Skip to main content

Home/ International Politics of the Middle East/ Group items tagged Ayman

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Sana Usman

Al-Qaeda's top leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri hideaway in FATA. Said US Adviser - 0 views

www.newsspeedchannel.eu/y-in-fata-said-us-adviser.html

Al-Qaeda's top leaders Egyptian National Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri Pakistan's Pak-Afghan Border U.S. President Barrack Obama counterterrorism counselor Osama bin Laden Special forces Al-Qaeda heads FATA The Federal Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan Assista

shared by Sana Usman on 30 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Sana Usman on 30 Apr 12
     
    The Al-Qaeda's top leaders, as well as its new chief after Bin Laden Egyptian National Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri, keep on to "hideaway" in Pakistan's tribal areas, adjoining to Pak-Afghan Border, U.S. President Barrack Obama's top counterterrorism counselor said vowing to carry them to justice like Late Osama bin Laden.
Ed Webb

Syria Comment » Archives » "Bush White House Wanted to Destroy the Syrian Sta... - 0 views

www.joshualandis.com/blog

US USA Cheney Blair Syria Lebanon Iraq analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Ed Webb on 05 Sep 10
     
    Search Comment Search Poll Assad's statement with Ahmadinejad was appropriate and necessary over the top and asking for trouble View Results Polls Archive Categories announcement (28) Asad quotes (55) Authors (189) Book (20) Britain (4) Economics (189) Foreign Relations (2529) EU (32) France (78) Germany (6) Iran (112) Iraq (154) Israel (423) Lebanon (684) Hariri (96) Hizbullah (169) Palestine (110) Russia (26) Saudi (108) Turkey (87) UK (17) US (609) Golan (93) Jordan (8) nature (4) Omar Dahi (1) Politics (479) Religion and Ethnicity (134) Society & Culture (126) UN (48) Uncategorized (132) Weapons (113) Reading Syria Books Islam Books Middle East Books Greatest Hits Opposition Meeting Planned for Paris Collapses, August 25, 2005 Is Syria Ready for Democracy? March 12, 2005 Syria's Bourse - The Launch & Recommendations See All... Blogroll Creative Syria Juan Cole's Informed Comment Syrian History: Moubayed Thara - Womens Rights Ammar Abdulhamid Damascene Blog Nur al-Cubicle Innocent Criminal Syrian Diplomat in America Syria Planet (Aggregates Sy Blogs) Dove's Eye View Anthro in Dam Open Lebanon Lebanese Bloggers Mideast Policy Iraq Slogger POMED PostGlobal Syria News Wire by Sasa Rime Allaf abu muqawama Angry Arab Arabist Steve Clemons War in Context Levant Watch George Ajjan Patrick Seale Missing Links by Badger 'Just World News' by Cobban friday-lunch-club Wampum Col. Patrick Lang Yves Gonzalez Guide de Syrie-sur-Web All4Syria - Ayman Abdel Nour Lobelog - Jim Lobe and Friends China Matters LeftLink Mona Eltahawy Le Monde Diplo Blogs Syrian TV and Radio Forward - Sami Moubayed Rootless Cosmo by Karon Mondoweiss by Philip Weiss Marc Gopin Dreyfuss Report Qifa Nabki Belgravia - Greg Djerejian TurcoPundit Eighth Gate Toot - Choice M.E. Blogs One Region, One future Enduring America - Lucas et. al. Maghreb Blog Maghreb Blog - Daadaoui Syria Comment Bint Al-Beltway - Shana Marshall On Olives and Sake (Yazan Badran) Firas Azm
Ed Webb

Bin Laden's Return to Form | Marc Lynch - 0 views

lynch.foreignpolicy.com/...bin_ladens_latest

Lynch binLaden analysis publicdiplomacy propaganda al-qaida

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Sep 09 - No Cached
  • It deserves attention in ways which many recent al-Qaeda communications have not.
  • the growing problems that al-Qaeda really does have with its distribution mechanisms
  • By far the most important technical point about the tape is this:  no English-language subtitles were offered on the video version.  Al-Sahab productions very often provide such subtitles.  For them to be absent in a video ostensibly produced as a direct message to the American people is frankly quite odd.  Does it suggest degraded capabilities?  Poor judgement?  I really don't know, but it's worth noting.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • one of the reasons for al-Qaeda's recent decline has been its general exposure -- or branding, if you prefer -- as an extreme salafi-jihadist movement rather than as an avatar of Muslim resistance.
  • Bin Laden's heavy focus on Israel is not new, despite the frequent attempts to argue the opposite. He has frequently referred to Israel and the Palestinians since the mid-1990s. Whether he "really" cares about it is besides the point -- he understands, and has always understood, that it is the most potent unifying symbol and rallying point for mainsteam Arab and Muslim audiences.
  • Bin Laden also quite interestingly forgoes talk of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, and seems more keen to try to exploit internal American divides.   His focus on the "Israel lobby" and his call to "liberate" Washington D.C. from the various lobbies and corporations allegedly controlling it is a far cry from a monolothic model of an irredemiably hostile and unified West crusading against Islam. 
  • His presentation of this strategy as a war of attrition
  • Al-Qaeda has been on the retreat for some time.  Its response thus far to the Obama administration has been confused and distorted.  Ayman al-Zawahiri has floundered with several clumsy efforts to challenge Obama's credibility or to mock his outreach.  But bin Laden's intervention here seems far more skillful and likely to resonate with mainstream Arab publics.   It suggests that he at least has learned from the organization's recent struggles and is getting back to the basics in AQ Central's "mainstream Muslim" strategy of highlighting political grievances rather than ideological purity and putting the spotlight back on unpopular American policies.
  • Ed Webb on 14 Sep 09
     
    Important analysis of al-Qa'ida's strategic communications effort.
Ed Webb

Al-Qaida growing in strength and numbers in Africa - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/...us_al_qaida_north_africa

al-qaida Mali Algeria maghreb Libya Morocco Tunisia terrorism

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)
  • northern Mali
  • Born as an Algerian insurgency in the early 1990s, the group was largely defeated and driven into a swath of ungoverned desert land — about the size of France — in northern Mali. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the group reached out to al-Qaida in an effort to survive. AQIM was officially recognized as an al-Qaida affiliate by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Both the U.S. and the European Union have designated AQIM a terrorist organization. The group has since absorbed some of al-Qaida's techniques for roadside bombs and suicide attacks. Occasionally it has issued videos and statements on jihadi Internet forums. In December 2007, for example, the group attacked the U.N.'s Algerian headquarters, killing 37 people, including 17 U.N. staff members. At the same time, AQIM has increased its recruiting efforts, drawing insurgents from Mauritania, Nigeria and Chad, officials said. The recruits are trained in small arms and roadside bomb construction, officials said, then return to their home countries to plan and execute attacks. The spike in recruiting and training, along with the increase in kidnappings and other crimes, has made the region more insecure and unstable in just a year, several officials said. The militants often partner with local criminals, who kidnap tourists then sell them to AQIM, which then demands ransoms, officials said. Those alliances cement contacts between the criminal groups and AQIM, broadening its reach and membership.
Ed Webb

"It Started With Conversations - And Then They Started Hitting Each Other" - 0 views

www.buzzfeed.com/...sis-and-the-muslim-brotherhood

Egypt MB ISIS ikhwan prisons radicalism Arabs

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Inside the prisons of Egypt and other Arab and Muslim countries, a ferocious competition has erupted between radical militants and more established political Islamists over fresh recruits. ISIS is often muscling out more peaceful groups for influence and loyalists among the mostly young men tossed into cramped cells for months or years.
  • Some inmates are subjected to torture and deprivation, despite having committed no or minimal crimes, fueling anger that researchers have long feared breeds extremism in Arab jails.
  • The political dynamics inside Arab detention centers have ramifications far beyond the prison walls. Jails in the Middle East have long forged radical extremists, including the Egyptian intellectual godfather of Islamic extremism, Sayyid Qutb, and the founder of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian ex-convict whose al-Qaeda in Iraq later morphed into ISIS. Alleged ISIS supporters find prisons to be fertile soil, especially in brutal Arab regimes like Egypt. There are numerous signs ISIS has begun using prisons that are intended to confine them and limit their activities to expand their influence and even plan operations. Egyptian authorities and activists believe former prisoners recruited by ISIS in jail were behind suicide bombings of churches in Cairo in December and on Palm Sunday this year in Alexandria and Tanta.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • “Many of the prisoners were already very angry after the coup and eager to fight,” said Yasser Khalil, an Egyptian journalist who has extensively covered prisons. “Telling them them they will go to heaven and get virgins just makes it that much more attractive. They say, ‘Yes, you have a Christian neighbor and he is lovely. But the Coptic Church supports the state, and thus they should be killed.’”
  • Reports have emerged of ISIS recruiters being locked up in prisons all the way from Algeria to Russia’s Caucasus region, Tajikistan, and Indonesia.
  • many warn that ISIS’s nihilism is overpowering the Brotherhood’s appeals. “This is the year of disappointment and disillusion when there’s no hope for the Islamist factions to get out of prison any time soon,”
  • Refusing legal counsel is one trait that distinguishes ISIS prisoners from other inmates, including alleged al-Qaeda supporters. “He used to love life. He used to be keen on getting out of jail. But not anymore.”
  • “ISIS says, ‘We tried democracy and we ended up in jail,’” Abdullah recalled. “‘It was the army that introduced the gun. Why is Sisi in power? He has guns.’”
  • “Imagine you are in prison — the great challenge is killing time,” said Ghadi, whose father and brother have been jailed. “Before you could read books. When they closed that door the only way to kill time is sharing your thoughts and experiences. The Islamist groups and factions are the great majority of prisoners. Imagine there’s a constant flow of radical ideas into your mind. They talk and listen and talk and listen. You start to give in. You get weak. You lose all rational argument. You are finally ready to absorb radical thoughts and arguments.”
  • Ahmed Abdullah, the liberal activist, had had enough. He approached some wealthy businessmen inside the prison and arranged for them to bribe guards to allow in some books. He launched a reading group using Arabic translations of world literature and philosophy. They read Franz Kafka to understand the nightmarish nature of Egypt’s bureaucracy, George Orwell as an illustration of brutal authoritarianism, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as an introduction to democratic governance and the social contract. To his delight the other prisoners were receptive; even some of the Islamists would attend the talks.Suddenly, security forces stormed in and seized the books, loudly accusing Abdullah, who is a professor of engineering at a university in Cairo, of poisoning the minds of the inmates. He was transferred to a dank solitary confinement cell, without a towel or blanket. After three days he was released from jail. He said authorities must have calculated he was more trouble inside prison than outside.“When we have a chance to compete we win,” said Abdullah, smoking flavored shisha at a cafe in central Cairo. “The inmates were really excited with what we had to say. But it turns out our government considers secular activists more dangerous than the Muslim Brotherhood, or ISIS.”
  • Many of Egypt’s estimated 40,000 prisoners are being held in makeshift jailhouses, interior ministry compounds and military camps that don’t have the capacity for separating inmates. One former prisoner described watching as another inmate was recruited by an ISIS supporter while sitting for hours in the van on the way from jail to court. One researcher described a brawl involving Brotherhood and ISIS prisoners during a similar transfer of inmates earlier this year.
  • “ISIS looks down on the Muslim Brotherhood, they consider them infidels, and they point this out to the younger Muslim Brotherhood members,”
  • ISIS targets recruits who have special skills. Gamal Ziada recalled intense competition between the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS over a prisoner who was a student at Cairo’s elite Zewail City of Science and Technology, considered Egypt’s MIT. “ISIS told him, ‘You’re not going to carry a weapon,’” Gamal Ziada said. “‘You’re not going to fight. You will use your brain.’”
  • “He tried to convince me that I was an apostate and that my parents were apostates too, and I have to convince my family to give up the pleasures of the world and return to Allah,” the smuggler said of his 2015 imprisonment. “He used to ask me to share lunch and dinner with him. He was ordering the best Turkish food in town. He was very rich. He told me that I could continue my work in smuggling for the Islamic State and make much more profit than I did with working with refugees.”
  • “His mission was to get closer to the poor and the simple people and convince them that if they joined the Islamic State they would have power, money, and women,” he said, “and heaven in the afterlife.”
  • Some experts fear ISIS has recruited potential sleeper agents in prison who might later become emboldened to act. Abdou, the researcher, said he interviewed one former inmate who joined ISIS in prison but dropped any Islamist pretenses the moment he walked out of jail, shaving his beard and going back to smoking shisha and lazing about with old friends.
  • ISIS recruitment and violence inside prisons jumped in 2015 when Egyptian authorities began clamping down on allowing books inside jails
Ed Webb

By labeling Arabs an 'existential threat,' Bibi invokes a terrifying history of ethnic ... - 0 views

972mag.com/...144502

Israel Palestine israelpalestine Netanyahu politics elections government propaganda genocide

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a bitter struggle to prevent his challenger from establishing a government with support from the Arab-led Joint List party, has again accused Arab party leaders of representing an existential threat to Israel. On Sunday night, Joint List Chairman Ayman Odeh responded by circulating a photo on social media of himself in pajamas, reading stories to his three doting kids. “At the end of a long day, I’ve got to put these existential threats to sleep!” he wrote, to viral delight.
  • Netanyahu’s frenzied anti-Arab diatribes are accelerating in pace and severity. In 2015 he warned that Arab citizens were voting “in droves.” Prior to the September election, his Facebook page stated that “Arab politicians want to destroy us all.” (Netanyahu said it was a campaign staffer’s mistake.) On Sunday, Netanyahu held an “emergency” meeting of Likud members (the emergency was not a rain of rockets but the possibility of a minority coalition backed by the Joint List). There he thundered that the rival Blue and White party was negotiating with the Arab MKs, who, he insisted, “support terror organizations and want to destroy the state.”
  • conflating Iran’s “existential threat” with Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel mimics the ideological rhetoric behind some of the worst ethnic violence in the world
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The conflation of genuine grievances with obsessive repetition of imminent existential threat should terrify everyone.
  • In a way, Netanyahu’s fantasies are even more egregious. They lack any basis of actual injury by Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, historical or present. This group is never involved in organizational terror, and individual incidents are exceedingly rare. The community has no secessionist tendencies, has participated in the Israeli political process for decades, and repeatedly states its desire for greater political, civil, and economic integration. The one demand that challenges Israeli Jews is symbolic: preservation of their battered Palestinian identity. The great political demand associated with that identity is their call to release Palestinians in the territories from a five-decade military occupation and allow their independence.
Ed Webb

Israeli politicians prefer chaos over Jewish-Arab partnership - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...izens-hatred-social-peace.html

Israel Palestinians citizenship equality minority xenophobia nationalism politics elections

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Nov 19 - Cached
  • Assuming that no Knesset member manages to cull 61 Knesset supporters for himself as prime minister within 21 days, Israelis will be dragged to the polls for the third time in less than a year. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that even this bad option was preferable to a government based on Arab Knesset members. Israel’s current kingmaker, Yisrael Beitenu Chair Avigdor Liberman, went as far as to portray the 13 elected Arab Knesset members as a fifth column.
  • unprecedented incitement campaign being waged by the state’s leaders against its Arab minority. The message conveyed by a clear majority of Jewish Israelis to their Arab neighbors — from the far-right Yamina (Rightward) faction to the centrist Blue and White party — is that political chaos is preferable in their view to Jewish-Arab partnership
  • the Arab Joint List is not asking for the defense minister’s portfolio in return for its support, or for any other security-related portfolio. In fact, it is totally uninterested in joining any government. On the other hand, when Hezbollah bombarded Israel’s north and Islamic Jihad launched rockets at its south, the country’s Arab citizens sought shelter just like the Jewish ones. Thus, Israeli Arabs are under similar security threats as their Jewish neighbors, yet all they ask for is recognition of them being part of Israel’s society and politics. They do not ask for ministerial portfolios.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • the percentage of Israeli Jews who accept the Arabs as full-fledged members of Israeli society dropped from 69.5% to 61.1%
  • percentage of Jews who recognize the Arabs’ right to live in the state as a minority with full civil rights dropped from 79.7% in 2015 to 73.8% in 2017
  • the Racism Index compiled by the Haifa-based 7amleh – Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, according to which Israeli users issued 474,250 racist and/or violent posts against Palestinians, most of them focused on Israel’s 21% Arab minority. The Joint List and its four constituent parties received the highest number of racist mentions. The leader of the Joint List, Knesset member Ayman Odeh, led the targets subjected to violence and racism with 24,000 mentions, followed by Knesset member Ahmad Tibi with over 20,000. The top five included two Israeli Arab women unrelated to politics — television presenter Lucy Aharish and a contestant in the "Big Brother" reality show, Shams Marei Abumuch
  • a sharp decline in Arab acceptance of the state’s Jewish character: from 60.3% in 2015 to 44.6% in 2017
  • The Arab minority continues to tie its fate to the State of Israel and to fight for an improvement of its status within the state. Arab citizens do not sever themselves from the Jewish majority. Some 60% (compared with 58.8% in 2015) prefer living in Israel to living in any other country, including a Palestinian state, if and when one is established.
  • It is the civil society that must now step in and take the lead. Jews and Arabs alike must speak up in one clear voice for advancing the values and the interests that most of them so yearn for.
Ed Webb

Is Jordan Valley's annexation already on the way? - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...benny-gantz-jordan-valley.html

Israel Palestine israelpalestine territory US USA Trump politics elections election

shared by Ed Webb on 23 Nov 19 - Cached
  • The campaign for the next election is yet to get underway, but it is expected to be uglier and nastier than its predecessors. It most certainly will feature the indictments that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced Nov. 21 against Netanyahu for bribery and other corruption-related charges. The annexation of the Jordan Valley is another issue expected to top the political agenda.
  • “The historic decision of the American administration yesterday [Nov. 18] gives us a one-time-only chance to determine the eastern border of the state of Israel and annex the Jordan Valley,” Netanyahu proclaimed in the video. “This cannot be done by a minority government dependent on [Arab Joint List leaders] Ahmad Tibi and Ayman Odeh. Therefore, I call upon Benny Gantz to come together with me and with [Yisrael Beitenu leader] Avigdor Liberman to establish a unity government: The first item of this government, on the first day of the new government, is annexation of the Jordan Valley. The nation, and history, will not forgive anyone who squanders such a golden opportunity.”
  • New Right leader Ayelet Shaked is a challenger for credit for the annexation idea. When Shaked served as justice minister, she planted the first seeds for West Bank annexation together with her political partner, Naftali Bennett. Justice Minister Shaked pushed to impose Israeli law on the West Bank, or in other words, full annexation, period.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Joint List's Tibi had been in touch with Blue and White in recent weeks regarding a possible minority government. He believes that the timing of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement that the settlements do not violate international law is not coincidental. According to Tibi, President Donald Trump did not hide the fact that he favored Netanyahu in the September elections in Israel. With his friend in Jerusalem still in distress, why not give Netanyahu a little push to help him in the competition for right-wing votes? “This is an election gift from a president undergoing an impeachment inquiry to a prime minister who was toppled,”
  • it seems that annexation of the Jordan Valley is on its way, with the encouragement of the Trump administration
Ed Webb

How a Lebanese company's role in shipping Turkish arms to Libya landed it in the crossh... - 0 views

today.lorientlejour.com/...1239861

Lebanon Turkey France Libya Jordan Syria shipping arms weapons sanctions corruption

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Nov 20 - Cached
  • The 40-year-old car carrier named Bana that plied the waters of the Mediterranean was unremarkable in almost all ways, except a dramatic one: the Lebanese-flagged vessel’s shipment of weapons from Turkey to Libya in January 2020 placed it squarely in a whirlwind of international intrigue
  • the European Union on Sept. 21 sanctioned the ship’s operator, Med Wave Shipping SA, a company that L’Orient Today has learned is owned by a Lebanese shipping magnate’s relative who ran for Parliament in 2018
  • Little is as it seems on the surface of the complex world of maritime shipping. A trail of documents, public statements and other information sheds light on the kaleidoscopic history of Med Wave Shipping SA and the Bana, one that is bookended by sanctions, marked by arms shipments and has passed through Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Libya and Italy.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Med Wave Shipping SA’s formation was sparked by a controversial set of US sanctions. In October 2015, Washington designated Lebanese businessman Merhi Abou Merhi, several of his relatives and his portfolio of business holdings for alleged money laundering on behalf of a drug trafficker. Targeted in the sanctions, which were later lifted, was a vessel named the City of Misurata, later to change its name to Sham 1 and then finally to Bana. The US accused Abou Merhi of using the vessel to provide vehicle transportation services for Ayman Joumaa, an alleged Lebanese-Colombian drug kingpin.
  • the vessel made deliveries to Tobruk for groups affiliated with the Libyan National Army under the command of Khalifa Haftar in the eastern part of the war-torn country, according to UN investigators.A 2017 UN Security Council report detailing violations of the arms embargo in effect for Libya said that the Sham 1 delivered 300 Toyota pickups and armored Land Cruisers to Tobruk on Jan. 16 of that year before making another shipment on April 14.
  • the Bana, which was still registered to Med Wave Shipping SA at the time, left the Turkish port of Mersin for a journey ostensibly to Tunisia; however, it turned off its location transponder off the Libyan coast before calling to port in Tripoli, according to a forensic investigation by the BBC Africa Eye unit.
  • BBC Africa Eye confirmed that two Turkish Navy G-Class frigates escorted the Bana across the Mediterranean as it transported armored combat vehicles, self-propelled howitzers, cannons and an anti-aircraft gun to Tripoli. While the vessel had previously supplied forces allied with Haftar, on this trip, it delivered arms to the general’s rivals in Tripoli.
  • One of the Bana’s sailors told Italian police that 10 Turkish military and intelligence personnel guarded the weapons onboard the vessel on its trip from Mersin to Tripoli.
  • French President Emmanuel Macron referenced the shipment on Jan. 29 when he harshly criticized Turkey for what he called the country’s “broken promise” to stop sending military material to the Government of National Accord in Libya. France, meanwhile, has denied its backing of the Libyan National Army rivaling the GNA.
  • If implemented, these sanctions could target corruption among Lebanon’s elite. Given the multiplicity of their regional and international connections, the country’s poor data infrastructure and its strict banking secrecy law, the range of potential targets could be as deep as the sea.
1 - 9 of 9
Showing 20▼ items per page