A “FOREST JIHAD” REDUX?
R. A. Schultz
The following material comes from the latest revision (July, 2017) to my own Introduction to Terrorism, which was first published early in 2002 as a text for the Coast Guard’s Port Security School in Yorktown, VA, and revised several times since.
Early in 2008, it became public knowledge that the jihadis were intentionally setting fires in heavily forested areas as well as in open plains in Australia, and U. S intelligence experts warned that the same thing could happen in North America. U.S. officials monitoring terrorist web sites have discovered a call for using forest fires as weapons against “crusader” nations, in what may explain some recent wildfires in places like the western United States and Greece.
Geostrategy Direct, on January 20, 2008, reported: “A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for ‘Forest Jihad.’ The posting was listed on the Internet on November 26, [2007], and reported in U.S. intelligence channels last week, [the second week of January, 2008]. The statement, in Arabic, said that ‘summer has begun so do not forget the Forest Jihad.’ The writer called on all Muslims in the United States, Europe, Russia, and Australia to ‘start forest fires.’”
It should be noted that suspicious forest fires and wildfires have been detected and noted by various agencies of the intelligence community in the United States since the early 2000’s, and many American intelligence experts have indicated their belief that many such fires are the work of Islamofascist arsonists seeking to sap our strength and resources. Indeed, on numerous occasions, incendiary devices were discovered to be the source of such fires. Information of this sort continues to be ignored by the MSM to this day.
I consider it to be not beyond the realm of possibility that the current proliferation of major fires in California can be traced to deliberate acts of arson. The seeming spontaneity of these fires raises my suspicions. Whether the culprits are jihadis or, as some have suggested, Mexican drug cartels, ultimately the matter is a significant national security issue and must be dealt with accordingly.
