Bringing the number of banned terror groups (including Northern Irish groups) to 40. The latest banned groups include the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group; Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain; Ansar Al-Islam; Al Ittihad Al Islamia; Islamic Jihad Union; Ansar Al Sunna; Hezb-e Islamia Gulbuddin; Harakat ul Muhajideen/Alami; Jundallah; Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan; Lashkar-e Jhangvi; Khuddam u-Islam; Jamaat ul Furquan; Harakat ul Jihad ul Islami; and Harakat ul Islami (Bangladesh).
"'Terror group' ban agreed by MPs," from the BBC (including the sneer quotes around "terror group"), with thanks to Cindy:
A ban on 15 international groups believed to be terrorist organisations has been approved by Parliament.The decision means the ban will come into force on Friday, bringing the total number of banned groups to 40.
The groups have links in Iraq, Uzbekistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Morocco.
Concerns were raised by some MPs, who said evidence of the groups' activities should be revealed and argued decisions must be made on an individual basis.
'Allegiances'
The Home Office believes the selected groups are "concerned in terrorism".
Some 25 international organisations are already proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, and a further 14 already banned in Northern Ireland.
Labour MPs John McDonnell and Alan Simpson, expressed their reservations when the ban was debated in the House of Commons on Thursday.
Mr Simpson said the groups were being banned because their allegiances had shifted from "pro-western terrorism to anti-western terrorism".
Mr. Simpson's comments betray some of the myopia that is so common these days. The US supported the Afghan mujahedin against the Soviet Union! That means, evidently, that any action against the mujahedin today, and the totalitarian, expansionist, supremacist ideology that motivates them, is simply evidence of hypocrisy. Simpson and his ilk can't seem to see beyond the 1970s to the fact that the mujahedin, and their ideology, have been around a good deal longer than the United States. Any support America gave to the mujahedin in the 1970s was evidence of its own short-sightedness and superficial analysis of political realities. Nor does that support mean that the global jihad threat of today is somehow non-existent.
I feel the Soviets should get a tad of blame for invading Afghanistan in the first place. Blaming the U.S. for supporting rebel groups against the Soviets suggests someone looks at Cold War history through a soda straw.
Would the Soviet Union have crumbled without the Afghani venture? Yes. Did the United States have to distribute Stinger missiles like confetti to Muslims fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan? No. Did the United States have to employ the kind of C.I.A. agents in Afghanistan who never understood Islam but were delighted with the deeds of derring-do (as they saw it) of the local mujahedin, and who never comprehended what was happening in those madrasas in Pakistan from which the Taliban emerged?
These are 11th hour actions in a big picture of 20 mill Muslims in Europe, Britain with its own contingent, on welfare with its own baby factories.
May it not be a sad end to a great nation.
Hugh,
I'm sure the CIA felt they were giving the Soviets a taste of their own medicine. Whatever one thinks about the CIA blowback from Afghanistan, the 'root cause' of the jihad was Soviet invasion.
This was, and continues to be, the problem:
Our policy re Saudi Arabia is also on point.
The history of CIA covert operations seems to be one failed misadventure after another. If the operation is successful, as it was in Afghanistan, the blowback turns it into a misadventure.
Adding these organizations to a 'list of banned terror groups' is just pissing into the wind. I credit the named groups with sufficient ingenuity to change their names - rendering such banning ineffective.
Members of all these groups share one, common characteristic - they are muslims. Ban islam and begin the deportation of muslims.
Then, talk to me about 'progress in the WOT'.
Havoc, you are 100 percent correct.
Beagle, the history of the CIA is sorry and bloody, ignorance, and misadventure abound, the CIA trained, knew about and participated in horrific death squads that murdered poor peasants wholesale in central America, and for what truth is they were workers movements wanting better wages from the likes of Coca Cola, or to hold on the land that United Fruit claimed as there's. Like United Fruit didn't have enough money and power, the CIA though is only a tool, a tool like a hammer, it is the hands that wield the tool that are to blame
As regards the use of mujahideen against the Soviets , read Robert Baer's Sleeping with the Devil, the Saudis convinced Reagan to have the CIA recruit jihadis from Egypt and Algeria, they took care of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates and Yemen.
And the CIA, completely ignorant of Islam or the Muslim Brotherhood recruited Jihadis who hated America and Europe worse than the Soviets, but saw Afghanistan as a great recruiting tool and training ground for resurrecting and spreading the Jihad.
And IMO, Osama was sent by "Prince" Turki, to act as an ambassador between the Wahhabi and Shi'a, and to create a synthesis by uniting the two cults, to some degree he succeeded because the ensuing organization is named after the Exalted one, the student of Muhammad, Ali ibn Abu Talib which means the Exalted son of the Father of the Student (of Muhammad) and that's what Taliban means, it doesn't mean students, "an" is not the plural form of Talib.
And as evidence every picture of Osama shows him dressed as a Shi'a, abandoning the Arab ghutra,igal and thawb, for the Shi'a turban and clothing, and his last video shows him dressed like the Mehdi with a gold robe and all.
From a theological point of view, Wahhabiyyah and Shi'a are at polar opposite of the poles, as Shi'a are considered polytheists (mushriks) by Wahhabi, but small steps, on thing that Shi'a and Wahhabi Islam have in common is their versions of Shari'a, and in many ways the Iranian/Iraqi version is more harsh than the Wahhabi, I haven't heard of the Saudis hanging teen age girls, or stoning adulterers, and when they executed Shari'a violators they do it more humane than the Iranians who stone people to death or hang them in public (probably a strangulation hanging, not a neck breaking hanging).
Got a tough stomach, from Apostates of Islam website, video of Stoning in Iran
Lashkar-i Toiba and Hizb-ut Tahrir are not even on the list.
What nonsense is that? Then of curse, like Havoc says: All they have to do is change the name and they are back in Biznes, that is really pissing in the wind! Bah!!
Hugh sez:
"...Did the United States have to distribute Stinger missiles like confetti to Muslims fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan? No..."
The US, at that time, was obsessed with the "evil empire", the SU.
Even now, when the relationship should be given priority over many others, there remains a lot of very (unhealthy) distrust between the US and Russia.
The Russians would have given up on Afghanistan either way. But I guess the US couldn't resist seeing the stingers tried in the heat of battle.
Beagle sez:
"I feel the Soviets should get a tad of blame for invading Afghanistan in the first place. Blaming the U.S. for supporting rebel groups against the Soviets suggests someone looks at Cold War history through a soda straw."
What good does it do to blame the Soviets, haven't you heard that the evil empire is now out of business?
Here's the story behind the invasion of Afghanistan.
True there was a communist government in Afghanistan, but the troubles started when in Herat, the government started to educate women, the religious and insecure males, which epitomize conservatives of all types, charged the school and massacred, beheaded the teachers and administration.
The Communist government of Aghanistan (and Russia) were better than the Muslim problem we have now. The former was an enemy we could contain , the latter is an enemy and fifth column that we can't.
Sad fact is that our great leaders screwed the goose, big time.
The Government in Kabul could not handle the uprising of threatened conservative males, and called Moscow for assistance, the Russki's came to their assistance and the insurgency started, it would have died there, were it not for Reagan,American and Saudi money and of course the recruiting efforts of the Saudis and the CIA, who based their efforts in Pakistan, using the extant system of Madrassas to recruit, fund, arm and transport Jihadis aka mujahideen.
WTC I, the hook, WTC II (9-11) were blowback.
As I said above, the Muslim Brotherhood whom they recruited hated the west more than the Soviets.
And FYI, whatever you call them, al Qaeda, ansar al sunna, ansar al Islam, Jamayyah Islamiyah or Abu Sayef brigade they are all part and parcel of the Muslim Brotherhood Independent cells, sprung off from the mother hive, just like hornets and wasps.
This is idiotic.
The groups will just change their names.
It's the ideology which needs to be banned.