Word: islamists
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...Qaeda's decimated Old Guard may no longer be able to mount elaborately detailed plots executed by trained terrorists under its direct command. But U.S. counterterrorism officials believe the remaining inner core has put out a general go-ahead to Islamist cells worldwide: Attack whenever and wherever you can. Sometimes the mother ship may provide financial and logistical support, but the dirty work seems to be handled by local, autonomous units that are intimately familiar with their areas and can plan and attack below the radar of local security forces. The pattern, says Rand Corporation terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman...
...heart of the Islamic world. But starting on May 12, when at least nine Arabs were among the 26 victims in the first Riyadh attack, al-Qaeda and its surrogates seem to have abandoned any concerns about causing Muslim deaths or alienating Muslim public opinion. "You have Islamist terrorists attacking innocent victims as an indirect manner of striking Arab or Islamic governments that militants condemn as corrupt," says the adviser to Morocco's King. France's Jacquard calls the tactic a new "strategy of rupture." The purpose, he says, is to force Muslims "to finally, fatally decide whether they...
...Terror strikes in the heart of Muslim cities such as Casablanca, Riyadh and Istanbul are also designed to provoke a confrontation between pro-U.S. regimes and indigenous Islamists, in the hope that these regimes could be weakened or toppled. The movement's primary strategic objective is to gain control of Muslim countries, eliminating Western influence and establishing Islamist regimes. But pursuing that goal via terrorist bombings in those countries carries the inherent risk of turning potentially sympathetic public opinion against the extremists, as it did in Egypt during the 1990s when terror attacks on tourists and civilians prompted many...
...their own streets, and turn against the extremists. Those who "massacred innocent people will account for it in both worlds," said Turkish prime minister Recip Erdogan in response to the bombings. "They will be damned until eternity." Erdogan's own ruling party has its roots in Turkey's moderate Islamist movement. But the reaction to jihadi suicide attacks in Iraq raises a cautionary flag: Even when most of the victims are innocent Iraqis, many ordinary Iraqis direct their anger over the attacks at the Americans for failing to ensure security or simply for being occupiers. The street reaction...
...That war on terror saw human rights abuses that were cited by the European Union as reasons to delay Turkey's membership, and the al-Qaeda aligned insurgents may want to provoke a widespread crackdown and foment hostility between secular military authorities and a civilian political leadership with Islamist roots, in the hope that this could halt Turkey's democratic reform process and delay its accession to the EU. Turkey may have managed to avoid domestic political discord by staying out of the Iraq war, but al-Qaeda may now be forcing some tough choices on the Turkish leadership...