Thursday Winds of War: March 16/06

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Thursday's Winds of War briefings are given by Matt 'Colt' of Eurabian Times.

TOP TOPICS

• Remember that talk of a major attack being planned by al-Qaeda in Iraq? This may have been it. 421 al-Qaeda members were to have been given jobs guarding the 'Green Zone' in Baghdad, before storming it, taking hostages and generally wreaking havoc.

• Israeli forces stormed Jericho prison, seeking to arrest Ahmed Sa'adat - the leader of the PFLP - and five others. The six men surrendered after pledging to stand 'with courage'. Sa'adat and four of the five are accused of murdering an Israeli minister. The sixth man was involved in the Karine A incident (a ship packed with weapons heading for Gaza, intercepted by the Israelis). Locals took nearly a dozen Westerns hostage, all of whom have been released, and attacked British offices, destroying the British Council building in Gaza.

• The Counterterrorism Blog notes that al-Qaeda chatter is at pre-9/11 levels. Douglas Farah comments further here.

• A Pakistani newspaper says that the Pakistani government paid lobbyists to convince the 9/11 commission not to include negative references to Pakistan.

Other Topics Today Include: Iran to get 'incremental' diplomatic punishments; indigneous reactor for Iran; Russia peeved with Iran diplomats; Aznar says Khamenei wanted to destroy America and Israel in 2001; A-Q in Sinai plans to kidnap Israelis; IDF prepare for more urban warfare; Hariri investigators say Syria mostly co-operating; Syria to run out of oil; inside Saddam's regime; Badr Corps hunts homosexuals; women's rights in the Gulf; DARPA wants to build 'insect-cyborgs' to hunt terrorists; 6,000 hits on terror watch list; Moussaoui case trouble; the tri-border region; bikers protect soldiers' funerals from crazed homophobes; 3/11 funny stuff; German group wants Koran banned; car bomb in France was criminal - police; Brits told to sue terrorists; Zapatero to talk ETA into ceasefire; Taliban get Stinger batteries from ISI; new terror gang claims India blasts; jihadi flags removed in earthquake areas; China brief; Australia gives boats to hunt JI; Abu Sayyaf courier nabbed after senior man arrested; A-Q pulls out of Somalia base; Zarqawi shifts focus; and much more.

Iran

• British FM Jack Straw laid out the 'incremental' approach Britain wants to take with Iran at the UNSC. First, the president of the council will make a statement. Then, the council will consider a resolution on sanctions, which would be increased a little at a time. The Iranian Foreign Ministry is already saying it will not bow to UNSC demands, which would make the incremental approach a waste of time, no? To get an idea of the British approach, check this out: Britain drafts 14-day Iran nuclear deadline - but stopped short of specifying any punishment.

• Rooz Online says that both Nasrallah and al-Sadr met with senior officials in Tehran last week.

• Concern is mounting that Venezuela is planning to prodive Iran with uranium.

• John R. Bradley is in Iran's Khuzestan province (the Arab-majority region bordering southern Iraq) reporting on the recent bombings and violence. Bradley also says that the Tehran elite is turning on the Ahmadinjead regime.

• Iran is to begin building an indigneous nuclear power plant.

• StrategyPage: Why "People Power" Will Fail in Iran

• According to the interrogation of a senior Taliban official, Iran and the Taliban put aside their difference to fight America after October 2001.

• Russia is furious with Iran's behaviour in the recent bilateral talks.

• Ambassador Bolton told ABC News that, if Iran were allowed to develop nuclear weapons, the U.S. could face a nuclear attack.

• Jose Maria Aznar has said that, when he met Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2001, he said he wanted to wage war against the U.S. and Israel 'until they are completely destroyed'.

• According to the a Florida Representative, the Bush administration is opposed to imposing sanctions on firms that work with Iran - but lawmakers will push for that anyway.

• An Iranian legislator says that the British embassy in Tehran is a nest of spies.

• The Iranian State Security Forces claim that all of those responsible for the recent spate of bombings in south-western Iran have been captured - and the bombers say they are working with Britain.

• Ahmadinejad has realised that the West is uncomfortable with an Iranian nuclear program because the regime is so keen to destroy Israel. No, really.

The Middle East

• Al-Qaeda cells in the Sinai - 30km from the Israeli border - have drawn up plans to kidnap Israeli soldiers and civilians.

• Hamas has denied running a website encouraging children to blow themselves up.

• Secretary Rice says she wants to find ways to give the palestinians more aid.

• Officially not expecting (but unofficially expecting) a new wave of terrorism, the Israeli army is putting its forces through more urban warfare training.

• The Israeli Labor party is pissed, because Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has endorsed Ehud Olmert and Kadima.

• The out-going Fatah-dominated PLC has voted to give honourary citizenship to Samir Quntar, who brutally murdered a four-year-old girl and her father. Quntar is in an Israeli jail for another 500 years.

• WND, grab the salt. Have elite Iranian terrorist units moved in to Israel?

• An Israeli soldier was killed during an arrest operation in Jenin. Five Islamic Jihad and al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades terrorists were later captured.

• Two Israelis were wounded by gunfire outside Nablus, near the checkpoint.

• Kibbutzniks near Gaza are having to choose which families gets a bomb-shelter, since the army didn't provide nearly enough.

• Syria has switched all foreign currency transactions to euros.

• The UN teams investigating the Hariri murder say Syria is complying with nearly all of their requests.

• The same team want to question a Lebanese woman imprisoned in Brazil. Rana Koleilat worked at the Al-Madina Bank in Lebanon; investigators want to know if diverted funds were used to finance the murder.

• Syria is running out of oil, prompting Royal Dutch Shell to cut their staff from 100 to 40.

Iraq and the Gulf

• The NYT was a look at an internal U.S. military report about Saddam's conduct of the war. It notes that Saddam told his generals two weeks in to the war that he had no WMD, something the generals were shocked by. Another such document says that Saddam maintained the pretence in order to prevent an Israeli attack.

• Thousands of documents captured in Iraq are to be released. Stephen Hayes, who pushed long and hard for this, has more details.

• Here's a report on how the SCIRI's Badr Corps is hunting down Iraqi homosexuals and killing them.

• Moqtada al-Sadr is being blamed by some for the recent tensions in Iraq.

• Local insurgents in Anbar province claim to have pushed al-Qaeda out of the region altogether.

• Britain is planning to withdraw 10% of its troops starting in April.

• StrategyPage has a look at the composition of the new Iraqi Army.

• One of the Saudis killed last month in an attempt to destroy a Saudi oil facility threatened more attacks. It isn't clear when the video was recorded.

• The Lebanese Daily Star looks at women's rights in the Gulf.

The Americas

• This is so damn cool: DARPA wants to build 'insect-cyborgs' to hunt al-Qaeda.

• Since December 2003, the USG in its many forms has had contact with 6,000 people on the terrorist watch list. This doesn't include border incidents, but about 40-50% of the hits were repeats.

• The Moussaoui trial has run in to some trouble, after a government lawyer coached witnesses and gave them trial transcripts. The judge has ruled out the tainted evidence, leading the prosecution to say a continued trial would be a waste of time (hopefully that's just rhetoric).

• CBS has a look at the tri-border area in South America.

• An in-depth look at the military transformation in the U.S. military.

• The SUV incident at North Carolina University - Psychosis or Terrorism?

• A Canadian soldier who was struck in the head with an axe while serving in Afghanistan has opened his eyes. Best wishes to him and his family.

• Publishing the Mohammed cartoons can get you fired.

• Yehudit comments on the Anti-Slavery Sudan Freedom Walk between New York and D.C.

• A group of lunatic Baptists is showing up at the funerals of fallen American soldiers to tell their loved ones that their sons and daughters died because God is punishing America's tolerance for homosexuality. Groups of bikers, including Hell's Angels, have stepped-up to counter-protest these scum.

Europe

• Winds has covered a fair bit of the controversy surrounding the Madrid bombings. According to this op-ed, some commentators and politicians are starting to ask some very tough questions.

• A grass-roots German organisation has reported the Koran to the police, saying it is a political text that cannot be reconciled with the country's constitution.

• Mullah Krekar, both a terrorist leader and a refugee in Norway, says that Islam will defeat the West through demography.

• The Council of Europe has invited Hamas legislators to attend its April meeting, despite the EU listing Hamas as a terrorist group.

• The Boston Globe looks at the rising Jew-hatred amongst French Muslims.

• Joe on The German Question: Darfur, Diplomacy & the European Media.

• The British government has told the relatives of Britons killed in the recent bombings in Egypt to seek damages from 'the perpetrator'. Do the FCO really expect QCs to wander around Pakistan, knocking on hut doors?

• There are new questions about when the Metropolitan Police Chief Sir Ian Blair knew that Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian killed by police on July 22nd last year, was an innocent man rather than a suicide terrorist.

• Another priest has been attacked in Turkey, this time with a knife. Police have arrested a suspect. Related: Creeping Islamofascism in Turkey?

• A man was killed when his car exploded in northern Paris. Police are considering it a criminal act.

• Milosevic's corpse will be on display at the Revolution Museum in Belgrade before his funeral.

• Spanish PM Zapatero says he is going to convince ETA to renounce terrorism.

• In France, legislation is being proposed to ban insults to religious belief, specifically cartoons.

• The editor of the Sunday Telegraph has been fired after publishing an 'Islamaphobic' article, in which Patrick Sookhdeo called for a new translation of the Koran to be banned. The full article (worth reading in its own right anyway) is here, along with details on the story. Gateway Pundit has more.

Russia, the Caucasus & Central Asia

• The Taliban have reportedly recieved batteries for Stingers from Pakistan's ISI - posing a risk to all allied aircraft in Afghanistan. This may be part of the summer offensive threatened by Mullah Omar.

• NATO forces have discovered the largest arms cache found for several years. 80 tons of TNT and 25,000 landmines were amongst the munitions found in a Soviet bunker complex.

• A new terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the recent bombings in India - Jamestown has more.

• The house of Karachayevo-Cherkessia's mufti has been fired on - no-one was injured. Chechen's mufti noted Ismail Berdiyev's long opposition to Wahhabism.

• Chechnya's new prime minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, says that all terror groups have been eliminated.

• Due to the increased tensions between the Afghan and Pakistani governments, 100 extra police officers have been posted to guard the Pakistani embassy in Kabul.

• Five Afghan police were killed on Tuesday, while the Taliban kidnapped and murdered four Albanians working for a German cleaning compay.

• A training video by the Islamic Army in Iraq is being distributed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

• An investigation in to a train fire in 2002 that killed 59 people has concluded that, contrary to claims by Hindu radicals, the fire was not caused by Muslims. Anti-Muslim violence after the fire left 1,000 people dead.

• Pakistani troops have destroyed a Taliban-linked madrassa in northern Waziristan.

• A Shia cleric wanted for involvement in the murder of the Sipah-e-Sahaba leader has been arrested in Greece.

• A bomb outside a grocery store in Quetta has wounded 14 schoolgirls.

• The jihadi groups providing aid in earthquake-stricken regions of Pakistan have been told by the government to stop flying their flags. U.S. and NATO forces providing aid asked about the sword and Arabic text on the flag of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. At a time when it is already being propagated in the West that Islam was spread through the power of sword, the security agencies fear its presence on Dawa’s flag would further strengthen this wide spread assumption,” the sources noted. Jamaat-ud-Dawa, by the way, spawned Lashkar-e-Taiba.

• This Indian op-ed claims the recent counter-terror arrests in Bangladesh are a farce, part of the annual February-March crackdown designed to coincide with the annual EU and World Bank decisions on Bangladesh aid.

• Balochi groups claim that nationalist leader Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri was arrested, then released on Tuesday. Local authorities deny it.

• The governor of Balochistan says that militants are recieving outside funding, as shown by the volume of arms in their possession.

Far East & South East Asia

• Jamestown's China Brief is out. This week, China's offensive against recent Taiwanese anti-unification moves; China's relationship with Venezuela; and the growth of ballistic missile arsenals in the region.

• Joe on China's Ticking Time Bombs.

• The release of several dozen Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists in Indonesia may mean more attacks in the near-future.

• Secretary Rice warned of a terrorist 'ring of fire' in the Pacific, unless regional powers confront them.

• Australian FM Alexander Downer says containing China is a mistake. The comments came as the U.S., Australia and Japan meet to discuss regional issues, specifically China.

• Australia is to provide the Phillipines with 30 small river boats, to help Filipino forces to hunt JI camps in Mindanao.

• Israel is warning of a 'concrete threat' of "terrorist attacks on the Philippine island of
  Palawan":http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=28766.

• 11% of Indonesians admit to 'sometimes' supporting suicide bombings against civilians.

• An Abu Sayyaf courier has been caught in Jolo.

Africa

• Al-Qaeda has pulled out of a base in southern Somalia, after pressure from U.S. forces in the region and local tribes.

• The UN has reports of another deadly attack in Darfur, carried out by about 1,000 'militants' on trucks, camels and horses. Sounds like a good cluster-bomb target.

• The founder of the Armed Islamic Group was one of those freed in Algeria's amnesty.

• France and Libya have signed a deal to co-operate in the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

• 50 female imams are to start preaching in Morocco in April.

The Global War

• Michael Scheuer comments on al-Qaeda's 'long war' doctrine.

• Here's an interesting interview with Saad al-Faqih, leader of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia.

• Rita Katz, who runs the SITE Institute, suggests Zarqawi has decided to shift focus from Iraq to other regional targets.

• The UN still cannot define 'terrorism'. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference wants to protect 'freedom fighters', as well as include military forces as potential terrorist groups.

• Harmony and Disharmony: Stealing al-Qaeda's Playbook.

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