Opposing war and the imperialist policies of the US doesn’t mean that the other sides in such conflicts are allies, a mistake some on the left sometimes make.
‘Mother’ of Iraqi women bomber network arrested. She apparently told her jailers said she persuaded rape victims to become suicide bombers to reclaim their honor.
UN. Hamas police ‘seize aid for Gaza’, including food and blankets, rather than allowing it to be distributed to civilians.
Not sure how much we can believe the story about al-Qaeda rapes yet. There is a LOT of disinformation going on right now in the jihadi sphere including multiple stories about recruiters raping people, both men and women, and also rumors about surrenders, bioattacks, and coercion by various regional governments. If I had to take a guess, I’d say this stuff is coming from an Intelligence Service due to the saturation and coordination involved, but more specifically a regional Intel service such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or possibly even Jordan, due to the apparent lack of sophistication and heavy focus on cultural standards.
I’m not flat out saying it isn’t true, nor that al-Qaeda is somehow a trustworthy, honest reporter of its own affairs. Something just doesn’t feel right about this stuff.
OK, so I have just a few more issues with this deceptively short post 😉
#1 How dare you compare support for Hamas to support for al-Qaeda? Sorry, this just strikes me as ignorant or at the very least a cheap shot. Here’s a lead from Haaretz that may make you think twice about the comparison: “U.S. President George Bush said during a closed working meeting between the American and Israeli teams that there is no difference between Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaida.” Are you in good company?
#2 More to the point of the post, al-Qaeda has NEVER had any sort of relationship with leftist, anti-imperial or anti-war groups in the United States. The opinion of al-Qaeda in most of these groups runs from “al-Qaeda isn’t a threat” to “al-Qaeda doesn’t exist.” There’s no room in there for any sort of support or relationship, even simple rhetoric.
And this isn’t for lack of trying. Since 2004 with the early “Adam Gadahn session” as-Sahab tapes of Bin Laden and Zawahiri, al-Qaeda has made many overtures to a wide variety of US political and ideological movements, from statistics on economic disparity aimed at black liberationists to extensive quotes of Noam Chomsky aimed at anti-Corporate leftist groups. Even hispanic immigrants and Wal-Mart employees have been highlighted as potential recruits. It has failed every single time. So far there seem to be only two groups domestically who’ll respond to extreme jihadist theology, those being ultra-nationalist diaspora like the Somali mujahideen from Minnesota or the obviously sociopathic like Adam Gadahn or John Walker Lindh.
That being said, there were successes in the past. During the 60’s and 70’s the Saudi Government as well as Egyptian and Palestinian factions of the Muslim Brotherhood recruited extensively in the American black militant movement, particularly Nation of Islam. This coordination ultimately ended with proto-Jihadi militants’ seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, resulting in a bloody crackdown and a complete makeover of the Saudi national security strategy. Everybody suffers the blowback from these jihadi guys.
We could probably write several books just on WHY leftists don’t particularly gel with the jihadis, but I’d pin it on one thing most of all. That would be 9/11, for obvious reasons. While it’s getting murkier, it’s likely anyone old enough to definitively call themselves a leftist is also old enough to remember September 11.
I wasn’t trying to compare them. But when I was active in the far left, more than a few, if not outright calling for solidarity with such groups, would never criticize them, under the delusion that anyone fighting against the US must be an ally. That was my main point.
Of course, if those groups ever took power, about the first thing they’d do is kill the leftists.
Thomas at Jihadica also suspects a psyop re:rape allegations
http://www.jihadica.com/pathetic-psy-ops/
“I would not normally bother with this kind of nonsense were it not for the fact that it sheds light on the recent reports about AQIM’s alleged plague experiments, covered previously on Jihadica. Both stories were broken in the West by The Sun, and both stories relied on Algerian security sources. We are most likely dealing here with an anti-al-Qaida psy-op, and a very poor one at that.”
DRS, Algerian security services, are also suspected of involvement in the US’s extraordinary rendition program; transporting, detaining and torturing Algerian prisoners coming and going from Guantanamo Bay and other western secret prisons.
It does seem more than a bit odd that she would admit something like that to her jailers.
However, the story you linked to was about male rape, this is a different story / pysop, she recruited females who had been raped.
No, that’s what I’m saying – there are A LOT of these stories happening all at once and all involving some sort of rape, male, female, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan. These stories are connected, all part of the same operation.
Jihadica was only citing the two Algerian leak stories from the Sun, the male rapes and the failed bio-attack. There’s more, one of them being the story you posted.
Aside from the Algerian sources, again I’d point more towards Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia for the head of this psyop. Algeria is using sources in the west because they’re trying to elevate their profile in the GWOT, and they do have their own set of problems, but they don’t have near as much to lose against Jihadis returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as the other regional powers I mentioned. These stories focusing on cultural taboos are probably aimed at domestic muslim populations in order to soften support for militants returning from the battlefield and the ideologies they bring with them.