"Foreign elements" operating in Syria, UN says

An increasing number of “foreign elements” including jihadist are operating in Syria, an independent U.N. panel confirmed yesterday in its first report to say that outside “terrorists” have joined a war spiraling out of control.

The investigative panel appointed by the Human Rights Council said some of these forces are joining armed anti-government groups while others are operating on their own. “Such elements tend to push anti-government fighters towards more radical positions,” the head of the panel, Brazilian diplomat and Professor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, told diplomats. He referred to the foreigners as “terrorists,” though the word did not appear in the written report, according to the Associated Press.

Syria accuses Turkey

Pinheiro said they had drawn up a new secret list of Syrians and military units suspected of committing war crimes who ought to be prosecuted, Reuters reported. He did not say if any Syrian rebels were among the names on the list, which updated a confidential one his team submitted to U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay in February. Meanwhile, Syria accused Turkey of allowing thousands of Muslim extremists to cross into its territory.

In letters sent to the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Sept. 16, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said Turkey allowed “thousands of al-Qaeda, Takfiri and Wahhabi terrorists” access to the country in order to “kill innocent Syrians, blow up their properties and spread chaos and destruction.” Turkish Foreign Ministry strongly rejected Syria’s accusations and called on Syria to stop crackdown on its own people

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.

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

Muslim world anger rises over film

The California-made film on the Profet triggered an attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya's city of Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans on Tuesday, the anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

In Tunis, at least five people were wounded by police gunfire near the U.S. embassy, and a big fire had reportedly erupted within the embassy compound. Protesters had earlier leapt over the compound wall.

Witnesses said Sudanese police fired tear gas at thousands of protesters to prevent them from approaching the U.S. embassy outside Khartoum, but some jumped over the wall

The wave of indignation and rage over the film, which portrays the Prophet Mohammad as a womanizer and a fool, coincided with Pope Benedict's arrival in Lebanon for a three-day visit.

The protests present Obama with a new foreign policy crisis less than two months before seeking re-election and tests Washington's relations with democratic governments it helped to power across the Arab world.

It also emerged that Libya had closed its air space over Benghazi airport temporarily because of heavy anti-aircraft fire by Islamists aiming at U.S. reconnaissance drones flying over the city, after President Barack Obama vowed to bring the ambassador's killers to justice.

The closure of the airport prompted speculation that the United States was deploying special forces in preparation for an attack against the militants who were involved in the attack.

A Libyan official said the spy planes flew over the embassy compound and the city, taking photos and inspecting locations of radical militant groups who are believed to have planned and staged the attack on the U.S. consulate.

There were protests in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

MARINES TO YEMEN

The Pentagon said it had sent a "fast" platoon of Marines to Yemen to bolster U.S. embassy security after clashes in Sanaa.

U.S. embassies were the main target of anger and protest but most embassy staff were not at work because Friday is the Muslim weekend across the Arab World.

The frenzy erupted after traditional Muslim Friday prayers. Fury over the film has been stoked by Internet video footage, social networks, preachers and word-of-mouth.

Protesters clashed with police near the U.S. embassy in Cairo. Two Islamist preachers in Egypt told worshippers that those who made the movie deserved to die under sharia (Islamic law) but they urged protesters not to take their anger out on diplomats or others.

Sudanese demonstrators broke into the German embassy in Khartoum and hoisted an Islamic flag, while one person was killed in protests in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.

Police in the Sudanese capital had fired tear gas to try to disperse 5,000 protesters who had ringed the German embassy and nearby British mission. Witness said police stood by as a crowd forced its way into Germany's mission.

Demonstrators hoisted a black Islamic flag saying in white letters "there is no God but God and Mohammed is his Prophet". They smashed windows, cameras and furniture in the building and then started a fire.

Staff at Germany's embassy were safe "for the moment", Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in Berlin. He also told Khartoum's envoy to Berlin that Sudan must protect diplomatic missions on its soil.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry had criticized Germany for allowing a protest last month by right-wing activists carrying caricatures of the Prophet and for Chancellor Angela Merkel giving an award in 2010 to a Danish cartoonist who depicted the Prophet in 2005 triggering protests across the Islamic world.

BASHIR UNDER PRESSURE

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is under pressure from Islamists who feel the government has given up the religious values of his 1989 Islamist coup.

The official body of Sudan's Islamic scholars called for the faithful to defend the Prophet peacefully, but at a meeting of Islamists, some leaders had said they would march on the German and U.S. embassies and demanded the ambassadors be expelled.

The Foreign Ministry said in its statement: "The German chancellor unfortunately welcomed this offence to Islam in a clear violation of all meanings of religious co-existence and tolerance between religions."

Sudan used to host prominent militants in the 1990s, such as Osama bin Laden, but the government has sought to distance itself from radicals to improve ties with the West.

A Lebanese security source said a man was killed in Tripoli as protesters tried to storm a government building.

Earlier, a U.S. fast food restaurant was set alight. Twelve members of the security forces were wounded by stones thrown by protesters, the source said.

Protesters also clashed with police in Yemen, where one person died and 15 were injured on Thursday when the U.S. embassy compound was stormed.

U.S. and other Western embassies in other Muslim countries had tightened security, fearing anger at the film may prompt attacks on their compounds after the weekly worship.

Obama has promised to bring those responsible for the Benghazi attack to justice, and the United States also sent warships towards Libya which one official said was to give flexibility for any future action.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington had nothing to do with the crudely made film posted on the Internet, which she called "disgusting and reprehensible", and the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff called a Christian pastor in Florida to ask him to withdraw his support for it.

Palestinians staged demonstrations in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli police, some on horseback, used stun grenades and made a number of arrests outside Jerusalem's Old City as a few dozen demonstrators tried to march on the nearby U.S. consulate.

"Israeli police prevented an illegal demonstration from reaching the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem and used stun grenades after rocks and bottles were thrown at them," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

In Nablus, in the northern West Bank, several hundred people protested and burned an American flag, witnesses said.

AMERICAN FLAGS BURNED

The largest protests were in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Islamist group Hamas, with at least 30,000 Palestinians staging rallies across the coastal territory.

Some 25,000 took to the streets of Gaza City, answering a call by Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad faction and waving the green and black flags of the two factions.

American and Israeli flags were set alight, along with an effigy of the film's producer.

Protesters in Afghanistan set fire to an effigy of Obama and burned a U.S. flag after Friday prayers in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

Directing their anger against the U.S. pastor who supported the film, tribal leaders also agreed to put a $100,000 bounty on his head.

About 10,000 people held a noisy protest in the Bangladeshi capital. They burned U.S. flags, chanted anti-U.S. slogans and demanded punishment for the offenders, but were stopped from marching to the U.S. embassy. There was no violence.

Thousands of Iranians held nationwide protests. There were also rallies in Malaysia, Jordan, Kenya, Bahrain, Qatar, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iraq.

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.

US ambassador in Libya killed

Deputy Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif earlier accused supporters of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi of carrying out the attack.

The attack in Libya came hours after Egyptian protesters climbed the walls of the US Embassy in Cairo, pulling down the American flag and temporarily replacing it with a black Islamic banner. Some tried to raise a black flag with the words “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his messenger”, a Reuters witness said.

The attacks in Benghazi and Cairo were the first such assaults on US diplomatic facilities in either country, at a time when both Libya and Egypt are struggling to overcome the turmoil following the ouster of their longtime authoritarian leaders, Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak, in uprisings last year. The protests in both countries were sparked by outrage over a film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad produced by an Israeli filmmaker living in California and being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States. Excerpts from the film dubbed into Arabic were posted on YouTube.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government on Wednesday distanced itself from the filmmaker whose movie sparked the deadly riot in Libya, but said it will be “vigilant” at its diplomatic offices overseas. The movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” was produced by Sam Bacile, a 56-year-old California real estate developer who has said he’s both Israeli and American.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said those killed in Libya had been “committed to helping the Libyan people reach for a better future.”

Stevens was a career diplomat who spoke Arabic and French and had already served two tours in Libya, including running the office in Benghazi during the revolt against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. He was confirmed as ambassador to Libya by the Senate earlier this year.

His State Department biography, posted on the website of the US Embassy to Libya, says he “considers himself fortunate to participate in this incredible period of change and hope for Libya.”

Clinton said Stevens had a “passion for service, for diplomacy and for the Libyan people.”

“This assignment was only the latest in his more than two decades of dedication to advancing closer ties with the people of the Middle East and North Africa which began as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco,” Clinton said.

He “risked his own life to lend the Libyan people a helping hand to build the foundation for a new, free nation. He spent every day since helping to finish the work that he started,” she said.

Stevens joined the Foreign Service in 1991 and spent his early State Department career at posts in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Israel. After working for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff for Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, Stevens was posted to Libya as deputy chief of mission.

Pakistani network Haqquani blacklisted by US

The decision to blacklist the Haqqani network, by U.S.in a an announcement made by  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a trip to Russia could rise tensions between Washington and Islamabad very tense since Bin Laden’s killing by Navy Seals last year, and have far-reaching implications for any reconciliation process in Afghanistan.

Senior Haqqani commanders warned as much, saying that it showed the United States was not sincere about peace efforts in Afghanistan. The commanders also said it would bring hardship for America's only prisoner of war, U.S. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who is being held by the militants.

The Haqqanis, a Pashtun tribe with strongholds in southeastern Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan, are blamed by Washington for an attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul and other assaults in Afghanistan.

The United States accuses Pakistan's intelligence agency of supporting the Haqqani network and using it as a proxy in Afghanistan to gain leverage against the growing influence of its arch-rival India in the country. Pakistan denies the allegations.

But whether to brand the group as a terrorist organization has been the subject of intense debate within the Obama administration, with some officials arguing it will have little real impact but risks setting back Afghan reconciliation efforts.

Clinton said in a statement that she had told the U.S. Congress she will brand the Haqqani network a foreign terrorist organization, subjecting the group and its members to additional sanctions, including an asset freeze.

"We also continue our robust campaign of diplomatic, military and intelligence pressure on the network, demonstrating the United States' resolve to degrade the organization's ability to execute violent attacks," said Clinton, who was in Vladivostok for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

The United States also has targeted the Haqqanis with military strikes. U.S. and Pakistani officials say they have high confidence that Badruddin Haqqani, a top commander and son of the group's founder, was killed in a U.S. drone strike last month.

Clinton signed the report to Congress on Friday in Brunei stating that the network met the criteria to be designated as a foreign terrorist organization, the State Department said. A U.S. official said the formal designation would be made in the coming days.

Formal designation as a foreign terrorist organization would increase pressure on the Pakistani government, but any actual effects beyond that were unclear since most of the Haqqani leaders have already been blacklisted individually.

It also remained unclear how much damage the U.S. decision could do to ties with Islamabad. Relations have warmed slightly in recent months following a U.S. apology for an airstrike that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, but remain fraught.

A senior Pakistani security official said blacklisting the Haqqani network would be counterproductive and would put unnecessary pressure on Islamabad, a strategic U.S. ally.

"If the United States wants to have a constructive relationship with Pakistan, then this is a bad move," the official said. "This will push Pakistan into a corner."

A spokesman for Pakistan's embassy in Washington said: "This is an internal matter for the United States. It is not our business. The Haqqanis are not Pakistani nationals."

In June, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the United States was reaching the limits of its patience with Pakistan because of the safe havens that groups like the Haqqanis found there.

Designation by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization would bring sanctions such as criminal penalties for anyone providing material support to the group and seizure of any assets in the United States.

The Obama administration faced a congressional deadline this weekend to determine whether the network met the criteria for such designation.

In Congress, both Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, a Republican, applauded the move and urged Pakistan to do more to take on the Haqqanis.

"This is a terrorist organization and an enemy of the United States, and I urge Pakistan to redouble its efforts - working with U.S. and Afghan partners — to eliminate the Haqqani threat," Feinstein said in a statement.

MAFIA GROUP

The Haqqanis run a sophisticated and diverse financial network comparable to a mafia group, according to a July report by the Center for Combating Terrorism.

It said the group raised money through kidnapping, extortion and drug trafficking but also had a business portfolio that included import/export, transport, real estate and construction interests in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Persian Gulf.

But the group has never had to deal with a sustained attack on its finances, author Gretchen Peters said, and might be vulnerable to cash flow choke points and attacks on its small and centralized command structure.

"Network leaders appear to be as motivated by profit-making as they are driven by issues like revenge, honor and ideology," the report said.

In Kabul, a government spokesman said any move by Washington against the Haqqanis was welcome.

"This will be a major step by the United States against the Haqqani network who are still plotting for dangerous and destructive attacks against us," said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi.

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.