Posted on 05/12/2004 8:07:49 AM PDT by Eurotwit
JUST before Christmas, Norwegian scientists surfing the internet stumbled across a 42-page document that made chilling reading.
A strategy for ridding Iraq of the US and its allies, it was written by Islamic extremists.
Spain was the weakest link in the coalition, the document detailed. Two or three "painful strikes" in the lead-up to its national elections and the country could crumble.
The document held little interest for the scientists from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. Norway has no troops in Iraq. They skimmed its pages before throwing it on their growing pile of terrorist manuals and missives pulled off the net.
Three months later, bombs ripped apart four trains during Madrid's morning rush hour, killing 191 people. The Spanish government was swept from office and the incoming Prime Minister pledged immediate withdrawal of its 1300 troops from Iraq.
The document was probably a secret discussion paper for al-Qa'ida operatives. Thomas Hegghammer from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment says in hindsight it was also probably a warning sign that attacks against Spain were imminent.
The internet has become a powerful weapon for terrorists raging against the West – one that countries such as Spain and Australia cannot ignore.
Terror experts say the internet is now an online training camp, allowing terrorists worldwide to communicate – clandestinely in chat rooms and by publishing their manuals and strategies on websites.
"The internet has become a virtual Afghanistan," says Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University.
"They are using the internet as a command and control centre and for discussion of targets like Madrid. The documents show they had been talking about that on the internet since last December," he says.
French terror suspect Willie Brigitte allegedly spent hours on the internet before he was deported from Sydney last year. He has since denied to French interrogators that he spent that time contacting operatives in Pakistan to prepare for an attack in Australia.
The Australian revealed this week that al-Qa'ida had published a discussion paper for its sympathisers naming Australians for the first time as the No.1 terrorist target in Indonesia.
And it seems al-Qa'ida's documents are growing in sophistication and political awareness. The strategy paper discovered by the Norwegians has a detailed analysis of the political climate of Spain and other countries involved in Iraq.
"The document analyses three countries (Britain, Spain and Poland) in depth with a view to identifying the weakest link or the domino piece most likely to fall first," says Hegghammer.
"The author provides a surprisingly informed and nuanced analysis of the domestic political map in each country."
But the net is more than a communications and training tool – it is also crucial for propaganda.
Al-Qa'ida sees itself now not as a terrorist organisation but as a mass movement trying to win a war against the West, say terror experts. The net is therefore fundamental to harnessing support worldwide and inspiring and rallying its sympathisers.
Consequently, thousands of Islamic extremist websites exist, incit ing hatred and violence against Westerners, particularly in Muslim countries.
A horrific video released yesterday on an al-Qa'ida linked website shows five hooded men beheading an American, Nick Berg, 26, with a knife. Apparently ordered by Osama bin Laden's partner Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the execution is revenge for abuses against Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.
The American's body was found near a highway overpass in Baghdad. The video is reminiscent of a tape from early 2002 showing the gruesome killing of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. Last month Iraqi militants videotaped the killing of Italian hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi – a tape al-Jazeera network deemed too graphic to air.
"Putting this stuff on the internet is barbaric but that's the reaction they want us to have," says terror expert David Wright-Neville.
"These videos are a win-win situation for them. They further intensify our own fear and simultaneously advertise their credentials to that smaller group of people who are sympathetic to their cause," says Wright-Neville, formerly with the Office of National Assessments and now lecturing at Monash University.
"Those (sympathetic) people will look at them as freedom fighters rather than the criminals that they are."
Not that all of the propaganda videos posted on the net are so grotesque. Some are sophisticated and slick productions.
In a marketing move on the second anniversary last year of the September 11 attacks, bin Laden's network released three electronic books on the web. The first two detail its tactics and intentions in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, while the third is a handbook called The 39 Steps to Jihad.
Their appeal is far-reaching. Visiting a chat room this week on an extremist Islamic website, this newspaper met an Australian web designer wanting to get his hands on a video called The Nineteen Martyrs. In the video, bin Laden eulogises the 19 hijackers responsible for the September 11 attacks; it also contains pictures of them training in military camps.
Finding the websites and countering their propaganda is difficult. Written mainly in Arabic and produced offshore, the sites stay on the move, always being chased by human rights and other groups that lobby servers to shut them down.
But Williams says closing these websites is not the answer. Finding and studying them is crucial to understanding the ideology of al-Qa'ida – and perhaps gleaning clues about future attacks.
"It's like any conflict, you need to know your enemy to be able to have much of a chance of countering what your enemy is doing," Williams says.
The Defence Signals Directorate does just that, scrutinising chatter on the internet between terrorists – although litle is known about DSD's top-secret operations.
Ian Shaw from Australian security company Intelligent Risks says terrorists use codes when communicating via email, chat rooms and messages posted on websites.
Shaw says the coded messages are similar to those used by the Allies during World War II. Broadcast by the BBC over the radio in the lead-up to D-Day, the messages could be understood only by Allied agents in France.
"The Americans are convinced that terrorists use this kind of coding," says Shaw, IR's manager of security analysis. He says more resources are needed for Australian counter-terrorism agencies to monitor these communications and crack the codes.
Wright-Neville says many of the terrorists and their sympathisers are "highly technologically savvy, often more so than those making the policies on how to deal with them".
Williams agrees that extra resources are needed. More than 300 new pages of al-Qa'ida-related manuals, instructions and rhetoric are published on the internet every month.
But even with extra resources, little can be done to stop the diatribes from al-Qa'ida sympathisers and calls for all Muslims to take up arms.
Terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna says sites have tried to recruit Australian Muslims to a jihad for five years now.
"Some of those websites have been playing a role in politicising, radicalising and mobilising . . . the migrant communities and people have joined these groups from accessing their websites," he says.
While surfing the net this week, The Australian found a passionate appeal to Australian Pakistanis posted on an Islamic website's discussion board.
It directs them to fly to Afghanistan to fight the Americans destroying the country. Most Australian Pakistanis would dismiss such an appeal. But the language is highly emotive and persuasive – with clear instructions for getting past immigration officials and into Afghanistan.
"An appeal has been made for Pakistanis all over the world to make arrangements to travel to Afghanistan to . . . defend the Islamic land of Afghanistan from destruction," the three-page appeal says.
"Remaining at home and becoming upset by watching the television is not going to achieve anything . . . Now is the time to act."
So, a detailed report stating a clear target is not of interest to these guys because the target wasn't Norway? With friends like these...
This should be headline news.
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