Obsolete

Thursday, October 09, 2008

The Abu Beavis and Abu Butthead trial begins.

Hot on the heels of the semi-collapse of the liquid bombs trial, one half of the Abu Beavis and Butthead team, the other half having sadly expired after setting himself on fire, along with a supporter and funder, are up before the beak charged with conspiracy to murder and and conspiracy to cause explosions.

In a way, Bilal Abdulla and Mohammed Asha were actually far less successful even than their counterparts in the liquid explosives case; they, after all, had no chance of actually carrying out their plot due to their being under constant surveillance by the security services, even without the doubts about whether their plot was viable being brought in. The idea of planes exploding mid-flight over the Atlantic however, especially when both politicians and police had conspired to describe the non-existent threat from the gentlemen as a plot to mass-murder on an unimaginable scale, did far more to frighten and cause fear in the general public than Abdulla and Asha's actual failed attempts did. After all, the thought that someone could carry a bomb onto a plane that is no bigger than a soft drink bottle and which can destroy it utterly is terrifying: how do you mitigate against it happening? Abdulla and Asha however, through both their sheer incompetence and the politicians and police who unlike the previous year, reacted calmly and efficiently, with it quickly becoming apparent that the men didn't actually have any genuine explosives other than petrol and patio gas canisters, pretty much didn't scare anyone. This was almost comedy, and it should have been responded to in such a way.

Such an attitude was never going to be present in the case against them, but the prosecution has already succeeded in going over the top in their descriptions of just what could have happened had the "bombs" exploded. The problem with this is that they were never going to, for, as the prosecution freely admits, there wasn't enough oxygen present in the cars left outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub for there to be the right mixture with the gas to cause even the beginning of a fireball. The intention was to cause the "detonation" via mobile phones, but they apparently tried this on several occasions, and due to the lack of a sufficient oxidiser, failed on every count. Jonathan Laidlaw QC's statement that

"[T]he repeated attempts to detonate the vehicles failed but that was not through any lack of effort by the bombers. It was no more than good fortune that nobody died."

is not completely erroneous, but isn't that far off. Yes, there was no lack of effort from the "bombers", but that same effort in the construction of the "bombs", with there being no oxidiser, meant that good fortune wasn't necessary: no one was going to die that night. The same goes for Laidlaw's similiar statement that

[H]ad it been executed in the way intended it would have resulted in the loss of many lives ...

Well yes, their intention was undoubtedly to kill people. Intention and properly executing that intention are two entirely different things.

In the worst case scenario, if the gas had been sparked by the phone, there would have been a fireball, which would have Italian Job style perhaps blown the doors off, and perhaps distributed some of the nails into the vicinity. If someone had been reasonably close to the cars, the flying debris could have seriously injured or killed them, if "good fortune" had been on the side of the men responsible and if the luck of those passing was truly out that night.

Similarly puzzling is the description of the following day's "attack" on Glasgow airport as a suicide mission, as there is no indication apart from Kafeel Ahmed's dousing himself with petrol that this was to result in their deaths. The trial might perhaps clear up what did happen that day, as it still remains unclear: had they already set some of the petrol on fire before ramming into the airport's entrance, in the hope that it would heat the canisters up and cause them to explode, or had something else gone wrong with their apparent panicky attack? Either way, this further showed how canisters, even when close to fire, need to be heated to a very high temperature before they'll burst, something which they failed to do despite as the prosecution saying, the fire burning "fiercely".

Also rather rhetorical and not backed up by facts was Laidlaw's statement that one of the most "extraordinary things" about the case was that Asha and Abdulla were doctors. Taking the Hippocratic oath is no barrier to becoming a terrorist: Ayman al-Zawahiri himself was a surgeon, something he is still referred to as. You don't have to bring up Harold Shipman to know that doctors can harm as well as heal; their employment hardly affects their politicial views. The "evil" doctor is as much a cliche as the crazy psychiatrist.

It'll also be interesting to note if any allegations are made of al-Qaida connections. The media at the time speculated furiously that this inept attempt at bomb-making was their work, but there has been nothing whatsoever so far to substatiate it. Nothing also seems to have been brought up today regarding it, other than that the two men with Ahmed made up a "small" cell. Their lack of connections with al-Qaida can be taken as either good or bad news depending on your outlook. It can be seen as good in the sense that the group itself does not appear to have numerous sleeper cells waiting for the call to come for them to start their own plots or attacks, despite the claims that there are up to 2,000 terrorists supposedly just waiting to do us harm, and that gaining access to both the group and to its undoubted expertise in bomb-making is far more difficult than has been made out; while also bad in that if this small cell was apparently operating purely out of its interest, with no wider allegiances, that there are likely to be other such fanatical small sects, perhaps building each other up towards the ultimate aim of launching attacks, completely out of the sight of the security services and police as these 3 apparently were. The upside to that is that are obviously far less likely to be knowledgeable in making explosives or causing explosions, as even the scientific knowledge of these men apparently didn't help them.

Either way, while we ought to remain concerned about the possibility of groups such as these growing in confidence and expertise, the biggest threat by far still remains those who have gone to fight in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq or the slightly more exotic jihadi breeding grounds, such as Somalia or Algeria/Morocco, perhaps even Yemen returning and bringing their knowledge back from what their own leaders have described as "universities" of terror. The two bomb attempts outside Tiger Tiger were originally linked by the press to al-Qaida in Iraq's car bombs, for example, but if there's one thing the ISI knows how to make it's bombs that actually work to horrific effect, as their released videos showcasing "martyrdom operations" testify, and they involve explosives, not gas canisters, although a recent attack did involve the use of a fuel tanker as the VBIED. The use of suicide attacks where vehicles are packed with genuine explosives are probably the biggest nightmare of the authorities, outside of the tiny risk of the use of so-called "dirty bombs" or chemical or biological weapons. Explosives though are difficult to come by in this country, hence why our attackers have favoured the more easily available hydrogen peroxide. All this is further reason not to fearmonger or overstate the deadliness of Abu Beavis's and Abu Butthead's "device"; should a real one come along we might well regret claiming that it could have caused such mass murder when a real one undoubtedly would.

Labels: al-Qaida, Bilal Abdulla, central London nail bombs, Glasgow airport attack, jihadists, Jonathan Laidlaw, Kafeel Ahmed, Mohammed Asha, terror, terrorism

10/09/2008 11:59:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Friday, September 26, 2008

On the jihad in Iraq and online.

By almost all accounts, the extreme-Salafist takfiri jihad in Iraq is not going well. Down mainly to the Awakening movement, which started when the Sunni tribes tired of the sectarian bloodshed, indiscriminate murder and imposition of the most harsh and ridiculous interpretation of Sharia law rose against the Islamic State of Iraq (formerly al-Qaida in Iraq and the Mujahideen Shura Council) and its allies, over time attracting other former insurgents, and to on a much lesser level, the US troop surge, the few remaining sanctuaries are Mosul in the north and Diyala province in the centre of the country. Along with the continuing ceasefire by the Mahdi army (and its eventual dissolution), which for a time had been the main cause of casualties to US troops in and around Baghdad, combined with the effective ghettoisation of the capital into sectarian enclaves, the drop in violence has resulted in the number of troop deaths falling to its lowest since the start of the war, with just 13 killed in July. Civilian deaths are still though rarely below three figures a week, even if the suicide bombings which were once a daily occurrence in the capital have fallen significantly.

Away from the real war, the online propaganda war is also, if you listen to some of the hyperbolic jihad watchers, in trouble. The most prominent jihadi forum, al-ehklass.net, has been down for almost two weeks, and its front page currently resolves to a domain bought place holder. Also down, or at least were, were three of the main four forum sites, with only the most exclusive, al-Hesbah, remaining up, but even that at the moment appears to be down. Why they are down, or rather, who is responsible is equally unclear; those who have formerly and continue to involve themselves in removing jihadi material from the web have refused to comment or denied it. The main point of taking down the forums was to deny as-Sahab, al-Qaida's media arm, from being able to distribute their yearly video marking September the 11th. Not only was this successful, but when the video was eventually posted for distribution and mirrored across the net, the password to the archive was wrong, further delaying and disillusioning those waiting for it.

The Islamic State of Iraq would still presumably prefer to be in as-Sahab's position. As it becomes apparent even to the most deluded and dedicated of its supporters that it faces a battle for its very survival, even if still clinging on in Diyala and Mosul, its media releases are increasingly being derided. Their "Two Years with an Islamic State" video claimed that they had chemical warheads capable of reaching Israel, something which not even the most die-hard supporter of the group or most swivel-eyed jihad watcher could possibly believe.

For as ISI declines, a group that had existed in Iraq long before al-Zarqawi's organisation pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden continues to punch well above its apparent weight. Ansar al-Islam, first formed in 2001 and active in the autonomous Kurdish north, and which may well have sheltered Zarqawi before he moved south and established the forerunners of the ISI, continues to impress (if that's the right word) both those in the "online jihadi community" and observers of it. While sharing almost exactly the same ideology as the ISI, the same brand of extreme Salafi Islam which led it to carry out one of the most notorious atrocities of the insurgency, the execution of 12 Nepalese hostages, it has never allied with the group, even if they have often carried out operations together. More recently the group, previously known as Ansar al-Sunnah, reverted to its original name, and with it established a media arm based on both As-Sahab and al-Furqan, al-Ansar. Their latest video, The Earth Rain, is even by the high production standards of those two "media organisations" especially ambitious: featuring a host, translated, apparently non-Googlish English subtitles and credits at the end, it attempts to document last year's American "Arrowhead Ripper" operation in Diyala province. Whether Ansar al-Islam with this new approach intends to become a rival to al-Qaida in general remains to be seen, but the aspiration appears to be there.

The bringing down of the jihadi forums though, however satisfying for those in the short-term who seem to imagine that doing so is striking a blow against the movement in its entirety, is by no means necessarily a good thing. Putting matters of censorship aside, it not only makes things more difficult for those on them, but also for those with the equally important task of monitoring the forums. Whilst doubtless the intelligence agencies have moles on the inside and at probably the very highest levels of the administration on them, not every activity on them can be monitored by the security services, which is why civilian organisations that do so have sprung up. While these tend to be rabid and completely overstate the level of threat from takfirist jihadists, their role is still a noble one. It isn't just the monitoring of them for potential threats though which is important, they're also a goldmine for the also vital research into who exactly it is that is most likely to become a jihadi sympathiser. As the leaked document from MI5 showed, this is an area in which the stereotypes generally don't apply. Only through delving into more backgrounds and the lives of those on these forums might we improve our ways of targeting and stopping radicalisation before it takes place. Just knocking the suppliers down while not targeting the source itself will do nothing to help in that.

Labels: al-Qaida, Ansar al-Islam, Iraq, Iraq insurgency, Islamic State of Iraq, jihadists, online jihadists, radicalisation, terror

9/26/2008 10:02:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Crying over spilt liquid continued.

You'd have to say that the response to the ignominious end of the "liquid bomb" plot trial has been little short of remarkable. I've just finished watching the Panorama special on the plotters, produced with an incredible amount of co-operation with both the police and the security services, which was most likely sitting there waiting to be shown as soon as the jury reached their decision, no doubt hastily re-edited yesterday and today to be in line with the conviction of only three and then not for conspiracy to cause murder through explosions on planes.

It, like almost all the rest of the media, didn't question in any great detail the idea that the plotters could have pulled off the plans that we're told they had in mind, because again, there was little to no evidence presented that they themselves knew what the targets were going to be, and very little dispute that they were almost ready to go. The evidence for the targeting of planes amounts to, as mentioned yesterday, the fact that one of plotters had downloaded information of transatlantic flights to his memory stick, the details from the diary which suggested getting the devices through security, most likely airport security, and that two of the plotters were heard discussing different holiday destinations in line with which were the most popular for British tourists. The questioning of the readiness of the devices themselves amounted to the presenter Peter Taylor asking a government scientist whether what the suspects planned was possible. Mindful of his words and being as non-committal as possible, he said yes, and said that it would have been possible to blow an airplane out of the sky with one of the bombs in a bottle.

Just in case we didn't get that, shown on news bulletins throughout the day on the BBC has been their own experiment using a bomb apparently made to the same specifications being placed inside the hull of an aircraft. It explodes, and punctures the hull successfully, which you can see here. The problem with this is the same as with the other government tests shown to the jury: that these are professionals with experience of what they're doing with the best available materials. It also doesn't take into account the circumstances in which the bombers would be working: the bomb made for the BBC appears to have been put together almost on the spot, something that the bombers would not have done. As Charlieman points out on Liberal Conspiracy, TATP is incredibly volatile and begins to degrade very quickly. This was part of the reason why the 21/7 bombers' devices failed. The liquid bomb plot would have involved even higher dilutions of the hydrogen peroxide, increasing drastically the danger of it going off prematurely while also decreasing its "shelf-life". Additionally, it's by no means certain that such a bomb on board an aircraft would even then have the catastrophic consequences which the police and politicians claimed it would: only recently we saw the consequences of the explosive decompression on the Qantas flight, which managed to land safely. An even worse ED was suffered on Aloha Airlines Flight 243, which also managed to land with the loss of just one person and injuries to 60 others. One of the few other new facts added by the Panorama documentary was that Sarwar, the alleged bomb maker, had successfully boiled down some of the HP to the right dilution. Again though, the programme didn't bother to point that the bombs had still to assembled, that they had not constructed a viable device and that when you consider the difficulty involved in doing so they were still a long way from creating just one, let alone the 7 which the prosecution claimed there would be.

It isn't just however the security services and the police that found the verdict of the jury "astonishing", as spooks' friend Frank Gardner put it, it's also been sections of the media who are incredulous at them not convicting all the men for their obvious murderous ambitions. The Times for one went absolutely overboard, not just enlisting Peter Clarke for an tendentious article on how the "surveillance society" works just wonderfully, but also their lead article, which includes this nugget:

The jury’s indecision in the face of a detailed Crown case raises questions about the public perception of the terror threat that could undermine government attempts to introduce further security legislation.

They just don't seem to get it, do they? You could apply that reasoning to both the hacks and the public. We're told by the Times, Peter Clarke and the security services that this was "strong evidence", "a detailed Crown case" and "the strongest terrorism case ever presented to a court", but they seem to have started believing their own hype. Yes, there was a very strong case here for the men being involved in some sort of terrorist plot, which is why three of them have been convicted of conspiracy to murder, and will likely be sentenced to very long terms of imprisonment, in line with the likes of Dhiren Barot, who had even more laughable plans than those of the non-existent ricin crew. There was however very little hard evidence that planes were the targets, as has been discussed. What seems to have happened is similar to that in cases of miscarriages of justice: the briefers have been out briefing and the journalists' sources have been whispering furiously into ears about the obvious guilt of those on trial, and when it doesn't go according to plan, they respond by blaming everyone other than themselves, with the journalists also flummoxed.

Hence along with the Americans getting the blame for ordering the arrest of Rauf, also being fingered are the jury themselves. The fact that there was a two-week break in proceedings for holidays, that some members of the jury were sick and otherwise is regarded as significant enough to be commented upon, especially by the Daily Mail, referring to it as a "farce". That those involved have given up nearly six months of their lives to hear an incredibly difficult case and then have to come up with a verdict is of no consequence; since they've come to the wrong one they're apparently fair game. They're also hardly likely to be able to defend themselves, as the only jury members I can recall speaking out recently were some of those involved in the ricin case after those acquitted were subjected to control orders, and then some of those involved in the original case involving Barry George, who had changed their minds over time.

It's perhaps a little over-the-top to be concerned immediately about the prospect of jury trials in terrorist cases being curtailed as a result of this verdict, but what if another jury also fails to find the men guilty of conspiring to cause explosions on planes? As the Times also reports, the man completely acquitted of all the charges, Mohammed Gulzar, is now likely to be given a control order. That's justice for you: a jury finds you not guilty but the state with its secret evidence tribunals disregards that entirely. I'm sure I won't be the only one to find potential menace also in the words of Peter Clarke, especially in these two paragraphs:

Take this case. To save the lives of the innocent and convict the would-be killers we used all the tools in the security armoury. Deeply intrusive surveillance, informants, CCTV, DNA, telephone call data and so on. This was not about collecting information for its own sake - it was to secure evidence to put before a court.
Some critics fail to understand that sophisticated, modern evidence gathering has allowed the most complex terrorist conspiracies to be tried in our criminal courts in front of a jury. No need for military commissions or the juryless Diplock courts of Northern Ireland.

And yet despite all of this evidence the jury were still failed to be convinced that planes were the targets. In any event, what Clarke is describing is a false dichotomy between surveillance and security; nothing that the police did broke the current rules as they were, and in fact, in their breaking into the "bomb factory" and planting bugs and live cameras they were using the oldest tricks in the book. It's the implication though in the second paragraph which both needles and worries. To begin with, it's not as if we're some wonderful place where every alleged terrorist is subjected to a court trial: just above we mentioned that Gulzar is likely to be given a control order, where the evidence against him will be heard in secret and not given to his lawyers. It wasn't so long back that we were locking foreign suspects up indefinitely without charge, and Clarke himself was at the forefront of pushing for support for 42 days detention without charge. What though if ever more complex cases keep coming before juries and they keep failing to reach the "correct" result? Are we really so potentially far away from military commissions or Diplock style courts? After all, juries in some fraud trials are already mooted to be abolished. Just how many more cases like yesterday's will it take before populist politicians with an eye on the standard of debate in the tabloids decide that this "farce" should be brought to an end?

Clarke continues:

And what if we had failed? What if the prosecution case was right, and half a dozen American airliners were to be brought down by British terrorists, operating from Britain and in effect using the UK as a launch pad for an attack on the United States? What would have happened to the UK and indeed the global economy? What would the impact have been on UK/US relations? What about the pressure it would have placed on Muslims in the UK? A very senior politician, at the time of the arrests, told me he thought it could have led to a breakdown in the community cohesion that had survived the attacks in 2005.

But these are all suppositions. The security services and police had been aware of these men and were documenting their every movement. There was never the slightest possibility they were going to be allowed to even take the first steps towards actually carrying out an atrocity. The only reason the arrests were brought forward was because of Rauf's arrest, and the possibility of the disruption of the plot. Less plausible is something Clarke says at the beginning of the article:

More worrying still, if they were tipped off to the arrest they might panic and mount a desperate attack.

As we have seen though, the devices simply weren't anywhere near ready, and even if they had the right amounts of diluted HP, there's still no indication that their attempts at constructing the bombs in full would have been any more successful than the government scientists' ones. And please, Clarke really should spare us the spurious concern for community cohesion: he was directly involved in the Forest Gate raid, which did more damage to the rapport with British Muslims and the actions of some in their communities than anything else has.

Should the restrictions now be lifted on liquids then, as Virgin Atlantic has called for? While as I've attempted to document, the dangers are vastly overstated and the problems involved in creating liquid explosives are manifold, I still think it's probably right for the moment for caution to be erred on, although the limit could perhaps be lifted from 100ml bottles to 250ml or above, and the idea that babies' bottles could be used is ridiculous.

Most of all however, the conclusion of this case should not cause panic amongst politicians or security agencies as to whether the public has become blase towards the terrorist threat. They clearly haven't. What is apparent however is that many are increasingly concerned about the febrile exaggeration of such cases, including this one and the claims of mass-murder on an unimaginable scale which simply are not backed up by the facts, and which is often for short-term political gain. The Panorama documentary also completely established that John Reid had long been aware of the "plot", meaning that his speech damning civil libertarians for not getting it just the day before the arrests was cynicism of the absolute worst kind. We don't like it when concerns about terrorism lead jumped-up police officers and community support staff to order people not to take photographs of public buildings, and we also don't like it when the threat of terror is used wholesale to justify the removal of ever more liberties, as the failure to reach a verdict in this trial could yet do. There is a terrorist threat, but it's not going to lead to the demise of this nation, and it doesn't even begin to amount to the that posed either by the Nazis in 1940 or to the Soviet Union during the height of the cold war. The same newspapers and media which want us to be scared are the same ones, ironically, that want us at the same time to have Churchillian resolve in the face of it. We need neither, and that has to be emphasised.

Labels: Abdulla Ahmed Ali, al-Qaida, civil liberties, jihadists, John Reid, liquid bombs plot, media reporting, Panorama, Peter Clarke, Peter Taylor, security services, terror, terror suspects

9/09/2008 11:17:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, September 08, 2008

Crying over spilt liquid.

There will be more than a few surprised people tonight, both in the media and outside it, at the verdict reached by the jury in the "liquid explosives" trial. The case, after all, had been presented, as George Tenet famously said, as a "slam-dunk". Here were 8 Muslim extremists, caught red-handed with quantities of hydrogen peroxide, used by both the 7/7 and 21/7 bombers in their attacks, having recorded "martyrdom videos" and with apparent plans for the blowing up mid-flight of an unspecified number of transatlantic planes. There were shrieks of initial incredulity then horror from the press, all liquids in containers above 100ml were banned from planes as a precaution, with mothers having to taste their babies' milk, apparently as a result of claims that the bombers were prepared to blow up their children and use their bottles as containers for the explosives, and from both the police and the politicians, accusations and boasts that they had successfully foiled mass-murder on a grand scale.

Two years later and at the end of the £10,000,000 trial, just three of the suspects have been convicted of conspiracy to murder, and even then not on aircraft. One man has been acquitted altogether, while five others will most likely face a retrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict on their charges of conspiracy to murder. Already we have those with close contacts with the spooks being highly defensive: Frank Gardner on the BBC more or less suggesting that the security services were outraged that the jury had failed to reach the right verdict. The Sun tomorrow has a very similar, defensive editorial from what I've seen.

All of which brings to mind the fiasco of the "ricin" trial, where as everyone now knows, there was no ricin, and where only Kamel Bourgass, who murdered a police officer whom was attempting to arrest him, was convicted of any conceivable plot. The analogy is not quite right, because while the ricin plot was laughable and absurd, this one was clearly not, and what else is clear is that at least the three today convicted of conspiracy to murder were deadly serious. What is similar is that both appeared to have ideas way beyond their station, that they imagined they could pull off an incredibly dastardly and fiendish, murderous plot, despite their own inadequacies and lack of training.

If you examine the actual prosecution against the men somewhat closer, it soon becomes apparent that the case for planes to be blow up in mid-air was if not completely weak, hardly robust. For all the surveillance work that was undertaken on the men, which seems to have amounted to hundreds of hours, they don't seem to have at any point caught them directly discussing the plot, let alone the idea that they were going to blow up planes, or if they did, we don't seem to have been given the access to it which the jury was. The only evidence that convincingly points towards airplanes being the target was the flight times which were found on a memory stick in one of the men's possession, and the diary notes made by the alleged ringleader, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, that give the impression that the materials which were to make the bomb were to be smuggled through security at airports. It's little wonder that the jury failed to reach a verdict, as such evidence was hardly likely to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt of their guilt, as the prosecution and security services surely knew.

There have been reasons from the very beginning to doubt that even if the plot was to mirror that of Project Bojinka, dreamed up by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that these individuals would have been any more successful than Yousef in their attempts. The story at first was that the ingredients for the bombs were to be taken on the planes and mixed in the toilets, which was quickly laughed at by scientists for its impracticability. Instead what the prosecution set out to prove was that the bombs were instead to be manufactured at the flat beforehand, then smuggled onto the planes in soft drinks bottles, before being detonated mid-flight using hollowed-out batteries filled with the explosive HMTD, with cameras or mp3 players used as the power source. To this end the prosecution showed the jury film of government experts detonating bombs to this specification, and as could be expected, they packed a mighty wallop. Those videos were replayed again today, accompanied by an American video of an aircraft being torn apart by an explosion, supposedly again via similar explosives, although no real explanation about this test was given. What was not as well reported by the media was the fact that the explosives expert giving evidence admitted that it had taken them over 30 attempts to construct a viable bomb, and that the one they showed had been one of a series, doubtless the most powerful. They also had to admit that the components were so volatile that the detonator had to be added by mechanical arm, rather than by a human, lest the mixture go off in their faces.

As I wrote at the time that this evidence was given:

So, as yesterday, this is the experts who know what they're doing using the exact same materials as the rank amateurs were meant to, and the danger of rather than explosives blowing up a plane but instead going off in the face of the bomb-maker was so great that the detonator had to be inserted using a remote-controlled machine. We're meant to assume that if this plot was going to come to fruition that the 8 men were going to overcome the volatility of the materials they were using, something the experts couldn't, succeed in smuggling the bombs onto an airplane without the explosives going off prematurely on the journey to the airport and then the plane, and then again manage, after fully constructing the bomb, to detonate it without anyone else noticing what they were up to with an explosion so successful that it would result in the deaths of everyone on board.

Additionally, the prosecution also admitted that no viable bomb had been constructed by the men, although this was supposedly only a matter of time.

Quickly, now that the trial has reached a somewhat ignominious end, the security services are searching for an acceptable reason other than the over-egging and exaggeration of the plot. Being fingered are the Americans, for upsetting the applecart in the first place. It was they who apparently ordered the Pakistanis to arrest Rashid Rauf, who is alleged to have links to al-Qaida, and who is wanted here in connection with the murder of an uncle. This arrest apparently either would have alerted the bombers to the unravelling of the plot, and so have gone forward with it, despite the apparent lack of readiness, with some of the proposed bombers not having passports, and with no viable bomb actually constructed, or would have led to them destroying the evidence. Indeed, some have suggested that there was a message received from Pakistan for the bombers to "go now", again despite their inability to be able to do so. The difficulty in confirming this version of events is obvious: Rashid Rauf mysteriously "escaped" from custody in December last year, although the charges against him had already been thrown out.

For all these reasons it was prudent to be sceptical about the ability of the men to carry out such a complicated and spectacular attack. Again, there have been repeated accusations of links to al-Qaida, with Ali apparently in Pakistan at the same time as Mohammed Siddique Khan and the ringleader of the 21/7 attacks, but this is hardly conclusive evidence of al-Qaida membership. Despite the success of 9/11, al-Qaida has generally stuck to the tried-and-tested lone bomber or car/truck suicide attack. The difficulties with replicating such tactics here are that the explosives which make those attacks so relatively simple and cheap to pull off are not readily available. The fertiliser bomb plot has been the only recently foiled terror attack which was to involve the more conventional ammonium nitrate. The 7/7 and 21/7 attacks instead involved the boiling of hydrogen peroxide and mixing with other household items to create either TATP or HMTD, both of which are extremely volatile, especially when boiled to the dilution required for the bombs to pack a large enough punch at 500ml. The plotters did have decent quantities of hydrogen peroxide, probably well beyond what they needed for 8 500ml containers. We also now know that they had apparently sought out other targets, including nuclear sites. al-Qaida generally prides itself on its technical abilities; if this was their doing, would they really have been so set on a Project Bojinka style plot where it was by no means certain that it could be pulled off, especially with hydrogen peroxide rather than nitroglycerin? Why not instead go in for a repeat of the 7/7 attacks, or step it up slightly and go for a car bomb targeting another soft target, like the Glasgow airport attackers, but with actual explosives?

All of this ought to have sown doubts in the minds of the jurors over the bombers' intentions. Just to stress again, it's clear that some of these men were potentially highly dangerous, especially those convicted of conspiracy to murder. They were certainly takfirist jihadists, or at least some of them were. Again, this is undermined somewhat by the doubt over just how far the plot had gone along: only one will was found, and the prosecution only seem to have said that Ali was certain to die in the attacks. If they hadn't been arrested or been under surveillance, they may well have gone on to take part in an attack which could have killed innocent people.

Once again though, it's difficult not to be shocked by the incompetence, arrogance, egotism and extreme exaggeration which took place both before and after the disruption of the "plot". It's worth remembering that just the day before John Reid had delivered a speech ridiculing civil libertarians as not getting it, when he most certainly knew that very night that raids were going to be taking place to bring the accused in. He and police officers then delivered bloodcurdling claims that this was to be "mass murder on an unimaginable scale", already potentially affecting the possibility of the men getting a fair trial. As Craig Murray notes, the most diabolical hyperbole was spread about the men potentially killing their children and using babies' bottles, when this was nonsense as the trial showed. All along, they knew just how weak the case was but are now most likely again likely to blame the jury instead of themselves. Then there's the media, which swallowed wholesale from the very beginning the whole idea that such an attack involving liquid explosives was possible, even while experts were disputing it. The coverage of the trial was an absolute joke, as evidenced by my attempts to get to the bottom of the claims about the explosives themselves: different papers and sources seemed to be inclined to provide only one different fact between the lot of them, with the BBC mentioning that up to 30 attempts had been made by the experts before they succeeded, something not reported elsewhere, and the Telegraph reporting on the volatility of the bombs, while only the Press Association and the Guardian mentioned that the men had not succeeded in building a viable device. Half the reason why there will be so much surprise at the verdict is that they failed to bother to report almost any of the defence case apart from the stunt and documentary one. Even much of the prosecution case was ignored.

Some will doubtless argue that if the men had been left longer more damning evidence would have emerged against the men. Most likely it would. That still however leaves the open quandary of the expertise needed for viable bombs to be made, which further gives the impression that they may well have abandoned the Bojinka style plot further down the line, if indeed they had at any point planned to blow up aircraft. None of this however justifies the politicising of the raid by New Labour at the time, the idiotic and reprehensible briefings which accompanied it about the casualties that would have been involved, and the general assuming of guilt which is now common place in terrorist cases. It has to be remembered that cases like this are the ones being used to further dilute our own liberty, the apparently limitless amounts of information which the group had pointed to for why 42 days or longer is needed, all without there being anything approaching a real, immediately dangerous plot being disrupted. We have comprehensively failed to keep the terrorist threat in perspective: it's true that we have to be lucky all the time and the terrorists only have to been lucky once, but this needs to be seen in the context of the failures which are now totting up. First 21/7, which was extremely lucky, then this plot, which was ridiculously overblown, then Abu Beavis and Abu Butthead, with no explosives but plenty of petrol and canisters. Add in Nicky Reilly and what we see are fantasists, unable to live up to their ambitions. If these are the pick of the al-Qaida crop from this country, do we really have so much to fear? It's time that we looked more realistically at the threat and demanded that the age of spin and politicising of it came to an end. Only then might we then learn more about how to more effectively fight it before the raids become necessary.

Labels: Abdulla Ahmed Ali, al-Qaida, civil liberties, jihadists, John Reid, liquid bombs plot, media reporting, security services, terror, terror suspects

9/08/2008 11:59:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, August 28, 2008

All good hoaxes come to an end.

There was perhaps only two ways in which the "al-Qaida in Britain" story would end: either being completely forgotten after being dismissed as either irrelevant or low-level jihadist supporters messing around, or in those responsible being arrested.

Lancashire police have now brought charges against three men, one of whom has been charged with soliciting murder. It's being made quite apparent that the police or the security services have not foiled any genuine actual plot to kill either Gordon Brown or Tony Blair, just that those behind the message have been caught. The soliciting murder charge is by no means unprecedented - at least one of the Danish embassy protesters was successfully convicted of it - but it still seems potentially over-the-top when seen in the context of online banter which often is extreme and by no means going to be followed through. Since no weapons, let alone explosives have been found in the searches carried out by the police, this further encourages the view that this was nothing more than a serious, but not that serious hoax.

Of course, it might well be that as two of the men were arrested whilst trying to board a plane travelling to Finland, they could well have been going there as a precursor to acquiring materials which might have been used in an attempt to carry out the threat of the original message. Alternatively, and this looks like, on all we know so far, the most obvious explanation, they may just have been three young men sympathetic to the jihadist cause who thought it was a rather spiffing idea to pretend that were members of al-Qaida on a well-known message-board, where, it has to be said, their antics were treated with rather short shrift.

This professing to be members of al-Qaida, when it hardly seems feasible that they actually were, has nonetheless earned Ishaq Kanmi with the additional charge of belonging or professing to belong to al-Qaida. Now, while al-Qaida is a proscribed organisation, it does seem rather extreme for someone only pretending to be a member of the group to be charged with it as an additional offence. Justin seems to think this is not a new addition to our burgeoning terror laws but rather a hangover from the 70s, when it may have been all the rage to suggest you were a member of the IRA. It does though invite comparisons with all the other little Billy Liars and fantasists that inhabit pubs and small towns, claiming to have been members of the SAS or similar while everyone around them just humours them. It is slightly different to claim to be an al-Qaida operative, but it still seems like something incredibly likely to be joked about. Similarly, the charge of inviting support for al-Qaida is probably down to the original message's appeal for other Muslims to join "al-Qaida in Britain" in the holy war, against, well, err, the credibility of other jihadist groups, quite frankly.

The other charges are those similarly vague ones which are recent introductions, the "possession of an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism" which is so widely drawn that it can apply to any number of everyday items which might still be useful were to terrorist to use them. One of the apparently damning pieces of evidence against Hammaad Munshi was that he and his group had "personal details of members of the royal family", or as they're otherwise known, their addresses. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the addresses of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are not state secrets.

I could of course be completely, additionally wrong about all of this. These men might well have been potentially dangerous - and indeed, we should take seriously all proponents of the jihadist cause, even the more dilettante ones among them - but it seems far more likely that these were rag-tag individuals at the lowest levels imaginable that probably downloaded videos from al-Ekhlass, perhaps contributed, and who thought it was a wizard wheeze to pretend to be the newest al-Qaida franchise, set-up right here in Britain. You can take this in two ways: either you can be glad that even the bottom-feeders amongst the online jihadist community are being watched, and if they step slightly out of line, they'll be picked up and dealt with; or you can be concerned that the ones we perhaps ought to be least worried about are the ones which the police and security services seem to be wasting their time with. After all, the monitoring of MSK and others was apparently curtailed because of more pressing concerns - and look where that led us. "al-Qaida in Britain" has been dissolved - but the real al-Qaida most certainly has not been.

Labels: "al-Qaida in Britain", al-Qaida, bullshit, hoaxes, Ishaq Kanmi, jihadists, online jihadists, security services, terror, terrorism, Umar Rabie al-Khalaila

8/28/2008 11:59:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Friday, August 22, 2008

al-Qaida in Britain return.

It's interesting to say the least that the BBC are reporting that the arrests made in Lancashire last week are connected to the investigation into the supposed setting up of "al-Qaida in Britain". You might recall that this got certain sections of the media very excited back in January, after a message was posted on the al-Ekhlass jihadist forum which threatened both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair with death if British troops weren't withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq by the end of March. As both are still very much with us and there hasn't been even the sniff of a major attack for over a year, the scepticism with which it was treated outside of the confines of Newsnight and the Times seems to have been very much warranted.

The three men arrested, all in their early twenties, were apparently about to travel to that well-known hot-bed of Islamic militancy, Finland. The ages of the men perhaps further gives the game away: if this truly was another franchise of al-Qaida setting itself up, it hardly seems likely that they would have chosen three individuals hardly out of nappies to head it. From the sketches of what we know about the offshoots which have spread across the Muslim world, the leaders of the groups have tended to be veterans of past conflicts, or at least long-time adherents to the takfirist/Salafist ideology which underpins al-Qaida's thought processes. While al-Zarqawi, former leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, now the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq, only turned up in Afghanistan after the fighting had finished against the Soviets in the 80s, he was still considered a veteran. His successor (or at least considered real successor, with Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as a figurehead, Masri serving as ISI's "minister for war"), presumed to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an organisation formerly helmed by Ayman al-Zahawiri himself. Elsewhere, formerly independent radical groups have pledged allegiance to al-Qaida, such as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria, now known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb, keeping their leadership intact.

As a security source said at the time, this was always likely to be the work of fantasists dreaming about truly belonging to al-Qaida. The short shrift their proclamations were given on al-Ekhlass further underlined how even amongst their apparent peers they were viewed as being bullshit artists. If it does indeed turn out these three were responsible, then it will only likely further show the amateurish nature of the current "radicals" in this country.

Labels: al-Qaida, bullshit, hoaxes, terror, terrorism, Umar Rabie al-Khalaila

8/22/2008 11:18:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Understanding radicalisation.

The MI5 report "leaked" to the Guardian, titled Understanding radicalisation and violent extremism in the UK, does the reassuring job of telling you little which you didn't already know while confirming just that which you did.

Firstly, it makes clear the idea that that there a number of extremist preachers doing most of the radicalising, or even brainwashing is either completely out-of-date, if it ever was the case. Rather, it's what a number of individuals have been arguing for quite some time: that those who become radicalised are often first exposed to extremist material online, become engaged in those communities, but also often have to have some sort of real world link to either a charismatic or popular local figure also versed in radical Islam. Once inside such small autonomous groupings, the emotional reward of belonging comes into play, giving meaning to a life which might have been up till then wholly lacking in it, with the other members almost becoming like an extended family, similar to criminal gangs.

Perhaps the ultimate example of this in action could be the 7/7 bombers. Whilst the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, has since been portrayed as an angry self-obsessed sexually frustrated, even constipated psychopath, almost the opposite is the case when you consider Mohammad Sidique Khan, the alleged 7/7 ringleader. On the face of it, MSK had everything to live for: his daughter had only just past her 1st birthday, he had previously worked as a teaching assistant and youth worker, and very few people generally had a bad word to say about him. He appears to have been conscientious, charismatic and well-liked; everything which ultimately led to those around him deciding to end their lives whilst murdering others around them.

The idea that MSK was after the promised 72 virgins for martyrs doesn't seem convincing when he was so clearly devoted both to his child and his wife; he was not, perhaps unlike the other bombers, stuck in dead-end, unrewarding jobs and so frustrated with his lot in life; and whilst he didn't talk about his religious beliefs to many people, he was certainly devout without being overbearing. He played the role of the gatherer, the charismatic leader which those around him looked up to and enjoyed the company of. The abiding image we have of him, outside of the few other video clips, including the one where he says goodbye, movingly, to his daughter, is the "martyrdom video" he recorded which was subsequently released by As-Sahab, al-Qaida's media arm. His self-serving justifications, now all too familiar, belie the man that he clearly was in private.

Also noted in the report that by no means are those who become radicalised well versed in Islam in its totality. Indeed, few are probably anywhere near as versed as this Islamist blogger suggests for training recruits, and that is mostly a collection of the familiar radical preachers. Probably closer would be the suggestions made by this forum inhabitant, both courtesy of the excellent Jihadica blog. While opinion is divided over whether Islam is inherently violent, and neither side should be dismissed out of hand, it's probably telling that those who have emerged from radical groups have done so only after they have properly assessed a far wider spectrum of theological thought, Ed Husain, Maajid Nawaz et al. Rachel North, who has more reason than most for wanting to get to the very bottom of what motivates radicalisation and subsequently terrorism, has reported that Atila Ahmet, one of those recently jailed as part of the "paintball jihad" had to be segregated from other extremists, due to his studies into Islam and renunication of his past beliefs.

Additionally left on the myth heap is the idea that all of those radicalised or involved in extremism are asylum seekers, when half of those evaluated by MI5 were born here, with the other half mostly immigrating here mainly for economic reasons, that poverty is not an issue, as shown by the amount of those stuck in "McJobs" despite in many cases having decent qualifications, and that only those who are "pure" in their past behaviour are eligible, is if that wasn't laughable enough considering the criminal schemes which those who have carried out attacks have indulged in. Also doubtful is the claim by one group which suggested that those raided often didn't have any pornography on their computers when they were searched; the report suggests that despite it being generally being considered haram to consume alcohol in Islam, some were drinkers, drug-takers and even used prostitutes, although again the 9/11 example of some of the attackers visiting a strip club the night before also should have put paid to that one. Some of this could perhaps be a result of the jihadis adopting the ideology of extremist groups such as Takfir wal-Hirja, whose members "blended in" by shaving their beards, drinking, etc, although again, it might just be that like everyone else, jihadis can't live up to their own moral standards and so can be seen as hypocrites.

There are a couple of things that do appear to be missing from the report however. There doesn't seem to be any mention, for example, of the role that foreign policy plays in the radicalisation progress. Whilst we should never fall into the trap of dismissing terrorism as being purely down to our own actions in countries considered Muslim states, it would be equally naive to dismiss the idea that it has no role whatsoever. Yet nowhere, at least in the Guardian report of the document, does it allude to our actions in either Afghanistan or Iraq, which seems strange, especially when you consider that the security services themselves warned that action in the latter would lead directly to an increase in attacks. Also, perhaps less suprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any reference to the security services' own role in helping radicalisation along. Only today we learn indisputably that MI5 were involved in the interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, currently languishing in Guantanamo and potentially facing execution, which led to his horrendous torture in both Pakistan and Morocco. Yesterday I mentioned the role of MI5 in the rendition of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna, both of whom had had direct relations with the service. This is without also mentioning the unsubtle actions of the police, for instance in the raid on Forest Gate, which contributes to the victimhood mentality which most certainly is a part of radicalisation. The report also makes clear that this is not just a mentality or illusion; racism, discrimination, inequality, "mainstream UK media coverage that perpetuates negative stereotypes of Muslims", all play a role which is heightened and repeated again and again until the only response is to strike back physically, with the religious ideology as the justification.

If all this suggests that the fight against terrorism and radicalisation is as infinitely complex as the process itself is, then it doesn't necessarily need to be so. What is clear is that the heavy-handed government approach is still at the moment part of the problem rather than the solution. Also unhelpful is the continuing demonisation of Islam as a whole, as shown recently by Peter Oborne (PDF). Instead, as if it wasn't already obvious, the fight has to be led from inside and within rather than from above. Organisations like the Quilliam Foundation are almost certainly part of the mix, although they could do with turning down the rhetoric a shade, or at least Ed Husain could. The security services need to end their complicity in torture and rendition, if they have not already. Subtlety, rather than constant new big initiatives and huge police operations, especially when accompanied by egregious exaggeration are also key.

If we exclude the apparent failed attempt by the convert in Exeter, then there hasn't been a major foiled plot or failed, serious attempt at a terrorist attack in this country now for over a year. The vast majority of those who do become radicalised in any case are mostly not interested in attacking Britain; their concerns are more with either fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan or any of the other current jihadi hot spots. The real worry might well be when those who have graduated from those "universities of terrorism" potentially return, and we can hardly say then that we were not in any way responsible for the blow-back.

Related:
Spy Blog - Whistleblower leak or propaganda briefing?

Labels: al-Qaida, jihadists, MI5, online jihadists, radicalisation, terror, understanding radicalisation

8/21/2008 09:44:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Beheading videos and sillily overreacting.

Sometimes you just have to simply despair at the overreaction where anything slightly related to terrorism comes to public notice:

Video clips of al-Qaida-inspired terrorists beheading people have been found on the mobile phone of a 12-year-old boy, a senior police officer revealed yesterday.
The footage was found by teachers who reported the child, who is white, to police after he sent clips to his classmates.
The discovery was revealed yesterday to show how children of all religions could be attracted to al-Qaida. West Yorkshire's chief constable, Sir Norman Bettison, said terrorist propaganda was spreading like a virus, and warned that every Muslim child in Britain could be at risk.

This ludicrous interpretation is based on the premise that jihadist propaganda is so dangerous that anyone so much as watching it is likely to be attracted to the ideology behind it. I'd argue that the absolute opposite is the case, at least when it comes to the snuff films that were for a while all the rage in Iraq; why else would al-Zawahiri himself have apparently ordered that al-Qaida in Iraq stop releasing them, other than because of the revulsion they were causing and continue to cause except in the most bloodthirsty of the gorehounds? ISI as a result switched to the slightly more humane execution method, at least when they were filming them, of a point blank shot to the head. A recent raid in Iraq itself that turned up a treasure trove of media releases, if you could call them that, revealed that AQI/ISI had continued to record most of the beheadings which were carried out, but hadn't released them, which as the account noted was close to the level of documentation which the Khmer Rouge gave to those that they murdered. Similarly, Mullah Omar, the erstwhile head of the Taliban recently made gave more or less the same edict, calling for an end to the beheadings of "spies" and other unfortunates caught up in the anarchy of Afghanistan/the lawless regions of Pakistan, presumably because of the outcry over the release of a video showing a child beheading a man.

Rather, the beheading videos just show the barbarity of the likes of AQ/ISI, especially when so many of those executed, rather than being Westerners, were Iraqis that had committed the crime of "spying" for the occupiers or working for either the police or Iraqi army. Two of the most horrific executions were in fact not carried about by al-Qaida in Iraq/MSC/ISI but by Ansar al-Sunnah, which has now reverted to its original moniker of Ansar al-Islam, a group with an almost indistinguishable Salafi takfirist ideology from ISI, but which has never joined the ISI for reasons unknown. The first, and one of the most notorious was of 12 Nepalese cooks. Only one was beheaded, but the deliberately appalling way in which he was killed has stuck in the memory of many due to the killer only initally severing the man's trachea, leaving him unable to breathe, his windpipe making a chilling, blood-curdling noise as he struggles for breath, before he finally succumbs, some 25 seconds later. The other 11 were lackadaisically shot, almost as an afterthought, with hardly any of them being killed instantly, or even approaching quickly. The reaction in Nepal could have been predicted; Kathmandu saw its two mosques attacked, and riots across the city. Seif Adnan Kanaan was the second, who in the video says he works at Mosul airport, where he also supplied Americans with beverages. He is later seen being beheaded slowly, before the masked man cuts deep enough to sever the jugular, leading the killer to pull his head back, with the blood gushing from his neck in a torrent. Like in many of the other recorded murders, his head is then placed on his back. If anyone is seriously attracted to such groups and their mindset after viewing either, then their psychiatrists are going to be incredibly happy.

Instead, what has obviously happened in this case is that the boy has been browsing the numerous video websites with a slightly more challenging selection of delights than YouTube, or visited one of the similarly vast selection of gore websites that also exists. He and his friends have already doubtless browsed the porn sites, and he's just gone the next inquisitive step up. His mistake appears to have been in getting caught and someone in the chain of command completely overreacting; this has nothing whatsoever to do with any attraction to a terrorist group.

He [Bettison] raised the example of the 12-year-old during a speech at the Association of Chief Police Officers annual conference in Liverpool. The boy has been referred to a project to divert people from extremism before they turn violent. His parents are not Muslim.

Sigh. This boy didn't need referring to any spurious project; he needed to be treated like anyone else at that age examining death and life's extremes which the internet provides in spades. Yes, he shouldn't be viewing such things at all at that age, but that's no reason for him to be treated as a potential terrorist simply because he's seen such videos. The whole thing comes across as some grotesque charade, to be seen to be doing something, especially in its apparent view that Muslims are more susceptible simply because they share the religion, as if they too aren't disgusted and turned off by some of the brutality recorded by insurgents in Iraq and elsewhere.

Jihadist propaganda is potentially a worry, but that it is only really likely to be sought out by individuals already inquisitive about the current conflicts where mujahideen groups are fighting shows the limited reach it is always likely to have. Influencing those in the West is only one of the aims of such releases, whether they be potential jihadists or the public at large, in order to give the impression that such wars can never be won against such hostile enemies, but the main aim by them has always been an insular one, to keep the jihadi community itself salving at the bit, while showing off the group's own achievements. At the same time it also provides those monitoring such groups with an invaluable insight into them, one which almost balances out the negative effects of their release in the first place. This is why legislation against them, something which has been threatened, needs to be opposed. A change in attitude from complete horror and the "something must be done" attitude whenever someone also gives into temptation and inquisitiveness also wouldn't go amiss either.

Labels: al-Qaida, beheadings, jihadists, Norman Bettison, online jihadists, terror

6/26/2008 09:23:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Terrorists have personalities too!

Amazingly, according to the Telegraph. Jihadist wit is also the same as every other sort of wit:

Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, a 30-year-old Kuwaiti said to have sent £60,000 to the 19 suicidal terrorists, made the press gallery snigger. Told by the judge that US military lawyers were being provided free of charge, he snapped back that America "tortured me free of charge, too".

You can't argue with that, can you?

Labels: al-Qaida, Guantanamo, jihadists, Telegraph, terror

6/07/2008 07:02:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Friday, May 16, 2008

Osama bin Tedium.

A new audio message purported to be from Osama Bin Laden has called for Muslims to continue the fight to liberate Palestinian lands.

This would of course be the same Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaida, the terrorist organisation which despite its incessant bluster about both Jews and Israel has never attacked Israel, or indeed seemingly attempted to. It is after all far easier to bomb your fellow Muslims, even if they are a different sect, in the markets of Baghdad. Quite why we continue to give him and his self-aggrandising rantings even the slightest coverage ought to be a question worth putting to all news editors.

Labels: al-Qaida, jihadists, media coverage, Osama bin Laden, war against bullshit

5/16/2008 11:14:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, May 01, 2008

State terrorism without a purpose.

Let's call a spade a spade. The United States has just carried out another act of state sponsored terrorism, launching 4 cruise missiles into the country recently described by the United Nations as suffering from the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the whole of Africa. The target, Aden Hashi Ayro, was killed, with between 10 and 30 others also most likely blown apart by the finest of American weaponry.

The motive behind the attack, much like the last time that the United States admitted to striking Somalia, was to kill an alleged leader of al-Qaida. This time this justification has even less credibility than then.

Aden Hashi Ayro was a leader in the Young Mujahideen Movement, a jihadist group that split from the Islamic Courts Union which briefly held the balance of power in Somalia's capital Mogadishu before being ousted by a coalition made up of the Somali transitional government and Ethiopian troops in December 2006. Although their methods were reminiscent of the Taliban, the ICU succeeded in bringing peace to the Somalian capital for the first time since 1992, removing the warlords that had control of various different sectors for years, and were for that reason at least somewhat popular with the majority of those still left. The last year has seen the ICU regrouping, with an insurgency subsequently raging resulting in human rights abuses on all sides.

The Young Mujahideen Movement and al-Shabaab appear to be one and the same organisation, but the YMM are the online face of the movement to the various jihadist forums. Like the various groups that emerged in Iraq, and also influenced by al-Qaida's media wing, As-Sahab, they've been releasing various videos of their "operations" since early 2007. Unlike the majority of the groups in Iraq who have eschewed suicide bombings, with the exception of the Islamic State of Iraq (formerly al-Qaida in Iraq), Ansar al-Islam and the Shield of Islam Brigades, all of whom share much the same aims, the YMM has released a number of videos of "martyrdom operations", including their most recent one targeting African Union peacekeepers.

There's little doubt then that the YMM and al-Shabaab share similar aims and methods to al-Qaida, although something they don't seem to have done as yet is target market places and general innocents as the ISI has on numerous occasions. Again though, as with most of the insurgent groupings in Iraq, the vast majority of the fighters are indigenous, with very few the much talked of foreign fighters. Put simply, whatever links that Aden Hashi Ayro might have formerly had with al-Qaida, with some claiming that he trained in Afghanistan, which in itself proves very little as there were numerous camps in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, not all of which were anything to do with al-Qaida itself, he would have had few to none now, and as for him being the supposed leader of al-Qaida in Somalia, that is simply a fantasy, much like the belief that al-Qaida had anything to do with the "Black Hawk Down" attacks, something that bin Laden boasted about but which were without foundation.

Just as when the US strike against alleged al-Qaida targets proved al-Zawahiri right that the Americans were just waiting to get involved in a strictly internal affair, the attacks today, which could have been quite easily carried out by the Ethiopians and not by the Americans, will just further the hatred against the US for getting involved in a conflict in which they have no excuse for doing so, and exacerbate the already horrific humanitarian situation. The violence needs to end; the United States' action will only make that even less likely to happen.

Labels: Aden Hashi Ayro, al-Qaida, jihadists, Somalia, terrorism, United States foreign policy, Young Mujahideen Movement

5/01/2008 11:34:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post