"One of the disturbing and little noticed events of recent weeks was the crash (or destruction) of a Boeing 727 in the desert of Mali.
The crash is disturbing for many reasons, among them these three: 1) the aircraft was carrying between 2 to 3 tons of cocaine, far more than other, smaller aircraft and boats that have been detected in recent months, indicating an escalation of the trade through the Trans-Sahel region; 2) The region where the aircraft was found, most likely torched by its crew to destroy evidence, in a area of heavy operation of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM); and 3) the aircraft departed from Venezuela, now Latin America's primary transshipment hub from Latin America to West Africa, and source of all the major air shipments of cocaine that have been interdicted in West Africa."
Unsurprising. Given the number of Cuban DGI agents in Venezuela, this is that state's future, whether Chavez eats a bullet tomorrow or not. Note, also, the incidental al-Qaeda opportunity to pick up the high value part of the pipeline moving the shipped drugs north to Europe.
While searching for something totally different online, I came across a Commentary blog post by Peter Wehner, which touts a New Yorker article by Lawrence Wright, author of the recommended book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." I own that book, so dropping that name definitely sent me hurrying over to read a June 2009 New Yorker article titled "The Rebellion Within."
It's a worthy read. Sems that one of al-Qaeda's most influential jihad theorists and Islamic jurists has been rethinking his positions, and is publishing a book called "Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World." Uncharacteristically, that title is meant as a criticism, not a mission statement.
Al-Qaeda's #2 (or #1, depending on who you talk to) Zawahiri had to devote a 200 page work ("The Exoneration"; formally "Treatise Exonerating the Nation of the Pen and the Sword from the Blemish of Weakness and Fatigue") to directly opposing and refuting "Dr. Fadl," which is interesting and noteworthy in and of itself.
Ultimately, in a post-proliferation world, Belmont Club's "3 conjectures" assertion that "If Islam desires the secret of the stars it must embrace the kuffar as its brother -- or die" remains fundamentally true. Is Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, aka. Dr. Fadl, someone I can ever call my friend? I'm not sure. To the extent that he represents a shift in the tectonic plates of Islamic thought, however, as the war comes home to them instead of just killing infidels of of other faiths, his writings are an important and positive development.
Johann Hari's article in The Independent, "Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again," is the result of his interviews with some unusual people - British Muslims who first joined violent global jihad, then very publicly abandoned and began to battle against Islamism.
Some interesting passages. This one, about the impellers that led them into violent jihad as an identity:
Osama bin Laden vowed to destroy Israel.This declaration is less a statement of actual intention than an attempt to rally the Muslim world appearing sympathetic with the one cause, Palestinian-Israel issue, that inflames passions across Islamia.The fugitive Al-Qaida leader issued an audio recording Saturday in which he came out against Palestinian and other Arab leaders who have recognized the Jewish state.
"I would like to assure our people in Palestine that we will expand our jihad there," Bin Laden said. "We intend to liberate Palestine, the whole of Palestine, from the river to the sea."
"We will not recognize even one inch for Jews in the land of Palestine as other Muslim leaders have," he said.
Al-Qaida is believed to have set up cells in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but its influence is limited given doctrinal opposition from ruling local groups like Islamist Hamas.
In his message, Bin Laden also mocked Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, over the fact that the U.N. peacekeeper presence has grown in southern Lebanon since last year's war with Israel. The peacekeepers, Bin Laden said, "protect the Jews."
Kalashnikovs are getting dearer
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Darra Adam Khel, a small town in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, 'consists of one main street lined with shops, with some alleys and sidestreets containing workshops'. Almost all the shops and the workshops are involved in the business of small, and not-so-small, arms. Officially, you need a permit to get there. Officially, you will not be issued with one.
Well, the news from Darra is that Kalashnikov prices are going up.
Over at Greg Burch's blog Burchismo, grudging admiration for the clever text of the most recent bin Ladin video to surface...
ONE SMART S.O.B.I've got to hand it to bin Laden. He really is one smart son of a bitch. I just read the transcript of his latest video. I strongly recommend it. He and his close advisers have been studying the West closely. This message is carefully crafted to plug into some very powerful currents in the left -- he uses Islamic rhetoric to push the basic Marxian buttons that lie beneath the ideology of the left in a very deft way. And then he turns and pushes Christian religious buttons. All the while, he plays the parallels to Vietnam, takes a side shot at race-guilt and even gets in a solid reference to the current credit melt-down in Western economies. Brilliant.
Prediction: None of the main organs of leftist communication, whether mainstream or extreme, will call him on the game he's playing here. It's too smooth and, compared to al Qaida's actual action, too gentle.
Good job, ObL! As a lawyer, I have to hand it to you.
Greg kindly provided a link to a PDF scan of an English-language translation of Osama's text. I hope a straight ASCII version shows up; I might tackle that myself while I'm doing chores this weekend.
America is ignoring the popular movement against Musharraf to its own disadvantage
PostGlobal's Amar Bakshi is going around the world, lugging a laptop and a camcorder, to get a sense of how people in different countries view America. If he ever makes it to Pakistan, he's likely to find a country where anti-Americanism is rife. Pakistanis have genuine reasons to hold a negative opinion of American foreign policy---though not necessarily for the reasons Americans may be inclined to believe. Right now, they have little reason to nurse good feelings towards America, given Washington's determined refusal to demonstrate the smallest amount of sympathy for democracy and freedom in the ongoing confrontation between the people and the dictator.
Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark) has a post up that captures the nub of a problem I've been chewing on for a while. Note that I don't necessarily agree with Marc - but that it's a problem well worth thinking through.
In a nutshell, if we believe that freedom and some form of a democratic / representative government are the keys to dismantling the more violent and hard-to-live-alongside versions of Islamism - how do we deal with the problem that in free elections in much of the Muslim world today, the Islamists - the hard-to-live-alongside ones - would be likely to win?
And what do we do then? Lynch says:
This selective outrage, where Westerners care about one anti-Islamist blogger but can't be bothered about equally arbitrary and illiberal repression of hundreds of Islamists, only reinforces general skepticism that this isn't really about freedom, human rights, or democracy. It's just like the American focus on the release of jailed liberal politician Ayman Nour as a litmus test for the Egyptian regime (one which it continues to fail, by the way, without seeming to suffer the slightest penalty). I can not exaggerate how many times I hear from Arabs and Muslims that America's campaign against Hamas after it won fair elections and its blind eye to Mubarak's campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood proves once and for all the fundamental hypocrisy of its democracy talk. I am not criticizing anyone for rallying to Nabeel's or Nour's defense. They should. But they should also see this as part of a comprehensive regime crackdown on Egyptian political opposition, with the attack on the Muslim Brotherhood the leading edge of the regime's anti-democratic backlash. People who claim to care about Egyptian reform, democratization, and human rights should take a slightly wider view of the problem than the travails of one anti-Islamist blogger or one liberal politician.
I'll discuss this more when I get some time tonight...but the conundrum presented here is a serious one. If we believe we can avoid conflict by doing the right thing, and doing the right thing means handing power to people who are determined to have a conflict with us...there's a good chance we've got issues with the way we're formulating the problem.
What we have seen so far is that bin Laden lashes out spasmodically at targets of opportunity. The United States has been the consistent target of the attacks (though not the only one, of course) but bin Laden’s "strategy" (it can hardly be dignified with the term) is based on a delusion that he has explained many times: when hurt, the United States always cuts and runs. In the Isma'il interview, bin Laden said,
We think that the United States is very much weaker than Russia. Based on the reports we received from our brothers who participated in jihad in Somalia, we learned that they saw the weakness, frailty, and cowardice of US troops. Only 80 US troops were killed. Nonetheless, they fled in the heart of darkness, frustrated, after they had caused great commotion about the new world order.
Bin Laden thought that terrorist violence by itself would cause America to continue to retreat, to withdraw from Saudi Arabi and the rest of the Persian Gulf countries, enabling the Muslim ummah to realize their long-suppressed dream of a true Islamic society (bin Laden having a delusion that ordinary Muslim men and women truly thirsted for a Talibanic society for their own countries). Hurt the Americans enough, he said - more than once, on the record, - and they will flee.
Al Qaeda's political objectives were, and remain, well defined: reestablish the Islamic caliphate of yore. Then extend the caliphate into the middle of Africa, South Asia and parts of Europe and Southeast Asia. After that - these are very long-rage objectives - extend the rule of Islam across the entire globe. It matters not at the moment whether these are realistic goals. Islamists think they are.
Today, for both Islamists and the US, Iraq is the main battlefield. Whomsever prevails there will gain the intiative for many years to come, perhaps so strongly that the other side will not be able to take it away.
There are two main al Qaeda objectives to its fighting in Iraq.
1. Prevent the establishment of a democratic government and society there.
2. Compel the United States to withdraw its forces, hence its influence, before a democratic government is soundly established.
Obviously, these are two closely-related objectives. What is the threat to Islamism by democracy? Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden's closest associates since the early 1990s, was killed by Saudi security forces in Riyadh in 2003. He wrote a book published by al Qaeda entitled, The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad. In it Ayyeri wrote, "It is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy." Islamic absolutism, Ayyeri wrote, cannot exist inside a society where the people think they can pass their own laws and makes their own rules.
I often urge people to read the writings of Bin Laden. In fact, I think it would be a valuable exercise to have the whole nation take a day off work and read what the man has said and written about us and what he plans to do to us and why.
But the next question is, where do I get them; and the answer to that is surprisingly difficult. There is one published collection in English that I am aware of, Messages to the World. It's a good collection, but it has problems.
A debate over matters of faith is drawing attention away from a very necessary debate over matters of international politics
Even as the world grapples with the threat from radical Islamist terrorists and watches with concern---both silent and noisy---of a 'return to the roots' movement among the world's Muslims, a good part of the debate has focused on whether or not Islam is as peaceful as many of its moderate adherents claim it to be (via Desipundit). As Retributions points out in a recent post, the debate over the tenets of Islam is misdirected. It is also misleading and ultimately counter-productive for it plays into the very hands of those who benefit from both Islamist terrorism and from the war against it.
