Pakistan is 'epicenter of Islamic terrorism'

New York (News Today) - The suspect in the Times Square bombing attempt was caught as he was seeking to flee to Pakistan, a nation that analyst Fareed Zakaria calls the "epicenter of Islamic terrorism."

"It's worth noting that even the terrorism that's often attributed to the war in Afghanistan tends to come out of Pakistan, to be planned by Pakistanis, to be funded from Pakistan or in some other way to be traced to Pakistan," said Zakaria. He added that Pakistan's connection with terrorist groups goes back decades and has often been encouraged by that nation's military for strategic reasons.

Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old naturalized citizen of Pakistani descent, had recently been trained in bomb making in Pakistan's Waziristan province, according to a federal complaint filed in court Tuesday. CNN reported Tuesday that Faisal Shahzad's father is a retired vice-marshal in the Pakistani Air Force.

Shahzad was arrested around 11:45 p.m. ET Monday at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport just before he was to fly to Islamabad, Pakistan, by way of Dubai.

Zakaria, author and host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," spoke to CNN on Tuesday. Here is an edited transcript:

CNN: Based on what we know so far, what lessons can be learned from this incident?

Fareed Zakaria: This does not seem to be part of a larger and more organized effort to penetrate the United States. That doesn't mean such efforts are not under way....it does make you realize just how open we are as a country and how open we are as a society. There is always a level of vulnerability that comes from being an open society and this guy, Mr. Shahzad obviously took advantage of that openness.

CNN: Apparently he traveled to Pakistan on a number of occasions. Does that signal that Pakistan isn't vigilant enough about terrorism?

Zakaria: Well it certainly signals something that we have known for a while, which is that Pakistan is the epicenter of Islamic terrorism. ... The British government has estimated that something like 80 percent of the terror threats that they receive have a Pakistani connection.

So there's no question that Pakistan has a terrorism problem. It has radical groups within the country that have the ability to recruit people and have access to resources that makes for a very combustible mixture.

It should remind us that even when looking at the war in Afghanistan, ultimately the most important place where jihadis are being trained and recruited is not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan. And there's no other part of the world where you have quite the same concentration of manpower, resources and ideology all feeding on each other.

CNN: What feeds the ideology that drives the terror effort?

Zakaria: Pakistan has been conducive to this kind of jihadis for a number of reasons. For the last three or four decades, the Pakistani government, the Pakistani military has supported, funded many of these groups in a bid to maintain influence in Afghanistan, in a bid to maintain an asymmetrical capacity against India -- in other words, to try to destabilize India rather cheaply through these militant groups rather than frontally through its army.

So it has found it useful to have these militant groups and to support them. It has always assumed that these groups will not attack Pakistanis and therefore was not a threat to Pakistan itself. And to a large extent that's true, these groups by and large have attacked people in Afghanistan, India, in the West but not in Pakistan. But that is changing, because these groups are so intermingled and often sufficiently ideological, and also because the Pakistani military is beginning to take them on.

But fundamentally the reason this has gone on is that there has been a policy of the Pakistani state and particularly the Pakistani military, to encourage these groups, to fund them, to ignore their most pernicious activities. And some of it goes back even further than four decades. In the 1965 war against India, the Pakistanis used Islamic jihadis...

And the great hope now is that finally the Pakistani government is getting serious about this. Frankly it remains a hope.

CNN: Why do you say that it's only a hope?

Zakaria: Over the last few years, it appears that the Pakistani government has begun to understand that these groups all meld together, that they are a threat to a stable and viable modern Pakistani state. But when I talk about the Pakistani government you have to realize that there are different elements in it.

The Pakistani civilian government really does understand the danger that Islamic terrorism poses to Pakistan, but the civilian government in Pakistan appears quite powerless. Most power lies with the military.

The military in Pakistan has a somewhat more complex attitude. It does believe that these militants have gone too far. It does believe that it has to take on the militants. And it has actually battled them quite bravely over the last few years.

CNN: So what's the reason for thinking the military supports militant groups?

Zakaria: It still holds within it the view that at the end of the day, the United States will leave the region and that they will have to live in a neighborhood which will have a very powerful India and an Afghanistan that is potentially a client state of India's -- and that in order to combat this Indian domination, they need to maintain their asymmetrical capabilities, their militant groups.

It is interesting to note that Ahmed Rashid, who may be the most respected Pakistani journalist, has reported on the way in which Pakistani government has thwarted and put obstacles in the way of any kind of talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

The message it has sent to the Afghan government is very clear. If you want to have any negotiations with the Taliban, you have to understand that since we are the critical intermediary -- since the Taliban leadership all lives in Pakistan -- the Pakistani military's terms to the Afghan government are, we want you to push back on Indian influence in Afghanistan, we want you to shut down Indian consulates in various Afghan cities.

In other words, the Pakistani government is still obsessed with the idea of an Indian domination of the region, and they're using their influence with the Taliban to try to counter Indian influence. This is the old game that the Pakistanis have played.

That's what makes me skeptical that there's been a true strategic revolution in Pakistan... There are still people who believe that there are good terrorists and bad terrorists, and some you can work with to further Pakistan's goals.

CNN: In the attempted car bombing in Times Square and the Christmas Day attempted bombing, you have two failed plots that don't appear to be highly sophisticated. Does that tell us anything about the terror groups?

Zakaria: At some level, that tells you about the weakness of the terror groups. You do not have highly organized terrorist groups with great resources and capacity that are able to plan spectacular acts of terrorism the way they were in the 1990s and on 9/11.

What you have now are more isolated, disorganized lone rangers and while they're obviously very worrying and one has to be extremely vigilant, it is also at some level a sign of the weakness of an organization like al Qaeda that it is not able to do the kind of terrorist attacks it used to.

To be sure, it's important to be very vigilant and make sure you have groups like al Qaeda on the run. But I don't know that in a free society, you will ever be able to prevent an individual with no background in terrorism who's broken no laws and is radicalized from attempting to make some kind of trouble.

Source : CNN

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Religious persecution is widespread, report warns

(News Terupdate) - The numbers are shocking: 12,000 people killed in a cycle of violence between Christians and Muslims stretching back more than a decade.

The location: Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, lying on the continent's fault line between the largely Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.

The number of people convicted and sentenced for the killings: Zero.

That's just one of many stark assessments about the level of religious persecution around the world today in a huge new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The report names more than two dozen countries as offenders. Some engage in what's classically thought of as religious persecution.

Egypt, for example, not only imprisons members of the Baha'i faith and members of minority Muslim sects, but also has some fired from their jobs, kicked out of universities and barred from having bank accounts, driver's licenses, even birth certificates, according to the report.

Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, export "extremist ideology," the commission charges. But the kind of religious persecution seen in Nigeria and some other countries is "equally egregious," the report says. "Many governments fail to punish religiously motivated violence perpetrated by private actors," it says, warning that "impunity... often leads to endless cycles of sectarian violence."

It calls Nigeria "a tragic case in point," saying that in the most recent outbreak of killing in Nigeria's Jos State several months ago, 500 "men, women and children were hacked to death with machetes and then dumped into wells.

"Not a single criminal, Muslim or Christian, has been convicted and sentenced in Nigeria's ten years of religious violence," the report claims.

The commission did have limited praise for Nigeria's government, saying that when an USCRIF team went to the African nation in March, it found officials "attentive and even grateful for its concerns."

The Ministry of Justice filed 41 prosecutions while the American team was in Nigeria, the report said. Even so, the commission recommended that the United States include Nigeria on a list of 13 nations called "countries of particular concern" which engage in "severe violations of religious freedom."

CNN has reached out to the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria for comment, but has so far not received a response to the report.

The other countries were North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Iraq. (Commissioners were not unanimous in including Iraq on the list.)

That's five more countries than are on the State Department's "countries of particular concern" list from its 2009 report on religious freedom. That list doesn't include Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Vietnam.

The list is similar to one compiled recently by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, but not identical. The Washington-based think tank put out a global survey of restrictions on religion in December. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Egypt, Myanmar/Burma, the Maldives, Eritrea, Malaysia and Brunei topped that list of countries with the most government restrictions on religion.

More than two out of three people around the world live in countries with high or very high restrictions on religion, the Pew Forum concluded.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom studied only 28 countries, but since it is a congressionally mandated body, its recommendations can have significantly more impact than those of the Pew Forum.

Designation as a "country of particular concern" can prompt concrete action from the United States, such as restrictions on arms exports or other trade.

But in reality, the government often waives or circumvents sanctions on countries of strategic importance, such as Saudi Arabia and China, a chart in the USCRIF report shows.

The commission report also has a watch list of countries which "require very close attention." That list includes Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey and Venezuela.

It recommends that three other countries -- Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka -- be "closely monitored."

Many of the incidents which worry the commission made international headlines in the past year, including China's crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in the west of the country, and Iran's labeling its domestic political opponents "enemies of God" -- a capital offense.

But others are ongoing problems that often attract little attention, such as Eritrea's harrassment of Orthodox Church members and Jehovah's Witnesses, or the imprisonment of Buddhists and Protestants in Vietnam.

The report also criticizes the United States government itself for not doing enough to fight the problem.

"Neither prior Democratic nor Republican administrations, nor the current administration, have been sufficiently engaged in promoting the freedom of religion or belief abroad," the commissioners charge.

The commission based its report on visits to some of the countries at issue, meetings with bodies such as the European Union and the Vatican, news reports and the findings of government agencies and international organizations ranging from the American Islamic Conference to the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society.

The paper published Thursday is the 11th annual report since the commission was established by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.

Source : CNN

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American-born cleric appears in al Qaeda video

(News Terupdate) - An American-born Muslim cleric has appeared in a video released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda recruiter and supporter based in Yemen, is on the United States' list of al Qaeda leaders targeted for capture or assassination. He has appeared in other videos but has never before been featured in an official video by AQAP, al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen.

It is not clear from the video when it was recorded.

In the video released to media outlets, al-Awlaki said the goal of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq is to get Muslims to fight each other by blaming market bombings on Islamic militants. According to al-Awlaki, Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, came up with the strategy.

Al-Awlaki also blamed the U.S. military for an airstrike in December that killed about 30 suspected al Qaeda militants in a district in the Shabwa governorate. The state news agency SABA credited Yemeni forces with the strike at the time of the attack.

In January, a top Yemen government official said al-Awlaki met with Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who has been charged in a botched attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet en route from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day. The attempt to ignite explosives hidden in AbdulMutallab's underwear failed to bring down the plane.

Some video obtained by news outlets appears to show AbdulMutallab taking part in militia training in Yemen with AQAP.

The group includes terrorist operatives in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

In a video first aired on ABC News, a man identified as AbdulMutallab is shown training in the desert with several other armed men. The men are shown firing at flags bearing the insignia of the Union Jack, the Star of David and the United Nations.

Later in the video, the man identified as AbdulMutallab delivers a "martyrdom" statement -- messages that would-be suicide bombers record before carrying out their missions.

The man begins by reading a verse from the Quran: "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily God guideth not a people unjust."

Al-Awlaki also has claimed a connection to the U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of fatally shooting 13 people at the Fort Hood, Texas, military base last year. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan communicated with the radical Islamic cleric via e-mail for about a year before he went on a shooting rampage that also wounded 40 on November 5, the cleric told Aljazeera.net in late December.

Hasan, a U.S.-born citizen of Palestinian descent, has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder, making him eligible for the death penalty.

Source : CNN

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Graham disinvited from prayer event over Islam comments

Washington (News Terupdate) - The Army rescinded its invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham for the upcoming National Day of Prayer at the Pentagon over controversial remarks he made about Islam.

"True Islam cannot be practiced in this country," he told CNN's Campbell Brown last December. "You can't beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they've committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries."

Graham later tried to temper his remarks by saying that he had Muslim friends. However, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham has a history of comments that bothered the Pentagon. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, for instance, Graham called Islam a "very evil and wicked religion."

Graham, who said a prayer at the inauguration of President George W. Bush, said he regretted the Army's decision but stood by his comments.

"I don't like the way they treat women, the way they treat minorities. I just find it horrific. But I love the people of Islam," he said, adding some of his work has been in Muslim nations. For instance, Samaritan's Purse, the international charity that he heads, works with Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

"It's a part of the world I love very much," Graham said. "And I understand it. But I certainly disagree with their teaching."

"I want to express my strong support for the United States military and all our troops," he said. "I'm very proud of them and it's just unfortunate that I won't be able to participate on May 6th."

The Army, which oversees the National Day of Prayer ceremonies at the Pentagon, feared that if Graham spoke at the Pentagon, Islamic militants would publicize his comments, potentially fueling tensions in Muslim nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are deployed.

Concerns about Graham were flagged by the watchdog group Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which also raised objections that the Pentagon prayer ceremony had become a fundamentalist Christian event.

The group penned a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on behalf of Muslim military members and defense department employees. It said that Franklin's remarks had sparked outrage.

"Mr. Graham has never retracted or apologized for these statements," the letter said.

But Graham's supporters disagreed with the Army's decision.

"What are they afraid Franklin Graham is going to say?" said Rep. Randy Forbes of Virginia. "I think again we are getting to the point in the country where we are trying to exclude everybody from speaking if I disagree with what they are going to say."

Graham's invitation was not the only controversy swirling about the National Day of Prayer this year. Last week, a federal judge struck down as unconstitutional the 1952 law that established the day, saying it violated the ban on government-backed religion.

On Thursday, the Justice Department informed a federal appeals court that the Obama administration will appeal that decision.

Source : CNN

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