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The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades,
which is supposedly the European branch of al-Qaeda, issued a leaflet
threatening the French with a wave of “bloody Jihad” attacks in the heart of Paris for electing Nicolas
Sarkozy, the “Zionist Crusader.” The leaflet was splashed across the internet
as usual. However, it came on the eve of the handover between the outgoing and
incoming president and accurately specified the period of operations between
now and the first round of legislative elections on the 10th of next
month.
The leaflet has so far
not received the expected amount of hullabaloo, given that it was released
during a celebratory time in which the French media outlets and official-departments
were busy with the arrangements of this special-moment, which has only been
magnified with the nature of this new president. That is, the change he
represents politically in comparison with the approach taken by the last
administration under Chirac in administrating situations and crises. This is in
addition to his personal-nature, which has a tendency towards the sensational, and
which has allegedly encouraged him to turn the spotlight mostly on himself.
Still, this terrorist
threat to Paris
cannot be disregarded, and according to the predictions of experts, this shifts
the country from being in a position of a secondary target to taking a front
row seat. True, this is not the first time France receives such threats. Last
year, on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Ayman al-Zawahiri
dedicated a major portion of his speech to the country, in which he called on
the “Salafi movement for religious calling and battle” to “plant terror in the
hearts of the traitors and heathen French.” That day, this Algerian group paved
the way for what al-Zawahiri would announce himself just a few months later. At
the start of 2007, he declared that this group had joined al-Qaeda under the
name “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib.” The group changed its name from the "Group
for Preaching and Combat" (GSPC) to this new name and rushed to declare
its responsibility for the Algerian bombings of April 2007 in the heart of the
capital, which took the lives of 30 people. Previously, it also claimed
responsibility for operations in Morocco
and Mauritania, which unlike
the bombings in Algeria,
were major failures in terms of the number of victims.
So, who will “take
responsibility” for the French?
Will it be this group,
which was born in 1998 from a split within the Algerian “Armed Islamic Group?”
Much has been written about the extent to which the Algerian security services
have infiltrated this group—both the mother organization as well as the
fledgling branch. A number of vital-studies have provided a thousand tangible examples
that support this theory of infiltration during the Algerian civil war that
took place in the seventies, or at least they confirmed the ability of these
services to manipulate it. These studies also indicate that the group was used
as a playing field for struggles between the various blocs in influential-positions
within the Algerian military. At the same time, it indicates the American
exploitation of the activity of this group. The US justified its intensive military
maneuvers in the African coastal-area with the existence of this group there.
However, like the European countries that issued arrest warrants against the
most prominent leaders of this group, namely Abdel Razzaq al-Bara who kidnapped
European tourists in Chad in
2003, the US
avoided demanding his extradition after the Chadian Tawareq movement
arrested him. Everyone knows what happened after that. The abovementioned
movement handed him over to Libya,
which in turn handed him back to Algerian authorities, which then tried him in
absentia. The man simply disappeared with no further explanation. There were
rumors however, of his close relationship with a certain man of influence
within the Algerian establishment—a former officer who fell into the backdrop
and then reappeared several-times during the bloody nineties. One time was in
the mid-nineties when he was sent to a training course at a Green Beret camp in
the United States,
one of the most elite groups in the American Army. So, if this group was
‘responsible’ for the French according to the call by Ayman al-Zawahiri , it
must have kept these secret diplomatic maneuvers and struggles under wraps, all
part of this clandestine world woven with the intersecting interests of
countries and rulers and mutual-messages whose code can only be cracked by
those involved.
So, does this explain why
the Abu Hafs al-Masri group, which is threatening France for the first time, has
taken this position? That is, “taking care” of the French by a group that is
supposed to be the historical-organization of al-Qaeda in Europe, which
previously claimed responsibility for the bombings of the Madrid train in March 2004 in which almost
200 people were killed and others injured. It also claimed responsibility for
the bombing of the London underground in July
2005, which it planned to coincide with that G8 summit in Scotland. This
same group threatened Berlusconi in Italy
and carried out a bloody operation in Istanbul
in 2003. In 2006, it threatened Denmark
because of offending cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Hence, the Abu Hafs al-Masri
group could claim it has a good knowledge of Europe,
its special-occasions and events. It could also claim an unprecedented
“efficacy.” Mr. Aznar’s close alliance with the American administration got him
ousted from his own party in the parliamentary elections, which were scheduled
just days after the bombing. Also Berlusconi failed to return to power after
last year’s elections, while Tony Blair is departing because of Iraq.
Despite all of the
group’s so-called economic and social-accomplishments, however, the fact
remains that its “efficacy” is in serious doubt, given that the fate of political-trends
in Europe are determined by a number of interrelated and accumulated factors
and are the sum of real-conflicts inside the societies of these countries,
unrelated to any response to the Pavlovian threats of al-Qaeda. Still on the
surface, it appears that al-Qaeda succeeded in causing the downfall of those it
intended to bring down. The appearance of things reinforces this characteristic
in the behavior of al-Qaeda, which wants to possess the quality of a universal-government
that oversees all events and has a role in every corner—it directs threats here
and there or mixes threats with directives in a way that determines the fate of
the universe. It is a mentality that can only be compared to the mentality of
say…the American administration under President Bush! Perhaps they also partake
in a competition to achieve the most catastrophic results.
In France, Mr. Sarkozy
could not dream of anything better—this candidate who resorted to fear in order
to succeed: fear from the rising poverty and unemployment for which Mr. Sarkozy
suggests solutions that could only be called painful. This is especially the
case in regards to the fear from threats—various and mysterious—embodied by the
millions of immigrant youth, the overwhelming majority which came from the Arab
countries of northern Africa, followed by black Africa (all of whom represent
Muslim environments)—these “scum” who live in the major French suburbs. Sarkozy
has asked of the French people, in a bid to deal-with the illusory fear he
succeeded in planting in them, to agree to abandon traditions and values related
to personal-liberties and laws that guarantee these liberties. We can say that
the majority of votes that brought Mr. Sarkozy to the presidency imply an
implicit consent over this mandate. As for the threat of bloody retributive
operations, the mere fact that they exist, paves the way for the new president
to enact all these exceptional-measures from his imagination and exempts him
from gaining the approval of those who oppose them.
Once again, far from
searching for secret conspiracies or a police-like interpretation of history:
Would President Bush have been able to strike and occupy Afghanistan and invade and occupy Iraq if it were
not for September 11?
This article was
originally published in Arabic in al-Hayat, and translated into English
by the Alternative Information Center (AIC) by request
of the author.
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