Tag: Jihad

  • Anti-jihad ad urging people to support ‘civilized man, not the savage’ gets go-ahead to be plastered on New York subway

    Anti-jihad ad urging people to support ‘civilized man, not the savage’ gets go-ahead to be plastered on New York subway

    By Daily Mail Reporter

    PUBLISHED: 23:33 GMT, 19 September 2012 | UPDATED: 23:45 GMT, 19 September 2012

    While outrage continues in the Middle East over the incendiary film, ‘The Innocence of Muslims,’ a new pro-Israel ad denouncing Jihad as ‘savage’ is set to make its debut on New York City’s subway system next week.

    The ad states: ‘In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.’ It adds, ‘Support Israel. Defeat Jihad,’ in between two Stars of David.

    NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Aaron Donovan said the ad was initially rejected for its ‘demeaning’ language, but is now expected to appear at 10 subway stations.

    Although initially rejected for its ‘demeaning’ language about Islam, the ad is now expected to appear at 10 New York City subway stations next week

    Although initially rejected for its ‘demeaning’ language about Islam, the ad is now expected to appear at 10 New York City subway stations next week

    A Manhattan federal court judge ruled in July that the MTA violated the First Amendment rights of the ad’s sponsor, The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), and must let the ad appear, NBCNewYork.com report.

    ‘Our hands are tied,’ Donovan told The New York Times.

    The group has also bought ad space in Washington D.C., but the transit authority there has said that it had ‘deferred’ the ad’s placement ‘out of a concern for public safety, given current world events.’

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    The group’s ad has already appeared on public buses in San Francisco, in August. The transit agency there, the Muni, said it would donate the $3,400 ad revenue to the city’s Human Rights Commission and placed an ad next to AFDI’s message to say ‘Muni doesn’t support this message.’

    ‘Our hands are tied’: Spokesperson Aaron Donovan says the MTA may now consider revising its ad policy

    ‘Our hands are tied’: Spokesperson Aaron Donovan says the MTA may now consider revising its ad policy

    Golden Gate Bridge transit district, which provides bus and ferry service between San Francisco and suburbs to the north, rejected the ads at a Sept. 7 board meeting by adopting a policy banning religious and political ads.

    Pamela Geller, executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, said in an email to the Times that transit officials in Washington were ‘kowtowing to the threat of jihad terrorism.’

    Recent events in the Middle East have not given her pause ‘for a second’ about posting the ads in New York, she said. ‘I will never cower before violent intimidation and stop telling the truth because doing so is dangerous,’ Geller said. ‘Freedom must be vigorously defended.’

    ‘If someone commits violence, it is his responsibility and no one else’s,’ she added.

    The controversial ad is set to appear at 10 New York Subway stations next week

    The controversial ad is set to appear at 10 New York Subway stations next week

    The Southern Poverty Law Center branded Geller ‘the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead’ and AFDI as a hate group.

    The Anti-Defamation League said in March that Geller ‘fuels and fosters anti-Muslim bigotry in society.’

    Muneer Awad, the executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Times the ads were an attempt to ‘define Muslims’ through hate speech.

    ‘It’s perfectly legal to be a bigot and to be a racist,’ he said. ‘We want to make sure there’s a counter-voice.’

    Donovan said the MTA might consider revising its ad policy at its board meeting next week.

    via Anti-jihad ad urging people to support ‘civilized man, not the savage’ gets go-ahead to be plastered on New York subway | Mail Online.

  • The Obama Administration’s Islamist Whitewashing Campaign

    The Obama Administration’s Islamist Whitewashing Campaign

    The Obama administration continues to deny that we are at war with Islamist jihadists. Indeed, the word “jihad” itself is forbidden in Obama-land if used to describe the Islamist warriors. At its highest levels, the Obama administration insists on using bland euphemisms rather than accurate language describing the Islamist ideology we are fighting.

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    As far as the Obama administration is concerned, the global war against Islamist killers is an “Overseas Contingency Operation.” The Fort Hood massacre, in which thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded by an Islamist jihadist, is described by Obama officials as “workplace violence.”

    In one of the most recent examples of political correctness gone amok, Paul Stockton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, refused to acknowledge that we are fighting a radical ideology that has anything to do with Islam. Asked during a joint Senate-House committee hearing last week, conducted by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), whether “we are at war with violent Islamist extremism,” Stockton said “No sir. We are at war with al-Qaeda, its affiliates.” Stockton was then asked to at least concede that al-Qaeda is acting out violent Islamist extremism. Refusing to answer the question directly, he stuck to his talking point that “We are not at war with Islam.”

    Stockton was spewing his nonsense at the same time as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department hosted a three-day international conference in Washington, D.C., which included her friends from the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), representatives from the Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and representatives from countries and international organizations “selected on the basis of their geographic, religious, and political diversity.” It turns out that more than a third of the countries selected were Muslim. The Arab League was represented in addition to the OIC. Religious diversity was not enough, however, to secure the Jewish state of Israel an invitation.

    The purpose of the D.C. conference was to discuss ways to implement the provisions of a new United Nations resolution, the product of a deal reached between the OIC and the Obama administration, entitled “Combating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and Discrimination, Incitement to Violence and Violence Against, Persons Based on Religion or Belief.”

    The deal was for the OIC to at least temporarily put on hold its annual campaign to have the United Nations pass its “defamation of religions” resolutions, in favor of the “compromise” resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council in March of this year and then passed by the UN General Assembly in November.

    The title of the new “compromise” resolution may be different from the OIC’s “Combating defamation of religions” resolutions that the OIC has successfully steered through the UN over the last ten years or so. However, the net effect is that with the new UN resolution in hand and the full cooperation of the Obama administration, the OIC will actually be closer to achieving its objective, which to stamp out speech deemed offensive to Muslims.

    Continuing the Obama administration’s submission to the OIC’s wishes, Clinton met with OIC officials in Istanbul last July, at a conference she co-hosted, to embark on what has become known as the “Istanbul Process.” The ostensible purpose of the Istanbul Process is to work with Muslim majority countries, the OIC and other interested nations on exploring specific steps to combat intolerance, negative stereotyping, discrimination and violence on the basis of religion or belief.

    Clinton, in full spin mode, insisted that the new UN resolution was totally consistent with the free speech protections of the First Amendment, as opposed to the “defamation of religions” resolutions that the OIC was willing to have replaced. At the same time, Clinton assured the OIC that she was perfectly on board with using “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.” She also invited OIC representatives to Washington, D.C. to begin implementing the Istanbul Process, which culminated in last week’s three-day closed door conference.

    The OIC, meanwhile, is engaging in a bait and switch game. Reporting after the meeting in Istanbul on what it expected to happen next, the OIC stated: “The upcoming [Washington] meetings . . . [will] help in enacting domestic laws for the countries involved in the issue, as well as formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred resulting from the continued defamation of religions.” In other words, banning “defamation of religions” was still on the OIC’s agenda, even if it had to be achieved through indirection.

    About a month after the Istanbul meeting, OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu insisted that “no one has the right to insult another for their beliefs or to incite hatred and prejudice.”

    Is Hillary Clinton so obtuse that she fails to understand the OIC’s true intentions? Alternatively, is she trying to publicly assure American citizens that their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and press are safe, while working behind the scenes with her OIC partners to find acceptable ways to stifle speech offensive to Muslims? I think the latter is the case, as the Obama administration examines employing legal mechanisms such as hate speech laws and vigorous enforcement of very broadly interpreted anti-discrimination laws, as well as using the “shaming” campaign Clinton talked up in Istanbul. Her actions are right in line with Barack Obama’s vow to the Muslim world in his June 2009 Cairo speech: “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam whenever they appear.”

    Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and serving as a commissioner on the official but independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, was invited to attend just the opening and closing sessions of last week’s conference. That was bad enough.

    Shea was very concerned about the conference after it was first announced last July, seeing right through the OIC’s maneuvering. She came away even more concerned after she heard what was being said at the conference, beyond Hillary Clinton’s platitudes about the importance of free expression and religious tolerance. “It is a scandal that the US is partnering on an issue regarding free speech with an organization like the OIC that is committed to undermining free speech,” Shea concluded.

    Here, in Shea’s own words, are some of the things she heard:

    [L]egal and security officials of a delegation which will remain unnamed gave a sweeping overview of American founding principles on religious freedom and how they have been breached time and again in American history by attacks against a broad variety of religious minority groups — including now against Muslims. A raft of current cases was mentioned; America’s relative exemplary and distinctive achievement in upholding religious freedom in an emphatically pluralistic society was not. That same speaker reassured the audience, which was packed with diplomats from around the world, that the Obama administration is working diligently to prosecute American Islamophobes and is transforming the U.S. Justice Department into the conscience of the nation, though it could no doubt learn a thing or two from the assembled delegates on other ways to stop persistent religious intolerance in America.

    As mentioned above, the three-day Washington, D.C. conference was closed to the public, with very little reporting on what went on – particularly on what transpired between the opening and closing sessions that Nina Shea attended. However, I did manage to learn of one illustrative closed break-out session that confirms Ms. Shea’s concerns. The session consisted of a review by U.S. Department of Homeland officials regarding the training that the department delivers to federal, state, and local law enforcement on “Countering Violent Extremism,” together with a mock training session. It was an exercise in multi-cultural and diversity training. Ignoring the Islamist source of the most dangerous acts of “violent extremism” today, the session showcased the kind of misleading, politically correct training that the Obama administration is pushing, including community outreach programs, guides for community interaction and discussion of purported stereotypes of religious communities.

    The Obama administration is helping the OIC to immunize Islamist ideology and law from critical scrutiny, under the banner of combating “Islamophobia.” As a result, our First Amendment right of free expression – starting with expression that the Obama administration and the Islamists “abhor” – are in jeopardy.

    By Joseph Klein
    Frontpage Magazine

  • Jihad is not a crime

    Jihad is not a crime

    Matt KrauseBefore I lived in Turkey, I thought the word “jihad” was a word of hate and violence. I associated it with suicide bombers and crazed fanatics who flew airplanes into buildings.

    But then I went to Turkey. And I started meeting people named Jihad!

    I remember this one day in particular, when I met my first Jihad (actually, his name was “Cihat”, the Turkish spelling of “Jihad”).

    My wife and I went to this beautiful tea garden. It was up on this high bluff with an incredible view of the Bosphorus Straits and the blue Marmara Sea stretching all the way to the horizon.

    We met up with my wife’s cousin, his wife, and their kids. And this guy, this cousin, his name was Cihat!

    But this guy with the radical, violent name, he was just a big teddy bear. I mean, you could see it in his eyes, in his face, in the way he looked at his wife and kids. You could even hear it in the way he talked to me. He was one the gentlest souls I had ever met.

    When we parted ways that day, I was feeling a little confused, wondering, my god, how can this gentle teddy bear of a man have a crazy, violent, hateful name like Cihat? What on earth were his parents thinking? Did they even know what that word meant?

    Turns out I was the one who didn’t know what that word meant.

    Because in the months that followed, I met tons of Cihats in Turkey. It turns out Cihat is actually a pretty common guy’s name.

    And I figured, the parents must know something I don’t. I mean, it doesn’t matter where in the world you are, parents love their children. No parents in the world are going to give their kid a hateful, violent name.

    So I figured I would look into what this word meant, jihad. And here’s what I found…

    The word “jihad” has multiple meanings. And yes, “violent war against an external infidel” is one of them. But an equally valid, equally accepted meaning of “jihad” is “war against the infidel within the self”. The phrase “I am conducting a jihad” means, “I am rooting out sin within MY OWN heart”!

    Now, this is not some niche, alternative meaning bandied about by a few academic philosophers.

    I didn’t go to some obscure, Middle East-loving, crazy peacenik source to find this definition. I just went to Wikipedia. I went to Wikipedia and typed in “jihad”. And then just to verify what I learned, I went to a couple other mainstream American websites like Yahoo, and Ask.com.

    Turns out this other meaning, “purging your own heart of sin”, is a mainstream, widely-accepted meaning. In fact, it is the majority meaning of this word. Most of the people who use this word mean “purge the infidel within your own heart”.

    Now, I’m not saying that suicide bombers are peace-loving, gentle souls. I am saying that for every crazed lunatic, there are a hundred gentle, loving souls who say jihad is about purifying your own heart. They are saying never mind the non-believers, our hands are full just living God’s words in our own hearts.

    This theme is common to pretty much every religion around the world. For every Christian who thinks Christianity is about grabbing a sword and slaying the heathens in the name of the Lord, there are a hundred who think Christianity is about saying, “Never mind the heathens, my job is to purify my own heart.”

    It means one of the primary meanings of Jihad is very similar to what Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world”. And Gandhi, he was a gentle Indian guy who walked around in a white robe talking about peace. Everybody loves Gandhi. And yet he was basically telling people, “Yeah man, let’s all do some jihad!”

    So it turns out that our conventional-wisdom, popular understanding of the word “jihad” is ridiculously myopic. It means that when some crazy American woman goes off the deep end and moves to Pakistan, and we call her “Jihad Jane”, we’re just highlighting our own ignorance.

    And if we’re myopic about that, what else are we myopic about?

    When we meet someone else, someone from another religion, or another country, or another job or social class, it is our duty to humanity to remind ourselves that our understanding of that person is probably incorrect. And it is our duty to the world to try to overcome that incorrectness.

    When we allow an incorrect understanding to drive our actions, those actions will be misguided. And even if we do reach our goal, we will probably find out, too late, that we have chosen the wrong one.

    Matt Krause

    Originally published at mattkrause.com on 18 june 2010

  • Jihadism in 2009: The Trends Continue

    Jihadism in 2009: The Trends Continue

    By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

    The Devolution of Al Qaeda

    For the past several years, we have published an annual forecast for al Qaeda and the jihadist movement. Since the January 2006 forecast, we have focused heavily on the devolution of jihadism from a phenomenon focused primarily on al Qaeda the group to one based primarily on al Qaeda the movement. Last year, we argued that al Qaeda was struggling to remain relevant and that al Qaeda prime had been marginalized in the physical battlefield. This marginalization of al Qaeda prime had caused that group to forfeit its position at the vanguard of the physical jihad, though it remained deeply invol ved in the leadership of the ideological battle.

    As a quick reminder, Stratfor views what most people refer to as “al Qaeda” as a global jihadist network rather than a monolithic entity. This network consists of three distinct entities. The first is a core vanguard, which we frequently refer to as al Qaeda prime, comprising Osama bin Laden and his trusted associates. The second is composed of al Qaeda franchise groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, and the third comprises the grassroots jihadist movement inspired by al Qaeda prime and the franchise groups.

    As indicated by the title of this forecast, we believe that the trends we have discussed in previous years will continue, and that al Qaeda prime has become marginalized on the physical battlefield to the extent that we have not even mentioned their name in the title. The regional jihadist franchises and grassroots operatives pose a much more significant threat in terms of security concerns, though it is important to note that those concerns will remain tactical and not rise to the level of a strategic threat. In our view, the sort of strategic challenge that al Qaeda prime posed with the 9/11 attacks simply cannot be replicated without a major change in geopolitical alignments — a change we do not anticipate in 2009.

    2008 in Review

    Before diving into our forecast for the coming year, let’s take a quick look back at what we said would happen in 2008 and see what we got right and what we did not.

    What we got right:

    Al Qaeda core focused on the ideological battle. Another year has passed without a physical attack by the al Qaeda core. As we noted last October, al Qaeda spent a tremendous amount of effort in 2008 fighting the ideological battle. The core leadership still appears to be very intent on countering the thoughts presented in a book written in 2007 by Sayyed Imam al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl, an imprisoned Egyptian radical and a founder (with Ayman al-Zawahiri) of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Al-Sharif’s book is seen as such a threat because he provides theological arguments that counter many of the core teachings used by al Qaeda to justify jihadism. On Dec. 13, an 85-page treatise by one of al Qaeda’s leading religious authorities, Abu-Yahya al-Libi, was released to jihadist Web sites in the latest of al Qaeda’s many efforts to counter Dr. Fadl’s arguments.

    Pakistan will be important as a potential flashpoint. Eight days after we wrote this, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Since then, Pakistan has become the focal point on the physical battlefield.

    The November 2007 addition of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) to the global jihadist network will not pose a serious threat to the Libyan regime. The Libyans have deftly used a combination of carrots and sticks to divide and control the LIFG.

    Jihadists will kill more people with explosives and firearms than with chemical, biological or radiological weapons. We saw no jihadist attacks using WMD in 2008.

    What we got mostly right:

    The Algerian jihadist franchise, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), will be hard-pressed in 2008, but not eliminated. AQIM succeeded in launching a large number of attacks in the first eight months of 2008, killing as many people as it did in all of 2007. But since then, the Algerian government has been making progress, and the jihadist group has only conducted two attacks since August 2008. The Algerians also are working closely with neighboring countries to combat AQIM, and the group is definitely feeling the heat. On Dec. 23, 2008, the Algerian government reportedly rejected a truce offered by AQIM leader Yahia Djouadi. Djouadi offered that al Qaeda would cease attacks on foreigners operating in oil fields in Algeria and Mauritania if the Algerian security service would cease targeting al Qaeda members in the Sahel region. The group is still alive, and government pressure appears to have affected its operational ability in recent months, but it di d take a bit longer than we anticipated for the pressure to make a difference.

    Syria will use Fatah al-Islam as a destabilizing force in Lebanon. We had intelligence last year suggesting that the Syrians were going to press the use of their jihadist proxies in Lebanon — specifically Fatah al-Islam. We saw a bit of this type of activity in late May, but not as much as anticipated. By November, Syria actually decided to cut ties with Fatah al-Islam.

    Jihadist operatives outside war zones will focus on soft targets. Major terrorist strikes in Islamabad and New Delhi were conducted against hotels, soft targets Stratfor has focused on as vulnerable for many years now. Other attacks in India focused on markets and other public places. While most of the attacks against hard targets came in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, there were a few attacks against hard targets in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Turkey. Granted, the Sanaa and Istanbul attacks were unsuccessful, but they were attacks against hard targets nonetheless.

    What we missed:

    The jihadist franchises in Yemen resurged, and the al-Shabab in Somalia found success. While we quickly picked up on these trends in April and May respectively (and beat most others to the punch with some very good analysis on these topics), we clearly did not predict them in December 2007. We knew that the influx of fighters from Iraq was going to impact countries in the region, but we didn’t specifically focus on Yemen and Somalia.

    The Year Ahead

    We anticipate that we will see the United States continue its campaign of decapitation strikes against al Qaeda leadership. While this campaign has not managed to get bin Laden or al-Zawahiri, it has proved quite successful at causing the al Qaeda apex leadership to lie low and become marginalized from the physical jihad. The campaign also has killed a long list of key al Qaeda operational commanders and trainers. As noted above, we believe the core leadership is very concerned about the ideological battle being waged against it — the only real way the theology of jihadism can be defeated — and will continue to focus their efforts on that battlespace.

    As long as the ideology of jihadism survives (it has been around since the late 1980s), the jihadists’ war against the world will continue. It will continue to oscillate between periods of high and low intensity. In the coming year, we believe the bulk of physical attacks will continue to be conducted by regional jihadist franchise groups, and to a lesser extent by grassroots jihadists.

    With the lack of regional franchises in North America, we do not see a strategic threat to the United States. However, as seen by the recent convictions in the Fort Dix plot trial, or even in the late October case where a U.S. citizen apparently committed a suicide bombing on behalf of al-Shabab in Somalia, the threat of simple attacks against soft targets in the United States remains. We were again surprised that no jihadist attacks occurred in the United States in 2008. Given the vulnerabilities that exist in an open society and the ease of attack, we cannot rule out an attack in 2009.

    In Europe, where AQIM and other jihadist franchises have a greater presence and infrastructure, there is a greater threat that these franchises will commit sophisticated attacks. It must be recognized, though, that they will have a far harder time acquiring weapons and explosives to conduct such attacks in the United Kingdom or France than they would in Algeria or Pakistan. Because of this, we anticipate that they will continue to focus on soft targets in Europe. Due to differences between the Muslim communities in the United States and Europe, the grassroots operatives have been more active in Europe than they are in the United States. The May 22, 2008, attempted bombing at the Giraffe Cafe by a Muslim convert in Exeter serves as a good reminder of this.

    Jihadist Franchises

    After failing last year to predict the resurgence of the jihadist franchises in Yemen and Somalia, we will be keeping a sharp eye on both for 2009. Somalia continues to be a basket case of a country, and the instability there is providing an opportunity for al-Shabab to flourish. There is currently an attempt under way to bring stability to Somalia, but we anticipate that it will not succeed, due to the militant factionalism in the country. The only thing working against al-Shabab and their jihadist brethren is that the Somalian jihadists appear to be as fractious as the rest of the country; al-Shabab is itself a splinter of the Supreme Islamic Courts Council (SICC), which ruled Somalia briefly before the Ethiopian invasion in 2006. There are currently as many as four different jihadist factions fighting one anot her for control over various areas of Somalia — in addition to fighting foreign troops and the interim government.

    In Yemen, things have been eerily quiet since the Sept. 17 attack against the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa and the government campaign to go after the group behind that attack. Six gunmen were killed in the attack itself, and the Yemenis have arrested numerous others whom they claim were involved in planning the attack. The Yemenis also killed or captured several significant jihadists prior to the September attack. But given the large number of Yemenis involved in the fighting in Iraq, the number of Saudi militants who have traveled to Yemen due to pressure at home, and the Salafist-jihadist influence within Yemen’s security and intelligence apparatus, it will be possible for the two jihadist franchises in Yemen to recover if the Yemenis give them breathing space.

    Meanwhile, though Iraq is far calmer than it was a few years back, a resurgence in jihadist activity is possible. One of the keys to calming down the many jihadist groups in Iraq was the formation of the Awakening Councils, which are made up of many Sunni former Baathist (and some jihadist) militants placed on the U.S. payroll. With the changes in Iraq, responsibility for these Awakening Councils has been passed to the Iraqi government. If the Shiite-dominated government decides not to pay the councils, many of the militants-turned-security officers might return to their old ways — especially if the pay from jihadist groups is right. Intelligence reports indicate that Baghdad plans to pay only a fraction of the approximately 100,000 men currently serving in the Awakening Councils. The Iraqi central government apparently plans to offer the bulk of them civilian jobs or job training, but we are skeptical that this will work.

    Elsewhere, Pakistan is once again the critical location for the jihadists. Not only is Pakistan the home of the al Qaeda core leadership as its pursues its ideological war, it also is home to a number of jihadist groups, from the Afghan Taliban and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in the northwest to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed in the northeast, among several others. The coming year might prove to be pivotal in global efforts against the jihadists in Pakistan. Pakistan already is a country in crisis, and in some ways it is hard to imagine it getting much worse. But if Pakistan continues to destabilize, it could very well turn into a failed country (albeit a failed country with a nuclear arsenal). Before Pakistan becomes a failed state, there are a number of precursor stages it probably will pass through. The most immed iate stage would entail the fall of most of the North-West Frontier Province to the jihadists, something that could happen this year.

    This type of anarchy in Pakistan could give the jihadists an opportunity to exert control in a way similar to what they have done in places like Afghanistan and Somalia (and already in the Pakistani badlands along the Afghan border.) If, on the other hand, Pakistan is somehow able to hold on, re-establish control over its territory and its rogue intelligence agency and begin to cooperate with the United States and other countries fighting the jihadists, such a development could deal a terrible blow to the aspirations of the jihadists on both the physical and ideological battlefields. Given the number of plots linked to Pakistan in recent years, including the Nov. 26 Mumbai attack and almost every significant plot since 9/11, all eyes will be watching Pakistan carefully.

    This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com