Afghanistan: På flugt ind i døden - Taliban mister 136 mand på to dage

Taleban-styrker forsøger efter en række nederlag i Syd-Afghanistan at oprette baser i den vestlige del af landet. Her led de to gange nederlag til afghanske og NATO-styrker i løbet af weekenden. 136 talebanere mistede livet i kampene.

Som før rapporteret her på bloggen har en ny amerikansk-inspireret tilgang til bekæmpelsen af Taleban-bevægelsen ført til et stadig stigende pres på Taleban i det sydlige og østlige Afghanistan. Det har gjort, at Taleban har fundet sig ude af stand til at starte deres længe bebudede forårsoffensiv. Alene mellem nytår og i fredags har Taleban mistet over 450 krigere i kampe med Afghanske styrker og allierede NATO-styrker, rapporterer Terrorist Death Watch.

Dette har ført til, at Taleban fra sine stærkt truede højborge i Syd- og Øst-Afghanistan har forsøgt at oprette nye baser i det vestlige Afghanistan. Dette efterlader Taleban-styrkerne betydeligt mere sårbare end de er vant til. Presset i det sydlige Afghanistan har dog været stort nok til at de har løbet risikoen alligevel. Dette har ført til denne weekends kampe.

Fredag var en gruppe bestående af afghansk politi og amerikanske specialstyrker på natpatrulje nær landsbyen Parmakan i Zerkoh-dalen, da den kom under beskydning med håndvåben og RPG´ere fra en styrke på over 70 talebanere. Med håndvåbenild og flystøtte lykkedes det derefter de afghanske og amerikanske styrker at nedkæmpe Taleban-styrken, dræbe 49 af dens medlemmer, deriblandt to lokale Taleban-ledere. Amerikanske tab begrænsede sig til én dræbt.

To dage senere, søndag, identificerede amerikanske specialstyrker på recognosering sammen med Afghansk politi og NATO-styrker, flere Taleban-stillinger 50 kilometer syd for Shindand i Herat-provinsen. De gik i stilling og begyndte beskydningen af Taleban-stillingerne med morterer, håndvåben og RPG´er.

Yderligere styrker af afghansk politi og NATO-tropper ankom efter nogle timers kampe, og NATO-fly bombede flere Taleban-stillinger. Stillet over for et sikkert nederlag flygtede talebanerne, men blev forfulgt og beskudt af et AC-130 gunship, der dræbte yderligere 26.

Sammenlagt kostede nederlaget syd for Shindand søndag Taleban 87 krigere. Med tabene ved Permakan har Taleban bare i det vestlige Afghanistan mistet 136 krigere hen over weekenden. Dertil kommer blandt andet nederlaget ved Gereshk fredag, der kostede yderligere 10 talebanere livet.

Sammenlagt nærmer Talebans tab sig alene i år således 600 krigere.

Kilder:

• US Central Command 28/4 2007: TALIBAN KILLED, BUILDINGS DESTROYED IN EARLY MORNING FIREFIGHT
• US Central Command 30/4 2007: COALITION MEMBERS, ANP CRUSH TALIBAN FIGHTERS NEAR SHINDAND
• America´s North Shore Journal: Terrorist Death Watch

Algeriet: al-Qaida i Det Islamiske Maghreb mister topleder

Efter en periode med stadigt stigende aktivitet hos Nordafrikas undergruppe af al-Qaida er gruppen begyndt at løbe ind i stigende tab. Torsdag mistede gruppens næstkommanderende livet, og mandag blev fem selvmordsbombere arresteret før de kunne gennemføre deres angreb.

Tabene kommer efter en periode med stadigt stigende islamisk terror-aktivitet i Nordafrika. Den øgede aktivitet begyndte, da den algeriske terrorgruppe Den Salafistiske Gruppe for Mission og Kamp i januar meldte sig ind i al-Qaida og tog navneforandring til "al-Qaida i Det Islamiske Maghreb". Siden er de månedlige tab af menneskeliv øget fra 21 i januar over 18 i februar og 45 i marts til april måneds tab på 81.

Den foreløbige kulmination blev nået med det fejlslagne dobbelte selvmords-bilbombeangreb i Algeriets hovedstad Algier 11. april, hvor det lykkedes terroristerne at slå 33 uskyldige ihjel, men hvor de primære mål - regeringens hovedkvarter og en politistation - ikke blev ødelagt. En tredie bilbombe nåede end ikke at eksplodere, da den blev opdaget og uskadeliggjort før den kunne detonere.

Siden da har de algeriske myndigheder målrettet gået efter at nedkæmpe terror-gruppen. Torsdag i sidste uge blev al-Qaida i Det Islamiske Maghrebs næstkommanderende Samir Saioud, alias Samir Musab således dræbt i en ildkamp 40 kilometer øst for hovedstaden Algier, i Bourmerdes-provinsen, og mandag blev fem terrorister med forbindelser til selvmordsangrebene 11. april arresteret.

Af de 81 mennesker, der mistede livet i april var de 28 islamiske terrorister.

Kilder:

• Ech-Corouk 17/4 2007: Algiers attacks: suicide bomber Abu-Sajida is still alive
• ME-News 30/4 2007: ALGERIA KILLS AL QAIDA NO. 2
• Reuters 30/4 2007: Death toll from Algeria violence reaches year high
• ADN-Kronos 30/4 2007: ALGERIA: 'FIVE WOULD-BE ATTACKERS' ARRESTED

Irak: 72 terrorister fanget i razziaer i provinserne Anbar og Salah ed Din

Razziaerne fandt sted som led i en koordineret kampagne mod al-Qaeda i Irak, og alene i byen Samarra blev 36 arresteret. Nær Karmah blev et lager af kemikalier til fremstilling af sprængstoffer yderligere fundet.

Kilder:

• MNF-Iraq 29/4 2007: 72 SUSPECTED TERRORISTS DETAINED

Irak: "Oprørerne" fortsætter med at lide tab

I Irak fortsætter "oprørerne" med at lide betragtelige tab. Bill Roggio rapporterer:

The building of the security barrier, or "wall", around the Sunni neighborhood in Adhamiya is back on track. Dave Kilcullen, the Senior Counter-Insurgency Advisor for Multi-National Force Iraq, explains that Prime Minister Maliki re initiated the project after he was briefed on the need for the barrier and how the protests came about. "As I understand it, once the reasons for the project and the likely benefits in terms of lives saved were explained to the PM, he was happy for it to continue. I understand that the evidence of extremist manipulation was also a factor."

Mr. Kilcullen likened the barrier to an "urban tourniquet," and explained that the propaganda campaign to disrupt its construction came from none other than al Qaeda in Iraq. Omar Fahdil first reported this development early
last week.

Coalition raids in Al Asad, Karma, Baghdad, Mosul and Balad Iraq netted 17 al Qaeda operatives on Saturday. Coalition air power also destroyed a truck bomb near the insurgent-riddled town of Karma in eastern Anbar province. A joint U.S. and Iraqi Army operation south of Baghdad resulted in the capture of two insurgents and the discovery of 3 IEDs and a weapons cache.

Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army and Iran's weapons network continue to be targeted. Coalition forces captured 4 Mahdi Army fighters in Sadr city during a raid on Saturday. Eight insurgents were captured during a raid in Mahmudiyah. Also discovered were "three caches containing mortar systems, rockets and ammunition... Soldiers of the unit examined the weapons, which were stamped with recent dates and Iranian markings."

Efter artiklens deadline lykkedes det ifølge MNF-Iraq under razziaer i Baquba at arrestere fem terrorister, dræbe yderligere 25, og beslaglægge 20 våbenlagre.

Kilder:

• The Fourth Rail 28/4 2007: Iraq Report: Bombings in Karbala, Hit; AQI and the Adhamiya wall
• MNF-Iraq 28/4 2007: Baqubah: Local’s tips lead to success

Israel: Abbas´ talsmand fordømmer Israel for at forhindre terrorangreb

I går berettede jeg om, at Israelske styrker havde nedkæmpet en gruppe på fire arabiske terrorister, og havde dræbt tre og såret en fjerde. Den fjerde er siden afgået ved døden, og den arabiske mediemaskine er gået igang i form af den "moderate" arabisk-palæstinensiske præsidents talsmand. Bemærk hvor ofte forhindringen af et terrorangreb kaldes en "forbrydelse":

Presidency Spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeina condemned on Saturday crimes perpetrated by Israeli Occupation Army on Gaza, of which was resulted in killing of four citizens in east Gaza.

In a statement, Abu Rdeina said that such crimes are a fatal blow to all efforts exerted to re-launch the peace process and return to negotiations, in particular the Arab peace initiative.

Abu Rdeina considered the crime of killing of four citizens at the hand of Israeli occupation forces is continued series of crimes against the Palestinian people, stating that nine citizens were killed in Jenin, Nablus and Gaza in the past week.

He held Israeli government responsibility for such crimes, calling on international community and the Quartet to immediately intervene and halt the state of deterioration and pressurize Israeli government to stop its aggressive policy and provide protection to the Palestinian people.

Kilder:

• WAFA 28/4 2007: Presidency Spokesman Condemns Israeli Crime of Killing 4 Citizens in east GAza

Israel: Fanget al-Qaeda-topmand bag selvmordsangreb i Israel i 2003

Det spektakulært fejlslagne dobbelte selvmordsangreb i april 2003 bliver nu forbundet med Nashwan abd al-Razzaq abd al-Baqi, den al-Qaeda-topmand der i denne uge blev overført til Guantanamo:

Under US interrogation, his rich experience in charting al Qaeda’s offensive in the West has come to light. Al Hadi is now credited with plotting the first direct al Qaeda suicide attack inside Israel on direct orders from Osama bin Laden.

Two British Muslims were sent to blow up the US embassy in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2003. Instead, they bombed a Tel Aviv seafront bar, Mike’s Place, killing three Israelis and injuring 60.

Al Hadi was quick to spot the potential of young British Muslims of Pakistani origin, who are English-speaking and carry EU passports. Their recruitment was a major feat of this Iraqi-born terrorist commander’s global strategy. Two years later (according to the Sunday Times), he is said to have masterminded the July 7 suicide bombings on the British tube and a bus, leaving 52 dead and hundreds injured.

Asif Muhammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, the Mike’s Place bombers, were headhunted at the radical Finsbury Park mosque in London. So too was Richard Reid, the failed shoe bomber serving time in the United States for attempting to blow up an American Airlines plane bound for Miami from Paris in Dec. 2002.

Past investigations established that Hanif, Sharif and Reid all spent time at Hamas training camps in the Gaza Strip before they embarked on their missions.

The al Hadi case confirms once again the farsightedness and long preparations al Qaeda invests in operational planning. In each case, every effort is made to wipe clean any leads to the chain of command after the suicide bombers are dead; the planners have a preset escape route that leaves counter-terror agents very few clues to work with.

Despite the close cooperation between the Israeli, American and British secret services in probing the Mike’s Place attack in 2003, the full scope and depth of Al Qaeda’s mobilization drive in Britain were not appreciated in time to avert the 7/7 bombings on London transport two years later. To this day, no one knows who exactly prepared the explosives used in Tel Aviv and gave the two bombers their instructions.

Full details of the Mike’s Place bombing, the 4th anniversary of which falls in exactly two days, appeared in DEBKAfile on June 3, 2003. Click HERE

This attack was a flop for its planners in more ways than one, but it served as a useful dry run for the attacks which followed. Asif Hanif managed to detonate his bomb vest, but his partner did not. Omar Sharif escaped and two weeks later, a body identified by Israeli security services as his was washed up on the Jaffa coast.

Kilder:

• DEBKAfile 28/4 2007: Abd al Hadi Engineered First al Qaeda attacks in Israel and Britain

Afghanistan: Mere aggressiv anvendelse af helikoptere skaber resultater

Talebans nederlag til amerikanske kamphelikoptere, der kostede dem 11 dræbte rapporterede jeg allerede om i går. Idag en artikel om det skift i anvendelsen af amerikanske kamphelikoptere, der indtil videre har afværget den længe frygtede Talibanske forårsoffensiv:

American commanders believe that the uncompromising use of airpower in recent weeks has been a key factor in preventing the Taliban from launching their expected full-scale spring offensive against coalition forces and forcing them to rethink their tactics.

Aircrews say they have been told to show no mercy, but to press home their advantage until all their targets have been destroyed. The Apache attack was one of five in three days in -Helmand, where British troops operate alongside a much smaller contingent of American infantry and special forces.

Capt Staley, the commander of the Apache unit based at Kandahar airfield, described how his helicopters had arrived just after an ambush by Taliban fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns, on a detachment of American special forces and an infantry unit. In the second Apache, 1st Lt Jack Denton, 26, was in radio contact with the special forces unit, Scorpion 36, on the ground.

The soldiers said they had information that the Taliban were escaping across the river. "Look out for any boats," they said. He spotted a small aluminium fishing boat pushing out from the eastern shore of the 200-yard-wide river. In it were six or seven people. When they caught sight of the Apaches, they started to paddle back towards shore.

The aircrew hesitated. "It seemed a little premature," said Lt Denton. "We didn't have hostile intent or a positive ID from the ground commander." But the special forces soldiers were adamant that, although they could not themselves see the men on the boat, they must be the Taliban who had attacked them. That, said Lt Denton, was good enough for the Apache crews.

By then, most of the men were ashore, walking quickly towards the tree line. They appeared to be pulling clothing over their heads - burqas, Capt Staley thought, and Lt Denton concurred. As the helicopters came in to attack, Lt Denton said, one of the men turned to face him and dropped to his knees. "I think he knew that there was no hope," he said. "He was making his peace."

Capt Staley's helicopter hit them with its rockets while Lt Denton, the gunner in the other helicopter, opened up with his 30mm cannon. Three or four of the Taliban died where they stood and the rest made a dash for the trees. "They were trying to get to their bunkers," Capt Staley said. "We started a diving run and destroyed four of the six people we could see, including the Taliban commander."...

As the Apaches came in for another run, Capt Staley said, he saw the muzzle flashes of automatic weapons among the trees. A rocket-propelled grenade screamed towards his helicopter, but it passed by harmlessly.

The Apaches made eight attacking runs and, by the end, the bodies of 14 Taliban littered the shore. Another two were spotted floating down the river. Any survivors did not hang about. "They usually extricate their dead but this time they left them there," Capt Staley said.

American intelligence named the dead commander as Mullah Najibullah, who, they said, had been responsible for leading attacks against British forces in and around the town of Sangin, in Helmand.

...Capt Staley said he had no qualms about pressing home such attacks until no one was left standing and claimed that American pilots were more effective than their British Apache counterparts, who he said flew higher and were less ruthless
in finishing off their targets. "The Brits are good but they don't have the
extreme aggression that we do."...

On Monday, the Apaches struck again, killing 12 Taliban whom they had caught in the open near Qalat, in Zabul province.

Lt Denton and Capt Staley were in one of the two-man aircraft, escorting two Black Hawk helicopters, when they spotted eight motorcycles, with a rider and passenger on each. It seemed unusual and the Apache broke away to take a closer look.

Dropping to 200ft, it swooped close to the motorcyclists - and the two men could not believe their luck: some of the passengers were holding the parts of a long-barrelled
heavy machine-gun.

Six of the bikes slewed to a stop, their passengers leaping off and aiming their weapons at the helicopter in what appeared to be a well-practised drill, while the others took off across country. The Apache banked away to begin its attack run.

"Some of them were trying to get the heavy machine-gun up a small hill to engage us," Lt Denton said. "Capt Staley used the 30mm gun to take out the two guys who had taken off, and then we fixed on the ones with the heavy machine-gun. They were huddled around a large boulder and we shot them. We put as many rounds around it as we could, because if they got to it they could cause us trouble. But they
never had a chance to set it up."

Using its cannon and then its rockets, the Apache finished off all the Taliban fighters it could find, then launched nail-filled rockets and dropped white phosphorous to destroy the motorcycles and the machine guns. After the shooting stopped, 12 Taliban were confirmed dead.

Not surprisingly, the Apache assaults have forced the Taliban to adopt a lower profile.

OPDATERET:

Den britiske avis The Telegraph har en artikel online, hvor den mere aggressive brug af kamphelikoptere sættes i sammenhæng med, at briterne efter amerikansk pres opgav deres fejlslagne politik med at indgå våbenhviler med lokale ældster, bare for siden at se Talebanerne indtage områderne der var dækket af våbenhviler uden kamp. Blandt andet byen Musa Qala, som danske soldater ellers havde holdt mod konstante Taleban-angreb blev tabt på denne måde:

British commanders made ceasefire deals with local leaders in a number of areas of Helmand last year, arguing that a halt in the fighting would strengthen the hand of the tribal elders. But America believed that the ceasefires merely allowed the Taliban time to re-arm and reinforce its positions, and American commanders and diplomats criticised the deals.

The American ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann, criticised the British decision to pull out of Musa Qala in northern Helmand last year and he appeared to be vindicated when the town was taken over by the Taliban in February.

Lt Andrea Anthony, the intelligence officer for the 82nd Airborne Division's Task Force Corsair - which includes the Apache helicopter gunship force - said last week that American commanders had adopted a more aggressive approach, out of concern for what was happening on the ground.

"It was difficult for the Brits to have the support they needed," she said. "The ground elements in Helmand were so isolated that they would get shot at and mortared.

"That has changed now. It was a case of having friendly guys there, and we needed to go out and take care of them. You can only lose so many guys before you say, 'This is ridiculous, we are going to do something about it'."

The US airborne task force consists of six Apaches, based at Kandahar, in the neighbouring province to Helmand. Although the British now have a similar number of attack helicopters in Helmand, pressure is such that the Americans felt it necessary to intervene.

Lt Col Dan Huggins, the commanding officer of the airborne task force, said: "Helmand was at a point where the Taliban got too comfortable. They had too much freedom of movement."

Yesterday, Lt Col Charlie Mayo, a spokesman for British forces in Helmand, accepted that the Americans might have been concerned that British troops had been left isolated. He said he did not know who took the final decision on the change of tactics, but said British commanders had agreed that the time had come to mount more aggressive operations.

Kilder:

• The Telegraph 29/4 2007: US aircrews show Taliban no mercy
• The Telegraph 29/4 2007: US 'halted Taliban' by ending British ceasefire

Irak: Fremgang i Anbar-provinsen

Siden September har al Qaedas terror-taktik i større og større grad ført til at grupper der tidligere tog del i kampen mod de amerikanske styrker nu er begyndt at samarbejde med disse og den irakiske regering:

Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas, shops and schools are reopening, police forces are growing and the insurgency appears to be in retreat.

“Many people are challenging the insurgents,” said the governor of Anbar, Maamoon S. Rahid, though he quickly added, “We know we haven’t eliminated the threat 100 percent.”

Many Sunni tribal leaders, once openly hostile to the American presence, have formed a united front with American and Iraqi government forces against Al
Qaeda in Mesopotamia. With the tribal leaders’ encouragement, thousands of local residents have joined the police force. About 10,000 police officers are now in Anbar, up from several thousand a year ago. During the same period, the police force here in Ramadi, the provincial capital, has grown from fewer than 200 to about 4,500, American military officials say.

At the same time, American and Iraqi forces have been conducting sweeps of insurgent strongholds, particularly in and around Ramadi, leaving behind a network of police stations and military garrisons, a strategy that is also being used in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, as part of its new security plan...

...some American officials readily acknowledge that they have entered an uncertain marriage of convenience with the tribes, some of whom were themselves involved in the insurgency, to one extent or another. American officials are also negotiating with elements of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a leading insurgent group in Anbar, to join their fight against Al Qaeda...

“There are some people who would say we’ve won the war out here,” said Col. John. A. Koenig, a planning officer for the Marines who oversees governing and economic development issues in Anbar. “I’m cautiously optimistic as we’re going forward.”

For most of the past few years, the Government Center in downtown Ramadi, the seat of the provincial government, was under near-continual siege by insurgents, who reduced it to little more than a bullet-ridden bunker of broken concrete, sandbags and trapped marines. Entering meant sprinting from an armored vehicle to the front door of the building to evade snipers’ bullets.

Now, however, the compound and nearby buildings are being renovated to create offices for the provincial administration, council and governor. Hotels are being built next door for the waves of visitors the government expects once it is back in business.

On the roof of the main building, Capt. Jason Arthaud, commander of Company B, First Battalion, Sixth Marines, said the building had taken no sniper fire since November. “Just hours of peace and quiet,” he deadpanned. “And boredom.”

Violence has fallen swiftly throughout Ramadi and its sprawling rural environs, residents and American and Iraqi officials said. Last summer, the American military recorded as many as 25 violent acts a day in the Ramadi region, ranging from shootings and kidnappings to roadside bombs and suicide attacks. In the past several weeks, the average has dropped to four acts of violence a day, American military officials said...

The turnabout began last September, when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Among the council’s founders were members of the Abu Ali Jassem tribe, based in a rural area of northern Ramadi. The tribe’s leader, Sheik Tahir Sabbar Badawie, said in a recent interview that members of his tribe had fought in the insurgency that kept the Americans pinned down on their bases in Anbar for most of the last four years.

“If your country was occupied by Iraq, would you fight?” he asked. “Enough said.”

But while the anti-American sheiks in Anbar and Al Qaeda both opposed the Americans, their goals were different. The sheiks were part of a relatively moderate front that sought to drive the Americans out of Iraq; some were also fighting to restore Sunni Arab power. But Al Qaeda wanted to go even further and impose a fundamentalist Islamic state in Anbar, a plan that many of the sheiks did not share.

Al Qaeda’s fighters began to use killing, intimidation and financial coercion to divide the tribes and win support for their agenda. They killed about 210 people in the Abu Ali Jassem tribe alone and kidnapped others, demanding ransoms as high as $65,000 per person, Sheik Badawie said...

The council sought financial and military support from the Iraqi and American governments. In return the sheiks volunteered hundreds of tribesmen for duty as police officers and agreed to allow the construction of joint American-Iraqi police and military outposts throughout their tribal territories.

A similar dynamic is playing out elsewhere in Anbar, a desert region the size of New York State that stretches west of Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders. Tribal cooperation with the American and Iraqi commands has led to expanded police forces in the cities of Husayba, Hit, Rutba, Baghdadi and Falluja, officials say.

With the help of the Anbar sheiks, the military equation immediately became simpler for the Americans in Ramadi. The number of enemies they faced suddenly diminished, American and Iraqi officials said. They were able to move more freely through large areas. With the addition of the tribal recruits, the Americans had enough troops to build and operate garrisons in areas they cleared, many of which had never seen any government security presence before. And the Americans were now fighting alongside people with a deep knowledge of the local population and terrain, and with a sense of duty, vengeance and righteousness.

“We know this area, we know the best way to talk to the people and get information from them,” said Capt. Hussein Abd Nusaif, a police commander in a neighborhood in western Ramadi, who carries a Kalashnikov with an Al Capone-style “snail drum” magazine. “We are not afraid of Al Qaeda. We will fight them anywhere and anytime.”

Beginning last summer and continuing through March, the American-led joint forces pressed into the city, block by block, and swept the farmlands on its outskirts. In many places the troops met fierce resistance. Scores of American and Iraqi security troops were killed or wounded. The Ramadi region is essentially a police state now, with some 6,000 American troops, 4,000 Iraqi soldiers and 4,500 Iraqi police officers, including an auxiliary police force of about 2,000, all local tribesmen, known as the Provincial Security Force. The security forces are garrisoned in more than 65 police stations, military bases and joint American-Iraqi combat outposts, up from no more than 10 a year ago. The population of the city is officially about 400,000, though the current number appears to be much lower...

American commanders see the progress in Anbar as a bellwether for the rest of country. “One of the things I worry about in Baghdad is we won’t have the time to do the same kind of thing,” Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of day-to-day war operations in Iraq, said in an interview here...

...there is a new sense of commitment by the police, American and Iraqi officials say, in part because they are patrolling their own neighborhoods. Many were motivated to join after they or their communities were attacked by Al Qaeda, and their successes have made them an even greater target of insurgent car bombs and suicide attacks.

Abd Muhammad Khalaf, 28, a policeman in the Jazeera district on Ramadi’s northern edge, is typical. He joined the police after Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia killed two of his brothers, he said. “I will die when God wills it,” he said. “But before I die, I will support my friends and kill some terrorists.”

Some tribal leaders now working with the Americans say they harbor deep resentment toward the Shiite-led administration of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, accusing it of pursuing a sectarian agenda. Yet they also say they are invested in the democratic process now.

After boycotting the national elections in 2005, many are now planning to participate in the next round of provincial elections, which have yet to be scheduled, as a way to build on the political and military gains they have made in recent months.

“Since I was a little boy, I have seen nothing but warfare — against the Kurds, Iranians, Kuwait, the Americans,” Sheik Badawie said. “We are tired of war. We are going to fight through the ballot box.”

Already, tribal leaders are participating in local councils that have been formed recently throughout the Ramadi area under the guidance of the American military.

Kilder:

• New York Times 29/4 2007: Uneasy Alliance Is Taming One Insurgent Bastion

Israel: Landsforrædder-sag mod arabisk Kneset-medlem velkommen

Nedenstående klumme fra Caroline Glicks hånd er fra før anklagepunkterne mod det tidligere Knesset-medlem, eks-kommunisten Azmi Bishara blev offentliggjort. Den er et frontalt angreb på den israelske venstrefløj og dens eftergivenhedspolitik overfor islamisk terrorisme:

...even without knowing the specifics of Bishara's crimes, two notable aspects of his case stand out. First, the very decision of Israel's investigatory arms to open a probe against Bishara for acts of treason is a welcome development. It marks a clear departure from their past treatment of Bishara and other Arab parliamentarians who have openly worked on behalf of Israel's enemies in recent years.

Bishara has acted as an overt Syrian and Hizbullah flunky ever since he was first elected to the Knesset in 1996. In contravention of Israeli law, which bars unauthorized travel to enemy states, in 1997 he traveled to Syria and met with then-vice president Abdel Halim Khadam. In 1998 he returned to Syria to meet with then-foreign minister Farouk a-Shara. Throughout the 1990s he organized illegal visits for Israeli Arabs to Syria.

Bishara's high profile visit to Syria and Lebanon last September along with his Knesset colleagues Jamal Zahalka and Wasal Taha, when he praised Hizbullah and Syria, was but an escalation of his actions on behalf of Hizbullah and Syria in the wake of the IDF's withdrawal from south Lebanon in May 2000. After that withdrawal, Bishara praised Hizbullah at a conference of Israeli Arabs in Umm el-Fahm, saying, "Hizbullah is entitled to take pride in its achievement in humiliating Israel."

He repeated the statement in 2001 during another illicit visit to Syria. There he praised Iran's proxy army in Lebanon while standing next to Hizbullah commander Hassan Nasrallah at a memorial ceremony for Hafez Assad.

Bishara's work on behalf of Syria and Hizbullah was but one aspect of his treasonous behavior. He has also championed the unification of Israeli Arabs with the alestinians in their war against Israel. According to the Orr Commission, Bishara played a central role in inciting the Israeli Arab riots of October 2000.

Although all of these acts reeked of treason, Israel's legal and security establishment demurred from addressing them. Rather than investigate him for treason, he was probed for incitement or supporting terrorist organizations or visiting enemy states
without permission. Due to his political prominence, time after time, he was given a pass.

And Bishara's was not a unique case. Since 1994, MK Ahmed Tibi has openly acted as an agent of the Fatah terror organization. Last month MKs Muhammad Barakei and Ibrahim Sarsour participated in a conference in Ramallah where they called on the Palestinians to conquer Jerusalem. No criminal probes have been initiated against any of these men.

Is there reason to hope that Bishara's investigation signals a new willingness on the part of the legal and political establishment to put an end to the culture of treason that has come to dominate Israeli Arab society?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question can be inferred from the second notable aspect of the Bishara case, namely, that he has fled the country.

The law on treason stipulates that members of Knesset suspected of being traitors do not enjoy parliamentary immunity from investigation or prosecution. The police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) could have arrested Bishara for the duration of the probe against him. Yet not only did they not place him under arrest, they allowed him to leave the country.

Some have attributed the authorities' decision to permit Bishara to leave to a bad judgment call. But this view a misses the mark. It is far more likely that the decision to allow him to flee justice stemmed from institutional weakness.

To date, attempts by the Knesset, the police and the Shin Bet to enforce the laws of the state against Arab politicians and radical leftists who act against the state have been stymied by the Israeli establishment. That establishment is comprised of the academic and cultural elites who embrace them and the heads of the state prosecution, the Supreme Court justices and Israel's political leadership who protect them...

AND HERE lies the heart of the problem. Bishara and his associates have only been able to act as they have because the Israeli establishment has allowed them to do so. And the Israeli establishment has allowed them to do so because since the inauguration of the Oslo peace process with the PLO in 1993, that establishment has been corrupted and dominated by anti-Zionists.

Since Deputy Premier Shimon Peres was the father of the Oslo process, it can come as no surprise that he has been the central engine behind the corruption of the establishment. Today, Peres openly mocks the rule of law by basing his campaign for the presidency on his promise to pardon Marwan Barghouti, the imprisoned Fatah commander and convicted mass murderer.

After inaugurating the Oslo process, then-foreign minister Peres worked steadily to undercut the Zionist foundations of the state bureaucracy. The most obvious example of this was his decision to close the Foreign Ministry's public diplomacy department. That department had been responsible for making Israel's case to the world based on Jewish history, the history of the Zionist movement, and the history of the Arab world's war against the Jews in the Land of Israel.

For Peres, ensuring public support for his embrace of the PLO - a terrorist organization founded in 1964 to destroy Israel and to nullify the Jewish people's right to self-determination in its homeland - necessitated a rejection of history. Still today, Peres insists that history must be rejected. Just two weeks ago he said, "If it were up to me, I would cancel all history studies."

Under the thrall of Oslo and the control of anti-Zionist professors, the Education Ministry quickly began toeing the line. Now led by Yuli Tamir, one of the founders of Peace Now, the ministry last month announced that in accordance with her educational vision, school children will learn fewer facts, since there is no real historic truth.

Kilder:

• The Jerusalem Post 26/4 2007: Column One: Bishara and the Old Guard

Israel: Arabisk snigmord på Knesset-medlem slår fejl

Det palæstinensiske nyhedsmedie Maan rapporterer, at en terrorgruppe med forbindelser til den "moderate" arabiske-palæstinensiske præsident Abbas har forsøgt at snigmyrde et medlem af det israelske parlament Knesset:

A group linked to al-Fatah tried to kill in early March a member of the Knesset in the centre of Tel Aviv, but the killers murdered by mistake a famous doctor of the Ichilov medical centre, David Niv.

Palestinian news agency Maan attributes the incident to an up-to-now unknown 'Buraq Army', reportedly linked with the al-Aqsa Brigades and al-Fatah. A statement of that group which Maan received specifies that the attack had been prepared for weeks and that the commandos acted at the Aluf Sadeh junction in the centre of Tel Aviv.

The statement did not reveal who was the targeted Knesset member, nor how the error of the mistaken identity occurred.

The killing of Doctor Niv - shot while he was driving his car at the end of the working day - remains a mystery for the Israeli police. One of the investigators told Maariv that the statement released by the Palestinian militants does not seem credible.

Kilder:

• ANSA 27/4 2007: MIDEAST: FATAH WANTED TO KILL KNESSET MEMBER, MEDIA

Denny Krane: Blow them up

Et sidste indlæg for idag, en aflsappende stund i selskab med Denny Krane, den fiktive ejer af et advokatfirma i serien Boston Legal, og seriens absolutte lyspunkt efter min mening. Talen falder på Barack Obama....

Saudiarabien: Racisme og fattigdom i verdens største oliemagt

Ed Hussain, en radikal muslim fra London, havde glædet sig til at komme til Saudiarabien, det nærmeste en rettroende muslim kan komme himlen uden at dø. Troens realitet viste sig at være en noget anden end han havde håbet:

My first clash with Saudi culture came when, being driven around in a bulletproof jeep, I saw African women in black abayas tending to the rubbish bins outside restaurants, residences and other busy places.

"Why are there so many black cleaners on the streets?" I asked the driver. The driver laughed. "They're not cleaners. They are scavengers; women who collect cardboard from all across Jeddah and then sell it. They also collect bottles, drink cans, bags."

"You don't find it objectionable that poor immigrant women work in such undignified and unhygienic conditions on the streets?"

"Believe me, there are worse jobs women can do."

Though it grieves me to admit it, the driver was right. In Saudi Arabia women indeed did do worse jobs. Many of the African women lived in an area of Jeddah known as Karantina, a slum full of poverty, prostitution and disease.

A visit to Karantina, a perversion of the term "quarantine", was one of the worst of my life. Thousands of people who had been living in Saudi Arabia for decades, but without passports, had been deemed "illegal" by the government and, quite literally, abandoned under a flyover.

A non-Saudi black student I had met at the British Council accompanied me.

"Last week a woman gave birth here," he said, pointing to a ramshackle cardboard shanty. Disturbed, I now realised that the materials I had seen those women carrying were not always for sale but for shelter.

I had never expected to see such naked poverty in Saudi Arabia.

At that moment it dawned on me that Britain, my home, had given refuge to thousands of black Africans from Somalia and Sudan: I had seen them in their droves in Whitechapel. They prayed, had their own mosques, were free and were given government housing.

Many Muslims enjoyed a better lifestyle in non-Muslim Britain than they did in Muslim Saudi Arabia. At that moment I longed to be home again.

All my talk of ummah seemed so juvenile now. It was only in the comfort of Britain that Islamists could come out with such radical utopian slogans as one government, one ever expanding country, for one Muslim nation. The racist reality of the Arab psyche would never accept black and white people as equal.

Standing in Karantina that day, I reminisced and marvelled over what I previously considered as wrong: mixed-race, mixed-religion marriages. The students to whom I described life in modern multi-ethnic Britain could not comprehend that such a world of freedom, away from "normal" Saudi racism, could exist.

Racism was an integral part of Saudi society. My students often used the word "nigger" to describe black people. Even dark-skinned Arabs were considered inferior to their lighter-skinned cousins. I was living in the world's most avowedly Muslim country, yet I found it anything but. I was appalled by the imposition of Wahhabism in the public realm, something I had implicitly sought as an Islamist.

Dette i verdens største oliemagt, der skovler milliarder ind på oliesalg hver uge. Læs det hele selv.

En malaysisk blogger, der tog på pilgrimsfærd til Mekka fandt sorte tigger-børn helt inde ved al Haram, den store moske der omslutter Kaabaen. Han gad ikke give dem penge, men tog billeder af dem istedet. Se et af dem her.

Kilder:

• Times Online 21/4 2007: How a British jihadi saw the light

Pakistan: al Qaeda-ledelsen under angreb?

En mystisk eksplosion i landsbyen Danda Saidgai har kostet fire livet og såret tre. Den pakistanske regering hævder, det er en "arbejdsulykke" blandt islamiske terrorister, mens lokale påstår det var et luftangreb. Bill Roggio spekulerer:

Danda Saidgai is a small town on the Afghan border which sits about 10 miles north of Miranshah, the district seat of North Waziristan. This is the heart of Taliban country. The village has been the scene of multiple attacks by Pakistani and U.S. Special Forces. The most high profile attack occurred in March of 2006, when the U.S. Special Operations Command unleashed Task Force 145, the specialized al Qaeda hunter killer teams, against a sprawling al Qaeda training and military complex which housed hundreds of foreign fighters.

The complex in question was a specialized al Qaeda camp used to train the elite Black Guard, the praetorian guard unit designated to protect Osama bin Laden. Task Force 145 struck with air and ground forces, and killed 45 al-Qaeda recruits as well as Imam Asad, a senior Chechen al-Qaeda commander and associate of Chechen al Qaeda leader Shamil Basayev, who was killed in June of 2006. Asad was the camp commander and at the time was believed to have been the commander of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, a position of honor and power within al-Qaeda due to the importance of the country to the organization.

Weeks prior to the strike on the Black Guard camp, a Task Force 145 operation was launched into Danda Saidgai, and directed at the home of Maulana Noor Mohammad. Task Force 145 killed 8 Taliban and captured 5 others during the raid.

According to the Associated Press, Daily Times, Dawn and other Pakistani newspapers, the two religious schools (called Darul Uloom Hassania) that were purportedly hit were owned by none other than Maulana Noor Mohammad, whose home was raid last year. Dawn notes that Noor Mohammed "signed a peace deal with the government in September last year." That peace deal is the infamous Waziristan Accord, which the Pakistani government ceded control of North Waziristan to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The Associated Press noted the home that was struck was owned by Habib Ullah, who "declined to discuss his occupation or answer other questions" and "said he was staying at another house in the village when the attack happened." Habib Ullah's guests were sleeping in his courtyard. The Daily Times reported that the Taliban are furious over the strike and have threatened to withdraw from the Waziristan Accord. Abdullah Farhad, "a spokesman for pro-Taliban tribal militants" noted that the Taliban are calling a shura (or council) to discuss the future of the Waziristan Accord.

While it is unclear if the latest Danda Saidgai incident was the result of a work accident, a ground rocket assault from Afghanistan, or a U.S. air strike, the unlikely coincidence of Noor Mohammed's involvement and the recent history of the region point to some type of U.S. operation. Several strikes of this nature have occurred over the past year, including the Zamazola air strike in South Waziristan in January of 2007, the Chingai attack in Bajaur in October of 2006 and the Damadola
assault in Bajaur in January of 2006.

Each of the strikes targeted senior al Qaeda leaders and known terrorist camps in Pakistan's tribal areas. In the summer of last year, an American military intelligence source informed us there were 22 al Qaeda camps int eh tribal areas. The number is only growing.

Kilder:

• The Fourth Rail 28/4 2007: Taliban/al Qaeda camp targeted in North Waziristan

Israel: Arabisk medlem af Knesset anklages for landsforrædderi

Azmi Bishara var den eks-kommunistiske første arabiske kandidat til premierminister-posten i Israels historie i 90erne, og formåede med en vis karisma at samle arabiske stemmer op ved hvert valg efter han var med til at grundlægge det national-socialistiske arabiske parti Balad. I torsdags blev anklagerne mod ham for landsforrædderi og kollaboration med terrorbevægelsen Hezbollah offentliggjort:

Passing information to and helping the enemy while Israel is in a state of war, contact with enemy agents, laundering of sizeable amounts of money - these are some of the serious charges which hang over former Knesset member Azmi Bishara, the charismatic and popular leader of the Arab Israeli party Balad.

Bishara risks a sentence of ten years in jail. According to a jurist of the Israeli radio, he risks capital punishment in theory, considering the state of war.

A court in Petah Tikva yesterday authorised the publication of the accusations faced by Bishara, partially revoking the censorship imposed on the case. A total revoking is expected in about a week.

Bishara is also suspected of having received large amounts of money from abroad, part of them transferred in his personal account during the war in Lebanon last summer. Bishira, whose resignation from the Knesset entered into force yesterday, denied the accusations against him from Qatar in an interview with the Al Jazeera television. He said he was victim of a campaign for seven years against him and his voters for the political ideas expressed.

Bishara has been for some time under investigation of the police and in the eye of Shin-Bet, the secret security service for his unauthorized trips in Syria and Lebanon, states still formally at war with Israel, which he made taking advantage of the parliamentary immunity.

Photos of a ceremony showing Bishara next to Skeikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader in Lebanon, sparked furious protests in Israel and calls to revoke Bisharàs parliamentary immunity.

Kilder:

• ANSA 26/4 2007: ISRAEL: BISHARA ACCUSED OF WORKING FOR HEZBOLLAH

Nigeria: Lesbisk orgie viser sig at være fundraiser. Forfølgelse forgæves

Tidligere på ugen kunne kilder i Nigeria rapportere om, at en lokal lesbisk dame havde giftet sig med fire andre kvinder for at provokere i forhold til de nordlige nigerianske delstater, hvor Sharia er lov. Sharia er den islamiske lovkodeks, der tillader mænd - og kun mænd - at gifte sig med fire kvinder. Resultatet var hun og hendes koner var blevet tvunget under jorden, mens det theater hvor de blev gift var blevet jævnet med jorden af myndighederne.

Nu viser det sig, at damen ikke er lesbisk, og ikke er blevet viet til de fire andre kvinder:

Aunty Maiduguri insisted she "never practised" lesbianism.

"It's a lie, it's unbelievable. I have never in my life seen where a lady can marry four ladies at one time.

"I have never practised - never heard the word 'lesbian' - truly," she told the BBC in Kano.

She said the elaborate wedding celebration held on Sunday was actually a ceremony to raise money for the women's weddings to men.

She said: "One of them gets a husband to marry so I organised in order to get something sorted."..

Eyewitnesses said there was a large turnout and guests were given leaflets as a souvenir showing Aunty Maiduguri surrounded by her "brides".

But she said the words on the pamphlets meant "love and understanding".

"They are my sisters, what will I put apart from love and understanding or love and kindness?"

Islamiske selvtægtsmænd slår til baseret på rygter. Fem kvinder er under jorden, et theater er jævnet med jorden, og læsbiske forhold bliver stadig straffet med døden ved stening.

Kilder:

• BBC 28/7 2007: Nigeria 'lesbian wedding' denied

Israel: HAMAS bryder våbenhvile, lider nederlag

HAMAS erklærede torsdag, at de genoptog den våbenhvile i Gaza-striben, som terror-organisationen selv brød med en massiv byge af raketter og granater ind over grænsen til Israel tirsdag.

Idag, lørdag, kom så et eksempel på, hvordan HAMAS overholder våbenhviler:

In Saturday's incident, four armed Palestinians tried to plant a bomb near the Gaza-Israel border and were killed by Israeli troops, the Israeli military said. Palestinian militants have attempted to plant more than 50 bombs near the border since the ceasefire took effect, the army said.

Palestinian medics said they found three bodies in the area and that a fourth person was seriously wounded. Hamas said the three dead were members of its military wing.

Kilder:

• DR 26/4 2007: Hamas vil genoptage våbenhvile
• Brandonsun.com 28/4 2007: Troops shoot and kill at least three Hamas militants in thwarted border attack

Somalia: Mogadishu vender langsomt tilbage til normaliteten

...sådan da. Efter de islamiske styrker torsdag endelig gav op og flygtede fra Mogadishus nordlige forstæder, efterladende 1.300 dræbte, er befolkningen gået igang med at begrave ligene. Samtidig har regeringsstyrkerne iværksat en serie husundersøgelser for at fange eventuelle islamiske militsmænd, der har brudt krigens love og har forsøgt at klæde sig ud som civilister:

There are reports that men are fleeing northern districts in case they are arrested as insurgents.

"They are moving from house to house, arresting people," Ibrahim Sheikh Mao, a resident of the Suuqahoola district told AFP.

He said the Ethiopians were studying people's elbows and hands for bruises or marks to indicate that they had been firing weapons.

Baggrunden til husundersøgelserne er interessant. Da Somalia er et udpræget klan-samfund, har kampene også haft en udpræget klan-karakter. Mens det historisk set især har været Hawiya-klanen der har domineret Somalia (selv om klanen kun står for 25% af Somalias befolkning), så har denne ikke kunnet presse sin dominans igennem i Somalias midlertidige regering.

Istedet gik klanen samlet ind og støttede de Islamiske Domstole, og kom hen over sommeren 2006 tæt på igen at tage hele Somalia i besiddelse og undertrykke de 75% af Somalierne der tilhører andre klaner. Med interventionen af Ethiopiske styrker blev dette power-play kastet over ende, og De Islamiske Domstole led en serie katastrofale nederlag i december 2006 og januar 2007.

Med støtte fra islamiske terrorister fra hele den muslimske verden forsøgte Hawiye-klanen så med basis i sine højborge i blandt andet Mogadishus nordlige forstæder at genvinde kontrollen med hovedstaden. Efter flere omgange af heftige kampe gennem de sidste to måneder er dette forsøg nu slået ned, til en pris af 1.300 menneskeliv.

Et kort, der viser hvor somaliernes klaner er bosatte kan ses her.

Kilder:

• BBC 27/4 2007: Somalis move bodies after clashes
• BBC 26/4 2007: Clan divisions behind Somali violence

Pakistan: 22 dræbt under selvmordsbomber-angreb på indenrigsminister

I Pakistan er endnu et forsøg fra islamiske terroristers side på at slå et højtstående regeringsmedlem ihjel slået fejl:

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao had finished giving a speech at the meeting in Charsadda when the blast occurred, a police official said.

Mr Sherpao was taken to hospital in nearby Peshawar with minor injuries, official Mohammed Khan told AP...

According to an unnamed intelligence official quoted by AP, security guards blocked the attacker as he tried to get close to the minister.

The attacker detonated the bomb moments later, the source said...

Gen Musharraf narrowly escaped injury in two bombings which claimed 17 lives in Rawalpindi in December 2003.

In July 2004, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz survived a suicide bombing as he campaigned for a by-election west of the capital, Islamabad. Eight people were killed.

De to angreb på General Musharraf var planlagt af Nashwan abd al-Razzaq abd al-Baqi, den top-al Qaeda-leder der tidligere på ugen blev overført til Guantanamo.

Kilder:

• BBC 28/7 2007: Bomb kills 22 at Pakistani rally

Irak: Islamiske terrorister dræber 55

Endnu et i en lang række af islamiske massemord, kun to uger efter et lignende angreb dræbte 42 i samme by:

A car bomb has killed at least 55 people and injured about 70 in the Iraqi city of Karbala, in the second such attack in two weeks.

The city houses two of Shia Islam's holiest shrines and reports say the bomb went off on a busy street as people headed to pray.

The bomb exploded near the golden-domed mosque of the Imam Abbas shrine, which is protected by a barrier.

Kilde:

• BBC 28/4 2007: Bomb kills many in Iraq holy city

Afghanistan: 11 Talebanere dræbt i ildkamp

Lørdag prøvede en bande Talebanere at angribe et lokalt regeringskontor i Alishar-distriktet i Khost-provinsen. Det viste sig at være en dårlig ide:

A one-hour gun battle between police units and Taleban insurgents was followed by a Nato air strike.

"It was the Nato helicopters who caused the major blow to the enemy," provincial police spokesman Wazir Badshah told the AFP news agency.

A Nato spokeswoman said there were no civilian or military casualties...

At least three police are said to have been wounded in the gun battle.

Eyewitness Mohammad Amin told AFP he had counted 13 bodies after the attack. "They were almost in a line which makes me think they were running one after another as they came under aerial attack," he said.

Kilde:

• BBC 28/4 2007: 'Taleban killed' in Afghan clash

Syrien: 300 æresdrab på kvinder hvert år.

For at sætte det i perspektiv, så anslår FN, at der foretages op mod 5.000 æresdrab på piger og kvinder om året.

Up to three hundred women are killed each year in Syria for "motives of honour" by their family members, with the full approval of relatives. As was the case of the two young sisters who had their throats slit by their brother in Al-Qamishli, a town in north-eastern Syria along the Turkish border, earlier this month. Both breastfeeding new mums, the victims were suspected by their male sibling of having extramarital affairs, according to Syrian Women Observatory website, which notes that in Syria, with an estimated population of 20 million, about half of the murders committed each year are against women, around 200-300 each year...

Honour is a core value in the Arab-Islamic societies. This helps explain the extreme and violent behaviour used to protect it. Such an example was the September 2005 murder of a young Druze woman, Huda Abu 'Asali, by members of her family in southern Syria.

The crime - provoked by her marriage to a man outside her ethnic group - sparked outrage and prompted the independent local website ''Syrian Women" to launch a sweeping campaign with the support of Syrian Muslim and Christian clerics as well attorneys, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens. The main goal of the campaign is to ammend various articles of the Syrian penal code which grant immunity or slashed sentences to men who murder female relatives. Local human rights advocate Bassam al-Kadi says discussion of honour killing was banned in the Syrian media until two years ago...

Social Affairs and Labour Minister Diala Hajj Aref recently declared that honour crimes were "rare incidents" blown out of proportion by the media. Two days later, teenager Salam Shiekmous Dokko was killed by her brother, who suspected her of dating a young man. The medical examiner found she was a virgin.

Kilder:

• ANSA 26/4 2007: Syria on razor´s edge with honour killings

Saudiarabien: Enormt islamisk terror-komplot forhindret

Saudiarabien kunne i går bekendtgøre, at landets sikkerhedsstyrker havde forhindret en serie af større terrorangreb i landet, og at de i en serie af razziaer havde arresteret 172 terrorister og beslaglagt store våbenlagre og over 160 millioner kroner i kontanter.

Arrestationerne begyndte efter det totalt fejlslagne forsøg i februar sidste år på at angribe Saudiarabiens største olieraffinaderi i Abqaiq med to selvmords-bilbomber. Afhøringer af de første arrestanter førte til arrestationen af 40 terrorister måneden efter, og siden har den ene serie af razziaer givet efterretninger der har ført til den næste serie af razziaer. Sammenlagt er seks terror-celler blevet sprængt ved arrestationen af sammenlagt 172 terrorister, alene én celle havde 61 medlemmer.

Målene for terroristernes planlagte angreb var varierede:

1. Et fængsel, der skulle stormes så dets fanger kunne blive befriet
2. Olieinstallationer
3. Offentlige figurer
4. Militære anlæg såvel i Saudiarabien som i udlandet.

Nogle af terroristerne var blevet sendt til udlandet for at få pilot-undervisning, selv om de saudiske myndigheder dog intet siger om, om der her var tale om forberedelser til 911-type fly-selvmordsangreb. Det eneste der manglede var at terroristerne fastsatte tidspunktet for angrebene.

Efter det angrebet på olieraffinaderiet i Abqaiq i Saudiarabien i februar 2006 fulgte et lignende angreb på et olieraffinaderi og et olielager i Yemen i september samme år. Også dette anvendte to selvmords-bilbomber. Også dette slog fejl. Man kan derfor uden de store problemer forvente flere forsøg i samme genre inden for det næste år.

Kilder:

• CNN 27/4 2007: Saudis say they´ve busted massive terror plot
• BBC 27/4 2007: Saudis foil `air attack plotters´
• UPI 27/4 2007: Saudis arrest 172 terror suspects
• VOA 27/4 2007: Saudi arabia says 172 suspected militants arrested
• ABC 27/4 2007: Saudis Arrest 172 Militants in Oil Plot

Libanon: Snigmord på to uskyldige

Som led i en serie mord på kristne og andre oppositionelle i Libanon siden 2003 blev Libanon i mandags udsat for kidnapningen af et 25-årige Ziad Qabalan og 12-årige Ziad Ghandour. Ligene af de to gidsler, begge henrettet med 3 kugler i hovedet, blev fundet sydøst for hovedstaden Beirut 3 dage senere, torsdag.

Såvel Ziad Qabalan som Ziad Ghandours far er medlemmer af det hovedsageligt drusiske Progressive Socialistparti, der er støtteparti for den pro-vestlige regering under Fouad Siniora, og mordene ses som hævnakt fra en shiitisk klan allieret med den pro-syriske terrorbevægelse Hezbollah. Denne mistede selv et medlem under et forsøg på at styrte den demokratisk valgte regering i januar.

Mistanken mod Hezbollah styrkes yderligere ved, at de to mordofres bil blev fundet i et shiitisk kvarter i Beirut tidligere på ugen. Over 80 mennesker er blevet afhørt i sagen, men de tre hovedmistænkte er flygtet til Syrien.

Kilder:

• BBC 26/4 2007: `Kidnapped´ Lebanese found dead
• YaLibnan 27/4 2007: Update on the murder of the 2 youths in Lebanon

Irak: Top al-Qaeda leder fanget

En begivenhed, der fandt sted sidst på året sidste år, men som først nu er blevet offentliggjort: Nashwan abd al-Razzaq abd al-Baqi, bedre kendt under sit nom de guerre Abd al-Hadi al-Iraki, (al-Hadis slave fra Irak) er blevet fanget af CIA da han forsøgte at krydse ind i Irak fra Iran.

al-Baqi startede sin karriere i Saddam Husseins hær i Irak, hvor han nåede rangen af major før han rejste til Afghanistan i starten af 1990´erne. Her havde han en lang karriere som kommandant for diverse terror-træningslejre før han i slutningen af det årti blev medlem af al Qaeda. Siden avancerede han til at blive medlem af både al Qaedas shura-råd (det rådgivende organ for Osama bin Laden) og al-Qaedas militære komité. I sidstnævnte position stod han blandt andet for en række angreb fra Pakistans stammeområder ind i Afghanistan, forsøg på at snigmyrde Pakistans præsident Musharraf, samt selvmordsbombeangrebene i London i sommeren 2006.

Efter befrielsen af Irak i 2003 stod han for forbindelsen til al-Qaeda i Irak, og da han blev arresteret sidst i 2006 var han på vej for at tage kommando over denne, åbenbart fordi al Qaeda ikke havde været voldeligt nok indtil da.

En interessant detalje: det lader til, at han også har voret involveret i at lave ballade i Iran. Man kan spekulere i, om Iranerne derfor har fundet det opportunt at stikke ham til USA.

Kilder:

• BBC 27/4 2007: US holds `senior al Qaeda figure´
• BBC 27/4 2007: Profile: Abd al-Haid al-Iraqi
• TimesOnline 28/4: 7/7 `mastermind´ seized in Iraq

Irak: splittelse i den Baathistiske del af "modstanden"

I Irak er der tegn på, at den del af "modstanden" der er styret af afdøde Saddam Husseins nationalsocialistiske Baath-parti er kommet ud i alvorlige interne stridigheder:

On one side of the power struggle is Izzat Ibrahim, the highest-ranking member of Hussein's inner circle to evade capture. The king of clubs in the Bush administration's "deck of cards" that depicted the most wanted members of Hussein's regime, Ibrahim was Hussein's chief deputy and has been viewed as a ringleader in the insurgency.

The forces apparently seeking to oust Ibrahim from his leadership of the Baath movement are led by a former general in Hussein's army, Mohammed Yunis Ahmad.

U.S. officials learned of the infighting after a meeting in the northwestern Syrian town of Halab that military and intelligence officials believe involved Baath Party leaders.

The meeting in January, shortly after Hussein's hanging, led to an apparent split in the movement...

Although accounts of the meeting in Halab vary, U.S. military and intelligence officials said partisans loyal to Yunis "hijacked" the session and expelled Ibrahim and others affiliated with him, declaring the ex-general the new party head.

The U.S. military official said Ibrahim, who was not at the meeting, quickly responded by issuing a communique denouncing Yunis and declaring that he was no longer a member of the party."

Yunis orchestrated this meeting and did so without what appears to be the consent of Ibrahim," the military official said. "There was a walkout at the meeting, and clearly Ibrahim's camp and his followers, or those who thought that the meeting was going to do harm to Ibrahim and their interests, walked away from it. Hence you have the split."

Der er imidlertid uenighed om, hvordan de interne stridigheder i "modstanden" skal tolkes. Afhængigt af visse kilder man lytter til kan det således ses som en rent intern begivenhed, hvor Baath-partiets militære gren under Yunis har taget over fra den politiske gren under Ibrahim, eller der er tale om en begivenhed med regionale konsekvenser. I sidste tilfælde ses Ibrahim som repræsentant for en mere uafhængig Baath-linie baseret på tilgængelighed til financielle midler uafhængigt af værtslandet Syrien, mens Yunus, der ikke har tilsvarende uafhængige kilder, ses som Syriens lakaj.

I sidstnævnte tilfælde er der så tilløb til, at Syrien prøver at få fuld kontrol over Baath-partiet, så det kan bruges som forhandlingsbrik i en studehandel med USA, der skal sørge for at retsforfølgelsen af Syriens diktator Bashar Assad for mordet på den tidligere libanesiske premierminister Rafiq Hariri bliver opgivet.

Uanset hvad har den irakiske regering imidlertid optaget kontakt med Yunis, og afventer hvilke resultater en sådan kontakt kan føre til.

Saudi Arabien: AIDS og HIV eksploderer

Mens islamister prædiker om, hvordan der skal total tildækning af kvinder til for at bekæmpe voldtægt, sex-chikane og kønssygdomme, så lader verdens mest islamisk regerede land til ikke helt at have haft succes med det. Alene over de seneste 4 år er antallet af AIDS og HIV-tilfælde i landet ottedoblet (kilder: 1, 2 og 3):

Aug 2002	1,285
Dec 2003	6,787
2004	7,800
Jun 2006	10,000+

Dette er de officielle tal. Uofficielt er det reelle tal på 80.000, og dette er med total kønsapartheid og deportation af samtlige udlændinge, der er smittede. Sammenlign med det ifølge islamiske normer utilstrækkeligt kønsfascistiske Danmark (hvor kvinder forøvrigt iflg Saudiske kilder gifter sig med hunde og æsler), hvor det samlede antal AIDS og HIV-smittede ligger på omkring 5.000.

To mulige årsager til den voldsomme epidemi af AIDS i det islamiske paradis Saudi-Arabien:

1. At den islamiske forestilling om sikker sex er at dyrke det med et lagen mellem sexpartnerne, kun med et hul til de mandlige kønsdele.
2. At ugifte mænd, der jo ikke fra naturens hånd er udstyret med en seksualitet der kan slukkes frem til de bliver gift, simpelthen kaster sig over hinanden og dyrker ubeskyttet analsex alt hvad de kan.

En artikel fra denne måneds udgave af The Atlantic giver her et fingerpeg om, at det sidste er tilfældet:

...some of the men having sex with other men don't consider themselves gay. For many Saudis, the fact that a man has sex with another man has little to do with "gayness." The act may fulfill a desire or a need, but it doesn't constitute an identity. Nor does it strip a man of his masculinity, as long as he is in the "top," or active, role...

In Saudi Arabia, "It's easier to be a lesbian [than a heterosexual]. There's an overwhelming number of people who turn to lesbianism," Yasmin said, adding that the number of men in the kingdom who turn to gay sex is even greater. "They're not really homosexual," she said. "They're like cell mates in prison."

This analogy came up again and again during my conversations. As Radwan, the Saudi American, put it, "Some Saudi [men] can't have sex with women, so they have sex with guys. When the sexes are so strictly segregated"-men are allowed little contact with women outside their families, in order to protect women's purity-"how do they have a chance to have sex with a woman and not get into trouble?" Tariq, a 24-year-old in the travel industry, explains that many "tops" are simply hard up for sex, looking to break their abstinence in whatever way they can. Francis, a 34-year-old beauty queen from the Philippines (in 2003 he won a gay beauty pageant held in a private house in Jeddah by a group of Filipinos), reported that he's had sex with Saudi men whose wives were pregnant or menstruating; when those circumstances changed, most of the men stopped calling. "If they can't use their wives," Francis said, "they have this option with gays."

Gay courting in the kingdom is often overt-in fact, the preferred mode is cruising. "When I was new here, I was worried when six or seven cars would follow me as I walked down the street," Jamie, a 31-year-old Filipino florist living in Jeddah, told me. "Especially if you're pretty like me, they won't stop chasing you." John Bradley, the author of Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (2005), says that most male Western expatriates here, gay or not, have been propositioned by Saudi men driving by "at any time of the day or night, quite openly and usually very, very persistently."

Iran: Klapjagt på "utækkeligt klædte" kvinder

Tidligere på ugen lod Center for Ligestillings chef, Karen Valeur Sjørup, os herhjemme vide at stiletter som kvinder frivilligt tager på er et større ligestillingsproblem end islamiske tørklæder, tvang eller ej. Nypuritanismen slår til igen.

Idag kunne den udtalelse så stilles i perspektiv, da Iran begyndte på endnu en runde af klapjagter på "utækkeligt klædte" kvinder. Publius Pundit har video af hvad der sker med en pige, der godt nok har tørklæde på, bare ikke nok: