joel brinkley writes on the globalization of jihadist terror Kazakhstan’s National Security Commission said it was surprised to find twenty-four Salafist cells nationwide earlier this year with nearly five hundred members. Salafism is a fundamentalist Islamic sect blamed for terrorist activities worldwide. In the Philippines, after decades of bloody conflict that has left more than a hundred thousand people dead, officials say they are close to striking a peace deal with a Muslim separatist group that has a militant guerrilla force of eleven thousand. The Philippine government said recent developments in the region have prompted serious concerns over the possibility that al-Qaeda would use the Muslim-controlled areas of the country as safe havens. The same is happening in Thailand, where a government official signed a peace agreement with a violent Muslim separatist movement that has been operating for decades in the country’s southern peninsula. But Thai journalist Don Pathan told me he considers the agreement “a big leap of faith” because the Thai don’t know if the Muslim separatist who signed the agreement actually speaks for the leadership. Months later, the daily attacks continued. In Tanzania, where one-third of the population is Muslim, extremists beheaded a Christian pastor early this year because Christians had entered the butcher trade, which Islamists asserted was theirs alone. And in Austria, complaints about neo-Nazi activities have diminished to insignificance now because “people are more worried about Salafist extremist teenagers,” the newspaper Austria Today reported. Germany just banned three ultraconservative Islamic sects, including Salafism, complaining that they oppose and actively fight against rights to freedom of religion. And in Bangladesh, throngs of protestors have been calling for the government to ban the state’s largest Islamic political party. Jihadist atrocities in Arab countries and adjacent states are viewed as business as usual in that part of the world. Islamic fundamentalists take over northern Mali, countered by the French military. Coptic Christians are slaughtered in Egypt, while President Mohamed Morsi, with his strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, stands idly by. An annual kite-flying festival in Pakistan is cancelled this spring because Taliban extremists threaten to kill the participants. All this is now presumed to be normal—a status quo to be lived with. But the truth is that al-Qaeda, its affiliates, and other Islamic terror groups are also posing lethal threats all over the world. Late last year, while he was still the Defense Department’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson observed that the US might soon reach what he called a “tipping point” in the so-called War on Terror, begun after the 9/11 attacks. During a speech at Oxford University, he said the tipping point will come when “so many of the leaders and operatives of al-Qaeda and its affiliates have been killed or captured,” by drone strikes and other means, that “the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States.” At that point, Johnson said, responsibility should be turned over to police departments and intelligence agencies—not the military. Then, in a classified report in early spring, a panel of senior officials warned President Obama that intelligence agencies were paying too little attention to China, the Middle East, and other major national-security issues because of the preoccupation with counterterrorism operations, the Washington Post reported. (The CIA’s counterterrorism office had three hundred employees before 9/11. Since then it has maintained a staff of about two thousand—ten percent of the agency’s staff.) But Johnson also warned that, right now, “there is still danger” because al-Qaeda has become “more decentralized,” with “most terrorist activity now conducted by local franchises”—a clear fact. Nonetheless, in May President Obama announced he was going to de-emphasize the War on Terror. “This war, like all wars, must end,” he said. “That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.” He said the Authorization for Use of Military Force enacted after the 2001 attacks should be revised and eventually repealed because al-Qaeda is already on the path to defeat. A week later, the State Department issued its annual country reports on terrorism and proclaimed that al-Qaeda “has been significantly degraded as a result of worldwide efforts against the organization.” Still, in the spring the Pentagon announced plans to begin stationing Marine Corps special operations teams aboard Navy ships patrolling the Middle East and North Africa. That decision was primarily a reaction to the jihadist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last fall, which killed the US ambassador and three other Americans. The Pentagon said it would also open a new drone base in Niger, which borders Libya and Nigeria, two countries facing serious struggles with Islamic extremists. The State Department report did acknowledge that local al-Qaeda affiliates “seem more inclined to focus on smaller scale attacks closer to their home base.” Libya offers strong evidence of that. The weak Libyan government does not control most of the country, and Salafist militias roam the state without restraint, destroying historical shrines and threatening unveiled women, among other malignant activities. Nigeria, meanwhile, is locked in seemingly unending deadly warfare with a jihadist group named Boko Haram, which in English means “western education is sinful.” It’s believed to be an affiliate of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and has no known central leadership to target. It blows up churches and other sites that it views as heretical, kills people celebrating Christian holidays, and is said to be responsible for as many as ten thousand deaths over the last decade. Boko Haram is blamed for kidnapping a French family of seven in Cameroon early this year and taking them across the border to Nigeria, then demanding a ransom. In response, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared: “We must do the maximum” to free the hostages “but...we will not yield to terrorist groups.” After two months of negotiations, the family was finally released in late April. France says no ransom was paid. A short time after that, one hundred and eighty-five villagers were killed in a gun battle between Boko Haram and the Nigerian military.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 15:55:46 +0000
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