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Showing posts from May 17, 2009

Morocco’s Multi-Pronged Counterterrorism Strategy Matthew Chebatoris

This May marks the sixth anniversary of the deadly night of suicide bombings in Casablanca. The attacks, characterized by many as Morocco’s 9/11, took the lives of 33 innocent victims, while the attackers, hailing from the slums of Sidi Moumen, lost 12 of their own.   Since that dark night, Moroccans have been led by King Mohammad VI on a path to cleanse the kingdom of the scourge of violent extremism.   In pursuit of this goal, Morocco has embarked on a multi-pronged strategy to combat terrorism and thwart the efforts of the Algerian-based Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to widen the theater of regional jihad in North Africa.   The strategy is comprehensive in nature and sets out multiple objectives which illuminate Morocco’s position as a beacon of hope in the often tumultuous North African political environment. Judicial Actions Morocco’s judiciary remains a key player in the country’s counterterrorism arsenal and routinely coordinates its efforts with counterparts abroad.

'You need India and Pakistan to talk to each other'

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Ahmed Rashid, perhaps the world's foremost expert on the Taliban, says while it is true that the Pakistani army may be in denial over the internal existential threat of the Taliban and other extremist groups and may be obsessed over the perceived threat from India, it is imperative that New Delhi cut Islamabad some slack. Rashid's first book on the Taliban shot to the top of The New York Times's bestsellers list after 9/11 and stayed there for weeks and was also translated to more than two dozen languages. He has just published another book Descent into Chaos: US Policy and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia. In an interview with rediff.com India Abroad's Aziz Haniffa, Rashid explains why India should cooperate with Pakistan to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan. What's your take on the Obama administration's AfPak policy, particularly the regional approach, which includes India to help stabilise Afghanistan? The

Serial blasts: Key man from Kerala hiding in Bangladesh

May 21, 2009 15:04 IST Investigators into the serial blasts that rocked various Indian cities have identified a Kerala-based chief recruiter who personally handpicked men for terror operations. Son of a rich businessman in Kannur, 35-year-old Haji Umar, aka Nasir, was working for the now defunct Islamic Seva Sangh before joining the Lashkar-e-Tayiba [ Images ] . The interrogation of the 10 arrested persons in connection with the Bangalore blasts case has revealed how Umar recruited youth into the terror movement. Another startling discovery is that Abdul Hameed, one of the men recruited by Nasir, was assigned to assassinate E K Nayanar [ Images ] , former chief minister of Kerala [ Images ] . A senior police officer in Bangalore told rediff.com that Nasir's arrest could lead to major terror plots being hatched across India. In Kerala, the first thing Nasir did was to identify men for the operations. Not only did he handpick operatives for operations, he also sent a

12 cops killed in Naxal strike

Naxalite guerillas on Monday ambushed a police party and killed 12 cops and a civilian in Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari district, around 150 km from Raipur. Another 12 policemen were injured. This is the first Naxal attack in Dhamtari and has taken the state police by surprise. According to A.N. Upadhyaya, IG, Bastar Range, about 150 heavily armed Naxalites triggered landmine blasts on the route of the three-vehicle convoy that was carrying 41 policemen. They then opened fire from the nearby Risgaon-Mandgiri hillocks, killing 12 security personnel. Seven seriously wounded policemen were airlifted to Raipur and admitted to a private nursing home. Additional forces have been rushed to the area. This is second major Naxal attack over the past five days. On May 6, they had killed 11 people in south Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada. And Monday’s attack takes the 2009 death toll in Naxalite attacks in the state to 77, including 51 security personnel. The police have succeeded in gunning down only 41

Lankan forces thought out of the box to defeat LTTE

P K Balachandran First Published : 21 May 2009 03:14:00 AM IST COLOMBO: Three years ago, no political or military observer would have predicted a total decimation of the formidable LTTE. And yet, by May 18, 2009, its entire top leadership, including Prabhakaran, lay dead in the marshy land adjacent to the Nanthikadal lagoon in Northeast Sri Lanka. Such an ending was possible because the Sri Lankan armed forces had begun thinking out of the box, and were getting unflinching support from the country’s top political leadership. ARMY: Under the leadership of Gen Sarath Fonseka, the Sri Lankan army opened, for the first time in the history of the war in the island, a war front that stretched from Mannar in the West to Mullaitivu in the East and from Jaffna in the North to Vavuniya in the South, a stretch of 200 kms. Since there were operations every day, the LTTE was unable to cope. As a senior Tamil defence correspondent said: “Its limited number of commanders had to be moved from

Docs get lessons on tackling disaster, terror attack on Games

Express News Service Posted: Thursday , May 21, 2009 at 0200 hrs IST In view of the ‘threat perception’ during the Commonwealth Games, city doctors are being trained for eventualities like bio-terrorism and nuclear attack. The trauma centre of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is hosting experts at a three-day workshop on emergency medical response to Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) casualties. “Doctors are being trained to deal with casualties in case there are CBRN terrorist attacks. Both civilian and military doctors are being trained,” Dr M C Mishra, head at the AIIIMS Trauma Centre, said. Speaking about the preparations for the event, N Balachandran, Special Secretary (Health), Delhi government, said three hospitals were being specially equipped with the latest equipment. Besides, he added, their facilities were being spruced up to handle mass casualties, if any. “September-October 2010 will witness a lot of movement of foreigners

The Decline Of The West

by James Dunnigan May 21, 2009 The army is advancing slowly against the LTTE fortifications in the four square kilometer no-fire zone. The LTTE has built bunkers (or, rather, forced their human shields to do most of the work),  planted landmines and deployed a few suicide bombers, to make it costly for the army to get in and finish off the LTTE defenders.  The army believes this will be done by the end of the month. The politicians want it done sooner, but the generals want to keep their casualties down. During their advance in the last few months, the army has captured over 100,000 rifles and pistols, over a million rounds of ammunition and over 30,000 landmines. There are also thousands of grenades, roadside bombs and mortar shells, plus tons of explosives, trucks, artillery and some armored vehicles. China has not been critical of how the government has fought the LTTE rebels, and has offered attractive economic deals, including direct aid. While Western nations have been quick to

Lanka promises to give India Prabhakaran's death certificate

21 May 2009, 1914 hrs IST, PTI COLOMBO: Sri Lanka has promised to give the certificate regarding LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran's death to close the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, India's national security adviser M K Narayanan said on Thursday. He said India was going by public statements from the Sri Lankan government that Prabhakaran, 54, had been killed in combat in the island's northeast earlier in the week and had no reason to doubt Colombo's announcement. Narayanan told reporters here after talks with President Mahinda Rajapaksa that the Sri Lankan government has made a public announcement on Prabhakaran's death. "We will go by that. We will of course wait for a death certificate from the government so that Rajiv assassination case can be sort of closed," said Narayanan, who arrived here yesterday along with foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon. "Beyond that, it is not possible for us to do anything. They have promised to give us

PAKISTAN: THE BATTLE WITHIN

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Pakistan diary: 'Crush 'em' The refugee crisis is a growing and intractable problem for Islamabad [AFP] Imran Khan, Al Jazeera's reporter in Pakistan, is filing regular dispatches from the country as the army battles Taliban fighters in the North West Frontier Province. Islamabad, Thursday, May 21, 10.01GMT Support for Pakistan's war seems be to holding. Nightly, the county's media shows salute its soldiers. One newspaper headline is particularly striking: "The nation speaks with one voice: Crush 'em!" Pakistan will have to deal decisively with the massive refugee crisis it faces as a result of the conflict [AFP] In the markets and coffee shops people seem to want the crisis over, but welcome the fact that the army is tackling the Taliba