SALAFISM AND
THE US INTELLIGENCE SERVICES:
THE WINNING FORMULA TO DESTABILIZE RUSSIA’S
CAUCASUS AND THE MIDDLE EAST
By F. William Engdahl
The assassination of the most
respected Sufi religious leader in DAGESTAN,
RUSSIA’S volatile CAUCASUS, comes as Salafist
jihadists in LIBYA murder a US Ambassador who was actually a key player in
ousting Gaddafi and bringing the Salafist
Muslim Brotherhood and Jihadists into
power. Throughout the entire Islamic world today, a wave of hate is being
unleashed in the name of Islamic fundamentalism that could bring about a new
worldwide crisis. This is the consequence of the Greater Middle East Project put in play in 2010 and earlier by
circles in Washington and London. Manipulating religious fervor is an explosive
cocktail.
SYRIA
COMES TO THE RUSSIAN CAUCASUS
On August 28 Sheikh Said Afandi,
acknowledged spiritual leader of the Autonomous RUSSIAN REPUBLIC OF DAGESTAN,
was assassinated. A jihadist female suicide bomber managed to enter his house
and detonate an explosive device.
The murder target had been carefully
selected. Sheikh Afandi, a seventy-five-year old Sufi Muslim leader, had played the critical role in attempting to
bring about reconciliation in DAGESTAN between jihadist Salafi Sunni Muslims and other factions, many of whom in DAGESTAN
see themselves as followers of Sufi.
With no replacement of his moral stature and respect visible, authorities fear
possible outbreak of religious war in the tiny RUSSIAN autonomous
republic.
The police reported that the
assassin was an ethnic RUSSIAN woman who had converted to Islam and was linked
to an Islamic fundamentalist or Salafist
insurgency against RUSSIA and regional governments loyal to Moscow in the
autonomous republics and across the volatile Muslim-populated NORTH CAUCASUS region.
Ethnic Muslim populations in this
region of RUSSIA and of the former SOVIET UNION, including UZBEKISTAN,
KYRGYSTAN and into CHINA’S Xinjiang Province, have been the target of various
US and NATO intelligence operations since the Cold War era ended in 1990.
Washington sees manipulation of Muslim groups as the vehicle to bring
uncontrollable chaos to RUSSIA and CENTRAL ASIA. It’s being carried out by some
of the same organizations engaged in creating chaos and destruction inside SYRIA
against the government of Bashar
Al-Assad. In a real sense, as RUSSIAN security services clearly understand,
if they don’t succeed in stopping the Jihadists insurgency in SYRIA, it will
come home to them via the CAUCASUS.
The latest Salafist murders of Sufi
and other moderate Muslim leaders in the CAUCASUS are apparently part of what
is becoming ever clearer as perhaps the most dangerous US intelligence
operation ever—playing globally with Muslim fundamentalism.
Previously US and allied
intelligence services had played fast and loose with religious organizations or
beliefs in one or another country. What makes the present situation
particularly dangerous—notably since the decision in Washington to unleash the
misnamed Arab Spring upheavals that
began in TUNISIA late 2010, spreading like a brushfire across the entire
Islamic world from AFGHANISTAN across CENTRAL ASIA to MOROCCO—is the
incalculable wave upon wave of killing, hatreds, destruction of entire cultures
that Washington has unleashed in the name of that elusive dream named
“democracy.” They do this using alleged Al-Qaeda
groups, SAUDI Salafists or Wahhabites, or using disciples of TURKEY’S
Fethullah Gülen Movement to ignite
fires of religious hatred within Islam and against other faiths that could take
decades to extinguish. It could easily spill over into a new World War.
FUNDAMENTALISM COMES TO CAUCASUS
Following the dissolution of the
USSR, radical AFGHANISTANI Mujahadeen, Islamists from SAUDI ARABIA, from TURKEY,
PAKISTAN and other Islamic countries flooded into the Muslim regions of the
former USSR. One of the best-organized of these was the Gülen Movement of Fethullah Gülen, leader of a global network of
Islamic schools and reported to be the major policy influence on TURKEY’S Erdogan
AKP party.
Gülen was quick to establish The
International DAHGESTANI-TURKISH College in DAGESTAN. During the chaotic days
after the SOVIET collapse, the Ministry of Justice of the RUSSIAN FEDERATION officially
registered and permitted unfettered activity for a variety of Islamic
foundations and organizations. These included the League of the Islamic World, the World Muslim Youth Assembly, the reportedly Al-Qaeda friendly SAUDI foundation ‘Ibrahim ben Abd al-Aziz al-Ibrahim.’ The blacklist also included
Al-Haramein a SAUDI foundation reported tied to Al-Qaeda, and IHH, [2] a Turkish organization banned in GERMANY,
that allegedly raised funds for jihadi
fighters in BOSNIA, CHECHNYA, and AFGHANISTAN, and was charged by FRENCH intelligence
of ties to Al Qaeda. [3] Many of these charities were
covers for fundamentalist Salafists
with their own special agenda.
As many of the foreign Islamists in CHECHNYA
and DAGESTAN were found involved in fomenting the regional unrest and civil
war, RUSSIAN authorities withdrew permission of most to run schools and
institutions. Throughout the NORTH CAUCASUS at the time of the CHECHYN war in
the late 1990’s, there were more than two dozen Islamic institutes, some 200 madrassas
and numerous maktabas (Koranic study schools) present at almost all
mosques.
The International DAGESTANI-TURKISH College
was one that was forced to close its doors in DAGESTAN. The College was run by
the Fethullah Gülen organization. [4]
At the point of the RUSSIAN crackdown
on the spread of Salafist teaching inside RUSSIA at the end of the 1990’s,
there was an exodus of hundreds of young DAGESTANI and CHECHYN Muslim students
to TURKEY, SAUDI ARABIA, PAKISTAN and other places in the MIDDLE EAST,
reportedly to receive training with the Gülen
movement and various SAUDI-financed organizations, including Salafists. [5] It is believed in RUSSIA that the students trained by
Gülen supporters or SAUDI and other Salafist
fundamentalist centers then were sent back to DAGESTAN and the NORTH
CAUCASUS to spread their radical strain of Islam.
By 2005 the situation in the CAUCASUS
was so influenced by this Salafist intervention
that the CHECHEN Salafist, Doku Umarov,
cited by the UN Security Council for links to Al-Qaeda, [6] unilaterally declared creation of
what he called the CAUCASUS EMIRATE, announcing he planned to establish an
Islamic state under Sharia law
encompassing the entire NORTH CAUCASUS region including DAGESTAN. He modestly
proclaimed himself Emir of the CAUCASUS EMIRATE. [7]
SALAFISM
AT WAR WITH SUFI TRADITION
Salafism,
known in SAUDI ARABIA as Wahhabism,
is a fundamentalist strain of Islam which drew world attention and became
notorious in March 2001 just weeks before the attacks of September 11. That was
when the Salafist Taliban government
in AFGHANISTAN willfully dynamited and destroyed the historic gigantic Buddhas
of Bamiyan on the ancient Silk Road, religious statues dating from the 6th
Century. The Taliban Salafist
leaders also banned as “un-islamic” all forms of imagery, music and sports,
including television, in accordance with what they considered a strict
interpretation of Sharia.
AFGHANI sources reported that the
order to destroy the Buddhas was made by SAUDI-born jihadist Wahhabite, Osama bin Laden, who ultimately convinced Mullah Omar, Taliban supreme leader at the time to
execute the act. [8]
While Sufis incorporate the worship of saints and theatrical ceremonial
prayers into their practice, Salafis
condemn as idolatry any non-traditional forms of worship. They also call for
the establishment of Islamic political rule and strict Sharia law. Sufism is
home to the great spiritual and musical heritage of Islam, said by Islamic
scholars to be the inner, mystical, or psycho-spiritual dimension of Islam,
going back centuries.
As one Sufi scholar described the core of Sufism, “While all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway
to God and will become close to God in Paradise—after death and the ‘Final
Judgment’— Sufis believe as well that it is possible to become close to God and
to experience this closeness—while one is alive. Furthermore, the attainment of
the knowledge that comes with such intimacy with God, Sufis assert, is the very
purpose of the creation. Here they mention the hadith qudsi in which God
states, ‘I was a hidden treasure and I loved that I be known, so I created the
creation in order to be known.’ Hence for the Sufis there is already a
momentum, a continuous attraction on their hearts exerted by God, pulling them,
in love, towards God.” [9]
The mystical Islamic current of Sufism and its striving to become close
to or one with God is in stark contrast to the Jihadist Salafi or Wahhabi current
that is armed with deadly weapons, preaches a false doctrine of jihad, and a
perverse sense of martyrdom, committing countless acts of violence. Little
wonder that the victims of Salafist
Jihads are mostly other pacific forms of Islam including most especially Sufis.
GEOSTRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS: RUSSIA’S NIGHTMARE SCENARIO OF
“SYRIA COMING TO RUSSIA.”
The respected seventy-five year old Afandi had publicly denounced Salafist Islamic fundamentalism. His
murder followed a July 19 coordinated attack on two high-ranking muftis in the RUSSIAN
VOLGA REPUBLIC of TATARSTAN. Both victims were state-approved religious leaders
who had attacked radical Islam. This latest round of murders opens a new front
in the Salafist war against RUSSIA,
namely attacks on moderate Sufi Muslim
leaders.
Whether or not DAGESTAN now descends
into internal religious civil war that then spreads across the geopolitically
sensitive RUSSIAN CAUCASUS is not yet certain. What is almost certain is that
the same circles who have been feeding violence and terror inside SYRIA against
the regime of Alawite President Bashar al-Assad are behind the killing
of Sheikh Afandi as well as sparking
related acts of terror or unrest across RUSSIA’S Muslim-populated CAUCASUS. In
a very real sense it represents RUSSIA’S nightmare scenario of “SYRIA coming to
RUSSIA.” It demonstrates dramatically why Putin has made such a determined
effort to stop a descent into a murderous hell in SYRIA.
SALAFISM AND US INTELLIGENCE
SERVICES
The existence of the so-called jihadist Salafi brand of Islam in DAGESTAN
is quite recent. It has also been deliberately imported. Salafism is sometimes
also called the name of the older SAUDI-centered Wahhabism. Wahhabism is a minority originally-Bedouin form of the
faith originating within Islam, dominant in SAUDI ARABIA since the 1700’s.
The Centre for Islamic Pluralism give the following description of SAUDI conditions
under the rigid Wahhabi brand of
Islam:
“Women living under SAUDI rule must wear
the abaya, or total body cloak, and niqab, the face veil; they have limited
opportunities for schooling and careers; they are prohibited from driving
vehicles; are banned from social contact with men not relatives, and all
personal activity must be supervised including opening bank accounts, by a male
family member or "guardian." These Wahhabi rules are enforced by a mutawiyin, or morals militia, also
known as "the religious police," officially designated the Commission
for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) who patrol SAUDI cities,
armed with leather-covered sticks which they freely used against those they
considered wayward. They raid homes looking for alcohol and drugs, and harassed
non-Wahhabi Muslims as well as
believers in other faiths.” [10]
It’s widely reported that the
obscenely opulent and morally-perhaps-not-entirely-of- the-highest-standards SAUDI
Royal Family made a Faustian deal
with Wahhabite leaders. The deal
supposedly, was that the Wahhabists
are free to export their fanatical brand of Islam around to the Islamic
populations of the world in return for agreeing to leave the SAUDI Royals
alone. [11]
There are, however, other dark and dirty spoons stirring the Wahhabite-Salafist SAUDI stew.
 |
| alleged close ties between the CIA and Saudi Arabia |
Little known is the fact that the
present form of aggressive SAUDI Wahhabism,
in reality a kind of fusion between imported jihadi Salafists from EGYPT’S Muslim
Brotherhood and the fundamentalist SAUDI Wahhabites. Leading Salafist members of the EGYPTIAN Muslim Brotherhood were introduced into
the SAUDI Kingdom in the 1950’s by the CIA in a complex series of events, when
Nasser cracked down on the Muslim
Brotherhood following an assassination attempt. By the 1960’s an influx of EGYPTIAN
members of the Muslim Brotherhood in
SAUDI ARABIA fleeing Nasserite repression, had filled many of the leading
teaching posts in SAUDI religious schools. One student there was a young
well-to-do SAUDI, Osama bin Laden. [12]
During the Third Reich, Hitler GERMANY
had supported the Muslim Brotherhood
as a weapon against the BRITISH in EGYPT and elsewhere in the MIDDLE EAST. Marc
Erikson describes the Nazi roots of the EGYPTIAN Muslim Brotherhood thus:
…as ITALIAN and GERMAN fascism
sought greater stakes in the MIDDLE EAST in the 1930s and ’40s to counter BRITISH
and FRENCH controlling power, close collaboration between fascist agents and
Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 ARAB Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm
Canaris, head of GERMAN military intelligence, sent agents and money to support
the Palestine uprising against the BRITISH, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and "supreme guide" Hassan
al-Banna. A key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the
Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini. [13]
After the defeat of GERMANY, BRITISH
Intelligence moved in to take over control of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ultimately, for financial and other reasons,
the BRITISH decided to hand their assets within the Muslim Brotherhood over to their CIA colleagues in the 1950s. [14]
According to former US Justice
Department Nazi researcher John Loftus, “during the 1950s, the CIA evacuated
the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood
to SAUDI ARABIA. Now, when they arrived in SAUDI ARABIA, some of the leading
lights of the Muslim Brotherhood,
like Dr Abdullah Azzam, became the teachers in the madrassas, the religious
schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird
Islamic cult, Wahhabism." [15]
"Everyone thinks that Islam
is this fanatical religion, but it is not,” Loftus continues. “They
think that Islam—the SAUDI version of Islam—is typical, but it’s not. The Wahhabi cult has been condemned as a
heresy more than 60 times by the Muslim nations. But when the SAUDIS got
wealthy, they bought a lot of silence. This is a very harsh cult. Wahhabism was only practised by the
Taliban and in SAUDI ARABIA—that’s how extreme it is. It really has nothing to
do with Islam. Islam is a very peaceful and tolerant religion. It always had
good relationships with the Jews for the first thousand years of its existence." [16]
“SYRIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL”, DOMINATED IN REALITY BY THE
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
Loftus identified the significance
of what today is emerging from the shadows to take over EGYPT under Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi, and
the so-called SYRIAN National Council, dominated in reality by the Muslim Brotherhood and publicly led by
the more “politically correct” or presentable likes of Bassma Kodmani. Kodmani,
foreign affairs spokesman for the SNC was twice an invited guest at the Bilderberg elite gathering, latest in
Chantilly, Virginia earlier this year. [17]
The most bizarre and alarming
feature of the US-financed regime changes set into motion in 2010, which have
led to the destruction of the secular ARAB regime of Hosni Mubarak in EGYPT and Muhammar
Qaddafi in LIBYA, and the secular regime of President Ben Ali in TUNISIA, and which have wreaked savage destruction
across the MIDDLE EAST, especially in the past eighteen months in SYRIA, is the
pattern of emerging power grabs by representatives of the murky Salafist Muslim Brotherhood.
By informed accounts, a SAUDI-financed
Sunni Islamic Muslim Brotherhood
dominates the members of the exile SYRIAN National Council that is backed by
the US State Department’s Secretary
Clinton and by Hollande’s FRANCE.
The SYRIAN Muslim Brotherhood is
tied, not surprisingly to the EGYPTIAN Muslim
Brotherhood of President Mohammed
Morsi who recently in a meeting of the Non-Aligned in IRAN called openly
for the removal of SYRIA’S Assad, a
logical step if his Muslim Brothers
in the present SYRIAN National Council are to take the reins of power. The SAUDIS
are also rumored to have financed the ascent to power in TUNISIA of the
governing Islamist Ennahda Party, [18] and are documented to be financing
the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated SYRIAN
National Council against President Bashar
al-Assad. [19]
MORSI’S
REIGN OF SALAFI TERROR
Indicative of the true agenda of
this Muslim Brotherhood and related
jihadists today is the fact that once they have power, they drop the veil of
moderation and reconciliation and reveal their violently intolerant roots. This
is visible in EGYPT today under Muslim
Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi.
Unreported in mainstream Western
media to date are alarming direct reports from Christian missionary
organizations in EGYPT that Morsi’s
Muslim Brotherhood has already begun to drop the veil of “moderation and
conciliation” and show its brutal totalitarian Salafist colors, much as Khomeini’s
radical Sharia forces did in IRAN after
taking control in 1979-81.
In a letter distributed by the
Christian Aid Mission (CAM), a Christian EGYPTIAN missionary wrote that Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood
"announced they would destroy the country if Morsi didn’t win, but they also said they will take revenge from
all those who voted for [his opponent Ahmed] Shafiq, especially the Christians as they are sure we did vote for Shafiq. Yesterday they began by killing
two believers in el Sharqiya because
of this," the missionary added, speaking on condition of anonymity. [20]
This report came only weeks after EGYPTIAN
State TV (under Morsi’s control)
showed ghastly video footage of a convert from Islam to Christianity being
murdered by Muslims. The footage showed a young man being held down by masked
men with a knife to his throat. As one man was heard chanting Muslim prayers in
ARABIC, mostly condemning Christianity, another man holding the knife to the
Christian convert’s throat began to cut, slowly severing the head amid cries of
“Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is great”), according to transcripts. In the
letter, the EGYPTIAN missionary leader added that, "soon after Morsi won, Christians in upper EGYPT were
forcibly prevented from going to churches.” Many Muslims, the letter
claimed, "also began to speak to women in the streets that they had to
wear Islamic clothing including the head covering. They act as if they got the
country for their own, it’s theirs now." [21]
Already in 2011 Morsi’s Salafist followers began attacking and destroying Sufi
mosques across EGYPT. According to the authoritative newspaper Al-Masry
Al-Youm (Today’s EGYPTIAN), 16 historic mosques in Alexandria belonging to Sufi orders have been marked for
destruction by so-called ’Salafis’.
Alexandria has 40 mosques associated with Sufis,
and is the headquarters for 36 Sufi
groups. Half a million Sufis live in
the city, out of a municipal total of four million people. Aggression against
the Sufis in EGYPT has included a
raid on Alexandria’s most distinguished mosque, named for, and housing, the
tomb of the 13th century Sufi Al-Mursi
Abu’l Abbas. [22]
Notably, the so-called
“democratically elected” regime in LIBYA following the toppling of Mohamar
Qaddafi by NATO bombs in 2011, has also been zealous in destroying Sufi mosques
and places of worship. In August this year, UNESCO Director General Irina
Bokova expressed “grave concern” at the destruction by Islamic Jihadists of Sufi sites in Zliten, Misrata and
Tripoli and urged perpetrators to “cease the destruction immediately.” [23] Under behind-the-scenes machinations
the LIBYAN government is dominated by Jihadists and by followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, as in TUNISIA and EGYPT. [24]
The explosive cocktail of violence
inherent in allowing the rise to power of Salafist
Islamists across the MIDDLE EAST was clear to see, symbolically enough on the
night of September 11th when a mob of angry supporters of the fanatical Salafist group, Ansar Al-Sharia, murdered the US Ambassador to LIBYA and three US
diplomats, burning the US Consulate in Bengazi to the ground in protest over a
YouTube release of a film by an American filmmaker showing the Prophet Mohammed
indulging in multiple sex affairs and casting doubt on his role as God’s
messenger. Ironically that US Ambassador had played a key role in toppling Qaddafi and opening the door to the Salafist takeover in LIBYA. At the same
time angry mobs of thousands of Salafists
surrounded the US Embassy in Cairo in protest to the US film. [25]
Ansar Al-Sharia
("Partisans of Islamic law" in Arabic) reportedly is a spinoff of Al-Qaeda and claims organizations
across the MIDDLE EAST from YEMEN to TUNISIA to IRAQ, EGYPT and LIBYA. Ansar al-Sharia says it is reproducing
the model of Sharia or strict
Islamic law espoused by the Taliban
in AFGHANISTAN and the Islamic State of IRAQ, a militant umbrella group that
includes al-Qaeda in IRAQ. The core
of the group are jihadists who came out of an "Islamic state", either
in AFGHANISTAN in the mid-1990s, or among jihadists in IRAQ after the US-led
invasion in 2003. [26]
The deliberate detonation now of a
new round of Salafist fundamentalist
Jihad terror inside Muslim regions of the RUSSIAN CAUCASUS is exquisitely timed
politically to put maximum pressure at home on the government of Russia.
The Russian Government is the
strongest and most essential backer of the current SYRIAN government of Bashar al-Assad, and for RUSSIA as well
the maintenance of RUSSIA’S only Mediterranean naval base at SYRIA’S Tartus
port is vital strategically.
HARD COP - SOFT COP TACTICS
At the same time, Obama’s sly message to Medvedev
to wait until Obama’s re-election to evaluate US intent towards RUSSIA and
Putin’s cryptic recent comment that a compromise with a re-elected President
Obama might be possible, but not with a President Romney, [27] indicate that the Washington
“stick-and-carrot” or hard cop-soft cop tactics with Moscow might tempt RUSSIA
to sacrifice major geopolitical alliances, perhaps even that special close and
recent geopolitical alliance with CHINA. [28] Were that to happen, the World
might witness a “reset” in US-RUSSIAN relations with catastrophic consequences
for world peace.
[2]
Mairbek Vatchagaev, "The Kremlin’s War on Islamic Education in the North
Caucasus=3334]," North Caucasus
Analysis Volume: 7 Issue: 34.
[3]
Iason Athanasiadis, "Targeted by Israeli raid: Who is the IHH?," The Christian Science Monitor, June 1, 2010.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Mairbek Vatchagaev, op. cit.
[6]
UN Security Council, QI.U.290.11. DOKU KHAMATOVICH UMAROV, 10 March 2011. The UN statement reads: “Doku
Khamatovich Umarov was listed on 10 March 2011 pursuant to paragraph 2 of
resolution 1904 (2009) as being associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or
the Taliban for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating,
preparing, or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under
the name of, on behalf of, or in support of”, “recruiting for”, “supplying,
selling or transferring arms and related materiel to” and “otherwise supporting
acts or activities of” the Islamic Jihad Group (QE.I.119.05), the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan (QE.I.10.01), Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and
Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs (RSRSBCM) (QE.R.100.03) and Emarat Kavkaz
(QE.E.131.11).”
[7]
Tom Jones, "Czech NGO rejects Russian reports of link to alleged
Islamist terrorists al-Qaeda,"
May 10, 2011.
[8]
The Times of India, "Laden ordered Bamyan Buddha destruction,"
March 28, 2006.
[9]
Dr. Alan Godlas, "Sufism — Sufis — Sufi Orders."
[10]
Irfan Al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz, "Wahhabi Internal Contradictions as Saudi Arabia Seeks Wider
Gulf Leadership," Center for Islamic
Pluralism, May 21, 2012.
[11]
Ibid.
[12]
Robert Duncan, "Islamic Terrorisms Links to Nazi Fascism," AINA, July 5, 2007.
[13]
Marc Erikson, "Islamism, fascism and terrorism (Part 2)," AsiaTimes.Online, November 8, 2002.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
John Loftus, "The Muslim Brotherhood, Nazis and Al-Qaeda," Jewish Community News, October 11, 2006.
[16]
Ibid.
[17]
Charlie Skelton, "The Syrian opposition: who’s doing the talking?: The media
have been too passive when it comes to Syrian opposition sources, without
scrutinising their backgrounds and their political connections. Time for a
closer look …," The Guardian, UK, 12
July 2012.
[18]
Aidan Lewis, "Profile:
Tunisia’s Ennahda Party," BBC
News, 25 October 2011.
[19]
Hassan Hassan, "Syrians are torn between a despotic regime and a stagnant
opposition: The Muslim Brotherhood’s perceived monopoly over the Syrian
National Council has created an opposition stalemate," The Guardian, UK, 23 August, 2012.
[20]
Stefan J. Bos, "Egypt Christians Killed After Election of Morsi," Bosnewslife, June 30, 2012.
[21]
Ibid.
[22]
Irfan Al-Alawi, "Egyptian Muslim Fundamentalists Attack Sufis," Guardian Online [London], April 11, 2011.
[23]
Yafiah Katherine Randall, "UNESCO urges Libya to stop destruction of Sufi sites," Sufi News and Sufism World Report, August 31,
2012.
[24]
Jamie Dettmer, Libya elections: Muslim Brotherhood set to lead government, The Telegraph, London, 5 July, 2012.
[25]
Luke Harding, Chris Stephen, Chris Stevens, "US ambassador to Libya, killed in Benghazi attack:
Ambassador and three other American embassy staff killed after Islamist
militants fired rockets at their car, say Libyan officials," The Guardian (London), 12 September 2012.
[26]
Murad Batal al-Shishani, "Profile: Ansar al-Sharia in Yemen," BBC, 8 March 2012.
[27]
David M. Herszenhorn, Putin Says Missile Deal Is More Likely With Obama, The New York Times, September 6, 2012. According to
an interview Putin gave on Moscow’s state-owned RT TV, Herszenhorn
reports, “Mr. Putin said he believed that if Mr. Obama is re-elected in
November, a compromise could be reached on the contentious issue of American
plans for a missile defense system in Europe, which Russia has strongly
opposed. On the other hand, Mr. Putin said, if Mr. Romney becomes president,
Moscow’s fears about the missile system — that it is, despite American
assurances, actually directed against Russia — would almost certainly prove
true.
“Is it possible to find a solution to the problem, if current President Obama is re-elected for a second term? Theoretically, yes,” Mr. Putin said, according to the official transcript posted on the Kremlin’s Web site. “But this isn’t just about President Obama. “For all I know, his desire to work out a solution is quite sincere,” Mr. Putin continued. “I met him recently on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, where we had a chance to talk. And though we talked mostly about Syria, I could still take stock of my counterpart. My feeling is that he is a very honest man, and that he sincerely wants to make many good changes. But can he do it? Will they let him do it?”
“Is it possible to find a solution to the problem, if current President Obama is re-elected for a second term? Theoretically, yes,” Mr. Putin said, according to the official transcript posted on the Kremlin’s Web site. “But this isn’t just about President Obama. “For all I know, his desire to work out a solution is quite sincere,” Mr. Putin continued. “I met him recently on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, where we had a chance to talk. And though we talked mostly about Syria, I could still take stock of my counterpart. My feeling is that he is a very honest man, and that he sincerely wants to make many good changes. But can he do it? Will they let him do it?”
[28]
M.K. Bhadrakumar, "Calling
the China-Russia split isn’t heresy,"
Asia Times, September 5, 2012.
