Word: terrorism
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These aren't hypothetical concerns for a Syrian. The country was paralyzed by years of coups and plots until the Assad regime came to power in 1970; the Muslim Brotherhood launched a terror war against the regime in the 1980s; and Syria is still formally at war with Israel, which occupies Syrian land and almost certainly has spies operating here. As the saying goes, sometimes even the paranoid have enemies...
...could have discussed how the Syrian government helped create these conditions by supporting and funding groups that wage a terror war against Israel, and how closing legitimate forms of opposition tends to push opponents to extremes. But another student left me struggling for words when she pressed the case: "Don't tell us the United States doesn't do the exact same thing." After all the revelations about abuses of power that have occurred in the name of the War on Terror - kidnappings, torture, illegal wiretapping, and invading a country to neutralize a non-existent WMD threat - even the would...
...Zawahiri, that Algeria's radical Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) had joined bin Laden's organization. After renaming itself al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group quickly began targeting foreign interests in Algeria and warned that attacks abroad would follow. AQIM then used an al-Qaeda terror signature in its April 11 strike in Algiers - multiple and coordinated suicide bombings, followed up by post-mortem video statements by the "martyrs" broadcast on jihadist web sites...
...French terror expert Roland Jacquard points out that the AQIM was formed by a hard core of leaders who now view with disdain the holdouts of their former organization, the GSPC, still operating in the southern part of Algeria. Similarly, Moroccan extremists are frequently divided into small, local groups who turned locally recruited impoverished youths into the hastily trained kamikazes that botched the recent Casablanca bombings. More sophisticated groups connected with Qaeda leaders in the Gulf may have recruited officers in the security forces and pilots in the national airline, but they have also been more closely monitored...
...best manner of preventing regional jihadist cooperation and structures from forming is by keeping groups scrambling to avoid detection at home," the French counter-terror official says. Preventing that happening in north Africa is vital for Europe, and France in particular, Jacquard notes. "If they can coordinate and become efficient through cooperation there, there's no doubt they'll export that for terror purposes here," Jacquard warns. "That's inevitable - and it's why European security services view north Africa as Europe's front line in fighting terrorism...