Key
Pakistan area gets new al-Qaeda
chief By Jacob Zenn
Farman Ali Shinwari, a native of
Pakistan's Khyber Agency, has been named
al-Qaeda's new leader in that country to replace
Badr Mansour, whose "martyrdom" in a US drone
strike in Miran Shah, North Waziristan, in January
was confirmed by al-Qaeda's As-Sahab media
foundation on March 9. [1]
Al-Qaeda's Dawa
[Propagation] and Media Department, which is led
by Ustad Ahmad Farooq and disseminates speeches on
Taliban and al-Qaeda websites, including As-Sahab,
announced Shinwari's promotion on April 30.
According to the statement, Shinwari was approved
as leader in Pakistan after consultations by
al-Qaeda's "top leadership" and ratification by
its commanders in Pakistan.
Authentic
documentation about the promotion is yet to emerge in
al-Qaeda online media,
so some tribal elders and militants in Pakistan's
Federally Administered Tribal Areas say they
cannot confirm it. However, Pakistani officials in
FATA have confirmed the statement.
Moreover, the decision to promote Shinwari
is consistent with al-Qaeda's preference for
putting men affiliated with Kashmiri militant
groups into leadership positions. Such leaders
include Ilyas Kashmiri, former al-Qaeda external
operations commander and Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami
founder, and Shinwari's predecessor Badr Mansour.
The immediate effect of Shinwari's
promotion is that he will oversee the
intensification of attacks by al-Qaeda and the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on North Atlantic
Treaty Organization supply lines passing through
Khyber Agency into Afghanistan from Pakistan. The
medium-term effect is that he can take advantage
of his family connections to Kashmir- and Central
Asia-focused militant groups in North Waziristan
to support al-Qaeda and the TTP as they renew
their operations in those regions.
In the
long term, Shinwari's youth makes him an ideal
candidate to be one of the faces of al-Qaeda
leadership in the next generation - if he can
avoid the drones that will be honing on him, as
they did his predecessor Mansour.
Militant family base Farman Ali
Shinwari belongs to the Khugakel clan of the
Shinwari tribe based in the Landikotal subdistrict
of Khyber Agency. His tribe, the Pakistani
Shinwaris, is different from the 400,000-member
Afghan Shinwari tribe living in Nangarhar
province, Afghanistan, which in 2010 agreed to
support US troops to fight the Taliban in exchange
for US$1 million in development aid. The Pakistani
Shinwaris are not the largest tribe in Khyber
Agency - others such as the Afridi tribe are
larger - but Farman Ali Shinwari's power base does
not stem from his tribal affiliations; rather, it
stems from his militant affiliations and his
family's commitment to the TTP, al-Qaeda, and
Kashmiri militant groups.
The Shinwaris
are among the most important militant families in
Khyber Agency. One of his brothers, Hazrat Nabi
(aka Tamanchay Wala), taught theology at a
government-run school in Landikotal before
becoming one of the TTP's leading commanders in
2005. Hazrat Nabi has sent many fighters to
Kashmir and Afghanistan and is reportedly now
leading both a TTP faction in North Waziristan and
the Kashmir-focused militant group
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Three of Farman Ali
Shinwari's other brothers, Rehmat Nabi, Matiullah
and Raziullah, were deployed with Harkat-ul-Ansar
in Kashmir during the height of militancy in
Kashmir in the 1990s and now are affiliated with
the TTP (Harkat-ul-Ansar changed its name to
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen after the United States
designated it as a terrorist organization in
1998).
Early in his career, in the late
1990s, Farman Ali Shinwari was affiliated with
Harkat-ul-Ansar, which was then led by Maulana
Fazlur Rehman Khalil. Badr Mansour was also
affiliated with the Harkat-ul-Ansar and later the
TTP, like Shinwari. Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil's
past association with Farman Ali Shinwari
contributed to Shinwari's credibility when
al-Qaeda decided to promote him. Similarly,
Mansour was known to have been personally
acquainted with Shinwari through their
affiliations in Harkat-ul-Ansar and the TTP.
Al-Qaeda's Dawa and Media Department reportedly
said Shinwari was chosen as Badr Mansour's
successor because Mansour had trusted him.
Al-Qaeda eyed Shinwari because he is a
Khyber Agency native with deep knowledge of FATA
and the NATO supply routes. He is uniquely capable
of supporting the TTP to assert control of the
Khyber Agency's Tirah Valley and to continue to
disrupt the supply lines that pass through the
area into Afghanistan. The Khyber Pass is the
transit point for as much as 70% of the supplies
that sustain the NATO alliance in its battle
against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
Farman Ali Shinwari's strongest militant
credential for al-Qaeda's top post in Pakistan is
his leadership of the Abdullah Azzam Shaheed
Brigade with his brother Hazrat Ali (aka Abu
Ma'sab). The TTP and other militant groups
operating in FATA have formed specialized wings
that carry out specific tasks independent of the
parent organization. The Abdullah Azzam Shaheed
Brigade operates under the TTP and attacks convoys
of Afghanistan-bound NATO fuel supply trucks,
especially in Peshawar and Khyber Agency. (Despite
the similar names, the Abdullah Azzam Shaheed
Brigade is distinct from the Abdullah Azzam
Brigades, which are operating in various countries
and territories, including Pakistan, Lebanon, the
Gaza Strip, Egypt and Jordan.) [2]
The TTP
also has priorities in the Tirah Valley, which is
strategically located on the confluence of Khyber,
Orakzai, and Kurram Tribal Agencies, and connects
northern and southern FATA. Control of the valley
would provide the TTP with a regular land route to
ferry logistics and human resources throughout the
length and breadth of FATA and shift its bases to
new areas in FATA where the Pakistani and US
governments have yet to establish effective human,
signals and technical intelligence networks for
supporting the US drone campaign. [3] The TTP is
still vying for control of the Tirah Valley with
two militant groups, Lashkar-e-Islam, which is led
by Manghal Bagh Afridi, and Ansarul Islam,
although the TTP now controls most of Khyber
Agency itself.
Internet savvy In
2011, Abdul Shakoor al-Turkistani, the leader of
the third-largest militant group in FATA after the
TTP and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the
Uighur-based Turkistan Islamic Party (formerly
called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or
ETIM), was promoted to al-Qaeda leader of FATA. He
is believed to be powerful enough within the
militant groups in North Waziristan that he was
considered as a possible successor to Osama bin
Laden after bin Laden's death on May 1, 2011. The
TIP is believed to have broken into two factions,
one focused on Xinjiang and the other focused on
international militancy. However, their numbers
are hard to ascertain, since the Pakistani
government has the incentive to under-report or
not report at all about the group to avoid
conflict with its top ally, China.
In
addition to his militant resume and family
background, Farman Ali Shinwari was chosen over
other high-ranking militants such as al-Turkistani
because Shinwari's youth, high level of education
and Internet savvy are appealing to al-Qaeda,
which seeks these attributes in new leaders to
replace aging men like Ayman al-Zawahiri and
"martyred" leaders such as bin Laden and Ilyas
Kashmiri.
Shinwari is 30 years old,
married since 2008 with two children, fluent in
English, and a holder of a Bachelor of Science
degree in chemistry and biology from Landikotal
College in Khyber Agency and a first-division
master's degree in international relations from
the University of Peshawar. He has worked in
several private schools in Landikotal teaching
chemistry and biology and has a reputation for
being an eloquent speaker on issues of jihad.
In 2008, when Pakistani security forces
initiated a campaign to root out militants in
Shinwari's home town of Landikotal, his family
members escaped to Waziristan. The security forces
later demolished the Shinwari family house in
Khugakhel village in Landikotal and arrested
several members of his extended family who did not
escape. Thus Farman Ali Shinwari is surely to have
revenge on his mind, another asset that will
motivate him as al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan.
Security analysts from India worry that
al-Qaeda under Shinwari will set its sights on
Kashmir, since it has been a main target of
Pakistani-based militant groups and the Shinwari
family for decades. While Kashmir is still a key
battleground for al-Qaeda and the TTP, however,
the first priority for Shinwari is to expedite the
US withdrawal from Afghanistan by intensifying
attacks on NATO's supply lines in Khyber Agency.
This will open up opportunities for
al-Qaeda foot soldiers and the TTP to shift their
operations to Kashmir and other fronts, such as
the secular Central Asian countries and the West,
while also working to secure safe havens in
Taliban-controlled areas of Pakistan and
Afghanistan as al-Qaeda had in the era preceding
September 11, 2001.
Jacob
Zenn is a legal adviser and international
security analyst. His research focuses on
comparative insurgent movements in Central Asia,
Southeast Asia, Nigeria and South America. He is a
graduate of Georgetown University Law Center in
Washington and the Johns Hopkins SAIS Nanjing
Campus. He can be reached at jacobzenn@gmail.com.
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