‘You Can’t Let Anyone Preach’: Germany Needs to ‘Control’ Mosques to Fight Terrorism - UAE Minister

This seems pretty intuitive to most of us, however, the German government

just doesn't seem to understand

© Odd Andersen / AFP

A loose oversight over mosques is what contributes to the rise of Islamist terrorism in Europe, an UAE minister warned. He then called on Germany and its neighbors to introduce stricter regulation over Muslim prayer halls to prevent radicalization.

“You can’t just leave a mosque open and allow anyone to go there and to preach. You need to have licences,” Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al-Nahyan, the minister for tolerance of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), told Germany’s DPA news agency as he commented on the security situation in Europe. He added that the governmental non-involvement into the activities of religious communities is what has led to the rapid rise of extremism.

Muslims in Germany as well as in the neighboring France, Belgium and the UK had been radicalized exactly due to the fact that authorities in these countries did not pay enough attention to what happened in the mosques on their territory, the minister argued. “Germany and other European states must eventually exert stricter control over such meeting places of Islamists,” he said.

The minister said that the European countries apparently had “good intentions” when they allowed Muslim migrant communities manage their religious issues, including the establishment of mosques and choice of imams, independently. Still, he criticized such approach as ultimately false and dangerous.

All European mosques should be placed under state surveillance

Europe must understand that only people who underwent sufficient training, have a profound knowledge of Islam and possess a license, can become imams, Al-Nahyan said, adding all European mosques should be placed under state surveillance. Explaining the idea, brought the example of his own country, where also prayer halls are controlled by the state authorities.

In the UAE, the state exercises “comprehensive” control over mosques while security services have broad powers allowing them to stop radicalization and prevent any terrorist attacks. The minister told dpa that his country repeatedly offered its assistance and experience in the field of managing religious institutions to the European countries but found little enthusiasm on their part.

“We believe that something [similar] should be done in Europe,” Al-Nahyan told dpa. According to the German media, authorities play no role in the appointment of imams. A person also does not need any approval from the state to establish a mosque.

In the meantime, Islamism has long been a source of concern for the German security services. In February 2017, the German domestic security service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), warned that Islamist extremists were advancing “with impunity” in rural areas of eastern Germany even before the 2015 refugee crisis.

Around the same time, the head of the domestic intelligence service in the German region of Saxony said that Muslim Brotherhood – a Sunni fundamentalist organization – is actively investing into real estate and are trying to “monopolize” mosques in the region to increase its influence. The German media reported in February that about 1,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood were active in Germany at that time.

In a separate development, in February, it was reported that the German authorities closed down the mosque that was attended by Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, who carried out the deadliest terrorist attack in Germany’s recent history.

In December 2016, Amri drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injured dozens more in a deliberate attack claimed by Islamic State. Even though the mosque he frequented was under surveillance since at least 2015, it was closed only two months after the attack.

However, all these facts apparently did not persuade the German government that it should change its policy towards mosques, as in April 2017 it dismissed an idea of introducing surveillance over the Muslim prayer halls. The government dismissed the so-called “Islam law” as a “populist crackpot idea.”

The “Islam law” initiative was proposed by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own party, the Christian Democratic Union, and involved introducing a Muslim registry, language tests for imams and a monitoring system for mosques. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, rejected the idea by saying that “such a law is not now an issue for government business,” adding that freedom of religion “one of the central freedoms safeguarded by our constitution.”

Even when that religion is hell-bent on destroying the very country and civilization in which it resides!!!

And you wonder why Nazism and white supremacy is raising its ugly head. It's because you, the government, are enabling the very destruction of your own society. Is there anything more you can do to assist the cause of jihad in Germany?

Corruption and Waste in Afghanistan: Role of US Gov’t Exposed in New Report

The spectacular corruption in Afghanistan, which, I believe is common to most 3rd world countries, and the lack of oversight by Americans, resulted in the USA providing materiel support to both sides of the war - a phenomenon that is not so rare and only applicable to America.

Afghan children pumping water from a well

A new report examining widespread corruption and waste in Afghanistan found that the practice blossomed following the US invasion in 2001. The problem was fed by its slowness to recognize the problem and exacerbated by the injection of tens of billions dollars into the economy with very little oversight.

“Corruption in Conflict: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan” examined how from 2001 to 2014 the US government, through the Department of Defense, State, Treasury and Justice and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) understood the risks of corruption in Afghanistan, how the US evolved its understanding, and the effectiveness of that response.

SIGAR was created by Congress to provide independent and objective oversight of Afghan reconstruction projects and activities.

US funding both sides of war

The report released on Wednesday had five main findings: 1) corruption undermined the US mission in Afghanistan by fueling grievances against the Afghan government and channeling material support to the Taliban; 2) the injection of tens of billions of dollars into the Afghan economy was governed by flawed oversight and contracting practices and “partnering with malign power-brokers”; 3) the US was slow to recognize the problem; 4) when it did recognize the depth of corruption “security and political goals” trumped anti-corruption efforts; 5) in areas where it was successful it was only “in the absence of sustained Afghan and US political commitment.”

The report defined corruption as “the abuse of entrusted authority for private gain,” and placed in the context of Afghanistan’s kinship-based society where the gains from corruption often benefited not just an individual but a family, clan, tribe or ethnic group.

Corruption is the system of governance

According to SIGAR about $113.1 billion has been appropriated for Afghanistan relief and reconstruction since 2002. The funds were used by the Afghan National Security Forces to promote good governance, conduct development assistance, and engage in counter-narcotics and anti-corruption efforts.

In a 2010 US Embassy Kabul report on a meeting with senior US officials and the Afghan National Security Adviser, Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta said “corruption is not just a problem for the system of governance in Afghanistan; it is the system of governance.”

The report referred to a 2015 UK research that showed there was weak separation of the private and public spheres which resulted in widespread private appropriation of public resources, vertical- and identity-based relationships had primacy over horizontal, i.e. citizen-to-citizen relationships, and politics was centered around a centralization of power and patron-client relations replicated throughout society.

Opportunities for corruption expanded after 2001 as the amount of money in the economy grew from millions to billions of dollars with the Department of Defense budget at time equivalent to the entire Afghan economy and sometimes quadruple the amount.

“Many of the funds were licit, arriving via civilian and military contracts. At their peak in fiscal year 2012, DOD contract obligations for services in Afghanistan including transportation, construction, base support, translation/interpretation, an private security total approximately $19 billion, just under the Afghanistan’s 2012 gross domestic product of $20,5 billion,” stated the report. “From 2007 to 2014 those contract obligation totaled more than 89 billion.”

Billions worth scandals

During the years of the Obama administration, Afghanistan was rocked by two corruption scandals: The Salehi arrest and the Kabul Bank losing $1 billion.

Salehi was involved in the New Ansari Money Exchange, a money transfer firm that moved money into and out of Afghanistan. The exchange was suspected of moving billions of dollars out of Afghanistan for Afghan government officials, drug traffickers and insurgents. US law enforcement and intelligence investigators estimated that as much as $2.78 billion was taken out of Afghanistan between 2007 and 2010.

“A wiretap recorded an aide to Karzai, Mohammad Zia Salehi, soliciting a bribe in exchange for obstructing the investigation into New Ansari. Reportedly, after US officials played some of the wiretaps for an adviser to Karzai, the adviser approved Salehi’s arrest,” stated the report.

Salehi was arrested in July 2010, but was released within hours on the orders of President Karzai and the case was dropped. The New York Times reported Salehi had once worked for notorious warlord Rashid Dostum and was also “being paid by the CIA.”

“If true, this would suggest a US intelligence agency was paying an individual as an intelligence asset even as US law enforcement agencies were building a major corruption case against him,” stated the report.

The other corruption scandal involved the Kabul Bank, which paid was used among other things to pay the salaries of the Afghan military and police, was found in 2010 to have lost nearly $1 billion of US taxpayer’s funded foreign assistance to Afghanistan. The bank’s deposits had seemingly vanished into Dubai and off-shore locations and unknown offshore bank accounts and tax havens, through Ponzi schemes, fraudulent loans, mass looting and insider loans to fake and bogus companies by less than 12 people who were apparently linked to President Karzai.

Lack of oversight and slow response

Against this the DOD and USAID vetted contractors and implemented contracting guidance to reduce opportunities for corruption and while they were somewhat successful, “they were not unified by an overarching strategy or backed by sustained, high-level US political commitment,” stated the report.

During this time, from mid-2011 to March 2012, the US also sought to explore political reconciliation with the Taliban and to do so the US had to preserve a working relationship with President Karzai to ensure an Afghan government buy-in.

“The US government showed a lack of political commitment. When it became clear the Afghan government was not willing to undertake true reform – because it involved taking action against people connected to the highest levels of political power – the US government failed to use all of its available tools to incentivize steps towards resolution,” stated the report.

Another weakness in tackling corruption was the high turnover of US civilian and military staff “meant US institutional memory was weak and efforts were not always informed by previous experience.”

“One Afghan anticorruption expert noted that US agencies often hosted workshops and training that lasted only a few days, with limited follow-up. He suggested that a more fruitful approach might have been to establish a standing institute to train auditors, attorneys, investigative police and others for year, rather than days,” stated the report.

SIGAR's report quoted Ryan Crocker, who re-opened the US Embassy in Kabul soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks and served again as ambassador in 2011-2012 as saying that "the ultimate point of failure for our efforts wasn't an insurgency. It was the weight of endemic corruption."

The report comes with recommendations for addressing corruption risks to US strategic objectives for future missions. It recommended that Congress pass legislation to make clear “that anticorruption is a national security priority in a contingency operation” and required strategies, benchmarks and “annual reporting on implementation.” It also recommended that Congress consider sanctions and the DOD, State and USAID should establish a joint vetting unit to better vet contractors and subcontractors in the field.

The recommendations for the executive branch level are that interagency task force should formulate policy and lead strategy on anticorruption during an operation and the intelligence community should analyze links between host government officials, corruption, criminality, trafficking and terrorism and provide regular updates.

"In Afghanistan today, corruption remains an enormous challenge to security, political stability, and development," SIGAR said.