Word: qaeda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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According to Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based terrorism expert with the International Crisis Group, the breakdown of negotiations may have freed the most radicalized faction of a fluid coalition of homegrown separatists, criminals, and foreign jihadis trained by Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaeda-linked international terrorist group. "The MILF was keeping a fairly tight lid on the radical elements," Jones says. "When things were looking bright for a peace agreement, they were even providing intelligence on foreign jihadis to the armed forces of the Philippines." Such cooperation is unlikely to continue, Jones says...
...Obeidi's band of citizen fighters and local watchmen, divisions of the U.S.-backed Awakening movement around Iraq, have been critical to the taming of the insurgent-infested areas since 2006. As a consequence, they have faced regular assassination attempts from militants aligned with al-Qaeda in Iraq, the umbrella organization for Sunni insurgents. Al-Obeidi said four of his men had been killed since the beginning of the year. And, just about a month after speaking with TIME, al-Obeidi himself was dead. On August 17, a suicide bomber walked up toward al-Obeidi and a team...
Farooq al-Obeidi sensed his killers were near. "We have been penetrated by al-Qaeda," said al-Obeidi, a top commander of the Sunni Awakening group in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya...
Washington may be glad to hand over the formerly al-Qaeda infested area and the Shi'te dominated government in Baghdad happy to receive it. But not everyone is celebrating. A leader of the Awakening movement narrows his eyes and tightens his jaw at the idea of the U.S. hand-over. "We wanted it to be postponed but the decision had already been made by the government and we cannot change it," says Sheikh Mohammad Mahmood al Natah, the spokesperson for the Awakening Council. The hand-over, originally scheduled for June, took place on Monday, making Anbar the 11th...
Anbar's tribal leaders say they feel threatened. "Our reward for defeating Al Qaeda is that we've been sidelined," says Sheikh Hamid al Hayess, a senior member of the movement. "We are sensing a change toward us," says Colonel Rashid. "The government should help us, not try to break us with its decisions...