Posts

Showing posts from March 2, 2014

Maghreb Islamist movements go mainstream

Text and photos by Imrane Binoual in Casablanca for Magharebia – 07/03/2014 Salafist movements face tough challenges if their goal is political integration, analyst and writer Amel Boubekeur says. French-Algerian Amel Boubekeur is an internationally-recognised expert on political Islam. Her books include "Whatever Happened to the Islamists?: Salafis, Heavy Metal Muslims, and the Lure of Consumerist Islam". Magharebia met with Boubekeur in Casablanca to learn more about what she calls the "transformation" of salafist and Islamist movements in the Maghreb. Magharebia : What is the first thing people need to know about Islamists in the Maghreb region? Amel Boubekeur : These movements can be viewed in terms of how much access they have to political power. It is more meaningful to talk about whether parties have been legalised or not than to distinguish between "moderate" or "radical" Islam. In Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, we find legalised parties t

AQIM terrorists killed in Mali

French forces in Mali killed twelve fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), France's defence minister said Thursday (March 6th). The Tuesday night offensive involved the use of drones, Jean-Yves Drian said. The operation was confirmed by the United Nations mission in Mali (MINUSMA). "Islamists, notably from Libya… had set up two bases in the north-east," a Malian army source told AFP. The Reaper drones used in the counter-terrorism operation are based in Niamey, Niger. Source  http://magharebia.com/en_GB/articles/awi/newsbriefs/general/2014/03/07/newsbrief-03

Up to 12 'terrorists' in Mali killed by French forces

Image
Paris (AFP) - As many as 12 fighters from the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group have been killed in a counter-terrorism operation by French forces in Mali who used drones to track down the Jihadists, France's defence minister said Thursday. The offensive took place Tuesday night in northeastern Mali, Jean-Yves Drian said. Separately, a UN source confirmed that "a very large French operation" in the area had taken place. The AQIM fighters were spotted by French forces operating the US-made Reaper drones, Drian said, confirming a report which had appeared in the daily Le Figaro. "These are the drones which the French army now has in place which allows us to identify these groups," said Drian. Ministerial sources said the those killed belonged to the AQIM group, operating in a mountainous region of northeastern Mali. According to the same source, use of the drones -- as well as Mirage 2000 fighter jets and military helicopters -- underlined the increasin

Civil war, secession and the body politic

Image
Working with young people is important in any society. The recent story of an unusual Chechen initiative demonstrates why functional governance has so spectacularly failed to take root during the last 23 years. ‘Youth mobilisation’ is a constant theme in my work in the North Caucasus. It’s what the international aid agencies have been doing for a decade or more, it’s the local NGOs’ bread and butter, it’s on every regional government’s agenda and nowhere is it higher than in Chechnya, which spends 2% of its budget on youth policy – more than anywhere else in Russia. Even the federal government does its bit, funding the Mashuk summer camp, which brings together 3000 ‘young leaders’ from the region every year for a mix of patriotic pep talks, workshops and experiments with ethnic coexistence in close quarters. These are often well-meant, earnest affairs, run by people who genuinely care; and yet, they tend to fall flat. You pick 25 ‘young leaders’ from village schools, put them through a

Feminist peacebuilding - a courageous intelligence

There are patriarchal reasons why women are disproportionately made to suffer in wars. It should not be surprising that women are disproportionately active in resisting and challenging violence, wars and armed oppression, says Rebecca Johnson. “ As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world .” (Virginia Woolf ) On Monday, the British Library hosted a meeting on  “Sisterhood: Greenham in Common” . This brought together film director Beeban Kidron (now a baroness in the House of ‘Lords’); Labour MP Dame Joan Ruddock, former Chair of CND; Sasha Roseneil, Professor of Sociology and Social Theory at the University of London’s Birkbeck Institute, and me. Each of us was involved with the Greenham Common Women’s  Peace Camp  in the 1980s – in rather different ways. The panellists and several audience members commented how Greenham – “the largest feminist social movement in recent times” has been almost completely left out of mainstream histories and retrospective prog

Sri Lanka: women in conflict

Image
What happened to the aspirations of Tamil women in the national liberation struggle which lasted nearly 30 years? Rahila Gupta covered the conflict in the mid-80s, and reflects on the situation today when the war appears to be decisively over, but the post-war reality remains as harrowing as ever, particularly for women. On 8th March 2014,  Sri Lankan Tamil women will form a contingent to join the million women rise  march  in central London with a banner declaring, ‘Raped, Abused, Widowed and Forgotten: Tamil Women in Sri Lanka Still in Tears’. What happened to the aspirations of Tamil women in the national liberation struggle which lasted nearly 30 years? I covered the beginnings of this conflict for Outwrite, a feminist anti-racist newspaper in the mid-80s, and it  is particularly poignant to return to this issue when the war appears to be decisively over but the post-war situation remains as harrowing as ever, particularly for women. As with all ex-colonies of Britain, Sri Lanka wa

Soldiers killed in attack on Yemen base

Image
- Al Jazeera English One attacker and two soldiers killed in assault carried out by suspected al-Qaeda fighters. Fighters suspected of being associated with al-Qaeda have fired rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machineguns at a military base in southern Yemen, killing two soldiers guarding its gate, a senior military official has said. Brigadier General Mohammed Abdullah, commander of the army's 115th Brigade, said that one of the attackers, a Saudi national, was killed in Saturday morning's attack on his unit's base in the southern town of Lawder in Abyan province, the Associated Press news agency reported. The general also said that two Yemeni nationals were arrested. Yemen's al-Qaeda branch, also known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is considered by the US to be the group's most dangerous offshoot. The group seized large swaths of southern Yemen after the country's 2011 uprising. A US-backed military offensive later drove fighters out of main cities

Ex-rebel poised to win El Salvador presidency

Polls indicate that left-leaning ex-guerrilla Sanchez Ceren is set for victory in runoff vote. A former Marxist rebel who has promised to continue the government's popular social programmes is poised to win El Salvador's presidential election runoff on Sunday, giving the ruling party a second consecutive term. Most polls show Salvador Sanchez Ceren, 69, of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, with a lead that ranges from 10 to 18 percentage points ahead of San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano, the candidate of the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as ARENA, the Associated Press news agency reported. Quijano, 67, campaigned with Cold War references to the country's 12-year civil war, in which the United States backed the Salvadoran government against the FMLN to stop the spread of communism in Latin America. Quijano said Sanchez Ceren, one of the top rebel commanders, would take the Central American country down a communist path and invoked

Sri Lanka mass grave 'on old burial site'

Work on grave site suspended after official says it pre-dates war during which both sides were accused of atrocities. Sri Lankan authorities have halted excavations in a suspected mass grave after suspicions that 83 skeletons unearthed from the former northern war zone may date to before the war against Tamil rebels. The Sri Lankan army has been accused of killing tens of thousands of civilians in 2009, during the final weeks of the 26-year war against northern Tamil separatists who had sought a separate state to represent their ethnic minority. Colombo has been under pressure to investigate reports of mass graves there. Police at first suggested the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) separatists could be responsible for the burial site near a Hindu temple in the northwestern town of Mannar, which was the fist to be uncovered since the war came to an end almost five years ago. But Senerath Dissanayake, director general of the state-run archaeological department, said it was not a

Mpls. Somali Youth Group Fights Al-Shabab With Documentary

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO)  — A small Minneapolis-based youth group is taking on one of the world’s leading terrorist groups. Al-Shabab is an Al-Qaeda-linked terror organization that has successfully recruited more than a dozen young Twin Cities men to join in their fight. It’s also the group behind the deadly siege at a shopping center in Kenya last year. Al-Shabab uses Internet videos to convince Minnesota men to come back to Somalia. But now, a Somali youth group is fighting back with a documentary of their own. “Somebody has to step up. Somebody has to take the leadership in terms of going against the cancerous ideology that these folks promote,” Mohamed Farah, Ka Joog’s executive director, said. Until recently, their group, called  Ka Joog , was best known for programs like its youth camps for Minnesota’s growing Somali population. But the group’s concern about Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabab peaked this summer when the terror group released a documentary called “The Minnesota Martyrs.” The docume

Al-Shabab 'retreats' in battle for town

Spokesman for African Union forces in Somalia says al-Qaeda-linked group was driven from Hudur, a statement it denies. Ethiopian and Somali forces have taken a strategic regional capital from the al-Qaeda-linked rebel group al-Shabab, a spokesman for the UN-backed soldiers has told Al Jazeera. Colonel Ali Aden Houmed, a spokesman for the African Union Mission in Somalia, said on Friday that Hudur, the capital of Bakool province, "is in our hands and free of al-Shabab".  Houmed said the rebel group tried to resist before its forces retreated. "They tried to fight, they lost and ran away. Three soldiers from the Somali national army sustained small injuries. No casualty on AMISOM side." But a spokesman for the rebel group denied those claims. "Nothing changed. Hudur is still in our hands. They are 10km outside the town. They are shelling the town's residents," said Sheikh Abdiaziz Abu Muscab, the military spokesman for al-Shabab. Residents fled the town

IRS Employing Convict Prosecuted for Tipping Off Al-Qaeda Suspect, Wrecking Terrorism Investigation

Prepare to be enraged — make that more enraged — over the IRS. At  PJM , my buddy Patrick Poole breaks important news: It turns out that while the tax agency was targeting conservative groups for special investigative scrutiny, it was also giving a pass to a terrorism facilitator: The IRS hired,  and is reportedly to this day still employing as a “financial-management analyst,” a former police officer who had been convicted by the Justice Department for tipping off a terrorism suspect — a close associate of top al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki — to the FBI’s surveillance of the suspect.  Patrick writes: Weiss Russell (he has changed his name from “Weiss Rasool,” the name under which he was convicted), is currently employed as a Financial Management Analyst in the IRS Deputy Chief Financial Officer’s office. In 2008, Russell/Rasool was prosecuted for his role in tipping off Abdullah Alnoshan, a close associate of al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and a friend of Russell’s from their mos

Lifting of arrest warrant vs MILF leaders lauded

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Local officials were elated with the court's lifting of a controversial warrant for the arrest of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) leaders who were charged with criminal offenses by Andal Ampatuan Sr. for being hostile to his administration while he was governor of the province. Among those that benefited from the court’s action was Ustadz Wahid Tundok, chief of the MILF’s 118th Base Command, who was arrested last week in Cotabato City, and detained by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group for three days at the Army’s Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in the province. The lifting of the warrant for Tundok’s arrest, along with many other MILF members, was authorized by Judge George Jabido of the Regional Trial Court Branch 13 in Cotabato City. Tundok told reporters he was grateful to the Army’s 6th Infantry Division for treating him “humanely” at Camp Siongco following his arrest, while the government and MILF’s ceasefire committee sought