2RHPZ
05-15-2004, 12:29 PM
May 14, 2004, 8:35 a.m.
Breeding Ground
A home for al Qaeda in Iraq.
By Evan Kohlmann
Ever since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan during late 2001, al Qaeda has been desperately searching for a new theater of operations in which to physically confront "the infidels," train new budding terrorists, and whip up popular resentment against the United States. Just as the former Soviet Union had become entrapped in an endless guerilla war in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden had hoped to do the same with America. His strategy proved to be poorly thought out: After only days of U.S. carpet bombing of their positions, Afghan Islamists quickly deserted the chaotic front lines and surrendered to their Northern Alliance enemies. However, the principle itself of drawing the U.S. military into an urban-street battle on enemy turf, using malicious terrorist tactics to cause inevitable American casualties, is quite intelligent. Certainly, if the latest reports from Iraq are correct, then al Qaeda seems to have found a secure homebase in the vaunted "Sunni Triangle" ? not just for killing foreign soldiers and civilians, but also for training would-be terrorist cells with their crosshairs squarely aimed at Europe and the American homeland.
While the links between Saddam and al Qaeda are still nebulous and uncertain, there is little doubt that foreign-terrorist entities ? including al Qaeda ? used the power vacuum created by the collapse of Saddam Hussein in order to gain entry and safe haven inside of Iraq. Particularly in the case of al Qaeda and allied followers of Jordanian exile Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (a.k.a. Ahmad al-Khalayleh), arriving international terrorists were able to forge informal partnerships with locally based armed Islamic militant groups like Ansar Al-Islam and the Ansar Al-Sunna army. Seething hatred of America proved enough of a bond to unite these ethnically mixed fundamentalist Sunni Muslim factions together in a common cause.
One of these groups, in particular, has gained an infamous reputation for its adoption of ruthless, bloody tactics: the Tawheed Islamic movement loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and loosely allied to al Qaeda. Zarqawi initially trained in Arab-Afghan camps run and sponsored by bin Laden ? but like 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef before him, seems to have preferred remaining somewhat independent from the direct control of key al Qaeda leaders like bin Laden. Nonetheless, Zarqawi has freely employed the same predominantly North African terrorist sleeper-cell and recruitment network as al Qaeda and subscribes to the identical extremist ideology espoused by bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zarqawi has been linked to most if not all of the most shocking acts of terrorism in Iraq since the fall of Saddam, including the bombings of the respective headquarters of the United Nations and the International Red Cross in Baghdad. The latest videotaped beheading of Philadelphia businessman Nicholas Berg distributed over the Internet is merely yet another ? albeit eye-opening ? manifestation of Zarqawi's cruel fanaticism.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has also been suggested as the likely mastermind behind a number of major recent terrorist attacks overseas blamed on al Qaeda ? as far away as Istanbul, Casablanca, and Madrid. Spanish investigators now believe that Amer Azizi ? a Moroccan Islamic militant charged in Spain with involvement in the September 11 suicide hijackings ? may have also served as the leader of the terror cell responsible for the deadly 3/11 commuter train bombings. Communications intercepts collected by intelligence authorities allegedly show that Azizi was hiding inside Iran last year and meeting with al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi has also made use of Europe as a key recruitment center for volunteers interested in joining the jihad in Iraq. Over the past 14 months, Italian authorities have broken up several foreign terrorist networks responsible for sending potentially hundreds of European Muslim recruits to fight against America in Iraq on behalf of Ansar al-Islam and Zarqawi's Tawheed group. As recently as this week, Italian antiterrorism police initiated a major crackdown across three northern Italian cities aimed at preventing an "al Qaeda-linked cell" from sending suicide volunteers to join the foreign mujahedeen in Iraq. According to Genoa police chief Oscar Fiorolli, "We don't know where in Iraq they were going, but they were willing to be suicide attackers... It was clear they intended to reach Iraq and strike Western targets." Though Fiorolli denied that there were any indicators of immediate planned acts of violence inside Italy, at least one Italian television report indicated that the would-be "martyrs" had also been "sizing up" potential local terrorist targets that included a movie theater and shopping mall near Florence.
Indeed, if the current level of unrest inside Iraq is any indicator, then Westerners have good reason to fear the near-term schemes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ? even if they aren't planning a visit to Iraq any time soon. Terrorist attacks attributed to Zarqawi's movement have stepped up dramatically both in number and in scale over the past two months. On April 24, three suicide boat bombs ? in a style clearly reminiscent of previous al Qaeda tactics ? exploded en route to two Iraqi oil terminals in the Persian Gulf, killing two U.S. sailors. The attack was followed shortly thereafter by a purported claim of responsibility issued on the Muntada Al-Ansar website (al-ansar.biz) on behalf of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, "Commander of the Al-Tawhid Group." Zarqawi explained in the statement that his followers had sought to "imitate what their brothers in al Qaeda did...[against] the destroyer Cole in the Port of Aden" three years earlier. If Zarqawi's attack on the oil terminals had succeeded, it would have caused significant damage to coalition efforts towards rebuilding the shattered Iraqi economy.
On May 2, Al-Tawheed released a communiqué claiming credit for more "martyrdom" operations, this time in the southwest suburbs of Baghdad. According to the document, a pair of foreign fighters ? Abi Hussain al-Suri (from Syria) and Abu al-Walid al-Tunisi (from Tunisia) ? had launched twin suicide car-bomb attacks on passing American Humvees and Armored Personnel Carriers (APC). Al-Tawheed bragged that the Tunisian's latter explosion was so powerful that it scattered human body parts up into the air from the soldiers inside the U.S. vehicles. The communiqué continued on to cite quasi-Islamic precedent for the terrorist battle ongoing in Iraq: "Allah, glory be to he, says 'and they thought they were secure in their fortresses from Allah but then Allah came to them from [an unexpected place] and threw terror in their hearts.'" Less than one week later, Al-Tawheed released another statement on the Internet claiming responsibility for a deadly suicide car bomb attack on May 6 outside the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad. According to that statement, a lone militant ? Abu Mitan Al-Saudi (from Saudi Arabia) ? was the suicide bomber, detonating a car packed with over 600kg of explosives and killing at least five Iraqis and one American soldier. Al-Tawheed also made references to U.S. "strategic interests" and warned that "the mujahedeen...are still capable of striking the strategic sites of the enemy at the suitable time and place."
In the early 1990s, it did not take long for legions of terrorist graduates from al Qaeda's former training camps in Afghanistan to shift the focus of their violence from the Middle East to the more-distant shores of Europe and North America. Just as in Afghanistan, many of the new generation of foreign mujahedeen active in Iraq will never live to see the future of their movement ? they will be "martyred" in mismatched battles against a much better trained and equipped U.S.-led military force. Nonetheless, the crème de la crème of al Qaeda's unit in Iraq who manage to survive the experience will be combat-tested and terror-schooled. The inevitable infiltration of such veteran 21st-century terrorists into Western nations presents a formidable problem for international intelligence and law-enforcement bodies. As demonstrated by evidence gathered in Madrid and in nearby Morocco, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has at least partially adopted the same terrorist sleeper-cell network responsible for 9/11 ? and that network of zealots is now thirsting for another devastating blow against the United States.
Evan Kohlmann is an international terrorism consultant and author of the upcoming book, Al Qaida's Jihad in Europe: the Afghan-Bosnian Network.
Breeding Ground
A home for al Qaeda in Iraq.
By Evan Kohlmann
Ever since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan during late 2001, al Qaeda has been desperately searching for a new theater of operations in which to physically confront "the infidels," train new budding terrorists, and whip up popular resentment against the United States. Just as the former Soviet Union had become entrapped in an endless guerilla war in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden had hoped to do the same with America. His strategy proved to be poorly thought out: After only days of U.S. carpet bombing of their positions, Afghan Islamists quickly deserted the chaotic front lines and surrendered to their Northern Alliance enemies. However, the principle itself of drawing the U.S. military into an urban-street battle on enemy turf, using malicious terrorist tactics to cause inevitable American casualties, is quite intelligent. Certainly, if the latest reports from Iraq are correct, then al Qaeda seems to have found a secure homebase in the vaunted "Sunni Triangle" ? not just for killing foreign soldiers and civilians, but also for training would-be terrorist cells with their crosshairs squarely aimed at Europe and the American homeland.
While the links between Saddam and al Qaeda are still nebulous and uncertain, there is little doubt that foreign-terrorist entities ? including al Qaeda ? used the power vacuum created by the collapse of Saddam Hussein in order to gain entry and safe haven inside of Iraq. Particularly in the case of al Qaeda and allied followers of Jordanian exile Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (a.k.a. Ahmad al-Khalayleh), arriving international terrorists were able to forge informal partnerships with locally based armed Islamic militant groups like Ansar Al-Islam and the Ansar Al-Sunna army. Seething hatred of America proved enough of a bond to unite these ethnically mixed fundamentalist Sunni Muslim factions together in a common cause.
One of these groups, in particular, has gained an infamous reputation for its adoption of ruthless, bloody tactics: the Tawheed Islamic movement loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and loosely allied to al Qaeda. Zarqawi initially trained in Arab-Afghan camps run and sponsored by bin Laden ? but like 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef before him, seems to have preferred remaining somewhat independent from the direct control of key al Qaeda leaders like bin Laden. Nonetheless, Zarqawi has freely employed the same predominantly North African terrorist sleeper-cell and recruitment network as al Qaeda and subscribes to the identical extremist ideology espoused by bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zarqawi has been linked to most if not all of the most shocking acts of terrorism in Iraq since the fall of Saddam, including the bombings of the respective headquarters of the United Nations and the International Red Cross in Baghdad. The latest videotaped beheading of Philadelphia businessman Nicholas Berg distributed over the Internet is merely yet another ? albeit eye-opening ? manifestation of Zarqawi's cruel fanaticism.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has also been suggested as the likely mastermind behind a number of major recent terrorist attacks overseas blamed on al Qaeda ? as far away as Istanbul, Casablanca, and Madrid. Spanish investigators now believe that Amer Azizi ? a Moroccan Islamic militant charged in Spain with involvement in the September 11 suicide hijackings ? may have also served as the leader of the terror cell responsible for the deadly 3/11 commuter train bombings. Communications intercepts collected by intelligence authorities allegedly show that Azizi was hiding inside Iran last year and meeting with al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi has also made use of Europe as a key recruitment center for volunteers interested in joining the jihad in Iraq. Over the past 14 months, Italian authorities have broken up several foreign terrorist networks responsible for sending potentially hundreds of European Muslim recruits to fight against America in Iraq on behalf of Ansar al-Islam and Zarqawi's Tawheed group. As recently as this week, Italian antiterrorism police initiated a major crackdown across three northern Italian cities aimed at preventing an "al Qaeda-linked cell" from sending suicide volunteers to join the foreign mujahedeen in Iraq. According to Genoa police chief Oscar Fiorolli, "We don't know where in Iraq they were going, but they were willing to be suicide attackers... It was clear they intended to reach Iraq and strike Western targets." Though Fiorolli denied that there were any indicators of immediate planned acts of violence inside Italy, at least one Italian television report indicated that the would-be "martyrs" had also been "sizing up" potential local terrorist targets that included a movie theater and shopping mall near Florence.
Indeed, if the current level of unrest inside Iraq is any indicator, then Westerners have good reason to fear the near-term schemes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ? even if they aren't planning a visit to Iraq any time soon. Terrorist attacks attributed to Zarqawi's movement have stepped up dramatically both in number and in scale over the past two months. On April 24, three suicide boat bombs ? in a style clearly reminiscent of previous al Qaeda tactics ? exploded en route to two Iraqi oil terminals in the Persian Gulf, killing two U.S. sailors. The attack was followed shortly thereafter by a purported claim of responsibility issued on the Muntada Al-Ansar website (al-ansar.biz) on behalf of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, "Commander of the Al-Tawhid Group." Zarqawi explained in the statement that his followers had sought to "imitate what their brothers in al Qaeda did...[against] the destroyer Cole in the Port of Aden" three years earlier. If Zarqawi's attack on the oil terminals had succeeded, it would have caused significant damage to coalition efforts towards rebuilding the shattered Iraqi economy.
On May 2, Al-Tawheed released a communiqué claiming credit for more "martyrdom" operations, this time in the southwest suburbs of Baghdad. According to the document, a pair of foreign fighters ? Abi Hussain al-Suri (from Syria) and Abu al-Walid al-Tunisi (from Tunisia) ? had launched twin suicide car-bomb attacks on passing American Humvees and Armored Personnel Carriers (APC). Al-Tawheed bragged that the Tunisian's latter explosion was so powerful that it scattered human body parts up into the air from the soldiers inside the U.S. vehicles. The communiqué continued on to cite quasi-Islamic precedent for the terrorist battle ongoing in Iraq: "Allah, glory be to he, says 'and they thought they were secure in their fortresses from Allah but then Allah came to them from [an unexpected place] and threw terror in their hearts.'" Less than one week later, Al-Tawheed released another statement on the Internet claiming responsibility for a deadly suicide car bomb attack on May 6 outside the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad. According to that statement, a lone militant ? Abu Mitan Al-Saudi (from Saudi Arabia) ? was the suicide bomber, detonating a car packed with over 600kg of explosives and killing at least five Iraqis and one American soldier. Al-Tawheed also made references to U.S. "strategic interests" and warned that "the mujahedeen...are still capable of striking the strategic sites of the enemy at the suitable time and place."
In the early 1990s, it did not take long for legions of terrorist graduates from al Qaeda's former training camps in Afghanistan to shift the focus of their violence from the Middle East to the more-distant shores of Europe and North America. Just as in Afghanistan, many of the new generation of foreign mujahedeen active in Iraq will never live to see the future of their movement ? they will be "martyred" in mismatched battles against a much better trained and equipped U.S.-led military force. Nonetheless, the crème de la crème of al Qaeda's unit in Iraq who manage to survive the experience will be combat-tested and terror-schooled. The inevitable infiltration of such veteran 21st-century terrorists into Western nations presents a formidable problem for international intelligence and law-enforcement bodies. As demonstrated by evidence gathered in Madrid and in nearby Morocco, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has at least partially adopted the same terrorist sleeper-cell network responsible for 9/11 ? and that network of zealots is now thirsting for another devastating blow against the United States.
Evan Kohlmann is an international terrorism consultant and author of the upcoming book, Al Qaida's Jihad in Europe: the Afghan-Bosnian Network.