Mastermind behind USS Cole bombing escapes
LYON, France (AP) — An al-Qaeda operative sentenced to death for plotting the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors in 2000 was among a group of convicts who escaped from a Yemen prison last week, Interpol said Sunday in issuing a global security alert.

A recent picture of Jamal al-Badawi, who is considered the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole.
By Khaled Fazaa, AFP/Getty Images

Officials set up checkpoints around the capital of San'a, where the prison was located, to try to catch the escapees before they could flee to the protection of mountain tribes, according to a Yemeni security official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Some mountainous tribal areas are essentially outside the control of Yemen's central government, raising fears the fugitives could hide there before escaping the country.

The Yemeni government made no official comment Sunday.

Yemeni officials said Jamal al-Badawi — a man convicted of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the Cole bombing — was among the fugitives, Interpol said. Al-Badawi was among those sentenced to death in September 2004 for plotting the attack, in which two suicide bombers blew up an explosives-laden boat next to the destroyer as it refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000.

A Yemeni security official announced the escape of convicted al-Qaeda members Friday but did not provide any details or names. The official said only that the escapees had all had been sentenced last year on terrorism-related charges.

Interpol said in a statement that at least 13 of the 23 escapees were convicted al-Qaeda fighters.

The convicts escaped via a 140-yard-long tunnel "dug by the prisoners and coconspirators outside," Interpol said. The Yemeni official said the prison was at the central headquarters of the country's military intelligence services in a building in the center of the capital.

Another of the 23 escapees was identified as Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeiee, considered by Interpol to be one of those responsible for a 2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen's coast. That attack killed a Bulgarian crewmember and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.

Al-Rabeiee also was convicted for an attack on a helicopter carrying Hunt Oil Co. employees a month later and the detonation of explosions at a civil aviation authority building.

"We are closely monitoring the situation at this time and we will work with our domestic and international partners to actively pursue these dangerous terrorists," FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said in Washington.

Interpol's urgent global security alert, known as an "orange notice," was issued "because the escape and unknown whereabouts of al-Qaeda terrorists constituted a clear and present danger to all countries," the statement said.

Secretary General Ronald Noble urged Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, to provide names, photographs, fingerprints and other information about the suspects.

He called on the agency's 184 member states "to take all relevant precautionary measures both at and inside their borders" and to help Yemen locate and capture the fugitives.

Noble also said that unless the fugitives were tracked down, they possibly "will be able to travel internationally, to elude detection and to engage in future terrorist activity."

The escape came a day before the expected start of a trial of 15 people charged with involvement in terror operations in Yemen, including Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, another suspected plotter of the Cole and Limburg bombings.

The trial was postponed indefinitely.

Yemen was long a haven for Islamic militants. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the government aligned itself with the U.S.-led war on terrorism. But many diplomats and outside experts have raised questions about Yemen's cooperation and inability to control tribal areas.


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Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

February 12, 2006
'Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden'
Becoming bin Laden
Review by NOAH FELDMAN
There is something obscene about reading the self-justifications of an acknowledged mass murderer. But what makes the collected speeches, interviews, Web postings and other public statements of Osama bin Laden different from, say, "Helter Skelter," is that bin Laden is not clinically mad. He gives reasons for his actions that, while morally outrageous and religiously irresponsible, could be accepted by otherwise logical people who shared his premises. This makes him more, not less, dangerous than the Charles Mansons among us. Bin Laden has an audience, of which he is acutely aware — a fact made particularly clear by his recent offer of a "truce" with America. His words, as much as his deeds, aim to convince others to embrace his view of the world and act accordingly.

Without words, in fact, bin Laden's violence could not achieve its stated goals. By his own account, bin Laden is neither a nihilist nor a millenarian. He does not claim to embrace violence for its own sake or in the hope of hastening the apocalypse. Rather, he purports to fulfill the twin duties of calling nonbelievers to Islam and defending the Muslim community from attack.

The goal of jihad (presented by bin Laden as a matter of self-defense) needs words because bin Laden has no sizable army at his back. Unable to subjugate the West, bin Laden thinks his best bet is to inflict harm — human and economic — and then blackmail his target. For bin Laden, then, actual violence is instrumental. It is the interpretation of violence that is the very essence of his religious and political program. To hold his explanation in one's hands is to confront his reason for being.

"Messages to the World" is almost too well produced. Bound in an attractive orange wrapper and printed on excellent paper, it comes decorated with a thumbnail painting of the man himself, garbed in one of his allusive, carefully constructed outfits. The peaks of the Hindu Kush loom in the background, reminders of the Tora Bora debacle. James Howarth's English translation is idiomatic and creditable. Bruce Lawrence's notes are occasionally idiosyncratic — why refute the claim that the United States created the AIDS virus but not the argument that "Rumsfeld, the butcher of Vietnam," is responsible for two million deaths? And Lawrence's introduction could have done without the puzzling comparison to Che Guevara. For the most part, though, the contextual explanations provided in the volume will be helpful to those uninitiated in the discourses of contemporary Islamic radicalism.

The real contribution of this book is what it tells us about bin Laden's own development. Beginning as a trenchant critic of the Saudi government, he becomes an advocate of global religious war and the intentional killing of civilians, including women and children. This "progress" tells us something potentially useful about the path of radical Islamic ideology in recent years.

A product of his Saudi milieu, the young bin Laden recognized the moral authority of the religious scholars who enjoy quasi-official status in the kingdom as the people who legitimate the rule of the royal family. His first major public statement, made in 1994, when he was 37 years old and had been living in exile in Sudan for three years, took the form of an open letter to Sheik Abdelaziz bin Baz, then the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, and a man widely considered to be both a religious conservative and a credible Islamic scholar. In the letter, bin Laden addressed bin Baz respectfully, urging him to retract fatwas that authorized the presence of foreign troops in the kingdom and validated the Oslo accords. Bin Laden presented himself not as a religious authority in his own right — in fact, he has no scholarly qualifications — but as a supporter of dissident Saudi religious scholars who had been silenced by the Saudi government.

By 1997, however, bin Laden had begun to abandon this deferential stance and assume for himself the role (as he put it in an interview with the journalist Peter Arnett) of "enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong," since Islamic scholars seemed incapable of fulfilling this traditional duty themselves. He was on a course that would eventually lead to the conclusion that listening to scholars who err is "tantamount to worshiping them rather than God." From here it was but a short step to try to replace the scholars, offering his own interpretations of Islamic texts and traditions and presenting them as binding on believers.

Bin Laden's "legal" innovations are not minor. Following some other radicals, he frequently speaks of the war against Christians and Jews as an individual duty of every Muslim. But according to Islamic law, only defensive jihad is an individual duty; offensive jihad is a collective duty of the Muslim community, to be prosecuted only under the command of a responsible leader.

As classically understood, the law of jihad prohibits the killing of innocents. In 1996, bin Laden denied having targeted civilians, and in 1997 he condemned the United States government's hypocrisy in not calling the bombing of Hiroshima terrorism. Over time, though, bin Laden has come to endorse the targeting of civilians. In November 2001, for example, when asked in an interview whether the killing of civilians (including Muslims) on Sept. 11 was justified, he argued that revenge killings of Americans were justified, and pointed out that Islamic law allows believers to attack invaders even when the enemy uses human shields. But this classical position was originally intended as a legal justification for the accidental killing of civilians under very limited circumstances — not a basis for intentionally targeting noncombatants. Later, in an open letter to Americans posted on the Internet in 2002, bin Laden appears to have abandoned this pseudoscholarly argument in favor of the perverse claim that since the United States is a democracy, all citizens bear responsibility for its government's actions, and civilians are therefore fair targets.

The shift in authority away from the scholars and to the individual is sometimes seen as a feature of an Islamic reformation. If so, its harmful consequences need to be recognized alongside whatever promise it may hold. The individual duty of jihad and the targeting of innocents are the two indispensable pillars of the jihadi movement as it exists today. Bin Laden's move to supplant the scholarly tradition, arrogate authority to himself and embrace violence on a grand scale represents a power grab of historic significance. When bin Laden says he is engaged in a war of religion, he is doing more than trying to mobilize Muslims — he is trying to make himself their legitimate decision maker, and thus their leader.

Ultimately, bin Laden's innovations matter because they point the way to defeating his arguments. Attacks on Muslim civilians in Iraq and Jordan have begun to create some backlash, and the targeting of civilians is once again an issue among jihadis and other Muslims in a way it has not been since 9/11. In the long run, the only way to cut off the international jihadi movement at the root is for Muslims to conclude that their own religious tradition does not countenance the deviations of recent years.

Putting bin Laden's words on paper helps show him for what he is — a Muslim out of the mainstream, distorting the faith to justify murder. In the end, the most constructive thing one can do with a book like this one is to use it against itself, as a tool in the fight against terrorism.

Noah Feldman is a professor of law at New York University. His most recent book is "Divided by God."



Copyright 2006The New York Times

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U.S. Attack Killed Al-Qaida Leader's Kin
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By RIAZ KHAN
Associated Press Writer

February 12 2006, 2:47 AM PST

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A U.S. missile strike on a Pakistani village last month killed a relative of al-Qaida's No. 2 leader and a terror suspect wanted by America, Pakistan's leader said Saturday, breaking weeks of silence about the identities of the men.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wi...pnews-headlines

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060213/...iphate_myth.php
The Caliphate Myth
Tom Porteous
February 13, 2006


Tom Porteous is a freelance writer and analyst who was formerly with the BBC and British Foreign Office. He has lived and worked in the Middle East for many years, and travels frequently to Iran.

At a time of growing political tension between the Muslim world and the West, a new bad idea is creeping into the discourse of European and North American political leaders and is being used to justify an intensification of Western political and military intervention in the Muslim world.

Donald Rumsfeld wheeled this bad idea out at a conference on global security in Munich last week. George Bush alluded to it in his 2006 State of the Union address in January. Tony Blair and his Home Office minister, Charles Clarke, have both spoken of it in the past six months. Dick Cheney has bandied it about for even longer. The rhetoric of the new German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggests she too has signed up.

The new bad idea is this: the “free West,” having defeated German Nazism and Soviet Communism, now faces a new strategic challenge from the ambition of Muslim radicals to re-establish an Islamic caliphate and impose Islamic law on half the world.

As the U.S. Defense Secretary put it at last week’s Munich conference, Islamic radicals “seek to take over governments from North Africa to Southeast Asia and to re-establish a caliphate they hope, one day, will include every continent. They have designed and distributed a map where national borders are erased and replaced by a global extremist Islamic empire."

Ouch! A map without borders! Is this the new WMD?

It is true that many Islamist groups, including terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, say they would like to see the reunification of the Muslim world under one political leadership. They also frame this in terms of the re-establishment of the political institution which unified the Muslim world in the first few centuries of Islam: the caliphate.

But does this make it sensible, wise or proportionate for the leaders of the most formidable military alliance in the history of the world to base their strategic posture for the early 21st century on the invocation of an Al Qaeda or Iranian run, “terrorist caliphate” stretching half way around the globe?

No, it does not. And here’s why.

First, the evidence that Al Qaeda or any similar organization is in a position to re-create and control a caliphate is entirely non-existent. The only country where Al Qaeda was able to gain any kind of territorial foothold was in parts of Afghanistan. Even there, they were dependent on the goodwill of local leaders, the Taliban, who had only come to power after Afghanistan had been reduced to ground zero by the combined policies of the Soviet Union and the West during the Cold War and subsequent international neglect.

In Iraq, where the U.S. military invasion and occupation has created another opportunity for Al Qaeda, Bush’s claim that Al Qaeda would take over the country in the event of a U.S. military withdrawal is nonsense. Al Qaeda has the same chance of imposing its political authority in Iraq as the U.S. does: nil.

As for Iran, in the 25 years since the Islamic revolution, Tehran has been unable to export its Shi’ite version of Islamist rule to any other Muslim state, in part because most other Muslim states are dominated by Sunnis. In fact, revolutionary Iran long ago gave up efforts to export its ideology to the wider Muslim world and has concentrated instead on cultivating its influence among Shi’ite sectarian groups in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere.

The second reason why raising the specter of a resurgent caliphate is foolish is that it plays into the hands of groups like Al Qaeda who claim the “war on terror” is an assault on Islam itself. Where, one wonders, have all those millions of dollars put aside by Washington and London for public diplomacy in the Muslim world gone? It surely would not have cost much to find out that, so far from being seen as a totalitarian tyranny, the early Muslim caliphate is highly venerated by most Muslims as a golden age of Islam. Comparing it to the Third Reich is therefore not a good way of winning friends and influencing people in the Muslim world.

The third problem with the caliphate idea is that it has led Western politicians to prepare for and fight the wrong kind of conflict. Al Qaeda is a non-state terrorist organization that presents a complex of threats to western interests, some quite serious but none existential. Its main resource lies not in controlling territory or armies but in its symbolic and ideological influence among young and alienated Muslims. This influence is directly proportionate to the degree to which such Muslims sense they and their religion are oppressed and attacked by the West.

The main policies of the U.S. and its allies since 9/11 have been to fight Al Qaeda as though it was a conventional territorial enemy. This has involved massive projection of military force throughout the Muslim world—from "North Africa to Southeast Asia,” to borrow Rumsfeld’s words—including two outright military invasions and occupations, a continuing buildup of Israeli military power, and now the threat of military strikes against Iran. But because the enemy is not a conventional one, these interventions have quickly degenerated into crude counterinsurgency operations involving the use of torture, prolonged detention without trials and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians.

The chronic insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq and the occupied territories, the successes of Islamist political parties in elections in several Muslim countries and, to some extent, the furor over the Danish cartoons, all demonstrate how counterproductive and ill-judged these policies are. Among other impacts in the Muslim world, they are boosting the influence of Al Qaeda and other forms of Islamist radicalism, fostering anti-Western sentiment, undermining secular reformist trends and destabilizing states.

If Western leaders’ apparent obsession with the notion that the West faces a real threat from an emergent extremist caliphate is so foolish, why do they use it?

Three answers come to mind. First, whether they really believe in the threat or not, it is a convenient cover for their signal and deepening failure in the “war on terror.” By raising the menacing specter of another evil empire, Western leaders seem to be saying to their publics that the failures in Iraq , Afghanistan and elsewhere have nothing to do with their own shortcomings, lack of imagination or ideological blindness, but with the very terribleness of the threat we are facing.

Second, the notion that the West faces the extraordinary threat of an evil caliphate provides an excuse for avoiding the very real and difficult problems that the West does need to face in relation to the Muslim world, problems which the West is so far either unwilling or unable to address seriously. These include the need to engage with political Islam and undercut the appeal of extremists, to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, to help stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan and to prevent other states going the same way.

Third, in the febrile post-9/11 political atmosphere of the West, the exaggeration of the threat from Islam has in different ways (immigration, terrorism, values) come to be exploited by political entrepreneurs as a crucial means of winning political power, extending state control over scared citizens, and justifying the massive projection of military power abroad. So the notion of a threatening Islamic caliphate may be not such a bad idea after all.

It’s just not true.

===
Al Qaeda establish 'Islamic state' in Pakistan province:

After taking "virtual control" of the entire North Waziristan province of Pakistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda have recently "declared" the establishment of an 'Islamic State' in the area and gained a major base for their operations against the US-led forces in Afghanistan, media reports said.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11906.htm

Bin Laden's Game:

Most officials thought last month's Osama bin Laden tape was no big deal—maybe even a gesture of weakness. Author and ex-CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who founded the Agency's bin Laden unit 10 years ago, thinks they're dead wrong.
http://citypages.com/databank/27/1315/article14125.asp

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools...cas/4725992.stm
US 'losing media war to al-Qaeda'
The US is losing the propaganda war against al-Qaeda and other enemies, defence chief Donald Rumsfeld has said.
It must modernise its methods to win the minds of Muslims in the "war on terror", as "enemies had skilfully adapted" to the media age, he said.

Washington and the army must respond faster to events and learn to exploit the internet and satellite TV, he said.

Separately, President Bush said the US should not be discouraged by setbacks in Iraq and must realise it is at war.

"We shouldn't be discouraged... because we've seen democracy change the world in the past," George W Bush said.

However, he also used his speech in Florida to claim progress in the war on al-Qaeda.

Mr Bush said that slowly but surely the US was finding terrorists where they hid.

'Newsroom battles'

Correspondents say that in recent months victory in the battle for public opinion has become a new front for the Bush administration.

In a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations, Mr Rumsfeld said some of the US' most critical battles were now in the "newsrooms".

"Our enemies have skilfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but... our country has not," he said.

Mr Rumsfeld said al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists were bombarding Muslims with negative images of the West, which had poisoned the public view of the US.

The US must fight back by operating a more effective, 24-hour propaganda machine, or risk a "dangerous deficiency," he said.

Government communications planning must be "a central component of every aspect of this struggle", he added.

"The longer it takes to put a strategic communications framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/worl...cas/4725992.stm

Published: 2006/02/17 21:41:36 GMT

© BBC MMVI

February 19, 2006
Bin Laden Vows Never to Be Captured Alive
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:56 p.m. ET

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Osama bin Laden promised never to be captured alive and declared the United States had resorted to the same ''barbaric'' tactics used by Saddam Hussein, according to an audiotape purportedly by the al-Qaida leader that was posted Monday on a militant Web site.

The tape appeared to be a complete version of one that was first broadcast Jan. 19 on Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite channel, in which bin Laden offered the United States a long-term truce but also said his al-Qaida terror network would soon launch a fresh attack on American soil.

''I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don't want to die humiliated or deceived,'' bin Laden said, in the 11-minute, 26-second tape.

In drawing the comparison to American military behavior in Iraq to that of Saddam, the speaker said:

''The jihad is continuing with strength, for Allah be all the credit, despite all the barbarity, the repressive steps taken by the American Army and its agents, to the extent that there is no longer any mentionable difference between this criminality and the criminality of Saddam.''

By using that language to describe Saddam, bin Laden appeared to be denying assertions by the Bush administration that the former Iraqi leader had ties to al-Qaida -- ties that were given as one rationale for invading Iraq.

Bin Laden also challenged Bush administration assertions that it was better to fight terrorists in Iraq than on U.S. soil.

''The war against America and its allies has not remained confined to Iraq as he (Bush) claims, but rather Iraq has become a point of attraction and recruitment of qualified forces,'' the speaker said.

''What's more, the mujahideen, by the grace of Allah, have been able to penetrate time after time all the security procedures undertaken by the oppressive countries of the alliance as evidence by what you have seen, in terms of bombings in the capital of the most important European states.''

The tape's release in January came days after a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan that targeted bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, and reportedly killed four leading al-Qaida figures, including possibly al-Zawahri's son-in-law. There was no mention of the attack on the segments that were broadcast.

In the full tape posted Monday, bin Laden engaged in renewed propaganda, mocking Bush's aircraft carrier declaration in April 2003 that major conflict in Iraq had ended.

''The Pentagon's figures indicate an increase in the number of your killed and injured in addition to the massive material losses, not to mention the collapse of troop morale and the increase of the suicide rates among them,'' the speaker said.

Speaking directly to the American people, he said:

''You can rescue whatever you can from this hell. The solution is in your hands, if their (U.S. troops') situation matters to you at all.''

The initial excerpts had been the first tape from the al-Qaida leader in more than a year -- the longest period without a message since the Sept. 11, 2001 suicide hijackings in the United States.

The CIA last month authenticated the voice on the initial recording as that of bin Laden, an agency official told The Associated Press at the time. The al-Qaida leader is believed to be hiding in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

------

Associated Press reporter Omar Sinan contributed to this report.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

Rethinking al-Qaida
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Rethinking_al_Qaida.html

Washington DC (UPI) Feb 19, 2006 - The Bush administration has bungled the war on terror by relying too much on military force alone, according to a prominent expert, and the war needs to be conducted with new ideas at the political dimension.

A Bomb-Builder, 'Out of the Shadows'
Syrian Linked to Al Qaeda Plots Describes Plan to Attack Cruise Ship in Turkey

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 20, 2006; A01



ANTALYA, Turkey -- Right up to the hot August night his apartment exploded, Louai Sakka's neighbors took him for a newlywed. The lanky Syrian was not seen much in the corridors of the high-rise residential complex where he lived in this sunny resort city, but he spent time nuzzling an attractive young brunette and sipping beer beside the pool.

His real identity began to emerge shortly after 3 a.m. on Aug. 4, when the windows of Apt. 1703 blew out, showering the parking lot with the contents of the kitchen and bits and pieces of the massive bomb Sakka had been painstakingly assembling in the living room. Sakka, who escaped the inferno only to be arrested two days later, turned out to be a senior operative for al Qaeda and intimately linked to major terrorist plots in Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, where he had worked beside Abu Musab Zarqawi, a longtime confederate.

He showed up in Antalya last summer with tens of thousands of dollars in cash and a face altered by plastic surgery. After his arrest, he told investigators he had planned to die steering a yacht laden with explosives into a cruise ship he believed was filled with U.S. soldiers and which was already approaching across the turquoise Mediterranean.

The attack, just 48 hours away when the chemicals ignited, was intended to crown a wide-ranging career in terrorism. Sakka played a role in the so-called millennium plot to attack hotels in Amman, Jordan, on Dec. 31, 1999. Turkish prosecutors also describe him as the planner of the 2003 truck bombings that killed 57 people in Istanbul, financed with $160,000 in al Qaeda funds.

Between attacks, according to his attorney, Sakka provided false passports and other means to help Islamic militants through the web of paths that U.S. military officials call rat lines. The routes crisscross Turkey to and from Afghanistan, Chechnya and, since 2003, Iraq, where Sakka traveled after the Istanbul bombings. Insurgents say Louai al-Turki, as he was known there, played a prominent role in major attacks on U.S. bases and commanded insurgent forces in Fallujah when it served as the militants' headquarters.

"He's been involved in this for 15 years," said the attorney, Osman Karahan.

The significance of Sakka, who was 32 at the time of his arrest, was slow to emerge. But he spoke at length to Turkish interrogators, admitting his role in past plots and describing Iraq as a training ground for terrorists comparable to Chechnya and Bosnia in the past, according to people who have read a summary of his statement. Sakka, who remains in a jail in Istanbul, declined to sign the account, however, on the advice of his controversial attorney.

"Actually, he does not deny his past activities," said Karahan, who subscribes to the same militant vision of Islam as many of his clients. "We are people who work for justice, so we want to tell the truth. Things need to be taken out of the shadows." Investigators have pressed Sakka to provide evidence against Karahan.

The attorney's office candidly declares his beliefs. The waiting room features copies of Kaide magazine, the Turkish spelling of Qaeda, with ads announcing the martyrdom of Turkish volunteers in Iraq. Copies of a paperback titled "Virgins of Paradise: Eyes Like Fawns and Shining Skin" are on sale for $4. Every image of a human face, including the portrait on Karahan's diploma, is covered by a tab of paper. "Angels don't come where faces are pictured," Karahan explained.

The lawyer said he handles almost 80 percent of the criminal cases brought against Islamic militants in Turkey, a practice that increased sharply after Sept. 11, 2001, when Turkey began detaining large numbers of suspects at its borders. In 2000, he secured the release of Sakka's wife and three children, who were taken in an operation that narrowly missed Sakka.

"He called me on the phone from Holland," Karahan said. "He said he was in Istanbul a few days earlier but managed to escape."

Born in Aleppo, in Syria's north, the son of successful factory owner, Sakka forsook a "rich life" for the struggles of radical Islam, the attorney said. He said Sakka worked in Turkey starting in 1998, easing the passage of militants through a country that U.S. and Turkish authorities have long acknowledged is a major logistical hub for terrorists. Karahan said that included preparations for the Sept. 11 attacks, notably in Bursa, a city 60 miles south of Istanbul.

It is unclear when Sakka crossed paths with Zarqawi, but a Jordanian court convicted both men in absentia for plotting to attack an Amman hotel, border crossings and Christian tourist sites during the celebration of the millennium.

By 2003, Turkish prosecutors say, Sakka was in the thick of the planning for the bombings of two synagogues, the British Consulate and a British bank in Istanbul over two days in November that year. Though Karahan said Sakka now denies involvement, an indictment released Feb. 10 charges that he "proposed" the attacks, with specific approval from both Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden. Testimony in the mass trial of more than 70 Turks already charged in the case indicated that Sakka provided all the funds for the attacks, with the largest installment delivered in a sock stuffed with euros from Saudi sympathizers, according to the indictment. When the bombs went off, he cheered as he watched satellite television reports with the leading Turkish plotters, all of whom had fled to Aleppo.

Sakka next surfaced in Iraq, infiltrating the border via routes he was known for helping volunteers navigate, insurgents said. A former member of Zarqawi's group, Abu Khalid Dulaimi, 55, said Sakka arrived in Fallujah in March 2004 with seven Turkish men and helped defend the city against the first, aborted Marine offensive in April. Reunited with Zarqawi, he was well known as a key aide to the insurgent leader. Prosecutors say he was involved in the slaying of a Turkish truck driver.

Dulaimi said Sakka provided coordinates for mortar attacks on U.S. bases in Mosul, Samarra, Baghdad and Anbar province. He said Sakka also played a "vivid" role in an attack on Abu Ghraib prison, where the inmates included two organizers of the Istanbul bombings. A third organizer, Habib Akdas, was reported killed in the second, successful Marine offensive on Fallujah in November 2004.

In the aftermath of the fall of Fallujah, foreign fighters in Iraq convened a shura , or council, Karahan said. The meeting authorized 10 separate attacks on Israeli targets. Sakka, who told Turkish interrogators he learned bomb-making in Iraq, volunteered to strike the Israeli cruise ships that regularly call on Turkey's southern coast, Karahan said. The attorney said Sakka believed U.S. soldiers used the vessels for R & R and that his own days were numbered because his surgically altered face had appeared on an insurgent video of a downed American drone in Iraq. Turkish doctors had detected a nose job and scars suggesting Sakka might also have altered his chin and eyebrows.

"He decided it's about time his life ends, because he changed his face but he was still recognized," Karahan said.

In Antalya, Sakka spent lavishly preparing for the attack. Using an alias, he put down $60,000 on a villa in the Beldibi neighborhood, insisting on the unit closest to the beach, with a panoramic view of the resort city and its harbor. "His criterion was it had to be directly on the water, no matter what the price was," said Mehmet Yildirim, the watchman.

The two-bedroom Apt. 1703 was closer to town, in a complex overlooking the marina where Sakka moored a 27-foot yacht, the Tufan. On board was diving equipment and a submersible water scooter, capable of running for 45 minutes at a depth of 75 feet.

Karahan said Sakka spent days chatting with Israeli tourists, who flocked to the Turkish coast in summer, and learned the precise arrival time and route of the ship he planned to attack as it approached Antalya. In a rented Hyundai, he ferried the ingredients for a one-ton bomb -- hydrogen peroxide, aluminum powder, acetone -- from the port city of Mersin. Then he scoured Antalya's industrial zone for a shop that worked with chrome.

Sakka needed someone to build a distiller, a glorified pressure cooker to concentrate the hydrogen.

"He said he wanted to increase the hydrogen peroxide to 70 or 75 percent by extracting the water," said the metalworker who did the job, at the cost of another 2,000 euros, after checking out Sakka's claim that he wanted to use the chemical to bleach wood. The metalworker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears for his safety, said his only suspicion was that Sakka might be making drugs. But he said a friend who works with chemicals told him the wood-bleaching purpose made sense, and Sakka named a genuine firm in Syria as his employer.

During the week it took to build the device, Sakka spent time at the shop; one day, the conversation turned to al Qaeda. "God knows how it came up," the metalworker said. "I said, 'Nah, there's no such thing as al Qaeda.' Probably he was thinking, 'Yeah, you'll find out!' "

He did not look the part of an Islamic radical. The metalworker recalled pulling up next to Sakka on a street, rapping on the window and asking him why he wasn't in Syria, where he claimed he was headed the day the distiller was lifted into his trunk. Sakka's reply was a leering nod toward the striking young woman in the passenger seat, apparently the companion neighbors saw him nuzzling by the pool at the apartment complex.

Inside his apartment, the living room became a workshop crowded with plastic vats, gas masks, fire extinguishers and PVC pipes to circulate the water needed to keep stable more than 1,000 pounds of hydrogen. The room held 200 pounds of aluminum powder and 13 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives. Sakka said he intended to finish assembling the bomb on board the Tufan to ensure that no Turks were endangered.

How the fire began is unclear. The metalworker suspects it was sparked by his creation, wired for industrial use at 7,500 watts, enough to melt the wiring in a residential building. Hamid Obysi, a fellow Syrian who was assisting Sakka, told police they were both awakened by the explosion -- a small one, by all accounts, and less damaging than the resulting fire -- and scrambled for their lives, leaving behind a laptop computer, four cell phones, a digital camera and seven fake IDs. They took a taxi to Beldibi, where, after a quick visit to the villa, Sakka gave the guard 2,000 euros and instructions to keep quiet, prosecutors said. The fugitives left town by bus, with Sakka giving Obysi 1,000 euros in getaway money. Obysi was arrested trying to enter Syria.

Sakka proceeded east to Diyarbakir and made plans to double back, booking a domestic flight to Istanbul. He got as far as the police check at the airport, where his attorney said he surrendered to police officers who found his ID suspicious.

"I'm the one you're looking for," he said.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Bin Laden compares US "barbaric" acts to Saddam's
By Inal Ersan
Sun Feb 19, 6:47 PM ET

Osama bin Laden accused U.S. forces of "barbaric" acts in Iraq comparable to those committed by Saddam Hussein, according to an audio tape first broadcast in January and posted on the Internet in full on Monday.

"The (U.S.) criminality has gone as far as raping women and holding them hostage before their husbands ... as for the torture of men it has now come to the use of burning chemical acids and electric drills in their joints," he said in the tape posted with an English-language voice over.

"Despite all these barbaric methods ... the mujahideen are strengthening and increasing by the grace of Allah," he said.

The tape, whose authenticity could not be verified, was posted on the Internet by the al Qaeda media group al-Sahab.

In January, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television aired parts of the tape, in which bin Laden said al Qaeda was preparing further attacks in the United States.

U.S. intelligence analysts then authenticated the tape as a message from bin Laden. It was the first bin Laden tape since 2004.

In the audio released on Monday, bin Laden said the insurgency in Iraq was gaining strength despite "barbaric and oppressive steps taken by the American army and its agents to the extent that there is no longer any mentionable difference between this criminality and the criminality of Saddam."

The tape was first broadcast by Al Jazeera before new images surfaced of Iraqi prisoner abuse by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib prison in a 2004 scandal. The images showed sexual humiliation of prisoners and physical abuse.

U.S. officials have often accused Saddam of links to al Qaeda, one of the reasons of the U.S.-led war on Iraq which was chiefly based on allegations Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Bin Laden's remarks appeared to disassociate his group from Saddam's regime.

He said Washington was trying to muffle any media outlet that reports the truth about the losses of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Commenting on British newspaper report in a November that U.S. President George W. Bush had mulled bombing Al Jazeera's head office, the Saudi-born militant called Bush the "butcher of freedom" and criticized the prominent Arab television and the leaders of its host country, Qatar.

"Recently it has surfaced in documents that the butcher of freedom in the world had resolved to bomb the head offices of Al Jazeera satellite channel in Qatar after he had bombed its offices in Kabul and Baghdad although it, as it stands, is the instrument of your (Americans) servants there (in Qatar)."

In 2001, the station's Kabul office was hit by U.S. bombs and in 2003 Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a U.S. strike on its Baghdad office. The United States has denied deliberately targeting the station.




Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.


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Bin Laden compares US "barbaric" crimes to Saddam’s Aljazeera.com
Osama bin Laden accused the US of the same “barbaric” acts that Saddam Hussein committed in Iraq, according to a purported audiotape by Al-Qaeda leader that was first broadcast last month and posted on the Internet in full on Monday, Reuters reported. "The (U.S.) criminality has gone as far as raping women and holding them hostage before their husbands ... as for the torture of men it has now come to the use of burning chemical acids and electric drills in their joints," the speaker said in the in the 11-minute, 26-second tape. But he added that “the jihad is continuing with strength, for Allah be all the credit, despite all the barbarity, the repressive steps taken by the American Army and its agents, to the extent that there is no longer any mentionable difference between this criminality and the criminality of Saddam." By using this language to describe Saddam, bin Laden appeared to dissociate his group from the former Iraqi leader, and deny U.S. claims that Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda, which was one of the reasons the Bush Administration used to justify Iraq war, that was chiefly based on allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The tape was originally broadcast by an Arabic satellite channel in January, days after a U.S. air strike in Pakistan killed more than 18 civilians. Its full version comes after the release of new pictures of prisoner abuses by U.S. forces at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib jail. In the tape posted Monday, bin Laden also promised never to be captured alive. "I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don't want to die humiliated or deceived," he said. The speaker also challenged Bush administration assertions that it was better to fight terrorists in Iraq than on U.S. soil.
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Home:Qatar

Al Qaeda leaders not in Afghanistan: AbdullahPublished: Monday, 20 February, 2006, 11:32 AM Doha Time

Staff Reporter

Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah was sure yesterday that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taleban leader Mullah Omar were not present in his country.

He admitted that there was a recent increase in Taleban’s operations "was a matter of concern for us".

However, he told reporters that the security situation has improved taking into consideration that 90% of the country was under the control of Taleban and Al-Qaeda."

He said that discussions between President Hamid Karzai and the Pakistani leadership concentrated on ways to stop attacks from Taleban and Al-Qaeda and to put an end to the infiltration on both sides of the border.

Abdullah said that the government’s priority was to form a national army that will be a beginning of a reconciliation.

On the issue of cartoons offending the Prophet Muhammad, Abdullah questioned the logic of destroying infrastructure and property during demonstrations in order to show resentment.




Gulf Times Newspaper, 2006 ©

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...25-110611-4227r

Analysis: Al-Qaida alive and well in Saudi
By Sana Abdallah
United Press International
Published February 25, 2006


AMMAN, Jordan -- Al-Qaida network confirmed its operatives are still alive and kicking in Saudi Arabia by claiming responsibility for a foiled attack against a major oil installation in the Arab kingdom's eastern Dammam province Friday.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said in a statement on an Islamic militant website that two of its "heroic mujahedeen of the squadron of Sheikh Osama bin Laden, God protect him, has successfully penetrated the oil and gas refinery in the town of Abqaiq where two car bombs were able to enter."


While the group's claim could not be independently authenticated, analysts believe it was the work of al-Qaida to confirm the organization continues to have influence, eager operatives and weapons to strike in the oil-rich kingdom.

Friday's attack also confirms the security services are well aware of al-Qaida's presence in the country after having successfully prevented one car carrying gunmen and two other vehicles laden with explosives from entering the Abqaiq facility in a gun battle. The cars were detonated, leaving all the militants, whose number was not revealed, and two security officers killed and four others injured.

Although reports indicated the cars were painted in the colors of the Saudi state oil giant Aramco, which operates the facility, and the militants were dressed in Aramco uniforms, the security officers were nonetheless alert and managed to stop the operation from succeeding inside the complex.

While the Saudi authorities said the guards fired at the militants as they tried to ram into the first security gate, about a mile from the compound, other reports said they managed to penetrate the first gate leading to the facility and were stopped at the second gate.

Regardless of where they were stopped, the attackers would have needed to break through three high-security gates to enter the complex, and if successful, the attack may have caused one of the worst oil disasters in the kingdom, let alone a high number of casualties.

Security analysts say they believe al-Qaida, whose leaders Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have been calling for striking against oil installations in the Arab Gulf region, initially knew this operation would not succeed due to the heavy security around the facility.

They say al-Qaida more likely wanted to send a message that its fighters were still alive in Saudi Arabia after its operations declined significantly since the security authorities launched a war on the group after a May 2003 triple suicide bomb attack in Riyadh.

Officials say at least 125 militants, 90 civilians and 54 security officers were killed and hundreds of others wounded since then, while the authorities continue to issue new lists of suspected terrorists, mostly young men who are eventually captured or killed.

Al-Qaida claimed in its statement that Friday's attempted attack on the Abqaiq facility, through which two-thirds of Saudi oil exports pass, was a success and warned of future attacks on sensitive oil installations.

The statement said the attempted attack was done in the name of al-Qaida chief bin Laden, adding "these plants contribute to the pillage of oil wealth from the Muslims...This operation is in line with operations carried out by al-Qaida in its war against the Christians and Jews to stop their pillage of Muslim riches and as part of a campaign to chase them out of the Arabian Peninsula."

It continued to say the attackers were "heroes and an honorable model for the youth of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula," warning "there are many more who burn with impatience to fight the enemies of God among the Jews, Christians and their servile allies in apostate governments. They share the suffering endured by their Muslim brothers in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere."

The attempted operation in Abqaiq was the first major strike in Saudi Arabia, which sits on a quarter of the world's oil reserves, since suicide bombers tried to attack the interior ministry in Riyadh in December 2004.

In an audio-taped message in December 2004, Saudi-born dissident bin Laden for the first time called for attacking oil installations in the Gulf. His deputy, Egyptian-born al-Zawahiri, made a similar call in a recorded message a year later.

This was not al-Qaida's first oil-related target in Saudi Arabia, although the first in terms of infrastructure.

Militants stormed the offices of an American oil company in Yanbu in western Saudi Arabia in May 2004, killing six Westerners and a Saudi before the attackers were gunned down.

Later the same year, 22 people were killed when al-Qaida affiliates stormed oil company compounds in the eastern city of Khobar and took hostages.

But Abqaiq plant is by far the most significant oil-related target and is considered the world's most important oil facility, in which it receives crude oil from nearby fields, processes 6.8 million barrels a day and pumps it to oil shipping terminals on the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Al-Qaida experts say Friday's attempt, although a failure and apparently did not affect oil supplies, strongly indicates the network can reach oil-related targets to strike against and injure the kingdom's top economic commodity that will certainly have its repercussions on the rest of the oil-consuming world.

However, these experts add, al-Qaida leaders were also aware that striking against the kingdom's oil infrastructure could threaten the network's long-term objective to eventually run a country that relies on the oil industry for its wealth.

In addition, they say, damaging Saudi Arabia's major industry would also damage the organization's own support from the people, namely potential volunteers and financiers.

That may be precisely why al-Qaida's masterminds chose an obviously high-security facility knowing it will fail: To prove it has enough tools and clout to strike anywhere in the kingdom, but without harming the source of the people's livelihoods.

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...28-093330-6528r

Politics & Policies: Al-Qaida targets oil
By Claude Salhani
UPI International Editor
Published February 28, 2006


WASHINGTON -- Oil, once flaunted by producing countries as a political weapon to pressure the West, is now being used against them as al-Qaida promises further attacks on Saudi -- and possibly other -- installations.

As the world's largest oil producer and exporter, Saudi Arabia is also the most vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The kingdom sits on 25 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, estimated at around 261 billion barrels.


Al-Qaida's targets in Saudi Arabia, until now at least, tended to avoid oil facilities. In the past they have focused on foreign workers, offices and housing complexes. Friday's attack on Abqaiq is a clear indication of a change in tactics.

In a tape posted on an extremist website, bin Laden asserted that "Targeting America in Iraq in terms of economy and loss of life is a golden and unique opportunity... Be active and prevent them from reaching the oil, and mount your operations accordingly, particularly in Iraq and the Gulf."

His deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called on fighters to "concentrate their attacks on Muslims' stolen oil, from which most of the revenues go to the enemies of Islam while most of what they leave is seized by the thieves who rule our countries."

And in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has consistently targeted the country's oil installations.

Khalid R. Al-Rodhan, a visiting fellow at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security estimated there have been 299 attacks on Iraqi oil infrastructures and personnel between June 2003 and February 12, 2006.

Meanwhile, several thousands of miles and another continent away, rebels in Nigeria assaulted oil installations, disrupting exports and forcing Shell to suspend operations. A group calling itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed responsibility for the attacks and the kidnapping of foreign oil workers in the West African country.

Al-Rodhan points out to the similarities in the rhetoric used by the Nigerian group to that of al-Qaida. MEND claims they are fighting a "total war" to control the oil wealth of the Niger Delta.

Until now, Saudi Arabia has played an important stabilizing role in the global oil market by not only meeting shortages in oil supplies, but also in its ability to reassure the market, says Al-Rodhan, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But attacks on its oil facilities would hamper that ability. Saudi Aramco, the company that manages Saudi's oil infrastructure, claims that even if some of the kingdom's facilities were destroyed, it has adequate backup and redundant facilities to produce at near capacity.

In selecting their target, al-Qaida demonstrated it knew what it was going after. According to a CSIS report, Abqaiq holds strategic importance for numerous reasons:

-- it holds one of the largest oil fields in the world.

-- it is the main oil processing center for Arabian Extra Light and Arabian Light crude oils.

-- it has a capacity to produce more than 7 million barrels a day.

-- it includes pumping stations, gas-oil separator plants, and pipelines.

-- it has a production capacity of close to 0.43 million barrels a day.

-- it is predicted to reach 0.44 million barrels a day by 2010.

Understandably, the kingdom has put in place extraordinary security precautions to guard its oil fields, terminals and approximate 17,850 km (11,091 miles) of pipeline that traverses the country.

According to a CSIS study by Anthony Cordesman and Nawaf Obaid, each oil terminal and each field has its own specialized security unit, comprised of 5,000 Saudi Aramco security forces, and an unknown number of specialized units of the National Guard and Ministry of Interior forces. The Coast Guard and components of the Navy protect the installations from the sea.

Special forces from the Saudi Ministry of Interior include: members of the Special Security Forces, Special Emergency Forces, the General Security Service (domestic intelligence), regular forces of the Public Security Administration (police and fire fighters), the Petroleum Installation Security Force, and specialized brigades of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, Saudi Royal Navy, and the Coast Guard.

The CSIS report further states that Saudi Aramco has built advanced communication centers to manage emergency and supply disruptions in its pipelines and processing hubs.

While al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia may well be on the defensive, "the asymmetric and terrorist threat to the kingdom and its energy facilities is certainly not over," says Al-Rodhan. Abqaiq "is one battle in the war against al-Qaida.

"It is equally important to note that the attack against Abqaiq should not be seen as a turning point in either Saudi stability or the global energy market," says the Saudi analyst. Yet "it also signals that al-Qaida is changing tactics to attack an area that will garner most attention and inflict most damage on the Saudi leadership, the U.S., and the international community."

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...01-101040-6669r

Analysis: Sudan distrusts U.N., fears al-Qaida
By William M. Reilly
UPI United Nations Correspondent
Published March 1, 2006


UNITED NATIONS -- Sudan, a North African nation one-quarter the size of the United States, has been plagued by conflict since independence from Britain in 1956. The infighting continues today in the western region of Darfur, but the Khartoum now sees external enemies on the horizon.

The top U.N. envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, said Wednesday that Sudan's leaders harbor fears of both the United Nations and al-Qaida. These fears, he continued, stem from the uncertain results a U.N. peacekeeping mission would bring if it were to replace the present African Union forces in Darfur.


"Politically we are in a bit of a stalemate," said Pronk, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative to Sudan.

"The climate in Khartoum against the United Nations is heating up very strongly... threats, there are warnings, there is talk about al-Qaida and there is fear in Khartoum, that is being used, that the U.N. transition will be not a U.N. transition but a conspiracy which will bring Sudan into the same situation as Iraq a couple of years ago," Pronk told reporters at U.N. World Headquarters in New York Tuesday.

"Of course that is a feeling, which is being manipulated by leaders," he added. "At the same time it's also a feeling which is true for many people in the streets of Khartoum, and in that very difficult situation we at the moment are working."

Pronk's mission was deployed to support the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed about a year ago in Nairobi between the government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement.

However, it also has a mandate from the U.N. Security Council to provide some support to the 7,000-strong AU mission in Darfur.

Despite the peace agreement, violence involving the rebels, government forces and militias has continued in Darfur, prompting the Security Council Monday to consider sanctioning individuals deemed to be a threat to the peace or to human rights in the area.

The panel "expressed its desire to move forward expeditiously on targeted sanctions, which I expect we'll do shortly," Ambassador John Bolton of the United States, the February council president, told reporters after the Monday session.

"The purpose of the targeted sanctions mechanism... is to apply pressure -- and I don't think we should be ashamed to say that -- to people who are violating the arms embargo, not contributing to our effort to establish an effective peace process in Darfur and restore the deteriorating security situation there," he said.

Since fighting flared a week ago in North Darfur, a large number of villages have been attacked and burned, markets have been looted and people displaced, UNMIS said. Clashes between the Sudan Armed Forces and rebel Sudan Liberation Army are ongoing.

Pronk was in South Darfur, bordering on the Central African Republic, over the weekend, urging parties to exercise restraint and protect civilians, a U.N. spokesman said.

He had been expected to attend a Mar. 3 ministerial meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council on the shift to a proposed Darfur peacekeeping force supervised by the United Nations, but that session has now been postponed to Mar. 10.

On Tuesday Pronk also said that 300 people had been killed in one area of South Darfur since December by attackers riding horses and camels and backed up by military vehicles.

He also said he was "very concerned about what's going on around the border in Darfur" with neighboring Chad, where more than 200,000 Sudanese refugees have sought safety in the past three years from the killings in their homeland, adding that there was violence on both sides of the frontier.

The U.N. High Commission for Refugees said the agency was seeing "population movements in both directions along the troubled Chad-Sudan border, further evidence of the spreading insecurity that now straddles this increasingly insecure region."

"In addition to the more than 200,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur who have sought refuge in eastern Chad in the past three years, we're now seeing indications that some Chadians are themselves fleeing in the opposite direction, to Darfur," UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said in Geneva Tuesday.

"High Commissioner Antonio Guterres has repeatedly expressed deep concern over the potential for further destabilization in the region," she added, noting that agency officials were on a one-week mission to Chad to visit its borders with Sudan and the CAR.

UNHCR said it had reports of more CAR arrivals fleeing banditry as well as hostilities between rebel groups and government forces in the northern region of their country.

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Al_Qaeda_bra...rates_0302.html

Al Qaeda bragged of infiltrating Emirates government, casting shadow on security of port deal
RAW STORY
Published: March 2, 2006


Al Qaeda bragged of infiltrating the United Arab Emirates government, according to a 2002 letter posted on a U.S. military site and discovered by ThinkProgress.

In the letter, dated in May or June of 2002 and translated by the U.S., al Qaeda declares that the Emirates is "committing acts of injustice" in order to "appease the Americans' wishes which include: spying, persecution and detainment." In return, the group says they have infiltrated the Emirate government. The letter can be seen here.

"You are well aware that we have infiltrated your security, censorship and monetary agencies along with other agencies that should not be mentioned," the authors write. "Therefore, we warn of the continuation of practicing such policies, which do not serve your interests and will only cost you many problems that will place you in an embarrassing state before your citizens."

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"Our policies are not to operate in your homeland and/or tamper with your security because we are occupied with others which we consider are enemies of this nation," they continue. "If you compel us to do so, we are prepared to postpone our program for a short period and allocate some time for you."

It concludes by asking that the Emirates release all detainees "since [the] September incidents."



The claim that al Qaeda had infiltrated the UAE government seems to raise serious concern as to whether a U.S.-backed plan to turn over 21 ports to a company owned by the country's governing monarchs is sound.

During the initial 30-day review of the port deal, the Coast Guard warned of gaps in intelligence as regards the Arab firm, saying, "There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat assessment" of the potential merger.

"The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities," the half-page assessment added.

Another assessment by the General Accountability Office -- which has received scant attention -- concluded that the Committee for Foreign Investment, the arm of the Treasury Department that approves such deals, could not possibly conduct a thorough intelligence review in 30 days. It adds that the U.S. has put pressure for the reviews to be conducted faster.

“In complex cases in which national security concerns have been raised ... case documentation we reviewed revealed the significant pressures some agencies face to complete analysis within 23 days,” the GAO said in a 2005 report, noting that the Justice Department “shared our concern with respect to the time constraints imposed by the current process. Specifically, Justice stated that ‘gathering timely and fully vetted input from the intelligence community is critical to a thorough and comprehensive national security assessment. Any potential extension of the time available to the participants for the collection and analysis of that information would be helpful.'"

The GAO report was revealed by ROLL CALL in a relatively unnoticed piece by John Stanton.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/02/...in1364828.shtml
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U.S. Intel: Qaeda Plotting 'Big Bang'

March 2, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS/AP) U.S. officials tell CBS News that intelligence has picked up reports that al Qaeda in Iraq is planning what one source calls the "Big Bang," a spectacular terrorist attack in Iraq against either a single high-profile target or multiple targets simultaneously.

Last week's mosque bombing in city of Samarra that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war was the work of terrorists, some U.S. officials have theorized. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi seems to be betting that another big bang would push the country over the brink, reports CBS News correspondent David Martin. The bomb in one of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims set off violence all across the country that left hundreds dead.

The Iraqi government has banned all private vehicles in Baghdad during daylight hours Friday, the Muslim prayer day, just as it did last week. That kept car bombs, what the military cars vehicle-born improvised explosive devices, off the streets.

But Zarqawi just waited until the ban was lifted.

"The day the vehicle ban was lifted, all these VBIEDS that he had staged he deployed in Iraq and detonated over the last three days," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a U.S. military spokesman.

This week, the ban takes effect when the overnight curfew ends at 6 a.m. Friday and will last until 4 p.m. Friday, according to a statement issued by the prime minister's office. Police and army were instructed to seal off the capital and seize any private vehicles that defy the ban.

Pentagon officials are also worried that a terrorist spectacular will undermine administration claims about progress in Iraq and therefore weaken public support for the war here at home, Martin reports.

Also Thursday, a bomb ripped through a vegetable market in a Shiite section of Baghdad and a leading Sunni politician escaped an attack on his convoy as at least 36 people were killed in unrelenting violence pushing Iraq toward civil war.

As sectarian killing surged last week, the U.S. 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division was put on alert in neighboring Kuwait for a possible move into Iraq, the military said. But no orders were given for such a move.

The violence has complicated talks to form a broad-based government, which U.S. officials consider essential to cut support for insurgents among the Sunni-Arab minority so coalition forces can start drawing down later this year.



©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/oped/ci_3557429

Article Last Updated: 3/01/2006 05:44 AM

The U.S. has lost sight of bin Laden's vision

John BRENNAN


Inside Bay Area

OSAMA bin Laden's plan to use terrorism to trigger an Islamic reawakening that will challenge Western dominance of world events and assure the ascendancy of Sunni extremists is moving forward — at an alarming rate.
Hibernating securely somewhere along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, bin Laden and his Egyptian sidekick, Ayman al-Zawahiri, must be deriving warmth from the fact that the Iraqi insurgency has taken on a decidedly Sunni extremist coloration; that Hamas has successfully exploited political opportunities in Palestine; that radicals within Europe's Muslim communities are gaining strength and destructive force; and that caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad have led to violence even among Muslims not inclined toward terrorism.

Terrorism, in bin Laden's strategy, is only a tactic, a means to achieve what he believes is a providentially ordained objective — global domination by an Islamic caliphate. Yet dangerously, the United States is focusing on countering that tactic, missing the growth of the extremist Islamic forest as we flounder among the terrorist trees. Maybe it's because we have led ourselves to believe that the term "al-Qaida" means "Kill Americans." It doesn't. It means "foundation" or "base" in Arabic. Bin Laden chose the word intentionally and cleverly. He knew that his battle-hardened core of veterans from the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s would serve only as the foundational wellspring to irrigate fields of political, social and economic discontent among the Muslim masses.

He also recognized that the global explosion of mass media outlets during the last decade gave al-Qaida a ready recruitment vehicle. Headline-grabbing violent attacks against the West, especially the United States, broadcast by al-Jazeera, CNN or the BBC — and abetted by instantaneous Internet communication — were certain to impress and win adherents.

Bin Laden also has insidiously convinced us to use terminology that lends legitimacy to his activities. He has hijacked the term "jihad" to such an extent that U.S. and other Western officials regularly use the terms "jihadist" and "terrorist" interchangeably. In doing so, they unwittingly transfer the religious legitimacy inherent in the concept of jihad to murderous acts that are anything but holy.

While al-Qaida has been rocked by a well-financed and increasingly successful international counterterrorism effort, there is no equivalent successful campaign to counter bin Laden's strategic plan and vision. Sunni extremist activists roam virtually unchallenged in the Islamic world, spreading political and ideological seeds among a younger generation thirsting for attention, power and celestial reward.

Leaders of Islamic countries, organizations and local communities have most of the burden, as well as the best chance, of steering Muslim hearts and minds away from bin Laden's world vision. Yet while most distance themselves from his terrorist acts, their penchant for engaging in fiery rhetoric castigating the West helps breed greater intolerance of non-Muslims. The wide disparity between the haves and have-nots in the Middle East also fuels the fires of Islamic activism.

It would be in the United States' best interests to locate and deal with bin Laden sooner rather than later, to undercut his image of invincibility among his followers. But whether his ultimate demise is the result of a well-targeted missile, disease or old age, his days are numbered. His strategic plan, however, has the disturbing potential to live on — unless we are able to ensure that his vision, his values, his followers and he himself are discredited in the Islamic fields he has so adeptly cultivated.


John Brennan, former head of the National Counterterrorism Center and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, retired from the CIA in November after a 25-year career. He is president and CEO of The Analysis Corp. of McLean, Va.

March 5, 2006
In Tape, Qaeda No. 2 Seeks Strikes on West
By REUTERS
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, March 4 (Reuters) — Al Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called on Muslims to attack the West in an audiotape posted on the Internet on Saturday, urging strikes similar to those in recent years against New York, London and Madrid.

In a video of his remarks televised by Al Jazeera, he also urged the Islamist militant group Hamas not to recognize peace deals signed by the Palestinian Authority with Israel.

He also called on Muslims to boycott countries where satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad had been published, including Denmark, Norway, France and Germany, and said that Muslims should prevent the West from "stealing Muslims' oil."

Muslims have to "inflict losses on the crusader West, especially to its economic infrastructure with strikes that would make it bleed for years," Mr. Zawahiri said. "We have to prevent the crusader West from stealing the Muslims' oil, which is being drained in the biggest robbery in history." It was not clear if the tape was made before the failed Qaeda attack last month on a Saudi oil facility.



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Zawahiri berates West on cartoons
Al-Qaeda ideologue Ayman al-Zawahiri has attacked the West for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, in video footage shown by Arab TV network al-Jazeera.
Zawahiri urged Muslims to boycott countries that had published cartoons caricaturing the Prophet.

The cartoons were deemed blasphemous by Muslims and unleashed violent protests across the world.

Zawahiri also endorsed the Palestinian militant group Hamas' election win and urged Muslims to attack the West.

He accused the outgoing Palestinian administration of betrayal.

"No Palestinian has the right to give away a grain of the soil," Zawahiri said.

"The seculars in the Palestinian Authority have sold out Palestine for crumbs... Giving them legitimacy is against Islam."

He urged Hamas to "continue the armed struggle" and reject agreements struck between its predecessors in government and Israel, describing them as "surrender accords".

Strikes on West

In a reference to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad printed in several European newspapers, Zawahiri said the West had committed deliberate blasphemy and was guilty of double standards.

"They did it on purpose and they continue to do it without apologising, even though no one dares to harm Jews or to challenge Jewish claims about the Holocaust nor even to insult homosexuals."

He also singled out domestic Western policies he said discriminated against Muslims.

"In France a Muslim father cannot prevent his daughter from having sex because she is protected by the law, but this same law punishes her if she covers her hair," he said.

He called for strikes against Western nations, as well as pro-Western Muslim governments, like those of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and Tunisia.

"Inflict losses on the crusader West, especially to its economic infrastructure with strikes that would make it bleed for years," he urged.

"The strikes on New York, Washington, Madrid and London are the best examples," he said.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/midd...ast/4775222.stm

Published: 2006/03/04 23:54:47 GMT

© BBC MMVI

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/03/05/...tape/index.html

Muslims urged to make West 'bleed for years'
Audio attributed to al Qaeda No. 2 may be from recent video

Sunday, March 5, 2006; Posted: 10:15 p.m. EST (03:15 GMT)
(CNN) -- A taped message attributed to Osama bin Laden's deputy calls on Muslims to attack the "economic infrastructure" of the West and stop Western countries from "stealing" Mideast oil, according to recordings posted on Islamist Web sites Sunday.

The statement calls on al Qaeda's followers to launch attacks that will make Western powers "bleed for years."

"We have to prevent the crusaders from stealing the Muslims' oil, which is being drained in the biggest robbery in history," the statement, attributed to No. 2 al Qaeda figure Ayman al-Zawahiri, said.

The statement came out a week after Saudi authorities thwarted a suicide car-bomb attack on the Abqaiq oil-processing facility in eastern Saudi Arabia.

The February 24 incident did not affect the facility's operations, Oil Minister Ali bin Ibrahim al-Naimi said, and five suspected Islamic militants that Saudi authorities linked to the attack died in a gunbattle near Riyadh three days later. (Full story)

The audio appears to have been taken from a recent videotaped message, portions of which were broadcast Saturday on the Arabic-language news network Al-Jazeera.

In those excerpts, al-Zawahiri complimented the Islamic militant group Hamas on its Palestinian election victory, spoke against the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed and condemned the latest images of prisoners being mistreated by U.S. troops at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. (Full story)

In the video, al-Zawahiri appeared standing in front of a panel of white lace curtains and wearing a black turban. Although he referred to recent events, it is unknown when the tape was made.

"All this in the West is allowed so they can steal and occupy our land, and stealing our wealth and insulting us and our religion and Quran and our prophet. And after that, they gave us lessons on freedom and human rights," he said.

Al-Zawahiri was last heard from publicly January 30, when he appeared in a video to announce he was alive and well after a U.S. missile strike targeted him January 13 in Pakistan. (Full story)

U.S. officials have said that between four and eight al Qaeda members were killed in the CIA attack in Damadola, near the Afghanistan border.

Pakistani officials said 18 people were killed in the airstrike, including five women and five children, which prompted protests across the country. (Full story)

There was no independent confirmation that the voice on the tape was that of al-Zawahiri, an Egypt-born physician who has remained at large since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The U.S. government has put a $25 million price on his head.

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...05-041355-5346r

Analysis: Al-Qaida in Jordan persistent, well-organized
By Sana Abdallah
United Press International
Published March 5, 2006


AMMAN, Jordan -- The Jordanian authorities have given minor details about last week's foiled al-Qaida terrorist attempt against a "vital civilian installation" in the country, but few are questioning the credibility of the official claims and security measures this time after a successful triple suicide attack in November.

The authorities announced Wednesday they arrested two Iraqis and a Libyan, followed the second day with the capture of a third Iraqi suspect, in connection with an al-Qaida plot to bomb an unidentified civilian installation.


While they did not reveal the alleged target, independent reports quoted security officials as saying the suspects were planning to bomb a major power plant that supplies the country with electricity. But the report could not be officially confirmed.

The authorities said they continued to hunt for a Saudi and two other Iraqi militants, whom they believed were in a "neighboring country," in obvious reference to Syria or Iraq.

State-owned television broadcast pictures of those arrested, images of automatic rifles and explosive canisters the authorities said they seized in the possession of the suspects.

Although the government gave few details on the foiled attempt, skeptics who normally question the credibility of such arrests and claims of foiling terror attempts are this time believing the official story that al-Qaida is not going to leave Jordan terror-free.

The Nov. 9 suicide attacks on three hotels in the capital, Amman, which killed 60 people and injured 100 others - mostly Jordanians - left little room for doubt that the kingdom's campaign against al-Qaida that began in 1999 is well-founded and is not merely a campaign to crack down on public freedoms.

Columnist in Jordan's independent al-Ghad, Jamil Nimry, wrote Saturday there was no doubt in anyone's mind the authorities have in fact thwarted a possible attack last week.

Nimry argued the Nov. 9 suicide bombings "removed all doubts that came with every previous announcement that revealed the aborting of a terrorist attack. That attack shocked public opinion, as if there was a need for the terrorists to succeed once to suddenly discover that bloody terrorism and blowing up people are not just allegations, but facts that threatens us."

The hotel bombings were claimed by al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born fugitive, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was sentenced to death several times in Jordan on terrorism charges and who has a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head.

The opposition voices that had previously screamed "foul" and "fabrication" whenever the authorities revealed an aborted attack and when the State Security Court convicted suspected al-Qaida terrorists are this time relatively silent.

However, some commentators warned that concealing details to the public produces room for uneasiness and "dangerous speculation," as the English-language Jordan Times daily warned in an editorial.

Dozens of groups, mostly Jordanian, plotting to launch attacks against Jordanian and Western targets have been tried in the kingdom's military tribunals.

But since last August, the attacks carried out or foiled have been perpetrated by non-Jordanians, according to the authorities. They say the terrorists are now infiltrating from Jordan's eastern neighbor, Iraq, which many see as having turned into fertile ground for al-Qaida terrorists after the chaos that ensued the U.S.-British invasion and occupation of the country.

A triple Katyusha rocket attack from Jordan's Red Sea port city of Aqaba in August, claimed by al-Qaida, in which one Jordanian soldier was killed, was carried out by Iraqis and Syrians, while the hotel bombings were done by Iraqis recruited by al-Zarqawi.

Officials say the intelligence and security services have succeeded in cracking down and eliminating local al-Qaida elements in its 6-year campaign and now the organization cannot find willing Jordanian volunteers; thus resorting to Iraqi and other Arab zealots to carry out their attacks in the kingdom.

Al-Qaida statements have made no secret of their intent to try to topple the Hashemite regime by destabilizing the country, which enjoys a powerful security system to the point of being labeled a "police state."

Jordan, squeezed as a buffer zone between Israel, Iraq and Syria, is perhaps one of al-Qaida's most important targets, having signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and is a close U.S. ally seen by the network as an apostate state.

Analysts say the latest aborted attempt, whose announcement coincided with a rebellion in three prisons in Jordan by al-Qaida convicts, shows this group is well-organized and persistent in trying to find security gaps to achieve its objectives in this country.

Inmates managed to take a dozen security officers and guards, including the head of the country's penitentiaries, hostages for more than 12 hours Wednesday in Juwaideh Prison outside Amman, where 80 al-Qaida prisoners are held.

The riots apparently broke out after the authorities rejected demands by inmates that two top al-Qaida convicted operatives on death row be transferred to their prison and to keep all the Islamic militants in one facility.

The rebellion ended peacefully and the chief of the penitentiaries later resigned from his position, although it was not clear whether the authorities agreed to the prisoners' demands.

Experts say the fact the riots by Islamic militants erupted simultaneously in three prisons in the country, and less than a week after a four-day rebellion by al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan that left six detainees dead, indicates there is some kind of coordination among these prisoners, and perhaps with their leadership on the outside.

In the meantime, Jordan's security services are finding a way to subdue al-Qaida elements inside the prison walls and working to prevent a repeat of the Nov. 9 deadly attacks as the kingdom realizes it is one of al-Qaida's important targets.

But Jordan is adamant to prove it will not be the easiest to penetrate.

http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com...&partnerID=1665


Osama bin Laden fan clubs build online communities
By Kasie Hunt, USA TODAY
Al-Qaeda sympathizers are using Orkut, a popular, worldwide Internet service owned by Google, to rally support for Osama bin Laden, share videos and Web links promoting terrorism and recruit non-Arabic-speaking Westerners, according to terrorism experts and a survey of the sites.

This "community" on Orkut declares, "The World Needs More Osamas."


Most jihadist message boards on traditional websites are in Arabic and require users to know someone connected with the boardbefore they can gain access. Social networking services such as Orkut, Friendster and MySpace, however, allow users to create personal profiles and associate with "communities" based on shared interests. After users join one of these services, they have access to the forum postings in any public community.

These popular Internet services can be used for everything from publicizing a garage band to finding dates to connecting supporters of democracy — or terrorism.

Political impact

Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group, notes in a recent report that Internet use has grown faster in Iran than in any other Middle Eastern country, largely because of its political potential. "Weblogs are much used at times of crisis, such as during the June 2003 student demonstrations, when they were the main source of news about the protests and helped the students to rally and organize," the group's report says.

Militants, too, are flourishing on websites. On Orkut, at least 10 communities are devoted to praising bin Laden, al-Qaeda or jihad (holy war) against the United States. They can be found easily through a simple English-language search of the site. The largest bin Laden community has more than 2,000 members, according to Orkut's tracking data, available on the site. It has a link to the site of the Islamic Army in Iraq, the group that claimed responsibility for and released a video of a bombing Dec. 2 that killed 10 Marines in Fallujah.

"They're one of the largest insurgency groups in Iraq today," says Rita Katz, director of SITE Institute, a Washington non-profit that tracks terrorist activity online for government and private clients, including the Department of Homeland Security. SITE gathers data by infiltrating and monitoring message boards and other sites that terrorism supporters frequent.

English-speaking visitors to the sites can find videos of attacks, see pictures of dead U.S. soldiers and read an English translation of the Iraq-based wing of al-Qaeda's latest communiqué before it is available in English anywhere else, Katz says. "We know for sure that al-Qaeda is trying to recruit as many as possible from the Western societies, not people who look like Arabs," she says. "This is a good place to be if you want to recruit people like that."

Translated communiqués from al-Qaeda in Iraq have been appearing, four or five at a time, on a message board forum within an Orkut community since Dec. 26, Katz says. When al-Qaeda's operation in Iraq officially started calling itself the Mujahedin Shura Council on Jan. 15, she says, updates on the forum reflected the change.

Google, which operates Orkut, says it tries to balance the free flow of information against the appearance of objectionable material by keeping intervention to a minimum. Google spokeswoman Debbie Frost says the service may remove obscene, defamatory or otherwise objectionable material from Orkut sites "but has no obligation to." Frost did acknowledge that Google deleted some terrorism-related content that violated Orkut's published terms of service after USA TODAY inquired about it.

"It is a very fine line to walk sometimes," says Paul McMasters, a free speech expert at the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Va. "But our tradition under the First Amendment is always: Come down on the side of more speech, not less speech."

In any case, says Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney with the advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, the sheer size of the Internet makes it "simply impossible to monitor all the communications that get posted."

Popular overseas

Orkut, which claims 13 million members, is particularly popular overseas, notably in Iran and Brazil. Iranian traffic was curtailed in January when the government banned Orkut and several popular blogging tools that carried anti-government content, Reporters Without Borders noted.

Despite Iran's actions, Orkut's size offers a measure of protection from outside interference that attracts terrorism sympathizers. "It's difficult for Saudi Arabia, for example, to censor that whole website" because so many citizens use it for legitimate purposes and would notice if it were shut down, Katz says. Orkut users who are members of communities such as "Al-Qaeda" and "Jihad Videos" take advantage of this to trade information as well as to provide links to other radical websites.

More than half of Orkut's users claim, upon registration, to be ages 18-25, and more than 75% say they are under 35, according to the service's tracking data. Some experts see the communities fostering an environment that reinforces radical beliefs among young people. "You are creating what I call a virtual community of hatred and seeding these ideas very early," says Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Others note that the technology makes possible some free speech in oppressive countries and say that will ultimately foster democracy. "You've got to remember the entire picture," says Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. "The technology allows more good from the good people than bad from the bad people. It has immense positive consequences."

"I think the knee-jerk response will be to blame the messenger," says Bruce Hoffman, director of the RAND Institute's counterterrorism center. "But the jihadists are already using the Internet," he says. "The real issue is how we counter these messages of hate and radicalism."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-03-...htm?POE=TECISVA

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...11/ixworld.html

Al-Qa'eda steps up propaganda war with bloodthirsty DVDs
By Isambard Wilkinson and Imtiaz Ali in Miran Shah
(Filed: 11/03/2006)

Al-Qa'eda is flooding the unruly border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan with propaganda DVDs, in a media campaign designed to win recruits and sympathy.

The films, sold for 40p each in local markets and distributed throughout Pakistan and across the Afghan frontier, depict Taliban forces attacking American, Pakistani and Afghan soldiers. Punishment killings and damage inflicted by American and Pakistani forces on both Islamic fighters and local civilians are also portrayed.


The cover of 'Holy War and Nothing Else'
To the alarm of the Pakistani authorities, the blood-soaked movies sell well in the hard-bitten North West Frontier Province, despite a police crackdown on their production and sale.

"We have moved against any form of production that is against Pakistan or our allies," said a spokesman for the government of the semi-autonomous, and largely lawless, Tribal Areas.

"Not only have we confiscated illegal films, but we have countered them with leaflets and messages broadcast through our three radio stations in the Tribal Areas".

Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the region has become a refuge for local and foreign radical militants, believed to include Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Last week the Pakistani army temporarily lost control of Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, to forces loyal to the Taliban and al-Qa'eda.

It was the heaviest fighting witnessed since an operation in 2003 when the army entered the Tribal Areas at the behest of America. During the operation to re-establish control over Miran Shah, the army claimed it killed more than 100 militants, while civilian casualties are unknown.

Despite the presence of 70,000 of its troops, the army has only managed to exert minimal control over the porous border region. The Miran Shah incident underlined fears that weak central government presence has enabled the free movement of militants, money, weapons and now propaganda in the region.

Qari Amanullah, a DVD shopkeeper in the town, said: "These jihadi DVDs have made our businesses flourish. There is a great demand for such films because they are popular with all age groups.

"Young boys used to watch movies, particularly Indian blockbusters, but now these DVDs have replaced movies and even young boys are going to be addicts.

"The DVD showing the recent killing of bandits by the Taliban and then hanging their dead bodies from electricity pylons is the current top of the chart."

He said that a DVD about Taliban fighters, The Young Eagles of High Mountains, is another hit with about 20,000 copies already sold.

The films, mostly scripted in Urdu, Pashto and Arabic, are produced by two "production companies", Ummat Studios and Jundullah CD Centre. The films do not mention their contact details, but the Shawal and Mir Ali areas of Northern Waziristan - the latest battlefield for Pakistani troops - are believed to be the centre of production.

Naeem Noor Khan, an al-Qa'eda computer expert, is said to have visited South Waziristan before his arrest in Lahore last July.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F20...F58B6B887E5.htm

Al-Qaida warning to Saudis

Thursday 16 March 2006, 13:05 Makka Time, 10:05 GMT


Al-Juweir was killed in Abqaiq plant attack last month
A slain al-Qaida leader in Saudi Arabia, in a video recorded before his killing, warned Americans and the US-allied Saudi monarchy to leave the kingdom or face more bloodshed.

In the video, Fahd al-Juweir, one of five militants killed last month after taking part in a failed attack on a key oil facility, called on Muslims everywhere to join their fight to expel Westerners and install Islamic rule.

It was not clear when the video, which was posted on a website used by militant groups, was recorded.

"To Americans we tell you to leave Muhammad's peninsula [Saudi Arabia], and leave all Muslim lands. Stop aiding Jews in Palestine and stop aiding Christians in Muslim lands or else you will face killing, destruction and bombings," said al-Juweir, who was on a most-wanted list of al-Qaida suspects.

"To the Saudi government, we have come to you to slaughter you and your rule is fleeting ... If you knew what the [mujahideen] have prepared for you, you would be fleeing this Arabian peninsula."

Holy war

Al-Juweir also called on Saudi security forces to join the group's holy war.

"To the Saudi government, we have come to you to slaughter you and your rule is fleeting ... If you knew what the [mujahideen] have prepared for you, you would be fleeing this Arabian Peninsula"

Fahd al-Juweir, slain al Qaida leader in Saudi Arabia

"[Prince] Nayef bin Abdul Aziz [the interior minister] told you to sell your souls to his government and kill for him in defence of Americans ... Stop defending tyrants and join the mujahideen or else you know what awaits you," he said.

Al-Qaida has vowed more attacks after the attempted assault on the Abqaiq oil processing plant.

Two suicide attackers, both on a list of wanted militants, were killed in the attack which was the first significant strike by al-Qaida militants on oil facilities in the world's top crude exporter.

The Saudi wing of al-Qaida has been waging a violent campaign for more than two years aimed at toppling the pro-US monarchy and expelling Westerners from the birthplace of Islam.

Officials say that about 144 foreigners and Saudis, including security forces, and 120 militants have died in attacks and clashes with police since May 2003, when al-Qaida suicide bombers hit three Western housing compounds in Riyadh.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...icle%2FShowFull

Mar. 18, 2006 13:05 | Updated Mar. 18, 2006 16:13
Al-Qaida vow to overthrow Saudi royals
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
CAIRO, Egypt

The leader of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, who was killed in a raid last month, vowed in his final testament that his group will overthrow the royal family and threatened more attacks against the kingdom and Americans in the region, according to a video released Saturday.

The video showed Fahd Faraaj al-Juwair wearing a red T-shirt and what seems to be an explosive belt, reading his will. Behind him, the map of the Saudi Kingdom, written on it, "Expel the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula."

Addressing the Saudi Royal family, al-Juwair said, "if you know what the youth are preparing for you, you will be busy to escape this peninsula," he said in the video, sent in an email to The Associated Press.

He warned Americans, "Get out of Muhammad's peninsula, get out of all Muslim lands, stop supporting the Jews in Palestine, halt supporting Christians in Muslim lands, or else you'll have nothing but killing, destruction and explosions," al-Juwair added.

Al-Juwair was reported killed by Saudi security forces along with four other leading militants in a Feb. 27 raid in the capital Riyadh, launched in the wake of an al-Qaida attack on the Abqaiq complex, the largest oil processing facility in the world.

Some U.S. Officials Fear Iran Is Helping Al Qaeda

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence officials, already focused on
Iran's potential for building nuclear weapons, are struggling to
solve a more immediate mystery: the murky relationship between the
new Tehran leadership and the contingent of Al Qaeda leaders
residing in the country. By Josh Meyer.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ezj...Io30G2B0HN5x0EC

- Eye On Eurasia: Russia As East-West Bridge
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Eye_On_Eur...est_Bridge.html

Tallinn, Estonia (UPI) Mar 22, 2006 - The Russian Federation must become a bridge between East and West if the world is to avoid a disastrous clash of civilizations, two leaders of that country's Islamic community said this week -- and its 20-million-strong Muslim population can play a major role in making that happen.

Israel May Be Next al-Qaida Battleground
By STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 39 minutes ago

Signs are mounting that al-Qaida terrorists are setting their sights on Israel and the Palestinian territories as their next jihad battleground.

Israel has indicted two West Bank militants for al-Qaida membership, Egypt arrested operatives trying to cross into Israel and a Palestinian security official has acknowledged al-Qaida is "organizing cells and gathering supporters."

Al-Qaida's inroads are still preliminary, but officials fear a doomsday scenario if it takes root.

Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon have established contacts with al-Qaida followers linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, according to two Israeli officials.

Al-Zarqawi has established footholds in the countries neighboring Israel — Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan — and is interested in bringing his fight to Israel, too, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because Israel does not want to identify those involved in the issue.

Tuesday's indictment of two militants on charges of belonging to al-Qaida and receiving funds from the group for a planned double-bombing in Jerusalem was Israel's most concrete allegation to date linking al-Qaida to West Bank Palestinians.

The indictment described in detail how the two, Azzam Abu Aladas and Balal Hafnai, met with al-Qaida operatives in Jordan, arranged for secret e-mail exchanges and received thousands of dollars from al-Qaida to carry out the attack. The indictment came just three weeks after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the London-based Al Hayat newspaper that al-Qaida had infiltrated the West Bank and Gaza.

Still, Mideast watchers warned against overstating the al-Qaida presence because the issue is easily manipulated for political ends.

Israel has a lot to gain by portraying its local conflict with the Palestinians as part of the global war on terror, and Abbas, badly damaged by the recent political rise of Hamas militants, wants "to show that he is needed by the West," said Israeli security analyst Dan Schueftan.

Both Israeli and Palestinian security officials described al-Qaida's activities here as incipient, involving a handful of local militants who reached out to al-Qaida — often via the Internet — rather than the other way around. A senior Israeli military intelligence official said he believed there were no more than 20 al-Qaida-linked activists in the Palestinian territories.

Most of them are unhappy with a year-old decision by mainstream Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, to enforce a cease-fire with Israel, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

Hamas, struggling to avert an international aid boycott in the wake of its Jan. 25 victory in parliamentary elections, is particularly sensitive about being associated with al-Qaida, despite sharing core beliefs such as the rejection of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

When Ayman-al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, appeared in a video earlier this month urging Hamas not to renounce its violent struggle, a Hamas official in Gaza shrugged him off.

The Hamas official said the group had no links to any outside group. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying the movement did not want to respond formally to al-Zawahri.

By all accounts, Hamas, set to form the next Palestinian government, is not likely to further harm its international standing by joining forces with al-Qaida.

But al-Qaida itself is making an effort "to operate both in the Palestinian territories and inside Israel proper," said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev. A Palestinian security official in Gaza agreed that al-Qaida "is in the process of organizing cells and gathering supporters."

If the group succeeds in establishing a full-blown presence, predicted the Israeli military intelligence official, Israel can expect far larger terror attacks than it has seen in the past.

Another Israeli official said a major concern is al-Qaida's activities in Israel's neighbors, especially Jordan, where al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the November 2005 bombings of three hotels that killed 60 people.

Al-Zarqawi also claimed responsibility for a Dec. 27 barrage of rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel, provoking Israeli airstrikes on a Palestinian base in central Lebanon.

The Israeli official praised Egyptian security forces for their performance following two bombing sprees in Egypt's Sinai peninsula — one in October 2004 and another in July 2005 — that some have blamed on al-Qaida.

He said Egyptian forces arrested two sets of suspected al-Qaida operatives — one a month ago and another three months ago — who were trying to enter Israel through Sinai "most probably carrying explosives."

An Egyptian police official at the Egypt-Gaza border would not confirm or deny the Israeli's account, saying, "It's our job to halt any security violations, that's what we've been always doing, nothing less or more."

Some Israeli officials have expressed concern that al-Qaida operatives from Egypt may have entered Gaza after Israel withdrew from the coastal strip last summer.

But Assem Rashed, a former teacher at a Gaza university, said he doubts al-Qaida could find many backers in Gaza.

"People here are against the attacks in Iraq, Jordan and Egypt. I don't think they will survive, or find much support from the public," he said.

___

Associated Press correspondent Ibrahim Barzak contributed to this report from Gaza City.



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Al Qaeda's nuclear option
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
March 24, 2006



President Bush says frequently "we are fighting them over there so they won't come over here." "Them" are transnational terrorists and "over there" is Iraq.
The insurgency in Iraq has much to do with al Qaeda's plans for a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) act of terrorism in the United States, but not the way the White House believes. Assuming the Bush administration is successful in midwifing democracy out of a near-civil war situation in Iraq, the WMD threat level will remain unchanged. High, that is.
Paradoxical though this may seem to Washington's armchair strategists, the defeat of the al Qaeda-Sunni insurgency in Iraq would actually heighten, not lessen, the danger of a September 11 CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) attack. Defeated by the U.S. in Afghanistan and again in Iraq, al Qaeda would have to conclude its strategy of forcing the U.S. into a humiliating, Vietnamlike retreat has failed.
Arabic-speaker Professor Gilles Kepel, one of France's leading experts on al Qaeda, published last week "Al Qaeda dans le Texte," an analysis of the public and (intercepted) private utterances of the two Z's -- Ayman al-Zawahri (Osama bin Laden's No. 2) and Abu Musab Zarqawi, al Qaeda's insurgency honcho in Iraq. Stripped if its complexities, al Qaeda's strategy, Mr. Kepel explains, is to defeat the U.S. in Iraq, use this victory to roll over traditional oil-rich regimes in the Gulf that are security wards of the U.S., and then focus on Israel. But there is now an obstacle even greater than the U.S. -- Iran. Tehran, as seen through Zawahri's geopolitical viewfinder, is already calling the shots in large parts of Iraq. Whether the U.S. stays or leaves Iraq, concludes Zawahri, it's still Iran's ballgame. Which brings al Qaeda back to its WMD-in-America strategy.
"The Race Between Cooperation and Catastrophe," or why "the [nuclear] threat is outrunning our response" is how Sam Nunn, the former senator and co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, describes an overarching terrorist construct. The starter's gun for this new race went off at the end of the Cold War. Congress has appropriated almost $12 billion under Nunn-Lugar legislation designed to enhance security in scores of former Soviet and now Russian nuclear weapons and nuclear materials storage sites. Another $20 billion was pledged for the same purpose at a G-8 summit of the major industrialized nations in Canada three years ago -- $1 billion by the U.S. and $1 billion by the other seven per year for 10 years.
There has been no cooperation from India in the nuclear security field, says Matthew Bunn, director of the Atom Project at Harvard. "China," he adds, "has secured one civilian facility."
With more than $30 billion in the button-down-the-nukes kitty, more than half the security work remains to be done. There are 43 countries with more than 100 research reactors or related facilities that store enough highly enriched uranium nuclear materials to make several bombs. Only 20 percent of these sites are properly secured, says Mr. Nunn, and less than a handful meet U.S. Energy Department security standards, says Mr. Bunn. Most countries consider the Energy Department security criteria too demanding.
Rather than try to steal or buy one of thousands of Russian tactical nukes, or nerve gas artillery shells, a WMD terrorist is far more likely to knock off the night watchman, lower the chain-link fence somewhere in Switzerland or Italy and drive off with sufficient materials for a nuclear device. Actually making a nuclear bomb after that is the easy part; the recipe is on the Internet.
Mr. Nunn, chairman of the board of trustees at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says we appear to have forgotten the "devastating, world-changing impact of a nuclear [terrorist] attack. "If a 10-kiloton nuclear device goes off in Midtown Manhattan on a typical work day, it could kill more than half a million people," he explains. Ten kiloton is a plausible yield "for a crude terrorist bomb," according to Mr. Nunn.
Hauling that volume of explosives would require a freight train 100 cars long. As a nuclear bomb, it could easily fit on the back of a pickup truck.
Another Nunn scenario has a terrorist group with insider help acquiring a radiological source from an industrial or medical facility; say cesium-137 in the form of powdered cesium chloride. Conventional explosives are used to incorporate cesium into a "dirty bomb," then detonated in New York's financial district. A 60-square block area has to be evacuated. Millions flee the city in panic. Only two dozen are killed but billions of dollars of real estate is declared uninhabitable. Cleanup will take years -- and many more billions.
What interests bin Laden and Zawahri beyond casualty lists is collateral damage to civil liberties, privacy and the world economy. America, as they see it, would be knocked off its pinnacle. This would be the shot heard around the world and hundreds of millions of either frightened or jubilant Muslims would flock to the Muslim world's black Jolly Roger of white skull and crossbones.
In a routine exchange of information, Russia's chief intelligence officer in Washington notified his CIA liaison officer that al Qaeda operatives had been scouting nuclear storage sites in Russia. It would be a miracle if nothing had been stolen from Russia's long ill-guarded nuclear weapons storage depots during the collapse of the Soviet Union when anything and everything was for sale. We also know from sketches found in al Qaeda's safe houses in Kabul and Kandahar that bin Laden was interested in nuclear bomb design. Two Pakistani nuclear scientists from A.Q. Khan's stable were in Kandahar when this reporter was there three months before September 11, 2001.
The distance remaining to near-perfect security can be measured by how Mr. Nunn describes the adequacy of the U.S.-Russian response to the terrorist nuclear threat.
On a scale of 1 to 10," says Mr. Nunn, "I would give us about a 3, with the last summit between Presidents Bush and Putin moving us closer to a 4."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2B8...600549C2738.htm

Zarqawi 'sacked for mistakes'
Sunday 02 April 2006, 13:01 Makka Time, 10:01 GMT