Feral Jundi

Thursday, July 24, 2008

News: How to Win the War Within Islam, from the Economist

Filed under: Afghanistan,Al Qaeda,Iraq — Tags: , , — Matt @ 11:44 PM

      This was an excellent special report written by the good people at the Economist.  Be sure to follow the link I provided and read the entire thing, because this was just the teaser article below.  There were lot’s of great ideas in this report, and I highly recommend reading it.  What was really motivating to me, was to read about the current state of Al Qaeda and how we have actually accomplished some pretty remarkable things.

 

     For me, Al Qaeda has always symbolized an idea more than anything.  And AQ has certainly tarnished the rest of the Islamic world with their war.  And like the article pointed out, the one thing that really hurts them in this war, is their killing of other muslims in the name of Allah.  And when one of the founders of Al Qaeda named  Dr. Ladl even says that Al Qaeda has gone too far, then I think we are starting to make some headway in this war.

     And what really gets me, is that in Iraq, Zarqawi and company proclaimed that Iraq will be the main battle ground to fight the infidels at.  Soon after this proclamation, we killed Zarqawi and then the surge happened and the rest is what we have today.  A Iraq that is significantly better than it was, and Al Qaeda being run out of town by the Iraqis and  the Coalition.  The turning point with AQ was when Iraqis said enough was enough, and joined forces with us to rid the country of these islamic extremists.  My point with this, is that the surge and our new counter-insurgency strategy was certainly a contributing factor, for this victory against AQ.  And I say victory, because they are now a shadow of themselves in Iraq.  

     I also think it is significant what Saudi Arabia has been able to do in this war.  I would have certainly expected AQ to have carried out several massive and successful attacks by now.  But  it seems that Saudi Arabia has done a pretty good job of putting down AQ, and I am sure Bin Laden and company have been biting their lip about that one.  Bin Laden has always held a grudge against the Saudi Royal family, and it must kill him that Al Qaeda of Saudi Arabia sucks.  

     So now they are all running to Afghanistan, to join the fight there I guess.  And to me, this is one of the most complex problems we have right now to deal with in this war.  In Pakistan, you have the FATA region where AQ and the Taliban have been training and enjoying a safe haven.  And then during the fighting season(summer), they make the cross over into Afghanistan and cause trouble.  Couple that with the poppy situation(drugs for guns) and a nation ravaged by years of war and terrible infrastructure, and we have a really complex problem to solve there.  And I am not even sure if more troops will solve this.  We’ll see how it goes, because I think Afghanistan will be a huge deal in the coming months and then next summer with a new US President. I am optimistic, with Petraeus and company at the helm.  If anyone could think up the correct strategy, it is the batch of warrior leaders we have right now.  –Head Jundi 

 

 

 

OBL

  

How to win the war within Islam

Jul 17th 2008

From The Economist print edition

In the long run, al-Qaeda will be defeated by Muslims, not foreigners. But the West can still help

AMERICA’S “global war on terrorism”, now in its seventh year, has gone on longer than the second world war. Will it ever end? Optimists believe some kind of victory is in sight: Iraq is improving; al-Qaeda has been unable to stage a big attack in the West in three years; and terrorists have shown little sign of using weapons of mass destruction. Jihadists face an ideological backlash, even from radical “brothers” who support jihad but disagree with killing Muslims.

Welcome as al-Qaeda’s setbacks may be, the world should not be complacent. As our special report in this issue explains, the threat is likely to last for decades. One reason is that al-Qaeda, though weaker in Iraq, has created a new sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Another is that al-Qaeda’s ideology has spread far and wide thanks to the internet and ease of travel. A third is that anti-Americanism remains powerful across the Muslim world. Only a tiny proportion of the world’s billion or so Muslims need to take up jihad to create serious trouble.

(more…)

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Iraq: Al Qaeda Discusses Losing Iraq

Filed under: Iraq,News — Tags: , , , , — Matt @ 9:49 AM

     This was an awesome little article about the state of affairs of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and how they are losing there.  Our guys have done such an awesome job over there, and my hats off to them.  Next stop, Pakistan, so we can slay that booger eater Osama Bin Laden. -Head Jundi 

——————————————————— 

Al Qaeda Discusses Losing Iraq
May 27, 2008:  Al Qaeda web sites are making a lot of noise about “why we lost in Iraq.” Western intelligence agencies are fascinated by the statistics being posted in several of these Arab language sites. Not the kind of stuff you read about in the Western media. According to al Qaeda, their collapse in Iraq was steep and catastrophic. According to their stats, in late 2006, al Qaeda was responsible for 60 percent of the terrorist attacks, and nearly all the ones that involved killing a lot of civilians. The rest of the violence was carried out by Iraqi Sunni Arab groups, who were trying in vain to scare the Americans out of the country.
 

Today, al Qaeda has been shattered, with most of its leadership and foot soldiers dead, captured or moved from Iraq. As a result, al Qaeda attacks have declined more than 90 percent. Worse, most of their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have turned on them,  or simply quit. This “betrayal” is handled carefully on the terrorist web sites, for it is seen as both shameful, and perhaps recoverable.

This defeat was not as sudden as it appeared to be, and some Islamic terrorist web sites have been discussing the problem for several years. The primary cause has been  Moslems killed as a side effect of attacks on infidel troops, Iraqi security forces and non-Sunnis. Al Qaeda plays down the impact of this, calling the Moslem victims “involuntary martyrs.” But that’s a minority opinion. Most Moslems, and many other Islamic terrorists, see this as a surefire way to turn the Moslem population against the Islamic radicals. That’s what happened earlier in Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt and many other places. It’s really got nothing to do with religion. The phenomenon hits non-Islamic terrorists as well (like the Irish IRA and the Basque ETA).

The senior al Qaeda leadership saw the problem, and tried to convince the “Al Qaeda In Iraq” leadership to cool it. That didn’t work. As early as 2004, some Sunni Arabs were turning on al Qaeda because of the “involuntary martyrs” problem. The many dead Shia Arab civilians led to a major terror campaign by the Shia majority. They controlled the government, had the Americans covering their backs, and soon half the Sunni Arab population were refugees.

Meanwhile, the “Al Qaeda In Iraq” leadership was out of control. Most of these guys are really out there, at least in terms of fanaticism and extremism. This led to another fatal error. They declared the establishment of  the “Islamic State of Iraq” in late 2006. This was an act of bravado, and touted as the first step in the re-establishment of the caliphate (a global Islamic state, ruled over by God’s representative on earth, the caliph.) The caliphate has been a fiction for over a thousand years. Early on, the Islamic world was split by ethnic and national differences, and the first caliphate fell apart after a few centuries.  Various rulers have claimed the title over the centuries, but since 1924, when the Turks gave it up (after four centuries), no one of any stature has taken it up. So when al Qaeda “elected” a nobody as the emir of the “Islamic State of Iraq”, and talked about this being the foundation of the new caliphate, even many pro-al Qaeda Moslems were aghast. When al Qaeda could not, in 2007, exercise any real control over the parts of Iraq they claimed as part of the new Islamic State, it was the last straw. The key supporters, battered by increasingly effective American and Iraqi attacks, dropped their support for al Qaeda, and the terrorist organization got stomped to bits by the “surge offensive” of last year. The final insult was delivered by the former Iraqi Sunni Arab allies, who quickly switched sides, and sometimes even worked with the Americans (more so than the Shia dominated Iraqi security forces) to hunt down and kill al Qaeda operators.
If you can read Arabic, you can easily find these pro-terrorism sites, and see for yourself how al Qaeda is trying to explain its own destruction to its remaining supporters. While it’s common to assume the Information War has been going against the West, this was not the case when you checked with what was going on inside the enemy camp.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20080527.aspx

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