The People's Mujahedin of Iran and their friends in the west

The BBC World Service has a remarkable documentary available currently on the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI). Most non-Iranians will have not heard of the group, but in short they were anti-the Shah and supported the revolution against him - it's important to remember that it's only really subsequently become labelled the 'Islamic Revolution'. At the time there was a considerable radical left-wing and secular dimension to the uprising alongside the later to be dominant Islamists. The Islamists under Khomeini subsequently turned on their previous leftist allies, including the PMOI, and the group went into exile in Iraq where they allied with Saddam Hussein against the regime in Tehran. The documentary does a pretty good job of explaining the general weirdness of the group, leaving aside their politics. It would appear to resemble a cult more than a political party now, with at least hard to dismiss claims of mistreating its members who wish to leave.

Nevertheless the most noteworthy dimension to the documentary is the reporting on the PMOI's lobbying within the United States. The group was listed as a terrorist organisation in the 1990s by the US government and remains so to today. In Europe it has been de-listed as a terrorist group, although its fund raising within Europe appears to be dubious to say the least. The BBC interviews numerous prominent Americans who are now part of the PMOI's campaign in the States to be taken off the terrorist group list; they include Republicans and Democrats, and many former senior officials and soldiers. It gives a fascinating insight into this world: some of those interviewed openly admit to not knowing anything about the PMOI before being approached to speak at their events in return for (considerable) payment. Nevertheless, these personalities seems to have taken their duties seriously and are openly pushing for the PMOI to be brought in from the cold - believing clearly that their position against the current regime in Iran* means their past sins (including involvement in the hostage taking of the American diplomats in Iran all those years ago) can be forgiven.

Perhaps the enthusiastic cynicism of some in the American political world should be no surprise to us, but it's always interesting to see how this sort of lobbying for non-domestic interests works. What is far more alarming is listening to the non-mercenary supporter of the PMOI - a former US colonel who dealt with them in Iraq when the US took over their camp there - who seems to be seriously suggesting that this exile group, who have not been in Iran for nearly 30 years and that has its own cultish leanings, could be the core of a future Iranian regime when the current leaders in Tehran fall or are deposed. I expect I'm not the only one for whom, on hearing this, the name Ahmed Chalabi immediately springs to mind. People really don't learn from their mistakes do they?

*Incidentally, some reporting links the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel via the PMOI. This has a certain attractive logic to it - if Israel is behind the assassinations as seems likely presumably they would need some sort of proxy in Iran, plus the PMOI has been responsible for bring to light some of Iran's secret nuclear facilities. Nevertheless, the PMOI has denied any linkages to Israel, there is little hard evidence linking Israel to the attacks so far, and the PMOI are far from being the only Iranian domestic insurgents/terrorist groups - there Baluch and Arab separatist groups in Iran for example as well.

Finland, NATO and terrorists

I spent a lot of time at the start of week commenting on the Stockholm terrorist attack to the Finnish media. Of course they all ask the unanswerable questions like "will there be a terrorist attack here?" For various reasons my answer has evolved to "not likely, but you can't say that it is impossible"; so it was quite surprising to hear the Finnish president say mid-week that it is only a matter of time before there is a terrorist attack in Finland. But by the end of the week, YLE reports the government doesn't agree with the President and is saying that the risk of terrorism is low, although they note that:

"...the embassies of large Nato members may become terrorist targets"

Which is odd, considering that whole not-being-a-NATO-member-saves-you-from-the-terrible-terrorists thing doesn't seem to be working so well for Sweden currently.

A review of "Al Qaeda Weapons of Mass Destruction Threat: Hype or Reality?" by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen

Post-terrorism Paris: soldiers on the streets

I was in Paris last week at a conference about terrorism. The focus of my job has drifted on to other matters in recent years, so it was fun being back in that world, meeting old acquaintances and making new ones. I gave a speech on a report I wrote a couple of years ago - mainly about how the US military conceived of the GSPC, now called AQIM - or al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. I was that sandwich filling on my panel; squeezed between two generals, one of whom was the commanding officer of the GIGN - basically the French SAS. So not intimidating at all...

Anyway, I met a German researcher who was doing work on policy-making around the threat of WMD-terrorism. This is something that I used to work on, and my research turned me into something of sceptic. Hence I was interested when I spotted a report this week called "Al Qaeda Weapons of Mass Destruction Threat: Hype or Reality?" on the website of Harvard's Kennedy School's Belfer Center - a prestigious research establishment. Reading the preface I was made even more interested:

"Rolf Mowatt-Larssen spent more than two dozen years in intelligence, both in the CIA and U.S. Department of Energy. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he led the U.S. government's efforts to determine whether al Qaeda had WMD capabilities and to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States. Mowatt-Larssen, now a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, has put together a detailed timeline illustrating terrorists' efforts to acquire WMD."

Mowatt-Larssen writes clearly about how the alarmism around WMD-terrorism in the early part of last decade turned many analysts into sceptics; much of the discourse was seen to be hype for political purposes and that "it is difficult to debunk this allegation, given the US government's lack of credibility in the case of Iraqi WMD" (p.8). Although in the US the idea that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and might give them to terrorists became part of the justification for war, this always seemed far fetched to me. I was always interested in the possibilities of non-state groups developing chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapons without state sponsorship. Mowatt Larssens attempts to show al Qaeda's interest in CBRN through the 1990s and first half of the 2000s and to argue that this means the treat of WMD-terrorism is real. I think his paper is very unconvincing in its attempt.

Firstly for someone who has spent his career in intelligence his choice of sources (all well footnoted) are odd. He relies significantly on George Tenet's autobiography for many of the more interesting claims. Why Tenet felt he could reveal these intelligence details in his book, but Mowatt-Larssen could only refer to a secondary source, I'm not sure. Presumably Mowatt-Larssen saw the same intelligence whilst in government. Instead we have continual references to the memoir of the, to many discredited, former CIA chief, perhaps not the most obviously credible source. But actually that is a minor problem, the paper also contains factual errors which makes me think it was not proof read by anyone with a moderate knowledge of the subject area. Jemaah Islamiyah is a group based in southeast Asia, not southwest (p.14). Detective Constable Stephen Oake, was a Manchester police officer (not London) murdered in Manchester (not in London) and Kamal Bourgass stabbed him to death, he did not shoot Oake (all mistakes on p.25). In this, the supposed UK "ricin case", no ricin was found. Separate to Bourgass' murder conviction, he was only found guilty of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance not of a terrorist conspiracy to murder, and four co-defendents were found not guilty (charges were dropped against a further four). Mowatt-Larssen maintains Colin Powell's argument made whilst giving evidence to the UN on the eve of the Iraq war, that this was a link between Iraqi-based jihadists and "European terrorist cells" (p.25). Powell couldn't have known the outcome of the trial, still 2 years away when he spoke, but Mowatt-Larssen does not engage with the subsequent findings that there never was any ricin in the UK and despite the British government claiming otherwise there was no link from Bourgass in the UK to al Qaeda in Kabul.

Perhaps even more telling is that Mowatt-Larssen repeats the idea that in 1993 bombing of the WTC in New York, the bomb makers attempted to include cyanide in their bomb. This was a mistake made by a trial judge in a later court proceedings, and the myth was clearly proven false by John Parachini of the RAND corporation in his chapter in the excellent book "Toxic Terror", edited by Jonathan Tucker and published in 2000. I find it very surprising that anyone interested in non-state actors and CBRN weapons would not have read this book.

I've not really looked at this issue for three or four years, but if this Belfer Center paper represents where things have got to, it would seem we are still chasing our tails with only limited and often questionable open sources and as much confusion and mythology as there was half a decade ago.

But if all this a bit depressing, here's a sparkly Eiffel Tower for you:

ABC's "Rear Vision" on Lockerbie

Rear Vision from ABC, the Australian national broadcaster, is a consistently excellent radio programme. It really is adult reporting at its best - find real experts on a subject, set the historical context, and let them talk.

Last week they re-ran their 2007 Lockerbie bombing programme with some updates reflect Megrahi's recent release. What comes out from the programme, particularly in the comments of Prof. Robert Black, was the systemic weaknesses in the set up of the Scottish legal process at Camp Zeist, and how that seems to have enabled outside parties - the US, UK and Libyan governments - to influence the trial. Whatever one thinks of both the conviction and release on compassionate grounds of Megrahi, it is well worth a listen. You can also subscribe to Rear Vision via iTunes.

On the same subject, also well worth reading is STRATFOR's piece on why the evidence for Megrahi's guilt is stronger than some suppose. Unfortunately Stratfor's writers specifically do not look at the reliability of Tony Gauci's evidence at the trial, questions about which are now central to those who have concerns over the safety of the conviction.

Will unusual birds come home to roost?

According to YLE, the Finnish security police SUPO (Finland's only real intelligence agency and something of mix between MI5 and Special Branch in the UK context) has started following developments in Afghanistan for possible spin off effects on Finland.

Which leads to the rather bloody obvious question: what? They weren't before?!?!

The timing of this revelation may be totally coincidental, but it's hard not to wonder whether this has been sparked by the political ruckus that followed the comments of a friend of mine (and indeed the original co-founder of this blog), Charly, who suggested in op-ed piece in Helsingin Sanomat that Finland was now part of a war in Afghanistan.

Violence against refugees in Finland

Today saw the second headline in two weeks about an attack on asylums seekers at a hostel in Finland. Two weeks ago someone threw some sort of bomb at a Red Cross hostel for refugees in SW Finland, fortunately with no injuries. Yesterday, men armed with knives attacked a refugee inside a reception centre in northern Finland, and another refugee was thrown in a nearby lake. The national broadcaster YLE has come up with the quite incredible headline this evening of:

Authorities Unalarmed by Reception Centre Violence

One wonders what would have to happen to alarm them? Is people making bombs and throwing them at occupied buildings not alarming? YLE also reports the authorities saying - as if it was a good thing - that no known "organised hate groups" have been linked to the attacks in northern Finland. If a known group was involved, they could be arrested and charged. If no known group is involved it means that locals are actually organising racist violence themselves, in places where that kind of activity didn't exist before. I'm not sure if that can really be seen as a good thing. The move towards committing politically/ideologically motivated violence has over recent years become known as "radicalisation" - and is generally considered pretty frigging alarming when it is being done by young, brown, Muslim men. Understanding what factors lead to that radicalisation has become a central political and academic question across Europe since 9/11. The same questions should be asked in these case as well.

Finland is not facing any particularly big issues over immigration; no more than anywhere else in Europe, and actually a lot less than most. Yet still some wish to make political capital out of attacking asylum seekers, whilst national policy makers (probably with the best intentions if not much forethought), tell Finns that immigrants are a security risk. Perhaps the knife wielders of Kemi and bombthrowers of Suomusjärvi think they are defending something. I'm an immigrant and I'm not a security risk. I am pretty angry though.

Counting al Qaeda

Something that I meant to blog last week and totally forgot about: one of my weekly podcast is the 'Political Scene' from the New Yorker. It's just a few journalists chatting, but they are pros and know their stuff. Last week, in the wake of Obama's Cairo speech, they were discussing US policy and the 'Muslim world'. One of the speakers was New Yorker correspondent Lawrence Wright who I still think has written one of the better books on al Qaeda: The Looming Tower. Wright spent years interviewing spooks, Islamist activists, retired Jihadis, family members of still active Jihadis, local journalists and the like around the world. He clearly has good contacts, and notes in this podcast that he was recently told by Egyptian intelligence that they believe the core of al Qaeda, now mainly based in Pakistan number now below 200 people. Even the CIA number them only between 300 and 500. These numbers don't presumably include any of the affiliates who have adopted the al-Qaeda monniker in more recent years, such as the GSPC in Algeria, but does suggest that for all the weaknesses in US policy towards the Taliban in Afghanistan, the coalition (and Pakistanis) are having some success at keeping al Qaeda's central organisers suppressed.

Wright does make the very interesting point though, that the "Af-Pak" insurgency is become "proletarianized" and the Taliban is taking on a class distinction that wasn't clear before. Landless peasants are joining the Taliban and fighting against the landed class. If the conflict becomes progressively influenced by socio-economic factors, this is a major policy failure as it provides the insurgency with a moral legitimacy that it didn't previously possess.

You can listen directly to the podcast here. Wright's interesting comments begin at about 7.40.

"The most dangerous place in the world"

Long time readers of this blog will know that I have an interest in Somalia. There is an excellent article explaining Somalia's recent history and current desperate situation by Jeffrey Gettleman of the NYT in this week's Foreign Policy magazine.

Print a copy off and read it during your coffee break. It's a fine example of clarity and approachability in dealing with a complex story that will give you a solid introduction to this sad country.

The plague terrorist takedown

(Photo - some dodgy terrorists with really snotty noses, hence massive handkerchiefs)
Some years ago for work I looked in some depth into the idea of "WMD terrorism". In the early part of this decade, Jihadi terrorism seemed unbounded in its brutality, someone had sent weapons grade Anthrax through the US postal service and CNN found footage in an abandoned Afghan camp of al Qaeda people gassing dogs. It all seemed so possible and hence utterly terrifying. But the scary thing was, the more you dug, the more crap you found you were digging through. And I don't mean scary crap, I mean just simple common or garden bullshit. The concept of WMD became virtually meaningless through sloppy over-use in global discourse. I remember hearing a normally sensible and grounded former US marine general on NPR call ricin WMD and just thinking the world was going nuts. Ricin is as much a WMD as bullets are. Some American terrorism 'experts' still go on about "European ricin plots", seemingly unaware that in court case after court case these claim have virtually all turned out to be nothing. American neo-Nazis were messing about with ricin in the 80s, but nobody ever accused them of plotting Armageddon. The collapse of the Bush Administration's claim that the Saddam regime had WMDs, and wanted to give them to al-Qaeda, had a lot to do with the slow retrenchment of the world's media from the story. But every once in while once these stories pops up again like a fart in a bath.

I remember seeing the story about AQIM fighters dying from the plague in Algeria a few weeks ago and didn't pay much attention. I've researched quite a lot on the Algerian situation in the past and soon learnt that vast amounts of what you read about terrorism in that country is crap. The agendas of many different actors make sorting out fact from fiction pretty hard when it comes from Algeria, and the idea that AQIM (the former GSPC) were messing around in mini-biolabs with bubonic plague seemed far-fetched to say the least. What I hadn't realised at the time was that the story came from the Sun. If you read the Sun to get your info on jihadist movements, you deserve everything you get. I noticed just two weeks back that even whilst the bodies were still lying in the open in Victoria, the Sun was suggesting that it might have been terrorist 'what done it' with the bushfires. They won't just scrape the bottom of the barrel, rather attacking it with a chisel and mallet. But whilst reading around on some other North Africa related issues in the last couple of days, I've come across some really quite impressive takedowns of the story by some quality bloggers.

So first off check The Sun Lies for a rather in-depth fisking of the story. The Armchair Generalist has a very good overview of why it is all bollocks and even finds an Algerian doctor writing in a medical journal who notes that the Algerian medical profession thinks it's bollocks too (although I'm sure the good doctor would use slightly more technical language). The Generalist sticks with the story coming back a few weeks later to note that the Algerian health ministry and WHO are also both voting for the "bollocks" option. Jihadica has an interesting post looking at this along with other very unlikely stories from recent times about al Qaeda - Thomas writes:

Let me start by congratulating the journalist on being able to fit the four words “al-Qaida”, “gay”, “rape” and “horror” in one and the same headline in the world’s largest English-language newspaper.

Journalism of that 'quality' - it just makes you proud to be British. OK, so maybe I'm missing a 'not' from that last sentence.

(You might also be interested in this earlier post on related matters)

Where now for the Uighurs?

The absolutely ridiculous situation of the "Guantanamo Uighurs" is somehow darkly symbolic of the fag-end of an utterly failed Presidency. So a bunch of Chinese Uighurs get picked up in Afghanistan in 2001/2002 and dropped into the legal black hole of Guantanamo as suspected terrorists. Slowly the American judicial branch claws back authority from an executive drunk on powers and give habeus corpus rights to the inmates. At this point even the Bush the administration gives up on the pretense that these guys were anything other than innocent bystanders swept up in the invasion and agree that they have to be released. But they won't release them in the U.S. because that would just make them look silly, yet international conventions that the U.S. is party to won't allow them to hnad them back to China because of a reasonable fear that the Chinese authorities will... wait for it... torture them. So the Uighurs continue to rot in Guantanamo whilst the U.S. desperately tries and bribe some poor country to take them as refugees. Meanwhile Chinese diplomats chase around the world threatening and/or bribing any country that might consider it.

So the Bush administration, that has attempted to make torture part of U.S. law, won't release innocent men to China because they fear that they might be tortured. Roll on November 4. It's hard to imagine that even McCain/Palin could make any less sense than this lot.

al-Qaeda-Finland-Gordon Brown terror nexus: update

So it's confirmed - British special branch are currently visiting Finland, trying to work out why these guys from Blackburn who they have arrested were coming to Helsinki. Helsingin Sanomat has a few more details today, but the Finnish security police spokesperson is saying release of the information on the case will only come from the British end.

Although it has been by no means a 100% rule, generally terrorism plots in Europe have exhibited ethnic, national or at least regional groupings in the family-origins of the plotters. Hence the 7/7 bombings were mainly the result of British Pakistanis (although Germaine Lindsay was a convert), the Madrid bombing was mainly Moroccans etc. Helsingin Sanomat says that the arrested men are British-Pakistanis, which is interesting as there is only a very small Pakistani community in Finland making that a less likely, if still possible, link. Ultimately this may turn out to be another 'internet plot' where threats are made but no credible plan had ever existed to act upon them - but when the internet is centrally involved it really does throw open the door to unlikely linkages between people who may have never even met.

Time will tell how serious these arrest turn out to be and what the Finnish connection was. Perhaps they had just made an "inspired choice" to select Finland for their family holiday destination?

al-Qaeda-Finland-Gordon Brown terror nexus

Now there is a title I never thought I'd write - but, what the hell? Three people from Lancashire arrested over threats to kill the PM, claiming to be al-Qaeda in Britain (nice to see there is no petty nationalism there: i.e. seperate al-Qaedas in England, Scotland and Wales), with two being taken off a plane about to leave for Finland? Presumably as it was Manchester airport, that would have been the daily Finnair flight to Helsinki. Now reports say that Greater Manchester counter-terrorism police are "in Scandinavia" continuing their inquiries. Technically, Finland isn't part of Scandinavia but I'm not sure if the PA or the Greater Manc polis spokesperson knows that, so they could well be in town.

Weird. I'll need to make some call Monday to see if I can find out more!

Is this terrorism?

If a group or an individual target civilians with violence - say, Egyptian Islamist groups attacking fellow Egyptians because they are Coptic Christians - that would count as Jihadi terrorism I think most would agree. In which, case - what is this case?

An unemployed man accused of opening fire with a shotgun and killing two people at a Unitarian Universalist church apparently targeted the congregation out of hatred for its support of liberal social policies, police said Monday. (from AP)

Is it "Right-wing terrorism"?

How to count terrorists

I was googling to see if I could find a free copy of an article in the most recent Democracy: a Journal of Ideas that I want to read. So far no luck, but Google did find me Jon Stewart instead. Stewart is probably more amusing, if a little less informative.



Yep, I know it's a year old but I'm sure President Bush and the team aren't making any more sense now.

Dodgy Engineers

(Please note, the pictured engineers are probably not dodgy at all) For anyone who has closely followed terrorism since 2001, or indeed before then, its always been blatantly clear that engineers are a right dubious bunch. Despite some of my best friends being engineers, you can see why: it's a mindset of neat organization, just ripe for a fundamentalist view of the world. Perhaps all engineers should be made to do a course on post-modern philosophy, or literary studies before they graduate. It might be safer for all of us. Malise Ruthven noted this correlation in his 2002 book, a Fury for God. He pointed out that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was not just an Islamic affair, the Communist students also revolted, but were later purged by the Islamists - but, anyway, the Islamist students virtually all came from the engineering, medical and natural science faculties at Tehran University, whilst the communists were from the humanities and social science faculties.

Anyway, I just noticed Foreign Policy magazine had an article on this earlier this year - called "Engineering Jihad". You can read most of it here - only the last paragraph is missing to non-subscribers and that only says that on top of a fundamentalism-ready mindset, in the Middle East there aren't enough jobs for engineering graduates, so you also get boredom and unemployment added to this unhealthy mix.

Terrorism - it ain't what it used to be

The British police come in for plenty of criticism; they're either arresting every Asian guy on the street under the prevention of terrorism act, or they are conniving with the Islamists to sell out 'our' 'Judeo-Christian' culture to the barbarian hordes. Probably both, and all before tea - how's that for hard work? But three terrorism related stories in the news today make you wonder if they aren't actually, in conjunction with the Security Service, doing not a bad job at all.

Only one of these stories is really a case of where the police stopped something - the arrest in Bristol last month - but the general amateur hour-ness of all them suggest the ineffectiveness of those willing to use violence in Jihadi cause as a result of counter-terrorism policing. First of all, the scary news from Exeter of the attempted bombing: the idea of using someone mentally retarded to do your dirty work is an old one used by scum of all types - criminally or politically motivated - but even still the fact the bomber survived one bomb going off in his hands, and that two other devices seem to have failed to explode suggests a lack of technical skill. The police seem to have already known about the people who put the would-be bomber up to it as well. Then secondly there is the story of the guy who wanted to blow up the Bluewater shopping centre (and it should be noted that if it wasn't for the potential of bloody loss of life, a plan that isn't wholly without merit), only that a) he didn't even know which county it is in and b) he revealed his dastardly plans to his... wait for it... prison officer. Perhaps not really a terrorist mastermind then. The third story is the remanding in custody until trial of Andrew Ibrahim, who was arrested last month for attempting to manufacture a suicide bomb vest. The 'informed speculation' is that Ibrahim was a self-starter, unconnected to wider terrorist networks - just the type of character that people like Marc Sageman have been predicting. These types are generally reckoned to be less of a danger as they have lower technical skills, but harder catch as they are not linked to other extremists. So if the Ibrahim prosecution next year is successful, that will be a good catch from the Bristol police.

Considering that the last 'serious' attack in the UK was the Glasgow airport attack where one of the "terrorists" ended up getting floored by a passing baggage handler, things don't seem to be going too badly for the UK counter-terrorism operations. Of course there is always the risk of a more serious and organised group, like the 7/7 bombers, who have been totally missed - but with the number of court cases underway, or that have ended in guilty verdicts in the last year, even this doesn't look as threatening as in 2005. The more nutty end of the Jihadi spectrum are always the ones likely to get through, but thankfully are also likely to be the ones that don't do too much damage. It's another argument for gun control as well: if the UK had easily available firearms, any of these nutters could perpetrate a mass killing as we've seen numerous times in the US over the last year in non-terrorism related instances. Instead they have to keep on trying to make their own bombs - fortunately with limited success.

"Wicked Jihad?"

I by accident found this interesting piece called "Wicked Jihad?" (or direct to the PDF) by Jamie Bartlett on the DEMOS website. I left a longish comment and, being a lazy git, I'll recycle the comment below rather than trying to think too much for one evening...

It's great to see this argument, as it should be one of those "well, Duh!" moments when someone states the incredibly obvious, yet still it isn't. Counter-terrorism commentators, researchers and students get all mixed up in, say, the relative importance to Qutbist Egyptian political Islamism versus Saudi-based Wahhabi fundamentalism (I know, I've been there), and totally miss the hip-hop.

In 1991(?) when Ice T released Cop Killer, there was discussion about gansta rap being a threat to national security, and with the LA riots of 1992 it didn't seem too much of leap. Partly as a result - rap, particularly it's not very "conscious" West Coast form, went global as the guaranteed-to-scare-your-mum teenage rebellion of choice. Compare it to UK indie of the same era - that might have vaguely embarrassed your mum but no more. It would seem obvious that "jihadi-chic" is now going to have the same sub-cultural pull on young men in Western Europe now. But the danger is always there that if the aesthetic is the attraction, some with darker intentions will exploit the young and stupid, just like some of those who listened to Snoop Dog and Ice Cube even in the suburbs really decided to live the gansta-life and stick a gun in the back of their baggy jeans and sell drugs.

Trying to react appropriately to genuine security threats whilst not over-reacting to youthful posturing (and by doing so actually beginning to really marginalize and perhaps radicalize) is the policy puzzle to solve.

al-Qaeda as "a post-modern pastiche"

This week's "Start the Week" on Radio 4 was a cracker, but Prof. Madawi Al Rasheed was particularly great. I don't think I have heard of her before but her description of the political-clerical balance in Saudi Arabia was excellent - brief, pithy, but completely convincing. It is somehow comforting that such smart people are around - truly "one cheerful rational voice amidst the din of mourners and polemics". When I first started reading about al-Qaeda seriously in 2003 I couldn't get how seemingly differing ideological strands came together - Saudi Wahhabism, Egyptian political Islam, the early liberal Salafism and the later reactionary Salafism. There didn't seem to be much coherence to it. So Prof. Al Rasheed's description of al-Qaeda being "a post-modern pastiche" of an organisation is wonderful: there is no one ideology but rather a fuzzy mess of shared agendas and localised co-option.

I'm going to have to get Michael Burleigh's new book as well "Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism", it sounds very interesting. His quote from Baader-Meinhof: "we half read a lot theory, that we fully understood", and his description of a consistency over time amongst very different terrorist groups: "a moral squalor" are alone enough to make me want to read it.

"Camp Bucca prison has become a school for takfir supporters"

MEMRI, the Israeli translation organization, has an interesting and depressing translation of an al-Arabiya television report on Jihadi violence inside U.S. prisons in Iraq, notably Camp Bucca, against other Iraqi prisoners. It shows the depths of extremism that the Iraqi Jihadis have reached. The al Qaeda and other jihadis are called "Takfiris" by other prisoners. Takfir is the act of one Muslim pronouncing another to be an apostate, or 'bad' Muslim, and extremists often use it as a way of legitimating calls to kill the supposed apostate. Non-Takfiri prisoners recount people being beaten for smoking, stepping into the toilets with the wrong foot first, or just for sitting in the wrong place. It also suggests that the U.S. forces do little to control what is happening inside the prisons, just letting the prisoners get on with "organising" themselves. The report suggest some innocent prisoners who get mistakenly picked up by US or Iraqi forces, end up joining al Qaeda to find protection within the prison.

Extremist recruiting in prisons is a well known phenomenon worldwide; the reasons that it happens being rather obvious. But it has been well known for many years now that many held in these internments camps in Iraq are not part of the insurgency, and it therefore makes allowing the prisons to get this far out of control into a very self-defeating policy.

The picture at the top I found on photo essay on a U.S. Department of Defense website, showing a military policeman seizing an improvised knife during a search at Camp Bucca. The pictures are from a couple of years back, but show some of the weapons that were being found even back then.

One man's terrorist...

...is another man's strategic asset? Particularly when the first man is President Ahmadinejad of Iran, the second man works for the U.S. State Department and the group in question is PJAK.



You've got to love that revolutionary vibe!

PJAK are Iranian Kurdish guerrillas/terrorists/freedom fighters/insurgents/militants/dudes (delete as ideologically suitable/aesthetically pleasing). The Iranian government is almost certainly messing around inside Iraqi Kurdistan, probably by sponsoring a nasty Takfiri/Jihadi Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam, who have been repeatedly bashed down by the Kurdish Peshmergas but keeps popping back up again like mushrooms after rain. But on the other hand, neither the U.S. as the occupying power, nor the Iraqi National Government or Kurdish regional government are doing much about the PJAK bases inside Iraq from where they attack Iran. This can be contrasted with the recent bombing by the Turkish air force of the PKK bases inside Iraq, which the U.S. must have given a nod to as the USAF has dominance over Iraqi airspace. The Iranian government has responded though, by firing artillery into Iraqi Kurdistan - seemingly with little impact beyond injuring Iraqi Kurdish civilians who had nothing to do with PJAK.

The saying "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" has come in for regular bashing over the last few years, particular from American commentators after 9/11: moral relativism, etc. etc. But PJAK isn't listed by U.S. as a terrorist organisation, and it's representatives have visited Washington D.C. Only a few people claim that the U.S. is supporting the group directly and they present no real evidence of it beside the normal unnamed sources or just saying 'it's logical'. But the U.S. is danger of falling into its own rhetorical trap of demanding 'moral clarity' in the 'War on Terror', even when in the past parts of the government have already shown hypocritical tendencies in that direction.

PJAK may well have a legitimate cause, and as it appears to have a certain pro-feminist ideology making them rather sympathetic in a region where women are heavily oppressed. But its methods would be quickly described as terrorist if they were aimed at Western forces in Iraq, or at Western countries more generally.

Links of interest:

• Quality BBC reporting on the tenuous position of the Iraqi Kurds trying to balance American, Turkish and Iranian interests against their own.
• Jamestown Terrorism Monitor article on the PJAK.
• Wikipedia article on PJAK with lots of links to news coverage, particularly on their relations with the U.S.