The Radical Legacy of 1979

JANUARY 1, 2010, 6:30 P.M. ET

By EDWARD. P. DJEREJIAN

If ever one year in recent times was a catalyst for change in the broader Middle East and Muslim world, it was 1979. One ray of bright light in that year of darkness was the signing of the historic Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Conversely, three events had dire consequences with which we live today.

First, there was the overthrow of the shah of Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Second, there was the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, by a group of Islamic extremists. And third, there was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Each event fostered the forces of radicalization with implications far beyond the region’s borders.

• Iran becomes a theocracy. Khomeini’s revolution in the early months of 1979 established the wilayat al-faqih, or rule by a Muslim cleric who became the Supreme Leader. He, in effect, formed a theocratic system in Iran, a predominantly Shiite country, and declared the new regime to be “God’s government,” warning that subsequent disobedience was a “revolt against God.”

Damning human rights report reveals evidence of UK complicity in torture

‘The British know well we do not garland or honour terror suspects,’ says Pakistan intelligence officer

Ian Cobain

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 November 2009 20.43 GMT

The latest evidence that British government officials have been complicit in the torture of British citizens during the so-called “war on terror” has come from the most compelling of sources: the torturers themselves.

For more than a year, researchers from Human Rights Watch have been interviewing members of two notorious Pakistani intelligence agencies, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) about the part they have played in British-led counter-terrorism operations.

In Somalia, a New Template for Fighting Terrorism

Mohamed Dahir/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ANARCHY Two policemen lay dead last July. But a new government may now have an interest in allowing attacks on terrorist leaders.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: October 17, 2009

Somalia isn’t just a nagging geopolitical headache that won’t go away. It is also a cautionary tale. Few countries in modern history have been governmentless for so long, and as the United States has learned, it would be nice to think you could ignore this wild, thirsty, mostly nomadic nation 7,000 miles away. But you can’t.

Indonesia to operate terrorist surveillance aircraft

Sunday, October 18, 2009 09:12

Tangerang (ANTARA News) – The Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) will operate an un-manned mini-plane called “Puna” in 2010 to support national defense and terrorist surveillance, minister Kusmayanto said.

The minister of research and technology said BPPT has conducted a research and successfully developed the surveillance aircraft.He said the aircraft would later be used by the military and the police to infiltrate in conflict-prone areas.

ABC: Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped By Global Warming

By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)

October 10, 2009 – 13:24 ET

Global warming is helping America’s sworn enemies al Qaeda as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan.

So claimed ABCNews.com’s “World News Webcast” Friday in a segment not only designed to increase America’s fear of Al Gore’s money-making bogeyman, but also give cover to President Obama as things in Afghanistan continue to spiral out of control.

Talk about your amazingly convenient, two-fisted, win-win situations.

“World News” anchor Charles Gibson ominously began (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Shrugtastic):

http://shrugtastic.com/2009/10/10/abc-news-comes-to-obamas-aid-blames-worsening-afghan-situation-on-man-made-climate-change/

We don’t usually think of the Taliban and global warming in the same sentence, but U.S. intelligence studies are showing a connection. For this week’s “Nature’s Edge” notebook, Bill Blakemore explains how climate change may be giving a boost to the Taliban and to al Qaeda.

Blakemore began his report: This study by eleven U.S. generals and admirals shows how global warming is playing into the hands of terrorist groups like the Taliban in many countries often because of worsening drought.

After some background from one of the CNA study’s supervisors, former Army chief of staff Gen. Gordon R. Smith, Blakemore continued:

BLAKEMORE: Afghanistan, eleven years into a drought with no end in sight. Snows vanishing from mountains that used to pour melt water down into orchards and fields now leaving young men with no money or work. Arian Sharifi worked with ABC News there, and recently in the Afghan government.

ARIAN SHARIFI, GRADUATE STUDENT AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: A lot of more people — young male — who are unemployed with nothing to do, and so the Taliban basically seems an attractive thing for them to join. The Taliban pays most of the fighters. In other ways they are protecting the poppy crops.

BLAKEMORE: And the poppy crops, which the Taliban encourage and tax, are making them and their al Qaeda allies very rich, an estimated half a billion dollars a year. Many farmers say they are now growing opium poppies because they need little water, good in the lengthening drought. So the rising temperatures are helping both heroin traffickers and their Taliban and al Qaeda supporters.

So, according to Blakemore, the problems in Afghanistan — drought, heroin production and trafficking, unemployment, AND the growth in the Taliban and al Qaeda — are directly linked to global warming.

Exit question: What HASN’T been blamed on climate change since Nobel Laureate Al Gore figured he could become rich spreading this as yet unproven theory?

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/10/10/abc-al-qaeda-taliban-being-helped-global-warming

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• Al Gore’s First (and Probably Last) Q&A (online.wsj.com)
• Official: Taliban Better Financed Than Al-Qaida (abcnews.go.com)
• A strange new respect for our Afghan policy (powerlineblog.com)
• Afghan violence reached ‘unprecedented’ level, government report says (nationalpost.com)

Analysis: More gunships may not be the answer.

By Tristan McConnell - GlobalPost

Published: April 14, 2009 06:48 ET
Updated: April 28, 2009 20:05 ET

NAIROBI — After the dramatic rescue of American captain Richard Phillips from the clutches of Somali pirates, U.S. President Barack Obama announced his determination to end piracy: “We remain resolved to halt the rise of piracy in this region,” he said.

Defence of the Realm

by Christopher Andrew

From Blackadder to Burgess and Maclean, this history of MI5 is a scholarly and hugely entertaining account, says Robert McCrum

Robert McCrum

The Observer, Sunday 11 October 2009

British intelligence officer and Soviet spy Kim Philby holds a press conference after being cleared of spying charges in 1955. Photograph: Getty Images

An authorised centenary history of MI5, the mysterious organisation whose existence was not even officially acknowledged until 1989, was bound to be a strange bestseller. But then, as Christopher Andrew amply demonstrates in this compendious volume, British countersubversion, founded in 1909 in response to Edwardian spy mania, stoked by a popular novelist and the Daily Mail, has always been a funny game.

26/11 suspects charged by Pakistani Anti-Terror Court

Nirupama Subramanian

ISLAMABAD: The seven suspects arrested here in connection with the November 26, 2008 Mumbai attacks were formally charged by a Pakistani Anti-Terror Court on Saturday, but the defence lawyers accused the judge of making a “mockery” of the law. They said they were considering asking for a transfer of the case to another court.

French warn of “body bomb” threat for airplanes

Tue, 10/06/2009 – 12:45pm

Al Qaeda’s newest suicide bombing tactic — cellphone activated explosives hidden inside the bomber’s rectum — has French security officials worried:

French anti-terrorism chiefs are expected to recommend widening examinations already used to catch drug smugglers after President Sarkozy’s new domestic intelligence directorate (DCRI) learnt of an attack in Saudi Arabia in which the bomber detonated such a device in his rectum.

Al-Qaeda gave video publicity to its new method tested by Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri, a 23-year-old terrorist, who blew himself apart at a meeting in Jeddah in late August with Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi anti-terrorism chief.

British Paper Claims Ahmadinejad Born Jewish

October 5, 2009

London

JTA Wire Service

The author of a book on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is refuting a British newspaper report that the Iranian president was born to a Jewish family that converted to Islam.

The Daily Telegraph based its report Saturday on Ahmadinejad’s original family name of Sabourjian, which according to the article is a common Iranian Jewish name, especially among those from Aradan, where the Iranian president was born.