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Why Salafist-takfiris should worry us


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247422-why-salafist-takfiris-should-worry-us.ashx#axzz2tLnmjlZtDaily Star:

Rami G. Khouri

February 15, 2014

 

Several months ago when I wrote about the looming danger of the growing strength of Salafist-takfiri groups in Iraq and Syria, I focused on the threats that thousands of their fighters, bombers and terrorists posed to those countries and also to other lands where they would travel in due course.

 

Both the scale and threat of the Salafist-takfiri enterprise in the Middle East are now much more significant, because they control more territory, they can assault many foes across Syria, Lebanon and Iraq as a single operational theater; they have expanded to comprise tens of thousands of adherents; the conditions that brought them to prominence persist; and they have yet to face an enemy that is willing or able to eradicate them.

 

I wondered months ago whether we would soon see some coordinated action by regional and foreign powers to redress the danger posed by such groups as the Nusra Front, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), Ahrar al-Sham and many others that were both locally anchored and also pan-Islamic like Al-Qaeda. Some focus on fighting President Bashar Assad’s regime, Hezbollah and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government in Iraq, while others are content to carve out territory that they can transform into their imagined pure Islamic society. This is an ever-changing universe of identities and allegiances among Salafist-takfiri groups that evolve over time, as some merge into larger umbrella coalitions. More recently, some such organizations have also fought each other, especially as some Syria-based groups have pushed back the aggressive expansion of ISIS.

 

The frightening thing about the growth of these groups is what they tell us about the condition of societies in the Levant and other Arab countries.....(Snip)


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Counter-Terrorism: The Seething Valleys Of Central Asia

February 15, 2014:

 

Despite being the northern neighbor of Afghanistan and part of a key drug smuggling route, Tajikistan has managed to keep al Qaeda under control. In 2013 the security forces arrested 118 suspected Islamic terrorists. Early in 2013 ten men were arrested and found with weapons and documents indicating plans to carry out terror attacks in the Tajik capital, as part of an effort to disrupt the up elections in November. No such disruption occurred. Meanwhile most of what Islamic terrorist activity there is takes place in a few areas.

 

In Tajikistan and throughout Central Asia its the thickly populated river valleys that tend to be where the Islamic radicals get established and become dangerous, and that has been going on in Tajikistan since 2008. In the Rasht Valley near the Afghan border troops have frequently found caches of weapons and medical supplies. These apparently belonged to Islamic radical groups preparing to hunker down for the Winter. These Islamic radical groups mostly come from Afghanistan and Pakistan and are usually associated with al Qaeda and the Taliban.

 

(Snip)

 

The Rasht Valley is not the only place where Islamic terrorists have been active. Further north there is a much larger valley with much more potential for becoming an Islamic terrorist hot spot. There is growing unrest in the lush Fergana Valley of Central Asia. The valley is 300 kilometers long, 70 kilometers wide, and comprises 22,000 square kilometers (8,900 square limes) fed by two rivers. It is a very large oasis in an otherwise semi-desert region. The densely populated valley is home for 11 million (25 percent Kyrgyz Turk, 19 percent Tajik, and 56 percent Uzbek Turk). The Uzbeks see the Kyrgyz and Tajik as interlopers (courtesy of the Soviet Union era borders) in what they consider a Uzbek valley. Meanwhile, the Uzbeks are divided into several factions who have not historically gotten along but are now united in a desire to control the entire valley. That is a possibility, as Uzbekistan has a population of 30 million compared to Kyrgyzstan with six million and Tajikistan with eight million. But all three countries are poor, although per capital income in Uzbekistan (about $1,800 a year) is about fifty percent higher than the other two.

 

(Snip)

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