Category: Foreign Affairs

NEW YORK, Sept 18 — Authorities are investigating three incidents — explosions in New York and New Jersey and a stabbing attack in Minnesota — that took place within a 12-hour period on Saturday and sowed fears of terrorism.

Officials said they could identify no definitive links between the disturbances — a bombing that hurt 29 in Chelsea, an explosion along the route of a scheduled race in Seaside Park, N.J., and a stabbing that wounded nine in a St. Cloud, Minn., mall.

But each incident in its own right raised the possibility of terrorist connections, prompting federal and local law enforcement to pour major resources into determining exactly what happened and why.

A news agency linked to the Islamic State claimed Sunday that the suspect in Minnesota, who was fatally shot by an off-duty police officer, was “a soldier” of the militant group, though there was no confirmation of what connection the man may have had.

A claim of responsibility is no guarantee that the terrorist group directed or even inspired the attack, and authorities said they were still exploring a precise motive. The terrorist group made no similar claims about the New York and New Jersey incidents.

In New York, authorities said there was no evidence that the mysterious Saturday-night explosion was motivated by international terrorism, though they confirmed that the bombing was intentional.

“This is the nightmare scenario,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said.

The governor said nearly 1,000 police officers and National Guard troops would be sent to bus stops, train stations and airports, as investigators with the New York Police Department, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives worked to identify the person or people responsible for the explosion.

A federal law enforcement official said investigators were still aggressively probing if the New York and New Jersey incidents were related, though the official cautioned that as of Sunday afternoon they had not tied them together definitively.

Those injured in the Saturday-night blast in Chelsea had been released from hospitals by Sunday.
The Manhattan explosion occurred about 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the area of West 23rd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, injuring 29 people as it hurled glass and debris into the air, officials said. Surveillance video showed passersby running to get away from the blast, and investigators said they would comb through that and older footage to try to identify those responsible.

Authorities said the explosion was produced by some type of bomb, and they posted on Twitter a photo of what appeared to be a mangled Dumpster or garbage container. Masum Chaudry, who manages a Domino’s Pizza near the scene, said the explosion “shook the whole building” and caused “total chaos.”

Cuomo said, “When you see the amount of damage, we really were very lucky there were no fatalities.”
A short time after the explosion, just a few blocks away, police found another potentially explosive device, which looked like a pressure cooker with wiring, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Both that device and the remnants of that which exploded will be sent to the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Va., for analysis, authorities said. Pressure cookers were used in the two bombs detonated at the Boston Marathon in 2013.

Sara Miller, who was at a restaurant two blocks from the site of explosion, said she heard the blast, then saw people scrambling to get away. “I was here on September 11th so I thought, maybe, you know, I was being paranoid … but then I saw people running,” said Miller, 42. “It is a scary time because you never know when it will happen again.”

Officials differed on whether to call the Saturday night explosion an act of terrorism. Cuomo said: “It depends on your definition of terrorism. A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism, but it’s not linked to international terrorism.”

City, police and FBI officials said it was too early to determine any type of motivation, though they insisted they would not shy from labeling the crime an act of terror if it became appropriate to do so.

“We do not know the motivation. We do not know the nature of it. That’s what we have to do more work on,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who shied away from labeling the attack as terrorism.

The incident comes as foreign leaders, including many heads of state, are heading to Manhattan for the United Nations General Assembly. Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrived Saturday, while Obama is scheduled to head to the city on Monday.

This annual meeting — held more than two miles from the site of the explosion in Chelsea — is traditionally a challenging time for New York, as many roads are shut down and the heavy security leads to traffic jams.

Officials said they had already prepared to beef up security, and now they would intensify those efforts.
On the campaign trail, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates offered varied reactions to news of the incident. As early reports circulated Saturday night, Donald Trump declared that a “bomb went off” in New York City and said: “We better get very, very tough. We’ll find out. It’s a terrible thing that’s going on in our world, in our country and we are going to get tough and smart and vigilant. … We’ll see what it is. We’ll see what it is.”

Hillary Clinton condemned what she characterized as the “apparent terrorist attacks” in Minnesota, New Jersey and New York.

“This should steel our resolve to protect our country and defeat ISIS and other terrorist groups,” Clinton said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. She added, “I have laid out a comprehensive plan to do that.”

Moyed Abu, 28, a manager of OMG, a jeans store on 7th Avenue, said he and two employees were in the store at the time of the blast. Abu said they assumed initially it was construction noise — but immediately saw dozens of people, though not everyone, running in both directions, Abu said.

“I saw that some people started to take pictures,” he said. “In this situation, it’s better to just leave! It’s not safe!”

The Chelsea explosion occurred about 11 hours after a pipe bomb exploded in a Jersey Shore garbage can, shortly before a scheduled charity 5K race to benefit Marines and Navy sailors. No one was hurt.

Officials said that device, too, would be sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, though Cuomo noted the pipe bombs used in New Jersey “appear to be different” than those in New York.

New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said officials would explore a possible connection between the two cases but noted, “At this point, there doesn’t appear to be one.”

Two law enforcement officials said residue of tannerite — used primarily for making exploding targets for firearms practice — was found in material that had detonated in New York. The officials said a cellphone was used in both the New York and the New Jersey cases.

In another incident Saturday night in Minnesota, a man who made reference to Allah and asked at least one person whether he or she were Muslim stabbed and wounded nine people inside a Minnesota mall. He was shot to death by an off-duty police officer. On Sunday, the Islamic State claimed that the attacker was “a soldier of the Islamic State” and “carried out the operation in response to calls to target the citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition.”

A law enforcement official said Sunday that officials were examining all the devices, reviewing surveillance footage and combing through social media. Another official said that there was no clear suspect as of Sunday afternoon but that the investigation was in its very early stages.

“Whoever placed these bombs, we will find, and they will be brought to justice,” Cuomo said.

Some New Yorkers, though, said they felt uneasy waiting. Leonard Glass, 55, who walked 20 blocks from the upper West Side of Manhattan to the site of the explosion early Sunday afternoon, said that no one had taken responsibility for the explosion made it worse.

“I hope this is something else,” he said. “Not terrorism.”

Zapotosky and Wang reported from Washington. Renae Merle in New York and Mark Berman, Ellen Nakashima, Kristine Guerra, Sari Horwitz, Sean Sullivan, Steven Overly, John Wagner and Julie Tate contributed to this report, which has been updated.

The Islamic world, at the end of this week, looks like a series of boiling cauldrons from Dhaka to Kabul through to Istanbul and Baghdad. Islamist rage depicts itself equally violently in killing other Muslims as it does infidels. This – Islamist terror – is the common thread between terrorist acts in Mumbai, Paris, Brussels, Orlando and all over Afghanistan. From Syria-Iraq, the scourge has spread to Libya and will reach out to the rest of Africa, Europe and even the US.

Let us make no mistake that Islamist terror is thriving globally. A section of the Muslims is using extreme violence to terrorise fellow Muslims. Yet, the other hard reality is that hundreds of thousands of Muslims are willing to die and kill in the name of Islam as that see that as the way to paradise.

The other issue is whether, in all this, the Dhaka attack is a manifestation of ISIS’s presence or an example of local radical groups using the ISIS brand to seek publicity through their gruesome acts. It is doubtful if ISIS have sent their CEOs to manage things in Bangladesh. What, however, is more likely is that those Bangladeshis who had gone to Syria and Iraq have returned and are now willing to be used by one or more of the several radical organisations that still exist in the country. These could be independent acts replicated all over the world. They are more like franchises than actual branches of the main group. It is a kind of  common discourse with groups acting under peer pressure knowing that the rest of us do not have an adequate reply. Drones will kill but they do not prevent the birth of other jihadists.

To understand where the world stands today perhaps a short recap of recent history is necessary. The game was played in several playing fields. Vietnam had been a Cold War disaster for the US and an early reprieve was necessary. Proxy wars in Africa had not delivered satisfactorily and Iran had slipped out of the US orbit. Brezhnev provided the opportunity to the US in December 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. For the first time, the US used religion and not democracy and human rights as weapons when the Afghan jihad was launched. And for the first time in modern history, Muslims from different parts of the ummah got together to battle the Evil Empire. Ultimately, an exhausted, over-stretched Soviet Union withdrew and the Afghan mujahideen thought this was the result solely of their bravery and Islamic faith. No credit was given to the US contribution for this victory.

The 1990s were different; the US lost interest in the region. The jihadi presumed he had inherited the world because of his superior religion. When this did not happen, the mullah reverted with great vehemence to promising paradise in the other life to be attained through war and dying for the faith. Theological orthodoxy has been the ploy since then.

The US administration allowed Pakistan to develop its nuclear capability when it winked at Zia ul-Haq’s efforts to nuclearise. Pakistan launched its proxies in India (and later in Afghanistan) in the 1990s confident that it could use terror as a weapon under a nuclear umbrella. The US had fought an inconclusive war in Iraq; Saddam Husain continued to be the ruler and the Americans were seen as occupation forces in Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda was born and Osama bin Laden swore to cleanse the Holy Land of infidel forces. September 11, 2001 brought the US back into West Asia with all its might and instead of concentrating on eradicating the threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Washington once again diverted its attention to Iraq. The world knows what happened there and how.

Arab Winter not Spring

Iran emerged as the strongest force in the region. The Arab Spring in Iran-backed Syria turned into a long cold bitter winter. ISIS was officially born in June 2014 when Abu Bakr Baghdadi made his sole appearance and announced the ‘caliphate’.

This is not to say that ISIS or the Al Qaeda are solely the result of US policies and interests. Local dictators and monarchs have contributed to this by suppressing any attempt at collective emancipation of their people and denied them any hope of power sharing. ISIS was helped in its phenomenal rise by the Saudis and the Qataris in their regional and sectarian battles against Iran. But even they did not expect the group to be so successful in its efforts at state-building. In fact, the caliphate would be a great danger to all the Muslim allies of the West in the region. There may be some truth in reports that the Iranians and the Saudis secretly met in an effort to try and dissolve the caliphate. Turkey tried to play the dangerous game in several ways with and against ISIS in order to contain the Kurds. The Istanbul airport bombing is the result of this double game, just as much as the recent onslaught in Baghdad with hundreds killed is obviously mean to exhibit its strength and discredit reports that its hold is slipping.

It is impossible to fully discuss here the complex nature of the relationships in West Asia, which is compounded further by the interests of other outside powers that drive the present chaos. The Al Qaeda-ISIS rivalry in West Asia is another factor that adds to the confusion. At some point they are conjoined twins – for instance Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have the ‘Shahada’ as their banner. ISIS concentrates currently in its own region, followed by Europe and the US. It is a kind of a reverse-crusade.

While ISIS brutality is particularly frightening, there are two factors that cause greater concern. One, the deliberate use of certain Quranic verses by the ISIS to justify its brutality is accepted by a section of Muslims in different parts of the world. This frightens others, especially non-Muslims whose knowledge about Islam is bound to be inadequate. The second is that we often make the mistake of assuming that others see themselves as we see them. While the rest of us assume that everyone considers ISIS to be evil incarnate, there are others who think otherwise. For us in India, we have the problem that confirmed Pakistani terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba plan a ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ and dream of establishing three caliphates in India.

This fits admirably with the dreams of the Pakistani military mindset that seeks parity with India through confrontation. (Both share the same motto – ‘Jihad in the name of Allah’). Pakistani terror outfits dreamt of caliphates in India decades before Abu Bakr Baghdadi announced his caliphate in Iraq two years ago.

ISIS conceivably has no ethnic Arab presence or even interest in our region apart from the usual rhetoric. Bangladesh and Pakistan have Syria-Iraq returnees in larger numbers, who could be the vanguard of ISIS franchises. They would opt for the brand equity of ISIS and the latest attack in Dhaka was to register an international presence. Fortunately for India, we do not have those kinds of numbers in Syria or returning to wage jihad in their own country.

While one may be reasonably confident that ISIS will not make a mark in India, one should not be complacent and there is continued need to monitor the growing radicalisation of the youth in our major cities. Conscious efforts are being made to spread jihadist ideology. Inflammatory speeches and videos and violence against other sects are the usual ploys. There is little difference between Barelvi groups like the Raza academy and ISIS on theological principles such as blasphemy, apostasy and Shia Muslims. The number of Salafist mosques and madrassas all over the country has grown. These are funded illegally from abroad and tolerated and even, encouraged by state governments and the Centre. These institutions propagate Islamist supremacist ideologies that would ultimately lead to conflict.

We were lucky in Hyderabad with the recent arrest of 11 suspects alleged to be plotting terrorist strikes on behalf of ISIS. The problem is that for every terrorist plot disrupted, there could be several others in the pipeline. But to blame ISIS without evidence would be to create a scare. Since there is no real presence of ISIS capability, the only way this can happen in India is if Lashkar-e-Tayyaba wears the ISIS mask and begins to operate here. This will let Pakistan off the hook, the US would not have to push Pakistan any more and we will not be able to contemplate any action. India must not fall into the trap of changing the narrative about terrorism in the country without adequate proof.

Vikram Sood is the former chief of Research and Analysis Wing

Dozens of people have been killed in clashes between Islamic State militants and Afghan forces as the extremist movement renewed efforts to seize parts of eastern Afghanistan.

Fighters pledging allegiance to the movement, also known as Daesh, attacked police checkpoints in the Kot area of Nangarhar province.

As many as 36 attackers were reported to have been killed in the assaults, with at least another dozen police and civilians also dead from the fighting.

The assault comes just three months after the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, said the militant movement had been wiped out in Afghanistan.

Afghan extremist fighters set up an offshoot of the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil) in 2014 and have since fought both the Government and Taliban to increase their influence.

The US military estimates between 1,000 and 3,000 Isil fighters are in Afghanistan, mostly comprised of disaffected Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, as well as Uzbek Islamists and locals.

Saleem Khan Kunduzi, Nangarhar province governor, said: “There is no doubt that Daesh do not respect anyone.

“They kill people, regardless of whether they’re a child or a woman. They burn down madrasas, mosques and schools.”

Sediq Ansari, the head of Afghanistan’s civil society federation, blamed local leaders for failing to tackle the threat from Islamic State.

He told the Reuters news agency: “They should be accountable for every drop of blood that has been shed in Nangarhar so it becomes a lesson to other officials.”

Isil is also a bitter foe of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which it accuses of lacking Islamic zeal. The US Air Force has begun launching air strikes on its positions in the country. So far this year, between 60 and 80 American air raids have targeted Isil in Afghanistan, including those by drones and strike aircraft.

Isil’s leadership  is now believed to have left Nangarhar and moved northwards into the neighbouring Kunar province. That could be the next target if the group has the strength to expand.

The attack on Istanbul airport by suspected Islamic State terrorists is a classic example of unintended consequences, or what the CIA calls blowback.

But having turned a blind eye to the menace of Islamic State across its southern border for strategic reasons, Turkey can hardly be surprised at what is now occurring.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says it is highly likely ­Islamic State is responsible.

If so, it will be the third terror ­attack committed by the group in Turkey this year.

Add in the gathering violence committed by Kurdish separatists and it is clear that Turkey, once ­described as the most cosmopolitan country in the Islamic world, now faces a worsening crisis of ­religious and political violence.

The problem has been inc­ubated by Ankara’s policies. Since the war began Turkey has used Syria’s innumerable opposition groups as a foil against the Assad regime, Turkey’s enemy and rival in the region.

Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has been increasingly supportive of Islamist movements across the region, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which in 2013 was over­thrown in a military coup.

But as the Americans discovered when they funded the Mujaheddin against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, terror groups like ­Islamic State and al-Qa’ida are “cold monsters’’. They have their own agendas, which will never align with the secular, liberal and peaceful society most Turks aspire to create. They are not your allies.

As a NATO member, Turkey has been an ally in the coalition air campaign against Islamic State, but a deeply reluctant one. Late last year it finally began launching sorties against Islamic State targets inside Syria and northern Iraq after much international pressure and a suicide attack in the border town of Suruc, which killed 34.

Turkey has also been broadly supportive of Australia’s efforts to suppress Islamic State, catching, where it can, transiting Australian fighters and deepening its co-­operation with our police and ­intelligences agencies.

But traditionally Ankara has shown more enthusiasm for bombing hostile Kurdish groups such as the PKK which have ­exploited the chaos in Syria and northern Iraq to establish a foothold on its border.

This has hindered the campaign against Islamic State as Kurdish fighting units are among the most effective troops in the Syrian-Iraq theatre.

Turkey has also allowed Islamist militants free reign at the border, both to smuggle foreign fighters into Syria and to move contraband, like oil, out of it. This has greatly contributed to Islamic State’s strength and wealth. But now, like spores to the wind, ­Islamic State’s attackers are spreading across the globe.

Yesterday’s attack was the third Islamic State assault in Turkey this year. It is unlikely to be the last.