Tag Archives: Africa

Canadian Intelligence Sees AQ to Shift to Smaller Attacks

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download (1)by IPT News:

Al-Qaida’s (AQ) international terrorist network will rebound but shift tactics – seeking more frequent smaller-sized attacks in the coming years, a newly released Canadian intelligence report finds.

“The death of Osama bin Laden, the popular uprisings spreading across the Middle East and North Africa, and the global recessionary pressures that are causing governments to re-evaluate their [counter terror] strategies are amongst the many far-reaching developments that will influence AQ’s future prospects,” the report said.

The report emanated from the findings of a workshop sponsored by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Academic Outreach program in January. It sought to explore AQ’s future in the next decade. It relied solely on open-source information and studied different variables that would influence AQ’s evolution in the coming years, including the network’s external and internal environments.

Instability in AQ strongholds in the Middle East and Africa, combined with preoccupation of regional and Western governments with local security concerns such as mass violence and regime collapse may help the terrorist group “cultivate popular support; attract new recruits; inspire homegrown Western terrorists; acquire new weapons and funding; secure existing safe havens; and reach into new operating theatres,” the report said.

Al-Qaida’s future also will be shaped by its ideological goals, leadership, structure, and resources. This would include the internal debate raging in AQ affiliates regarding global v. local jihad as well as the leadership crisis resulting from the killing of senior al-Qaida leaders.

Since AQ “does not accept defeat,” the report concludes, it will shift its focus to waging more “small rudimentary attacks.” To the extent anti-Western sentiment continues to sell among the local population, AQ’s political and other sympathizers will “succeed in embedding the network’s extremist views in state institutions.” AQ’s antipathy towards the West will then be “expressed through both terror attacks and indirect state-to-state tensions.”

Some 100,000 Christians killed per year over faith, Vatican says

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Egypt Blast (1)

A car exploded last November in front of a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, as worshipers emerge from a New Year’s Mass, killing more than 20 people and prompting a clash with Muslims at a nearby mosque

By :

A staggering 100,000 Christians are killed annually because of their faith, according to the Vatican — and several human rights groups claim such anti-Christian violence is on the rise in countries like Pakistan, Nigeria and Egypt.

“Credible research has reached the shocking conclusion that an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are violently killed because of some relation to their faith every year,” Vatican spokesman Monsieur Silvano Maria Tomassi said Tuesday in a radio address to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“Other Christians and other believers are subjected to forced displacement, to the destruction of their places of worship, to rape and to the abduction of their leaders, as it recently happened in the case of Bishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji, in Aleppo [Syria],” Tomassi said.

While several human rights groups could not comment specifically on the Vatican’s number, organizations, like Persecution.Org, said the persecutions of Christians have been on the rise in places like Africa and the Middle East over the last decade.

“Two-hundred million Christians currently live under persecution. It’s absolutely on the rise,” Jeff King, the group’s president, told FoxNews.com.

“It’s easing in the old Communist world and it’s rising in the Islamic world,” King said, noting in particular countries like Egypt, Pakistan and Nigeria. King said that the first major killing spree in recent years happened between 1998 and 2003, when he claims 10,000 Christians were murdered in Indonesia alone during those years.

Read more at Fox News

 

Obama Pushes Funds for Islamists —- Trashes Their Christian Victims

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Boko-Haram-Violence-450x286By :

The “Islamist apologist choir” described in Cinnamon Stillwell’s recent story “Profs on Boston Bombing” doesn’t sing solely on behalf of Chechnya and Cambridge. Some of that choir’s most dreadful caterwauling today is in support of Nigeria’s yet-undesignated terrorists, Boko Haram. The choir stalls are located in the U.S. State Department, which not only refuses to designate the jihadists as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), but maligns and defames Boko Haram’s Christian victims, as well.

Boko Haram’s latest attack, killing at least 42, took place on Tuesday, May 7, in the already battle-worn town of Bama, in Nigeria’s northeast Borno State. Borno, one of 12 states under Sharia, has suffered heavy losses under the Islamists. Some believe that Boko Haram has taken over northern Borno State much as Islamists took over northern Mali. At least 277 had been killed by Boko Haram in Borno State in 2013 before this attack.  According to an AP story the Tuesday event involved “coordinated attacks by Islamic extremists armed with heavy machine guns” in multiple locations around Bama. The jihadists also raided a federal prison, freeing 105 inmates.

Military spokesman Lt. Colonel Sagir Musa told AP that “some 200 fighters in buses and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns attacked the barracks of the 202 Battalion of Nigeria’s beleaguered army.” Musa, who said two soldiers and 10 insurgents died in the attack, revealed that the attackers “came in army uniform pretending to be soldiers.” The Islamists killed 14 prison guards. They also attacked and razed a police station, a police barracks, a magistrate’s court, and local government offices, according to Lt. Col. Musa. Bama police commander Sagir Abubakar reported that at least 22 police officers, three children and a woman were killed in the attacks.

Boko Haram frequently attacks Nigeria’s police and military forces. In 2012 as documented by the Facts on Nigeria Violence website, there were at least 67 attacks, almost exclusively by Boko Haram, against military barracks, police stations, prisons, and other government facilities, as well as against individual soldiers, policemen, and civil servants. But Boko Haram’s main targets are northern Nigeria’s Christians and churches.

The official name of Boko Haram, Jamā’a Ahl al-sunnah li-da’wa wa al-jihād, can be translated “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” Its goal is to establish a pure Islamic state in northern Nigeria, removing the Christian presence – either by conversion, expulsion, or extermination. Boko Haram appears to prefer the third option. According to the World Watch Monitor (WWM) report on global Christian persecution, Nigeria had a higher death toll from anti-Christian persecution and violence than the rest of the world combined. WWM concluded that Nigeria is “the most violent place on earth for Christians.”

In a recent Front Page Magazine article, Daniel Greenfield exposed the unfortunate moral equivalence found in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) 2013 report on Nigeria. While much of the report is very good and condemns Boko Haram, impunity, and the forced imposition of Sharia, USCIRF appears to have developed the same pathological impulse that afflicts the rest of the federal government, to never blame Islam. As a result, portions of the report mischaracterize certain acts of violence by both Boko Haram and other Islamists targeting Christians, and criticize northern Nigerian Christian leaders for calling the situation what it is: persecution.

USCIRF’s egregious observations and recommendations are actually State Department policy. For instance, USCIRF parrots former Asst. Sec. of State for Africa, Johnnie Carson, who declared in a congressional hearing, “It is important to note that religion is not the primary driver behind extremist violence in Nigeria” and that “the Nigerian government must effectively engage communities vulnerable to extremist violence by addressing the underlying political and socio-economic problems in the North.” USCIRF reports that “The U.S. government consistently has urged the Nigerian government to expand its strategy against Boko Haram from solely a military solution to addressing problems of economic and political marginalization in the north,” says USCIRF, “arguing that Boko Haram’s motivations are not religious but socio-economic.”

Read more at Front Page

UK: The Crisis of Female Genital Mutilation

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???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????by Soeren Kern:

Despite these laws, no one has ever been prosecuted for performing FGM. Victims are often afraid to speak out for fear of physical abuse or death threats, some involving paid hitmen.

British authorities are redoubling their fight against the spiraling problem of female genital mutilation (FGM) after a weekly primetime television show broadcast by the BBC forced the previously “taboo” subject into mainstream debate.

FGM is endemic in Muslim-majority countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Three million girls between infancy and age 15 are subject to FGM every year, and it is believed that 140 million women worldwide are suffering from the lifelong consequences of the practice.

FGM has emerged as a major problem in Europe due to mass immigration. The European Parliament estimates that 500,000 girls and women in the European Union are living with FGM, and every year another 180,000 girls in Europe are at risk of being “cut.”

Britain has the highest levels of FGM in Europe. According to a government-funded study published in 2007, at least 66,000 women and girls in Britain have had the procedure performed on them, and more than 20,000 girls under the age of 15 are currently at risk.

These figures, however, may be only the tip of the iceberg. A 2011 Department of Health policy paper warns that “it is possible that, due to population growth and immigration from practicing countries…FGM is significantly more prevalent than these figures suggest.”

FGM is thought to be common in Britain among immigrant groups from Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Kurdistan, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Northern Sudan, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Yemen.

The Times of London has reported that circumcisers — also known as “house doctors” because they conduct the procedure in private homes — are often flown to Britain from Africa and the Middle East to carry out the mutilations.

Alternatively, families who have immigrated to Britain from countries where FGM is practiced may send their daughters back to those countries to undergo FGM there, ostensibly under the guise of visiting relatives.

According to The Guardian, the six-week-long school summer holiday in Britain is the most dangerous time of the year for these girls. It is a convenient time to carry out the procedure because the girls need several weeks to heal before returning to school.

Sometimes immigrants living in other European countries even send their daughters to Britain to have them mutilated there. In an interview with the BBC, Isabelle Gillette-Faye, an anti-FGM activist in France, recounts the story of two little girls about to board a train for London.

Gillette-Faye says: “It was a Friday. We heard just in time. They had tickets for Saturday. A family member tipped us off. We told the police and they were stopped from making the journey.” The parents were warned that if they would go ahead with the mutilations and be found out, they would be imprisoned for up to 13 years.

“In England,” she added, “you are very respectful of your immigrants. It is very different in France. They have to integrate and they have to obey our laws. We simply will not tolerate this practice.”

In Bristol, a city in southwest England with a sizeable immigrant community, it is believed that some 2,000 girls are at risk of “FGM parties.” According to the BBC, “They cut them all together, as a group, because it is cheaper and quicker that way. At first the girls are all excited because it’s a party, until they realize what is going to happen, and then they get frightened. It’s done by the elder women, or the Imam, whoever is expert at cutting.”

FGM has been a crime in Britain for more than 25 years. It was made a criminal offense by the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985. That Act was superseded by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and (in Scotland) by the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005, both of which also introduce extraterritoriality. Taking a British citizen or permanent resident abroad for the purpose of FGM is a criminal offense whether or not it is lawful in the country to which the girl is taken.

Despite these laws — which carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison for anyone convicted of carrying out FGM or helping it to take place — no one in Britain has ever been prosecuted for performing it.

Read more at Gatestone Institute

 

John Kerry Should Ask President Morsi About Genital Mutilation

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images (6)By David P. Goldman:

If the State Department wants to advance the rights of Egyptian women, why not ask President Mohammed Morsi to support a ban on female genital mutilation, a horrific form of violence perpetrated on more than 90% of Egyptian women, according to the World Health Organization? The point of the mutilation is to destroy a woman’s capacity for sexual pleasure the better to ensure her marital fidelity. Deposed President Mubarak and his wife campaigned against it: not so President Morsi. As the blog “An Arab Citizen” reported last year:

Speaking now on Egypt’s CBC Channel in a “meet your presidential candidate” type of event, the FJP/MB’s Mohammed Morsy was asked by a female doctor and panelist what he thought about recent calls to apparently “revise” the law banning FGM/Female Circumcision in Egypt. The candidate embarked on a long and vague answer which left a few, including the doctor herself, uncertain to a considerable extent as to his concise statement of position. But most of the people I have spoken to agree that the candidate seems to be suggesting that it should be the prerogative of the family to decide if they want their daughter to undergo it or not. When pressed further, he said it was not the role of the president to be involved in such details.

The Mubarak government banned the practice in June 2007, to little effect. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi refused to support the ban. The most prominent Muslim Brotherhood cleric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, defended a surreal “moderate” position of removing part but not all of the clitoris in a fatwa published on the website Islam Online:

The most moderate opinion and the most likely one to be correct is in favor of practicing circumcision in the moderate Islamic way indicated in some of the Prophet’s hadiths—even though such hadiths are not confirmed to be authentic. It is reported that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to a midwife: “Reduce the size of the clitoris but do not exceed the limit, for that is better for her health and is preferred by husbands.” The hadith indicates that circumcision is better for a woman’s health and it enhances her conjugal relation with her husband. It’s noteworthy that the Prophet’s saying “do not exceed the limit” means do not totally remove the clitoris.

There is no greater right than the right not to be killed or mutilated, as 90% of Egyptian women have been. Is there a more heinous or systematic violation of human rights anywhere in the world than the genital mutilation of tens of millions of women? And is there a more revolting example of human rights violation in the name of religion than the declaration of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading authority, Sheikh Qaradawi? Why doesn’t Secretary Kerry say something about this? And why don’t American feminists demand that he raise the issue? Does cultural sensitivity trump the most fundamental right of women?

Read more at PJ Media

 

Shocking Facts on Female Genital Mutilation

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fgmby: Abigail R. Esman:

Last fall, Mohamed Kandeel, a physician and member of the Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research – a partner of the World Health Organization (WHO) – published an article in which he argued for the legalization of the procedure widely called “female genital mutilation” (FGM).

His reasoning?  Because it is practiced by Muslim cultures throughout Africa and much of the Middle East, and the Muslim community, he noted, “is the second largest in the world.”

Kandeel’s ideas may be all wrong, but his facts are shockingly correct: The WHO estimates that between 100-140 million women and girls have undergone FGM, with millions more likely to be victimized, and the overwhelming majority of these women and girls are Muslim.  (FGM does take place in non-Muslim cultures in Africa and among Coptic Christians in Egypt, but it is by no measure as widespread.)

Read more at Radical Islam

Abigail R. Esman, an award-winning writer based in New York and the Netherlands, is the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West

 

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In Timbuktu, al-Qaida left behind a manifesto

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By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press

TIMBUKTU, Mali     (AP) — In their hurry to flee last month, al-Qaida fighters left behind a crucial document: Tucked under a pile of papers and trash is a confidential letter, spelling out the terror network’s strategy for conquering northern Mali and reflecting internal discord over how to rule the region.

The document is an unprecedented window into the terrorist operation, indicating that al-Qaida predicted the military intervention that would dislodge it in January and recognized its own vulnerability.

The letter also shows a sharp division within al-Qaida’s Africa chapter over how quickly and how strictly to apply Islamic law, with its senior commander expressing dismay over the whipping of women and the destruction of Timbuktu’s ancient monuments. It moreover leaves no doubt that despite a temporary withdrawal into the desert, al-Qaida plans to operate in the region over the long haul, and is willing to make short-term concessions on ideology to gain the allies it acknowledges it needs.

Abdelmalek Droukdel

Abdelmalek Droukdel

The more than nine-page document, found by the AP in a building occupied by the Islamists for almost a year, is signed by Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, the nom de guerre of Abdelmalek Droukdel, the senior commander appointed by Osama bin Laden to run al-Qaida’s branch in Africa. The clear-headed, point-by-point assessment resembles a memo from a CEO to his top managers and lays out for his jihadists in Mali what they have done wrong in months past, and what they need to do to correct their behavior in the future.

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Islam on the Rise in America

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flag as hijabby ALAN  CARUBA:

While the daily headlines are filled with news reflecting Islamist’s acts of  terrorism in various parts of the world and Americans begin to suspect that, in  addition to the Middle East, Africa is becoming the next “hot spot” in the war  on terror, many are unaware of the rise of Islam in America.

“The future of the country-that was conceived by the pilgrims and  Puritans as ‘the new Zion’-is now bound inextricably to Islam.” So  writes Paul L. Williams in his new book, “Crescent Moon Rising: The Islamic  Transformation of America.”

“The Faith of the Prophet Mohammed will continue to impact and transform all  aspects of American life: social, political, and economic. Save for a  cataclysmic event that will shatter demographics, Islam by 2050 will emerge as  the nation’s dominant religion.”

Williams offers facts that are nothing less than astounding.

“Muslims continue to pour into the country occupy positions (vacated by aging  Americans) as physicians, engineers, and scientists. Others arrived to perform  tasks that American workers are unwilling to perform in food-processing plants,  agricultural facilities, and telecommunications. In addition to the Muslims who  come here with employment visas, thousands more arrive with student visas to  enroll in colleges throughout the country. Still others with ‘diversity’ visas  to enrich America’s racial composition.”

Read more: Family Security Matters

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alan Caruba  writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The  National Anxiety  Center, and he blogs at
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com
. His book, “Right  Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy“, is published by Merrill  Press.

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France in Mali fights the unfinished Libyan War

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Trouble in store: French troops arrive at Bamako's airport Photo: AP

Trouble in store: French troops arrive at Bamako’s airport Photo: AP

Debka:

On January 11, a few hundred French troops and a handful of fighter jets and gunships launched a campaign against Islamist terrorists in Mali, a West African desert vastness larger than Texas and California combined. This former French colony appealed to Paris for aid to throw back a mixed al Qaeda-rebel advance on the capital, Bamako. But France, no more than the US, had learned from the Afghanistan War that Al Qaeda cannot be beaten by aerial warfare – certainly not when the jiahdists are highly trained in special forces tactics and backed by highly mobile, well-armed local militias, armed with advanced anti-aircraft weapons and knowledgeable about conditions in the forbidding Sahara.

Within 48 hours, this modest “crusader” intervention had united a host of pro-al Qaeda offshoots and allies, some of them castoffs from the army of Libya’s deposed Muammar Qaddafi. They are led by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb – AQIM; the West African jihadist MUJAO; and the Somali al-Shabaab which is linked to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – AQAP. Together, they are threatening to execute one by one the 10 or eleven French hostages they are holding as part of their revenge on France. The French declared their mission to be to dislodge the Islamists from an area larger than Afghanistan in the north, including the principal towns of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal. Without several thousand special forces’ troops on the ground, this is just a pipedream. The disaffected Touareg tribes are supporting al Qaeda against the French as part of their drive for independence. Their added value is the training in special forces’ tactics some 1,500 Touareg fighting men and their three officers received from the US.  The US originally reserved them as the main spearhead of a Western Saharan multi-tribe campaign to eradicate al Qaeda in North and West Africa. Instead, the Sahel tribesmen followed the Touareg in absconding to Mali with top-quality weapons for desert warfare and hundreds of vehicles from US and ex-Libyan military arsenals.

This major setback for US administration plans and counter-terror strategy in Africa tied in with Al Qaeda’s assassination of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his staff in Benghazi last September. Because the United States held back from direct US military action in both cases, Qaeda has been allowed to go from strength to strength and draw into its fold recruits from Mali’s neighbors. They are tightening their grip on northern Mali and have imposed a brutal version of Islam on its inhabitants, putting hundreds to flight.

France stepped in when al Qaeda drove south to extend its rule to all parts of Mali and pose a terrorist threat to Europe.

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Mali Islamists Hit in Lightning Strikes by French

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Map showing Mali's location in Africa (Source: CIA)

Map showing Mali’s location in Africa (Source: CIA)

Determined to win and win in a short time, French fighter planes began lightning strikes on Islamist strongholds in northern Mali Friday. Since then, the strikes have intensified, as have the amount of ground troops – now at 550 – that France has brought in for support.The French specifically stepped in as radical Islamists, who had taken over northern Mali last April, began a successful expansion campaign into the central region of the country, threatening to reach Bamako, the capital.

Seven other countries have joined the effort, including the U.S., who is providing communications support, and Britain, who is sending aircrafts to help transport troops from neighboring countries.

Since taking over the northern part of the country (an area greater than the size of France), the Al Qaeda-linked groups have imposed the most extreme form of Sharia (Islamic) law on the territory, amputating arms for those accused of thievery, public whippings of women for wearing perfume or makeup, flogging men for smoking cigarettes, and stoning to death individuals accused of adultery. Alcohol, music and watching sports on television have also been forbidden. The Islamists began their campaign in the region by smashing historic tombs and shrines located in Timbuktu.

See RadicalIslam.org’s related report Mali Islamists Amputate Thief’s Hand. Threaten 60 More

Tens of thousands of Malians have fled the region, with those left behind having to deal with the horrors of everyday life under the Islamists.

“France’s goal is to lead a relentless struggle against terrorist groups,” the ministry said, “preventing any new offensive of these groups to the south of Mali,” said France’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Mali map (Source: CIA)

Mali map (Source: CIA)

The Islamists rapid expansion into central Mali prompted the French to take action to prevent Al Qaeda terrorists from establishing large terrorist bases from which to launch attacks in Europe and link to other Islamist groups in Somalia, Yemen and northern Africa.

France’s goal is also to provide support to Malian government forces, who are hoping to soon be joined by troops from other African nations to take back their country.

Read more a Radical Islam

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