Islamist Wave 2013 - Overview & Updates

10 posts

Angocachi
When people are fighting to hold onto their symbols and have to beg and bitch just to get permission from the authorities to display their 'divisive flag' then they have lost.

Ache's separatism was snuffed out in the Tsunami. They needed government aid, the government was no longer so overbearingly secular, and the movement quickly faded. This flag ordeal is comparable to the bickering and fiddling over the stars and bars of the old confederacy being hoisted in the nowadays.

Here's an Indonesia article by Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Back...-Islamist-politics-and-democracy-in-Indonesia

"When I moved to Indonesia in 1993, the Indonesian media and political spheres were closed shops. There were only three legal political parties and the media, particularly broadcast media, were tightly controlled. The scenes around me now, in this corner of the archipelago, reveal just how much the nation has transformed itself.

Twenty years ago, nightly news reports largely consisted of long, loving accounts of the latest factory opening by President Soeharto, the self-styled "father of Indonesian development" (the old 50,000 rupiah note carried a beaming Soeharto with this title beneath ), followed by an account of the latest foreign dignitary he received and then, perhaps, sports.
There were red lines everywhere for reporters and film and television producers. Most important was to never, ever discuss in a critical tone the 1965 coup that brought him to power and the anti-Communist purge that followed, leaving an estimated 500,000 dead. There was an official narrative that everyone had to adhere to: Evil communists tried to take over and brave young Soeharto saved the day, pushing the first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, from power for having unsavory friends. End of story. Or else.

It wasn't until 2000, two years after Soeharto was pushed from power, that the mawkish 1983 romance "The Year of Living Dangerously ," set amid Indonesia's 1965 turmoil, was allowed to be shown here , with Indonesians in the audience twittering at the accents of the Filipino actors when they spoke Indonesian.

Even almost 30 years later, Soeharto's regime still played masterfully with the fear and paranoia generated by the national tragedy of 1965. In that time, he built an order (which he called the "New Order") based on rigid political control. In the years after taking power he forced Indonesia's existing political parties into two super-parties that, for decades, represented the loyal (very, very, very loyal) opposition: the United Development Party (PPP) for Islamist political groups and the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) for more secular nationalist ones.
And then there was the new party to rule them all: His Golkar, an acronym that means "Functional Groups."

In the early 1990s, the protest movement that would help galvanize opinion against Soeharto in 1998 was being born, though no one really understood it back then. It was much like Egypt when I arrived there a decade ago: activists hounded by the state, organizing, seeking to make links to labor unions, often getting their heads kicked in by the police or the military in what seemed like a hopeless cause.

In 1993, Soeharto made one of his great miscalculations. Though he had show-elections every five years, which his government called "festivals of democracy," both PDI and PPP were allowed some scraps of parliamentary representation as rewards for good behavior. At the time, some members of the PDI, however, were pushing to engage politics in a real way, and Soeharto's government sought to directly control the election of a new party leader. However, the PDI succeeded in naming Megawati Sukarnoputri , Sukarno's daughter, as the head of the party.
While she had neither political skills nor governing ability of her own, a group of bright political operators seeking political change gathered around her, and were important players when the curtain came down on Soeharto's 32-year reign. Megawati ended up Indonesia's first post-Soeharto vice president and its second president, in a political era in which the country exploded from just three parties to over 100.

Today, Indonesia's raucous political environment is a stunning change from a decade ago. South Maluku , of which Ambon is the capital, is gearing up for gubernatorial elections (under Soeharto, all local politicians down to the district level were appointed by Jakarta ) and the island is awash in political posters and canvassers. Judging from a few days traveling in the province, there are at least five candidates with some money behind them, and the bottoms of their billboards show the support they've aligned in each case from dozens of national parties.
Speaking to an old friend from Indonesia recently, who describes himself as a "glass half-empty guy," he nevertheless said direct local elections and a commitment to the political process has been one of the great successes of Indonesia since Soeharto. Sure, crooks often get into office, "but they end up getting voted out."

Indonesia's next big "festival of democracy" (this time, a real one) is scheduled for next year. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is being term-limited from office, and the jockeying to replace him has already begun.

The old three parties have had mixed fortunes in the years since democracy came to Indonesia. The PDI (which came to be known as the PDI-P, or " Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle ") leads the opposition in parliament, with about 17 percent of the seats. Golkar, which has parlayed backing from big businesses and years of organization into ongoing support, is the junior partner in the governing coalition with about 19 percent of the seats. And the PPP? A shadow of their former selves, with 7 percent of the seats in parliament.
But I switched on the TV here two nights ago before going to bed, and came across the PPP's 40th anniversary rally in Surabaya , East Java . Having spent much of the past decade in the Middle East , and having covered the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Indonesia, I was transfixed. A crowd of thousands of enthusiastic young Indonesians, the girls in headscarves, were head-banging to the heavy metal band Jamrud, which was headlining a party for an avowedly Islamist political group.

With apologies to Mark Levine , who wrote an excellent book on the alternative music scene in the Arab world called " Heavy Metal Islam ," this was the real thing. I wish I could find an online video of the show. But though its absent the PPP's green flag, with the Kabbah in Mecca in the middle waving above the music, this is what Jamrud sounds like: (go to link for video)

And it reminded me that a unique political culture is evolving here that can consistently confound expectations and preconceptions"
Angocachi
Roland Thomas777 Byssus Stubby CLAMOR O'Zebedee niccolo and donkey

In England,

"As part of Islam Awareness Week, the University of Leicester recently hosted a talk entitled “Does God Exist?” by Hamza Tzortzis , a controversial lecturer known for his anti-Semitism, homophobia and hostility toward democracy. As students arrived at the venue, they saw handwritten signs inviting “brothers” and “sisters” to use separate entrances . During the talk, the men sat on one side, the women on the other.

The university is now conducting an inquiry to determine whether male and female students were coerced into sitting apart, a practice it prohibits. Tzortzis’ spokesman claims the signs were meant to “ facilitate ” gender segregation, not enforce it. But even this kind of facilitation would be excessive: Although gender segregation is widely practiced in the Muslim world, it is not required of Muslims in public spaces. Men and women jointly perform the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca.

Thus the controversy at the University of Leicester is stark evidence that radical Islamist groups have more and more clout on campuses — and that academic authorities are struggling to figure how to react.

Universities have shied away from curtailing the activities of such groups for fear that they might appear to be stifling free speech and freedom of religion. But the issue of gender segregation offers them an unlikely opportunity to push back against extremist values because it directly conflicts with school policies on equality between the sexes.

Earlier in March, University College London banned the Islamic Education and Research Academy, an organization that promotes Islam through public events, for enforcing gender segregation at a debate (it, too, featured Tzortzis). And the University of East London canceled an event organized by a Muslim students’ society that advertised segregated seating. (Student organizations had also complained that the invited speakers were homophobic.)

But cracking down on gender segregation will not be enough given how organized and deeply entrenched Islamist groups are. The watchdog group Student Rights counted 150 appearances by extremists on British university campuses in 2012. Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an organization that claims it is “ dangerous ” for Muslims to integrate into Western societies, was involved in 6 percent of the 214 campus events monitored by Student Rights.

In February, during the annual Pakistan Future Leaders’ Conference at Oxford, which brought together student delegates from more than 40 colleges, a Pakistani friend who is on a fellowship at the university joined a panel discussion on Pakistani politics. During the debate, he was taken aback to hear some participants champion the role of religion in state affairs and call for the revival of an Islamic caliphate. “The only revolution that can work is one brought through Shariah law,” one participant said. Another speaker dismissed the Pakistani Constitution as “human law” that is irrelevant in the face of “divine law.”

It took my friend some time, and several conversations with pro-democracy students who recognized them, to understand that his fellow speakers were Hizb-ut-Tahrir activists. “Their interventions were meticulously planned and very disconcerting,” he told me. “It’s clear that they’re very committed to their cause.”"

Islamism is increasingly the choice of Western Muslim university students. They used to walk around with Hamas hats and protested Olmert's visit to the University of Chicago when I was on campus.

Here's the speaker, Hamza Andreas Tzortzis. He's an ethnic Greek convert from a Secular Humanist upbringing; http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/
Angocachi
Roland niccolo and donkey Thomas777 Stubby President Camacho

I'm 50-some pages into Scheuer's biography on Osama Bin Laden. Some notes that standout in my mind, because I had either been unaware of it or thought otherwise;

- Osama was Ayman Al Zawahiri's mentor and transformative figure and not the other way around. It's often been stated that Zawahiri was the brains behind Bin Laden, but this misconception was produced by Saud to try and pin Al Qaeda on an Egyptian rather than an Arabian millionaire. I'll cite loosely from an awesome list Scheuer gives to drive home the point that OBL was the brains, and Zawahiri a sidekick. Zawahiri wanted to overthrow the Egyptian government and march on Jerusalem, and this was his only goal before joining Bin Laden. He believed Jihadists should strike the near enemy, until Osama convinced him the prerequisite of striking the foreigners behind the anti-Islamic regimes. He believed in small secret organization rather than a highly public and 'too large to count the members of' organization until he met Bin Laden. Zawahiri believed they could only topple the secularist regimes by military coups, until Bin Laden convinced him of insurgency. Zawahiri was bordering on Takfirism before Bin Laden got a hold of him. Zawahiri was against publicity until Bin Laden showed him the importance of the media and spotlight. Zawahiri was a Qutbi until Bin Laden took him in. Zawahiri's EIJ failed and was broke, Bin Laden dusted him off and told him that the US was the force behind the Egyptian government and turned his focus on America.

It's true that Zawahiri is an intellectual, but Osama Bin Laden was a superb thinker as well. Al Qaeda was Bin Laden's vision, and it was Zawahiri who was shaped by him, not the other way around.

- Osama's mother may have been an Allawite or had Allawites in her family, Scheuer doesn't know but he's heard the rumors and the reasons behind them are intriguing.

- Osama's idols were Khalid Bin Walid, Nur Al Din, Saladin, and Ibn Taymiyyah.

- Osama went to an elite school as a boy. Compared to the brilliant students he attended class with he was average, but compared to the general populace he was a 1 in 50 student, according to his teacher.

- Osama was not a Qutbi or Takfiri. He did not believe in Qutbi's big ideas; that the Ummah had fallen back into paganism, that bad Muslims should be declared non-Muslims and fought, that Jihad is an offensive duty and the non-Muslim world had to be conquered. Osama wasn't about restoring Muslims to a pure Islam or eliminating heretics and non-fundamentalists. He wasn't about subjugating infidels, and he believed Jihad must be defensive.

- He's never advocated killing the Saudi family and in fact has admired a handful of them. Rather, he wanted to depose them and put them on trial... at last. There's no indication that he wanted to lynch them or have a shoot out with them, as the regime in Libya met its end.

- He was a Spartan and Survivalist, and believed a man should not provide comforts and luxuries for himself lest he grow lazy and cowardly. He shunned air conditioning and cold water, wanted to live as basic a life as possible. It wasn't a religious tenet, just a personal ethic.

- Like his father, he didn't believe in borders between Muslim countries. He was a true pan-Islamist.

- Scheuer shits on a great number of other books, articles, public statements and films on OBL and AQ. He laments the knuckle-dragging demonization of OBL, poorly sourced accounts that rely on OBL's enemies to tell his story, and so on. He rejects Lawrence Wright's 'The Looming Tower" as naive and inaccurate, but still worth a look.

On the other hand, Scheur despises the Neoconservative commentators; Douglas Feith, Bernard Lewis, Charles Krauthammer, George Weigel, John Bolton, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Victor Hansen Davis. The Weekly Standard, Wallstreet Journal, Commentary, National Review, Frontpagemagazine and Powerline are all lying about Al Qaeda, and they're trying to divert public attention away from American foreign policy, especially toward Israel... Scheuer says.

Scheur gives his approval to Peter Bergen, Abdel Bari Atwan, Steve Coll, and Brynjar Lia.

The book is damn good.


In the world of Jihad, the fields haven't changed from the map I first posted. None of the current hot spots have diminished and no new fronts have been opened.

Other than Al Nusra doing very well in Syria, the biggest news is the Islamist uprising in Bangladesh.


[​IMG] Islamist getting mopped, but keep coming

[​IMG] Police getting frustrated

[​IMG] Islamist rally

[​IMG] supporters of the Islamist party pray in Dhaka


"A fresh outbreak of violence in Bangladesh followed a tribunal that sentenced a top Islamist opposition party politician to death. But those radical Islamist groups currently challenging the government, experts say, pose a wide regional threat.
Clashes were reported in Dhaka, Rajshahi, Chittagong and several other major Bangladeshi cities, the Times of India reports.
Activists of the Jamaat-e-Islami party have been hurling stones and handmade bombs at security forces, who were deployed in great numbers in anticipation of a new wave of protests after the hearing.
The verdict against Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, the top member of Jamaat-e-Islami, was the fourth from Bangladesh's war crimes tribunals since January.
Over the last week at least 38 people have been killed, according to official estimates, while the opposition says government forces killed hundreds during the protests on Monday alone.
Liberation war tribunal

The recent surge in Islamic related clashes intensified following the creation of a tribunal by the Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The court was introduced to bring to justice to those who were accused of committing atrocities during the war for independence and a civil war of 1971.
Since then, Jamaat-e-Islami, Islamist political party activists have increased their confrontation with the government forces across the country with many hundreds of deaths and mass destruction of public property with the aim of overthrowing Hasina’s government. Historically, Jamaat opposed Bangladeshi independence from Pakistan.
On February 28th the tribunal announced a death by hanging sentence for Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, one of the leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami, for the war crimes over 40 years ago. By March, three Jamaat leaders had been convicted of crimes.
At least seven more verdicts are expected to be announced in the coming months. The high profile cases include Jamaat’s current leader, Motiur Rahman Nizami, as well as the party’s head in 1971, Ghulam Azam. If the defendants are found guilty, then top leadership of the Jamaat will be eliminated.
Following deadly Monday’s clashes, the police indicted 194 Hefajat-e-Islam activists with various crimes.
It is also this group that since 2011, possibly empowered by the Arab Spring protests across the wider Muslim world, led violent demonstrations against the women's equal rights policy of the government.
In 2013 this group warned the government with a 13-point charter, demanding the government to introduce a new blasphemy law, reinstate the role of Allah in the constitution, make Islamic education mandatory and ban women from mixing with men. Bangladesh has rejected the Hefajat-e-Islam demands.
Opposition terror links

One of the organizers of the latest violence is Maulana Habibur Rahman who claimed to have been to Afghanistan in 1988 and revealed his involvement with Osama Bin Laden and another banned Islamist militant organization Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami most active in South Asian countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh and India since the early 1990s.
BNP’s coalition also includes an Islamist party, the Islamiya Okiyya Jote (IOJ) which is rumored to have connections with Al-Qaeda after some of its members fled to Bangladesh in the aftermath of US war in Afghanistan.
Other groups linked with Al-Qaeda are also active on the ground in Bangladesh. Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) is said to be active in the country’s north-western region. The Government of Bangladesh has classified JMJB as a terrorist organization.
Regional threat

All of these militant elements inside the country pose not only a domestic security threat but also a regional danger, especially with the ties to Pakistan and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Fundamentalist activism in Bangladesh flourished in 2001 after a four party coalition led by the center-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party and including two fundamentalist parties - Jamaat-e-Islami and the Islamic Oikya Jote rose to temporary power.
“Jamaat and Islamic Oikya Jote are not just fundamentalist organizations. They support and have links with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and both parties have supported the terrorist activities,” writes Sudha Ramachandran from the worldsecuritynetwork.com.
The BNP led government reign coincided with the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the loss of training camps in Pakistan.
“Their bases were disrupted by counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan, so al-Qaeda fighters were forced to look for new nests. Bangladesh emerged as an attractive sanctuary,” Ramachandran writes.
“These fundamentalist right wingers who oppose the independence of Bangladesh conspired from the outset of the country. They could not reconcile with the fact that with the demise of Pakistan they never accepted the secular identity of Bangladesh,” Bidit Dey from the University of Northumbria told RT.
In the past, Bangladeshi nationals have been linked to terrorist schemes abroad. In October of 2012 a Bangladeshi man was arrested for allegedly trying to blow up the United States Federal Reserve building in New York City. In 2010 British citizens of Bangladeshi origin were arrested in the United Kingdom for plotting to attack during the Christmas holiday season.
The Islamist conglomerate in the country are now in opposition of Hasina government as her Awami League official stands has had a vision of freedom and democracy.
“They are trying to convert it to another state like Pakistan. They are trying to make it an ungoverned state by creating anarchy,” Dey says.
Today Muslims in Bangladesh account for approximately 148.6 million people, some 90 percent of the total population, so the recent Muslim driven protest in Bangladesh can also be attributed to self-identity.
“The whole Muslim identity question affects Muslims much further afield as well. It has surfaced in Indonesia, and it has become an issue in the Middle East since the Arab revolts of 2011,” Dr Carool Kersten, lecturer in Islamic Studies at King’s College in London told RT."
http://rt.com/news/bangladesh-islamic-protests-threat-036/
"The Bangladeshi Islamist group Hefajat-e-Islam has demanded stricter blasphemy laws and the segregation of sexes in public. It is bringing followers onto the streets to push the agenda of a more Islamic Bangladesh.
The driving force behind the demonstrations against female Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government is the Islamist Hefajat-e-Islam group, which until recently has attracted little public attention.
The organization is led by Shah Ahmed Shafi, who claims his organization is apolitical. Its aim, he says, is instead to prevent Islam from being "undermined." The group wants to enforce a 13-point radical program. Hefajat wants tougher laws against blasphemy, the death penalty for so-called atheist bloggers, and stricter segregation of sexes in public places. The organization demands "special protection" of Islam and for references to Allah to be returned to the constitution. Women, according to Hefajat, should not be permitted to work outside the home.
Another Afghanistan in making?
Such demands are, of course, not compatible with the liberal constitution of Bangladesh. The director of the Islam Foundation in Dhaka, Shamim Mohammed Afjal, rejects the demands of the group. "Out of these 13 demands, some are Islamic, but their interpretation is flawed. Furthermore, Islam does not support violence."
Sufia Akhtar, a spokesperson for the women's organization Mahila Parishad and a women's rights activist, told the media that the Bangladeshi women would not permit the Islamists to "Talibanize" Bangladesh. "Why should we allow Bangladesh to become another Afghanistan?" said Akhtar.
The fear is understandable .
Maulana Habibur Rahmen, one of the Hefajat leaders, runs a madrassa in Sylhet. He boasts of his role in the 1980s Afghan war and his support to the former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. His beliefs have earned him respect from the Hefajat followers, especially from students and teachers of the madrassas.
Hefajat was first noticed in 2010 as one of the new Islamist organizations which opposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's secular policies. In 2011, Hefajat took to the streets to protest against the gender equality policies of the government.
'Supporting the opposition'
Observers believe that the reason Hefajat has gained so much popularity is because another Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has been literally paralyzed by the verdicts of the war crimes tribunal, and is now putting its weight behind Hefajat. Some of the Jamaat leaders are either charged by the tribunal for their role during Bangladesh's war of independence from Pakistan in 1971. Others have disappeared. The Jamaat leaders are accused of genocide and rape during the war of independence. The Pakistan-backed militias are said to have raped more than 200,000 women during the war. In January, the tribunal ordered its first death sentences.
Bangladesh's biggest opposition party, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), is supporting protests against the government. The BNP, led by Former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, views the war crimes trial as a process initiated by the government. It is apparently interested in using the Islamists' protests to gain political advantage because Prime Minister Hasina has refused to stop the war crimes trial before the scheduled parliamentary elections and is also not prepared to put in place an interim government similar to one set up in 2007.
Last Sunday, the Islamists brought Dhaka to a standstill. It is estimated that up to 200,000 protesters blocked the main roads of the capital and shouted "death to all atheists." More than 150 people have officially died since protests began in January.
Dr. Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain, a leading BNP official, believes the real number of dead is higher. Speaking to DW, he holds the government accountable. "The way that the government has killed hundreds of people in the night, disposing of their bodies wherever, is something that no modern society can accept. I can’t support all of Hafazat’s demands, but I would not say that I don’t support them (generally)."
Hefazat resorted to extreme violence against the supporters of the ruling party as well as students and liberal-minded Bangladeshis who, in a series of counter-demonstrations at the centrally located Shahbag Square in Dhaka, demanded the death penalty for those Islamist leaders accused of war crimes. Bloggers involved in the protests were specifically targeted by the Islamists. Several were murdered in the streets.
The Islamists, in return, demanded the death penalty for bloggers, who they claimed were atheists.
Charges against the madrassas
To prevent further escalation the government was forced to arrest several bloggers. The Secretary General of the ruling Awami League and prime ministerial advisor, Mahbubul Alam Hanif, accepts this is a concession to the Islamists: "We have accepted some demands, but some we cannot accept. If we were to accept all demands that would mean turning our country into another Afghanistan. We are now going to put an end to all Hefajat activities."
The police have now filed charges against nearly 200 Hefajat followers. The Minister of Information, Hasanul Haque Inu, accused the heads of the madrassas of preparing their students for "terrorist activities" and sending them to the streets to protest against the government.
International human rights organizations and journalists have meanwhile called on the government to respect freedom of expression and free the bloggers. But the violence continues to escalate. Other demonstrations are planned."
http://www.dw.de/bangladeshi-islamists-are-gaining-ground/a-16798966
Thomas777
Bin Laden was an anti-modernist I believe - he told Mullah Omar that Afghanistan was important because the conditions there (and the simplehearted piety of the Pashtun people) allowed Islam to thrive in ways that it could not in more developed and ''normal'' operational theaters. Bin Laden also would frequently say that the caves and mountains (like Tora Bora) reminded him of his ancestral home in Yemen - and both were similar to the caves that the Prophet took to when he was blessed with revelatory visions.

Osama would watch television news a lot because as a man leading a war effort, he had to stay abreast of information and utilize propaganda to his advantage, but he otherwise disdained media and viewed the use and consumption of it as decadent and un-Islamic. It was noted that the only modern things he used/owned were televisions and his AK-47, as these things were both essential instruments of war.
Angocachi
He was a rustic, in idea, and moved from the city complaining that it was too crowded and busy. He spent time in the mountains between Syria and Turkey. When he set to creating Al Qaeda, he stated their option was Yemen or Afghanistan because the people in both were armed, zealous, rural, and the terrain was mountainous and ungoverned.
Thomas777

RE: Defensive Jihad, Scheuer's book is also important b/c it fleshes out how the 1990s really radicalized Salafis (Osama first among them) on grounds of what was happening in the Balkans and in occupied Palestine.

The Chetniks were doing deplorable things to Bosnian Moslems; and Milosovich actually stipulated to these facts rather candidly and without prompting. Concomitant with this catalyst for reaction, Israel (in the wake of Likud ascendancy post-Rabin) was engaging in an aggressive campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians of the sort not really experienced since the completion of the Camp David Accords. Osama's statement to the House of Saud, the Grand Mufti, and the United States was that 1) Islamic blood is cheap, 2) Chetniks and Jews are murdering Moslems with impunity, 3) When Islamic peoples defend themselves, they're accused of ''terrorism'', unless they're attacking targets America/Saud/Israel approves of (such as Soviet and Afghan communists).

These developments also largely neutralized sympathy for Takfiri militias as well - doctrinal objections notwithstanding, men who were calling for Sectarian violence were sabotaging the ability of Dar Al Islam to defend itself from what amounted to a massive assault by very powerful elements.

Byssus

So, Angocachi , when will you be adding some personal updates to this thread?

Angocachi

More info bits from Scheuer's Osama Bin Laden biography

- OBL never had kidney disease or Marfan's Syndrome, but AQ did use the kidney disease myth to lure CIA agents to their deaths.

- OBL never took credit for himself or Arabs for the Afghan defeat of the Soviets, but put the victory squarely on the Afghans. He thanked them only for giving him and his men guerrilla experience, which he had plenty.

- OBL gave a great deal in construction and other financial aid to Afghanistan and Sudan when they hosted him. He built a lot of roads and buildings.

- The US did not abandon Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal but was working very hard to install a secularist neomarxist government that excluded the Islamists who fought in the 80's.

- The Taliban was very happy to have him and it was only a few dissident elements within the Taliban that resented him. The Taliban doesn't blame OBL for the American war in Afghanistan, and perceive that they were at war with the US long before 9/11.

- OBL split with the Saudi Royalty when he returned to the KSA and he found them supporting a Marxist government in Yemen (his maternal root country) rather than allowing him and other Islamists to topple it. The last straw was when the military raided his property and disarmed him and his men.

- Sudan's Islamist leader Turabi, according to Scheuer, invited OBL only to use him for his money and betrayed him deeply, seizing the bulk of his assets in the Sudan and forcing him to flee to Afghanistan.

- OBL warned a long time in advance that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait and if he wasn't stopped, he would invade Saudi Arabia right after. He wanted to fight Saddam but the Sauds forbid him from it and relied on the US to evict Iraq from Kuwait. OBL took this as final proof that Saud was an American agent regime.

- OBL decried and hated all the government sponsored clerics in Saudi Arabia for being anti-Islamic mouth pieces of the Saudi royalty.

-OBL hated the Saudi royal family for arresting and suppressing Islamists in the KSA. He hated them for abusing the treasury of the Arabian people. He hated them for their involvement with the UN and supporting Israel over Palestine.

-OBL hated Hamas and Fatah's secular leadership but loved their Jihadist Mujahideen. He had a plan to enter the Palestinian front by setting up in Gaza and pulling true Islamists from Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad ranks into Al Qaeda. Hamas responded to this by stomping on every trace of Palestinian AQ it could sniff out, but according to Scheuer it's worked and many of Palestine's sincerest Islamists have become Al Qaeda covertly, forming a kind of Salafi infiltration of Palestine's militant society.

- The Saudi royal family often tried to assassinate OBL. Takfiris also tried to assassinate him.

-Zarqawi nearly ruined AQ by refusing orders from central. He was a brilliant terrorist but could not conform to AQ's global strategy. Scheuer says the US did AQ a great favor by killing him so that they could replace him with a Zawahiri loyalist.

- OBL originally intended AQ t0 enter Jihadi fronts around the world and act as supplements to indigenous Islamist insurgents, as the Arab Jihadists acted as supplements to the Afghan Mujahideen and later the Taliban. They get all awkward when the AQ supplement grows into the strongest wing of the insurgency and is compelled to begin administering territory under its dominion (by shariah courts of course). This is AQ's biggest challenge now, since it has managed to take hold in several countries and fight winning campaigns, it needs to learn how to make the transition to governance as the Viet Minh did in North Vietnam.

- Scheuer vomits on AQ conspiracy theories, that it doesn't exist or that it's a CIA false flag. He goes on to dismiss as retarded any explanation of AQ's motives in attacking the US or any country on the basis of culture war or whatever aside from it's their obligation as Muslims to defend Muslims from aggression. They're attacking the US because of American foreign policies; wars, sanctions, support for secularist despots, etc in the Muslim world and a good Muslim can't ignore this.... period.

Angocachi
Thomas777 Roland Stubby President Camacho niccolo and donkey Broseph Bronze Age Pervert Apocales

Algeria is teetering,

Here's an article from a CFR Jew worried about Algeria.

'As the “Arab Spring” swept the fake republics of North Africa–Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt–Algeria seemed immune. Media reports dwelled on its stability (see this 2011 BBC and this 2012 Deutsche Welle story).

The question now is whether that perception is correct.

There was one burst of violence this year, the January 16 terrorist seizure of a natural gas facility that ultimately left at least 38 civilians and 29 terrorists dead after a four-day siege. But now there is more trouble: President Bouteflika appears to have had a stroke and has not been seen in public in over a month. The government claims he is recovering well, but there is no evidence to support that claim. As France 24 put it, “When he was appointed foreign minister in 1963 after Algeria won its independence from France, the 26-year-old Bouteflika cut a dashing, energetic picture as the world’s youngest foreign minister. Half-a-century later, the Algerian president is in frail health as he enters the final year of his third consecutive term in office.”

The country has long been run by the opaque group of military and intelligence officials known as “ le pouvoir ,” but can that system really hold? The nation is rich due to gas revenues, but the people are poor: foreign reserves are said to be $200 billion, but there is widespread rural poverty and high unemployment.

A persuasive analysis just published by the Atlantic Council is entitled “Algeria: A Powder Keg Ready To Explode?” Karim Mezran, the author and a senior fellow at the Council, says this:
Algeria may be teetering on the brink of a crisis, with the three pillars of the regime’s stability—its powerful military, abundant revenues from hydrocarbons, and the façade of a democratic political system—beginning to crumble.​
First, the terrorist and security challenge is greater than it has been in years, as Algeria’s border with Mali reminds us. Second, “From a socioeconomic point of view, despite Algeria’s enormous wealth in oil and gas, the population suffers from poverty, unemployment, and citizen discontent.” Then comes “a political crisis at the top of the state apparatus. The illness of Abdulaziz Bouteflika, President of Algeria since 1999, makes it highly unlikely that he will be able to run for another term with upcoming presidential elections in 2014. No clear procedure exists for the appointment of his successor, which leaves a vacuum at the pinnacle of political authority.”

As Mezran notes, “It is hard to predict the outcome of the myriad of tensions that are boiling in the country. It is possible that the Algerian people, still fatigued from the bloody civil war of the 1990′s and conscious of the repressive power of the state choose not to confront the regime in any sustained or systematic way.” Right–perhaps. As we’ve seen across the region, things are often far less stable than they appear. A recent Carnegie study notes this:
At first glance, Algeria gives the impression of a country that has succeeded in bypassing the turmoil of the Arab Awakening that has rocked the Middle East over the last two years. Social unrest appears to be largely under control. The country is enjoying a large current account surplus, a limited budget deficit, and very low external debt. Recent parliamentary elections were conducted without interruption and were officially open to participation by all political parties. But despite this reassuring veneer, many of the social, economic, and political challenges that triggered uprisings in neighboring North African countries fester just beneath the surface in Algeria.​
The author, Lahcen Achy, concludes starkly that:
The clock is ticking. If the regime does not start down the road of managed political and economic reform soon, while it retains the cushion of high hydrocarbon rents, it will quickly become too late. Algeria is faced with a stark choice: reform now or collapse later.​
But Le Pouvoir has never been inclined toward such reforms, especially not at a moment of political uncertainty–Bouteflika apparently quite sick, and an election next year without him on the ballot for the first time since 1999. So Algeria is worth more attention than it is getting. Its immunity to change may be wearing thin.'

http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2013/05/22/is-algeria-the-next-crisis/



Another Jew, from WPR, is worried about Algeria and Tunisia.

'Security has crumbled on Tunisia’s western border with Algeria in recent months. A small but destructive group of jihadi militants with links to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has infiltrated the region, with weighty security implications for both Tunisia and Algeria. To successfully rout the jihadists in the short term, the Tunisian military needs better equipment, which the government has promised to deliver. But it is not yet clear whether Tunis is ready to pursue the deeper military and economic reforms needed to quell the terrorist threat in the long term.

Tunisian government forces have so far failed to crush two jihadi groups entrenched in the mountains tracing Tunisia’s western border with Algeria. The larger collection of militants, around 20 in number, is ensconced in the Mount Chaambi area. Around half are Tunisians, the rest Algerians. There is a second band of around 10 armed radicals in the Kef region further north. The government has confirmed that both groups have links to al-Qaida and are veterans of the conflict in Mali.

Jihadi militancy has been smoldering on Tunisia’s western border for several months; the military has pursued armed radicals in Mount Chaambi since December, following an attack on a border post. However, the operation to expel the fundamentalists intensified in April, when bombs planted by the militants injured soldiers scouring the area. Several government fighters have now lost their limbs from stepping on mines while pursuing the jihadi. But they have yet to arrest or kill a single rebel, according to Tunisia’s Defense Ministry.

If the jihadi presence is allowed to fester on the border, the security consequences for Tunisia will be serious. First, Tunisia’s jihadists and AQIM could use the western region as a safe haven to plan, as well as train and recruit fighters and gather weapons for attacks on the rest of Tunisia. Exposure of holes in Tunisia’s security is heartening to radicals elsewhere in the country who are hungry to cause damage too. In particular, Tunisia’s small but growing clique of jihadi Salafists are a concern. So too are the thousands of young Tunisians currently fighting alongside the armed rebels in Syria; most will, at some point, return home.

The security repercussions for Algeria are just as alarming, especially as AQIM, which evolved out of a terrorist faction from Algeria’s civil war, still seeks to overthrow the Algerian government . Militants could use the Tunisian border as a base from which to train fighters and collect and smuggle weapons for assaults on eastern Algeria. There are signs that fighters intent on waging jihad in Algeria favor this approach: There is already a slow drip of weapons and bomb-making ingredients, including ammonium nitrate, from Tunisia to Algeria, and rebels have also already launched attacks in Algeria only to subsequently retreat to Tunisia. In February, rebels attacked an army barracks in the Algerian province of Khenchela and then fled about 60 miles across the Tunisian border to escape. Unless Tunisian forces can clamp down on jihadism on its western frontier, such operations are likely to increase in both frequency and scale.

Tunisia’s difficulty in stamping out the militants could also provide a boost to AQIM. Although the strength of links between the jihadi in Tunisia and AQIM is not yet clear, if the former group continues to evade the Tunisian military, AQIM will want to nurture its relationship with them. The result would be an extension of AQIM’s reach and further diversification of its recruitment base. Until now, AQIM has been dominated by Algerians.

Analysts will now be scrutinizing the Tunisian military’s ability to recover from its spluttering initial response to the security situation in the west. The army lacks necessary gear to capture the jihadi, in particular mine detectors and sniffer dogs, according to Defense Minister Rachid Sabbagh. The government has promised that the military will get what it needs.

But to quash the western security threat in the long term, the army may also require more far-reaching military reforms. Tunisia’s 27,000-strong army is easily overstretched, and investment in defense, at around 1.4 percent of GDP, is strikingly low. This small, impoverished army is the product of Tunisia’s political history. The country’s two post-independence leaders, Habib Bourguiba and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, deliberately limited the army’s size and power lest it threaten their authoritarian rule.

The present government, led by the Islamist party Ennahda , has shown few signs of breaking with the past on this score. In fact, Tunisia’s security has arguably taken a back seat to pushing through economic policies since the party was elected. It remains to be seen whether the spectacular deterioration of security in western Tunisia will change attitudes.

The government also needs to tackle income inequality between the border regions and the rest of Tunisia to deprive the jihadi of local sympathizers. Indicators for the region’s main town, Kasserine, are revealing. Almost a third of the population lives in poverty, according the African Development Bank, while the same proportion is illiterate, compared to a roughly 10 percent illiteracy rate nationwide. Unemployment is several percentage points above Tunisia’s average.

Crucially, discontent among Tunisians in and around Kasserine has intensified since the revolution, in part because residents think they now deserve better, having contributed disproportionately to the ousting of Ben Ali in 2011. Kasserine is known as the “City of Martyrs” because locals believe more people there lost their lives during the revolution than anywhere else. Residents are bitterly disappointed that their area has seen little improvement since. The government has pledged millions of dollars in infrastructure investment, but it has yet to be delivered.

Jihadism in Tunisia’s western region is embryonic. The government still has a window of opportunity to eliminate the threat before it becomes unmanageable. But ridding the region of violent radicalism in the long term requires expensive military and economic reforms. It is not yet clear whether the government has the political will to undertake them.'

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/...-jihadi-safe-haven-hangs-over-tunisia-algeria
Angocachi

AP suspects the Algerian regime will soon fall.

'The Arab Spring may finally be en route to Algeria.

With the president in a French hospital recovering from a stroke, the generation of aging politicians and generals that has run Africa's largest country for a half-century is reaching its end. Adding to the mix, Algeria's overwhelmingly young population is increasingly vocal in its demands for jobs and housing that its oil-dependent economy isn't providing.
What comes next is of vital importance to Algeria — and the West.

Algeria has the most powerful and best-equipped military in North Africa and the Sahel and is an important bulwark against terrorist groups linked to al-Qaida. Any further instability in North Africa, where Tunisia, Libya and Egypt are already struggling, could embolden the armed militants.

So far Algeria has been buoyed by high oil prices and, with almost $200 billion in foreign reserves, it has spent lavishly to try to buy off the discontent. But critics maintain that short-term approach does not take into account the volatile energy market or of Algerians' deep-seated need for a new political vision.

Algeria has been more stable than its neighbors, but that may not last. In a country where the age of the average government official is the 70s, the biggest driver of political change has been the funerals, as one by one the grand figures of Algeria's revolutionary generation die off.

In the past year, the country's first president, Ahmed Ben Bella; Chadli Benjedid, the third president; and Ali Kafi, an interim leader after the 1992 military coup have all died. During a moment of silence for Kafi at a soccer game last month, the crowd started chanting "Bouteflika next."

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 76, has been ill since he disappeared into a French hospital in 2005 to treat what was called a bleeding ulcer. U.S. State Department cables at the time said it could possibly be stomach cancer. Yet despite his apparent frailty and his frequent absences from public life, Bouteflika is widely believed to be aiming for a fourth presidential term in the 2014 election.

He has been in Paris since April 27 recovering from a mini-stroke.

Chafiq Mesbah, a former member of Algeria's intelligence service and now a political analyst, said Bouteflika's mini-stroke should mean that Algerians in 2014 will finally get to truly elect a leader.

He said Bouteflika's insistence on going for another term and growing reports of corruption in his entourage have aggravated Algeria's powerful military and intelligence circles.

What happens next depends on the shadowy head of the intelligence service, Gen. Mohammed "Tewfik" Mediene, the power behind the throne since 1990.

"The head of intelligence — he was my boss, so I know him — could take the path of Andropov or Beria," Mesbah said, referring to Soviet-era KGB heads Lavrentiy Beria, who was notorious for his repressive methods, and Yuri Andropov, who began opening up the superpower in the 1980s.

But if the choice is made for rigged elections and more of the same, the results could be dire, Mesbah warned.

"If there is not real democratic transition, there will be an uprising ... we will return to the violence of the 1990s," he said.

He was referring to Algeria's so-called black decade, when a civil war raged between Islamic militants and security services after the government voided the 1992 election that Islamists were winning. Some 200,000 people died and villages were razed in the ensuring violence.

Memories of that grim time up to now have kept Algerians from pushing for real political change, analysts say. But with nearly half the population under the age of 24, the black decade is a distant memory for many.

Algerians have increasingly held small protests in the past few years demanding housing, electricity and jobs — in 2011 alone there were more than 10,000 protests, some of which turned violent. They have never, however, come together into any kind of broader movement.

For days after Bouteflika's illness was announced, young Algerians drove through the streets honking horns and cheering over an upcoming soccer championship, showing how profoundly little they cared about which old man was running the country.
While Algeria has dozens of political parties and thousands of civic organizations, they have little impact on society because the state has coopted, attacked, weakened, infiltrated or bought off any group that showed a real chances of connecting to the people, said Nour-Eddine Benissad, president of the Algerian League for the Defense Human Rights.

"They have broken civil society, the political parties and the unions. So I fear if there is an uprising, it will be just the protest movements face to face with the authorities without any intermediaries that could manage the situation," he said.

In the midst of this leadership crisis, the state is coming under new pressure from a group organizing one of society's most
volatile sectors — unemployed young people.

The National Committee for Defense of the Rights of the Unemployed is based in the south, the home of Algeria's sensitive oil and gas industry, and has mobilized young people to demonstrate for jobs in the oil industry in several southern cities. It also has ambitions to take its cause nationwide.

In a country that is so outwardly rich yet feels poor, unemployment is a top issue. Officially the rate stands at 10 percent, but it rises to 22 percent for those between 18 and 24. Algeria's economy is almost entirely based on oil and gas, an industry that is lucrative but does not produce large numbers of jobs.

More than 100 Algerians have set themselves on fire in the last two years over the lack of opportunities — an act that in neighboring Tunisia set off what became the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions.

The leader of the new movement has been nicknamed after South American revolutionary Che Guevara, and has seen success despite dropping out of school at a young age.

"I am not Che, I just am a simple activist demanding his rights — I have a brother who committed suicide along with four other friends in my neighborhood who did," said Tahar Belabes, who comes from the southern oil city of Ouargla, where the largest protests have been.

"I want people to apply the principles and actions of Che, but not to dress up like him with berets and do nothing," he said in the rough accent of the south, a traditionally neglected area.

The government has used its familiar methods to quiet the movement, announcing thousands of new police recruit jobs in Ouargla and low interest loans for unemployed youths looking to start businesses.

Far from appeasing Belabes and his movement, however, the measures have only made the activists more political, expanding their demands beyond jobs.

"We are calling for change in the regime because we believe that there is corruption throughout the government," he said, adding that the plan was to coordinate with groups all over the country and start holding new protests everywhere.

Whether the movement is eventually repressed or coopted is less important than how it shows the pressures for change, said sociologist Nasser Djabi of Algiers University.

He said with Algeria's coffers filled with oil money it was a good time for wide-ranging reforms to engage the population and reinvigorate the economy so it can produce jobs. He acknowledged, however, that Algeria's leaders have been profoundly cautious about anything that would lessen their control.

"They could miss this moment for change and it could explode or not explode and we would just live in a time of chronic instability," said Djabi. "It is the end of a political generation ... it's the biological end of a system."'

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/17/algeria-aging-regime-restive-youth-makes-for-volatile-political-mix-in-north/#ixzz2U1e9S58Y


Algeria's Islamists are circling...

'ALGIERS, Algeria — The head of Algeria's main Islamist political party has called for the country's ailing president to appear on television to dispel rumors over his health after a three week absence.Abderrazzak Mukri, the leader of the Movement of Society for Peace, warned that if the president did not soon appear, it would require invoking constitutional powers allowing his removal for health reasons.President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 76, suffered a mini-stroke on April 27 and was rushed to a French military hospital where he has remained.The government has said he is fine and following events from abroad but rumors are rife that his condition is much worse.An editor of two newspapers said publication was blocked after he rejected an order to remove a story that claimed Bouteflika was in a coma.'

http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/20/2779358/algerian-islamist-demands-ill.html#storylink=cpy