Legion of Angels News Archive

EXCLUSIVE:

A U.S. military “Red Team” charged with challenging conventional thinking says that words like “jihad” and “Islamist” are needed in discussing 21st-century terrorism and that federal agencies that avoid the words soft-pedaled the link between religious extremism and violent acts.

“We must reject the notion that Islam and Arabic stand apart as bodies of knowledge that cannot be critiqued or discussed as elements of understanding our enemies in this conflict,” said the internal report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

The report, “Freedom of Speech in Jihad Analysis: Debunking the Myth of Offensive Words,” was written by unnamed civilian analysts and contractors for the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East and South Asia. It is thought to be the first official document to challenge those in the government who seek to downplay the role of Islam in inspiring some terrorist violence.

“The fact is our enemies cite the source of Islam as the foundation for their global jihad,” the report said. “We are left with the responsibility of portraying our enemies in an honest and accurate fashion.”

The report contributes to an ongoing debate within the U.S. government and military over the roots of terrorism, its relationship to Islam and how best to counter extremist ideology.

It cites two Bush administration documents that appear to minimize anylink between radical Islam and terrorism.

A January 2008 memorandum from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties stated that unidentified American Muslims recommended that the U.S. government avoid using the terms “jihadist,” “Islamic terrorist,” “Islamist” or “holy warrior,” asserting that would create a “negative climate” and spawn acts of harassment and discrimination.

Dan Sutherland, Homeland Security officer for civil rights and civil liberties, said the document is not department policy.

“This was a compilation of recommendations and thoughts provided to us by some prominent American Muslim thinkers and never was intended to be Department of Homeland Security policy,” he said in an interview.

“If a paper from another part of government says this doesn’t make sense, that’s a valid point. This memo is a thought piece meant to stir discussion.”

Mr. Sutherland said he agrees that a debate on terrorist terminology is needed in describing “the very serious threat we face.”

A second document mentioned by the report was developed for the State Department by the National Counterterrorism Center’s Extremist Messaging Branch.

It urges officials to use the term “violent extremist” and never to use “jihadist” because that will “legitimize” terrorists.

Michael E. Leiter, director of the counterterrorism center, questioned some of the memo’s conclusions during a July 10 Senate hearing, said spokesman Carl Kropf.

“I do think you cannot separate out the fact that the terror fight we are fighting today involves Islam as a religion,” Mr. Leiter said under questioning from Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent. He added, however, “the ideology which motivates these terrorists has very little to do in reality with the religion of Islam.”

Oneof the most sensitive issues in the new report involves the word jihad.

An Arabic word derived from the verb meaning “to strive,” it appears about 30 times in the Koran, but “the preponderance of references refer to internal striving to prove one’s piety,” said William Graham, a professor of Middle East Studies at Harvard University.

About 10 references are clearly to fighting, said Mr. Graham, who is also dean of the university’s divinity school.

The word, often translated as “holy war,” has been used in a military context throughout Muslim history, said Princeton University Professor Emeritus Bernard Lewis, a leading authority on Islam.

Several terrorist groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, include the word in their titles.

The Red Team report said jihad is an obligation of all Muslims under Islamic law and must be performed “until the whole world is under the rule of Islam.”

However, the Koran states that the embrace of Islam must be voluntary, Mr. Graham said.

Jim Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said he had no problem using words such as jihad, provided it was made clear that militant groups were misusing the terms to justify their violent actions.

“They’re not talking about jihad in a theological sense,” Mr. Zogby said. “Jihad means to struggle or strive for the good and against evil. These people are talking about violent revolution.”

Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, cautioned against interpreting the debate as a dispute between those who think Islam as a whole is bad and those who think Islam as a whole is good.

“Islam is manifestly in crisis, with bad people who are Muslims fighting against good people who are Muslims. That should be the point - how to mobilize the good people against the bad people,” Mr. Schwartz said.

The Red Team report said the government documents in question reflect “the views and opinions of a very small [number] of Americans whose contributions may have escaped critical review. … While there is concern that we not label all Muslims as Islamist terrorists, it is proper to address certain aspects of violence as uniquely Islamic,” the report says.

The report notes that some terms for terrorists, such as “Islamo-fascist,” are “conspicuously offensive.”

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent U.S. Muslim group, has argued that government terminology should minimize any connection between Islam and terrorism to avoid fanning religious hatred.

A council spokesman said Corey Saylor, CAIR’s legislative director, recently stated the group’s views on the issue in a Detroit News Op-Ed article.

Mr. Saylor said CAIR opposes the use of “jihadist” and other Islamic terms because the use of non-Islamic terms “serves the strategic purpose of isolating extremists and removing the false cloak of religiosity that they use to justify their barbarism.”

Marine Corps Maj. Joseph D. Kloppel, a Central Command spokesman, said Red Team reports “are often controversial.”

“But the resulting debate sharpens reasoning, forces intellectual integrity, and improves decisionmaking and subsequent action,” he said in an e-mail, noting that its products are “designed for internal use” and not meant to represent the personal views of the Centcom commander.

Source — The Washington Times

WASHINGTON - President Bush has secretly approved U.S. military raids inside anti-terror ally Pakistan, according to current and former U.S. officials. The high-risk gambit prizes the death or capture of al-Qaida and Taliban extremists over the sensitivities of a shaky U.S.-backed civilian government that does not want to seem like Washington’s lapdog.

Bush acted in July to give U.S. forces greater leeway to cross from outposts in Afghanistan into the rugged area along the Pakistan border. Pakistan’s central government has little control in this area, where extremists have found what U.S. officials say is a comfortable safe haven.

Already frustrated with what the U.S. perceived as a balky and incomplete commitment to hunting militants seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said the last straw came when it appeared Pakistani authorities were passing tips to militants.

One official familiar with South Asia policy said the new rules were adopted in response to increasing problems with U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism cooperation — particularly evidence that Pakistan’s intelligence service, known as the ISI, had been compromised by militants and that some ISI elements were helping extremists. The official said extremists got Pakistani help before an attack July 7 on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“Up to that point, the idea was to share intelligence with the Pakistanis and then proceed but there was a lot of frustration with delays and problems, including leaks to militants, in sharing the intelligence,” the official said.

“This (the new order) is a reaction to that and it was sped up by the revelations about the penetration of the Pakistani intelligence service,” the official said. “It was decided that we had no choice but to free up the hands of our commanders.”

Current and former U.S. officials described Bush’s orders covering special operations and conventional forces on condition of anonymity because “execute orders” are classified. The order was first reported in Thursday’s New York Times.

The Associated Press reported in early August that senior U.S. intelligence and military aides were pressing Bush to give American soldiers greater flexibility to operate against al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in Pakistan — for example, sending U.S. special forces teams into the tribal areas to hit high-value targets.

The “rules of engagement” have been loosened now, allowing troops to conduct border attacks without being fired on first if they witness attacks coming from the region, according to a former U.S. official with recent access to administration thinking. That would include artillery, rockets and mortar fire from the Pakistan side of the border.

A senior U.S. military official last week confirmed that a U.S. Special Forces attack had taken place about a mile across Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, killing at least 15. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because the internal debate over the U.S. response to rising violence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border includes discussion of classified intelligence.

That Sept. 4 raid was the first use of the new authority, which allows military teams to target suspected terrorists in the dangerous area along the Afghanistan border, the officials said. At the same time, the administration secretly has given conventional ground troops greater latitude to pursue militants across the Afghan border into Pakistan, they said.

The focus is on militant havens that have grown on Pakistan’s side of the border at the same time a resurgent Taliban has increased attacks inside Afghanistan. The situation led Bush on Wednesday to commit to sending more troops there. Washington wants Pakistan to do more to crack down on its side of the border.

Pakistan’s inability or unwillingness to mount a counterinsurgency campaign inside the tribal area was discussed at a National Security Council meeting this week, according to notes of the meeting provided to the AP. The notes said Pakistan is still focused on fighting India and is “still denying the counterinsurgency problem.”

Top U.S. and Pakistani military officials held a secret strategy session in August on an aircraft carrier off Pakistan to discuss the problem.

Bush’s decision to approve cross-border attacks without alerting Islamabad appears to undercut Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari days after his election. Zardari, widower of assassinated Pakistani political figure Benazir Bhutto, was chosen last week to replace Pervez Musharraf, who had been Washington’s point man in Pakistan. Musharraf resigned under pressure in August, done in partly by the perception that he was too close to Washington and took his orders from Bush.

Zardari and other politicians have called the cross-border attacks unacceptable and a violation of their country’s sovereignty.

U.S. counterterrorism operations along the border are highly unpopular in Pakistan. Many people in that country, including some now in government, think military action only invites further extremism.

Pakistan’s prime minister on Thursday backed a harsh rebuke of the U.S. by the Muslim nation’s military chief, a sign of a strain in the anti-terrorism partnership forged after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the powerful but media-shy army leader, said nearly a week after the American-led ground assault that Pakistan would defend its sovereignty and that there was no deal to allow foreign forces to operate inside its borders.

He said unilateral actions risked undermining joint efforts to battle Islamic extremism and warned that “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country will be defended at all cost.”

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, in comments reported Thursday by state media and confirmed by his office, said Kayani’s words reflected government opinion and policy.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he will press Pakistan to allow U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan to take a new approach to hunting Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants who slip back and forth between the neighboring nations. But Brown offered no specifics on how the border could be better defended.

The U.S. forces were apparently seeking specific Taliban or al-Qaida leaders. The senior U.S. military official said the assault targeted “individuals who were clearly associated with attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.”

Source — Yahoo!