Word: islamists
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...French have a long and intimate acquaintance with terror, earned in years of attacks by Algerian independence fighters. Although currently plagued by an Islamist terror threat, French authorities have made their country so inhospitable to terrorist networks that many have relocated to Germany. How did they do it? What lessons can the U.S. learn? And, perhaps most important, how many civil liberties are we willing to give up in the process...
...early 1990s, Islamist radicals found a pool of willing recruits in the cauldrons of youthful rage found in the impoverished suburban ghettoes that house many of France's 5 million people of Arab origin. The point of connection between the suburbs of Paris and Marseilles and Osama Bin Laden's Afghanistan-based networks came via Algeria. There, the military-backed government overturned elections won by the Islamists, banned their party and drove its most extreme elements underground - where they've led a merciless war of terror against politicians and citizens alike. The most notorious Algerian terror faction, the Armed Islamic...
...police are able to arrest and detain any suspect in any crime whose goal, however remotely, can ultimately assist terrorist activity. That law shocks civil libertarians in the U.S. and Britain, but French officials retort that those countries' commitment to strict civil libertarian principles has made them havens where Islamist militants can plot terror with less risk of detection because of the legal restraints on techniques such as spot ID checks and information monitoring...
...China shares a small border with Afghanistan, and has been generally supportive of the U.S. call for action against terrorism. Bin Laden's group has trained Islamist fighting for secession in western China, and Beijing would be happy to see an end to the regime in Afghanistan that allows terrorist training camps to be maintained there. The Chinese have moved troops to the border recently, but are unlikely to support any direct U.S. military intervention in their neighborhood, much less allow their own territory to be used. Beijing's importance may lie in the fact that it is Pakistan...
...Uzbekistan, another former Soviet republic whose 25 million people share ethnic ties with an anti-Taliban section of the Afghan population, faces an Islamist insurgency of its own, and that intensifies its opposition to Afghanistan's ruling militia. It has served as a rear base for opposition forces based in the north, and could be another important base for U.S. action - once again, if its Russian patron is willing...