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CCBBRRNNEE--TTEERRRROORRIISSMMVolume 38 - 2011

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Osama bin Laden – the End

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Japan’s triple catastropheCBRN security at London 2012UK DCBRNCAgroterrorismForest Fires can be a Tactic of TerrorismClimate change and global securityCBRN training for Photographers and TV Crews Innovative chem-bio sensorE. Coli O104 – Terror in GermanyIran has secretly stocked enriched uraniumfor 4 nuclear bombs15 US nuclear reactors are located in an active seismic zone

Carry spice could be usedto detect explosivesHow IEDs workWhat if there is a US-Chinacyber-war in 2020?Latin America: Terrorism issues

Osama bin Laden


CBRNE-Terrorism NewsletterCBRNE-Terrorism NewsletterSummer 2011Summer 2011 599

In a brilliant special forces operation (“Nep-tune Spear”) deep inside Pakistan, U.S. spe-cial forces yesterday (Sunday) attacked acompound in the town of Abbottabad, killed alQaeda founder and leader Osama bin Laden,and took his body to an American militarybase in Afghanistan for DNA analysis.

The operation was carried out by a teamof Navy Seals who arrived at the location byhelicopters. The operation lasted less thanforty minutes. One of the helicopters crashedon its way to the target owing to mechanicalfailure. No American soldiers was injured inthe crash, and the helicopter was destroyedto prevent al Qaeda from gaining any intelli-

gence infor-mation fromsifting throughthe wreckage.

The opera-tion killed threeadult males inaddition to BinLaden — oneof the deadwas BinLadenʼs son —and a female resident of the compound whowas used as a human shield by the men.

President Barack Obama, who made theannouncement late Sunday evening in a livespeech to the nation, revealed that informa-tion about Bin Ladenʼs whereabouts was dis-covered last August, and that in the monthssince, as the information was ascertainedand augmented, contingency plans were de-veloped for yesterdayʼs raid.

President Obama gave to go-ahead forthe operation on Friday, 29 April.

The Pakistani NDTV reports that on 25January this year, Pakistani forces arrestedanother wanted terrorist who was hiding inAbbottabad — Umar Patek, an al Qaeda-linked Indonesian militant who, for ten years,had been on the run from a $1 million bountyon his head. Patek allegedly helped build thebombs used in the 2002 bombings of night-clubs in Bali that killed 202 people.

The Pakistanis kept Patekʼs arrest a se-cret until 1 April, when the Associated Presscame out with the story.

It is not known whether Patek had knowl-edge of Bin Ladenʼs presence in the town,and if he did, whether or not he shared thatinformation with his captors.

U.S. commandos kill Osama bin LadenSource: http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/us-commandos-kill-osama-bin-laden

Osama bin Laden



The town of Abbottabad – a mid-size townof 81,000 residents — is situated in the OrashValley, 150 km north of Islamabad and 200 kmeast of Peshawar. The city is known for itsbeautiful vistas (it is located at an altitude of4,120 feet, or1,260 meter), its pleasantweather, high standard educational institu-

tions, and military estab-lishments.

Bin Laden lived in acompound which was builtin 2005. It was the largestestates in the town, wassurrounded by security

walls 12- and 18-ft tall and topped with razorwire. U.S. intelligence noted that although itwas valued at a $1 million, it had no tele-phone or Internet connection. Also, unlikeneighboring residencies which left their trashfor collection outside their gates, the resi-dents of this compound were in the habit ofburning their own trash. Another anomaly: al-though the residents of the compound werelisted as two brother and a sister and theirchildren, the number of people who appearedto live in the compound was much larger andtheir ages did not match the ages of familieswith kids.



Analysis1. The killing of Bin Laden is an impressive

achievement for the U.S. intelligence com-munity and military. In the military they saythat persistence overcomes resistance,and in this case, the sheer persistence ofthe U.S. intelligence community – and theunwavering determination of the Bush andObama administrations – overcame yearsof confusing information and lack of infor-mation, and the frustration of pursuingleads which led nowhere accept dead-ends and trails which grew cold.

2. The last preparations for the operationbegan six weeks ago. During that period,Obamaʼs national security team met five orsix times, in secrecy, to hash out the de-tails. It is impressive – very impressive —that these preparations were kept in total

secrecy. There were no leaks, no hints,and no rumors.

3. The fact that Bin laden was not killed by aUAV but by a Navy Seals team means thatPakistan allowed a U.S. ground operationdeep inside Pakistan. Pakistanʼs attitudetoward cooperating with the United Statesin the war on terrorism has been ambiva-lent at best. It is not clear whether the per-mission to the United States to launch theground operation signifies a change of di-rection on the part of the Pakistanis.

4. The killing of Bin Laden does not mean theend of Islamic terrorism. Since 9/11, BinLadenʼs involvement in operational detailsof operations was limited because of his in-ability to communicate directly with alQaeda operatives around the world. Still,there is no denial that the killing of Bin

GeoEye IKONOS Sat image few hours after the attack



Laden is a major psychological and sym-bolic blow to al Qaeda and terrorism.The analysis can wait for another day.

Today we should reflect on pledges made andpromises kept. In his speech to Congress on20 September 2001, President George W.

Bush said: “Our grief has turned to anger andanger to resolution. Whether we bring our en-emies to justice or bring justice to our ene-mies, justice will be done.”

On Sunday, the United States fulfilled thatpledge, and brought justice to its enemies.

Osama Bin Laden: The most wanted face of terrorism

Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistanon Sunday (May 1st, 2011), was a son of theSaudi elite whose radical, violent campaign torecreate a seventh-century Muslim empire re-defined the threat of terrorism for the 21stcentury.

With the attacks on the World Trade Cen-ter and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, BinLaden was elevated to the realm of evil in theAmerican imagination once reserved for dic-tators like Hitler and Stalin. He was a new na-tional enemy, his face on wanted posters,gloating on videotape, taunting the UnitedStates and Western civilization.

“Do you want bin Laden dead?” a reporterasked President George W. Bush six daysafter the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I want him — I want justice,” the presidentanswered. “And thereʼs an old poster outWest, as I recall, that said, ʻWanted: Dead orAlive.ʼ ”

It took nearly a decade before that quest fi-nally ended in Pakistan with the death of BinLaden during a confrontation with Americanforces who attacked a compound where offi-cials said he had been hiding.

The manhunt was punctuated by a De-cember 2001 battle at an Afghan mountain re-doubt called Tora Bora, near the border ofPakistan, where Bin Laden and his allies werehiding. Despite days of pounding by Americanbombers, Bin Laden escaped. For more thannine years afterward, he remained an elusive,shadowy figure frustratingly beyond the graspof his pursuers and thought to be hidingsomewhere in Pakistan and plotting new at-tacks.

Long before, he had become a hero inmuch of the Islamic world, as much a myth asa man — what a longtime officer of the C.I.A.called “the North Star” of global terrorism. He

had united disparate militant groups, fromEgypt to Chechnya, from Yemen to the Philip-pines, under the banner of his Al Qaeda or-ganization and his ideal of a borderlessbrotherhood of radical Islam.

Terrorism before Bin Laden was oftenstate-sponsored, but he was a terrorist whohad sponsored a state. For five years, 1996to 2001, he paid for the protection of the Tal-iban, then the rulers of Afghanistan. Hebought the time and the freedom to make hisgroup, Al Qaeda — which means “the base”— a multinational enterprise to export terroraround the globe.

For years after the Sept. 11 attacks, thename of Al Qaeda and the fame of Bin Ladenspread like a 21st-century political plague.Groups calling themselves Al Qaeda, or act-ing in the name of its cause, attacked Ameri-can troops in Iraq, bombed tourist spots inBali and blew up passenger trains in Spain.



Holy war To this day, the precise reach of his power re-mains unknown: how many members AlQaeda could truly count on, how many coun-tries its cells had penetrated, and whether, asBin Laden boasted, he sought to arm AlQaeda with chemical, biological and nuclearweapons.

He waged holy war with distinctly modernmethods. He sent fatwas — religious decrees— by fax and declared war on Americans inan e-mail beamed by satellite around theworld. Al Qaeda members kept bomb-making

manuals on CD-ROM and communicated withencrypted memos on laptops, leading oneAmerican official to declare that Bin Ladenpossessed better communication technologythan the United States. He railed against glob-alization, even as his agents in Europe andNorth America took advantage of a globalizedworld to carry out their attacks, insinuatingthemselves into the very Western culture hedespised.

He styled himself a Muslim ascetic, a bil-lionaireʼs son who gave up a life of privilegefor the cause. But he was media savvy andacutely image conscious; before a CNN crewthat interviewed him in 1997 was allowed toleave, his media advisers insisted on editingout unflattering shots. He summoned re-porters to a cave in Afghanistan when heneeded to get his message out, but like themost controlling of C.E.O.ʼs, he insisted on re-ceiving written questions in advance.

His reedy voice seemed to belie the war-rior image he cultivated, a man whose con-stant companion was a Kalashnikov rifle thathe boasted he had taken from a Russian sol-dier he had killed. The worldʼs most threaten-ing terrorist, he was also known to submit tofrequent dressings down by his mother. While

he built his reputation on his combat experi-ence against Soviet troops in Afghanistan inthe 1980s, even some of his supporters ques-tion whether he had actually fought.

And though he claimed to follow the purestform of Islam, many scholars insisted that hewas glossing over the faithʼs edicts againstkilling innocents and civilians. Islam drawsboundaries on where and why holy war canbe waged; Bin Laden declared the entireworld fair territory.

Yet it was the United States, Bin Laden in-sisted, that was guilty of a double standard.

“It wants to occupy our countries, steal ourresources, impose agents on us to rule us andthen wants us to agree to all this,” he toldCNN in the 1997 interview. “If we refuse to doso, it says we are terrorists. When Palestinianchildren throw stones against the Israeli oc-cupation, the U.S. says they are terrorists.Whereas when Israel bombed the United Na-tions building in Lebanon while it was full ofchildren and women, the U.S. stopped anyplan to condemn Israel. At the same time thatthey condemn any Muslim who calls for hisrights, they receive the top official of the IrishRepublican Army at the White House as a po-litical leader. Wherever we look, we find theU.S. as the leader of terrorism and crime inthe world.”

The turning point For Bin Laden, as for the United States, theturning point came in 1989, with the defeat ofthe Soviets in Afghanistan.

For the United States, which had sup-ported the Afghan resistance with billions ofdollars in arms and ammunition, that defeatmarked the beginning of the end of the coldwar and the birth of a new world order.

Bin Laden, who had supported the resist-ance with money, construction equipment andhousing, saw the retreat of the Soviets as anaffirmation of Muslim power and an opportu-nity to recreate Islamic political power andtopple infidel governments through jihad, orholy war.

He declared to an interviewer, “I am confi-dent that Muslims will be able to end the leg-end of the so-called superpower that isAmerica.”



In its place, he built his own legend, mod-eling himself after the Prophet Muhammad,who in the seventh century led the Muslimpeople to rout the infidels, or nonbelievers,from North Africa and the Middle East. As theKoran had been revealed to Muhammad amidintense persecution, Bin Laden saw his ownexpulsions during the 1990s — from SaudiArabia and then Sudan — as affirmation ofhimself as a chosen one.

In his vision, he would be the “emir,” orprince, in a restoration of the khalifa, a politi-cal empire extending from Afghanistan acrossthe globe. “These countries belong to Islam,”he told the same interviewer in 1998, “not therulers.”

Al Qaeda became the infrastructure for hisdream. Under it, Bin Laden created a web ofbusinesses — some legitimate, some less so— to obtain and move the weapons, chemi-cals and money he needed. He created train-ing camps for his foot soldiers, a media officeto spread his word, even “shuras,” or councils,to approve his military plans and his fatwas.

Through the 90s, Al Qaeda evolved into afar-flung and loosely connected network ofsymbiotic relationships: Bin Laden gave affili-ated terrorist groups money, training and ex-pertise; they gave him operational cover anda furthering of his cause. Perhaps the mostimportant of those alliances was with the Tal-iban, who rose to power in Afghanistan largelyon the strength of Bin Ladenʼs aid, and in turnprovided him refuge and a launching pad forholy war.

Long before Sept. 11, though the eviden-tiary trails were often thin, American officialsconsidered Bin Laden at least in part respon-sible for the killing of American soldiers in So-

malia and in Saudi Arabia; the first attack onthe World Trade Center, in 1993; the bombingof the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia; and afoiled plot to hijack a dozen jets, crash a planeinto C.I.A. headquarters and kill President BillClinton.

In 1996, the officials described Bin Ladenas “one of the most significant financial spon-sors of Islamic extremism in the world.” But hewas thought at the time to be primarily a fin-ancier of terrorism, not someone capable oforchestrating international terrorist plots. Yetwhen the United States put out a list of themost wanted terrorists in 1997, neither BinLaden nor Al Qaeda was on it.

Bin Laden, however, demanded to be no-ticed. In February 1998, he declared it theduty of every Muslim to “kill Americans wher-ever they are found.” After the bombings oftwo American Embassies in East Africa in Au-gust 1998, President Clinton declared BinLaden “Public Enemy No. 1.”

The C.I.A. spent much of the next threeyears hunting Bin Laden. The goal was tocapture him with recruited Afghan agents orto kill him with a precision-guided missile, ac-cording to the 2004 report of the 9/11 com-mission and the memoirs of George J. Tenet,director of Central Intelligence from July 1997to July 2004.

The intelligence was never good enough topull the trigger. By the summer of 2001, theC.I.A. was convinced that Al Qaeda was onthe verge of a spectacular attack. But no oneknew where or when it would come.

The early life By accounts of people close to the family,Osama bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Ladenwas born in 1957, the seventh son and 17thchild among 50 or more of his fatherʼs chil-dren.

His father, Muhammad bin Awad binLaden, had emigrated to what would soon be-come Saudi Arabia in 1931 from the familyʼsancestral village in a conservative province ofSouthern Yemen. He found work in Jidda as aporter to the pilgrims on their way to the holycity of Mecca, and years later, when he wouldown the largest construction company inSaudi Arabia, he displayed his porterʼs bag in



the main reception room of his palace as a re-minder of his humble origins.

According to family friends, the Bin Ladenfamilyʼs rise began with a risk — when the fa-ther offered to build a palace for King Saud inthe 1950s for far less than the lowest bid. Bythe 1960s he had ingratiated himself so wellwith the Saudi royal family that King Faisal de-creed that all construction projects beawarded to the Bin Laden group. When theAksa Mosque in Jerusalem was set on fire bya deranged tourist in 1969, the senior BinLaden was chosen to rebuild it. Soon after-ward, he was chosen to refurbish themosques at Mecca and Medina as well. In in-terviews years later, Osama bin Laden wouldrecall proudly that his father had sometimesprayed in all three holy places in one day.

His father was a devout Muslim who wel-comed pilgrims and clergy into his home. Herequired all his children to work for the familycompany, meaning that Osama spent sum-mers working on road projects. The elder BinLaden died in a plane crash when Osamawas 10. The siblings each inherited millions— the precise amount was a matter of somedebate — and led a life of near-royalty.Osama — the name means “young lion” —grew up playing with Saudi princes and hadhis own stable of horses by age 15.

But some people close to the family paint aportrait of Bin Laden as a misfit. His mother,the last of his fatherʼs four wives, was fromSyria, the only one of the wives not fromSaudi Arabia. Bin Laden senior had met heron a vacation, and Osama was their onlychild. Within the family, she was said to beknown as “the slave” and Osama, “the slavechild.”

Within the Saudi elite, it was rare to haveboth parents born outside the kingdom. In a

profile of Osama bin Laden in The NewYorker, Mary Anne Weaver quoted a familyfriend who suggested that he had felt alien-ated in a culture that so obsessed over line-age, saying: “It must have been difficult forhim, Osama was almost a double outsider.His paternal roots are in Yemen, and withinthe family, his mother was a double outsideras well — she was neither Saudi nor Yemenibut Syrian.”

According to one of his brothers, Osamawas the only one of the Bin Laden childrenwho never traveled abroad to study. A biogra-phy of Bin Laden, provided to the PBS televi-sion program “Frontline” by an unidentifiedfamily friend, asserted that Bin Laden nevertraveled outside the Middle East.

That lack of exposure to Western culturewould prove a crucial distinction; the other sib-lings went on to lead lives that would not beunfamiliar to most Americans. They took overthe family business, estimated to be worth bil-lion, distributing Snapple drinks, Volkswagencars and Disney products across the MiddleEast. On Sept. 11, 2001, several Bin Ladensiblings were living in the United States.

Bin Laden had been educated — and, in-deed, steeped, as many Saudi children are —in Wahhabism, the puritanical, ardently anti-Western strain of Islam. Even years later, heso despised the Saudi ruling familyʼs cozinesswith Western nations that he refused to referto Saudi Arabia by its modern name, insteadcalling it “the Country of the Two Holy Places.”

Newspapers have quoted anonymoussources — particularly, an unidentifiedLebanese barber — about a wild period ofdrinking and womanizing in Bin Ladenʼs life.But by most accounts he was devout andquiet, marrying a relative, the first of his fourwives, at age 17.

Soon afterward, he began earning a de-gree at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jidda. Itwas there that he shaped his future militancy.He became involved with the Muslim Brother-hood, a group of Islamic radicals who believedthat much of the Muslim world, including theleaders of Saudi Arabia, lived as infidels, in vi-olation of the true meaning of the Koran.

And he fell under the influence of two Is-lamic scholars: Muhammad Quttub and Ab-



dullah Azzam, whose ideas would becomethe underpinnings for Al Qaeda. Mr. Azzambecame a mentor to the young Bin Laden.Jihad was the responsibility of all Muslims, hetaught, until the lands once held by Islamwere reclaimed. His motto: “Jihad and the riflealone: no negotiations, no conferences andno dialogue.”

The Middle East was becoming increas-ingly unsettled in 1979, when Bin Laden wasat the university. In Iran, Shiite Muslimsmounted an Islamic revolution that overthrewthe shah and began to make the UnitedStates a target. Egypt and Israel signed apeace treaty. And as the year ended, Soviettroops occupied Afghanistan.

Bin Laden arrived in Pakistan on the bor-der of Afghanistan within two weeks of the oc-cupation. He said later that he had beenasked to go by Saudi officials, who wereeager to support the resistance movement. Inhis book “Taliban,” the Pakistani journalistAhmed Rashid said that the Saudis had orig-inally hoped that a member of the royal fam-ily might serve as an inspirational leader inAfghanistan but that they settled on Bin Ladenas the next closest thing when no princes vol-unteered.

He traveled like a visiting diplomat morethan a soldier, meeting with leaders and ob-serving the refugees coming into Peshawar,Pakistan. As the family friend says, it “was an

exploratory rather than an action trip.” Hewould return twice a year for the next fewyears, in between finishing his degree andlobbying family members to support theAfghan mujahedeen.

Bin Laden began traveling beyond the bor-der into Afghanistan in 1982, bringing with himconstruction machinery and recruits. In 1984,he and Mr. Azzam began setting up guesthouses in Peshawar, which served as the firststop for holy warriors on their way toAfghanistan. With the money they had raisedin Saudi Arabia, they established the Office ofServices, which branched out across theworld to recruit young jihadists.

The men came to be known as the AfghanArabs, though they came from all over theworld, and their numbers were estimated ashigh as 20,000. By 1986, Bin Laden hadbegun setting up training camps for them aswell, and was paying roughly $25,000 amonth to subsidize them.

To young would-be recruits across theArab world, Bin Ladenʼs was an attractivestory: the rich young man who had become awarrior. His own descriptions of the battles hehad seen, how he lost the fear of death andslept in the face of artillery fire, were brush-strokes of an almost divine figure.

But intelligence sources insist that BinLaden actually saw combat only once, in aweeklong barrage by the Soviets at Jaji,



where the Arab Afghans had dug themselvesinto caves using Bin Ladenʼs constructionequipment.

“Afghanistan, the jihad, was one terrificphoto op for a lot of people,” Milton Bearden,the C.I.A. officer who described Bin Laden as“the North Star,” said in an interview on “Front-line,” adding, “Thereʼs a lot of fiction in there.”

Still, Jaji became a kind of touchstone inthe Bin Laden myth. Stories sent back fromthe battle to Arab newspaper readers, andphotographs of Bin Laden in combat gear,burnished his image.

The flood of young men following him toAfghanistan prompted the founding of AlQaeda. The genesis was essentially bureau-cratic; Bin Laden wanted a way to track themen so he could tell their families what hadhappened to them. The documentation AlQaeda provided became a primitive databaseof young jihadists.

Afghanistan also brought Bin Laden intocontact with leaders of other militant Islamicgroups, including Ayman al-Zawahri, the be-spectacled doctor who would later appear atBin Ladenʼs side in televised messages fromthe caves of Afghanistan. Ultimately Dr. Za-wahriʼs group, Egyptian Jihad, and otherswould merge with Al Qaeda, making it an um-brella for various terrorist groups.

The movement Through the looking glass of Sept. 11, itseemed ironic that theAmericans and Osama binLaden had fought on thesame side against the Sovi-ets in Afghanistan — as ifthe Americans had some-how created the Bin Ladenmonster by providing armsand cash to the Arabs. Thecomplex at Tora Bora whereAl Qaeda members hid hadbeen created with the helpof the C.I.A. as a base forthe Afghans fighting the So-viets.

Bin Laden himself de-scribed the fight inAfghanistan this way: “There

I received volunteers who came from theSaudi kingdom and from all over the Arab andMuslim countries. I set up my first campwhere these volunteers were trained by Pak-istani and American officers. The weaponswere supplied by the Americans, the moneyby the Saudis.”

In truth, however, the American contactwas not directly with Bin Laden; both workedthrough the middlemen of the Pakistani intel-ligence service.

In the revisionism of the Bin Laden myth,his defenders would later say that he had notworked with the Americans but that he hadonly tolerated them as a means to his end. Asproof, they insisted he had made anti-Ameri-can statements as early as 1980.

Bin Laden would say in retrospect that hewas always aware who his enemies were.

“For us, the idea was not to get involvedmore than necessary in the fight against theRussians, which was the business of the Amer-icans, but rather to show our solidarity with ourIslamist brothers,” he told a French journalist in1995. “I discovered that it was not enough tofight in Afghanistan, but that we had to fight onall fronts against Communism or Western op-pression. The urgent thing was Communism,but the next target was America.”

Afghanistan had infused the movementwith new confidence.

“Most of what we benefited from was thatthe myth of the superpower was destroyed

not only in my mind but alsoin the minds of all Muslims,”Bin Laden later told an inter-viewer. “Slumber and fatiguevanished, and so was theterror which the U.S. woulduse in its media by attributingitself superpower status, orwhich the Soviet Union usedby attributing itself as a su-perpower.”

He returned to Saudi Ara-bia, welcomed as a hero,and took up the family busi-ness. But Saudi royals grewincreasingly wary of him ashe became more outspokenagainst the government.



The breaking point — for Bin Laden and forthe Saudis — came when Iraq invaded Kuwaitin August 1990. Bin Laden volunteered to theSaudis that the men and equipment he hadused in Afghanistan could defend the king-dom. He was “shocked,” a family friend said,to learn that the Americans — the enemy, inhis mind — would defend it instead. To him, itwas the height of American arrogance.

The United States, he told an interviewerlater, “has started to look at itself as a masterof this world and established what it calls thenew world order.”

The Saudi government restricted him toJidda, fearing that his outspokenness would

offend the Americans. Bin Laden fled toSudan, which was offering itself as a sort ofhaven for terrorists, and there he began set-ting up legitimate businesses that would helpfinance Al Qaeda. He also built his reserves,in 1992, paying for about 500 mujahedeenwho had been expelled from Pakistan tocome work for him.

The terrorism It was during that time that it is believed hehoned his resolve against the United States.

Within Al Qaeda, he argued that the or-ganization should put aside its differenceswith Shiite terrorist groups like Hezbollah in



Lebanon, the better to concentrate on thecommon enemy: the United States. He calledfor attacks against American forces in theSaudi peninsula and in the Horn of Africa.

On Dec. 29, 1992, abomb exploded in ahotel in Aden, Yemen,where American troopshad been staying whileon their way to Soma-lia. The troops had al-ready left, and thebomb killed two Aus-trian tourists. Americanintelligence officialslater came to believethat that was the firstBin Laden attack.

On Feb. 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in atruck driven into the underground garage atthe World Trade Center, killing six people. BinLaden later praised Ramzi Yousef, who wasconvicted of the bombing. In October of thatyear in Somalia, 18 American troops werekilled — some of their bodies dragged throughthe streets — while on a peacekeeping mis-sion; Bin Laden was almost giddy about thedeaths.

“After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslimfighters headed for Somalia and prepared fora long battle, thinking that the Americans were“like the Russians,” he told an interviewer.

“The youth were surprised at the lowmorale of the American soldiers and realizedmore than before that the American soldierwas a paper tiger and after a few blows ran indefeat,” he said. “And America forgot all thehoopla and media propaganda about beingthe world leader and the leader of the newworld order, and after a few blows, they forgotabout this title and left, dragging their corpsesand their shameful defeat.”

By 1994, Bin Laden had established newtraining camps in Sudan, but he became aman without a country. The Saudi governmentfroze his assets and revoked his citizenship.His family, which had become rich on its rela-tions to the royals, denounced him publiclyafter he was caught smuggling weapons fromYemen.

This only seemed to make him more zeal-ous. He sent an open letter to King Fahd, out-

lining the sins of the Saudi government andcalling for a campaign of guerrilla attacks todrive Americans from Saudi Arabia. Threemonths later, in November 1995, a truck

bomb exploded at aSaudi National Guardtraining center oper-ated by the UnitedStates in Riyadh, killingseven people. Thatyear, Belgian investiga-tors found a kind ofhow-to manual for ter-rorists on a CD-ROM.The preface dedicatedit to Bin Laden, thehero of the holy war.

The next May, whenthe men accused of the Riyadh bombing werebeheaded in Riyadhʼs main square, they wereforced to read a confession in which they ac-knowledged the connection to Bin Laden. Thenext month, June 1996, a truck bomb de-stroyed Khobar Towers, an American militaryresidence in Dhahran. It killed 19 soldiers.

Bin Laden fled to Afghanistan that summerafter Sudan expelled him under pressure fromthe Americans and Saudis, and he forged analliance with Mullah Muhammad Omar, theleader of the Taliban. In August 1996, from theAfghan mountain stronghold of Tora Bora, BinLaden issued his “Declaration of War Againstthe Americans Who Occupy the Land of theTwo Holy Mosques.”

“Muslims burn with anger at America,” itread. The presence of American forces in thePersian Gulf states “will provoke the peopleof the country and induces aggression on theirreligion, feelings, and prides and pushes themto take up armed struggle against the in-vaders occupying the land.”

The imbalance of power between Ameri-can forces and Muslim forces demanded anew kind of fighting, he wrote, “in other words,to initiate a guerrilla war, where sons of thenation, not the military forces, take part in it.”

That same month in New York City, a fed-eral grand jury began meeting to considercharges against Bin Laden. Disputes aroseamong prosecutors and American law en-forcement and intelligence officers aboutwhich attacks against American interests



could truly be attributed to Bin Laden —whether in fact he had, as an indictment even-tually charged, trained and paid the men whokilled the Americans in Somalia.

His foot soldiers, in testimony, offered dif-fering pictures of Bin Ladenʼs actual involve-ment. In some cases he could be as aloof asany boss with thousands of employees. Yetone of the men convicted of the bombings ofthe embassies said that Bin Laden had beenso involved that he was the one who hadpointed at surveillance photos to direct wherethe truck bomb should be driven.

Bin Laden was becoming more embold-ened, summoning Western reporters to hishideouts in Afghanistan to relay his message:He would wage war against the United Statesand its allies if Washington did not remove itstroops from the gulf region.

“So we tell the Americans as a people,” hetold ABC News, “and we tell the mothers ofsoldiers and American mothers in general thatif they value their lives and the lives of theirchildren, to find a nationalistic governmentthat will look after their interests and not theinterests of the Jews. The continuation oftyranny will bring the fight to America, asRamzi Yousef and others did. This is my mes-sage to the American people: to look for a se-

rious government that looks out for their in-terests and does not attack others, their lands,or their honor.”

In February 1998, he issued the edict call-ing for attacks on Americans anywhere in theworld, declaring it an “individual duty” for allMuslims.

In June, the grand jury convened two yearsearlier issued its indictment, charging BinLaden with conspiracy to attack the UnitedStates abroad, for heading Al Qaeda and forfinancing terrorist activities around the world.

On Aug. 7, the eighth anniversary of theUnited Statesʼ order sending troops into thegulf region, two bombs exploded simultane-ously at the American Embassies in Nairobi,Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. TheNairobi bomb killed 213 people and wounded4,500; the bomb in Dar es Salaam killed 11and wounded 85.

The United States retaliated two weekslater with strikes against suspected terroristtraining camps in Afghanistan and a pharma-ceutical plant in Sudan, which officials con-tended— erroneously, it turned out — wasproducing chemical weapons for Al Qaeda.

Bin Laden had trapped the United Statesin an escalating spiral of tension, where anydefensive or retaliatory actions would affirm



the evils he said had provoked the attacks inthe first place. In an interview with Time mag-azine that December, he brushed aside Pres-ident Clintonʼs threats against him, andreferred to himself in the third person, as ifrecognizing or encouraging the notion that hehad become larger than life.

“To call us Enemy No. 1 or Enemy No. 2does not hurt us,” he said. “Osama bin Laden

is confident that the Islamic nation will carryout its duty.”

In January 1999, the United States gov-ernment issued a superseding indictment thataffirmed the power Bin Laden had sought allalong, declaring Al Qaeda an international ter-rorist organization in a conspiracy to kill Amer-ican citizens.

The aftermath After the attacks of Sept. 11, Bin Laden didwhat had become routine: He took to Arab tel-evision. He appeared, in his statement to theworld, to be at the top of his powers. Presi-dent Bush had declared that the nations of theworld were either with the Americans or

against them on terrorism; Bin Laden held upa mirror image, declaring the world dividedbetween infidels and believers.

Bin Laden had never before claimed or ac-cepted responsibility for terrorist attacks. In avideotape found in the southern Afghan city ofKandahar weeks after the attacks, he firmlytook responsibility for — and reveled in — thehorror of Sept. 11.

“We calculated in advance the number ofcasualties from the enemy, who would bekilled based on the position of the tower,” hesaid. “We calculated that the floors that wouldbe hit would be three or four floors. I was themost optimistic of them all.”

In the videotape, showing him talking to fol-lowers nearly two months after the attacks,Bin Laden smiles, hungers to hear more ap-proval, and notes proudly that the attacks letloose a surge of interest in Islam around theworld.

He explained that the hijackers on theplanes — “the brothers who conducted theoperation” — did not know what the missionwould be until just before they boarded the



planes. They knew only that they were goingto the United States on a martyrdom mission.

Bin Laden had long eluded the allied forcesin pursuit of him, moving, it was said, undercover of night with his wives and children, ap-parently between mountain caves. Yet he was

determined that if he had to die, he, too, woulddie a martyrʼs death.

His greatest hope, he told supporters, wasthat if he died at the hands of the Americans,the Muslim world would rise up and defeat thenation that had killed him.

Bin Laden's killing: intriguing questions, few answersSource: http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/bin-ladens-killing-intriguing-questions-few-answers

The brilliant operation conducted by the U.S.Navy SEALs to kill Osama bin Laden shouldbe celebrated, but the information provided sofar by the administration leaves many ques-tions unanswered; one of them has to do withPakistan: it is inconceivable that bin Ladenand his entourage could have stayed in theirostentatious compound for five years withoutelements in the Pakistani security servicesprotecting them; it is bad enough for Pakistanto train and support several local Islamist ter-rorist groups so that they do Pakistan's bid-ding in its conflict with India; it is another thingaltogether for Pakistan to help hide the leaderof a movement that declared war on -- andhas pursued active acts of war against -- theUnited States, and do so while receiving bil-lions of dollars in aid from the United States;we typically use the adjective "ambivalent" todescribe Pakistan's attitude toward the war onIslamic terrorism; perhaps it is time to searchfor another adjective; there are also some in-triguing questions about the operational as-pects of the raid on bin Laden's compound

The brilliant operation conducted by theU.S. Navy SEALs to kill Osama bin Ladenshould be celebrated, but the information pro-vided so far by the administration leavesmany questions unanswered. Here are a fewof them:

1. Pakistan

A. Advise and consentIn his speech last night, the president thankedPakistan for its help in the operation, andgave the impression that the Pakistanis gavepermission for the operation. Other adminis-tration officials, in background conversations,

said no other country was involved, or in-formed about, the operation.

The truth is probably something like this:There is little doubt that there was no con-

sultation or sharing of information at the pro-fessional level. It is highly unlikely that the CIAand the U.S. military advised their Pakistanicounterparts of the information that reachedthe United States last August about binLadenʼs location, and about the plans beingdrawn up to kill him. The Pakistani military andintelligence service (ISI) are so penetrated byIslamists sympathetic to the Taliban and alQaeda, that sharing information with these or-ganizations means that the information willfind its way to the terrorists sooner rather thanlater.

Some parts of ISI support the Taliban andseveral Pakistani Islamist organizations withweapons, training, and intelligence, and usethem as foot soldiers in Pakistanʼs campaignto gain control of the disputed territory ofKashmir and, more generally, as a weaponagainst India and pro-Indian actors in the re-gion.

Not sharing information at the professionallevel before or during the operation does notmean that President Obama did not call Pres-ident Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan while the hel-icopters were on their way to bin Ladenʼscompound – or, more likely, after the opera-tion was concluded but before the Navy Sealteam left Pakistani soil – to advise the Pak-istani president of the operation.

This way, the United States could “share”information with the Pakistani leadership, inthe process giving the impression of consul-tation and information sharing – that theUnited States was seeking Pakistanʼs advice



and consent — but without jeopardizing theoperation. Obama could thus thank Zardari forPakistani cooperation – an assertion whichcan be seen as technically and linguisticallycorrect – and thus maintain the appearancethat the United States did not violate Pakistanisovereignty and that the Pakistani leadershipwas on board.

B. Pakistanʼs ambivalence There is no hiding the fact that bin Ladenʼspresence, in his ostentatious compound in themiddle of a Pakistani town and right next to aPakistani military academy – Pakistanʼs Westpoint – means only one thing: Bin Laden wasprotected by elements within the Pakistanigovernment. It is inconceivable – inconceiv-able – that bin Laden and his entourage couldhave lived in that place for the last five yearswithout the knowledge of at least some ele-ments – perhaps rogue elements – of the ISI.

Pakistan is not exactly a country where thesecurity services and law enforcement unitsare hampered by notions of civil rights or theright to privacy. The reach of the governmentis more limited in the semi-autonomous North-western tribal regions, but that reach is un-limited in Pakistan proper.

The fact that bin Laden could have re-ceived the protection of important elements ina government that receives billions of dollarsin aid from the United States is troubling. It istroubling enough that the ISI trains and sup-ports local or regional Islamist groups that doPakistanʼs bidding against India, but it is an-other thing to hide the leader of a movementthat declared war on – and has pursued activeacts of war against — the United States.

We should also be disappointed in thePakistani lack of sophistication here: theyshould have understood that they would havebeen better off sacrificing bin Laden and giv-ing him to us. Just think of the good will theywould have generated in U.S. – and Western– public opinion. Moreover, they should haverealized that, for their own strategic goals,they should strive more energetically to proveto the United States that they make a distinc-tion between groups fighting for what they –the Pakistanis – regard as their rights in Kash-mir, and groups that fight the United States.

The fact that important elements in thePakistani ruling circles did not make this dis-tinction may raise questions about whether ornot the adjective “ambivalent,” so often usedto describe Pakistanʼs attitude toward Islamicterrorism and those who carry terrorist acts inthe name of Islam, should be replaced. Wemay conclude that the protection bin Ladenhas received may justify the realization thatperhaps the Pakistani true attitude is not soambivalent after all.

2. Operational aspectsThere three things that are unclear about theoperational aspects of what happened yes-terday.

A. The number of deadToo few people were killed – and thankfully,no Americans were killed — for there to havebeen a real “firefight.” In a firefight in which thetwo sides are seriously engaged, more peo-ple die and get injured on both sides. In thisinstance only three combatants other than binLaden were killed – two of his couriers andpossibly one of his sons. Where were binLadenʼs many body guards? We were toldthat he was surrounded by a phalanx ofguards who were willing to die protecting theirleader. Where were they? How many of themwere there? Why did they not spring into ac-tion to protect their leader?

B. Compound layoutThis was a large compound – large enoughand ostentatious enough for Donald Trump tobe its proud owner. How did the Navy SEALsknow in which of the many rooms in the com-pound bin Laden was staying? How did theymanage to get to that room without being no-ticed? If they had been noticed, they wouldhave had to overpower those sentries andguards who noticed them. This would havecreated a lot of noise – not just any noise, butfire arms noise – alerting bin Laden and theguards who were physically close to him atthe time, thus allowing them to put up more ofa fight when the American showed up at thedoor. It may well be the case that the NavySeals used guns with silencers, but eventhen, complete silence is difficult to maintain.



C. Escape routeHow come bin Laden did not have an escaperoute – a tunnel leading outside the com-pound? The compound was built in 2005 andwhoever designed it, knew it was designed fora wanted man. It may well be the case thatthere was an escape tunnel, but that binLaden and his people were taken by surpriseand thus were unable to reach it.

There are other questions to which we mayreceive answers in days to come. For now, itappears that the United States may have hadsomeone on the inside providing information.The ability to arrive stealthily, enter the highly

secure compound, find the room where binLaden was staying, kill only four people, anddo it all in less than forty minutes means thatthe Navy Seals team had either unusuallyprecise and current information, or an unusu-ally high degree – extremely high degree —of sheer luck.

I vote for precise and current actionable in-formation.

Ben Frankel is editor of the Homeland Se-curity NewsWire

2009 – Geographers Had Calculated 89% Chance ThatOsama Was in AbbottabadSource: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/05/geographers-had-calculated.html?ref=hp

Could Osama bin Laden have been foundfaster if the CIA had followed the advice ofecosystem geographers from the Universityof California, Los Angeles? Probably not, butthe predictions of UCLA geographer ThomasGillespie, who, along with colleague JohnAgnew and a class of undergraduates, au-thored a 2009 paper predicting the terroristʼswhereabouts, were none too shabby. Accord-

ing to a probabilistic model they created, therewas an 88.9% chance that bin Laden was hid-ing out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he

was killed last night. And they correctly pre-dicted that he would be in a large town, not acave. The bin Laden tracking idea began as aproject in an undergraduate class on remotesensing that Gillespie, whose expertise isusing remote sensing data from satellites tostudy ecosystems, taught in 2009. Based oninformation from satellites and other remotesensing systems, and reports on his move-

ments since his last known lo-cation, the students created aprobabilistic model of wherehe was likely to be. Their pre-diction of a town was basedon a geographical theorycalled “island biogeography”:basically, that a species on alarge island is much lesslikely to go extinct following acatastrophic event than aspecies on a small one.

“The theory was basicallythat if youʼre going to try andsurvive, youʼre going to a re-gion with a low extinction rate:a large town,” Gillespie says.“We hypothesized he would-

nʼt be in a small town where people could re-port on him.” “Itʼs not my thing to do this typeof [terrorism] stuff,” he says. “But the same

Cretid: MIT International Review



theories we use to study endangered birdscan be used to do this.” In the end, they ze-roed in on a Pakistani border town calledParachinar which has, among other things,access to medical care. Then they predictedthe exact building he would be in by makingassumptions as to the characteristics of thebuilding itself, such as high enough ceilings toaccommodate bin Ladenʼs 6ʼ4” frame, afence, privacy, and electricity. The undergrad-uates did such a nice job on the project, Gille-spie says, that he wrote the results up as apaper and submitted it to a small journal, MITInternational Review. The next day, he wasshocked to find his inbox full of requests forinterviews from everyone from USA Today toSean Hannity. (He declined the latter.)

The paperʼs precise predictions weretreated with some skepticism by other re-searchers, who said the authors were over-confident in predicting the terroristʼs hideyhole down to specific buildings. Gillespie saysthat one of its weaknesses was a lack of harddata on bin Ladenʼs location, last known in

2001. As to intelligence agenciesʼ taking in-terest in his work, “I didnʼt hear from them,didnʼt expect to. But they obviously did apretty good job,” he says. Gillespie says hewas surprised to hear bin Laden ended upbeing only 268 km away from his last knownlocation, but not surprised that he was in atown. “Caves are cold, and you canʼt see peo-ple walking up to them,” he says. Still, the lateAl Qaeda leader made a bad choice of realestate, in Gillespieʼs opinion. “An inconspicu-ous house would have suited him better.”Finding bin Ladenʼs deputies—the terroristmastermind is said to be only one of 40 “high-value” targets the Pentagon seeks—is not onGillespieʼs to-do list. “Right now, Iʼm workingon the dry forests of Hawaii where 45% of thetrees are on the endangered species list,”says Gillespie. “Iʼm far more interested in get-ting trees off the endangered species list.”

NOTE: Download the full paper from“CBRNE-CT Papers” section of Newsletterʼswebsite.

CSI bin Laden: Commandos Use Thumb, Eye Scans toTrack TerroristsSource: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/csi-bin-laden-commandos-use-thumb-eye-scans-to-track-terrorists/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_cam-paign=Feed%3A+WiredDangerRoom+%28Blog+-+Danger+Room%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

The U.S. forces who killed Osama bin Ladenin his Abbottabad compound were more thanexpert marksmen. Some of them were foren-sics experts as well, using sophisticated toolsto ensure that they got the right man. Speak-ing at a White House briefing, counterterror-ism adviser John Brennan said he had “99percent” certainty thecommando team killedbin Laden, thanks to“facial recognition,[his] height, [and] aninitial DNA analy-sis.”The initial DNAanalysis appears tohave been done farfrom the scene, by“CIA and other spe-

cialists in the intelligence community” on Mon-day, according to an intelligence official whobriefed Pentagon reporters, and it returned a“virtually 100 percent DNA match.”

Press reports say the DNA used to identifybin Laden may have come from one of his sis-ters, who allegedly died at Bostonʼs Massa-

chusetts GeneralHospital. (However,hospital spokes-woman Katie Mar-quedant wouldnʼtconfirm this, tellingDanger Room, “Wehave no information atall.”)

But according to asenior Defense De-



partment official, chances are they used thetool pictured above to verify his biometric in-

formation. The device is called a Secure Elec-tronic Enrollment Kit, or SEEK, a handheldbiometrics recorder that takes iris scans, fin-gerprints and facial scans and ports themback to an FBI database in West Virginia in

seconds.“Weʼve al-

ways said thisis about morethan findingpeople in acrowd,” saidthe senior de-fense official,who requestedanonymity totalk about theCSI-like gearthat SpecialO p e r a t i o n sForces carry.

The latest version, developed by acompany called Crossmatch, isknown as SEEK II (picture – left),and it came out last year. It weighsless than 4 pounds, and its ability tosend information back to the FBIdatabase is “wham-bam,” even fromlow-connectivity areas. To pull thatoff, SEEK II has built-in wireless ca-pability and optional 3G to push orpull biometric info from the data-base. If that doesnʼt work, USB portsconnect SEEK to other computers.

The device runs on Windows XP. SEEK IIdoesnʼt have a touch-screen, so troops ortheir FBI partners will still need to key in infor-mation the old fashioned way. But its finger-print sensors are more sensitive, allowingtroops to scan in both pressed and rolledprints for a fuller scope of whom theyʼre tar-geting. According to the defense official, ittook “probably a million, 2 million” dollars todevelop.

The U.S. military has other biometric toolsthat itʼs put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan toidentify insurgents and distinguish them fromcivilians. Oneʼs called the Biometrics Auto-mated Toolset, or BATS (picture below). An-otherʼs called the Handheld InteragencyIdentification Detection System, or HIIDE.Those donʼt appear to be state-of-the-art any-

more. “This is better than BATS or HIIDE. Wedid that early,” the defense official said. “Itʼsfaster, it can pick up more information, betterthan the iris scan, and get it into the system.”For one thing, the connection speed withSEEK II is a lot better, the official said. And itsyncs up with a much bigger database.



BATS and HIIDE feed into a military data-base called the Automated Biometric Infor-mation System. ABIS contains detaineeinformation only from the country in whichU.S. forces are operating. SEEK II, on theother hand, feeds into an FBI database withfar more fingerprint and biometric data thanthe military possesses, the defense officialsaid. Plus, the machine has its own “localdatabase,” allowing operators to store specificbiometric data on the device if they know whotheyʼre looking for.

But for all youʼre hearing now about facialrecognition, the official said, the old-fashionedfingerprint remains more reliable. SEEK has fa-cial-recognition capability, but itʼs stillpretty weak. “Weʼve evolved facerecognition very significantly, but itʼsstill not as good as people would likeyou to believe,” the official said. Sev-eral factors still mess up positiveidentification: “different angles, dif-ferent lighting, a lot of false pieces.”

It wasnʼt long ago that SpecialOperations Forces didnʼt have ac-cess to much biometric data of anykind. “Matthew Alexander” is apseudonym for one of the mem-bers of a special mission unit thathunted and ultimately killed theleader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu

Musab al-Zarqawi, in 2006. “Iʼm working foran elite task force,” Alexander recalled. “Weʼresupposed to have the best of everything. Butwe had just then started entering peopleʼs bio-metric data. We were basically creating thisdatabase in ʻ06, three years into the war.”

Facial recognition was a far-off dream. Allof this had real consequences for the man-hunt. “One guy fooled us,” he remembered.“He gave us a fake name. It was not till an an-alyst found a picture of him on old slides [thatwe learned] he was an operations com-mander for northern Iraq.” But before theSEALs can verify the data they find duringtheir raids, theyʼve got to finish the raids first.The scene of a firefight like the one that killedbin Laden isnʼt the place for checking infor-mation, given the insecurity of the locationswhere troops are fighting. To prepare them forwhat theyʼre getting into, elite troops alsohave a tool called Forward Looking Infrared,or FLIR (picture – left). A more mature tech-nology than SEEK, the optic-mounted FLIRsystem gives troops a sense of where theirenemies are inside a compound by trackingtheir heat sensors. Itʼs not that sensitive — “itcanʼt see through a wall,” the defense officialsaid — but it provides a glimpse of where inan open space someone might be, using hisheat signature. (The Armyʼs currently workingon a device called Sense Through The Wall,which, as its name suggests, has a sophisti-cated sensor to learn where people are on theother side of structures that are too dense forheat scanning.)

AN/PPS-26 STTW(“Sense ThroughThe Wall”)



If all of this seems like the Joint SpecialOperations Command is acting like a federalSWAT team, thatʼs not by accident. Thesedays, special operations teams “have FBI rep-resentation on them,” said Ali Soufan, a for-mer FBI counterterrorism agent who huntedal-Qaida before and after 9/11. The FBI mightnot go on raids with the commandos, but backat the base, “they do the fingerprints, they cando the DNA [analysis] and collect the evi-dence.”

That was something Alexander saw first-hand. “Itʼs definitely moving more toward po-lice work,” he said, because law enforcementhas more experience painstakingly collecting,analyzing and tracing evidence to get the rightman. SEEK II represents an unlikely mind-meld — or, at least, fingerprint meld — be-tween the door-kickers at JSOC and the FBI.But the apotheosis of this new influence nowhas global prestige, as the commandos justtook down the FBIʼs most-wanted terrorist.

Already-Written Book About Navy Seal Group That KilledOsama Bin Laden Suddenly HotSource: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/written-book-navy-seal-group-184084

A book about the Navy Seal group Seal TeamSix, members of which killed Osama BinLaden in a mansion near Islamabad, will bepublished this May. According to Publisher's

Weekly, the book, Seal Team Six is byHoward Wasdin, is due to hit stores on May24. Wasdin declined comment to The Holly-

wood Reporter when asked about the printrun, an updated publish date and if movierights had been optioned. The book will bepublished by Thomas Dunne. Scott Miller ofthe Trident Media Group tells The HollywoodReporter that he's "already gotten calls" fromscouts and studios to turn the film into amovie. As for the print run, he says it's "toosoon to tell how many more copies [the pub-lisher] will get out."

It will chronicle the specialized militarygroup, called Naval Special Warfare Devel-opment Group or DevGru for short. It's a unitof the Joint Special Operations Command,which costs the country more than $1 billionannually to fund. Members flew to the Abbot-tabad mansion in which Bin Laden was cap-tured from the Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan.The gunfire went on for more than 40 minutes.22 people were killed or captured.

Laura Ingraham will have the first interviewMonday with Wasdin, who was a Navy Sealin the first Gulf War and in the Somalia con-flict. He was a top-ranked sniper of the SealTeam Six, and tasked with trying to kill war-lord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.



Ilyas Kashmiri came from the Kotli District ofAzad-Kashmir, the Pakistani administratedpart of Kashmir. Ilyas Kashmiri was a juniorcommander in Afghanistan in the war againstthe Russians in the 80s. He trained theAfghan Mujahideen in mine warfare in Miran-shah on behalf of Pakistani ISI and at onepoint lost an eye.After the war ended with the withdrawal of theSoviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989, IlyasKashmiri continued his official militant work inKashmir with the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-IslamiHuJI. Disagreements with leader Qari Saiful-lah Akhtar led Ilyas Kashmiri, in the mid 90s,to establish his own new unit within HuJI,know as the 313 Brigade.

During the mid-1990s Ilyas Kashmiri andNasrullah Mansoor Langrial were captured bythe Indian Army near Poonch in Indian Kash-mir and sent to prison, where he would spendthe next two years before escaping and re-turning to Pakistan. Upon his return IlyasKashmiri continued to conduct operationsagainst India, once reportedly being rewardedpersonally with cash by then Army Chief Gen-eral Pervez Musharraf for presenting the headof a dead Indian army officer.

In 2000 Ilyas Kashmiri rejected orders fromISI to serve under Maulana Masood Azhar inthe newly founded Jaish-e-Mohammed andwas even once targeted by the group. Fallingout of favor with the Pakistani military, he was

Ilyas KashmiriSource: http://www.globaljihad.net/view_page.asp?id=1799



even taken into custody and tortured in late2003 in the wake of President Musharrafʼs as-sassination attempts in 12/2003.

In 02/2004 Ilyas Kashmiri was releasedfrom jail. Until the Lal Mosque Crisis, in07/2007, he apparently did little, but after-wards he returned to the 313 Brigade inHarkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and rebuilt itsstrength while collaborating with the Taliban.Ilyas Kashmiri moved his base of operationfrom his home town Kotli, in Kashmir, to FATAWaziristan, Razmak district, on the Afghanborder.

Ilyas Kash-miri was pro-nounced deadfollowing theUSA UAV missileattack, on09/14/2009, inwhich Kalimul-lah Mehsud was,probably, killed,but later reportssuggested he escaped the attack unharmed.Ilyas Kashmiri granted an interview with AsiaTimes Online in mid 10/2009. Ilyas Kashmiriwas associated with a number of attacks, in-cluding a 2008 plan to assassinate the Pak-istani Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, but AlQaeda leadership rejected the plan on strate-gic grounds.

Ilyas Kashmiri was in regular contact forsome time with David C. Headley, who wasarrested in Chicago, USA, on 10/27/2009 (see- Headley and Rana). Their communicationssuggested that they were in the process ofplotting fresh attacks in India. (It is most likelythat the communication was monitored byUSA intelligence, which led to the missile at-tack, on 09/14/2009, in which KalimullahMehsud was killed). Ilyas Kashmiri was also incontact with Raja L. Khan, a Pakistani fromChicago, who was arrested in USA for send-ing money to support terror in Pakistan, onFriday 03/26/2010. • Ilyas Kashmiri was charged, on

01/14/2010, in absentia, in USA, with plot-ting international terror attacks (see -Chicago 01.14.10).

• Following the Times-Square plot investi-gation, in 05/2010, Intelligence sourcessaid that the prime suspect FaisalShahzad was, during his visit to Peshawarin 07/2009, in direct contact with IllyasKashmiri.

• The USA announced a reward of $5 mil-lion, on Wednesday 04/06/2011, for infor-mation leading to the arrest of HuJIcommander Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri,holding him responsible for a 2006 attackon its consulate in Karachi, among others.

Bin Laden Raid Discovery: Al Qaeda Considered AttackingU.S. Train On 9/11 Anniversary Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/06/bin-laden-raid-train_n_858315.html

Holed up in a compound in Pakistan, Osamabin Laden was scheming how to hit the UnitedStates hard again, according to newly uncov-ered documents that show al-Qaida plans forderailing an American train on the upcoming10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Details of the plan emerged Thursday assome of the first intelligence was gleanedfrom the trove of information found in binLaden's residence when Navy SEALs killedthe al-Qaida leader and four of his associates.They took his body and scooped up comput-ers, DVDs and documents from the com-

pound where U.S. officials think he had beenliving for as long as six years.

The confiscated materials reveal the rail at-tack planning as of February 2010. One ideaoutlined in handwritten notes was to tamperwith an unspecified U.S. rail track so that atrain would fall off the track at a valley or abridge. Counterterrorism officials said they be-lieve the plot was only in the initial planningstages, and there is no recent intelligenceabout any active plan for such an attack. TheFBI and Homeland Security issued an intelli-gence bulletin with details of the plan to law



enforcement around the country. The bulletin,marked "for official use only," was obtained byThe Associated Press.

Other intelligence pulled from the com-pound represented a terrorist wish list but hasrevealed no specific plan so far. Some docu-ments indicated a desire to strike the U.S. withlarge-scale attacks in major cities and on keydates such as anniversaries and holidays. Butthere never was any sign that those were any-thing more than ambitions, said a U.S. officialwho spoke on condition of anonymity to dis-cuss the intelligence.

Even before the raid, intelligence offi-cials for years had warned that al-Qaida

was interested in attacking major U.S.cities on prominent dates on the Americancalendar.

Monday's raid by helicopter-borne SEALswas fraught with risk, sensationally bold and ahistoric success, netting a man who had beenon the run for nearly a decade after his ter-rorist organization pulled off the devastatingSept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000people in New York, Washington and Penn-sylvania. During the raid, the SEALs met farless resistance than the Obama administra-tion initially described. The commandos en-countered gunshots from only one man,whom they quickly killed, before sweeping thehouse and shooting others, who were un-armed, a senior defense official said in the lat-est account.

The New York Times and Washington Postreported Thursday on their websites that aCIA surveillance team had been watching binLaden's residence from a rented house nearthe compound for months. The agency de-clined to comment on the reports.

President Barack Obama visited NewYork's ground zero on Thursday during asomber and understated event where heavoided mentioning bin Laden by name.



The U.S. account of what happened insidebin Laden's Abbottabad compound is so farthe only one most Americans have. Pakistanhas custody of the people rounded up after-

ward, including more than two dozen childrenand women. Differing accounts purporting tobe from witnesses have appeared in Pakistaniand Arab media, and on the Internet.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Surprised? If yes, this is another proof of why terrorists are alwaysahead of us. Train attack – especially derailment is far much easier than airplaneoperations, equally or more catastrophic and of high impact if timing is successfuli.e. a chemical train derailment… So take nothing for granted and keep an eye onall possible scenarios – even those who look simplistic.

My name is Cairo and I serve at SEAL Team VI !



Belgian Malinois “Cairo” - The 80th SEAL hero!!!



If you see this dog coming for you, run.Thanks to his extensive training--and cus-tomized body armor that can cost upwards of$30,000--he's bulletproof, can hear throughconcrete, and can record high-def video ofmissions, even in the dead of night.

160digg Since the moment it was revealedthat the "nation's most courageous dog" [Up-date: named "Cairo"] served alongside the 80Navy SEALs who took out Osama bin Laden,America's fascination with war dogs has hit afevered pitch. And while the heart-tuggingphotos of these four-legged heroes are wortha look, so is the high-tech gear that helpsthem do their job.

Last year, the military spent $86,000 onfour tactical vests to outfit Navy Seal dogs.The SEALs hired Winnipeg, Canada-basedcontractor K9 Storm to gear up their four-legged, canine partners, which it has used inbattle since World War I. K9 Stormʼs flagshipproduct is the $20,000-$30,000 Intruder, anupgradeable version of their doggie armor.The tactical body armor is wired with a col-lapsible video arm, two-way audio, and otherattachable gadgets.

"Various special ops units use the vest, in-cluding those in current headlines," says MikeHerstik, a consultant with International K-9,

who has trained dogs from Israeli bomb-sniff-ing units to the Navy SEALSs. "It is muchmore than just body armor."

The big idea behind the armor add-onsboils down to a simple one: the key to anyhealthy relationship is communication. Each

dog is assigned one human handler. To oper-ate efficiently in a tactical situation, they needto be connected.

So how much high-tech connectivity doesa dog get for $30,000 anyway? Using a high-def camera mounted on thedog's back, handlers can see what the dogsees, using handheld monitors. Jim Slater,who cofounded K9 Storm with his wife Glori,says footage is stable because the entiremodule is sewn into the vest. With unpre-dictable light conditions, like middle-of-the-night missions, the camera adjustsautomatically to night vision. The lens is pro-tected by impact-resistant shielding. Andsince we're talking about SEALs notorious foramphibious assaults, the system is water-proof.

In Abbottabad, the patented load-bearingharness would have enabled a Navy SEALhandler to rappel from the helicopter with hisdog strapped to his body. Once in the com-

The Bulletproof Dog That Stormed Bin Laden's Lair Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1753360/the-tech-that-outfits-the-dogs-of-war



pound, the dog could run ahead to scout asthe handler issued commands through an in-tegrated microphone and speaker in thearmor. The proprietary speaker system en-ables handlers to relay commands at low lev-els to the dog. "Handlers need to see andhear how their dog is responding," said Slater."In a tactical situation, every second counts."The encrypted signal from dog to handlerpenetrates fortified barriers like concrete,steel-fortified ships, and tunnels. That trans-lates to standard operating ranges up to fourfootball fields.

The armor itself protects against shotsfrom 9mm and .45 magnum handguns. Slateris a veteran police dog trainer and built thefirst vest after a prison riot. He realized hewore full riot gear, while his K9 partner, Olaf,was basically naked. So he started makingvests. The weave technology catches bullets

or ice picks like a mitt wrapping around abaseball; knives and sharpened screw driverswielded by prisoners require tighter weaves.

Keeping the armor strong, but light, is a pri-ority. "Every gram counts for our clients. Sowe prefer advanced fibers and innovative tex-tiles," said Slater. "The entire communicationmodule is 20 ounces." The average armorweighs between three to seven pounds, de-pending on the size of the dog and the level ofprotection.

Theyʼve even gone stealth. A silent hard-ware system prevents any metal to metal con-

tact--you won't hear any jangling or see anyreflective give-aways. K9 took the average150-gram V-ring and developed a 5-gram ver-sion made of a Kevlar, poly-propylene, andnylon fiber blend. "Itʼs actually stronger, ratedto 2,500 pounds. Completely silent, and ultra-light," said Slater.



Of course, these systems don't comecheap--and it's the dogs themselves that arethe real investment. The Navyʼs first MasterMilitary Working Dog Trainer (a trainer ofother dog trainers), Luis Reyes emailed fromAfghanistan: "There are many products thathelp MWDs [military work dogs] and many areʻcoolʼ but not necessary. No amount of moneycan replace the life of a canine that saves theprecious lives of our troops in harm's way."

Although new tech is the buzz, what put K9Storm on the map is dedication to customiza-tion. Its mainstay dog armor is the more-af-fordable $2,000-$3,000 base model. Eachvest they make is custom sized for the dog."The fit has to be perfect or it will flop around,"said Slater. That hinders mobility, or worse,can cause injury.

Clients can measure dogs themselves, orSlater will fly out for dog fittings. Theyʼve done15-pound West Highland Terriers--which looklike playful white puffballs but were bred toscare badgers out of holes, and are helpful indrug raids with confined spaces like air ducts.

On the other end are St. Bernards, whichpush 240 pounds.

K9's client list spans 15 countries, fromChina to Switzerland. Buyers include SWATteams, police and corrections agencies, se-curity firms, search and rescue units, and bor-der patrols. Slater and 12 employees spentyears developing a proprietary computer-as-sisted design program to translate measure-ments into accurate patterns, which are handsewn. However, it's as much a tech companyas it is an armor manufacturer.

The next phase of development includesplans for remote-delivery systems and en-hanced accessory functionality. They describea system that would help dogs transport med-ical supplies, walkie-talkies, or water into con-stricted areas like rubble. They're alsoplanning new appendages like air-level qual-ity meters for mines.

No word on mounting mini heat-seeking mis-siles just yet. So, for now, bad guys will only haveto tussle with highly-trained fangs exerting 700pounds of pressure per square inch.

One Osama gone: Many more in the makingBy Anita Rai Source: http://www.rieas.gr/research-areas/global-issues/islamic-studies/1490-one-osama-gone-many-more-in-the-making.html

Osama bin Laden is dead. Islamist terrorism,is nonetheless alive and kicking. US NavySeals sealed his fate and buried him at sea.The fight against terrorism is however, farfrom over. This century is going to be shapedby how we fare in this war and how heavy thecost will be in terms of invaluable lives, bothmilitary service members and civilians. Mus-lim supremacists have thrust this war uponthe free world and in order to survive we haveto fight back. Human hearts should welcomethe news of Osamaʼs elimination. Somehowthe concept and clear identification, of goodand evil and a clear difference between thetwo are lost upon many people.

Ismail Haniya, the head of Hamas admin-istration in the Gaza strip expressed his sor-row and anger at the death of this monsterterrorist in these words: “We condemn the as-sassination and the killing of an Arab holy

warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy withthe true believers and the martyrs.”

How can anyone forget the response of thepeople of Gaza to the news of the slaughter of9/11? They erupted into loud cheers and vul-gar chants. Sweets and candies were distrib-uted in celebration of the carnage. Haniya toldthe reporters that Hamas sees the killing ofOsama bin Laden as “a continuation of theAmerican policy based on oppression and theshedding of Muslim and Arab blood”.

We have seen comparable show of soli-darity with, and sympathy for the dead terror-ist in numerous Muslim countries. In Pakistan,two elected parliamentarians from two differ-ent parties lifted their hands in prayer for thedeparted soul of a mass murderer. This hap-pened on the Floor of the House and theSpeaker did not stop these Members of theNational Assembly from praying for a terror-



ist. The headline of Daily Ausaf, a Pakistan-based Urdu newspaper, read: American Raid,Osama “martyred”.

An Imam of Al-Aqsa mosque when ex-pressing his support for the dead terroristthreatened President Obama and Bush (Jr.)with death. Imam of a mosque is extremelyimportant for Muslims and plays an intrinsicrole. Mosque plays a pivotal role in the lives ofMuslims everywhere. And it acquires an im-mensely heightened significance on Fridays.For Muslims, Friday is the most sacred day ofthe week. Most Muslims including those whodo not pray the daily five obligatory prayersattend the Friday congregational prayers heldin the mosques. While many perform the dailyprayers at home or at work, the Friday prayerswould necessarily mean a large gathering ofMuslims in the mosques. Khutbaah (Sermon)is an integral part of Friday congregationalSalaat / Namaaz (prayer). It is delivered bythe cleric of the particular mosque who leadsthe congregation in prayer. He is known asthe Imam of the mosque.

Most of the clerics who on a weekly basislecture large-to-huge gathering of Muslimsand lead them in prayers, are devoid of anycreditable education at the formal level. Atmost mosques the sermon comes before theobligatory prayer. Be it a mosque in a remotevillage of Indonesia or Bangladesh, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the GreatMosque in Mecca or the University of Tehran,the congregation of Muslims are obligated byreligious pinning to sit through the clericsʼ ser-mons. This is how a clergy that is highly une-ducated commands the attention andattendance of masses of worshippers whenthey are riding a religious high.

The Friday sermon has a set theme. Thekhateeb (lecturer/sermon-deliverer) and themosqueʼs financer however have the privilegeof choosing its tone and scale. Thematically,the Friday sermon is: Christians, Jews, everyother non-Muslim and those Muslims whoprefer peaceful co-existence to Islamist su-premacy, are all enemies of Allah, and there-fore your enemies too. Infidels can never beyour friends. Muslims who are friends withnon-Muslims are bad Muslims and must notbe trusted. These bad Muslims, Jews, Chris-

tians, and every other infidel are hostile to thefundaments of Islam, which is to convert, con-quer, and coerce until all submit to the onetrue creed of Allah. It is therefore, the obliga-tion of all true Muslims to fight for the de-struction of Satans of all sizes (USA, UK, andother free nations) and to wipe Israel “from theface of the earth”.

Special mention is made of the “holy” war-riors like Hamas and Hezbollah and in ahighly charged atmosphere of religious ar-dour, their horrific deeds are heroised. Thetotal thrust of the sermon is on a Muslimʼs holyduty of combative jihad and how to sustain anatmosphere of continuous aggression untilthe Muslim domination over the infidels iscomplete and conclusive.

On Friday 13 March 1998, Sheikh Ali Abd-ur-Rahman al-Huzaifi, Imam of Masjid-e-Nabavi (the Prophetʼs Mosque in Medina,Saudi Arabia) said the following in his sermonto a huge congregation of Muslims. For SunniMuslims, the Imam of this mosque is amongstthe excellent of Allahʼs creation. He is reveredas a Muslim man of extraordinary virtue, wis-dom, piety and truth. His words are believedto be in perfect alignment with the “Will ofAllah”. In his sermon, Imam Huzaifi said: “…How can there be any similarity, any bond be-tween Islam and Yehudiyyat, (the Jewishfaith) when… Yehudiyyat is a collection of ma-terialism and narrow-mindedness, bears mal-ice towards humanity, is steeped in moraldegradation, greed and covetousness. … Canthe Muslims bear the presence of the Jewswho call Hazrat Esa Alayhissalam (Jesus) theson of a whore? …

Similarly there is no similarity betweenChristianity and Islam. Islam is a pure andclean religion believing in the oneness ofAllah, in Tauheed….Whereas Christianity is adeviation from the right path…

The Shias are the followers of Ibn Sabaa,the Yehudi, and of Abu Lulu, the Majoosi(Zoroastrian)… The enemies of Islam haveunited in their false beliefs to fight againstIslam. This applies whether the enemies areof old or new.

Thus the only reason for the creation of aJewish, Zionist state in Palestine was to startan armed conflict with the Muslims and thus



create tension and terror in the region. Afterthey had succeeded in creating Israel, theJewish colonial powers then set in motionsuch basic and collective plans….Amongthese the major plan was to bring about a dis-solution of all Sharaee courts from the Islamiccountries….To a large extent the Kuffar suc-ceeded in their aim. But praise is to Allah Ta-Aala, that the Saudi government did not fall aprey to this conspiracy and there still existmany Sharaee courts in the country. Today,amongst all the Muslim governments of theworld, the government of Saudi Arabia is theonly representative, model Islamic govern-ment. …forces of Kufr (infidelity) have now allunited against Islam and the Muslims.

The evil intentions and aims of the worldpowers are:• To strengthen and fortify the Zionist, Jew-

ish state of Israel • To tear down Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a

synagogue in its place, thus satisfying theancient desire of the Jews

• To maintain the military supremacy of theJews over the Muslim Arab countries

• To appropriate a major part of the oil-wealth of the Gulf States for themselves,leaving the Saudis with the residue only

• To deal a death-blow to Islam at the slight-est provocation

• To promote everything which is againstIslam… The Americans should learn a lesson from

the Muslims of Afghanistan who had startedJihad against Russia armed with sticks only.They had thus brought about the total de-struction of the super power of the day…

O people! There is religious enmity be-tween the Muslims and the Kuffar. So howcan they be the well-wishers of the Muslims?...Muslims cannot tolerate…the presence ofany power of Kufr in the Arabian Peninsula…Two religions cannot co-exist in Arabia…

Ya Allah! Confer upon the Muslims andIslam, honour and victory, upon Kufr and theKuffar dishonour and defeat….Ya Allah! Lordof the universe cause the powers of Kufr to goto war against each other…. Ya Allah! Seizethe Jews and Christians in the grip of yourpunishment. Seize the Hindus and theMushrikeen (polytheists) too…. Ya Allah!

Send down upon them a torment most griev-ous…. Ya Allah, we seek only thy shelteragainst the mischief of the Rawafiz (Shias),the heretics…”

The current Imam of the Great Mosque inMecca, Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Sudais, is oneof the most powerful religious advisors of theSaudi government. On Friday 19 April 2002,he delivered a sermon from the Great Mosqueto a large gathering of pilgrims in which hesaid: the Jews are, “the dregs of the humanrace… the rats of the planet…killers ofprophets…pigs and monkeys,” and prayed toAllah to “exterminate them”. (Laurent Muraw-iec, Princes of Darkness, 2003, chapter 8, p88).

Thursday 24 March 2011, this Saudi clericcame to India upon the invitation of JamiatulUlema-e-Hind, an organisation of hardlinerSunni clerics. Hundreds of thousands of Mus-lims from different parts of the country flockedto the Darul-Uloom seminary (founded andrun by Deoband Muslims who follow the Wah-habi school of Islam) in the state of UttarPradesh to welcome their Imam.

On Friday 25 March 2011, Imam Al-Sudaisled this sea of Indian Muslims in prayer. Everyroad and alley leading to this Wahhabi semi-nary was bursting to its seams with peoplewho had come to offer their Friday Namaaz(Salaat) under the leadership of Imam Sudais.The Friday fervour was such that worshippersprayed from every place conceivable and oth-erwise. Streets, lanes, pavements, parks,rooftops, terraces, verandas, back and frontyards, highways – all became grounds forprayer.

Around the world the Friday prayer is fol-lowed by a Dua (supplication) marking theend of the midday worship session. SuppliantMuslims invoke Allah to annihilate the Jewsand grant fataah (victory) to Filisteen (Pales-tine) and bless the Muslim ummah (commu-nity) with victory over the kuffar (infidels). It isnot incomprehensible why the day of Fridayis so important in the “Revolutions” that arerising and rolling in the Muslim territories, andin every anti-government demonstration byMuslims living in the West. Peace is conspic-uously absent in the regimen of Fridayʼs oblig-atory congregational worship.



Muslim clerics easily obtain Visas to West-ern countries as appointed Imams ofmosques and/or as visiting preachers/lectur-ers. A greater number of Sunni brand ofmosques, Islamic centres, and schools in theWest are run by Wahhabi and Salafi Islamistsblessed by the Saudi government. Likewise,centres labelled Shiite are “inspired” and“moved” by the Islamist Revolution of Iran.The “spiritual” sustenance these “men ofAllah” serve to the believers inside theseplaces of worship has little difference to whatthey feed the millions of Muslims inside themosques and madrassas in Islamic countries.Large number of young generation Muslimsare growing up on a staple diet of hatreddished up to them inside places of worship.

The show put up by the mosques and Is-lamic centres in the West for the benefit of lawenforcement and security agencies is truly amaster workmanship of duplicity andhypocrisy. Every prominent Islamist organisa-tion in the West carefully and meticulouslykeeps and updates a “front-office” for inter-faith understanding and peace. An army ofWestern educated professional Muslim broth-ers and sisters are assigned the ʻjihadʼ ofglossing the way for various government aidsand charity grants to glide in. For one who isnot aware of what is really going on behind

the showbiz of Islamism, legions of clericsbarely versed in one Western language andbasic IT skills and donning robes of religionare damn convincing in their public perform-ances. More than anything else, this has moreto do with performance-based pay packetshere, and a congregation of paradisiacal vir-gins hereafter.

Freedom of the West, enshrined in its laws,allows people of all faiths to practice, preach,and promote their faiths without any fear anddiscrimination. Hence, the Muslim minoritieseasily build mosques and religious centres inthe West, some of which stand out in size andopulence. Like believers of other faiths, theytoo practice, preach, and promote their re-spective sects of Islam in an atmosphere offairness and freedom. The minorities in Mus-lim countries on the other hand do not havethis privilege. People are being slain just be-cause they subscribe to faiths other thanIslam. Their places of worship and those whoworship therein are constantly terrorised byMuslims inflamed by Islamist clerics andpreachers at home and abroad.

Anita Rai is the author of the book: Jihad andTerrorism

Understanding Strategic Change in al-Qaedaʼs CentralLeadership after Bin LadenBy Murad Batal al-Shishani Source: http://www.jamestown.org

Since the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama BinLaden, was killed on May 2, much analysishas appeared speculating potential changesto the organization and its leadership. This ar-ticle aims to answer the basic question of inwhich direction core al-Qaeda (based alongthe Afghanistan-Pakistan border) will go in thepost-Bin Laden era according to the ideologyof its remaining leaders. These figures includeEgyptian jihadist Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, whowill probably emerge as the undeclaredleader, as al-Qaeda members considersthemselves not an organization, but rather“vanguards” of the jihadist movement. As al-

Qaeda ideologue Abdul Majid Abdul Majid putit: “Al-Qaeda is no longer just a hierarchal or-ganization [built] on specific names, but hasbecome a jihadi mission held [in common] byall mujahedeen of the umma [Islamic commu-nity].” [1]

Some indication of al-Zawahiriʼs emergingrole can be found in his eulogy for Osama binLaden which was released on jihadi websiteson June 8. [2] In the message, entitled “TheNoble Knight Alighted,” al-Zawhiri announcedthe renewal of al-Qaedaʼs Baiʼa (oath of alle-giance) to the Amir al-Muʼmineen (Comman-der of the Faithful) Mullah Omar, indicating



that al-Zawahiri has the authority to do so onbehalf of those “vanguards.”

In order to assess the future behavior of al-Qaeda this article will examine the ideology ofthree members of al-Qaedaʼs Shura councilin addition to al-Zawahiri: Abu Yahya al-Libi(a.k.a. Hassan Muhammad Qaid), Abu Abdul-rahman Attiya al-Libi (a.k.a. Jamal IbrahimShtelwi al-Misrati) and Abdul Majid AbdulMajid. A fourth Shura member, Abu Khalil al-Madani, is not included in this analysis due toa lack of information about his views.

Saif al-Adel in the al-Qaeda LeadershipAlthough al-Zawahiri has been described asthe deputy leader of al-Qaeda over the last 15years, some recent reports have suggestedthat Egyptian commander Saif al-Adel wouldbe appointed as the new al-Qaeda leader.However, al-Adel is a military professional, ascan be noted from his writings, which meansthat his lack of ideological credentials makesuch reports unlikely. [3] A retired Egyptianmilitary officer, al-Adel is believed to be theleader of al-Qaedaʼs military committee andreturned to Waziristan in 2010 after being re-leased from detention in Iran (Foreign Policy,May 26). Saif al-Adel is commonly identifiedin reports as the alias of a retired Egyptian in-telligence (or Special Forces) officer namedMuhammad Ibrahim Makkawi; however, thereare reasons to question this identification. Al-Adelʼs father-in-law, an Afghan jihad veterannamed Abu Hamid al-Masri (a.k.a. MustafaHamid), has denied Makkawi is al-Adelʼs realname. In 2004, the London-based “IslamicMedia Observatory” released a statementsaying al-Adel and Makkawi are not the sameperson. [4] More recently, an Egyptian news-paper published a letter from an individualidentifying himself as Muhammad IbrahimMakkawi, a veteran of the Afghan jihad, stat-ing that he is not Saif al-Adel and has beenexperiencing problems as a result of thismisidentification. The author appears to alsobe in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, butclaims to have denounced al-Qaeda since9/11 (al-Youm al-Sabiʼi, May 18).

It is important to note that killing Bin Ladendoes not mean the dismantlement of al-Qaeda. A June 16, 2010 video recording by

Abu Yahya al-Libi, entitled "Our LeadersʼBlood Fuels Our Battle", eulogized the formerleaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, whowere killed in a U.S. air strike on April 19,2010. Al-Libiʼs eulogy indicates the mind-setinfluencing the behavior of al-Qaeda post-BinLaden: “There is no mujahid who has foughtin bouts and stepped into battlefields, whetherhe is a leader or a soldier, [who] has not pre-pared himself for death; he is eagerly await-ing it, hour by hour, no, moment by moment…this worship [Jihad], which is part of our glori-ous religion, cannot be stopped, disrupted ordelayed by the death, killing or capture ofsomeone, whoever he is and [whatever] hisstatus is.” [5] Abu Yahya escaped from theAmerican detention centre in Bagram-Afghanistan in 2005. Since then he has ap-peared as one of the most prominentideologues of Salafi-Jihadism after studyingIslamic fiqh (jurisprudence) in Mauritania. Ji-hadists often refer to his writings, especiallyhis opinions on killing civilians.

Far Enemy and Near EnemyBin Laden was fond of the idea of fightingagainst “the far enemy” (the “Crusaders andJews”). Seventy percent of his speeches andappearances were focused on the far enemy,with 20% consisting of general advice and in-structions to jihadis, and just 10% directed attoppling local regimes of “the near enemy”(“apostate” regimes in the Muslim world). [6]These figures suggest that although BinLaden served as a symbol for jihadis, he wasa strategist more than a religious ideologue.

Unlike Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri is focusedmore on the near enemy, this being due to hisbackground as leader of a national jihad groupbefore it adopted Salafism and joined thelarger international jihad movement in the1980s, of which al-Qaeda is the prime exam-ple. Al-Zawahiriʼs focus on “the near enemy”comprised 50% of his speeches; in contrast“the far-enemy” was the focus of only 15% ofhis speeches, the rest being comprised mainlyof general advice and instructions. The worksof Abu Yahya al-Libi, Abu Abdulrahman Attiyaal-Libi and Abdul Majid Abdul Majid reflect asimilar lack of focus on fighting the far enemy.



This suggests that core al-Qaeda will focus ontargeting near enemies in the future. In hisJune 8 eulogy for Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri madeexplicit calls for jihad against the near enemy inPakistan, Syria, Yemen and Libya.

Ideologues and Operatives Al-Qaeda and all its branches have a func-tional division between political-ideologicalleaders and military operatives. Switchingbroad strategies would increase the roles ofcertain leaders from both groups. For in-stance, al-Zawahiri will rely on operatives whoprefer to target near enemies, such as his oldcomrade Abu Muhammad al-Masri (a.k.a. Ab-dullah Ahmad Abdullah). Al-Masriʼs prefer-ence for targeting “near enemies” was asource of disagreement with Bin Laden him-self after the 9/11 attacks (al-Sharq al-Awsat,May 17, 2003). Al-Masri is an al-Qaeda oper-ative and appears on the FBIʼs most wantedlist. He is accused of involvement in the Au-gust 7, 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassiesin Dar es Salaam and Nairobi and is believedto be located in the area of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Al-Zawahiri will also need to rely on oper-atives such as al-Adel and Muhammad IlyasKashmiri to maintain al-Qaeda ties with localinsurgents in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.Kashmiriʼs current status is uncertain; a state-ment allegedly from Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami(HuJI) announced his death in a June 3 dronestrike in North Waziristan, although thespokesman was previously unknown, therewere mistakes in the text unlikely to be madeby a HuJI spokesman. Moreover, the photo ofan allegedly dead Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiriwas actually the dead body of Abu IsmailKhan, one of the LeT terrorists involved in the2008 Mumbai attack (The News International[Islamabad], June 7; Asia Times Online, June8). Kashmiri is known to be an al-Qaeda com-mander and leader of the Waziristan-basedand HuJI-associated "Brigade 313," which ismade up of members of the Tehrik-e-TalibanPakistan (TTP) and allied Kashmiri groups, in-cluding Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and theKarachi-based Jundallah movement.

However, focusing on the near enemycould be the first challenge to al-Zawahiriʼs

leadership. Al-Qaedaʼs rhetoric promoting vi-olent jihad has had very little effect on theyouths agitating for political change in thestreets of the Arab world, which has also hurtits recruitment base.

However, if political violence were to con-tinue to escalate in Libya, Syria and Yemen,for instance, it would provide new opportuni-ties for a movement that has always gravi-tated to areas in crisis.

Individual Jihad In this context, it is expected that the ideolog-ical role of Abu Abdulrahman Attiya al-Libi willincrease. Attiya is a prominent al-Qaeda the-orist and a leader of the jihadist movement inLibya (see Terrorism Monitor, August 12,2010). A graduate of Shariʼa studies in Mauri-tania and an expert in explosives, he is con-sidered close to al-Zawahiri. He was alsoclose to Bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Iraqleader Abu Musʼab al-Zarqawi before the lat-ter was killed in 2006. Attiya has also been de-scribed as a coordinator between al-Qaedaleaders and other Islamic groups. Looking athis writings, one notes that all of them fell intothe category of “general advice and instruc-tions” until the turmoil in Libya started lastFebruary. At that point he started to send mes-sages more regularly denouncing Muʼammaral-Qaddafi and NATO military operations inLibya.

Attiya al-Libiʼs role as a general theorist isessential for al-Qaeda. This was indicated ina recent two-part video recording produced byal-Sahab Media Production entitled “LaTukalif ila Nafsak” (You are not tasked [heldresponsible] except for yourself only). The firstone hour episode was devoted to encourag-ing al-jihad al-fardi (individual jihad), particu-larly among Muslims who live in the West. Thetactic was described in the recording by bothAttiya al-Libi and Abu Yahya al-Libi (as-ansar.com, June 3). [7] Attiya al-Libi stressedthe importance of individual jihadi attacksbeing in line with “the mujahideenʼs generalstrategy… all Western countries are not thesame.” He further urged potential jihadis tocontact “the leaders of mujahideen, if thatʼspossible” before undertaking individual oper-ations.



Besides its tactical advantages, individualjihad suggests that the “far enemy” remains apriority for al-Qaeda. This will increase the im-portance of the work of Abdul Majid, whoclearly stated the priority of targeting theUnited States when he was asked about thestrategy of jihadists: “As for the overall strat-egy of jihad, I think it is known to all, which is[based] on the importance of focusing on thehead of kufr [disbelief] and corruption in theglobe - America." [8]

ConclusionAl-Qaeda will continue after Bin Laden by re-lying on its ideology, but a change will be seenin its behavior. These changes will be re-flected in new roles for the movementʼs lead-ers, particularly those involved in developingthe groupʼs ideology.

Under al-Zawahiriʼs leadership, al-Qaedawill be more near-enemy-oriented, but this willdepend on developments in the Arab worldand the direction of the popular oppositionmovements. Relying on military operatives tomaintain ties with locals in the region couldbecome a problem for core al-Qaeda if theydo not dedicate an ideologue for such mis-sions. Though al-Zawahiri will play an impor-tant role as al-Qaedaʼs new leader, theincreased roles of various ideologues willmean that the movement will be led in a morecollective fashion than has existed previously.

Notes:1. Not much is known about him or whetherthis is his real name. Unlike most Egyptian ji-hadists he has not come from al-Gamaʼa al-Islamiya or al-Jihad, but is rather a productof the traditional Egyptian Salafist move-ment. For the full text of his interview, see:http://www.tawhed.ws/r?i=19061015, June19, 2010. 2. http://www.as-ansar.com/vb/showthread.php?p=193941.3. For Saif al-Adelʼs writings, see:http://www.tawhed.ws/a?a=nkpabwye.4.http://www.aljahad.info/vb/showthread.php?t=5859.5. The video can be watched at this link:http://www.archive.org/details/dema3.6. All figures compiled by the author.7. For more details on the al-jihad al-farditactic, which was first encouraged by BinLaden, see Terrorism Monitor, June 17,2010.8. http://www.tawhed.ws/r?i=19061015,June 2010.

Murad Batal al-Shishani is an Islamic groupsand terrorism issues analyst based in Lon-don. He is a specialist on Islamic Move-ments in Chechnya and in the Middle East.

Al Qaeda Says Al-Zawahiri Has Succeeded Bin LadenSource:http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/06/16/al-qaeda-says-al-zawahiri-has-succeeded-bin-laden/ #ixzz1PRyFYw9xPublished June 16, 2011

Usama bin Laden's longtime deputy Aymanal-Zawahiri has taken control of Al Qaeda,the group said Thursday, a widely anticipatedmove that comes at a time the terror networkis struggling for relevance amid a wave ofArab uprisings that has threatened to up-stage it.

Al-Zawahiri, a surgeon by training, haslong brought ideological fire as well as tacti-cal and organizational cunning to Al Qaeda,which has found itself increasingly decentral-ized and prone to internal disputes following

its expulsion from Afghanistan after its inva-sion by U.S. forces in 2001.

Thursday's announcement comes morethan six weeks after the U.S. killed bin Ladenin a May 2 raid on his home in Pakistan. Al-Zawahiri pledged to avenge the death of theAl Qaeda founder and mastermind of theSept. 11 terror attacks and to continue theterror network's campaign of attacks againstthe U.S. and other Western interests.

"The general command of Al Qaeda, aftercompleting consultations, decided that the



sheik doctor Abu Mohammed Ayman al-Za-wahiri take the responsibility and be incharge of the group," said a statement pur-portedly by Al Qaeda and posted on militantwebsites, including several known to be affil-iated with the group.

Al Qaeda gave no details about the selec-tion process for bin Laden's successor butsaid that it was the best tribute to the memoryof its "martyrs."

Al-Zawahiri, who turns 60 on Sunday andhas a $25 million bounty on his head, hasbeen behind the use of suicide bombings andthe independent militant cells that have be-come the network's trademarks. But U.S. in-telligence officials have said that some AlQaeda members find al-Zawahiri to be a con-trolling micromanager who lacks bin Laden'spopulist appeal.

He also faces significant challenges inpromoting Al Qaeda's agenda of a religiouslyled state spanning the Muslim world afterfinding itself sidelined in the wake of popularrevolts that have been driven by aspirationsfor Western-style democracy instead.

Al-Zawahiri has been in hiding for nearly10 years and is widely believed to be nearthe Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He has ap-peared in dozens of videos and audiotapesin recent years, increasingly becoming theface of Al Qaeda as bin Laden kept a lowerprofile.

Most of his pronouncements on the videosand audiotapes show him to be a man con-sumed by deep hatred for the West, particu-larly the United States, and Israel.

Al-Zawahiri had been considered the mostlikely successor because of his longtime col-laboration with bin Laden. Analysts had saidthat few were likely to challenge the Al Qaedadeputy leader for the top spot despite somereservations.

Many predicted he would step up attacksto prove himself.

"He was a given leader from the outset.But he doesn't have the same iconic statusor personality as bin Laden," said MagnusRanstorp, a terror analyst at the RoyalSwedish Defense College. "He will focus onattacking the West in a big way. To avenge(bin Laden's death), but also to make himself... even more effective and relevant."

Al-Zawahiri and bin Laden first crossedpaths in the late 1980s in the caves ofAfghanistan, where the Egyptian reportedlyprovided medical treatment to bin Laden andother Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces.Their alliance would develop years later intothe terror network blamed for America's worstterror attack in its history.

In a videotaped eulogy released earlierthis month, al-Zawahiri warned that Americastill faces an international community of Mus-lims that seek to destroy it.



"Today, praise God, America is not facingan individual, a group or a faction," he said,wearing a white robe and turban with an as-sault rifle leaned on a wall behind him. "It isfacing a nation that is in revolt, having risenfrom its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad."

Al-Zawahiri also heaped praise on binLaden and criticized the U.S. for burying himat sea.

"He went to his God as a martyr, the manwho terrified America while alive and terrifiesit in death, so much so that they trembled atthe idea of his having a tomb," he said.

Al-Zawahiri is the son of an upper middleclass Egyptian family of doctors and scholars.His father was a pharmacology professor atCairo University's medical school and his grand-father was the grand imam of Al-Azhar Univer-sity, Sunni Islam's formal seat of learning.

At the age of 15, he founded his first un-derground cell of high school students to op-pose the Egyptian government. He continuedhis militant activities while earning his med-ical degree, later merging his cell with othermilitants to form Islamic Jihad.

Al-Zawahiri served three years in anEgyptian prison before heading toAfghanistan in 1984 to fight the Soviets,where he linked up with bin Laden. Al-Za-wahiri later followed bin Laden to Sudan andthen back to Afghanistan, where they found asafe haven under the radical Taliban regime.

Soon after came the 1998 bombings ofthe U.S. embassies in Africa, followed by the2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole offthe coast of Yemen, an attack al-Zawahiri isbelieved to have helped organize.

In a 2001 treatise, he set down the long-term strategy for the jihadi movement -- to in-flict "as many casualties as possible" on theAmericans.

"Pursuing the Americans and Jews is notan impossible task," he wrote. "Killing them

is not impossible, whether by a bullet, a knifestab, a bomb or a strike with an iron bar."

Al-Zawahiri's hatred for Americans hasalso become deeply personal: His wife andat least two of their six children were killed ina U.S. airstrike following the 2001 U.S. inva-sion of Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks.

Al-Zawahiri has worked in the years sinceto rebuild the organization's leadership in theAfghan-Pakistan border. Al Qaeda has in-spired or had a direct hand in attacks in NorthAfrica, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, the2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2005transit bombings in London.

The CIA came close to capturing him in2003 and killing him in 2004 -- both times inPakistan. In December 2009, they thoughtthey were again close only to be tricked by adouble agent who blew himself up, killingseven agency employees and wounding sixmore in Khost, Afghanistan.

The statement announcing his successionwas filled with the terror network's usual rhet-oric, vowing to continue the fight against whatit called "conquering infidels, led by Americaand its stooge Israel, who attack the homesof Islam."

The Al Qaeda statement also stated thegroup's support for this year's popular upris-ings in the Middle East and North Africa. Itvowed never to recognize the legitimacy ofIsrael and to support what it called the strug-gle of the Afghan people under the leadershipof Taliban commander Mullah Omar againstAmerican occupation.

"We support the uprisings of oppressedMuslim nations in the face of corrupt and op-pressive tyrants in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen,Syria and Morocco and we encourage themalong with the rest of the Muslim people tocontinue the struggle until all the corrupt op-pressive regimes imposed by the west are re-moved," it said.

osama bin laden – the end ccbbrrnnee- … · 2011-07-24 · osama bin laden: the most wanted face...

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