ji·had·ica

Hijazi Comments on New AFPAK Strategy – 2

In his series titled “The Power of God in the Great Empires,” jihadi blogger Akram Hijazi has criticized President Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy and questioned the actual US commitment to this strategy. In the third installment titled “Strategic Crisis and NATO’s Humiliations,” he claims that multinational forces in Afghanistan are suffering severe coordination problems and Europeans are beginning to question the utility of the war. Hijazi believes that Americans understand the time commitment for the new strategy, but are unsure about the strategy. He states that if there is not progress by next summer, the Obama administration will lose support for the war. Hijazi claims that like the United States, the British government has been concealing the realities of the war from its citizens, who are just now starting to consider the war seriously. He posits that the British are facing higher costs in blood and financial strain, causing many

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Scott Sanford August 18, 2009

Hijazi Comments on New AFPAK Strategy

On 28 July 2009 the popular jihadi blogger Akram Hijazi initiated a series of articles under the title, “The Power of God in the Great Empires.” He titled the first installment “The American Strategy in Afghanistan,” the second “Dismembering the Strategy,” the third “Strategic Crisis and NATO’s Humiliations,” and the fourth, which is the last and not yet published, “The Realities of the Taliban’s War.” In the first article, Hijazi questions if there ever really was an American strategy in Afghanistan and he asserts that observers will have to wait and see how the new strategy will play out given Afghanistan’s history as the “Graveyard of Empires.” However, his tone is not optimistic. He then continues to describe the evolution of the US Afghanistan strategy by quoting from US public officials and Western media. The strategy he describes is basic counterinsurgency, increased troop levels, and eliminating safe havens in Pakistan.

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Scott Sanford August 16, 2009

The Posts That Never Were

Apologies for the slow publication pace here at Jihadica, but deadlines and an upcoming house move mean I can only dream about serious blogging these days. This does not mean forums are quiet. Every morning this past week I found things on the forums that deserved commentary. In a dream world, here’s what I would have written about had I had the time: –    France is taking heat. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb published a statement declaring “France the mother of all evils”, and other posts fumed over the recent French plans to ban the niqab or the burka. I suspect the Americans and the Brits (who of course have long argued that France is the mother of all evils)  are happy to share the burden of jihadi attention. Unfortunately for the Anglo-Saxons, however, I don’t think the veil weighs nearly as heavy in the jihadi basket of grievances as

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Thomas Hegghammer July 13, 2009

Obama is more Dangerous than Bush

This is the title of the main story in the July issue of al-Sumud, the Arabic-language magazine of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The 56-page magazine has several articles devoted to Obama and the Cairo speech, and the front page features a particularly unflattering picture of the US president. But it is the lead article which I find the most interesting, because it confirms that jihadis feel threatened by Obama in their fight for Muslim hearts and minds. The two-page article (pp-18-19) is written by the Saudi sheikh Abd al-Aziz al-Julayyil and is actually taken from the latter’s website, which says the text was written on 17 May 2009. Al-Julayyil starts off by saying he was motivated to write this article after observing a lot of optimism among Muslims over the arrival of the new US administration. He says he realises  many will react to the headline, for how can

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Thomas Hegghammer June 29, 2009

Weekend Trivia

British soldiers found an Aston Villa tattoo on the body of a dead Taliban fighter in Afghanistan, British newspapers reported earlier this week. Of course, for Birmingham City supporters, this is reason enough to deploy nuclear weapons against the Taliban. It’s more unclear what this means for Taliban-al-Qaida relations, given that Bin Ladin is an Arsenal supporter. Jihadica is on the ball and will report any soccer-related chatter on the forums. Jihadists have been more interested in fashion this week, with forum participants discussing the “Infidel” fashion label at length. I knew this stuff existed, but I didn’t realise quite how much there is. Some introspective forum participants got the irony and likened the phenomenon to jihadists embracing the label “terrorist”. Others saw it as a sign of the apocalypse. But most didn’t know what to make of it. Thanks to Cecilie and Brynjar for the links. Have a great

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Thomas Hegghammer June 19, 2009

Are the Uzbeks Going Global?

[Editor’s note: I am thrilled to introduce Einar Wigen, author of the recent FFI report on the IJU, as a guest contributor. Einar interned at FFI last summer and is currently a a student fellow at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI). A fluent Turkish speaker, Einar specialises in jihadism among the Turkics. Not many people produce world-class research as summer interns, so this guy is really someone to look out for in the future.] The Turkic peoples have until now played a fairly peripheral role in global jihadism. They have not attracted much academic attention, and apart from the 2003 Istanbul bombings and the 2008 American Consulate attacks, operations carried out by Turkics have gained little attention. The Waziristan-based group Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) seems to be trying to change this (as Jihadica has suggested before). The IJU broke off from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in 2001,

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Einar Wigen June 17, 2009

Taliban’s View of the Upcoming Elections

Afghanistan’s next presidential elections have been scheduled for 20 August 2009, and Taliban’s media committee has already started its campaign. That is, a campaign to discredit the election process and defame its candidates. President Karzai is the most popular target, but the others are also starting to receive their portion of insults. This is of course in line with Taliban’s broader media campaign, described in detail in this International Crisis Group report. The headlines in last months’ issues of al-Sumud are telling enough: The March issue featured an article entitled “The coming presidential elections, or an agreement to sell Afghanistan to the occupiers?” The May issue followed suit with a similar rhetorical question: “Will the replacement of Karzai with another agent solve the Afghan problem?” In both articles, the line of argumentation is simple: As long as foreign troops are present in Afghanistan, there can never be free and fair elections. The

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Anne Stenersen May 5, 2009

Virtual safe havens and the war of ideas

Abu Muqawama has a great piece in the New Republic today. Given his very kind words for Will and myself, I am biased, but the article makes an extremely important point about the importance of virtual safe havens. Although I just posted and don’t really have the time to blog, I felt compelled to add a few thoughts. There are at least two more reasons why there ought to be a virtual dimension to the new AfPak strategy. First, the Pashto and Urdu-language part of the jihadi cyberspace is growing rapidly, and very few people are keeping track of it. Those who do rarely know the Arabic sites and vice-versa. No analyst I know has enough Arabic and Pashto to connect the dots (except Mustafa Abu al-Yazid). Second, the Internet infrastructure in Afghanistan and Pakistan is relatively poorly developed compared to the Arab world. This is very worrying, because it

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Thomas Hegghammer March 31, 2009

Magazine Update

It has been a good week for jihadi magazine buffs. There are new issues of Qadaya Jihadiyya and Tala‘i Khurasan, as well as two brand new magazines, Sawt al-Qawqaliz (sic) and Markaz Ansar al-I‘lam. The newcomers are not particularly impressive and I do not expect them to last long in the fiercely competitive world of jihadi media. Sawt al-Qawqaliz seems intended as a mouthpiece for the Caucasus Emirate, and it is clearly the work of non-native Arabic speakers, for the language is full or errors and low on idiom. Incidentally, I cannot figure out what “Qawqaliz” is supposed to mean (suggestions anyone?). It could simply be a misspelling of Qawqaz, but how could they get the very name of the magazine wrong? In terms of content, the 24-page publication is almost entirely focused on Caucasian issues and does not even mention Gaza. The Shabab of Somalia are the only outsiders

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Thomas Hegghammer February 12, 2009

A Unified Strategy towards Germany?

Over the past few months, several German-speaking jihadists have appeared in propaganda videos emanating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bekkay Harrach (aka Abu Talha al-Almani), who was recently featured in a production by al-Qaida’s official media arm al-Sahab, is only the most recent example. As described in this article, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and its offshoot, the Islamic Jihadi Union (IJU), also boast Germans in their ranks, and have actively used them in their media productions. Meanwhile, a suicide bomber, believed to be from the Taliban, attacked the German embassy in Kabul on 17 January 2009. All of this has been interpreted  as a sign that Germany is being targeted by al-Qaida. The German focus is indeed intriguing. But what I find even more interesting are the differences between these productions and what they tell us about the landscape of jihadi groups in Afghanistan. Too often, groups like al-Qaida,

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Anne Stenersen February 2, 2009
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