Top Arab TTP Planner captured in Punjab

[sandy]

I don't see any change in near future . KSA funding will continue and the terrorism will continue but they won't go against the US because they know what happens to their kingdom. Until they get the strength of going against the US i don't think 9/11 is going to happen ever again. But the rest will face terrorism. Only way is to move away from oil .Its not happening .Though US and west have the capability to develope technologies to get rid of this mess , they are not going on full scale because of powerful oil companies and they are not effected by any means bcos the war is going on other countries.

 

[S-2]

"...KSA funding will continue..."

I don't see you providing proof or even allegations from responsible quarters that the KSA is funding the taliban. I don't discount the possibility but see such as extremely remote-even from rogues within their government.

 

[S-2]

"S-2, you really think OBL and AQ are still in a position to "lauch" another 911 from the rag-tag organisation that AQ is currently..."

I don't know. I'm unsure how they been degraded and to what degree. All I know is that significant attacks in the west seem to have ceased since, what, 7/7/07 in London? Further, we're not talking about the here and now but speculating on those possibilities were the afghan taliban to recapture Afghanistan and again provide sanctuary it seems.

 

[Nomad]

The KSA is not a monlithic entity. Lets focus on the actual power structure in the kingdom as opposed to a conventional notion of government.

The ruling elite has always been an alliance between the sauds and the salafi clergy since the inception of 'saudi' arabia. So its not unreasonable to assume that there are several factions within the ruling elite.

According to some US officials, portions of the actual ruling family in addition to the salafi clergy sympathize with the Salafi cause - it would be naive to think that the entire ruling family has been immune to salafi indoctrination over the last hundred years.

IMHO - Al Qaeda is the most visible operational arm and a (admittedly important) component of a greater Salafi Jihad Network.

You are right that the center of power in KSA is the house of Saud with the support of the Salafi clerics. The are conservatives, moderates, and a few liberals (though they may not admit it) in both groups. Destabilizing the house of Saud will be a disaster for the US as the Salafi clerics may assume power. The best course is what is happening now, working with the moderates to sideline the hardliners and slowly moderating the kingdoms course.

I personally do not believe the KSA is involved terror financing though hardliners with jihadi sympathies are there. Cutting the funds of the jihadi groups is more important. The KSA is taking positive steps in this direction, by shutting out some of the loopholes of money transfer in their system (I looked for a link but couldn't find it).

 

[Vassnti]

You are right that the center of power in KSA is the house of Saud with the support of the Salafi clerics. The are conservatives, moderates, and a few liberals (though they may not admit it) in both groups. Destabilizing the house of Saud will be a disaster for the US as the Salafi clerics may assume power. The best course is what is happening now, working with the moderates to sideline the hardliners and slowly moderating the kingdoms course.

I personally do not believe the KSA is involved terror financing though hardliners with jihadi sympathies are there. Cutting the funds of the jihadi groups is more important. The KSA is taking positive steps in this direction, by shutting out some of the loopholes of money transfer in their system (I looked for a link but couldn't find it).

Great news on the capture and hope he sings like a bird.

Instability in KSA would be a disaster but i do wonder what the path ahead is. The current monarchy/theocracy blend seems inherently unstable but too many have too much invested in the current system to allow a gradual change. If gradual change cannot occour then pressure builds up to a break point and chaos would ensue.

 

[S-2]

"when ever this s2 scum comes on just ignore him hes not worth replying to..."

You should try to stay on topic, sir, and avoid derailing the thread with personal attacks. Please use your "ignore" button. Those here will thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

I know I will...

Thanks.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Destabilizing the house of Saud will be a disaster for the US as the Salafi clerics may assume power. The best course is what is happening now, working with the moderates to sideline the hardliners and slowly moderating the kingdoms course.

I personally do not believe the KSA is involved terror financing though hardliners with jihadi sympathies are there. Cutting the funds of the jihadi groups is more important.

Good point - however we have to ask how long can we wait before the kingdom reforms itself and effectively sidelines the influential hardliners.

Clearly, the Salafi clerics can destabilise the Sauds. If that is the case, I would think the Sauds would take a 'live and let live' approach towards the clerics. It seems to me the Saud family has an incentive to not rock the power-sharing boat they have invested so much in - and that is not good news for us.

I don't know if Pakistanis and the Americans can afford to wait another ten years for change in KSA while the salafi jihadis continue to wreak havoc in our backyard.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

"...KSA funding will continue..."

I don't see you providing proof or even allegations from responsible quarters that the KSA is funding the taliban. I don't discount the possibility but see such as extremely remote-even from rogues within their government.

The Salafi clerics have had a track record of funding Salafi jihadis. I'm sure your friends in the US intelligence would confirm that.

The Salafi clerics ARE the 'rogues in the government' and are funding scumbags like TTP and other salafi foot soldiers through fake charities along with other channels.

The clerics are the other half of the ruling alliance in KSA - so effectively, they are part of the establishment. I'm surprised that you don't seem to be aware of this long-standing ground reality.

 

[seekers]

This is biggest illusion in Muslim world that Islam is the most spreading religion in the west.
This is Wahabism which is rapidly spreading in the US and Europe with hundred of thousand saudi salfi funded Mosques and madressas in the West.Moreover these mosques are also spreading terrorism ideology in west.These wahabi / takfiri culture propaganda spreading in west through mosque has also played role in 7/7 attacks in UK.
Terrorist are now preparing the immigrants and reverts through their takfiri ideology for more attacks in US and Europe.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

DAWN News

RIYADH: Thirty years ago, as tens of thousands of hajj pilgrims were completing dawn prayers inside Mecca, gunshots pierced the sanctity of the Grand Mosque.

To mark a new century on the Islamic calendar, a group of millennialist zealots, who claimed to have with them the new redeemer — the mahdi — seized Islam's holiest site.

The November 20, 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque by Juhayman al-Oteibi and his 400-plus fundamentalists, and the subsequent unholy, bloody military assault to dislodge them, stunned Muslims worldwide and rocked the Saudi monarchy to its foundation.

While Oteibi and 67 fellow militants were ultimately caught and beheaded, and the mahdi was shot dead in the battle, the incident continues to reverberate through Saudi society and the world, say historians.

‘It is painfully clear: the countdown to September 11, to the terrorist bombings in London and Madrid, and to the grisly Islamic violence ravaging Afghanistan and Iraq all began on that warm November morning,’ wrote Yaroslav Trofimov, author of the most complete account of the uprising, ‘The Siege of Mecca’.

The hajj had just finished when Oteibi and his band smuggled hundreds of assault weapons into the mosque at the centre of Mecca.

Angered at what they saw was Saudi society's plunge into immorality, with Muslims embracing ‘Western’ entertainment like cinema, television and sports, and Muslim women taking jobs, Oteibi's act was to herald a new age of purism.

His army took over every corner of the massive walled mosque, locking shut the normally welcoming gates, sending machine-gun armed snipers into the seven minarets, and taking hostage hundreds of the faithful.

Quickly shooting dead two guards who resisted, they denounced Saudi Arabia's leading clerics as corrupt and the ruling Al-Saud family as illegitimate.

Snipers picked off arriving policemen and soldiers and it would take two weeks and a massive Saudi army effort, that began with shelling the mosque and ended up with hand-to-hand fighting, to regain control.

The soldiers were backed by a small team of French commandos, led by the now infamous Lieutenant Paul Barril, and endorsed by a fatwa extracted the highest clerics that it was permissible to shoot the militants inside the sanctum.

The official death toll was 127 soldiers, 117 militants, and an unknown number of civilians. Trofimov cites independent observers in reporting a toll of ‘well over 1,000 lives.’

For most of the three million pilgrims massing in Mecca in the coming week for the hajj, Oteibi's takeover of the Grand Mosque is likely a vague memory.

Many details — including whether the non-Muslim French commandos were allowed
inside Mecca — remain secret.

But 30 years later, the intense security around Mecca, a sharp turn toward more conservative behaviour in Saudi society, and the very present Al-Qaeda threat, attest to lasting effects of the 1979 siege.

Sparked by Oteibi's complaints, Saudi religious leaders now ban movie theatres, and public concerts of all but traditional music are unknown.

Women cannot drive or attend soccer matches, and the religious police try to enforce a stringent dress code for them: all-black shroud-like abayas, with all but the eyes covered.

Robert Lacey, whose new book ‘Inside the Kingdom’ traces Saudi history from the Mecca siege to the present, said there is no proven direct link between Oteibi and Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

‘The link between Juhayman and bin Laden is that they are clearly in the Salafi tradition,’ he told AFP, referring to the arch-conservative Islamic movement.

‘Their messianic style — from their long, Salafi beards to their quarrel with the House of Saud — stem from the same violent and rejectionist reading of traditional Islam,’ he said.

‘We can now see that Juhayman's revolt helped shift Saudi society in the conservative and reactionary direction that has only been seriously contested in the last few years.’

Trofimov drew a closer parallel, saying that in many ways Oteibi's multinational army of zealous Islamic fighters ‘was a precursor to Al-Qaeda itself.’

By the 1990s, when bin Laden turned against the Saudi rulers, ‘he started to repeat almost word for word Juhayman's repudiations of the royal family,’ Trofimov wrote.

And indeed, several Oteibi acolytes joined Al-Qaeda after their release from Saudi prisons, he said.

Similar tensions remain in Saudi society. Progressives are pressing for theatres; a women's soccer team plays — though not publicly — in Jeddah; and clerics are battling what they see as licentious television shows broadcast by satellite from abroad.

Meanwhile a resurgent Al-Qaeda branch in Yemen attacks King Abdullah's reforms as abandoning ‘true’ Islam. In August a Qaeda operative tried but failed to kill a top security official, Prince Mohammmed bin Nayef, with a suicide bomb.

In October Qaeda plots to attack unknown targets in the kingdom were interrupted, with hundreds of weapons, explosives and suicide vests discovered and dozens of suspects captured.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

"If you want to end the puppet show, you have to take out the puppet master."

As to the possibilities that things might just flow elsewhere, I'd suggest that if there were better options for the A.Q. leadership to do so, they would already have done so.

There's a reason that they boogied from Somalia.

At the very least, the AQ-led groups have not 'boogied from Somalia', and if anything are getting more entrenched in the region.

I repeat...if its Waziristan today, it will be Somalia tomorrow - unless you tackle the Salafi hub in Saudi.....the heartland of the Salafi Jihad Movement.

AP
November 29, 2008

MOGADISHU, Somalia – The recruits gather in scorching desert hideouts in Somalia, use portraits of President Barack Obama for target practice, learn how to make and detonate bombs, and vow allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Training camps in the lawless nation of Somalia are attracting hundreds of foreigners, including Americans, and Somalis recruited by a local insurgent group linked to al-Qaida, according to local and U.S. officials. American officials and private analysts say the camps pose a security threat far beyond the borders of Somalia, including to the U.S. homeland.

In interviews with The Associated Press, former trainees gave rare details on the camps, which are scattered along desert footpaths, rutted roads and steamy coastal dens. They say the recruits are told the United States is the enemy of Islam.

U.S. and Somali officials say Somalia's al-Shabab jihadist, or holy war movement is growing, and uses foreign trainers with battlefield experience from other conflicts.

The threat posed by the training camps was underscored in federal court documents unsealed Nov. 23 in Minneapolis, home to a large Somali-American community. An indictment against several Somali-Americans who allegedly fought in Somalia said trainees at one camp included dozens of ethnic Somalis from Somalia and other African countries, Europe and the United States.

"The trainees were trained by, among others, Somali, Arab, and Western instructors in ... small arms, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and military-style tactics," said an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Michael N. Cannizzaro Jr. that was unsealed with the indictment.

Former al-Shabab fighter Hassan Yare, who works in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, said life in the camps is austere. Recruits sleep on plastic sheets and sometimes eat only one meal a day — often maize cooked with water. Phones are confiscated. Recruits are only allowed to speak to their parents once every other Friday — Islam's holy day.

"The message is simple," Dahir Muhiyadiin, 18, said three months after finishing his training at a camp run by Somalia's main insurgent group. "We are taught how the Western infidels want to eradicate pure Muslims, about how the U.S. government does nothing as Israel harasses our Muslim Palestinians."

Al-Shabab — "the youth" in Arabic — controls much of the desert nation's southern region and holds large parts of Mogadishu. It wants to overthrow the government and install a strict form of Islam. Analysts say the group has between 2,000 and 3,000 fighters.

Among al-Shabab's ranks are an estimated 200 to 400 foreigners from Pakistan, Chechnya, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and other countries — many of them veterans of fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Mark Schroeder, an Africa analyst at the global intelligence firm Stratfor.

The proliferation of jihadist training camps raises concerns that Somalia will become the next Afghanistan — a sanctuary for al-Qaida-linked groups to train and plan attacks. The Somali government seems powerless to do anything about it.

"The threat posed by al-Shabab is something that we pay very, very close attention to," Vice Adm. Robert T. Moeller, the deputy commander for the U.S. military's Africa Command, told AP at the command's headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

The government is backed by 5,000 African Union peacekeepers but controls only a few blocks in Mogadishu. The insurgents are so confident that they stage executions of suspected spies there.

Jihadists linked to al-Shabab can also roam through neighboring countries without attracting much attention and already cross boldly into northern Kenya.

U.S. officials are concerned Somali-Americans who fought with al-Shabab will return to the United States and carry out attacks. As many as 20 from Minnesota have been lured to their ancestral homeland to join the jihad. At least one blew himself up in a suicide attack in Somalia.

One of the documents unsealed in Minneapolis gave details on that attack. It said Shirwa Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Minneapolis resident, took part in a truck-bombing in Bossaso, Somalia, on Oct. 29, 2008, against offices of a regional intelligence service. Ahmed, who was alone in the truck, was identified through a fingerprint obtained from a finger found at the bomb site.

A Somali-American from Seattle is suspected of also having taken part in a suicide attack against an AU peacekeeper base on Sept. 17. U.S. authorities said they are awaiting DNA test results to confirm it.

Michael Leiter, the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, told Congress in September there is "significant concern" that al-Qaida operatives in Somalia may commission Americans to return to the U.S. and launch attacks. In recent weeks, al-Shabab has threatened to attack Uganda, Kenya, Israel and other countries, although it has not made a direct public threat against the United States.

About a dozen al-Qaida operatives are in Somalia with ties to al-Shabab, Schroeder said. One of them, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, is wanted for al-Qaida's 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Somalia is among a handful of places where terrorists can train openly. The U.S. State Department says terrorist training also takes place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of North Africa, the Philippines, Lebanon, Yemen and Colombia.

The United States withdrew most of its troops from Somalia in 1994, months after 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in the battle described in the book "Black Hawk Down." The soldiers had been deployed to help amid a famine but became embroiled in clan warfare. The U.S. is leery of making such a large commitment again but is still engaged.

On Sept. 14, U.S. commandos on helicopters strafed a convoy carrying top al-Qaida fugitive Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in rural southern Somalia, rappelled to the ground, collected his body and another corpse and took off. Nabhan was wanted for the 2002 car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.

In October, the U.S. began using sophisticated Reaper surveillance drones in the region, initially to hunt for pirates. Analysts expect they will also be used to search for militants in Somalia.

Al-Shabab recently released a video showing its members vowing allegiance to bin Laden, training in dusty camps and calling Somalia's U.S.-backed President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed a traitor. The militants leaped over sandbags, crawled on the ground and fired at targets under the gaze of light-skinned, bearded trainers.

Recruits are trained in intelligence matters and explosives, said an al-Shabab official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Suleyman Hussein, a former al-Shabab fighter who defected to a government-allied militia, told AP that camp leaders affixed photos of Obama and Ahmed to wooden boards.

"They were our targets," he said.

Somali Police Chief Abdi Hassan Awale said the camps are mostly near the Kenyan border and are drawing more recruits. He said one camp is near Raaskambooni, a town along the Indian Ocean less than two miles (3 kilometers) from the Kenyan border.

"Most of the trainers are foreigners, including people from Western countries," he said. "We do not know exactly how many there are, but we estimate hundreds."

Awale said al-Shabab tries to recruit the poorest, the mentally ill and teenagers who have lost their parents in Somalia's violence. He accused the group of brainwashing recruits "with false, un-Islamic(read: Salafi) ideas imported from Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Somalia has many orphans that al-Shabab can try to recruit. As many as 22,000 civilians have been killed and 1.1 million displaced in the past two years, according to Ted Dagne, an African affairs specialist with the Congressional Research Service.