The Command Post Op-Ed Page

Time For A Truce?

Thanks to Dhimmi Watch, which points out an OpEd article in Lebanon’s Daily Star, by the hand of Mark LeVine, associate professor of modern Middle Eastern history, culture and Islamic studies at UC.

The government paper supports John Kerry, who promised the Arab world ‘Dramatic change’ if he’s elected President in November. LeVine jumps on this, and offers a suggestion.

A Truce.

It is time for the United States to declare a truce with the Muslim world, and radical Islam in particular.

This may sound like a naive, even defeatist statement in the context of the 9-11 Commission Report’s reminder that the United States remains very much at war with “Islamist terrorism” and the ideas behind it. Yet a truce (Arabic hudna) rather than an increasingly dangerous “clash of civilizations” is the only way to avoid a long, ultimately catastrophic conflict.

But here’s the kicker:

And it’s up to Europe to be the good broker.

Wow. Rather than giving a real alternative strategy here, he simply states that to avoid a long conflict with our enemies, we should just bow before them, and all will be good again. That’s not a solution, that’s surrender. His reasoning for it goes like this:

Indeed, there is no chance for a halt in the “war on terror”, or any fundamental change in US foreign policy as long as George W Bush is president. Even if John Kerry wins the presidential election this November, the possibility that he might initiate such a transformation is slim. However, there is one difference - at least rhetorically - between the two possible presidencies: Kerry has made a point of saying that he would “listen” to European allies and strive to build a common approach to combating terrorism.

European leaders face the threat of an increasingly bloody conflict with Muslim extremists thanks to the continent’s imperial past in the region and, more important today, their perceived support for US policies in Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq. They would be wise to suggest that president Kerry call a truce so that the United States, the European Union, and more broadly the “West” can have the time collectively and publicly to explore the root causes of the violence against them that emanates from the Muslim world - something the 9-11 Commission should have, but did not, do. At least there’s a chance Kerry might listen, especially if the war in Iraq continues to spiral out of America’s control.

He does point out correctly that the Europeans, if given half a chance, would give anything to just be left alone, without any guarantees for future safety of her continent. Remember, its history is rife with examples of appeasing a strengthening enemy, blindly hoping that it will all go away if we just give them what they want. Chamberlain, and recently Zapatero in Spain, are good examples. And the fact that Osama Bin Laden has offered Europe a truce only underscores this. Though they did not take him up on it the last time, I believe this had more to do with the fact that with President Bush in the White House, there would be nothing to gain from it. With a President Kerry covering their cowardice with a new doctrine, Europe’s momentary steadfastiness won’t last long.

His truce offer itself is a riot. Not only does it include a complete kneefall before Islamists everywhere, it also only seems to carry obligations for the US and Europe. LeVine asks nothing from our enemies, except to maybe (though he does not mention this) please stop killing us. It also leaves Israel alone in the world, a small price, like Czechoslovakia once was, for peace in our time.

From the US and European side, a meaningful hudna with Islam would include (but not be limited to) the following steps:

First, just as most every mainstream Muslim personality has condemned Muslim extremism, the next US president must be prodded by his European counterparts to take the important psychological step of admitting US responsibility for the harm decades of support for dictatorship, corruption and war have caused ordinary Muslims, especially in the Middle East.

Second, the US, the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should halt all offensive military actions in the Muslim world and outline a serious plan for the removal of troops from Muslim countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq. (These could be replaced, where necessary, by robust United Nations peacekeeping forces or UN-assisted transitional administrations.) The hunt for Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and related terror networks would then be transformed from a war of vengeance into what it always should have been: a vigorous international effort led by the US, the UN and, where relevant, European and other governments to apprehend, prosecute and punish people and groups involved in the September 11, 2001, assaults and similar attacks.

Third, all military and diplomatic agreements and aid to Middle Eastern countries that aren’t democratic or don’t respect the rights of the peoples under their control should be suspended. Yes, this means for Israel as well as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other “allies” and “partners”. This is crucial to stopping the regional arms race and cycle of violence that make peace and democratic reform impossible.

Finally, the hundreds of billions of dollars that would have been devoted to the “war on terror” should be redirected toward the kind of infrastructural, educational and social projects the 9-11 Commission Report argues are key to winning the “war on terror”.

It contains two poignant contradictions, both related to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. In his first point he states that going after Bin Laden in Afganistan would be acceptable under this truce, but in the same point he also states that all Western troops would have to be removed from Muslim lands. So how would we go after Bin Laden then? By serving him with a soebpena?

Secondly, he states that the West would need to sever all ties with any repressive or undemocratic Middle Eastern country (which means all, save maybe a future Iraq and Afghanistan, although a troop pullout will have both countries run either by Iran or the Taliban within no time). But with whom do we sign the truce then? The Islamists themselves who also oppose these regimes? Who, under point one, are fair game to go after?

It’s capitulation. It freaks me out to think that LeVine actually teaches this crap.

First published at Southern Watch.

The Threat Exists

I haven’t seen so much chest pounding since watching Mighty Joe Young. The usual suspects (I won’t link to them. They know who they are and you know who they are) are all clamoring to proclaim that Howard Dean was right and that the Bush administration is politicizing the war on terror. It’s based on this super spinning article in the NY Times that reveals the information which led to increased terror alerts in New York, Washington and Neward is 3-4 years old.

The fact that the bulk of the information is 3-4 years old does not mean the threat does not exist. Does anybody seriously think these attacks are planned a couple of weeks in advance? They take years to plan and carry out. The 9/11 attack plans were hatched 5-7 years before they took place. The African embassy attacks were 3-5 years in the making.

In addition, the information found had been updated as recently as January. What was Tom Ridge and the administration supposed to do? Flush this stuff down the toilet and dismiss it because most of it was 3-4 years old? What if one of these buildings were attacked and the press got wind of the fact the administration was in possession of these documents but said nothing of them? The howl of outrage from the same people feigning outrage today would be loud enough to shatter windows.

In an amazing display of chutzpah, the critics of the administration are now lambasting the administration for doing what they lambasted them for not doing prior to the 9/11 attacks: Issuing warnings and taking steps to prevent such attacks from taking place. The administration is doing precisely what it should be doing.

What would those who are complaining have done? Judging by their reaction, the only possible thing they would have done is: nothing. According to them, it was all cooked up by the administration in an attempt to deflect attention away from Kerry’s mini-bounce coming out of the convention. It’s for that reason alone, that I cannot fathom supporting Democrats in the upcoming election. If they cannot be trusted to take this kind of intelligence seriously, why then should they be entrusted with our national security?

Europe Is Not Prepared

The more details come out of the investigation into the Madrid bombings of March 11 of this year, the more I am beginning to get the feeling that I’m walking around with a big target pinned to my back, while the government seems to be calling ‘over here!’ to our enemies. The first stages of paranoia? Mmm, maybe. I’ll try and explain, then you tell me if I’m sliding.

When Italian police arrested Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed in Milan, considered to be one of the masterminds behind the Madrid attacks, they had been tapping his phone conversations for three months. The wealth of information about the planning and motivation of the attacks, is just starting to come out now. Yesterday, Spanish newspaper El Mundo (link in Spanish, local copy kept here)
published new details from the transcripts of Rabei Osman, aka ‘Muhammad the Egyptian’, in which at the end he mentions a weapon they devised, which looks like a blow dryer and would cause convulsions and high fever (translated, emphasis mine):

Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed, aka ‘Muhammad the Egyptian’, considered to be the brain behind the terrorist attacks of March 11, and arrested in Italy, said that “Madrid is a lesson to Europe, they need to break with the US” and praised the head of the Spanish government, Rodríguez Zapatero, “for valuing Arabs”

‘The Egyptian’ also called for a large-scale attack in Italy like in Madrid, he assured that Berlusconi is “a dictator” and that his government “will have the same ending as that of Aznar”, for following “the American dog”, as he referred to George Bush.

[…]

“Madrid is a lesson to Europe, which must understand that they need to break with the Americans. The Berlusconi government is following the same methods as the dog (referring to Bush) and I hope that God will eliminate this government of Berlusconi because it’s dictatorial and a destroyer of Islam. We hope that God will give them [Berlusconi government -ed.] a disaster, and that so Italy will have a disaster”, stated ‘the Egyptian’.

[…]

They’re slaves, now that the dog (Bush) comes [this was on the day of President Bush’s visit to Rome -ed.] they put all these controls in place which serve nothing, if we want to strike, we can. It’s Berlusconi’s fault, who is a great dictator”, states the terrorist. ‘The Egyptian’ adds that according to him, all countries that follow the US “will have the same fate as Aznar”.

He underlines that after the Madrid attacks, which caused 192 victims, “all the Arabs and all the Spanish went onto the streets, calling Aznar a murderer”.

Continuing his conversation, ‘the Egyptian’ has words of praise for the president of the Spanish government, stating that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero “inmediately understood the importance of the Arabs, and his rise to power has opened a dialogue”.

He attacks Berlusconi again, and they are talking about if what happened in Madrid would take place in Italy, the blame would be on Berlusconi, “whoever follows this dog (Bush) will hurt himself”.

On the same day, but later, ‘the Egyptian’ returns to talk with his friends and he talks with them about a weapon, “in the shape of a hair dryer”, which “causes a lot of damage to your health”.

He adds that when this weapon, of which more details are lacking, starts to blow hot air, “it heats the temperature a couple of degrees, the body will start to suffer convulsions and it weakens [the target -ed.]and the (body) temperature starts to rise”.

My first instinct says Ricin, don’t know why, but it may also be Anthrax, but that tends to take longer to cause effect. I’m not a toxin expert here, but Ricin in powdered form, distributed by blow dryers?

Now, this is bad enough, but look at this recent Reuters report about the same terrorist. During his stay in Paris, he was directing the cell(s) in Madrid by phone, masking his calls by hacking into a local bank’s phone switch:

Prosecutors this month began a probe into a flurry of calls to Spain and Morocco from a bank in the Val-de-Marne area.

The calls increased significantly in the days before the attack and stopped a few hours before the bombs ripped through a series of commuter trains on March 11, killing 191 people, according to the daily newspaper Le Parisien.

Police have established that the calls were made by “phreaking” — a practice similar to hacking that bypasses the charging system.

The paper said Rabei Osman Ahmed es-Sayed, alias Mohamed the Egyptian, a suspect in the attacks who was arrested in Milan in June, spent several months in Val-de-Marne last year.

I tried this myself for a while, back in the eighties, but never got it to work, it is hard to do, even though the average techie will snuff at it. This is an enemy using low-end means in a counter-counter terrorist fashion, which absolutely worked.

There’s one tidbit of information more I wanted to share. This week it came to light in the local press here, that a second car was used to bring the terrorists to the train stations. It was detected in June, three months after the attacks. On the first day they found a minivan, with detonators and tapes with coranic verses. This time, the police were alerted by the rental company Hertz, who recovered a stolen car from the same spot where they found the minivan, and while cleaning it, they came across a box with clothes, and again tapes. DNA testing proved two persons had been in touch with the items, one a presumed cell leader who blew himself and six other terrorists up, when their hideout was stormed in a suburb of Madrid (they started tearing down the building yesterday), and the other one, well his DNA was found in the other car, but he remains at large.

And now the politicians are calling each other names, because the government decided to keep this under wraps until this week. Recall if you will the whole setup by the Socialists directly after the attacks, inmediately spreading rumors that Aznar’s government was lying, (leading exactly to all these Spaniards flooding the streets calling for Aznar’s head, to the joy of the terrorists we now know). The PP is fuming that they were forced to inmediately make everything public right after the first attack, while the Socialists are now claiming that they didn’t want to harm the ongoing investigation.

I said it right after the attacks, the real-time reporting of progress, by the Interior minister and heads of police, directly endangered the investigation itself, but the PP government felt itself cornered, defending against rumor mongering to which there really was no defense.

Meanwhile, there are intelligent and tech-savvy terrorist cells and at least one plotter of the Madrid attacks out there, and they’re working on some Doomsday Weapon.

So, am I being paranoid?

first published at Southern Watch.

Courage Versus Hate

It was Courage versus Hate….from the moment they stormed the cockpit to the second they brought down the plane.

Some in the Arab world will make the case that hate won — that Al Qaeda’s merciless terrorists, after murdering the pilots, brought down Flight 93 before the rebelling passengers could get to them. But, in reality, Courage won — because the passengers weren’t going to take it and signalled in that instant that the days of passive passengers trusting thugs who take over their airplanes were definitely over.

The bipartisan 911 Commission report contains a chilling account of what went on board on that plane. It’s a story for the ages.

But it won’t need the impact of ages: as soon as you read it you realize that in that moment when the passengers rebelled, the terrorists job became that much more difficult forever more. You can read it all here but we offer these key highlights from a New York Times report:

——(After Captain and passengers knew about the other hijackings and got warnings about possible attempts to enter the cockpit..JG)Two minutes later, the hijackers attacked Captain Dahl and his first officer.

Unlike the three other hijackings, Flight 93 continued transmitting over the radio during the struggle in the cockpit. The captain or first officer declared “Mayday,” and 35 seconds later, one of them shouted, “Hey, get out of here get out of here get out of here.” Later, passengers reported seeing two bodies outside the cockpit, injured or dead, probably the pilots….

—-A lot of the passengers used cell phones to call the ground.

—They were stormed by the passengers. And they knew it. And they knew they were losing…so:

At three seconds after 10 a.m., Mr. Jarrah is heard on the cockpit voice recorder saying: “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?”

But another hijacker responds: “No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.”

The voice recorder captured sounds of continued fighting, and Mr. Jarrah pitched the plane up and then down. A passenger is heard to say, “In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die!”

Then a passenger yelled “Roll it!” Some aviation experts have speculated that this was a reference to a food cart, being used as a battering ram.

Mr. Jarrah “stopped the violent maneuvers” at 10:01:00, according to the report, and said, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!”

“He then asked another hijacker in the cockpit, `Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?’ to which the other replied, `Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.’ “

Eighty seconds later, a hijacker is heard to say, “Pull it down! Pull it down!”

“The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them,” according to the report, which seems to indicate that the hijackers themselves crashed the plane. “With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes’ flying time from Washington, D.C,” according to the report

.

So there you have it: hijackers consumed with hatred for the West and the United States, determined to use an airplane as guided missle, in control of a plane after murdering the pilots and seeking their own and the passengers’ deaths. Courageous passengers of all backgrounds and sexes, not sitting back and taking it. THOSE PASSENGERS launched the war against terrorism…in that plane.

In the end, the hijackers — knowing they would lose control of the plane — in their final contemptuous act thinking they would “win” by crashing it into the ground and killing everyone. So they aimed the plane down. And when it was over, the passengers’ souls ascended and the terrorists souls descended into eternal damnation.

And the story of Flight 93 lives on in history.

Which Side Are We On Anyway?

[Picture not available. Please go over to the original post to see the accompanying photo.]

Look at this photo. Just look at it. Some sports hero advertising the latest isotone drink? A flamenco dancer’s album cover? The latest contestant in the Spanish version of Idols?

Wrong. This is Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, fresh out of Guantanamo and recently released on a €3000 bail by Judge Garzón, after he ensured to him in an interview that he denounced terrorism. And if he gave him that look, who could have said no?

Disgusting, I keep seeking a decent expression of the revulsion I felt reading this interview in El Mundo newspaper (in Spanish, local copy kept here) with the unlawful combattant picked up by the Pakistani army in November 2001. We reported on his release here, mentioning back then that the press seemed to be celebrating, rather than reporting facts.

And that seems to be true, reading the interview in El Mundo. Writer Juan Carlos de la Cal interviews the man on route to his home in Spanish Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Morocco from which Abderrahman hails, making every effort to ‘humanize’ the ‘Spanish Taliban’ as he’s known in the press.

Hamed Abderraman Ahmed, Hamido para su familia, tenía 26 años cuando bajó el empinado callejón por el que se llega a su estrecha casa, en el laberíntico centro de la barriada ceutí del Príncipe.Era una soleada mañana de junio de 2001, víspera de San Pedro para los cristianos. Bajó la mirada al despedirse de su enfermo padre. Contuvo las lágrimas cuando besó a su madre. Esbozó una forzada sonrisa cuando acarició las cabezas de algunos de sus sobrinos.

Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, Hamido to his family, was 26 years when he went down the steep alley which led to his small house, in the labyrinth of the Ceuta Principe quarter. It was a sunny morning of June of 2001, the eve of San Pedro to the Christians. He lowered his head while saying goodbye to his sick father. He held back his tears when he kissed his mother. He forced a smile while caressing the heads of some of his nephews.

And it goes on like this. Ahmed tells of his journey from Madrid to Afghanistan, and the reporter interjects that he flew out of Madrid to Tehran on July 4, the American national holiday, which ‘surprised Ahmed’.

No tenía ningún contacto ni nadie me organizó el viaje. En Ceuta conocí a algunas personas que habían estado en la zona y que me dieron algunos consejos. Nada más. Desde el mismo aeropuerto de Teherán cogí un taxi para la frontera que me costó muy barato: unas 1.500 pesetas por un trayecto de un par de horas, casi como desde Málaga a Algeciras”. Hamido habla todavía en pesetas porque cuando se marchó el euro no existía.

I didn’t have any contact and nobody organized the trip. In Ceuta I knew some people who had been there [Afghanistan -V-Man] and they gave me some tips. Nothing else. From the same airport in Tehran I took a taxi to the border, which was very cheap: 1.500 pesetas [about 12 dollars -V-Man] for a trip of a couple of hours, about from Málaga to Algeciras”. Hamido still speaks of pesetas, because when he went, the Euro didn’t exist.

Note that the reporter calls him by his family-given first name, which he does for the entire interview. Habderrahman tells of his reception at the Afghanistan border, where he was welcomed by Taliban border guards, accustomed to receiving foreigners, and got him a taxi ride to Kandahar, where he stayed in a Madrassa, with other, mostly Asian, foreigners. He notes that the Taliban have brought peace to the country, and well, HE never minded the women in Burkas.

But he tells this, after the reporter’s insistence to his audience that ‘now comes the hard part’ of the interview:

Llega el momento de las preguntas incómodas. Aún con la presencia de su solvente abogado, no queremos entrar en juicios de valor.Hamido está especialmente sensibilizado sobre el tema. No olvidamos que estamos ante un hombre que ha sido interrogado cientos de veces por policías, militares y jueces de varias nacionalidades.

The moment comes of the uncomfortable questions. Still in the presence of his court appointed lawyer, we don’t want to pass value judgements. Hamido is very sensitive on the whole subject. We must not forget that we are before a man who has been interrogated hundreds of times by police, soldiers and judges of various nationalities.

Follows his description of 9/11, leaving Kandahar for the Pakistan border with a group of fellow students of the Madrassa he was at. On the Pakistan side of the border, they were picked up by the Pakistan army and after being detained for some time, handed over to US forces, who took him back, first to Kandahar, and then saw fit to move him on to Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo (you know, where all religious students were sent to).

He tells of the evil Americans guarding them, the humiliation, the horror of it all, down to the depression he suffered, yada yada yada. And then he gives us this little gem:

- ¿Es verdad que les dijo a los representantes consulares españoles que cuando le liberaran quería ir a luchar con los chechenos?

“Sí, pero lo dije siguiendo una consigna que funcionaba entre los prisioneros del campamento. Allí pensábamos que como los americanos son enemigos de los rusos, les iba a gustar esa relación”.

- Is it true that you told the representatives of the Spanish consulate that when they let you go, you wanted to go and fight with the Chechens?

“Yes, but I told them that following advice which was going around among the prisoners at the camp. There we thought that because the Americans were the enemies of the Russians, they would like that story”.

Sounds like lawyers talking to me. This guy is still under investigation for pertaining to Al Qaeda in Spain, and we have reporters from all over celebrating his freedom from the clutches of Evil America.

We have buried the dead of the Madrid bombings, and with it our heads it seems. We pulled out of Iraq, we are sanitizing terrorist suspects, Wahhabi mosques in our midst are treated as ‘moderate’, we insist upon prosecuting terrorists as criminals and we’ll do generally whatever it takes to show the Islamofacsists that we have learned our lesson, and please don’t bomb us again. Thereby converting Spain in precisely the type of target for any future ‘quick fix’ success they need to keep the Jihad going.

Remember, there’s Spanish troops in Afghanistan. And over the horizon is the never forgotten pain over the loss of Al Andalus.

First published at Southern Watch.

Summer Tourorism

This was in the news yesterday, but didn’t get around to posting on it. Spanish anti-terrorism judge Baltasár Garzon claims that there are about 100 Al Qaeda Cells inside Moroccan territory:

Madrid - Morocco - home to most of the suspects in the Madrid train bombing - is teeming with some 100 al-Qaeda-linked cells that are capable of suicide attacks and pose Europe’s biggest terrorist threat, Spain’s leading anti-terrorism judge testified on Thursday.

Each cell has five to 10 members, “so we are talking about 900 to 1 000 people who could be sought by police now in Morocco,” Judge Baltasar Garzon told lawmakers investigating the March 11 attacks, which killed 190 people. Garzon quoted police and intelligence data.

“In my opinion it is the gravest problem Europe faces today with this kind of terrorism,” Garzon said, noting that many of those groups are in northern Morocco, with members who speak perfect Spanish and are able to slip easily in and out of Spain.

Garzon has little positive to say about the EU’s attempts to fight islamic terrorism:

He also complained that European law enforcement bodies, intelligence services and courts lack a clearly defined strategy for fighting Islamic terrorism.

“At least I don’t know of one yet, despite all the efforts that are being made,” Garzon said.

Of course, this isn’t news, but it is reason for concern. The EU is more and more becoming like an example of cat herding, in my opinion. All good when you’re dealing with the size of bananas and fiscal harmonization, but the threat of terrorism looming over Europe is too important to fight by concensus, which always brings out the lowest common denominator, and usually two years late.

On the same note, Spain’s Southern Coast is the main transit point for Moroccans living throughout Europe, returning to their motherland for the summer vacation. Referred to in Spanish as Operación Paso de Estrecho (Operation Crossing of the Straight), between July and August every day more than fifty-thousand (50,000) Moroccans cross the Straight, with peaks to going over 100,000 a day. On this page (in Spanish) on the left side there is a pull down menu with which you can show the daily flow of cars, passengers etc. making the crossing. Operation Paso is renowned for its efficiency in getting as many across in as little time possible.

In 2003, more than 2,5 million Moroccans and more than 600,000 cars made the crossing by ferry, going to Morocco and coming back one month later. For this year, they’re expecting more than 2,8 millian Magreb-born immigrants to make the crossing.

Spain’s police forces have warned (link in Spanish) that the crossing may be taken advantage of to get terrorists across and into Europe. A total of 7,000 combined police forces have been allocated to oversee the crossings.

Which means that this summer, if Al Qaeda would like to smuggle in say, ten cells into Europe, each consisting of ten terrorists, making 100 terrorists, they can hide them between 2,5 million Moroccan tourists, which are watched over by 7,000 police officers along the entire southern coast of Spain.

Odds, anyone?

First published at Southern Watch

No War On Terror, No Liberties Either

GAL, a three-letter acronym that can get any Spanish socialist up in a tizzy, and his back against the wall. Short for Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación, or Anti-terrorist Liberation Groups, this was a shadowy death squad, funded and operated by the Spanish socialist government of Felipe Gonzalez between 1983 and 1987. Its aim was to deny safe haven to ETA terrorists, by kidnapping and killing them, inside Spain, and in the French part of Basque province.

During the late eighties the first GAL members were arrested when trying to hire killers, which led to an inquiry in 1994. Two years later, the socialists were ousted from government by a victory for the Popular Party. The socialists might have won still, as ETA was and continues to be much hated and Spaniards generally felt little if no compassion towards them, were it not that of the 23 extra-judicial killings, about one third had no relation with ETA. A fact that many say contributed to a revival in ETA’s support from Basque reactionaries. To this date, Gonzalez and his socialist PSOE party deny every direct involvement with GAL, which is commonly referred to as Spain’s ‘Dirty War’.

Now, twenty years later, Spain’s Attorney General, Candido Conde-Pumpido, is comparing the Bush Administration’s anti-terrorist politics with GAL. Speaking at Madrid’s Universidad Complutense, the attorney appointed by Zapatero stated:

As part of the summer courses of the Universidad Complutense, Conde-Pumpido stated that the United States have responded to the terrorist violence “with more violence and to throw out all legality”, like what “happened in Spain at the end of the seventies and the start of the eighties”. To Pumpido, who during those years was a magistrate in one of the provincial courts of San Sebastian [Basque Province -V-Man], this attitude, far from solving the problem, “created more terrorism”.

He then goes on to state that because of Spain’s experience with terrorism, the world, and specifically the United States, should take note of how to defeat terrorism:

The State Attorney General suggested that the experience of Spain in the fight against barbarism centers on three ideas. The first one is the acknowledgement that “the fight against terrorism is not to be seen as a war, because the terrorists aren’t combattants, they’re delinquents and criminals and the fight needs to be fought with legal proceedings and procedures”.

Secondly, he commented that our country provides a system, specialized in the prosecution of terrorism, the ‘Audiencia Nacional’. “A centralized system which carries an enormous number of advantages with it, which do not exist in other countries, and make them seek procedures outside the normal justice system, like for instance Guantanamo, because no systems exist like the Audiencia Nacional”, he explained.

The third point Conde-Pumpido mentioned, is the thesis that “you cannot respond to violence with violence”. “When Spain responded with violence things went bad for her in her fight against terrorism”, on the contrary, “nowadays we use the law, and only the law, but with maximum force, and we are further than ever in our fight against ETA’s terrorism”. The Attorney General expressed his conviction that “using the same proceedings we can defeat Islamic terrorism”.

To counter his arguments on how to fight terrorism, I sincerely do believe that we are fighting a war, which needs to be taken to the enemy, rather than serve them with legal papers after they strike, as President Bush has stated so many times.

How do you prosecute a terrorist organization, intent on the destruction of your civilization, hiding out in failed states which have no functioning legal system nor extradition treaties? How do you wait for the ‘criminal’ act to take place, when you know that the evidence may come in 2,000, 10,000 or in the case of the Madrid bombings, 191 dead innocent citizens?

The second point is truly a gift to respond to. Because it shows exactly the difference between European and American ways of dealing with terrorism, and by extent, personal freedoms. He speaks as the true bureaucrat, when there is a problem, we’ll make a law for it, and another and another, until we have such great laws that we can prosecute it from every angle, and convict without exception. And then pound his chest and have the whole world take note of the ‘advanced’ legal system they built, truly a model for the world.

The Audiencia Nacional was formed in 1976, right after the transition from Franco’s dictatorship, and was modeled after Franco’s Tribunal de Orden Publico (‘Tribunal of Public Order). Spain has a long history of these types of tribunals, going back to the civil war which ended 1882. The role of these tribunals has always been to actively investigate and prosecute (not separated, judges have wide-ranging investigative powers, can hold defendants for years without charges being brought, and ultimately judge them) terrorist or before the Audiencia Nacional’s founding, subversive elements.

The sad thing is, he doesn’t see it. He thinks the United States of America would embrace this type of tribunal when seeing it in action. Sure, it works wonders when you’re fighting terrorists, but doesn’t it leave a whole lot of power in the hands of the government? And doesn’t it take away a whole lot more rights from citizens?

His final point on which he bases his entire view of how to prosecute the War on Terror is a fallacy. He states that answering violence with violence is wrong, not because it would be wrong per sé to do so, but because the result in Spain has shown that terrorism flared up afterwards. He doesn’t realize that this was not a result of violence being dealt at the terrorists, but how it was dealt. With a government death squad. Therefore, his conclusion that violence can never be answered with violence is based on the premise that all government action to counter terrorism would be illegal and uncontrollable. Which, for an Attorney General, shows little confidence either in his democracy or his party.

To sum up, it is not the means with which the fight against terrorism is fought that creates more terrorism, as Spain’s highest prosecutor states, but rather as was in the case of Spain, setting loose an uncontrolable band of kidnappers and assasins, targeting who they thought were terrorist, without any recourse. A government attempting to do that, will see the public’s support disappear like snow before the Spanish sun, and give the terrorists legitimate ammunition to score public relations points.

And finally, I hope some liberal civil rights activists will read this post. You may worry about the Patriot Acts, I and II. Believe me, you can go up to Patriot Act XII and still have more civil liberties than the average European.

The article (in Spanish) can be found here, if it has moved to a paid archive, I kept a local transcript here.

First published at Southern Watch.

Profiles In Terrorism

I picked up an interesting article in the Washington Times, from Hannah K. Strange of UPI. She interviews Marc Sageman, who wrote “Understanding Terror Networks,” and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s also a counterterrorism adviser to the U.S. government.

In the interview, Sageman tells us that it’s a myth to believe that terrorists are poor, fanatically religious and would carry a huge chip on their shoulders. He bases his findings on research which involved studying 400 members of terrorist networks from North Africa, the Middle East, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Of this sample, he said, 75 percent come from upper- or middle-class backgrounds, and most also from “caring, intact” families. Sixty percent were college educated and 75 percent could be considered professional or semi-professional. Seventy percent were married, and most had children.
Only half came from a religious background, and a large group raised in North Africa or France grew up in entirely secular communities, which, Dr. Sageman said, “refutes the notion of culture,” often cited as a factor encouraging terrorism.
He rejected the idea of terrorists as “inherently evil.”
“None of these guys, really, are evil — though their acts definitely were.” Neither are they mentally ill, he said. Of those studied, he said, only 1 percent had hints of psychological disorders — the same as the world base rate.
“Most of [them] were the elite of the country,” he said.
Many were sent abroad to study, became lonely and isolated from their communities and cultures, and sought friends among people like themselves. They often found them in groups based around mosques, even if they had little previous interest in religion, Dr. Sageman added.
Seventy percent joined a jihad — “holy war” — group while away from their country of origin, he said, and a further 20 percent were second-generation immigrants. Sixty-eight percent had friends in the jihad, or joined as groups. An additional 20 percent had close relatives who were already members.

His remarks on Salafism are interesting, Northern Africa is home to many followers. Overlooked by many is the notion that Salafists are in fact followers of Wahhabism, since Wahhabists detest to be called as such. Explains Khaled Abou El Fadl, Distinguished Fellow in Islamic Law at the UCLA School of Law: (quoted from a different article)

But Wahhabism did not spread in the modern Muslim world under its own banner. Even the term “Wahhabism” is considered derogatory by its adherents, since Wahhabis prefer to see themselves as the representatives of Islamic orthodoxy. To them, Wahhabism is not a school of thought within Islam, but is Islam. The fact that Wahhabism rejected a label gave it a diffuse quality, making many of its doctrines and methodologies eminently transferable. Wahhabi thought exercised its greatest influence not under its own label, but under the rubric of Salafism. In their literature, Wahhabi clerics have consistently described themselves as Salafis, and not Wahhabis.

Sagem seems to disagree, from reading his interpretation of Salafism:

Salafi, “the re-creation of the practices of the devout ancestors,” as Dr. Sageman last year told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, is inherently a peaceful social movement, with about 30 million followers worldwide.
Dr. Sageman pointed out that more than half of the terrorists in his sample worshipped at only 10 mosques worldwide.
Salafis generally advocate the formation of a model Islamic society “based on fairness and justice” by nonviolent means. But there is a violent strand, he said.
This violent group develops what he called “in-group love and out-group hate.” It sees those standing in the way of the true Islamic community as “infidels,” who, according to distorted interpretations of the Koran, can justifiably be killed.
Targets include Arab leaders viewed as oppressive or corrupt, such as the Saudi royal family, and, particularly in the case of networks such as al Qaeda, the “far enemy,” Dr. Sageman said, meaning those Western countries seen to be aiding such leaders, chiefly the United States.

The considerably mild tone in Sagem’s description of Salafism can be related to his final verdict on the War on Terror. According to him, we will never to win with weapons and intelligence, but we more or less brought it on ourselves, so we need to engage in a war of ideas.

Therefore, Dr. Sageman said, it is “almost trivial to arrest terrorists acting right now, against preventing the next generation.” Though we must, he said, “eliminate the immediate and present threat to the U.S. and the West, much of our focus needs to be on the war of ideas. “Our military options have run out,” he said.
“We have to stop shooting ourselves in the foot,” Dr. Sageman said.
“Much of the [present] anger is because of the run-up to Iraq, the occupation of Iraq. … The way we’ve handled the Israel-Palestine issue has not played well in the Muslim world. We need to appear much fairer and just in our dealings with both sides than we have been in the last few years.”

So, in the end, it’s the ‘Root Causes’ caravan again. Rather than to seek blame with us, it is Islam that needs to reform itself, and weed out the sects that preach a return to 11th century beliefs, and seek the spread of their religion by killing its opponents. We can and will help in this process where possible, but in the end it’s up to muslims everywhere to challenge these clerics, and to ensure that others don’t fall prey to them by looking at the early warning signals Sagem writes about.

First published at Southern Watch.

The Polishing Of Al Qaeda

Much how I hate to push down all those nice 4th of July pictures, it’s my first post to the Op-Ed pages of the Command Post, where I’m hoping to share some views with you all from Madrid, Spain, which is where I live. Most posts appear on my blog Southern Watch as well (unshameless plug, last time I promise), which deals mostly with the War on Terror, and how it affects Spain and Northern Africa. Because I follow the Spanish and North African press, some links to articles will lead to Spanish or French articles.

I’m not a big fan of conspiracy theories, but with regards to Spain’s socialist government’s and the liberal press’ handling of the March 11 attacks, I keep having this feeling that something is very wrong here. It’s like they want to forget, move on, hoping (and in many cases believing) that the Madrid bombings were somehow a deserved payback for Spain’s support of the liberation of Iraq, so Spain can now be considered safe from Islamist terror. These are things almost impossible to say out loud over here.

Recently, one hundred days passed since the bombings, without any official rememberance ceremony. On the contrary, on June 9, Madrid City Council revealed a replacement for the spontaneous memorials erected at the targeted stations, replacing candles, notes and flowers with a cold, sterile video wall and a website, on which pictures of the now cleaned up memorials are displayed. The reason for this? Station and railway workers were having a hard time dealing with the memorials day after day, and it kept them from recovering. These railway workers must have endured all this stress at least, say, 50 days, before asking for the removal? And knowing a bit more about organized labor here, I can very well imagine a labor union (which are all in some way linked to the socialist party) pushing for this on behalf of the government? But that’s when my rational side usually stops me from endulging in more conspiring.

But I digress, although it helps introducing what I really wanted to write about, namely the ‘polishing up’ of Al Qaeda. Ever so softly, it seems the agenda set by the press (the US as the true enemy of peace), the government (you can’t shoot your way out of any situation, you need to talk and work together) seems to evoke a reenforcing response by the other. Today it struck me for the first time, seeing references made here and in El Periódico to “Al Qaeda’s military wing” I’m mentioning El Periódico specifically, because it also carries an interview with Diaa Rechuan, quoted as an ‘expert on pacifist and violent Islamism’, who works at the ‘prestigious’ Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt.

The Al-Ahram Centre is the research center of the Al-Ahram group of newspapers, state-owned and widely known for its open anti-semitism. For a good starting point on what Al-Ahram stands for, check out this MEMRI special report on the newspaper, and the anti-semitic and anti-american cartoons that grace its pages.

Because I had no link, I’ve pasted (and translated) the interview below. Remember, this is a respectable Spanish newspaper passing this on as an ‘expert opinion’

Al Qaeda no es una red sino sólo un modelo, asegura un experto

La red terrorista Al Qaeda no existe como tal, se ha convertido en un modelo que multitud de grupos terroristas utilizan según su conveniencia, y ni siquiera en Irak está presente, según cree uno de los mayores expertos del mundo.

Diaa Rechuan, experto en islamismo pacífico y violento en el prestigioso Centro Al Ahram de Estudios Estratégicos, ha explicado a Efe que Al Qaeda se está convirtiendo “en una especie de MacDonald’s, una marca o franquicia que muchos se quieren atribuir y para lo que no hace falta más que un requisito: extender el terror en nombre del islam”.

Después del 11-S

Al Qaeda nació probablemente después del 11 de septiembre del 2001, no antes, y ahora está operativa solo en Afganistán, Pakistán, el centro de Asia, el este de África y algún lugar de la Península Arábiga, pero carece de mando central operativo y Osama bin Laden ya solo actúa como inspirador, pues su capacidad de reunión y reclutamiento es nula, según Rechuan.

El hombre que Estados Unidos considera jefe de Al Qaeda en Irak, el jordano Abu Musab al Zarqaui, probablemente no tiene nada que ver con Al Qaeda, pues los ataques antishiís que se le atribuyen —como los del pasado marzo en Bagdad y Kerbala, con 143 muertos— no entran dentro del estilo de Al Qaeda, asegura el experto.

Explica que Al Qaeda sigue siempre una política constante: atacar a los que considera “infieles” y a sus aliados, pero no a una multitud de shiís en una mezquita, pese a que Bin Laden y sus hombres, todos ellos sunís, no profesen ninguna simpatía por el shiísmo.

Rechuan tiene sus dudas de que Zarqaui, por el que EEUU ofrece una recompensa de 25 millones de dólares, sea en realidad tan importante como Washington dice que es, y asegura que ha sido el secretario de Estado, Colin Powell, el que ha hecho famoso a Zarqaui.

Dudas de su relación con el 11-M

También duda de que Al Qaeda haya tenido algo que ver en el atentado del pasado 11 de marzo en Madrid, pues significaría un fallo estrepitoso de los servicios de seguridad españoles, fallo que sería más comprensible si se tratara de un grupo que actuaba por su cuenta y riesgo.

Advierte este experto de que Al Qaeda no desmiente su participación en atentados que se le atribuyen siempre que éstos cumplan con ‘un patrón común’: golpear a los infieles o a sus aliados, pues así se va engrosando el mito del “terror global”.

Sin embargo, sí ha desmentido su vinculación con los atentados antishiís, recuerda.

Al Qaeda is no network but just a model, assures an expert

The terrorist network Al Qaeda doesn’t exist as such, it has converted into a model which multiple terrorist groups use it to fit its purposes, and isn’t even present in Iraq, so thinks one of the biggest experts in the world.

Diaa Rechuan, expert in pacifist and violent islamism at the prestigious Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, explained to Efe [Spanish news agency -VM] that Al Qae