Nederland en Afghanistan 59

Met de toegenomen Westerse terreur in het Midden Oosten is ook de contra-terreur toegenomen. Een feit waar het kabinet Balkenende rekening mee zal moeten houden nu Nederlandse militairen steeds meer betrokken raken bij de oorlog in Afghanistan. De Christian Science Monitor bericht: 'US intel report: Major increase in terrorist incidents. But experts say a common definition of terrorism is a great challenge and a global issue. In a report to be released next week, US government figures will show that the number of terrorist attacks in the world jumped sharply in 2005, totalling more than 10,000 for the first time. That is almost triple the number of terrorist attacks in 2004 -- 3,194. Knight Ridder's Washington bureau reports that counterterrorism experts say that there are two reasons for the dramatic increase: a broader definition of what consitutes a terrorist attack, and the war in Iraq. More than half the fatalities from terrorism worldwide last year occurred in Iraq, said a counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the data haven't been made public. Roughly 85 percent of the US citizens who died from terrorism during the year died in Iraq. The figures cover only noncombatants and thus don't include combat deaths of US, Iraqi and other coalition soldiers.
"There's no question that the level of terrorist attacks in Iraq was up substantially," said the official, who's familiar with the methods used by the National Counterterrorism Center to track terrorist trends. The center is part of the US intelligence community. Knight Ridder also reports that the new definition was used in 2004, but 2005 was the first year that analysts had more time to use the new method. In past years, only terrorist attacks that involved people from more than one country were counted. But officials realized this would, for instance, leave out incidents like the one in the Philippines where terrorists sank a ferry killing 132 Filipinos.
The latest figures will be released in conjunction with the US State Department's annual report on terrorism. Earlier this month, the EUobserver.com reported that two officials from the US State Department slammed Europe's policies on the integration of Muslim communities into broader communities, saying that Europe's failure to do so is creating a "particularly dangerous mix." Daniel Fried, the undersecretary for European affairs, told a US Senate committee that "the failure to integrate Muslim minorities in Europe constitutes a security risk for the US."
Mr Fried said unemployment, discrimination and lack of integration among Europe’s Muslim communities had created an "audience" open to extremist messages, according to Reuters. He added that some European countries’ far-reaching freedom of expression laws helped radical elements to spread anti-democratic ideologies. "Add to this a deeply negative perception and a distorted perception of US foreign policy among Western European Muslim communities, and relative freedom of movement across the Atlantic, and you have a particularly dangerous mix," he said.' Lees verder: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0421/dailyUpdate.html