Darfour and the Brotherhood

[Frank S.]

http://www.douglasfarah.com/


As Sudan Crisis Lingers, it is Worth Recalling it is a Brotherhood Government
Last weekend, as today’s Washington Post editorial reminds us, the EU again huffed and puffed about doing something about Darfur. The situation is “intolerable” Mr. Blair said, adding that the actions of the Sudanese government were “completely unacceptable.” Ms. Merkel chimed in on the need for stronger sanctions. And then they all walked away.

The Bush administration has done much the same thing. Remember “phase two” sanctions that were to go into effect on the first of the year if the government didn’t halt the slaughter (and blah blah blah).

The toll remains staggering and the situation is not improving. Some 200,000 dead (on the very low end of estimates), 2 million driven from their homes, etc. etc. etc.

Why? Because the government of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, which is made up primarily of members of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Bashir and Hassan al Turabi, among others, are prominent members) allow it. Turabi may be out of power, but not because of his ties to the Brotherhood, but due to internal rivalries that do not touch the heart of the Brotherhood project there.

Perhaps al Bashir et al missed the new commitment to not supporting jihad and to pluralistic democracy that Mssrs. Leiken and Brooke found compelling in their discussions with the Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Perhaps they believe in ethnic cleansing and doing what the Brotherhood would do elsewhere if it took power. Or perhaps they are not acting on anyone’s behalf except their own but their own Brothers do not see that as a problem.

It is striking that the Brotherhood-related groups across Europe and the United States, and the regimes in the Gulf (particularly Saudi Arabia) that support them have raised not a single protest over the genocide in Darfur. They have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to build their infrastructure and rally to the cause of Hamas and occassionally Hezbollah. But not one word of condemnation for their regime in Sudan.

Al Turabi opened his country to bin Laden and any other Muslim, precisely because he was implementing the Ikhwan strategy of creating a non-territorial Islamic state that welcomes all Muslims (including crossing the Shia-Sunni divide, and Youssef Nada has made clear in his public statements and the Brotherhood ties to Iran, also unexplored and unexplained in the Leiken/Brooke piece).

Egypt, China and other countries outside the Brotherhood orbit also bear great responsibility in allowing the al Bashir regime to carry on genocide. All of the outside world does, and it is a black mark against every government that continues to deal with Sudan as if it were a member of the international community.

But the greatest responsibility lies with those closest to the regime, who have chosen not to even make the weak gestures of verbal protest and condemnation, and those are the Muslim Brothers and their backers.

The Ongoing Debate over the Muslim Brotherhood
Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke, the co-authors of the recent Foreign Affairs piece called The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood have posted this this response to my, and others, strong disagreement with their premise that U.S. policy should include a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, who, they contend, do not endorse jihad and embrace democracy. This is, I think, one of the most important debates we can have at this time.

I think they are badly and dangerously off the mark, as I will describe below, but apologize for my initial, overly-personalized description of their work as shoddy and slipshod, and hope the ongoing debate we can stay away from personal attacks, and will do my part. I would also note that, in their response, Leiken and Brooke incorrectly state that my friend Yousef Ibrahim’s _ credentials include a dismissal from the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Ibrahim had a one-year fellowship there, paid for by BP, and he returned to his post there after the fellowship ended.

Two other quick points. Leiken and Brooke critique my lack of sources on my blog. I would only point to my extensive published work on the international Muslim Brotherhood, which, on a blog, I did not have the time and could not reproduce.

I also never expressed “shock” at Zawahiri’s attack on Hamas, nor “suprise” at splits brewing between the Brotherhood and the jihadists. I simply noted they were happening as important matters to be understood by policy makers. On matters of more substance, here is another good response to some of the issues raised by Leiken and Brooke in Front Page Magazine.

My biggest disagreement is the failure to factor in, mention or discuss the Muslim Brotherhood as a clandestine group well experienced in denial and deception tactics, honed for more than four decades. I have talked to some Brotherhood leaders and read their literature extensively.

They still proclaim, in their writings, the goal of establishing an Islamic Europe (and the United States), governed by sharia law and taking as its sole source of authority the Koran. This in fact negates any ability to embrace democracy, unless, as the Ikhwan do, they will embrace it until they win. Then, retreating from Allah’s injunction to spread Islam would be impossible and the worst kind of heresy. This is what they share with the jihadists.
My work has been largely on the international Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1982 as the Tanzim al-Dawli. I do not claim expertise nor have I written on much else related to the Ikhwan. My site has all the links to the full publications for those who are interested.

Several points on the International structure,whose principals include Youssef Nada, Ghaleb Himmat, Idriss Nasreddin and Ahmed Huber. The first is that all four of these gentlemen have been designated terrorist financiers not only by the U.S. Treasury Department, but the United Nations as well as individual European countries.

This is not something that can be lightly dismissed, given the four men’s role (along with al Qaradawi) in setting up a multi-billion dollar clandestine financial structure that was centered on Bank al Taqwa and Akida Bank in Nassau, Bahamas.

These banks were used to fund Hamas, and other terrorist groups, including, according to public statements by the U.S. Treasury Department, al Qaeda, Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front and Armed Group, and Tunisia’s An-Nahda. Nada, according to public U.S. and European statements on investigations, continued to help bin Laden after 9/11.

It is worth noting that Nada describes himself as the “foreign minister” of the Muslim Brotherhood and had enough prestige in the Muslim world to be given, in 2002, five nights of back-to-back, hour-long interviews on al Jazeera. Not something just anyone gets invited to do. In those interviews he describes his extensive work for the Brotherhood around the world.

The big difference between some in the international Brotherhood and the jihadists is more tactical than ideological. Both share the same fundamental goals, but differ on how to get there. But the difference is not on the use of jihad, but on whether attacks on the West that kill women and children are acceptable “defensive jihad” tactics are less accepted “offensive jihad” tactics.

There is also little debate over Qaradawi’s endorsement of suicide bombings. See, for example, Hasan Ali Daba, “Sheykh Al-Qaradawi Discusses Terrorism, Dialogue Between Islam and West, U.S. Policy,” Doha al-Rayah, Oct. 26, 2002 (Translation by FBIS) where Al-Qaradawi states that those carrying out suicide attacks should be called martyrs because “calling them suicide bombers is wrong and misleading. These are heroic, martyrdom, fedayeen operations.”

Alain Chouet, the former head of the French Security Intelligence Service, who monitored the international Brotherhood in Europe for more than three decades and dealt with them often, wrote when he retired last year that:

The Brotherhood’s modern strategy was shaped by the repression it suffered, along lines it would never depart from: clandestinity, duplicity, exclusion, violence, pragmatism and opportunism.
Taking refuge in clandestinity, the Brotherhood abandoned all more vulnerable forms of pyramidal or hierarchical organizational structures. Ideological direction emerges informally and consensually by a college of elders, while operational management is in the hands of the very decentralized secret organization tanzim as-Sirri…
Their actions follow no short-term, concrete tactical plan: the only requirement is that they form part of the long-term strategy of taking power by whatever means available.