Turkish Forum

Tag: Al-Qaeda

  • Turkish Airline Flying Al-Qaeda from Pakistan to Syrian Borders

    Turkish Airline Flying Al-Qaeda from Pakistan to Syrian Borders

    Turkish Airline Flying Al-Qaeda from Pakistan to Syrian Borders

    TEHRAN (FNA)- Turkey’s national air carrier, Turkish Air, has been transiting Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants from North Waziristan in Pakistan to the Turkish borders with Syria, sources revealed on Saturday, mentioning that the last group were flown to Hatay on a Turkish Air Airbus flight No. 709 on September 10, 2012.

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    “The Turkish intelligence agency sent 93 Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists from Waziristan to Hatay province near the border with Syria on a Turkish Air Airbus flight No. 709 on September 10, 2012 and via the Karachi-Istanbul flight route,” the source told FNA on Saturday, adding that the flight had a short stop in Istanbul.

    The 93 terrorists transited to the Turkish border with Syria included Al-Qaeda militants from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and a group of Arabs residing in Waziristan, he added.

    The source, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his information, further revealed that the Turkish intelligence agency is coordinating its measures with the CIA and the Saudi and Qatari secret services.

    FNA dispatches from Pakistan said new al-Qaeda members were trained in North Waziristan until a few days ago and then sent to Syria, but now they are transferring their command center to the borders between Turkey and Syria as a first step to be followed by a last move directly into the restive parts of Syria on the other side of the border.

    The al-Qaeda, backed by Turkey, the US and its regional Arab allies, had set up a new camp in Northern Waziristan in Pakistan to train Salafi and Jihadi terrorists and dispatched them to Syria via Turkish borders.

    “A new Al-Qaeda has been created in the region through the financial and logistical backup of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and a number of western states, specially the US,” a source told FNA earlier this month.

    Ali Mahdian told FNA that the US and the British governments have been playing with the al-Qaeda through their Arab proxy regimes in the region in a bid to materialize their goals, specially in Syria.

    He said the Saudi and Qatari regimes serve as interlocutors to facilitate the CIA and MI6 plans in Syria through instigating terrorist operations by Salafi and Arab Jihadi groups, adding that the terrorists do not know that they actually exercise the US plans.

    “Turkey has also been misusing extremist Salafis and Al-Qaeda terrorists to intensify the crisis in Syria and it has recently augmented its efforts in this regard by helping the new Al-Qaeda branch set up a camp in Northern Waziristan in Pakistan to train Al-Qaeda and Taliban members as well as Turkish Salafis and Arab Jihadis who are later sent to Syria for terrorist operations,” said the source.

    He said the camp in Waziristan is not just a training center, but a command center for terrorist operations against Syria.

    Yet, the source said the US and Britain are looking at the new Al-Qaeda force as an instrument to attain their goals and do not intend to support them to ascend to power, “because if Salafi elements in Syria ascend to power, they will create many problems for the US, the Western states and Turkey in future”.

    “Thus, the US, Britain and Turkey are looking at the Al-Qaeda as a tactical instrument,” he said, and warned of the regional and global repercussions of the US and Turkish aid to the Al-Qaeda and Salafi groups.

    “Unfortunately, these group of countries have just focused on the short-term benefits that the Salafis and the Al-Qaeda can provide for them and ignore the perils of this support in the long run,” he said.

    “At present, the western countries, specially Britain which hosts and controls the Jihadi Salafi groups throughout the world are paving the ground for these extremists to leave their homes – mostly in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Untied Arab Emirates (UAE) as well as those who live in Europe and the US – for Waziristan,” the source added.

    In relevant remarks, Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi last week blamed certain states, the Salafis and the Al-Qaeda for terrorist operations which have claimed the lives of thousands of people in his country, and said terrorist groups supported by certain foreign actors are misusing differences in his country to bring Syria into turmoil.

    Addressing the 16th heads-of-state summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) here in Tehran on Thursday, the Syrian premier noted terrorist attacks on his nation, and said the “terrorists are backed up by certain foreign states”.

    “Many countries allege to be supporting peaceful solutions in Syria, but they oppose Annan’s plan in practice,” he said, and cautioned, “The responsibility for the failure of this plan lies on their shoulder as they strove to keep the Syrian crisis going and falsified events.”

    “The world should know that the Syrian crisis, in fact, rises from foreign meddling. Certain well-known countries from inside and outside the region are seeking instability of Syria,” the Syrian prime minister complained.

    Elaborating on the recent developments in Syria, al-Halqi said, “It has been proved that foreign-backed terrorist groups have been misusing events and killing the innocent people.”

    “These terrorists include Salafis and Al-Qaeda Takfiri groups,” he reiterated, and added, “Those states that support terrorism and oppose talks should be given moral and economic punishments as they are part of the problem in Syria.”

    Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

    In October, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of stirring unrests in Syria once again.

    The US and its western and regional allies have long sought to topple Bashar al-Assad and his ruling system. Media reports said that the Syrian rebels and terrorist groups have received significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, a crime paid for by the Persian Gulf Arab states and coordinated by the United States.

    The US daily, Washington Post, reported in May that the Syrian rebels and terrorist groups battling the President Bashar al-Assad’s government have received significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, a crime paid for by the Persian Gulf Arab states and coordinated by the United States.

    The newspaper, quoting opposition activists and US and foreign officials, reported that Obama administration officials emphasized the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the Persian Gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.

    Opposition activists who several months ago said the rebels were running out of ammunition said in May that the flow of weapons – most bought on the black market in neighboring countries or from elements of the Syrian military in the past – has significantly increased after a decision by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Persian Gulf states to provide millions of dollars in funding each month.

    Special Thanks to: FNA Bureau in Islamabad, FNA Bureau in Kabul, FNA Bureau in Damascus

  • CIA Agent Exposes How Al-Qaeda Doesen’t Exist

    CIA Agent Exposes How Al-Qaeda Doesen’t Exist

  • Lebanese security officials seize suspicious cargo from US, Brazil

    Lebanese security officials seize suspicious cargo from US, Brazil

    shamsaraLebanon’s security officials say suspicious cargo from the US and Brazil containing huge amounts of US dollars, guns, special passports and credit cards have been seized upon arrival in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

    The items, packed in a number of chests and delivered via airmail, were discovered at Beirut’s airport, the Lebanese security officials said.

    The chests also contained a list of both well-known and ordinary Lebanese citizens including a figure related to Salafi extremist groups. The security officials have summoned a number of the individuals, whose names were on the list, arresting some of them.

    Beirut has redoubled security surveillance across the country following remarks by some Lebanese factions as well as widespread rumors about the presence of al-Qaeda in Lebanon.

    Meanwhile, the Lebanese defense minister earlier confirmed that members of the al-Qaeda terrorist group, fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, have entered Syria through Lebanon.

    Over the past few months, reports have circulated that caches of weapons have been smuggled to armed gangs in Syria through the Lebanese border.

    presstv.com

  • Bay: Turkey, not al-Qaida, provides model

    Bay: Turkey, not al-Qaida, provides model

    By AUSTIN BAY

    Global media report militant Islamists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood’s extremist factions and al-Qaida intend to subvert the Egyptian and Libyan Arab Spring revolts.

    Concern is legitimate. International diplomatic, intelligence and economic action to support liberalizing revolutionaries is absolutely necessary.

    In the context of 9/11, however, news of attempts at covert militant subversion of the Arab Spring 2011 instead of out-front leadership is another indication of al-Qaida’s great ideological failure and decline.

    A decade after 9/11, al-Qaida and its affiliates are not leading these revolutions, but tagging along, as destabilizers-come-lately. That was not how it was supposed to be. In 2001, militant Islamists billed their movement, and themselves, as the strong horse, empowered by God’s divine sanction. In 2011 the violent extremists are, at best, a dark horse, if not a near-dead horse surviving on a life support system hooked to Iran’s robed tyrants. That’s ironic. Iran’s Islamic revolution is a miserable, impoverished failure, and its dictators confront their own revolutionaries.

    For many reasons, militant extremists now must hide behind a veil. Arab Spring involves issues of cultural and political identity, but pragmatic demands for jobs, education and individual rights are also driving energies. In a world where every teenager wants a cellphone, savvy futurists bet that these are the decisive demands. Al-Qaida has little to say about jobs, education and how to expand and sustain a society’s material well-being.

    This is why many democratic revolutionaries look to contemporary Turkey, the political legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (arguably the 20th century’s most successful revolutionary), as a model for development.

    American grit and perseverance also deserve credit. In al-Qaida’s millennialist narrative, America was a weak horse, a nation of godless hedonists and gutless libertines unable to sustain the global, long slog of a war Osama bin Laden planned. Blast the World Trade Center, smoke the Pentagon, and Yankee couch potato psyches would shatter.

    A decade proved otherwise. America took the war to Afghanistan, al-Qaida’s chosen battlefield. B-52s and Green Berets drove al-Qaida and the Taliban into the hills. Divine sanction became a question mark. In the turmoil of Iraq, al-Qaida made another great strategic mistake, but one which anarchistic sociopaths in any culture are prone to commit. Terror in New York might elicit jigs on a Palestinian Arab Street, but the daily mass murder of fellow Muslims in Baghdad slowly eroded, death by death, al-Qaida’s reputation. Divine sanction? Does God support murder of the faithful?

    Loss of divine sanction played a major role in al-Qaida’s decline, but so did the utter failure of The Blame Game. Al-Qaida blamed America for Muslim social, political, and economic ills. Its real target, however, was modernity, with America as its grandest embodiment.

    2011, however, is not about blame. Arab populations slipping the psychological bonds of blame and fear, then taking responsibility for their own political situations, is one of 2011’s most promising indicators, a sign that these revolutions can lead to systemic and productive modernization rather than the imposition of another dystopian tyranny.

    Which is why the Turkish model attracts Arab Spring modernizers. Turkey, however, is the product of 90 years of trial and error, with the structure Ataturk left evolving into a democracy. The democratic process, of course, is never finished. The moderate Islamist political party now governing Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), is testing Ataturk’s secular model. Its critics argue that under the guise of extending democracy, the AKP is destroying pluralism. Others argue Ataturk’s system is now so strong it has turned Turkish Islamists into committed supporters of democracy.

    Still, Turkey provides a compelling – though sobering – example of how to systematically modernize a Muslim society. The complex process requires discipline and flexible leadership backed by soldiers committed to defending pluralism. Ataturk was a pragmatist who believed a broadly based educational system (spreading literacy and promoting scientific inquiry) and a dynamic economy were essential features of a modern state. He separated mosque from state by eliminating the Islamic caliphate, one of several fossilized Ottoman Empire institutions that stifled creativity and thus condemned Turks to economic and political backwardness. The subservience of women denied society half of its intellectual resources, so Ataturk’s reforms included emancipating Turkish women. Remaining modern requires adaptation. Ataturk saw parliamentary democracy as the political system best suited to sustaining social and economic creativity.

    Arab Spring revolutionaries do not have nine decades to succeed. Ataturk’s visionary policies, however, do offer guidance. Contemporary Turkey, with its vibrant civil society, expanding middle class, democratic elections, and lively media, is an example of a modernizing vision made concrete. Its dynamism stands in stark contrast to the fossilized answers of Iranian ayatollahs and al-Qaida caliphs whose future is the same old impoverishing tyranny.

    Bay’s new book is “ATATURK: Lessons in Leadership from the Greatest General of the Ottoman Empire.” Bay, a Rice University graduate, will be appearing at Houston’s Brazos Bookstore on Sunday, Sept. 11, at 2 p.m.

    via Bay: Turkey, not al-Qaida, provides model – Houston Chronicle.

  • MI5 former chief decries ‘war on terror’

    MI5 former chief decries ‘war on terror’

    Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller uses BBC lecture to criticise ‘unhelpful’ term, attack Iraq invasion and suggest al-Qaida talks

    Richard Norton-Taylor

    BBC Reith lectures
    MI5's former director general Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller during her 2011 BBC Reith lecture. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

    Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, delivered a withering attack on the invasion of Iraq, decried the term “war on terror”, and held out the prospect of talks with al-Qaida.

    Recording her first BBC Reith lecture on the theme, Securing Freedom, she made clear she believed the UK and US governments had not sufficiently understood the resentment that had been building up among Arab people, which was only compounded by the war against Iraq.

    Before an audience which included Theresa May, the home secretary, she also said the 9/11 attacks were “a crime, not an act of war”. “So I never felt it helpful to refer to a war on terror”.

    Young Arabs, she said, had no opportunity to choose their own rulers. “For them an external enemy was a unifying way to address some of their frustrations.”They were also united by the plight of Palestinians, a view that the west was exploiting their oil and supporting dictators. “It was wrong to say all terrorists belonged to al-Qaida,” added Manningham-Buller.

    Pursuing a theme which some in the audience may have been astounded to hear from a former boss of MI5, she said terrorist campaigns – she mentioned Northern Ireland as an example – could not be solved militarily. She described the invasion of Iraq as a “distraction in the pursuit of al-Qaida”. She added: “Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator but neither he nor his regime had anything to do with 9/11.” The invasion, she said, “provided an arena for jihad”, spurring on UK citizens to resort to terror.

    September 11 was a “monstrous crime” but it needed a considered response, an appreciation of the causes and roots of terrorism, she said later in answers to questions. She said she hoped there were those – she implied in western governments – who were considering having “talks with al-Qaida”.

    Some way must be found of approaching them, she suggested, though she said she did not know how, at the moment, that could be done.

    Manningham-Buller, who retired in 2007, attacked the invasion of Iraq in an interview with the Guardian in 2009. However, she has never before expressed such antipathy towards the prevailing policies and rhetoric of the government which she had to endure when she was in office. The lecture is to be broadcast on Radio 4 on 6 September, and entitled Terror.

    www.guardian.co.uk, 2 September 2011

  • Breivik’s Balkan obsession

    Breivik’s Balkan obsession

    AN UNPLEASANT little surprise. Anders Behring Breivik, the man who has confessed to the Friday attacks in Norway that killed at least 96 people, makes a glancing reference to me in the “manifesto” he apparently put on the internet hours before he began his killing. Discussing a key event in the history of Serbia and Kosovo, in 1690, Mr Breivik refers to me (mistakenly) as a historian, and says that I “refuted” a specific claim made by Noel Malcolm in one of my book reviews. In fact I questioned the claim; “refute” is too categorical.

    A look through Mr Breivik’s 1,500-page 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, which he published under the pseudonym “Andrew Berwick”, shows that he had a strange obsession with the Balkans. A word search for “Kosovo” comes up with 143 matches, “Serb” yields 341 matches, “Bosnia” 343 and “Albania” 208. (“Srebrenica”—the site of a Bosnian Serb massacre of some 8,000 Bosniaks in 1995—does not appear in the document.)

    The document is best described as a kind of “Mein Kampf” for our times, in which Jews are replaced by Muslims as the enemy which must be fought and expunged from Europe. Drawing on the crudest of warmongering Serbian propaganda from the 1990s, the document describes Muslim Albanians and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) as an evil jihad-waging enemy. Needless to say, its history is convoluted and misinformed.

    In one section Mr Breivik says he would like to meet Radovan Karadžić, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs who is currently on trial at the UN’s war crimes tribunal in The Hague. “But isn’t Radovan Karadžić a mass murderer and a racist?!” he asks. “As far as my studies show he is neither.”

    The document goes on to claim that for decades Muslims in “Bosnian Serbia” andAlbanians waged deliberate demographic warfare, or “indirect genocide”, against the Serbs. This echoes an infamous draft  memorandum by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which was leaked in 1986 and widely regarded as a key influence on Serbian nationalists at the time.

    The section goes on to display the extent of Mr Breivik’s delusions. Mr Karadžić, he says, “offered the Muslims in Bosnian Serbia the chance to convert or leave the country”. He continues:

    …he even went as far as offering the Muslims certain enclaves. When they refused he wanted to deport them by force. When this was made impossible by NATO he gave the order to fight the people who refused which was his sovereign right and responsibility as one of the primary leaders of Serb forces. This was never about ethnicity but about ridding the country of the genocidal hate ideology known as Islam. I do condemn any atrocities committed against Croats and vice versa but for his efforts to rid Serbia of Islam he will always be considered and remembered as an honourable Crusader and a European war hero. As for the NATO war criminals, the Western European category A traitors who gave the green light, they are nothing less than war criminals.

    Mr Breivik also has harsh words for Albanians. Their families, he says, “procreate at large scales [sic] trying to conquer territories demographically and later through bloodshed.” Although Albanians are among the most secular Muslims in the world, and fanatically pro-American at that, Mr Breivik chooses to highlight alleged links to al-Qaeda.

    In the coming “war” that Mr Breivik foresees, he discusses the deportation of Muslims from Europe and appears to endorse the physical annihilation of any Albanians and Bosniaks that resist. As they have lived here for “several centuries”, he says, “they will not accept being deported from Europe and will fight for their survival. A more long term and brutal military strategy must therefore be applied.”

    As Europe is cleansed of Muslims, Albania is designated by Mr Breivik as the official “transit zone for the Balkans”. After that, the local map is to be completely redrawn. Once all Muslims have been deported from Europe, Kosovo will be “reunified with Serbia once again.”

    Bosnia, too, is to disappear from the map, in a manner that recalls the failed attempts of the 1990s to divide it between Serbia and Croatia. Mr Breivik refers to the country as “the Serbian/Croatian territory currently known as Bosnia Herzegovina.” It will be divided into a “Serbian (60-70%) and Croatian (30-40%) part… after historical ethnic lines. All Muslim individuals (Bosniaks and Albanians) will be deported to the nearest transit area (Albania) awaiting deportation from Europe.”

    His geography gets a little wonky when it comes to the country he refers to as “the Greek/Croatian/Serbian territory currently known as Albania”: Albania shares no border with Croatia. He suggests dividing the country such that Greece and Montenegro get 20% each, with the rest left for Christian Albanians. “All Muslim Albanians will be deported to central Anatolia.” The resulting “rather large” unpopulated areas in Albania could be offered as a “permanent home (territory) to several Christian minorities” coming from the Middle East.

    Seeing himself as a modern-day crusader, Mr Breivik presumably hoped that by murdering so many fellow Norwegians he would provoke a new world war in which the Balkans would be one of the central fronts. His document contains details of various medals to be awarded. The “Liberation of the Balkans Service” medal is to be given “for assisting to drive out Islam from occupied territory belonging to Serbia and Croatia (Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina).” There are similar prizes for Macedonia and Albania.

    Interestingly, Mr Breivik claims that it was Norway’s “involvement in the attacks on Serbia” (the NATO bombing of the country during the Kosovo war) that led him to want to “move on with the assault”. He writes:

    It was completely unacceptable how the US and Western European regimes bombed our Serbian brothers. All they wanted was to drive Islam out by deporting the Albanian Muslims back to Albania. When the Albanians refused, they really didn’t have any choice but to use military force. By disallowing the Serbians the right for self-determination over their sovereign territory they indirectly dug a grave for Europe. A future where several Mini-Pakistan’s would eventually will be created in every Western European capital. This is unacceptable, completely unacceptable.

    Finally, Mr Breivik discusses the creation of a so-called military order, to which he says he belongs. The initial contact was through Serbian “cultural conservatives”—presumably extreme nationalists—on the internet. He met others from all over Europe, but notes:

    I had the privilege of meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle. Due to EU persecution for alleged crimes against Muslims he was living at one point in Liberia. I visited him in Monrovia once, just before the founding session in London, 2002.

    www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches, Jul 25th 2011