Bushfire Jihad?

As fires swept through a hot and dry Victoria State, Australia in February 2009, some observers (including myself) wondered if this might not be an Islamist attack on the country. But one stayed quiet, not having proof.

Now, Mervyn F. Bendle, a senior lecturer in History and Communications at James Cook University, Queensland, has come out and made the argument in a 6,000-word article, "Australia's nightmare: bushfire jihad and pyroterrorism," in the National Observer. Bendle marshals an impressive body of evidence. But first, a review of what happened: The fires

began in the mountainous forest areas north-east of Melbourne, and in Gippsland, Bendigo and other parts of the state, on Saturday, 7 February 2009, and continued for several weeks. The fires broke out on a day of extraordinarily high temperatures (up to 47˚C) and gale-force winds (exceeding 100km/h), after an extended heat wave and a protracted drought. In a ghastly conflagration, they caused the largest ever bushfire death toll in Australian history, leaving at least 210 people dead, some 500 injured, and over 30 missing. Some towns were virtually wiped out, including Kinglake, Marysville, St Andrews, Steels Creek, Flowerdale, Strathewen, and Narbethong. The fires destroyed more than 2,000 homes and 1,500 other buildings or structures, and damaged thousands more, leaving an estimated 7,500 people homeless. An area of approximately 4,500km² (450,000ha) was burned out and millions of animals were destroyed. At one point, fires came close to the main electricity transmission lines supplying Melbourne from the Latrobe Valley, and also threatened the Hazelwood Power Station. Insurance payouts could reach several billion dollars.

A fire blazes on February 9, 2009, in Healesville, Australia.

Then to the evidence (mostly Bendle's, some added by me):

• Police believe that the Victoria fires were the result of human action, as are over 90 percent of Australia's fires.

• Australian authorities have long worried about this form of jihad; for example, in 2003, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Daryl Williams stated that "Arson attacks are just one of a wide range of scenarios which have been considered as part of our investigations into al-Qaida's ability to conduct attacks in Australia."

• An article by Josh Gordon, "Islam group urges forest fire jihad," appeared in Melbourne's Age newspaper on September 7, 2008 and described how "a group of Islamic extremists [is] urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror" against Australia.

• Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations not only celebrated the fire but held it up as a model for future action.

• A number of non-Muslim groups have resorted to pyroterrorism, such as the Earth Liberation Front in the United States. "Globally, between 1968 and 2005, some 56 terrorist groups employed arson as their principal form of attack."

• This form of terrorism has increased greatly in recent years. Between 2003 and 2004, for example, the number of fatalities from fires jumped from 7 to 254.

• Islamists have long engaged in pyroterrorism in Israel, starting in 1988. By 2002, the chief ranger od the Galilee region, Gilad Mastai, estimated that the vast majority of deliberate fires were started by Arabs with political motives.

Despite this evidence, Bendle notes, the Victoria Police hyperbolically dismissed the possibility of an Islamist attack even as the blaze was in full force and well before it had any knowledge of the fires' cause. He worries that this willful blindness renders Australia (and, by extension, the entire West) vulnerable to this simple but devastating form of attack.

Comment: Were the fires part of a jihad effort, it would fit an established Islamist goal. For example, in an issue dated December 6, 2007, inSite documents how members of password-protected jihadi websites discuss among themselves ways to destroy dams and flood cities both in the United States and other Western countries. (March 26, 2009)

July 1, 2009 update: "Tens of Simultaneous Fires in Northern Israel are 'Terror Arson'," reports Gil Ronen of Arutz Sheva. Sounds like a case of bushfire jihad:

Fire fighters in northern Israel fought dozens of blazes that broke out during the day Wednesday, most of them around noontime. A source in the Hadera Fire Services told News1 that due to the fact that numerous fires broke out in a relatively limited area, the working assumption is that they were deliberately set. "We still do not know how the fires were set and we do not have details about the arsonist or arsonists," he said.

Oct. 26, 2009 update: Back to the Australian fires: Sany Edow Aweys, 26, one of four Melbourne men standing trial on terrorism charges for taking part in a conspiracy to attack Sydney's Holsworthy Army Base, was recorded expressing delight about the Black Saturday bushfires and the drought. In a telephone call, he told a friend the "filthy people" are being brought down hard by Allah. "The whole nation is coming down, first the economy comes down first. By Allah, factories shutting down, nothing here mate, nothing barely anything. By Allah, I've never seen Melbourne like this, then fire coming to them, no water, the water storage is empty."

May 1, 2010 update: I have just become made aware of a Feb. 16, 2008 report about a forest fire in Greece. Ioannis Michaletos and Christopher Deliso write at BalkanAnalysis.com about "New Security Threats, Trends in Global Intelligence Influence Greek Reforms," also containing references to the issue:

In summer 2007, the enormously destructive wildfires that decimated large swathes of countryside emerged as a new menace - and one that may yet be repeated with even more brutal effect in the years ahead. Although arid, sun-baked Greece is a natural victim of forest fires, what happened last summer was without precedent and became for a time the chief priority for the intelligence services, in a country essentially under attack. Further, deliberate arson aimed at a country increasingly vulnerable to desertification and lacking sufficient water resources can have devastating long-term effects for actors with political or economic objectives in mind.

While everyone from rogue property developers and organized crime syndicates to anarchists and leftists have been blamed at one time or another for the many and widespread fires that gripped the country during the summer, another and even more disturbing possibility is that least some of the fires that occurred, and that are likely to occur in the future, can be attributed to Islamist networks. A recent report, citing US intelligence channels, claims that an Arabic-language jihad website has urged Muslims in Europe, America and Australia to use arson as a tool of terror. The website apparently cited imprisoned Al Qaeda "theorist" Abu Musab Al-Suri as the ideological progenitor of this plan. While Greece is not specified among the countries to be attacked, and while it is not a contributor of troops to the US-led coalition in Iraq, it has been vital to the war effort by allowing the Americans access to its island bases, transport and other logistical services.

Further evidence attests to a possible connection between Islamists and the forest fires in Greece. A type of improvised explosive device used in setting off the fires was ignited with a mobile phone. By calling the phone's number, the device exploded, sparking a blaze that soon grew out of control. The advantage for the perpetrators is that this result can be achieved from a safe distance- even from abroad. Significantly, it is similar to one of the methods used in the Madrid bombing in March 2003.

Further, a ranking Greek intelligence officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, states that during the height of the summer fires a Saudi national equipped with such a device was arrested by Greek border police in the north of Greece, in the company of several Kosovo Albanians. It is no secret that the latter consider Greeks to be an enemy, in light of the latter's historic support for the Serbian point of view regarding the Kosovo issue. However, there is no way of confirming this claim, so it must remain a mystery, at least for now. Nevertheless, there is evidence, some of it gathered in an August 2007 Jamestown Foundation report, of Greece being used as a transit zone and even potential target for al Qaeda and related groups.

Dec. 5, 2010 update: The worst fire in modern Israel's history started on Dec. 2 in the Haifa vicinity and seems to have been an accident. But ancillary fires appear to be the work of Muslim arsonists. More to come as information becomes available. As Aaron Lerner writes:

This piece of information is not being censored by the Israeli media in the sense that it is broadcast for a second and gets a sentence or two in reports. But what a JNF official termed "widespread arson terror" apparently doesn't fit into the narrative that the Israeli media herd has locked into. … It raises questions the media isn't comfortable with about Arab-Jewish relations. And it raises horrific questions about what we may face in terms of internal Arab caused chaos in the next war and what measures may be required to address it.

Dec. 6, 2010 update: More details from a Jerusalem Post editorial today, which sets the stage by noting that arson attempts all year long "at a staggering average of two per day in the past 12 months" and "are part of a concerted effort by lawless Arab Israelis to take control of Jewish farmland in the Galilee. Crops or orchards that are repeatedly burned down are eventually left fallow, in some cases allowing Arab farmers to move in. Additional tactics include the killing of livestock and violence against Jewish farmers, according to those affected." As for recent days, it writes of "a mind-boggling rash of locally concocted arson attempts":

Perpetrated by Arab Israelis, these attacks are a cynical exploitation of Israel's sorrowfully inadequate firefighting capabilities. These local terrorists are willing to cause further ecological damage and endanger the lives of both Jews and Arabs in the name of hateful and narrow political goals.

On Friday, Israel Police Insp.-Gen. David Cohen directed district commanders to be on the lookout for such arsonists and has reportedly consulted with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) on thwarting them. Yoel Zilberman, head of a grassroots network of about 1,000 unarmed volunteer guards that operates in the Galilee and who call themselves "Hashomer," a throwback to the pre-state organization, estimates that in the last three days there have been between 30 and 40 arson attempts in northern Israel. The organization was created two years ago to fight acts of arson and vandalism perpetrated by Arabs against Jewish farmers in the Galilee.

One of the largest arson attacks that took place since the fire erupted on Mount Carmel was at Tzur Shalom, where police found a bike and a wig, apparently abandoned by an arsonist who had disguised himself and planned to ignite the local gas pump and start a fire that could have spread to the factories of heavily-industrialized Haifa Bay.

Other suspected arson attacks occurred in Tarshiha, Kiryat Tivon, Shfaram, Naveh Yosef, a neighborhood outside Haifa, Mashad, an Arab village in the North, and in the Nazareth Forest. Police Cmdr. Shimon Koren, commander of the Northern District, said that there were cases in which Molotov cocktails were thrown along Route 70.

The Post concludes that Israeli Arabs who engage in arson are in part inspired by "a larger Muslim world with decidedly antagonistic attitudes toward Israel," as shown by celebrations at news of the Carmel fire.

Arutz Sheva also pursues this angle today and is critical of the mainstream media for ignoring it, in "Fire or a Massacre? Israeli Media Downplays Arson Suspicion," by Gil Ronen:

MK Yaakov Katz (Ketzaleh) of the National Union was the first leader Thursday to publicly give voice the possibility that the fire was a terror attack – "an act of arson that turned into a massacre," in his words. Most of the large forest fires in Israel are set by hostile Arabs, Katz said. He noted that he had proposed a bill for minimum punishment of terror arsonists nine months ago, and blamed Justice Minister Yaakov Ne'eman for torpedoing it. …

The fire spread from three locations simultaneously – making arson a likely possibility. Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara (Likud), a resident of Usfiyeh, said on Channel 10 Thursday evening that he has received information that the fire is a terror act. He said that if the perpetrators are caught they should be executed "like [the Nazi criminal Adolf] Eichmann" who is the only person put to death by Israel to date.

Arab citizens of Israel use arson as a simple means of inflicting terror and destruction upon the Jewish state. Large scale fires recently consumed 5,000 acres in the Golan Heights. A fire was set in the Gilad Farm several weeks ago and an Arab was seen fleeing by a group of soldiers in the area. The numerous large fires that broke out or were set this year depleted Israel's reserves of fire-fighting chemicals, and the supply of chemicals is expected to be used up completely by Friday morning. Israeli planes are reported to be en route to France to bring more supplies of fire-dousing materials. According to an unconfirmed report on rotter.net, Radio Haifa reported that Arabs have been dancing in the streets of Furadis, just south of Haifa, in celebration of the deadly fire.