Trevor Stanley

Positives Outweigh Negatives in Tit-for-tat Terror War

2005-12-05T02:08:00.000+11:00

There's an old saying that no news is good news.

By the same token, good news often isn't reported as news.

Since my article Al-Qaeda in Australia was published by Terrorism Monitor, a number of important events related to the war on terrorism have taken place in Australia and around the world. As is to be expected, some of these events are good news and some bad news, but I believe the balance has been positive.

I have been kept busy with work commitments and writing an article on the Australian Anti-Terror Raids, so I have not been able to blog on these events as they happened.

In this blog post, I want to briefly comment on some of the events and changes that have taken place since my last post. (I will leave out the riots in France, which are somewhat peripheral to the theme I have in mind for the post).

Australia - Terror Raids
Indonesia and Jemaah Islamiyyah
Jordan - Hotel Bombings
Egypt - Increasing Openness harms recruiting
Israel - New Party Formed
America and Iraq - Torture and Exit Strategy debates
Death of al-Qaeda's #3

Australia

In Al-Qaeda in Australia, I argued that al-Qaeda and allied groups had a serious intention to launch attacks on Australian soil, and that they had attempted to convert this intention into capability by recruiting and training 'cleanskin' Australians and converts, long before the London attacks brought this threat to the forefront of world attention. Although Australians have a tendency to disproportionately fear 'foreign' attacks from the Asia-Pacific region, this could potentially blind us to the importance of internal, Australian threat sources as well as threats beyond our region. Indeed, what was more concerning was the interaction of forces within Australia, the region and further afield.

Internally, I identified alienated individuals who 'self-recruit' to radicalism, and radical clerics (such as Melbourne's Sheikh Omran) who may help to lead such individuals to radicalism.

Externally, I identified the Laskar-i-Taiba terrorist network alongside Jemaah Islamiyyah and Al-Qaeda's core leadership, as groups that could provide needed training, logistical support and motivation to a potential attack within Australia.

Shortly after my article was published, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) published the unclassified version of its 2004/05 Annual Report, which similarly (though briefly) warned of the threat from home-grown terrorists.

In the second week of October, dozens of raids were launched by ASIO, Australian Federal Police and State police in Victoria and New South Wales, resulting in a total of 18 arrests, and police claimed the raids thwarted a mammoth terrorist attack in the late stage of planning. Terrorism Monitor recently published my follow-up article about these arrests, Australian Anti-Terror Raids, as its feature article.

The alleged leader of those arrested, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, became increasingly radical under the tutelage of Sheikh Omran, and eventually broke away from his Brunswick Mosque. The majority of those arrested seem to have become radicalised within Australia. However, the Sydney group's plans seem to have been far more advanced - and many of those arrested in Sydney have previously been linked to members of Laskar-e-Taiba, some allegedly training with the (now banned) al-Qaeda-allied Pakistani militant group. In my article, I argue that differences in the nature of the Sydney and Melbourne groups explain why the Sydney group came so much closer to achieving its alleged objectives.

While any confirmation that there are Australian citizens who would contemplate attacks against their compatriots is bad news, the ability of four different security forces to work so effectively together is good news indeed. ASIO, AFP and the Victorian and NSW police apparently tracked these individuals for 16 months, recording 250 hours of conversations. Thanks in great part to their efforts, no terrorist attack has yet taken place on Australian soil.

Indonesia - Jemaah Islamiyyah

It appears that Jemaah Islamiyyah is now deeply divided about the best method for bringing about political change. Those within the organisation who supported an al-Qaeda-style terror war against foreign interests and were willing to countenance the deaths of hundreds of Indonesian bystanders have been deprived of their foreign backers since the invasion of Afghanistan. Links between al-Qaeda and JI have been severed (eg by Hambali's arrest) and the Indonesian authorities are now taking the terror threat much more seriously than they did in the past. This is one way that takfiri terrorism weakens itself. The terrorists' disregard for the lives of mainstream Muslims (whom they regard as impious or even apostate) means that instead of 'converting' their coreligionists, they alienate them.

The day after the arrests in Australia, one of the last remaining JI hardliners, Malaysian explosives expert Azahari Husin, was killed in a gun battle in central Java, along with several of his acolytes. Police seized 30 small bombs from the hideout. Another JI hardliner, Noordin Muhammad Top, narrowly escaped arrest and his ability to launch attacks in Indonesia is now extremely constrained - as compared to the position in 2001, when the war on terror began.

This does not mean that further terrorist attacks in Indonesia are impossible - but that future attacks will be lesser in magnitude and number than they would otherwise have been. The mainstream in Indonesia - and even within JI itself - has turned decisively against terrorism as a method.

Jordan

For two years Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi has openly stated that he intends to use Iraq as a base for expansion of 'jihad' throughout the region, particularly to his native Jordan, so the suicide bomb attacks against three Amman hotels in November did not come as a surprise. What did shock many Jordanians was the indiscriminate wounding and death of so many ordinary Jordanian civilians. In particular, the bombing of a wedding by a husband-and-wife team (the wife failed to detonate her explosives) appalled most Jordanians.

Although al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Zarqawi, initially boasted that "a group of our best lions launched a new attack [on] hotels [that] the Jordanian despot turned into a backyard for the enemies of the faith", it was later forced into the unprecedented step of defending the operation in a specially issued public statement.

Increasingly in the Middle East, the elites and the general public alike are seeing Islamic terrorists in Iraq less as avatars of their own resentment of America and more as a serious threat to their own existence. The governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have recently begun to look for ways they can help in the reconstruction of Iraq.

Egypt

This is not the only way that Egypt is changing. Although the country remains an authoritarian dictatorship, and its cosmetic steps towards democracy have been a disappointment, President Hosni Mubarak is completing a process begun by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s, whereby Islamists are neutralised through co-option.

The birthplace of Hassan al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood, and of the radical MB ideologue Sayyid Qutb, Egpyt was the most important source of Salafi terrorism for most of the last century. Many of the leading figures in al-Qaeda, right up to second-in-command Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, came from Egypt.

However, this seems to be changing. Demographic analysis of the origins of slain fighters whose details have been posted on foreign Islamist Internet forums has shown that while 53% of those whose nationality was mentioned came from Saudi Arabia, only 1% came from Egypt. While sample bias is possible (for example because different networks of Islamists might use different Internet forums), there are strong historic links between the Salafist movement in Egpyt and Saudi Arabia that should mitigate against such biases. (See my July article on the Egyptian origins of Saudi Salafism).

In recent years, the Egyptian terrorist groups that have remained in Egypt (such as Gamaah Islamiyyah) have renounced violence. Muslim Brotherhood members now see a brighter future in Egypt's limited openness (such as through representatives in Parliament) than in blowing themselves up. This is an example that can be followed in other parts of the Middle East.

Israel

Developments in Israel over the past week are also broadly relevant to the war on terror and political progress in the region.

Despite predictions that the invasion of Iraq would destabilise the Middle East, and Hamas' threats that the assassination of Muhammad Yassin and Abd al-Aziz Rantissi would lead to a 'volcano of revenge', the situation in Israel and Palestine is now more hopeful than it has in many years - perhaps since 1948.

Four years ago, Israel faced daily suicide attacks as the 'second intifada' raged across Palestine. Although Israel has borne relentless criticism for the methods it employed in response to this onslaught - such as its security barrier - it has survived and the intifada has comprehensively failed. Today, terrorist attacks are far less common in Israel.

Over the past two weeks, an historic shift that has taken place in Israeli politics. Ariel Sharon quit Likud - a party he originally co-founded - to form the new centrist party, Kadimat (Service). Subsequently, the Labour leader Shimon Peres resigned from his party and declared that he will support Sharon.

It is true that the new relationship between Israel and their Palestinian Arab neighbours that Kadimat represents would probably not have been possible without the progress made by Palestinian Authority leader Abu Mazen since the death of Yasser Arafat. However, Abu Mazen has been far from a dove himself in the past. His track record suggests that had the intifada not been defeated, and had an American-led Coalition not made clear its support for democracy in the region, he may have taken a very different approach to the administration of the Palestinian Authority.

Iraq and America

For the past couple of months, America has engaged in a bizarre and unedifying debate over whether or not it should allow the CIA to torture terror suspects. This debate has been triggered by Senator John McCain, who was himself tortured during the Vietnam War, and has recently introduced a Bill to explicitly ban torture by American personnel.

This debate has run in parallel with a debate about America's "exit strategy" in Iraq, in the face of polling showing a majority critical of both the decision to go to war and the handling of the aftermath. If we are to believe the media, the consensus in America is that all US troops must be withdrawn from Iraq, and the only question is how soon this can be accomplished.

This analysis ignores two important statistics. First, the majority of Americans polled did not support the immediate withdrawal of US troops. Second, the majority of Iraqis polled continue to say their lives are improving.

The debate between proponents of various plans for staged or immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq is also strange when one of the key criticisms of the US handling of the war is the failure to provide enough troops to stabilise the country. Now the argument is that Iraq would be more stable with less troops? It is telling that Senator McCain, so often cited for his admirable stance on terrorism, is seldom quoted when he sensibly says that America should increase its commitment to Iraq by 10,000 troops.

Let's face the unpleasant facts:

Al-Qaeda has historically ramped up attacks when a foreign power looks set to withdraw.

Zawahiri recently wrote^[pdf] to Zarqawi discussing plans to fill the vacuum when America withdraws.

If the polls are bad for President Bush while he is 'staying the course' in Iraq, they will be worse if he 'cuts and runs', particularly as the situation in Iraq fails to improve.

I don't mean that the current troop numbers should be maintained forever. Rather, the numbers should only be scaled down when it is clear that the troops are surplus to requirements. However, there is no need to set a deadline for complete withdrawal. There are still US troops stationed in South Korea and Japan more than 50 years after hostilities ceased in both cases, and indeed there are US troops stationed in Australia, and Australian defence personnel stationed in various friendly countries. There is no reason America should ever set a date for the withdrawal of the last soldier from Iraq, because there is no particular reason why a future independent, stable Iraq should object to a small, residual number of allied troops on its territory.

Al-Qaeda's #3 Dies

Finally, tonight it was reported that Al-Qaeda Operational Commander Abu Hamza ar-Rabia has been killed in Waziristan, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. It is unclear whether he was killed by his own explosives or by Predator drones.

What is clear is that al-Qaeda has been going through operational commanders like Kleenex - this is the first and the last most had heard of Al-Araby.

The two top positions in al-Qaeda (the spiritual leader/figurehead and the intellectual strategist) can be performed without exposing the incumbents to attack. But the operational commander must expose himself to the risk of capture or attack if he is to be of any use to the organisation. But as Abu Hamza al Araby, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and others before them have found, it is no longer possible for al-Qaeda's centre to function operationally as it once did.

In summary, judging from the past two months, we are slowly but steadily winning the War on Terror.

Al-Qaeda in Australia

2005-10-16T16:09:00.000+10:00

This week Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor (TM) published another of my articles, titled Al-Qaeda in Australia.

In writing my previous TM article, I already had an idea that had emerged from my thesis research and subsequent research. But when TM asked me to write an article on al-Qaeda in Australia, I did not have an argument prepared. However, when I began to think about this article, I realised that there was ample material. In the end, I was only able to detail a couple of illustrative examples, rather than detailing the many al-Qaeda-connected networks that have operated here.

It should already be obvious to most Australians that al-Qaeda would like to attack Australian targets within Australia (Australian targets have already been struck repeatedly in Indonesia, and were indeed hit again in Bali not long before my article went to print). Al-Qaeda has repeatedly listed Australia as one of its high priority target countries, not only after the invasion of Iraq but over an extended period of time. Most of us can think of a few specific news stories and personalities that demonstrate Islamic radical activity within Australia. But when one stops to assemble a list of the individuals and groups that have attempted to penetrate Australia's defences and prepare for attacks here, it is surprising (and a testament to our intelligence and security organisations) that none have succeeded.

The following are some of the radical Islamic groups that have, or have had, a presence in Australia:

Al-Qaeda (Global)
Jamaah Islamiyyah (Regional)
Laskar Jihad (Regional)
Laskar-e-Taiba (South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia)
Hizb ut-Tahrir (Global)
Islamic Youth Movement/Nida'ul Islam (Australia)
IISNA/IISCA (Ahlus-Sunnah Wal-Jamaah Australia) (Australia)

These groups range from actively engaging in terrorist activity to merely pushing an ideology that is calculated to alienate their followers from the wider community, including from their fellow Muslims.

Various independent cases of propaganda operations, fundraising, terrorist training camps and planning for actual terrorist attacks have taken place in Australia. As I argue in my article, the most plausible and worrying cases have involved collaboration between global, regional and Australian networks.

The Emigrants: Al-Muhajiroun

Although it was beyond the scope of the TM article, I also found that my research reinforced the impression that al-Qaeda attacks depend on international travel.

Al-Qaeda's theoretical model, which is designed as an analogy to Muhammad's defeat of the pre-Islamic pagans in Mecca, places great emphasis on migration and trade. In its analysis of the 'enemy' (the regimes in the Middle East and their alleged 'Crusader' sponsors), al-Qaeda borrows directly from Sayyid Qutb's depiction of 7th Century Arabia. Mecca at this time was a merchant town whose economy was based on trade with Christian countries in areas that are now Syria and Yemen.

In 622AD, Muhammad fled/emigrated from Mecca to Medina (then called Yathrib), where he and his followers were assisted by the Ansar (helpers). There, they were able to mount raids on trade caravans and thus weaken Mecca. By so doing, they were able to defeat their pagan enemies. In other words, by migrating away from the threat they were able to defeat it, by hitting its trade and communications infrastructure.

Several waves of Jihadi theorists have tried to turn this story into a model for modern warfare, and indeed al-Qaeda has managed to put together a model of global guerrilla warfare that can claim to be based on this precedent, but which also utilises the unprecedented characteristics of a globalised world.

This model determines the what sort of targets should be hit; trade, communication and other links within and between 'enemy' countries, particularly between Western countries and Muslim-majority States al-Qaeda seeks to supplant. Think of the targets of terrorist attacks. Attacks on the World Trade Centre, tourists in Bali, an oil tanker in Yemen, oil wells in Iraq and expatriate workers in Saudi Arabia all involve cutting the financial lifeline between the West and Muslim countries. Attacks on domestic air and train transport and the power grids of both Iraq and Australia* relate indirectly to this emphasis on cutting communications and transportation of resources. Almost all al-Qaeda-connected terrorist attacks meet this criterion.

The al-Qaeda model also dictates a system of preparation for terrorist operatives: they must migrate to an area free from 'infidels' in order to prepare themselves. Whether travelling to Afghanistan to train in al-Qaeda or Laskar-e-Taiba training camps, to the southern Philippines, or to war zones such as Iraq and Bosnia, this travel is considered vital for the would-be terrorist. Even so-called clean-skin terrorists - those without known connections to terrorist organisations - such as the July 7 London bombers and British-born Australian Jack Roche, travelled to South Asia. It would seem fairly obvious that if one was planning a terrorist attack, a Pakistani customs stamp in one's passport would be something to avoid. Yet without exception, all those al-Qaeda operatives who have seriously plotted to attack Western countries on their own soil have engaged in this 'migration' to foreign training and indoctrination camps.

For this reason, the counter-terrorist effort should pay particular attention to international trade and travel, and should continue with efforts to enhance international cooperation and technological advances in the area of customs. And as I argue in my TM article, Australia's counterterrorist efforts can not afford to neglect the terrorist threat within Australia, in the region, or in the wider global arena.

Footnote:
* There is a case currently before the courts in which individuals connected to Laskar-e-Taiba allegedly prepared to attack the power grid.

The Quagmire of New Orleans

2005-09-11T22:32:00.000+10:00

In discussing the nature and scale of the New Orleans hurricane disaster on the PWHCE Discussion Group recently, I brought up Cyclone Tracy as the closest analogy in Australian history - although of course considerable geographical and demographic differences separate the two examples. Because of its geography, Darwin was not submerged by a storm surge as New Orleans was. And Darwin's smaller population reduced the potential for mass destruction. The recent flooding in the United States is said to cover a surface area larger than the entire area of the Great Britain.

In considering the US Government's response to this disaster, however, there is a much more recent parallel for Australians. After the recent Southeast Asian tsunami, John Howard immediately made a public statement that firmly expressed Australia's commitment to its neighbours. As Australians watched a panorama of misery and destruction unfold on their doorstep, the country's leader expressed that sense of shock and articulated a response. He replaced a feeling of helpless horror with a plan of action.

This powerful act of leadership shows again how John Howard earns the credibility he has in the eyes of the Australian public. Howard's actions were in stark contrast to Opposition Leader Mark Latham's lack of a response. Although his career was already in terminal decline, Latham precipitated its end by this failure.

For an Opposition Leader to fail to respond to an event in neighbouring countries is one thing, but Bush's failure to respond convincingly and immediately to such an overwhelming disaster in his own country, seriously, perhaps irretrievably damages his credibility.

What makes this particularly difficult to take is that Bush did respond appropriately to the tsunami. Australian and American equipment and personnel were on the scene and making a difference within days. True, in Southeast Asia much of the damage occurred in coastal areas that were easily accessible from higher, unaffected land. In New Orleans, getting access to a particular area can mean travelling several kilometres over water. On the other hand, getting American aid to Southeast Asia did require a crossing of the Pacific Ocean...

Before the tsunami, it was possible to believe that George W Bush's legacy would hinge on strategic gambles such as the war in Iraq.

Bush's challenge to both the statist dictatorships that plague the Middle East and the Jihadi upstarts who seek to establish a new kind of violent, expansionist and repressive dictatorship through terror could end in two ways. If it succeeded, it would show that democracy can work and that the free world is willing to make sacrifices to see it work. Bush would be remembered as the sort of brilliant, unappreciated maverick that many retrospectively see in Ronald Reagan.

If it failed, it would embolden the most nihilistic ideology to stalk the Earth since respective deaths of Hitler and Stalin. Bush would be remembered as an ignorant dilettante whose Middle East adventurism handed power to terrorists.

Which leader is Bush?

It is Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, as much as the fate of the democratic experiment in Iraq, that will determine whether he is remembered as an unappreciated maverick or an overrated failure. He will need to do some serious work to extricate himself from this quagmire.

Howard's overlooked influence

2005-08-07T10:30:00.000+10:00

During my recent trip to the US, I was very fortunate to meet Dr Michael Rubin, at the headquarters of the American Enterprise Institute. Dr Rubin was previously political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq (2003-2004) and a staff assistant to the Secretary of Defense (2002-2004).

During our conversation, Rubin spoke about his impressions of Australian Prime Minister John Howard. He observed that John Howard's influence in world affairs, and on the decision makers in Washington in particular, is disproportionate to Australia's economic or military strength. He also observed that while US policy makers have a high regard for Howard's opinion, this fact seems to be little recognised in Australia.

I was certainly not surprised by the second observation; as Dr Rubin does not live in Australia, he may not realise just how true his words are. In Australia, John Howard is regularly presented as a poodle, lapdog or patsy for an indifferent US Administration. In a medium-sized country like Australia, one expects to hear politicians playing up their influence overseas, and we expect the media to give coverage to foreign visits that might go unnoticed in the actual country being visited. For this reason, it was interesting to hear that John Howard actually has a higher profile in the US than Australians perceive to be the case.

I have recalled Dr Rubin's observations often since March. The Howard Government has continued to extend Australian prestige overseas, and to exercise an influence that is consistently downplayed back home.

For example, in the past two weeks, John Howard has written himself, and Australia, into the history books in several important ways, which were highlighted in a recent article by Greg Sheridan.

Sheridan outlines the key achievements of "what must rank as one of the most successful prime-ministerial trips of all time."

Washington

Finalised the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, an important environmental agreement which will include China, India, USA, South Korea, Japan and Australia. Unlike the almost moribund Kyoto Protocol, this partnership is realistic, stands some chance of being adhered to by its signatories and includes the world's largest countries - in terms of population, economy and energy usage.
This important partnership will hold its first ministerial conference in Adelaide in November this year.

London

Howard was lunching with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "the most significant statesman of his time" (Sheridan points out), when the second attempted London terrorist attack in a fortnight took place. In the ensuing Howard-Blair press conference, which was viewed by an audience of millions, "As the older man, longer in office, Howard played the senior role ... answering the critical question on terrorism first and in such a way that Blair commented: 'I agree 100 per cent with that.'"

Iraq

Never a shrinking violet, Howard continued to Baghdad, where he met with the Iraqi Prime Minister, who thanked him for Australia's support. Although Howard would have presented an extremely attractive target for terrorists, he then flew south by helicopter to visit Australian troops in Al-Muthanna.

Asia

The East Asia Summit. As Sheridan observes, "If Labor in office had achieved entry to an East Asia Summit it would have been building monuments, renaming universities and writing countless histories of the moment." It is worth remembering that in 1996, the Keating Labor Government repeatedly warned that electing the Howard Coalition would lead to Australian isolation as Asian leaders would refuse to communicate with us. Apparently, Keating thought Asian leaders only respected a Western country if it grovelled to them (while occasionally insulting one of their leaders) and snubbed the US (which happened to be a close ally of many of those Asian countries.)
ASEAN: On stage with the Foreign Ministers (and equivalents) of the USA, South Korea, Japan, China and India, it was Foreign Minister Alexander Downer who announced the Asia-Pacific Climate Control Partnership.

As Sheridan observed, this remarkable series of foreign policy achievements by Howard and Downer represents a "vindication on three fronts: Australia's participation in the war on terror has increased our global influence; our close alliance with the US does not damage our regional interests but enhances them; and rejection of Kyoto was not only sound policy but smart politics, hooking us up to new Asia where the economic and political dynamism resides and decoupling us from the statist, bureaucratic politics of old Europe at its worst."

Aside from Sheridan's article, the importance of this trip has been largely glossed over or ignored by the Australian media, and downplayed by the Opposition.

Note: Since my meeting with Michael Rubin, he has published an article in which he expands on the Australian-US relationship, which he sees as stronger than the US-UK relationship, for reasons that include cultural similarities between Australia and America.
Our Ally Down Under: The Strongest Anglosphere Link

Second Wave of London Bombings

2005-07-24T18:20:00.000+10:00

You will probably be aware that, two weeks on from the shocking terrorist attacks against three tube trains and one bus in London, a second wave of attacks took place.

There are two main messages in these attacks - the intended message and the unintended message.

The intended message was that the terrorists can deliver terror payloads one after another, at will. The selection of three trains and a bus - the same target pattern as the first wave - seems designed to communicate the message: "We will attack at the time and place of our choosing, even when you are at your highest level of alert."

However, the failure of this second wave communicates an important unintended message. While the use of home-grown, 'cleanskin', minimally trained operatives in suicide attacks is terrifying and poses major problems for counter-terrorism efforts, it seems such people still need intensive training and the help of highly skilled explosives experts in order to carry off a smooth attack.

After the first attacks, it was discovered that the suicide bombers had travelled to Pakistan, where they were exposed to radical Islamic teachings, and presumably given rudimentary training. It was also found that a foreign terrorist minder had flown out of Heathrow just before the first attacks took place.

Al-Qaeda's operational model requires that operatives 'emigrate' (hijrah) to areas of training and preparation before returning to the target country to carry out 'raids' (ghazwah). The importance of thorough training and indoctrination is emphasised. As Usama bin Laden has said, "He who migrates repeatedly is doubly rewarded."

All four bombs in this attack failed to explode, presumably because they were constructed by less well trained operatives. It has also been reported that the amateurish would-be bombers left a treasure trove of forensic evidence.

The details of the London attacks therefore show that the proverbial "guy next door" can't suddenly 'become' a terrorist after all. By keeping an eye on the behaviour of those who travel to countries where terrorists operate, the authorities can thwart future attacks.

The Origins of Wahhabism and Salafism

2005-07-17T12:19:00.000+10:00

Since September 11, many people have tried to get a handle on the sources of Islamic terrorism.

Several assertions have become common around dinner tables, water coolers and weblogs around the world. And although these opinions are often informed by a level of research and thought, the Muslim world is extremely complex, leading to assumptions that are sometimes half true, and sometimes outright wrong.

For example, take the following assumptions:

Saudi Arabia is dominated by Wahhabism; Saudi Arabia's problems stem from this ideology.
Usama bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia, so al-Qaeda is a Wahhabi organisation.
Muslims fall into two broad categories: those who want change and support peaceful means such as education and social welfare, and the violent extremist conservatives who refuse to recognise the need for change or education in the Middle East.
The Middle East's problems stem from backwardness. What the Middle East needs is more education.
The Saudi royal family has supported Islamic radicals - there is no rational reason for this.
We invaded the wrong country and toppled the wrong regime - we should be overthrowing the Saudi terrorists!

It was with these myths about Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism and Terrorism in mind that I wrote the article, Understanding the Origins of Wahhabism and Salafism, which has recently been published in the Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor.

In this article, I show (contrary to common perceptions even amongst some Muslims) that Salafism and Wahhabism started independently as quite different movements in different places. Salafism was an Egyptian-centred movement that attempted to reconcile Islam with Modernism, whereas Wahhabism was a Najdi (now part of Saudi Arabia) movement that rejected modernity outright.

The most important Salafis, from Muhammad 'Abduh through Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and MB ideologues such as Sayyid Qutb and his brother Muhammad Qutb, and later terrorist leaders such as Salih Serriya, Umar Abd al-Rahman and Abdullah Azzam, have been educationalists. It is a little recognised fact that education and public services have remained a major plank of Salafi ideology - not just for moderate Salafis, but for the radical takfiris as well.

While more moderate Salafis saw education as a way of gradually awakening the whole society to Salafi Islam, takfiris inspired by Sayyid Qutb saw education as a way of awakening a revolutionary vanguard.

In Egypt under the monarchy, pan-Islamist Salafism and secular pan-Arabism had been close to each other. The Salafis saw pan-Arabism as a step towards the goal of pan-Islamic unity. However, the Muslim Brotherhood fell out of favour with the pan-Arabists in the early 1950s, soon after the Free Officers' Coup.

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia gave santuary to the Muslim Brotherhood dissidents in Saudi Arabia, and allowed them to teach in the new Universities. This policy was based on quite rational considerations, as it resolved both a foreign and a domestic policy crisis in one move. However, it also fundamentally changed the Saudi religious doctrine, and submerged it as a hybrid theology, a sub-category of Salafism. A generation of Saudi graduates was taught this 'official' ideology by Salafi teachers.

Despite the essential rationality of the policy, Faisal, and later Khalid, had been too indiscriminate in the range of Salafis they had allowed into Saudi Arabia. Some of the most important mentors of today's terrorists were teaching in Jeddah in the late 1970s, among them Muhammad Qutb, Maulana Maududi, Abd al-Rahman and Azzam. They 'awakened a revolutionary vanguard' in Saudi Arabia, the solid foundation (al-Qaedat al-Sulbah) for the predicted future Islamic state.

Saudi Arabia has since moved against the takfiris such as al-Qaeda, and confines its funding of Salafism to a those Salafis who condemn the radical tendency in Salafism. The result is a profusion of Salafi groups (often going by the name Ahl as-Sunnah wal-Jamaah, People of the Prophetic Tradition and the Muslim Community) which accuse each other of not being real Salafis.

Neither regime change in Saudi Arabia nor simply increasing the quantity of education are panaceas for the Middle East. It was education by the wrong people that got us into this mess, and the Saudi monarchy is on the right side of a battle within Salafism.

To find out more, please read the article at Jamestown's web site.

BBC: London Bombings Aren't Terror

2005-07-12T17:01:00.000+10:00

When is a terrorist not a terrorist?

Most of us would agree that a person who deliberately attacks civilians in order to terrify the population for political ends is a terrorist. But this has long been a vexed question for many in the media.

The reason is that many journalists or editors support the Palestinian side in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Operating from a 'post-colonial' viewpoint, these people incorrectly cast the Israelis as imperial colonisers and the Arabs as the oppressed, indigenous inhabitants. Attacks against Israelis, therefore, must be placed under the category of glorious 'resistance'. Consequently, many media outlets avoid calling attacks against civilians 'terrorism' if the attacks are carried out by Palestinians against Israelis.

Those who support Israel's right to exist and/or oppose terrorism in all its forms have long criticised the hypocrisy of those media who inconsistently refer to some attacks as 'terrorism' while referring to identical attacks against Israelis as 'militant activity' or 'resistance'.

This appears to be the cause of a quiet change made by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Several BBC news stories on the web called the London attacks and their perpetrators by the correct name, 'terrorist', but soon afterwards, the wording was changed. The Google search engine entries still quoted the original words for some time, but when the link was followed, the word terrorist had been changed or removed.

For example, the story "Bus man may have seen terrorist" became "Passenger believes he saw bomber", and the words "A bus passenger says he may have seen one of those responsible for the terrorist bomb attacks in London" became "A bus passenger says he may have seen one of those responsible for the bomb attacks in London".

In another story, the words, "on the morning after the worst terrorist atrocity Britain..." became "on the morning after the worst peacetime bomb attacks Britain has seen".

Apparently, someone at the BBC doesn't consider bomb attacks to be terrorism.

Screenshots of these changes can be see at Hurry Up Harry Blogspot.

Clearly, when we minimise terrorist attacks against one section of humanity, consistency demands that we minimise terrorism against our own. The BBC's decision to erase the word 'terrorism' from its web page, except in mocking quotation marks when used by a public figure, demonstrates that the disregard for the lives of Israeli civilians has now translated into disregard for the loss of British and other civilians.

Wouldn't it have been better if the BBC had simply begun referring to all terrorism by its correct name?

Italian Swoop Yields Explosives, 140 Arrests

2005-07-10T14:19:00.000+10:00

Italian police have arrested around 140 people in Milan, many of them migrants, and seized a quantity of explosives, in the wake of Thursday's bombings in London.

Italy, as a former colonial power and a country divided over its significant contribution to the Iraq coalition, has been assessed by al-Qaeda as one of the weak links of the Western alliance, alongside Spain.

It is normal for any police or intelligence operation tracking organised criminals or subversives to leave suspects 'in the wild' and gather further intelligence by observing their movements and communications. It would appear Italy has determined that this is an appropriate time to 'draw in the nets'.

Labor's Defence Plan

2005-07-10T12:13:00.000+10:00

Both shadow attorney general Robert McClelland and Opposition Leader Kim Beazley have recently spoken about Labor's current policy in relation to Australian troop commitments.

My discomfort with the policy approach of the previous Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, is on record. Under Latham, Labor policy changed regularly, and seemed to be aimed at appeasing terrorists after Madrid. Consequently, I found it unsurprising that the Australian Embassy in Indonesia was attacked during the Australian election campaign.

I had hoped that the Beazley leadership would dispel some of these concerns, and indeed the flamboyant policy swings associated with Latham are a thing of the past. However, the new policy line still gives cause for concern.

McClelland has stated that Australian troops should be drawn out of Iraq and moved into Afghanistan. Beazley has made slightly different statements, saying simply that Australian troops should be taken out of Iraq, whether they are redeployed to Afghanistan or not. The rationale for this proposed redeployment is that Afghanistan is more relevant to specific Australian national interests because of its role in the international narcotics trade, which funds terrorism.

From the outset, I agree that Afghanistan is an important and possibly neglected theatre in the War on Terror. However, beyond this fact, there are serious problems with Labor's policy.

First, the inconsistency between the statements of Beazley and McClelland suggest that there is either division or simply a lack of detail in the ALP's policy. This is dangerous in such an important policy area.

Second, there is the timing of the announcements, which makes it seem as if the ALP is responding to the London attacks with a commitment to withdraw Australia from Iraq. Whether the timing was intentionally or unintentionally linked to the London blasts, this looks dangerously like appeasement, and a win for the terrorists.

Third, there is the continued emphasis on specific national interests, which ignores the global nature of terrorism. Yes, the narcotics trade is important to funding terrorism, and yes many terrorists were trained in Afghanistan. But most of these terrorists have now moved from Afghanistan to Iraq, Europe and our own region. It is likely that the terrorist attacks in London were carried out by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's wing of al-Qaeda, which departed Afghanistan in 2001 and now operates primarily out of Iraq. Troops in Afghanistan could not have stopped the terrorists who committed the London attacks, and by extension they would be unlikely to stop attacks on Australia - the primary front in the War on Terror is now clearly Iraq.

Withdrawing the international force from Iraq will not change that fact. If the international coalition abandons Iraq in the near future, al-Qaeda will move onto the next phase in their revolutionary model, the wholesale destruction of the fledgeling Iraqi Government. Terrorists will then fill the vacuum in Iraq and begin 'exporting the revolution', with terrorist attacks across both the West and the Middle East.

If Labor is incapable of seeing the relevance to Australian interests of Iraq's status as either a terrorist state or a democracy, perhaps the party should consider the relevance to our interests of the most oil-rich parts of the world being a haven for terrorist operatives. Drugs may be a lucrative source of terrorist funding, but their relevance is peripheral when placed alongside the importance of oil to the world economy, or the geostrategic importance of Iraq in world stability. More than ever, we live in a world where events on the other side of the world impact directly on our interests.

Finally, the policy of shifting our military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan is actually superficial. While Afghanistan would certainly benefit from the re-commitment of the SAS to counter-insurgency operations, and our defence force's well known strengths in the area of peace keeping and reconstruction, around half of our personnel in the Middle East are actually stationed in the Persian Gulf. Our naval and air resources in the region are already relevant to both Iraq and Afghanistan. What would a shift of focus from Iraq to Afghanistan mean for these forces - that Australian ships would turn a blind eye to terrorists or smugglers plying the waters in the Gulf?

Labor's policy seems to be a largely cosmetic attempt to play to a domestic audience and differentiate itself from the Government. Coming straight after the London bombings, the policy announcements are irresponsible.

The ALP must change if it is to become fit for Government.

Alert, Not Alarmed

2005-07-10T12:11:00.000+10:00

While travelling home by train last night, my fiancee and I were surprised by a sudden loud bang and the sound of small objects bouncing around the carriage. A large rock had been thrown through the window directly behind us, showering us with glass beads, although obviously the first thing that went through our minds was the London bombings.

The train driver declined to report the incident immediately on the basis that he would have to put us all off the train as a matter of standard policy. Presumably the teenagers will be out tomorrow scaring another train full of passengers.

We were on our way back from a trip to the centre of Melbourne. On the train journey into the city centre, a man entered carriage carrying a clear plastic bag. Amongst other items, the bag contained two large knives. Several inches of one blade were poking out the side of the bag.

An objective of terrorism is to sow panic. Accordingly, it is important to be conscious of the risks in order to make such attacks less probable, but to avoid unnecessary alarm. The risk of terrorism is real, and should be taken seriously. Carrying knives in full view, throwing rocks at trains, and failing to take rock throwing incidents seriously makes it difficult for the public to distinguish between real threats and false alarms, and also ratchets up the level of unnecessary alarm upon which the terrorists rely.

More News from Britain

2005-07-10T11:55:00.000+10:00

London

Adding to the list of inconsistencies in early media reports of the London blasts, investigators have found that all three bombs in the London Tube detonated simultaneously, not spread over a 45 minute period as previously reported. The package bombs consisted of 5kg of high grade explosives detonated using timing devices. The explosives were presumably imported into Britain or, as in Madrid, purchased on the black market. They would not have been cooked up in a home lab.

In an interview with ABC News Radio today, Aldo Borgu of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute claimed that the simultaneity of the attacks and the use of timers suggested that several different 'teams' carried out the attacks. I disagree.

Al-Qaeda and related groups have previously demonstrated that it is possible for a single team, or even a single individual, to place several timed explosives on different vehicles. For example, we know of Ramzi Yousef's "Bojinka Plot", a sophisticated plan to plant bombs on board ten different aeroplanes, all of which was later scheduled to fly over the Atlantic to the US more or less simultaneously. Although this was thwarted when Yousef's home bomb laboratory caught fire, the plans recorded on his laptop demonstrated that the plan was quite viable.

The London bombs could have been placed under train seats by a single plotter who simply changed trains repeatedly, perhaps being met at prearranged rendezvous points by an accomplice carrying the bombs in a car or van. More likely, three or four individuals of the same team could have taken different trains that morning, each of them planting their bomb on a particular train.

There is no need to jump to the conclusion that this cell has enough members to operate several multi-member teams.

One of these plans apparently ran into some sort of hitch, resulting in the bus bombing slightly later. The discovery of a dead suspect on board the Tavistock bus more likely suggests an accident on the terrorists' part, rather than a deliberate suicide bombing.

Birmingham

20,000 people have been evacuated from the centre of Birmingham amid a credible bomb threat. One suspect package aboard a bus has been destroyed by a controlled detonation.

Authorities have reportedly said that this incident is unconnected to the London blasts. It is difficult to know what to make of this at such an early stage. Is it perhaps a different cell? Is it a copycat, a prank attack, or just a bag left on a bus? Are the authorities playing down the connection until they know for certain that one exists?

No doubt we will find out in coming days.

BBC Resource on London Attacks

2005-07-08T21:00:00.000+10:00

The BBC World webpage has a web page with an interactive map showing the locations of the four blasts and outlining what happened in each case.

Bus bombed at Tavistock Square: BBC World

The time between the first blast (at Liverpool, 8:51) and the last (Tavistock, 9:47) actually suggests that the bombs could have been planted separately by operatives moving from place to place. After the train system was halted and passengers transferred to buses, the terrorists attacked the bus at Tavistock.

The London Terror Attack Failed

2005-07-08T17:46:00.000+10:00

Yesterday morning, terrorists committed a cowardly, repugnant and evil attack against the citizens of London.

It seems highly probable that this was timed to coincide with the opening of the G8 Summit - which means that it is also a symbolic attack against the governments of the world's most advanced countries.

The key questions are:

Who did this?

Why did they do it?

What action should we take?

Who Did This?

Very soon after the attack, an Internet posting claimed responsibility for the attacks, using the name:

Jamaat Tanzim Al-Siri	Secret Organisation Group
Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad fi Europa	Organisation of the Base (Qaeda) of Jihad in Europe

The media have been quick to say that this organisation was previously unknown, and some have begun to speculate that this means there is a new, completely independent organisation operating in Britain. There is no reason to jump to these conclusions.

During the late 1990s, both Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Usama bin Laden's al-Qaeda independently developed parallel terrorist networks in Europe. Al-Qaeda's statements at that time differentiated between "Al-Qaeda in Europe", "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" (Saudi branch) and so on.

When Zarqawi's Jama'at Tawhid wal-Jihad (Group of Monotheism and Holy War) merged with al-Qaeda last year, it followed this system of nomenclature, except that it retained the word "Jihad" in its name. Since then, Zarqawi's messages have called the organisation Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad fi Balad al-Rafidin (Organisation of the Base of Jihad in Iraq/Land of the (two) rivers).

The banner used in an April 2005 statement by Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Close-up: The text reads Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad fi Balad al-Rafidin. (Organisation of the Base (Qaeda) of Jihad in Iraq).

The statement of responsibility for the London bombings is essentially signed "Secret Cell of Zarqawi's European Al-Qaeda network."

I am assuming the message is genuine and the attack was carried out by Zarqawi's wing of al-Qaeda. It is highly unlikely that a new group would have the dedicated personnel, logistical expertise, technical expertise (such as knowledge of explosives) and resources to carry out such a sophisticated attack.

Why Was London Attacked?

This question can be approached in several ways. Why London? Why now? Why are al-Qaeda Attacking the West at all? And so on.

The purpose of this attack, like most such attacks, can be summed up in a word: Division.

Broadly, al-Qaeda seeks to divide the Western world from Muslim countries, to isolate Western countries from each other, and to divide individual countries internally. In this sense, the 11 March 2004 Madrid bombings were a success for the terrorists. Since they are, in form, so similar to yesterday's London Bombings, they serve as an ideal benchmark against which to measure the success of the attacks.

In Madrid, serious division over the country's foreign policy already existed; between the two major parties, between the government and the population, and between Spain and some of its neighbours. Coming at the end of an election that had been largely fought over these faultlines, the attacks had a seismic impact on Spain. The populace turned against the Government. Spain changed from one Western camp to the other. Most importantly, Spain withdrew from Iraq.

If that is the benchmark of a successful terrorist attack, then this attack has failed. The British people did not panic as the terrorists' statement predicted, and nor did they turn inwards, blaming each other.

"Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters." - Al-Qaeda statement

Britain has a culture of stoic defiance in the face of adversity. Moreover, it has the most efficient and professional terrorist emergency response system in the world, with the possible exception of Israel. Britain was already taking serious legislative steps against the threat of Islamic terrorism before the 'wake up call' of 11 September 2001. Obviously, Britain's experiences with IRA terrorism contribute to this stoic attitude to terror attacks, but it should be remembered that Spain has a similar history of terrorist attacks initiated by ETA.

Furthermore, since Madrid, Western leaders have learnt to live with their differences over foreign policy. Attacking Britain while the leaders of the free world were present was a mistake, because it was a symbolic threat directed at these leaders en bloc. Chirac, Blair, Schröder, Bush and Putin stood together to denounce the terrorist attacks and publicly commit to a newly invigorated, unified fight against global terrorism. Al-Qaeda has unintentionally encouraged a unity of purpose that has not existed since 2003.

Why Now?

Al-Qaeda suffered serious setbacks between 2001 and 2004. However, its merger with Zarqawi's network has given it new 'synergistic' strength. The insurgency will ebb and flow in Iraq, but while the group is strong it is making a powerful statement that it can still strike with devastating effect in Europe.

However, because there was no election campaign or moment of division, the attacks were poorly timed. Rather than being thrown into bitter division, Britain and her allies were given an opportunity resolutely to face al-Qaeda down. The attacks were, in a sense, simply too random.

Why This Form of Attack?

The tube system was an obvious target. Labyrinthine, claustrophobic and archaic, hard to guard but easy to hit. The attacks had the potential to be even more shocking than the strikes in Madrid.

Concentrating on the central eastern part of London, the financial district, the attacks brought one of the world's greatest cities to a standstill. Yet this did not bring about the sort of decisive financial difficulties that 11 September brought about. The world's stock markets have experienced several terrorist events now, and traders correctly assessed that little permanent damage had been done to business infrastructure.

However, with the same resources the terrorists could have done greater real financial damage. In addition to the transportation of commuters during the day, the London Tube system also carries nuclear waste from reactors at night. A bomb placed on the track would have led to a very lengthy clean up process that could lock up a section of the Tube for months. This would impact Londoners financially but would not kill many and would not cause the same degree of trauma. The deliberate targeting of commuter trains and buses demonstrates that a psychological impact was intended. The attacks were calculated to personally touch as many people as possible, and to resonate emotionally with a much wider audience - hence the deliberate mention of other countries in the statement of responsibility.

"We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the Crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused." - Al-Qaeda statement

What Next?

In searching for the reason for the attack, it is tempting to seize on the terrorists' statement:

Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist Crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. - Al-Qaeda statement

Al-Qaeda's propaganda insists that the ultimate cause of terrorist attacks lies with the victims of those attacks. "You caused this", they imply, "so you can prevent it." But Britain could not have safeguarded itself from terrorism by backing out of Iraq - or Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda is a professional terrorist organisation - it is not motivated by revenge, but rather its attacks are of a purely utilitarian nature. They are designed to secure the withdrawal of all Western support - military, financial and otherwise - from nominally Muslim countries, including financial support. (Again, to cause division). Al-Qaeda sees this as a prerequisite for the subversion of governments in the Muslim world. It wants the West out of Iraq and Afghanistan because we are standing in the way of its game plan.

Those who subscribe to the "give the bully your lunch and he might not beat you up" school of international relations should think carefully about the implications of appeasing al-Qaeda. Aside from seriously risking the establishment of a terrorist state in Iraq, this argument also implies that we should withdraw from Afghanistan, terminating our hunt for al-Qaeda remnants. (Indeed, a withdrawal from Iraq would also be a retreat in a front of the war on terror).

Al-Qaeda repeatedly attacked Western targets before the invasion of Iraq - Bali in October 2002, Washington and New York in September 2001, the African Embassy Bombings in Tanzania and Dar as-Salam in August 1998, the Khobar Towers bombing, and on and on. To appease Jamaah Islamiyyah, Australia would have to cease tourism and trade with its closest neighbour.

Despite France's stance against the War in Iraq, the French-flagged oil tanker Limburgher was bombed as it left Yemen. To appease al-Qaeda, the West would presumably have to stop purchasing oil from and docking ships with, Middle Eastern countries. If al-Qaeda was given what it wanted, every country would be financially, diplomatically and militarily divided from every other country. It would be a world not of international cooperation but of fear.

In the face of the deaths in London and in Iraq, it is difficult not to flinch. But to continue to follow the correct course is not callousness - rather it means these sacrifices were not in vain. Unfortunately, there will be more deaths in this war, which has been declared against us by a nihilistic foe. Obviously all efforts should be made to prevent such attacks, but when they do happen the appropriate response is to ameliorate the effects and hold firm to the right course.

By continuing a united and steady course, Blair and the other G8 leaders have shown true leadership.

But it is the British people who, by their quiet resolve, have rendered this attack a failure.

Restoring Freedom to Arab Countries

2005-06-05T23:15:00.000+10:00

In a recent article published in Social Action magazine and Perspectives on World History and Current Events, Allan McDonald looks at the prospects for freedom in the Arab World, in particular reviewing the findings of the latest UN Arab Human Development Report.

This is a particularly topical article.

It's been a little while since my last post on the blog, and it may be a couple of weeks until my next.

I am currently changing jobs, trying to organise a replacement Arabic class (my current one is ending soon) and putting the finishing touches on an article that should be published by a think tank some time this month.

After that, I should resume more regular blogging.

Radical Islam: The Opium of the Marxists?

2005-05-08T17:01:00.000+10:00

In The New Islamo-Marxism: Where Trotsky Meets Bin Laden, Bill King discusses the recent phenomenon of support for Islamic fundamentalism by many Marxists. Looking for a replacement for failed materialist revolutionary fronts, many Marxists are now aligning themselves with Islamic radicals, betraying many of the causes the left has traditionally championed.

The cruelest [irony] is that in championing the Islamist insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, today's Western Islamo-Marxists are supporting the very forces that are terrorizing and murdering politically active women, trade unionists, foreign aid workers, and left-wing activists in those countries

Marxists have frequently co-opted essentially unrelated causes (nationalism, environmentalism, pacificism), but the growing links between Marxism and fundamentalism are something new and incomprehensible. Mr King's article sheds light on this new phenomenon.

Through the Lens of History

2005-05-08T14:51:00.000+10:00

In the past couple of weeks there have been a number of big news stories that have ostensibly focussed on history. China has criticised Japan for failing to apologise for war crimes that took place during World War II. Many in the West have joined the Vietnamese Communist Party in commemorating (and in some cases celebrating) the 30 year anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. This year is also the 60^th anniversary of the end of World War II.

However, history is not simply about reciting events and the dates they occurred - it is about understanding and learning from their meaning in context. These events have by and large been viewed without a sense of historical context or moral clarity. Recalling World War II should be a sobering reminder for us of the threat of totalitarianism to human values. Australia and other members of the British-led Commonwealth stood almost alone against the unmitigated evil that Nazi Germany represented, until 1941, when the USA and USSR entered the war.

America had followed an isolationist policy, attempting to stay out of the "European" war while providing resources to Britain and her allies, until the attack on Pearl Harbour brought the consequences of isolation home. America learnt then that failing to confront tyranny simply delayed and worsened the predicament. (A similar lesson for Britain has often been drawn from Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement).

The Soviet Union, which under Stalin's dictatorial rule was closely aligned with Hitler's Germany, was brought into the war only after Operation Barbarossa, in which the Nazis betrayed and invaded their fellow dictatorship. There is no honour among either thieves or tyrants.

China and Japan

China's criticisms of Japan, and its orchestration of attacks on the Japanese Embassy, are grotesquely cynical when viewed through the lens of history.

Although Japan's current leadership should be more honest and objective in its treatment of its history, the Japan and China of 1945 were completely different countries to those that exist today. Japan was an expansionist, imperial power organised on fascist principles. It was preoccupied with wars of conquest and systematically violated human rights. Since 1945, Japan has become a deeply pacifist, vigorously democratic state. Its tyrannical tendencies were overturned by an American-led military campaign and a free society was built behind the shield of American military power.

During World War II, China was also an imperial state, though without a systematic, ideological basis. The China of today is a totalitarian dictatorship, unlike the China of the war years. While today's Japan is democratic and therefore pluralistic, China systematically represses any voices that deviate from the party line. Thus the murder of hundreds of democracy campaigners at Tiananmen Square in 1989. China's claim that the protesters who attacked the Japanese Embassy were independent of the State are simply not credible given China's systematic destruction of independent voices. It has been reported that the Chinese government bussed in the protesters, who promptly dissipated at the instruction of the security forces. Internally, then, China is behaving in a way that would not be unfamiliar to the Japanese before 1945.

If we compare the external policy of Japan and China, we again find that Japan has repudiated wars of conquest, but that military threats to neighbours now form a central part of China's foreign policy. China was able to point the finger at Japan's invasion of Manchuria while passing the "Anti-secession law" which perpetuates the fiction that Taiwan is an integral part of China. China reinforces this claim through threats of military take-over and by pointing 600 missiles at its tiny neighbour. Taiwan is another country that, over the past 60 years, has followed a trajectory from totalitarian dictatorship to free democracy under the protection of US military guarantees.

China's recent behaviour over Taiwan was a mistake because it showed Europe the folly of its proposal of lifting the arms embargo against the People's Republic. In my opinion, Australia should have conditioned its free trade negotiations on the repeal of the anti-secession law, and should have considered reinstating the arms embargo which was lifted in 1983. As Pearl Harbour demonstrated, we ignore the belligerence of totalitarian states at our peril.

Vietnam

The media's treatment of the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War were inadequate because many journalists came of age during the Vietnam era and retain a distorted understanding of that event. As Vietnamese human rights campaigner Quynh Dao, who delivered a PWHCE talk in 2004, wrote in a recent article in The Australian:

One enduring myth is that the West became involved in the Vietnam War to prevent communism spreading, but that it turned out to be a civil war involving nationalists who wanted unification. In fact, the Vietnam War was fomented by the communist North. The communist North was instructed and abetted by communist China and supported by the rest of the communist bloc

This distorted historical 'lens' allowed some in the media to claim that the Vietnamese people today are indifferent or satisfied with communist rule and are simply happy for an end to the war. On America's National Public Radio, Loren Jenkins reported from the site of the US Embassy building, where on 29 April 1975, Vietnamese people had desperately tried to board helicopters that were evacuating American personnel from South Vietnam. The building has since been razed by the Communists. Jenkins drew an equation between the lack of political freedom in the north and the south, and spoke with an optimism that could have been taken from a Vietnamese government press release:

Detractors are quick to point out that there's no political freedom in Vietnam under its one party communist rule. But as I remember it, there wasn't any political freedom either, under the old South Vietnamese government that Washington supported. The country is at last at peace. It isn't crippled by its past, but looking solidly into the future to more progress unimpeded by war.

Viewed through the lens of history however, this equivalence is nonsensical. The purpose of the American and Australian support of the South was not to first set up a perfect, stable functioning democracy in the face of relentless, heavily armed insurgency. The purpose was to first secure the south against the north, so that an independent, stable and free democracy could then grow over time, as occurred in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The action also served to buy time for other countries in the region that China and the Soviet Union were attempting to subvert.

Conversely, the Viet Cong and its backers sought to expand and consolidate a military dictatorship that would systematically persecute its own population. This is, in fact what happened.

Jenkins failed to see the symbolism of Vietnam's razing of the building from which Vietnamese attempted to escape the approaching communist troops. The failure of democratic forces in Vietnam resulted in a flood of refugees during the 1970s, and indeed there is still a serious refugee problem associated with Vietnam's campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Hmong people.

Learning from History

It is increasingly important today that we understand that world events are dynamic. It is up to us whether the future will be free and peaceful, like Japan and Taiwan, or unfree, repressive and belligerent, like China and Vietnam. In 1945, few had the foresight to believe that Germany might one day be a free, independent and democratic state. The idea of promoting democracy in Asia was derided in the 1970s (and sometimes still today), on the basis that Asian culture supposedly prevents the development of democracy.

The Middle East can change. China can change. Vietnam can change. Let's learn from our past and make sure these changes are for the better.

Galloway Feigns Compassion for Iraqis

2005-05-07T16:57:00.000+10:00

George Galloway poses with a picture of his 'friend' Saddam Hussein. [AP]

Baghdad blogger Salam Pax

In April, George Galloway told Iraqi blogger Salam Pax that regardless of the fact that around 80% of Iraqis want coalition troops to remain in Iraq for the time being;

I just want to be honest with you. You can not demand that our armed forces occupy your country - that's a matter for us. It's not a matter for you - it's a matter for us

Left by itself, this statement represents an ugly, but potentially consistent policy - the policy of narrow, national self interest being more important than defending human rights. It could be assumed, then, that Galloway's opposition to the Iraq war was based on the popular view that Blair's government was dishonest about its reasons for going to war, or that other issues were higher on the policy agenda than Iraq.

However, having won the seat of Bethnal Green and Bow at Thursday's election, Galloway's victory speech contradicted his comments to Salam Pax. He said:

Tony Blair, this and other defeats that New Labour have suffered are for Iraq. All the people you've killed, all the lies that you told, have come back to haunt you.

And in an interview with Jeremy Paxman, he said that the MP he defeated (Oona King), and all Labor MPs who voted for the war in Iraq had the blood of 100,000 mostly Iraqi dead on their hands. (This figure, often touted by the Left, is contested).

Galloway can't have it both ways. Either he considers the plight of Iraqis irrelevant to British foreign policy (as he told Salam Pax) or he ran his election on behalf of the people of Iraq. One or the other.

Is Galloway simply being logically incoherent here, or is this propaganda hiding a more sinister motivation?

When Galloway and his business representative in Iraq and political confidante Fawaz Zureikat were named in a list of beneficiaries of the UN oil for food scandal, in which Saddam Hussein's Iraq gave millions of dollars in secret kickbacks, Galloway said the following about Zureikat's donations to his (Galloway's) previous election campaign:

I don't know the exact figure, but he's one of the three biggest benefactors who are the Governments of the UAE, united Arab emirates and Saudi Arabia and Zureikat would be either second or third on that list. So he was a very generous donor to the campaign

In other words, Galloway's political career has been bankrolled by a number of Arab dictatorships.

Galloway's approach to the Iraq issue is callous, dishonest and opportunistic, and it should be recalled that Galloway, unlike the great majority of Iraqis, has been an avowed supporter of Saddam Hussein for many years.

As such, he may fairly be said to have on his hands the blood of the 400,000 Iraqis so far found in mass graves, those Israelis killed by suicide bombers sponsored by Hussein's regime, and many others who have died premature deaths because of Hussein's brutality.

An open letter to George Galloway

2005-04-26T13:44:00.000+10:00

The war in Iraq is being used as a campaign issue by some in the British election. One example is George Galloway, who has previously visited Iraq and met with Saddam Hussein, and now dismisses Iraqis who are grateful for the overthrow of Hussein for "selling out".

One Iraqi Kurd (Kurdo) has responded with an open letter to George Galloway, which begins:

I know that you are campaigning hard to win the hearts and minds of the British public, and I wish you good luck in failing. I and many other people from Iraq, just like the father of the Iraqi blogs, Salam Pax, will never forget the scenes in which you were sitting and joking with Saddam Hussein on the screens of the Iraqi television.

We were wondering what you were laughing about. Were the jokes of the dictator who filled the lands and the rivers with mass graves, who terminated birds and rivers, who did not differentiate between a killing baby and a soldier, were his jokes too funny? Or were you laughing at the Iraqi people for having a leader like Saddam Hussein?!

Kurdo concludes:
We are thankful for the forces of United States and United Kingdom and the rest of the world for getting rid of a dictator like Saddam Hussein. Many of us died and didn't live to see their long dream of a world-without Saddam, but those who are living today in that dream-come-true world, are not appreciating your works.

Kurdo also has some words for British voters who might be considering voting against Blair on behalf of Iraqis:

The decision to topple Saddam Hussein was the most courageous and beneficial decision a British Prime Minister could have ever taken for the sake of the freedom of the Iraqi people.
[...]
If you are voting against Tony Blair for the sake of the Iraqi people, then don't please, because the majority of Iraqis don't appreciate that.

When we see the anti-war protests around the world we think "Where were these people when we were entering our mass-graves alive, when our babies were being gassed, when our villages were being destroyed. Why you didn't protest against Saddam Hussein for our sake ?"

I hope some British voters will read Kurdo's messages and think twice before voting for candidates such as George Galloway.

Nerve Gas in Fallujah

2005-04-24T20:52:00.000+10:00

I just found this photograph and thought it was worth posting.

During the assault on Fallujah, American forces captured vials of nerve gas.

A photograph of forty tubes labelled "Sarin, Soman, V-Gas" in English, Russian and German can be seen on the USA Today web site. Where did these come from?

The photo can be found here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphics/phantom_fury/flash.htm

The link is to a slide show, and the nerve gas photo is the second in the sequence (just click the little right arrow next to the page number).

[ From Louise at Iraqi Blog Roundup ]

Jalal Talabani: First Kurdish President of an Arab State?

2005-04-23T15:34:00.000+10:00

The recent nomination of Jalal Talabani, a longtime Kurdish leader, to the position of President of Iraq has generated many newpaper headlines and TV soundbites to the effect that Talabani is "The First Kurdish Head of an Arab State" or "The First non-Arab President of Arab Iraq". This claim is doubly flawed, and has irritated many Iraqi Kurds. (See, for example, Kurdo's blog and An Iraqi's Thoughts).

An Arab State?

First, it is unfair and perhaps tasteless to report that a Kurd is President and in the same breath reiterate that Iraq is an "Arab State". Iraq is a multiethnic and multidenominational country. Although Arabs constitute a majority, the Kurds still comprise 15-20% of the population,^a and therefore deserve a stake in its government. Moreover, the Kurds are not simply a minority distributed randomly across Iraq. Since its foundation, the modern state of Iraq has contained provinces that are overwhelmingly populated by Kurds. The Kurds have lived in those areas since time immemorial. In other words, parts of the Republic of Iraq are not at all 'Arab', but are part of the Kurdish homeland. Although it is tempting to use the term "Arab State" as shorthand for "Arab majority State", in the context of Talabani's presidency, the phrase is offensive to many Kurds.

The First Kurd to Lead Arabs?

Second, Kurds have ruled Arab majority states before. As Simko points out, Husni al-Zaim, the first Za'em (President) of Syria and Nuri As-Said (the last elected Iraqi premier before Qassim's coup) were Kurds, as was the legendary Muslim leader Salahuddin (Saladin). Simko lists many other Kurds who have been leaders in the Arab world. The Kurds are not a perpetually victimised people, so Talabani is not a fleeting anomoly. The Kurds have the same capacity to lead in the Middle East as anyone else - perhaps more so given Iraqi Kurdistan's recent record of successful, democratic self-administration.

The nomination of a Kurd as President of Arab-majority Iraq is of course of immeasurable importance, precisely because for so long certain people have asserted that Iraq belongs to the Arabs. The term "Arab State" was part of a policy mindset that denied the legitimacy of the Kurdish people. This was the same mindset that saw the Kurds slaughtered and gassed under Saddam Hussein. This mindset also extended to religious issues; the Sunni Arab minority was presented as the rightful ruling group, justiying the subjugation of the Shi'ite majority.

Thus, to shatter the myth of "the Arab State of Iraq" is to shatter the quasi-tribal mythologies that prop up dictatorships across the Middle East - presenting challenges to the ruling classes of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran among others.

A vestige of an unpleasant past

Colin Powell was the first black Secretary of State of the USA. If, hypothetically, he became the next US President, that would also be a first. But would the newspapers call him "The First Black President of White America"?

The domination of Iraq by particular ethnic groupings is (hopefully) a thing of the past - the mainstream political leaders of Iraq's ethnic and religious communities are increasingly working towards the common goal of an Iraqi state that is neither exclusively Arab nor Kurd, neither Sunni nor Shiite.

Supporting Statistics:

	Ethnic Grouping						Religion/Denomination
	Arab	Kurdish	Iranian/ Persian	Asian	African	Other	Sunni	Shi'ite	Other Muslim	Christian	Other
Iran	3%	7%	51%			39%^b	5%	93%		2%^c
Iraq	75-80%	15-20%	3%			2%^d	32-42%	54-65%		3-4%	0.25%^e
Kuwait	80%		4%	9%			Deleted 29/5/05 due to errors (see comments)^f
Lebanon	95%	^g				4%^g	~75%			~25%
Saudi Arabia	90%			10%			85%	15%
Syria	90.3%	^h				9.7%^h	74%		16%ⁱ	10%
UAE	42%			50%		8%^j	80%	16%		4%
Yemen	No data						52%	48%
Source: SBS World Guide, PWHCE. Note that each country was compiled separately, and in some cases irregularities may arise because of differences of definition. In some cases, statistics may only be available from state sources and figures may be distorted.

Notes:
^a Source: SBS World Guide, 9th edition, 2001, p364.
^b Azerbaijani 24%, Giliki and Mazadarani 8%, Lur, Baloch and Turkmen 2% each. Other 1%
^c Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, Baha'i
^d Mostly Turks
^e 30 000 Yazidis, 25 000 Sabeans, 2500 Jews
^f See comments
^g Other consists of Armenian, Kurdish, Assyrian, Turkish and Greek. The religious breakdown presented here is also greatly simplified and numbers are approximate.
ⁱ Alawite, Druze, other sects.
^h 9.7% 'other' includes significant Kurdish minority in addition to Armenians, Turks, Circassians and Assyrians
^j Represents non-Asian expatriates.

Mullah Krekar to be Extradited to Iraq

2005-04-22T03:17:00.000+10:00

This is not the first time Norway has told Krekar it's the end of the line, but it looks as though Ansar al-Islam's founder may be back in Iraqi Kurdistan for good soon.

A Norwegian court has stated that it will extradite Mullah Krekar to Iraq if the Iraqi authorities can give assurances that the malevolent Mullah will not face the death penalty.[1] Judging from discussion over at Kurdo's blog, Krekar might not enjoy serving out the term of his natural life amongst his countrymen...

[hat tip: Vladimir at Kurdo's Blog]

[1] Norway, like Australia, never extradites anyone if they might face the death penalty as a result of said extradition.

The baby and the bathwater

2005-04-22T02:38:00.000+10:00

Michael Warby has had an opinion piece, "Drug Ban's Downside" published in The Australian. In the article, Warby makes an argument in favour of heroin legalisation, using arguments related to supply and demand, and - implicitly - regulation and deregulation.

Australia is in the middle of a 'heroin drought' brought about by effective policing and border protection (as Warby acknowledges). He also acknowedges reports that show the drug drought has led to plummeting crime rates. So why change a prescription that is working?

The central point of any ideologically libertarian argument for drug legalisation is that drug laws, by distorting the market, make heroin artificially expensive and therefore drive users to crime. The high price of illicit drugs thus funds organised crime.

There are, however, countervailing economic forces (for those who believe that the legal status of drugs should be determined by economics), as Warby acknowledges: "What is striking reading two online publications on the heroin drought . . . is that heroin users do respond to the rise in the price (including more diluted [sic] strength) and cost (increased search time) of heroin. Higher prices and longer search times mean less heroin use. Which means successfully restricting the supply of heroin can genuinely reduce heroin usage. A definite plus for a zero-tolerance policy."

Good news as far as the evidence goes. But Warby's ideology tells him there must be more to this. By reducing the issue to a theoretical abstraction (supply and demand), Warby loses sight of the real point of drug laws (to stop or reduce drug use), and sooner or later these false assumptions lead to an absurd conclusion:

"The argument for banning narcotics is basically the same as St Augustine's objection to sex: something so pleasurable and attractive overturns rationality, overwhelms morality and disastrously corrodes attention to one's proper duties."

Can Warby seriously think that banning narcotics and banning sex are comparable? A society in which nobody had sex would soon be extinct. A society in which everybody took heroin would quite possibly share that fate.

Sex is a natural part of the human experience. By counterposing man to woman, sex expresses the complementary nature of humanity, uniquely binding two individuals as one. As a central element of reproduction, sex is one of the most important creative forces known to mankind.

Heroin is unnatural and entirely unnecessary. It causes listlessness, isolation and anti-social behaviour. Depressing the respiratory system, the pulse and the nervous system, heroin is one of the most destructive forces in contemporary human life.

Put simply, sex leads to new life and heroin leads to death.

By equating prohibition of sex with prohibition of heroin, Warby unwittingly exposes his libertarianism to its own internal contradictions, showing the flaws in his argument better than any critic could. Essentially, the libertarian argues that if all criminal laws were abolished, no crimes would be committed.

The criminalisation of almost anything will intensify demand by stifling supply - but the point is to reduce overall consumption, not to reduce prices. Slaves, prostitution, heroin and explosives will all increase in price on the illegal market when they are taken off the legal market. This does not mean we can not or should not ban them.

The ultimate purpose of such laws is also not to price organised crime out of markets - eliminating organised crime is the role of law enforcement agencies. The heroin drought demonstrates that they are doing that job effectively in Australia.

Iraqi Freedom and Chinese Hypocrisy

2005-04-19T23:08:00.000+10:00

An article by Gerald Mercer recently published on Perspectives on World History and Current Events, quotes another author as follows:

"no one can possibly deny that the election was successful and champions the freedom that democracy brings. . . the Middle East has never before held a democratic election involving other parties and political factions."

"This act of democracy is completely different from the ruthless oligarchy of former President Saddam Hussein's 36-year long rule."

"Such an earthshaking change not only matches Iraq's national condition, but also follows the historical trend of the world's political democratisation." (emphasis added)

Who was being quoted? George Bush or John Negroponte? A neo-conservative think tank? A Murdoch Press journalist? In fact, the words quoted above were taken from an opinion piece by Ma Xiaolin in the China Daily (4^th February, 2005)

In his article, which originally appeared in Melbourne magazine Social Action, Gerald Mercer comments on the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Chinese Communist Party, which publishes the China Daily, publishing an article that clearly recognises the benefits of the democratic transformation we are witnessing in the Middle East and yet refuses to countenance democracy for the people it rules. It would be nice to think that this article signalled a fresh direction for China's totalitarian dictatorship, but as Mr Mercer points out, the evidence points to the opposite conclusion.

Gerald Mercer's article, The Freedom Democracy Brings also discusses the democratic impulse currently spreading through the Middle East in more detail.

Some travel overseas to relax. . .

2005-04-19T22:23:00.000+10:00

My recent trip to the United States was a great success. I met with a number of policy analysts and democracy and human rights activists, and came home with a lot of new ideas.

As this was my first trip to the United States, it was interesting to see first hand whether the various preconceptions and cliches would be proven true. I found Americans to be universally friendly (except for a certain obstinate truck driver in Manhattan!) and much slimmer than expected! My only regret is that I no longer possess the appetite for donuts that I enjoyed in my youth.

I was stunned by the architecture in some places (particularly Washington DC) and the absolute lack of planning in places such as Florida. Moving between states, or even between parts of the same city in some cases meant more of a change of atmosphere than one experiences moving between different countries in Europe. I suspect that anything one says about America is bound to be true, but the opposite is also the case!

Ending a holiday is never easy, but the return to Australia was made more pleasant by the fact that my recent article, The Evolution of al-Qaeda: Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, appears in the April edition of The Review

This article deals with the merger between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organisation, At-Tawhid w'al-Jihad (Monotheism and Holy Struggle) and Osama bin Laden's Tanzim al-Qaeda in October last year. Zarqawi has often been rumoured to be part of al-Qaeda, but in fact he has kept his group formally independent for years, refusing to swear bayat (fealty) to Osama bin Laden. Nonetheless, he has worked within the ideological framework or paradigm that is associated with al-Qaeda.

In my article, I sought to explain what it meant for a group that was working within the al-Qaeda paradigm to merge with al-Qaeda. I also sought to explain why these two groups needed each other and what the merger of their organisations meant for their respective futures. The article was accepted for publication some time ago, but was delayed for a couple of months by events such as the visit of Israeli President Moshe Katsav, which the Review covered in detail.

As my article appears in The Review's hard copy edition but is not reproduced on their web page, I have uploaded a copy to the PWHCE web page. It can be found here:

http://www.pwhce.org/evolutionofalqaeda.html

I have also updated the profiles of Mullah Krekar and Muhammad Abdus Salaam Faraj, the latter being a complete rewrite.

Going to America

2005-03-13T04:16:00.000+11:00

I will be in the United States for the next couple of weeks, and therefore will probably not post for some time.

Any American readers of the blog interested in organising a meeting can view my itinerary online

I will periodically check my e-mail at the trevor@pwhce.org address.

Mullah Krekar's Passport on al-Qaeda's Hard Drive

2005-03-13T04:10:00.000+11:00

One of my first posts on this blog was about Mullah Krekar, the leader of Kurdish Ansar al-Islam who now lives in Norway as a refugee. Krekar has spent years posing as a victim of the CIA and the Norwegian security services, both of which claim he is a terrorist. Krekar is particularly adept at spreading confusion, continually contradicting himself. He has managed to convince a significant slice of the Norwegian intelligentsiya that his intolerant views were simply manifestations of an alien but nonetheless legitimate culture, and that his detractors were simply bigots.

In my original post, I quoted from a long-forgotten 1997 interview with Krekar published in Nida'ul Islam, demonstrating that Krekar was firmly in the Jihadi-Salafi mould - he even named his children after Islamic radicals and their books.

Recently, while reading an excellent article in the Atlantic Monthly, Inside al-Qaeda's Hard Drive (Alan Cullison), I saw something that caught my attention.

The article revealed a treasure trove of documents found on a computer hard drive abandoned by al-Qaeda leaders as they fled their Kabul office before advancing Northern Alliance troops. Amongst the article's illustrations was a passport featuring an unmistakable photograph of Mullah Krekar. The name on the passport was one of Krekar's aliases. The caption revealed only that Krekar was a Kurdish militant.

I have now written and uploaded a biographical profile of Krekar, the enigmatic Norwegian Islamic terrorist.

[ Update: Since writing the above, further information has come to light. The identity document is not a passport, but a membership card for the (now defunct) Islamic Movement for Kurdistan (IMK) issued in 1999. The name on the card, Aso Muhamad Hasan, is also not a known alias of Krekar, but is very similar to an alias of another Ansar al-Islam figure, Aso Hawleri ('of Irbil') who was arrested in Iraq last year. However, two Kurdish sources (including intelligence sources in Sulimaniya) have now said that the picture is Krekar. I am updating my Krekar bio as information comes to hand. Thanks to Kurdo, Michael Rubin and Bjørn Stærk blog for assistance. 19/04/2005 ]

Winds of Change blowing a gale in Egypt

2005-03-01T06:36:00.000+11:00

In my last post, I talked about democratic developments in the Middle East.

One takes a risk when attempting to identify an historical trend. It can turn out that the events described were simply a blip, and the trend can be proven illusory by subsequent developments. If, however, major historical developments take place that follow the identified trend, this is an indication that one may just be onto something.

One country I left out of my Winds of Change: Democracy and Security Outlook in the Middle East article was Egypt - because nothing in particular had changed. Since the Free Officers' Coup of 1952, all Opposition political parties have been banned, and although elections take place, only the (until now mis-named) National Democratic Party can run.

However, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak recently announced democratic reforms for Egypt (article), involving a referendum to change the constitution so that multiple parties could stand in the upcoming Presidential Election, which had hitherto been expected to serve merely as a rubber stamp.

A number of caveats must be provided here.

The elections still have not happened, and observers wonder whether any steps will be taken to impede the normal freedoms of the opposition parties, foremost among which is the Wafd Party.

Given the period of time that opposition parties have been banned, it must be wondered whether they will be capable of competing fairly against the ruling 'National Democratic Party'.

This step still will not provide the democratic election of representatives to the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Council, Assembly), and therefore can only be seen as a first step to democracy, albeit a very significant one.

One of the most important political groupings in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, with the goal of establishing an Islamic State. Breakaways from the Muslim Brotherhood include Muhammad Abd Us-Salam Faraj, whose group assassinated President Sadat, as well as Ayman al-Zawahiri's and Usama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. One wonders what electoral response the Muslim Brotherhood would command today. It is probable that its more moderate core would maintain the most electoral support and be best positioned to contest democratic elections, given that many moderates have already been allowed into the political system.

Despite the above caveats, it must be reiterated that this is an historic move. Mubarak specifically stated that this reform was conducted in keeping with the times. Let's hope that other countries - such as Syria and Iran - give way to the current of history in the Middle East, so that we can have a happier, freer and ultimately a safer world.

(Originally via Jan Haugland, who is now reporting on calls for democracy in the UAE)

Winds of Change in the Middle East

2005-02-21T01:24:00.000+11:00

Critics of American policy make a number of claims or predictions:

American and allied policy in the Middle East will lead to a deterioration of the regional and global security situation

Democracy in the Middle East is impossible, as it is alien to Arab culture

America's war in Iraq, like that in Vietnam, was doomed because it was a struggle against a local nationalist insurgency supported by the population

America is demonstrably hypocritical because rather than supporting democracy in Latin America (its own back yard), it propped up right-wing dictators.

Two new articles on Perspectives on World History and Current Events examine the basis of these claims in more detail.

David Bennett's article about John Negroponte, America's new National Intelligence Director and until recently the US Ambassador to Iraq, illuminates a career that has involved standing up for democracy against totalitarianism, despite these principled stances sometimes damaging his career.

Beginning his career in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Negroponte stood up for the South against the machinations of Ho Chi Minh and his own less principled countrymen. Despite media misreporting of the conflict, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army were not representative of the will of the South Vietnamese people, just as those who tried to derail the 30 January election in Iraq were not representative of the Iraqi people - the great majority of whom defied the threats and voted.

Negroponte was later Ambassador to Honduras, where he worked against Soviet and Cuban attempts to impose Marxist government. As David Bennett points out, Latin America is now largely democratic thanks in part to idealists such as John Negroponte.

Negroponte's adherence to his beliefs led to some setbacks in his career - at one time he even held the unenviable title, 'Ambassador for Fish'! However, his eventual role in Iraq utilised the experience he had acquired working against totalitarianism in Southeast Asia and Latin America, as well as the character and ideals he demonstrated.

Mr Bennett argues persuasively that John Negroponte's example demonstrates that it has been those who struggled for democracy and against totalitarian tyranny, rather than those who denigrated them, who most deserve the epithet 'idealist'.

The second article, Winds of Change: Democracy and Security in the Middle East, examines the positive trends that are emerging across the Middle East. Looking at events since 2001 in eleven important Middle Eastern countries, this study finds that recent elections, clampdowns on terrorism and/or alterations in foreign policy lead to positive prognoses in nine (Libya, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan).

The exceptions, Iran and Syria, have worsened because their governments can see that life is going to become more difficult for tyrants and easier for democratic reformers in the Middle East. They fear these winds of change because they know that they themselves would not last a moment if the people they rule over had a say in their own destinies.

Although some people have doubted the wisdom or motivations of the United States and its allies in the Middle East, we should all be pleased to see a breeze of hope blowing through this stagnant and tense region.

Iraqi Petition Condemns 'Negative' French

2005-02-13T21:43:00.000+11:00

Those who oppose the liberation of Iraq have given a number of reasons for that opposition.

One specious claim is that the invasion is an attempt to impose 'our' system on Arabs who apparently choose to live under Ba'athist tyranny. These same people proceed to inform their incredulous audience that Arabs have no democratic history, so democracy in Iraq is impossible. The sentiments of the 'resistance', they claim, are the rule in the Arab world, and the democrats the exception.

These claims, which attempt to paint supporters of the war as culturally ignorant, in other words bigoted, in fact expose the condescending racism of those making the claims. What seems to be forgotten is that much of Europe laboured under tyranny throughout significant parts of the 20th century. Arabs are not a separate species, incapable of seeking genuine freedom and a say in their own destiny. When they live in tyranny it is because of unfortunate historical circumstances, not through choice.

In recent weeks we have seen truly groundbreaking events in the Middle East that have struck a blow against the bigotry of those who believe Arabs are incable of being democrats. The first was the election of a new Palestinian President who is expressing the will of his constituents by working to end the long conflict with Israel. The second is the enormous number of Iraqis who turned out in the recent election, smiles across their faces, holding their ink-daubed fingers in the air in triumph, despite the ever-present threat of violence from their former overlords and foreign jihadis.

These two elections double the number of countries in the Middle East whose governments are elected by the people - the others being Israel and Turkey.* These events are now permanently part of world history.

What do proponents of the "Arabs can't be democrats" line say to these two elections? The predictable response is that elections do not a democracy make. Sure, these may be examples of budding democracy, but without a tradition that incorporates the many other essential democratic institutions, democracy will never blossom.

Iraq now has hundreds of political parties, independent media outlets, bloggers and many other aspects of a nascent democracy. Large protest marches against terrorism, although rarely publicised in the West, are reported on Iraqi blogs. The Iraqis have also begun to utilise the petition, a democratic institution which pre-dates democratic elections in Europe, to tell us exactly what they think of those who oppose their liberation.

The following is from a petition from "Iraqi civil society organizations [and] Iraqi and Arab intellectuals" sent to Kofi Annan.

We, the undersigned, [...] are gravely concerned at the continuing attempts of certain governments to undermine the democratic process in Iraq. In the vanguard of these governments stands the French government. Since the start, this government has opposed the endeavours of the international community to help the Iraqi people end the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein, a rule that posed a threat to international peace and security, under the pretext of protecting the integrity of the Iraqi people. It threatened to resort to the veto in the UN Security Council to thwart any resolution which could help the Iraqi people rid themselves of the dictatorial regime.

After the liberation of Iraq under United States leadership and supported by many countries in the world, the French government called for the participation of the Baath party in the transitional government in spite of that party's totalitarian thought, nationalistic fanaticism and sanguinary past. These efforts were repeated in different forms including the persistent call for the withdrawal of multinational forces from Iraq, forces which Iraq needs in order to ensure security. The last such effort was the French government's demand to convene an international conference in Egypt to include governments and representatives of what it calls factions of the "Iraqi resistance". We wish to confirm to you that this "resistance" is none other than an alliance of remnants of the ousted regime in Baghdad and non-Iraqi Islamist and extremist terrorist groups affiliated to the Al Qaida organization led by Osama Ben Laden whose Iraq branch is headed by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, as well as organized crime gangs previously released by Saddam Hussein before his fall.

The whole petition can be read http://www.petitiononline.com/ocsi/petition.html (scroll down for English translation).

Link from: Omar at Iraq the Model

* Some definitions of 'the Middle East' include Afghanistan. This would bring the number of countries whose governments were democratically elected to five - three more than in 2001.

Petition link for those reading this through text-only e-mail:
http://www.petitiononline.com/ocsi/petition.html

A Year of Elections and Terror Threats

2005-01-26T22:41:00.000+11:00

In under a year, we have witnessed arguably the most important elections of the post-911 era. These elections will be studied by students of history decades from now. The international events that form the backdrop for these critical elections culminate in the election that will take place in Iraq this Sunday.

One common element that will no doubt be noted by astute historians is that all of these important elections were subject to attempted distortion by Islamic terrorists.

First, the Spanish election of March 2004. Days before the election, a series of train bombs exploded simultaneously across the capital, Madrid, exactly 911 days/two and a half years after the September 11 attacks. These bombings shocked Spain and the world. In the wake of the bombings, Spaniards concluded that they were being targeted by a Muslim world aggrieved by Spain's assault on Iraq. Spain voted out the Aznar government, replacing it with the opposition Socialists led by Zapatero. The opposition platform of withdrawal from Iraq thus became government policy and Spain, along with several hispanic allies, withdrew from the Coalition of the Willing.

An Islamist strategy document found by a Norwegian military research/intelligence institute revealed that the terrorists had identified Spain as the Coalition member most likely to withdraw from Iraq in response to attacks on its national interests. It was argued in the document that America could be forced to withdraw from Iraq if its allies could be removed one after another, producing a sort of 'domino effect' that would leave Iraq defenceless. Rather than being a reflexive action by the global Muslim community, the Madrid attacks were part of a deliberate, calculated geopolitical plan by revolutionaries who are alienated from mainstream Muslim society.

In other words, Aznar's policy of supporting the liberation of Iraq alone would not have placed Spain at the top of the terrorists' target list. Zapatero's contrary policy meant that a terrorist attack could achieve a political result by attacking Spanish interests.

In April 2004, as Spain and its allies withdrew from the sector of Iraq for which they had responsibility, America was forced to reallocate troops and abandon the attempt to retake Fallujah. Terrorist groups such as at-Tawhid w'al-Jihad (Monotheism and Holy Struggle, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), were able to establish the sort of haven (or 'destination for hijra and preparation) that had given birth to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1980s during the war against the Soviets. (Zarqawi formally merged his organisation with Usama bin Laden's al-Qaeda in October last year).

In other words, the attack in Madrid achieved its intended short-term objective.

Another two important elections took place on 9^th October 2004. One of these was in Afghanistan. Although it was of enormous historical importance and also took place against a background of terrorist threats and attacks, I would like to focus on the election in my own country, Australia.

As previously reported on this blog, Australian Opposition leader Mark Latham changed his policy on Iraq in response to the Madrid attacks, declaring that Australian troops would be withdrawn either immediately or 'by Christmas'. To be generous to Mr Latham, one must assume that he saw the attacks in Madrid as some sort of reflex action by the Muslim world. By demonstrating that Australia didn't really support the war in Iraq, he hoped to discourage Muslim terrorists from targeting Australia. A less charitable interpretation is that this was a misguided attempt to appeal to populist sentiment and cause the Howard government to suffer Aznar's fate.

However, in terms of the Islamist strategy outlined above, making the withdrawal of troops from Iraq an election issue was a red rag to al-Qaeda sympathetic terrorist cells in our region. Although the responsibility for a terrorist attack always lies with the perpetrator, it must be said that Latham's new policy made it worth terrorists' while to attack Australian interests. For this reason, the attack against the Australian Embassy in Jakarta during the election period was regretably predictable. This did not stop the Opposition candidate for Fairfax and self-professed terrorism expert, Ivan Molloy, from blaming John Howard for the Jakarta bombings.

However, the Jakarta attack did not have the same impact on the Australian electorate as the Madrid attacks had on the Spanish electorate. For one thing, the Spanish swing was also connected to the impression that Aznar had known Islamists were responsible for the attacks but instead accused ETA for political reasons. For another thing, the Australian and Spanish public attitude to concepts such as war and appeasement are fundamentally different due to the two countries' very different respective histories.

John Howard was returned by a landslide in Australia, and the Latham Opposition was reduced to a stammering mess. Latham has recently resigned from both the Opposition leadership and his seat of Werriwa due to his ailing physical and political health. During Australia's response to the 26^th December 2004 tsunami, there were signs of a healing of the perceived rift between the Howard government and Muslim communities both within Australia and across the region.

Aside from the enormous domestic significance of the Howard election victory, the Australian election bucked the 'domino effect' trend the Islamists were trying to establish. As stated in a recent Center for Defense Information report on the changing composition of the Coalition, "Australia is a traditional American military ally and had supported every U.S. military effort since 1917. The withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq, therefore, would have represented a serious diplomatic dilemma for Washington."

The importance of the elections in Afghanistan and Australia on 9^th October 2004 cannot be underestimated. Different results in Australia and/or Afghanistan could even have impacted on the November American election.

Once again in the US election, terrorists attempted to influence the result. On 29^th October 2004, Usama bin Laden issued a tape warning Americans not to re-elect George W Bush. Endorsing Kerry, who had prevaricated on the issue of continued US commitment to Iraqi stabilisation and based his career on a refusal to support South Vietnam in a roughly analogous situation, the al-Qaeda leader failed to replicate the Madrid effect, and Bush romped home to a second term.

The Election in Iraq this Sunday

This article has looked at a number of cases in which Islamic terrorists attempted to undermine the American-led post-war reconstruction effort in Iraq. However, as Michael Ledeen recently pointed out in a public lecture hosted by the Australian Institute of International Affairs and the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, the countries of the coalition and most people in Iraq are also united in wanting foreign troops to leave Iraq. The difference is that the coalition and most Iraqis want the troops to remain until Iraqi society is capable of standing on its own two feet. The most important landmark in the establishment of a sovereign, self-sufficient Iraq is the election of a representative government this Sunday.

Much has been made of the public announcements by Sunni groups that intend to boycott the election. However, indications are that the majority of Iraqis, Sunni and otherwise, will vote in the election. What's more, most party lists are multi-ethnic. Community leaders, particularly leaders of the Kurdish and Shiite communities, which have borne the brunt of sectarian persecution in the past, refuse to allow Iraqi politics to be defined by ethnic categories.

This is what many of the protesters, the human shields and the media didn't, and still don't, understand. The Iraqi people supported the removal of Saddam Hussein by the American-led coalition as an opportunity to rebuild their society and live a life of genuine freedom, such as we in the West take for granted.

This does not mean that terrorism will stop in Iraq after this Sunday, or that all foreign troops will be able to withdraw immediately. Indeed, terrorist attacks could increase if the troops were withdrawn prematurely, in much the same way that terrorist attacks increased in Saudi Arabia when the withdrawal of the US troop presence was annouced. The point is that without these elections, Iraq has no chance of a decent future.

The world should hold its breath on Sunday, and hope that despite the depredations of the terrorists and the Ba'athists, another brick will be lain in the foundation of Iraqi democracy.

Postscript

Lance in Iraq has an interesting suggestion. Those 'human shields' who professed their willingness to lay down their lives for the safety of the Iraqi people, placing themselves between the coalition military might and the infrastructure on which the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein depended, Lance suggests, might be appreciated all the more by the Iraqi people if they volunteered to place themselves between the terrorists and the Iraqi voters they are likely to target this Sunday.

But then, defending ordinary Iraqis and their fledgeling democracy against terrorists just isn't as romantic as defending a repressive regime against a liberating western army, is it?

(Postscript link via Athena in Jordan aka Terrorism Unveiled)

PWHCE relaunched for 2005, or What I've been up to lately

2005-01-26T22:00:00.000+11:00

Over the past month, I have spent most of my spare moments working on the Perspectives on World History and Current Events web page.

Now that the page has its own domain name, I am working to update and standardise the format of the page and also speed up the process of putting articles on the page after they have been submitted.

PWHCE now also has its own advertisements, so that eventually the web page might be financially self-sufficient and even subsidise other costs of running PWHCE.

The following new articles have been added to the page over the past month:

Culture:
Film Review: GATTACA
Film Review: Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Asia Pacific Report:
The Asia Pacific Report gave PWHCE exclusive permission to publish excerpts from the report on our web page some time ago. There have been some delays in the publishing of this report, but it is now almost completely up to date. These delays will not occur in future.

In particular, APR 65, from December 2004, includes profiles of each of the 36 ministers in the new cabinet of Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Yusuf Kalla.

Who's Who of Russia:
This project, one of the first on PWHCE, is undergoing a revamp. The original project of producing dozens of very short profiles of figures from Russian History and Current Events has been revised, and instead we are now looking at a smaller number of more comprehensive profiles and some full biographies. Examples include:

Authors:
Aksakov, Pushkin, Gogol.
Soviet political figures:
Abakumov, Stalin, Trotsky, Tukhachevsky
Figures from the Russian monarchy:
Grand Duke Vladimir Cyril Romanov, Catherine the Great.
Figures from the decline of the Soviet Union and the subsequent period:
Yevgeni Primakov, Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Anatoly Sobchak, Roman Abramovich.

There is also a biography of Boris Yeltsin that has been on the page for some time.

Middle East and Islam:
Open Letter: To the Misguided Muslims. Muslim Peace Activist S A Rehman calls on militant Islamists to relinquish violence, and stop sullying the religion of Islam.

The Middle East Project continues to be updated.

Having recently acquired a digital camera, I should also be able to illustrate the web page more frequently in future.

So there it is - PWHCE re-launched for 2005!

Give Corporates Credit when they Care

2005-01-01T01:38:00.000+11:00

In the wake of the tsunami that has devastated coastal and island areas in the Asia/Indian Ocean region, I was pleased to see the Care Australia press release, Overwhelming generosity shown by the Australian business sector

At a time when the Australian economy is performing well, it is good to see that not only individuals, but also corporations, are willing to help their neighbours at a time like this. This is a time to put corporate profits and competition aside.

I was therefore surprised to read, later in the day, an article in the centre-left Fairfax broadsheet The Sydney Morning Herald entitled, Corporate Australia 'slow' to open its wallet. The article began with the words: "Australia's big businesses have chipped in with millions of dollars of donations to help the relief effort after the Asian tsunami disaster. But corporate Australia has been criticised for failing to dig deep enough for arguably the world's greatest disaster relief operation."

Criticised by whom? None of the quoted individuals or organisations in the article voice such criticism, and in fact the news seems uniformly positive. Why the quotation marks around 'slow' in the article's heading?

The final sentence in the article is the only one in which any specific corporation is criticised:
One of Australia's largest companies News Corporation could not outline whether it intended to make a donation today.

So it turns out that the "criticism" alluded to is Fairfax's own petty and tasteless swipe at its rival. A positive story about corporate generosity is turned into a headline about corporate selfishness, and business leaders are left wondering whether they might be better off not bothering next time.

To find out how to make a donation, go to the Care Australia web site

End of year banquet

2004-11-07T13:28:00.000+11:00

The date for the 2004 PWHCE end end of year banquet has changed. It will now be held on Thursday 25th of November.

Keynote speaker:
Shirley Scanlan will speak on the topic, "Teaching History in Modern Australia".

Read the invitation here: http://www.pwhce.org/talk2004.html

www.pwhce.org

2004-10-26T23:24:00.000+10:00

I said back in June that I wanted Perspectives on World History and Current Events to have its own domain name, and it has finally happened:

http://www.pwhce.org/

The page is now up and running.

In the coming weeks I'll clean up a few details (such as remaining references to the old address), then I hope to relaunch the site with new material, departments and articles from new authors.

Final PWHCE events for 2004

2004-10-17T17:24:00.000+10:00

October Talk

On 27th October, Ted Lapkin of The Review will give a talk entitled, A Few Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Geneva Conventions.

Although I agree with Ted's position that by the letter of the Geneva Conventions, some Guantanamo Bay inmates such as David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib have forfeited their rights, I personally believe that the most morally appropriate and sensible action for America (and Australia) would be to extend equivalent rights to such people anyway. Why? Because the way to fight fire is not with fire, but with water. We and the Americans ought to preserve our high moral ground wherever possible.

For this reason, I will be particularly interested to hear Ted's arguments. If you're in Melbourne on the 27th, I strongly encourage you to come along.

End of year banquet

The Annual PWHCE end of year banquet will take place on Saturday 27th November at Golden Triangle Thai/Cambodian/Burmese restaurant. This was the banquet venue for the Monarchist Alliance conference I was involved in organising earlier this year.

Links

Invitation to Ted Lapkin's talk:
http://pwhce.org/talk1004.html

Invitation to the Banquet:
http://pwhce.org/talk2004.html

Election comment

2004-10-09T07:12:00.000+10:00

The focus of this blog is foreign affairs, and therefore this comment relates to Australia's foreign policy.

Many have speculated that the recent bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta was a product of Australia's support for America in Iraq. After the Madrid bombings in March, Mark Latham adopted a policy of withdrawing our troops from Iraq for this reason. His policy involves refocusing on the Asia Pacific region. Personally, I think that Latham's decision to differentiate himself from the Government on the issue of withdrawal from Iraq made Australia a more attractive target.

However, on the eve of our polls, there were several bombings around the world. The Indonesian embassy was bombed in Paris. There was a bombing in Pakistan. And three tourist destinations popular with Israelis were hit with car and truck bombs in Sinai, Egypt.

None of the countries in which these attacks took place, or against which they were directed, were part of the war in Iraq, and in fact many of these countries were actively opposed. Indonesia, our regional neighbour, was attacked in Paris.

This demonstrates that terrorists are engaged in a global war, in which targets can be hit anywhere on the planet. Migration is a key facet of their ideology. Regions are meaningless, and one of their primary short term goals is to establish a new training base in the Middle East - the current target is Iraq.

Three years and one month ago, Australians died alongside Americans and people from around the world, when Afghan-Arab terrorists attacked on American soil.

This is a war in which regional distinctions of marginal relevance. Iraq is the war's principal front.

A continuation of the Howard government's policy is the most wise decision at today's election.

Molloy and Latham Feed the Terrorists

2004-10-04T07:27:00.000+10:00

"Labor candidate Dr Ivan Molloy's article, "PM feeds the terrorists", demonstrates such an alarming failure of logic that Australians ought to be very concerned about the prospect that Molloy could soon be in Parliament. Following closely behind his wife's assertion that Liberal Parliamentarians are responsible for both the Bali bombings and the recent Jakarta embassy bombing, Molloy, like Mark Latham, has identified the first objective of global terrorism (the withdrawal of all foreigners - except terrorists - from Iraq) and made it his election policy. Is it any wonder that Jemaah Islamiyya recently cast its vote at the Australian embassy, just as Moroccan terrorists cast their vote in the Spanish elections?"

This is the first paragraph of an article I wrote to The Australian in response to an opinion piece by candidate for Fairfax, Dr Ivan Molloy. Photographs of Molloy training with separatist guerrillas in Mindanao have since appeared in the press.

A full report on the Molloy affair, accompanied by the article I wrote and the edited version The Australian published as a letter to the editor, are now available online.

Links

My article:
http://geocities.com/pwhce/mollcorr.html

Molloy's original article, PM Feeds the Terrorists:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10859475%255E7583,00.html

An interesting comment by Greg Sheridan:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10920899%5E25377,00.html

I have been busy!

2004-09-23T21:25:00.000+10:00

Regular readers of my web log may have noticed that it is anything other than regular. This long hiatus has been the result of certain other projects I took on.

I recently organised the Monarchist Alliance inaugural conference, which was held over the last weekend in August. The conference was well attended and we were fortunate to have a number of prominent speakers, such as Professor David Flint (National Convenor, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy) and Philip Benwell MBE (National Chairman, Australian Monarchist League) and Harold Schmautz (Tradition und Leben, Germany).

Some of the papers from the conference are now available on the web page. Eventually, all of them will be uploaded.

Perspectives on World History and Current Events also hosted the usual monthly talks, which can be perused on the events page at PWHCE.

Our next talk will be Catalonia: A Linguistic Perspective on a Nation Within a Nation, by Gillian Darcy, on 29^th September 2004.

I hope to publish more on the blog in the near future!

Links for those who read this page in plain text:
http://geocities.com/monarchistalliance/
http://geocities.com/pwhce/events.html
http://geocities.com/pwhce/talk0904.html

PWHCE presents a paper on Somalia

2004-06-20T03:18:00.000+10:00

Perspectives on World History and Current Events will host a talk by Dr Said Aden, on the topic, Lessons from Somalia: The Disintegration of a Nation and the Impact on the Society and its Health Infrastructure, on 30^th June. In an age when the phenomenon of failed states and failed Western interventions is of critical importance, this talk should prove very interesting.

The talk will take place in Melbourne, Australia. See the invitation for more details.

Europeans vote No or not at all

2004-06-17T00:03:00.000+10:00

The three most notable phenomena from the EU elections on the weekend are (1) a very low voter turnout particularly in the East, (2) a decline in support for pro-European-Union major parties and (3) the emergence of new eurosceptic parties.

The decline in votes in the East is a biting indictment on the whole European bureaucracy. As Wolfgang Böhmer, head of the government in Saxony-Anhalt, said, "When people in East Germany marched in 1989 for the right to vote in free elections, and when 15 years later nobody votes in those elections, something has gone wrong." The vote all over Europe was very low and this indicates that the politicians in Brussels have lost touch with the people they are supposed to represent, a worrying development in Europe, the cradle of democracy.

The interesting result for me was in Sweden, because my 'kompis' Carl-Johan was a candidate for a newly registered party, Högerpartiet de konservativa (Right-Conservatives). (Kalle's the serious-looking one in the black suit and tie). The Right-Conservative party was important because it was the only non-socialist Swedish Eurosceptic party in the election - a party that was right/conservative/christian, in the sense of being neither socialist nor liberal. It calls for a return to Swedish "monarchist, christian and cultural" values and traditions, and warns of "a world without God, without Swedishness, without right and wrong, and without meaning." The party platform continues, "We were here before the left. We will remain when the left has disappeared."

As a new, small party with non-existent media exposure, the Right-Conservative Party had little chance of winning a seat in the EU Parliament, particularly since Sweden's representation has dropped to only 19 seats. However, one of the two left-Eurosceptic blocs, Junilistan, shocked many by gaining not one seat, as expected, but three. Given the balance of media coverage and the cursory attention many voters seem to have given to the election, it is perhaps not unreasonable to assume that a significant number of Junilistan voters would have voted for a Right-Conservative Eurosceptic party, had they been aware of that option. Aside from the Centre Party, which retained its one seat, all parties with representation in the EU Parliament lost a seat each, three of those seats going to Junilistan.

It will be very interesting to see how these election results across Europe will influence the European Parliament and whether the new parties will last. It will also be interesting to see whether this prefigures an increasing domestic disenchantment with establishment parties in many European countries.

The following table shows the election results in Sweden in terms of seats. I have given a short clarifying comment on some of the parties, using terminology that might be helpful to Australians:

Party	Description	Seats	Previous
Social Democratic Worker's Party	Mainstream labor party, normally gets a large majority	5	6
Moderates	Right Liberals (dries)	4	5
Junilistan	New left-oriented Eurosceptic party	3	-
Liberal People's Party	Small-l Gladstonian liberals (wets)	2	3
Centre Party		1	1
Christian Democrats		1	2
The Left Party	Rebranded Swedish communist party	2	3
The Green Environment Party		1	2

PWHCE Yahoo! Group

2004-06-16T23:45:00.000+10:00

Last year, I looked for ways to make the Perspectives on World History and Current Events (PWHCE) page interactive. I tried a guestbook, a Correspondence page and a Yahoo! Group.

Eventually I settled on the Trevor Stanley blog as an interactive medium linked to the web page.

Nonetheless, the Yahoo! Group format still has significant advantages over the blog format - personally I find Yahoo! Groups more democratic, and they have a more cosy atmosphere. They also provide for much larger comments than this blog currently caters for! In an attempt to give the Yahoo! Group a second lease of life, I have set up the blog so that all posts are automatically sent to the Yahoo! Group.

To subscribe to the PWHCE Yahoo! Group, send e-mail to pwhce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.au

Click to subscribe to pwhce

Time to get my own domain name

2004-06-06T22:27:00.000+10:00

I just found a Polish Geocities webpage that claims to be the website of al-Qaeda.

It isn't.

I have to get my own domain for Perspectives on World History and Current Events... and soon!

Vaclav Havel criticises European Leaders' Populism

2004-06-06T21:01:00.000+10:00

Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright who became Czechoslovakia's most famous 'dissident' and went on to be his country's first democratically elected President when communism fell, recently criticised the unimaginative populism of many European leaders.

(From SILT via Non Tibi Spiro)

This blog has been quite slow for the past couple of months. This is because I've been working a lot of overtime, and have also been preoccupied with other projects.

In addition, I've been ill for the past four days, and have been unable to write up a couple of posts I had planned.

I've added more links though - hopefully they will keep readers occupied :)

The Vietnam Syndrome in Iraq

2004-05-30T21:46:00.000+10:00

Lately, we have heard a number of public figures declare that Coalition of the Willing is doomed to failure, that the reasons that America and Australia (and other countries) gave for invading were cloaks for ulterior motives, and that the people of Iraq will defend their national pride against our presence to the death. We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, to become bogged down in a quagmire, to fight for an unworthy cause, and to be opposed by the people of Iraq until we retire in disgrace.

The war in Iraq, we are told, is just like the war in Vietnam.

For these reasons, I was very pleased to host a talk on Wednesday by Quynh Dao, a Vietnamese Australian who witnessed the war in Vietnam, saw communism in place, fled to Australia, and has watched how the media and intellectuals have distorted the truth about the Vietnam war and the communist dictatorship.

Quynh, a member of the Australia-Vietnam Human Rights Committee, gave a highly professional presentation, with technical assistance from the Vietnamese Professionals Society (Victoria). The result was a truly memorable experience.

The text of Quynh's talk, Two Sides to Every Story: Perspectives on the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, is now available.

Comments would be most welcome.

Hinch Grinch grimaces at Cinderella's Prince

2004-05-18T00:17:00.000+10:00

Mark Richardson has posted on the out-of-step sourness of Derryn Hinch. Apparently oblivious to the overwhelming interest Australians have taken in Friday's wedding between Tasmanian Mary Donaldson (now Denmark's Crown Princess) and HRH Fredrik of Denmark, Hinch has been critical of the attention Fredrik has received, solely as a matter of birth. (An tenuous proposition by the way!)

This reminds me of the scrooge-like behaviour of Tasmania's Governor, His Excellency Richard Butler, whose narcissistic parading of his contempt for the institutions he has sworn to represent (such as declining to take the title "his Excellency") is cold-hearted and mean. Placed alongside the magic, romance and pageantry of the marriage of commoner Mary Donaldson to the handsome Crown Prince Fredrik, in Copenhagen, the city synonymous with fairytales, who could prefer Butler, or for that matter the Hinch grinch?

President of Iraqi Governing Council killed in suicide bombing

2004-05-17T23:55:00.000+10:00

The President of the Iraqi Governing Council, Izzadine Saleem (aka Abdel-Zahraa Othman), was among six Iraqis killed two hours ago by a suicide carbomb while waiting at a Coalition Provisional Authority checkpoint.

Saleem was a Shiite and the leader of the Islamic Dawa Movement in Basra.

The terrorists clearly seek to undermine not just the foreign occupation, but also any possibility for Iraqi self-government except by the terrorists themselves. As I stated in my recent talk, it is vitally important that the Coalition not abandon the majority of Iraqs who support a transition to a stable, free and democratic country. Al-Qaeda's objective is to tear down all forms of order hostile to the terrorist agenda.

I would like to personally extend my sympathies and condolences to the people of Iraq.

We must stay the course, ensuring that Iraq possesses a viable, democractically-elected government capable of defending itself before we consider leaving.

Articles

Channel News Asia: Iraqi council leader killed in Baghdad car bomb, US vows to stay firm

Boston Globe: Sorrow, anger over killing of Iraqi Governing Council president

Guardian: Car bomb kills head of Iraq ruling council

Channel News Asia: No let-up in Shiite uprising, Iraqi politicians averse to US withdrawal notion

Al-Qaeda's Revolutionary Model

2004-05-09T18:54:00.000+10:00

I have uploaded the full text of my recent talk, Al Qaeda's Revolutionary Ideology: Madrid and the Iraq War in Context.

The document covers a lot of ground, being a basic primer on the ideology of al-Qaeda and its precursor groups, showing how al-Qaeda radically altered the understanding of key technical terms (which are explained in the text) by synthesising rival ideologies. Some of the key concepts and Arabic terms used by Jihadi Salafis such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates are explained, which should give the reader a better understanding of groups such as Ansar al-Islam and al-Muhajiroun. Some of the material in this document is based on my thesis research, and is the only place this understanding of al-Qaeda's methodological ideology for political change is available.

Finally, I tried to cover the events in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and the Madrid bombings and election result - essentially an up to date picture of what is at stake and what al-Qaeda's specific objectives are at present. The talk was given just before the horrible prisoner abuse scandal broke.

In addition to putting the talk online, I have revamped one page, initiating The Middle East Project by adding ten separate biographical pages to the website. Eventually, the Middle East Project will be a portal to information on various Middle Eastern issues, but particularly to documents on Al-Qaeda-linked terrorism.

One other thing to blog on:
I found an interesting article on bin Laden's gold award offer on an Arab publication called Dar al-Hayat. The analysis of bin Laden's strategy in Iraq is spot on, and matches the predictions I made in my talk. For al-Qaeda, Iraq is not only an open arena for terrorist attacks against American and 'hypocrite' targets, it is also an opportunity to regenerate its network by training recruits in jihad in Iraq. These muhajiroun will then either travel to other hot spots or return to their home countries (eg in the West) to commit terrorist attacks.

Norway's Secret Jewish Conspiracy

2004-05-09T06:22:00.000+10:00

Norway's state-funded broadcaster, NRK, recently uncovered a vast secret conspiracy, directed by Israel, to shift Norwegian politics in favour of Israel and jews in general, by infiltrating charismatic churches. Hold on, did I say NKVD, KGB or NRK?

What actually happened was that NRK concocted a conspiracy theory in order to discredit a group organising an anti-terrorist demonstration. Because one of the organisers of the anti-terrorist project had been critical of the Norwegian media for its allegedly anti-Israeli bias, that organiser was targetted and duped into an interview by an NRK journalist who pretended to be sympathetic to the group's opposition to anti-semitism. The interview was then deliberately twisted and misrepresented, then broadcast as a special segment on the evening news.

This is what NRK considers the appropriate response to criticism of its anti-Israeli bias by a group that opposes anti-Semitism - accuse the group of being part of a vast, interlocking jewish conspiracy. The broadcast has taken the debate over whether Scandinavian media are simply anti-Israeli or actually anti-semitic to a new level. The episode has shades of Stalin's "Doctors Plot".

How can decent people believe that state-funded media is a good idea when said media operate in this way?

---

While Australia's state broadcasters have not quite descended to NRK's level, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) sometimes comes close. The broadcaster, which was originally intended to provide foreign-language media for isolated migrants, is now a left-dominated funds trough that serves to broadcast semi-pornographic arthouse movies, usually from countries in which everyone speaks English anyway.

The last remnant of SBS' original raison d'etre is the foreign news broadcasts that are screened every morning. Recently, SBS began broadcasting Hanoi television news into the living rooms of Australia's Vietnamese community, despite a stated preference for alternative Vietnamese-language news hosted by emigres in America. Vietnamese groups in Australia launched protests against SBS, pointing out that their children were being taught lies about their parents, their old country, and their new country, in their own language, if they turned SBS on in the morning.

A member of the Australia-Vietnam Human Rights Committee who was involved in the protests will deliver the 26^th May PWHCE talk. If you are in Melbourne on 26^th May, please consider attending this event.

2004-05-02T00:18:00.000+10:00

I wrote the following 'off the cuff' on a Yahoo! discussion group in response to the hackneyed claim that Australia is Constitutionally 230 years behind America.

The Westminster Constitutional system is a conglomerate of documents, conventions and assumptions. As such, it has constantly changed and adapted, from the days when Parliament was a gathering of Lords convened by the Monarch for the purpose of levying troops, through to the present system.

The United States Constitution is a codification of assumptions and conventions that prevailed at the time it was written; before the British constitutional system had reached maturity. Since 1766, the British system has matured significantly. Specifically, Walter Bagehot overturned some faulty assumptions, such as the rather clumsy and potentially dangerous wall between the Executive and the Legislature, which makes it well nigh impossible to rein in an Executive who has lost the confidence of the Legislature. In addition, there is no way to break supply deadlocks, which encourages them to happen with discomforting regularity. (This is why in some parts of the US, public servants have to wait for backpay and roads are closed because there is no money to perform necessary roadworks). The American Constitution is worse than a 230 year old document frozen in time. It has actually codified the misconceptions of the 18th Century. This is compounded by the fact that the American Constitution, being Republican, is founded on a negative concept: the abolition of the Monarchy.

On the other hand, the Australian Constitution is just over 100 years old - it was written after the most important developments in Constitutional Law had already taken place, and it incorporates those ideas. The Australian System is less rigid than the American, and has continued to evolve over time: for example, the Australia Act considerably altered Australia's status vis-a-vis Britain. Much of our Constitution is, in reality, convention, lending it a greater flexibility. (For example, the Ministerial system is not enshrined in the Constitution, but is inherited from its parent.) Our relationship to Britain is one of both independence and connection; a mature and civil approach.

Australia has one of the world's most flexible yet stable constitutions, and one of its most successful. We have had only one major Federal crisis (the supply crisis culminating in the 1975 Dismissal), which was resolved without undue fuss. On the other hand, the most recent American Presidency saw a major crisis which was unresolved.

America's partisan judges and governors, its systematically corrupt system of electoral borders (rotten boroughs went out of style here a long time ago!) and the obscenely venal system of electoral funding are an embarassment for America's democratic allies (most of which are monarchies). It would be great to be able to point to the great successes of a liberal-democratic capitalist system such as we have in our "Northern European" monarchies (Britain-Canada-Australia-NZ, Norway, Sweden, Denmark), but we are constantly embarassed by the glaring cracks in America's imperfect democracy.

Trevor Stanley speaking on 28th April

2004-04-19T23:28:00.000+10:00

If you are in Melbourne on 28^th April, please consider attending a PWHCE event at which I will be speaking on the topic Al-Qaeda's Revolutionary Model: Iraq and the Madrid Bombings.

RSVPs would be appreciated.

Yet another volcano of revenge

2004-04-19T22:27:00.000+10:00

A seismic event of astounding proportions has been unleashed in Gaza. After the assassination of Hamas leader Dr Abdel Aziz Rantissi, Hamas 'vowed "we will explode a volcano of revenge"' according to The Australian today. One wonders whether this is the same volcano of revenge predicted weeks ago when Rantissi's predecessor Ahmed Yassin was killed; or will the volcanos spew their vengeance on Israel one after the other? I do not mean to joke over dead bodies, but there is a point to be made here. The reason why Hamas' threats ring hollow and are ignored by Israel is that before Israel attacked Yassin and Rantissi, Hamas was already doing everything in its power to kill as many Jewish citizens as possible, with the stated aim of killing or deporting all of them. The volcano has already erupted, spewed its lava, and become a fact of life. To switch to a different metaphor, Hamas played its last cards months ago, and now has recourse only to absurd bluff as Israel repeatedly trumps it.

Various world leaders condemned the assassination, just as they lamented the attack on the pitiable wheelchair-bound Yassin. To put it in perspective though, the USA has had a crippled President and Indonesia a blind one. Nobody patronises Stephen Hawkings the way they fawned over the late Ahmed Yassin.

Those who want to remember Yassin and Rantissi as hapless victims should remember some things Rantissi said:
"The word ceasefire is not in our dictionary."
Israel will "never know security."
"We will fight them until the liberation of Palestine, the whole of Palestine."
(and what does that mean for the people of Israel?)
"By God, we will not leave one Jew in Palestine."

Some argue that Yassin and Rantissi were not military targets, being political leaders - after all, they issued political statements and organised social infrastructure. But what is new about this? Several days ago Usama bin Laden issued a political statement, and during the 1990s he heavily invested in infrastructure (particularly agricultural infrastructure) in the Sudan, putting his company, al-Hijra Construction, to work.

But at the same time, "Sheikh" Usama bin Laden was the spiritual leader of a worldwide terrorist movement, directing the murder of westerners across the globe - just as "Sheikh" Ahmed Yassin was the spiritual leader of Hamas, directing the murder of Jews in Israel.

Each spiritual leader also had an intellectual right-hand man. Oddly enough, both men - Dr Rantissi and Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri were paediatricians trained in Egypt.

Speculations also abound about the role of Abdullah Azzam in both organisations, however Rantissi's "the word ceasefire is not in our dictionary" could have come from Azzam's lips.

Take a close look at al-Qaeda and Hamas - two Jihadi Salafi organisations following the path of the Muslim Brotherhood's Sayyid Qutb. How do they differ? Hamas kills jews in Israel, whereas al-Qaeda kills Americans in America and Europeans in Europe. Now we come to a central aspect of the division between "old Europe" and neo-Conservatism. After September 11, the world heard George W Bush declare that war would be waged on terrorism. Not al-Qaeda, note - but terrorism. "Old Europe" chose a more narrow conflict - while al-Qaeda would be fought tooth and nail because it threatened Old Europe, Hamas and various terrorism-sponsoring states would be absolved. The overthrow of Ba'athist Iraq, which funded terrorism against the Jews in Israel and an assassination attempt against George Bush Senior, was for Old Europe not a war on terror - because Iraq could not be seen to be connected to al-Qaeda, or seen to be a direct threat to Paris or Berlin.

The difference between "Old Europe" (a mindset that is not confined to Europe) and neo-conservatism (a mindset not confined to the United States) is the difference between short-sighted self-interest on the one hand, and the far-sighted vision that seeks to secure self-interest through a wide-ranging and positive vision.

If al-Qaeda routinely attacked French citizens, and attempted to assassinate Jacques Chirac, does anyone doubt that France - the country that bombed an environmentalist vessel in the harbour of its ally New Zealand - would attempt to 'assassinate' Usama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? Would the leaders of civilised countries condemn France for its "illegal" and "irresponsible" attack, blame France for the "inevitable wave of vengeance amongst the Islamists" or cry over poor old bin Laden, who walked with a stick?

It's time we all took a good look at our prejudices.

I will never rejoice at the loss of a human life, but by no means will I mourn the deaths of those vicious criminals, Yassin and Rantissi.

Bin Laden's Phony Peace Offer: Europe Blunders

2004-04-17T16:46:00.000+10:00

I've been working long hours this week, but also thinking about Usama bin Laden's recent tape. Here are my thoughts, some of them in response to Bjørn Stærk's post on the tape:

Is it really bin Laden?

I heard an excerpt played on the radio, and it sounds like his voice, which is quite distinctive.

The CIA also seems to think it's him.

Brilliant Propaganda

Personally, I thought Usama bin Laden's tape was a brilliant political ploy, and the European leaders fell right into it. That's not surprising though, because any response to this tape would constitute the error of confirming the consequent. In other words, it's a bit like answering the question "do you still beat your wife?" Any incautious answer will confirm the assumption in the statement, which is that one is, or has been, beating one's wife. Politicians use this trick all the time.

Bin Laden is cynically positioning al-Qaeda as the hapless victim here, as he often does. His tape essentially says "If you stop assisting the American-Jewish alliance against Muslims, we will stop defending ourselves (by killing you) - because after all, ours is the camp of peace, and we are responding against the camp of war". This statement is packed with lies and deceptive assumptions, all integrated into the ultimatum.

Any response that does not identify and refute the underlying assumptions will deliver a strategic propaganda advantage to al-Qaeda. The tape is an ultimatum (accept our peace offer or we'll attack you), so Europe can answer in two obvious ways:

(1) Yes [... we will stop the murderous campaign against Muslims that we have been waging at America and Israel's instigation.]
(2) No [... we will continue killing Muslims and committing all the barbarous acts you accuse us of because we do not care for your peace.]

Either answer confirms a falsehood.

The first answer would of course be a tremendous victory for bin Laden. Note that his tape does not call for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but for a withdrawal of all personnel from all "Muslim countries". Of course bin Laden did not believe the Europeans would agree to this - that was not the purpose of the tape.

The second answer is still a victory for bin Laden, of course. The Europeans have confirmed the underlying assumption that al-Qaeda is the camp of peace, whereas America-Israel-Europe is the camp of war. This is entirely unrealistic, but European governments will now be more likely to distance themselves even further from Israel and America. By confirming al-Qaeda's claim that Europe is waging a war against Islam by daring to set foot in Muslim countries (who exactly appointed bin Laden the arbiter of what was a Muslim country or who was allowed into it?), the Europeans are placing themselves in an unenviable position. This tape restricts Europe's actions not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but even in Kosovo and Bosnia! This tape is a brilliant wedge.

No negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues

Several leaders declared that it is impossible to negotiate with al-Qaeda. For example, Colin Powell said, "You can't make a deal with somebody like bin Laden. How can you make a deal with a terrorist?" The problem with this approach is that it implies that we in the West refuse to negotiate because we don't like terrorists, preferring relentless war. It is as if we are closing the door. Of course, the real reason one can't negotiate with these terrorists is that they themselves rule out the possibility of negotiation in good faith!

One of the key principles in al-Qaeda's ideology is that compromise or negotiation with the 'enemy' is pointless and sinful. The motto of Abdullah Azzam, the late mentor of Usama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, was "Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues." In the unlikely event that Europe did withdraw all personnel from all Muslim countries, they would enjoy but a brief reprieve. One must naturally assume that bin Laden would consider the arrest of his agents in Europe to be a breach of the truce; in other words, such a truce would turn Europe into an organisational centre for anti-American terrorist attacks. Bin Laden would also presumably regard trade with America and its allies to be a breach of the truce, as he frequently justifies attacks on civilians on the basis that they form part of the American war machine because they pay taxes. Al-Qaeda treats non-Muslim aid workers and businesses in the Middle East as invaders. What is being offered is not a treaty, but a siege.

Jihadi Salafis such as bin Laden are attempting to emulate al-salaf al-salih (the 'pious predecessors' of early Islam), particularly the first Muslim community at Yathrib (Medina). According to the story, after the hijra (migration) to Yathrib, Muhammad and his Sahaba (companions) established a 'perfect community', with the co-operation of the Ansar (helpers) - the citizens of Yathrib. Although they had a ten year hudna (truce) with Mecca, they carried out ghazwah (raids) against Meccan merchants, wearing Mecca down. Eight years into the truce, Muhammad determined that the Meccans had broken the treaty through their own actions, and marched triumphantly into Mecca, establishing the first Caliphate.

In order to recreate the Caliphate, al-Qaeda and its precursor groups have attempted to interpret that story for contemporary conditions. The base (al-qaeda al-sulbah - the solid base) of operations in Afghanistan is considered to be the location of al-Qaeda's hijra - both in the anti-Soviet Jihad and in the current one. Al-Qaeda almost always refers to attacks such as September 11 and March 11 as ghazwah, raids. It is natural for al-Qaeda to offer Europe a hudna, as a precursor to its conquest. Al-Qaeda's treaty offer should be placed in the same category as Hitler's Munich Agreement - a political instrument designed to soften up a target. The treaty would end at bin Laden's convenience.

This was not a treaty offered in good faith, and therefore it was not negotiation at all. That is why one can not negotiate with al-Qaeda.

A New bin Laden?

Someone at the BBC described this tape as the first example of Usama bin Laden striking a clever political blow. That is completely false - the tape is entirely in keeping with every other publication by al-Qaeda and every major political action the group has taken. What exactly happened in Madrid in March? Did Spain/Europe/The West ACT against Muslims, who then RESPONDED to their action with a bombing? Or did Islamists ATTACK Spain, at which point Spain RESPONDED by panicking? Who is pulling whose strings? Think of the tape. Bin Laden has the arrogance to address Europe - and Europe quickly stammers out a response! When al-Qaeda acts, it is with an eye to making its enemies react in a particular way, although in the tape bin Laden carefully positions the West as the active aggressor and the Muslims as the victim responding. Al-Qaeda has proven to be very successful in pushing us just where they want us, because they know us. On the other hand, we in the West know very little about al-Qaeda. Most of us don't understand what they want, how they think, what their plans are. So we can only act in the dark. Al-Qaeda watches and waits, and chooses its moment to dig the needle directly into the nerve. The West, stabbed in the dark, leaps away, or throws blind punches.

Other reactions to the tape

Scott Martens has his finger on the pulse with his response to the tape, although I fail to see why he thinks that Usama bin Laden was not intentionally splitting the Europeans from the Americans. From my experience, most effective politicians choose a course of action that achieves several objectives. Al-Qaeda is fighting an asymmetric war against a vastly more powerful opponent - naturally bin Laden is attempting to 'wedge' components of the West apart. That doesn't mean that he believed they might actually accept the offer; the very act of re-affirming that Europe is in America's camp will place pressure on European leaders on an issue where they have proven themselves vulnerable to pressure. I also don't quite agree that "There is no risk whatsoever in refusing, and nothing to gain from accepting." - there is risk in both paths.

Jan Haugland also picks up on the fact that this tape manoeuvres European countries into turning down "Bin Laden's honest and generous offer of a truce". Haugland sees the tape as an attempt by bin Laden to appeal to moderate Muslims by himself appearing to be moderate.

Dominic Cummings, in an astute article in the Telegraph, observes that "If we are to defeat bin Laden, we must not fall for his tricks." He places the tape in the perspective of bin Laden's previous words and actions, and also looks at the historical crisis of the Middle East that is a principal reason for al-Qaeda's emergence; "Particularly since Napoleon's landing in Egypt and Nelson's ejection of him, Muslims have been asking: what went wrong?" Spot on. The one reservation I have is Cummings' claim that bin Laden has "reinvented himself as the rational terrorist". If Cummings means that this rational, politician's point of view is a new thing for bin Laden, then he is mistaken. If he means that from a public relations point of view, bin Laden has appeared politically rational to the West for the first time, I can see the point.

More links (18/04/2004)

The BBC has a more comprehensive translation than the MEMRI selected excerpt translation I linked to above. I obtained the BBC link from Non Tibi Spiro's entry on this topic. Non Tibi Spiro underlines the fact that bin Laden's tape is phrased in a way that is clearly directed at European citizens, something he has done in the past.

The BBC also has an analysis of the tape that points to the important fact that "The craftily worded broadcast contained a classical left-wing analysis" of America and multinationals. The focus on Palestine also indicates bin Laden's wily use of wedge politics.

Half tonne of dynamite stolen in Norway

2004-04-07T01:14:00.000+10:00

660kg of dynamite - more than six times the amount used in the Madrid bombings - and 5000 detonators have been stolen from a storage depot in Norway.

Report: BBC

Richard Clarke, al-Qaeda and Pearl Harbour

2004-04-06T21:57:00.000+10:00

The current investigation the Bush Administration's failure to prevent the September 11 attacks from happening has generated some scary but ultimately pointless stories. For example, several media outlets have rehashed the story about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's chilling warning (since revived by an interview with Lebanese paper al-Safir) to the American Government twelve days before the attacks. Apparently, Mubarak told the Administration (and I quote) that "something was going to happen". To which they no doubt replied, "Thanks Hosni, we'll get right onto that."

Naturally, those who have a deep emotional investment in the Bush Administration being proven inept or negligent have taken this information as being in some way meaningful.

What, precisely ought the Government have done?

Closed all foreign embassies?

Shut down the entire country's mail system and closed down all government buildings in case "something" meant the then unprecedented mailing of anthrax through the post?

Set up road blocks across the country in case a car bomb or truck bomb was going to be detonated in a repeat of the Oklahoma bombing or the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing?

Checked thousands of reservoirs in case al-Qaeda agents had planted ricin? (Al-Qaeda's Kurdish affiliate, Ansar al-Islam, apparently manufactured ricin in a lab in northeast Iraq, and the deadly chemical has been found in several European countries in connection with al-Qaeda)

Shut down the entire rail network in case al-Qaeda was going to attempt something along the lines of the Madrid bombings?

Post armed guards outside all nightclubs in case al-Qaeda was going to try something like the bombings of the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar in Bali?

Although these precautions may have reduced the probability of success of threats that sound plausible in retrospect, in most cases the threats would have sounded like inventions from a Tom Clancy novel in August 2001. In a large, open society, terrorists can invent just about any plan and put it into effect.

Second guessing who will attack what, when and how is essentially impossible without good intelligence. In the event, the attacks of 11^th September were more unbelievable than any of the above possibilities, and indeed President Mubarak states, "But nobody expected the event would be of such enormity. We did not know that they would hit this target or that, and we were all surprised when planes with passengers on board hit the twin towers."

The two best ways of combatting terrorism are (1) to gather intelligence and (2) to weaken terrorist organisations and eliminate the most dangerous possible methods of attacks. The destruction of al-Qaeda training bases in Afghanistan and northern Iraq and the cleanup of the illicit WMD trade that has resulted from the war in Iraq certainly address point (2). How does Bush stand up on point (1)?

Ought the Bush Administration have known how great a threat al-Qaeda was before September 2001? Critics argue that the Administration ought to have been able to sort out a picture of the al-Qaeda threat from the vast stream of tip offs and "something will happen" warnings beforehand. For example, indications that several Muslims had taken flying lessons and not learnt to take off or land should have rung alarm bells, whereas the fact that Iraq sponsored the attempted assassination of George Bush Senior, and the regime's repeated attempts to hinder arms inspections (apparently an elaborate bluff) should have been passed aside as mere 'static'

Of course, the US Government should have listened to the people whose job was to sort through the stream of intelligence and prioritise threats. Ideally, such people ought to be able to tell the government who is going to attack its interests, how, and where.

It is for this reason that the claims of Richard Clarke seem to be biting. Clarke was responsible for tracking terrorist threats against America before September 2001, and was immediately demoted to the head of the Cyberterrorism threat assessment after the attacks. A lot of coverage has recently been given to Clarke's claims that the Bush Administration brushed off his warnings that al-Qaeda could organise an attack that would be America's "next Pearl Harbour". Clarke says he urged Wolfowitz to divert resources into the prevention of this "next Pearl Harbour", to no avail.

In fact, as Jan Haugland's Secular Blasphemy blog has revealed, Clarke was very loudly demanding that the Bush Government divert resources into preventing the imminent "digital Pearl Harbour". That's right, Clarke predicted that the greatest threat to American security was not al-Qaeda but Internet viruses.

That certainly puts Clarke's demotion to the Cyberterrorism unit into perspective...

Spain's place in Al-Qaeda's strategy

2004-04-04T20:14:00.000+10:00

Spanish voters who hoped to make themselves safe from terror attacks by supporting Zapatero in March 2004 are no doubt disappointed to discover that Islamic terrorism is still active in their country.

On Friday, another bomb (which may or may not have been placed by the same people who initiated the 11th March wave of attacks) was found on the train line between the capital Madrid and the city of Seville in southern Spain. Today three Northern African terror suspects detonated a bomb while chanting in Arabic when police raided their apartment. The bomb killed all three suspects and a police officer.

The recent discovery of a cache of ammonium nitrate (one of two ingredients of massively destructive but easily produced ANFO bombs) in Britain also underlines the importance of the terrorist strategy document discovered by Norway's Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt (FFI). It would appear that al-Qaeda is attempting to force the allies from Iraq one at a time by means of terrorist attacks designed to alter those countries' internal political dynamics. The Islamist strategy document states that the road to British withdrawal from Iraq lies through Spain.

Some commentators have implied that Islamic militants have only now 'discovered' their ability to impact on the politics of their targets in this way. In writing my thesis on al-Qaeda in 2003, I found that this is in fact at the core of al-Qaeda's methodological model. Al-Qaeda - including its allies in the 'Arab-Afghan' diaspora - genuinely believes that the Soviet Union fell as a consequence of the application of 'correct' theory by the foreign Mujahideen in Afghanistan. This theory states that just as Muhammad and his Al-Salaf al-salih (pious predecessor) companions migrated from pagan Mecca (the Hijra or migration/flight) to establish the ideal Muslim community in Yathrib (Medina), so Afghanistan was the ideal destination for Hijra (until the American-led coalition invaded in 2001.) Applying their new theory to new conditions, al-Qaeda leaders have repeatedly predicted that by attacking Western/American interests, they could drive the West out of lands they 'occupied' (such as Saudi Arabia) thereby destroying America as a Superpower. Similarly, Jemaah Islamiya believes Australia will cease to exist within ten years, and Indonesia will be thrown into civil war as a result of Australia's terrorism-induced collapse.

Al-Qaeda's current objective is to render Iraq ungovernable by destroying all external and internal forms of support for non-Salafi-Islamic government. Note that this does not necessarily mean al-Qaeda aims to found a new Salafist Islamic government in Iraq. Al-Qaeda did not respect the laws of the Taliban - with which it had significant theological differences - rather the group exploited the opportunity to work undisturbed in those areas controlled by the Taliban - just as al-Qaeda's Kurdish wing, Ansar al-Islam, operated in Iraqi Kurdistan under the protection of the no-fly zone. As Medina/Yathrib was used as a base from which to build up strength, resulting in the reconquest of Mecca eight years after the Hijra, so Iraq is to be used as a base for training and organisation against al-Qaeda's enemies in Europe, America, Australia, the Middle East - indeed, everywhere.

By helping al-Qaeda to achieve that goal, Spain has taken us all one step closer to the nightmare scenario of a failed post-Coalition Iraq. The world community must provide Iraq with all the support it needs until it can genuinely govern itself.

Salafis have always adhered to the principle that 'nothing succeeds like success'. The recent events in Spain must surely have boosted al-Qaeda's standing within Jihad Salafi circles and in the Salafi community in general.

Now for some positive Iraq coverage!

2004-04-04T18:25:00.000+10:00

Jan Dehs of Norway just sent me the following e-mail in response to my piece on the ABC's pessimism about Iraq:

Hi,

I read your "paranoid" and "cheesy" comments on Bjørn Stærk's Total War Blog and found my way to your own blog.

Having read your piece about ABC not finding anything positive, I thought I had better send you this in order to brighten up your day!

Cheers,
jd

And indeed, it has brightened up my day!

The article, "What has gone right in Iraq?, reports on the flow of Iraqi refugees - back into Iraq.

This underlines one of the weaknesses in the left-wing anti-war position.

Many critics of the Australian Government contrast the Government's position on refugees (most of whom come from Iraq and Afghanistan's Hazara region) to the more compassionate position taken towards Vietnamese boat people by Malcolm Fraser's Government in the 1970s, after Australia and the United States failed to save South Vietnam from Marxist subversion. The current Prime Minister (John Howard) was Fraser's Deputy Leader.

However, as a general rule those who are most vocal on the refugee issue are also vocally opposed to the Coalition of the Willing's liberation of Iraq. If America and its Coalition allies (including Australia and Norway) are making such an awful mess of Iraq and Afghanistan, why have both countries gone from being the greatest sources of fleeing refugess to being the greatest recipients of repatriated refugees?

In the case of Vietnam, the flow of refugees in the opposite direction was the consequence of the withdrawal of military and logistical support by America, Australia and South Korea. In Iraq, democratic countries invaded a quasi-Marxist totalitarian state in order to instal democracy, whereas in Vietnam the Marxist North invaded and installed totaliarian Marxism. This is why Iraqi and Vietnamese refugees are so supportive of the war in Iraq.

Takk for linken Jan!

ABC Finds Nothing Positive in Liberation of Iraq

2004-03-21T20:21:00.000+11:00

Many media outlets attempt slant a story in a particular direction while appearing neutral, by selecting positive and negative arguments designed to guide the reader to a particular conclusion. When presented as 'news' this is, of course, insidious dishonesty.

However, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation doesn't bother with such niceties when commenting on the war in Iraq. This piece on the anniversary of the war in Iraq presents the story in purely negative terms, as if there was not a single positive thing to be said about the unseating of a brutal dictator by a broad-based international coalition.

Take the "then and now" picture portrayed in the two introductory paragraphs:

A year ago this weekend, bombs began dropping from the sky over Baghdad and "shock and awe" stormed into the lexicon, as the US-led war in Iraq began.

Today, the bombs are detonated from inside Iraq, the targets are unpredictable and the carnage indiscriminate.

The first sentence implies that bombs were randomly 'dropped' over the capital (rather than guided by satellite into government targets on the western side of the Tigris). The second sentence is similarly desolate.

All indications are that Iraqis support the toppling of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath regime, but somehow the ABC didn't think this was worth mentioning.

If you're not convinced that the ABC is systematically biased, take a look at Hope and Realism in Iraq by Mark Bannerman.

In order to present a picture of everyday life in Iraq, Mark Bannerman interviewed ordinary Iraqis from all walks of life. Actually, only a policeman and one ordinary Iraqi. Actually, the 'ordinary Iraqi' was a Ba'athist whose job in the State media "disappeared with Saddam Hussein." (Apparently the new independent media in Iraq actually want to find out what is happening and report it, rather than operating as the mouthpiece of State intelligence).

"For the Younis family, it is fair to say the departure of Saddam has been a mixed blessing. Food and many other essentials are much easier to come by but they have come with a price"

- namely, that they no longer enjoy the status that comes with being employed by a totalitarian state.

The other stories in this feature are unrelentingly negative, from the hostile interview of Richard Armitage to the exchange of cliches between the 7.30 Report's Kerry O'Brien (ABC) and ABC foreign affairs editor Peter Cave.

Australia's 2004 election - another M11?

2004-03-21T17:57:00.000+11:00

I very briefly met Australia's Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, at La Trobe University on Friday.

I asked him one question: "If you become Prime Minister, will you bring the troops back from Iraq?" He answered, "Sure, when they've finished their work, they'll be coming straight home." (Paraphrased).

He assumed I wanted to hear a "yes" and gave me a fob off answer, which for the purposes of the question was really a "no". Australian troops will not withdraw from Iraq until their duties have been discharged. Australia will not capitulate to terrorist threats, and therefore is less of a target. I just hope the Islamists are aware of Latham's position...

It would seem prudent for the residents of countries in the Coalition of the Willing to lobby their opposition parties to support the war!

Comment: Mark Latham radically changed his position several times in the ten days after I posted this. I hope to add another blog entry on this topic soon. -TS. 04/04/04

Islamist webpage recommended pre-election attacks on Spain

2004-03-21T17:15:00.000+11:00

The Norwegian Defence Research Establishment has discovered a strategy document that encourages terrorist attacks against Spanish interests as a method of driving Spain and other coalition members out of Europe, on an Islamist webpage.

This was reported by BjornStaerk Blog, which also contains excerpts translated into English.

The document, which includes analysis of Spanish elections back into the 1980s, demonstrates that the terrorists are highly advanced in their intelligence gathering and strategic thinking. They are not uni-dimensional automatons acting in direct response to their victims' foreign policies, but rather independent agents acting in the geopolitical arena.

The prevalent impression that terrorists will attack those countries that offend them (for example by invading Iraq) and leave alone those who toe the line (for example by withdrawing, as Zapatero plans to) is incorrect. This view denies the agency and intelligence that the Islamists clearly possess. It treats them as puppets that will behave in our interests if only we learn how to operate their strings. As the Madrid bombing and election demonstrate, the converse is true.

Whatever spin the world media or the Left put on the recent events in Spain, be assured that the world's Islamists are watching, listening and - most importantly - learning.

Coalition of the Willing page overhauled

2004-03-21T16:51:00.000+11:00

I've spent a couple of days researching new material for the Coalition of the Willing webpage on PWHCE. It retains the information about countries that were part of the coalition during the invasion, and now also has information on contributions in March 2004.

I've also added troop numbers for the many countries currently helping in Iraq, and two indices: troop commitment by population and troop commitment by size of military.

Iraq Troop numbers March 2004

	Country	Troops	Per 100000 population	Per 1000 military

1	USA	130,000	47.7	94.8
2	United Kingdom	9,000	15.2	42.4
3	Italy	3,000	5.3	11.3
4	Poland	2,460	6.7	10.2
5	Ukraine	1,600	3.2	5.1
6	Spain *	1,300	3.3	7.0
7	Netherlands	1,100	7.0	19.5
8	Australia	800	4.3	14.5
9	Romania	700	3.1	3.4
10	Bulgaria	480	5.9	5.9

11	Thailand	440	0.7	1.4
12	Denmark	420	7.8	17.3
13	Honduras *	368	6.1	5.4
14	El Salvador	361	6.2	14.7
15	Dominican Republic	302	3.7	12.3
16	Hungary	300	2.9	6.9
17	Japan	240	0.2	1.0
18	Norway	179	4.0	5.8
19	Mongolia	160	6.1	17.6
20	Azerbaijan	150	1.9	2.1
21	Portugal	128	1.3	2.6
22	Latvia	120	5.1	20.9
23	Lithuania	118	3.3	9.7
24	Slovakia	102	1.9	2.3
25	Czech Republic	80	0.8	1.4
26	Philippines	80	0.1	0.7
27	Albania	70	2.1	7.0 **
28	Georgia	70	1.4	2.7
29	New Zealand	61	1.7	6.4
30	Moldova	50	1.1	4.7
31	Macedonia	37	1.8	2.3
32	Estonia	31	2.2	6.5
33	Kazakhstan	25	0.1	0.4
Sources: The Australian, 17^th March 2004. SBS World Guide, ninth edition, 2001. * Spain and Honduras have signalled they will not renew their troop commitments in June 2004 unless a UN mandate is forthcoming.

I strongly encourage readers to express their views on the Coalition and Iraq by posting a comment to this blog.

Zawahiri surrounded?

2004-03-19T15:03:00.000+11:00

There are currently suggestions that Pakistani troops could be on the verge of capturing a major al-Qaeda target in an offensive in Waziristan Province, along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

Pakistan believes it has surrounded "a high value target", possibly al-Qaeda's #2 Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, the intellectual power behind al-Qaeda spiritual leader Usama bin Laden. This offensive is part of an offensive that involves American and allied troops on the Afghanistan to seal off escape routes that allowed al-Qaeda's leaders to escape into Afghanistan in 2001. At that time, Pakistani troops were diverted to the eastern border after a terrorist attack against Indian interests ignited long-standing animosity between the two countries.

In recent years, Usama bin Laden's propaganda videos have typically shown the terrorist leader flanked by Dr Zawahiri and Suleiman Abu Gheith, who is now in custody. The capture of Dr Zawahiri would be a very major blow in the War on Terror.

Talk on the 31st March

2004-03-16T15:09:00.000+11:00

If you are in Melbourne on the 31st of March, please consider attending Perspectives on World History and Current Events' March talk, Pope John Paul II and the End of the Twentieth Century, by Andrew Rabel.

MEMRI casts doubt on "alleged" al-Qaeda message

2004-03-16T12:08:00.000+11:00

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has published a translation of the claim of responsibility for the 11th March 2004 train bombings in Madrid issued by the al-Qaeda-linked "Abu Hafs Al-Masri Brigades".

MEMRI's President, Yigal Carmon, has provided a commentary to this translation, in which he states that the tape "includes linguistic usages and concepts that are incompatible with or alien to authentic Al-Qa'ida writings by Osama bin Laden, Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and others". Although I can not comment on specific uses of Arabic, I believe Mr Carmon is mistaken in a number of his claims, and find the text to be in keeping with other al-Qaeda publications.

Carmon says:

Following the Qur'an verses is the title "The Trains of Death Operation." This is uncommon in bin Laden's writing.

In fact, the diabolical kitschness of the "Trains of Death Operation" is not unprecedented in al-Qaeda statements. For example, Suleiman Abu Gheith, the most prominent al-Qaeda spokesman until his recent capture, a man who constantly accompanied Usama bin Laden in his videos and audiotapes, used the phrase "aircraft storm" after the September 11 attacks.

Comparing bin Laden's and Suleiman Abu Gheith's statements, it seems clear that very different rhetorical styles are used by the Director and his Lieutenants.

The concept of conditionality, as in the statement "And if you renounce [fighting us], we too will stop fighting you" is not a bin Laden concept.

On the contrary, this conditionality runs through many of bin Laden's statements. (Whether it is a statement of his genuine intentions is certainly debatable, since ceasing to attack the West would contradict other planks of the al-Qaeda ideology.)

Take these statements for example:
"To America I say I swear by God the great... America will never taste security and safety unless we feel security and safety in our lands and in Palestine. . . They will not feel safe until the troops of the United States of America withdraw from the Muslim holy places."

"I ask the American people to force their government to give up anti-Muslim policies. The American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. They must do the same today. The American people should stop the massacre of Muslims by their government."

"We say to the Americans as people and to American mothers, if they cherish their lives and if they cherish their sons, they must elect an American patriotic government that caters to their interests not the interests of the Jews. If the present injustice continues with the wave of national consciousness, it will inevitably move the battle to American soil, just as Ramzi Yousef and others have done. This is my message to the American people."

Additionally, a video released by al-Qaeda in October 2003 (no longer online) contained the first ever al-Qaeda message in English, which contained the following ultimatum:
"We want from all Christian and Jewish to go out from our Islamic countries and release our brothers from jails. And stop killing Muslims. Or we will kill you, as you are killing Muslims. We will continue in our fighting until we will get what we want."

"Settling old accounts," both as a linguistic form and as a concept, is alien to authentic Al-Qa'ida writings.

This is contradicted by the following statement by Usama bin Laden, released following the Bali bombings:
"This is unfair. It is time that we get even."

Carmon's claim that "The phrase 'but you did not get the message' is not one used by bin Laden, who does not cast his operations in the light of 'messages,' rather, as acts in and of themselves to further the goals of Al-Qa'ida for the sake of Allah." is likewise contradicted by the tape following the Bali bombings:
"We warned Australia before not to join in [the war] in Afghanistan, and [against] its despicable effort to separate East Timor. It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali."

The sequence of events al-Qaeda is attempting to follow is derived from the 'Jihad' against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. This methodological model, which I explored in my recent thesis, can be represented as follows:

	Afghanistan and the Soviet Superpower	Predicted demise of the Crusader Superpower
1	Soviet infidels invade (1978)	Crusaders and Jews invade Arabian Peninsula
2	Jihadis enter Afghanistan (1978 onwards)	Jihadis attack America and allies
3	Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan (1988)	'Crusader-Jewish Alliance' leaves the Middle-East
4	Soviet Union collapses (1991)	America/West collapses
5	Afghan Communist regime collapses (1992)	Arab regimes collapse as Western support is withdrawn
6	Islamic regime begins to take shape. This becomes a key destination for Jihad training. (Taliban emerged 1994)	Islamic State(s) established in Arabian Peninsula, leading to the eventual spread of Islamic radicalism throughout the Peninsula, Muslim countries, and possibly the entire world.

Al-Qaeda is currently working on step two and appears to be laying the groundwork for later stages. Attacks on the West are motivated both by the individual religious obligation (fard ayn) to attack all 'Crusader States' (whether involved in Iraq or not - witness the attacks on French interests) and by the objective of dividing and weakening America's alliances and forcing the Coalition out of Iraq. In Iraq, attacks are designed to make the country ungovernable and knock out the pillars of support for a future democratic state (the UN, other Arab States, Shia, infrastructure, police stations, aid organisations). Outside Iraq, there is an attempt to influence the public to pressure Governments into withdrawing from Iraq.

With all international support withdrawn from Iraq, a new "location for Hijra" could be established, after the demise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. More on this can be found in this MEMRI translation of a bin Laden tape. This would, in other words, be a base of operations for the training of jihadis and the projection of Islamist violence around the world. The withdrawal of Western troops from Iraq at this point would have catastrophic consequences for the entire world.

The tape should be viewed in terms of this grand plan; released in conjunction with the shocking pre-election bombings, its aim was to change the Spanish Government, thus pulling Spain (and other supporters) out of Iraq. The plan has worked - the Popular Party seemed poised to win until the attacks of the 11th of March, days before the election. Although the new Socialist Government has stated that it will be tough on terrorism, it may yet withdraw material support for the Coalition in Iraq.

Carmon's commentary points out a number of linguistic features and conventions that are supposedly "alien to bin Laden's scholarly Islamist style". However, the tape in question does not purport to be from bin Laden himself, but from a satellite group. As already noted, al-Qaeda spokesmen often adopt a different rhetorical style to bin Laden. In this case, the tape's author or authors are clearly targeting a Western audience.

In my opinion, Carmon's two most compelling blows against the credibility of the tape are that it uses the term 'events' rather than 'ghazwah' (raids) to describe the attacks, and that the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades previously claimed responsibility for the August 2003 blackouts in America, which were later shown to be caused by technical failures, not terrorism. I can not explain why the Brigades used the word 'events'. However, the making of a previous false claim of responsibility does not render all subsequent claims false. Multiple claims of responsibility have been common in previous terrorist conflagrations. Since the point of terrorism is its psychological impact, it makes sense to augment real terrorist attacks with claims to have committed other acts.

Extracts from the tape published by The Age but for some reason not translated by MEMRI use trademark al-Qaeda language, such as "You love life and we love death, which is an example of what the Prophet said."

Given that the Brigades are willing to make false claims, some points need to be made:

The bombs were set off simultaneously using mobile telephones, a technique widely used by al-Qaeda affiliates such as Abu Sayyaf Group. In fact, the attacks are reminiscent of a series of bombings of buses, bus shelters and shopping centres in Manila from September to October 2002. These attacks were claimed by Abu Sayyaf Group (which is named after Rasul Sayyaf, a prominent mujahideen leader who was closely allied with Usama bin Laden in Afghanistan) before they took place.

The explosives used were not dynamite, the favoured explosive of ETA, as previously claimed by the Spanish Government.

ETA denied responsibility for the attack, which would be unusual for such a group: a terrorist organisation following the national liberation model, in which violence is used as a tool to directly extract a specific action from the Government.

Men were seen taking heavy bags from a white van and placing them in one of the trains that exploded. This white van was later found to contain detonators and an audiotape of the Quran in Arabic (purchased from a shop).

The attack was exactly quarter of a decade (2.5 years) to the day after the September 11 attacks, as stated on the tape. (Through a strange numerological quirk, exactly 911 days passed between 11th September 2001 and 11th March 2004 - although this was presumably a coincidence not noticed by the attackers).

Five men of Arab origin were arrested after being connected to a mobile telephone connected to one of the bombs that failed to explode. One of the suspects was wanted in connection to last year's Casablanca bombings.

While expressing disagreement with the content of Mr Carmon's article, I must affirm my respect for Mr Carmon and MEMRI, whose work I often cite.

Talk in Melbourne

2004-02-24T00:00:00.000+11:00

If you're in Melbourne on Wednesday 25th February, please accept this invitation to a talk I'm hosting (in conjunction with the PWHCE Board of Trustees), entitled A Life in the Foreign Service. The talk will be delivered by Mr Noël Deschamps. Read the invitation to learn more about Mr Deschamps' career, which saw him taking part in some of the most important events in the 20th Century - from the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany through to Allende's fall in Chile.

Indymedia Antisemitism

2004-02-01T03:33:00.000+11:00

Here's a charming example of fashionable Left-wing opinion in twenty-first century Britain.

Al-Qaeda's Rising Star in Europe

2004-01-24T00:25:00.000+11:00

The Christian Science Monitor reports on Abu Musab Zarqawi, a key figure in al-Qaeda's European network linked to Mullah Krekar, the Istanbul bombings, and more.

Not Making Distinctions

2004-01-23T23:41:00.000+11:00

Although it at first appears to be a fairly obvious but superficial dig at the recent 'artwork', "Snow White and the Madness of Truth" by Mrs and Mrs Feiler, this "Hitler Memorial" parody is quite clever.

The æsthetics of the Third Reich and of the Snow White installation are similar - for example, both use blood red, white and black. Hitler's "Blut und Boden" (blood and soil) comes to mind. Both Snow White and Hitler Memorial justify an absolute evil - the murder of innocent civilians. In my opinion, the fact that both sets of victims were Jews is beside the point because Snow White does not draw attention to the religion of the victims or the terrorist. The point is that Snow White attempts to obscure the existence of evil. However, this correspondence between Hitler Memorial and Snow White also adds to the effect.

The 'Memorial' includes a poem that closely mirrors the Snow White poem. Take the following line, in which only the gender of the pronoun is changed:

Weeping bitterly, he added: "If our nation cannot realize its dream and the goals of the victims,
and live in freedom and dignity, then let the whole world be erased"

This is reminiscent of Hitler's "let them reign over ash", uttered in the dying days of World War II.

I can't see a significant difference between the two exhibits, but it is obvious that the Hitler Memorial would never be displayed at Historiska Museet - at least not since Germany lost the war.

(Source: 'me here' commenting on Bjørn Stærk's Blog.)

Zvi Mazel Still Making Waves

2004-01-19T15:18:00.000+11:00

Jewish-Russian artist Dmitri Wasserman has modified an art installation at Stockholm's Historiska Museet by floating a picture of Anna Lindh's murderer, Mijailo Mijalovic alongside the picture of a Palestinian suicide bomber that was the work's original centrepiece.

The original artwork exhibits a naive or cynical moral equivalency in attempting to 'understand' the motivations of Islamic Jihad bomber Hanadi Jaradat, by floating her picture in a boat on a blood-red pool in the grounds of Historiska Museet. The work was accompanied by classical music and a postmodern poem that juxtaposed hypothetical thoughts of the suicide bomber with a fairy tale.

Israeli ambassador Zvi Mazel came under criticism for making his own artistic statement recently, unplugging the spotlights that illuminated the otherwise dark installation. Mazel's performance art was accompanied by a poem of its own; Mazel made the following statement:

I felt that I was standing in front of a horror, I felt that I was standing in front of an exhibit that, while it was in an historic and big museum in the heart of Europe, was glorifying genocide. I was standing before an exhibit calling for genocide, praising the genocide of me, you, my brothers and sisters. I pulled the plug on the three spotlights and plunged the exhibit into darkness. I think one of the spotlights fell into water.

Given that Mazel's act involved the temporary unplugging of some lamps, it is curious that Haretz and Jerusalem Post chose to describe the act as destroying or wrecking: Government supports wrecking of terror exhibit.
(The Ha'aretz article I linked to yesterday has been replaced by one that does not accuse Mazel of 'destroying' the work. The original title was "Top Israeli diplomat to Sweden destroys 'suicide bomb' artwork.")

Ironically, Mr and Mrs Feiler, the artists who created the original installation, while understanding the motivations of a suicide bomber, 'don't understand the ambassador's rage'.

See also: Bjorn Staerk's blog and Zvi Mazel, iconoclast

Genocide against the Hmong

2004-01-18T05:25:00.000+11:00

Aside from the one tasteless exhibit at the "Making Differences" exhibition (see previous entry), the idea of the anti-genocide project itself is obviously very worthwhile.

Philip Blenkinsop's photographs of the Hmong people, erstwhile allies of the Australians and Americans in Laos and Vietnam are also being exhibited at "Making Differences". Since the withdrawal of the American-led forces from Indochina, and the resultant communist revolutions, the Hmong are now hunted through the jungles of Laos and Vietnam by the communists.

See also Lao Human Rights Council and Hmong International Human Rights Watch

Freedom to offend against decency

2004-01-18T04:31:00.000+11:00

Israel's ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, has been criticised for allegedly damaging artwork.

Zvi Mazel was attending the Making Differences exhibition at Stockholm's Historiska Museet as part of an international anti-genocide conference. Israel had apparently been assured by the Swedish Government that the conference would not be linked to the conflict in the Middle East. However, one exhibit, "Snow White and the Madness of Truth",

consisted of a rectangular basin filled with red water on which floated a boat carrying a portrait of Islamic Jihad suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who killed herself and 21 others in an attack at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa on October 4.

As Mazel put it,

This was not a piece of art. . . It was a monstrosity. An obscene distortion of reality."

Both Mazel and the Israeli Government requested that the exhibit be removed. When it was not, Mazel protested by unplugging the spotlights that illuminated the exhibit, and placing one of the spotlights in the basin.

He has been summoned by the Israeli Government to explain his actions.

Lapping up the publicity, Dror Feiler, an Israeli residing in Sweden who created the exhibit with his Swedish wife Gunilla, described Mazel's protest as vandalism. The museum director also condemned the protest, saying "If you don't like what you see, you can leave the premises."

Such a 'liberated' approach may convince woolly liberals, but would it sound as plausible if the exhibit had been a large swastika flag, or a canister of Zyklon-b? Is there a significant difference?

(Via World Press Review)

Who will win in Serbia?

2004-01-18T04:08:00.000+11:00

After the dangerous increase in support for Serbia's Radical Party at the recent elections, it will be a difficult task for the forces of, well, "everyone else" to form a stable coalition.

Serbian media outlet B-92 is keeping track of the negotiations for us.

(Via World Press Review)

The truth about the Coalition of the Willing

2004-01-17T11:59:00.000+11:00

In 2002 and early 2003, I was mildly opposed to the idea of an American-led invasion of Iraq. I had my reasons, but these reasons were progressively whittled down while points in favour of the war accumulated. By the time of the invasion, I was strongly in support, and I have spoken to a number of other people who describe the same trajectory in their thinking.

The most frustrating aspect of being nominally opposed to the invasion of Iraq was the sort of company in which I found myself. Many in the anti-war crowd were systematically dishonest, shamefully tasteless and/or willfully ignorant. Such people can be found clinging to the running-boards of many causes, but in this case they were in the driver's seat.

Most appalling of all was the systematic bias in alternative and mainstream media, which took every opportunity to deride the American-led effort as unilateral, bullying and opposed by the more 'civilised' Europeans. Dozens of articles and websites emerged, ridiculing the "Coalition of the Coerced" [PDF] or "Coalition of the Billing", or describing the opponents of dictatorship as "war criminals". This refusenik response was pre-scripted. The war effort was always going to be "dominated by a few large, wealthy countries" or "composed of insigificant countries that couldn't possibly contribute anything", or both. Every effort was made to present the members of the coalition as being half-hearted, resistant or bribed into participation. Britain was presented as isolated and opposed by 'Europe'.

Note: I included the picture here, but for some reason it doesn't show up. Perhaps blogspot doesn't allow pictures for free accounts. Please click here to see the map.

The Coalition of the Willing in Europe.
Blue: supported the invasion. Red: Opposed.

On closer inspection, all these arguments proved to be Pilgerisms or outright lies. My response was to produce a list of the countries involved, a colour-coded map of Europe demonstrating that France, Germany, Russia, Belgium and Greece were isolated, and a list of links refuting many of the common fallacies about the Coalition. In contrast to the anti-war webpages, I let the facts speak for themselves.

This page was the most popular on Perspectives on World History and Current Events for 2003, being referenced from discussion groups and weblogs around the world. It was vitally important that this debate took place, and was well informed. The truth about the Coalition of the Willing will fight against a wall of lies in our history books for decades to come.

I have provided this blog entry because PWHCE does not have a comments feature, and I would like to facilitate further discussion of the historical question of the composition and nature of the Coalition that invaded Iraq in March 2003. (Note that the Coalition of the Willing page concerns itself primarily with the Coalition at the time of the invasion.)

Technical problems

2004-01-16T23:21:00.000+11:00

A couple of days after I installed the comments feature, the hosting company, Blogspeak, folded, and is now being acquired by Haloscan.

Rather than wait for Haloscan to relaunch the Blogspeak system, I have installed Haloscan comments. I don't think anyone left any comments using Blogspeak before it folded, but I've left the scripting there temporarily. If you see two comment links, please use the Haloscan link.

Thanks.

Bjørn Stærk tracks Krekar case

2004-01-14T22:47:00.000+11:00

For more information on the Krekar case, click over to Bjørn Stærk's blog.

Bjørn is closely following the Norwegian press and court reports on the case.

Read these entries in particular:
Krekar arrested, released (also links to our previous entry on Krekar).
Depends on the meaning of "we" - translated excerpts from recent Krekar interviews, with interesting reader comments.
Krekar release overturned - the most recent post.

With further links to court records, news stories and other Norwegian blogs, it's well worth a look.

DIY Jihad Training Camp

2004-01-07T00:47:00.000+11:00

Al-Qaeda has taken another aspect of its operations into cyberspace, creating what may be the world's first 'virtual' Jihad training camp, al-Battar.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has a report on the new publication which bills itself as "A Magazine Published by the Military Committee
of the Mujahideen in the Arabian Peninsula".

The publication emphasises that al-Qaeda considers the 'Jihad' to be Fard Ayn (a compulsory responsibility for every individual). This publication is intended to bring military training into the Muslim's loungeroom, redressing what al-Qaeda apparently sees as a tragic shortage of military-trained young Muslims.

"The basic idea is to spread military culture among the youth with the aim of filling the vacuum that the enemies of the religion have been
seeking to expand for a long time. Allah willing, the magazine will be
simple and easy, and in it, my Muslim brother, you will find basic
lessons in the framework of a military training program, beginning with
programs for sports training, through types of light weapons and guerilla
group actions in the cities and mountains"

Some people may doubt they could fit such activities into their loungerooms...

Al-Qaeda follows through and closes the sale:

"Oh Mujahid brother, in order to join the great training camps you don't have to travel to other lands. Alone, in your home or with a group of your brothers, you too can begin to execute the training program. You can all join the Al-Battar Training Camp."

I know Peter Bergen described al-Qaeda as a franchised international business enterprise, but I never expected them to go in for telemarketing home fitness kits...

More on Krekar

2004-01-04T23:29:00.000+11:00

Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch has an entry on Krekar's arrest with some more detail.

Spencer's main source is this Reuters/Haretz article.

In December, I posted a long reply (really an impromptu essay) in the comments of an article on Jihad Watch. Mr Spencer responded with an essay to which I have again replied in the comments field. The debate is over the place of violence in Islam, and the relationship between radical and traditionalist Islam and the religion's source texts.

Ansar al-Islam Leader Is Arrested in Norway

2004-01-03T12:28:00.000+11:00

Ansar al-Islam's Spiritual Leader has been Arrested

Norwegian intelligence has arrested 'Abu Sayyid Qutb', aka Sheikh Karikar.

This 'Sheikh' was interviewed by Nida'ul Islam[1] (al-Qaeda's da'wa/propaganda arm in Australia, run by a former Qantas baggage handler), back in 1997, just a year after Nida'ul had published its seminal Usama bin Laden interview.[2]

The first time I read Karikar's interview, I looked at one section and thought it was his list of favourite books. Actually it was the names of his four children:

1. Sayyid Qutb [The pivotal figure in the formation of deeply alienated and violent ideological jihadi organisations from the breakdown of the Muslim Brotherhood].
2. Ma'alim [Named after Qutb's famous political pamphlet "Ma'alim fi'l-Tariq" - Milestones on the Road. The poor kid is actually called 'milestones' or 'signposts']
3. Zhalil [Named after Qutb's famous 23-volume tafsir (commentary) on the Quran (so far only about 11 volumes are in English). In this book (full name "Zhalil al-Quran", In the Shadow of the Quran. In other words, the kid is called "In the Shadow"), Qutb twists the interpretations of the (already fairly radically deviationist) mediaeval scholar Ibn Taymiyyah to meet his objectives.]
4. Ibn Taymiyyah [Yes, when Karikar ran out of well-known Sayyid Qutb references, he switched to the most famous historical precursor to Qutb.]

Because he has named his first son 'Sayyid Qutb' Karikar can use the name "Abu Sayyid Qutb", the bearer/father of Sayyid Qutb.

In the interview, Karikar mainly complains about how all the Muslims in the Arab world, and even all the other Kurdish groups, hate Ansar al-Islam and expend an inordinate amount of resources attempting to destroy the hapless holy warriors. He explains that "Islam" came late to Kurdistan (mid to late 1980s). By Islam, of course he means the type of Islam he believes in; the only true Islam. The reason that came late to Kurdistan is because Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abdullah Azzam were still in the process of inventing it in the early 1980s.

Karikar heaps praise on Azzam, the man recognised as bin Laden's mentor.

Incidentally, Karikar's position is "Spiritual Leader of Ansar al-Islam. The name means 'the helpers of Islam', a typically Salafi reference to those citizens of Yathrib who assisted Muhammad in the early ideal Muslim community. One of bin Laden's first bases in Afghanistan was called Beit al-Ansar, "House of the Helpers". Usama bin Laden's title is also Spiritual Leader, of the al-Ansar umbrella organisation we call al-Qaeda.

Sheikh Karikar Abu Sayyid Qutb, Spiritual leader of Kurdish Ansar al-Islam was reportedly doing "good efforts in da'wa" (in this context propaganda) in Oslo as early as 1997.

Hopefully in 2004 his efforts will come to an end.

(Site links deliberately disabled - remove spaces to use)
[1] http :// www .islam.org.au /articles/20/kurds.htm
[2] http :// www .islam.org.au /articles/15/LADIN.HTM

(Via LGF).