In the comments to this post about the supposed broad strata of the Canadian terror cell that was busted, commenter Bithead has been asking for data where the profile doesn’t work. What profile, Male of Middle Eastern descent pretty much sums it up.
Well here we go.
First up is the Belgian woman (white, European, and female–stating the obvious here for those who need it) who blew herself up in a suicide attack on American troops in Iraq.
MIREILLE, who was born in Belgium to a white, middle-class Christian family, blew herself to pieces last month in a suicide attack against American troops near Baghdad.
In one of the most extraordinary tales of Islamic radicalisation, she is thought to be the first white Western woman to carry out a suicide bombing.
Belgian investigators, who arrested 14 people associated with her, are keeping the 38-year-old woman’s true identity secret, but details have started to emerge. She was from the southern Belgian town of Charleroi, married to a Moroccan and converted to an extreme form of Islam.
Then there is Jemaah Islamiyah.
Authorities in the region have arrested more than 200 members of the group for allegedly planning an October 12, 2002, bombing that killed 202 people at a Bali nightclub. Three of the four main suspects behind the bombing have been sentenced to death in Indonesia. JI is also suspected in the August 5, 2003, car bombing of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed twelve, and the September 9, 2004, attack, which apparently targeted the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Before the Bali bombing, Indonesian authorities had not aggressively investigated the group, though Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines had cracked down on it. After the Bali attack, the United States—which suspects the group of having ties to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network—designated Jemaah Islamiyah a foreign terrorist organization.
Fro those who need a lesson in geography Indonesia is not in the Middle East. Hence the attackers are, shockingly, not Middle Eastern. Hence, it doesn’t fit the profile. And there is more from this Southeast Asian (i.e. not the Middle East) terrorist group,
State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said in January 2003 that “information indicates that Hambali was involved in a 1995 plot to bomb eleven U.S. commercial airliners in Asia and directed the late-2001 foiled plot to attack U.S. and Western interests in Singapore,” referring to Jemaah Islamiyah’s plans to attack the U.S., British, and Israeli embassies in December 2001. In the most recent Bali attacks, two Americans were reportedly wounded.
There is evidence linking Jemaah Islamiyah to Al Qeada, although that evidence is not ironclad.
Then there are the Chechens. Also, not Middle Eastern.
In recent months, radical Islamist Chechen leaders such as Shamil Basayev, along with Osama bin Laden, have been “clear” about wanting to “set Russia on fire,” says Michael Radu, a terrorism expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. “This is not an Al Qaeda operation: These are autonomous groups,” he says. “It’s not like bin Laden wrote the checks. But they are synchronized ideologically and strategically.”
And there are more links to the Chechens and Al Qaeda.
- The late Chechen warlord Khattab, a Jordanian-born fighter who was killed in Chechnya in April 2002, and Osama bin Laden. Khattab apparently first met bin Laden while both men were fighting the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow, said shortly after September 11, “We have long recognized that Osama bin Laden and other international networks have been fueling the flames in Chechnya, including the involvement of foreign commanders like Khattab.”
- Individuals connected to the September 11 attacks and Chechnya. A Moroccan man charged with abetting the hijackers told a German court in October 2002 that the plot’s ringleader, Muhammad Atta, initially planned to join the fight in Chechnya.
- Zacarias Moussaoui, whom U.S. authorities have charged with being the “20th hijacker” in the September 11 attacks, was reported by the Wall Street Journal to be formerly “a recruiter foral-Qaeda-backed rebels in Chechnya.”
- Chechen militants reportedly fought alongside al-Qaeda and Taliban forces against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in late 2001. TheTaliban regime in Afghanistan was one of the only governments to recognize Chechen independence.
Then there was this article from U.S.A Today,
WASHINGTON — Al-Qaeda allies are believed to be scouting U.S. targets, and the terror organization is using non-Arab recruits to avoid detection, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials say.
And the Jawa Report links to an article that seems to have moved about how terrorists are looking to recruit “White Muslims”.
Terrorists have been working to recruit non-Arab sympathizers — so-called “white Muslims” with Western features who theoretically could more easily blend into European cities and execute attacks — according to classified intelligence documents obtained by The Associated Press.
A 252-page confidential report jointly compiled by Croatian and U.S. intelligence on potentially dangerous Islamic groups in Bosnia suggests the recruitment drive may have begun as long as four years ago, when Arab militants ran up against tough post-9/11 security obstacles.
And there is this article on the use of women as suicide bombers in Iraq. In case some readers are unaware of this, women are not men. Shocking I know.
And I haven’t gone looking for any information on people sharing Michelle Malkin’s ethnicity the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). There is some evidence connecting the ASG to Al Qaeda. And one more geography lesson: The Philippine Islands are not in the Middle East.
The point is that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that fixating on the Middle Eastern male in terms of security measures is foolhardy. As commenter John Burgess noted, it is begging to be killed. This is why we need random searches and why Grandma from Cheboygan may find herself being searched. Random searches are not vulnerable to the Carnival Booth strategy.
