World Threats

The U.S. is looking positively upon how our “ally,” Qatar, is taking a more pro-active role in the region. It was the first Arab country to dedicate its military to overthrowing Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Now, it’s taking the lead in Syria by helping arm the rebels so the U.S. can stay by the sidelines. But, our shortsightedness has long-term consequences.

Recently, a group called the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) raised about $6.5 million in Qatar. The group is led by Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, a top Muslim Brotherhood cleric who calls himself the “Mufti of Martyrdom Operations.” He never shies from supporting Hamas and suicide bombings and got into a bit of hot water in 2009 when he said that the Holocaust was a judgment upon the Jews from Allah. He prays that the Muslims will deliver the next judgment. In November, the IUMSdeclared that Muslims must “revive the duty of jihadin all its forms” and prepare for the destruction of Israel.

Not only was the fundraiser held in Qatar (which is also where Qaradawi lives and hosts a television show on Al-Jazeera), it was attended by Crown Prince Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani. Another member of the ruling family, Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al-Thani, donated about $1.4 million. The IUMS chose him as “Personality of the Year.”

Qatar has long supported the Brotherhood. In 1999, the Brotherhood even formally disbandedin the Qatar because it doesn’t view the ruling government as an adversary. Qatar now appears to be the biggest state sponsor of the Brotherhood, though Islamists in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and the rest of the Gulf provide major support as well.

Click here to read the rest of the article at RadicalIslam.org.

The Middle East Media Research Institute has broken the story that Saudi textbooks are still teaching students that they are religiously obligated to fight the Jews. How many times have we been told that they have cleansed their textbooks of such hate?

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has the low-down on how a Saudi textbook for 12^th-grade students that, “Jihad for the sake of Allah is the only path to liberating Palestine. Only through jihad did the Muslims conquer Jerusalem, and only through jihad did the Crusaders leave Palestine.” Some other educational quotes:

“…throughout Islamic history, the Jews have striven to destroy the [Islamic] religion and spread fitna [chaos] among the Muslims.”

“Whoever studies the nature of the conflict between the Muslims and the Jews understands an important fact, [namely that] this is a religious conflict, not a dispute about politics or nationality, or a conflict between races or tribes, or a fight over land or country, as some describe it.”

But of course, the Saudis are our friends. Just like the Pakistanis and Qataris.

On October 31, NATO’s mission in Libya officially ended. The Friends of Libya, an alliance of 13 countries led by the U.S. “ally” of Qatar, is in the driver’s seat. The sheikdom is the chief backer of the Libyan Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Libya’s secularists are warning that Qatar is using its leadership position to bring its Islamist allies to power.

NATO eagerly embraced Qatar’s role in the war to topple Muammar Qaddafi. It was the first Arab country to recognize the National Transitional Council as the legitimate governing authority and sent fighter jets into Libyan skies. Now, the Qatari Chief of Staff reveals that hundreds of Qatari troops were on the ground, planning the rebels’ offensives and “running the training and communication operations.” Now, Qatar will be in charge of setting up the new Libyan military.

Qatar has helped the Libyan Islamists since the civil war began. The tiny Gulf country is home to Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, the radical Muslim Brotherhood theologian who calls himself the “Mufti of martyrdom operations.” One of his close colleagues in Qatar, Sheikh Ali Sallabi, oversaw the Brotherhood’s support to the rebels and is arguably the most influential cleric in Libya today. In keeping with Brotherhood strategy, Sallabi portrays himself as a harmless moderate. A former member of the Tripoli Municipal Governing Council said, “He is just hiding his intentions. He says one thing to the BBC and another to Al-Jazeera. If you believe him, then you don’t know the Muslim Brothers.”

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

First, the good news: The Arab League has suspended Syria’s membership for its relentless oppression of the Arab Spring, including torturing and killing children and ending the lives of 3,5000 innocent people. Iraq disappointingly abstained from the vote and Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon and Yemen opposed (there are reports of Syrian pilots fighting on behalf of Saleh’s regime).

The Arab League said that sanctions on the Assad regime will follow and member states should withdraw their ambassadors. In the next 3 days, the Arab League will meet with representatives of the Syrian opposition to discuss (in the words of CNN) “a transitional phase.” That sounds an awful lot like regime change.

So, as someone who detests Bashar Assad, you’d probably think I’m jumping for joy. I’m not there yet and here’s why: The leader who read the announcement was the Prime Minister of Qatar.

I know the U.S. considers Qatar an “ally” and so the West was more than happy to give Qatar the lead in helping Libya’s rebels and overseeing the international effort there after Qaddafi was killed. But, as I’ll explain in a future article, it is a huge mistake to give Qatar the lead on these issues. In Libya, Qatar directed its aid to benefit the Islamists over the secularists. You can bet that Qatar will do the same in Syria. Our real allies, the democratic secularists fighting for freedom, will be left to be on their own.

Ten years later, there is still much we don’t know about 9/11. There is shocking evidence that Iran and Hezbollah had a role, and the FBI is still looking for three Qataris who escaped the country. Questions remain surrounding a likely Iraqi intelligence operative and a Saudi family who fled the country shortly before the attacks.

Speculation about Iranian and Hezbollah responsibility for 9/11 began to heat up after the 9/11 Commission Report was released in 2004. According to the report, 8 to 10 of the hijackers transited Iran between October 2000 and February 2001 and the Iranian border guards did not stamp their passports. Senior Hezbollah operatives, including the late Imad Mughniyah, were on some of the flights taken by the hijackers during this preparatory stage for the attacks.

Click here to read the rest of my FPM article.

On October 23, Crown Prince Sultan of Saudi Arabia passed away, replaced by Prince Nayef. He has a fierce reputation, striking fear into the hearts of Al-Qaeda, Iran, Israel and liberal Saudis alike. King Abdullah, is possibly as old as 88, is in poor health and has just recovered from his third back surgery. The time when Nayef becomes the King of Saudi Arabia is drawing near and everyone but the Wahhabists are worried.

Nayef is a firm ally of the Saudi Wahhabists whose networks and ideology contributed to the rise of Al-Qaeda. In 2003, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer demanded that the Saudis fire Nayef because of his “well-documented history of suborning terrorist financing and ignoring the evidence when it comes to investigating terrorist attacks on Americans.”

Click here to read the rest of my Family Security Matters article.

But Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are allies, right?

A document released by WikiLeaks shows that the principal officer of the U.S. consulate in Lahore in November 2008 said that $100 million was making its way to Pakistani madrasses in Punjab Province from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates every year. It is inconceivable that the Arab governments do not know about this massive transfer of wealth.

And what goes on in these “religious schools,” you ask?

“At these madrassas, children are denied contact with the outside world and taught sectarian extremism, hatred for non-Muslims, and anti-Western/anti-Pakistan government philosophy,” said the cable.

It described how “families with multiple children” and “severe financial difficulties” were being exploited and recruited, Dawn reported.

“The path following recruitment depends upon the age of the child involved. Younger children (between 8 and 12) seem to be favored,” said the cable.

Teachers in seminaries would assess the inclination of children “to engage in violence and acceptance of jihadi culture.”

The most impressive students that are “chosen for jihad” then go on to bigger and better things. As The Dawn reports:

“youths were generally sent on to more established training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and then on to jihad either in FATA, NWFP, or as suicide bombers in settled areas.”

This isn’t the only cable exposing the Saudis. Another one written by Secretary of State Clinton said:

“it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority…Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide” — running into millions of dollars.”

Well, it’s about damn time. The Saudi Ministry of Education will now require its approval for book donated to a public school library and is banning books by specific extremist authors, including Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood member who inspired Al-Qaeda and various other terrorist groups. The Ministry also said that it would carry out inspections of the libraries to ensure compliance.

From CAN:

The anti-secrecy organization Wikileaks has published government documents revealing that four individuals possibly involved in the 9/11 attacks have not been apprehended and may have planned a fifth attack for that day, various press outlets report.

The Telegraph reports that three nationals of the Gulf country of Qatar flew from the United Kingdom to Newark on August 15. They visited several sites on the East Coast, including the White House, Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center.

“Were the Qataris a fifth suicide team tasked with attacking another target, such as the White House or the Statue of Liberty, both of which they had visited?,” The Telegraph asks.

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Yahoo! News is carrying an Agence France Presse report that El Queda in the Arabian Peninsula apparently lead by Anwar al-Awlaki is threatening the West with the death of a thousand cuts.

HONG KONG (AFP) – The Yemen-based branch of Al-Qaeda has vowed further small but frequent attacks against the West such as last month’s cargo plane parcel bombs, in a “strategy of a thousand cuts” that will “bleed the enemy to death”, a monitoring group said. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said the packages it put aboard freight planes bound for the US in late October were never intended to cause mass casualties, but were aimed at creating maximum economic damage. The group said the parcels, which were intercepted in Dubai and Britain, were part of “Operation Hemorrhage,” a plan that had cost just 4,200 dollars to mount. It said there was now little focus on large-scale mass-casualty attacks like those on New York and Washington in September 2001.

“To bring down America we do not need to strike big,” the network said in an English-language magazine called Inspire, which was monitored Saturday by the US-based Intelcenter. “In such an environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch and thus we may circumvent the security barriers America worked so hard to erect,” AQAP said. “This strategy of attacking the enemy with smaller, but more frequent operations is what some may refer to as the strategy of a thousand cuts. The aim is to bleed the enemy to death.” (Edited for space.)

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Yemen is preventing US military forces from landing in Yemen and putting the package bomb plotters out of business says Debka.

The mastermind of the Al Qaeda (AQAP) plot to plant explosive packages aboard US-bound air freighters is identified by Debkafile’s exclusive counter-terror sources as Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri, a Saudi Arabian. He is hiding out at the main Al Qaeda fighting base in the Yemeni province of Al Gouf, 140 kilometers south of Sanaa.

Our sources also reveal that Saturday night, Oct. 30, Yemeni president Abdullah Ali Saleh was still refusing to allow Washington to land US special forces in Al Gouf to wipe out the al Qaeda bastion which has so far resisted all the Yemeni army’s efforts to root it out. Based there, according to US and Saudi intelligence, is the al Qaeda (AQAP) infrastructure of terror planners and bomb makers who planted the two explosive packages taken off cargo flights bound for Chicago, US, on Friday.

Please read the entire article for more important information.

Analysis. Three B-52s. Eighty-one M117 750 pound class bombs. Flight level 300. Zero Three Hundred local. Problem solved. Recurrence unlikely.

Don’t read this if you want to stick to the comforting line that the Saudis are fully-engaged in the war against radical Islam. Afghan intelligence has found that over 920 million British pounds worth of Saudi money, which is over $1.3 billion, has entered their country over the past four years. But those are just business transactions and investments, right?

Nope. The money is coming in via Pakistan, specifically the terror harbor known as Waziristan.

“We can trace it back as far as an entry point in Waziristan,” said Mohammed Mustafa Massoudi, the director-general of FinTraca in Kabul. “Why would anyone want to put such money into Waziristan? Only one reason — terrorism.”

The report goes on to say that the money goes from North Waziristan to Peshawar of the Northwest Frontier Province, where it is converted. Under a tyrannical regime like that in Saudi Arabia, it is impossible for the highest authorities to not know this massive flow of money. It is unclear why the Saudi government would allow this when these forces target them, but that doesn’t cast doubt on the Afghans’ conclusion as Pakistan does the same thing. The Wahhabi religious establishment and sympathetic government officials are probably behind the effort, and the Royal Family is very afraid of severing its critical alliance with the clerics.

The Iraqi press has published a secret Saudi government document describing the sending of money, explosives and weapons to terrorists in Iraq, including Al-Qaeda’s branch there. The Saudis indirectly confirmed the document’s authenticity by slamming the leak, and arresting 37 intelligence officials potentially involved.

The report notes that a Saudi army officer was just arrested in Iraq for planning attacks on the World Cup in South Africa and that 55 percent of the foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudi.

For some reason, whenever I discuss the War on Terror on college campuses, I get hammered for saying Saudi Arabia still supports radical Islam. Students say they are moderate, and have fought Al-Qaeda and invented a fantastic terrorist de-radicalization program (which we now know isn’t nearly as good as the Saudis led us to believe). They point to Saudi clerics who have condemned Al-Qaeda, suicide bombers and extremism.

And now, they will mention this. From CNSNews.com:

A conference in Saudi Arabia this week ended with a condemnation of terrorism and appeals for Muslims to reject extremism, but it also recommended that all Muslim governments apply shari’a (Islamic law) “in all aspects of life.”
 
A long list of adopted recommendations included an implicit call for terrorism to be defined in a way that excludes resistance against “foreign occupation.”

We need to have higher standards for what a “friend” is. Condemning Al-Qaeda is appreciative, but if you support attacks on Israeli civilians and U.S. forces and demand the establishment of Sharia Law, you are not our friend.

The Long War Journal reports that the Arab press has a story about an Al-Qaeda camp that just opened in Al-Jaza in the district of Mudiyah in the province of Abyan, containing 400 militants. They report that a second camp opened in Abyan Province in the spring.

Iran is supporting Al-Qaeda elements involved in fighting the Yemeni government as well as the Shiite Houthi rebels. Yemen apparently is supporting these same Al-Qaeda elements in order to use them to fight the Houthi rebels. No one ever said Middle Eastern geopolitics wasn’t complicated.