Saturday, January 12, 2013 2:05:33 AM
France Battling Islamists in Mali
Romaric Hien/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Fighters of the hard-line Salafi group Ansar Dine in August. The group has controlled Timbuktu and much of northern Mali since a coup d’état and a successful revolt against the central authority in March.
By ADAM NOSSITER and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: January 11, 2013
BAMAKO, Mali — The international standoff with Islamists controlling northern Mali took a decisive turn on Friday, as French forces engaged in an intense battle to beat back an aggressive militant push into the center of the country.
Responding to an urgent plea for help from the Malian government, French troops carried out airstrikes against Islamist fighters, blunting an advance by hundreds of heavily armed extremists, according to French officials and Gen. Carter F. Ham, the top American military commander in Africa. One French helicopter had apparently been downed in the fighting, he said.
The Pentagon is now weighing a broad range of options to support the French effort, including enhanced intelligence-sharing and logistics support, but it is not considering sending American troops, General Ham said.
The sudden introduction of Western troops upends months of tortured debate over how — and when — foreign nations should confront the Islamist seizure of northern Mali. The Obama administration and governments around world have long been alarmed that a vast territory roughly twice the size of Germany could so easily fall into the hands of extremists, calling it a safe haven where terrorists were building their ranks and seeking to extend their influence throughout the region and beyond.
Yet for months, the Islamists have appeared increasingly unshakable in their stronghold, carrying out public amputations, whippings and stonings as the weak Malian army retreated south and African nations debated how to find money and soldiers to recapture the territory.
All of that changed this week, when the Islamists suddenly charged southward with a force of 800 to 900 fighters in 50 to 200 vehicles, taking over a frontier town that had been the de facto line of government control, according to General Ham and a Western diplomat. Worried that there was little to stop the militants from storming ever further into Mali, France .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/france/index.html?inline=nyt-geo .. — for the second time in less than two years — intervened with guns and bombs into a former African colony rent by turmoil.
“French forces brought their support this afternoon to Malian Army units to fight against terrorist elements,” President François Hollande .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/francois_hollande/index.html?inline=nyt-per .. of France said in a statement to reporters in Paris on Friday, noting that the operation would “last as long as necessary.”
“The terrorists should know that France will always be there,” he added.
Sanda Ould Boumana, a spokesman for Ansar Dine, one of the Islamist groups that controls northern Mali along with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda_in_the_islamic_maghreb/index.html?inline=nyt-org , known as A.Q.I.M., and its allies, insisted in a telephone interview that the militants had held their ground.
“Some planes came and bombed some civilians,” he said. “A woman was killed. It’s a well-known scenario. There wasn’t even combat. Planes bombed a mosque. That’s it.”
Mr. Boumana called the intervention illegal, saying the French had “come to support a bunch of murderers. That’s France, and that’s the West. We are not surprised.”
Malian officials in the capital, Bamako, called the French military strike a welcome shift in the standoff.
“It was evident that the Malian Army would never have been able to handle this,” said Tiébilé Dramé, a leading opposition politician. “The French intervention goes beyond what was hoped for. No one was expecting things would go this quickly. France had said it wouldn’t intervene, and Malians were hoping for a rapid intervention.”
Why the Islamists provoked a military strike by capturing the village of Konna on Thursday, a possible prelude to attacking bigger towns on their way to the capital, more than 300 miles away, remained unclear. They were not facing a military intervention for many months, and even then it was not expected to include Western forces.
“Was this a move by A.Q.I.M. toward Bamako? Were they making a move to simply strengthen negotiating position, to gain a little more territory?” General Ham said. “The real question is, now what?” he said, adding that discussions were now under way among Washington, Paris and African governments in the region.
The big prize the Islamists evidently sought — capturing the major Malian government airfield nearby in Sévaré, which is vital for any military intervention in the north of Mali — seemed to be outside their grasp on Friday.
But while senior Malian officers heralded their new military “partners on the ground,” some warned that the Islamists remained strong and could still press forward. “It’s temporary,” said one officer, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “They have the means to advance.”
Holding off the Islamists, moreover, is a far cry from retaking the north. While tens of thousands of civilians have fled the area, many others remain in the ancient city of Timbuktu and other towns under Islamist control, leaving them highly vulnerable in the event urban warfare breaks out.
Beyond that, extremists in the north, who finance themselves in part by kidnapping and ransoming foreigners, are still holding more than a dozen hostages and have sometimes threatened to kill them if an attack takes place.
Still, Western and Malian officials said the French assault had changed the dynamic of the conflict, accelerating plans for a broader military strategy.
“What’s sure now is that things will not happen as we thought they would a month ago,” said a Western diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “We’ve told Ecowas countries to accelerate preparations to send troops,” he added, referring to the 15-member Economic Community of West African States .. http://www.ecowas.int/ , which has agreed to provide an intervention force.
France has a long history of expeditionary military actions in its former African colonies. Mr. Hollande had said that France would not send troops into combat in Mali until Friday, when it seemed that the government in Bamako might collapse. But the French had positioned military contingents near Mali, with deployments in Senegal, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast, for example. There were also persistent reports that French special forces were in Mali.
Under Mr. Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, France also carried out airstrikes to dislodge Ivory Coast’s strongman, Laurent Gbagbo, in 2011, bringing a quick end to a bloody four-month civil war precipitated by Mr. Gbagbo’s refusal to leave office after an electoral defeat.
Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako and Eric Schmitt from Niamey, Niger. Rick
Gladstone contributed reporting from New York, and Scott Sayare from Paris.
A version of this article appeared in print on January 12, 2013, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: France Battling Islamists in Mali .
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/world/africa/mali-islamist-rebels-france.html?_r=0
"The third tier incorporates more than a dozen allied groups that remain formally independent but work with al Qaeda on operations when their interests converge. One example is Pakistan's Tehrik-i-Taliban, which, though focused on South Asia, has been involved in terrorist plots overseas, notably the failed 2010 attack in Times Square. Al Qaeda has assisted in several Tehrik-i-Taliban-led attacks, including the May 2011 siege of the Pakistan Navy's Mehran naval base in Karachi. In Nigeria, the Salafi group Boko Haram has emerged as an increasingly deadly threat -- most spectacularly killing more than 200 people in January -- and has also developed relations with al Qaeda. Since 2009, according to U.S. government officials in the region, Boko Haram operatives have traveled to Mali to train with members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in explosives manufacturing and suicide attacks."
======
Study: Muslim extremists not looking for world domination
ASU researchers highlight one effort to counter a video by al Qaeda's leader Ayman
al-Zawahiri as a better approach to fighting extremist rhetoric
By Adam Levine - July 10th, 2012 12:01 AM ET
Muslim extremists are more concerned with defending against foreign intrusion than foisting Islam on the world, according to a new study of extremist texts. The study suggests that a Western approach of claiming extremists are seeking world domination is misdirected, and instead should seek to counteract claims of victimhood.
"Continued claims to the contrary, by both official and unofficial sources, only play into a 'clash of civilizations' narrative that benefits the extremist cause. These claims also undermine the credibility of Western voices, because the audience knows that extremist arguments are really about victimage and deliverance," write the researchers, Jeffry Halverson, R. Bennett Furlow and Steven Corman.
The analysis by Arizona State University's Center for Strategic Communication looked at how the Quran was used in 2,000 propoganda items from 1998 to 2011, though the majority were from post-2007, that emanated mostly from the Middle East and North Africa. Among the groups analyzed were al Qaeda and al Shabaab, as well as anonymous postings online.
One result that surprised the researchers, the "near absence" of citations from one of the most extreme passages, the "Verse of Swords," that encourages "all-out war against world domination."
"Widely regarded as the most militant or violent passage of the Quran, it is treated as a divine call for offensive warfare on a global scale," the researchers wrote. "It is also regarded as a verse which supersedes over 100 other verses of the Quran that counsel patience, tolerance and forgiveness."
The study concludes that extremists, at least based on how they quote from the Quran, do not reflect "an aggressive offensive foe seeking domination and conquest of unbelievers, as is commonly assumed. Instead they deal with themes of victimization, dishonor and retribution."
"The verses frequently utilized by extremists from this surah address subjects such as enduring hardships and the importance of fighting against the unjust unbelievers who oppress men, women and children," the researchers wrote about the most cited chapter (called a "surah").
The insights led the researchers to suggest alternative approaches to counteracting the extremist messages, rather than focusing on the fear factor. The Arizona group cites a recent effort by the State Department to counteract al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who said in a 2011 video that "there is no hope to remove the corrupt regimes in Muslim countries except by force. And there is no chance to bring change through peaceful action." The State Department Digital Outreach Team posted a video intercutting that video, which included Zawahiri daring someone to find a single example to prove Zawahiri wrong, with video of Arab Spring protesters in Egypt.
Halverson, Bennett and Corman also suggest undermining the "champion" image aspired to by extremists.
Extremists use a "deliverance narrative to position themselves as the champion that can deliver the community from evil," the researchers wrote. "However, as we have argued elsewhere, extremists do little that is champion-like. They have not unseated any apostate rulers, and their victims are overwhelmingly likely to be Muslims."
The study cites data from the West Point Combating Terrorism Center that estimated al Qaeda militants were 38 times more likely to kill a Muslim than a Westerner, based on data from 2006 to 2008.
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/10/study-muslim-extremists-not-looking-for-world-domination/
If we had not invaded Iraq? ... the memory of reading of the ordinary Saudi family man who said he went to fight in Iraq because of the invasion always comes into my head at times like this .. i can't think how this mess will ever end with us creating more terrorists every hour ..
Romaric Hien/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Fighters of the hard-line Salafi group Ansar Dine in August. The group has controlled Timbuktu and much of northern Mali since a coup d’état and a successful revolt against the central authority in March.
By ADAM NOSSITER and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: January 11, 2013
BAMAKO, Mali — The international standoff with Islamists controlling northern Mali took a decisive turn on Friday, as French forces engaged in an intense battle to beat back an aggressive militant push into the center of the country.
Responding to an urgent plea for help from the Malian government, French troops carried out airstrikes against Islamist fighters, blunting an advance by hundreds of heavily armed extremists, according to French officials and Gen. Carter F. Ham, the top American military commander in Africa. One French helicopter had apparently been downed in the fighting, he said.
The Pentagon is now weighing a broad range of options to support the French effort, including enhanced intelligence-sharing and logistics support, but it is not considering sending American troops, General Ham said.
The sudden introduction of Western troops upends months of tortured debate over how — and when — foreign nations should confront the Islamist seizure of northern Mali. The Obama administration and governments around world have long been alarmed that a vast territory roughly twice the size of Germany could so easily fall into the hands of extremists, calling it a safe haven where terrorists were building their ranks and seeking to extend their influence throughout the region and beyond.
Yet for months, the Islamists have appeared increasingly unshakable in their stronghold, carrying out public amputations, whippings and stonings as the weak Malian army retreated south and African nations debated how to find money and soldiers to recapture the territory.
All of that changed this week, when the Islamists suddenly charged southward with a force of 800 to 900 fighters in 50 to 200 vehicles, taking over a frontier town that had been the de facto line of government control, according to General Ham and a Western diplomat. Worried that there was little to stop the militants from storming ever further into Mali, France .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/france/index.html?inline=nyt-geo .. — for the second time in less than two years — intervened with guns and bombs into a former African colony rent by turmoil.
“French forces brought their support this afternoon to Malian Army units to fight against terrorist elements,” President François Hollande .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/francois_hollande/index.html?inline=nyt-per .. of France said in a statement to reporters in Paris on Friday, noting that the operation would “last as long as necessary.”
“The terrorists should know that France will always be there,” he added.
Sanda Ould Boumana, a spokesman for Ansar Dine, one of the Islamist groups that controls northern Mali along with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb .. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda_in_the_islamic_maghreb/index.html?inline=nyt-org , known as A.Q.I.M., and its allies, insisted in a telephone interview that the militants had held their ground.
“Some planes came and bombed some civilians,” he said. “A woman was killed. It’s a well-known scenario. There wasn’t even combat. Planes bombed a mosque. That’s it.”
Mr. Boumana called the intervention illegal, saying the French had “come to support a bunch of murderers. That’s France, and that’s the West. We are not surprised.”
Malian officials in the capital, Bamako, called the French military strike a welcome shift in the standoff.
“It was evident that the Malian Army would never have been able to handle this,” said Tiébilé Dramé, a leading opposition politician. “The French intervention goes beyond what was hoped for. No one was expecting things would go this quickly. France had said it wouldn’t intervene, and Malians were hoping for a rapid intervention.”
Why the Islamists provoked a military strike by capturing the village of Konna on Thursday, a possible prelude to attacking bigger towns on their way to the capital, more than 300 miles away, remained unclear. They were not facing a military intervention for many months, and even then it was not expected to include Western forces.
“Was this a move by A.Q.I.M. toward Bamako? Were they making a move to simply strengthen negotiating position, to gain a little more territory?” General Ham said. “The real question is, now what?” he said, adding that discussions were now under way among Washington, Paris and African governments in the region.
The big prize the Islamists evidently sought — capturing the major Malian government airfield nearby in Sévaré, which is vital for any military intervention in the north of Mali — seemed to be outside their grasp on Friday.
But while senior Malian officers heralded their new military “partners on the ground,” some warned that the Islamists remained strong and could still press forward. “It’s temporary,” said one officer, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “They have the means to advance.”
Holding off the Islamists, moreover, is a far cry from retaking the north. While tens of thousands of civilians have fled the area, many others remain in the ancient city of Timbuktu and other towns under Islamist control, leaving them highly vulnerable in the event urban warfare breaks out.
Beyond that, extremists in the north, who finance themselves in part by kidnapping and ransoming foreigners, are still holding more than a dozen hostages and have sometimes threatened to kill them if an attack takes place.
Still, Western and Malian officials said the French assault had changed the dynamic of the conflict, accelerating plans for a broader military strategy.
“What’s sure now is that things will not happen as we thought they would a month ago,” said a Western diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “We’ve told Ecowas countries to accelerate preparations to send troops,” he added, referring to the 15-member Economic Community of West African States .. http://www.ecowas.int/ , which has agreed to provide an intervention force.
France has a long history of expeditionary military actions in its former African colonies. Mr. Hollande had said that France would not send troops into combat in Mali until Friday, when it seemed that the government in Bamako might collapse. But the French had positioned military contingents near Mali, with deployments in Senegal, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast, for example. There were also persistent reports that French special forces were in Mali.
Under Mr. Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, France also carried out airstrikes to dislodge Ivory Coast’s strongman, Laurent Gbagbo, in 2011, bringing a quick end to a bloody four-month civil war precipitated by Mr. Gbagbo’s refusal to leave office after an electoral defeat.
Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako and Eric Schmitt from Niamey, Niger. Rick
Gladstone contributed reporting from New York, and Scott Sayare from Paris.
A version of this article appeared in print on January 12, 2013, on page A1 of
the New York edition with the headline: France Battling Islamists in Mali .
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/world/africa/mali-islamist-rebels-france.html?_r=0
"The third tier incorporates more than a dozen allied groups that remain formally independent but work with al Qaeda on operations when their interests converge. One example is Pakistan's Tehrik-i-Taliban, which, though focused on South Asia, has been involved in terrorist plots overseas, notably the failed 2010 attack in Times Square. Al Qaeda has assisted in several Tehrik-i-Taliban-led attacks, including the May 2011 siege of the Pakistan Navy's Mehran naval base in Karachi. In Nigeria, the Salafi group Boko Haram has emerged as an increasingly deadly threat -- most spectacularly killing more than 200 people in January -- and has also developed relations with al Qaeda. Since 2009, according to U.S. government officials in the region, Boko Haram operatives have traveled to Mali to train with members of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in explosives manufacturing and suicide attacks."
======
Study: Muslim extremists not looking for world domination
ASU researchers highlight one effort to counter a video by al Qaeda's leader Ayman
al-Zawahiri as a better approach to fighting extremist rhetoric
By Adam Levine - July 10th, 2012 12:01 AM ET
Muslim extremists are more concerned with defending against foreign intrusion than foisting Islam on the world, according to a new study of extremist texts. The study suggests that a Western approach of claiming extremists are seeking world domination is misdirected, and instead should seek to counteract claims of victimhood.
"Continued claims to the contrary, by both official and unofficial sources, only play into a 'clash of civilizations' narrative that benefits the extremist cause. These claims also undermine the credibility of Western voices, because the audience knows that extremist arguments are really about victimage and deliverance," write the researchers, Jeffry Halverson, R. Bennett Furlow and Steven Corman.
The analysis by Arizona State University's Center for Strategic Communication looked at how the Quran was used in 2,000 propoganda items from 1998 to 2011, though the majority were from post-2007, that emanated mostly from the Middle East and North Africa. Among the groups analyzed were al Qaeda and al Shabaab, as well as anonymous postings online.
One result that surprised the researchers, the "near absence" of citations from one of the most extreme passages, the "Verse of Swords," that encourages "all-out war against world domination."
"Widely regarded as the most militant or violent passage of the Quran, it is treated as a divine call for offensive warfare on a global scale," the researchers wrote. "It is also regarded as a verse which supersedes over 100 other verses of the Quran that counsel patience, tolerance and forgiveness."
The study concludes that extremists, at least based on how they quote from the Quran, do not reflect "an aggressive offensive foe seeking domination and conquest of unbelievers, as is commonly assumed. Instead they deal with themes of victimization, dishonor and retribution."
"The verses frequently utilized by extremists from this surah address subjects such as enduring hardships and the importance of fighting against the unjust unbelievers who oppress men, women and children," the researchers wrote about the most cited chapter (called a "surah").
The insights led the researchers to suggest alternative approaches to counteracting the extremist messages, rather than focusing on the fear factor. The Arizona group cites a recent effort by the State Department to counteract al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who said in a 2011 video that "there is no hope to remove the corrupt regimes in Muslim countries except by force. And there is no chance to bring change through peaceful action." The State Department Digital Outreach Team posted a video intercutting that video, which included Zawahiri daring someone to find a single example to prove Zawahiri wrong, with video of Arab Spring protesters in Egypt.
Halverson, Bennett and Corman also suggest undermining the "champion" image aspired to by extremists.
Extremists use a "deliverance narrative to position themselves as the champion that can deliver the community from evil," the researchers wrote. "However, as we have argued elsewhere, extremists do little that is champion-like. They have not unseated any apostate rulers, and their victims are overwhelmingly likely to be Muslims."
The study cites data from the West Point Combating Terrorism Center that estimated al Qaeda militants were 38 times more likely to kill a Muslim than a Westerner, based on data from 2006 to 2008.
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/10/study-muslim-extremists-not-looking-for-world-domination/
If we had not invaded Iraq? ... the memory of reading of the ordinary Saudi family man who said he went to fight in Iraq because of the invasion always comes into my head at times like this .. i can't think how this mess will ever end with us creating more terrorists every hour ..
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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