Kenya (catch all)

[davidbfpo]

This might help clarify the role sadism plays in Islamist attacks: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dawn-pe...n-at-the-mall/ The author of the piece pursues scholarship in psychology, symbols, and ritual violence.

I am not an expert, let alone well read on the presence of sadism in Jihadist violence, but this passage simply did not sound truthful:

The Westgate Mall massacre is comparable to the mass murder of 166 people by members of the Islamist Jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, in ten coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India on November 26 -29, 2008. During their siege operation the LeT Jihadists also took the time to sexually humiliate, torture and mutilate some of the victims before shooting them dead.

So I contacted an Indian friend, a Mumbai resident, who officially investigated the attacks and is "in the know". He responded:

There was no "ritualistic" killing, no "beheading" and no rape in Mumbai. The gory details carried on this web site did not happen here. They did not carry any knives. They did not even mutilate the Jews in Chabad House". All they did was to open fire indiscriminately on innocent civilians.

Several of the victims in Nairobi were from India or of Indian origin. Had there been any mutilation or slaughter of children, Indian press would have published.

The Indian police charge sheet, which details what property was recovered and no such weapons are shown (I have a copy).

I do not doubt mutilation has happened, for example in London, but the author is wrong about Mumbai and I suspect such violence did not occur in Nairobi.

[davidbfpo]

Clint Watts asks 'Was Kenya Westgate Attack More AQAP/AQ Central Than Shabaab?'. Link: http://selectedwisdom.com/?p=1164

[omarali50]

About the Gurkha beheading: this is one of the big reasons why so many prominent targets were beheaded in the good old days. In a world without photographs, taking the head to someone who knew him was the surest way of confirming that the deed had indeed been done. When Yazid's Ummayad forces killed Hussain at Karbala (now remembered as the central event in Shia historical memory), they beheaded a person who was, after all, the beloved grandson of the holy prophet of Islam. This was not just (or even mainly) an expression of their barbaric nature. It was the norm to cut off the head of the rebel and take it to the emperor for inspection, confirmation and reward.
When Aurangzeb overthrew his dad and killed his brothers to become the Mughal emperor of India, one brother (Shuja) escaped to Myanmar. He was apparently killed in a skirmish there, but no one brought back a head (to the Raja of Arakan, whose people killed him; or to Aurangzeb, who was not directly involved in that skirmish). As a result, rumors of his return unsettled Aurangzeb's officials for years. ..Much better for the imperial government if that head had been cut off and brought for display.

[omarali50]

About ritual mutilation in Mumbai; I dont recall any such event either. The attack itself was barbaric enough (shooting unarmed innocent people while casually walking through the railway station..those images are more shocking to me than ritual mutilation). I wish psyops geniuses did not feel the need to add these details. I have never really understood why the truth (in this case, the willingness of some groups to randomly kill completely innocent unrelated people for the sake of their "cause") is not enough.
Then again, maybe I am just too naive.

[Fuchs]

About ritual mutilation in Mumbai; I dont recall any such event either. The attack itself was barbaric enough (shooting unarmed innocent people while casually walking through the railway station..those images are more shocking to me than ritual mutilation). I wish psyops geniuses did not feel the need to add these details. I have never really understood why the truth (in this case, the willingness of some groups to randomly kill completely innocent unrelated people for the sake of their "cause") is not enough.
Then again, maybe I am just too naive.

I don't think that professional PsyOps strategy is behind this.

The last decade shone some light at some prevalent depth of human nature.
Many people are mixing racism, authoritarianism, timidity, their desire to be knowledgeable (while being too stupid and/or lazy to actually acquire knowledge, thus they make #### up and insist others are clueless for they disagree), some despicable fantasies and other dirt from the bottom together.
The outcome is a flood of such made-up nonsense.

I suppose this is not new; 9/11 merely added a new fashion to the phenomenon.


The more I look at the world, the more I become convinced that time is overdue for a pile of good books about cognitive psychology on my desk.

[M-A Lagrange]

Two interesting articles on the Westgate and the SEAL raids.

First one is on the “white widow”. It is now almost certain she did not participate and the media frenzy around her involvement has been prompted by a lack of info and, as usual, the need for a scoop!

White Widow merely person of interest in Nairobi mall probe
AS FAR as the security officials in Kenya are concerned, Samantha Lewthwaite, the Northern Irish woman popularly tied to the Somali extremist group al-Shabaab, is merely a person of interest and not wanted for September’s mall siege in Nairobi that left dozens dead and many more injured. Having been first linked to the attacks by the British media, the link became so compelling that it was carried around the world as fact.
The Sunday Independent got the correct Lewthwaite angle: we should be worried about what the news of her fake South African passport will do to this country’s bid to reassure the world at large that its passport-issuing system is reliable.

Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor has assured the nation that the department had a handle on the situation as far back as 2011, when it cancelled the fraudulent passport.

"It was reported that Lewthwaite bought passports for her and her two children in Durban from convicted fraudster Ehmed Chisty for R60,000. The Sunday Independent was reliably informed that home affairs has been searching for three men who have been running ID schemes across the city similar to Chisty’s, raking in between R50,000 and R120,000 for each ID," the paper reported.

http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/colu...obi-mall-probe

And a very detailed inside of the SEAL raid:

Somalia SEAL Raid Ended by Children Used as Shields
In a corroborating report, NBC News described how SEALs were able to enter the al-Shabaab compound, take the positions required by their planning, and even watch one of the terrorists take a cigarette break. But that same al-Shabaab fighter may have spotted the SEALs, because he came back out with an AK-47 and fired on the SEALs. The mission quickly escalated into a firefight, with the SEALs encountering intense fire with both guns and grenades. An unidentified official told CNN that, “Once it became clear we were not going to able to take him, the Navy commander made the decision to withdraw.”

CNN and NBC had both received word from U.S. officials that the decision to end the Somalia raid was prompted by seeing children, used as human shields, being moved out of the fortified seaside stronghold the SEALs were attacking.

SEALs were actually able to see Ikrima through the compound’s windows, but when children came into their scopes, the threat of hurting them prompted the team’s withdrawal. The tactical situation for these members of SEAL Team Six, the same unit that killed Osama bin-Laden, was also disintegrating, and they evacuated via the beach.

http://guardianlv.com/2013/10/somali...ed-as-shields/

[jmm99]

Ms Permutter, of Symbol & Ritual Intelligence (apparently its only key figure), formerly "The Institute for the Research of Organized & Ritual Violence", founded in 2001 -

Symbol & Ritual Intelligence specializes in the research, analysis and investigation of symbolic and ritual violence. Specific areas of expertise include; unfamiliar cultural traditions, ritual activities, religious terrorism, desecration controversies, ritual murder, and the identification of symbols, artifacts and unusual practices. What distinguishes Symbol & Ritual Intelligence from other institutes is our concentrated study of images and the application of symbolic methodologies for use in law enforcement. We can assist you in identifying emblems, tattoos, colors, graffiti, clothing, ritual objects, etc. of hundreds of gang and terrorist organizations. We produce specialized charts, intelligence reports, and group bulletins from our unique perspective.

branched off from philosophy (in which, she has a PhD) into satanic and occult ritual crimes (big back in the 80s and 90s), and after 9/11 into Islamist ritual crimes.

As to these subjects, she wrote Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes (2003):

•Presents over 100 illustrations of signs and symbols to look for at crime scenes that indicate ritual practice
•Includes background and investigation techniques for crimes involving religion-based terrorism
•Details domestic and international terrorist religions
•Provides organizational structures of large clans and covens, membership and recruitment policies, and homicide case studies
•Offers intelligence strategies inclusive of indoctrination techniques, negotiation and prosecution strategies, and advantages of understanding religious violence
•Examines types of criminal profiling and provides a crime classification system to distinguish between types of ritual homicide

and True Believers: A Symbolic Anthropological Study of Islamist Culture (tbp 2014):

•Includes detailed descriptions of the use and origins of Islamist loaded words, embedded symbols, and collective rituals used in indoctrination and psychological warfare
•Demonstrates how honor and shame is utilized to inculcate children, recruit moderates, train soldiers, and motivate violence
•Includes descriptions of specific rituals and burial rites related to martyrdom operations that can assist in preventing suicide attacks and the investigation of previous attacks
•Explores the use of overt and subliminal messages in Islamist communications, cartoons, advertising, music, and videogames
•Provides a detailed symbolic analysis of honor killing, beheadings, suicide attacks, dismemberment, and other Islamist atrocities.
•Explains the disproportionate violent responses to Quran desecration and how Islamists exploit these and other incidents
•Explores the difference and significance of tribal and rational societies
•Demonstrates the impact of Islamist conspiracy theories for indoctrination, recruitment, and propaganda
•Illustrates the significance of Muslim victimhood for Islamist strategic and psychological operations
•Features full color photos

I haven't read either book; nor do I intend to. I have read her 2006 article, Mujahideen Blood Rituals: The Religious and Forensic Symbolism of Al Qaeda Beheading (obviously the title rings my feeding time bell), which concludes (in snips):

It is difficult to remain in denial when there is actual proof of ritual murders and not just remnants of the crime scene. The American public is all too familiar with images of violent murder. What the public cannot accept is the fact that these beheadings are communally sanctioned and religiously justified. These are not violent crimes committed by psychopaths or a form of group hysteria; beheading, suicide bombing, and ritual mutilation are the sacred blood rituals of the Holy warriors of Islam. This is a highly organized community that consistently and proudly professes their ideology, values, and goals and persistently identifies themselves as Mujahideen. They do not hide the fact that they are fighting a holy war and that they have a religious imperative to kill Christians, Jews, and unbelievers. All we have to do is listen to what they are telling us.
...
The media is fond of using the word "desecration," particularly in reference to Islamic beliefs. Desecration is a sacred concept, and although we are supposedly not fighting a holy war, the word "desecration" has made headlines quite frequently; desecration of the Quran, desecration of enemies’ bodies, and desecration of mosques. We are hypersensitive to what Muslims hold sacred even when it jeopardizes our national security and puts soldiers’ lives at risk. We are not going to be defeated by terrorism but we will be defeated by political correctness unless we stop sugarcoating the sacred nature of this war. There are many people who recognize the implications of this religious threat; however, not one politician will acknowledge that we are involved in a holy war. It would be political suicide to announce that this is not a war on terrorism but a war on Islam.
...
True believers are the most dangerous enemies. You may be able to get a soldier to fight and die for his country in battle, but you would be hard pressed to find one willing to strap on C-4 attached to a vest full of nails and ball bearings and commit suicide as a walking claymore mine. Mujahideen are lining up for this duty. These holy warriors are willingly blowing themselves up because they have faith. As a consequence of our Western view of the world and standard behavioral science analysis of crime, we fail to see the nature of these true believers. Al-Qaeda has already won the most important strategic battle; they know their enemy, but we are in denial of their religious imperative to annihilate us. Our worst opponent is not the Mujahideen, it is our refusal to acknowledge that we are fighting soldiers of God in a centuries-old holy war.

Nothing in these snips is that much different from what I've said; but I worry about Ms Perlmutter's facts. That is, is she taking (esp. as in the current Frontpage article) killings by Muslims - not part of a jihadist organization - and using them to amplify the acknowledged killings by jihadist organizations ? And, is she amplifying the Mumbai killings (and perhaps other events she cites) by adding non-facts ?

Personally, if I were to hire someone to advise me on jihadist killings, I'd hire someone like Scott Atran from the Univ. of Michigan (includes his scientific and popular pubs), who's played that game at the major league level, with such as Marc Sageman, etc., Theoretical Frames on Pathways to Violent Radicalization (2009).

Regards

Mike

[omarali50]

btw, re my comments above, I did not mean to deny that Jihadists indulge in horrific ritualized violence (like beheadings and displaying the heads on white sheets), see (if you wish, I did not actually see the video, but have seen others like it in the past) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ApPc...ctr=1381167244
But I just think it should not be necessary to make up stories if they did not happen.
What is happening and has happened is bad enough.

[Bill Moore]

I am not an expert, let alone well read on the presence of sadism in Jihadist violence, but this passage simply did not sound truthful:

So I contacted an Indian friend, a Mumbai resident, who officially investigated the attacks and is "in the know". He responded:

The Indian police charge sheet, which details what property was recovered and no such weapons are shown (I have a copy).

I do not doubt mutilation has happened, for example in London, but the author is wrong about Mumbai and I suspect such violence did not occur in Nairobi.

David,

Unfortunately based on personal observation of several bodies in Iraq and a few elsewhere that were mutilated by Jihadists that indicates to me at least some, and I suspect a minority, do engage in mutilation for whatever purpose. Shifting to your comments on Mumbai, a lot of people from several nations investigated the attacks in Mumbai, so pardon me for being suspect of your friends apparent all knowing assumptions. He may very well be correct, but the jury is still out in my opinion. The latest I read on the Jewish victims, which were the only victims in Mumbai that were possibly tortured was their bodies were too badly mutilated to tell. I saw photos and it appears their bodies were mutilated by explosives. If I recall correctly, hard to believe the attacks were 5 years ago now, the reason the torture was suspected was based on the directions the terrorists were received from Karachi that was intercepted. Even if they did cut their throats, that isn't exactly torture in my view, it is just murder, but getting back to your friends comments none of the terrorists died at that site, so not having knives on them is hardly justification to rule out they didn't use a knife (perhaps for the Indian version of Sherlock Holmes that suffices as evidence of innocence). For example, a group of thieves could break into my house and tie me up, and then grab a knife from my kitchen or elsewhere and slice my throat, and then leave the knife at my house and continue on their killing rampage. I doubt any western investigator would rule they couldn't have cut my throat because they didn't have a knife on them when they were killed or captured. I'm simply throwing out a counter argument to reinforce what Fuchs pointed out, which is that the truth is elusive, which leads to ignorance.

The information coming out of Nairobi is still terribly confusing, the only thing that remains clear is that several innocents were murdered by terrorists, and possibly several more were killed by the so called security forces. The number of attackers according to open source reports ranges from four (apparently all that was seen in the videos) to 15 to as high as 30! It has been several days since the attack and the reporting is still mixed. Sometimes what passes for the truth doesn't emerge until years after the event.

After reading the Selected Wisdom post it seemed to be a lot of uninformed rambling about nothing. Al Shabaab has been a multinational terrorist network for years, and they also have been an insurgency force (even longer). Contrary to all the reports of Al-Shabaab being on their last leg, they remain one of the more dangerous Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist networks (even if their insurgency efforts were rolled back). We struggle too much to try to fit loose networked organizations into our desired view of organizations with a formal structure, and this results in a continued misdiagnosis or classification. We think we know how to defeat formal organizations, but loose networks are much harder to understand since they constantly adapt and are also very resilient. We seem to want to claim victory prematurely simply because African Union forces pushed Al-Shabaab out of the major urban areas in Somalia, yet they still exist and they still have the will and capability to fight, so making claims like they're on their last leg only sets us for disappointment when we find they're far from it. Instead of making such wishful comments, we should pursue the momentum the AU created and continue to aggressively target them until they're sufficiently suppressed. Furthermore, there is no reason to think they conducted this attack on the mall on their own, since the various terrorist networks around the globe mutually support each other to varying degrees, but on the other hand it may been conducted by homeboys from Kenya. It wouldn't surprise me if actors as far away as Pakistan and Yemen were involved (neither are that far away). Much too early to tell at this point, but whatever the truth is, it shouldn't be surprising, since all are credible probabilities.

http://www.nctc.gov/site/groups/al_shabaab.html

Al-Shabaab is not centralized or monolithic in its agenda or goals. Its rank-and-file members come from disparate clans, and the group is susceptible to clan politics, internal divisions, and shifting alliances. Most of its fighters are predominantly interested in the nationalistic battle against the TFG and not supportive of global jihad. Al-Shabaab’s senior leadership is affiliated with al-Qa‘ida and is believed to have trained and fought in Afghanistan. The merger of the two groups was publicly announced in February 2012 by the al-Shabaab amir and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of al-Qa‘ida.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/05/world/...rticle_sidebar

Washington (CNN) -- A pre-dawn raid by elite U.S. forces in southern Somalia, in the heart of territory controlled by the al Qaeda subsidiary Al-Shabaab, targeted an Al-Shabaab commander connected to one of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, a senior Obama administration official said Sunday.

The suspected foreign fighter commander is named Ikrima, a Kenyan of Somali origin about whom little is known. The official said Ikrima is associated with two now-deceased al Qaeda operatives who played roles in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and the 2002 attacks on a hotel and airline in Mombasa, also in Kenya.

Not only do they have American, British, and Kenya recruits:

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-s...,4926499.story

According to Norway's Channel 2, Ikrima had traveled to Norway in 2004 and sought political asylum while living in Oslo. He received travel documents but left in 2008 before authorities had ruled on his asylum request. Two Swedes whom he met in Norway later joined him at Shabab training camps in Somalia, the TV station said, adding that a Swedish member of the Shabab was killed in the SEAL raid Saturday.

Morten Storm, a Dane who said he has worked for several Western intelligence agencies, told CNN that he helped pass messages between Ikrima and Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen between 2008 and 2012.

Ikrima communicated directly with Anwar Awlaki, the American-born Al Qaeda leader in Yemen who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011, about going to Yemen but never made the trip, Storm said. Instead Ikrima, who speaks Norwegian, became a key handler of Shabab recruits from the West.

[Bill Moore]

I am not an expert, let alone well read on the presence of sadism in Jihadist violence, but this passage simply did not sound truthful:

So I contacted an Indian friend, a Mumbai resident, who officially investigated the attacks and is "in the know". He responded:

The Indian police charge sheet, which details what property was recovered and no such weapons are shown (I have a copy).

I do not doubt mutilation has happened, for example in London, but the author is wrong about Mumbai and I suspect such violence did not occur in Nairobi.

It is a fact that some Islamists torture and mutilate their victims, but it does not seem to be a common practice. What I don't know is if it is part of a ritual based on religion or just sick behavior conducted by a few? I'll go a step further and wonder if they're actually more humane than many others we have fought to include Saddam's relatively secular forces, the Vietnamese, Japanese, Germans, Soviets and their proxies, etc.? Putting it in context the incidents of Islamists torturing their victims pales in comparison to the Cartels in Mexico, the Mafia in Italy, numerous communist insurgent groups, and of course the Nazis and Japanese practicing the unspeakable on an industrial scale, etc. On the other hand I am still concerned with the apologists for the Islamists in the media. It seems people can pick the news they want to reinforce their view (savage killers or something far from that), but the truth is getting harder and harder to come by in our so called information age (maybe more accurately the disinformation age). What little I could find on potential torture in the mall is still very questionable.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/02/world/...ing/index.html

Members of Kenya's government were mute about what they had seen inside after emerging from an inspection there earlier this week.

CNN learned that the Westgate mall attackers tortured some of the hostages.

Military doctors said militants severed hands, cut off noses and, in some cases, hanged hostages. CNN has seen photographic evidence of one dead victim with a hand amputated.

http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/...=p&age=0&&tt=b

CNN Video briefly discusses potential torture/maiming during the attack and claims to have photographic evidence, but of course not provided.

My research on Dawn Perlmutter exposes little new JMM didn't already point out, except I did look at the reviews of her book on Amazon and the majority of reviews were one star reviews based on her lack of knowledge on the topic.

[M-A Lagrange]

If we believe the Kenyan security agencies:

Security agencies worry about new terrorist threats in Kenya

Kenyan and Western security services are racing against time to foil new planned terror attacks in Kenya barely three weeks after the Westgate attack.

Much of the investigations are now focused on the underground activities of a shadowy militant organisation called Al-Hijra, led by Sheikh Iman Ali, a Kenyan preacher now hosted by al-Shabaab in Somalia.
...
“We in the EU are aware of the threats posed by Al-Hijra and its affiliates. The new plots are grave and warrant a lot of attention, but we have no intention at this stage to elevate them into a full-blown travel alert. We are sensitive to Kenya and its economic needs and we are all working together to foil possible future attacks,” a senior European diplomat told the Sunday Nation.
...
“Westgate was a complex operation that was carried out with low-tech means and certainly much more difficult to detect or disrupt than the iconic suicide bomber. It is also much easier to replicate,” Matt Bryden, a regional analyst and director of Sahan Research, told the Sunday Nation
...
“There have been extensive arrests in Kenya, on the border with Somalia, and even as far as Uganda and Tanzania. I believe good progress is being made. But we must complement these measures by strengthening our capacity; improving our intelligence gathering and law enforcement systems and improving co-operation with the public.”
...
“Al-Hijra has been under surveillance for a number of years and the Kenyan state has accumulated enough intelligence on its ideological leaders to disrupt the movement. For some reasons, there is reluctance to provide classified intelligence to the law enforcement agencies for effective prosecutions. And this ought to change.”

http://www.hiiraan.com/news4/2013/Oc..._in_kenya.aspx

[davidbfpo]

No real surprises here IMHO in a breathless story:

.. simple, its effective and easy to copy (much later)....counterterror operatives are looking at a world that appears more frightening every day.....At the end of the day, these days, terror’s just another word for a few guys with guns.

Link:http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-massacre.html

I would ask does such reporting in fact amplify the effect of terror?

[carl]

No real surprises here IMHO in a breathless story:

Link:http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-massacre.html

I would ask does such reporting in fact amplify the effect of terror?

Breathless? A sense of an almost pornographic thrill imagining what might happen? In creating that thrill, amplifying the effect of terror? From an American dominant liberal establishment mass media writer? Naw, ain't never gonna' happen.

[jmm99]

Long one and short one gave me a better idea of what happened. A 4-man fire team - what if a section of 4 fire teams had been there ?

Regards

Mike

[JMA]

Maybe more difficult to infiltrate the additional numbers (people, weapons and ammo) without drawing attention.

The end result is that they achieved their aim, got away with it and exposed the Kenyan military as being something like the Keystone Cops.

Long one and short one gave me a better idea of what happened. A 4-man fire team - what if a section of 4 fire teams had been there ?

Regards

Mike