Analysis: Syria - three wars for the price of one

If you think the war in Syria is hard to follow, that’s because there’s actually three of them—at least. Distinct but interconnected, the competing web of allegiances and motivations puts al-Qaeda on the same side as the USA and makes a solution impossible. By SIMON ALLISON.

Many people, like this reporter, find the Syrian war confusing sometimes. It throws up all kind of strange and unnatural contradictions, like America appearing to be on the same side as al-Qaeda-linked jihadists and Al-Jazeera turning into a typical, propaganda-spouting state media house. No doubt policy-makers also find it difficult to understand. It’s been nearly two years and there’s still no sensible international policy on Syria, just a steady stream of ad-hoc condemnations and hamstrung mediations.

There’s a simple reason for all this confusion and complexity: it’s a very, very complicated situation. Even worse, there’s not just one war being fought in Syria, but at least three and possibly even more.
War number one is the one we’re all familiar with (especially if we’ve been watching too much Al-Jazeera). This is your typical Arab Spring narrative, pitting a downtrodden civilian population against the brutal regime that has repressed its people for so long. It’s a simple tale of good-versus-evil, of democracy taking on dictatorship, of the people sticking it to the man. We’ve seen variations of the theme in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, all of which ended with the people hurling off the yoke of dictatorship and replacing it with a new, enlightened, freely-elected government (oh, wait; it hasn’t quite ended like that in any of these countries, but let’s not spoil a good story with the facts).

Elements of this story are true in Syria. Certainly, the regime was brutal and autocratic, happy to stifle political freedoms and concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a very few, mostly of the Alawite ethnic minority. In fact, the Syrian security forces had such a world-class reputation for torture that they were, on occasion, prevailed upon by American intelligence to practise their craft on detainees as part America’s extraordinary rendition program.

There was popular dissent, too. Not much of it initially, but it grew in size and voice in the wake of the uprisings in other Arab countries. Whether or not the anti-Assad movement was really a majority will be argued over endlessly in years to come, but it is important to recognise that just as there was a large anti-Assad sentiment, so there was a significant chunk of the population that was happy with the status quo; autocracies are stable and peaceful, after all, unlike revolutions and civil wars.

War number two is not really about Syria at all. Instead, it’s about Middle Eastern and global geopolitics, and it’s very messy. In one corner is the Syrian Alawite regime and Iran, who are natural allies. The Alawites are a sect of Shi’a Islam, while Iran is an explicitly Shi’a state (as opposed to Sunni Islam, the other main branch of the religion). Russia finds itself in this camp too, desperate to protect its vital naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus—its only reliable warm water port. So too does China, which sees no reason to put its excellent trading relationship with Syria in jeopardy.

Ranged against this formidable combination is a regional alliance of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, all of which would love to see Bashar al-Assad replaced with a more compliant Sunni leader. All have designs on regional leadership, and in Syria they find common cause. Turkey was one of the first countries to express support for the Syrian rebels, while both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have helped to fund and arm them. Qatar has also been accused – with some justification – of using its hugely influential satellite TV channel, Al-Jazeera (specifically the Arabic version) to influence public opinion by portraying a one-sided version of events.

Lurking behind this regional triumvirate is the United States and the Western world, their foreign policy distorted, as usual, by their Iranian paranoia. Robert Fisk, doyen of Middle East correspondents, summed up their approach in the Independent: “This is an attempt to crush the Syrian dictatorship not because of our love for Syrians or our hatred of our former friend Bashar al-Assad, or because of our outrage at Russia, whose place in the pantheon of hypocrites is clear when we watch its reaction to all the little Stalingrads across Syria. No, this is all about Iran and our desire to crush the Islamic Republic and its infernal nuclear plans—if they exist—and has nothing to do with human rights or the right to life or the death of Syrian babies.”

Syria, in other words, is a proxy war; a relatively safe place (for everyone else, not for Syria) to fight the battles that can’t yet be fought in the open.

But it doesn’t end there. There’s a third war happening. This one pits the nominally Shi’a (though relatively secular) Syrian state against the global Sunni jihadist movement (known to Americans as “terrorists”). A flood of reports recently have explained how fighters from all over the Arab world, many of them battle-hardened in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, have come to the support of the Syrian rebels.

This from Ed Husain in the National Review is typical: “Our collective excitement at the possibility that the Assad regime will be destroyed, and the Iranian ayatollahs weakened in the process, is blurring our vision and preventing us from seeing the rise of al-Qaeda in Syria. In March of this year, jihadis mounted seven attacks against Assad. By June, they had led 66 “operations”, and over half of these were on Syria’s capital, Damascus. The Syrian opposition is benefiting hugely from the terrorist organization’s determination, discipline, combat experience, religious fervour, and ability to strike the Assad regime where it hurts most.”

The War on Terror has reached Syria and somehow, America and al-Qaeda find themselves fighting on the same side. No wonder no one seems to know what’s really going on.

Nor does anyone know how to stop it. With all these tangled conflicts and competing interests and motivations, figuring out a solution seems like an impossible task. Which, so far, is exactly what it’s proven to be. DM

Source: Daily Maverick

Obama threatens to invade Syria

Yesterday US and NATO officials discussed plans for a US military invasion of Syria to bring down Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, after US President Barack Obama announced that the US was contemplating a direct attack on Syria at a press conference Monday night.

A delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Beth Jones discussed US military plans with Turkey. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Defense Department and US intelligence officials met their Turkish counterparts “to share operational pictures, to talk about the effectiveness of what we’re doing now, and about what more we can do.”

Senior US officials said that contingency plans for US intervention in Syria include scenarios requiring tens of thousands of American troops.

At a press conference at the White House Monday, Obama declared: “I have indicated repeatedly that President al-Assad has lost legitimacy, that he needs to step down. So far, he hasn’t gotten the message, and instead has double downed in violence on his own people. The international community has sent a clear message that rather than drag his country into civil war he should move in the direction of a political transition. But at this point, the likelihood of a soft landing seems pretty distant.”

Obama said that he would order “military engagement” if chemical or biological weapons are moved or used in Syria. He said that Syria’s alleged stockpile of chemical weapons “concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel. It concerns us. We cannot have a situation in which chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.”

Obama added that the US “have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region, that that’s a red line for us, and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front, or the use of chemical weapons.”

The cynicism with which Obama is seeking to justify the next US imperialist aggression in the Middle East is staggering. The main groups in Syria who could seize chemical weapons from Syrian government stockpiles are Al Qaeda forces promoted by the US and its allies as shock troops against Assad. (See also: “Washington’s proxy in Syria: Al Qaeda”)

Having armed Al Qaeda-linked groups and sent them into Syria to carry out bombings and assassinations, the US and its allies now plan to justify their invasion of Syria by citing the need to protect the world’s population from Al Qaeda’s terrorist atrocities!

The Obama administration advances its arguments today with total disregard for the fact that they clash with the lies used until now to justify its support for Sunni anti-Assad “rebels.”

For months it maintained the pretense that it would not directly attack Syria, and that the Syrian regime’s statements that it was fighting US-backed terrorists were “propaganda.” Now, the White House is admitting that terrorist groups play a major role in the anti-Assad forces, and citing this as a pretext for war.

By proceeding in this fashion, the Obama administration demonstrates its complete contempt for the American electorate, which voted him into office in 2008 in large part based on hopes he would stop the US military aggressions against countries in the Middle East. Today, as during the 2003 invasion of Syria’s neighbor, Iraq, Washington is preparing to invade a country based on cynical lies about weapons of mass destruction.

A US invasion of Syria would be a crime of historic proportions, like the war in Iraq—a country whose population is only slightly larger than Syria’s. This war led to the deaths of over a million Iraqis and thousands of US and allied soldiers. Iraq became a battleground for US occupation forces, as well as Sunni and Shiite death squads that carried out sectarian bombings and massacres.

A US invasion would threaten similar carnage inside Syria, which is already being torn apart by sectarian fighting in which Washington is working with right-wing regimes in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to back Sunni Islamist forces against Syria’s Alawite regime. However, the far greater tensions in a region already destabilized by a decade of US and Israeli wars in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Libya now threaten to spread the violence over the entire Middle East.

Sectarian bloodshed provoked by the intensifying US intervention in the region is already spilling over into Syria’s neighbors. On Tuesday four people were killed and more than 60 wounded in firefights between Sunni Muslims and Shiite Alawites in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. Tensions in Lebanon have been growing for months, with Western-backed forces seeking to provoke the Lebanese government which is led by the Shiite organization Hizbollah, a close ally of Syria and Iran.

A US war against Syria would be the next step in an ongoing campaign by US imperialism to deepen its hegemony over the energy-rich and geo-strategically vital regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.

The Syrian regime responded to US threats with warnings and proposals for negotiations. Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil described Obama’s statements about chemical weapons as a pretext for Western intervention in Syria. “The West is looking for an excuse for direct intervention. If this excuse does not work, it will look for another excuse.” He warned that an attack on Syria would turn the conflict into a regional war, saying: “Those who are contemplating this evidently want to see the crisis expand beyond Syria’s borders.”

Jamil announced that the Syrian regime is willing to talk with the opposition to work out a transition, however. He even declared that Assad’s presidency is negotiable, stating: “We are ready to discuss Assad’s resignation—but not as precondition.”

Obama’s war threats against Syria are also deepening tensions with Russia and China, who have already vetoed three UN Security Council resolutions backed by the US and its Western and Arab allies aiming to give a pseudo-legal fig leaf for US aggression against Syria.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov spoke at a meeting in Moscow with China’s State Councilor Dai Bingguo, who also met Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top security adviser, Nikolai Patrushev, on Monday. Lavrov said that both Russia and China base their diplomatic cooperation on “the need to strictly adhere to the norms of international law and the principles contained in the U.N. Charter, and not to allow their violation.”

Lavrov said that only the Security Council has the authority to approve the use of external force against Syria, warning against imposing “democracy by bombs.” Russian officials have reportedly stated that they hope to avoid a repetition of the attack on Libya last year. Moscow abstained from the Security Council vote on Libya, and a resolution was passed which was subsequently used by NATO to justify its bombing of the country.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

Washington’s proxy in Syria: Al Qaeda

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday issued a warning against anyone “attempting to exploit the misery of the Syrian people, either by sending in proxies or sending in terrorist fighters.” She insisted that such actions would “not be tolerated.”

Neither she nor the State Department cared to spell out precisely which countries or organizations were being warned. Hidden behind Clinton’s hypocritical statement is the reality that US imperialism and its allies are themselves relying on, bankrolling and arming just such “proxies” and “terrorist fighters” to pursue their war for regime-change in Syria.

Chief among these forces is Washington’s supposed arch enemy, the Islamist terrorist organization Al Qaeda.

The growing acknowledgment within official circles that Al Qaeda is playing a decisive role in Syria’s civil war exposes both the real nature of the US-backed bid to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the fraud of Washington’s “war on terror.”

Having for months dismissed as “propaganda” the Syrian government’s statements that it is battling Al Qaeda terrorists, the corporate media and sources close to the US government are now not only acknowledging the role of this organization in the Syrian events, but celebrating it.

The major US news networks all carried reports on Monday and Tuesday highlighting Al Qaeda’s presence inside Syria. These follow a report in the New York Times late last month that Al Qaeda is operating in the heart of the so-called Syrian “revolution” through three groups: the Al Nusra Front for the People of the Levant, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades and Al Baraa ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade.

The frankest admission of the significance of Al Qaeda’s role came Monday in an article posted on the web site of the Council on Foreign Relations by Ed Husain, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies and one of the council’s chief analysts on Islamist political movements in the Middle East.

Husain wrote: “The Syrian rebels would be immeasurably weaker today without al-Qaeda in their ranks. By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective… Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now.”

Husain predicts that “Al-Qaeda could become the most effective fighting force in Syria if defections from the FSA” to its ranks continue growing and “the ranks of foreign fighters continue to swell.” Recent media reports have made clear that Islamist fighters from as far away as Chechnya are being funneled into Syria across the Turkish border, along with many more from Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan and elsewhere.

The US reaction? “Thus far, Washington seems reluctant to weigh heavily into this issue,” writes Husain. “The unspoken position of policymakers is to get rid of Assad first—weakening Iran’s position in the region—and then deal with Al-Qaeda later.”

Such statements are not made lightly and are based upon intimate knowledge of American policy. The Council on Foreign Relations has the closest ties to the State Department of any Washington think tank. Sitting on its board of directors are two former secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright.

What is involved here are political realities that serve to blow up the pretexts for both the war in Syria and the “global war on terrorism” that has served as the touchstone for US policy, both foreign and domestic, for over a decade.

Washington is not waging a crusade for democracy and human rights in Syria. It is involved in a dirty war in which carnage is being unleashed against the Syrian population as a means of toppling a regime that has historic ties to Tehran. This, in turn, is meant to pave the way for a wider war aimed at eliminating Iran as a rival for regional hegemony in the energy-rich and geo-strategically vital regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.

That Iran itself recognizes these aims was spelled out Tuesday by Iranian envoy Saeed Jalili, who traveled to Damascus. “What is happening in Syria is not an internal Syrian issue but a conflict between the axis of resistance and its enemies in the region and the world,” he said.

The New York Times as much as admitted the accuracy of this assessment, acknowledging that it is not “surprising that Tehran should view the internal conflict in Syria as part of a wider international war--with Iran as the ultimate target.” It continued: “To understand the roots of Iranian paranoia, just look at the map. Iran has been steadily encircled by a network of US military bases in the decades since the Iranian revolution of 1979.”

As for Al Qaeda, after being used as a bogeyman to justify two wars of aggression and a sweeping and continuing assault on democratic rights within the US itself, it now emerges as the indispensable shock troops in Washington’s war for regime-change in Syria.

This alliance is virtually a direct repetition of the relations established by the CIA and Washington when Al Qaeda was founded by Osama bin Laden in the early 1980s. Then it funneled Islamist mujahideen fighters across the Pakistani border into Afghanistan in a war against a Soviet-backed regime that was orchestrated by the CIA and funded with billions of US dollars.

Now the CIA is playing a similar role in Syria, overseeing a huge logistical operation on the Turkish border. Can anyone believe that armed Chechen jihadis are marching across Georgia and Turkey into Syria without the active collaboration of US intelligence?

All of the rhetoric about a global war against Islamist terrorism notwithstanding, the reality is that US imperialism has utilized such forces over the course of decades. Saudi Arabia, which provides these forces with both financial and ideological backing, is Washington’s key Arab ally. Throughout the Cold War, the US government promoted the virulently anti-communist forces of political Islam in the Middle East as well as Asia as a means of destabilizing and toppling nationalist and secular regimes and countering the development of socialist movements.

The response of the US media and the political apparatus as a whole to revelations about Al Qaeda’s role in Syria goes beyond cynicism. It expresses deep-going political disorientation. In Orwellian style, the media reports that yesterday’s mortal enemy has turned into today’s ally without skipping a beat and without seeing the need for explanation. Not a single leading politician has seen fit even to publicly question this transformation.

The lineup of US imperialism and Al Qaeda in Syria exposes even more glaringly the reactionary role played by pseudo-left groups like the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in supporting the imperialist-led drive for regime-change and even casting it as a “revolution.”

Do they all really believe that the American people won’t notice, after having been dragged into two protracted wars, costing the lives of thousands of US soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, as well as trillions of dollars, all in the name of the struggle against Al Qaeda? If so, they are deeply mistaken. These revelations will have an explosive effect in laying bare and discrediting the entire US ruling establishment.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

International Media Exaggerating Terrorist Threat from Yemen

Yemeni Prime Minister, Ali Muhammad Mujawar said that the international media is exaggerating the recent events and terrorist threat from Yemen. In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat Mujawar said "Yes, Al Qaeda is present in Yemen as it is present in all advanced industrial countries." He also told Asharq Al-Awsat that poverty is the cause of all problems in Yemen, and he called for international effort to aid Yemen with a comprehensive development plan, saying that his country is in need of a "Marshall Plan" which can reach up to 40 billion dollars. Mujawar also pointed to the problem of high unemployment among young people in Yemen, saying that the solution to this in the short and medium term is to open the door to Yemeni employment in Gulf States.

The London conference on Yemen, which was attended by 20 countries and ended yesterday concluded with a mutual agreement between Yemen and its international partners to cooperate in order to address the roots of terrorism. British Foreign Minister David Miliband also announced that Riyadh will host a conference on 27 - 28 February on Yemen which will be attended by Gulf States and other Yemeni partners. Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi welcomed the support expressed by fellow attendees for Yemen's unity and sovereignty. "What we have achieved today does indeed achieve the results (wanted) by Yemen," he said. For her part, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said that Yemen's problems cannot be solved via military operations, but through supporting Yemen's development efforts to achieve stability. As for Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, he said that there is foreign interference "from some regional powers that desire control and which seek to sow destructive conflicts and instability among the Yemeni people."

London has warned that unless Yemen is stabilized, it could become a "failed state", like its lawless neighbor Somalia. Yemen's troubles sprang to prominence when 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to detonate explosives in his underwear on a plane approaching the US city of Detroit on Christmas Day. US President Barack Obama has accused Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen -- Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- of training, equipping and directing the suspect. Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the plot in an audio message broadcast this week and vowed further strikes would follow.

Yemen has ruled out allowing the United States to set up military bases on its soil and stepped up its own campaign earlier this month with a military crackdown against Al-Qaeda.

Source: Asharq Al-Awsat

U.S. to Join Talks on Helping Yemen

A month after the failed airplane bomb plot that put this country’s problem with Al Qaeda in the international spotlight, the United States and 20 other countries are gathering for a conference on Wednesday in London to discuss ways to address Yemen’s growing instability. But in their efforts to move beyond a narrowly military approach to fighting Al Qaeda here, the conference participants are likely to run up against a morass of social, political and logistical obstacles that have frustrated similar efforts in the past. And some diplomats and analysts say they fear that the sudden rush of aid and attention, if it is not handled properly, could reinforce patterns of patronage that have contributed indirectly to Yemen’s culture of extremism. Western donors have already begun increasing their aid commitments, and the London conference — though not aimed at securing more money — is focused on the need to address the many crises that help breed radicalism in Yemen.

The facts are appalling: half the population is living on less than $2 a day; the official rate of illiteracy is 45 percent; fewer than half of Yemenis from ages 15 to 24 are employed. Outside the major cities, access to public water supplies, electricity and health services is vanishingly rare. Those desperately poor hinterlands have become a haven for Qaeda militants, who have regrouped here in the past two years and claimed credit for training Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian militant accused of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound jet on Dec. 25.

Addressing Yemen’s needs, though, is no simple matter. As in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years, security concerns have put some of this country’s poorest and most dangerous areas beyond the reach of development assistance. An intermittent war rages in the country’s remote north, and a secessionist movement has grown worse in the south. A vast, corrupt and spectacularly inefficient government bureaucracy has been a stubborn obstacle to aid as well. For those reasons, only a tiny fraction of the $4.7 billion pledged to Yemen during a London donor conference in 2006 has been spent. More money, in other words, is not necessarily the answer. Yemen’s main development agency, the Social Fund for Development, has $12 million in unspent aid money for the Jawf Province, a huge, impoverished area where Qaeda militants have found refuge, said the agency’s director, Abdulkarim Ismail al-Arhabi. The province is too dangerous, and there are no effective intermediaries who could help spend it, Mr. Arhabi said. Western donors say they understand the challenges and are calling for political and economic reform to pave the way for more effective aid. Fixing Yemen’s system of diesel fuel subsidies — which consume almost a third of the budget and are widely said to be an avenue for smuggling and kickbacks — is an important priority, diplomats say.

The conference will also seek a more unified international approach to Yemen, including support from its immediate neighbors. Pressing Persian Gulf countries to open their labor markets to Yemenis could provide tremendous relief for the ailing economy, Western and Yemeni officials say. Another focus will be Saudi Arabia, which gives far more to Yemen than any other country, though mostly through unofficial channels. Western diplomats say they hope to persuade Saudi Arabia to start making its support conditional on political and economic reforms in Yemen. But previous reform efforts have repeatedly stalled. And diplomats say that the publicity created by the Dec. 25 bombing attempt could generate more foreign military and development aid, which in turn could — without the necessary reforms — strengthen the patronage networks that have helped weaken Yemen’s state institutions in the past.

Part of the problem, critics say, is that Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, has concentrated too much power in his own hands, skillfully balancing the country’s various political and tribal groups over his 32 years in office, but failing to build a modern state. “At the heart of the economic problem is corruption, and at the heart of the corruption problem is unchecked presidential power,” said Abdel Ghani al-Iryani, a political consultant. Government officials counter that patronage is part of the price of stability in a country that is fragmented along lines of sect, tribe, region and social class. They say that corruption, though widespread, has been exaggerated, and that reforms are under way. Last year Mr. Saleh endorsed a 10-point plan that would bring new blood to the civil service and cut back on the government’s use of diesel fuel. “The corruption is a symptom of the lack of money, the lack of capacity for monitoring this kind of thing,” said Jalal Yacoub, a deputy finance minister and one of the authors of the plan.

The Yemeni state’s administrative weakness, Mr. Yacoub added, derives in part from two major crises of recent years. North Yemen and South Yemen united in 1990, and the north had to absorb hundreds of thousands of public employees from the formerly socialist south. A year later, Saudi Arabia expelled a million Yemeni laborers, following Mr. Saleh’s decision to side with Saddam Hussein in the first Persian Gulf war. Afterward, the Yemeni civil service became a social safety net, as Yemen struggled to find jobs for the returning workers. Mr. Yacoub and other Yemeni officials say they put their hopes in well-financed pilot projects that can quickly improve people’s lives, especially in remote areas where distrust of the government is high. That is also the goal of the United States Agency for International Development, which channels its aid mostly through Yemeni nongovernmental groups. The agency signed a $121 million three-year development assistance program in September, a major increase. But that effort will be hampered by Washington’s inability to send Americans to Yemen’s most dangerous areas, which are also some of its poorest. And they are not the first efforts of their kind. Starting in 2003, a former United States envoy, Edmund J. Hull, traveled to Marib, Jawf, Shabwa and Abyan Provinces to foster aid projects, including the building of new hospitals. “The formula was ‘no security without development, no development without security,’ ” Mr. Hull recalled. “I proposed a virtuous circle to replace the vicious circle.”

Today, the provinces Mr. Hull focused on constitute the main havens of Al Qaeda in Yemen.

Source: New York Times

Bin Laden warns US of more attacks

Osama bin Laden has warned Barack Obama, the US president, that there will be further attacks on the United States unless he takes steps to resolve the Palestinian situation.



In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera on Sunday, the al-Qaeda chief, praised the Nigerian accused of a failed attempt to blow up an airliner heading for Detroit on Christmas Day. "The message I want to convey to you through the plane of the hero Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, reaffirms a previous message that the heroes of 9/11 conveyed to you," Bin Laden said. "America will never dream of living in peace unless we live it in Palestine. It is unfair that you enjoy a safe life while our brothers in Gaza suffer greatly. "Therefore, with God's will, our attacks on you will continue as long as you continue to support Israel," bin Laden said. "If it was possible to carry our messages to you by words we wouldn't have carried them to you by planes."

The Obama administration said intelligence analysts had not confirmed that the al-Qaeda leader's voice was on the tape. But it quickly dismissed its significance. David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, told CNN's State of the Union programme that "assuming that it is him, his message contains the same hollow justifications for the mass slaughters of innocents that we've heard before". "And the irony is that he's killed more Muslims than people from any other religion - he's a murderer," Axelrod added.

Phil Rees, the author of Dining with Terrorists, told Al Jazeera: "Bin Laden has a great sense of timing; it's a complete poke in the eye to President Obama at a time when Obama is domestically suffering. "The reference to Palestine is possibly the most interesting part of this because he almost now becomes the al-Qaeda leader that speaks about Palestine."What you've now got in Gaza is bin Laden looking at the situation where there's a peace process which is going nowhere, and in an ironic way, Hamas is at the frontline of the battle with al-Qaeda there."

Azzam Tamimi, a political analyst and the author of Hamas the Unwritten Chapters, said that bin Laden was simply using the Palestinian issue in an attempt to mobilise Muslims against the US. "I would say that al-Qaeda has not been able to set foot in many places in the Muslim world despite its rhetoric," he told Al Jazeera. "In Palestine they failed miserably and that is why I understand this message as a return to the older strategy of waging war against America and the world order in the skies. "It is very difficult to compete with an organisation like Hamas in Palestine."

Osama Hamdan, a spokesman for the Hamas movement, told Al Jazeera that the Palestinians were focused on ending the Israeli occupation. "All Arabs and Muslims support our cause. [But] the Palestinian position is clear, the resistance is against the occupation, the Israeli army who is occupying and killing our people," he said. "Everyone knows that the policies of the US have created huge problems in the region. At this moment, we know who our enemy is - the Israeli occupation."Imtiaz Gul, the chairman of the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, questioned whether the tape was genuine."I think the validity of this tape should be subjected to scrutiny because we haven't heard from Mr Bin Laden for quite some time."

In the attempted attack on Christmas Day, Abdulmutallab, who is now in US police custody, allegedly tried to ignite explosives sewn into his underwear as Northwest Airlines Flight 253 made its final descent to Detroit. He had boarded the flight in Amsterdam, but purchased his tickets in Ghana on December 16. Passengers on the flight were able to overpower the would-be bomber as he attempted to ignite the explosive's fuse. After being taken into custody, Abdulmutallab told police he had been directed by al-Qaeda and had obtained his explosive device in Yemen. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the organisation's affiliate in Yemen, has said it armed Abdulmutallab, describing the attempted attack as revenge for the US role in a Yemeni military offensive against al-Qaeda. Obama has criticised his own intelligence agencies for failing to piece together information about the suspect which should have stopped him boarding the flight.

Source: Al Jazeera

Abu Sayyaf operative reported killed in North Waziristan

A wanted member of the Philippines-based, al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf Group is thought to have been killed in a US airstrike in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan last week. Abu Sayyaf operative and bomb-making expert Abdul Basit Usman is thought to have been killed in an airstrike on Jan. 14 in North Waziristan. Usman is believed to have died in the attack that targeted Taliban chieftain Hakeemullah Mehsud in the Pasalkot region in North Waziristan, an area close to the border with the neighboring tribal agency of South Waziristan. Ten Taliban and foreign fighters were reported killed in the attack, which hit a madrassa, or religious school, used by Taliban fighters from South Waziristan who dodged the Pakistani Army operation in South Waziristan.

Usman is wanted by the United States for his involvement in multiple bombings in the Philippines and also has links to Jemaah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's regional affiliate in Southeast Asia. "Because of his association with these US Government-designated international terrorist organizations, US authorities consider Basit to be a threat to US and Filipino citizens and interests," states the Rewards for Justice website. "He is believed to have orchestrated several bombings that have killed, injured, and maimed many innocent civilians."

The US has put a $1 million reward out for information leading to his capture and prosecution. It is unclear when Usman entered Pakistan. As of May 2009, the US believed Usman was hiding on the Philippine island of Mindanao. US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal would not confirm Usman's death, but did say they were investigating the reports. Usman's death in North Waziristan, if confirmed, would further reinforce the reports that Pakistan's tribal areas are a nexus for al Qaeda-linked groups across the globe. "It isn't just al Qaeda operating in the tribal areas," a senior US intelligence official told The Long War Journal. "You have Pakistani groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. You have the Uzbek terror groups. You have HuJI (the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, a terror group based in Pakistan and Bangladesh), Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Sayyaf, you name it."

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has described this jihadist nexus in Pakistan as "a syndicate of terrorist operators" during his recent visit to India. US military and intelligence officials often privately refer to this alliance as AQAM (al Qaeda and allied movements, or al Qaeda and associated movements). US intelligence officials have spoken of AQAM's influence in Pakistan for years. "At times their [AQAM's] planning, allocation of resources, and operations are indistinguishable," a US intelligence official told The Long War Journal in October 2009. "Their goals are identical; they want to hit us here as well as carve out their caliphate there [in Pakistan and Afghanistan]."

Despite the growth of al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan's tribal areas, the Pakistani military has stated it will not conduct further operations this year to root out the Taliban and al Qaeda safe havens. "We are not going to conduct any major new operations against the militants over the next 12 months," Major General Athar Abbas, the top spokesman for the Pakistani military told the BBC in an interview today. "The Pakistan army is overstretched and it is not in a position to open any new fronts," Abbas continued. "Obviously, we will continue our present operations in Waziristan and Swat."

Source: The Long War Journal

Somalia's President Laments Lack of International Support

Somalia's president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said his country lacks the international support it needs to prevent powerful Al-Qaeda-backed insurgents from overthrowing his fragile government. Sharif said his government only control pocketful of Mogadishu with the rest including southern Somalia under the hands of Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam, the two main insurgent groups. "Somalia is facing crisis brought about by foreign groups currently in the country, who are determined to frustrate any peace attempts," he added.We need international support, because the country is ruined and is becoming home to some elements of Al-Qaeda who resolved to clear plans."

Some 5,100-strong African Union peacekeeping troops are currently in the war-torn country to try to shore up the UN-backed government from the powerful insurgents and control strategic sites such as airport and presidential palace. Somali presidents accuse the international community of planning to go back against their pledges, which was to support his Djibouti-formed government both financially and politically. "The enemy prepared itself and wanted to bring down this government before it could accomplish its mission. Surely, that act has its own risks. We are expecting the world to help us fight these groups," he said. Commenting about the piracy menace in the high seas, Sharif said his government is not in the position to tackle at the moment. "Piracy, which is the other major problem, is caused by years of lawlessness in the country. So my government can not do anything about it,"

Sharif's remarks come as his Presidential Palace Villa Somalia comes under heavy mortar attack launched by Al-Shabaab fighters. Heavy exchange of gunfire and mortar shells has claimed the lives of at least four people while five others were wounded.

The Horn of African country is marred by years of civil strife that erupted after the ouster of the regime of President Mohamed Siad Bare in 1991.

Source: All Africa

Al-Awlaki's father says son is 'not Osama bin Laden'

His anguish apparent, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki told CNN that his son is not a member of al-Qaeda and is not hiding out with terrorists in southern Yemen. "I am now afraid of what they will do with my son, he's not Osama Bin Laden, they want to make something out of him that he's not," said Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. As recently as Sunday, Yemeni officials including provincial governor Al Hasan al-Ahmadi claimed that al-Awlaki was hiding out in the southern mountains of Yemen with al Qaeda. "He's dead wrong. What do you expect my son to do? There are missiles raining down on the village. He has to hide. But he is not hiding with al Qaeda; our tribe is protecting him right now," insisted al-Awlaki's father in an exclusive interview with CNN. "My son is (a) wanted man, he's cornered, that's the problem I am facing," al-Awlaki said.

The al-Awlaki family comes from the large and powerful Awalek tribe of southern Yemen. It has many connections to the government of Yemen, including the country's prime minister, who is a relative of the al-Awlaki family. Recently, Yemeni officials have also claimed that Anwar al-Awlaki had contact with Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab during his stay in Yemen in late 2009. When asked if his son met with the man charged with trying to blow up a U.S.-bound plane on Christmas day, al-Awlaki's father said it's not likely. "I have no idea but I don't believe it," he said. But the United States has independent intelligence verifying that AbdulMutallab met with al-Awlaki somewhere in southern Yemen before the Christmas Day bombing attempt, according to a U.S. security official with knowledge of the intelligence.

Even if al-Awlaki is hiding out with his tribe in the mountains of southern Yemen, the official added, authorities have no doubt that he is a member of al Qaeda and is now one of the top five or six operatives in Yemen for the terrorist organization. The official said al-Awlaki's transformation from inspirational leader to operational recruiter for al Qaeda was first picked up in the early part of 2009. This official also noted that the United States believes he is still involved in trying to recruit more bombers to launch attacks.

His father, the elder al-Awlaki, is an accomplished academic and had held several positions within the Yemeni government, including minister of agriculture. He first went to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar in the late '60s, and his son Anwar was born there in 1971. Al-Awlaki says he is doing what he can to coax his son out of hiding, but does not want to jeopardize his son's life. "I will do my best to convince my son to do this (surrender), to come back but they are not giving me time, they want to kill my son. How can the American government kill one of their own citizens? This is a legal issue that needs to be answered," he said. "If they give me time I can have some contact with my son but the problem is they are not giving me time," he said.

Al-Awlaki acknowledged his son has espoused some controversial views but all of them, he said, would be protected by freedom of speech provisions in the American Constitution. He denied his son has done anything to encourage terrorists to commit violent acts. "He is a preacher, you cannot tie Anwar to acts of terrorism," said al-Awlaki.

Al-Awlaki's name surfaced in November when U.S. officials revealed he and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5 -- had exchanged e-mails. The intercepted e-mails between the two, officials said, had not not set off alarm bells. The cleric recently told Al Jazeera's Arabic-language Web site that he met Hasan nine years ago while serving as an imam at a mosque in the Washington, D.C., area. He said he lauded the Fort Hood attack because it was aimed at troops, whom he accused of fighting an unjust war against Islam. "It is a military target inside America and there is no dispute over that," Anwar al-Awlaki said. "Also, these military personnel are not ordinary; they were trained and ready to fight and kill oppressed Muslims, and commit crimes in Afghanistan." When asked why his son would praise Hasan, Nasser al-Awlaki said he did not agree with his son's views. "I don't think that's right what he said about Major Hasan's actions, but my son has been very upset by the violence against Muslims," said al-Awlaki.

Al-Awlaki does concede his son's views did seem more radical after he spent time in a Yemeni prison from 2006 to 2007 for suspected ties to terrorism. He was released for lack of evidence. "They put him in jail for 18 months and I detected a change after he got out of prison, he began to get away from the mainstream," al-Awlaki said. The father also warned that the aggressive hunt for his son and al Qaeda operatives in Yemen using missile strikes will only serve to recruit more members to the organization. "I don't want those American cowboys to destroy Yemen," said al-Awlaki before conceding that the hunt for al Qaeda in Yemen is now a global concern. He has been wrongly accused, it's unbelievable. He lived his life in America, he's an all-American boy. My son would love to go back to America, he used to have a good life in America. Now he's hiding in the mountains, he doesn't even have safe water to drink," al-Awlaki said.

Source: CNN

Yemen instability poses a 'global threat'

Instability in Yemen is a global as well as regional threat, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said. She said the Yemeni government had to take measures to restore stability or risk losing Western support. The US embassy, closed after threats from a regional al-Qaeda offshoot, would reopen when "conditions permit". The UK and France have also shut their embassies.

Security at world airports has been tightened after the alleged jet bomb attack in Detroit last month. The suspect - a Nigerian - had allegedly been trained in Yemen. He has been charged in the US with trying to blow up the aircraft just before it was due to land at Detroit airport on 25 December. A number of countries have tightened security or suspended some operations at their embassies. US President Barack Obama has ordered a review into the Christmas Day incident. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) last week said it was behind the alleged plot to bomb the plane.

From Monday all travellers flying to America are being subjected to new security measures, introduced by the US government. Airport staff will now carry out extra screening of people from 14 countries, including those the US considers to be state-sponsors of terrorism - Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Yemen and Nigeria - through which the alleged bomber travelled - also face the new restrictions. Passengers flying from other countries will be checked at random. The Yemeni authorities have tightened security measures at Sanaa's airport, as well as around several other embassies.

The suspect had apparently been trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen, and his father had notified US officials of his extremist views. A preliminary investigation found that the state department complied with procedures about potential threats, but officials now had to decide whether those procedures themselves were appropriate, Mrs Clinton said. Threats in Yemen to US interests pre-dated the current holiday season, she said, reiterating advice to US citizens there to be vigilant.Speaking in Washington, Mrs Clinton said: "We see global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al-Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region."

The Yemeni government has a tribal rebellion and a secessionist movement to deal with, and has regarded al-Qaeda as a lesser priority, a BBC correspondent in Yemen says. "It's time for the international community to make it clear to Yemen that there are expectations and conditions on our continuing support for the government so that they can take actions which will have a better chance to provide that peace and stability to the people of Yemen and the region," Mrs Clinton said.

The US embassy was the target of an attack in September 2008 in which an American was killed. The attack was blamed on AQAP. Correspondents say the security situation in Yemen is complicated by an abundance of firearms, an insurgency in the north and a secessionist movement in the south. But the prospects of re-asserting central government authority over the lawless areas where al-Qaeda is based look, in the opinion of some analysts, remote - even with beefed-up American support.

Source: BBC

Rival Islamists Fight for Town in Somalia

Shabab rebels, who control most of Somalia with allied Islamist groups, on Saturday attacked a town lost to moderate Islamists about a year ago. It appeared late Saturday that the moderate Islamists had kept control of the town, Dusa Marreb, in central Somalia, although the Shabab earlier claimed victory. The battles killed 10 people, witnesses said. The two groups have been fighting each other elsewhere in Somalia for months. The group that had been controlling Dusa Marreb, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama, had chased out the Shabab in December 2008 and vowed to challenge the Shabab in other areas to “restore stability and harmony in Somalia and achieve a genuine government of national unity.”

Residents of the town say they evacuated it when they heard gunfire early Saturday morning. “I and my children immediately fled outside the town,” Khadiija Ali said. “I was preparing breakfast for my family, when the bullet sound shocked me. We were not expecting such fight.” The assault came a day after the Shabab, which have increasing ties with Al Qaeda, tried to attract international media attention by vowing to send fighters to help insurgents in Yemen.

The United States has been helping the Yemeni government combat a branch of Al Qaeda, an effort that is likely to continue, with President Obama saying Saturday that the group sponsored the attempt on Dec. 25 to bring down a jet bound for the United States. Western governments have been hoping that Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama and other moderate Islamists can repel Somalia’s increasingly powerful extremists. Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama, a Sufi militia, has been one of the more successful groups in fighting the Shabab, who are fearsome fighters.

The weak transitional government in Somalia controls a small enclave in Mogadishu, the capital, under the protection of African Union peacekeeping troops. Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991.

Source: New York Times

U.S. Says Plane Passenger Tried to Detonate Device

A Nigerian man with possible terrorist ties sneaked an explosive onto a trans-Atlantic Northwest Airlines flight on Friday and tried to ignite it as the plane prepared to land in Detroit, federal officials said. The device, described by officials as a mixture of powder and liquid, failed to fully detonate. Passengers on the plane described a series of pops that sounded like firecrackers.

Federal officials said the man wanted to bring the plane down. ''We believe it was an attempted act of terrorism,'' said a White House official who declined to be identified discussing the investigation of the incident, which is likely to lead to heightened security during the busy holiday season. ''This was the real deal,'' said Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, who was briefed on the incident and said something had gone wrong with the explosive device, which he described as somewhat sophisticated. ''This could have been devastating,'' Mr. King said.

It was unclear how the man, identified by federal officials as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, managed to get the explosive on the plane, an Airbus A330 wide-body jet carrying 278 passengers that departed from Amsterdam with passengers who had originated in Nigeria. A senior administration official said that the government did not yet know whether the man had had the capacity to take down the plane. A senior Department of Homeland Security official said that the materials Mr. Abdulmutallab had on him were ''more incendiary than explosive,'' and that he had tried to ignite them to cause a fire as the airliner was approaching Detroit.

Mr. Abdulmutallab told law enforcement authorities, the official said, that he had had explosive powder taped to his leg and that he had mixed it with chemicals held in a syringe. A federal counterterrorism official who asked not to be identified said Mr. Abdulmutallab was apparently in a government law enforcement-intelligence database, but it is not clear what extremist group or individuals he might be linked to. ''It's too early to say what his association is,'' the counterterrorism official said. ''At this point, it seems like he was acting alone, but we don't know for sure.'' Although Mr. Abdulmutallab is said to have told officials that he was directed by Al Qaeda, the counterterrorism official expressed caution about that claim, saying ''it may have been aspirational.''

The incident unfolded just before noon. ''There was a pop that sounded like a firecracker,'' said Syed Jafry, a passenger who said he had been sitting three rows ahead of the suspect. A few seconds later, he said, there was smoke and ''some glow'' from the suspect's seat and on the left side of the plane. ''There was a panic,'' said Mr. Jafry, 57, of Holland, Ohio. ''Next thing you know everybody was on him.'' He said the passengers and the crew subdued the man. The suspect was brought by the crew to the front of the plane -- Northwest Airlines Flight 253, bearing Delta's name -- and the plane made its descent into Detroit Metropolitan Airport, landing at 11:53 a.m. (The two airlines merged last year.) Once on the ground, it was immediately guided to the end of a runway, where it was surrounded by police cars and emergency vehicles and searched by a bomb-disabling robot.

Sandra Berchtold, a spokeswoman with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Detroit office, said F.B.I. agents were at the scene Friday night and were investigating the matter. One federal official who requested anonymity said Mr. Abdulmutallab had suffered severe burns but was expected to survive. A Michigan state official confirmed that he was being treated at the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor.

Friday's incident brought to mind Richard C. Reid, the so-called ''shoe bomber,'' who attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight between Paris and Miami in December 2001 by igniting his explosives-laden shoes. Since then, airline passengers have had to remove their shoes before passing through security checkpoints in American airports.

Source: New York Times

More information and images of the explosive device can be found here.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen: Political, Social and Security Dimensions

Last month, two suicide attacks occurred in Hadramaut’s Shibam area and Sana’a respectively. The first one left four South Korean tourists killed, a Yemeni driver and six others injured. The second terrorist operation targeted a Korean delegation that came to investigate the circumstances of Shibam operation, but there were no causalities save the bomber.

The address of Al-Qaeda is instigative and allowed other parties and organizations to recruit people in the name of Al-Qaeda to launch terrorist operations. Further, some people can personally launch such attacks under the influence of Al-Qaeda’s instigative and chaotic address. Al-Qaeda in Yemen raises many questions as for the number of its personnel, the risks they pose and their relations with those considered by them to be enemies including the authorities and Americans.

In their efforts to contain Al-Qaeda, Yemeni authorities are in a open war with them and the nature of this organization made it possible for some groups to work with the authorities while others work against. Still, there are deep doubts about Yemen’s dealing with such a file especially when the state lacks in the concept of state’s overall security.

Al-Qaeda’s address was focused on fighting crusaders and Jews, despite the fact that no single Israeli interest was attacked. Further, targeting foreign tourists is included in Al-Qaeda’s address, but the question remains, why Koreans?
The first assumption is that Al-Qaeda’s style is chaotic and targeting tourists is not decided by nationality; the second is that another organization targeted the Korean tourist for unknown reasons and both assumptions are accepted.

Both operations have left behind wide negative effects. The first victims of such acts are both Islam and Muslims. Islam which is a mercy for human beings and urges Muslims to posses power for forcing others to accept peace is thus viewed to be the religion that: calls Muslims to commit suicide and killing acts against others.

Both operations will have negative political aspects on Yemen especially in matters relating to the attempts by the authorities to contain Al-Qaeda and cooperate with Americans in what is known to be “war on terror”. These two operations reinforce the distrust of Americans on the authorities and the possibility of directing military attacks in certain areas of Yemen and turning these areas into another Waziristan. This will also bring Yemen into the front of international media and will picture the country as a safe haven for Al-Qaeda, something that harms Yemen’s international relations.

The two operations clearly indicate that the absence of a total national security strategy is among the key reasons that prevent the state from containing the armed groups including Al-Qaeda. They clearly indicate that Al-Qaeda has penetrated security apparatuses, because its element were capable to decide both time and place at which the Korean delegation passed by the area; they can further lead to other security problems the last of which was killing a university student at the gate of Sana’a University and this prompted tribesmen to occupy the university premises. Again, both operations raise the concerns of foreign governments who have started to warn their citizens against traveling to Yemen, considering it to be a highly dangerous country.

The recent operations have left negative impact on investments and tourism, leading to complicated economic problems. Thus the country is inflicted by three destructive powers: foreign powers, the regime and Al-Qaeda.

Source: Yemen Post

Ex-Gitmo Detainee Joins Al-Qaida in Yemen

A Saudi man released from Guantanamo after spending nearly six years inside the U.S. prison camp is now the No. 2 of Yemen's al-Qaeda branch, according to a purported Internet statement from the terror network. The announcement, made this week on a Web site commonly used by militants, came as President Barack Obama ordered the detention facility closed within a year. Many of the remaining detainees are from Yemen, which has long posed a vexing terrorism problem for the U.S.

The terror group's Yemen branch — known as "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" — said the man, identified as Said Ali al-Shihri, returned to his home in Saudi Arabia after his release from Guantanamo about a year ago and from there went to Yemen, which is Osama bin Laden's ancestral home. The Internet statement, which could not immediately be verified, said al-Shihri was the group's second-in-command in Yemen, and his prisoner number at Guantanamo was 372. "He managed to leave the land of the two shrines (Saudi Arabia) and join his brothers in al-Qaida," the statement said.

Documents released by the U.S. Defense Department show that al-Shihri was released from the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in November 2007 and transferred to his homeland. The documents confirmed his prisoner number was 372. Saudi Arabian authorities wouldn't immediately comment on the statement. A Yemeni counterterrorism official would only say that Saudi Arabia had asked Yemen to turn over a number of wanted Saudi suspects who fled the kingdom last year for Yemen, and a man with the same name was among those wanted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the press and would not provide more details.

Yemen is a U.S. ally in the fight against terror, but it also has been the site of numerous high-profile, al-Qaida-linked attacks including the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden, which killed 17 American sailors. Yemen's government struggles to maintain order. Many areas of the California-size country are beyond government control and Islamic extremism is strong. Nearly 100 Yemeni detainees remain at Guantanamo, making up the biggest group of prisoners.

Al-Shihri's case highlights the complexity of Obama's decision to shut down the detention center within a year despite the absence of rehabilitation programs for ex-prisoners in some countries, including Yemen. The Pentagon also has said more former ex-detainees appear to be returning to the fight against the U.S. after their release. Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, who heads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said the reports about al-Shihri should not slow the Obama administration's determination to quickly close the prison. "What it tells me is that President Obama has to proceed extremely carefully. But there is really no justification and there was no justification for disappearing people in a place that was located offshore of America so it was outside the reach of U.S. law," she told CBS's "The Early Show."

But Rep. Pete Hoekstra, of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the executive order Obama signed Thursday to close the facility as "very short on specifics." Interviewed on the same program, he said there are indications that as many as 10 percent of the men released from Guantanamo are "back on the battlefield. They are attacking American troops."

The militant Web statement said al-Shihri's identity was revealed during a recent interview with a Yemeni journalist. That journalist, Abdelela Shayie, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Friday that 35-year-old Saudi man had joined the kingdom's rehabilitation program after his release and got married before leaving for Yemen. Shayie said al-Shihri told him that several other former Guantanamo detainees had also come to Yemen to join al-Qaida.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is an umbrella group of various cells. Its current leader is Yemen's most wanted fugitive Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, who was among 23 al-Qaida figures who escaped from a Yemeni prison in 2006.

Since the prison break, al-Qaida managed to regroup. It set up training camps, has attracted hundreds of young men and launched dozens of bloody attacks against Westerners, government institutions and oil facilities. Most recently, gunmen and two vehicles packed with explosives attacked the U.S. Embassy in Yemen in September, killing 17 people, including six militants. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack. According to the Defense Department, al-Shihri was stopped at a Pakistani border crossing in December 2001 with injuries from an airstrike and recuperated at a hospital. Within days of his release, he became one of the first detainees sent to Guantanamo. Al-Shihri allegedly traveled to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, provided money to other fighters and trained in urban warfare at a camp north of Kabul, according to a summary of the evidence against him from U.S. military review panels at Guantanamo. He also was accused of meeting extremists in Iran and briefing them on how to enter Afghanistan, according to the documents.

Al-Shihri, however, said he traveled to Iran to buy carpets. He said he felt bin Laden had no business representing Islam, denied any links to terrorism and expressed interest in rejoining his family.

Source: abc

Al-Qaeda chemical expert 'killed'

Reports from Pakistan say a leading al-Qaeda chemical weapons expert, Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, has been killed in a missile strike. Taleban officials in the tribal area of South Waziristan confirmed to the BBC that he was killed in a missile strike that left at least six people dead. The US, which has a reward of $5m on his head, said it had no information. He was wrongly reported to have been killed in 2006 in a strike aimed at al-Qaeda deputy head Ayman al-Zawahiri. The pre-dawn strike targeted a house near a mosque in the village of Azam Warsak, 20km (12 miles) west of the main town in South Waziristan, Wana. It was suspected to be a strike by US forces, with residents saying they had heard US drones, but this has not been confirmed. Pakistani military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas told the AFP news agency it was still awaiting "authentic information" from the area.

Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, 55, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, is an Egyptian national. The US government's Rewards for Justice website says he is "an explosives expert and poisons trainer working on behalf of al-Qaeda". It says he trained hundreds of militants in chemical and explosives operations at a camp at Derunta in Afghanistan.

The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says the militant was considered part of Osama Bin Laden's inner circle and was said to be in charge of efforts to gain access to, or develop, weapons of mass destruction. Local residents said the house targeted belonged to a local tribesman and suspected militants used to stay there. The US is reported to have carried out a number of drone missile attacks in the tribal regions. Pakistan has complained the attacks could damage bilateral relations. The latest strike came shortly before Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was due to meet US President George W Bush in Washington.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said she had no information about the incident. In recent months the US and its allies have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in military and other forms of assistance to help Pakistan's new government tackle militancy in border tribal areas.

Source: BBC

CIA admit 'waterboarding' al-Qaida suspects

Interrogators used "waterboarding" on three men shortly after the September 11 attacks, the CIA admitted today, naming for the first time the victims of a technique widely perceived as torture.

The men subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were al-Qaida suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, told the US Congress. "We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

Hayden told the senate intelligence committee that Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks - and the other two men were subject to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003. "The circumstances are different than they were in late 2001, early 2002," Hayden said, adding that he opposed limiting the CIA to interrogation techniques permitted in the US Army field manual, which bans waterboarding. Hayden told the committee that fewer than 100 people had been held in the CIA's terrorism detention and interrogation programme, with less than one-third subjected to "coercive" techniques. The CIA said in December that it had destroyed videotapes depicting the interrogations of Zubaydah and Nashiri, prompting a justice department investigation. The tapes were destroyed as Congress moved to pass a ban on inhumane interrogations and a prosecutor is investigating whether US intelligence officials broke the law or violated court orders in destroying the tapes.

In waterboarding, the victim's mouth is covered and water poured over his face, making the victim feel as if they are drowning. "Waterboarding taken to its extreme, could be death - you could drown someone," McConnell acknowledged. He said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA's arsenal, but it would require the consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.

At the same hearing, the US director of national intelligence said the Taliban, which was overthrown in Afghanistan in late 2001, has expanded its operations into once-peaceful areas of western Afghanistan and around the capital, Kabul, despite the death or capture of three top commanders in the last year. McConnell also said al-Qaida maintains a "safe haven" in Pakistan's tribal areas, where the group is able to stage attacks supporting the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. The Pakistani tribal areas provide al-Qaida "many of the advantages it once derived from its base across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale", allowing militants to train for strikes in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa and the US, McConnell said. "Al-Qaida remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad," McConnell said, even though the terror network had suffered setbacks in Iraq. He expressed concern that al-Qaida in Iraq is shifting its focus elsewhere in the region. "They may deploy resources to mount attacks outside the country," McConnell said, although fewer than 100 terrorists have moved to establish cells in other countries. McConnell also told the senate panel that US officials believe that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas. A report released in London said nearly 400 militant groups now operate around the world and the greatest proliferation has been in the border regions between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

The number of violent "non-state" groups has grown about 10% in the past year, according to the 2008 military balance report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Iraq and India, with more than 30 active guerrilla groups each, are the most volatile countries, the report said, with the Afghan-Pakistan border and the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan the worst-affected areas.

Source: Guardian

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE BANKER; Italian Arab Is Perplexed By Swiss Raid

As he left his office here the night before the Swiss and Italian police raided it, Youssef M. Nada, 71, shook his head, saying: ''To come to the end of my life, a good life, and be accused of helping terrorists -- it is too much.''

Mr. Nada and his partner Ghaleb Himmat, who spent five hours talking with a reporter this week in their office and in Mr. Nada's tiled hillside mansion across the lake in Campione d'Italia, Italy, do not fit the image of the shadowy unregulated money shifters portrayed by some American officials.

From a building with copper-colored windows, they run an empire that had a Bahamas bank and shares of business throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with cement plants, drydocks, textile and brick factories and a division that trades steel, wheat, oil and other commodities. The lone sign for the sixth-floor office is a red placard with one word, ''NADA.'' All others ''were taken down because of the reporters,'' said a banker from another floor.

The trading screens and offices look typical.

Before the raid, Mr. Nada denied that he had aided Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group. ''It is not true, and I'm sure the U.S. government must know it is not true,'' he said when asked about the allegation.

Mr. Nada said he believed that he was a victim of guilt by association because he is a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and has had members of Osama bin Laden's immensely wealthy family as clients. ''I have been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood for 50 years,'' he said. ''That is no secret. But it is not a violent organization.''

The group, founded in Egypt in 1928, was banned in 1948 for opposing [Farouk I of Egypt]. It wants Egypt to become an Islamic state. Today it has members in Parliament, and the United States State Department does not list it as terrorist organization.

Mr. Nada, who left Egypt in 1959 and is an Italian citizen, pointed out that a deputy to Mr. bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wrote a book that attacked the group as infidels because they renounced jihad.

His investment house, Al Taqwa, meaning piety or fear of God, offers 3,000 clients investments in accordance with shariah, or Islamic law. That tenet forbids charging interest or owning anything to do with alcohol, weapons, gambling or adultery.

His chief investment vehicle, Al Taqwa Bank of the Bahamas, which he says he voluntarily liquidated in February, worked like a mutual fund, or mudarabah in Arabic. It made no loans and could not own bonds or, for example, shares in casinos, brewers or weapons manufacturers. But it owned commodities contracts and businesses, many in food and construction materials.

At its height, Mr. Nada said, the bank controlled $220 million in assets, and during its 14-year life investors -- ''mostly Muslims, but also some Christian and Jewish friends'' -- had annual returns of 7 to 14 percent. It closed, he said, because large losses in Indonesia and Malaysia plus news reports that alleged shady dealings started a run by investors. The United States said, however, the Bahamas revoked its charter in April.

An investigation by the Swiss Banking Commission, which included an audit by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, found no evidence of money laundering or allowing other entities to use al-Taqwa as a front, according to the audit.

''What more do you want?'' Mr. Nada asked.

Mark Widmer, a spokesman for the Swiss attorney general, said that there were ''signs and rumors about al-Taqwa for years,'' but that Swiss investigators had never found the ''substantial suspicion'' that courts require for a search warrant. He declined to say what new evidence led to the raid today.

Mr. Nada does not appear to lead a shadowy life. He donates to charity, invited a television crew to his house to meet Muslim women who were wearing head scarves and was for years the Middle East expert at the Pio Manzù Research Center, an organization in Rimini, Italy, affiliated with the United Nations.

SOurce: New York Times