In case you haven’t noticed it, please click here, here and here for an ongoing series of excellent posts by Will McCants at Jihadica on how a group of Kuwaitis transitioned “from forum fighters to foreign fighters”.
Archive for the ‘Militancy’ Category
Jihadica Scores Again
Posted in Militancy on July 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Torture Works — For al-Qaeda
Posted in Human rights, Militancy on June 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Over 40 percent of Americans think torture is fine if used on terrorists to save innocent lives, Reuters reported yesterday, quoting a new poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org.
Here’s the thing, though: it doesn’t work.
As Chris Zambelis writes in the Jonestown Terrorism Monitor:
Explicit references to accounts of torture in the region by al-Qaeda and other militants helps sustain [...]
Returning Jihadis: “The West Should Fear What It Cannot See”
Posted in Al-Qaeda, Militancy on June 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Clinton Watts looks at the Sinjar records and concludes:
Western fixation with AQ’s propaganda has resulted in over-focus on countering media outlets that likely have limited and at best a secondary recruiting impact in high foreign fighter producing cities and countries. While AQ mass media propaganda is an important factor in the war of ideas, it [...]
When Omar comes marching home
Posted in Iraq, Militancy on June 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Andrew Exum aka Abu Muqawama raises an important question in Democracy: What happens when “Omar comes marching home” — when foreign jihadis traumatised by combat in Iraq return to their home countries? The short answer is that as these countries have far fewer means of assimilating the fighters or providing them with proper psychiatric care [...]
Killing yourself in the name of a deity
Posted in Militancy on May 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Ahmed Rashid reviews seven important books on jihadi terrorism in The New York Review of Books. Money quote:
Of course al-Qaeda is still engaged in conventional guerrilla wars, fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but today, seven years after September 11, jihad for al-Qaeda and its worldwide allies increasingly means one thing—suicide bombing. This is [...]
The Bengali hand
Posted in Bangladesh, Militancy on May 16, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Unsurprisingly, police in India now suspect that the Bangladeshi militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami was behind Tuesday’s bombings in Jaipur. A good primer on HuJI, JMB and other Bengali jihadists can be found at Jamestown.
