Radicals corner the post-arab spring moderate regimes

US is positioning military forces so that it can respond to unrest in as many as 17 or 18 places in the Islamic world, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced late Friday. "We have to be prepared in the event that these demonstrations get out of control,” he said.
Those words dashed hopes in Washington that the anti-US Islamist rampage by now sweeping 21 countries over a video deriding Islam had passed their peak. In fact, by their sixth day Saturday, Sept. 15,the street protests against American embassies and other US symbols of influence were growing more violent and more organized, threatening not only American lives but tearing up President Barack Obama’s entire outreach policy toward Arabs and Muslims. I

In at least four Arab countries, anti-US protesters were no longer just throwing stones but using firearms. The most serious occurred in Egyptian Sinai, where scores of armed Salafist Bedouin linked to al Qaeda firing missiles, grenades, mortars and automatic weapons were able to break down two guard posts at the US-led Multinational Force near El Arish base in search of American victims. A battalion of Colombian troops fought the invaders off in fierce battle for hours, preventing them from reaching the hundreds of US officers, soldiers and air crews pinned down in fortified quarters.
In Cairo, Islamist demonstrators began firing rubber bullets at Egyptian security forces which have still not succeeded in breaking up the disturbances.
In Tripoli, Lebanon, protesters and the Lebanese army exchanged heavy gun fire. In Khartoum, Islamists shot their way into the US embassy and the American school before setting them ablaze.

In Tunis, the American ambassador almost suffered the same fate as his colleague, Chris Stevens and three consulate staffers who were murdered in Benghazi, Libya, last Tuesday, Sept. 11. The ambassador and several US diplomats were rescued from the burning embassy building by a special Tunisian counter-terror unit and taken to safety.
Friday, saw the first five fatalities as well the first violent Muslim demonstration in the Australian town of Sydney.

At this stage it is logical to draw seven conclusions from nearly a week of surging anti-American violence across the Middle East, South Asia and beyond:
1.  The anti-Islamic video film was not the cause of the upheaval only a pretext.
2.  The outbreaks were orchestrated by a number of radical Islamic organizations ranging from the ultraconservative Salafis to Al Qaeda terrorists. They took advantage of swelling anti-US sentiment in many Arab and Muslim countries to weaken local governments which maintain ties with the United States, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
3.  It is not yet known how the mechanism coordinating operations among those Islamist extremist groups works, but it has already shown to be faster and more efficient than the American intelligence and counter-terror bodies keeping track of them. Day by day, Washington is caught unawares by fresh outbursts.
4.  After firing up Arab and some Muslim streets, this radical coalition believes its component organizations are gathering enough leverage to start pushing out the “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood branches brought to power by the US-backed Arab Spring in order to take their place. The anti-US ferment will therefore not abate, as Washington hopes, until they achieve their goal.
5.  The US has sent two platoons of 50 men each of specially trained Marines to protect its embassies in Libya and Yemen and may send a third to Sudan. Otherwise, the Obama administration dare not send in American troops to prop up the new Arab regimes; any visible US military intervention in those countries would only enhance the radicals’ popularity and weaken the regimes they are fighting to remove.
6.  The new Muslim Brotherhood rulers of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya face a tough strategic dilemma; Lean more heavily on American support to save their regimes, or bow to the Islamist extremists, turn their backs on America and give them a place in government.

7.  Power-sharing with radicals has already begun in some Arab countries, spelling the reversal of Obama’s policies and the goals of the “Arab Spring”

Those policies aimed naively at the removal in the name of democracy of autocratic, secular Arab rulers to make way for “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood regimes elected by the people and ready to work with the United States. This ideal was violently reduced to ashes in the second week of September 2012.
It is hard not to recall another debacle of 33 years ago, when President Jimmy Carter helped overthrow the Shah of Persia only to bring implacable ayatollah rule to Tehran.

US police questions the alleged film maker

US consulate in Bengasi after raids

The alleged maker of a provocative anti-Islamic movie that has sparking violence across the Muslim world was questioned early Saturday by the police, NBC channel reported.

The local NBC News affiliate said Nakoula Besseley Nakoula was escorted by sheriff's deputies from his Cerritos, California, home shortly after midnight for an interview by federal probation officers.

The report said the man emerged wearing a coat, hat, scarf and glasses.

Officials said the federal officers wanted to find out whether Nakoula had violated any federal probation.

In February 2009 Nakoula was charged in an alleged bank fraud conspiracy, the report said. The indictment accused him and others of fraudulently obtaining the identities and Social Security numbers of customers at several Wells Fargo branches in California and withdrawing $860 from them.

Nakoula also served a year in jail after pleading guilty to possession of meth with the intent to manufacture in 1997, NBC News said.

Local police said Nakoula had agreed to the interview prior to the deputies arriving at his home and that the move was "entirely voluntary," the report pointed out.

The film depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a thuggish deviant offended many Muslims, and sparked a wave of anti-American protests that have cost several lives and seen US missions, schools and businesses set on fire.

At least six protesters died in Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon and Sudan on Friday as police battled to defend American missions from mobs of stone-throwers, and Washington deployed US Marines to protect its embassies in Libya and Yemen.

Death toll rises as Muslim protest goes global over blasphem film.

The revulsion in the Muslim world for a controversial film about Mohammed has now gone global, with demonstrations that began in Egypt and Libya now spread through the Middle East and into Africa and Asia.

Fanned by the internet the flames of indignation exploded after Friday prayers to engulf mainly American targets as tens of thousands took to the streets. In all six people died in clashes in Tunisia, Sudan, Lebanon, and Egypt.

In Tunisia the outer walls of the US embassy were breached and Islamist black flags raised over the building. The nearby American school was destroyed by fire. Tunisia’s president said the violence was “totally unacceptable”. Two people died and forty were injured, twenty of them police officers.

The American embassy in the Sudanese capital Khartoum was also penetrated by protesters. The US immediately dispatched a platoon of marines following similar deployments to their Yemen and Libyan embassies. The German embassy was set on fire.

In Lebanon, where the Pope is currently on a visit, 25 people were injured and one killed in clashes in Tripoli, where reportedly islamists went on the rampage against American fast-food outlets.

Elsewhere Bangladeshi police prevented a crowd of 10,000 from marching on the embassy in Dhaka, thousands protested in Iran, the West Bank and Gaza, and there were also rallies in Malasia, Nigeria, Jordan, Kenya, Bahrain, Qatar, Pakistan, and Iraq.

To report also an attack to the UK/US base "Camp Bastion" in Helmand province in Southern Afghanistan.

Taliban claimed the attack that killed 2 US soldiers.

More on this at  BBC Website

US President promises revenge over ambassador's killing

President Barack Obama yesterday vowed “to bring to justice the killers” of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador in Libya also condemning the “outrageous” attack. “Make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people,” Obama said in the White House Rose Garden. Obama, however, vowed the attack would not break America’s bond with the newly liberated nation. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, 52, was killed when he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff as the building came under attack by a mob armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attack as the work of a “small and savage group” but said U.S.-Libyan ties would not suffer. “I ask myself, how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?” Clinton said.

Libya apologies

Libyan leader Mohammed Magarief apologized to the United States yesterday over the attack. “We apologize to the United States, the people, and to the whole world for what happened,” Magarief, president of Libya’s national assembly, told a news conference broadcast live on Al Jazeera television.

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) Adm. James Stavridis voiced “deep sadness” over Stevens’ “tragic” killing in a tweet. A U.S. Marine anti-terrorism team was being deployed to Libya to bolster security after the deadly attack, a U.S. defense official said yesterday, on condition of anonymity. France also condemned the “unspeakable actions,” and demanded that Libyan authorities act quickly to arrest those responsible. The U.N. and Organization of Islamic Cooperation strongly condemned the attack. The Benghazi attack came just hours after Islamists had stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo in a similar protest against the American-made film, “Innocence of Muslims” which pokes fun at the Prophet Muhammad.

Brotherhood calls for protests accoss Egypt

Nearly 3,000 demonstrators, most of them hard-line Islamist supporters of the Salafi movement, gathered at the embassy to protest the film. Witnesses said the attackers ripped up a U.S. flag, then looted the consulate before setting the flag on fire and replacing it with a black Islamic flag. Egyptian police persuaded the trespassers to calm down. The crowd then largely dispersed.

Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood yesterday called for nationwide protests tomorrow against the film. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Secretary-General Mahmud Hussein called “for peaceful protests on Friday outside all the main mosques” in a statement. Also, Egypt’s Coptic activists said they would stage a vigil late yesterday in protest against the film. Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said yesterday the film, which was reportedly produced by an Israeli-American, “has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel.” Still, he said Israel will “have to be vigilant.” Around 100 hardline Salafis Muslims protested outside the U.S. embassy in Tunisia yesterday against the film.
Compiled from AFP, AP and Reuters stories by the Daily News staff.

Film behind The vıolent protests

CAIRO – Agence France-Presse

A film portraying the life of the Prophet Mohammed, which touches on themes of pedophilia and homosexuality, has sparked attacks on a U.S. missions. Clips of the film have been posted on the Internet. The film “Innocence of Muslims” portrays Muslims as immoral and gratuitously violent. The film was produced by Israeli-American Sam Bacile, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Who is US Envoy diplomat in Libya?

U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, a career officer with the U.S. foreign service, took up his post in Tripoli in May.

The Arabic and French-speaking diplomat also served in Libya as deputy chief of mission between 2007 and 2009. He served as a foreign service officer in Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo and Riyadh. He is the sixth American envoy killed by terrorist. Stevens had supported the Libyan revolt that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi. “I was thrilled to watch the Libyan people stand up and demand their rights,” Stevens said shortly after he was appointed. “Now I’m excited to return to Libya to continue the great work we’ve started ]...] to help you, the Libyan people, achieve your goals.”

Al Zawahri behind US ambassador killing in Libya

The US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three staff members at the US consulate in Benghazi were deliberately murdered Tuesday night Sept 11 just after memorial ceremonies were held in America for the victims of the 9/11 outrage. According to intel sources report exclusively that far from being a spontaneous raid by angry Islamists, it was a professionally executed terrorist operation by a professional Al Qaeda team, whose 20 members acted under the orders of their leader Ayman al Zawahri after special training. They were all Libyans, freed last year from prisons where they were serving sentences for terrorism passed during the late Muammar Qaddafi’s rule.

In a video tape released a few hours before the attack, Zawahri called on the faithful to take revenge on the United States for liquidating one of the organization’s top operatives, Libyan-born Abu Yahya al-Libi in June by a US drone in northwestern Pakistan.
Its release was the “go” signal for the hit team to attack the US diplomats in Benghazi.
To mask their mission, they stormed the consulate on the back of a violent protest by hundreds of Islamists against a film said to insult Prophet Muhammed produced by a Florida real estate agent called Sam Bacile, who has been described as of Israeli origin.

The operation is rated by terror experts as the most ambitious outrage al Qaeda has pulled off in the last decade. According to our sources, the gunmen split into two groups of 10 each and struck in two stages:

1. They first fired rockets at the consulate building on the assumption that the ambassador’s bodyguards would grab him, race him out of the building and drive him to a safe place under the protection of the US secret service;
2.  The second group was able to identify the getaway vehicle and the ambassador’s armed escort and lay in wait to ambush them. The gunmen then closed in and killed the ambassador and his bodyguards at point blank range.

Intelligence sources report that the investigation launched by US counter-terror and clandestine services is focusing on finding out why no clue was picked up of the coming attack by any intelligence body and how al Qaeda’s preparations for the attack which took place inside Libya went unnoticed by any surveillance authority.

The Arab Spring and Al-Qaeda.

The unrest generated by the Arab uprisings has given Al-Qaeda room in which to operate, but at the same time these revolts or revolutions- whatever one wants to define them- may serve as an antidote against radicalism. 

Experts’ point of view.

During a rare public conference in London, Jonathan Evans, director of Britain's spy agency MI5, said the instability arising from a collapse of the regimes ousted by uprisings has created an optimum environment for Al-Qaeda to flourish. "It's the end of a cycle," he said. "Al-Qaeda first set up in the 1990s in Afghanistan due to growing pressure in its origin Arab states. It then left for Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban. But now some are returning to the Arab world." He points to evidence that some jihadist-trainees have gone to the Arab states in search for militant opportunities, and that some might return to Britain and "become threats." 

Britain's intelligence chief noted that until recently three-quarters of the agency's work focused on Pakistan or Afghanistan. The figure has since dipped to less than 50 percent. But even as it has become less monolithic, he said, the threat posed by Al-Qaeda has grown. "The movements which are affiliated to it in Yemen, Somalia and in countries of the Sahel have become more dangerous than Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and they are cooperating more and more" with each other, he added.

But other experts point out that the political renaissance in the Arab states could help curb the violent streak of Islamist movements in the mid- or long-term.

Dominique Thomas, an expert in Islamist movements at the School for Higher Studies on Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, noted that Al-Qaeda had adapted its public discourse to accommodate the shift towards openness and democracy. "Be it Ayman al-Zawahiri” – generally acknowledged as Osama Bin Laden's successor – “or the movement's main figures who have communicated on the question, they have all set aside violence to concentrate on societies and on the application of sharia," he said.

"They are acting as the defenders of Islam's 'real values',” he added, noting that Al Qaeda now seeks to cast itself in the role the opposition, and that “sharia” had largely replaced “jihad” as a focal point in their statements. 

"We see that in Egypt, in Tunisia and Libya: they no longer preach violence on their territories, but are very active on religious rhetoric. They are posing as the vanguards of what they present to be real Islamic values," said Thomas. The Arab Spring and the opening of political space have allowed jihad to become part of a marketplace of of ideas that can be expressed in a completely open manner. “It's a ‘neo-jihadism’, with a rather radical discourse which is found outside the system but without direct recourse to violence."

Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor at Paris' Sciences-Po who has written extensively on the origins of Al-Qaeda, notes that "overall, a year-and-a-half after the start of the Arab revolution, we see that Al-Qaeda has become an obsolete reference in the countries concerned. This is due to the "fact that the accent is now put on the electoral competition by all the actors, including repented jihadists, as in Libya or Egypt."

Referring to the MI5 chief's comments, Filiu said that "a part of the western intelligence community has a problem dropping its decade-long focus on Al-Qaeda." But it is not in countries hit by the Arab Spring, but in the Sahel, Somalia and Yemen – nations where entire regions have escaped government control – that Al-Qaeda has the best chance of developing in the months or years to come, he conceded.

That said, even though jihadists are proclaiming Al-Qaeda ideology in these countries, they have mostly concentrated their violent action in the country concerned, rather than exporting it abroad.

The exception is Yemen, where Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) has twice attempted to bring down commercial planes bound for the United States. The group, many experts agree, is now Al-Qaeda's most dangerous franchise, and the biggest threat to Western interests. No coincidence, then, that United States has increasingly deployed armed drones and missiles in Yemen, and that Washington's Number One target is the Saudi national Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, the presumed chief of AQAP and the inventor of the “explosive underwear” which is undetectable in the airports.