INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR : PAPER NO.766
B.RAMAN
Since September 11,2012, the 11th
anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist strikes by Al Qaeda in the US Homeland, there
have been violent incidents outside the US Embassies in Cairo and Sanaa in Yemen and outside the US Consulate in Benghazi
in Libya.
2. The incidents were triggered off by protests by
some of the local Muslims against a video clip believed to have been uploaded
by an unidentified person in the US projecting Islam and its Holy Prophet in
negative colours.
3.According to speculative reports of the British
and American media, a person, suspected to be a Coptic Christian of Egyptian
origin living in the US is reported to have produced a film on Islam which was
shown to a small audience in California in June 2012. A video clip of this with
no Arabic sub-titles was allegedly uploaded by him on the Internet on July
1.Nobody in the Islamic world noticed it. Subsequently, he had the same clip
uploaded with Arabic sub-titles. It was noticed by an Islamic TV channel of
Egypt which drew attention to it. This led to the first demonstration in Cairo.
Thereafter, it spread to Benghazi and Sanaa. Demonstrations are being reported
from other Islamic countries too.
4.The crowds which demonstrated outside the US
Embassies in Cairo and Sanaa were reportedly unarmed. They threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the security forces
guarding the missions whom they tried to overpower in order to pull down the US
flag. The security forces were able to control the demonstrators by using
tearsmoke.
5. In Benghazi too, outside the US Consulate, there
was a similar demonstration against the US by a group of unarmed local Muslims.
The US Ambassador to Libya, Chris
Stevens who is based in Tripoli, was then on a visit to Benghazi and was inside the Consulate. The
demonstrators did not appear to have been aware of this.
6. While this demonstration was going on without
posing any major problem to the security guards, another group of armed Muslims
carrying fire-arms and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) appeared on the scene
and launched a commando-style attack on the Consulate. There was a heavy
exchange of fire and use of grenades. The armed intruders with others entered
the Consulate complex and tried to set fire to the buildings.
7. By the time their attack could be brought under
control after four hours, the Ambassador and three other American employees
were killed. The circumstances under which they were killed are not clear.
8. The
CNN TV channel quoted State
Department officials as saying that the two incidents at the
diplomatic missions in Cairo and Benghazi were not related and that they believed the Benghazi violence was a
"clearly planned attack." The CNN quoted a senior official as saying:
"It was not an innocent mob. The
video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their
perspective but this was a clearly planned military-type attack."
9.On September 10, Al Qaeda had released a video
message by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, its Amir, who is an Egyptian, confirming that his
No.2 Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan cleric
who handled Al Qaeda’s motivational and propaganda work, had been killed in a
US Drone strike in Pakistan’s North Waziristan on June 4,2012. The US had
announced his death in June itself but Al Qaeda confirmed it only on September
10. This has given rise to speculation that the commando-style attack on the US
Consulate might have been in retaliation for the death of the Libyan cleric,
but Al Qaeda itself has not come out with any statement on the Benghazi attack
so far.
10.The speculation in Benghazi is that the
commando-style attack was probably carried out by Ansar al-Sharia (Supporters
of the Sharia).The Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which operates
from Yemen, has also been calling itself since last year as the Ansar
al-Sharia. It is not yet clear whether the Ansar suspected in the Benghazi
attack is the same as the Yemen-based wing of Al Qaeda or is an indigenous
Libyan organisation.
11. In the protest movement in Egypt that
preceded the resignation of Hosni
Mubarak last year, there was no participation by external jihadi elements. It
was a purely Egyptian movement with no involvement by Al Qaeda or its
supporters. Moreover, the overthrow of Mubarak did not affect the command and
control of the Egyptian Army and the Egyptian intelligence, which continued to
monitor the activities Al Qaeda. There was no intelligence and security vacuum
in Egypt.
12. When Qaddafi put up a stiff resistance to the
US-sponsored external intervention to bring about a regime change in Libya, the
US and other NATO countries recruited, trained and armed a number of external
radical elements for using them against Qaddafi’s army. The brutal massacre of
Qaddafi and his aides resulted in a collapse of the command and control of the
Libyan Army and intelligence. As a result, there has been a security and
intelligence vacuum in Libya. Apparently, taking advantage of this, Al Qaeda
and its affiliates have set up sleeper cells in Libya.
13. The events in the coming days and weeks may take a
course similar to what happened in the Islamic world after the publication of
caricatures of the Holy Prophet in a Danish journal on September 30,2005.
Starting from April 2006, for a little over two years there was a rash of
violent incidents in different parts of the Islamic world including an
explosion outside the Danish Embassy in Islamabad in June 2008.
14. The present demonstrations are in protest
against the film. It is likely that Islamic fundamentalist elements may demand
the identification, arrest and prosecution of the person living in the US who produced
the film. The US may not agree to this just as the Danish Government refused to
act against the cartoonist on grounds of his freedom of expression. The US
refusal to act might become a cause for further anger.(13-9-12)
(The writer
is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi,
and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate
of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter @SORBONNE75)
