SOEREN KERN: AL QAEDA’S STRATEGY OF A THOUSAND CUTS
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3412/forest-fire-jihad
“Fire Is One of the Soldiers of Allah.”
Spanish police have arrested six members of an al-Qaeda cell in Barcelona that was dedicated to providing a related terrorist cell in Germany with large numbers of stolen passports.
The Spanish Interior Ministry said the police action, dubbed Operation Comet, was carried out on October 13 in Barcelona and the nearby town of Vilanova del Camí, and entailed police raids on at least four homes of Muslim immigrants involved in the network. Police found large numbers of stolen passports and identity papers issued in many different countries.
Those arrested were from Algeria, Belgium and Morocco, and all were carrying stolen passports that included their own photos attached to the personal data of dozens of individuals from several different countries.
One of those arrested was intercepted at the main airport in Barcelona as he was about to board a flight to Greece; he had more than 100 stolen passports in his possession.
Some of Barcelona’s tourist areas, especially those in the downtown areas, are known for having gangs of North African pickpockets who prey on foreigners. On any given day, tourists can be seen standing in lines in front of local police stations waiting to file police reports about stolen passports and other personal possessions. Spanish police believe many of the passports stolen in Spain end up in the hands of al-Qaeda operatives in Europe, among other places.
Operation Comet was launched after German anti-terrorism officials alerted the Spanish Interior Ministry to links between the two terrorist cells. In April 2011, for example, German police arrested three members of an al-Qaeda cell in the cities of Düsseldorf and Bochum on suspicion of planning a shrapnel-laden bomb attack in a crowded location.
A month later, police in Berlin arrested a 22-year-old Austrian al-Qaeda operative, Maksud Lodin, who was hiding a digital storage device in his underpants. The German newspaper Die Zeit recently reported that German cryptologists discovered 141 al-Qaeda documents embedded inside a pornographic movie on the memory device. The documents provided detailed information about the terror group’s most ambitious future plots in Europe, including a plan to hijack cruise ships in the Mediterranean and to execute the passengers.
German investigators also discovered that al-Qaeda members in Germany had been in regular contact with various individuals in Spain who provided them with stolen identity papers to facilitate their activities and movements within Europe.
According to Spanish police, the members of the Spanish cell purchased the stolen passports from pickpocketing gangs in the Barcelona metropolitan area. The documents would then be sent to other countries in Europe and Asia by mail or by human couriers. The cell in Barcelona would often receive specific requests for stolen passports from certain countries in particular, or with detailed biometric data, such as eye or hair color.
The money obtained for providing the stolen documents was wired through money transfer companies of the Western Union type, using third persons who were offered cash in exchange for the use of their name as senders and receivers of the funds.
The arrests come just days after the head of Russian intelligence blamed al-Qaeda for a series of forest fires in Spain and other European countries in recent months. Alexander Bortnikov, the chief of Russia Federal Security Service (FSB), said the fires were set by arsonists as part of al-Qaeda’s low-cost attack strategy.
“One should note that setting fires to forests in the countries of the European Union is a new tendency in al-Qaeda’s strategy of a ‘thousand cuts’,” Bortnikov said at a meeting of heads of security agencies in Moscow, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. “This method allows al-Qaeda to inflict significant economic and moral damage without serious preliminary preparations, technical equipment or significant expenses.”
Although Bortnikov provided no concrete proof, he did point to calls to launch a “forest jihad” by various Islamic extremist websites which he said also publish detailed instructions about how and where to carry out arson attacks.
The summer 2012 issue of Inspire, the online propaganda magazine run by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, devoted 11 pages to starting forest fires in NATO countries, including instructions. “Fire is one of the soldiers of Allah,” it said. “Imagine that, after all the damage is caused, if a jihad organization were to take responsibility for the forest fires. You can imagine the dread it would cause people in the United States, Europe, Russia and Australia.”
Deadly forest fires have swept through thousands of hectares of forest land in Spain and Portugal over the past few months, killing scores of people and forcing thousands to evacuate. More than 198,000 hectares of land in Spain alone were destroyed by fires between January 1 and September 30, according to the Agriculture Ministry, the highest amount in a decade.
In August, Spanish police arrested three suspected al-Qaeda terrorists who were allegedly plotting an airborne attack on a shopping mall near Gibraltar, the British overseas territory on the southernmost tip of Spain.
Spanish counter-terrorism officials say an attack near Gibraltar, home to 30,000 British citizens, was likely intended to coincide with the London Olympic Games, and would have been a more feasible alternative to attempting an act of terrorism in the heart of London.
In addition to Gibraltar, the suspects were also plotting to attack the joint US-Spanish naval base at Rota, strategically located near the Strait of Gibraltar.
The recent arrests in Spain contradict claims of some within the Obama Administration that al-Qaeda and its offshoots are dead and no longer pose a threat to Europe and the United States. In July 2012, the US State Department claimed that al-Qaeda “is on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse” and even declared that the “war on terror is over.” Advisors to President Obama have also boasted of “the end of al-Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word.”
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics: Spain | Soeren Kern
Egypt’s “United States of Arabs”
Muslim Brotherhood Plan Belligerent Pan-Islamic Super-State
by Yaakov Lappin
October 30, 2012 at 4:00 am
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3422/united-states-of-arabs
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Be the first of your friends to like this.Recent comments by the head of the Muslim Brotherhood [MB], the winner of the recent elections in Egypt, and others, provide yet another jolting reminder of the ruling party’s plans for the Middle East.
With the presidency under its control, members of the MB apparently believe they must oversee a comprehensive process of Islamization of the Egyptian state and society, before they can turn their sights on their final goal, the creation of a pan-Islamic super-state that will encompass the region, and then wage war on Israel.
In an October 19 Egyptian Channel One television broadcast, made available by the invaluable MEMRI, Egypt’s President can be seen deep in prayer. The prayer session included a sermon by Futouh Abd Al-Nabi Mansour, a cleric in charge of religious endowment in the Matrouh governorate of northwest Egypt. Mansour called out to the worshipers: “O Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters.” [Note: The call takes on blatant anti-Semitic tones rather than hiding behind the usual code word of “Zionists.” – the Editor]. The call to destroy the Jews did not disturb Morsi’s prayers.
Sheikh Mohammed Badie, chairman of the MB, signaled his movement’s intentions, calling for a “jihad for the recovery of Jerusalem,” and described religious warfare against Israel as a “duty for all Muslims.”
Badie’s comments underscored the disappointing fact that, unlike the old Mubarak regime that was a cornerstone of regional stability, the new Islamist-governed Egypt opposes peace with Israel and is joining the rejectionist camp of the region’s fundamentalist forces, promoting unending hostilities, and seemingly seeking to lead the radical bloc.
By issuing calls for jihad, Badie has taken Egypt a step closer toward adopting, as Egypt’s foreign policy, Hamas and its ideology.
In declaring that Jerusalem’s conquest “will not be done through negotiations,” Badie was effectively repeating Hamas’s rejection of peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
This stance should come as no surprise: Hamas is, in fact, the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, as stated in Article 2 of the Hamas charter .
Badie’s comments are only the latest in a series of warning signs from Egypt. At a Muslim Brotherhood election rally held earlier this year, an event attended by Mohammed Morsi shortly before he became president, a cleric hailed the Brotherhood’s candidate as a leader who would work to ensure that “our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca, or Medina. It shall, Allah willing, be Jerusalem. Our cry shall be: Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.”
As Morsi looked on smilingly, the cleric told the crowds that, “We can see how the dream of the Islamic Caliphate is being realized, Allah willing, by Dr. Muhammad Morsi and his brothers, his supporters, and his political party. We can see how the great dream, shared by us all — that of the United States of Arabs …shall, Allah willing, be restored. The United States of Arabs will be restored by this man and his supporters.”
Although some commentators dismiss Badie as unrepresentative of the Morsi government and therefore not to be regarded with particular attention, this could well be a potentially lethal mistake, and one which plays into the Brotherhood’s efforts to deceive Western governments and opinion makers.
Morsi’s “Freedom and Justice Party,” the Brotherhood’s political entity, proudly features interviews with Badie on its website. This working arrangement between Badie and Morsi allows Badie to issue frank, ideological statements – utterances that Morsi could not presently say for fear of losing U.S. financial aid.
The arrangement is comfortable for both Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement. The Egyptian president can focus on securing loans for the Egyptian economy while making vague, conditional references to maintaining the peace treaty with Israel — thereby keeping US aid money coming in — as senior officials from his movement can prepare the Egyptian public with a stream of bellicose rhetoric, for the future severance of its ties with Jerusalem.
The Muslim Brotherhood has waited for this moment for more than six decades. It has spent years creating a strong base of support among Egyptian society, while waiting for Egypt’s secular autocracy to crumble.
It patiently gathered followers by creating a network of medical clinics and centers, providing aid to the needy, and spreading Islamist ideas to the poor.
It was this network that allowed Morsi to win 52% of the vote in the presidential elections, and that paved the way for Islamist parties to win two-thirds of the Egyptian lower house of parliament.
Now that the Islamists have secured a majority on the panel tasked with drawing up Egypt’s new constitution, it should not surprise anyone that they are proposing articles that will ensure Egypt’s transition to an Islamist state.
The proposals being produced by the panel have Egyptian liberals up in arms, and helped to fuel the recent violent clashes between the supporters and opponents of Morsi in Cairo.
The Islamist panel members are seeking to impose the strict enforcement of Sharia law in the constitution. The finalized draft will be put to a national referendum, and, if passed, will mark another milestone in the transformation of Egypt into a hardline Sunni state.
These developments have a direct bearing on regional security. Hamas in Gaza is greatly encouraged by the Islamist ascendency in Egypt, and is expecting Cairo to be its principle future patron, in the place of Iran and the crumbling Syrian regime.
Meanwhile, Egyptian security forces in the Sinai Peninsula are failing to take sufficient action against the mushrooming Salafi jihadi groups – the same elements that are increasing their presence in the Gaza Strip.
The ongoing rocket attacks and cross-border infiltrations by al-Qaeda-inspired elements in Gaza and Sinai are forcing Israel to take action in the Strip, thereby raising the overall chances of a conflict with Hamas. Should Hamas become involved in a new major conflict with Israel, that could trigger a further deterioration with Egypt – a situation which, in the short-term future, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood would prefer to avoid.
Both Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood dispute the doctrine of immediate jihad pursued by the Salafi jihadis; they appear to prefer instead to focus on consolidating their newly found political power before confronting Israel. As the Muslim Brothers keep repeating, at least for now, they seem to be planning to seek conflict with Israel only after they have completed the Islamization of their societies at home.
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