This story:
CHICAGO, Feb. 21 — Two cousins were arrested here Wednesday on charges of conspiring to commit terrorist acts against American military personnel in Iraq, as well as others abroad, in an Islamic holy war against the United States and its allies.
The defendants, Zubair A. Ahmed, 27, and Khaleel Ahmed, 26, were taken into custody at their Chicago homes after a federal grand jury in Cleveland returned a fresh indictment in a pending terrorism case in which three Ohio men are already awaiting trial in Toledo.
The new indictment accuses the two Chicago men of plotting with the Ohioans “to kill or maim persons in locations outside of the United States,” including members of the armed forces serving in Iraq.
It says the cousins, both United States citizens, sought training in firearms and countersurveillance from a person with an American military background. The indictment identified that person only as the Trainer. It describes the Trainer as an American citizen who communicated extensively with the three original defendants about paramilitary training but who was not engaged in the conspiracy.
Fits in nicely with the latest dispatch from Laura Manfield about the use of the "individual terrorist":
An Egyptian man attacks an El Al airline counter at Los Angeles International Airport on July 4, 2002, killing three. An off-duty pilot takes control of an EgyptAir flight out of JFK airport in 1999, sending into a nosedive into the Atlantic, killing all aboard. A graduate student drives his SUV into a crowd of students on a busy college campus. Six people were wounded, and one killed by a Pakistani-American in a shooting attack on the Seattle Jewish Federation. A young man attacks a shopping mall in Salt Lake City on Valentine’s Day, killing five. Another young Muslim convert was arrested on charges that he planned a Christmas shopping season attack on a Chicago area mall.
Were these incidents terrorism? In each of these incidents, the FBI at least initially said "no" because there were no clear ties to any organized terror groups.
All of these alleged perpetrators re Muslim. Were these really radical Islamic terror attacks?We can’t be 100% certain that they were or weren’t.
Like any other group in society, there are criminals who claim to adhere to the Muslim faith.
But what complicates the assessment is the sheer volume of jihadist writings that have emerged over the past decade trumpeting the role of the individual terrorist, which insist that "personal jihad" in one’s home country is something that is mandated of all Muslims.
These ideas and doctrines are readily found on the internet, and have become more popular. They are not only being discussed on Arabic language websites like Ekhlaas, but are also discussed on English language social networking sites like MySpace.com, Orkut, and MSN Spaces.
Al Qaeda ideologues such as Abu Mus’ab al Suri have advocated been strong advocates for individual jihad. In his 1604-page book Da’wat al-Moqawma al-Islamiyah al-Alamayah, or Call to Global Islamic Resistance, al Suri claims that the era of the "secret organization" such as the Muslim brotherhood is over. He maintains that the hierarchical nature of such groups makes them especially vulnerable to infiltration and exposure by security agents.
He acknowledges the role of "Open Fronts" for jihad in place like Chechnya are Afghanistan, but he finds that this option is not available for most individuals.
Instead, he says that the only opportunity for jihad for most people is individual jihad in one’s own country. In fact, al Suri maintains that there is a religious imperative for Muslims to do so, citing the Qu’ran.
She writes that many al-Qaeda leaders are stressing the use of an individual jihad where the solitary person or small group can never be tied back to any central organization. They are all supposed to appear as self-contained terrorist organizations.
Is this what we have here in this Chicago arrests?
Laura writes that proving this may be quite difficult:
Do the incidents outlined above, along with dozens of others, fit the definition of "individual jihad"?
That’s a question for law enforcement.
By definition, that’s not going to be an easy question to answer, because by definition, the rogue jihadist is delinked from any central organization. There may be little or no evidence delineating the ideological or political convictions of the individual jihadist. At most, investigators may find some material downloaded from the internet as clues. But it’s very unlikely that paper trails such as money transfers from Al Qaeda Inc, or plane tickets to Pakistan for training will be found.
Instead, for all intents and purposes the rogue jihadists will look like he’s working alone, perhaps inspired and trained through the internet, but working on his own.
Is this the new face of this war on terror?
al-Qaeda and other organizations issue tapes and video’s depicting how you too can be a suicide bomber, do it for Islam, do it for the 72 virgins….and next thing you know we have a man with a suicide vest walking around the local mall.
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