Terrorist groups and the organized crime networks are increasingly working together, strengthening their ability to inflict harm with conventional weapons today and, maybe, with nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the future. Separated for a long time, the criminal and terrorist networks today are united.
The ransom money earned by Aftab Ansari from kidnappings in Dubai helped fund the September 11 attacks and criminals like Indian crime boss Dawood Ibrahim belong to both parties. In some areas it is impossible to destroy the infrastructures of one of them without facing the other’s. In South Asia and in the Middle East, these links are particularly worrying. Criminal networks have also been used for the nuclear smuggling network of Doctor Khan. Nuclear transfers from Pakistan to North Korea, Libya and Iran could not have occurred without the criminal networks.
Even if states agree to international nonproliferation treaties, the existence of criminal networks could allow proliferation to continue. For their part, criminal gangs can turn to terrorist groups to provide needed training in the use of explosives and to exploit certain territories. In addition, criminal organizations can become ideological over time terrorist groups can carry out criminal actions to finance their activities.
It is essential to strengthen international cooperation in the fight against terrorist networks.

Our world is “normally” silent in the face of evil. Israel, for its part, is not to choose between silence or complicity of political terrorism, but between being a victim or resorting to the use of force. The use of force is not inherently evil, and it is even indispensable in terrorism-related issues.
Israel faces a unique kind of terrorism for its cowardice, its barbarism and its genocidal nature. All states have the right of self-defense and facing biological and even nuclear terrorist threats Israel has the right to refuse to be a victim and to become an executioner. Albert Camus called on us to be neither victims nor executioners and he counted on the principle of reciprocity to calm down the spirits and limit the number of executioners. But we are not living Albert Camus’ world and if we adopt his principles, Israel would be on the way to its own self-destruction. Whatever the achievements of Israel, they will not impress the Islamists who want to kill Jews. There is no Arab solution with two states, there is only one final solution.
It is necessary that the executioners find a place within the Israeli government as, sadly, killing is sometimes a sacred duty in the face of evil.

Dear John:
You have become the first director of the national intelligence service. Regrettably, the law that created this post is ambiguous since its purpose is to please Donald Rumsfeld. Therefore, any control that you may have on the State Department Intelligence Service is not well defined. However, if the nation is to be protected, you will be obliged to fight for the control of such service, something that does not go with your nature.
You’ll be obliged to shake the CIA - a demobilized service with a double identity, half an analysis service and half an espionage service. That structure must be broken, analysts must be assigned to the Office of National Assessment and a national covert service must be created with the rest, which should be directed by someone with recent espionage experience, and the right person is not other but Porter Goss. The proposal of the Silberman-Robb commission must be implemented and a special counter-terrorism service must be created within the FBI. The framework of Bob Mueller’s half reforms must be outstripped
Within the Defense Department there exist various services in charge of collecting intelligence information. These services are superfluous and a legacy of the Cold War. Those services must be unified and put under your control. If Rumsfeld complains, it will then be up to George W. Bush to make a decision. As to the analysis service, you will have to recruit true experts and stimulate the dissident voices.
If you don’t like these proposals, then find your own, but please, be imposing.

Our intelligence service’s failure to detect the September 11 terrorist conspiracy and finding that Saddam Hussein did not posses any mass destruction weapons called forth the criticism of our service and led to reorganize the intelligence service. However, there is no need for excesses or endangering our country by making people believe we are doing the right thing.
There are two clichés now in our intelligence service, which have become dogma. The first is that our intelligence service is “damaged”. By increasing the use of this term, one may think that it can be fixed as long as the failure causes are inherent to the nature of the service. Intelligence needs information about different-minded people as well as about secrets, which would be compromised by data exchange. Additionally, the information is always analyzed in the political setting. Since the end of the Cold War, the major enemy changed in order to take a more heterogeneous shape, and the intelligence service is asked to know every little thing, which is impossible. Believing that the information service can be “fixed” to make it a perfect instrument is a dangerous hope.
The second cliché is that the intelligence service could be afraid of taking risks, but this is not about a Stock Market game. One cannot take this risk as error might bring terrible consequences.
In fact, improvements can only be secondary and gradual.

France was affected by Islamist attacks in 1986 and 1995 and that led us to respond politically and legally. This was followed with interest abroad. Our specificity is triple: firstly, the strategic choice of a preventive legal neutralization of terrorist groups; then the specialization of magistrates both judges and prosecutors, who can charge suspects of associating with criminals linked to a terrorist sector, and lastly, the double nature of the DST - an intelligence service that belongs to the national police and is empowered with judicial capacity.
The DST interrogated 58 persons in 2002, 41 in 2003, 76 in 2004 and is getting on to 55 this year. The intensification of our actions during the last few months reflects the mutation of the international Jihad. Danger grows: the Islamist Moroccan Combatant Group’s activists or those of the Iraqi branches have joined the Bosnian, Afghan or Chechen branches. Various individual classes mean danger, that is, trained Jihadists or those who have fought in Bosnia, Afghanistan or Chechnya, and young men without any combat experience or reference, but who have become more radical and are willing to participate in the Jihad. In Paris 19th District, we have seen young men really determined to go and fight in Iraq. Five French citizens have died in a suicide attack. Regarding the 9/11 Saudis, the French Jihadist is more rustic, younger but more radical and committed than a few years ago. The easy way in which these young men can be indoctrinated is of concern. However, I don’t think that terrorist groups could have the possibility of using bio-terrorist techniques at a massive scale. Nevertheless, their unsophisticated use would be enough to generate panic.
We still keep in prison the French detainees from Guantanamo, because they were resolute enough to become dangerous. We considered that their preventive arrest was necessary. If the French don’t get offended by this is because they trust us. We are bound to take measures in the face of an active threat with international ramifications, but our system is thoroughly democratic and the rights are guaranteed. Our answer was legal, not military. To consider the anti-terrorist fight as a war increases the risks since it is to acknowledge and give the terrorist an additional echo. Likewise, there is no need to yield to the temptations of these days and authorize torture.
In the European way, we have used methods that improve the procedures, that is, European arrest orders, freezing of assets, and so forth. But this system can be further improved. This is one of the White Book’s objectives launched by the Minister of the Interior, which will establish the strategic guidelines for the anti-terrorist fight.

Soon there will begin the trial against the murderer of Theo van Gogh. I had asked Theo to accept official protection, but told me that he didn’t want the Dutch police in his house. In the film Submission, on which I participated, his intention was to be provocative. He underestimated the radicalism of his adversaries. I had bodyguards for a long time, but he continued living normally. His murderer left a letter threatening me, completely turning my life upside-down with police protection 24 hours a day. I understand that this “fatwa” (Arab death threat) is directed against me, and against Holland and against everyone in the west. In the eyes of a radical Muslim, every country where it is possible to openly criticize Muslims is an enemy of Islam. If I had known that someone was going to die, I probably wouldn’t have written that script. Later, in thinking of places where I could hide, two countries well aware of the Islamic threat came to mind: Israel and the United States. I choose the United States. I later met with Salman Rushdie, who explained to me how to continue living under a fatwa. After two months in California, I was partially exonerated and therefore decided to return to The Hague for the start up of Parliamentary sessions.
It is grotesque to struggle for the liberation of Muslim women and have to walk around with two bodyguards, as they were my own chador. Radical Islam is too dangerous for our society, perhaps for the entire world. We have to fight that threat and some will die as a result. If we keep silent, more than a few people will die. Islam is very aggressive; there is wealth, there are godfather-like figures and there are desperate people who choose violence. We have to fight to conserve our western values; the price that we have to pay is to stand up to threats. If I continue saying in my book that Islam is retrograde, if I call for measures to force the assimilation of immigrants, if I prepare to continue the film , that means that I am already condemned to the maximum sentence - so from that point on, I can do as I like. If some people of my party, the VVD (rightwing), have felt annoyed by my work, that is because it’s about a liberal party interested in the free market above everything else. In my opinion, Labour Party members and the Greens fight for a very correct political line, they are for the creation of a multicultural society. Due to my criticism of Islam, I would have caused splits in those parties in which there are many Muslim voters. The Dutch security services were only put on alert status after the murder occurred. Following September 11, they met with Muslim leaders, gave money them and requested that maintained their faithfulness in their young people - it was something laughable. Later they tried to unify the different groups that formed liberal and orthodox Muslim camps. The radical young people used the description “volunteer prostitutes” to characterize the “leaders” who wanted to negotiate with the government, who they considered collaborators, traitors, and stupid.
We must penetrate their world. During an investigation made in the Moroccan district of Amsterdam, journalist Magalith Kleijwegt (author of the book Invisible Parents) discovered that the parents are not able to give their children the education necessary to live in a modern western society. They do not speak Dutch, do not know how to read or write, they watch Arab television which fills their heads with conspiracy theories with respect to the West. We do not know what is happening in these parallel worlds. We must adopt a policy of forced integration. We have to prohibit schools based only on faith, and we must consider those children like ours, not leaving their education in the hands of the defenders of a foreign dogma that inculcates them in the doctrine of anti-liberalism. To blindly respect its culture is not a correct approach. Instead of studying European philosophers, many of them study the eleventh century writings of Ibn Abu Taymiya, that proclaims holy war as a way of life. Reality is grotesque; we have all types of non-profit organizations sending individuals to Africa to convince people to use condoms, but in our country the problems continue with no solution. The democracy also includes legitimate intolerance. The intolerable cannot be tolerated. We must declare war on Islamic propaganda. Why must we ignore the women being marginalized, mistreated, and reduced to slavery? Why do we have to ignore that there are people preaching hatred and planning against us?

Although it might seem paradoxical, I am a prince who is in favor of strengthening civil society. I do not believe in paternalistic relations. All societies go through that phase, which is no more than a stage of their development. I believe in progress, in the revolution of understanding; but it is not indispensable to change the structure of the state. A democratic state can be constructed with the aid of government, and I am not speaking of a lay government, because conservatives would not accept that in our region. In our country, religion is inseparable from the state. Believing practitioners and religious values play a great role. But religion, of course, does not have to serve as screen to hide political interests. The Lebanese have a saying that I like: “religion belongs to God, the nation to all.
I believe in the power of the intellect. In these recent times there are no great ideas in the Arab world. Revolutionary situations have always arisen when the idea of Arab unity crumbled. The Israeli-Arab conflict has precipitated things. Over the past 50 years, the Arab world was seen itself shaken by revolutions in Egypt and Iraq. The nationalistic ideas of Nasser predominated in 1960’s. Presently, the revolutionary situation emanates from the fight against terrorism, and unfortunately many governments have taken up that struggle as a pretext for further restricting liberties so as to strengthen themselves.
In all, the Middle East is becoming terribly exhausting in its relations with the United States. The American have begun to refer to the “Great Middle East” the immense area that extends from Morocco to Bangladesh, one of the most populated regions in the world. In that area there exists no regional security institution, because each capital talks to its neighbor with Washington serving as the intermediary. There is no a concrete aid program for regional development. The United States promotes democracy, but individually-country by country, and democracy is not the same for Egypt as it is for Syria, without even speaking about Israel, which is on the brink of civil war. The region must be safeguard itself from the nuclear military threat. Why doesn’t Israel do what the others demand of it?
I call for the creation of a Middle East Assembly, for dialogue between the peoples of the region. Let us call it, for example, MECCA (the Middle East Citizens Assembly). I think that the declaration of George W. Bush on the “Great Middle East” is beautiful, but hollow. Democracy will not come from the outside. One of the problems of the present policy are extremist missionaries. These are American Christians and Zionist Israelis. Peculiarly, we have seen alliances created between them. On the one hand we see their urging of crusades, on another one, we see the call for holy wars.
People are the agents of democracy, those who must construct it and enjoy it. However, the rich are the ones who accumulate fortunes thanks to foreign influence, and that gives rise to extremism. We should take as a model the European Union and apply an antro-policy, created by people, instead of a petro-policy.