Terror Trends BulletinThe United States’ strained relationship with Pakistan has grown more tense after 50 influential imams and religious leaders there threatened a jihad if the U.S. attacks the nuclear-armed country.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/27/pakistan-on-brink-as-imams-call-for-jihad/#ixzz1ZDQeL421
Back in 2009, TTB published an article called “Thailand: The Jihad You’ve Never Heard Of:”
https://terrortrendsbulletin.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/thailand-the-war-youve-never-heard-of/
In the early days of this blog, that article was one of our most popular, perhaps because most folks had no idea that thousands of people had been killed since 2004 in an Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand.
Here we are over two and a half years later and the insurgency in Thailand is still going on. In fact, it’s getting worse. The Thais seem to be trying the same strategy and tactics that have failed elsewhere in the world: appeasement, accommodation and throwing money at the problem after blaming the violence on a bad economy.
The Jihadis are getting more sophisticated. They are making greater use of powerful IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). This is no coincidence. The terrorists didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to put bombs under and alongside roads. Someone is training them. And if the region is so impoverished, then someone is funding them. Obviously, it follows that someone is providing training as well. All of this after indoctrination in mosques. Thai authorities deny these realities at their peril.
For more background on this, check out our previous posts on the war in southern Thailand…
Particularly note this quote from one of our previous posts:
Note that the Thai Jihadists have never made any public statements since the violence started back in 2004. 4,000 people have been killed in the insurgency, but no demands have been issued and no goals announced. This is classic Jihadist warfare. They are not fighting because they want something from the non-Muslims or the government. They are fighting a war of elimination…
Now compare that to this passage from an article published this week by the Christian Science Monitor:
Among the detainees at the army base was a 30-something Muslim man who gave his name as Amatsydee. Sitting on a bed in his cell, he patiently explained, in passable Thai, that he had been detained because the authorities accuse him of assisting a “group of bad people.”
Asked about the reason for insurgent attacks in the region, “I don’t know how to say it,” he said, looking up at a burly guard standing beside him. “My Thai isn’t very good.”
Anyone else see a pattern here?
Here is the update on the violence in Thailand from the Christian Science Monitor in an article entitled “Muslim insurgency in Thailand’s restive south heats up.”
http://www.intellasia.net/news/articles/society/111338571.shtml
Periodically here on TTB, we have covered the Jihadist insurgency going on in the Philippines:
https://terrortrendsbulletin.wordpress.com/category/philippines/
Many people around the world are unaware of the war that has been raging in the Philippines. At the heart of the violence is the desire of Jihadist terrorist groups such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah to establish an independent Islamic state ruled by Shariah law on the island of Mindanao.
Along with the Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand, these Asia-Pacific Jihads illustrate the global war we find ourselves in. They also debunk the theory that US foreign policy, presence in the Middle East or support for Israel is the primary reason for Islamic terrorism.
No one can say that the Jihadists are killing innocent civilians in Thailand and the Philippines because the US supports Israel or because the US has troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Wikileaks documents have given us a clear view into just how serious the situation on the Philippines is, as well as the character of the global Islamic threat we face.
• US diplomats characterized the Jihadist terrorism on Mindanao as on a par with the insurgency in Afghanistan.
• US diplomats openly acknowledged in the secret cables leaked by Wikileaks the role Saudi Arabia was playing in funding the Islamic groups in the Philippines and declared that it must be stopped. This is a common theme around the world. Saudis fund Jihad with “private” donations (often from members of the royal family) while the Saudi government looks the other way and denies any support for terrorism. It’s called plausible deniability and the Saudis have been playing this double game for over 30 years. They fund Jihadist terrorism and claim they are our “allies” in the “war on terrorism.”
Read more at Philippine Daily Inquirer…
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/53639/us-cable-likens-mindanao-to-afghanistan
Three years go I was fortunate enough to spend some time with a couple of police officers from the New York Police Department who were part of that department’s counterterrorism apparatus. The things I learned about the NYPD left me extremely impressed. A few of the things I learned:
• The NYPD has officers attached to police departments in major cities around the world to both observe their foreign counterparts’ counterterror efforts and to ensure sharing of intelligence directly between police departments, without the information being delayed and filtered by national intelligence agencies.
• The NYPD has more personnel than the entire FBI.
• The NYPD has a linguistic capability exceeding that of any other US police department and probably exceeding the linguistic capabilities of the FBI. Here is an example of how important this capability is:
Several years ago, members of the security detail of Iran’s UN mission were observed by NYPD uniformed patrolmen videotaping and photographing New York City landmarks, as well as rail and subway facilities. The New York cops detained the Iranians, who, of course, claimed not to speak English (no doubt a lie). This was not a problem for the NYPD. Within an hour, a NYPD officer fluent in Farsi was on the scene to question the detainees (who, unfortunately, were diplomatically immune).
Also a few years ago, the NYPD counterterrorism unit published a report on Islamic “radicalization” in the West called Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. (http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_information/NYPD_Report-Radicalization_in_the_West.pdf)
That report was good enough for Muslim Brotherhood front groups to demand that it be redacted in its entirety, a sure sign that it hit too close to home.
One man who has seen the effectiveness of NYPD’s counterterrorism unit is former Assistant US Attorney Andrew McCarthy, who now writes for National Review. McCarthy convicted Omar Abdel Rahman, better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” for his leading role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
In the article linked below, he details how the NYPD did much of the work–overcoming federal incompetence and politics–to lay the groundwork for the Blind Sheikh to be sent to jail…
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/276181/how-nypd-gets-jihad-right-andrew-c-mccarthy?page=1
Ron Paul is at it again.
But let’s not get to worked up about the crazy old loon. After all, he’ll be 76 in August. That will make him 77 by the time the next president is inaugurated. That’s nearly the age President Reagan was when he left office after two terms.
Ron Paul isn’t in this race to win. He’s one of those perpetual candidates for president who just adores the attention.
In his latest appearance on Fox News, Paul manages to stick to his McGovern-like “Blame America First” script with the tired old assumption that Jihad is being waged against us just because we are in Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or especially because we are an ally of Israel. Paul appears to be a disciple of Michael Schuerer, who has been spouting that line since BEFORE he left the CIA.
Anyway, the good folks at Gateway Pundit posted Paul’s appearance. My comments follow the link:
Here are my thoughts:
It is interesting that Ron Paul bases his entire philosophy on the global Islamic insurgency on the opinions of Michael Sheuer. Michael Sheuer epitomizes all that is wrong with America’s bureaucratized counterterrorism apparatus. First of all, he broke longstanding CIA regulations at the encouragement of his politicized superiors to write a book while in active service. This alone makes him a scumbag in my book. Thousands of honorable CIA operators could have done the same, but none did. There is a reason. It’s called honor. Second, Sheuer had a uniquely disturbing career in the CIA. A career analyst with no field experience, he was somehow allowed to become a case officer and eventually found himself in charge of the CIA unit tasked with killing or capturing Bin Laden. He failed miserably. Moreover, if you actually read his work, it is readily apparent that Sheuer has at best a superficial level of knowledge of Islamic threat doctrine. He is appallingly ignorant for someone who was in the position he was in. This has resulted in his belief that we are only being attacked because of things we have done and especially for our support for Israel.
I ask my friends:
Is Jemmaah Islamiya attempting to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia because the US supports Israel?
Are the Chechyan jihadists waging Jihad against Russia because the US supports Israel?
Is Abu Sayyef attempting to establish an Islamic state on Mindanao because the US supports Israel?
Are Jihadists attempting to establish an Islamic state in southern Thailand because the US supports Israel?
Have Nigerian Jihadists attacked innocent Christians repeatedly because the US supports Israel?
Is Al Shabaad conducting terrorist attacks in Kenya and Somalia on innocent civilians because the US supports Israel?
Are Jihadists attempting to create an Islamic state in India’s Kashmir because the US supports Israel?
Have Jihadists killed thousands in attacks on innocent civilians in Morocco, Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, the UK, Spain, Jordan and Bangladesh because the US supports Israel?
Are young Jihadis rioting in France because the US supports Israel?
Why is all this happening? Could it be that there is something more to this global violence than the simple “blame America first” concept that Ron Paul supposes?
Why hasn’t he bothered to learn about the enemy threat doctrine?
Wikileaks has revealed a US report on Guantanamo terrorist prisoners called the “Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants.”
You will see this document written up in dozens of articles in the media and the blogosphere over the next few days.
We wanted to call attention to one list that has come out of that report: a list of foreign mosques and Islamic centers that are used to recruit and train Jihadis. Note that this list does not include mosques here in the US which, beyond a shadow of a doubt, are also centers for Jihad recruitment. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but it does purport to be the largest centers of Jihadi activity.
This should serve as a stark warning for those among us who still insist that Jihadist organizations like Al Qaeda and their followers are not embedded in religion…
• Al Sunnah Al Nabawiah Mosque Montreal, Canada
• Abu Bakr Islamic University Karachi, Pakistan
• Makki Mosque Karachi, Pakistan
• Al Khair Mosque Sanaa, Yemen
• Dimaj Institute in Sadah, Yemen
• Finsbury Park Mosque Great Britain
• Four Feathers Youth Club Great Britain
• Laennec Mosque Lyon, France
• Islamic Cultural Institute Milan, Italy
• Wazir Akbar Khan Mosque Kabul, Afghanistan
Mosques in places like Pakistan and Yemen certainly come as no surprise. The ones in Great Britain, France, Italy and Canada are much more worrisome for those of us who live in the West. It might also be noted that no Saudi mosques or Islamic centers are mentioned, no doubt due to a lack of intelligence. There is certainly no shortage of Saudi Jihadis in the world and they had to be recruited somewhere…
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, (formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe) who reportedly studied jihad with an Islamic scholar in Yemen, is being tried for the shooting of two US Army soldiers outside a Little Rock, Arkansas armed forces recruiting office in the spring of 2009.
Tennessee's murdering Jihadist terrorist Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad
Muhammad shot Private William Long and Private Quinton I. Ezeagwula. Long died from his wounds.
Since that incident we have learned more about Muhammad’s violent actions after he returned from Yemen. For example, we have learned that he attempted to fire bomb the house of a Nashville rabbi with a Molotov cocktail.
Now we learn that Muhammad has cryptically confessed to another killing. In a letter to the Arkansas judge presiding over his trial for the recruiting center shootings, Muhammad claims that he killed another person back in 2006 because that person was robbing and harassing Muslims.
Muhammad has not offered any clues as to who the victim was or exactly where this crime may have occurred, only that it was in his home state of Tennessee. The only good news here is that Muhammad is already being tried for capital murder for his 2009 crime. Hopefully he will be convicted in quick order and will sooner, rather than later, have a date with a needle.
But we suspect that perhaps Muhammad is not so ready to go to paradise to meet his 72 virgins and is dangling this tidbit in hopes of getting some sort of leverage for leniency:
“If you agree not to seek the death penalty, I will tell you all about this other guy I killed.”
We hope his ruse does not work, though we realize that it may be several years before he meets the executioner.
What really bothers us though is the media seem to be bending over backwards to avoid investigating this guy’s activity. He converted to Islam and flew to Yemen for training and then came back and started killing Americans (and tried to set fire to a Nashville rabbi’s home with a Molotov cocktail).
Yet we see no press curiosity as to who approached him to convert to Islam in the first place, how he was recruited to Jihad or how he got to Yemen and back…
What happened to investigative journalism? Why isn’t someone going to the mosque at Tennessee Tech where he converted to ask a few questions? What turned Carlos Bledsoe into a monster named Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad? Was he a member of the Muslim Students Association? Who else from that mosque went to Yemen? If Bledsoe was involved with the MSA, what, if any, role did that group, or some of its members, play in his transformation to Islamic Jihadist?
Why isn’t anyone asking these questions?
The UK Telegraph reports that the famous Berlin Reichstag has been closed to visitors as a result of the terror threat that has been reported on extensively over the past week or so. Reports have generally indicated that one of the potential scenarios that German authorities are prepping for is a Mumbai-style attack.
Numerous holy warriors raised in Germany have been filtering back into the country in recent months following spells in training camps in Pakistan.
Spiegel reported that the informant who triggered the Berlin scare repeatedly telephoned police from a foreign location in recent days, asking the authorities to help him return to his family in Germany.
He said the terrorist cell consisted of six people, of whom two had arrived in Berlin weeks ago. Four other militants – including a German, a Turk and a northern African – were still waiting to travel to Germany.
The attacks were seemingly planned for February or March 2011, and modelled on the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, in which 175 people died when Islamist militants attacked a series of high- profile hotels, a train station and Jewish centre. Now it appears they have been brought forward.
The FBI in America alerted German recently that a Shi’ite Indian group called Saif (Sword), had aligned itself with Al Quaeda and two of their men were due to travel from the United Arab Emirates to Germany in coming days.
Note in the report linked the apparent collaboration between Al Qaeda and a previously unknown Shiite Jihadist group from India…
German Police Outside the Berlin Reichstag This Week
The soon-to-be constructed Ground Zero mosque has generated a lot of controversy. There seems to be a general level of confusion as to what this is all about.
There shouldn’t be.
The Ground Zero mosque is about Islamic supremecism and conquest. It’s really quite that simple–and this is not a new phenomenon, as evidenced by these videos posted on YouTube by an individual going by the alias “mujahadeen911.”
Abdulhakim Mohammed, previously known as Carlos Bledsoe before his conversion to Islam in 2004, who is charged with murdering one US Army soldier and wounding another outside a Little Rock armed forces recruiting center last summer, now says he tried but failed to carry out additional Jihadist terror attacks in the southern U.S.
Mohammed has a history of violence and, sometime after his conversion to Islam, he started to consider himself a soldier of allah.
Terror Trends Bulletin 