Al Qaeda Fighters Research Articles

The US War on Terror in Afghanistan and its Impact on FATA in Pakistan

The US counterattack on Afghanistan in October 2001 changed in the overall security structure of the region. The Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters escaped the US bombing of the Tora Bora in Afghanistan and crossed into the FATA region of Pakistan. Pakistan’s military operations against these militants in the FATA provided a boost to the latter’s cause and almost the entire FATA experienced a sort of Talibanization. The US war in Afghanistan had its spillover effect in FATA. Terrorist activities unleashed in the entire Pakistan and turmoil in Afghanistan added fuel to this situation. FATA’s special constitutional status was adding to the woes of Pakistan and subsequently FATA was merged with the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). This paper analyzes the impact of the US war in Afghanistan on the FATA region of Pakistan.

Human rights activism and salafi-jihadi violence

ABSTRACTThe legal defence and high-profile campaigning by progressive human rights organisations representing or working on behalf of Al Qaeda fighters and supporters has generated furious debate internationally over the past decade. In the context of a rights-based perspective, this article explores two case studies, one related to a United States progressive, human rights delegation’s visit to Pakistan to protest drone strikes, and another focusing on the activities of a self-described human rights organisation working in the United Kingdom for those detained during the ‘global war on terror’. The article focuses on the left-wing and progressive arguments related to these two cases to examine some broader issues about the orientation of the political left to political violence, the nature of reactive human rights approaches to imperialism and war, and the prospects for more visionary orientations regarding human rights and political change.

Semi-Proxy Wars and U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy

On 4 February 2014, Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan (aka Al Qaeda Central) repudiated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Ayman al-Zawahiri declared that al-Baghdadi and his newly formed Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were no longer part of Al Qaeda's organization and Al Qaeda Central could not be held responsible for ISIL's behavior. It represents the first time that Al Qaeda Central has renounced an affiliate publicly. The announcement was driven by months of fighting between ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra, another Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. In fact, in Syria, Al Qaeda fighters are competing against each other for influence, as well as against other opposition groups, the Syrian regime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iraqi militiamen, and Lebanese Hezbollah. This chaotic, semi-proxy war is unlike any previous problem encountered, made even more challenging by the limited U.S. presence on-the-ground. More worrisome, this semi-proxy war also has spread beyond Syria. Similar dynamics have emerged in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon to a certain extent. This article argues that these dynamics necessitate a twist in U.S. counterterrorism strategy.

The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath ed. by Peter Cole, Brian McQuinn

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 40, 4, 2015 © The Maghreb Review 2015 This publication is printed on longlife paper BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS Books reviewed in The Maghreb Review can be ordered from The Maghreb Bookshop: www.maghrebbookshop.com. Our catalogue is also available on our website. THE LIBYAN REVOLUTION AND ITS AFTERMATH EDITED BY PETER COLE AND BRIAN MCQUINN, LONDON: HURST AND COMPANY, 2015. PP. 416. £30.00 (HBK). Libya is the anti-Tunisia. Where the latter led, the former followed. Where Ben Ali’s demise was quick, Qaddafi’s was drawn out. Where the Tunisian opposition was united, the Libyan was fragmented. Where Tunisia’s transition was peaceable, Libya’s was bloody. Where Tunisians can look forward to democracy, Libyans must endure war. And where Tunisia’s revolution was hailed as progressive, Libya’s remains heavily caveated. Certainly few now miss Qaddafi. Yet his legacy refuses to die. His passing created the political black hole from which the country is now struggling to escape. And the manner of his departure reinforced the murderous divisions which continue to separate and antagonise the population. Qaddafi is gone, would that he could be forgotten. Curiously, Libya and Tunisia are united by at least one notable commonality; both have been examined as regional vectors. Unlike what happened in the Maghreb’s other countries, their experiences have been given transnational weight. The Moroccan and Algerian protests were framed as mainly national events. They were situated within a wider context but as local episodes of a much grander saga; the Arab Spring. Their specificity was less important. And so too their individual effect on what was taking place elsewhere. Especially since they avoided the extremes. Their regimes survived. A little shaken and penitent perhaps, but nevertheless intact. And they escaped anarchy; rebellion, insurgency, civil war. As a result, they were subsumed, integrated, absorbed. They added to the momentum of the Arab Spring but remained indistinct details on its otherwise impressionistic canvas. And Mauritania was simply ignored, almost completely. As the progenitor and epicentre of the Arab Spring, Tunisia’s international impact has been carefully charted and analysed. And owing to the manner, consequences and implications of its collapse, so too has Libya’s. But that is where the similarity ends. For Tunisia remains a beacon. It started and inspired this latest wave of democratisation. And while the Arab Spring has largely descended into disappointment if not outright tragedy, Tunisia has not. Libya, in contrast, remains a source of instability. Qaddafi’s 510 BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS Tuareg auxiliaries assumed a central role in the Malian civil war (Lounnas 2013). His weapons soon found their way into the hands of Al Qaeda fighters in Algeria and the Sahel (Lounnas 2014). Libya’s territory became a safe-haven for Islamist terror groups, including, most recently, those of Islamic State (IS). This regional angle has arguably come at analytical cost. For it has tended to overshadow and draw attention away from the country’s chaotic domestic political situation. Both are understandable. The urgency of events in Mali in 2011 demanded scholarly and critical attention. While the fluidity and complexity of what was taking place in Libya presented formidable challenges to those seeking to chart and explain the country’s development. And it is also worth noting that at the start of the Arab Spring, the size of Libya studies was extremely small. An outlying country sometimes attached to the Maghreb, sometimes not, never part of the Mashreq but always within Arab North Africa it sat on the periphery of two peripheries. It is in addressing this shortfall that the real value of The Libyan Revolution and its Aftermath lies. The book’s 13 contributors are drawn from a range of professional and disciplinary backgrounds. They include journalists (Mary Fitzgerald and Rebecca Murray), senior international advisors (Ian Martin and Marieke Wierda), think tank analysts (Peter Cole and Wolfram Lacher), NGO practioners (Sean Kane and Frederic Wehrey) and academics (Peter Bartu, Yvan Guichaoua, Ahmed Labnouj, Brian McQuinn and Dirk Vandewalle). This spread of experience and approach adds to the book’s accessibility and enhances its utility. While empirically dense – each chapter is crammed with dates, names, places and titles – The...

The Burden of Knowledge

The Burden of Knowledge

Securing distant places? Practices of protection in contemporary peace-support operations

This article explores the dynamics and implications of practices of protection enacted within the framework of the UN-sponsored International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. It examines the ways in which those practices challenge established categories in the field of security, and discusses the problems and dilemmas they generate. The article demonstrates that the role played by North Atlantic Treaty Organization – as the lead actor in ISAF – reflects the Alliance's reconceptualisation of the relevant space of security. An analysis of security practices employed by ISAF in Afghanistan reveals that, in spite of statements that stress the unique situation of stabilisation and reconstruction in Afghanistan, ISAF's dual emphasis on inclusion/exclusion (i.e. defeating radical Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters while also winning the hearts and minds of the other Afghans) echoes in interesting ways of colonial practices of counter-insurgency. Conceptually, one of the most interesting features of ISAF's security practices has been a blurring of multiple boundaries that have long been at the heart of thinking about international politics: domestic/international, military/policing and public/private actors. By shedding light on that process of blurring boundaries, this article provides further evidence in support of the claim made in this special issue: that we are now living in a world in which many of the distinctions that once appeared to be clearly defined and fairly rigid are fast breaking down.

Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data

The media and public fascination who is detained at Guantanamo and why has been fueled in large measure by refusal of Government, on grounds of national security, to provide much information about individuals and charges against them. The information available to date has been anecdotal and erratic, drawn largely from interviews few detainees who have been released or from statements or court filings by their attorneys in pending habeas corpus proceedings that Government has not declared classified. This Report is first effort to provide a more detailed picture of who Guantanamo detainees are, how they ended up there, and purported bases for their enemy combatant designation. The data in this Report is based almost entirely upon United States Government's own documents. This Report provides a window into Government's success detaining only those that President has called the worst of worst. Among findings of Report: 1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against United States or its coalition allies. 2. Only 8% of detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation either al Qaeda or Taliban. 3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations a large number of groups that, in fact, are not on Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed fighters for; 30% considered members of; a large majority - 60% - are detained merely because they are associated with a group or groups Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of prisoners, a nexus to any terrorist group is not identified by Government. 4. Only 5% of detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86% of detainees captured by Pakistan or Northern Alliance were handed over to United States at a time in which United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies. 5. Finally, population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants - mostly Uighers - are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to be enemy combatants.

The Role of Transnational Norm Entrepreneurs in the U.S. "War on Terrorism"

One of the most visible symbols of the debate over human rights and national security in the context of the U.S. "War on Terrorism" has been the detainment of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The controversy concerning the fate of the nearly 600 prisoners demonstrates the emergence of new modes of democratic deliberation over how to strike the balance between rights and security. These new modes of deliberation involve nongovernmental organizations ("NGOs") and individuals who function as norm entrepreneurs, by mobilizing public opinion through transnational networks of opinion-makers and policymakers. Transnational networks of norm entrepreneurs have emerged where traditional avenues for foreign policymaking in the U.S. have failed to create a space for meaningful consideration of human rights in the rights/security balance. These traditional avenues are envisioned in the Constitution, which gives the President authority regarding foreign affairs, bounded by checks provided to Congress and the courts. While the goal of the constitutional process is to bring these institutional players into a dialogue, Congress and the judiciary have failed to engage the President in a conversation regarding the balance between human rights and national security. In the absence of initiatives by the government, nongovernmental actors have used communication structures within transnational networks to promote what this Article calls a dialogic approach to enforcement of human rights law.

Legal issues arising from the armed conflict in Afghanistan

The article is an attempt to shed some light on the legal issues arising from the conflict that took place in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th 2001 terrorist as concerns non-state actors. The first two parts consider the right of self-defence as a possible justification of the US bombings. Can by non-state actors qualify as armed attacks under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter? Secondly the legal limits of the exercise of the right of self-defence are considered, with focus on the possible adversaries of the actions of the defending state. In the third part, the imprisonment of the captured Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters is considered. The legal status of the detainees, the possible legal bases of the detention and the relationship of the legal bases with the treatment of prisoners are discussed.