After serious disagreements with Hezbollah and Hamas militants in Gaza Strip, Al-Qaeda does no longer consider itself a leader of the Arab resistance to the American influence in this region. Al Qaeda has settled down in Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, currently the front of struggle against NATO and the Hindus, who are hated by Pakistan extremists no less than Israelis are hated by Bin Laden Pravda.Ru reports.

Besides, Al Qaeda is trying to gain access to Pakistani nuclear weapons to "use them against Americans," a top commander of Al-Qaeda has recently said to Al Jazeera channel. Although these nuclear weapons are well protected and, technically, disassembled and stored in different places, a possibility of Al Qaeda seizing the weapons should not be ruled out.

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Alexander Bortnikov, the FSS [Federal Security Service] of Russia director, stated the Georgian side helps Al-Qaeda to transfer terrorists to the North Caucasus, to Chechnya. "Audio evidence seized from insurgents shows that, together with emissaries of Al-Qaeda, they had contacts with representatives of the Georgian secret services", Bortnikov claimed Georgia Times reports.

Through these links , Georgia "participated in the training and transfer of terrorists to the territory of Chechnya," the FSB chief said - AFP. He also mentioned that Georgia constantly tried to deliver weapons, explosive matters and financing for conducting subversions at the secret objects of Dagestan. "They perpetually undertake to deliver weapons, explosives and financing for subversive acts on high security sites in Dagestan -- first and foremost on oil and gas pipelines," he said.

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Al-Qaeda posed a threat to China for the first time, promising to organize acts of terrorism against Chinese workers in Northern Africa in revenge for the death of Moslems-Uygurs. Al-Qaeda threats followed the disorders in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China during the last week. 184 persons were killed and 1,680 wounded in the riots Pravda.Ru reports.

They were mostly the Chinese who fell victims of the Uigurs, but international terrorist network Al-Qaeda promised to revenge the PRC for the death of the Uigurs during recent interethnic collisions in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

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September 11, 2009 marks eight years since the day of tremendous terrorist attacks in the United States. The tragic events still raise many questions. Why did the twin towers collapse if they were built to stand a much stronger blow? How did some of the "suicide bombers" remain alive afterwards? Where is the clear footage of the plane crashing on the Pentagon? Pravda.Ru reports.

2,973 people were killed in the series of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Two twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City tumbled down as a result of the attacks. A part of the Pentagon building was demolished in Washington. The WTC used to be a symbol of power of the United States during the end of the 20^{th century. The towers were built in the beginning of the 1960s to show something grand to Americans and make them feel proud of their nation.}

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To state that International Terrorism does not exist, is dangerous because it is untrue. To state that International Islamist Terrorism exists as a structured organism with a command and control apparatus that poses a serious danger seems unrealistic. To state that the Islamist Terrorist threat will be easily destroyed in a question of a few years is simplistic.

What is the difference between a terrorist and a common murderer? The first has a cause and claims to fight for an ideal, and murders. The second murders. The first murders indiscriminately, not caring whether his/her victims are men, women or children. The second is more likely to target fellow criminals, people associated with him/herself, and most likely, adult males.

Therefore we see that there is nothing heroic about the terrorist, for the terrorist fights from under cover, perpetrates his attacks against the defenceless, against innocent members of society and only makes his presence known moments before it is too late to do anything about it. Nothing brave, nothing courageous, nothing mystical, nothing manly.

International terrorism

In a sense, to have a cause, a terrorist organization must necessarily have a broad base of support among a sector of society, be this within a state or at a supra-national level. In the 1970s and 1980s, the IRA enjoyed support and financing not only within Ulster and to a certain extent in the Republic of Ireland, but fundamentally from the Irish diaspora in the USA, where well-wishing NORAID contributors in New York in fact were funding terrorist attacks.

The same attacks were to go full swing and hit New York in the face on 9/11. While there was a certain amount of covert collusion among the Celtic terrorist movements, the IRA in Northern Ireland/UK and the Armee Revolutionnaire Bretonne (ARB), in Brittany, France, there was far more collaboration between ARB and the Basque separatists, ETA, in the 1980s and 1990s and during these decades, in Europe, International Terrorism was reduced to supplies of semtex explosives and financing operations.

The real international terrorism however was being fostered by those who supported Islamic extremist movements in Central Asia creating movements hostile to the Soviet Union. To make the break from simply Islamic (following Islam) to Islamist (radical Islam), these movements needed - and found - a common focal point in Wahhabism, a movement based around a stricter following of the Qu'ran, as professed by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), and which identified as 'takfir' those whose behavior was considered anti-(Orthodox) Islamic.

What had been largely a Saudi religious, social and cultural phenomenon, gained roots elsewhere in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Russia's southern flank (Chechen Wahhabis and the Mujaheddin movement, launched from the Madrassah of Pakistan with the CIA's total and wholesome support).

To claim that the United States of America created a monster by meddling in complex issues entirely beyond the grasp of those who dictated the country's external politics (traditionally business lobbies not known for their cultural interests and more famous for chortling clubbishly while peppering each other's buttocks with buckshot) would be an understatement. Washington created the Mujaheddin, Washington used bin Laden, directly or not. Yet to claim Washington knowingly created the Taliban and Al Qaeda is an overstatement as unfair as it is untrue. The monster was created when the Mujahedin Jihad leadership (Maktab al-Khadamat) morphed into Al Qaeda. By then the master had lost control.

From Wahhabism to Al Qaeda

If Wahhabism was to Islam what the Presbyterian or Quaker movements were to Christianity (and one must take into account the socio-cultural-historical comparative vectors followed by both religions over the time of their evolution), then bin Laden, and Al Qaeda, if not the Taliban themselves, have committed the same psychopathic blasphemous mistakes as countless Christian heretics have done. For Usama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden and Al Qaeda (the Islamists), the takfir is now the enemy, the infidel, the non-follower of the word...dictated by the Islamists.

Yet it was precisely in the CIA/bin Laden Afghanistan Jihad launched against the Soviet Union, where the roots of Islamist International Terrorism lie, for bin Laden, Ayman al- Zawahiri and Mullah Omar were the focal point around which Islamic zealots from Chechnya, from Uzbekhistan, from Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere gathered, first to form the Mujahedin. After a period of in-fighting among various factions, the Pashtun-based Taliban movement appeared dominant and this was the eventual winner emerging from the struggle, which bin Laden latched his Al-Qaeda onto. Or rather, the leaders of the Jihad became Al Qaeda (1988-1990) and the Taliban became their foot soldiers...without necessarily being one and the same thing at the beginning and over the past decade, far from it, with the Taliban and Afghan warlords having their hands firmly on the revenue from opium production and these days sectors of the Taliban movement being poised to return to Government. The divorce between the Taliban and Al Qaeda appears to be more or less complete and final.

How dangerous, how real?

The debate rages on about how true it is that a chain of command and control can be linked directly from New York/Washington to the mountains of Afghanistan, about the role the diverse American and foreign agencies inside and outside the USA played in the outrage which was 9/11. As usual, the victims were innocent civilians going about their daily lives.

If in 2001 Al Qaeda had the capacity to perform the most spectacular marketing coup in the history of terrorism (9/11), building on its previous attacks (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998; Aden, Yemen in 2000), since then it has been perpetrating ever more rudimentary, though deadly, events: Istanbul, Turkey 2003; Madrid 2004, London, 2005 being the most widely referred yet since 2001, no less than 14,776 terrorist attacks have been carried out by Islamists, murdering 60,000 people and injuring 90,000 others in the widest myriad of geographical destinations.

While the spectacular terrorist events make the front pages due to the appalling effectiveness of their atrocities, the thousands of others which murder a handful of people or injure a few kids do not, unless they take place in Western Europe or the USA or against their interests.

Increased intelligence and covert operations by the authorities and increased vigilance by common citizens (the front line in the fight against terrorism) have reduced Al Qaeda's intercontinental operating strategy to the realms of the lone, demented shoe bomber and some poor mixed-up Nigerian kid who set fire to his underpants.

Those who compare these events with the strategic brilliance of the 9/11 operation (however horrific its effects may have been) conclude that the capacity of Far Enemy Jihadism to strike successfully at massive targets has waned.

Conclusions

It is clear that International Islamist Terrorism exists and continues to pose a potential threat, while increased attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan on its leadership, and intelligence elsewhere, has seen Al Qaeda's ability to constitute the level of effectiveness it had from 1998 to 2001 reduced to crude attacks with little more than home-made equipment and far more Islamist terrorist attacks being perpetrated against regional competitors than against international foes.

International, yes. Dangerous, yes. Real, yes. Room for complacency, no. But does the spectre of an Al-Qaeda capable of carrying out massive terrorist strikes still exist? Time will tell. Until then, vigilance and intelligence at all levels, down to the common citizens, is the best form of prevention, while at a higher level, the leadership of the cause can be undermined through dialogue, through political inclusion and addressing the heart of the problem with a single weight and measure: the question of the Middle East.

The bottom line underpinning all of these strategies is to deprive the leadership of its foot-soldiers and this can only come through development. While the Soviet Union was internationalising development, the West was doing what it could to sabotage its models. The need for development is the constant factor in the fight against international terrorism.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

What makes the son of a successful Nigerian businessman set fire to his groin in an aircraft full of passengers? What makes the authorities allow someone who was on a list of suspects to board a passenger aircraft in the first place? And what exactly do these young men hope to achieve?

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had everything to live for, going by the standards of most human beings on this planet. He had an education, studied abroad, travelled, his family had money, he had a future. He tried to make his mark. He could have done it through studying, he could have done it through a professional career.

Instead he chose the path of terrorism. True, its marketing impact is tremendous. True, 9/11 put Usama bin Laden on the map.  And true, a nobody can become a somebody if he is given a cause to fight for. It depends on the cause.

And here is where I address you, Al Qaeda, its leaders and all those young men and women who want to feel special by committing outrages against fellow human beings. International journalism gave me a name and PRAVDA.Ru gave me a voice, which is only after all what you are seeking for.

Yet while I try to make a name and a career and a living by working hard, you sell your souls to the Devil. You sell your souls to those who have managed to manipulate you, make you believe in a cause which does not, and never will, exist and you sell your souls to those who insult Mohammed and Islam by their very existence and way of being.

You sell your souls to those who use mentally retarded individuals as suicide bombers, you sell your souls and your lives and your futures to unscrupulous cowards who make a comfortable living at the expense of others, including the lives of women, children and babies.

Is it heroic to destroy yourself, along with a few dozens of civilians? (These days the casualties are more and more reduced). Is it heroic to blow yourself up on an aircraft? Or to burn your groin because your "handlers" were so inept that they gave you PETN, which is practically impossible to detonate without a charge?

Do you believe you have a heroic cause when the majority of Al Qaeda attacks are sugar-and-weedkiller type rudimentary devices which more often than not cause severe burns to the idiot who was stupid enough to be talked in to killing himself and not the supposed victims?

Do you believe you create anything more than slight annoyance among airline passengers? Annoyance we have our hand luggage restricted, annoyance at yet more delays and annoyance that we cannot use the toilets when we want. Nothing more than that. People used aircraft before 9/11 and they have continued to use them in increasing numbers since then.

We, the thinking members of the international community, do not hate you, we do not despise you. We feel sorry for you because you are the victims, you are the ones whose lives and futures are being stolen away from you by those who sell you a warped and wrong image of Islam and use you to do the deeds they themselves are too cowardly to perform.

All you manage to do is basically to create a negative image of the religion and cause you aim to support. All you manage to do is to spread the idea that Islam is about hatred, intolerance and violence, which it is not. Have you actually read the Qu'ran? I have.

So when you are approached by these cowards, who prey on the debile, who prey on the weak and who prey on the defenceless to kill women, children and babies by proxy (for which as you will know if you read the Qu'ran, Allah will condemn you) think about two things.

Rather than turn your hatred against sweeping generalist notions such as "the Westerners", turn it against those who by using you insult your families, insult your mothers and insult Islam itself. Tell them to do it, as if they had the courage. But they will not because they want you do perform the outrage. Why? Because they are snivelling cowards, because they make millions out of trafficking guns and drugs and because they want to take away your life and future and gain reputations and fortunes through your family's loss.

And secondly if you really want to go and meet your seventy virgins, which I assure you do not exist (if you were real men you'd have them here on Earth and even if they did, how would you be in a state to do anything with them if you blow yourself up?), then go to a deserted area, strap the explosives to yourself, activate the detonator and get it over with.

The people you aim to hurt are decent, nice people. They have their families, their children and their loved ones. They like to laugh, they like to smile. And they would probably love you if they knew you. Those cowards who send you to your death do not and never will. They take away your lives on Earth and sell your soul to the Devil. You disappear. They stay. And they laugh at your stupidity and weakness.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

PRAVDA.Ru

Russian special services disclosed monstrous designs of international terrorist network al-Qaeda. The organization intended to conduct a series of terrorist attacks in Russia during the celebration of the Orthodox Easter Pravda.Ru reports.

Terrorists planned to explode a building of the Federal Security Bureau in Moscow, a building of an aircraft-making association and a tank-yard in Kazan. They also planned to assassinate a high-ranking FSB official, Boris G.

Russian special services left no chances to the terrorists. Eight al-Qaeda members have made their way to Kazan using fake passports. Three of the terrorists are Russians.