Posted by ...Concluded on 10/9/2004, 19:21:59, in reply to "The Wrong Man at the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time" As a result, Chechnya has long been of immense importance to the al Qaeda network. The Chechen militants are a near-perfect analogue of Ansar al-Islam, which operated for years in Iraq with the complicity of Saddam Hussein's regime. Just as Ansar has its Abu Musab Zarqawi — the al Qaeda-affiliated commander whom Saddam coddled long before our invasion and who has led the terrorist resistance ever since — the Chechens have their Abu Omar as-Seyf (also known as Mohammad bin Abdullah al-Seif). Reared in Saudi Arabia, as-Seyf has been al Qaeda's main man in Chechnya since 1995, the formative figure in establishing a region-wide Sharia court and the backbone of the struggle — the jihad — to establish Chechnya as an independent Islamic state. As-Seyf is considered a scholar of Salafism (like Wahhabism, a militant strain of Islam). He rejects all secular forms of government — whether American-style democracy, Soviet-style tyranny, Arab-style despotism, or otherwise — as profoundly sinful means of inculcating non-Islamic laws, values, and cultures. He believes in violent jihad as the required route to the founding of a theocratic Muslim state in which Sharia is imposed and those governed have no say. The jihad, moreover, is not war between nations; it is a series of shifting fronts in a battle between Islam on one hand and a perceived alliance of infidels and apostates on the other — a battle that rages until one side (as he sees it, his side) achieves total victory. Reports are already rampant that as-Seyf was a prime mover behind the bloody siege of Beslan. Even Kerry's staunchest ally, the New York Times, was forced to admit as much this week — although the Gray Lady took pains to bury deep in the 24th paragraph of its analysis any allusion to the creed that knits the global jihad together. It doesn't help Kerry peel Iraq from the rest of the war if voters are shown how the militancy and inhumanity there are the same as in Chechnya and Afghanistan and every other battlefield where this enemy stalks. But the enemy knows. Militant Islam understands that Iraq is not only an integral part of the war but has, in fact, become the stage for its signal showdown. That's why as-Seyf, even as he wages an unspeakable jihad in Chechnya, exhorts his confederates to get themselves to Iraq. As he urged in a widely circulated recording last year: Regarding the situation in Iraq and the guerilla war: There must be there a political element, an information element, and a preaching element alongside the military front. The lessons of the past in fighting the colonialists is [sic] that those who receive the state are the secularists and the apostates. We must not repeat this mistake. Therefore, it is essential that the jihad groups there unite and not separate, and that they have the political dimension to assemble the Sunnis, including the Kurds, the Arabs, and the Turkmenis. All must be united under the same political power. Similarly, there must be an information and a religious preaching arm. My recommendation is that a fatwa be issued, to be signed by a large number of clerics, and to be directed at the jihad groups, advising them to unite and to learn the lesson from the cases in the past when the secularists took the regime. Similarly, I recommend to the Mujahideen that instead of engaging in clashes and warfare against the Saudi government, it is better to go to Iraq. There, there are weapons aplenty and there they can fight the Americans. It is no secret that great damage will be caused the Americans if the Mujahideen turn to Iraq to fight them. As-Seyf understands what Kerry once pretended to understand when Dean voiced the "wrong war" rant that Kerry has now recycled as his own. He understands what Zarqawi tried to assure his al Qaeda superiors of in a letter our troops intercepted back in January. [See here.] He understands that Iraq is the key. And that alone would be enough to make Iraq the right war. It is the war that has to be fought, and won. It is where the enemy is assembled and determined to make his stand. Kerry says he will get our forces out of Iraq. President Bush is promising to win. If we leave Iraq without winning, we lose. Militant Islam grows stronger, and bolder. It moves on to the next front. There are more Beslans, more 9/11s. It's that simple: We can defeat them there, in Iraq, where they are massed against us; or we can duck and meet them in Manhattan — once again — when they are stronger, and when they have been fortified in the conviction of our weakness and their own invincibility. Kerry has told us what he thinks of Iraq. Our enemies have told us what they think. We should listen to the enemy — militant Islam's position is unlikely to change.
It will be months, if ever, before all the details of the Beslan massacre penetrate through the Soviet-lite that is Putin's Russia. But one thing is already certain, no matter how understated by the mainstream American media: the catalyzing role of militant Islam. For over a decade, jihadists have flocked to Chechnya to fight. The reason would be well known to us now if we had accepted that our war was a war against Islamic militants and their unique worldview, rather than against nebulous "terrorists." To the jihadists, Chechnya is not Chechnya but a Muslim land, and the Russians are not so much Russians as an occupying force of infidels standing athwart the spread of the militant creed.
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