush recently signed a bill enacted by Congress to streamline the process of screening and possibly rejecting purchases of American companies by foreigners on national security grounds.
But these account for only about 10 percent of such purchases, the Treasury Department says.
‘The Bush administration is right to look at this phenomenon, not with alarm but some attention,’ said Stephen Jen, head of currency research at Morgan Stanley.
‘What needs to be more transparent is the strategy and governance of these funds, so you don’t suspect of them some dark geopolitical strategy in their investments,’ he said.
Source: www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/21/america/wealth.php
TERRORISM RESPONSE
Egypt: Italy to ‘Defend’ Rights of Christian Convert (back)
August 21, 2007
Italy’s Foreign Ministry has instructed the country’s embassy in Cairo to monitor closely the plight of an Egyptian man, Mohammed Hegazi, who has received death threats following his conversion from Islam to Christianity.
Hegazi, a journalist and political activist, is in hiding together with his wife Katarina, who is four months pregnant.
Hegazi’s case ‘would not be taken lightly’, Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Ugo Intini was quoted as saying by Milan- based daily Corriere della Sera on Tuesday.
‘We will act, so as to defend human rights and freedom of religion’, Intini said.
Last year Italy granted political asylum to an Afghan man, Abdul Rahman, who converted to Christianity and who could have been executed in Afghanistan for renouncing Islam.
Hegazi’s case first came to light when he asked the Egyptian Interior Ministry to change the religion in his identity card, only to have his request refused.
While some 10 million Egyptians are Coptic Christians, Muslims who convert to Christianity or to other religions are branded as apostates, and according to some interpretations of Islamic law, can be punished with a death sentence.
While Egypt’s top Muslim cleric, the Grand Mufti, has said that apostasy is not punishable ‘in this world’ fundamentalists have often threatened to kill those who abandon Islam.
Source: www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Religion/?id=1.0.1221165580
TERROR ON TRIAL
Lebanese Court Charges 227 Islamists with Terrorism, Murder (back)
August 21, 2007
A Lebanese court has charged 227 Islamist militants suspected of belonging to the Fatah al-Islam movement with murder and terrorism, a judicial source said Tuesday. Lebanese authorities arrested 108 of the suspects in May, when fighting first started between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
The militants were charged with the killing of Lebanese troops, including 11 officers and 129 soldiers.
They were also charged with carrying out acts of terrorism, undermining the state’s authority and attacking its military and security institutions as well as civilians.
The militants can face the death penalty if they are found guilty of terrorism.
The Fatah al-Islam militant group has been engaged since May 20 in fierce battles with the Lebanese army at the Nahr al-Bared camp, outside the port city of Tripoli.
The fighting has left at least 200 people dead, including 140 soldiers, in the deadliest internal unrest since the 1975-1990 civil war ended.
Source: www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/96347.html
Saddam Aides Go on Trial in Iraq (back)
August 21, 2007
Fifteen aides of Saddam Hussein have been accused in a court in Iraq of ‘one of the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history’.
The defendants are alleged to have helped suppress a Shia uprising after the 1991 Gulf War, in which tens of thousands are thought to have died.
In recent years, mass graves containing hundreds of bodies have been uncovered.
Those in the dock include the cousin of Saddam Hussein, Ali Hassan al-Majid, who is widely known as ‘Chemical Ali’.
Majid has already been sentenced to death following an earlier trial for genocide against Iraq’s Kurdish population in the so-called Anfal campaign of 1988.
Two more of the defendants in the latest trial - Sultan Hashim al-Tai, a former defence minister, and Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, a former deputy chief of operations for the armed forces - were also sentenced to death for those killings.
DEFENDANTS
Ali Hassan al-Majid
Sultan Hashim al-Tai
Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti
Abd Hamid Mahmoud al-Nasseri
Ibrahim Abdul Sattar al-Dahan
Walid Hamid Tawfik al-Nasseri
Iyad Fatiya al-Rawi
Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan
Abdul Ghafour Fulayih al-Ani
Ayad Taha Shihab al-Douri
Latif Maal Hamoud al-Sabawi
Qais Abdul Razzaq al-Adhami
Sabir Abdul Aziz al-Douri
Saadi Tuma Abbas al-Jabouri
Sufyan Maher al-Ghairiri
Mass Graves
Dressed in a cream robe and a white kuffiya shawl, Majid was among the first to enter the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone.
‘I am the fighter Ali Hassan al-Majid,’ he replied when asked to identify himself by Judge Mohammed al-Oraibi al-Khalifa.
Once they had been seated, the 15 men were told they faced charges of crimes against humanity ‘for engaging in widespread or systematic attacks against a civilian population’, offences punishable by death.
‘The acts committed against the Iraqi people in 1991 by the security forces and by the defendants sitting were among one of the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history,’ the chief prosecutor said in his opening remarks.
The prosecutor alleged that former President Saddam Hussein had ordered tanks and infantry troops withdrawn from Kuwait to attack Iraq’s southern provinces when he realised he had lost control there.
‘The convict Saddam made rash judgements. Majid was authorised to demolish anything and kill anyone who came in the way of the forces,’ he said.
He then accused the defendants of both ordering and carrying out cold-blooded executions while they directed Baghdad’s military response to the uprising.
‘The helicopters were bombing the cities and houses of people. Prisoners captured were killed,’ he said.
‘Majid used to come to detention centres, tie the hands of the detainees and then shoot them dead with his weapon. The dead were then later buried in mass graves.
‘Many mass graves have been found since the 2003 war ended. And we will find many more if we keep searching.’
The first witness, 65-year-old former soldier Raybath Jabbar Risan, said troops from the elite Republic Guard had shelled his village in Basra province with artillery and mortars.
‘My cousin was killed and nephew wounded. My brother’s house was burned. I escaped with my family,’ he told the court.
‘I worked in the army for 30 years and never imagined they would do this to me and my family.’
The court expects to hear about 90 witnesses as well as audio tapes and written reports. US officials said there was little remaining evidence of the orders given, however, as Saddam Hussein ordered the destruction of records.
Reprisals
The Shaaban Intifada (Uprising) started in March 1991 as defeated Iraqi troops fled back to southern Iraq after US-led forces took control of Kuwait.
Galvanised by a message by US President George Bush to ‘take matters into their own hands’, the Shia strongholds of Najaf and Karbala rose in revolt in an attempt to topple Saddam Hussein.
Soon, thousands of rebel troops seized control of the city of Basra and 14 of Iraq’s provinces, and advanced to within 60 miles of Baghdad.
But despite these early successes, the rebellion was swiftly crushed by government forces. Mass reprisals followed in which tens of thousands of people are believed to have died.
Many Shia blame President Bush for the uprising’s failure, as the US came to a ceasefire agreement that allowed forces loyal to Saddam to crush the rebellion by using helicopter gunships.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6956080.stm
New Misgivings on Wiretap Law (back)
August 22, 2007
The Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program looks set to be the subject of renewed and bitter wrangling between Congress and the White House when lawmakers return to Washington in September.
And this upcoming battle promises to be far more complex than a run-of-the-mill dispute over an agriculture bill, say, or tax legislation. The law in this area is unusually dense and difficult. The underlying activity is classified. One of the key administration figures dealing with the issue is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, an official in whom many in Congress have little trust.
‘Essentially, it’s a difficult situation to have a rational conversation on the merits,’ says Benjamin Wittes, an expert on national security law at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The expanded snooping powers of the National Security Agency (NSA) have been controversial ever since they became public in 2006. To critics, the program opens the door to the possibility of dangerous infringement on the civil liberties of US citizens. To supporters, they’re a necessary tool against terrorism in an era of cellphones and Internet communications.
At issue now is the temporary update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) passed earlier this month, just before Congress fled Capitol Hill for its summer break. This update was made necessary when the secretive judicial body that oversees the wiretapping, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, banned eavesdropping on foreigners whose communications were being routed through the United States.
The legal update, which expires in six months, allows the NSA to resume siphoning such communications. In one of its key changes, US intelligence no longer needs to know that at least one of the parties to a communication is abroad prior to eavesdropping. It needs only to ‘reasonably believe’ that one person is off US soil.
In the weeks since this bill’s passage some Democrats have begun to regret the manner in which it was approved. They feel the vote was held in haste, with summer break looming. And they’ve started to worry that by changing just a few words in a massive piece of law they’ve opened the door to practices they did not intend.
Some civil liberties experts believe that the US may now be able to gather a wide range of information from US citizens on home soil without a warrant as long as it bears upon the monitoring of a person thought to be overseas.
Nor do many lawmakers like the fact that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is one of the key officials who will determine how the new rule is put into practice.
The bottom line: The vote will likely be revisited.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. John Conyers (D) of Michigan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) of California wrote that ‘Many provisions of this legislation are unacceptable, and, although the bill has a six-month sunset clause, I do not believe the American people will want to wait that long before corrective action is taken.’
In addition, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Aug. 20 threatened to pursue contempt charges against the administration over its reluctance to produce documents outlining the eavesdropping’s legal foundation.
Senator Leahy subpoenaed the NSA, the National Security Council, and the offices of the president and vice president for these papers in late June. They are necessary, he says, so that the Senate can understand better exactly what it’s voting for in regard to warrantless wiretapping.
White House counsel Fred Fielding has asked for more time to respond. In an Aug. 20 letter to Leahy, however, he noted that the White House had identified a ‘core set’ of these papers that it would likely withhold under a claim of executive privilege.
Lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney, for instance, indicated that they had found more than 40 ‘Top Secret/Codeword Presidential authorizations’ and memoranda dealing with the issue.
‘When the Senate comes back in session, I’ll bring it up before the committee,’ Leahy said at a press conference. ‘I prefer cooperation to contempt. Right now, there’s no question that they are in contempt of a valid order of the Congress.’
In regard to the subpoenaed documents, both sides have strong arguments for their positions, notes one legal expert.
Congress is directly legislating on the subject. In fact, eavesdropping legislation ‘is a critically important item on the congressional agenda,’ notes Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
Yet courts have generally favored claims of executive privilege when they deal with issues of national security. And any move to hold the White House in contempt of Congress over the withheld documents would be slow going.
‘It’s hard to see that moving very far even this year,’ says Mr. Tobias.
Source: www.csmonitor.com/2007/0822/p01s03-uspo.html
Terror Goes Digital with Canadian Help (back)
August 18, 2007
Welcome to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia – pivotal battleground in the global jihad.
The town of 7,000 doesn’t look the part. Its quietly beautiful downtown lives and dies by tourists. The coastline puts postcards to shame. The New York Islanders have held their training camp here for the past two years. But unwittingly, Yarmouth has become an example of the sort of unassuming places that are serving as relay stations in a virtual war.
The town is home to a branch of Register.com, one of its largest employers and one of the most popular Internet domain-name registration services in the world. For a fee, the company allows users to register website names – the .com, .net or .org addresses you type into your web browser to surf the Internet. Normally, when anyone signs up new domains, they have to provide a name, address and contact information, all of which become publicly available to anyone who’s even remotely net-savvy. (The information is copied to one of the central databases that form the backbone of the Internet, to ensure there are no conflicts, such as two separate entities owning the same domain.) But for a few extra dollars, Register.com also offers an anonymous registration service: Try to find out who registered any one of these websites, and you’ll be handed the same address and phone number in Yarmouth.
This service is hugely popular: Civil-liberties advocates and anyone else who values their privacy flock to it. But it’s also very useful to another group of people, halfway around the globe: On one of the world’s largest pro-Hamas websites, viewers can download martyrdom videos that feature the diatribes of masked men shortly before they launch deadly attacks. Look up the registration info for that site, and you’ll get that Yarmouth address and phone number.
The challenge this situation poses is not unprecedented. Years ago, authorities noticed that child pornography websites, though often operated from outside North America, made use of North American anonymous-registration services. In response, a large number of watchdog groups began hunting down such sites to force the registration firms to shut them down.
‘There’s nothing near that level [of public monitoring] with terrorist websites,’ says Wade Deisman, Director of the National Security Working Group at the University of Ottawa. Government intelligence services don’t have the resources to manage the scale of the problem. ‘I haven’t seen anything that comes even close to addressing this issue,’ he says.
The FBI estimates somewhere in the range of 6,000 terrorism-supporting websites are currently active. Last week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies published a report stating that, in terms of nefarious online activity, terrorism promotion had eclipsed hatemongering.
This is the new jihad – the evolution of a propaganda effort that, just a decade ago, consisted mostly of Osama bin Laden speeches on video tapes smuggled out of a hideout in Afghanistan. Today, the public-relations arms of terrorist organizations – run less by grizzled warriors than by 20-something computer geeks – deal in digital currency, getting their messages out instantly and universally using the scope and anonymity of the web.
The process is borderless. A beheading video moves from a hideout in Peshawar to a server in London to a computer screen in Toronto unhindered, fuelling a global radicalization juggernaut that intelligence agencies describe as perhaps the biggest threat facing the West today.
All manner of video, audio and even interactive propaganda have found an audience among many disaffected Muslim youth around the world. But while the majority of people who download such content may only fuel a passive resentment of the West, for others the audiovisual diatribes of Mr. bin Laden and his kin have served as a sort of gateway drug to a more violent worldview. That was the case among some of the alleged ringleaders of the Toronto terrorist group arrested during a sweep last summer – a trail led from some of those arrested to a massive, and now defunct, web forum where angry youth traded incendiary content.
In another case, a young British man named Younis Tsouli was arrested in England in 2005 and charged with ‘conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, conspiracy to obtain money by deception, fundraising and possession of articles for terrorist purposes.’ Mr. Tsouli, now 23, had never so much as fired a rifle – his agitation was purely online. The computer hacker got his start moving propaganda videos around the web for al-Qaeda in Iraq and soon popped up in connection with at least three alleged terrorist plots, including one in Canada. For Mr. Tsouli, it was not a great stretch from posting beheading videos to sending out suicide-bomb-belt manuals.
Besides the anonymous registries, many effective terrorist-propaganda producers rely on the hugely popular public blogging and file-sharing sites used by millions to rant about their bosses and share barbecue recipes. That leaves law-enforcement officials in the uncomfortable position of trying to catch a wisp of an enemy without trampling on everyone else’s civil liberties.
And so a battle rages in Ottawa, as Canadian police and spy agencies complain that the legislation governing online crime is a historical relic. Privacy advocates, on the other hand, fear a world where every 0 and 1 is visible to Big Brother.
Meanwhile, terrorist propaganda operations have come to rival the PR departments of multinational corporations, complete with publishing houses, movie-editing studios and video-game developers. This is the ammunition in a battle of ideas that all sides agree may end up being more important than any blood-and-bullets conflict – a battle that, so far, the West is losing.
al-Qaeda’s Spin Doctor
It started with a single memo, dated June 20, 2000. Abu Huthayfa, a member of al-Qaeda’s inner circle, was writing to his mentor, Osama bin Laden, about the importance of public relations. The writer was struck by some of the tactics already in use by Hamas, especially the practice of videotaping statements of soon-to-be ‘martyrs.’ A year earlier, the al-Jazeera television network had aired an interview with Mr. bin Laden, and the public response convinced Mr. Huthayfa that there were many people around the world hanging on the soft-spoken Saudi’s every word.
He asked his leader, why wasn’t al-Qaeda taking better advantage? Why was it that two years after the U.S. embassy bombings in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi, many people knew little about ‘the heroes of this magnificent undertaking’?
Abu Huthayfa’s solution to al-Qaeda’s PR shortfalls would serve as the foundation for the single most important advance in the terrorist group’s history. He proposed the creation of a separate informational branch of al-Qaeda. At the time, the group’s communiqués flowed freely around much of Afghanistan, but that was a form of preaching to the converted – elsewhere in the world, al-Qaeda was still a small fish.
To remedy this, Mr. Huthayfa set his sights on the Internet, especially e-mail and file-sharing websites. He touted the advantages of instant communication, the massive amount of information that could be sent around the world in a blink.
‘The importance of establishing a website for you on the Internet in which you place all your legible, audible, and visible archives and news must be emphasized,’ he wrote. ‘It should not escape the mind of any one of you the importance of this tool in communicating with people.’
It didn’t. Within a year, Mr. bin Laden would declare that up to 90 per cent of al-Qaeda’s battles would be fought not with guns, but words and images. (The memo, recovered in a raid on an al-Qaeda hideout, is now a public document found on several terrorism-studies databases.)
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a flood of videos glorifying the carnage began appearing online. In many cases the producer was al-Sahab (’the Clouds’), the newly created media arm of al-Qaeda. The hijackers appeared superimposed over images of the planes crashing into New York’s twin towers, reading their wills and issuing stern warnings to the U.S. This time, the propaganda opportunity would be fully exploited.
The post-9/11 videos showcased many of al-Qaeda’s major talking points. Over and over, would-be martyrs and senior leaders glorified the attacks and the attackers – the idea of a fast-track to eternal paradise being a significant selling point for disaffected Muslim youth and other possible recruits. Another refrain was to warn of further attacks, citing a list of demands that combined legitimate and illegitimate grievances from across the Muslim world in a patchwork of outrage.
‘If you look at the messaging and narrative, it’s aimed at a Western audience,’ says Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, and a former special assistant on security to the president. ‘I look at al-Qaeda as a brand, and you have to look at what makes brands flourish – there has been a big improvement in use of symbols.’
One of the most oft-repeated symbols is the Arabic word ummah, meaning ‘Muslim nation.’ Among many Muslims worldwide, it conjures halcyon images of a global empire ruled by religion, where borders of race, ethnicity and nationality are obliterated and the only common denominator is the word of God. But the ummah also has come to serve a second purpose, as justification for violence. If Muslims everywhere are one, the thinking goes, then a car bombing in Bali is a legitimate response to the killing of a child in Gaza.
In geographic reality, there is no ummah; perhaps the most recent attempt at one was the Ottoman empire. But from another view, there is perhaps the largest ummah in the history of Islam, composed of chat rooms and file servers from Islamabad to Antigua. In this cyber- ummah, race, ethnicity and nationality are invisible; the common denominator is the digitized word of God. There are segments of the cyber- ummah that have nothing to do with terrorism: Many mainstream Muslim youth groups in Canada use web forums. But, as with neo-Nazi and child-porn rings, the qualities that make Internet forums legitimately useful also empower the bad guys.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan scattered much of al-Qaeda’s leadership – its literal Arabic name, ‘the base,’ was no longer apt. At that point, al-Qaeda morphed from a group into a mindset: Where there once was one well-defined organization, there sprung up dozens of relatively unconnected cells, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in London and Madrid. The founders of those cells were, in many cases, Western-born young men whose parents were immigrants but who had never set foot themselves in any war zone. Instead, this new generation of jihadis had grown up watching the fruits of al-Sahab’s labour – the propaganda and martyrdom videos floating freely across the cyber- ummah.
‘You have a group of individuals who are distanced from their parents; don’t necessarily feel fully embedded in their current society, so they look to one another to reaffirm their attitudes,’ says Mr. Cilluffo. ‘It really goads the bravado.’
A new generation has taken over the informational arm Abu Huthayfa suggested some seven years ago. As comfortable at the keyboard as the original mujahedeen were with rifles, they have swapped the grainy video of past terrorist communiqués for a far more polished product. But it wasn’t only the form of the message that took a generational leap forward. The target demographic also had come into focus: young, angry, Western kids.
Joystick Jihad
By almost any measure, Night of Capturing Bush is an unbelievably awful video game.
In the first-person shooter, released in September of last year, you play the role of a hardcore, AK47-toting Islamic warrior. Your goal is to mow down feeble, eerily identical U.S. troops in Iraqi settings – Iraq being composed mainly of various heavily pixilated shades of brown. The difficulty levels are skewed to the point where the cloned U.S. troops could unload entire armouries of bullets on you and still not make much of a dent. As war songs play in the background, you make your way through six levels, culminating, as the title suggests, in a showdown with U.S. President George W. Bush. (Ironically, Night of Capturing Bush is a minor modification of Quest for Saddam, an equally mediocre 2003 game from right-wing U.S. activist Jesse Petrilla.)
But glitchy game-play and atrocious graphics did little to hinder Night of Capturing Bush’s primary purpose, which was strictly ideological. In a press release hyping the game, its creators, an anonymous group called the Global Islamic Media Front, dubbed their desired audience ‘terrorist children.’ Within a few hours of its release, across thousands of online message boards, these ‘terrorist children’ passed the game back and forth. The Media Front only had to initiate the craze; thousands of sympathizers around the planet did the rest.
It wasn’t the first time Islamic extremist propaganda fused with pop culture. Two years previous, a young British man calling himself Sheikh Terra stepped in front of a camera, his face covered, carrying what appeared to be a pistol, and began dancing. The resulting rap video was called Dirty Kuffar (Kuffar is an Arabic word for disbeliever).
Since its release, Dirty Kuffar has been downloaded onto millions of computers and remixed by many like-minded web jihadists. You can find it on video-sharing sites such as YouTube.
‘I saw a number of video games. I saw rap videos with a very good tune to them,’ says Mr. Cilluffo. ‘I can’t tell you for a fact we’re certain who’s designing what, but I can tell you that when it comes to technology and its application, I think the younger generation has a leg up.’
One common method of disseminating anything from a terrorist video game to a bomb-making manual to a beheading video is to make copies available on dozens of free websites at the same time. On these sites, which were created to help people transfer data files too large to e-mail, anyone can quickly create an account – when barred by the administrators of one site, the user just jumps to another. By the time all such sites wise up, the message is all over the world.
On the Global Islamic Media Front site, each newly produced video is quickly uploaded to a dozen or more free sites. The Front’s own site is not hosted on an obscure or secret server, but on Wordpress, one of the most widely used blogging services in the world. Because registering with a blogging site such as Wordpress doesn’t require domain registration, there is no publicly accessible address or phone number.
That’s likely the same thinking behind Press-Release, a website chock full of communiqués from ‘the Islamic State Of Iraq.’ There, users can download high-quality videos featuring attacks on U.S. military vehicles, as well as detailed listings of American casualties. Look up the registration info and you’re handed an address in Mountain View, Calif. – far removed from the killing fields of Iraq, but near the headquarters of Google Inc., which owns the popular blogging domain Blogspot, on which ‘Press Release’ is hosted.
Anonymity isn’t enough, however. There’s an intense emphasis on secrecy evident in the various password-protected forums and message boards where jihad-minded teens gather. One of the most widely visited extremist forums subscribes to the country-club model – the only way in is to have a current member vouch for you.
This security consciousness is in large part due to the new emphasis police and intelligence agencies are placing on infiltrating such forums. But today the level of infiltration is so high that intelligence agencies face a recurring problem: An agent goes undercover on a web forum and finds dozens of users making violent, extremists statements, but to the agent’s dismay, it soon becomes apparent that many of them are undercover operatives from other intelligence agencies.
Joining the Fray
Frank Cilluffo sat before a dozen or so of the most powerful politicians in the world last May and told them they should consider broadcasting footage of dead children to the public.
Mr. Cilluffo had been called before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee to talk about strategies for combatting online extremism. He presented a simple argument: Extremist videos often leverage footage of civilians killed by Israeli and U.S. troops. Why not show the world what happens to civilians – often Muslim civilians – when Islamic extremist groups carry out their attacks?
‘I don’t remember exactly [the committee’s] response,’ Mr. Cilluffo recalls. ‘I think we did have some silence. It’s a pretty provocative statement.
‘The idea behind that was to take off any filters and demonstrate that the consequences of terror have a real impact: People are killed. This is not a theoretical set of issues.’
The recommendation was part of a broader argument that if the U.S. government and its allies attempt to fight a war of ideas on their own, they’re going to lose.
‘Much of the solution comes from people with credibility in these constituencies, I don’t think that can come from Western governments,’ Mr. Cilluffo says. ‘We need people who are versed in the Koran, who can show how it’s being distorted. We need people who appreciate cultural nuances and norms. I think that governments have a role to play, but by no means the primary role.’
What Mr. Cilluffo was pitching was the construction of a rival narrative to the one circulated in the cyber- ummah – one that would separate out the reasonable grievances from the specious ones circulated by extremists, and be delivered by someone credible. But his pitch wasn’t an easy one to make, given that many Western governments, police and intelligence shops had long viewed the war on terror as just that – a war, which will be won or lost with old-fashioned techniques. Producing a rival message has been a low priority.
‘This is the tip of a much bigger issue,’ says Mr. Deisman of the National Security Working Group in Ottawa. ‘The reason why we haven’t matched the propaganda war is because we consider ourselves states characterized by tolerance and acceptance. For us to be saying what we stand for may be seen as infringing on someone else.’
In England, where the problem of ‘homegrown terrorism’ is far more urgent, Mr. Deisman points out the propaganda war has intensified: ‘England truly is an embattled country. The government is producing videos about what Englishness means,’ he says. ‘Can you imagine if we did that in Canada? People would be up in arms.’
But even on the traditional counterterrorism front, law-enforcement officials are coming up against a major wall: For the most part, the legal system was not designed for cyberspace, as you can see by looking at the key case of the murder-conspiracy trial of Younis Tsouli in England this summer. Mr. Tsouli was alleged to have lived a double life on the Internet under the name ‘Irhabi007’ ( Irhabi means terrorist in Arabic), distributing tools of extremism. He had become one of the most important terrorism conduits in the world, and his trial marked a watershed moment in combatting cyber-crime.
However, in May, that trial hit an embarrassing bump. Justice Peter Openshaw, the supervising judge, turned to prosecutors and said: ‘The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a website is.’ A university professor was quickly brought into court to explain the Internet.
In the case of child pornography, Mr. Deisman points out, there was a lag of about five to seven years before independent groups began forming for the purpose of shutting illegal sites down. The delay might be equally long with terrorism sites.
‘This stuff has happened so quickly,’ Mr. Deisman says. ‘Typically it takes a while to catch up.’
In Canada, the onus is largely on the public to point out such websites – such as the pro-Hamas one registered in Yarmouth – to the domain-name firms.
Register.com is based in New York but has offices in many places; the municipality and province provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in perks to convince it to locate operations in Yarmouth. And it has a very specific policy for dealing with cases where someone reports a domain being used for illegal purposes.
‘This policy includes reviewing the content to determine the validity of the report and, if applicable, disabling the domain and notifying the customer of the reason for this action,’ says Wendy Kennedy, the firm’s manager of public relations and customer marketing. ‘At times, Register.com has also reached out to law enforcement to report suspicious activity.’
But the servers in Yarmouth are by no means the only ones in Canada where terrorist-related content may be residing. Until a few weeks ago, the website for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the most extensive and regularly updated of its kind, was registered to a building near downtown Toronto. The address belongs to Contactprivacy, the anonymous-registration arm of Canadian domain-name provider Tucows Inc.
After its web-hosting service in Germany was alerted to the Maghreb site and pulled the plug earlier this year, Tucows followed suit. But in an environment where similar sites are popping up daily, it was a small victory.
It has been seven years now since Abu Huthayfa sent a memo to Osama bin Laden extolling the virtues of an online public-relations strategy. Their opponents have yet to catch up.
‘We have been slow to recognize that we have to go beyond tactics and recognize there’s a war of ideas,’ says Mr. Cilluffo. ‘I believe there’s only one side that has stepped up to the battlefield, and it’s not us.’
Source: www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070817.wyarmouth18/BNStory/National/home
Iran Hangs 30 Over ‘US Plots’ (back)
August 19, 2007
Iran has hanged up to 30 people in the past month amid a clampdown prompted by alleged United States-backed plots to topple the regime, the British Observer newspaper has revealed.
Many executions have been carried out in public in an apparent bid to create a climate of intimidation while sending out uncompromising signals to the West. Opposition sources say at least three of the dead were political activists, contradicting government insistence that it is targeting ‘thugs’ and dangerous criminals.
The executions have coincided with a crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a ‘soft revolution’ with US support.
The most high-profile recent executions involved Majid Kavousifar (28) and his nephew, Hossein Kavousifar (24), hanged for the murder of a hard-line judge, Hassan Moghaddas, a man notorious for jailing political dissidents. They were hanged from cranes and hoisted high above one of Tehran’s busiest thoroughfares.
The spectacle, the first public executions in Tehran for five years, took place outside the Judiciary Department headquarters where Moghaddas was murdered. But the location, near many office blocks and the Australian and Japanese embassies, meant they were seen by many middle-class Iranians who would not normally witness such events.
The previous day, seven men were publicly executed in the north-eastern city of Masshad, including five said to be guilty of ‘rape, kidnapping, theft and committing indecent acts’. Another two were hanged separately for raping and robbing a young woman. The executions were also shown live on state television.
Dramatic Increase
Public hangings are normally carried out sparingly in Iran and reserved for cases that have provoked public outrage, such as serial murders or child killings.
Human rights organisations say the rising death toll has brought the number of prisoners executed this year to about 150, compared with 177 in 2006, a dramatic increase in capital punishment since the country’s radical President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took office two years ago.
The executions come after the government launched a campaign targeting murderers, sex offenders, drug traffickers and others cast as a threat to ‘social security’. It resulted in a wave of arrests after police raided working-class neighbourhoods in Tehran and other cities. Those arrested were paraded in public, often in humiliating poses.
The government has also sought to publicise executions conducted behind closed doors. Last month, state television broadcast footage of 12 condemned men as they were about to be hanged in Tehran’s Evin prison. The authorities said they had been guilty of ‘rape, sodomy and assault and battery’. Opposition sources say at least three were political activists, though they have not disclosed their identities. Asiran, a government website, dismissed the claims as ‘lies’.
International gay rights campaigners have also said that homosexual men were among the executed. Homosexuality is a capital offence in Iran, along with adultery, espionage, armed robbery, drug trafficking and apostasy.
Worst Record
Iran has long been one of the world’s most prolific exponents of the death penalty and ranks second only to China in the number of executions. Human rights groups say it has the world’s worst record for executions for crimes committed when the defendant was under 18.
However, there have been signs of official disquiet over the recent trend. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the relatively moderate judiciary chief, has made an apparent protest by openly criticising Ahmadinejad’s government on a range of issues. He also signalled displeasure with the repressive climate by ordering officials to investigate claims that student activists were tortured during a recent detention in Evin Prison.
Shahroudi is believed to have been unhappy over the stoning to death last month of a man convicted of adultery after he had ordered a stay of execution.
However, the spate of executions seems likely to continue. Tehran’s hard-line chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, has announced that he is seeking the death penalty against 17 ‘hooligans’.
Source: www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/&articleid=316927&referrer=RSS
Faith, Charity and the Money Trail to Pakistan’s Islamist Militants (back)
August 21, 2007
Lolling on a ragged carpet in his cupboard-sized shop in the heart of old Peshawar, Wahhab the money-changer beckoned customers with a sly smile. ‘Best rate,’ he said, fingering a fat wad of banknotes over a low glass counter.
The portly man also offered another, more discreet, service: black market money transfers, any amount, to anywhere, in almost no time. Whipping out a calculator and a mobile phone, he explained how it worked.
‘You give me the money; I call my contact in London,’ he said. ‘Then in one hour your friend can go and collect the money - guaranteed.’
Quick, cheap and paperless, the age-old hawala money transfer is thriving in Pakistan. Millions of emigrants use it to remit their wages to families back home. But hawala is also favoured by drug smugglers, corrupt officials, and the financiers of militant Islam.
Foreign money is fuelling the tide of Islamist violence washing across northern Pakistan, according to diplomats, analysts and money laundering experts. Pakistan’s notoriously lax financial system helps them to move the money into the country.
Donors in petrodollar-rich Gulf countries, the US and Europe send donations - anything from a few thousand dollars to several million, said Seth Jones of the Washington-based Rand Corporation. ‘Without significant funding from abroad, especially the Gulf states, we would be nowhere near the current level of Islamist militancy,’ he said. ‘We’re talking about tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.’
President Pervez Musharraf is coming under fresh pressure to crack down on the flow. Last month’s Red Mosque siege in Islamabad raised questions about how a madrasa with no apparent source of income could afford to feed up to 6,000 students - and still have money to build a small arsenal of weapons.
Karachi is reputedly a hub of Taliban and Islamist financing. Last month Mariane Pearl, widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Karachi in 2002, launched a court action against a bank she alleges helped her husband’s killers.
On August 2 the US undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, called for new laws. ‘There’s a lot of financing, money that gets laundered through banks that support these terrorist groups. We’ve asked the Pakistani government to take stronger measures,’ he said.
But halting the flow of militant money is a complex - some say impossible - task. In Pakistan law enforcement is weak and militant money is often disguised as a religious donation - thrusting investigators into a sensitive area at the heart of Islam.
The government has already outlawed hawala, the system that Osama bin Laden used to transfer funds between Pakistan and Dubai, according to the 9/11 Commission. But police are powerless to stop it in the tribal belt, where the Taliban is strongest, and have shown little enthusiasm for crackdowns in major cities such as Peshawar.
Many militant donations are disguised as zakat, the annual Muslim charity tax, and channelled through a shadowy nexus of radical mosques, madaris (madrasas) and charities.
In Pakistan zakat - one of the five pillars of Islam - is levied by the state. But in oil-rich Gulf States Muslims also send zakat abroad - an estimated £50m a year from Saudi Arabia. That money has helped fund an explosion of mosques and madaris in Pakistan; some also ends up in the coffers of militant groups.
‘There’s a lot of people in the Gulf, particularly the rich merchant class, who feel a religious obligation to fund charities. They don’t think too hard about where it goes,’ said Robert Baer, an ex-CIA agent and Middle East expert.
The Saudi money is most visible in North West Frontier Province. In Peshawar the number of madaris has increased from 13 in 1980 to more than 150 today, according to one study. One of the most recent is Jamia Asaria, a sprawling complex amid the green maize fields on the city outskirts.
Built last year, the £500,000 Jamia Asaria is among the best madaris in Pakistan. Its multi-storey classrooms, dormitories, medical centre and bright, bejewelled mosque can cater for 1,200 students. Yet annual fees are just £16 - one-tenth of the real cost - thanks to the generosity of donors in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. ‘We are very grateful to them,’ said administrator Majid Khan.
Jamia Asaria follows the Ahle Hadith school of Islamic thought - sexes are strictly segregated, and it has links to schools in Saudi Arabia. Mr Khan stressed it had no links with militancy - but admitted there had been offers.
One time the charity Jamaat ud Dawa, which the US branded a ‘terrorist entity’ last year, offered a fleet of free vehicles, he said. Another time ‘some wealthy Saudis said that if we became involved in political activities, they would fund it’. In both instances the school refused. ‘We told them this is an educational institution and we want it to remain like that,’ he said.
Four years ago, under US pressure, the Saudi government started regulating zakat donations and charities. But the laws controversially exempted groups such as the International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO), a charity founded by Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, which still has a large office in Pakistan.
At its Islamabad HQ director Muhammad Javed said IIRO gave relief to victims of the Kashmir earthquake and Baluchistan floods, and ran two orphanages. He insisted all operations were ‘entirely transparent’ but referred further queries to the Saudi embassy.
Militant funding also comes from donors in the UK, said Tahseen Ullah Khan of the National Research and Development Foundation, a Peshawar-based NGO that promotes madrasa reform. ‘If I go to the UK as a cleric and tell people that Islam is under attack, I can come back with lot of funding.’
The holy month of Ramadan, which starts in mid September this year, is the main fundraising season. ‘Muslims abroad need to be educated. They think their money is going for Allah. But they should check if their money is going to a poor student or to buy guns,’ he said.
Western diplomats are getting impatient with Gen Musharraf’s promises of tighter regulation. An anti-money laundering law first pledged seven years ago is still languishing in parliament.
Diplomats suspect that powerful vested interests, possibly linked to official corruption or drug smuggling, are stalling the law. ‘This needs commitment at the highest level but it doesn’t seem to be there,’ said one.
The government bristles at suggestions it is not doing enough. ‘We are making concerted efforts but we will do it in our own national interest,’ admonished foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri. The State Bank of Pakistan recently set up a financial monitoring team.
Some experts say that laws and regulations alone will never be enough. Militants are adapting, pushing their money through increasingly obscure - or mainstream - channels. Abu Zubeida, an al-Qaida operative arrested in Pakistan in 2002, used to withdraw his funds from accounts in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait through ATM machines.
Mr Baer, the former CIA agent, said it was ‘plain nutty’ to try and regulate something like zakat. ‘Some people use the money for Qur’ans, others for peroxide bombs. It’s just impossible to make it accountable,’ he said.
Source: www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2152802,00.html
al-Qaeda Tries YouTube to Raise Funds, Recruits (back)
August 21, 2007
al-Qaida-linked extremists in the Philippines have turned to the wildly popular video-sharing website YouTube in an apparent attempt to raise cash and recruits, media reported Tuesday.
For the first time, two video clips from the Abu Sayyaf group, responsible for some of the worst terror attacks in the Philippines, have been posted on the site.
Philippine military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Bartolome Bacarro said the clips were taken from a one-hour video that was distributed throughout the Arabic-speaking jihadist community.
He said the speakers used Arabic apparently to appeal to wealthy would-be benefactors from the Middle East.
The armed forces, which is mounting a bloody major offensive against Abu Sayyaf strongholds on the southern islands of Jolo and Basilan, dismissed the YouTube posting as an ‘act of desperation.’
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-08/21/content_6578335.htm