08 Wild Cards – Page 65 – Public Intelligence Blog

Saudi Arabia's Efforts to Expand Radical Islam and Support Terrorism

Rachel Ehrenfeld and Ken Jensen

American Center for Democracy, 23 February 2013

On the eve of the Arab Spring, Rachel Ehrenfeld published a lengthy and important study titled, “Their Oil Is Thicker Than Our Blood“*on Saudi support for Islamist terrorism and the global expansion of the radical Islamic base, as well as the inadequacies of the Kingdom’s purported anti-terrorist efforts. While much has happened since, very little has changed regarding the patterns of Saudi behavior in this regard.

Despite continued public statements of support for U.S. and Western counterterrorism efforts, sporadic enforcement of new laws in the Kingdom regarding such things as money laundering, money transfers to dubious foreign recipients, and the occasional rousting of terrorist cells (al Qaeda- and Iran-affiliated), Saudi Arabia remains one of the most important sources of terrorist funding worldwide-if not THE most important source.

The U.S., while knowing this full well, has for many years doled out nothing but praise for the Saudis when it comes to fighting Islamist terrorism. This is as true now as it was after September 11. In this, the U.S. government has seemingly accepted the principal underpinning of the Saudi regime: buying off its would-be Islamist adversaries at home. The leading principle has been all along – not in our backyard. Thus the Kingdom’s support of Osama bin-Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

But Saudi funding to globally spread their Sunni radical version of Islam-Wahhabism–began in earnest in 1962 with the establishment of the Muslim World League (MWL), which expanded into at least to one hundred branches in more than thirty countries, and served as the main body for other international Saudi charities. Since then, the Kingdom’s charities have been estimated to spend between $1.5 and $2 trillion to build many thousand of mosques, madrassas and Islamic centers equipped with Saudi books and Imams, preaching the Wahhabi doctrine.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Saudi Arabia's Efforts to Expand Radical Islam and Support Terrorism”

2013/11/15

NIGHTWATCH: Syrian Kurds Holding North – Kurdistan Emergent + Kurd RECAP & Syria RECAP

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Peace Intelligence

Syria-Kurds: Islamist groups in northern Syria are weakening after months of fighting and Kurdish militias are gaining ground, a top Syrian Kurdish leader said on Wednesday.

Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said in an interview that Tuesday's announcement of an interim Syrian Kurdish autonomous administration in northeastern Syria is only a provisional measure until the end of the Syrian fighting. Muslim said he would only join the Geneva talks if there was a separate Kurdish delegation.

Muslim said, “About 3,000 of those Salafists have been killed. At the beginning they were strong, but now they aren't so strong….We have found no allies and paid for our own bullets.”

Muslim admitted, however, the PYD had received aid, money and weapons from the Iraq-based Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan as well as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which fought for greater Kurdish autonomy in Turkey for three decades.

Comment: Syrian Kurds number about two million people or 10% of Syria's population of 22.4 million, according to the CIA World Factbook. More than 25 million Kurds are dispersed among Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

The pro-Western and the jihadist groups reject the formation of an autonomous Syrian Kurdistan region. Nevertheless, one of the ripple effects of the Syrian fighting has been to galvanize the long-oppressed Syrian Kurds into taking action to defend their territory in northeastern Syria.

Muslim's admission that his group receives aid, money and weapons from other Iraqi and Turkish Kurds is significant because usually Kurdish leaders are more circumspect about linkages to other Kurdish regions, particularly the prosperous and highly autonomous Iraqi Kurds. None of the leaders of states with large Kurdish populations wants to see a Kurdish nationhood movement emerge.

For now, the Asad government owes the Kurds for preventing the jihadists from seizing northeastern Syria, as they have tried for much of the summer.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Syrian Kurds Holding North – Kurdistan Emergent + Kurd RECAP & Syria RECAP”

2013/11/152013/11/15

NIGHTWATCH: 12 Years of War, Pakistan’s Two Fertilizer Factories Still Producing Many Bombs, Some of Them Very Big…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism

Afghanistan: Government security forces recently intercepted one of the largest truck bombs ever built, a massive “vehicle-borne improvised explosive device,” or VBIED, packed with some 61,500 pounds of explosives. The Hino heavy cargo truck was stopped as it crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan south of Peshawar. Hino Motors is owned by Toyota.

According to the press accounts, Afghan and US sources claimed the truck belonged to the Haqqani network which is responsible for almost all major bombings in Kabul and in the eastern provinces that border Pakistan, where the Haqqani syndicate is based.

The news sources suggested that a likely target was the US military's Forward Operating Base Goode near Gardez City. According to Afghan sources, the driver was a Pakistani who set off a grenade in the cab of the truck. He was taken to a nearby hospital where he detonated a suicide vest and killed himself, officials said.

News sources reported no other casualties from the detonations.

Comment: News analysts reported that this truck bomb was 12 times greater by weight of the explosives than the Oklahoma City bomb in 1995 and six times greater than the amount of explosives used in the 1983 Beirut Marine Barracks bombing. Like the Oklahoma City bomb, the primary explosive agent was ammonium nitrate fertilizer, according to the press.

The audacity of the attempt is more impressive than the fact that authorities discovered the truck. This attempt is significant for several reasons. First, it is a monumental act of defiance of Afghan security. Second, the truck could not have come as close as it did to Gardez without significant help by Pakistani and Afghan border guards or paramilitary forces. The truck was stalled on the side of the road, apparently, when the Afghans found it.

Finally, only two fertilizer plants in Pakistan make ammonium nitrate fertilizer. These are the same two plants that have been making it throughout the duration of the US and NATO intervention in Afghanistan, the past 12 years, with impunity. Afghanistan has no fertilizer factories and only the Taliban and drug growers use this fertilizer because it is more expensive than the alternatives. The Afghan government has outlawed imports of ammonium nitrate fertilizers, but they continue to pour in.

Despite 12 years of NATO operations and ostensibly elaborate cooperation with the Pakistanis, the Haqqanis continue to operate with impunity and apparently still enjoy the protection of Pakistani military intelligence.

2013/11/14

Chuck Spinney: Emile Nakhleh on Saudi Anger over Losing Influence — Iran Ascendant

05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Saudi Anger Masks Concern About Loss of Influence

by Emile Nakhleh via IPS News, 13 November 2013

Saudi Arabia’s public anger against the United States masks the kingdom’s growing concern about its diminishing influence in the Persian Gulf and the wider Arab world.

It has nothing to do with U.S. policy toward the Palestinians, Washington’s seeming oscillation toward Syria, or President Barack Obama’s support for democratic transitions in “Arab Spring” countries and his hesitancy to support Mohamed Morsi’s removal from Egypt’s presidency through a military coup.

The Saudis are lashing out because they fear a possible U.S.-Iranian rapprochement would elevate Iran’s rightful position as the key power in the Persian Gulf and correspondingly reduce Saudi Arabia to a secondary role. The Saudi Kingdom would resist playing a second fiddle to Iran.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Emile Nakhleh on Saudi Anger over Losing Influence — Iran Ascendant”

2013/11/12

Chuck Spinney: Kurdistan Emergent

05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

The below Reuters report describes one of the emerging regional complexities being unleashed by the Syrian civil war. At issue is Syria's Kurdish Question — yet another legacy of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire that continues to haunt the Middle East and the world after almost 100 years. President Wilson's reckless promises of nationhood to all minorities in his 14 Points were not fulfilled by the machinations and back room deals of the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. Today the Kurds, with a population of about 25 million, are the world's largest ethnic group without a state. But this population sits astride the modern borders Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, as the map below shows. And so, the Kurdish Question is grounded in the tectonic fault lines of (1) Turkish-Arab-Persian-Kurdish cultures, (2) the shared Fertile Crescent water resources of the Tigris/Euphrates watershed, (3) the larger Sunni-Shia religious schism (most Kurds are Sunni, but some Kurds in Iran are Shia), (4) the wealth and poverty of the northern tier of the Persian Gulf oil basin, and (5) the toxic legacy of Western colonialism (including the Israeli poison pill inserted into the region by an opportunistic then guilt ridden West). In recent years, most of the world's attention has been focused on the Kurdish subquestions in Turkey and Iraq, and to a lesser extent in Iran (don't forget the US sellout of the Iraqi Kurds with the help of the Shah of Iran, who had his own Kurdish problem), while Syria's Kurds have been the most forgotten of these minority questions — but as the attached report shows, the Syrian civil war has unleashed a new dimension to active Kurdish separatism that greatly complicates an already complicated regional situation.

Syrian Kurds' military gains stir unease

BY ERIKA SOLOMON AND ISABEL COLES

BEIRUT/ARBIL Mon Nov 11, 2013

(Reuters) – With a string of military gains across northeastern Syria, a Kurdish militia is solidifying a geographic and political presence in the war-torn country, posing a dilemma for regional powers.

Long oppressed under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, Kurds view the civil war as an opportunity to gain the kind of autonomy enjoyed by their ethnic kin in neighboring Iraq.

But their offensive has stirred mixed feelings, globally, regionally and locally, even among some fellow Kurds, who say the Kurdish fighters have drifted into a regional axis supporting Assad, something they deny.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Kurdistan Emergent”

2013/11/112013/11/11

Penguin: Stonewalling Fukushima – a Betrayal of the Public Trust

06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Officers Call

Think of the vastness of the evil of covering up this baby (headlines by country, plus streaming — truly shocking):

http://enenews.com/

Almost a complete blackout across the board when we there should be a national mobilization of state and local civil officialdom including schools to begin the measured precautions to protect our kids, particularly on the West Coast.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/how-to-protect-yourself-from-fukushima-radiation.html

NIGHTWATCH: CIA Kills Peace in Pakistan, Saudi Goes Nuclear [with Chinese Help?]

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

Pakistan-Pakistani Taliban: The Pakistani Taliban rejected peace talks with the government on Thursday after electing hardline militant Mullah Fazlullah as their new leader.

Earlier this month militant sources said that the consultative Shura council of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chose Khan Said Mehsud known as Sajna as the new leader. But the election of Sajna, who leads the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, reportedly was opposed by Taliban's other groups. Fazlullah was reported to have strongly objected to the choice of Sajna.

Shahidullah Shahid, the main spokesman for the TTP said talks with the government were a “waste of time” and the new chief Maulana Fazlullah was against them. “Holding of peace talks is not even an issue to discuss — this government has no authority, it is not a sovereign government, it is a slave, a slave of America. Holding peace talks is a waste of time.”

Fazlullah's men shot and wounded Malala Yousafzai last year, instantly turning Malala into a global hero for the education of girls.

Comment: Fazlullah's election does not necessarily mean that negotiations will never occur. Hardline leaders often are the only ones capable of negotiating with credibility. But that is for the future. Meanwhile, no peace talks are likely in the near term. Pakistani Pashtun savagery against Pashtun women will increase, including murder attempts against Malala in the UK.

Fazlullah's election signifies rejection of Prime Minister Sharif's peace overture. It also highlights a degenerative leadership pattern resulting from the US program of leadership decapitation. First, there is always someone waiting for the chance to be leader. Second, the new leaders are less experienced and wise than the men they replace. Third, the new generation of leaders is more extreme and theologically rigid than its predecessors. Finally, the new leaders tend to be unknown to intelligence relative to their predecessors. Decapitation is not a permanent solution to an insurgency or an uprising.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: CIA Kills Peace in Pakistan, Saudi Goes Nuclear [with Chinese Help?]”

Category: 08 Wild Cards

Berto Jongman: Saudi Arabia’s Efforts to Expand Radical Islam and Support Terrorism