organization:islamist

  • Libya’s Coming Forever War:Why Backing One Militia Against Another Is Not the Solution

    https://warontherocks.com/2019/05/libyas-coming-forever-war-why-backing-one-militia-against-another-is-

    Haftar’s Militias: Neither National nor an Army

    Trump’s call appears to rest on a mistaken but well-trodden narrative, advanced by Haftar’s forces, his Arab backers, and his western sympathizers, that the general’s “army” could deal a decisive military blow to Tripoli’s “Islamist and jihadist militias.” But this dichotomy is not anchored to current realities.

    After the 2011 revolution, as Benghazi fell into chaos and neglect, there was indeed a very real radical Islamist militia presence, which Haftar’s so-called Operation Dignity coalition started fighting in 2014. And some of these Islamists were later backed by hardline revolutionary factions in the western Libyan cities of Tripoli and Misrata. But since Haftar’s military victory in Benghazi and his consolidation of control over eastern Libya, the threat of Islamist militias has diminished significantly. So has Qatari and Turkish interference in Libya, especially compared to the still-robust role of the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. In tandem, moderate and pragmatic Libyan factions sidelined the radical presence in Tripoli and Misrata, with many militant figures exiled, imprisoned, or killed. Thus, it is a mistake to portray Tripoli as awash with radical Islam and Haftar as a savior figure coming to eradicate it.

    Aside from this inflated “radical” narrative, Haftar’s forces are hardly the professional army they appear to be. They contain a significant irregular, localized militia component, which includes foreign fighters from Chad and Sudan. Our interviews with Libyan National Army personnel, U.N. officials, and observers indicate this militia component to be somewhere between 40 to 60 percent of the army’s total. To be sure, there is a nucleus of regular infantry, armor, air force, and military police units — and it is this professional face that accounts for the public support, based on a recent poll, that Libyans accord the Libyan National Army as a welcome alternative to the country’s unruly and rapacious militias. But even this narrative is shaky. One of Haftar premier regular units, the Sa’iqa (or Thunderbolt Battalion), often described in the press as an “elite” organization, has been implicated in a string of abuses, and one of its senior officers has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

    Moreover, ever since Haftar started his military campaign in Benghazi in 2014, he has relied heavily on locally constituted militias. Denoted by the euphemism “support forces” or “neighborhood youths,” these militias were tied to specific Benghazi suburbs, and many hailed from an influential local tribe, the Awaqir. These support forces acted, in effect, as rear area guards, but also assisted regular units in frontline assaults. As the conflict dragged on, they also engaged in violent vigilantism, attacking the homes and businesses of Benghazi families suspected to be loyal to Haftar’s Islamist opponents.

    The presence of conservative Salafists in the Libyan National Army also belies the notion that Haftar’s forces are an institutionalized, professional force. Backed by Muammar Qadhafi in the waning years of his rule, these Salafists had a presence in the former regime’s security forces and are doctrinally hostile to the political Islamists Haftar was fighting. Salafist fighters have been crucial frontline combatants for the Libyan National Army. In areas of the east that Haftar has taken over, they’ve enjoyed some latitude to try and enforce their version of Islamic social mores. All of this suggests that any Trump administration support for Haftar on ideological grounds is misplaced. He is certainly a foe of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the White House is unwisely trying to designate as a foreign terrorist organization. But he is no secularist.

    More recently, Salafists have joined Libyan National Army military units commanded by Haftar’s sons. This familial dimension of Haftar’s forces is yet more evidence that the Libyan National Army is not all that it seems. Our interviews with members of the group and its supporters suggest that with minimal military training, Haftar’s sons Khalid and Saddam were elevated to command positions, part of a broader trend of Haftar ruling through a tight clique of family members and confidantes from his tribe, the Firjan. In particular, Khaled’s unit, the 106th Brigade, has received high-end foreign equipment and weapons, leading to frequent comparisons to Libya’s most elite formation during the Qadhafi era, the 32d Reinforced Brigade, commanded by Qadhafi’s youngest son Khamis.

    Finally, the acquiescence and, in some cases, active support that Haftar’s Libyan National Army enjoyed from foreign powers have also been crucial to the army’s expansion. The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, France, and Russia each backed the Libyan National Army for their own reasons (whether anti-Islamism, border control, or counter-terrorism). Haftar, like many Middle Eastern proxies, has proved adroit at exploiting this patronage . And the United States also shoulders some blame: Though Washington reportedly halted military engagement with Haftar’s side in 2015, American diplomats, based on our interviews, evinced an increasingly accommodative stance toward the general, hoping to bring him into the political process and taking at face value his professed support for elections. They also adopted a muted position toward his military move across Libya’s vast southern region earlier this year, which Haftar’s camp likely perceived as a tacit green light.

    During this southern advance, a security and governance vacuum allowed the Libyan National Army to effectively flip locally constituted militias — including those guarding oil installations — with offers of cash and equipment. In turning to attack Tripoli, Haftar adopted a similar strategy, hoping local militias in Tripoli and its environs would come to his side, persuaded by a mix of cash, force, and self-interested political calculations. But that plan has backfired spectacularly. Disparate militias in Tripoli that had long been at loggerheads have unified against him. Even ordinary citizens who might have welcomed Haftar into the capital as relief from the militias are turning against him.

    Understanding the fractured political and security backdrop against which the Libyan National Army has encountered these obstacles is important for understanding why Trump’s faith in Haftar is misplaced.

  • Temple Mount crisis: Jerusalem unifies the Muslims through struggle - Palestinians
    http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-1.802844
    Although most Palestinians are not allowed to visit Al-Aqsa, this holy site is doing what the siege of Gaza and the expansion of the settlements could not: bringing them together

    By Amira Hass | Jul. 23, 2017 | 12:55 PM |

    A secular young man from the Ramallah area expressed his astonishment at how Jerusalem was unifying the entire Palestinian people,, and compared the perpetrator of Friday night’s attack in Halamish, Omar al-Abed, to Saladin. A silly comparison, all would agree. Still, the need to bring up Saladin encapsulates all the fatigue among Palestinians about those they perceive as the new Crusaders.

    That young man can’t go to East Jerusalem and the Old City, which is less than 30 kilometers (about 18 miles) from his home, because even in ordinary times Israel doesn’t give entry permits “just like that” for people his age. And perhaps he is among those who consider it humiliating to have to request an entry permit to a Palestinian city. The last time he visited was when he was 13 – some 13 years ago.

    And so this young Palestinian did not hear a few of the preachers in Jerusalem on Friday talk about their longing for Saladin. Because the Palestinians stuck to their prohibition on entering Al-Aqsa through the Israeli metal detectors, self-styled preachers spoke to groups of worshippers who had gathered in the streets of East Jerusalem and the Old City, surrounded by Border Police personnel aiming their long rifles at them.

    One of those preachers said that if not for the positions and actions of various regimes in the world in the past and present, the Jews would not have overcome the Palestinians. Then he paused and added, “If not for the Palestinian Authority, the collaborator, the Jews would not have the upper hand.” He also wondered: “Is it possible that in all the Muslim armies in the world today, not one can produce a Saladin?” And then he promised that the day would come when armies from Jakarta, Istanbul and Cairo will arrive to liberate Palestine, Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa.

    Another preacher made similar statements to a tourist from Turkey before the sermon. The content and style recalled the Islamist-Salafist party Hizb El Tahrir: There is no preaching for an armed struggle against the Israeli occupier, but strong faith in a day when the Muslim world mobilizes and brings down the “Jewish Crusaders.”

    When the prayer was over, only a few joined the call warning Jews that “the army of Mohammed would return” – but no one protested the characterization of the PA as a “collaborator.” Anyway, its activities are forbidden in Jerusalem. Israel pushed out the PLO (to which the PA is theoretically subservient) from every unifying, cultural, social or economic role it had until the year 2000. A vacuum like that can only be filled with religious entities and spokesmen who will give meaning to a life full of suffering. The consistent position of the PLO and the PA that this is not a religious conflict and that Israel should not be allowed to turn it into one doesn’t sound particularly convincing in Jerusalem.

    Since most Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank can’t go to Jerusalem, the city – and particularly the Al-Aqsa Mosque – are for them abstract sites, a “concept” or a picture on the wall; not a reality to be experienced. But this abstract place, Al-Aqsa, is doing what the siege of Gaza and its 2 million prisoners, the expansion of the settlements and the confiscation of water tanks and solar panels from communities in Area C, are not doing: It is unifying them. The anti-colonial discourse, which is essentially national, political and secular, is channeled to Facebook posts, to scholarly articles that do not reach the general public and to hollow slogans mouthed by leaders, the shelf-life of whose leadership and mandate has long since expired.

    In other words, the national discourse and the veteran national leadership are no longer considered relevant today. While Al-Aqsa, in contrast, manages to create mass popular opposition to the foreign Israeli ruler – and that sparks the imagination and inspiration of masses of others who cannot go to Jerusalem. Not only nonreligious people came to places of worship in Jerusalem on Friday to be with their people. A number of Palestinian Christians also joined the groups of Muslim worshippers and prayed in their way, facing Al-Aqsa and Mecca.

    Of course, this is first and foremost the strength of religious belief. The deeper the faith, the greater the insult to its sacred elements. The fact that Al-Aqsa is a pan-Islamic site is an empowering element. But not only that: Jerusalem has the highest concentration of Palestinians who rub elbows with the foreign Israeli ruler, with everything this entails in terms of the trampling on their rights and humiliating them. They don’t need “symbolic sites” of the occupation, like military checkpoints, to recall the occupation or express their rage. And the Al-Aqsa plaza, for its part, is where the largest number of Jerusalemites can gather together in one place to feel like a collective. And when this right to congregate is taken away from them, they protest as one – which also reminds the rest of the Palestinians that the entire public is one, suffering the same foreign rule.

    But that same unified public can no longer express its oneness in mass actions. It is closed and cut off in ostensibly sovereign enclaves, and split into social classes with ever-widening social, economic and emotional gaps. Its road to the symbolic sites of the occupation, which surround every enclave, is blocked by the Palestinian security forces as well as by adaptation to life in the enclave.

    This is the political and factual foundation for the continued presence of lone-wolf attackers, without reference to the outcome of their actions: First of all, the intolerable continuation of the occupation; then the inspiration of Al-Aqsa as a place that unifies, religiously and socially; the disappointing, weakened and weak leadership; and a willingness to die that is a mixture of faith in Paradise and despair at life.

    en français : https://seenthis.net/messages/617928

    • Esplanade des Mosquées : M. Abbas suspend la coordination sécuritaire avec Israël
      Par RFI Publié le 23-07-2017
      http://www.rfi.fr/moyen-orient/20170723-esplanade-mosquees-abbas-suspend-coordination-securitaire-israel-oslo

      Israël joue avec le feu en imposant de nouvelles mesures de sécurité à l’entrée de l’Esplanade des Mosquées. L’accusation est lancée ce dimanche au Caire par le secrétaire général de la Ligue arabe pour qui Jérusalem est une ligne rouge à ne pas franchir. De nouvelles manifestations ont eu lieu samedi et deux nouvelles victimes sont à déplorer : deux Palestiniens ont été tués. Mahmoud Abbas avait annoncé dès vendredi le gel de tous les contacts avec Israël : première traduction concrète ce dimanche avec l’annulation d’une réunion de coopération sécuritaire israélo-palestinienne.

      avec notre correspondante à Ramallah, Marina Vlahovic

  • Intéressante remarque sur l’émergence des salafistes en Tunisie, non pas en situation de répression (comme le veut généralement la théorie), mais en situation de plus grande liberté politique : Book Review – Alison Pargeter’s ‘Return to the Shadows’
    http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2016/12/12/book-review-alison-pargeters-return-to-the-shadows

    As Pargeter explains, ‘An-Nahda found itself making compromise after compromise, with the result that it started to look like an Islamist party that was ruling without Islam’ (pp. 215–216). That the Brotherhood’s pragmatism and moderation of its political and social agenda have led to the emergence of more conservative, Salafi-inspired groups is an important change in the region, with major political implications. Indeed, these groups emerged not in situations of repression, but when greater political freedom was granted (p. 226), and their political trajectory will be interesting to follow in the coming years, given that they have not been maligned as much as has the Brotherhood in recent years.

    • Ah oui, certes. Mais dans les milieux que je fréquente, la théorie dominante est largement celle qui part de la répression politique. Et c’est cet aspect que souligne la citation (dans un texte qui ne me semble pas relever de l’islamophobie qui sous-tend généralement le discours que tu évoques).

  • US arms Syrian Islamists with surface-to-air missiles - World Socialist Web Site
    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/11/23/syri-n23.html

    US arms Syrian Islamists with surface-to-air missiles
    By Bill Van Auken
    23 November 2016

    A US-backed Islamist militia in southern Syria has been armed with portable surface-to-air missiles, so-called manpads. These weapons are capable of shooting down Syrian government aircraft as well as Russian warplanes, which have played a prominent role in providing air support to the Syrian army against the Al Qaeda-linked “rebels.”

    The group, the Ansar al-Islam Front, exhibited the weapons, SA-7 Strela-2 missiles, in a video it posted on Sunday, claiming that it had “a good number” of them in its possession. The video, produced by a Dubai-based Syrian opposition propaganda network, shows the Islamists un-crating, assembling and testing the manpads.

    #syrie #états-unis #armement

    • The Observatory said the attackers included Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front.
      An Ahrar al-Sham spokesman said: “Civilians were not targeted. On the contrary factions made great effort to spare civilians and deal with prisoners humanely.”
      The Observatory cited sources saying the 19 dead, who included six women, were from families of fighters loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and were killed as rebels stormed houses during their attack on al-Zara.
      An image shared on social media purported to show rebel fighters next to the bodies of two women in al-Zara.

      Comme le mentionne la dépêche Ahrar al-Cham a participé à cette offensive et au massacre, malgré les dénégations de son porte-parole. Sur la photo dont il est question, facilement trouvable - deux combattants dans une maison marchant sur le cadavre d’une femme (avec deux autres cadavres à côté) et des giclées de sang maculant les murs - se trouvent probablement des combattants d’Ahrar. D’autant qu’une vidéo diffusée avec un combattant pérorant dans une maison avec d’autres civils tués portait le logo d’Ahrar.
      La précision importe alors que la France, le RU, l’Ukraine et la Russie avaient bloqué deux jours auparavant une résolution russe au CS de l’ONU pour classer Ahrar (et Jaych al-islam) sur la liste des organisations terroristes : http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/05/12/russias-bid-to-blacklist-syrian-rebel-groups-at-us-block-by-us-others.html
      Russia Today prétend avoir recueilli des témoignages de villageois de Zaraa attestant de la responsabilité d’Ahrar :
      https://francais.rt.com/international/20605-syrie-alsham-terrorisme-onu

  • Is the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood pushing the group toward violence? | Brookings Institution

    http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2016/03/muslim-brotherhood-crackdown-violence-fayed

    Editor’s note: “Islamists on Islamism Today” is a new series within Brookings’s Rethinking Political Islam project. In this series, we will hear directly from Islamist activists and leaders themselves, as they engage in debate with project authors and offer their own perspectives on the future of their movements. Islamists will have the opportunity to disagree (or agree) and challenge the assumptions and arguments of some of the leading scholars of political Islam, in the spirit of constructive dialogue.

    REPORT
    Rethinking Political Islam
    April 21, 2016
    The military coup of July 2013 forced the Muslim Brotherhood to retreat to a climate of secrecy after the group had spent just a year working openly and in power. The authorities soon designated it as a terrorist organization, and banned around 1,200 of the civil institutions affiliated with the group or its members, to say nothing of the thousands of people killed and imprisoned. The Brotherhood was left with no other option but to protest in a climate characterized by exclusion and McCarthyism.

  • Une bonne fête de l’OTAN n’est jamais totalement réussie sans nos amis fascistes : Turkey’s nationalist ’Gray Wolves’ enter Syrian fray
    http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/02/turkey-syria-grey-wolves-emerge-as-jihadists.html

    Turkish involvement in the Syrian war has been heavily dominated by Islamist fighters, but the conflict has also drawn in an unlikely quarter — Turkish nationalists. The far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and its youth branch, the Idealist Hearths, have recently come into the spotlight with high-profile losses on the Syrian battlefield. The MHP is the main body of Turkey’s ultranationalist movement, also known as the Gray Wolves, whose hall of fame includes failed papal assassin Mehmet Ali Agca. The Alperen Hearths, the youth branch of the smaller Great Union Party, which represents the ultranationalist movement’s Islamist-leaning wing, are also visibly interested in the Syrian war.

  • Syrian Killed in Attack by Golani Druze Was Islamist Fighter, Not Civilian as IDF Claimed
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2015/06/26/syrian-killed-in-attack-by-golani-druze-was-islamist-fighter-not

    Israel regularly evacuates Islamist fighters wounded in the fighting against the regime in the region. Angry local Druze intercepted an IDF ambulance carrying two wounded Syrians, whom the IDF claimed were civilians. They beat the army medics, who were forced to flee. They then beat one of the wounded Syrians to death and severely wounded the other, before the authorities intervened and rescued him.

    Munther Khalil: the IDF’s Faux Syrian “Civilian”

    Syrian Islamists calling themselves the Revolutionary Command Council in Quneitra and the Golan, published a Facebook memorial to the victim who was killed in the attack. The page says in Arabic:

    Munther Khalil – the wounded man who was killed by Druze people from Majdal Shams in Israel

    May Allah have mercy on you, and accept you as one of the Shahids

    His picture features him brandishing a gun in full rebel garb. He is clearly not a civilian.

  • Migrants : et si ouvrir les frontières générait de la richesse ? Idées

    Imaginez que tous les pays ouvrent en même temps leurs frontières et autorisent la libre circulation des individus sur leur territoire. Que se passerait-il dans l’immédiat ? Au bout de vingt-cinq ans ? Hier considérée comme une utopie, cette question est devenue un véritable objet d’étude. Et les scientifiques commencent à y apporter des réponses, qui n’ont pas grand-chose à voir avec les timides mesures prises face à la crise migratoire au sujet de laquelle l’Europe se déchire. Le sujet, pourtant, reste dans le secret des laboratoires. Il en sera ainsi tant que les gouvernants construiront leur ­politique dans ce domaine en se laissant guider par l’opinion publique plutôt que par les résultats scientifiques.

    #migration #asile #réfugiés #richesse #libre_circulation #ouverture_des_frontières
    http://www.lemonde.fr/festival/article/2015/06/25/et-si-on-ouvrait-les-frontieres_4661969_4415198.html

  • Si les Américains disent qu’Assad est allié à ISIS, c’est certainement vrai. Après tout, ce sont les mêmes qui savaient déjà que Saddam Hussein était allié à Al Qaeda… (tu ne vois pas comme un schéma récurrent, là… ?)

    Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_link_allegations

    Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations were made by U.S. Government officials who claimed that a highly secretive relationship existed between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the radical Islamist militant organization Al-Qaeda from 1992 to 2003, specifically through a series of meetings reportedly involving the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS).[1] In the lead up to the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush alleged that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and militant group al-Qaeda might conspire to launch terrorist attacks on the United States,[2] basing the administration’s rationale for war, in part, on this allegation and others. The consensus of intelligence experts has been that these contacts never led to an operational relationship, and that consensus is backed up by reports from the independent 9/11 Commission and by declassified Defense Department reports[3] as well as by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose 2006 report of Phase II of its investigation into prewar intelligence reports concluded that there was no evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.[4] Critics of the Bush Administration have said Bush was intentionally building a case for war with Iraq without regard to factual evidence. On April 29, 2007, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on 60 Minutes, “We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al-Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America, period.”[5]

  • With US air war in 10th month, ISIS advances in Iraq and Syria - World Socialist Web Site

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/02/iraq-j02.html

    With US air war in 10th month, ISIS advances in Iraq and Syria
    By Bill Van Auken
    2 June 2015

    With the US-led air war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now in its 10th month, the Islamist militia continues to make territorial gains in both countries, inflicting serious losses on the military in Iraq as well as both government forces and rival Islamist “rebels” in Syria.

    In its latest attack on Monday, ISIS launched a devastating suicide bombing against an army base just north of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, killing at least 45 members of the security forces and wounding scores more.

    #is #ISIS #irak #syrie

  • The Muslim Brotherhood in transition | Mada Masr
    http://www.madamasr.com/opinion/politics/muslim-brotherhood-transition

    Incitements to murder on some television channels affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a growing number of supporters renouncing pacifism, and an increasing online presence of groups seeking retribution for the killing of “revolutionaries;” all this has raised the question of the Muslim Brotherhood and violence, not only regarding the origin of violence, but also the Islamist organization’s relationship with the other militant groups and how to deal with it.

    There are two predominant perspectives: The first has been adopted by the official discourse, its close circles and media mouthpieces, claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood is a violent group by definition, and that their formerly latent violence has now surfaced. Advocates of this view blame revolutionary forces for once cooperating with the Brotherhood, as this has allegedly supported the network and arming of the organization. The second view is the discourse prevalent in academic circles affiliated and sympathizing with the Brotherhood, which insist that it is impossible for organization to resort to violence, and that violent events are isolated incidents or a conspiracy by the regime to portray the Brotherhood as violent to justify their ongoing killing and detention. Both views share the same essential perception of the Brotherhood as an invariable self, unaffected by ideological and social changes.

  • Syria Calling : Radicalisation in Central Asia - International Crisis Group

    http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/central-asia/b072-syria-calling-radicalisation-in-central-asia.aspx

    Growing numbers of Central Asian citizens, male and female, are travelling to the Middle East to fight or otherwise support the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIL or ISIS). Prompted in part by political marginalisation and bleak economic prospects that characterise their post-Soviet region, 2,000-4,000 have in the past three years turned their back on their secular states to seek a radical alternative. IS beckons not only to those who seek combat experience, but also to those who envision a more devout, purposeful, fundamentalist religious life. This presents a complex problem to the governments of Central Asia. They are tempted to exploit the phenomenon to crack down on dissent. The more promising solution, however, requires addressing multiple political and administrative failures, revising discriminatory laws and policies, implementing outreach programs for both men and women and creating jobs at home for disadvantaged youths, as well as ensuring better coordination between security services.

    #asie_centrale #djihadisme #radicalisation #syrie #icg

    • Intéressant, mais toujours le même problème : il nous faudrait admettre que cette forme très spécifique d’islamisme radical naîtrait spontanément de la pauvreté, des discriminations et de la répression.

      Or, voici ce que Labévière écrivait déjà en octobre 1999 (il y a quinze ans !), dans son prologue pour l’édition américaine de « Dollars for Terror » :

      Parallel to the astonishing ideological convergence between the Parisian ex-Leftists and certain former CIA analysts, there is a perceptible propagation of Sunni Islamism (in varying degrees) from Chechnya to Chinese Xinjiang, and it affects all the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union. With the active support of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates andother oil monarchies and with the benevolence of the American services engaged in these areas, we can expect a “Talebanization” of Central Asia, particularly in Chechnya.

      Following a series of terrorist attacks in Moscow during the autumn of 1999, the Russian army launched a series of operations in Chechnya and Dagestan. This new war in Chechnya came on the heels of a series of grave events ascribable to the Sunni Muslims, whose networks are still expanding from the Caspian Sea to the gates of China. Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen president, had sought to unify his country via Islam; in the end, threatened by militants who want to establish an Islamic State in Chechnya similar to that of the Taleban in Afghanistan.

      After the withdrawal of the Russian troops in 1996, incidents between Islamists and the police force escalated dramatically. An emir of Arab origin, who wanted to found an Islamic State covering the whole of the Caucasus, raised an army of 2000 men. On July 15, 1998, conflicts between 1000 Islamic combatants and the security forces killed more than 50 people in the town of Gudermes, 23 miles east of Grozny. Shortly after these clashes, Chechen President Maskhadov called on the population and the local religious authority to resist the “Wahhabis and those who are behind these misled insurrectionaries.” He affirmed his intention to excise from Chechnya “those who are trying to impose a foreign ideology on the population.” On July 31, 1998 he barely escaped an assassination attempt attributed to Islamic activists.

      On December 12, 1998, the Chechen authorities announced the arrest of Arbi Baraev, a Wahhabi militant. He had proclaimed a “Jihad against the enemies of the true religion,” and was implicated in the murder of the four Western engineers (three British and one New Zealander) whose severed heads were found on December 10, 1998. He also admitted participating in the kidnapping and the detention of Frenchman Vincent Cochetel, a delegate from the U.N.’s High Commission of Refugees. Cochetel disappeared in Ossetia; he was released on December 10, 1998, after 317 days in captivity. The Islamists, in addition, acknowledged kidnapping the Chechen Attorney General Mansour Takirov, on December 11, 1998. And on March 21, 1999, the Chechen President escaped a second bombing, right in the center of Grozny.

      While Aslan Maskhadov proclaims his determination to eradicate Wahhabi Islamism in his country, he is opposed by several members of his government who protect the religious activists. Thus Movadi Uklugov, a member of the Chechen government, wants to establish diplomatic relation with the Taleban of Afghanistan. The Chechen Vice President Vakha Arsanov called for reprisals against the United States after the August 20, 1998 bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan. One year later, Chechnya was cut in two by the Russian forces; 170,000 women and children headed for exile in Ingushetia, another Islamic sanctuary. The pressure of refugees fleeing the war in Ossetia is growing and the entire area is slipping into a civil war mode, like Afghan — just what Maskhadov wanted to avoid. But “Talebanization” is gaining ground in Dagestan, Tatarstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and the fringes of China as well.

      In May 1997, in Dagestan, Wahhabi militants wielding automatic weapons clashed with representatives of local Sufi brotherhoods. Two people were killed, three others wounded and eighteen Wahhabis were taken hostage by the Sufis. On December 21, 1997, three units of former volunteers from the Afghan resistance attacked a Russian military base in Dagestan. These combatants, coming from Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, assassinated several dozen Russian soldiers and officers, and then set fire to some three hundred vehicles. Before retiring to Chechnya, these Islamists handed out leaflets proclaiming, among other things, that new military training camps would be opened in Chechnya to prepare additional combatants “who will teach the impious Russians a lesson.”

      In August 1998, the Wahhabi communities of three Dagestani villages proclaimed “independent Islamic republics,” recognized Sharia as the only law valid in the state, and sought to leave the Russian Federation to join Chechnya. Lastly, August 21, 1998, the mufti of Dagestan, Saïd Mohammad Abubakarov (who had urged the authorities to react firmly against Wahhabi terrorism) and his brother were killed when his residence was bombed. The chaos caused by this attack led the country to the brink of civil war.

      In Tatarstan, the authorities see the development of a radical Islamist movement as a serious threat to the country’s stability, since the appearance of “religious political organizations” endangers the coexistence of the Russian and Tatar populations. In March 1999, Mintimer Chaîmiev — President of Tatarstan — denounced “the action of emissaries from Islamic countries who recruit young people in Russia, and give them military training abroad, leading to terrorist actions.” During 1999, several Pakistani, Afghan and Saudi “missionaries” wereexpelled from the country for proselytism intended to unleash a “holy war.”

      The Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan has long been the site of an Islamist education and agitation center with close ties to Pakistan and the Saudi Wahhabi organizations. In 1992, after an uprising in Namangan, the biggest town in the Ferghana Valley, President Islam Karimov (the former head of the Uzbek Communist Party) ordered a series of arrests against the Islamist agitators while seeking to promote an official form of Islam through the International Center of Islamic Research financed by the State. In December 1997, several police officers were assassinated by Wahhabi activists. On February 16, 1998, the Uzbek Minister for Foreign Affairs blamed the Islamist organizations in Pakistan and accused them of training the terrorists who conducted these assassinations. According to his information services, more than 500 Uzbeks, Kirghiz and Tajiks were trained in Pakistan and in Afghanistan before returning to their home lands in order to propagate a holy war against the “impious authorities.”

      Between July 1998 and January 1999, a hundred Wahhabi Islamists were tried and sentenced to three to twenty years in prison. On February 16, 1999, six explosions ripped through Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, killing 15 and wounding some 150. The first three charges exploded near the government headquarters; three others hit a school, a retail store and the airport. Shortly after this lethal night, the Uzbek authorities denounced acts “financed by organizations based abroad” and reiterated their intention to fight Wahhabi extremism. On March 18, 1999, some thirty Wahhabi militants (suspected of involvement in the February 16 attacks) were arrested in Kazakhstan. According to Interfax, the Russian press agency, they were holding airplane tickets for the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Chechnya and Azerbaidjan.

      In Kyrgyzstan, in February 1998, the Muslim religious authorities launched a vast information campaign to counter Saudi proselytism and the propagation of Wahhabi ideology. On May 12, the Kyrgyzstan security forces arrested four foreigners, members of a very active clandestine Wahhabi organization. This group was training recruits from Kyrgyzstan in military boot camps linked to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The police also seized Afghan and Pakistani passports, a large sum in U.S. dollars, video cassettes summoning viewers to a “holy war,” and other propaganda documents. The authorities announced a series of measures against those who were using religious instruction “to destabilize the country.” In May 1998, the Kyrgyz authorities, who had already arrested and extradited eight Uzbek activists in 1997, signed two agreements on anti-terrorist cooperation with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

      China has not been spared. Xinjiang (southern China), has a population that is 55% Uighur (a turkophone Sunni ethnic group); it has been confronted with Islamist violence since the beginning of the 1990’s. Created in 1955, Xinjiang (which means “new territory”) is one of the five autonomous areas of China and is the largest administrative unit of the country. The area is highly strategic at the geopolitical level — Chinese nuclear tests and rocket launches take place on the Lop Nor test grounds — as well as from an economic standpoint, since it abounds in natural wealth (oil, gas, uranium, gold, etc.). Against this backdrop, attacks have proliferated by independence-seeking cliques, all preaching “Holy War.”

      Some are acting in the name of Turkish identity, while others are fighting in the name of Allah (especially in the southern part of the region). As in the rest of Central Asia, in Xinjiang we are witnessing the rising influence of Wahhabi groups and the increasing proselytism of preachers from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Traditionally allied with popular China, Pakistan is nevertheless trying to extend its influence to this part of China, using the Islamists as it did in Afghanistan. For this reason Beijing closed the road from Karakorum, connecting Xinjiang to Pakistan, between 1992 and 1995. Since 1996, the frequency of the incidents has skyrocketed. In February 1997, riots exploded in Yining (a town of 300,000 inhabitants located to the west of Urumqi, near the Kazakh border). This violence caused ten deaths, according to Chinese authorities, and the Uighurs have counted more than a hundred victims.

      Every week in 1998 saw a bombing or an attack with automatic weapons. The region’s hotels, airports and railway stations are in a constant state of alert. In April, Chinese authorities in the vicinity of Yining seized 700 cases of ammunition from Kazakhstan. In September, the Secretary of the Xinjiang Communist Party declared that “19 training camps, in which specialists returning from Afghanistan educate young recruits in the techniques of terrorism, with the assistance of the Taleban,” were neutralized. In January 1999, 29 activists implicated in the February 1997 riots were arrested. On February 12, violent clashes between the police and groups of Uighur militants wounded several dozen people in Urumqi. Two hundred people were arrested. In early March, 10,000 additional soldiers arrived at Yining to beef up security, while in Beijing, the Uighur Islamist organizations took credit for several bomb attacks.

      Le texte du International Crises Group recommande finalement :

      Russia and China are already concerned and have urged the Central Asian states to address the problem of radicalisation in light of the rise of IS. The region’s other international partners, including, the EU and the U.S., should recognise that Central Asia is a growing source of foreign fighters and consider prioritising policing reform, as well as a more tolerant attitude to religion, in their recommendations for combating the problem.

      Ce qui me laisse penser que là, comme dans d’autres situations (notamment la Syrie), on s’abstrait volontairement (et avec une fausse-naïveté épatante) des aspects géopolitiques et de l’histoire des deux dernières décennies. (Parce qu’on ne sait toujours pas à quel moment on devrait admettre que les Occidentaux et leurs relais Séoudiens et Pakistanais auraient définitivement renoncé à jouer la carte jihadiste dans le monde… après 2001, après l’Irak, après la Libye, après la Syrie, après Charlie Hebdo ?).

  • How Islamist rebels engineered Israel’s oil grab in Syria
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/how-islamist-rebels-engineered-israel-s-oil-grab-syria-740568063

    Israel’s ambitions to conquer the Golan Heights and western hopes to topple Assad raise questions around the discovery of oil in the Golan
    A US oil company is preparing to drill for oil in the Golan Heights.

    Granted the license in February 2013 by Israel, Afek Oil and Gas is a subsidiary of Genie Energy Ltd, whose equity-holding board members include former US Vice President Dick Cheney, controversial media mogul Rupert Murdoch and financier Lord Jacob Rothschild. Also on the board is Brigadier General Effie Eitam, a former Israeli minister for infrastructure who currently resides in the Golan Heights himself.

    Afek, which has exclusive rights to a 153-square-mile radius in the south of the Golan Heights, started “dirt works” in December 2014, to prepare the first site for drilling.

    Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War, annexing and occupying the territory in 1981 in violation of international law. As the conflict in Syria has escalated, the spillover into the Golan has invited Israel to label its de facto control over the territory as another security issue requiring military “defence.”

    Accordingly, Israel has considered unilaterally creating a new buffer zone that would extend up to 10 miles inside Syrian territory on the pretext of securing the border from Islamist fighters.

  • Libye : 3 activistes décapités à Derna - BBC

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30011640

    Three young activists have been found beheaded in Derna, in eastern Libya.

    The three, who had relayed information about the city through social media, had been kidnapped earlier this month.

    Several Islamist groups are competing for control of the city, with some militants recently declaring allegiance to Islamic State.

    Libya has been in a state of flux since Col Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, with disparate tribes, militias and political factions fighting for power.

    ’We reject IS’
    The BBC’s Rana Jawad, in the capital, Tripoli, says that in the immediate aftermath of the revolution that ousted Gaddafi, many rebel fighters left to fight with militant groups opposing the rule of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

    Many of the fighters are believed to have returned home, settling in the east of the country, she says.

    Beheadings are rare in Libya, our correspondent says, even in areas controlled by militant Islamists, and no group has so far said it carried out the latest killings.

    The activists have been named as Siraj Ghatish, Mohamed Battu and Mohamed al-Mesmari.
    Our correspondent says they remained low-profile, mostly passing on information via social media pages.

    Another activist in the city who cannot be named for reasons of safety, said: “We reject IS being here. We can’t come out in public about it.”

    Our correspondent says there appear to be three main militant groups in Derna, with varying degrees of extremism.

    Map showing Tobruk, Tripoli, Benghazi, Derna, Zintan, Misrata and Crete
    They are the Islamic Youth Shura Council, a branch of Ansar al-Sharia, and the more moderate Martyrs of Abuslim Brigade.

    The group that declared allegiance to IS is unclear, although the activist who spoke to the BBC said it appeared to be a group that broke away from the Shura Council.

    Derna has been out of government control since 2012.

    Last month, pictures from Derna showed public institutions renamed as Islamic courts and Islamic police.

    In August, a video emerged on social media showing a man being shot dead by an unknown group in the football stadium.

    The elected government has lost Libya’s three main cities amid the political crisis:

    In Tripoli, some members of the old parliament - the General National Congress - have continued to sit. They have appointed their own rival government, though this is not internationally recognised
    Much of Benghazi, the second city, is in the hands of Islamist fighters, some with links to al-Qaeda. There are near-daily assassinations of officials, journalists and social activists. Some 300 people have been killed in the past month in clashes between the army and militiamen
    Misrata, the third city and a major business port, is loyal to the Tripoli authorities

  • The Tunisian election result isn’t simply a victory for secularism over Islamism | Monica Marks | Comment is free | theguardian.com
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/29/tunisian-election-result-secularism-islamism-nidaa-tounes-ennahda?CMP=t

    A self-styled, secular, modernist party called Nidaa Tounes won against the Islamist Ennahda party in the Tunisian election this week. For many, the subsequent headline – “Secularist party wins Tunisia elections” – will seem more impressive than the fact Tunisia just completed its second genuinely competitive, peaceful elections since 2011.

    Indeed, in a region wracked by extremism and civil war, the secularists’ victory will strike many as further proof that Tunisia is moving forward and is the sole bright spot in a gloomy region. Some may prematurely celebrate, yet again, the death of political Islam, arguing that Tunisians achieved through the ballot box what Egyptians achieved through a popular coup, rejecting the Brotherhood and its cousin-like movements once and for all. We should exercise caution, however, in labelling Nidaa Tounes’s victory part of a seamless sweep of democratic achievements, or seeing Sunday’s vote as a clear referendum against all varieties of political Islam.

  • US-backed Hazm Movement, Muhajireen Army working together in Aleppo
    http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2014/10/us-backed_hazm_movement_muhaji.php

    The U.S.-backed Harakat Hazm, or Hazm Movement, has joined several groups, including Jaish al Muhajireen wal Ansar, a Chechen-led jihadist group, and the Islamist Jaish Mujahideen (Army of Mujahideen) in fighting the Assad regime in the Handarat District of Aleppo.

    (...)

    Jaish al Muhajireen wal Ansar (the Army of the Emigrants and Helpers), also known as the Muhajireen Army, is an #al_Qaeda allied jihadist group...

    (...)

    Underscoring the complexity of vetting Syrian rebel groups for US assistance, on September 23, the US-backed Hazm Movement released a statement condemning the recent coalition airstrikes in Syria:

    (...)

    The Hazm Movement is also known to fight alongside the Al Nusrah Front. An LA Times article in early September quotes a Hazm fighter as saying, “Inside Syria we became labeled as secularists and feared Nusrah Front was going to battle us. But Nusrah doesn’t fight us, we actually fight alongside them. We like Nusrah.”

    Les “#modérés” des #Etats-Unis en #Syrie

  • Foreign nations’ proxy war in Syria creates chaos - David Ignatius
    à retitrer : « I will send weapons to al-Qaeda if it will help »
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-foreign-nations-proxy-war-creates-syrian-chaos/2014/10/02/061fb50c-4a7a-11e4-a046-120a8a855cca_story.html

    A leading figure was a Qatari operative who had helped arm the Libyan rebels who deposed Moammar Gaddafi. Working with the Qataris were senior figures representing Turkish and Saudi intelligence.

    But unity within the Istanbul operations room frayed when the Turks and Qataris began to support Islamist fighters they thought would be more aggressive. These jihadists did emerge as braver, bolder fighters — and their success was a magnet for more support. The Turks and Qataris insist they didn’t intentionally support the extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra or the Islamic State. But weapons and money sent to more moderate Islamist brigades made their way to these terrorist groups, and the Turks and Qataris turned a blind eye.

    “The operations room was chaos,” recalls one Arab intelligence source. He says he warned a Qatari officer, who answered: “I will send weapons to al-Qaeda if it will help” topple Assad. This determination to remove Assad by any means necessary proved dangerous. “The Islamist groups got bigger and stronger, and the FSA day by day got weaker,” recalls the Arab intelligence source.

    The Saudi effort was run until late 2013 by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, at that time head of Saudi intelligence. Bandar was enthusiastic but undisciplined, adding to the chaos. Pushed by the United States, the Saudis in February replaced Bandar and gave oversight of the Syria effort to Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef. The program was less chaotic but no more effective in checking the rise of Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State.

    Retenir au passage que les Américains n’y sont pour rien, et que les Séoudiens n’y sont pas pour grand chose non plus (il n’est pas écrit que Bandar participait au soutien actif d’Al Qaeda, contrairement aux qataris, seulement qu’il « ajoutait au chaos » pour son « enthousiasme et son manque de discipline »).

    Avec Joe Biden, nouvelle narrative américaine ?
    http://seenthis.net/messages/298867

  • Nigeria Security Tracker - Council on Foreign Relations
    http://www.cfr.org/nigeria/nigeria-security-tracker/p29483

    The Nigeria Security Tracker (NST), a project of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa program, documents and maps violence in Nigeria that is motivated by political, economic, or social grievances. Different groups in Nigeria resort to violence. The militant Islamist movement Boko Haram is active in northern Nigeria. Violence among ethnic groups, farmers, and herdsmen sometimes acquires religious overtones. A new generation of Niger Delta militants threatens war against the state. Government soldiers kill civilians indiscriminately. Police are notorious for extrajudicial murder.
    ...
    The David Rockefeller Studies Program—CFR’s think tank—is composed of more than seventy full-time and adjunct fellows who cover the major regions and significant issues shaping today’s international agenda. The program also includes recipients of several one-year fellowships.

    The Studies Program is organized into more than a dozen program areas and centers that focus on major geographical areas of the world or significant foreign policy issues, including the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, the Center for Preventive Action, the International Institutions and Global Governance program, the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy initiative, and the Renewing America initiative.

    #cartographie #data-journalism

  • Voici comment le Daily Mail résume désormais ce qui était encore récemment considéré comme une « révolution » syrienne :
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2720755/War-victims-flee-Syria-refugee-camp-Lebanon-burned-ground-invading-Isla

    Refugees taking shelter in Lebanon from violent jihadists have turned around and headed back into war-torn Syria after insurgents launched repeated attacks across the border.

    The fleeing victims of the Syrian civil war were seen yesterday at the border town of Arsal, picking through the remains of a refugee camp which Islamist fighters burned to the ground.

    Having previously thought of Lebanon as a relatively safe haven from the long-running civil war between Syria dictator Bashar Assad and hard-line Muslim forces in the country, the Syrian victims found themselves in the firing line earlier this week after new attacks.

    Remarque : je ne référence pas pour savoir si ce serait vrai ou faux, mais pour signaler ce que raconte désormais un tabloïd anglais, dont la circulation quotidienne se compte en millions d’exemplaires.

  • Islamists overrun army base in #Benghazi
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/islamists-overrun-army-base-benghazi

    Islamist fighters and militants overran a major Libyan army base in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday after a fierce battle involving rockets and warplanes in which at least 30 people were killed. Special forces troops had to abandon their main camp in southeast Benghazi after coming under sustained attack from a coalition of Islamist fighters and militias, military officials and residents said. “We have withdrawn from the army base after heavy shelling,” Saiqa Special Forces official Fadel Al-Hassi told Reuters. read more

    #Libya

  • Libyan war jet crashes in #Benghazi
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/libyan-war-jet-crashes-benghazi

    A Libyan war jet that had been bombing Islamist fighters in the restive eastern city of Benghazi crashed and exploded Tuesday after its pilot ejected safely, a military source and a witness said. It was not immediately clear if the plane was shot down or suffered a malfunction, added General Sagr al-Jerouchi, chief of air operations for dissident general Khalifa Haftar. A witness, who said he saw a parachute open before the crash, added that the warplane had just attacked Islamist positions. Weekend fighting in Benghazi killed dozens of people, mostly soldiers. read more

    #Libya

  • Gunmen launch new assault on #Libya airport
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/gunmen-launch-new-assault-libya-airport

    Islamist militiamen on Sunday stepped up their assault on Libya’s main airport, two days after the collapse of a truce with rival ex-rebels who control the facility, a security official said. Local residents said the upsurge in violence killed at least one civilian when a rocket hit a house in the capital’s Qasr Ben Gheshir district near Tripoli international airport. “The airport was attacked this morning with mortar rounds, rockets and tank fire,” airport security official al-Jilani al-Dahesh told AFP. “It was the most intense bombardment so far.” read more

  • Will the ’Emirate of the Levant’ be announced on Eid al-Fitr?
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/will-emirate-levant-be-announced-eid-al-fitr

    Fighters from the Islamist rebel group #Al-Nusra_Front allegedly dig a tunnel under a military site of the Syrian government forces in the northern Syrian city of #Aleppo on July 17, 2014. (Photo: AFP-Ahmed Deeb) Fighters from the Islamist rebel group al-Nusra Front allegedly dig a tunnel under a military site of the Syrian government forces in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on July 17, 2014. (Photo: AFP-Ahmed Deeb)

    Preparations are underway by al-Nusra Front on the ground and in terms of sharia (Islamic law) to announce the Emirate of al-Sham [Greater #syria], which a jihadi source expects would be on the first day of Eid al-Fitr [the holiday at the end of Ramadan]. The Nusra waged new battles in #Idlib's countryside, (...)

    #Mideast_&_North_Africa #Abu_Mohammed_al-Joulani #al-Qaeda #Articles #Ayman_Zawahiri #Emirate_of_the_Levant #ISIS #Islamic_Front

  • Conflicting statements emerge over possible #Gaza #truce
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/conflicting-statements-emerge-over-possible-gaza-truce

    Updated 2:52 pm: An Israeli official said Thursday that #Israel had agreed a #ceasefire with #Hamas that will begin at 6:00 am Friday, but the Islamist movement said it had “no information” on a deal. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Israeli official told AFP that Israel and Hamas “have agreed upon a ceasefire that will begin at 6:00 am tomorrow.” Hamas refused to confirm the report, with spokesman Fawzi Barhum telling AFP: “We have no information about this agreement.” read more

    #Palestine