Ian at Beyond the River notices some incredibly sloppy reporting from the New York Times, Reuters, and other news agencies over the supposed existence of the IJU and its supposed connection to those guys who were just arrested in Germany.
A lot of “What is the Islamic Jihad Union (or Group)” stories are being put out by the major news organizations. They seem to be cut-and-paste jobs from Wikipedia. Take Reuters Alertnet, for instance, who erroneously posted information about Islamic Jihad, Palestine version, and had to withdraw it.
Fantastic, because Germany and Uzbekistan are like totally the same thing as Israel. Then again, it never seems to quite add up with most western reporting of the IMU, IJU, or any other splinter groups. As I said earlier this year, whilst casting doubt on the supposed “war” in Waziristan:
The violence is by the splinter faction Islamic Jihad Group[?] If this is the case, then it is the first time we’ve heard anything from them since 2004. As Hoffman notes, the lack of rallying cries, calls for additional jihad, funding, and weapons, and related propaganda operations is deeply curious if such a fanatical group really were under such vicious attack. Hell, even among established literature there is little evidence the IJG really exists anymore—since a limited bombing campaign against Israeli and American targets in 2004, nothing has been heard from them, in stark contrast even to the little sound bites Tohir Yol’dosh has released.
In fact, at this point I’m inclined to write off what little fighting there probably was in Waziristan as over-hyped nonsense. Furthermore, I’m inclined to disbelieve any reports that involve the Islamic Jihad Group… I remain deeply skeptical that a supposedly hyper-violent, fanatical splinter group that gained tremendous cachet by bombing the Israeli and American embassies in Tashkent would simply vanish for three years only to emerge in Waziristan fighting the Taliban and fellow Uzbeks.
Alas, since when has fact-checking been the forté of the Main Stream Media? Certainly not in extremely recent memory. Go check out Ian’s post—the errors he notes are astounding for agencies that consider themselves sources of record.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Joshua: Kudos to you and Ian for the important analysis. There must be a way to get it into the hands of the mainstream reporters at NYT, Reuters, etc. Their email addresses and phone numbers are easily available.