The new body has been established after the Indonesian government came under criticism following the July 2009 hotel bombings in Jakarta. During this incident, several terrorist suspects were found to be repeat offenders—that is, they had been arrested once before and already underwent rehabilitation classes. Then this past February, more than a dozen terrorists released from detention joined a militant training camp in the jungles of Aceh. The new agency, therefore, will focus on ways of more effectively de-radicalizing captured terrorists. Meantime, Special Detachment 88, part of the Indonesian National Police, will continue to be the country’s primary counter-terrorism strike force.

Some rights groups have criticized the new body because of what they see as vague provisions in the presidential decree, and because they oppose the idea of military officers serving on the board.

Tarar, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war and a reputed expert on guerilla warfare, has acknowledged a long relationship with the Afghan Taliban and its leader Mullah Mohammed Omar—but has been far more critical of the Pakistani Taliban movement. During a recent New York Times interview, Tarar admonished the TTP and its leadership as “troublemakers” who should be “neutralized.”

In his latest video-recorded message, Colonel Imam Tarar claims that he has been kidnapped by “Lashkar Jhangvi al-Alami, Abdullah Mansour” faction and insists that the Pakistani government has done nothing to facilitate his release. If the government continues to refuse negotiations for his freedom, Tarar further threatens to disclose highly sensitive information about “the weaknesses of our nation” and the secret “game being played with Afghanistan, India, Russia, and America.”

Still images and an English transcript of the video of Colonel Sultan Amir Tarar are now available via the website of Flashpoint Global Partners - http://www.flashpoint-intel.com.

This case study provides insight into how U.S. citizens who sympathize with terrorists make connections with like-minded people on the internet, and through school and community activities. This case also provides insight into how American citizens arrange to access terrorist training camps overseas.

The PowerPoint can be viewed here.

This is not a hypothetical concern – Hezbollah (long a terrorism pioneer) has already employed this strategy. According to the Israeli news site MySay:

The Hizbullah agent pretended she was an Israeli girl named “Reut Zukerman”, “Reut” succeeded during several weeks to engage more then 200 reserve and active personnel.

The Hizbullah agent gained the trust of soldiers and officers that didn’t hesitate to confirm him as a “friend” once they saw he/she is friends with several of their friends from the same unit. Most of them assumed that “Reut” was just another person who served in that elite intelligence unit.

In this way, Hizbullah collected information about the unit’s activity, names and personal details of its personnel, the unit’s slang, and visual information on its bases. This user / agent using Facebook is an example of a trend called fakebook.

Implications

The first concern regarding incidents of this nature is the raw intelligence collected. But more than the data, it creates opportunities to gather even more data.

Read the full post here.

The video excerpt can be accessed via Flashpoint’s website: http://www.flashpoint-intel.com.

"Little-Known Ghazi Brigade Now a Major Player in the Punjabi Jihad?", Terrorism Monitor, Vol. 8 (28), July 16, 2010.

Abstract of the article:

A recent spurt in sectarian attacks in Pakistan has been blamed on a lethal but lesser known group affiliated with Taliban and al-Qaeda elements: the Ghazi Abdul Rashid Shaheed Brigade, also known as the Ghazi Brigade or Ghazi Force (Daily Times [Lahore], July 2). What was formed as an Islamic vigilante group has now emerged as a radical jihadi organization in response to the July 2007 Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) siege in Islamabad. Over one hundred religious students were killed by Pakistani security forces during the siege, including the mosque’s deputy leader, Abdul Rashid Ghazi. Thousands of mourners pledging their commitment to jihad thronged the funeral of Abdul Ghazi, held in his native village of Basti Abdullah in Punjab (PakTribune, July 12, 2007). Indeed, his death heralded the start of a neo-Taliban movement in Pakistan, with radical students calling for jihad against Pakistan and its allies.

The events at Lal Masjid prompted al-Qaeda's Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri to call for revenge attacks in Pakistan. Maulana Abdul Aziz, the brother of Rashid Ghazi, also issued a threat of “bloody revolution” in the country (Dawn, July 10, 2009). Addressing an Islamic gathering to commemorate the Lal Masjid standoff, an unidentified cleric said, “You killed one Ghazi. Here are thousands of Ghazis ready to sacrifice in the way of Allah.” In effect, the events at the mosque have unleashed a wave of suicide attacks across Pakistan.

According to intelligence sources, the organization is led by Maulana Niaz Raheem (a.k.a. Bilal), a former student at the Red Mosque’s Jamia Faridia seminary. Pakistani agencies have arrested a Ghazi Brigade terrorist identified as Fidaullah (a.k.a. Junaid) who was allegedly involved in the attacks on the Police Special Branch and the FC checkpoint in Islamabad. Fidaullah has been identified as one of the top strategists for the Ghazi Brigade, operating from the Galjo area in Hangu, part of the North-West Frontier Province (Geo TV, June 1, 2009). Two of his accomplices also involved in the FC checkpoint attack, Khairullah and Khurram Shahzad, were arrested on earlier occasions. Ghazi Brigade terrorists adopted decapitation as a tactic to instill fear among those civilians supporting security forces in the battle zones. Fidaullah himself beheaded three people publicly in Sultanwas and Pir Baba in Swat (The News [Islamabad], June 2, 2009).

Read Full Text Here

"The factual allegations of the complaints sufficiently support an inference that Arab Bank and the terrorist organizations were participants in a common plan under which Arab Bank would supply necessary financial services to the organizations which would themselves perform the violent acts. Administering the death and dismemberment benefit plan further supports not only the existence of an agreement but Arab Bank's knowing and intentional participation in the agreement's illegal goals. No more is required."

The case had been locked in its discovery phase for some time pending rulings on Arab Bank’s refusal to provide documentation concerning such financial transfers. Plaintiffs maintained that such documents, if provided, would establish that Arab Bank participated knowingly in this money raising and transferring scheme. Arab Bank’s attorneys maintained that they were precluded from providing such documents because of Jordanian and other country bank secrecy laws. The ruling reflects Judge Gershon’s determination that the refusal to comply with the court's order that such documents be made available to the plaintiffs pursuant to discovery requests merits legal sanctions against Arab Bank. And, the judge's instruction to the jury that they can draw the above inference from this lack of production of such documents is the appropriate remedy. This ruling is fully in line with legal precedent in such cases of non production of court ordered documents.

The Linde case was brought before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in July 2004 by six American families, victims of Palestinian terrorism in Israel during the Al Aqsa Intifada. They sued Jordan's Arab Bank under section 2333 of the Anti Terrorism Act of 1996 alleging that Arab Bank had encouraged such terrorism by disbursing millions of dollars in support payment for families of suicide bombers, which served as a further incentive for attacks.

Section 2333 provides that “Any national of the United States injured in his or her person, property, or business by reason of an act of international terrorism, or his or her estate, survivors, or heirs, may sue {in Federal Court} … and … recover threefold the damages he or she sustains and the cost of the suit, including attorney’s fees.” The District Court also permitted foreign nationals to join the lawsuit via the Alien Torts Claims Act. Currently, more than 100 families and 700 individuals in the Linde case and related cases are seeking more than $1 billion in damages based on Arab Bank’s role in financially supporting terrorist activities. The foreign nationals consist mostly of Israeli citizens but also include Afghani, Argentinian, Australian, Belarusian, Canadian, French, Iranian, Iraqi, Peruvian, South African, Turkmenian, Ukranian, and Uzbeki citizens.

The payments were transferred by Arab Bank to and through several charities that allegedly serve as fronts for Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. These funds were originally collected by two special committees established in Saudi Arabia with the stated intention of raising funds for the families of those carrying out suicide missions at the behest of the named terrorist organizations. Some of these funds were routed through Arab Bank’s New York office in order to convert the funds into U.S. dollars. The Palestinian charities named in the suit include, inter alia, the Popular Committee for Support of the Intifada (the “Popular Committee”), the Coalition of Benevolence (the “Coalition”), the Humanitarian Relief Association (the “HRA”), the Al-Ansar Society, and the Tulkarem Charitable Committee.

The Arab Bank case will likely move forward before a jury at the same time as Canada’s Parliament takes up new legislation that would also grant victims of terrorism the right to hold those that finance terrorism liable for damages. Final Parliamentary committee hearings on this legislation were held earlier this month, and passage of the act is expected when Parliament reconvenes in October. This is due in large part to the unceasing efforts of C-CAT, the Canadian Coalition Against Terrorism, which has become the leading voice for victims of terrorism in Canada. I had an opportunity to testify in the course of these hearings. A webcast of the hearings can be found here.

In a new Washington Institute Strategic Report my co-authors and I argue that rather than avoid any mention of the religious motivation behind the terrorism of al-Qaeda and other like-minded organizations, the Obama administration should sharpen the distinction between the religion of Islam and the political ideology of radical Islamism to successfully defeat Islamist terrorism at its most fundamental source.

Engagement and counterterrorism are key elements of this comprehensive strategy, we argue, but the wide space between them must be addressed. Missing are the policies and programs that should suffuse the space between these two poles on the counterradicalization spectrum, including efforts to contest the extremist narrative of radicalizers, empower and network mainstream voices countering extremism, promote diversity of ideas and means of expression, and challenge extremist voices and ideas in
the public domain. Contesting the radical Islamist narrative does not mean arresting or banning despicable but protected speech; rather, it means openly contesting
extremist views by offering alternatives and fostering deeper ideological debate. The objective in either case is to strengthen the moderate center against the extremist pole and help Muslim communities become more resilient in confronting the challenge.

This report, Fighting the Ideological Battle: The Missing Link in U.S. Strategy to Counter Violent Extremism, follows on the Institute's 2009 bipartisan Presidential Task Force report Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization. It is a joint project of The Washington Institute's Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence and Project Fikra: Defeating Extremism through the Power of Ideas.

This new report recognizes the important steps the Obama administration has taken to address violent extremism and suggests ways to address remaining gaps in U.S. homeland security and foreign policy. The report has benefited from a series of interviews with administration officials at numerous cabinet level agencies and the White House and is the product of a small study group including myself, my Washington Institute colleague J Scott Carpenter, and former White House counterterrorism officials Steven Simon and Juan Zarate.

The complete report is available here.

The takeover of Iran's government in 1979 by radical Islamist forces faithful to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the breakthrough after which the so-called Islamic Revolution spread throughout the Middle East and beyond. The Khomeinist revolution is ideologically rooted in a radical Islamist doctrine that stands in opposition to the more traditional "Quietist" school of thought among Shia clerics. In a sense, the Khomeinists are the Shia world's equivalent of the Salafists within the Sunni world. The Islamist Shias are also jihadists, in the sense that they call for the establishment of a future Imamate, a Shia form of Islamic Caliphate, by any means necessarily, including what they coin as "Jihad," which practically means war.

Because it cannot project much conventional military power, Iran threatens the United States, Israel and other democracies by unconventional means. Through the use of its terrorist surrogates—such as Hezbollah—Tehran's reach extends around the world.

Iran

Syria

The administration of Abhisit Vejjajiva pledged to resolve the crisis in the south when it came to power in December 2008. The south has long been the Democrat Party’s heartland, and they believed they had a softer and more nuanced approach. But the government soon became embroiled in a popular uprising over how it came to power and the south became a low priority.

Nonetheless, in the 18 months since the Abhisit administration has been in office, violence has come down. An average of 32 people a month are being killed, while 66 are wounded. In 2007, the peak of the violence, 4 people a day were being killed and 8 were being wounded. In the first half of 2010, the ratio was down to just under 24.3 people a month being killed and 67 wounded.

For the full report, please click here.