You will only get this kind of stuff from The Long War Journal.
How a US citizen became a key player in the Islamic State’s rivalry with al Qaeda
Ahmad Abousamra, a US citizen who graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Boston, became one of the Islamic State’s top propagandists and “chief editor” of its English-language magazine. His story is told in the the eighth edition of the Islamic State’s Rumiyah (“Rome”) magazine, which was released online in several languages earlier this week. He is identified as “Abu Sulayman ash-Shami” and “Shaykh Ahmad ‘Abdul-Badi’ Abu Samrah” in Rumiyah. The cover of the publication, seen above, features him.
Abousamra was apparently killed in an airstrike near Tabqa, Syria in January. Press reports previously indicated that he was killed in mid-2015. But if Rumiyah is accurate, then he survived and continued to serve Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s cause for nearly two more years.
Before his demise, Abousamra rose to become one of the so-called caliphate’s most prolific English-speaking propagandists. And Abousamra was tasked with another especially important mission. He was one of the chief architects of the Islamic State’s anti-al Qaeda messaging.
Abousamra’s family is originally from Syria, but he was born in France on Sept. 19, 1981. Rumiyah begins his story much later, with his graduation from UMass Boston, where he studied computer science.
Dissatisfied with life in America, Abousamra decided “to go forth in the cause of Allah with some of his friends.”
“So they left as muhajirin to Allah, not coordinating their journey with anyone,” Rumiyah’s profile continues. “They roamed between Yemen, Pakistan, and Iraq, hoping to meet someone who would bring them to the mujahidin. But once they became weary of finding the way, and as they feared inciting the suspicions of intelligence agencies, they returned to America, asking Allah to guide them towards their goal.”
After returning to his home country, Abousamra “decided to try and make America itself the frontlines for his jihad and the place for his martyrdom.” He and two of his friends “planned…to carry out an operation that would target Americans in their own land.” So “they drew up their plans for their desired operation, including the seizure of some weapons from the Crusaders, which they would then use for an attack behind enemy lines that they hoped would cause the killing of a large number of mushrikin [polytheists].”
Their “plot was discovered just days before the operation’s appointed time,” according to Rumiyah. However, Allah supposedly “saved” Abousamra “from falling into captivity, allowing him to leave America before the FBI could gather sufficient information to release an order for his arrest at the borders and airports.” The FBI’s Most Wanted poster for Abousamra, offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his capture, can be seen on the right. The FBI announced the reward on Dec. 18, 2013, years after Abousamra absconded from the US.
Abousamra returned to “the birthplace of his fathers” in Syria, living in Aleppo for a “few years, seeking knowledge, calling his family and friends to tawhid [monotheism], and anticipating his next chance to wage jihad,” according to Rumiyah.
The university-educated jihadist “was keen to avoid the eyes of the intelligence agency and avoid sitting with the evil scholars who were allied with the tawaghit,” meaning Bashar al Assad’s regime, during this time.
Interestingly, Rumiyah avoids any mention of one of Abousamra’s earliest co-conspirators: Tarek Mehanna. Unlike Abousamra, Mehanna did not escape capture. Mehanna was arrested, tried and convicted on terror-related charges after joining Abousamra on a trip to Yemen in 2004. The pair unsuccessfully tried to join the jihad. After a week in Yemen, they were still unable to locate a training camp, so Mehanna returned to the US. Abousamra pressed on to Iraq and eventually elsewhere.
Mehanna didn’t give up, however. He began translating and posting al Qaeda videos on the Internet. In 2012, he was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison on terrorism-related charges. Federal authorities found that Mehanna lied about his own trip to Yemen and the activities of another one of his co-conspirators, Daniel Joseph Maldonado. In 2007, Maldonado pleaded guilty to separate charges in a US Court, “admitting that he had traveled from Houston to Africa in November 2005 and then on to Somalia in December 2006 to join the Islamic Courts Union and elements of al Qaeda to fight against the Transitional Federal Government to establish an independent Islamic State in Somalia.” Maldonado was subsequently sentenced to a decade in prison.
Meanwhile, Abousamra remained free.
An Islamic State loyalist who fought Assad’s regime
Abousamra joined the fight against the Assad government after popular uprisings swept through Syria in 2011. He was “wounded in a battle against the Nusayriyyah [a derogatory term for Assad and his supporters] in a neighborhood of Halab [Aleppo],” according to Rumiyah. He then joined Al Nusrah Front, which was an arm of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) at the time, and “met with” Al Nusrah’s “leaders.”
Rumiyah emphasizes that Abousamra knew Al Nusrah was initially comprised of Baghdadi’s “soldiers.” This is one of the key themes in Rumiyah’s story, because he would remain loyal to Baghdadi even after Al Nusrah broke away from the ISI and announced its direct allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s overall emir.
Al Nusrah allegedly denied Abousamra’s request for transfer to Iraq, and also did not “allow him to execute an istishhadi [martyrdom] operation against the Nusayriyyah.” So he continued to work in Aleppo, “participating in raids against Nusayri [Assad regime] positions.”
Rumiyah portrays Abousamra as an unwavering Baghdadi loyalist who opposed Al Nusrah’s “treacherous” emir, Abu Muhammad al Julani. Until 2013, Julani was one of Baghdadi’s lieutenants. But he took Al Nusrah in another direction, disobeying an order from Baghdadi to fall in line. After Julani announced his direct allegiance to Zawahiri in Apr. 2013, the greatest rivalry in the history of modern jihadism broke out. Baghdadi’s enterprise mushroomed into the current Islamic State, challenging al Qaeda’s authority within the jihadist community everywhere from West Africa to Southeast Asia.
Abousamra “criticized” Al Nusrah’s men “for their betrayal of the Islamic State and their violation of their covenant and bay’ah [oath of allegiance] to Amir ul-Muminin [‘Emir of the Faithful’] Abu Bakr al Baghdadi,” Rumiyah’s propagandists write. “He began exposing the truth of the situation to other soldiers, showing them that [Al Nusrah Front] had been trying to hide their original allegiance to the Islamic State, and he explained to them that it was not permissible to stop obeying Amir ul-Muminin or retract their bay’ah as long as they did not see blatant kufr [disbelief] from him.”
At this point, Al Nusrah supposedly “sought some way to get rid of him,” finally giving Abousamra approval for a martyrdom operation. But Abousamra was hip to their alleged scheme, so he left “their ranks in order to renew his bay’ah to Ami rul-Muminin [Baghdadi] and his status as one of his soldiers.”
“Chief editor” of Dabiq
Abousamra still sought to kill himself in a suicide bombing, but in the name of Baghdadi’s state, not Al Nusrah. The Islamic Sate finally picked a target, “a large group” of Bashar al Assad’s “supporters” in the “heart of the Nusayri regime-held areas inside the city of Aleppo.” He was going to “sneak into the middle of a gathering and detonate his explosive belt.” But Allah supposedly intervened once again.
Abu Muhammad al Furqan, one of the Islamic State’s most senior leaders, discovered Abousamra and concluded that his talents were best put to use elsewhere. Another jihadist was sent to carry out the suicide bombing. “It was then decided to bring [Abousamra] to the Media Diwan of the Islamic State, which Shaykh Abu Muhammad was striving to enhance by widening its activities and supporting it with cadres of qualified scholars and technicians,” Rumiyah’s editors write.
Under Furqan’s command in the media department, Abousamra organized the “foreign languages team,” which was created by Furqan “to inform Muslims in the east and west about the Islamic State and to urge them to perform hijrah to it.” Abousamra “worked on various videos” released by Al Hayat Media Center, one of the group’s main media arms, and translated materials into English.
Eventually, these efforts evolved into the English-language Dabiq magazine.
Dabiq is a town in Syria that has been at the center of the jihadists’ apocalyptic mythology. It is supposedly a key location where the jihadists’ enemies will be vanquished. Furqan chose Dabiq as the publication’s name “in order to frustrate the Crusaders of Rome and convey to them their inevitable end – by Allah’s permission – just as Allah’s Messenger explained.” Every issue of Dabiq carried the words of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the founder of al Qaeda in Iraq, which evolved into more than one jihadist group, including the Islamic State and Al Nusrah. “The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify – by Allah’s permission – until it burns the Crusader armies in Dabiq,” Zarqawi said.
The editors of Rumiyah do not highlight for readers the fact that their end-times predictions for Dabiq fell flat. The town was captured by Turkish-backed forces last year. The Islamic State likely knew that Dabiq would be lost for some time. Earlier in 2016, Dabiq magazine was renamed Rumiyah (“Rome”). And Zarqawi’s quote was replaced by another from Abu Hamza al Muhajir, who succeeded Zarqawi as leader of al Qaeda in Iraq and established the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006. Each edition of Rumiyah now includes the following line from Muhajir: “O muwahhidin, rejoice, for by Allah, we will not rest from our jihad except beneath the olive trees of Rumiyah [Rome].”
The group does not explain how it is going to conquer Rome, if it cannot even hold onto Dabiq.
Regardless, Abousamra helped establish this English-language propaganda publication, becoming its “chief editor” and leader “of all the foreign language teams.”
He wrote “many articles for the magazine, review[ed] what his fellow editors wrote, and scrutinize[d] any materials that were translated for publishing, spending a great deal of time and effort doing so,” Rumiyah’s editors explain. Abousamra worked closely with Furqan, who had “many responsibilities as a general caretaker of the Islamic State,” a role Furqan was appointed to by Baghdadi himself. Therefore, Furqan likely held one of the most senior positions in the Islamic State under Baghdadi.
Because Furqan was busy with many matters, he relied on Abousamra for help “in drafting treatises and articles which would clarify the methodology of the Islamic State and expose its enemies.” Rumiyah’s editors claim that Furqan, who was killed in 2016, was impressed by the “quality” of Abousamra’s writing and his knowledge of sharia law.
Writing under another alias, “Abu Maysarah ash-Shami,” Abousamra became one of al Qaeda’s most strident critics.
A staunch opponent of al Qaeda
Abousamra’s fierce opposition to al Qaeda is peppered throughout his writings in Dabiq. The cover story in the sixth issue of the online magazine was written by a purported al Qaeda defector known as Abu Jarir ash-Shamali. The piece was a harsh critique of al Qaeda’s operations, but also revealed some details about the structure of Zawahiri’s group, including how the committees within its hierarchy have been reshuffled over time. [See FDD’s Long War Journal report, The Islamic State’s curious cover story.]
That same issue of Dabiq included a lengthy article by Abousamra, writing under his pen name, “Abu Maysarah ash-Shami.” A screen shot of the piece can be seen on the right.
Weeks earlier, in November 2014, Baghdadi announced the expansion of the Islamic State, declaring that the group’s wilayah (provinces) now existed in several countries outside of Iraq and Syria. Baghdadi also claimed that existing jihadist groups in these countries had been nullified, due to the presence of the caliphate. All Muslims owed their loyalty to the Islamic State’s wilayah, Baghdadi claimed.
One of the affected nations was Yemen, where Baghdadi’s network has a branch to this day.
Naturally, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which rejected Baghdadi’s caliphate gambit, took exception to his declaration. After all, Baghdadi had implied, or even outright stated, that AQAP was no longer legitimate now that the caliphate operated on its turf.
Harith bin Ghazi al Nadhari, a senior ideologue, was among the AQAP officials who objected to Baghdadi’s declaration. (Nadhari was subsequently killed in a drone strike on Jan. 31 in Yemen.)
And in the sixth issue of Dabiq, Abousamra took it upon himself to blast Nadhari. Abousamra criticized Nadhari, “who is blinded by his spite,” for issuing a lengthy rebuttal to Baghdadi, adding that some of the AQAP man’s words “trickle with blood, forebode evil, and contain wickedness.” Abousamra claimed that Nadhari had fallen “into a bizarre contradiction” by emphasizing his continuing loyalty to Zawahiri. The Baghdadi loyalist argued that Zawahiri “doesn’t make takfir on the Rafidah [Shiites] to begin with,” as the al Qaeda emir excuses them “due to their ignorance.” Abousamra was referring to one of the key doctrinal differences between al Qaeda and the Islamic State, with the latter excommunicating all Shiites from Islam.
Abousamra added that Zawahiri “does not make takfir of the supporters” of the regimes throughout region, “except for those officers who torture Muslims and belong to some specific departments of National Security.” In other words, al Qaeda’s emir is supposedly soft on the jihadists’ foes — an accusation never hurled at the Islamic State, which is known for its us vs. the world mentality.
Abousamra believed he found a contradiction in Nadhari’s stance, as AQAP is warring with the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen and Zawahiri has forbidden the use of violence against Shiite civilians. But in reality, AQAP has attempted to put limits on its fighting. With some exceptions, AQAP confines its operations to predominately military and security targets manned by the Houthis and its other enemies. AQAP has also distanced itself from the Islamic State’s deliberate targeting of civilian areas. This is consistent with Zawahiri’s “General Guidelines for Waging Jihad,” a policy that was adopted by al Qaeda’s branches around the globe, but rejected by Baghdadi and his men, as they have fetishized attacks on Shiites.
Still, once one goes down the jihadist path, the dividing line between permissible and impermissible violence can become murky. And Abousamra complained in Dabiq that AQAP “never” has a “problem cooperating” with groups such as the Islah party, an Islamist political group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. A leading figure in Islah is Shaykh Abd-al-Majid al-Zindani, a longtime al Qaeda ally in Yemen.
In some areas of Yemen, Ansar al Sharia, an AQAP front group, fights “side-by-side with the apostate army” of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and “the Bankrupt Brotherhood against the Houthis,” Abousamra complained. Their forces are even “transported between the frontlines in the vehicles of the apostate army.”
In his Nov. 2014 speech, Baghdadi took a swipe at AQAP, saying that if the Houthis had been confronted by real Muslims, then “their evil would not have become exacerbated.” (The Houthis began a largely successful offensive in Yemen months earlier.) Abousamra defended Baghdadi’s dig at his rivals, arguing that if AQAP hadn’t adhered to Zawahiri’s guidelines and engaged in “Zawahiri-style” fighting, which treats the Houthis “as a Muslim faction that is to be fought with the least amount of force required to repel its aggression,” then the Houthis would not have gone on the march. Only after the Houthis rose did Nadhari bless a broader war on their forces, Abousamra claimed, and by then it was too late.
Abousamra also critiqued al Qaeda’s bay’ah (oath of allegiance) to the Taliban, noting that Mullah Omar’s group had called for and enjoyed good relations with nations such as Qatar and Iran. Such diplomacy is unthinkable from the Islamic State’s uncompromising perspective.
As Baghdadi and his self-declared caliphate rose in prominence throughout 2014, al Qaeda marketed Mullah Omar as the true caliph. Osama bin Laden himself named Omar as the Muslims’ rightful ruler, al Qaeda reminded jihadists. There was just one problem: Omar was already dead at the time.
And by late 2014, when the sixth issue of Dabiq was written, Abousamra seems to have heard that Omar was no longer among the living. The UMass grad explained that he had heard from others that “senior commanders in Afghanistan and Waziristan…doubt that Mullah Omar is still alive and are convinced that he was either killed or imprisoned, as none of them has seen him since the start of the modern crusader campaign against Afghanistan” in late 2001. He faulted the Taliban for issuing statements in Omar’s name with “clear deviation from the truth” in them, but recognized “it’s possible that these expressions…came from someone other than” Omar.
I so miss the days of a daily drone strike that puts an al Qaeda leader or a Taliban commander straight to the gates of Hell. Well, for old times sake, we got a good one in Afghanistan.
The story comes from The Long War Journal.
Pakistani Taliban confirms senior al Qaeda commander killed in Afghanistan
The Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) confirmed in a statement today that Qari Muhammad Yasin, a senior al Qaeda military commander, was killed in a US drone strike. The bombing took place in the Laman area of the eastern Paktika province on Mar. 19. The statement confirming Yasin’s demise was released online and is attributed to Mohammad Khurasani, the Pakistani Taliban spokesman.
Khurasani describes Yasin as a “close assistant” of the Pakistani Taliban and a “trainer of Mujahideen.” He claims that three of Yasin’s “companions” were also killed in the US drone strike.
Khurasani confirms that Yasin “was one of the closest companions of Shaheed Amjad Farooqi…a famous personality of Pakistan Jihad.”
Yasin’s relationship with Farooqi was previously reported by The Nation. Farooqi engineered two assassination attempts against Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf in Dec. 2003 at the behest of al Qaeda leader Abu Faraj al Libi and is suspected of involvement in other terror attacks as well. Farooqi was a member of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, the Harkat-ul-Ansar and its successor – the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen – as well as Harakat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Yasin’s connections with Farooqi positioned him to become a key leader in what is often described as the Punjabi Taliban, which includes jihadists from various other Pakistani terrorist organizations who are aligned with al Qaeda. Khurasani refers to Yasin as a “Punjabi Taliban commander,” thereby confirming his role in the group.
The Punjabi Taliban is led by Asmatullah Muawiya, the commander of what Osama bin Laden described as one of several al Qaeda military “companies.” [See FDD’s Long War Journal report, Bin Laden docs hint at large al Qaeda presence in Pakistan].
Khurasani refers to Yasin in glowing terms, describing him as “as one of the greatest trainers of explosives and electronics in the fields of jihad.” Yasin’s “students” are “still…performing their duties in the field of jihad relating to such sectors of jihad,” meaning they are manufacturing explosives.
Therefore, Khurasani’s eulogy confirms that Yasin trained his potential replacements long ago. As has often been the case in the 9/11 wars, the US kills a senior al Qaeda figure, only to then face his successors.
Khurasani adds that Yasin “participated enthusiastically in the various jihadi operations in Pakistan,” including an attack on the Pakistani Army’s general headquarters (GHQ). Yasin “was considered as the master mind of that plan and attack” on the GHQ, Khurasani writes.
The Pakistani Taliban’s eulogy contains the standard language about “martyrdom,” saying Yasin wished to be “martyred” and now he has joined others who have perished along the way.
“We, [the Pakistani Taliban], send our deep condolence to the survivors and companions of respected Ustad (trainer) on his martyrdom,” Khurasani’s statement reads. “May ALLAH grant patience to the survivors.”
Those “survivors” likely include Yasin’s “students,” some of whom are likely operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I'd like to think that Obama's last order to release 100 al Qaeda from Gitmo was miscontrued by the incoming Department of Defense under Maddog Mattis.
The story comes from The Long War Journal.
US kills more than 100 al Qaeda operatives in strike on Syrian training camp
Last evening, the US military killed more than 100 al Qaeda fighters in an airstrike on a training camp in Syria. The US has launched five attacks against al Qaeda’s network in Syria since the beginning of 2017.
A B-52 bomber and a number of remotely piloted aircraft, more commonly known as drones, were involved in the strike, US officials told The Associated Press. It is unclear if any senior al Qaeda leaders were killed.
The Pentagon later released a statement confirming the attack, and said it targeted the “Shaykh Sulayman Training Camp”, which “was operational since at least 2013.” It is unclear why the Pentagon allowed this camp to operate for more than 3 years before targeting it.
“The removal of this training camp disrupts training operations and discourages hardline Islamist and Syrian opposition groups from joining or cooperating with al Qaeda on the battlefield,” the Pentagon said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that last evening an “unidentified drone” targeted “Regiment 111,” a base in western Aleppo near the border of Idlib province, near the town of Shaykh Sulayman. Regiment 111 is controlled by Jabhat Fatah al Sham, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria that was formally known as the Al Nusrah Front, and Nur al Din al Zanki, a group allied with JFS. The Observatory later reported that 40 JFS fighters and three Nur al Din al Zanki fighters were killed. The strike described by the military and the one by the Observatory do appear to be one and the same.
The Pentagon has stepped up its targeting of al Qaeda and Jabhat Fatah al Sham. Last evening’s strike is the fifth against al Qaeda’s network in Syria since the beginning of the month. At the beginning of January, more than 20 al Qaeda operatives were killed in a pair of airstrikes in Syria. On Jan. 1, US warplanes hit a convoy of al Qaeda operatives as they left a headquarters near Sarmada. The Pentagon estimated that five fighters were killed.
Two days later, on Jan. 3, the Pentagon estimated that it killed more than 15 al Qaeda personnel when it targeted multiple buildings and vehicles in the Sarmada headquarters. Among those reported killed were Abu Khattab al-Qahtani, another al Qaeda veteran who is said to have fought in Afghanistan and Yemen, and Abu Omar al-Turkistani, a senior member in the al Qaeda-affiliated Turkistan Islamic Party who is reported to have served as a leader in JFS. [See FDD’s Long War Journal report, Pentagon: Airstrikes kill 20 or more al Qaeda fighters in northern Syria.]
Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that two al Qaeda leaders were killed in bombings in Syria on Jan. 12 and Jan. 17. Among those killed were Mohammad Habib Boussadoun al-Tunisi, who was described as an external operations leader, and Abd al-Jalil al-Muslimi, an al Qaeda veteran of Afghanistan and Syria who was trained by the Taliban and supported attacks against the West. [See FDD’s Long War Journal report, US kills al Qaeda facilitator and external ops planner in Syrian airstrikes.]
The US military has targeted al Qaeda’s cadre in Syria since September 2014, and has killed multiple high profile leaders over the past several years. However, the Islamic State has been the focus of the vast majority of the 6,647 Coalition airstrikes in Syria as of Jan. 19, 2017, according to Operation Inherent Resolve. With five strikes against al Qaeda in Syria already over the past 20 days, the US military may be signaling that the global jihadist group will get more attention over the coming months.
The story comes from The Long War Journal.
US military: 250 al Qaeda operatives killed or captured in Afghanistan this year
American counterterrorism forces have killed or captured approximately 250 al Qaeda operatives in 2016, according to US military officials.
The jihadists taken off the battlefield include 50 leaders and 200 other members of al Qaeda and Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which is the newest regional branch of Ayman al Zawahiri’s global network.
The figures were first announced by General John W. Nicholson Jr., the commander of NATO’s Resolute Support and US Forces Afghanistan, during a briefing on Dec. 2. FDD’s Long War Journal followed up with some additional questions regarding the number of al Qaeda and Islamic State jihadists targeted.
For more than six years, FDD’s Long War Journal has warned that official estimates of al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan were too low and inconsistent with publicly available evidence. Officials finally conceded earlier this year that the number of al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan exceeds the US government’s longstanding claim.
Longstanding lowball estimate at odds with evidence
In June 2010, then CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC’s This Week that the number of al Qaeda members in Afghanistan was “relatively small.” “At most, we’re looking at 50 to 100, maybe less,” Panetta said. “It’s in that vicinity. There’s no question that the main location of al Qaeda is in the tribal areas of Pakistan.”
FDD’s Long War Journal described this figure as fallacious at the time. An analysis of the raids conducted between 2007 and 2013 indicated that al Qaeda and its closest allies maintained a far deeper and broader presence. [For more information on the number of al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan see FDD’s Long War Journal report: US military admits al Qaeda is stronger in Afghanistan than previously estimated.]
In early May 2011, the US killed Osama bin Laden in a daring raid. The Americans recovered a large cache of files in bin Laden’s compound. One of the files was a memo written by Atiyah Abd al Rahman, who was subsequently killed in a drone strike, to bin Laden. The memo was dated June 19, 2010 — the same month that the CIA’s Panetta announced there were just 50 to 100 al Qaeda operatives, or “maybe less,” in all of Afghanistan.
Rahman’s memo told a different story. He reported to bin Laden that al Qaeda had “very strong military activity in Afghanistan,” and had conducted “many special operations” that were hitting the Americans and NATO “hard.” Rahman explained that al Qaeda was closely cooperating with Siraj Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani Network. Siraj was named one of the Taliban’s top two deputies in 2015 and he continues to serve in that role today.
Rahman explained that al Qaeda was operating in at least eight of Afghanistan’s provinces as of June 2010. In addition, just one al Qaeda “battalion” based in Kunar and Nuristan had 70 members by itself. That is, this one “battalion” had more fighters than the lower bound of the CIA’s figures for all of Afghanistan.
The lowball guess stuck, however, despite the recovery of this primary source evidence.
The US military claimed as recently as June 2015, in its biannual Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan report, that al Qaeda “has a sustained presence in Afghanistan of probably fewer than 100 operatives concentrated largely in Kunar and Nuristan Provinces, where they remain year-round.”
Another Defense Department report, published in Dec. 2015, claimed that al Qaeda is “primarily concentrated in the east and northeast.” This erroneous assessment was published despite the fact that US and Afghan forces raided two large al Qaeda camps in the Shorabak district of the southern Kandahar province just two months earlier, in Oct. 2015. More than 150 al Qaeda operatives were found at one of the two camps.
US officials walk back previous assessment
Earlier this year, US generals began to walk back the consistently low estimate of al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan.
In April, Major General Jeff Buchanan, Resolute Support’s deputy chief of staff, discussed al Qaeda’s footprint in the country and warned that previous US estimates on al Qaeda’s strength were wrong.
“If you go back to last year, there were a lot of intel estimates that said within Afghanistan al Qaeda probably has 50 to 100 members, but in this one camp we found more than 150,” Buchanan told CNN, referring to one of the camps discovered in Shorabak. US officials revised the estimate to upwards of 300 al Qaeda operatives in the country, “but that number does include other facilitators and sympathizers in their network,” CNN reported.
In addition to revising al Qaeda’s estimated strength upwards, US commanders in Afghanistan began to detail the scope of al Qaeda’s presence. In Sept. 2016, General Nicholson Jr. told the press that the US was hunting al Qaeda members in at least seven provinces.
However, less than seven months after US officials revised al Qaeda’s strength to upwards of 300 operatives, some US officials began to lowball al Qaeda’s numbers in Afghanistan once again.
“American officials estimate that both the core Qaeda group and the new branch [AQIS] number fewer than 200 total operatives in Afghanistan,” The New York Times reported on Dec. 2. The Times added: “Afghan officials put the number at 300 to 500.”
Obviously, there are more than 200 al Qaeda and AQIS members in Afghanistan (as some officials told the Times), because the US killed or captured 250 in the first eleven months of 2016.
After years of undercounting the members of al Qaeda’s network inside Afghanistan, US intelligence is due for a fresh assessment.
Fifteen years after 9/11/2001 and the hunt continues.
The story comes from The Long War Journal.
US military is hunting al Qaeda in at least 7 Afghanistan provinces
The US military’s top commander in Afghanistan said yesterday that American forces are hunting al Qaeda leaders and members in at least seven Afghan provinces. General John W. Nicholson Jr., who leads NATO’s Resolute Support and US Forces Afghanistan, listed the provinces in response to a question about how many senior al Qaeda leaders remain in eastern Afghanistan. He specifically mentioned the provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Paktika, Ghazni, Kunar, Nuristan and Nangarhar.
In October 2015, Gen. Nicholson reminded reporters, “there was an operation conducted down in the Shorabak District of Kandahar where…Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda [in the] Indian subcontinent were present” in a “training base that was destroyed.” After the Shorabak raid, General John Campbell, then the commander of Resolute Support, said the al Qaeda base was “probably the largest training camp-type facility that we have seen in 14 years of war.” At approximately 30 square miles in size, it is easy to see why this is true.
“We…see them [al Qaeda] in the east, stretching from you know, to Zabul, Paktika, Ghazni area in the Southeast and then up in the areas to the Northeast which you are familiar with, Kunar, Nuristan, Nangarhar, there’s some very mountainous area which — which lends itself to a sanctuary,” Gen. Nicholson explained. Al Qaeda and affiliated groups, including jihadist organizations that draw members from neighboring countries in Central Asia, are operating in other provinces as well.
US and Afghan forces have conducted multiple raids against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan over the past year. In addition to the operation against the al Qaeda camp in Shorabak, Gen. Nicholson mentioned another raid that took place in Paktika province. “The raid in which we rescued Haider Gilani, the son of the former Pakistani prime minister, that was…against an Al Qaeda target, and so Al Qaeda was holding that individual hostage,” Nicholson said.
After he was freed, Gilani told the press that al Qaeda was attempting to trade him for Ayman al Zawahiri’s daughters, another al Qaeda widow, and their children. Al Qaeda claims the women were freed in early August under murky circumstances.
The US military and Afghan forces also targeted al Qaeda bases in two other operations over the past year. In the summer of 2015, US forces targeted an al Qaeda encampment in Paktika. Abu Khalil al Sudani, a top al Qaeda’s leader, is thought to have been killed during that raid. Earlier this month, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security struck an al Qaeda “base” in Zabul.
Gen. Nicholson didn’t give an estimate for the total number of al Qaeda leaders being targeted, saying he wouldn’t “get into matters that would affect future operations.” Regardless, along with the Islamic State’s Khorasan branch, al Qaeda “remains at the top” of the US military’s “list” of targets and the Americans “continue to hunt them every day.”
Of the “98 US or UN-designated terrorist organizations around the globe,” Nicholson pointed out, “20 of them are in the Af-Pak region,” which “is the highest concentration of the numbers [sic] of different groups in any area in the world.” As The Long War Journal has reported on numerous occasions throughout the years, many of these same groups are closely allied with al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda’s participation in the fighting throughout Afghanistan is not a recent development. For example, a memo recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound summarized al Qaeda’s presence in eight different Afghan provinces as of June 2010. The file specifically mentioned Farouq al Qahtani, a veteran jihadist.
In February, the Treasury Department added Qahtani to the US government’s list of designated terrorists. Qahtani serves as the head of al Qaeda’s eastern zone in Afghanistan. He has been a key al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan since 2009, directing “the delivery of funds and weapons to Taliban associates.” Qahtani has also contributed to al Qaeda’s external operations, meaning its anti-Western plotting.
The US government and the military has downplayed al Qaeda’s presence for more than six years, despite evidence that al Qaeda has remained entrenched in Afghanistan some 15 years after the 9/11 attacks. From 2010 up until the spring of 2016, US officials claimed that al Qaeda had been “decimated” in Afghanistan and maintained a consistent, minimal presence of 50 to 100 operatives. This was in direct conflict with the US military’s own reporting on operations that targeted al Qaeda in the country between 2007 and 2013.
In April 2015, Resolute Support admitted that the previous long-held estimates of al Qaeda’s strength in Afghanistan were wrong. Brigadier General Charles Cleveland, the top spokesman for Resolute Support, said that the Shorabak raid forced the military to revise the often-repeated estimate of 50 to 100 operatives in country to upwards of 300. That figure is likely too low as well.
This reads like some sort of espionage novel or new series on Netflix.
The story comes from The Long War Journal.
Did al Qaeda exchange former Pakistani army chief’s son for Zawahiri’s daughters?
Al Qaeda claims that two of Ayman al Zawahiri’s daughters and a third woman were released weeks ago in exchange for the son of General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan’s former spymaster who also served as the Chief of Army Staff until 2013.
The 20th edition of Al Masra magazine, which was posted online in late August, featured the claim on its front page. Al Masra is produced by a media shop affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), but it reports on news from all parts of al Qaeda’s global network.
The Long War Journal cannot independently confirm the hostage exchange. There does not appear to be any reporting in the Pakistani press indicating that Kayani’s son had been kidnapped, let alone involved in a high-profile hostage swap.
Al Qaeda sources announced in early August that Zawahiri’s daughters had been released. Independent accounts indicate that the global jihadist organization had been trying to secure their release in exchange for the kidnapped sons of Pakistan’s elite.
The editors of Al Masra included a box (seen on the right) highlighting the story on the front page and saying that “detaining” the “son of the Pakistani Army Commander” led to the release. The newsletter’s authors claimed a series of tweets posted online in mid-August provided the insider details of the story. A pdf of the tweets, with accompanying images, can be viewed here. WARNING: The tweets include graphic images of an alleged Pakistani spy beheaded by al Qaeda for supposedly leading authorities to Zawahiri’s daughters.
The author of the tweets (who wrote on an account that has since been suspended, @muhager_0) blasted the “apostate” Pakistani Army for selling out high-profile al Qaeda operatives to the Americans in the past, such as Abu Firaj al Libi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.
In another tweet, the jihadist accused the Pakistani Army of detaining Zawahiri’s daughters, as well as the daughter of Sheikh Murjan Salem al Jawhari, as part of its “infidel” war on the mujahideen. The Twitter user, who is likely an al Qaeda media operative, further claimed that al Qaeda was left with two ways to deal with the situation. First, al Qaeda needed to take “revenge” on the supposed spy. Second, Allah “enabled the mujahideen” to detain the son of the Pakistani Army commander in order to exchange him “for the sisters.” He included a picture of Kayani to emphasize that this is the Pakistani leader he meant. Al Qaeda’s account referred to Kayani as if he is active, even though he has been retired for nearly three years.
The “prideful” Pakistani Army initially “refused” the proposed exchange, according to al Qaeda’s account, but eventually agreed to it after lengthy negotiations. Zawahiri’s daughters and the other woman, along with their children, were reportedly returned to Egypt.
It isn’t clear if the purported exchange took place in late July or early August.
As Sahab, the propaganda arm for al Qaeda’s senior leadership, released an unusual, thinly-veiled threat against the Pakistani Army in mid-July. The statement, dated June 2016, was attributed to “Al Qaeda Central” and dealt with the “treacherous” Pakistani Army’s detention of the three women and their children. Umaymah al Zawahiri and Fatimah al Zawahiri were identified, respectively, as the wives of Abu Dujana al Basha and Abu Basir al Urduni, both of whom are fallen al Qaeda commanders.
Al Jawhari’s daughter, Sumaiya Murjan Salem, was listed as the widow of Adnan al Shukrijumah, who was the chief of al Qaeda’s North American operations until he was killed during a Pakistani operation in Dec. 2014. Shukrijumah had been wanted by Amerian authorities for his role in a string of plots dating back to 2002 and 2003, when he was identified as a key operative in al Qaeda’s post-9/11 plans. He was also tied to a 2009 plot against New York City’s subways. [See LWJ report, Al Qaeda sleeper agent tied to 2009 NYC subway plot.]
In its threatening message, Al Qaeda accused the Pakistanis of holding the three women and their children on the “orders of American intelligence” since 2014. The jihadists claimed at the time that the negotiations to free them had “failed.” Al Qaeda said it would hold the Pakistani government and its “American masters” responsible “for their criminal behavior.”
Just over two weeks later, on Aug. 5, al Qaeda’s social media channels lit up with news that Zawahiri’s two daughters and Shukrijumah’s widow had been released.
Did al Qaeda force the Pakistani government’s hand by kidnapping Kayani’s son? Again, The Long War Journal cannot substantiate the claim with independent evidence. But the tactic is entirely consistent with al Qaeda’s past schemes.
In May, US Special Operations Forces and Afghan Commandos rescued Ali Haider Gilani, the son of Pakistan’s former prime minister, in a joint raid. Afghan officials said they didn’t even know the younger Gilani was being held at the location that was raided. Several al Qaeda operatives were targeted and it was apparently fortuitous that Gilani was found with them. [See LWJ report: US, Afghan forces rescue son of former Pakistani prime minister from ‘al Qaeda cell’.]
Ali Haider Gilani was kidnapped in 2013. His father, Yusuf Raza Gilani, was Pakistan’s Prime Minister from 2008 to 2012. According to the Associated Press and other outlets, Yusuf Gilani claimed that the hostage-takers wanted “several al Qaeda prisoners” in exchange for his son.
After his release, Ali Gilani was more specific. “They wanted the government to release some women from [the] family of al Zawahiri and also demanded hefty ransom,” press reports quoted Gilani as saying.
That is, al Qaeda wanted to exchange Ali Gilani for Zawahiri’s daughters. This the same swap al Qaeda now claims it arranged for Kayani’s son. Additional kidnappings in Pakistan over the past few years may be related to the same aim.
The details of how al Qaeda secured the release of the three women are important for our understanding of the group’s operations inside Pakistan and Afghanistan. If the jihadist organization is merely boasting, then that is noteworthy. But if al Qaeda did manage to kidnap Kayani’s son and force the Pakistani government’s hand, then this indicates Zawahiri’s men have a disturbingly long reach inside of Pakistan. Although retired, Kayani is one of the most powerful figures in the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which has long sponsored jihadis, including the al Qaeda-allied Taliban.
Al Qaeda used its safe havens in Afghanistan to hold Ali Gilani. This further demonstrates the importance of al Qaeda’s Afghan redoubt as it operates in South Asia. Al Qaeda likely chose to hold Gilani in Afghanistan, as opposed to Pakistan, because it would be easier to hide him from Pakistani authorities. However, al Qaeda’s arm in Pakistan has been growing as well. For example, the Washington Post reported in early June that Pakistani counterterrorism officials “have a list of several hundred active al Qaeda members” in Karachi alone and assume “there are at least a few thousand on [Karachi’s] streets.”
Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which was formally announced by Zawahiri in September 2014, is growing in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Verifying or disproving the claims surrounding Zawahiri’s daughters may shed additional light on this al Qaeda arm’s capabilities.
People ask how Israel, surrounded by Arab and Muslim enemies since it's birth, could have survived this long - well, look at the jihadi factions in Syria and Iraq and the complete cluster going on there and you'll have a good idea.
The story comes from The Long War Journal.
Zawahiri says jihadists should prepare for guerrilla war in Iraq
As Sahab, al Qaeda’s propaganda arm, released the third episode of Ayman al Zawahiri’s “Brief Messages to a Victorious Ummah” series on Aug. 25. The latest installment is subtitled “Fear Allah in Iraq.” The al Qaeda leader clearly expects the Islamic State to continue to lose ground, arguing that the Sunnis of Iraq should “reorganize themselves” for a “protracted guerrilla war to defeat the neo-Safavid [Iranian]-Crusader occupation of their regions as they did before.”
Zawahiri critiques the Islamic State’s approach to waging jihad in Iraq in his brief message, which is just over four minutes long. His arguments further highlight how al Qaeda and the Islamic State have evolved very different strategies for waging jihad. Whereas al Qaeda wants to be viewed as a popular revolutionary force, serving the interests of Muslims, the Islamic State deliberately markets itself as a top-down authoritarian regime that seeks to overtly impose its will on the populace. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State share the same long-term goal, as they both want to resurrect an Islamic caliphate. But they diverge on the steps that should be taken to achieve this goal.
Al Qaeda’s senior leaders think that the Islamic State’s methodology for waging jihad alienates the Muslim population and therefore makes it easier for the Sunni jihadists’ enemies to defeat them.
Zawahiri lays out a way forward for the jihadists in Iraq should the Islamic State’s caliphate continue to crumble.
Zawahiri says the jihadists in Iraq “must review their prior experiences to save them from the mistakes that led to their separation” from the Muslim community. These mistakes caused the jihadists to fall into “the abyss of extremism” and “takfir” (the practice of declaring other Muslims to be nonbelievers). They are also guilty of the “spilling forbidden [Muslim] blood,” Zawahiri says, and this path only serves the “proxies of America.”
In a telling passage, Zawahiri calls on “our brethren, the heroes of Islam, the mujahideen of the Levant” to assist “their brethren in Iraq in reorganizing themselves.”
Zawahiri famously sought to keep Al Nusrah Front in Syria, which was recently rebranded as Jabhat Fath al Sham (JFS, or Conquest of the Levant Front), separate from Baghdadi’s Islamic State. Zawahiri ruled that Baghdadi’s organization should be confined to Iraq, but the Islamic State refused to comply with his order.
Zawahiri now says the “battle is one,” with the Levant being “an extension of Iraq” and Iraq serving as “the depth of the Levant.”
That is, Zawahiri wants the jihadists in Iraq to follow the same strategy employed by al Qaeda in Syria. Under Zawahiri’s guidance, the group formerly known as Al Nusrah deeply embedded itself within the anti-Assad opposition and cultivated roots within the Syrian society.
Al Qaeda’s senior leadership publicly approved of Al Nusrah Front’s recent rebranding as JFS. This rebranding was spun as a clear “break” between Al Nusrah and al Qaeda. But Zawahiri’s own deputy, Abu Khayr al Masri, blessed the move shortly beforehand.
There is no hint in Zawahiri’s message that he feels betrayed by the jihadists in Syria. On the contrary, he wants the jihadists in Iraq to follow their model. When Zawahiri asks the “mujahideen of the Levant” to help their “brethren” in Iraq, he is clearly referring to JFS and others who have been following al Qaeda’s strategy.
The al Qaeda master further connects the jihad in Iraq to Syria by pointing out that Iranian-backed “militias and mercenaries” fight in both countries. Zawahiri says this is because Iran and its allies seek to annihilate Sunnis across the Middle East. He claims that Sunnis are being tortured and slaughtered in Iraq under the “pretext” of fighting Baghdadi’s Islamic State, but the supposed real reason for this can be found in the Iran’s expansionist goals. Zawahiri claims that the Iranians and the Americans have reached an “accord” that will allow a Crusader-Iranian-Alawite coalition (meaning an alliance of Western, Iranian and Assad regime forces) to swallow the whole region.
Even as Zawahiri rails against Iran, however, some of al Qaeda’s most senior leaders are stationed inside the country today.
All three episodes of Zawahiri’s “Brief Messages to a Victorious Ummah” series have been released this month. As Sahab has suffered production delays over the past two years, but the current pace of releases indicates that the official media shop for al Qaeda’s senior leadership is able to regularly churn out content once again. In the first episode of the new series, Zawahiri blasted the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. In the second, he called on Muslims to support the Afghan Taliban and reject the Islamic State’s upstart presence in Afghanistan.
This is the kind of indepth reporting that you can ONLY get from The Long War Journal, people. Visit the hell out of this site if you're serious about counter-terrorism and the War on Islam.
The Abu Zubaydah file
The US government has released an unclassified profile of the jihadist known as Abu Zubaydah, who is held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Abu Zubaydah’s case is currently being evaluated by the Periodic Review Board (PRB), which was established in 2011 “to review whether continued detention of particular individuals held at Guantanamo remains necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”
Abu Zubaydah has been at the center of controversy for years. He was one of the first detainees subjected to the CIA’s so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, in 2002.
Some argue that he was not really a senior al Qaeda operative at the time of his capture and that his importance was exaggerated by the US intelligence community during the Bush administration. One version of Abu Zubaydah’s story, citing excerpts from his diary and other fragmentary evidence, holds that he never swore bayat (oath of allegiance) to Osama bin Laden and was merely an independent jihadist facilitator.
The US government’s unclassified summary tells a different story, citing several key pieces of evidence that tie Abu Zubaydah to al Qaeda’s senior leaders and the terror group’s global operations. Abu Zubaydah allegedly “played a key role in al Qaeda’s communications,” “closely interacted” with Osama bin Laden’s “second-in-command,” enlisted al Qaeda operatives in planned attacks against Israel, worked with 9/11 planner Khalid Shaykh Mohammed in 2002, and may have had foreknowledge of al Qaeda’s three most successful attacks between August 1998 and September 2001. The PRB summary also notes that he has been convicted in absentia in Jordan for his well-known role in the so-called millennium terror plots.
Abu Zubaydah “possibly had some advanced knowledge of the bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the USS Cole bombing in 2000,” according to the government’s PRB summary. He was also “generally aware of the impending 9/11 attacks and possibly coordinated the training at Khaldan camp of two of the hijackers.”
The 1998 US Embassy Bombings and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 were al Qaeda’s two most effective operations prior to 9/11. It is doubtful that a truly independent actor could have had “some knowledge” of these plots, as well as be “generally aware” of the 9/11 attacks beforehand, given al Qaeda’s penchant for secrecy and compartmentalized planning.
In addition, the two future 9/11 hijackers were not the only al Qaeda operatives thought to have trained at Khaldan camp, which Abu Zubaydah helped oversee.
According to declassified and leaked files prepared by Joint Task Force – Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), as well as other reports, numerous al Qaeda operatives trained at Khaldan. Trainees at Khaldan included: Ramzi Yousef (the nephew of Khalid Shaykh Mohammed and also the chief bomb maker for the 1993 World Trade Center attack, as well as the point man for a plot to bring down airliners in 1995), Mohamed al-‘Owhali (convicted for his role in the 1998 US Embassy Bombings), Zacarias Moussaoui (who was slated to take part in the 9/11 hijackings, or a follow-on al Qaeda plot, prior to his arrest in Aug. 2001), and Richard Reid (al Qaeda’s would-be shoe bomber in December 2001), among others. Abu Zubaydah would later argue before a tribunal at Guantanamo that he taught “defensive jihad,” as opposed to “offensive jihad,” and was not hostile to the US and its partners. The dossiers of Khaldan’s graduates, as well as many other facts, undermine this argument.
According to the summary presented to the PRB, Abu Zubaydah “played a key role in al Qaeda’s communications with supporters and operatives abroad and closely interacted with al Qaeda’s second-in-command at the time, Abu Hafs al Masri.”
The 9/11 Commission described Abu Hafs al Masri, who was killed in an American airstrike in late 2001, as bin Laden’s “chief of operations” prior to 9/11. Bin Laden and Abu Hafs “occupied undisputed leadership positions atop al Qaeda’s organizational structure.” The 9/11 Commission continued: “Within this structure, al Qaeda’s worldwide terrorist operations relied heavily on the ideas and work of enterprising and strong-willed field commanders who enjoyed considerable autonomy.” Therefore, a senior jihadist could be part of al Qaeda’s organization and still maintain “considerable autonomy” – a detail worth remembering when evaluating Abu Zubaydah’s dossier.
The 9/11 Commission cited the career of Khalid Shaykh Mohammed (KSM), the chief organizer of the 9/11 hijackings, as an example of how al Qaeda’s hierarchy worked. Although KSM didn’t swear bayat to bin Laden (or so KSM claimed after being captured), he still planned the 9/11 attacks under the watchful eye al Qaeda’s most senior officials. Unlike Abu Zubaydah, no one seriously disputes KSM’s al Qaeda role. According to multiple reports, Abu Zubaydah divulged during his first days in US custody that one of KSM’s aliases was “Mukhtar.” Zubaydah also told FBI officials that KSM played a key role in the 9/11 hijackings. Again, we are left to wonder how someone supposedly outside of al Qaeda’s orbit could have known such important details concerning the secretive group’s inner workings.
In fact, according to the PRB summary and other files, Abu Zubaydah worked directly with KSM.
“Following 9/11,” the PRB summary reads, “[Abu Zubaydah] took a more active role in attack preparations, sending operatives to al Qaeda senior member Khalid Shaykh Muhammad…to discuss the feasibility of exploding a radiological device in the United States, and supporting remote-controlled bomb attacks against US and Coalition Forces in Afghanistan.”
The first part of the sentence refers to Abu Zubaydah’s involvement with Jose Padilla and Binyam Mohamed. They conceived a far-fetched plan to use a dirty bomb inside the US. KSM allegedly thought that their idea was foolish and so he directed one or both of them to consider setting fire to high rise buildings using natural gas instead. Zubaydah reportedly revealed details about Padilla and Mohamed while in US custody. Padilla was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 and eventually convicted on terrorism charges. Mohamed was detained in Pakistan and then held elsewhere before being sent to Guantanamo. Mohamed was transferred to the UK in 2009.
It is telling that Abu Zubaydah was able to seamlessly pass Padilla and Mohamed on to KSM, who was attempting to strike the US again just months after the 9/11 hijackings.
The second part of the sentence above from the PRB’s summary (“supporting remote-controlled bomb attacks” in Afghanistan) is a reference to Abu Zubaydah’s “Martyrs Brigade.” According to leaked JTF-GTMO files, the “Martyrs Brigade” was jointly created by Abu Zubaydah and Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, a top al Qaeda military commander who answered directly to Osama bin Laden. Known al Qaeda members joined the team, which was planning to travel back to Afghanistan to fight US and Coalition forces.
The PRB file notes that Abu Zubaydah “most actively plotted attacks against Israel, enlisting operatives from various militant groups, including al Qaeda, to conduct operations in Israel and against Israeli interests abroad.”
A brief biography released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2006 contained additional allegations regarding his anti-Israeli plotting. According to that biography, Abu Zubaydah had “enlisted” the help of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who would go on to establish al Qaeda in Iraq, to find “a smuggling route into Israel for moving persons and materials.” Abu Zubaydah had previously helped Zarqawi and dozens of others escape from Afghanistan into Iran in late 2001. Abu Zubaydah raised $50,000 from Saudi donors for his planned attacks in Israel. The money was passed to senior al Qaeda leadership, according to the ODNI’s biography, and may have even been repurposed for the 9/11 plot.
The millennium plots
Abu Zubaydah’s role in various planned terrorist attacks in late 1999 and early 2000 is well known. Khaldan’s graduates were directly responsible for some of the plots.
Abu Zubaydah “was convicted in absentia by the Jordanian Government for his role in planning attacks against Israeli, Jordanian, and Western targets during the Millennium time frame in Jordan,” the newly released PRB file reads.
The 9/11 Commission discussed the millennium plots in Jordan at length in its final report. Jordanian authorities unraveled the plans beginning on Nov. 30, 1999, when they intercepted a telephone call from Abu Zubaydah to an operative known as Abu Hoshar.
“The time for training is over,” Abu Zubaydah said.
The Jordanians suspected, according to the 9/11 Commission, “that this was a signal for Abu Hoshar to commence a terrorist operation.” Jordanian police then arrested 16 jihadists, including Abu Hoshar and his comrade Raed Hijazi. [See LWJ report, Jordan rearrests millennium bombings plotter.]
By late 1998, Abu Hoshar and Hijazi had begun planning to attack multiple sites frequented by Western tourists. “Hijazi and Abu Hoshar cased the intended targets and sent reports to Abu Zubaydah, who approved their plan,” according to the 9/11 Commission. Hijazi stockpiled the ingredients necessary to make the bombs their plan required.
Hijazi and Abu Hoshar contacted another alleged al Qaeda operative, Khalid Deek, in early 1999. They acquired a copy of the Encyclopedia of Jihad, a terrorist manual authored by Deek. The 9/11 Commission reported what happened next. In June 1999, “with help from Deek, Abu Hoshar arranged with Abu Zubaydah for Hijazi and three others to go to Afghanistan for added training in explosives.”
Then, in late November 1999, “Hijazi reportedly swore before Abu Zubaydah the bayat [oath of allegiance] to Bin Laden, committing himself to do anything Bin Laden ordered.”
How could Abu Zubaydah accept Hijazi’s blood oath to Osama bin Laden if he wasn’t really part of al Qaeda? This is one of many details that doesn’t make sense if Abu Zubaydah remained apart from al Qaeda.
Another one of the plots extended all the way into the US.
Ahmed Ressam, who was trained at the Khaldan camp, traveled from Canada to the US in late 1999 with the intent to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Ressam was arrested on Dec. 14, 1999 after customs officials discovered that his vehicle contained hidden explosives.
Ressam would later explain Abu Zubaydah’s role to the FBI. Ressam’s testimony was included in the Aug. 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) delivered to President George W. Bush.
“The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Laden’s first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US,” the PDB read. “Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack the Los Angeles International Airport himself, but that Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation.” Ressam added that Bin Laden “was aware of the Los Angeles operation” and Abu Zubaydah “was planning his own US attack” as early as 1998.
An extensive dossier
The unclassified PRB file deals with just some of the known or suspected details of Abu Zubaydah’s career. There is much additional evidence tying him to al Qaeda’s global enterprise. At a minimum, however, the file indicates that the officials representing the US government in the PRB process continue to view Abu Zubaydah as well-placed figure in al Qaeda’s network. This is true whether Abu Zubaydah swore his allegiance to Osama bin Laden or not, as the intelligence shows that he consistently worked with al Qaeda’s most senior operatives.
Note: The spelling of al Qaeda has been made consistent throughout this article and therefore differs from how it is spelled in some of the US government’s files.
