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    Default The Evolving Terrorist Threat in Southeast Asia

    The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 25 Jun 08:

    Neighbourhood Watch: The Evolving Terrorist Threat in Southeast Asia
    ....Nearly six years after the first Bali bombings, it is time to take stock of the regional security environment and to ask how the Southeast Asian terrorist threat might evolve in the future.

    Neighbourhood Watch analyses the changing nature of religious militancy in Southeast Asia and sets out a framework for understanding the forces and trends that are driving jihadist extremism in the region. It provides a comprehensive examination of the organisational and operational capabilities of the major terrorist groups including JI, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf Group in Mindanaoand the various groups associated with the current manifestation of Malay Muslim separatist violence in southern Thailand. In each case, the nature and extent of pan-regional networks and connections are examined.....

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    Default Conflict, Community, and Criminality in Southeast Asia and Australia

    CSIS, 30 Jun 09: Conflict, Community, and Criminality in Southeast Asia and Australia: Assessments From the Field

    A collection of essays with a foreword by Marc Sageman.
    ....In Southeast Asia, as in the rest of the world, it would be naïve to believe that terrorism can be defeated. It is and will remain a tactic of the weak against their government, and Southeast Asia has seen its share throughout modern history. However, the appeal of Islam is fading in some theaters but gaining strength in a few others due to local reasons. In the future, terrorism in Southeast Asia may still be waged in the name of new concepts. The key to holding it in check is to not overreact, punish only the criminals directly involved in violence, and encourage young people that might be attracted to violent ideology to pursue their political activism in a more effective and lawful way.
    Essays include:

    • Radical Islam in the Middle East and Southeast Asia: A Comparison

    • The Middle East, Islamism, and Indonesia: Pull versus Push Factors

    • Jemaah Islamiyah and New Splinter Groups

    • Can Indonesian Democracy Tame Radical Islamism?

    • The Role of Radical Madrasahs in Terrorism: The Indonesian Case

    • Communal Violence in Indonesia and the Role of Foreign and Domestic Networks

    • Radical Islam in Malaysia

    • Governmental Responses to Extremism in Southeast Asia: “Hard” versus “Soft” Approaches

    • The Malayu Insurgency in Thailand’s Southern Border Provinces

    • “A Carnival of Crime”: The Enigma of the Abu Sayyaf

    • Will the Conflict in Mindanao Look Like the Insurgency in Southern Thailand?

    • Little-known Muslim Communities and Concerns in Cambodia, Burma, and Northern Thailand

    • Assessment of Criminal Threats Emanating from Burma

    • The Extremist Threat in Australia

    • Muslim Alienation in Australia: Europe Down Under?

    • Jihadi Ideology: An Overview

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    CTC, 22 Jul 09: Radical Islamist Ideology in Southeast Asia

    ....The 17 July 2009 terrorist attacks on two hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia were a vivid reminder of the breadth of the battle space and the importance of constant vigilance. This break in Indonesia’s four-year calm might be a one-time event or an indication of a resurgent regional terror threat. With crude weapons and little logistical support, a small group of people were capable of carrying out an attack that received global media attention. The focus on the perpetrators of this attack may also veil the importance of ideologies other than global jihadism to political violence in the region, such as various strands of ethno-nationalism. As this report highlights, global jihadism is not the only ideology animating terrorist violence, and ethno-nationalism is still a prevalent force in Southeast Asia.

    The inherent difficulty of tactical defense makes it ever more important to address the broader ideological and strategic aspects of the terror threat in the hopes of identifying important trends. This volume examines the salience and content of jihadi ideology across Southeast Asia in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the types of threats and susceptibility to global jihadist violence in the region.....
    Essays Include:

    • The Landscape of Jihadism in Southeast Asia

    • The Current and Emerging Extremist Threat in Malaysia

    • The historical development of Jihadi Islamist thought in Indonesia

    • The Influence of Transnational Jihadist Ideology on Islamic Extremist Groups in the Philippines: The Cases of the Abu Sayyaf Group and the Rajah Solaiman Movement

    • Ideology, Religion, and Mobilization in the Southern Thai Conflict

    • A Survey of Southeast Asian Global Jihadist Websites

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    Just looking at the Abu Sayyaf material in these collections…

    There’s some very useful material here, and some that is less so. The Christopher Collier essay on the ASG (in the CSIS collection) is excellent, and a welcome change from the many quite superficial treatments that have appeared recently. It’s refreshing to see open discussion of some of the oft-ignored aspects of this fight: the tendency for attribution of attacks to be driven as much by expedience as evidence; the reality that members Philippine security forces routinely sell arms and ammunition to insurgents, share ransom payments, and engage in other extracurricular business deals; the unreliability of ASG force estimates; the confusion between armed business disputes and insurgent/counterinsurgent encounters; the questionable level of connection between ASG and AQ in the last decade… and so on.

    This excerpt deserves to be highlighted:

    Seasoned anthropologist Thomas Kiefer has spent years studying the Tausug, the people of Jolo, and points out that the notion of a clearly bounded “group”—as in Abu Sayyaf Group—is virtually meaningless in Tausug society. Instead, Tausug political and military life is structured by temporary factional alliances, “overlapping and criss-crossing ties in which the same men may be torn apart and bound together in multiple ways at the same time.” So-called minimal alliance networks are centered on a charismatic leader and rarely number more than a score strong, with membership becoming vague at the edges as one network shades off into another. Such networks only come together as “medial” or “maximal” alliances of hundreds or even thousands of men if a third common enemy, shared among them, emerges. Because every man in every component minimal alliance follows only his own leader and is typically pursuing only individual advantage, not any generalized ideology, larger alliances of expediency are extremely unstable. Abu Sayyaf is just such a medial alliance. It has no firm boundaries—only leaders with followers who interact with other leaders with followers. Hence the difficulty in estimating Abu Sayyaf numbers.

    Many armed encounters on Jolo and Basilan that are portrayed as clashes with Abu Sayyaf actually involve disputes over petty profiteering, such as the battle with Commander Nandi or guerrillas of the Misuari Breakaway Group of the MNLF (on Jolo) or MILF (on Basilan). In the face of a third common enemy, the AFP, the boundaries among these three theoretically discrete insurgent groups frequently become hazy, as leaders with personal ties form temporary medial alliances. It should be emphasized that these are personal alliances of convenience, more than organizational or ideological “links.”
    The only thing I’d add to that is that wider alliances are driven not only by the emergence of a common enemy: the rapid expansion of the ASG in the early 00s (from several hundred to several thousand) was not an alliance against a common enemy or a sudden burst of enthusiasm for jihad but a reaction to the ASG’s success in attracting large ransom payments. The subsequent reversal of the ASG’s fortunes is widely attributed to US-backed Philippine military action. This was a factor, but there were other major contributing factors, notably the difficulty of integrating a large influx of nominally loyal and basically opportunistic “members” and often violent internal disputes over the distribution of ransom payments.

    The ASG essays from the CTC and ASPI collections are much more conventional and much less interesting, apparently relying almost entirely on secondary and tertiary sources and often falling victim to the common tendency to treat the ASG as a discrete group with a coherent command structure and unifying ideogy. There are several serious stretches: recovering a pamphlet in an ASG camp does not justify the assumption that the contents of the pamphlet represent an organizational ideology. There are a few odd factual errors (Ramzi Yousef was arrested in Islamabad, not in Manila as the CTC essay states) and a generally unquestioned acceptance of the conventional account of ASG’s history, a history that deserves a good deal more questioning than it gets. It’s quite astonishing that until now reputable studies still describe Yousef’s Manila operation in ’94-’95 as an "Abu Sayyaf cell"… but given the general eagerness to characterize the ASG as a central link in the global jihad chain, I suppose that’s understandable.

    The discussion of the Rajah Soleiman Movement (RSM) seems almost anachronistic: while the RSM did at one time appear to be emerging as a serious threat, it has been severely degraded and proved largely to be a one-man show, unable to recover from the arrest of leader Ahmed Santos. While the possible threat from small cells of militants operating on the fringes of the Luzon-based “balik-Islam” movement cannot be discounted, RSM as an organization seems to be in terminal decline.

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    Default Indonesia: Suspects planned attack on U.S. Embassy

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-...n-u.s-embassy/

    He said the suspects belonged to a new group called the Harakah Sunni for Indonesian Society, or HASMI.

    "From evidence found at the scene, we believe that this group was well prepared for serious terror attacks," Alius said.
    Sticking with the theme of trends, what we seem to be seeing in Indonesia is the result of effective security operations that forces an enduring threat to continuously morph into new terrorist cells and organizations. Defeat of the idea and the strategic logic of terrorism is no where in sight. The terrorists like most adversaries have a political objective that won't be countered by population centric operations that focus on economic development and the rule of law. It may be we just have to accept this as the new norm until their is (if there is) an evolution in their underlying ideology and political goals. I think that means our security forces (the US and all its partners) need to focus our main effort on intelligence and disruption from a security aspect. Individual governments will have to wage the political competition within in their own borders.

    Last month, police arrested 10 Islamist militants and seized a dozen homemade bombs from a group suspected of planning suicide attacks against security forces and plotting to blow up the Parliament building. The alleged bomb maker turned himself in to police while wearing an empty suicide vest.

    Recent terror attacks in the country have been carried out by individuals or small groups and have targeted security forces and local "infidels" instead of Westerners, with less deadly results. The arrests announced Saturday appear to be the first in recent years to involve a group that allegedly planned to target foreign facilities.
    Different groups experimenting with different approaches to achieve a common political objective.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    Sticking with the theme of trends, what we seem to be seeing in Indonesia is the result of effective security operations that forces an enduring threat to continuously morph into new terrorist cells and organizations. Defeat of the idea and the strategic logic of terrorism is no where in sight. The terrorists like most adversaries have a political objective that won't be countered by population centric operations that focus on economic development and the rule of law. It may be we just have to accept this as the new norm until their is (if there is) an evolution in their underlying ideology and political goals. I think that means our security forces (the US and all its partners) need to focus our main effort on intelligence and disruption from a security aspect. Individual governments will have to wage the political competition within in their own borders.
    Actually the idea and the strategic logic of terrorism have been significantly challenged, mainly through continued success in avoiding further sectarian conflict in Sulawesi, Maluku, etc. Those conflicts have long been the motivator that links the radical core to a broader audience and gives them recruits and credibility. That core is still there, and probably will be for some time, but without local sectarian conflict they become increasingly isolated from the community and have a harder time attracting recruits and resources. The radical narrative coming out of the Middle East doesn't have a broad enough appeal in Indonesia to generate much active public support, they need local issues, and increasingly they haven't got them.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Interesting report from ICG on changes in Indonesian terrorism. Notes 2011 suicide bombings links to vigilante actions not directly tied to more traditional established groups connected with international jihad:

    http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/region...n-cirebon.aspx

    The opening paragraph:
    Anti-vice raids and actions against non-Muslim minorities are becoming a path to more violent jihadism in Indonesia. The 2011 suicide bombings of a police mosque in Cirebon, West Java and an evangelical church in Solo, Central Java were carried out by men who moved from using sticks and stones in the name of upholding morality and curbing “deviance” to using bombs and guns. They show how ideological and tactical lines within the radical community have blurred, meaning that counter-terrorism programs that operate on the assumption that “terrorists” are a clearly definable group distinguishable from hardline activists and religious vigilantes are bound to fail. They also mean that the government must develop a strategy, consistent with democratic values, for countering clerics who use no violence themselves but preach that it is permissible to shed the blood of infidels (kafir) or oppressors (thaghut), meaning government officials and particularly the police.
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 11-13-2012 at 07:27 PM. Reason: Citation in quotes

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    http://file.understandingconflict.or...n_Conflict.pdf

    INDONESIANS AND THE SYRIAN CONFLICT
    30 January 2014
    IPAC Report


    This is a very insightful report that should also probably be posted under one of the Al-Qaeda threads, but since the geographic focus is the impact of jihad in Syria on Indonesia I opted for this thread with the very relevant title of the evolving terrorist threat in Southeast Asia.

    You need to read all 13 pages of the report to capture of the full scope of the analysis. If you read the first two pages, you can confuse it with being overly alarming that Indonesians are sending fighters to Syria to support Al-Qaeda, but it is much more nuanced as you progress and points to the various divisions within the Indonesian jihadist community on whether to support ISIS, Al-Nusra, local groups, or even Assad. More importantly if read with an open mind it help readers make a shift from the tactical (focused on cells committing terrorist acts) to the strategic and gain an appreciation of what they're trying to achieve and the plan for doing so. It also validates what many already appreciate, which is politics are not just local affairs, but local issues have global implications, especially with nations/identity groups that don't appreciate state borders.

    The Syrian conflict is also attractive to Indonesian extremists because it enables them to apply the so-called “two-arm strategy”, the title of a book that has become a runaway hit in the jihadi community.
    The two army strategy is explained in detail in the report, in short it was written my an Al-Qaeda strategist. Much of it is similar to "The Management of Strategy," another jihadist strategy, but this one is focused on how to exploit the Arab Spring. The author notes,

    the restoration of the caliphate cannot start in what he calls “politically dead” areas like Sudan and Mauritania that are of little importance to the Islamic street. Instead it must start in an area of vital interest, near to areas of religious influence, with natural barriers for defence and secure bases. The two places that have these qualities are Syria and Yemen.
    The conflict in Syria has impacted the jihadist movement in Indonesia (and I'm sure many other countries) in ways that can't be fully appreciated yet. Most significantly it has given the jihadist movement a voice again which can breath new life into what was a dying movement in Indonesia. A number of Islamist leaders and their websites are leveraging it in different ways, one I found most interesting was,

    The Syrian conflict has already had an impact in Indonesia by convincing many extremists that their local jihad should be set aside for now to devote energy to the more important one abroad.
    JI’s Abu Rusydan expressed a widely held view when he said: Why should we expend so much energy by thinking small and undertaking a local jihad experiment as we’ve done up till now?
    He went on to say that history showed that the local jihads only end in defeat, because the enemy will be as strong or stronger than any force trying to destroy them. He used as an example the state set up by the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s that eventually collapsed after the Americans invaded. He also pointed to Darul Islam, defeated by the TNI in the 1960s. He said it was time for Indonesians to join the global jihad – a war undertaken collectively by jihadi forces from different countries in an area where victory was assured in prophecies. Indonesians would find the victory that up till now has been elusive: the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.
    The conclusion seems reasonable, but elsewhere in the article the author notes is the political situation in Indonesia changes, then the potential for a revived jihadist movement will exist.

    Without local grievances to build on, no mujahid coming back from Syria or Yemen or anywhere else can build much of a movement, and without community support, as Abu Rusydan has repeatedly argued, no movement can succeed. Indonesia’s great strengths are its own political stability and relatively peaceful regional environment. It is nonetheless worth keeping an eye on Syria.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    They fight with the same tenacity their brothers in the ME do, so much for the argument they're not as susceptible to radicalization.
    Yes, they fight hard, and there are radicals. As in most places, the inner circle will not de-radicalize and they will not change. They will eventually have to be killed or imprisoned. What can be done, however, is to isolate that radical core from the broader societal base to the greatest possible extent, which makes it harder for the radicals to hide and to recruit replacements for those arrested of killed. In Indonesia the reduction in domestic sectarian conflict has not eliminated the radical core, but it has succeeded to some extent in isolating it from the broader population.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    They have no qualms about killing those from other ethnic groups, and creating communal strife is still part of their strategy, this wasn't a flash in the pan.
    Clearly they want to re-ignite the sectarian fighting, but so far they are not succeeding. 12-15 years ago an incident like that would have generated an instant flare-up. That of course is what the radicals want. Hopefully they won't get it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    I do agree that the vast majority of Indonesian muslims do not support this, but Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim nation but the 3-7% that are estimated to support these radical views still equates to tens of thousands. Of those a much smaller percentage will be motivated to participate in violent acts, but is still signficant.
    3-7% of Indonesia is a lot of people. How many of those will actually give support up to the point of embracing terrorism remains to be seen, though. My guess is that a focus on Syria will prove to be a poor tactical move, as Syria is a long way from Indonesia and not a matter of immediate concern to most Indonesian Muslims... but as always, we will see. Not much to be done about it anyway, beyond keeping an eye on who goes and who comes back. That's the job of the Indonesians, and they are able to do it, though I'd assume that the US and other players will feed them any intel they can on movements of their nationals.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Default Perceptions of ISIS in the Philippines

    http://www.eurasiareview.com/1007201...link-analysis/

    A New ‘Caliphate’ In Middle East: Is There An Abu Sayyaf-ISIS Link? – Analysis

    A video of a purported member of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) pledging support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) surfaced recently. With an apparent spike in ASG-related activities, this is interpreted as evidence of convergence between the groups. However, the localised factors that motivate ASG factions should not be ignored.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCOA97_o1nU

    I agree with their analytical conclusion for ASG. They're little more than thugs masquerading as jihadists.

    The ASG remains a localised movement. Its subscription to the jihadist narrative is passive and superficial. It has yet to make its mark in the online world and would unlikely do so in the near future. Thus, state responses should always be aware of and be cautious of quickly ascribing ideological motivations to what essentially are socio-economic issues. The Philippines’s social and economic milieu creates distinct dynamics that may be wholly different even from close neighbours like Indonesia or Malaysia.
    On the other hand, the ASG isn't representative of the larger Muslim community in the Philippines. The potential for recruitment certainly exists, as already demonstrated in Indonesia.

    http://www.philstar.com/headlines/20...danao-possible

    MNLF official: ISIS recruitment in Mindanao possible

    MILF said the threat is not in the two groups joining the ISIS because their number is “too tiny to be felt and make a difference.”

    “The ISIS is overflowing with volunteers from all over the world, including those from the United States, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Australia,” it said.

    “The threat really comes from the extremism espoused by the ISIS. Ideas are contagious and infectious. Wild ideas are attractive to those who want adventures and pre-occupied with hatred and revenge.”
    MILF leaders went on to say that the Gov of the Philippines needs to deal with ASG and BIFF to avoid the potential of these groups joining ISIS. True, and since both of these groups are criminal-terrorists in character it would be better for the region, and for MILF it would help clear a path to consolidating political power in Mindanao. A potential win-win for most.

    http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/intern...ria-for-israel

    On a side note Philippine peace keeping forces, unintentionally on their part, are now in a fire fight was al-Nusra rebels in the Golan Heights. The good news is they refused to lay down their arms and opted to defend their positions as authorized in their mandate. I believe some have now withdrawn into Syria, since peacekeeping is apparently out the window now since Syria no longer effectively controls that region. Is al-Qaeda preparing to attack Israel to gain more support from the broader Muslim community?

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    One factor that's in the center of the Mindanao picture right now is the second recent attempt at a negotiated peace agreement between the MILF and the Government. A few years back an agreement was negotiated and approved by both sides, only to be shot down by the Supreme Court, which did considerable damage to the more moderate negotiation-oriented factions in the MILF. The current negotiations have been going on for some time, and are at real risk of getting caught up in end-of-term politicking. The Aquino administration has a bad relationship with the Supreme Court, and the political opposition are jumping on an anti-agreement bandwagon for political reasons: opposition to a peace agreement in Mindanao is an attention-getter and goes over well with the majority Christian population, much of which views all Muslims as violent terrorists and sees any move toward autonomy as an infringement on national sovereignty. Anti-Muslim prejudice in the majority population is deeply rooted and difficult to challenge, and popular awareness of the actual history is very low.

    If the second agreement is shot down by legal and political maneuvering, that will deeply undercut the credibility of the more moderate MILF factions and boost the standing of radicals who have said all along that negotiation with the Government is pointless. The radicals are not necessarily associated with ISIS in any way, and even in the case of those who have made pro-ISIS statements the relationship appears to be more nominal than practical, but that can certainly produce a return to open confrontation and more violence, with or without ISIS.

    That of course applies mainly to the MILF heartland on Mindanao itself, among the Maguindanao and Maranao groups.

    In the islands to the west, the Tausug/Yakan/Sama territory, things are a bit different. The MNLF is highly factionalized, lacks effective leadership, and is in many ways a spent force, though what's left of it would certainly like to see the government squash the ASG, which they see as competition.

    For its own part, the ASG is so unstructured that it barely deserves to be called a group at all. One reality often overlooked in these discussions is that these "groups" often do not have discrete memberships: clusters of armed men migrate among them at their own convenience.

    This point:

    state responses should always be aware of and be cautious of quickly ascribing ideological motivations to what essentially are socio-economic issues. The Philippines’s social and economic milieu creates distinct dynamics that may be wholly different even from close neighbours like Indonesia or Malaysia.
    is only half true. Socioeconomic conditions are a real problem, but identifying them as a core issue invites yet another misguided attempt to solve the problem with economic aid. Behind the socioeconomic conditions lies a pernicious network of "big man" politics, including both the government and the rebel factions, in which the "big men" are exempt from law, the coercive power of the state is applied more often for private gain than public, and theft of public resources is the rule, not the exception. The socioeconomic conditions in the area will not improve until the "big men" are brought within the rule of law, and the government needs to start with bringing its own representatives within the rule of law.

    The Muslim movements in the islands west of Mindanao are ripe for the emergence of new leadership, which under the present circumstances is likely to be radical, whether or not it's associated with ISIS or AQ.
    Last edited by Dayuhan; 08-31-2014 at 01:29 AM.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Article posted on the SWJ News Roundup

    http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la...ry.html#page=1

    Meet two Indonesians who are training to join Islamic State
    "I think there's some evidence that there's enough of a support base [in Indonesia] that if they got the green light from ISIS — which they haven't yet — they could quite quickly set up a structure of ISIS here," Jones said. "It would be tiny and there would be lots of opposition, but it raises concerns [that they might] follow other kinds of orders from ISIS, which could include violence."
    As many readers know, over half of the world's Muslims reside in South and Southeast Asia. The potential for extremism is alarming, but unfortunately despite our claims of dedicating effort to remain left of bang, we tend to ignore this and focus on the 5 meter knife fight.

    According to an Australian intelligence report obtained by news website The Intercept, two Indonesian commercial pilots have pledged devotion to Islamic State. Ridwan Agustin, a former AirAsia pilot, may have already traveled to Syria
    .

    It doesn't many to have a strategic impact. ISIL conducts a more or less conventional in Syria and Iraq, and an atomized global surrogate war with self-radicalized individuals of various capabilities. An airline pilot controls a potential weapon of mass destruction.

    "For Muslim people, there's a quite famous proverb: Live in dignity, or die in jihad. If we die doing this, we will have won."

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