Terrorismo yihadista (Continuación)

Rwandan armed forces prepare to board a flight to Mozambique, at the airport in Kigali, Rwanda, July 10, 2021 (AP photo by Muhizi Olivier).

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A violent insurgency in Mozambique’s northernmost province of Cabo Delgado is sparking fears that the area could become the next frontier for global jihadism in Africa. In recent years, young men, sometimes carrying the black flag of the Islamic State, have swept hundreds of thousands of people off their land in the natural gas-rich province. The militants’ attacks have often been marked by beheadings and mutilations, including of children.

All told, more than 3,000 people have been killed in the violence. Mozambican security forces have struggled to contain the insurgents, who in late March stormed the northern town of Palma, the gateway to multibillion-dollar natural gas projects that were being constructed with the investment of major multinational oil firms like France’s Total.…  Seguir leyendo »

Congolese soldiers enter the town of Mutwanga, partly deserted after recent armed attacks, in northeastern Congo on May 23. (Alexis Huguet/AFP/Getty Images)

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Beni, a city in eastern Congo, is experiencing a wave of violence. Bomb attacks in late June killed one and injured two others. On June 28, Beni’s mayor closed all schools and markets, banned public gatherings and established a curfew. These moves couldn’t prevent a July 1 attack, which left nine civilians dead.

Congo’s government attributed the attacks to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group active in eastern Congo since 1995. Some analysts see the ADF as the deadliest of the roughly 130 armed groups now operating in the region. Since 2019 there have been increasing reports of links between the ADF and the Islamic State, which seeks to establish a global Islamist militant movement, along with an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria.…  Seguir leyendo »

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L'insurrection islamiste de la province mozambicaine du Cabo Delgado était à ses origines un groupe disparate de jeunes aux frustrations locales menant quelques attaques ici et là, souvent à l’aide de machettes. L’assaut spectaculaire mené fin mars sur la ville de Palma a montré au monde que le groupe, désormais considéré par les États-Unis comme une franchise de l’État islamique, a bel et bien opéré une mue : des centaines d’hommes lourdement armés ont tué des civils, détruit une partie de la ville et tenu la dragée haute aux forces de sécurité, qui ont mis plus de dix jours pour reprendre le contrôle de Palma.…  Seguir leyendo »

El monstruo talibán de Pakistán

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Al difunto director de la poderosa Agencia de Inteligencia Inter-Servicios (ISI) de Pakistán, el teniente general Hamid Gul, le gustaba hacer alarde de que cuando se escribiera la historia de Afganistán, quedaría registrado que la ISI, con la ayuda de Estados Unidos, derrotó a la Unión Soviética. Y luego, agregaba disimuladamente, los historiadores dirían que la ISI, con la ayuda de Estados Unidos, derrotó a Estados Unidos.

El alarde de Gul no era el tipo de bravata vacía por las que se conoce a los militares cuando cuelgan el uniforme y recuerdan su pasado como algo más glorioso de lo que podrían garantizar los detalles.…  Seguir leyendo »

People walk through the central market in Pemba, Mozambique, on May 25. Pemba has taken in tens of thousands of people fleeing from violence perpetrated by Islamist insurgents. (John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images)

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In March, militants from the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province (ISCAP) attacked the city of Palma in Mozambique. They destroyed parts of the infrastructure, killing and beheading civilians and overrunning sections of the city for days.

Global headlines soon percolated that claims that the Islamic State was involved in the violence were overblown. This analysis centered on arguments that the Islamic State’s central leadership — “IS Central” and based in Iraq, security experts believe — had no command and control over the Mozambican group. The violence in Palma, some argued, was primarily motivated by unemployment and government grievances, not extremist ideology.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Around the world, states locked in conflict with jihadists are trying to devise policies to reintegrate disillusioned militants into society. In Nigeria, a program targeting defectors from the violent extremist group Boko Haram offers a window into the promise and pitfalls of such efforts.

For the past 12 years, Nigeria has struggled to quash a violent insurgency waged by Boko Haram in its northeast. Although a 2015 military offensive put the jihadists onto the back foot, the federal government recognized that it would not be able to defeat the insurgency solely through force. It therefore decided to explore nonmilitary ways to erode Boko Haram and, after the group split roughly five years ago, its two successor factions—which I will refer to collectively here simply as Boko Haram.…  Seguir leyendo »

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¿Es Osama Bin Laden el vencedor póstumo de la mal llamada “Guerra contra el Terror”? Una década después de la operación de las fuerzas especiales estadounidenses para secuestrar y asesinar al líder ideológico de los atentados del 11-S, plantearse esta cuestión es un ejercicio tan incómodo como inevitable. A primera vista, la respuesta es negativa: el 11-S no provocó la retirada estadounidense de los países musulmanes como exigía Al Qaeda. Sucedió más bien lo contrario: estos ataques justificaron varias intervenciones militares occidentales en países musulmanes (Afganistán, Irak, Mali, etc.). A su vez, la idea de una “amenaza terrorista” también ha servido de excusa a ciertos regímenes árabes autoritarios para reprimir cualquier forma de oposición política aparecida en estos años.…  Seguir leyendo »

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For decades, the centre of gravity of jihadist militancy swung between South Asia and the Middle East.

In the early 1990s, Arab volunteers who had been fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan returned home to battle governments they declared un-Islamic. Later that decade, as those rebellions petered out, many fighters retreated to Afghanistan, then under Taliban control. After the 9/11 attacks and the U.S.-backed ouster of the Taliban, foreign militants who weren’t killed or captured mostly hid in the Pakistani tribal areas or scattered. Then came the 2003 U.S. Iraq war, which breathed new life into global jihadism. Thousands of militants travelled to fight U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

An Afghan soldier at a road checkpoint near a U.S. military base in Bagram on Thursday. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

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U.S. troops are beginning the process of leaving Afghanistan, after almost 20 years of fighting. Announcing his decision to complete the U.S. withdrawal by September, President Biden declared: “I believed that our presence in Afghanistan should be focused on the reason we went in the first place: to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again. We did that. We accomplished that objective”.

But al-Qaeda — which, after 9/11, provided the U.S. rationale for invading Afghanistan — still has 400 to 600 members fighting with the Taliban, according to U.N. Security Council estimates.…  Seguir leyendo »

Members of a Shabwani elite force, aligned with a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, on patrol in the village of Hota, Yemen, in May 2018. The village was the main stronghold of al-Qaeda in the area, but Shabwani forces liberated the area in December 2017. (Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Post)

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“We delivered justice to Osama bin Laden, and we degraded the terrorist threat of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan,” Joe Biden declared in his speech to Congress on Wednesday. And that, he explained, was why we can now withdraw the last U.S. troops from Afghanistan, as he announced earlier this month.

Yes, bin Laden is dead — thanks to a daring raid by U.S. Special Operations forces 10 years ago. But the president’s statement misses the mark. Its founder might have left the scene, but al-Qaeda hasn’t gone away — and that has clear implications for our strategy in Afghanistan and across the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

Shoes are left behind in a school in Kankara, Nigeria, where Boko Haram claimed to have abducted hundreds of students in December 2020. (Sunday Alamba/AP)

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This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of the operation, code-named Neptune Spear, that killed Osama bin Laden. It’s an opportunity to reflect on the state of Islamist terrorism and radical Islam more generally. And the initial diagnosis is clear: The movement is in bad shape.

Total deaths caused by terrorism around the world have plummeted by 59 percent since their peak in 2014. In the West, the current threat is less from Islamist violence than far-right terrorism, which has surged by 250 percent in the same period, and now makes up 46 percent of attacks and 82 percent of deaths.

Most Islamist terrorism today tends to be local — the Taliban in Afghanistan, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabab in the Horn of Africa.…  Seguir leyendo »

Le village de Bounti, au Mali, le 30 mars. (Minusma/AFP)

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Au Sahel, les coopérations militaires engagées au nom de la lutte contre le terrorisme méritent qu’on s’y intéresse de plus près, à l’heure où le soutien de la France à un régime génocidaire au Rwanda fait de nouveau débat. Au Mali, l’armée a repris le pouvoir en août. Au Niger, en mars, des mutins ont essayé de renverser un président élu. Au Tchad, le chef de l’Etat et des armées s’est autoproclamé maréchal et devrait se faire réélire haut la main, consacrant l’emprise d’un homme lui-même arrivé au pouvoir par un coup de force il y a plus de trente ans, en décembre 1990.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Un coup d’œil sur la carte de l’Est du continent africain, et l’on voit la progression des djihadistes depuis la Somalie, sans mentionner ceux de la Syrie et en Irak où ils étaient installés dans leur Califat. Ils partent de Somalie (les shababs), puis passent par le Kenya et la Tanzanie d’où ils ont été chassés, ensuite dans l’Est de la RDC (République Démocratique du Congo), et maintenant, ils sont au Nord du Mozambique, en majorité musulman, dans la province de Cabo Delgado. Là où, depuis 2017, les violences ont fait 2400 morts, dont des centaines décapités, et 600 000 déplacés.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The Southern African Development Community (SADC) will hold a two-day extraordinary Troika Summit in Maputo on 8-9 April to deliberate on measures to address the armed militancy in northern Mozambique.

Countering the armed militants known locally as al-Shabab is an urgent regional and international priority following their attacks on Palma since 24 March and the devastation caused in deaths, displaced, and destruction and damage to property. The government recaptured the town on 5 April but it is too soon to assess the total death count in Palma, likely to be in the dozens with thousands newly-displaced.

Since 2017, some 2,500 have been killed and nearly 700,000 internally displaced by this insurgency, but the Palma attack is a new morbid watershed.…  Seguir leyendo »

Vínculos sociales y terrorismo yihadista: ¿qué conduce de la radicalización violenta a la implicación terrorista?

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Tema

Un análisis sobre los vínculos sociales que unen a un grupo de jóvenes radicalizados en el yihadismo en España con diferentes actores del movimiento yihadista global revela que el número y la intensidad de esos lazos influyen en que unos individuos se impliquen en actividades terroristas mientras que otros decidan no hacerlo.

Resumen

No todos los individuos que se radicalizan en el salafismo yihadista y disponen de vínculos sociales en el movimiento yihadista terminan por participar en actividades terroristas. Explicar por qué unos lo hacen y otros no requiere un análisis diferencial del tipo, el número y la intensidad de sus lazos personales con activistas yihadistas o con estructuras dedicadas a la movilización terrorista.…  Seguir leyendo »

Los errores que perpetúan el califato

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Han pasado dos años desde la desaparición del califato del Estado Islámico (EI), y desde la épica estampida de 30.000 yihadistas escondidos en el último kilómetro cuadrado de Baguz. La coalición internacional, una alianza de 80 países comandada por el ejército de Estados Unidos, derrotó por tierra y aire el malogrado proyecto terrorista.

De manera inevitable, este epílogo del califato resultó en la cuota de prisioneros yihadistas más numerosa de la historia: 70.000 personas recluidas en campamentos de detención y edificaciones penales en el norte de Siria e Irak. Entre ellos hay 1.165 ciudadanos europeos que incluyen a tres mujeres, 17 niños y dos hombres españoles, según datos de Egmont Institute.…  Seguir leyendo »

Tres días de marzo de 2004: del 11-M al 14-M

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El 11 de marzo de 2004, apenas pasadas las siete y media de la mañana, pudo oírse una cadena de explosiones en varios vagones en las estaciones de Atocha, Santa Eugenia y el Pozo, en Madrid, cuando cientos de viajeros se dirigían a sus trabajos y quehaceres cotidianos. El desconcierto y el pánico se adueñaron de la ciudad en cuestión de minutos. Tardó en saberse que había 192 muertos y más de 1.000 heridos. Policías y bomberos, sanitarios, forenses, vecinos y muchos ciudadanos de a pie fueron testigos directos del horror. Familiares y amigos de las víctimas deambularon por los hospitales y por el tanatorio improvisado en el recinto ferial Ifema, en busca de los heridos y, en el peor de los casos, de sus muertos.…  Seguir leyendo »

Restos de los vagones en la estación de Atocha por el atentado del 11 de marzo de 2004.

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La fractura política y la división social que provocaron los atentados del 11 de marzo de 2004 en Madrid —añadidas a los 192 muertos y a los más de 1.800 heridos ocasionados— hizo que durante mucho tiempo no se llevara a cabo una reflexión nacional serena y rigurosa sobre las lecciones que era preciso extraer de lo sucedido aquel día. Hubo una Comisión de Investigación sobre el 11-M en el Congreso de los Diputados, entre mayo de 2004 y julio de 2005, pero sus sesiones se vieron seriamente afectadas tanto porque al mismo tiempo se estaba instruyendo el sumario por la matanza en los trenes de Cercanías como porque el desencuentro acerca del tema era entonces muy intenso entre los partidos y entre la ciudadanía.…  Seguir leyendo »

These are the women who crushed the Caliphate

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In early 2016, the first time a friend told Gayle Tzemach Lemmon the story of Kurdish Women's Projection Units in northeastern Syria -- also known as the YPJ -- she had two reactions. The first was fascination: How had no one else told the tale of these women, aligned with US forces (and later provided with support by the Trump administration) who were fighting the Islamic State -- a group which routinely kidnapped, raped and murdered women?

The second reaction, when an American friend of Lemmon's who had been working with the women's units, urged her, "Come on, you have to see it," was: "No."…  Seguir leyendo »

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Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron convened members of the foreign press, mainly from American and British publications, for a wide-ranging conversation on the record — a very rare thing in Paris, where quote review is standard practice and where the worlds of media and politics intermingle in ways that would shock even the most seasoned Washington insider.

The meeting, initially scheduled for late last year, was set up largely as a means to foster dialogue with “la presse anglosaxonne”, the English-language media outlets such as The Washington Post at whom Macron has pointed the finger over coverage of France’s reaction to a recent string of terror attacks.…  Seguir leyendo »