AS YEMEN & LIBYA “SPIRAL DOWNWARD”— M.B. SUFFERS SETBACK IN TUNISIA

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Contents:

The Forgotten War That Spawned Paris’s Attacks: Adam Baron, Daily Beast, Jan. 11, 2015— The massacre at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo was neither the only nor the deadliest terror attack to occur on Wednesday.

Libya Spirals Downward as the West Looks the Other Way: Washington Post, Jan. 12, 2015— When Libya’s attempt to construct a new, democratic political system faltered after 2012…

How the West Destroyed Libya: Raymond Ibrahim, Frontpage, Jan. 13, 2015— The full impact of Western intervention in Libya was recently highlighted during a televised interview of Worlds Apart with guest Hanne Nabintu Herland, a Norwegian author and historian who was born and raised in Africa for 20 years.

Tunisia’s Elections Represent Yet Another Muslim Brotherhood Defeat: Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel, Dec. 26, 2014 — Four years have passed since that historic event that set off the Arab Spring.

On Topic Links

Benghazi – The Signs of Al Qaeda: Dawn Perlmutter,  Frontpage, Jan. 2, 2015

Tunisian President-Elect’s Focus on Security Has Some Worried: Tamer El-Ghobashy, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 26, 2014

How Did Yemen Become the Perfect Home to Al Qaeda Training Camps?: Clive Jones, Reuters, Jan. 14, 2015

Assessing the Arab Spring Uprisings After Four Years:  Robin Wright, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 2014

THE FORGOTTEN WAR THAT SPAWNED PARIS’S ATTACKS                                                               

Adam Baron                                                                                                                 

Daily Beast, Jan. 11, 2015

The massacre at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo was neither the only nor the deadliest terror attack to occur on Wednesday. Hours before the Koauchi brothers made their way to the offices of the French satirical magazine, thousands of miles away, in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, a car bomb struck a crowd of men lined up to enroll at the city’s police academy. Roughly four-dozen were killed as the bomb went off, strewing blood and body parts across the street. It’s a coincidence that has grown all the more notable—and tragic—in light of the emerging ties between the Charlie Hebdo attackers and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemen-based terror group that officials have accused of carrying out Wednesday’s car bomb. According to the AFP, Said Koauchi, the older of the pair, traveled to Yemen multiple times between 2009 and 2011, studying at Sanaa’s Iman University, a controversial institution headed by firebrand cleric Abdulmajid al-Zindani, prior to training with AQAP in camps in the south and southeast of the country.

Notably, Inspire, an English-language, AQAP-affiliate magazine, explicitly threatened to kill Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier in its March 2013 edition, and at writing time, AQAP has reportedly taken credit for the attack on behalf of the group, though the ultimate extent of the Koauchi brothers’ ties to Yemen and AQAP is still unclear. Either way, the attack has refocused attention to the impoverished, conflict-stricken country. Hailed as a textbook example of a successful counterterrorism strategy by U.S. officials as late as fall of last year, Yemen has instead been riven with unrest lately. An internationally backed power transition agreement has fallen apart, and the country’s economy—to say nothing of the central government’s control over the bulk of the country—has appeared to collapse as well. And no one in the circles of power in the West seems to have noticed.

Indeed, last week’s violence in Paris seems to underline how little progress has been made against AQAP. Despite the efforts of the U.S. and Yemeni governments, it still appears to possess the ability to unleash horrors against Western targets.  Yemen had already developed a reputation as a hotspot for extremism by the time Koauchi allegedly first arrived in 2009. Many western-born Muslim hardliners flocked to Salafi institutes in the country, most famously, perhaps, the Dar al-Hadith institute in the far northern town of Dammaj. While the bulk of these foreigners simply came to study, a number joined up with extremists on the ground. One of the most notorious among them was “Underwear Bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian student trained by AQAP who infamously attempted to blow up a passenger airliner on Christmas Day 2009. But while such rare plots against foreign targets have garnered AQAP the most attention, the bulk of activity—and the bulk of their attacks—has occurred on Yemeni soil. It is this violence the West ignores at its peril.

As the central government’s control over much of the country evaporated over the course of 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring-inspired uprising against the country’s long time leader, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, AQAP quickly moved to take advantage. While the group was pushed out of its former strongholds in the southern Abyan in a Spring 2012 military offensive, they’ve quickly regrouped. AQAP has continued to find safe haven in areas across country, ranging from the eastern province of Hadramawt—where the group’s fighters have displayed aims of establishing an Islamic emirate—to the oil and gas rich provinces of Marib and Shabwa, to Abyan itself. AQAP has continued to unleash a steady flurry of attacks on military and security targets, supplementing their finances through everything from bank robberies to taking foreign hostages for ransom, allowing the group to buy new weapons and loyalties as it aims to spread its writ to new territories.

Only the most diligent of news junkies would be aware of this bloodshed, given the dearth of coverage in most Western media—a disheartening oversight, because AQAP represents perhaps the purest distillation of al Qaeda’s ideology and ambitions outside of the core group headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Most terrorism analysts consider it the most dangerous al Qaeda franchise. The U.S. has worked to counter AQAP’s growth, gaining a comparatively free hand from President Abdo Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Saleh’s successor and a former vice president. He has openly backed American drone strikes in the country. But while the sharp uptick of U.S. drone strikes has succeeded in taking out a handful of key figures, including AQAP deputy emir Said al-Shihri and charismatic extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the barrage of remotely operated American airpower has failed to deliver anything resembling a knock-out punch to the terror group.

Yemenis overwhelmingly oppose the strikes, which they see as violations of the nation’s sovereignty and the rule of law. These misgivings have only been heightened by a series of civilian casualties resulting from the strikes. A number of observers—including former U.S. deputy ambassador to Yemen Nabil Khoury—have vocally criticized the strikes, arguing that they ultimately risk creating as many militants as they kill, ironically threatening to inflame anti-American sentiments to the point of spurring the very attacks the U.S. is aiming to prevent. All of this, however, fails to touch on the key factors behind the presence of extremist groups like AQAP in Yemen. In large part, AQAP is a product of its environment; as many Yemenis see it, the group is the fruit of a foreign ideology that has been able to lay roots in the country due to Yemen’s widespread poverty and the government’s endemic corruption and persistent dysfunction. As the group’s resilience in the face of repeated U.S. drone strikes has demonstrated, AQAP will continue to carve out a presence in Yemen as long as its given space to do so—something that is virtually inevitable as long as the power vacuum in the country remains—meaning the group appears destined to retain the operating space to train operatives who can take aim at targets in the west…                                                                            

[To Read the Full Article Click the following Link—Ed.]               

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LIBYA SPIRALS DOWNWARD AS THE WEST LOOKS THE OTHER WAY                                                 

Washington Post, Jan. 12, 2015

When Libya’s attempt to construct a new, democratic political system faltered after 2012, the Obama administration and NATO allies who had intervened to support the overthrow of dictator Moammar Gaddafi could still rationalize that they had headed off the mass bloodshed and civil war that the Gaddafi regime threatened and that later overtook Syria. The respite, however, proved to be temporary. As 2015 begins, Libya is well on its way to becoming the Middle East’s second war zone — with the same side effects of empowering radical jihadists and destabilizing neighboring countries.

The sprawling but sparsely populated country of 7 million is now split between two governments, parliaments and armies, one based in the eastern city of Tobruk and the other in the capital, Tripoli. While Syria’s war is fought along the Arab world’s Sunni-Shiite divide, in Libya the contest pits the region’s secular Sunnis against Islamists (along with minority Berbers). Since that same divide dominates the politics of Egypt, Tunisia, the Palestinian territories and much of the rest of the Maghreb, outside powers have predictably picked sides: Egypt and the United Arab Emirates back the secular forces in the east, while Turkey, Qatar and Sudan support the Islamist Libya Dawn in the west. This mounting conflict is occurring not so much because of NATO’s 2011 intervention, which was limited to airstrikes, but because of its swift withdrawal and subsequent failure to assist in stabilizing the country. Without institutions or trained and loyal security forces, an interim government could not gain control over the numerous militias that had sprung up to fight the Gaddafi regime. As the situation has steadily worsened in the past two years, the Obama administration, France, Britain and other participants in the NATO intervention have reacted not by dispatching aid but by shutting down their embassies and washing their hands of Libya. The task of trying to broker peace has been handed to a U.N. mediator, Bernardino León, who in recent interviews has described his mission as quixotic. As in Syria, this passivity could soon produce a serious threat to Western interests. According to the U.S. Africa Command, 200 jihadists linked to the Islamic State already have set up a training camp in the eastern Libyan town of Derna. Only 300 miles from southern Europe, Libya could — far more easily than Yemen or western Iraq — become the launching pad for more attacks on Paris and other Western capitals.

The only sign that the Obama administration is conscious of this threat has been the issuance with its allies of empty statements, such as one Saturday that congratulated Mr. León for scheduling talks in Geneva this week among some of the warring parties. Real progress toward ending the fighting would require more energetic action, such as diverting Libya’s oil revenues to an escrow account, enforcing an arms embargo, freezing the international assets of both sides and pressuring Egypt and other outside powers to cease their interventions. Ultimately, an international peacekeeping force probably will be needed to help restore order. The Obama administration is, as always, reluctant to mount or even support such an effort. Yet doing so now is surely preferable to being forced, as in Iraq and Syria, to conduct another military intervention in the future.                                     

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HOW THE WEST DESTROYED LIBYA                                                                                               

Raymond Ibrahim                                                                                                                 

Frontpage, Jan. 13, 2015

The full impact of Western intervention in Libya was recently highlighted during a televised interview of Worlds Apart with guest Hanne Nabintu Herland, a Norwegian author and historian who was born and raised in Africa for 20 years. At one point while talking about Libya, Herland firmly asserted that: “In a just world, the political leaders in the West, that have done such atrocities towards other nations and other cultures, should have been sent to the Hague [International Criminal Court], and judged at the Hague, for atrocities against humanity.”

Before that, the African-born, Norwegian author said: “Libya is the worst example of Western countries’ assault in modern history; it’s a horrible thing to be a European intellectual and to watch your own political leaders go ahead and engage in something like this. In Norway, for example, when it comes to something like the Libyan war … [political leaders] sent MSM messages to the other people in parliament; it was never a discussion in parliament, it was an MSM saying “Let’s bomb because someone called from America.”  We [Norway] bombed 588 bombs over roads, and water, and cities in Libya at that time.  And we had a large documentary in Norway, after that, where the fighters, the pilots that flew over Libya and dropped these bombs, they actually said in the documentary that “We were sent up and we weren’t even told what to bomb—just bomb something that looks valuable.”

Herland also pointed out that, according to UN figures, Gaddafi’s Libya was once the most prosperous nation in Africa. While Oksana Boyko, the host, sometimes disagreed with Herland, she agreed about the West’s counterproductive role, pointing out that Gaddafi “was very active in trying to advance women’s rights, he brought a lot of women into universities and the labor force [a thing few people in the West know, as usual, thanks to the “MSM”] and now what people and women in Libya are facing is Sharia [Islamic law], with the possibility of some of them being sold to ISIS fighters as virgin brides.” Indeed, that the jihadis and other “ISIS” type militants gained the most from Western intervention in Libya cannot be denied.  Simply looking at the treatment of Christian minorities—the litmus test of the radicalization of any Muslim society—proves this.

Thus…Monday, January 12, “A Libyan affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has claimed the abduction of 21 Coptic Christians and released pictures of the captives.”  It is not clear if these 21 are in addition to the 13 Christians kidnapped  days earlier on January 3. Then, around 2:30 a.m., masked men burst into a housing complex in Sirte, Libya.  The militants went room to room checking ID cards to separate Muslims from Christians, seizing only the latter.  They handcuffed the Christians and rode off with them. (Segregating Christians from Muslims is a common procedure around the Islamic world.  For example, last November, after members from the Islamic organization Al Shabaab hijacked a bus carrying 60 passengers in Kenya, they singled out and massacred the 28 non-Muslim passengers, the Christians.  In October 2012 in Nigeria, Boko Haram jihadis stormed the Federal Polytechnic College, “separated the Christian students from the Muslim students, addressed each victim by name, questioned them, and then proceeded to shoot them or slit their throat,” killing up to 30 Christians.)

According to Hanna Aziz, a Christian who was concealed in his room when the other Christians were seized in Libya, “While checking IDs, Muslims were left aside while Christians were grabbed….  I heard my friends screaming but they were quickly shushed at gunpoint. After that, we heard nothing.” Three of those seized were related to Aziz, who mournfully adds, “I am still in my room waiting for them to take me. I want to die with them.” A few days earlier, also in Sirte, Libya,  a Christian father, mother, and young daughter were slaughtered reportedly by Ansar al-Sharia—the “Supporters of Islamic Law,” or the Libyan version of ISIS that rose to power soon after the overthrow of Gaddafi. On December 23, members of the Islamic group raided the Christian household, killing the father and mother, a doctor and a pharmacist, respectively, and kidnapping 13-year-old Katherine.  Days later, the girl’s body was found in the Libyan desert—shot three times, twice in the head, once in the back…As for motive, nothing was stolen from the household, even though money and jewelry were clearly visible.  According to the girl’s uncle, the reason this particular family was targeted is because “they are a Christian family—persecuted.”…                           

[To Read the Full Article Click the following Link—Ed.]                                                                                                                                                              

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TUNISIA’S ELECTIONS REPRESENT                                                                   

YET ANOTHER MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD DEFEAT                                                                     

Avi Issacharoff                                                                                                    

Times of Israel, Dec. 26, 2014

Four years have passed since that historic event that set off the Arab Spring…A 26-year-old Tunisian from Sidi Bouzid opened his vegetable stand on the morning of December 17, 2010. A local female inspector came over and confiscated his wares, and, according to the vendor’s family, humiliated him in front of passersby. The young man, Mohammed Bouazizi, decided to set himself on fire as an act of revenge in front of the local governor’s office. Seventeen days later, he died of his wounds. The act led to a series of angry demonstrations against the rule of Zine El Abindine Ben Ali, “the Enlightened Dictator,” who ruled the country for 24 years. It didn’t take long for the protests to turn into the “Jasmine Revolution.” Ben Ali fled Tunisia on January 14. Eleven days later, a revolution began in Egypt, followed by Libya, Yemen, and of course, Syria.

As in Egypt, the first who managed to organize and make gains amid the chaos in Tunisia were the Islamists. The Ennahda Party won in the first free elections in October 2011. Three years later, the Islamists are out of power. They first voluntarily stepped down to allow for an interim government to draft a constitution, then lost the recent parliamentary elections, followed by this week’s presidential elections, which were won by officials from the old regime. At the beginning of the week, Tunisians were informed that their president-elect was Beji Caid Essebsi, 88, a former interior minister during the days of Habib Bourguiba, the dictator who preceded Ben Ali, and parliament speaker during Ben Ali’s rule. It should be mentioned, perhaps, that an interior minister in Arab countries isn’t just a functionary responsible for giving out passports, but is the man in charge of internal security, including intelligence bodies. That is, the flesh and blood of the previous regime. Essebsi, whose advanced age could give Shimon Peres some encouragement to run in Israel’s elections, won 55.7 percent of the vote, while his Islamist-affiliated opponent, Moncef Marzouki, garnered 44.3%. Essebsi’s victory led to a wave of protests, primarily in cities in southern Tunisia, seen as more religious, poorer, and largely cut off from the modern, Western capital of Tunis.

Tunisia is the second Arab country to experience an Arab Spring revolution, followed by electoral victory by pragmatic Islamists affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, only to see them pushed out in favor of members of the old regime. It happened in Egypt as well, after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi came to power, and was replaced by a second revolution that returned the army to its position of power in the country. Officials from the old political and security apparatus, who are nicknamed “a-doula al-amika,” or the deep state, have returned to power. They are from the same institutions that deepened their hold on the state over the decades, and after the fall of the dictator (Ben Ali or Mubarak) were left behind, and are now re-taking their positions of power. One can assume that Tunisia’s new president, Essebsi, will enjoy the help of the two strongest moderate Sunni rulers in the Middle East — Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, and Saudi King Abdullah. What’s more, the regime in Tunis, along with its counterparts in Cairo, will try to help its apparent ally in Libya, which sits between them.

After the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya stopped functioning as a country. Its territory is divided between major tribes from Misrata, and radical Islamist groups like Ansar al-Sharia. In recent months, Khalifa Haftar, a former general from Gaddafi’s army, who lived in exile for almost two decades, joined the battle for Libya. Haftar managed to clean out large areas in eastern Libya, including Benghazi, from Ansar al-Sharia, and he is now focusing his efforts on the western part of the country, near the Tunisian border and around the capital of Tripoli, currently in the hands of Misrata tribes. He supports the representative assembly that sits in Tobruk, while the tribes support the government in Tripoli, made up primarily of former members of the National General Congress.

It’s difficult by this point to talk about coincidences. The Muslim Brotherhood camp has been suffering one political defeat after another. The Arab public, which has been watching the madness that has gripped the region in the wake of the rise of the Islamic State (which was born in the same ideological womb as the Muslim Brotherhood), decided in Tunisia and Egypt, at least, to stay away from anything that reminded them of radical Islam (less radical than IS, but still radical). In some ways, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its counterparts in Tunisia are now paying the price for the success of IS. These developments do not, of course, portend the demise of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Arabic, there is a wealth of proverbs that talk about sometimes being up, sometimes being down. But without a doubt, this is one of the low points in recent years for an organization that was seen, not long ago, as President Barack Obama’s hope for a better Middle East — especially given Qatar’s decision to bow its head to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood’s main patron (with the exception of Turkey) surrendered to pressure from Riyadh and Cairo and chose to move away from its hostile tone toward Sissi. This didn’t happen overnight, and doesn’t stem from good will. The recall of ambassadors from several leading Gulf States (Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia) from Doha did its work, and Qatar decided to appease the strongman on the Nile.

How will this affect the Middle East? It’s still too early to say. Senior Egyptian sources have expressed great caution over the move. “First let’s see their actions, then we’ll know their true intentions,” said one official regarding Qatar’s shift. One immediate indication will be the line al-Jazeera takes about the Egyptian government. Until now, al-Jazeera has aligned itself with the Muslim Brotherhood camp against Cairo. It stands to reason that the station will take a more moderate line toward Sissi and his supporters. Turkey could find itself even more isolated as the last country waving the flag of political Islam in Muslim Brotherhood-style. But the weakening of the movement isn’t necessarily good for the West or Israel. Hamas in Gaza, which subscribes to the Brotherhood ideology, will seek support elsewhere, like Iran…               

[To Read the Full Article Click the following Link—Ed.]                      

Contents           

On Topic

Benghazi – The Signs of Al Qaeda: Dawn Perlmutter,  Frontpage, Jan. 2, 2015—The latest version of the Benghazi cover up is being argued with semantics of whether the jihadist group that attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was part of the “core” al Qaeda network.

Tunisian President-Elect’s Focus on Security Has Some Worried: Tamer El-Ghobashy, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 26, 2014—Beji Caid Essebsi ran for president on a promise to eradicate terrorism and restore security.

How Did Yemen Become the Perfect Home to Al Qaeda Training Camps?: Clive Jones, Reuters, Jan. 14, 2015 —According to Yemeni intelligence, both Cherif Kouachi and Said Kouachi, the two brothers who carried out a devastating attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo last Wednesday, were trained in camps run by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This has once more drawn attention to the militant organization’s territorial base: Yemen.

Assessing the Arab Spring Uprisings After Four Years:  Robin Wright, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 2014—Exactly four years ago, Tunisia’s corrupt autocracy pushed Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, too far.

Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research/ L'institut Canadien de recherches sur le Judaïsme, www.isranet.org

Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284 ; ber@isranet.wpsitie.com