Dangerous terror organization: Khorasan

[pieter]

Khorasan: Muhsin al-Fadhli - the man leading a terror group more feared by US officials than Isis


Some American experts say the al-Qaeda-linked group Khorasan poses a greater threat than Islamic State itself

Discussions of the terror plot were almost always discreet. So when the towers burned that September day, many al-Qaeda operatives didn’t know of their group’s involvement. Only Osama bin Laden and several top commanders knew the truth.

Now, more than 13 years later, one of those commanders is back and perhaps more dangerous than ever. On Sept. 11, 2001, Muhsin al-Fadhli had been barely more than a boy, aged 19. But today the steely-eyed 33-year-old operative is in Syria, leading a group of clandestine al-Qaeda operatives called “Khorasan,” which some American officials said may be more dangerous in some respects than the Islamic State.

Khorasan hasn’t arrived to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. It’s not interested laying claim to great swaths of land and resources, as is the Islamic State. Rather, American officials told the Associated Press, its members have come from Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan to exploit the flood of Western jihadists who now have skin in the fight — and possess very valuable passports. According to the AP, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri dispatched this deputy to recruit those Western fighters, who have a better chance of escaping scrutiny at airports and could place bombs onto planes.

In what the Wall Street Journal described as the first time an American official publicly acknowledged the group, James Clapper said late last week that “in terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger” as the Islamic State. The New York Times then reported the group posed a “more direct threat” to American and Europe than the Islamic State.

The Islamic State wants its caliphate. It wants regional control. But Khorasan, which has partnered with sophisticated Yemeni bombmakers, wants a repeat of 9/11.


2000: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qa’eda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders.


2009: Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March.


2010: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart.


2013: Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Laden’s successor) concerned about Isis’ expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi.


2014 - September: Obama tells us that America “will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country”


2014 - September: Isis released a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body.

[pieter]

edition.cnn.com/2014/09/22/world/meast/al-qaeda-syria-khorasan/index.htm

[Jaga]

There is so much superficial information about so called "war on terror" or "muslim terrorists" so a typical person has a very weak idea to distinguish between these different groups, since no religios differences, like between Sunni or Wahhabi and Shia are mentioned.

In today local newspaper there was a big article about Yemen being conquered and its capital, but who really cares, there is so much going on in Middle East.

www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/yemens-bloody-weekend-sees-100s-killed-and-rebels-on-the-ris

he Houthi rebel movement is a growing power in troubled Yemen. Its rise is part of a feud that stretches back a decade, and the bloodshed is unlikely to end here.
posted on Sept. 22, 2014, at 9:49 a.m.
Gregory D. Johnsen
Michael Hastings Fellow


Smoke rises from the headquarters of the Yemeni state television following an attack on it over the weekend. Khaled Abdullah / Reuters
Days of heavy fighting, which left at least 140 people dead in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, came to an end on Sunday with the resignation of the prime minister and a tentative new peace deal. But the deal, which was signed by representatives of the Houthi movement and Yemeni President Abd Rabu Mansur Hadi, is unlikely to be the sort of long-term agreement the country has been searching for since former President Ali Abdullah Salih stepped down in early 2012.
In carrying out its four-day blitz through Sanaa, which included taking over state television headquarters and several government buildings, the Houthis — a sophisticated rebel movement — were both flexing their political muscle and continuing a bitter blood feud that stretches back a decade.
Over the past two years the Houthis have moved far beyond their narrow sectarian origins. They have broadened their appeal beyond their traditional power base of Zaydi Muslims — a branch of Shiite Islam that is relatively close to Sunni Islam — and in the process become Yemen’s primary opposition group. They are also, as the latest agreement makes clear, the closest thing Yemen has to a kingmaker. The Houthis may not have enough power to impose their will upon the rest of the country, but they now have enough supporters and weapons to act as an effective veto on Yemen’s central government.
This is a remarkable turnaround for a group that once believed itself to be on the verge of political and religious extinction in Yemen. From 2004 to 2010 the Houthis fought six separate wars against a wide coalition of forces led by the central government in Sanaa, but which also included Salafi and tribal fighters.
The first of the so-called “Houthi wars” ended a decade ago this month, when the group’s initial leader, Husayn al-Houthi, was killed in the mountains near the Saudi border. Husayn’s younger brother, Abd al-Malik, now leads the group and it appears as though he is looking to settle old scores.

[pieter]

Jaga,

For people in the West, New York, Washington, Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, Madrid, London and Amsterdam do care about the so called "war on terror" or "muslim terrorists". The father and mother of Theo van Gogh, slaughtered on an Amsterdam street by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch–Moroccan Islamist and convicted murderer. He is serving a life sentence without parole for the assassination of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh. He holds both Dutch and Moroccan citizenship. He was a member of the Hofstad Network.

We often don´t know the difference between the various groups, networks, movements and parties. Like you see we can´t distinguish between Sunni or Shia, the puritinical Saoudi Wahhabi (puritical, radical fundamentalist, strict version of Islam) and Allawi or Ahmadiyya, Sufi Islam and other different branches or schools of Sunni Islam or Shia Islam. Both headstreams of Islam have very ultra-orthodox directions (like Wahhabism and Salafism, whom are closely connected) and the revolutionairy and doctrinary Orthodox Shia Islam of the Ayatollah's of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon; Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the Lebanese leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, and the radical Iraqi Shia leader and firebrand Muqtadā al-Ṣadr.

Yes, Yemen goes through a difficult stage of radical Sunni Muslim militant rebellion (Al Qaida on the Arab Peninsula), and the Shia Houthi rebels, who now control the capital and large part of the country, they conquered. Jaga, the are large and numerous differences between Muslims. Differences between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam, like between Protestant christinatiy and Roman-Catholicism. But also inside the Sunni Islam and Shia Islam there are differences, various sects and theological schools. These theological schools sometimes have cultural and religious powers in communities. When they are very powerful and violent they have also political, military andeconomical influence (if they control pockets of lands, regions or whole countries). The largest problem for Islam today is internal discord, Wars between Muslim nations, civil wars, Islamic (Jihadist militant) terror against non-Muslims and Muslims who are more liberal, secular or just different in how they experience their faith.







Cheers,
Pieter

[Jaga]

Pieter,

I did not see this post until now, sorry. Thanks for your very thorough presentation. All these different sects which have local influence (often good for the insiders and bad for the insiders) remind me about Reformation time in Christian church.

+++The largest problem for Islam today is internal discord, Wars between Muslim nations, civil wars, Islamic (Jihadist militant) terror against non-Muslims and Muslims who are more liberal, secular or just different in how they experience their faith.+++

I hope that this internal discord among Muslims would eventually lead to the new much more modernized face of Muslim countries.