Toronto Star, 16 Feb 10: When many Pakistanis discuss their country’s tumult, they do so with a furrowed brow or a grimace. Not Maulana Abdul Aziz.
A radical and charismatic Islamist leader who was a central figure in a bloody showdown between security forces and religious conservatives three years ago, Aziz now says he’s confident Pakistan is indeed on the road toward becoming a “true Islamic state.” He says Pakistan is on its way to adopting strict sharia law – forcing the women of this country of 170 million to begin observing purdah, or being removed from public life.
Aziz is among Pakistan’s most controversial personalities and has preached in front of massive crowds, encouraging suicide bombings and repeatedly promising the country is on the verge of “an Islamic revolution” and that “the blood of martyrs will bear fruit.”
Eventually, police stormed the mosque, formally known as Lal Masjid, and 102 people were killed, including Aziz’s brother and son. Aziz himself was captured when he tried to escape. He fled the mosque wearing a burqa, the head-to-toe veil worn by female students at his conservative seminary. . . .
Seven of the 11 suspects with European passports wanted by Dubai police for the murder of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Photograph: AP
Guardian, 16 Feb 10: If the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai last month is confirmed as a Mossad operation, it will not be the first time that Israeli agents have used or tried to obtain foreign passports.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 49, was found dead in his room at the Al-Bustan Rotana hotel last month. Within days, Hamas officials claimed he had been murdered as part of a secret operation by Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service. Dubai police said yesterday they were looking for 11 suspects in the killing, each carrying European passports: six from Britain, three from Ireland and one each from France and Germany. Dubai’s police chief suggested the assassination was a foreign intelligence operation, although he stopped short of blaming Israel.
Mossad agents have been caught with foreign passports before, triggering diplomatic rows. In 1997, two Mossad agents using forged Canadian passports were arrested in Amman after trying to assassinate Khalid Meshal, a Hamas official who is now the movement’s leader, by spraying poison into his ear.
The operation nearly succeeded but then the agents were quickly captured and their mission backfired spectacularly. Israel was forced to hand over an antidote that saved Meshal’s life and had to release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas spiritual leader, from prison, while also incurring the anger of its key Arab ally, Jordan. That operation was carried out while Binyamin Netanyahu was prime minister. He is now in the job for a second time.
When the Canadian government discovered its country’s passports had been used by Mossad, the documents were carefully recovered for further investigation in Canada. The country’s ambassador to Israel was withdrawn for “consultations” for two weeks, a sign of diplomatic dispute, and he only returned after Israel promised Canadian passports would never again be used for such missions.
But within a few years, another dispute surfaced. Two suspected Mossad agents were jailed for six months in 2004 in New Zealand for trying to falsely obtain a New Zealand passport . They were caught when an immigration official noticed a passport applicant was speaking with an American or Canadian accent. . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 220–An Introduction to Israeli Intelligence and Counterintelligence Methodologies
Don’t forget about the wives
BBC News, 16 Feb 10: The wife of one of the men who plotted to blow up passenger jets using liquid bombs failed to tell police of his plans, Inner London Crown Court heard. Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, was jailed for at least 40 years for plotting to blow up flights from the UK to America. Cossor Ali, 28, kept his suicide terror plan secret, the court was told. . . .
. . . . Mr Whittam read the jury an entry that she made in a notebook in 2005 when she was waiting for Abdulla Ahmed Ali to return from Pakistan. It said: “I am growing more and more attached to the cause for which you are striving for [sic], and the reason for which we are apart. I hope and pray Allah grants your wish and gives you the highest level of Shahada [martyrdom].”
Mr Whittam told the court: “Cossor Ali knew that her husband intended to become a martyr, which, in the context of her relationship with him, her knowledge of his beliefs and the beliefs that he had shared with her, meant that he intended to commit an act of terrorism that involved his own death.” The court heard police found notes which Abdulla Ahmed Ali had made while listening to lectures on jihad, which had his wife’s fingerprints on them. Islamic extremist books were also found in their one-bedroom flat in Walthamstow, east London, as was Mr Ali’s will. . . .
American Thinker, 16 Feb 10: The jihad against America is more active and assertive than ever — and hardly anyone is talking about it. . . . . . . The mainstream media, both liberal and conservative, and the entire government and law enforcement apparatus appear determined to obfuscate and deny the truth about the enemy’s ideology and belief system. This has the effect of minimizing in the minds of Americans the threat just as it is greater than ever and of rendering us blind to very real threats from people and groups that officials seem intent upon assuming to be innocuous.
Like it or not, we are engaged in a defense action against an Islamic jihad — one whose goals and motives are spelled out in the Koran and the teachings of Islam. Politically correct dissembling about this only makes Americans more vulnerable than they could be or should be. The conference is designed to speak the truths that others will not speak. It will educate Americans about the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration at the highest levels of the U.S. government, as well as its war on free speech: its attempt to silence and discredit those who speak up against the jihad and Sharia encroachment in the West.
Emphasis will be on the international character of the jihad against the West and on how the Islamic war on free speech (and the media’s self-imposed blackout on this issue, as in the Fort Hood massacre) is part and parcel of the same jihad against the West that terrorists are pursuing by violent means. This conference will be held at the Mariott Wardman Park Hotel on February 19, from 10AM to noon. . . . .
Daniel Pipes, 16 Feb 2010: The violence and cruelty of Arabs often perplexes Westerners. Not only does the leader of Hizbullah proclaim “We love death,” but so too does, for example, a 24-year-old man who last month yelled “We love death more than you love life” as he crashed his car on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge in New York City. As two parents in St. Louis honor-killed their teenage daughter with thirteen stabs of a butcher’s knife, the Palestinian father shouted “Die! Die quickly! Die quickly! . . . Quiet, little one! Die, my daughter, die!” – and the local Arab community supported them against murder charges. A prince from Abu Dhabi recently tortured a grain dealer whom he accused of fraud; despite a video of the atrocity appearing on television internationally, the prince was acquitted while his accusers were convicted.
On a larger scale, one accounting finds 15,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11. Governments throughout the Arabic-speaking countries rely more on brutality than on the rule of law. The drive to eliminate Israel still persists even as new insurrections take hold; the latest one has flared up in Yemen.
Several excellent attempts to explain the pathology of Arab politics exist; my personal favorites include studies by David Pryce-Jones and Philip Salzman. Now add to these The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations
Smith takes as his prooftext Osama bin Laden’s comment in 2001, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” What Smith calls the strong-horse principle contains two banal elements: Seize power and then maintain it. This principle predominates because Arab public life has “no mechanism for peaceful transitions of authority or power sharing, and therefore [it] sees political conflict as a fight to the death between strong horses.”
Violence, Smith observes is “central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.” It also, more subtly, implies keeping a wary eye on the next strong horse, triangulating, and hedging bets.
Smith argues that the strong horse principle, not Western imperialism or Zionism, “has determined the fundamental character of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.” The Islamic religion itself both fits into the ancient pattern of strong-horse assertiveness and then promulgates it. Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, was a strongman as well as a religious figure. Sunni Muslims have ruled over the centuries “by violence, repression, and coercion.” Ibn Khaldun’s famous theory of history amounts to a cycle of violence in which strong horses replace weak ones. The humiliation of dhimmis daily reminds non-Muslims who rules.
Smith’s prism offers insights into modern Middle East history. He presents Pan-Arab nationalism as an effort to transform the mini-horses of the national states into a single super-horse and Islamism as an effort to make Muslims again powerful. Israel serves as “a proxy strong horse” for both the United States and for the Saudi-Egyptian bloc in the latter’s cold war rivalry with Iran’s bloc. In a strong-horse environment, militias appeal more than do elections. Lacking a strong horse, Arab liberals make little headway. The United States being the most powerful non-Arab and non-Muslim state makes anti-Americanism both inevitable and endemic.
Which brings us to policies by non-Arab actors: unless they are forceful and show true staying power, Smith stresses, they lose. Being nice – say, withdrawing unilaterally from southern Lebanon and Gaza – leads to inevitable failure. The George W. Bush administration rightly initiated a democratization project, raising high hopes, but then betrayed Arab liberals by not carrying through. In Iraq, the administration ignored advice to install a democratically-minded strongman.
More broadly, when the U.S. government flinches, others (e.g., the Iranian leadership) have an opportunity to “force their own order on the region.” Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese leader, has half-seriously suggested that Washington “send car bombs to Damascus” to get its message across and signal its understanding of Arab ways.
Smith’s simple and near-universal principle provides a tool to comprehend the Arabs’ cult of death, honor killings, terrorist attacks, despotism, warfare, and much else. He acknowledges that the strong-horse principle may strike Westerners as ineffably crude, but he correctly insists on its being a cold reality that outsiders must recognize, take into account, and respond to.
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 560–Middle Eastern Intelligence Services and Terrorist Organizations
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 163–Dying to Kill Us: Understanding the Mindset of Suicide Operations
