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March 2008 - Posts
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It was America's Mogadishu moment - only with civilian private military contractors going down in Fallujah, Iraq instead of Army Blackhawks in Somalia's capital.
The Marines are trying to wipe the slate of history clean today with a few coats of fresh paint splashed over a ghastly landmark in America's painfully long war in Iraq.
Four years ago today, four American security men from Blackwater were ambushed in Fallujah. They were shot in their vehicles, doused in gasoline and set afire, mutilated and strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates River. The grisly images of their blackened corpses dangling from the steel bridge fueled the drive for a horrific Marine offensive into the city days later to exact revenge on Sunni insurgents.
Today Fallujah is enjoying a fragile peace. So to highlight how far the city has come since it was overrun by insurgents - including Al Qaeda in Iraq's late leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - the military announced the infamous site nicknamed "Blackwater Bridge" has been "completely restored and improved." It is even being named after King Feisel, who dedicated it himself in 1927. Click here to see the press release and photos.
Well, now, that should do it.
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CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden on Sunday made the most definitive statement to date about an emerging threat from Al Qaeda reported exclusively by the New York Daily News in December: The ever-creative top thugs of Osama Bin Laden’s terror network have succeeded in converting a group of white Europeans and has trained them in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.
Here’s how Hayden described it to NBC News’ Tim Russert on “Meet the Press:”
“It’s very clear to us that Al Qaeda has been able, over the past 18 months or so, to establish a safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, that they are bringing operatives into that region for training - operatives that, a phrase I would use, Tim, wouldn’t attract your attention if they were going through the Customs line at Dulles with you when you’re coming back from overseas,” Hayden said.
Asked by Russert if he meant terrorists who “look Western,” Hayden replied, “Look Western, who … would be able to come into this country with, again, without attracting the kind of attention that others might.”
In The News’ December report, my sources described a small group of white European converts who have raised fears among counterterrorism officials at the highest levels. I first began asking questions of U.S. counterterrorism officials after a December 2006 Newsweek article, in which a reporter described meeting one of the “English brothers” outside a Taliban safehouse on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Last month, Director of National Intelligence Adm. Michael McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee in written testimony: “We have seen an influx of new Western recruits into the tribal areas since mid-2006.”
Hayden yesterday also became one of the highest-ranking U.S. officials to state that Bin Laden himself is “not operationally involved” in his own terror network’s activities.
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Few in NATO, including U.S. leaders, appear willing to face the fact that the war in Afghanistan is growing to be one of the longest in our history and could be one of the costliest. Not just in economic terms, but because no one has been willing to commit the resources to win the war, despite the fact it was nearly won four years ago. The cost of not finishing the job is staggering.
The Taliban, in a move the seemed inconceivable in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, is back, moving easily through the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, with secure supply lines, money from heroin and other criminal activities (ransoms paid for foreigners included), and a will to win.
On the other side is a weak and ineffective government help in place by a foreign force, protecting ever-small swaths of territory, while Taliban areas of mobility and access increase.
It is not necessary for the Taliban to control vast swaths of territory, they simply need to be able to establish their presence, execute a few of their enemies with impunity, and create a general climate of fear and terror.
Now, as the situation deteriorates, the central government remains riddled with corruption and the inability to prosecute any of the powerful warlords, President Bush is trying desperately to get a weary NATO to do more.
The picture is getting worse, not better. In January retired Gen. James Jones, a former NATO commander, bluntly said in a report report by the Atlantic Council, "Make no mistake, NATO is not winning in Afghanistan." My full blog is here.
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"The new perception is that the United States has entered a war with Islam itself," CAIR Chairman Parvez Ahmed declared at Washington's National Press Club in July 2007.
But, in fact, CAIR officials and spokesmen have been peddling that same "new perception" ever since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. They have portrayed virtually every intervening prosecution of an alleged terrorist who is Muslim and every investigation of an alleged terrorist front group as an insidious attack on their religion.
Today's sixth installment in IPT's detailed analysis of the self-proclaimed civil rights group focuses on its protestations that the war on terrorism amounts to a war on Islam.
Part VI of our series is here, click here for the summary.
For the 5 previous installments on the Council on Islamic-Relations, click here.
Installments include:
Part I: CAIR's origins
Part II: CAIR's funding
Part III: The Suspect Ties of CAIR Officials, Fundraisers and Trainers
Part IV: CAIR and Hamas
Part V: CAIR and Terrorism: Blanket Opposition to U.S. Investigations, Equivocal Condemnations for Plots Against America
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In reviewing the action this week between Iraqi forces and Shiite militia, it's instructive to compare press accounts of this conflict to reports from the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel conflict in Lebanon, as posted or discussed on this website. Some examples: "Hizballah has proven to be a far more effective fighting machine than Israel anticipated, and the Israelis find themselves in a difficult situation: Continued military operations in Lebanon risk escalation and further destabilization, while a quick withdrawal would hand Hizballah a significant victory." Daveed Gartenstein-Ross ("DGR"), July 18, 2006. "Nasrallah admitted that it took five months of preparation to plan this operation." Olivier Guitta, July 19. 2006. "A senior Iraqi military adviser has said the crackdown is taking longer than expected, partly because militia fighters have superior weapons." Washington Post, posted March 28. 2008. "It's likely that Israel will begin a major ground engagement within the next two weeks designed to obliterate Hizballah's infrastructure and neutralize as much of its military wing as possible." DGR, July 18, 2006. "A source in the police command in Basra said he expected British and U.S. ground units to join the fight in coming days. Shiite fighters gave similar predictions." Washington Post, March 28. 2008. There are still unknowns in the current situation. We don't yet know if Shiite militia possess the range of armaments, the training and discipline displayed by Hezbollah units in 2006, or the same degree of integration with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that Olivier Guitta and Bill Roggio reported here (see Olivier's July 19, 2006 post and Bill's July 21, 2006 posts, during the period when our efforts were combined on this website). But it shouldn't surprise us if we find that the Shiite militias have prepared for the same type of warfare engaged in by their Hezbollah cousins in 2006, using Iranian arms, IRGC advisers and trainers, and similar tactics.
The obvious difference between Lebanon 2006 and Iraq 2008 is the direct action in Iraq by the U.S. military, who are now far more efficient in counterinsurgency and urban warfare than the Israelis were entering the 2006 conflict. Did the Shiite militia desire such a reaction? Is that why they shelled the Green Zone so early in the conflict with the Iraqi army, to draw the Americans in and inject more uncertainty over Iraq into the 2008 election cycle? Perhaps, perhaps not - perhaps it was a strategic miscalculation which will lead to the eventual defeat of the Shiite militias. But the Shiite militia leaders have already achieved one strategic goal: they showed Pentagon planners and American voters that the Iraqi army is nowhere ready to secure Iraq, much as Hezbollah exposed the weaknesses in Israeli armed forces. We can also expect that unless the American military completely wipes out the Shiite militia (an unlikely outcome given the tactics of the militia), the Shiites will take another page from Hezbollah leaders and claim victory, thus raising the morale of their followers and their reputation on "the Arab street." And that would mean another strategic victory for their Iranian backers.
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Jeff Breinholt’s excellent CTB article today, “The Value of Aggressive Enforcement,” is a strong reminder of the historically proven value of the multi-agency task force approach in targeting complex and difficult criminal organizations. This has been carried into the national security arena with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the various similar multi-agency efforts. The theory goes back to the Al Capone gangster days when the notorious mobster was taken down on those “mundane” tax violations. Everyone knew Capone was a murderous thug, but the tax charges were what the Feds could make stick. History has not seen many defenders of Mr. Capone.
Having spent a quarter century investigating and enforcing US immigration and nationality laws, and most of those years in organized crime and national security task force efforts, I know this approach works. Whether utilizing more routine violations against lower-level suspects (the baitfish) to work up the chain toward the kingpins (the barracuda) or, on occasion, charging the main players with “lesser” offenses, the end result is taking many bad guys (and sometimes bad gals) off the streets. Some of the most powerful and wide-ranging of those “routine” violations are tax and currency charges, weapons violations and immigration violations.
Interestingly, when the Government has applied these investigative and prosecution techniques against organized crime targets, there is little if any protest from any quarter, including the media, except perhaps the criminal suspects themselves and their attorneys. That has not been the case when these entirely legitimate and proven techniques are applied against terrorism suspects and their organizations. Suddenly, investigators and prosecutors are accused of bias and going on “fishing expeditions” and “casting wide nets.”
There is no double standard in this. This is smart and effective application of proven investigative and prosecution process. It needs to continue.
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Let's assume that the 33 kilos of nuclear material discovered last week by Colombian officials allegedly cached by FARC was almost worthless, and represented no real security threat, as suggested by Aaron Mannes in his article "DU Dud."
Does that mean we should conclude, as he does, that it represented desperation, ignorance, failure of judgment, or incompetence by the FARC, making FARC either (a) the victim of the scam, no longer feared by the person scamming FARC, or (b) the scammer who would hurt its reputation with critical partners if it sold the bad stuff for too much money?
Another view might conclude that FARC was interested in smuggling nuclear material, wasn't able to get highly radioactive material, and was undertaking a "trial run" at the nuclear business in preparation for better-grade future opportunities. It's certainly common for criminal organizations to start criminal activity small scale or low-level and to move up the chain as capacity and opportunity permit; terrorist activity tends to follow the same pattern.
Any assessment of the implications is for now be based on a rather thin set of data about the material. For now, we can only speculate about FARC's intentions for the depleted uranium, even if terrorist use of depleted uranium would be, as the LA Times cited an unnamed U.S. official as saying, more "irritating" than creating actual dangers to public health.
As previously noted, there is reportedly be a lot more information in the FARC computers that we have yet see. When it becomes available, hopefully we will achieve a better understanding of just how far along FARC was in its cross-border criminal and political networking, and better determine whether its nuclear interests were mere dabbling, or something more profound.
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I liked Frank Hyland’s recent CT Blog post, “Ex-Gov. Spitzer - Unfinished Business.” It reminds us that there are serious national security issues - and counterterrorism opportunities - even when it appears that the mischief involves something as banal as nooky.
A few years ago, as I was putting the finishing touches on my book Taxing Terrorism, I read an interesting article describing how foreign intelligence services are mindful of the difficulty their spies have operating in countries that have a strong income tax system. In these countries - and the U.S. clearly qualifies, in terms of our laws, if not always in our political will - law enforcement has a right to know not only how much income one receives, but also from whom. That presents a barrier to people living a lie, by claiming to be employed somewhere but actually being paid by someone else. Taxing Terrorism was my attempt to breathe new life into aggressive tax enforcement, by showing how our criminal tax laws have historically been used to go after people guilty of more than just cheating on their taxes. The book was a labor of love for me, because I started my prosecutorial career as a tax prosecutor. The notion that the IRS has a right to investigate not only the amount of income but its source makes the IRS and the Department of Justice’s Tax Division an underutilized resource in national security. Someone in the U.S. who is selling secrets to our enemies? His payments are taxable, which means he is a tax cheat in addition to being a spy. If you have any doubts about that, ask Jerry Whitworth, if you can find his federal correctional facility in California.
Secondly, the Spitzer affair will hopefully make terrorist financing commentators think twice before arguing that the Bank Secrecy Act is worthless in fighting terrorism. These commentators, who include R.T. Naylor and more recently Ibrahim Warde, are very proud of themselves for their “discovery” that terrorist financing is fundamentally different from money laundering, since terrorism in not a crime of greed and terrorist attacks do not require much cash. They are so busy congratulating themselves to appreciate that this is really a distinction without a difference. Last I checked, Spitzer’s peccadillos were not based on greed, and they did not generate as much cash as drug dealing. It didn’t matter matter. They were uncovered by some alert American bankers, who were doing their duties under the Bank Secrecy Act.
Finally, as noted by Frank, in an age of terrorism, we must police even small violations, because they lead to a loose system that can give rise to bigger criminal problems. This was the basis for the Guiliani/Bratton New York miracle, where aggressively enforcing pan-handling ordinances and prosecuting subway turnstile jumpers led to a dramatic decrease in Manhattan crime. Immediately after 9/11, by friend Paul Warner, who was then the U.S. Attorney in Utah, realized that the Salt Lake City airport seemed to have plenty of people manning the x-ray devices and working in sensitive areas who obviously did not have a good command of the English language. He organized an operation in which these employees’ immigration status and use of Social Security Numbers were reviewed. His suspicions proved correct - the airport was employing plenty of illegal aliens in sensitive locations. The mass arrests were controversial, and Paul apparently lost at least one Hispanic federal prosecutor, who quit the U.S. Attorney’s Office in protest. Nevertheless, Paul maintained that people living a lie while employed in sensitive transportation positions represented a low-grade threat that was too significant to overlook, since they could be blackmailed my people looking to violate TSA security. This point was unassailable, and the Salt Lake City airport operation was replicated in dozens of other jurisdiction over the next several months.
So Frank Hyland is absolutely correct - the Spitzer scandal is more than just nooky. Where you follow the money, and maintain your vigilance, things that seem trifling are actually more significant than they first appear. The trick is to maintain the pressure without apology, in the face of people who have incentive to argue that the government is acting too aggressively.
The views expressed in this article do not reflect those of the Department of Justice.
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The controversial Dutch film "Finta" by Geets Wilder, a member of parliament, has been released in English and is causing quite a stir. This includes the expected outcry from many quarters, including many Muslim groups. Riots are predicted in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
There are many flaws in the 15-minute show, to be sure. It is jammed with the worst and most atrocious of radical Islam and offers no hint that there are other, valid interpretations of the religion, followed by millions, that do not subscribe to Islam as portrayed.
Nor does it offer any hint that the vast majority of Muslims across the world are not violent and live ordinary lives, with their religion left between themselves and their God.
But the real point, to me, is that all the images, all the hate speech by radical Islamist (including well-known leaders and heads of state), is real. The citations from the Koran are real. None of it was fabricated. And we have seen that these groups are not simply speaking, they act. And they act and speak in the name of Islam.
The U.S. Embassy bombings, the USS Cole, 9/11, Madrid, London, Theo Van Gogh, the beheading of Daniel Pearl, etc. etc., are real actions by real people. I am waiting for large Islamist group out there not to threaten to kill Wilder, which they have done. I am waiting for them to stand up and disown the hate speech and atrocities of those who claim the same religion. My full blog is here.
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CAIR's soft spot for terrorists extends well beyond the Hamas connections documented in yesterday's installment in this comprehensive series on the group. Today we focus on its portrayal of virtually any law enforcement action against radical elements as an assault on all American Muslims.
· Days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, CAIR-New York Executive Director Ghazi Khankan used an online chat with the Washington Post to launch a weeks-long campaign casting them as part of a conspiracy to discredit Muslims. Citing spurious evidence, he claimed that "many of the names of the terrorists are people impersonating innocent Muslims and Arabs."
CAIR pushed Khankan's misidentification theory in an October 2001 statement, speculating that three of the 19 suspected ‘hijackers' were still alive in the Middle East and asking, "Who is impersonating these three Muslim Arabs? Why are Muslim Arabs been (sic) implicated in this terrorism? And, who could ‘benefit' from this horrific tragedy?"
· CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper similarly hesitated to blame Al Qaeda. "We condemn the attacks on the buildings,'" he told Salon.com, adding, "If Osama bin Laden was behind it, we condemn him by name." Asked why he qualified the response, Salon.com reported, "Hooper said he resented the question."
Part V of our series is here, click here for the summary.
Part IV is here: CAIR Remains Apologist for Terrorist Hamas, Seeks To Silence Critics, click here for the summary.
Part III is here: The Suspect Ties of CAIR Officials, Fundraisers & Trainers, click here for the summary.
Part II is here: CAIR's Funding, click here for the summary.
Part I is here: CAIR's Origins, click here for the summary.
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Colombian police have found 30 kilos (65 lbs.) of depleted uranium (DU). DU is what is left over after natural uranium is enriched. It is less radioactive than natural uranium and consequently useless for building dirty bombs (let alone nuclear weapons.) Tons of the stuff is around and there is virtually no market for DU (certainly not to the tune of $2.5 million a kilo).
While the Hollywood scenarios of terrorists dealing in WMD appear to be false, this incident raises interesting questions about the motivations and quality of the FARC’s leadership.
Here is a video from the site of Colombia’s El Tiempo of investigators examining the uranium. A close-up of the Geiger counter shows that it barely registers the radiation and the investigators clean off the bars and the words “depleted uranium” are clearly visible.
It seems likely that the FARC was involved in a scam. The question is were they the scammer or the scammed (or a bit of both)? Whatever the answer, the FARC is exposed as both vicious and incompetent.
Read the complete entry here.
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The NEFA Foundation has obtained footage documenting the first suicide attack carried out by a German national of Turkish origin in Afghanistan. The March 3rd attack targeted the Sebari military compound near Khost, along the restive Afghan-Pakistani border. Cuneyt Ciftci (a.k.a. Saad Abu Furqan)--a 28-year old German national born in Bavaria to a family of Turkish immigrants--drove an explosive-laden truck into a US guard post killing 2 soldiers. An Uzbek terror group, the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), claimed responsibility for the attack. Ciftci had worked as a clerical worker in Germany, and was married with two children. He left Germany in April 2007 after formally deregistering as a resident at his local town hall. According to media reports, Ciftici was linked to Adem Yilmaz, detained in Germany in 2007 for plotting attacks against Frankfurt airport, Ramstein airbase, and other American interests in Germany. Ciftci's departure from Germany and his journey to the Pak-Afghan region was reportedly organized by Yilmaz himself.
The final video footage of Ciftci can be watched on the NEFA Foundation website.
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Before he was alleged to have become a spy for Saddam Hussein's regime, Muthanna Al-Hanooti's charity work and political activism provided him with access to the highest echelons of government.
Newsletters collected by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, some published now for the first time, show Al-Hanooti photographed with dignitaries ranging from First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1996 and Vice President Al Gore along with significant members of Congress.
For never before published photos of al-Hanooti's 2002 Congressional junket to Iraq, visit the website of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
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The NEFA Foundation has released a new "Spot Report" in the wake of the March 26, 2008 indictment of Muthanna al-Hanooti, the long-time public relations coordinator for Life for Relief and Development (LRD), a charitable organization based in Southfield, Michigan. The Department of Justice alleges that in the late 1990s, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) "targeted LRD and...al-Hanooti to cooperate with and serve the IIS." The report provides photographic evidence of the remarkable access that LRD was able to secure to government officials, both inside the U.S. and abroad. For instance, al-Hanooti is pictured with the Governor of Michigan, the President of Syria, and a British MP. Moreover, LRD's leadership can be seen with high-ranking U.S. law enforcement officials, such as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and the Special Agent in Charge of ICE's Detroit field office, as well as the U.S. Ambassador to Syria. LRD further secured access to members of Congress, including John Conyers, who is pictured at LRD's office.
The report can be viewed on the NEFA Foundation website.
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Today, President Bush promoted the offensive underway by Iraqi government forces against Shiite militias as showing "the progress the Iraqi security forces have made during the surge." Let's look at that "progress" today: "With the threat of a civil war looming in the south, Nouri al-Maliki’s police chief in Basra narrowly escaped assassination in the crucial port city, while in Baghdad, the spokesman for the Iraqi side of the US military surge was kidnapped by gunmen and his house burnt to the ground. Saboteurs also blew up one of Iraq's two main oil pipelines from Basra, cutting at least a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 per cent of government revenue, a clear sign that the militias — who siphon significant sums off the oil smuggling trade — would not stop at mere insurrection. In Baghdad, thick black smoke hung over the city centre tonight and gunfire echoed across the city. The most secure area of the capital, Karrada, was placed under curfew amid fears the Mahdi Army of Hojetoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr could launch an assault on the residence of Abdelaziz al-Hakim, the head of a powerful rival Shia governing party... In Baghdad, the Mahdi Army took over neighbourhood after neighbourhood, some amid heavy fighting, others without firing a shot. In New Baghdad, militiamen simply ordered the police to leave their checkpoints: the officers complied en masse and the guerrillas stepped out of the shadows to take over their checkpoints." A U.S. embassy employee died when one of the unreliable Shiite rockets accidentally hit its target, and the State Department has now ordered our embassy employees to take cover in our own embassy.
This is a budding disaster for the Maliki government, and it doesn't merit plaudits from anybody connected with the U.S. We vividly recall the spectacle of seeing the President compliment FEMA for its "fine job" in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina, only to be confronted by live reporting on the stranded and dying residents stuck in the Convention Center. The Pentagon and the White House need to speak plainly and candidly about the strategic defeat being suffered thus far by the Maliki government and the implications for our Iraq policy. If Iraqi forces turn it around - and they could - there will be plenty of time for backslaps and handshakes.
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Much has been made of the family aspects and the political aspects of the Eliot Spitzer fall from power. Now that the laughter over “The Luv Gov” has died down on the late night TV shows as they move on to new fodder, there are two other aspects of the known case that are potentially far more serious and that deserve a much closer look than apparently has been the case thus far. One aspect has been mentioned but merely in passing; the second has escaped at least public mention. The two additional aspects combine to suggest at least the possibility of a serious breach. That is, this country and other nations have been subjected to the efforts of an espionage ring masquerading as a prostitution ring.
The first aspect is the international nature of the “Escort Agency,” the Emperors Club VIP (ECV). ECV is said to have been based in New York from its alleged inception in approximately August of 2004 until being shut down (at least by that name) in March of 2008. ECV is believed to have used other names such as “QAT Consulting Group” and “QAT International, Incorporated” on its bank accounts. It was those accounts and money transfers into them that led to the downfall of Governor Spitzer. Aside from passing mention of ECV being “New York-based” and “international,” scant attention has been paid to other mention, for example that ECV could supply clients in London and Paris with women. Little notice has been paid on this side of the Atlantic, but the British tabloids have run extensive coverage of ECV clients there, one of whom is described as holding a high position in the UK military establishment. The ECV woman, Zana Brazdek (from Lithuania, by the way) alleges that her client bragged about his connections within the UK Military and about his inside knowledge. Ms. Brazdek, known within ECV as “Shanna,” reported that her client told her that Usama Bin Ladin was in hiding in a village in Pakistan. While it is certainly true that statements to that effect have been made publicly in a large number of cases, in this instance it was made by someone with access to UK-classified information and it becomes confirmatory.
The second aspect worthy of deeper investigation is the “why” we should be concerned that the former New York Governor used the services of ECV. Governors are the “presidents” of their states and as such, they are privy to a great deal of sensitive (including “Law Enforcement Sensitive”) information and classified information by virtue of the chair they occupy. Meetings with federal, state, and local officials during which discussions take place and briefings are conducted happen on a virtually daily basis. In the case of New York State, its role in Terrorism and CounterTerrorism (CT) matters was a large one even before 9/11. FBI Field Offices, for example, play large roles in a variety of subject areas. The New York Field Office (NYFO) has a preeminent part in Bureau CT investigations, including those involving locations beyond the boundaries of New York State. The NYFO is in regular receipt of Bureau information coming from a number of the Legal Attaches (LEGATT) abroad. Further, the network of Bureau-hosted Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) across the country provide the NYFO investigatory results on a regular and frequent basis. The New York JTTF was the first of such groups, having been established in 1980. Even a brief glance at the website of the Bureau’s Albany Division reveals the “web”, of interorganizational relationships that exists. At the top of the list of participating agencies is the Central Intelligence Agency.
The New York City Police Department, even closer to the Governor and even more under his aegis (read budgetary thumb), has arguably the largest CT organization of any police department in the US, including even that of Los Angeles. NYPD actually has CT officers stationed abroad in places like London. NYPD’s intelligence-related subset is large enough that it hired a former CIA Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), David Cohen, to head it. NYPD’s former Deputy Commissioner for CT was Michael Sheehan, formerly of a lengthy list of positions, including that of the US State Department’s Ambassador at Large for CT. Upon taking the NYPD position, Mr. Sheehan was responsible for overseeing NYPD’s CT operations as well as partnering with the FBI JTTF.
The existence of the interorganizational relationships, I should hasten to add, is a plus for the US, one that has played perhaps the single biggest role in the prevention of another attack on the country. Protection of the information within that apparatus is paramount to continued US national security.
So - we have 1) an organization (ECV) that is undeniably international in character, with little about it that at least has been revealed publicly beyond a few names, a number of which are acknowledged to be false names; 2) a Client (Number 9) who by his own admission carried out illegal activities - making him vulnerable to blackmail by ECV; and 3) a client who likely has been privy to a great deal of sensitive and possibly classified information on Terrorism and US and allied CounterTerrorism. Overall, this is strongly suggestive of the architecture of an espionage organization and a recipe for disaster. It is also an organizational profile that is a classic one in espionage circles, with historical examples being rife. CTB readers can be certain that, even though reporting on the investigation has declined somewhat in the public arena, the scramble behind the scenes to produce voluminous “Damage Assessments” is ongoing and consuming hundreds, if not thousands, of personnel hours at taxpayer expense.
Before concluding, there is an important reason to raise the questions herein. More than a few commentators on this subject have amply demonstrated their abject ignorance by raising the issue of “consensual” sex and “victimless” crime before the investigation has been completed. Even aside from the lasting effects of Governor Spitzer’s debacle on his wife and two daughters, the issue of the possibility of ECV being a front for an espionage organization headquartered who-knows-where points to the absurdity of the commentators’ claims.
Finally, we know of Client 9 and the near-term results of his exposure, but what of other clients - governors, state-level staffers, federal officials and staffers, law enforcement officials, and on and on?
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There are governors who are not willing to comply with the Real ID Act and make it more difficult for terrorists to be able to receive driver's licenses. There are members of Congress who similarly oppose the Real ID Act; Democrat Senator Richard Durbin and Republican Senator Lamar Alexander are among those leading the charge against the Real ID Act. Senator Alexander wants to add a provision to the FY 2009 DHS appropriations bill delaying any enforcement of the bill unless and until the federal government fully funds implementation - in effect, a permanent delay.
Let us remember the impetus for the Real ID Act was the lessons that should have been learned from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. All but one of the terrorists who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, obtained state driver's licenses or other valid identifcation, with three doing so on the basis of fraudulent information. The terrorists used false identities in order to embed themselves in our country and hide in plain sight among us, before they attacked our nation and slaughtered so many innocent people. In the days and weeks after 9/11, many politicians demanded to know why the attack wasn't prevented and why the "dots weren't connected." It still took years for Congress to finally pass the "Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007." The Commission specifically recommended that standards should be set “for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver's licenses.”
And now instead of providing the funding for implementing the laws they passed, will Congress just walk away from the Act? What will these politicians have to say if there is another attack, and we find out that the failure to implement the Real ID Act is implicated in such attacks? The costs of implementation would certainly pale by comparison by the potential costs of a terrorist attack, without even taking into account the potential for irreplaceable human lives.
There are those who complain that the Real ID Act represents an invasion of privacy and that it is wrong to drift towards a national indentity document. Regardless of what the politicians say, the driver's license already serves that purpose today. If you doubt this, try to make a purchase with a personal check or even a credit card in a department store and see how the cashier will react. Try to board an airliner or a railroad train. Try to enter a government or even corporate building. The point is that the driver's license does more than establish the fact that the bearer is authorized to drive motor vehicles; it also is used to establish the identity of the bearer.
It is impossible for me to understand how anyone who is concerned about the security of our nation in this perilous age would oppose the implementation of the Real ID Act. The seven years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the three years since the passage of the Real ID Act are more than adequate time for our leaders to provide our nation with true security. The Real ID Act represents an important component of such an effort and should not be repealed.
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The snow hasn't even melted in the foothills of Afghanistan's rough and tumble Hindu Kush, but already bad news is flooding in from America's 6 1/2-year war there. And hardly anyone seems to be paying attention.
One of the earliest - and grimmest - assessments this year came February 27 from the stone-faced commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, who is responsible for military operations along the jagged Durand Line (aka the Afghan-Pakistan border). The other dismal overview of the war was delivered at virtually the same hour from Team Bush's intel czar, Adm. Mike McConnell.
In an open Pentagon briefing attended by the New York Daily News and only five other interested reporters, Rodriguez explained by video link from Bagram Airfield that Al Qaeda now essentially oversees much of the Taliban's operations in the escalating Afghan war. Let me put this another way: Al Qaeda is comfortable enough in Pakistan now to orchestrate major ground combat operations in Afghanistan. Read The News' report here, and Rodriguez's full remarks here.
"We are seeing an increase in cooperation between the insurgents as well as the terrorists led by Al Qaeda," Rodriguez said. "They're cross-fertilizing their tactics, techniques and procedures, and also, again, getting resourcing mainly from Al Qaeda, who is the central player in the terrorism equation."
Rodriguez also backed off his prediction that the Taliban won't mount their usual spring offensive, saying he is "expecting the same type of things" in 2008 that transpired last year - suicide bombings and other attacks.
On Wednesday, one of Rodriguez's brigade commanders, Col. Martin Schweitzer, told reporters that "direct fire attacks" - combat, in plainspeak - have decreased along the Pakistan border, "although there's about a 15 percent increase in the IEDs" which he said was a "change in tactics" by the enemy over the past year. Read Schweitzer's full remarks here.
Meanwhile, The News reported Wednesday that Operation Enduring Freedom is nearing the horrible milestone of 500 American troops killed since 9/11. We also uncovered an overlooked statement that the director of national intelligence, McConnell, submitted to a Senate committee before an oversight hearing, in which he admitted things have gotten worse in Afghanistan despite last year's U.S.-led NATO offensive. Read his full written testimony here, and a transcript of the February 27 hearing here.
Despite NATO's record of winning firefights, "the security situation has deteriorated in some areas in the south, and Taliban forces have expanded their operations into previously peaceful areas of the west and around Kabul," McConnell wrote.
Not bad enough? The DNI also stated: "The Taliban-dominated insurgency has expanded in scope despite operational disruption caused by International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Operation Enduring Freedom operations. The death or capture of three top Taliban leaders last year - their first high level losses - does not yet appear to have significantly disrupted insurgent operations."
The Senate Armed Services Committee's chairman, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), asked McConnell at the hearing, "Overall, has the anti-government insurgency been contained?"
"No, sir. I wouldn't say it's contained," McConnell replied. "It's been sustained in the south, it's grown a bit in the east [on the Pakistan border], and what we've seen are elements of it spread to the west and the north."
"Once you start seeing Taliban operations around Kabul and in the north," ex-CIA Osama Bin Laden hunter Mike Scheuer told me, "the Afghans are saying, 'We're going to have to throw these guys out of here just like the Russians.'"
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To say that The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has contorted logic and language to avoid criticizing its early patron, the terrorist group Hamas, would be damning enough. But the full truth is even worse: CAIR and its leaders have, over the years, actively supported Hamas positions and regularly done their best to discredit critics of militant Islamic activity.
Those ties with Hamas are at the center of today's installment in our examination of CAIR's history and activities.
Part IV of our series on CAIR can be found here, click here for the summary.
Part III is here: The Suspect Ties of CAIR Officials, Fundraisers & Trainers, click here for the summary.*
Part II is here: CAIR's Funding, click here for the summary.
Part I is here: CAIR's Origins, click here for the summary.
*Yesterday, as we published our installment on the ties of CAIR officials to terrorism and extremist groups, former CAIR Michigan Executive Director Muthanna al-Hanooti was indicted by federal prosecutors in Detroit for espionage on behalf of Saddam Hussein's Baathist government of Iraq. See: Ex-CAIR Official Indicted in Iraqi Spy Case.
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Authentication of the information reportedly found in the computers seized after Colombia's March 1 raid on FARC camps in Ecuador has been coming in concrete form. First there was the discovery March 14 of $480,000 in cash held in a safe in a resident of a couple outside San Jose, Costa Rica, precisely where it had been reported to have been stored according to information found in the computer. Then, on March 26 Colombia announced that on March 20 it had seized up to 66 pounds of uranium, linked to the FARC guerrillas, hidden off the side of a road in southern Bogotá, again corroborating data previously reported found in the computers of FARC commander Raul Reyes, killed in the cross-border raid. The FARC computers had discussed selling up to 50 kilos of uranium to unspecified governments that might be interested in acquiring it. Notably, the press accounts suggest the uranium was not weapons grade. According to the Colombia military, a sample of the uranium was provided by the miltiary to experts at the Colombian Institute of Geology and Mining, who confirmed the sample to be what was characterized as "depleted uranium."
Still, the latest revelation, should it be validated, provides further reason to believe that narco-terrorists with nuclear material are no longer the merely confined to Hollywood thrillers, but are dangerously real-world, requiring a real-world response, including from Colombia's neighbors, who need to decide whether they are serious about confronting terrorists in their midst.
FARC's operational, financial, logistical, and political networks now face exposure, and those who have directly facilitated terrorist or criminal activity -- regardless of their political position -- need to face practical consequences. Such consequences can include such responses as the imposition of economic sanctions and asset freezes, the bringing of criminal indictments, the loss of the right to travel in countries registering objections to those doing business with or supporting terrorists. But there have to be consequences, and they need to be multilateral, not confined to issuance by Bogota and Washington.
First, some honesty about what happened. Then, after the dose of reality, practical steps to deter those with public responsibilities who have chosen to become partners with an organization that specializes in drug trafficking and bombings. Ideas are welcome.
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After the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was driven from power in Somalia by Ethiopian troops 15 months ago, the region, and its ongoing turmoil, largely fell from public view and the the official policy agenda.
That is a serious mistake. As this BBC story shows, the radical Islamists have regrouped, have increased their ability to strike across the country, and are more formally allied with al Qaeda than in the past.
The most important of the Islamist groups now fighting is al Shabab (meaning "The Lads," in Somali), a group recently designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist entity.
The State Department statement on the designation said the following:
Al-Shabaab is a violent and brutal extremist group with a number of individuals affiliated with al-Qaida. Many of its senior leaders are believed to have trained and fought with al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
Al-Shabaab has used intimidation and violence to undermine the Somali government and threatened civil society activists working to bring about peace through political dialogue and reconciliation. My full blog is here.
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The questionable associations and actions by many of its leaders cast serious doubt on CAIR's claims of moderation and restraint. Some have committed criminal acts themselves; others have ties to organizations with connections to Islamic extremism. The third installment in our series on the Council on American-Islamic Relations details many of those instances of legal trouble or ties to radical groups.
Part III of our series on CAIR can be found here, click here for the summary.
Part II is here: CAIR's Funding, click here for the summary.
Part I is here: CAIR's Origins, click here for the summary.
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As the war in Iraq continues, more Iraqi women will be ready to make the ultimate sacrifice: to use their bodies as human shields. The U.S. Government and other experts are asking: Why now? Why has there been a spike in attacks in Iraq committed by women? More importantly, how will the new role of women as suicide bombers change the nature of this conflict?
Since March 2003, when the war began, Iraqi women’s participation in suicide terrorism has increased by nearly 30%. This year, alone, there have been eight attacks committed by women, compared to six in 2007. The exponential increase in female suicide bombings suggests the trend will continue to rise, unless security officials, the Iraqi Government, and the international community seek new solutions to counter the rising violence by an important non-state actor.
Over the past year, publicly available data of Iraqi female bombers has shown that women are now the driving force of suicide terrorism. To understand the psychological factors that stimulate such acts, there are three likely motivations relevant in Iraq: a mother’s love for her children—a cathartic desire for revenge that has motivated mothers, who had lost children to sectarian violence, to become suicide bombers; a woman’s love for her country—like men, Iraqi women are also die-hard nationalists and have the right to protect their families against sectarian attacks and foreign occupation; a woman’s love for her body—suicide terrorism becomes an act of restitution for women who perceive violence as a way to cleanse themselves of sinful acts. An additional explanation is related to men’s exploitation of women’s vulnerability and exposure to violence by other groups, foreign troops, and/or Iraqi security.
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The Council on American-Islamic Relation (CAIR)’s financing over the years challenges its self-description as a benevolent group out to protect the civil rights of the Muslim community in the United States.
The clichéd admonition to “follow the money” gives a clear picture of the group’s actual role as an enabler for organizations linked by the U.S. government to Islamic terrorism, prominently including the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). Part II of our series on CAIR delves into that financial history.
Part II of our series on CAIR can be found here (click here for the summary).
Part I is here: As IAP Offshoot, CAIR Followed Pro-Hamas Agenda From the Start.
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The Security Council voted last week to give the UN’s Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) a new lease on life until December 31, 2010. CTED was established in March 2004 (UNSC Resolution 1535) as part of a Security Council effort to “revitalize” the work of the Counter-terrorism Committee (CTC), but has been something of a disappointment ever since. Its original mandate and work program, spelled out in 2004, called for the group to keep the CTC apprised of the steps being taken by all countries to implement the counter-terrorism measures spelled out in UNSC Resolution 1373 (2001) and to facilitate the provision of assistance to countries to further such implementation. The group got off to a very slow start and seemed to lack direction, initiative, and transparency from the outset. Concern over this lack of direction was reflected in the statements issued by G8 leaders at St. Petersburg in July 2006, and again at Heiligendamm in June 2007. At the latter meeting the G8 leaders called on the CTED and the CTC “to take the necessary steps and to make their work more relevant and accessible to both the donor and recipient communities…. We will work together to strengthen CTED’s effectiveness as part of the renewal of CTED’s mandate.”
The first step in this renewal process was the appointment last October of a new CTED Executive Director, Ambassador Mike Smith (Previously Australia's UN Representative). Smith was instructed by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to overhaul CTED and to come up with a much more engaged work program. This he did. And Smith presented his new program to the Security Council on March 19th in an open session of the Security Council. His plan includes a near complete reorganization of CTED including the establishment of five new functional groups covering Arms Trafficking, Border Controls and Law Enforcement; Terrorism Financing; Legal Issues; Issued Raised by Resolution 1624(dealing with root of terrorism issues); and Technical Assistance. There would also be special emphasis, he said, on issues related to human rights aspects of counter-terrorism. Two smaller units - on quality control, and communications and outreach were also created, he said.
Smith also told the Security Council that he intended to place a much greater emphasis on evaluating the actual effectiveness of each country’s counter-terrorism measures, rather than merely on reporting whether this or that country had passed new counterterrorism legislation. His group would actually try to evaluate the effectiveness of existing counter-terrorism measures ranging from border controls to overall counter -terrorism coordination and law enforcement capabilities. The group would also work to identify and tackle specific enforcement problems, including resource and infrastructure issues. This is much to promise, but, at least, the new CTED Director is thinking in the right direction.
The Security Council formally endorsed Smith’s CTED reorganization plan on March 20th passing UNSC resolution 1805 which extends CTED’s mandate to December 31, 2010. As the United Kingdom Representative put it: “We will know we have succeeded when we actually see an improvement in Member States’ preparedness to tackle terrorism.”
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From the Hamas ties of its founders in 1994 to its solicitous stance toward accused terrorists today, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demonstrated that its actual mission is far removed from the civil rights advocacy it claims to pursue.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism launches a 10-part investigation into the Council on American-Islamic Relations, beginning with its roots in a Hamas support network in the United States.
Part 1: As IAP Offshoot, CAIR Followed Pro-Hamas Agenda From the Start
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I just wrote an article for the Middle East Times regarding Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's (AQIM) new strategy.
For an extensive coverage of AQIM, please visit The Croissant (available to subscribers only).
To read the full article, please click here.
Here is an excerpt:
Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb - or AQIM - kidnapped two Austrian citizens in Tunisia on Feb. 22. The hostages are reportedly being held in northern Mali and Austrian authorities, with the help of Libya, are trying hard to obtain the release of their citizens.
This latest action from AQIM should not come as a surprise, for several reasons.
First, AQIM has made no secret that targeting foreign nationals has become one of their priorities. In Algeria, AQIM recently targeted U.S. and Russian contractors, and the U.N. compound in Algiers, while Western nations have warned their citizens of the risks associated with remaining in the country. AQIM also recently almost succeeded in kidnapping two French executives. After this incident, a number of French nationals (mostly women and children) left Algeria to return to safer grounds. The idea behind this strategy is to kill the tourism industry and dry out foreign investment in the region.
Second, AQIM has a tradition of self-financing its operations mostly through kidnappings, racketeering and smuggling of all kinds. Interestingly enough, the kidnapping of the two Austrian tourists mirrors the operation led by the Algerian GSPC (the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), now AQIM, in 2003 under the command of Abdel Rezak al-Para.
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The NEFA Foundation has obtained a copy of a new audio recording from Al-Qaida’s Deputy Commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, titled “A Call to Help Our People in Gaza.” During his speech, Zawahiri called upon Muslims everywhere to “attack the interests of the Jews and the Americans… Select your targets, collect the appropriate funds, assemble your equipment, plan [your attacks] accurately, and then charge towards your targets… There is no place today for those who claim that the battlefield with the Jews is limited to Palestine… Let us hit their interests everywhere.” A complete English transcript of the recording is now available on the NEFA website.
Zawahiri's choice of words was unusual, and even his typically fiery rhetoric is rarely this specific. In recent months, there has similarly been an increasing Al-Qaida focus on the plight of the Palestinians, capped off by Al-Qaida's "amir al-mumineen" in Iraq Abu Omar al-Baghdadi bestowing public recognition on the Fatah al-Islam movement as Al-Qaida's official delegation in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. There seems to be a belief among Al-Qaida's leaders that it can restore the image of the flagging jihad movement in Iraq by shoring up its connections to the sacrosanct cause of jihad in Palestine. With the latest threats from Dr. al-Zawahiri, one is left only to wonder how far Al-Qaida intends to go in order to prove its ideological and practical commitment to besieged Palestinian Islamists holed up in Nahr al-Bared and the Gaza Strip.
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As Congress continues to consider the regulatory regime necessary to “permit” the President to engage in national security-based wiretaps, it is important to put the current debates into historical perspective. The canvass upon which the wiretap authority is now being argued is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a 1978 statute that was a response to litigation that arose during the Watergate era. That litigation, contrary to popular belief, did not reach the question of whether the President had inherent authority to conduct electronic surveillance with respect to the activities of foreign powers, within or without the U.S. U.S. v. U.S. Dist. Court, (Keith), 407 U.S. 297, 308, 321-22 (1972). If such authority existed, it is unclear how it was impacted by FISA, which arguably governs legal authority where the surveillance target is a domestic person or entity.
I am known as a Watergate junkie, and it remains my favorite historical topic. Shortly after joining the Department of Justice in the fall of 1990, I took it upon myself to read every Watergate book I could find. I watched all of the television retrospectives that tend to be broadcast on the anniversaries of the break-in, went to book signings and lectures, and followed with great interest the various historical theories and the news that accompanied the gradual opening of archives. I visited the locations where certain Watergate-related events occurred, and got to know many of the surviving characters. I now know far more trivia about 1970s-era government misdeeds than is good for me.
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A tip of the hat (actually, two tips) to Todd Bensman of the San Antonio Express-News for two articles (one in his paper and one one his website)
on the reality that Islamist terrorists have crossed the U.S. border, and are likely to do so again.
Bensman is one of the few investigative journalists left with a staff job who takes these investigations seriously. As much of newspaper world, in particular, slash their investigative capabilities, these gems will grow ever more rare.
Bensman looks at the recent case of three Afghanistan national with genuine Mexican passports seeking to enter the United States. The good news is that the Mexicans are willing and able partners in investigating these potential breaches. The bad news is that they nonetheless had real passports, which makes getting caught much harder.
In his other story Bensman looks at the 10 cases of terrorists who made it across the border, including al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas operatives. This is the first time I have seen the cases laid out in some detail and linked to terrorist groups.
What is of greater concern to me than Mexico, per se, as I have written earlier, is the number of Latin American countries where terrorists and their sympathizers, particularly but not limited to Hezbollah, can likely acquire legitimate travel documents that do not arouse much suspicion. My full blog is here.
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Last month, I traveled from Islamabad to Peshawar and then headed north to Kashmir. To understand where Pakistan is today and where it is heading, I presented the following briefing to the U.S. Congress.
Today, there is cautious level of enthusiasm and hope in the country, made evident by the February 18th election results which confirmed the popularity of the country's two main centrist parties. It would be an understatement to say that the Pakistani public desires change, and hope that the new civilian government, which convened in Parliament this month, will be able to mitigate the rising threat of suicide attacks. The new government has a great burden and responsibility to counter the threats from the Pakistani Taliban, local emirs / commanders in the northwest province, and the terrorists' claim to Pakistan's settled territories, such as Swat.
With the failure of President Pervez Musharraf to secure Pakistan, the public places great demand and pressure on the new government to reverse policies of nepotism and negligence. Certainly the Pakistani Army scored a few successes on the war on terrorism, but that victory pales in comparison to the lawlessness that exists along the Afghan-Pakistan border and the extremists' ability to disrupt civil society through numerous bombings against hard and soft targets which now include the capital city of Islamabad.
Based on my recent trip, it seems to me that an issue of great importance revolves around perceptions of the war on terrorism. How is the war perceived by the general public and established elites? With militants' largely striking Pakistanis, as opposed to Westerners in the country, the Pakistani public is now beginning to view the U.S.-led war on terror as "their" war; there is general acceptance that this battle that can only be won in the long-run with support from the local population to root out criminal and terrorists from within their families, neighborhoods, and communities. According to a prominent editor of the Daily Times, winning the war on terrorism in Pakistan will required the support of "the people a a whole."
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I had a piece in the Washington Post's Outlook section on Sunday on terrorist drop-outs. In the piece, I argue that with all of the increased focus on analyzing the radicalization process, it's just as important to improve our understanding of those who abandon terrorist organizations.
Here is an excerpt:
On Dec. 10, 2001, after completing his al-Qaeda training in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sajid Badat returned home to Britain. Badat, a 22-year-old Muslim born in Gloucester, had an associate, a gangly man named Richard Reid, and the duo were now ready to carry out their mission: blowing up two separate aircraft traveling from Europe to the United States. Badat and Reid had been given identical explosive devices, specially designed to evade airport security and destroy an aircraft in mid-flight. On Dec. 22, Reid -- now infamous as the "shoe bomber" -- was jumped by his fellow passengers when he tried to light his device on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami. He got further than Badat, who simply bailed on the plot, leaving his dismantled bomb in his parents' house.
Badat is now serving a 13-year sentence in a British prison. He told prosecutors that he decided to "get away from danger and introduce some calm in his life."
Badat's case sheds some light on a rarely considered question: Why do some terrorists drop out? We rightly think of al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups as formidable foes, but the stories of would-be killers who bail give us some intriguing clues about fault lines that counterterrorism officials should exploit. The reasons for a change of heart can be strikingly prosaic: family, money, petty grievances. But they can also revolve around shaken ideology or lost faith in a group's leadership.
It's become a truism of counterterrorism that we must understand how and why individuals become jihadists in the first place. But almost nobody is studying the flip side of radicalization -- understanding those who leave terrorist organizations. We'd do well to start. Figuring out why individuals walk away from terrorist groups can help governments predict whether an individual -- or even a cell -- is likely to go through with a plot. Understanding the dropouts should also make it easier for governments to determine which terrorists might be induced to switch sides, help stop radicalization and craft messages that could peel away people already in terrorist organizations. The more we know about why terrorists bail, the better we can fight them.
To read the rest of the piece, click here
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With much media fanfare, Philippine authorities last month claimed to have found a month-old corpse in the southernmost part of their country that allegedly belonged to fugitive Jemaah Islamiyah bomber Dulmatin. At the time, Indonesian security officials expressed skepticism that the corpse belonged to the terrorist. Their skepticism was reportedly based on the lack of corroborating testimony from sources within the radical Muslim community in the southern Philippines.
Earlier today, an Indonesian police official unofficially stated that tissue samples taken from the corpse did not match Dulmatin. For those keeping count, this is the seventh time that the regional media will have prematurely written Dulmatin's epiteph.
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On March 19, I moderated a Counterterrorism Foundation panel titled, "Compañeros de Armas ("Friends in Arms"): Chavez, FARC & South America" before a group of Congressional staff and other attendees on Capitol Hill in Washington. Panelists were Contributing Experts Douglas Farah of the NEFA Foundation and Jonathan Winer of Alston & Bird LLC, and Steven Monblatt, former counter-terrorism official at the OAS and State Department and now at the British-American Security Information Council. The attached file is a transcript of the event, beginning with my introductions of the panelists and continuing through their remarks (edited for grammar and using the panelists' written remarks when available), and including the attendees' questions and the panelists' answers.
The experts presented information which was taken from the computer found when Colombian forces killed FARC commander Raul Reyes in a raid in Ecuador. Jonathan Winer discussed a number of the most disturbing details in his March 18 post, including FARC's plan to conduct 300 bombings of the Trans-Andean pipeline and the alliances between FARC, Ecuadorean President Correa and Venezuelan President Chavez; and FARC's direct involvement in a wide range of terrorist and criminal activities.
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At the Counterterrorism Blog, we try to foster respect for dialogue. Individual contributing experts are responsible for their own postings, and not subject to any editorial oversight. True to the blog ethos, we believe the best response to a disagreeable posting is more words. It is in that spirit, as a CTB contributor, that I express my strong disagreement with Farhana Ali’s recent posting, “Outside View: Danish cartoons doom us all.”
Ms. Ali suggests that the Danish editors should consider an apology to Muslims offended by their decision to publish the cartoons, and notes that “undoing the damage across the Muslim communities will require more.” I am sorry, but I view this suggestion as outrageous. Usama Bin Laden, like Ali, was apparently annoyed by the cartoons, so much so that he has now threatened terrorist attacks in Europe because of them. When free speech is threatened by violence, it seems the more enlightened response is to support the speaker. This was the correct response to the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie almost 20 years ago, over a stunning work of literature he never imagined would set off such a firestorm. It is the correct response today.
Ali notes:
Feelings of alienation and isolation, particularly among European Muslims, could make it difficult for Muslim communities to co-exist within mainstream Western societies. As a Western-educated Muslim woman, what I find surprising are the inconsistencies of the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. In April 2003 one of its editors refused to print cartoons of Jesus Christ because it would "provoke an outcry." The editors did not seem to have any trouble, however, printing three new drawings of Islam's Prophet, one of which shows him with the face of a pig, an animal Muslims believe is unclean, neither to be touched nor eaten.
I can assure Farhana that my attitude in this instance has nothing to do with favoring one religion or another. I proudly crossed picket lines to watch “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “The Life of Brian,” and enjoyed both films. Same with the supposedly ant-Semitic “Passion of the Christ.”
Feeling alienated and isolated in the West? Perhaps the best response is not to take non-lethal intellectual property and artistic expression so seriously. Is there anything, as Westerners, we do take seriously? How about the threat of violence by religious fanatics, particularly those who have proven their capacity to act out on their threats?
So, Farhana, count me out of your calculation that the Danish cartoons “doomed us all.” I refuse to be doomed by political cartoons. Things will never be so dire, as long as we have people willing to stand up to thin-skinned guardians of religious sensibilities.
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We've been here before. Like two years ago, last week's rage in Pakistan over reprints of cartoons and a forthcoming Dutch film that insult Islam's holy book once again entangles Muslims and the West in a fury over freedom of speech.
In Pakistan's largest riot, 70,000 people gathered in the northwestern city of Peshawar, where I traveled last week, burning cars and cinemas. In Lahore, my birth city, at least two protestors were killed when a mob burnt Western fast-food chains, while in Islamabad students launched petrol bombs at various embassies.
They were protesting "Fitna" -- "Ordeal" in Arabic -- a forthcoming short film by controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Wilders, who has called the Koran a "fascist" book, has promised to release his film this month. They were also protesting the decision of several Danish newspapers to republish the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that provoked deadly riots after their first airing in 2006.
In a post-Sept.11 environment, where relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West are at best precarious, at worst distrustful, and above all central to everyone's security, the Danish editors might have known that reprinting the cartoons would provoke destructive behavior rather than encourage peaceful dialogue.
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This column is another in the ongoing series on the terrorist threat to India and the surrounding region by Frank Hyland and Animesh Roul.
The number of terrorist groups in the world that can claim to have killed more than 300 people in one attack is small, thankfully. Moving from northeast India to the northwest part of the country, though, one enters the self-claimed homeland of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) - Khalistan. BKI is one of the groups that has earned that dubious distinction of killing more than 300 people in a single attack.
Most readers are all-too familiar with the infamous events of al-Qa’ida’s attacks on September 11, 2001 at New York City’s World Trade Center, a field in Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon just outside Washington, DC. Most, though, would probably be surprised to find out that, prior to 9/11, the aircraft-related terrorist attack that consumed the greatest number of lives was the BKI’s downing of Air India Flight 182 on June 23, 1985 as the aircraft neared Ireland on its way to Heathrow Airport near London. A total of 329 persons - 22 crew and 307 passengers - lost their lives when an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) concealed in a suitcase caused the Boeing 747 to disintegrate and fall into the sea, which was over a mile deep at that location. In a continuation of the senselessness of ethnic strife and the heritage-related irony, many of those killed aboard Flight 182 were Sikhs, in whose name BKI said it perpetrated its attacks. As a measure of BKI’s sophistication and its operational capability to coordinate its attacks, a twin assault was carried out by BKI in Tokyo’s Narita Airport on the same day, killing two baggage handlers and injuring four others. The IED aboard Air India Flight 182, it turned out, had been timed to detonate at Heathrow Airport and would have done so if the aircraft had not been delayed in leaving Canada.
BKI came into being in the 1970s, was formed by and is continued by a subset of India’s minority of the Sikh religion. The group, currently, is trying revive its armed strength and terrorist capabilities by setting up bases outside India, in North America (the US and Canada) and Europe.
The peak of Sikh militancy and associated carnage occurred during two years in the mid-1980s. A period of increasing Sikh militancy, armed attacks, and louder calls for a separate state culminated in the Indian Government’s assault on the Sikh holy temple at Amritsar on June 3, 1984 (operation Blue Star) to arrest Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, accused of directing and perpetrating acts of terrorism in the region.
Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence Directorate (ISID), suspected to be the supporters and/or directors of so many other terrorist groups in the area as part of the decades long “Cat’s Paw” sub rosa conflict with India, is believed to now be sheltering BKI’s present leader, Wadwaha Singh, and deputy leader, Mehal Singh. Indian requests for the extradition of the two to India have been met with no success; nor are they likely to result in their extradition in the future.
The mother of many subversive activities in India, ISID reportedly is coordinating and establishing linkages among Jammu & Kashmir-centric Islamic groups with the Sikh extremist leaders operating in foreign countries, as distant as Germany, Belgium, Norway and Canada. BKI’s Berlin meeting held in June 2007 under ISI’s directives was an eye opener for India’s ever complacent intelligence agencies. The meeting was attended by BKI, other pro-Khalistan groups - The International Sikh Youth Federation/Rhode (ISYF/R) and the Islamic Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). BKI, too, has ties with northeastern group Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isaac-Muivah (NSCN-IM), especially for obtaining arms and ammunitions.
BKI militants were suspected in the Ludhiana Cinema Hall blast (October 14, 2007) and Delhi Cinema Hall Blasts (May 22, 2005). In the Ludhiana blasts, seven people lost their lives and more than 40 were injured. The Delhi blasts (in Liberty and Satyam Cinema halls) were of low intensity; one person died and over 50 others were injured, including four who had triggered the blasts.
In recent weeks, Delhi police claimed to have foiled two major BKI terror plots. On March 17th, Delhi police arrested three Babbar Khalsa terrorists, including Paramjit Singh, a close confidante of BKI’s Jagtar Singh Hawara, with four kilos of RDX high explosives. Two days later, on March 19th, Delhi police foiled a similar BKI plot to assassinate key religious leaders, when they arrested two of their cadre from Jalandhar, Punjab.
Presently, Sikh militants have reportedly formed conglomerates to trigger sectarian conflict as well as to carry out targeted killings in India. BKI had planned the elimination of the Dera Sacha Sauda Chief Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh, Baba Bhaniarewala and certain other heads of religious sects in Punjab, and already unleashed militants to target some high-profile personalities, including former Punjab police chief K P S Gill, and All India Anti-Terrorist Front chief M S Bitta.
The fact that BKI has been relatively quiescent in recent years should provide small comfort, if any, to those whom it may target in the future. The group has demonstrated that it possesses the intent, the capability, the global presence, and the technical sophistication to reach out almost anywhere to kill those whom it wishes to target.
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The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a copy of the latest audio recording from Al-Qaida leader Usama Bin Laden, titled, "The Way for the Salvation of Palestine." During his speech, Bin Laden insisted that control of Palestine shall only be reclaimed "with iron and fire" and admonished Muslims that "the nearest field of jihad today to support our people in Palestine is the Iraqi field, so it is necessary to be concerned with it, focus on it, and support it." Appealing specifically to Al-Qaida supporters living in the Levant, Bin Laden described how "great an opportunity" it would be for "arriving brothers from Palestine--who were prevented from waging jihad on the hills of Jerusalem--to... hasten to take their positions among the ranks of the mujahideen in Iraq... Then, there shall be a move towards the blessed al-Aqsa... The mujahideen coming from outside shall encounter their brothers within... and the Muslims shall delight in their clear victory."
A copy of the English-language transcript can be accessed on the NEFA Foundation website.
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In an audiotape posted on Internet, Osama Bin Laden threatened Europe with punishment because of its “negligence in spite of the opportunity presented to take the necessary measures” to stop the republishing of the Danish cartoons. It also menaced the Vatican with retribution for an alleged role in incitement "against religion." This al Qaeda warning would have been normal in Salafi Jihad logic. This radical movement obviously considers the drawings as an ultimate insult to Muslims and would unleash extreme violence in retaliation. Actually one would have expected al Qaeda to strike back “for the cartoons offense” long time ago. In fact, this particular audio is intriguing precisely because it is too “political,” read too sophisticated. Bin Laden’s school of Jihadism would have smitten first, explained later. So why is this message more peculiar than previous ones? What can we read into it? In short, I see in it the imprints of Jihadi "politicians” and strategists in international relations and deeply immersed in the diplomatic games across the Mediterranean. Even though it is indeed the voice of al Qaeda’s master but nevertheless one can see increasingly the impact of political operatives on the movement’s public statements. Here is why:
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In my opinion, the most important point in the second tape in two days by Osama Bin Laden is his reiteration of long-held Al Qaeda doctrine that victory in Iraq is critical to the long-term success of the jihad throughout the Middle East, ending in victory over and the destruction of the State of Israel. Bin Laden issues a renewed call for jihadists to win in Iraq in order to support the Palestinian cause: "The nearest Jihad (holy war) battlefield to support our people in Palestine is the battlefield of Iraq ... It should be taken care of and supported." This is a quick summary of the doctrine which his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, laid out in his famous letter in July 2005 to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq: "If our intended goal in this age is the establishment of a caliphate in the manner of the Prophet and if we expect to establish its state predominantly-according to how it appears to us-in the heart of the Islamic world, then your efforts and sacrifices-God permitting-are a large step directly towards that goal.
So we must think for a long time about our next steps and how we want to attain it, and it is my humble opinion that the Jihad in Iraq requires several incremental goals:
The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq.
The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate- over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq, i.e., in Sunni areas, is in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans, immediately upon their exit and before unIslamic forces attempt to fill this void, whether those whom the Americans will leave behind them, or those among the un-Islamic forces who will try to jump at taking power.
There is no doubt that this amirate will enter into a fierce struggle with the foreign infidel forces, and those supporting them among the local forces, to put it in a state of constant preoccupation with defending itself, to make it impossible for it to establish a stable state which could proclaim a caliphate, and to keep the Jihadist groups in a constant state of war, until these forces find a chance to annihilate them.
The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.
The fourth stage: It may coincide with what came before: the clash with Israel, because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity.
My raising this idea-I don't claim that it's infallible-is only to stress something extremely important. And it is that the mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal. We will return to having the secularists and traitors holding sway over us. Instead, their ongoing mission is to establish an Islamic state, and defend it, and for every generation to hand over the banner to the one after it until the Hour of Resurrection." Those who favor a quick withdrawal from Iraq should remember that Al Qaeda leadership has said for years that it must win in Iraq in order to eventually destroy Israel.
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 The NEFA Foundation has obtained a copy of a recent interview with a senior military commander of the Hamas al-Iraq insurgent group in the restive Diyala province of Iraq. During the interview, the unnamed Hamas commander sharply condemned the "criminal actions launched by the Al-Qaida network targeting innocent civilians and... other jihad movements... The occupying forces were unable to enter many districts and villages of Diyala until Al-Qaida paved the way for them when they began killing the Sunnis and demolishing their homes, mosques, and their hospitals." The Hamas al-Iraq commander also addressed allegations of Iranian logistical support for local Al-Qaida operations, and the relationship between Iraqi Hamas and a variety of other organizations--including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the Council of Iraqi Ulema, the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Awakening Councils, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the Iraqi Islamic Resistance Front (JAAMI), the Mujahideen Army, and the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI).
Among the highlights of the interview:
- "...We apologize for those who have stepped beyond the boundaries of good Muslim behavior… after a series of criminal actions launched by the Al-Qaida network targeting innocent civilians and, separately, other jihad movements. We have sought to find solutions to stop the harm and unify the ranks of the mujahideen—yet, neither our efforts nor those of others have yielded anything but betrayal and a lack of reciprocation by the Al-Qaida network. Ansar al-Islam knows quite well that, from the very beginning, we asked for their commander to be the mediator between us and [Al-Qaida], but they refused to do so.”
- "The occupying forces were unable to enter many districts and villages of Diyala until Al-Qaida paved the way for them when they began killing the Sunnis and demolishing their homes, mosques, and their hospitals. They did what the sectarian militias loyal to Iran could not do, and they finished off the job for them."
- "Anyone who has followed the impact of Al-Qaida in the Diyala province will generally find that wherever they go, they cripple daily life. We can summarize their actions in the Diyala province as follows: demolishing mosques (as what befell the Kanaan Mosque) and interrupting prayers; stealing the salaries of deserving retirees; preventing rations from reaching the people of Diyala for allegedly supporting the Iraqi Ministry of Trade; stealing livestock, especially from the families of martyrs from the mujahideen; killing women and children, and mutilating their bodies, as what befell our brothers from Asaeb al-Iraq al-Jihadiya and some of our mujahideen in Kanaan and Bahraz; shuttering hospitals and stealing many valuable pieces of medical equipment, destroying them or else exporting them to unknown locations."
- "While we were fighting against the American occupiers, the sectarian militias loyal to Iran were our biggest problem, because they know our mujahideen, they know our locations, our whereabouts, and where we live. However, once this problem was solved by the unified efforts of the resistance heroes from all the mujahideen brigades who defeated them, the Al-Qaida network showed up to take over an identical role in creating problems and havoc. This is what has allowed the American enemy to breathe, regain his strength, and to raid the villages and cities of the Diyala province. This Al-Qaida project has helped drain our reserves of fighters and weaponry and has facilitated the work of the occupiers."
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There are several interesting aspects to Osama bin Laden's first, albeit brief, message of 2008, transcribed here by the NEFA Foundation. Clearly the senior al Qaeda leadership thought the issue was important enough to have bin Laden address it, something he has not done since December 2007.
The first is the specificity of the threat to Europe, and the precise reason for that threat, the alleged insults perpetrated by the printing of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. This, according to bin Laden, is more insulting that waging war against al Qaeda or the killing of women and children.
This seems to be part of the Islamist tradition of warning one's enemies of an impending attack, and giving the enemy a chance, however brief, to repent and and convert. Whether al Qaeda can carry out a serious attack is a separate question from whether al Qaeda or its affiliates want to carry out such an attack and believe they can.
It would be highly demoralizing for bin Laden to make a rare public statement without being able to follow through, or at least believe his organization is capable of following through. My full blog is here.
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I will give a lecture on Thursday, March 20, at the International Spy Museum in Washington, titled, "The Bomber Behind the Veil: Muslim Women and Violent Jihad." Unlike other talks I've given on female suicide bombers in the Muslim world, this presentation will include data and findings from Iraq. Female suicide bombers in Iraq are now raising awareness and attention from domestic and international audiences. Today's front page of The Washington Times gives attention to the female bomber trend in Iraq, and there will be likely increased reporting as women continue to display their anguish through their actions. What these women hope to achieve by strapping on the bomb is a question I have been trying to answer since I began my research nearly ten years ago. To learn more about the Iraqi female bomber and other women's participation across different conflicts, join me tonight as I discuss the shelf-life of the mujahidaat. For more information, contact the Spy Museum at 202.EYE.SPY.U
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An English-language transcript of Usama Bin Laden's latest audio recording (released late this afternoon), titled "May Our Others Be Bereaved Of Us if We Fail to Help Our Prophet", is now available on the NEFA Foundation website. During his speech, Bin Laden once again condemned the publication of cartoons in Denmark deemed offensive to Islam, and the subsequent defense of their publication on free speech grounds. According to Bin Laden, "if there is no check on the freedom of your words, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions... The answer is what you see, not what you hear."
Separately, NEFA has also released the fourteenth installment in its "Target: America" series, examining the planned 2004 attack on the Herald Square subway station in New York City. Working closely with an NYPD informant, whom they believed would provide explosives, conspirators Shahawar Matin Siraj and James Elshafay plotted to bomb what U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf labeled "one of the most active public transportation hubs in America."
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This is to introduce my new book The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad which has been released today
In my first post 9/11 book, Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against the West, I attempted to explain the roots, the strengths and the strategies of the Jihadist regimes and movements. In short the "what do they want to do."
In my following book, The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy, I tried to show how the Jihadi forces waged three campaigns to seize the minds and hearts of millions of people. The first war of ideas was when they penetrated the Arab and Muslim world. The second war of ideas was when they infiltrated the West. And the Third War of Ideas is taking place now. In short the "how they did it."
My first two books were both read widely, particularly by members of the U.S. Congress, the UK House of Lords and Commons and in the European Parliament, as well as the defense, national security and expert communities.
In this third book of the "trilogy" I am attempting to analyze the long-term plans of the terror forces and their capacities both within the nation and around the world: A potential outline of the blueprints for the next stage.
Evidently this is a critical year. Americans are debating the future of the War on Terror and their own national security future. As voters head to the polls, they must decide what the best policies are to be adopted by the next White House and Congress. But beyond the debate about the new direction in America The Confrontation offers an all-out strategic plan to gather all possible national resources and reconstruct a world front against Jihadi terror. For in my conclusions, I feel that not only is it possible, but this is our only way as democracies to win the conflict. In this book I also make the case for a revolutionary agenda based on what the Jihadi forces are planning on doing -and what we can do about it.
I argue that the first step is to identify the threat. I use several chapters to explain how we cannot make progress if we don’t know why - and how - the enemy is moving forward. Thus, the War on Terror must be redefined. To do this, a cultural and intellectual revolution is necessary within the Western free world. Such intellectual developments, based on public awareness, must enable the public to understand the history, ideology and strategies of the Salafists, Khomeinists and their allies worldwide. Once an understanding is achieved, it will lead to an economic and diplomatic revolution within the West so that the terrorists won’t be able to use our systems and needs against us.
We also need to seize every inch of common ground we have with potential allies against Jihadists, from France and Europe to Russia to India and beyond.
Finally, I call for a revolution in the Arab and Muslim world: a war of ideas to enable the weak, democratic and ant-terrorist sectors of that society - our real allies in this deadly conflict.
All of these rationalized (and perhaps daring) steps are needed to reverse the balance of power and isolate the radicals. I have tried to provide answers to many of the questions raised in the U.S. political debate: Iraq, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, Homeland Security, Homegrown Terror, Europe, Russia, Africa and the Greater Middle East. I am glad to report -and I am honored- that The Confrontation has been praised and endorsed by leading members of Congress and the European Parliament who are familiar with my previous work. Like any author in the field of international relations and strategic studies I hope it will have its share of influence on our choices for our future directions in the War on Terror.
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Last November 2, I posted on a report on the 1985 Air India bombing from consultants at Deloitte & Touche who were asked to interview institutions and organizations that report large cash transactions, suspicious transactions and cross-border wire transactions to FinTRAC, the lead Canadian government agency on such issues (analogous to FinCEN in the U.S.). The report (download here) described FinTRAC as a "big black hole" and noted that Canada had never brought a single terrorist financing case: "A common theme amongst all those interviewed is the fact that terrorist financing is not on anyone’s radar screen." There was virtually no reaction to the report by Canadian officials.
Well, Canada finally has a terrorist financing case on its hands, involving a Sri Lankan-born Canadian man suspected of raising funds for the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Now we'll find out something about the quality of the transaction data provided to FinTRAC from financial institutions and to law enforcement agencies.
It hasn't been easy to prosecute terrorist financing cases in the U.S., which has the most stringent and detailed set of counter-terrorist financing compliance rules in the world, but the record of convictions is pretty good. Let's hope the Canadians are ready for courtroom scrutiny of their system for the first time.
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If the information in the laptops seized by the government of Colombia following its March 1 cross-border raid into Ecuador proves to be as authentic as it appears, Colombia's FARC guerillas have developed an extensive political network to supplement their criminal and terrorist activity, with important nodes including the political leadership of Ecuador and Venezuela.
According to the material released to date in the Colombian press and currently being analyzed by a team sent to Colombia from INTERPOL, over the past decade, FARC had reached out to the governments of a number of countries in an effort to develop strategic alliances directed against Colombia and against the United States.
Texts of letters and other documents found in a computer that Colombia says belonged to FARC leader Raul Reyes have been published in the daily Bogota newspaper, El Tiempo. The correspondence includes letters from FARC's leaders to Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez and to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, as well as memos to FARC leadership describing diplomatic initiatives involving senior officials of Ecuador. They also outline a wide range of terrorist and criminal activities, such as FARC's efforts to obtain surface-to-air missiles from Libya and uranium from an unnamed broker; the status of its approach to using its hostages to secure the release of guerilla fighters and narcotics traffickers from prisons (including from the US); its direct involvement in drug trafficking as well as in taking payoffs from drug-producing areas and traffickers; and a window into its propaganda campaign and efforts to justify its actions.
Choice tid-bits from the correspondence include:
FARC telling Chavez that it doesn't smuggle drugs, but instead that "we charge a tax on the drug traffickers as they are produced in peasant regions organized by us."
FARC reporting that it has just been informed by Ecuador's security minister, after he conveyed "greetings" on behalf of Ecuador President Correa, that President Correa was "interested in establishing official relations with the leadership of the FARC," and willing to replace law enforcement officials in border areas who are hostile to "local communities and civilians" (that is, hostile to FARC), based on FARC's recommendations.
One of FARC's leaders advising another FARC leader that FARC was planning "about 300 bombings of the trans-Andean pipeline" as of February 2008, and had prepared some 600 grenades for the purpose. The same letter included discussion of FARC's possible involvement in purchasing uranium at $2.5 million per kilo. As the letter states "we take a look who we can sell [the uranium] to, and the deal should be to sell it to a government. They've easily got 50 kilos ready and could sell a lot more."
Counter-intelligence operations, in which FARC obtained information on officials in the Andean region who allegedly were working directly for the CIA and/or the DEA.
Outreach between Chavez and French President Sarkozy on possible prisoner exchanges, including efforts to release French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage by FARC for the past six years. A separate memo, ostensibly written by Reyes, dated February 28, 2008, complains about the pressure being brought to bear on behalf of Bentacourt, who Reyes describes as having "a volcanic temper" and who is "crude and provocative to the guerrillas in charge of looking after her." Worse, according to the FARC commander, Bentacourt understands PR, and was using "image" and "symbolism" to make her kidnappers at the FARC look bad.
Discussions about working out a deal with drug traffickers who "are asking for shelter and offering economic assistance," in which the traffickers would give FARC $230 million in apparent exchange for protection by FARC.
Venezuela has challenged the authenticity of the documents, describing them as fabrications.
To determine if that is the case, INTERPOL has assembled an international team of experts to go to Colombia to review the laptops, which includes its Executive Secretary, Ron Noble, who is putting his own credibility on the line in an effort to assess the integrity of the documents.
If the INTERPOL analysis shows them to be real and true, the entire set should be copied and made available for review at the Organization of American States to provide a common foundation for some very serious discussions about how to deal with FARC's diplomatic initiatives, so nicely balanced in its data bases by its other initiatives, past and present, on nuclear smuggling, drug trafficking, bombings, kidnappings, and murder.
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It has been almost a year since the Indonesian authorities released detailed information about the believed whereabouts of Jemaah Islamiyah fugitive Noordin Top. At that time, he was believed to be hiding in the vicinity of Pekalongan, Central Java. Yesterday, however, the police announced that they had recent solid evidence Top was suffering from a liver ailment and had sought treatment at a clinic in Tuban district, East Java. Despite a search of Tuban, however, the ever-elusive Top once more apparently slipped the government dragnet.
Elsewhere in East Java, the authorities announced that they were being extra vigilant around Malang district. This is because another Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist, Mas Slamet Kastari, was caught there in early 2006 before being deported to his native Singapore--and there is speculation that he might once again seek santuary in that part of East Java since his escape from Singaporean detention. (Of course, the circumstances surrounding Mas Slamet Kastari's supposed escape from a high-security Singaporean prison continues to defy logic...and perhaps credibility.)
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Thanks to Yousef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who still enjoys speaking publicly, we gain added insight into the group's thinking.
In a recent interview with the al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper Qaradawi demonstrated the continued ambiguity of the _Ikhwan_ toward terrorist events, saying Osama bin Laden might not be responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Because of the uncertainty (despite al Qaeda's public and repeated claims of responsibility), Qaradawi argues, bin Laden should turn himself in to an impartial international tribunal to determine his guilt or innocence. Other al Qaeda leaders could be tried there too, he suggests.
At the same time, he equates U.S. counterterrorism efforts with the attacks of 9/11, a rhetorical tactic that is often used by the Brotherhood to share the blame among the victims and the perpetrators of terrorist acts.
Not an original proposal, and one that has been consistent with the Brotherhood's overall dilema: How to encourage and foment the creation of a global Islamist caliphate while disavoiwing the violence of those seeking the same goal? My full blog is here.
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As seen in two recent books by counterterrorism analysts, the ideology of Non-Interventionism is gaining popularity with a segment of the American public. While Non-Interventionist ideology plays off the frustrations of some of the American public with America's handling of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the wrong answer to the confusion over global Jihad and Islamism. Two recently-released books by counterterrorism analysts offer a panacea of Non-Interventionism ideology: Michael Scheuer's "Marching Toward Hell - America and Islam After Iraq", and Marc Sageman's "Leaderless Jihad". The Non-Interventionist ideology represented by these authors does not critically examine the role of political Islamism in Islamist terrorism; therefore the authors conclude that an appeasement approach towards Islamism will improve American national security.
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One month after the spectacular dismantling of what is called the"Belliraj" network in Morocco, the details and implications of this event are coming out little by little.
The Croissant has compiled a full dossier, drawing on fifty open source articles.
The full dossier is available to subscribers.
Here is an excerpt:
About 35 suspects were arrested on February 18. They lived in Morocco: Casablanca, Rabat, Fez, Marrakech, Kenitra, Tangiers, Nador, Oujda. There are also Moroccans living in Belgium; those individuals were key in the traffic of arms seized by the police. About 10 of the 35 suspects arrested in Morocco were allegedly known in Belgium, in the organized crime circle.
They come from all social classes, but most of them are from middle to upper classes: a doctor of pharmacy, a police captain, storekeepers, the head of a telecommunications company, a hotel manager, teachers. Nothing indicates that they are poor, or that they decided to take revenge on their country.
The Belliraj network was allegedly linked to Islamist leaders:
six political leaders from the authorized Islamist parties were arrested and are behind bars;
Amongst them, Mustapha Moatassim, leader of the al-Badil al-Hadari (civilized Alternative) party. His party, which had little clout on the political scene, was dissolved on 2/20/08. Like Belliraj, Moatassim allegedly had maintained in the past relations with Shiite circles that were Iranian or close to Hezbollah.
Indeed, Abdellah Sriti, the correspondent in Morocco of Lebanese Hezbollah's TV station Al Manar was also arrested.
And interestingly enough, among the arrested is also Alaa Badella Maa El Ainin, a member of the PJD (Justice and Development Party), the main Islamist party in Morocco and a candidate running in the legislative elections last September.
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I just wrote an article for the Middle East Times following up on the recent trouble in Kuwait after Mugniyeh's death.
You can read the full article here.
Here is an excerpt:
Hezbollah chief terror master Imad Mugnieh created havoc, terror and a trail of blood during his life. His death is likely to bring more of the same. And this might not be "limited" to potential retaliation terror attacks. Indeed, Kuwait is already paying the nefarious consequences of Mugnieh's death.
Mugnieh was not well liked in Kuwait, to say the least: at one point, he was considered public enemy number one. He was allegedly behind a 1988 airliner hijacking that resulted in the death of two Kuwaitis.
The latest crisis in Kuwait started on Feb. 16 when a demonstration in homage to Mugnieh, organized by Shiites, took place. Following this, authorities arrested eight Shiite personalities, including two ex-MPs and a cleric. They were accused of belonging to an organization called Hezbollah-Kuwait, of wanting to overthrow the regime and propagating false news on the country abroad to tarnish Kuwait's image. They were all later freed on bail.
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From time to time FATF, the Paris based Financial Action Task Force, publishes new guidance and “best practices” to re-enforce the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing practices of its member countries and the international financial community in general. The latest addition to this series is a special Terrorism Financing study issued February 29th (and published on the FATF website March 14th) which assesses current terrorism financing methodology and recommends new actions to combat it. This study draws heavily on the writings of several Counterterrorism Blog experts, and observations and ideas often discussed on this site, as well as on other official and non official sources.
The study recognizes that the international community has had only limited success, so far, in detecting terrorism financing activities and, that to strengthen this process it must re-examine its understanding of terrorist financing and design new techniques to combat it. To that end, FATF set out to survey terrorism’s diverse funding activities and requirements. This extends well beyond funding for specific terrorist operations and includes also the much broader organisational costs of developing and maintaining a terrorist organization, ie indoctrination, recruitment, training, maintenance, propaganda and fund raising. Curtailing the funding for any of these activities would make it substantially more difficult for terrorist organizations to function.
Terrorist organizations use a wide variety of methods today to raise and move money, the report says. This includes raising funds from legitimate business sources, abusing charitable activities, smuggling, trafficking, and petty crime, and self-financing. Substantial funding is also regularly provided by state sponsors of terrorism as well as deep pocket sympathizers. Terrorist organizations have also mastered techniques of moving money undetected through the formal financial sector, as well as by using cash couriers, and the movement of goods through the trade system. Charities and alternative remittance systems have also been used to disguise terrorist movement of funds.
The FATF study examines each aspect of the terrorism financing challenge and concludes that new government and private sector initiatives are required. The first section of the study report examines the funding requirements of terrorist organizations, including direct operational support and broader organisational requirements. The second addresses the ways terrorist organisations raise funds and obtain support - from legitimate sources and from criminal activity. It also describes the challenge posed by failed states, safe havens and state sponsorship. The third section explores the ways that terrorist organisations move funds by using the formal financial system, alternative remittance services (ARS), cash couriers, trade, and charities or non-profit organisations (NPOs). And, the fourth section describes the global response to terrorist financing and the need to improve cooperation and the two way flow of information between financial institutions and intelligence gathering organizations. There must be a critical partnership, the study says, between financial institutions and governments, to develop any coherent response to international terrorism financing.
Disrupting terrorist financing, the study concludes, will ultimately require a significantly strengthened joint government -- financial institution effort to establish new systemic safeguards to protect the financial system from abuse, as well as greater use of targeted economic sanctions against those funding, soliciting funding, facilitating or transferring terrorism related funds. Typologies, such as those contained in this report will continue to be necessary, and should regularly be updated to keep government entities and financial institutions apprised of methodologies being employed by terrrorists to escape detection. Critical to this process will be enhanced cooperation between the government and the private sector to combine counter-terrorist intelligence and financial information. These are all themes long espoused and written about by me and my Counterterrorism Blog colleagues here and elsewhere. Its nice to know that we are being read and heard.
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On Saturday night, a 20 kg bomb hidden in the back of a car was detonated in front of the CS Pattani Hotel in Pattani, southern Thailand. Two were killed, three are in critical condition and 15 others sustained moderate injuries. It was the boldest attack by Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand in recent months. Some 3,000 have been killed since the insurgency got underway in January 2004. Violence peaked in June 2007, and has gone down, owing to stepped up counter-insurgent operations; but the average rate of killing today is still above the 4-year average. This is not the first car bomb in southern Thailand, but the first in over a year.
The CS Pattani is the hotel in southern Thailand. It is where every delegation from Bangkok stay, the meeting point for journalists and visiting academics, and a conference center, where much of the government’s reconciliation meetings have taken place.
It is unlikely that the bombing will galvanize the government’s response. The southern insurgency was a non-issue during last December’s election, and barely rates as a priority of the current government of Samak Sundaravej. The military’s response has been passive at best: the majority of troops are confined to barracks and when deployed are in fixed static positions. The insurgency is a low priority for the military, which is more concerned with allocating its appallingly high budget allocations on Grippen jet fighters and submarines; hardly the weapon systems needed to combat an insurgency. Much of the fighting has been relegated to poorly trained and ill-disciplined paramilitaries. The police are riddled with corruption and inept: when insurgent suspects are detained, they can be held for 28 days, in which time the police and prosecutors must build up a case. Yet the police fail to gather the requisite forensic evidence or witness statements. Over 90% of the detained insurgents are freed. The different military and civilian security agencies are squabble over resources and have failed to create an integrated command structure and share intelligence. As long as the insurgency remains in the deep south, it will remain off Bangkok’s radar screen.
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On Wednesday, March 19, at 10 am, I will moderate a panel titled, "Compañeros de Armas ("Friends in Arms"): Chavez, FARC & South America," in room 2200 of the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. Our panelists will be Douglas Farah, a security consultant who works primarily with the NEFA Foundation and U.S. government; Jonathan Winer, Partner at Alston & Bird L.L.P. and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement; and Steven Monblatt, former Deputy Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism at the State Department and former Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism at the Organization of American States. Doug and Jonathan are also Contributing Experts to The Counterterrorism Blog. The event is sponsored by the Counterterrorism Foundation, a tax-exempt nonprofit in Washington, DC.
Douglas Farah lived with his family in South America for most of his childhood. After graduating from college in the U.S. with a degree in Latin American studies, he began a distinguished 15-year career covering Latin America affairs, during which he received several coveted awards for outstanding reporting. He switched interests to West Africa in 2000, broke the story of al Qaeda's ties to diamond and weapons networks there, and discovered Viktor Bout's activities. So it is terribly ironic for Doug that Viktor Bout's recent arrest came during a sting by DEA agents posing as FARC terrorists. You can read his Counterterrorism Blog posts on his archive page.
Jonathan Winer was also chief counsel on the Senate Banking Committee for Sen. John Kerry during his investigation of the BCCI scandal in the early 1990s. He now represents domestic and foreign clients on regulatory and enforcement matters, includng complying with the USA Patriot Act, Bank Secrecy Act, and Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations. You can read his Counterterrorism Blog posts on his archive page.
Steven Monblatt is now co-Executive Director of the British American Security Information Council in Washington. He is a counter-terrorism professional with a broad geographic and over 30 years of substantive security experience in the U.S. and abroad. At the OAS, he built from scratch a Secretariat whose organization and programs have been recognized by the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Committee as a model for other regional organizations.
We would appreciate your RSVP to this e-mail address.
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Well, that did not take long. According to my sources, confirmed by Bill Gertz in the Washington Times, Russia is actively seeking to get the State Department to help spring Viktor Bout from his Thai prison home.
One of the reasons the DEA held its sting operation that led to Bout's arrest so close to the chest was precisely because the agents understood the high risk of political interference in the case.
There is a strong desire in the State Department, derived partly as a legitimate function of the department's role, to seek to pacify other nations and make sure that they like us.
This institutional tendency is in play in an effort to engage the new Russian government on a variety of issues.
The argument is that there are other, larger issues at stake if the U.S. pushes Bout's extradition to the U.S. and a trial here. Better to suffer the short-term humiliation of finding a way to free him (and likely blame the Thais) than the long-term humiliation of having him expose his ties to numerous governments while carrying out his bloody business.
The counter-argument is that this is a high profile case that has the potential to show America's willingness to end impunity for transnational criminal figures, even if it means the pain of some unsavory revelations. My full blog is here.
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Kourtney McCarty of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) sent the following short summary on the banking laws applied and enforced in the Eliot Spitzer matter. ACAMS is an international organization which performs the vital service of educating and certifying anti-money laundering officials. As I wrote on Wednesday, these same laws and regulations are at the heart of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing efforts, so I am posting most of that discussion below with her permission. The pros in the business already know all of this; the Spitzer matter is an opportunity, however unfortunate in nature, to educate the general public. The ACAMS discussion clarifies a point about the term "politically exposed persons" that I added near the end of my post and might have confused readers.
Commonly misunderstood AML concepts currently in the news include:
1. CTRs, SARs: What's the difference? In short, a Currency Transaction Report (CTR) is required for reporting a single currency transaction, or multiple transactions within one day, of an amount of $10,000 or more. A Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) is required to be reported to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on transactions that have been identified as suspicious by the financial institution regardless of the amount of the transaction.
2. What is "structuring"? Structuring is dividing payments into a set of transactions where each individual transaction does not exceed the $10,000 reporting threshold. This method of structuring payments is designed to evade the reporting requirements for a CTR. Under recent amendments to the Bank Secrecy Act, structuring is now considered a felony. Transactions meeting the definition of structuring under the Bank Secrecy Act require the filing of a Suspicious Activity Report.
3. Does the government screen every banking transaction of every customer? No - the government's review of banking transactions rarely occurs at the individual level. Of the more than one million SARs filed by banks, government agencies physically review only a small portion. With the number of duplicates accounted for, SAR filings on individuals represent a small fraction of the total banking population with reviews representing an even smaller fraction.
All SARs are entered into a government database that is accessible by government agencies including law enforcement, which will review patterns in SAR filings. Nevertheless, the idea of "Big Brother" watching every American’s banking activity is grossly overstated.
4. What’s the difference between a politician and a “PEP”? The term “PEP” means different things in different jurisdictions. In the U.S, under the USA PATRIOT Act, a “PEP” (politically exposed person) is a “senior foreign political figure,” such as a foreign head of state or member of a royal family. Under the Act, banks are required to conduct enhanced due diligence on the private banking relationships of “senior foreign political figures.” Thus, enhanced scrutiny of U.S. politicians’ private banking relationships is not required by the law. According to the Wolfsberg Group, an international organization of banks dedicated to curbing money laundering, “PEPs” include persons whose current or former position can attract publicity beyond the borders of the country concerned and whose financial circumstances may be the subject of additional public interest.
5. What are "shell companies"? Shell companies are entities without a physical presence in any country or jurisdiction, are legal, and can serve a legitimate purpose. The risk is that many are created to conceal the beneficial owners and can be used for illicit purposes. They pose a major threat to the security of the U.S. and global financial systems by making them vulnerable to money laundering and terrorist financing. Due to this increased threat, the government has provided guidance to institutions on the importance of managing the risk associated with shell companies.
The ACAMS discussion also notes that “a SAR is required by law to be maintained confidential by the institution and by government agencies involved. Any investigation should never be publicized as being a result from a filing of SAR.”
Dennis Lormel has posted twice on the use of "shell companies" and his recommendations for increased federal oversight:
"Shell Companies: Contemplated Legislation an Encouraging Sign," February 22
"Shell Companies…Facilitation Tool for Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing," April 22, 2007
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Earlier this month, Philippine authorities announced that they had arrested three Middle Eastern men, two Jordanians and one Egyptian, in February 2008. The three were allegedly involved in the advance stages of plotting a terrorist attacks on the U.S., British, Australian and Israeli embassies in Manila and Makati. Philippine Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita publicly stated that the group was in advance stages of plotting and that “Funding for the plot has been secured.”
Khalil Hasan al-Alih, a Jordanian national, was arrested at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila upon his arrival on 15 February 2008. He supposedly dropped a package, which included incriminating evidence about the plot that was recovered by airport security officials. Between 17 and 29 February, authorities arrested another Jordanian national in Davao, identified as Walid Abu Aisem. An Egyptian national, not identified was also arrested. A Philippine accomplice of the three was arrested upon his return to the Philippines from the Middle East on 10 February.
Authorities quickly stated that the three were connected to Al Qaeda, and alleged - though without providing any evidence - that they were suspected of having connections to Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf. While the government did not publicly link the two events, on 16 February, Philippine security authorities also arrested in Davao an Indonesian suspected of being a JI member, Mohamad Baehaqi, 26, and two Philippine Muslim accomplices, Cabiza Generoso and his 30-year-old son Mohar Abais Generoso. Baehaqi had been trained by the two leading members of JI in the Southern Philippines, Dulmatin and Umar Patek, after coming to the Philippines in mid-2003. The three had a cache of bomb-making materials including blasting caps, explosives and bomb-making diagram with notes, as well as small arms.
(Baehaqi is a suspect in the 27 March 2006 Jolo-Sulu Cooperative bombing that killed nine and October 2006 bombings in Makilala, General Santos and Cotabato that left over a dozen people dead.)
The Philippine Daily Inquirer, today, reported that American and Australian security forces are questioning the detainees.
While the plot appears to have been neutralized, the continuing threat of violence in the Philippines remains a problem. Over the weekend, authorities arrested two suspected terrorists, a member of the Abu Sayyaf, Mohammad Bani Macarya, and Jemaah Islamiyah, Almizbahr Bondial, on the resort island of Boracay. Though far from the Sulu archipelago, the ASG’s home turf, Boracay is the crown jewel of Philippine tourism. ASG members had staged high-profile kidnappings from Philippine and Malaysian dive resorts in the past. The presence of a suspected JI member in such a soft target can only bring to mind to Philippine security officials JI’s attacks in Bali, Indonesia in October 2002 and October 2005. Such an attack is well within their capabilities and intentions.
One should not forget that two of the 2002 Bali bombers, Dulmatin and Umar Patek are still believed to be in the Philippines with the Abu Sayyaf. Though a body was exhumed in mid February in Tawi Tawi, thought to be Dulmatin’s, neither the Philippine nor the US governments have announced the results of the DNA test.
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I write to solicit your financial support for the Counterterrorism Foundation and the Counterterrorism Blog. My colleagues and I are now in our fourth year of offering independent, comprehensive, and often exclusive news and analysis about the extent of terrorism worldwide. The Counterterrorism Blog is recognized by the worldwide community of counter-terrorism researchers, policymakers, and press specialists as a primary source for independent, objective news and analysis. In all that time, we have done this without ads or subscriptions, and through a great deal of volunteer effort. Contributions to CTF and CTB are fully tax-deductible and go to support such important work as:
- Coverage and analysis of terrorist attacks and threats anywhere and anytime, from Indonesia and the Philippines, to Algeria and Morocco, to the UK and United States, and the changes in terrorists’ methods and tactics;
- Exclusive or first-look information about issues such as terrorist financing; the campaign to target elements of the Iranian regime; the FARC drug pipeline; and the numerous activities of designated terrorist Viktor Bout, recently arrested in Thailand;
- Exclusive information about U.S. efforts in Iraq to puncture the financial network of Al Qaeda in Iraq and enable Iraqis to push AQII out;
- The Holy Land Foundation’s links to Hamas and the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood financial network, gathered from numerous sources in the counter-terrorism community, capped by an exclusive live event in Washington on the evidence; and
- Information on the cutting edge of “tech terror” beyond Internet-based terrorist training, to “Second Life” and “virtual world” terrorism communities and jihadist botnets.
And so much more.
You can also mail checks payable to “The Counterterrorism Foundation” to our headquarters at 122 C Street, NW, Suite 380, Washington, DC, 20001. For a donation of $150, you will receive your choice of an autographed copy of either Douglas Farah’s Merchant of Death, about Viktor Bout, or Daveed Gartenstein-Ross’ My Year Inside Radical Islam: A Memoir, a story of the revelations about the Islamic foundation where he worked and his personal conversion. For a donation of $250, you will receive both books, autographed by the authors. For a donation of $5,000, we will list the contributor's name or logo on the Counterterrorism Foundation website as a "Sponsor."
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The SITE Intelligence Group has released an announcement from Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, in which it stipulates demands for the release of two Austrian tourists taken hostage this week. The demands provide three days for the Tunisian and Algerian governments to release prisoners. The message includes 6 images showing one of the hostages and a woman to his side with an obscured face and headscarf, who is likely the other hostage (see two such images below, courtesy of the SITE Intelligence Group).
Earlier today, the NEFA Foundation translated the AQIM communique in which it first claimed the kidnapping. AQIM warned Austria against attempting any military action to free the hostages and warned Western tourists to stay away from Tunisia: "The hands of the mujahideen can reach you wherever you are in the country of Tunisia..." You can download the entire communique from the NEFA website.
 
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An effort by radical Islamists to smear terrorism expert Steven Emerson backfired last week when the allegations proved to be fabricated. An article entitled, “Paul Kendall: Did an 'Expert' on Terrorism Conspire With a Foreign Government to Violate the Constitutional Rights of American Muslims?" was posted on PR Newswire on March 4. It was based on copies of emails the author claimed to have reviewed. “These electronic communications prove that Steve Emerson, along with some anti-Muslim advocacy groups, worked directly with the public affairs office of the Israeli consulate in Boston to formulate the creation of a smear campaign intended to stop the construction of a new Islamic cultural center,” the article claimed.
PR Newswire sought to corroborate the article’s claims. But the emails say no such thing - out of dozens posted with the article, Steve Emerson is referenced in only two. In neither case is he shown in any communication with the Israeli consulate, communication which simply did not happen. The author of the article apparently did not respond to requests from PR Newswire for corroboration.
PR Newswire therefore issued a “Kill” order on the story at 12:33 p.m. on Friday, March 7, withdrawing the original press release. This was confirmed in an email and telephone call to Steve’s attorney Richard Horowitz. WordPress.com also removed a blog containing the same report: “This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service.”
Steve Emerson expresses gratitude for the way both entities handled the situation. “I run an independent organization that takes no money from any government, or from anybody outside the United States,” he told me. “This report was an attempt at a viral smear, using the Internet to spread lies about my work. I appreciate the responsible steps PR Newswire and WordPress took to ensure they were not used any further.”
The emails in the original article appear to be part of the discovery process from a lawsuit brought in 2005 by the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB). A year earlier, Boston media outlets reported on the ISB’s mosque project. Most of the coverage focused on a land deal between a city redevelopment arm and the ISB which was well below market value. Several ISB officials also had demonstrable involvement in radical Islamist activity.
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The relatives of five American missionaries who were abducted and murdered by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have filed suit against Chiquita Brands International Inc., accusing the banana company of secretly financing and arming the rebel (and terrorist) group.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges the banana company knowingly and willfully provided the FARC with protection money and weapons in the late 1990s.
The case sheds much-needed light on the role that U.S.-based companies (and certainly others) play in fomenting conflicts that cost thousands of lives. Chiquita has admitted to being one of them.
The new suit is part a series of legal battles Chiquita has been fighting since the Cincinnati-based company acknowledged paying armed parties in the Colombia conflict. Last year Chiquita agreed to pay a $25 million fine to settle Justice Department charges in these matters.
It is often forgotten that the FARC has abducted and killed U.S. citizens throughout its history. None except the three U.S. contractors being held now had anything to with the war on drugs or Colombia's internal strife.
For all it Bolivarian rhetoric and calls for a "humanitarian" agreement, the group has a remarkable track record of shedding innocent blood.
And Chiquita, it seems, in the interest of protecting its profits, made several costly deals with numerous devils in the Colombian conflict. Unfortunately for Colombia, it chose the two worst groups to try to pay off so bananas could keep flowing north. My full blog is here.
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"But Spitzer had the money broken down into several smaller amounts of under $10,000 each, apparently to avoid getting around federal regulations requiring the reporting of the transfer of $10,000 or more, the sources said. The regulations are aimed at helping spot possible illegal business activities, such as frauds or drug deals. Apparently, having second thoughts about even sending the total amount in this manner because it still might reveal what he was doing, Spitzer then asked that the bank to take his name off the wires, the sources said. Bank officials declined, however, saying that it was improper to do so and in any event, it was too late to do so, because the money already had been sent, the sources said. The bank then, as is required by law, filed an SAR, or Suspicious Activity Report, with the Internal Revenue Service, reporting the transfer of the money that exceeded $10,000, but had been broken down into smaller amounts, the sources said."
And so began the federal investigation that will eventually result, no doubt, in the resignation of the Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer. Let's quickly run through the federal laws involved, for they are among the most important tools used to prevent, detect, and catch money laundering and terrorist financing. My sources are Congressional testimony in 2004 by a senior official of the Federal Reserve System, Jeffrey Breinholt's "The Bank Secrecy Act for Beginners," posted on February 14 on this year, and selected federal regulations.
These federal laws and regulations were added in layers as new transactions arose which exposed loopholes in existing law. In 1970, Congress passed the first such law, the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, also known as the "Bank Secrecy Act" (BSA), with requirements for recordkeeping and reporting by banks and other financial institutions to identify the source, volume, and movement of funds for investigatory purposes. The BSA implemented the filing of Currency Transaction Reports, or CTRs, for currency transactions in excess of $10,000. The Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 imposed criminal liability for any person knowingly assisting in money laundering or structuring transactions to avoid reporting under the BSA. It also directed banks to establish and maintain BSA compliance procedures. In January 1987, all federal banking agencies issued regulations requiring banks to develop procedures for complying with the BSA and other AML requirements. By 1996, the federal financial regulators mandated that all banking organizations report any instances of known or suspected criminal or suspicious activity to the Treasury Department by filing a Suspicious Activity Report, or SAR (see this IRS website for more details). Unlike the CTR, there is no threshold dollar amount for filing a SAR. It was this form, filed by Spitzer's bank, which triggered the investigation.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, of which Title III was directed at mandating more anti-money laundering and terrorist financing mechanisms. Title III criminalized terrorist financing, for banks and other financial institutions, expanded the reach of the BSA filing requirements to all financial institutions (including broker-dealers and casinos), toughened customer identification requirements for those institutions, and greatly raised the awareness in the banking community of the need to watch for suspicious transactions and report them to law enforcement.
Would Spitzer had been discovered if he had engaged in his activity before the passage of the Patriot Act? Personally, I doubt it. But heightened awareness among bank employees, tougher bank examination procedures, numerous stiff penalties for BSA noncompliance, and extra press coverage all came in the past six years. These combined forces make it almost impossible for a highly public figure, such as a state Governor, to successfully structure transactions to avoid the BSA requirements. Financial institutions face even more regulatory requirements for "politically exposed persons" of Spitzer's rank.
These anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws and regulations have been the subject of numerous other posts here since we opened, including the following:
Victor Comras, "Terrorism Financing: A New Emphasis on Tracking. But Will It Be Effective?" (typographical anomalies are due to the transfer of the post from our original site)
Andrew Cochran, "Highlights of First "U.S. Money Laundering Threat Assessment"" and "Bank Secrecy Act Compliance Not Getting Easier, But Not Broadening Either"
Dennis Lormel, "Bank Secrecy Act and National Security" and "Looking Back and Forward at Terrorist Financing and Money Laundering Highlights"
Jeffrey Breinholt, "The Holy Grail of Public-Private Counterterrorism Cooperation"
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One of the stranger sides to the unfolding Eliot Spitzer story is that he was caught by a wiretap in conjunction with some irregular banking activity. This seems an exceptionally quaint way to be caught out in 2008 and doesn’t really say much for the New York Governors criminal skill-set. Traditional wiretapping has seemingly become a thing of the past (although clearly useful in catching dangerous high-end prostitution networks). The Economist ran a piece last week entitled ‘bugging the cloud’ highlighting the virtual impossibility of tracing calls that use VoIP and especially Skype. The article notes that the FBI is pushing Skype to build a special back-door that allows for lawful-intercept but so far this hasn’t happened. This is a useful signpost as Skype’s history is connected to that of Kazaa (the P2P file sharing software) through its founders. Kazaa evades certain legal requirements as its holding company (Sharman networks) is based in Vanuatu --a small Island nation in the South Pacific. It doesn’t seem too much of a leap to imagine VoIP companies or virtual worlds similarly headquartered in Vanuatu seeking to evade regulation. Meanwhile the programmer who developed ‘Pretty Good Privacy’ is developing a free VoIP product called Zfone, which could be wholly wiretap proof. Most virtual worlds now also have VoIP built into them so if Skype is a current problem, it does stretch the mind to wonder how the intelligence community is going to keep up with encrypted VoIP communications in a virtual world.
The tension between technological innovation and government attempts to frame a legislative and operational response seems at times to be at breaking point. Governments do bite-back from time to time but this often appears to be piecemeal. The reported request from the Pentagon for Google to take down street-views of its military bases seems reasonable but it only works because Google is in the USA. But what about, EveryScape? A recently launched online tool that ‘takes you through the doors of the world’s cities’. This would appear to be of more use to a potential attacker than Google Street View but there have, as yet, been no attempts to limit its scope. So how can government frame a response to technological innovation, which is straining and breaking traditional law enforcement activity? There does at least seem to be a straightforward legislative case for western governments mandating that VoIP technology companies, based within their jurisdictions, comply with official requests to build in appropriate technical measures so lawful intercept can be conducted. This would blunt the potential problems associated with Skype and Zfone. In the case of visual products such as Everyscape or Google Street View this gets a little harder but the principle that analytical co-operation should be built into their systems should be maintained. This still leaves the problems of Pacific Islands being used as jurisdictional bases but for now this remains a seemingly inevitable possibility rather than current fact -- much like the New York Governors resignation.
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A twin suicide attack shook the cultural capital of Pakistan, Lahore, killing 31 people with more than 175 injured in both incidents. The truck bombs were targeted, almost simultaneously, at the Federal Investigating Agency (FIA) building located at Temple Road that houses businesses and government offices and one advertising agency in Model Town area of the city created widespread panic and security concern in Lahore. The first bomb went off in the morning at about 9.25 AM near FIA building, has caused extensive damage to the eight-storey building. FIA mainly deals with immigration and human trafficking issues. It is reported (Geo TV) that the FIA building at Lahore housed the offices of a US-trained counter-terrorism unit.
Today’s (March 11) blasts came a week (March 04) after similar (twin and motorcycle borne) suicide bombings at Navy War College, located in the city. At least six naval personnel died apart from the two bombers involved.
Unlike other cities of Pakistan, Lahore was relatively peaceful and unaffected by the wave of recent Jehadi strikes. This relative peace ended starting this year when 17 policemen got killed in a suicide bombing outside Lahore High Court on January 10.
The post- Red Mosque security situation and wave of terror strikes in Pakistan have been blamed on Baitullah Mehsud and his Teherik e Taliban Pakistan(TTP). No wonder today’s suicide blasts, as many would rightly suspect, may have a Baitullah-TTP angle too, though the outfit yet to claim responsibilities for these incidents.
Also, a keen observer would suspect the hands of Jehadi group, Lashkar- e- Jhangvi (LeJ) in these blasts. In the last couple of months nearly 45 Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants have been arrested in Lahore. On February 26 four LeJ cadres deteined in the Kotwali area of the city confessed to have planned terrorist activities including bomb blasts, assassination of political and religious figures and police officials.
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The UN Department of Safety and Security (at Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka) issued an advisory today (March 11) following the receipt of suspicious packages with powder substance at one of the government (possibly one of the UN agency or affiliated organisation) agencies in Colombo. This packet comprised of a threatening letter which contained white powdery substance. Presently the incident is being investigated by forensic people and police and probed by concerned agency and DSS itself.
However, the mailshot dispatched by the deputy security advisor, UN DSS to all their contacts and UN offices declares:
“At this stage it is not known whether any threat to health is emanating from the substance in the letter. There have been cases in the U.S. where letters containing the Bacillus Anthracis (anthrax) have been received. In some cases anthrax exposure took place, with several persons becoming infected. Laboratory tests will have to be conducted in order to rule out this possibility in case of the threat letter that was received by the local agency.
There is a remote likelihood that similar envelopes, whether it being a hoax or a real threat, could be sent to other agencies. It is of critical importance that the first response steps are followed. These have been laid out in the SOP in mail handling, which was distributed to all HoA before.
Due to the urgency of the matter please find below guidelines and ensure that your mail handling staff are IMMEDIATELY informed of them. Agencies in Colombo are requested to provided feedback that mail handling staff have been informed back to the EOC Colombo until 1600 hrs today, ASCs are advised to instruct agencies in their AOR likewise.”
In Sri Lanka, in the 1980s unidentified Tamil militants issued threat to use biological materials against the Sinhalese, though never used them. The militants planned out a strategy to cripple the country by spreading Bilbariasis and Yellow Fever. They also laid out plans to attack rubber plantations and tea gardens using anti plant agents and to poison water supplies of the army. However, there is no information about their capabilties as well. But history shows that they have knowledge and interests in BW materials and its mass disruption characteristics with all fear factors attched to it.
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The Washington Institute published a piece today on how Qassam rockets -- frequently and increasingly the weapon of choice for Hamas -- have altered strategic balance between Israel and the Palestinians.
Here is an excerpt:
Qassam rockets -- unsophisticated weapons manufactured in garages and backroom laboratories -- have transformed the strategic equation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These crude rockets give Palestinian terrorist organizations the capability to strike deep into Israeli territory, throwing the security assumptions behind future peace negotiations into doubt.
Background
Qassam rockets -- named after Izz al-Din al-Qassam, the militant Syrian preacher and Muslim Brotherhood member killed in 1935 while fighting British and Zionist forces in Palestine -- are the most recent innovation in attacks on Israeli civilians. Hamas first introduced them in Gaza in September 2001, about a year after the start of the second intifada. Although Hamas has the most advanced rocket manufacturing and launching capabilities, other groups have made similar weapons a staple of their arsenals, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Quds rockets), the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (al-Aqsa rockets), and the Popular Resistance Committees (Nasser rockets).
These radical groups have used rockets with greater frequency in recent years to overcome the obstacle posed by Israel's Gaza security fence, which has proven to be extremely effective in preventing Palestinian infiltration from that territory since its completion in 2001. Ironically, these groups have exploited the Qassam's notorious inaccuracy, highlighting the random violence that it causes on its targets. For example, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar explained to London's Sunday Telegraph in August 2007 that Hamas prefers rocket attacks to suicide bombings because rockets "cause mass migration, greatly disrupt daily lives and government administration, and make a much [larger] impact....We have no losses, and the impact on the Israeli side is so much."
To read the entire piece, click here
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I wrote a piece for the Asia Times on Al Qaeda's triple threat.
You can read it in full here.
Here is an excerpt:
Last November, Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union's anti-terror chief, said that al-Qaeda was the biggest threat to Europe. To confirm this, Western intelligence services have recently established operational links between al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda in The Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) whose goals include striking at the heart of Europe.
Al-Qaeda has not made any secret of its eagerness to target Europe. Indeed, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, has repeatedly threatened Europe. In 2007, numerous al-Qaeda-linked plots were foiled in Europe and several cells were dismantled in France, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. In September, thanks to information provided by US intelligence, Germany arrested three members of an al-Qaeda cell that planned on blowing up the US military base of Ramstein and
Europe alert to triple terror threat
By Olivier Guitta
Last November, Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union's anti-terror chief, said that al-Qaeda was the biggest threat to Europe. To confirm this, Western intelligence services have recently established operational links between al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda in The Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) whose goals include striking at the heart of Europe.
Al-Qaeda has not made any secret of its eagerness to target Europe. Indeed, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, has repeatedly threatened Europe. In 2007, numerous al-Qaeda-linked plots were foiled in Europe and several cells were dismantled in France, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. In September, thanks to information provided by US intelligence, Germany arrested three members of an al-Qaeda cell that planned on blowing up the US military base of Ramstein and the Frankfurt airport.
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Fifteen years from now, when classified documents produced today begin to be declassified, we will surely look back with some discomfort and see just how far off some of our judgments were when written in 2008. Such is the nature of intelligence assessments. What would be worse, however, would be for us to look back fifteen years hence and find ourselves stuck in much the same place we are today.
This reflection is prompted by reading a recently declassified August 1993 report, “The Wandering Mujahid: Armed and Dangerous,” written by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). Its subject was the possible spillover effect of Afghan Mujahidin fighters and support networks moving on to fight in other jihad conflicts, alongside other militant Islamic groups worldwide. Much of the report could be applied to the themes analysts have recently raised about Al Qaeda in Iraq.
My full article is available here.
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An anonymous State Department source told the Miami Herald that they are exploring the possibility of placing Venezuela on the list of state sponsors of terrorism for their relationship with the FARC - as revealed in the laptops captured from FARC leaders.
Being declared a state sponsor of terrorism brings a host of sanctions down on a regime, however the administration has flexibility about how they are enforced (I'll leave it to some of my co-bloggers, who are among the leading experts on U.S. law and state sponsorship of terrorism, to flesh this out.)
More than likely, this leak is just a shot across the bow. Declaring Venezuela a state sponsor of terror is a complicated issue in which many factors have to be carefully weighed including the quality of the evidence, the effect on the U.S. economy, the declaration's regional impact, and whether it furthers U.S. goals.
Read the complete post here.
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In the war with global Jihad, words and definitions matter, and in fighting anti-freedom ideologies, the free press and media should be America's greatest ally. Yet the confused and inconsistent reporting on Islamism and Islamist terrorism is another key fault line in America's struggles with global Jihad.
Without a precise definition of the enemy by American political leadership, major segments of the American free press have made their own foreign policy decisions as to who is and is not an enemy, made their own decisions on what terms like "Islamism" and "Jihad" mean (if they use such terms at all), and largely provided "isolated incident"-style reporting on such subjects, with the exception of the largely anti-war colored reporting on Iraq.
So instead of much of the American free press being used to largely address and confront enemy anti-freedom ideologies and their adherents, such media has been manipulated by editorial managers, publishers, and Islamist groups to focus their investigative reporting on the American government's reaction to Islamist terrorism. As much of American government actions are based on a reaction without a defined enemy, there has been plenty of source material for press critiques and for press managers to gain political points against an unpopular administration.
But as addressed last week by leaders of the Washington Post and the Associated Press, the larger issue of "Islamism" itself, its role as the root of "Islamist terrorism" (as defined in the 9/11 Commission Report), and coherent news reporting on the continuing global links between political Islamism and such Islamist terrorism is not even an objective of much of the American free press. The reactive political sniping agenda by much of the American press' reporting not only misses the larger issue, but also fails to understand that anti-freedom ideologies like Islamism are a threat to a free press itself.
Therefore, even when the threat of Islamism to a free press is unquestionable -- such as imprisoned Afghan journalist Sayed Pervez Kambakhsh on death row for "blasphemy" per Islamists in the Afghanistan government -- Islamism is not a concern of such media leaders as Washington Post's Philip Bennett or AP's Tom Curley. These American free press/media leaders' apparent obliviousness to Islamism is symptomatic of the larger problem with much of the American free press when facing Jihad -- as shown in such media shaping of terms, providing a platform for Jihadists, confusing the public on the identity of the enemy, providing opportunities for enemy infiltration, and allowing news reporting tainted by gullibility about Islamism.
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A recent posting for Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH) argues for the delisting of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or NCRI). I disagree. True, the MEK has provided some very useful intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program, but we lose the counterterrorism high ground if we only call out and designate those terrorists who target our friends and allies. As long as the MEK—a radical, cult-like group—continues to carry out acts of terrorism and political violence, it should remain on the U.S. list of designated terrorist groups. My full MESH comment is available here.
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Anyone trying to sort out the public allegations about FARC's global criminal reach can't be faulted for wondering how to distinguish between information and disinformation.
The latest account, out of the Bogota publication, The Spectator (El Espectador), begs for an early confirmation or discreditation in light of its implications for the globalization of terrorism and crime.
The piece alleges that British intelligence found the FARC commander killed in Colombia's cross-border raid on Ecuador last week had visited Romania earlier this year to negotiate the purchase of enough uranium to build a dirty bomb. According to the article, FARC commander Raul Reyes used a false name and a Venezuelan passport, to travel to Bucharest in mid-January to meet with a high-level member of the Semion Mogilevich organization. The article states that British intelligence concluded that the Mogilevich group had developed a working relationship with FARC that dated back a number of years and was also now working with Al Qaeda. According to the article, the Mogilevich group was also linked to the purchase of enriched uranium that disppeared from the Chelyanbinsk-70 nuclear storage site in the Urals. The article contends that the UK intelligence agency concluded that FARC wanted the material to build a dirty bomb to kill Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
The Chelyanbinsk allegation is iffy at best. In 1998, the Russians reported they had thwarted an effort by workers at the Chelyanbinsk facility to steal 18.5 kilos of uranium in an incident confirmed by the Russian government two years later.
Mogilevich himself was arrested by the Russians on January 23, 2008 in connection with a reported tax avoidance and money laundering scheme -- small potatoes by comparison to the vast set of criminal activities with which he has in the past been linked, including nuclear smuggling.
Putting Mogilevich, one of a handful of the most notorious post-Soviet mobsters, together with FARC and Al Qaeda on allegations regarding nuclear smuggling is about as close to a comic book fantasy about the nexus between crime and terrorism as one could get. It's like a bad-guy All Star event. It's a great story. But did it actually happen?
The sooner we separate reality from fantasy here, the better.
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First, a clarification. The documents taken from the laptop of FARC senior commander Raul Reyes when Reyes was killed had nothing to do with the arrest of arms merchant Viktor Bout in Thailand.
My sources involved in the operation said the operation was underway months before, and documents were not analyzed by DEA in relation to the Bout sting.
But the 36 pages of documents now made public by the Colombian government do provide a fascinating window into how the FARC, the oldest insurgency in the hemisphere, thinks, operates and views the world.
They show a rebel group that moves millions of dollars across the border for safe-keeping and sets up businesses, but is constantly under pressure from the Colombian military, making communications among the different commanders difficult. It shows they have problems with desertions and morale, and are desperate to change their international image.
The FARC is clearly (and rightly) counting on Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Correa in Ecuador, to bring new legitimacy to its 43-year struggle. My full blog is here.
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This weekend’s election in Malaysia dealt a tremendous electoral defeat for the ruling coalition government, both at the federal and state level. The United Malay National Organization (UMNO) is the lead partner in a coalition government (called the Barisan Nasional - or United Front) that includes the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) and the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA). Historically together these three parties can control anywhere from 66 to more than 80 percent of parliament. In the 2004 election, the BN coalition controlled 199 of the 219 parliamentary seats, a whopping 91 percent, and 64 percent of the popular vote.
While the UMNO/BN leadership knew that they would lose some ground in this past weekend’s polls, they had no idea the degree of their setback: the opposition parties won 83 seats (37 percent), up from 19 in the 2004 parliament (9 percent). The ruling coalition only won 139 of the 222 seats (63 percent). The BN, for the first time in recent memory no longer has an unassailable 2/3rds majority of parliament.
Moreover, the deck was stacked against the opposition: the press is not completely free, and most of the media is supportive of the government, there were limits on opposition parties’ ability to hold campaign events, and rampant gerrymandering that favored the coalition, whose deep coffers afforded them greater influence.
The big winner in the election was Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), the People's Justice Party, ostensibly led by the charismatic former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim who was ousted from power in 1998 and tried and convicted on trumped-up corruption and sodomy charges. He was banned from electoral politics for 10 years, which ends in mid-2008, explaining the timing of the snap election. PKR won 31 seats, up from 1 in the 2004 election, making it the largest opposition party in parliament and paving the way for Anwar to potentially become the Prime Minister following the next election.
The Chinese-based Democratic Action Party won 28 seats (13 percent), up from 12 in 2004. The Islamist opposition party, PAS won 23 seats (10 percent), up from 6 in 2004.
The BN won a mere 51 percent of the popular vote, down from 64 percent in 2004, but more importantly, UMNO’s share of the Malay vote was only 55 percent. This is important as when UMNO loses its base of support amongst the Malays, such as in the 1999 election, it panders to the Muslim Malays, by embracing more Islamist rhetoric and policies, at the expense of its Chinese and Indian coalition partners.
What is more shocking was the opposition’s gain at the state level. Malaysia’s 13 states have long been dominated by the BN coalition. While Kelantan has been the stronghold of PAS since the early 1990s, only between 1999-2004 did the opposition ever control more than 1 of the 13 states: PAS controlled Kelantan and Terengganu. As a result, the federal government punished Terengganu by seizing much of its revenue from offshore oil. In this past weekend’s elections, the opposition won 5 states: Selangor, Perak, Kedah and Penang, as well as strengthening their control of Kelantan, which PAS came close to losing in 2004.
In Kelantan, PAS won 38 of the 45 state seats, giving it a 2/3rds majority, which will allow it to further implement their social agenda, i.e. the implementation of the sharia. But PAS also won across the Malay heartland, winning the majority of state seats in Kedah and Perak. Their pro-sharia policies will now expand to two more states.
But there is also a security component to the PAS victory: PAS now controls three of the four states that share a border with Thailand, where an Islamist insurgency has been festering. The Thai insurgents’ ability to cross over and gain safe haven in Malaysia has played a key role in the insurgency’s development. With Kelantan in the opposition’s hands, there was little the Federal government could do to assist the Thais. PAS has been vocally sympathetic to the Thai insurgents, and they now control almost the entire border.
There are many reasons to explain the BN’s losses: corruption, a slowing economy, and lagging reforms. But the real loss for the coalition was the mass defection of ethnic Chinese and Indians. These communities, represented by the MCA and MIC respectively, put up with their junior partner status in the coalition by arguing to their constituents that they can be better advocates for the Indian and Chinese communities from within government. The minority electorate, who comprise over 40 percent of the population (27 million), get angry when UMNO pushes a pro-Muslim or Islamic agenda, finally had enough and punished their political leadership for not standing up to UMNO and protecting their rights.
Minority rights have been getting trampled. Late last year 10,000 Indians took to the streets in protest, totally unheard of in Malaysia. The leadership of the protests were detained indefinitely under the Internal Security Act. But perhaps no issue has alarmed the minorities more than the large number of apostasy cases. In the past few years, there have been roughly six high-profile cases of apostasy/conversion that the government has punted on. In most cases, the courts continuously have ruled in favor of the Muslim plaintiffs, through non-rulings (stating that the parallel sharia courts have standing, depriving non-Muslims of their legal rights unless they convert). There have been shocking cases, of forced religious re-education and the forced separation of children from their parents who have tried to convert.
The issue of minority rights/issues is the third rail of Malaysian politics. It always has been and always will be. The recent pandering to the Malay Muslims in these cases in order to ameliorate conservative Muslims and keep the issue away from PAS has backfired: the ethnic minorities fled the ruling coalition. Thus the UMNO-dominated BN, will have no choice but to pander even more, in the hopes of wooing the Malays back by the next election. The one bright star is that the PKR, though Muslim dominated is not an ethnic-based party. One hopes that UMNO and the BN would learn from this.
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Kuwaiti authorities have reportedly arrested two former members of parliament and a prominent local Shiite leader for belonging to Kuwaiti Hizballah.
The arrests of the MPs, Abdul Mohsen Jamal and Nasser Sakhouh, and a religious leader, Sheikh Hussein Al Maatouk, comes weeks after the death of top Hizballah operations commander, Imad Mughniyeh. Mugniyeh was killed by a carbomb in Damascus on February 12. Days later, a rally was held in Kuwait commemorating his “martyrdom.”
Approximately 30% of Kuwait's one million residents are Shiite.
Kuwaiti authorities were incensed by the rally mourning Mugniyeh: the former Hizballah leader was widely held responsible for the killing of two Kuwaitis in a 1988 airplane hijacking. As one Kuwaiti MP put it, "Holding a rally for Imad Mughniyeh is a provocation for the Kuwaiti people... especially because he was a criminal who killed Kuwaitis.”
Shortly after the rally, 1500 persons were summoned for questioning about the rally, and Kuwaiti Minister of the Interior Sheikh Jaber Khaled al-Sabbah announced that the state would “deport any expatriate who took part” in the rally.
Now, some other Kuwaiti parliamentarians have filed suit against participants in the rally, including Shiite parliamentary member Adnan Abdul Samad, who spoke at the commemoration. Abdul Samad has been questioned by the Ministry of the Interior, as well in regard to his involvement with Kuwaiti Hizballah. Last week, he described the government’s steps as “regrettable,” and denied Mugniyeh’s involvement in the 1988 hijacking.
It will be interesting to see how this story develops.
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The NEFA Foundation has released a new chart that I have created mapping the complex network of Sunni insurgent groups fighting in Iraq. The chart includes representations for the four dominant insurgent umbrella groups--Al-Qaida's Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the Reform and Jihad Front (RJF), the Political Council for the Iraqi Resistance (PCIR), and the Front for Jihad and Change (FJC)--as well as over twenty individual organizations, including Al-Qaida, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, the Army of al-Mustafa, the Dera Islam Brigade, the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI), the Mujahideen Army, the Fatihin Army, the Salahudeen Brigades, Hamas al-Iraq, Asaeb al-Iraq al-Jihadiya, the Army of Abi Bakr al-Siddiq, the Saad Bin Abi Waqqas Brigades, the Brigades of Medina al-Munawwara, the Al-Naqshabandiya Army, the Al-Qassas Brigade, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the Al-Rashideen Army, the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Mujahideen (IMIM), the Al-Muslimeen Army (JAM), the Al-Tabiin Army (JAT), the Army of Mohammed al-Fatih, and Saraya Dawa Wal Ribat (SDWR).
The chart can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.
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It did not take the Russian government long to the Russian government friends and lawyers for the recently-arrested Viktor Boutto begin working to protect him again.
The tactic now is to seek the extradition of Bout, arrested in Thailand in an elaborate sting operation run by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), back to Russia, rather than the United States.
Of course, Bout, who has armed rebels, criminals and terrorists from the Taliban in Afghanistan to the RUF in Sierra Leone to the FARC in Colombia, has always operated under the protection of Russian military intelligence.
Sending him home is setting him free, without ever going to trial. There are no charges against him in Russia and Russia, although a member of Interpol has, since 2002, ignored an Interpol arrest warrant issued at the behest of the Belgians.
Bout is a valuable commodity to the Russian services (as he has been a useful commodity to the U.S. Defense Department, the British military, the United Nations etc. etc.), and know where many, many skeletons are buried.
There must be a degree of panic among parts of the Russian intel structure that Bout could sink them all if he is not brought back home.
As my friend Lee S. Wolosky, a former National Security Council deputy who led the effort against Bout for the Clinton and Bush administrations, told the Los Angeles Times,
Bout "really needs to come into U.S. custody quickly. Otherwise, there's ample opportunity for others to mess around." My full blog is here.
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Remarkably, the Andean crisis over Colombia's cross-border raid into Ecuador ended as quickly as it erupted today, after the presidents of the two countries shook hands at a regional summit broadcast on live television through much of Latin America. At the summit, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had backed Ecuador's Rafael Correa in condemning Colombia's actions, also embraced Colombia's Alvaro Uribe.
In the meantime, the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo has published excerpts from the e-mails found on the computers of Raul Reyes, the FARC commander killed by Colombia in its raid. The excerpts are provocative, if inconclusive, describing apparent communications between the government of Venezuela and FARC regarding President Chavez's facilitation of prisoner exchanges; the details of multi-million dollar cocaine deliveries; and possible transactions between FARC and unspecified Middle Eastern groups to gain access to ground-to-air missiles.
What is striking on this last point is the congruence between the FARCs discussions of getting such equipment, and the sting operation run against arms merchant Victor Bout detailed in the U.S. indictment filed in connection with his arrest in Thailand. There have been conflicting accounts of whether the material found in the computers had any role in Bout's arrest, given the months of work that had already gone into the sting operation directed at him by the Drug Enforcement Administration and detailed in the indictment, whose chronology ends in February 2008.
It appears that the array of FARC e-mails may provide a unique window into FARC's international operational, financial, and political networks and operations. As the threat of war recedes, hopefully, more of this material will make its way into public view to enable broad analysis of its implications, and soon.
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The story behind the killing of FARC leader Ivan Rios has become more interesting - and even more indicative that the FARC is on the verge of collapes. Colombia's Defense Minister now states that Rios was killed by his unit's security chief. Closely pursued by Colombian Security Forces, the security chief, "Rojas" killed Rios and gave his hand, his ID papers, and his computer to the Colombian military.
Wow! The FARC is beginning to turn on itself. The FARC may in fact be on the verge of dissolution.
Read the full post here.
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As election fever takes hold in multi-religious Malaysia, which goes to the polls tomorrow, the world has a stake in seeing that the country continues to remain a model of a moderate Muslim democracy that does not tolerate Islamist-based terrorism and integrates a multi-faith, multi-ethnic society.
While the ruling Barisan National Coalition has remained in power since Malaysia's independence half-a-century ago from the British, balancing the relationships among the country's multiple racial, religious and linguistic groups remains an ongoing, and delicate, process. Sixty percent of Malaysia's 27 million people are Muslim Malays. Some 25 percent are ethnic Chinese and 7.8 percent are ethnic Indians. Sensitive issues regarding education, language and religion periodically stir racial and religious sentiment. Malaysians still remember the traumatic ethnic strife that took place in May 1969, making the goal of stability a central factor in the almost certain re-election of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.
One major factor maintaining support for the Badawi government is the country's continued strong economic growth, averaging some 6.5 percent annually for the entire 50 years since Malaysian independence. Once one of the poorest countries in the world, Malaysia is today a middle-income, multi-sector economy, one of the world's largest exporters of semiconductor devices and information technology products. Many Malaysian voters continue to focus on rice-bowl issues - avoiding inflation and maintaining low unemployment - even as they press Mr. Badawi to continue to strengthen his initiatives to combat corruption.
But the larger issue for Malaysia and the world for the long term is whether a moderate Muslim government can use an economic and social strategy that is creating prosperity and a broad middle class as an effective counter to religious and political extremism at home and abroad.
The threat of such extremism has been real enough, especially immediately prior to Mr. Badawi's taking office in 2003. Two of the 9/11 hijackers passed through Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, hosted by an alleged member of the Al Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). Two USS Cole bombing plotters also spent time in Malaysia courtesy of JI. Key figures in the Bali and the JW Marriott hotel bombings in Indonesia prepared their attacks while living in Malaysia. Malaysian police still periodically find cells linked to JI terrorists with illegal firearms and bomb making equipment or materials.
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On February 29, I moderated a special panel titled, "Meta-Terror: Terrorism and the Virtual World" before a packed room on Capitol Hill in Washington. Panelists were Kenneth Silva, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of VeriSign, and Contributing Experts Roderick Jones of Concentric Solutions International and Evan Kohlmann of the NEFA Foundation. The Counterterrorism Foundation co-sponsored this special panel with the GAGE International consulting firm and the NEFA Foundation.
The event drew considerable press interest, with three of us interviewed by the BBC before the event. See "Cyber-threats in Virtual Worlds and Beyond" and "US seeks terrorists in web worlds" on the BBC site, with appreciation to Chris Vallance of BBC.
The following is a transcript of the event, beginning with my introductions of the panelists and continuing through their remarks (edited for grammar and using the panelists' written remarks when available), and including the attendees' questions and the panelists' answers.
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News from Colombia keeps coming. This afternoon Colombian security killed Ivan Rios, another member of the FARC Estado Mayor Central (Central High Command.) This is the body that governs the organization. Raul Reyes, one of its members was killed last week, touching off a diplomatic spat. This latest strike took place within Colombian territory.
It is also rumored that the founder and top commander, Manual Marulanda is ill. This is an organization that could be entering a severe leadership crisis.
Overall this is good news - but there are potential dangers.
It is impossible for an outsider to know if intelligence collected from the laptops captured with Reyes contributed to this strike. It is worth noting that Colombia has, with U.S. aid, developed some impressive cyber-forensic capabilities. In the Colombian paper El Pais the operation was joint between the military and el Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación de la Fiscalía. Although there was also a humint component, demobilized FARC members provided intelligence as well.
Quick note about cyber-forensics - it may go beyond reading correspondence. I've heard intelligence analysts say that amateurs study content, professionals study traffic. It is possible that operational patterns were detected by studying the origin and destination of electronic traffic on these computers as well and then combining them with the human intelligence. An effective and professional operation all around.
Decapitation strategies (that is targeting the leaders of terrorist organizations) have a mixed record.
Read the complete post here.
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Recently, two important developments have broken months of gridlock on the Iranian nuclear issue: a third round of UN sanctions and a new warning by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Although both measures are positive, their ultimate impact will depend on how aggressively and effectively key governments implement them.
Security Council Vote
The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1803 on March 3, after nearly eight months of negotiations. The resolution will have an important symbolic impact, given that the December 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) seemed to halt international momentum to pressure Iran, making it unclear whether additional rounds of UN sanctions were even possible. The resolution's near-unanimous passage -- with fourteen members approving and Indonesia abstaining -- will send a strong message to Tehran. Those voting in favor included Russia, China, and South Africa -- all countries with longstanding economic ties to Iran.
To read the rest of this piece click here.
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The attack on a religious school in Jerusalem yesterday was the first major terror attack in that city since April 2006. There are several aspects of the attack that are worth noting.
First it is a reminder that Palestinian terrorists remain capable, perhaps at a much lower level than at the height of the al-Aqsa Intifada, but deadly capable nonetheless.
Second, the attacks came at a crucial time and place. The location was the Mercaz Harav, a leading religious school associated with Israel’s religious Zionist movement. The attack came both just as peace talks were re-starting also just after an extensive Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip had ended. The attack was celebrated in Gaza as revenge for the Gaza operations.
Third, the attack was reminder of how terrorists adapt when a particular mode of operation is denied them. With increasing difficulty in mounting a suicide bombing, the perpetrators of this attack turned to firearms. This is an old story.
Read the full post here.
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According to the Drug Enforcement Agency’s press release, international arms-trafficker extraordinaire Victor Bout was arrested for plotting to sell weapons to the FARC - not knowing that the reputed FARC representatives were in fact working for the DEA. Only nine months ago another notorious international arms dealer, Monzer al-Kasser was arrested for conspiring to sell weapons (and trainers) to the FARC, when in fact the FARC buyers were in fact DEA operatives. For al-Kasser, who has been linked to the Palestine Liberation Front (the group responsible for the Achille Lauro hijacking) as well as leading Baathist figures from Syria and Iraq, it was more than just business. He offered to raise an army to assist the FARC. Al-Kasser seems to have had a passion for his work.
Read the full blog here.
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Pakistan's February 18 elections signaled a dramatic shift in Islamist parties' fortunes in the North-West Frontier Province. In the
2002 general election, religious parties won 67 seats in the 99-seat
provincial assembly, while in 2008 they won only nine seats. Some commentators have attached great strategic significance to these results. For example, Heritage Foundation research fellow Lisa Curtis wrote that "[p]erhaps the most important outcome" of Pakistan's elections "was the victory of a secular Pashtun party in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) over religious parties sympathetic to the Taliban." The Christian Science Monitor declared that the victorious Awami National Party (ANP) is "expected to marshal all the province's resources - police, politics, and the law - against extremism." In my latest article, posted this morning at the Middle East Times, I argue that some commentators are overstating the significance of the results: First, there is already concern in Washington about the approach the
winning parties are planning to adopt vis-à-vis the Taliban. Farhana
Ali, an associate international policy analyst at the RAND Corporation
who recently returned from a 10-day trip to Pakistan, told me that many
Pakistanis are fatigued by this war. "They see it as America's war,"
she said, "but there is a new strand of thought emerging that the
Pakistanis need to choose their own strategies." One such strategy that
worries many Washington analysts is the new coalition's willingness to
negotiate with the Taliban.
The RAND Corporation's Seth Jones told me, "There is a strong desire
among even the secular parties to engage in dialogue with militant
groups. From a strategic perspective, I don't see this as a major win
for the United States." Second, violence may interrupt any kind of political change. There
have been at least three major attacks in the NWFP during the past
week, including an attack on a jirga (tribal gathering) in the frontier
town of Darra Adamkhel - flouting religious militants' traditional
practice of leaving such gatherings untouched by violence. "If law and
order is not quickly established," Akbar Ahmed told me, "things will
degenerate." Third, there is a question about how serious the ANP is about
combating the Taliban. Ahmed said that while the PPP is "structurally
opposed" to the Taliban, nationalist parties are not. "The nationalist
parties are as pro-Taliban as the mullahs," he argued, pointing to
their shared Pashtun ethnicity. "Commentators saying this is a loss for
the Taliban and al-Qaida are so off that it's embarrassing. The ANP are
Pashtun nationalists." Ali has a different perspective than Ahmed on the matter. She spoke
with several ANP members during her recent travels through Pakistan,
and says, "They certainly were against the militants."
You can read the entire article here.
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Today Thai authorities announced that they had arrested the international arms trafficker, Victor Bout. For more on Bout, I ask that you see my colleague Doug Farah's posts and excellent book. But Bout's arrest in Thailand begs the question: what was he doing there?
Bout has armed insurgencies in the region in the past, in particular in the Philippines. There is more to suggest that Bout was in the region not to arm insurgents, but to negotiate the purchase of arms. Though there is an insurgency in Southern Thailand, almost all of their weaponry has been captured.
Thai authorities announced that they will hold a press conference on Friday on the details of Bout's arrest. They have revealed little information other than the fact that he had recently landed in Thailand, though had been in the region for a period of time and that they had been tracking him. That he was arrested on a DEA tipoff suggests that he may have been involved in narcotics, metamphetimines or heroin from Burma, serious concerns for both the Americans and Thais.
If he was shopping for arms, my educated hunch is he was buying surplus Chinese weapons from the Burmese junta. They have enormous stockpiles of weapons provided by China and need the cash. Bout used to buy up the huge cache of weaponry (mainly Chinese) at the border market between Thailand and Cambodia, but his consignment-amount of weapons aren't so available there anymore.
Bout may also have been in either Burma or Cambodia to illegally purchase end-user certificates which would allow him to purchase large amounts of weaponry illegally. One could also not rule out a meeting with North Korean arms dealers. North Korean operatives are active in Southeast Asia, where they purvey everything from weapons, to metamphetimines, to "Super Notes" (high-quality counterfeit U.S. dollars). The Koreans have a history of selling end-user certificates to unsavory figures. A few years ago they sold the Tamil Tigers end-user certificates that allowed them to purchase a large consignment of weapons from NORINCO.
Thailand is the regional transit hub, and it has a long history of being a center of narcotics trade and document forging. But since 9/11 the government has upgraded its intelligence capabilities as well as its border security. Bout was not the first big fish to be arrested there. These investments are paying dividends.
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A “senior Colombian intelligence source” claimed that Colombia was able to pinpoint FARC chief Raul Reyes’ location because of a phone call made to his satellite phone by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
If true, this would have a certain irony (and perhaps also explain why Chavez is so angry - also the source claims Chavez mobilized to protect the ailing FARC founder Manuel Marulanda who is convalescing on a ranch in Venezuela near the Colombian border.)
Bogota is no different from Washington, “senior intelligence sources” say lots of things - and sometimes they are even correct. But there is no question that infiltrating the FARC’s communications systems has been a crucial element in Colombian strategy. It is also an illustration of a successful counter-insurgency turning an enemy’s strengths into weaknesses.
Read the full post here.
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Viktor Bout, the subject of my book with Steve Braun has been arrested in Thailand on charges of supplying weapons to the FARC in Colombia.
It is a stunning blow to the world's "Merchant of Death," who has been responsible for fanning wars across Africa, as well as aiding and abetting the Taliban, and thus, indirectly, al Qaeda.
Of course, this may finally stop the U.S. from carrying on dealing with him, despite his being the subject of an Interpol red notice, an Executive Order signed by President Bush, and numerous Treasury Department sanctions. Despite all that, Bout aircraft flew hundreds of flights, as a sub-contractor, for the U.S military and its principal contractors such as KBR, Fedex and others.
The arrest is the result of a DEA sting operation focused on targeting suppliers of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia),
ccording to ABC News.
The FARC is the hemisphere's oldest insurgency, and one that now sustains itself through drug trafficking activities and kidnappings. The FARC has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union. My full blog is here.
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The Russian arms supplier to insurgencies the world over was arrested today in Bangkok Thailand.
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The NEFA Foundation has released two new reports on its website. First, a report by NEFA Senior Investigator Claudio Franco and NEFA Director of Analysis and Research Ronald Sandee titled "Developments in the Jihadi Resurgence in Pakistan: January 2008." The report serves as a comprehensive study of events across various turbulent regions of Pakistan during the month of January, including a spate of recent suicide bombing attacks and the U.S. airstrike in Mir Ali that killed senior Al-Qaida commander Abu al-Laith al-Liby. As revealed in Appendix A to the report, according to NEFA sources inside Pakistan, the other Al-Qaida operatives killed in the Mir Ali strike reportedly included Abu al-Laith's former deputy "Abu Suhail", "Hamza al-Somali" (of Australian or US nationality), Adam Gadahn (a.k.a. Azzam al-Amriki), "Abu Ubayda Tawari Rakhis al-Mutairi" (of Kuwaiti nationality), "Abu Adil al-Kuwaiti" (of Kuwaiti nationality), and at least three Uzbek nationals. The report includes two separate appendixes--all of which can be accessed via the NEFA "Special Reports" sub-section.
Separately, NEFA has also now made available my expert witness report filed on behalf of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut in U.S. v. Hassan Abu-Jihaad. On March 5, a jury in New Haven found Abu-Jihaad guilty of providing material support to terrorists and disclosing classified national defense information. During the trial, federal prosecutors detailed how Abu-Jihaad--a former U.S. Navy signalman--had secretly passed along details regarding the planned movements of U.S. Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf to an Al-Qaida website known as "Azzam Publications." The information was later recovered by British authorities during a raid of the London home of Babar Ahmad, the former administrator in charge of Azzam Publications.
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ABC News has reported that U.S. authorities remain deeply skeptical about Colombia's charges that FARC was seeking to obtain materials for a dirty bomb. According to ABC, U.S. law enforcement officials want to scrutinize the entire cache of Raul Reyes-related computer documents to assess them for their impact on U.S. drug trafficking cases against FARC. Clearly the U.S. will also want to review the computer data bases to assess for themselves whether the data backs up Colombia's claims about FARC links to other terrorist groups and to efforts to acquire nuclear material for a dirty bomb.
The review of the known facts undertaken by Aaron Mannes remains the only meaningful public analysis of the allegation, and in my view, he makes a convincing case that the evidence revealed so far shows FARC ready to smuggle uranium but does not support the dirty bomb allegation.
That said, FARC's apparent interest in uranium smuggling provides further reason, if any were needed, for close intelligence focus on FARC's ties to other terrorist groups, and for undertaking as detailed an analysis of Venezuelan funding of FARC as the facts allow. Hugo Chavez held a minute of silence on his television show on March 2 for the slain FARC commander. Hopefully, the captured computer information, when fully analyzed and disseminated, will provide documentary testimony about whatever has been going on between Chavez and FARC, providing a set of common facts for further international action to respond to the ongoing Andean crisis.
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Among the more explosive revelations from the laptops of the late FARC leader Raul Reyes is the allegation that the FARC was trafficking in radioactive materials and according to Colombia’s Vice President was planning to build a “dirty bomb.” A dirty bomb (or a radiological dispersal device) is an explosive packed with radioactive materials that are dispersed with the explosion (for more details see below.)
No one should question the fundamental viciousness of the FARC. But the dirty bomb accusation should be investigated carefully, particularly considering the FARC’s access to international smuggling networks (they help smuggle tons of illegal drugs to the United States around the world).
From the documents released by the Colombian government (36 page pdf in Spanish), the sole reference to uranium is point number six in a memo dated February 16, 2008 to Reyes from Edgar Tovar. The other contents of the memo deal with FARC finances, operations, and possible informants. It has to be emphasized that the writing is not terribly clear (although when it is examined by experienced analysts and put into context it will undoubtedly prove to be a wealth of information about FARC operations.) Here is a translation of the paragraph about uranium: Another topic is about uranium. There is a gentleman who supplies me with material for the explosive that we prepare and his name is Belisario and he lives in Bogota. He is a friend of Jon 40 [possibly Jon 40 a commander of the 27th Front, which is based in the Meta Department, and is part of the FARC’s Eastern Bloc], eastern Efren [possibly the other commander of the 27th Front], Caliche of Jacobo [possibly a commander of the 9th Front, based In the Antioquia Department and part of the Northwest Bloc or someone associated with the Jacobo Arenas Urban Front, based in the Medellin region], he sent me samples and specifications and they propose to sell each kilo for 2.5 million dollars and they handle delivery and we handle who we sell to and that it be a business with a government to sell to. Arto [possibly plural] have 50 kilos ready and they can sell much more, he has direct contact with those who have the product. Read the full post here.
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For those who retain doubts about the the true thinking and attitude of the international Muslim Brotherhood toward violence, it is always useful to look to Shiekh Yousef al-Qaradawi, their spiritual leader.
While often portraying himself as a non-violent moderate when dealing with the outside world, he often sounds a starkly different note when addressing his own.
In a recent letter to the leader of Hezbollah from the International Union of Islamic Scholars, led by al-Qaradawi and published on the organization's official website, declares Imad Mugnhniyah a martyred hero to be revered.
Truly, we are deeply sorry for the death of the martyred hero and our sadness can only be paralleled with our joy that Almighty Allah selected him to be a martyr; granting him a status that is only attained by those who have been true to their covenant with Allah (they have gone out for Jihad), of them some have fulfilled their obligations (have been martyred), and some of them are still waiting, but they have never changed (betrayed their covenant) in the least.
This for a man who made his fame murdering civilians, kidnapping and murdering hostages and blowing up non-military targets in Argentina, as well as inspiring and helping Osama bin Laden and his cadres. My full blog is here.
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This week, while Venezuelan troops moved towards the Colombian border, and Ecuador broke relations with Venezuela, there has been startling new information emerge publiclly about alleged Venezuelan support for terrorist groups, laundering of political funds, and possible efforts on the part of the Colombian terrorist group FARC to build a dirty bomb.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's denials of having moved millions in laundered funds into last fall's Argentine presidential campaign were never especially credible. Now that a Venezuelan businessman has pled guilty in the case, admitting he laundered the campaign funds for President Chavez , the question is what comes next. Three criminal cases remain pending in the matter and the two men who have admitted their guilt are cooperating with U.S. prosecutors. Do they have additional information about state-sponsored laundering in Venezuela, and if so, will it link up with support for terrorist groups?
The question is not academic. This week, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has announced he will accuse Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez before the International Criminal Court [ICC] for sponsoring terrorist groups like the FARC guerrillas and funding genocides.
Meanwhile, a provocative, and to date, unconfirmed, posting by World Check, a financial intelligence service, alleges that the U.S. Treasury Department has found billions in laundered funds involving senior Venezuelan officials and their associates hidden overseas "on the express orders of President Hugo Chavez," which in turn has also been available for use by some terrorist organizations. World Check has also alleged that the FARC is financially supported by the current Venezuelan Government, and that "captured documents" show that Venezuela has sent millions of dollars to the FARC, the most recent payment having been made in February, 2008, in the amount of $300m.
In March 2007, the U.S. Department of State reported that it "remained unclear to what extent the Venezuelan government provided material support to Colombian terrorists," given that Colombian terrorist organizations had obtained at least limited amounts of weapons and ammunition, including some from official Venezuelan stocks and facilities. State further found that the Venezuelan government had failed to police the 1,400-mile Venezuelan-Colombian border to prevent the movement of groups of armed terrorists or to interdict arms or the flow of narcotics. Shortly, State will issue its newest annual report on counter-terrorism efforts and the terrorist threats, where it could address any new information the U.S. wishes to make public on the Venezuelan money laundering and terrorist finance allegations.
Even as Venezuela was rushing soldiers to its border with Colombia, the Colombians hurled one more incendiary charge: in Geneva, Uribe's vice-president, Francisco Santos, told the UN disarmament conference that captured FARC documents revealed the group was seeking to acquire uranium to build a radioactive "dirty bomb". According to Vice President Santos, on March 3, Colombia's national police submitted an initial report regarding the content of two computers found with Raul Reyes, second in command of FARC, who was killed on March 1. Santos said the computers contained "information from one commander to another indicating that FARC was apparently negotiating for radioactive material, the primary basis for generating dirty weapons of mass destruction and terrorism."
Given the allegations that the captured FARC computers showd financial support to FARC from Chavez, and Chavez himself expressed sympathy and support for Reyes and his efforts, it would be hard to rule out, at this time, a Venezuelan role in any efforts by FARC to acquire nuclear material for a dirty bomb.
While tensions between Venezuela and its neighbors rapidly escalate, any further information about alleged Venezuelan ties to terrorist groups, illicit financial activities, or a terrorist dirty bomb that may emerge can only add fat to an already bubbling fire.
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National Review Online ran my article Finding FARC on the fallout from Colombia's killing of FARC #2 Raul Reyes and Hugo Chavez's reaction.
March 4, 2008
Finding FARC
An important victory for Columbia sparks a major diplomatic spat.
By Aaron Mannes
The Colombian government’s successful killing of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) number-two Raul Reyes is an important victory in Colombia’s 44-year war with the narco-terrorists. Perhaps more significantly, the Colombian government’s ability to target the FARC will be substantially augmented by the computers captured from Reyes’s base. Advantages aside, however, the killing of Reyes and the contents of his hard drives have sparked a major diplomatic spat that has important regional implications.
The attack took place on March 1 about a mile and a half inside of Ecuadorian territory. Ecuador’s government was perturbed by this violation of their sovereignty, but the Colombian government apologized and the official Ecuadorian government reaction was subdued.
It was Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez who loudly and undiplomatically condemned Colombia’s President Uribe calling him a mafia chief, a criminal, and — the most offensive insult Chavez can level — an oligarch. He also called Colombia the Israel of Latin America (such sentiments are de rigueur for Chavistas). Chavez stated that similar attacks in Venezuela would be an act of war, and ordered ten battalions to the Colombian border. After its initially mild reaction, Ecuador followed suit, mobilizing troops and, in like fashion, expelling Colombian diplomats. But if it was Ecuadorian sovereignty that was violated, why is Chavez taking the lead in bashing Colombia?
Read the full post here.
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Today in Family Security Matters, I have an article on a topic I have been thinking about for some time: the silence of our reliable secular social critics in arguments over the threat of political Islam. There are plenty of commentators today who argue that we should adopt of policy of containment rather than confrontation with Islamists. These commentators have to answer the same critique that was presented against the the advocates of containment during the Cold War: their policy would condemn plenty of people to live under tyranny. What is amazing to me is the relative absence today of feminists and homosexuals on the side of those fighting political Islam. More than most, these interest groups stand to lose the most in places where the Islamists consolidate their power, yet they are strangely silent, no doubt because they also distrust Christian conservatives and agree with much of the Third World critique of American "imperialism" (a strange term, since the closet thing the U.S. has to a colony is Puerto Rico). I wish the secular humanists beyond Caroline Fourset and Bruce Bawer would speak up more, since they come from a tradition of Betty Friedan and Oscar Wilde that we could generally rely on to tell us what is non-negotiable in the Age of Enlightenment. I miss them...
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Iran’s leaders should surely take note of today’s Security Council action imposing a new round of sanctions on them for their continuing defiance of international non-proliferation norms. The measures included in UN Security Council Resolution 1803 appear to go well beyond previous resolutions, and for the first time may actually have some bite.
The new measures reportedly include an unequivocal ban on nuclear and related dual use equipment and technology exports to Iran, as well as the authority to inspect suspect air or sea cargoes destined for Iran. The new resolution also reportedly includes expanded asset freeze measures, and a real travel ban for an expanded list of targeted individuals and entities involved in these targeted activities (as opposed to the "exercise vigilance" over their travel that was contained in previous resolutions). And, it imposes new restrictions on certain export credits for Iran.
Of particular note is a new sanctions provision that calls for increased caution, due diligence and monitoring of dealings with any of Iran's banks. This measure builds on the sanctions measures already adopted with respect to Bank Sepah, and US actions directed against Bank Saderat and Bank Melli, and their branches and subsidiaries based abroad. It also builds on The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) February 28th Statement warning to all financial institutions "to take the risk arising from the deficiencies in Iran's {Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-terrorism Financing} regime into account for enhanced due diligence."
The 14 to 0 vote (Indonesia abstaining), and the fact that Libya, Vietnam and South Africa actually voted in favor of the resolution, should bring home to Iran’s leaders that the international community is losing patience and is now increasingly likely to go along with increasingly stern measures to convince Iran to comply. More importantly, Russia and China, for the first time, went beyond mere wrist slapping sanctions, and agreed to impose measures that entail real costs, and dangers, for Iran. Their statements in the Security Council, and their recent actions at the negotiating table with Iran, make it clear that Iran’s leaders can no longer count on them to block additional measures that might be necessary to convince Iran to change course. This development was presaged a few days ago, also, when the signing of the impending China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) deal with Iran to develop the northern Pars gas field was postponed.
Iran's leader should also know that their major trading partners in Europe and Japan are also increasingly committed to take further steps, unilaterally, if necessary, to place increased pressure and sanctions on Iran to prevent them from gaining nuclear weapons capability.
None of this means that these new Security Council measures will do the trick. That's very unlikely. This issue is likely to be much more retracted, and may well bring us to the brink before any real progress can be made. Nevertheless, given the very wrong signals sent by the previous two effete resolutions, this new resolution (1803) is an important first step in bringing home to Iran's leaders that their uranium enrichment project is ill-advised and that it will prove much more costly, and much less advantagous to the projection of their national interests than they now imagine.
Unfortunately, Iran’s fanatical leadership continues to appear blind to the writing on the wall and to the truth that their best course would be to suspend uranium enrichment and take up the EU+ generous June 2006 offer which is apparently still on the table.
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DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff welcomed a small group of blog editors to take our questions on a number of topics. I asked him for his response to Congressional criticisms of a new Bush Administration Cyber Initiative, as voiced most recently in a hearing last week, and the overall state of planning within DHS to enhance cybersecurity nationwide. He acknowledged that cybersecurity is "the one area where we're behind were I'd like to be" and that DHS has been "nibbling at the edges" until recently.
I also asked him whether he could state whether DHS investigative operations have been harmed by the expiration of the Protect America Act. He said that as a "consumer" of FISA-initiated information and not a "producer," he could not say whether ICE investigations have been harmed since the expiration. He added that he thinks the telecom companies deserve immunity when helping the intelligence community in terrorism cases in good faith. I will post the entire transcript of the roundtable in this space when DHS makes it available.
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The reaction of presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador to the killing of FARC commander Raul Reyes is now threatening to plunge South America into a disastrous conflict.
"This could be the start of a war in South America," Chavez said. He warned Colombian president Alvaro Uribe: "If it occurs to you to do this in Venezuela, President Uribe, I'll send some Sukhois" _ Russian warplanes recently bought by Venezuela.
This is no small threat. In the past several years Chavez has spent , according to the Defense Intelligence Agency, $4.3 billion in weapons in 2005-2006, more even than China. This includes a Kalashnikov assault rifle (AK-47) factory licensed from Russia. For a nation not at war, this is hardly an auspicious sign.
This is the alliance many of us have warned of for some time. Chavez, Correa, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Evo Morales in Bolivia have been trying for some time now to form an anti-American bloc in Latin America but have no coherent ideology to counter the changes in the world.
It is no secret that the Bush administration has taken even less interest in Latin America than Clinton and Bush I. The consequence of this short-sighted world view is the emergence of an axis that is fed on Venezuela's oil riches and the FARC's cocaine bonanza.
As I have said before, I do not want to use this forum to debate the rationality or efficiency of the U.S.-led "war on drugs." The policy is what it is, and is unlikely to change soon. So, in that context, the FARC has chosen to engage in a criminal activity that provides it with hundreds of millions of dollars. This river of money allow the group to control criminal pipelines that move drugs, weapons, illegal aliens, stolen cars etc. across our borders with impunity, on a daily basis. That is no small threat.
The economic bonanza of this alliance, coupled with the failure of previous governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela to deal with endemic corruption and real social issues, have given this axis access to power.
The main beneficiary of the current hue and cry by nations that have long sheltered the FARC-designated a terrorist entity for its drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion activities-is, of course, the FARC itself. My full blog is here.
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This article was written by Frank Hyland with Timothy Thompson
Many readers may wonder, perhaps even question, from time to time the level of resources that nations put into anti-terrorist programs. Some openly promote the idea that anti-terrorism programs are more properly in the arena of law enforcement, police matters, rather than military in nature. Some point to the number of deaths from terrorist attacks being lower than, for example, deaths from auto accidents. The possibility that a terrorist group can bring allied nations and others to the point of heated diplomatic exchanges might be dismissed by some, notwithstanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To the list must now be added the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which brought about bruised feelings between the US (and The European Union and Russia) and Turkey that will take considerable time and effort to repair.
Turkish ground forces crossed into northern Iraq late Thursday night, February 21st, to attack PKK positions. An estimated 4,000 Kurdish guerrillas shelter in Iraq’s semi-autonomous region, Kurdistan. Initially, two reinforced brigades -- some 10,000 Turkish soldiers -- supported this operation, and that number then increased. Fewer than 1,000 special operations and mountain troops actually crossed deeply into Iraq and this number was increased to more than 3,000 commandos. They were supported by Turkish fighter aircraft, attack helicopters and long-range heavy artillery. The incursion was advertised initially as being a short-term one, to last just four or five days. Turkey’s strike was guided by US-provided intelligence, supplied as a part of an information-sharing agreement with the United States that began in late fall 2007.
The Turkish ability to mount an effective winter attack in alpine-like terrain was impressive, with more than 240 PKK fighters killed and dozens more captured. Turkish deaths numbered fewer than 30. The Turkish forces generally maintained a 10:1 kill ratio in this offensive. The operation also severed remote infiltration routes used by the PKK, destroying a half-dozen bridges, and roads and foot paths used by the PKK to enter Turkey’s southeast region from Iraq.
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Tariq Ramadan is an enigma. The grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al Banna and the son of the late top Brotherhood leader in Europe, the Swiss academic is the probably the most celebrated Muslim public "intellectual" on the planet today. He is no longer welcome in France or Egypt, and his appointment to the faculty of Notre Dame is very much in doubt, based on the Department of Homeland Security's denial of his U.S. visa. The denial is premised on his financial support to Hamas, which Ramadan claims was - ha! - inadvertent. There is now the first book-length English biography of him, a translation of Caroline Fourest's Frere Tariq (in English, Brother Tariq). My review of it can be found on the website of the Investigative Project on Terrorism .
Fourest persuasively describes Ramadan's doublespeak, painting a picture of a radical ideologue with puny academic credentials that would put him squarely in the camp of religious extremists (Muslim and Christian alike) who believe they are divinely inspired to take us back to pre-Enlightenment days. This is no small feat, for Fourest is a feminist and part of a leftist milieu for whom Ramadan's anti-globalist worldview is generally attractive. If she concludes Ramadan is deceptive, we should take notice.
A guilty confession: part of me hopes that hard-headed American polemicists have the opportunity to see Ramadan live in South Bend, where the result would be good theater. Imagine a televised debate pitting Ramadan face-to-face against Steve Coughlin. The U.S., I am proud to say, is not Western Europe. We know religious extremists, and how to counteract them when they occassionally worm themselves into polite company. The good news is that this may be true of Australia as well (see this article from today). The biggest danger in letting Ramadan migrate is that he would waste the time of our nation's best Catholic students, whose future FBI careers are better served at football tailgates. However, I seriously doubt that the litigation challenging his exclusion will succeed. I do not credit the claims of Ramadan’s American supporters that their First Amendment rights to associate with this guy are legally cognizable. If these supporters really want to "dialogue" with someone who thinks the woman's place is under a veil and in the home and that gays should be cured or executed, they'll undoubtedly be able to find someone closer to home. (Something tells me that Indiana might have a few). In the meantime, if it's any consolation, I'm sure Tariq, from Geneva, would be glad to personally review their book and video choices for Muslim palatability. After all, we wouldn't want to offend him.
I commend Encounter Books and Roger Kimball et al for publishing Fourest's important book. Perhaps they'd like to parlay this righteous act by rescuing Alms for Jihad from the burning embers of Cambridge University Press?
Irrespective of their obvious brilliance, neither my comments here nor my review of the book reflect the views of the Department of Justice.
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The killing of FARC chief ideologue Paul Reyes will have important implications for the FARC and also for the region.
Reyes, who’s birth name was Luis Edgar Devia Silva, was the FARC’s chief ideologue and voice to the outside world. He was the first member of the FARC secretariat to be killed. The internal affairs of the FARC are opaque, but Reyes was frequently described as the number two in the FARC hierarchy after Manuel Marulanda, who is in his late 70s and is rumored to be ill. In the FARC’s hierarchy he is roughly equivalent to al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The loss of Reyes to the FARC is important in and of itself, but it is one in a series of reverses that indicate the organization may be in serious decline. According to the State Department’s 2008 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report the FARC has lost a number of important leaders in the past year. The GOC achieved significant success against the FARC leadership in 2007. Over a dozen mid-to-high level FARC commanders were killed or apprehended, including FARC 37th Front leader Gustavo Rueda Díaz, alias ‘Martin Caballero,’ 42nd Front leader Ernesto Orjuela Tovar, alias ‘Giovanni Rodriguez,’ and 16th Front leader, Tomas Molina Caracas, alias ‘Negro Acacio.’ Molina Caracas was considered a Consolidated Priority Organization Target (CPOT) by the USG and was one of 50 FARC commanders indicted in the U.S. in March 2006 for allegedly running the country’s largest cocaine smuggling organization. In addition, the rank and file is also suffering from attrition - reportedly 2800 FARC cadres deserted the FARC in 2007. While that number may have been exaggerated, there have been many desertions and it is clear that the rank and file are losing their ideological fervor. (Last year the diaries of a disgruntled FARCette were discovered and shed some light on the sordid daily reality of life in the FARC.)
FARC’s Future
Despite its decline, knockout blows against the FARC are not likely. The organization still has thousands of fighters under arms, a steady revenue stream (from narcotics, kidnapping, and other criminal activity), international links to other terrorist groups and criminals, and - in Hugo Chavez - a supporter willing to provide a safe haven across the border as well as rhetorical support. A major FARC revenge attack is well within the realm of possibility.
Read the full post here.
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The investigations into Las Vegas Ricin poisoning continue since last Friday, the mystery over two vials of poison found in the Von Bergendorff’s Motel room still haunts Police, FBI and U.S. Homeland Security agents. Police claimed to have found guns, "anarchist-type" fiction (with the ricin section highlighted) and castor beans from Bergendorff’s room who has been under medical supervision since mid February. Apparently, there is no indication of any link to terrorist activity or any involvement of Crime syndicates active in the locality. The seized literature and the social behavior of Bergendorff suggest that this could be a case of ‘millenarianism’ or an individual with an ‘apocalyptic’ worldview (remember Heaven’s Gate or Aum Shinrikyo cult).
However, the Ricin scare that has already gripped Las Vegas and securty agencies, is not a preferred terror weapon. Rather, it's effective weapon for assassination/murder with less accidental exposure and detection.
Ricin, a potential biological toxin for crime syndicates and terrorist outfits for murder and creating fear, is a by-product (a glycoprotein) in the production of castor oil from castor beans. The large castor plant, found in most part of Africa, India and Brazil along with other tropical and temperate climatic region, largely for their oil, is grown commercially for the pharmaceutical and industrial uses of its oil. Its fruit are often removed before they mature because of the poison ricin concentrated in the beanlike seeds.
Although it requires a significant amount of castor beans to develop a weaponised aerosol device, its main threat is by direct contact through inhalation and by ingestion. The incubation and lethality depends on the mode of entry into the host. Not as lethal as Anthrax, an estimate shows that it would take 4 tons of aerosolized ricin to equal the killing power of one kilogram of Anthrax. But it is 6,000 times more powerful than cyanide. While there is no known cure for a ricin victim, if penetrated through skin, ricin can cause hemorrhage of the lungs, liver, spleen, and kidneys leading to multi-organ system failure followed by death in less than a week.
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