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Bushfire Jihad in Australia?

by Daniel Pipes
March 26, 2009
updated Nov 22, 2009

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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."

Related Topics: Muslims in the West, Terrorism receive the latest by email: subscribe to daniel pipes' free mailing list This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.