MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

“KHAR, Pakistan (AP) – A suicide bombing in a Pakistani market close to the Afghan border killed 20 people Friday, officials said, a day after the U.S. released letters seized from Osama bin Laden’s compound that criticized Pakistani militants for killing too many civilians.

Five of the dead in the blast in the Bajur tribal area were local members of the security forces, including one who had received an award for bravery in fighting Islamist militants, government administrator Abdul Haseeb said. The others were passers-by. At least 40 people were wounded.

The suicide bomber detonated his explosives as he approached a security checkpoint near the market in the town of Khar, said Haseeb. The attack took place as locals were headed to work or taking their children to school. The dead included a woman and several schoolchildren.

The explosion damaged over a dozen shops, and rescue officials searched through the debris for anyone trapped inside. The ground outside the market was covered in blood and littered with the shoes of those hit by the attack.

No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the Pakistani Taliban or allied groups will be suspected.” Read more.

Reuters – “MAKHACHKALA, Russia – Suicide bombers killed 12 people and wounded 110 in attacks on a police post on the outskirts of the capital of Russia’s Dagestan region, local investigators and law enforcement sources said Friday.

The attacks outside Makhachkala late Thursday were the deadliest in months, undermining efforts by Russian security forces to contain an Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus region near Sochi, where Russia will host the Winter Olympics in 2014.

More than a decade after federal troops toppled an Islamist government in Chechnya, also in the North Caucasus, security forces are fighting militants whose ranks are swollen by anger at poverty, clan feuds and pervasive corruption.

The first suicide bomber detonated a bomb when police stopped a vehicle to check documents, a statement by the National Anti-Terrorist Committee said.

The second explosion came when fire brigades and ambulances arrived, causing additional casualties.

A witness at the scene said a fire truck was reduced to charred wreckage.

‘After the blast, only the wheels of the truck remained whole,’ the witness told reporters…

Dagestan faces near daily shootings and bombings blamed on Islamist rebels. It has become the epicenter of violence in the low-level insurgency across the mainly Muslim North Caucasus following two separatist wars in Chechnya.

The insurgents want to create an Islamic state in the region.” Read more.

Russia: Prominent Muslim Lawyer Promises To ‘Cover Russia In Blood’ and Turn Moscow Into ‘A Second Dead Sea’ If Sharia Law Is Not Implemented – “Police in the Russian capital said on Wednesday they will examine a video in which a prominent Muslim lawyer pledges to ‘cover Russia in blood’ if the authorities refuse to establish courts to implement Islamic law. ‘May be you are foreigners here, and this is our home. We will set our rules, whether you want this or not … Any attempts to stop this will result in blood. We will turn the city (Moscow) into a second dead sea,’ he was quoted as saying.” Read more.

By TIA GOLDENBERG, Associated Press – “JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel on Thursday received its fourth German-made submarine capable of launching nuclear warheads, expanding a fleet that experts say could be used in an attack on Iran.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the submarine would increase Israel’s capabilities and strength “in the face of the growing regional challenges.”

The Dolphin-type military submarine is one of six Israel has ordered from Germany, which subsidizes the submarines. Each submarine costs half a billion dollars. The sub was presented to Israeli officials in Hamburg, Germany, on Thursday and is expected to arrive in Israel in 2013, following final tests.

Israel is already in possession of three other German-made Dolphin-class submarines capable of carrying nuclear-tipped missiles. However, there is no evidence that Israel has armed them with such weapons and the country has never confirmed reports that it possesses a nuclear arsenal.” Read more.

Flashback: Israel Has Prepared for Possible Iranian Nuclear Strike for Years, May Have Developed Its Own Bunker Buster – “For more than a decade, Israel has systematically built up its military specifically for a possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. It has sent its air force on long-distance training missions, procured American-made ‘bunker-busting’ bombs and bolstered its missile defenses. […] Israel has developed an improved precision, bunker-burrowing weapon which Israeli Military Industries (IMI) unveiled on March 6. The 500-pound MPR-500 is an electro-optical (laser-guided) bomb that can penetrate double-reinforced concrete walls or floors without breaking apart.” Read more.

By KEITH GLADDIS and IMTIAZ HUSSAIN – “A British aid worker was found beheaded and riddled with bullets on a roadside in Pakistan yesterday because his kidnappers have not been paid the ransom they demanded.

Khalil Dale, 60, was taken at gunpoint in January while he was working with the Red Cross in the south-west city of Quetta.

His head and body were discovered wrapped in a plastic bag with a note addressed to the chief of police, which read: ‘This is the body of Khalil who we have slaughtered for not paying a ransom amount’.

Local police said the Pakistani Taliban had claimed responsibility.

David Cameron last night described the killing of Mr Dale, a Muslim convert who was also known as Ken, as a ‘shocking and merciless act’.

The Prime Minister said: ‘I was deeply saddened to hear today about the brutal murder of Khalil Dale – a man who was killed whilst providing humanitarian support to others.

‘This was a shocking and merciless act, carried out by people with no respect for human life and the rule of law.'” Read more.

Sharia Laws imposed while lawlessness reigns …

“Tripoli (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The Islamisation of Libya puts national reconciliation in jeopardy. Yesterday, the National Transitional Council (NTC) adopted a number of laws that include life in prison for glorifying Moammar Gaddafi, insulting Islam or denigrating the 17 February Revolution. For the Libya’s rulers, the country is still at war and such restrictions are needed to prevent it from beings destabilised ahead of next June’s parliamentary elections.

According to one law, disseminating information that harms state-building is an insult to the people that deserves incarceration. Another law seizes the assets of the late dictator’s relatives and those of former regime officials.

Experts note that since Gaddafi’s death and the capture of his son Saif al-Islam, Libya has fallen to Islamist extremists inside the NTC who want to impose Sharia on the country.

At the same time, Libyan villages and towns are flooded with weapons, local sources say.

As insecurity persists, people take the law into their own hands.

In the prevailing legal and law enforcement vacuum, organised criminal gangs are taking advantage of the situation to traffic in food, weapons and money, as well as control aqueducts.

In order to stop extremism and tribal revenge, NTC leaders issued a law last week that bans political parties based on religion, tribe or ethnicity. Groups close to the Muslim Brotherhood have come out against it and tried to get the NTC to change the law.

Like in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists are imposing their line.

Outlawed under the old regime, they quickly took over oil installations, presenting themselves as strategic partners to foreign companies brought to Libya by Gaddafi.

Backed and funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Brotherhood will run in the June election. Given its organisational strengths, it is likely to win.” Source – AsiaNews.it.

By DR. LAINA FARHAT-HOLZMAN, Family Security Matters – “There are two ways to analyze the violent eruption of global terrorist attacks that have marked the past three decades: analyze the nature of the threat and the culture supporting it, or blame it all on the evils of Western colonialism and American militarism. The latter analysis is the choice of the ‘politically correct,’ who say that terrorism is as rampant in the West as it is in the Muslim world. A truth check, however, will tell us that for every Western terrorist (such as Timothy McVeigh), there are hundreds almost exclusively from the Muslim world.

If colonialism is the villain of this piece, why do ideologues only talk about Western colonialism? Why ignore that Arab Muslims (and European Christians) suffered under 500 years of Ottoman Turkish colonialism well before Western colonization? And how about the Muslim world in Central Asia that suffered under both Russian Tsarist and Communist colonialism?

Arabs themselves were dreadful imperialists (700-1,000 A.D.) and every land they conquered is still dysfunctional today, according to Harvard economics professor, Eric Chaney: ‘Democratic Change in the Arab World, Past and Present,’ in the April 7 Economist and Fareed Zakaria in Time, April 7. Wherever Arabs conquered, good governance and economic development were smothered, as they are today. This is even true for countries temporarily conquered but not converted to Islam by the Arabs (Spain, Portugal, Southern Italy).

Islamist terrorism is not just aimed at the West (revenge for colonization), but also at Thailand (Buddhist); Muslim Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia; and Nigeria, where jihadis murdered Christian church goers on Easter Sunday.  Black slavery was an Arab business long before it was European. Read more…