THE ROVING EYE What is al-Qaeda really up to?
By Pepe Escobar
It may be comforting to learn - once again thanks to WikiLeaks - that the
United States State Department knows as much as any AfPak informed observer has
known for years; that private donors, non-governmental organizations, madrassas
and businesses from Saudi Arabia are ATMs for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the
Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
But this being a very sensitive oil-for-security "special relationship",
naturally the Saudis also had to be credited with "significant progress" -
under Washington pressure - in their efforts to smash al-Qaeda's cash fest. Yet
not much, according to leaked cables, seems to be evolving in the
Taliban/Lashkar front
(and it won't, because virtually all these funds transit through the informal hawala
system.)
Other Sunni-axis "friends of America" also do not fare so well. Kuwait is
blamed for not criminalizing the financing of terrorist groups; Qatar is
"passive"; and the United Arab Emirates is "vulnerable" - euphemism for it
being a merry arena of fund-transfer to both the Taliban and the Haqqani
networks.
Meet low-cost al-Qaeda
Now let's put this information in the context of the new al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) strategy of inflicting "death by a thousand cuts" to
the US.
Here's al-Qaeda's list of expenses for last October's toner bomb (or "Operation
Hemorrhage", in al-Qaeda-speak, averted because of Saudi intelligence): two
Nokia phones at US$150 each, two HP printers at $300 each, and transport
expenses for a total of $4,200, plus the working hours of six people for three
months - according to the website Inspire, "inspired" by American imam Anwar
al-Awlaki.
It's crucial to note that the advent of what could be dubbed "low-cost
al-Qaeda" happened just as Washington turbo-charged its offensive in Yemen.
Washington had wanted to take out Awlaki since last spring, coupled with the
head of Inspire, Samir Khan, a Saudi-born US citizen who grew up between Queens
and Canada.
A look at Interpol's new al-Qaeda Top 5 list reveals that, yes, Yemen is now
the name of the game. Forget about the old-school iconography of Osama bin
Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Here's the Top 5 list. US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, 39; Yemeni Nasir al-Wahishi,
34; Yemeni Qassim al-Raimi, 31; Saudi Said al-Shiri, 37; and Algerian
Abdelmalek Droukdel, 40. (No, Julian Assange is not on the list - to the
despair of US rightwing nut jobs).
With a new list comes a new narrative among Atlanticist intelligence agencies.
The narrative is that these people are responsible, among other acts, for the
Chicago toner bomb, the failed Northwestern flight 253 Amsterdam-Detroit plot,
the constant threats to the Eiffel Tower, and the ongoing plot against the
Reichstag in Berlin, revealed by German weekly Der Spiegel.
New list, new narrative - and new language. Gone is the talk of a caliphate;
instead the password is "re-Islamization" of Muslims living in the West. To
round it off, a (not so new) strategy; further delocalization, something that
has implied a proliferation of al-Qaeda acronyms - from AQIM (in the Maghreb)
to AQY (in Yemen) to AQAP (in the Arabian Peninsula). And new tactics:
"leaderless resistance" - as in attacking the Atlanticist heart with an "Army
of One".
Blame it on the net
This new Facebook/Youtube al-Qaeda story may start in Las Cruces, New Mexico,
where Anwar al-Awlaki was born in April 1971 of Yemeni parents. His father,
Nasser, future minister and president of the University of Sana'a, is a
Fulbright fellow at the University of New Mexico; the son grows up in the
campuses of the University of Nebraska and Minnesota, where Nasser labors to
get his agronomy diploma. Later, Anwar is back in the US when he's 20, to get
his engineering degree at Colorado State, a master in pedagogy in San Diego and
a doctorate in Georgetown that never happens.
Anwar is a hardcore Wahhabi; he marries a cousin and has five children. In the
months prior to 9/11, he's in San Diego, friend and spiritual mentor to Nawaf
al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar - two of 9/11's "martyrs". On 9/11 he's the imam
of Falls Church, in Washington suburbia. In 2002, he moves to London, getting
very close to Sheikh Omar Bakri. He hits Youtube with a vengeance - not to
mention Facebook. His DVD boxes and CDs are all the rage in the markets of
"Londonistan". One of his Youtube followers is Faisal Shahzad, the failed Times
Square bomber.
In 2004, Anwar is back - in hiding - to southeast Yemen, where he becomes the
mentor of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Somalian who wanted to blow up
Northwestern 253 in the skies over Detroit. And in March, in a video sent to
CNN, Anwar advocates for himself the mantle of leader of the anti-US jihad. In
Yemen, Anwar allies himself with local emirs; the CIA master narrative asserts
that the house of al-Qaeda should now be considered to be in the south of the
Arabian peninsula.
Anwar's trajectory intersects with Nasir al-Wahishi, Said al-Shiri and Qassim
al-Raimi. Nasir for years had been bin Laden's very young and trusted personal
secretary in Afghanistan. They only parted ways in 2001, when Nasir was still
23. He was captured by Iranian intelligence and extradited to Yemen, where he
spent five years in a maximum-security prison in Sana'a, from where he escaped
in February 2006 along with 23 other al-Qaeda military leaders.
It is Nasir who has come up with the AQY (al-Qaeda Yemen) acronym. Three years
later, in 2009, he is solemnly enthroned by al-Zawahiri via a video sent to
al-Jazeera, where it is announced the merger of AQY into AQAP. Nasir is the new
leader. He also hits the net with a vengeance with Inspire - al-Qaeda's first
English-language online publication, as well as Sada al-Malahem, "Echo of the
Epics", an Arab-language digital magazine. These reflect the strategy of urging
a large Internet audience to sustain jihad through small, autonomous and "easy"
attacks to "soft targets". Nasir is in charge of the web while two of his
commanders take care of the military front.
Nasir bears a direct connection with Saudi Said al-Shiri and Yemeni Qassim
al-Raimi; Qassim evaded Sana'a prison with him. Said al-Shiri fought in
Afghanistan and was captured in December 2001. He was one of the first jihadis
to sport an orange jumpsuit and go to Camp Delta - Guantanamo. He leaves
Guantanamo only in November 2007, repatriated to Saudi Arabia for a
"rehabilitation" program - which he follows; but afterwards he goes underground
to Yemen. On April 2009, he publicly calls Somali pirates and the "boys" from
al-Shabaab to engage in jihad "against the crusaders".
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) badly wants Said along with Qassim
al-Raimi, the alleged brains behind the toner bomb. Qassim had more or less
announced in January the new al-Qaeda strategy online, on the Sada al-Malahem
magazine, exhorting chemists, physicists and electronic wizards to join
al-Qaeda by conceptualizing the battle between the US and all the tribes in the
Arabic Peninsula.
From a CIA point of view, there could not be a more perfect match than to unite
al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula with the Horn of Africa, especially Somalia,
and then tie the knot with the Maghreb.
The "excuse" goes by the name of Abdelmalek Droukdel, an Algerian born in
Meftah. He is an emir, self-described "disciple from martyr al-Zarqawi" who has
cannily harnessed the heritage, the ferocity and the strength of the notorious
Salafist Group for Predication and Combat (GSPC, as in the original French
acronym) - which has been turned into AQIM in 2007. Abdelmalek hates France
with his guts and operates a thriving kidnapping industry (French, Spanish and
Italians have already been victims) in the deserts of Mauritania. Paris is
terrified; Droukdel has made it clear how al-Qaeda may be getting closer and
closer to the Mediterranean.
There's an additional gang that is not even included in the Top 5. These would
be 16 al-Qaeda members who spent eight years in detention in Iran, and were
recently released. They include Saad bin Laden (one of Osama bin Laden's sons),
Saiful Adil, Suleman al-Gaith and Abu Hafs al-Mauritani.
Unlike the Top 5, this bunch decided to settle in the AfPak tribal areas and by
now are believed to be fully back on the operational side. Saiful Adil is bound
to be the top AfPak-based al-Qaeda strategist in 2011 - operating from North
Waziristan and connecting the dots to Somalia, Yemen, Turkey and beyond towards
Europe. There's no evidence US intelligence has a clue where he is hiding.
Between a toner and a pipeline
Now combine these crucial "low-cost al-Qaeda" developments with another,
explosive WikiLeaks cable - the Washington list of key infrastructure nodes
around the world that could wreak havoc to US national security if they were
subjected to a terrorist attack.
It's highly improbable that acronym-feast al-Qaeda has failed to notice the
possibility of attacking, among other targets, the critical shipping lane at
the Bab al-Mendeb; the import and offloading export terminals at the Suez
Canal; the Basra oil terminal in Iraq; the Mina' al-Ahmadi export terminal in
Kuwait; the Strait of Gibraltar Maghreb-Europe (GME) gas pipeline in Morocco;
the Trans-Med gas pipeline in Tunisia; the Ras Laffan Industrial Center in
Qatar (which soon will be the largest source for the US of imported liquefied
natural gas, LNG); or the Jabal Zannah export terminal in the UAE.
And what about juicy targets in Saudi Arabia such as Abqaiq (the largest crude
oil-processing and stabilization plant in the world); the al-Ju'aymah export
terminal; the As Saffaniyah processing center; the Qatif pipeline junction; the
Ras at Tanaqib processing center; the Ras Tanura export terminal; and the
Shaybah central gas-oil separation plant?
Crucially, among all the sensitive sites for the US in the arc from the Middle
East to Central Asia, there's not a single one in Afghanistan, where the
Pentagon/North Atlantic Treaty Organization, according to the official cover
story, are fighting "al-Qaeda".
A February 2009 US State Department cable admits that an attack on any of these
sites "could critically impact" the US's public health, economic life and
national security. As if al-Qaeda would not have processed this kind of
information by now. But if "al-Qaeda" is really this larger than life evil
monster that the US intelligence agencies would like the world to fear - a
monster that is fought by hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds
- how come they are investing in toner cartridges from hell instead of
paralyzing the Bab al-Mendeb?
The great Italian writer Umberto Eco, in an essay in the French daily
Liberation, has pointed out how WikiLeaks has revealed that US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton's secrets are in fact empty secrets - thus stripped of
their power. As much as WikiLeaks has revealed that the emperor is naked when
the empire cannot even maintain its own secrets, it is legitimate to add it
remains naked as it also cannot maintain its lies. Onwards with "death by a
thousand cuts".
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