youth, he became a member of the country’s radical Islamist movement. In 1981, he took part in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and spent three years in prison, where he became a member of Ayman al- Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Abu al-Yazid left Egypt for Afghanistan in 1988 and accompanied bin Laden from Afghanistan to Sudan in 1991. While there, he served as the accountant for bin Laden’s Sudan-based businesses, including his holding company, Wadi al-Aqiq.32 He also may have arranged the funding for the June 1995 failed assassination attempt by the Egyptian Islamic Group against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa. Convicted in absentia in several trials in Egypt, he was sentenced to both life imprisonment and the death penalty.
Abu al-Yazid apparently returned to Afghanistan with bin Laden in 1996. By that time, he was a confidant of bin Laden, a senior al Qa’ida leader, a member of its Shura Council, and a key manager of the organization’s finances. He was reported to have supplied the requisite funding for Muhammad Atta—the leader of the September 11, 2001, attackers—and to have received from Atta the return of surplus funds just before the attacks occurred. In 2002, the U.S. government placed Abu al-Yazid’s name on the list of terrorists and organizations subject to having their financial accounts frozen. Pakistan’s
There were a number of other senior al Qa’ida leaders operating out of Pakistan, such as Abu Ubaydah al- Masri, an Egyptian who died of hepatitis in 2007. Al-Masri served as one of al Qa’ida’s senior external-operations figures after the death of Abu Hamza Rabi’a, who was killed by a missile strike in Pakistan in 2005. He was implicated in the 2006 transatlantic-aircraft plot, which was to be carried out by a terrorist cell operating in London, but which involved al Qa’ida’s central leadership. Another operative, Fahid Muhammad Ally Msalam, a Kenyan, served as a facilitator for communication between Osama bin Laden and the East Africa network and was located for a time with senior al Qa’ida leaders based in Waziristan. He was reported as killed in a U.S. missile strike on January 1, 2009.
Despite the loss of these key leaders, however, al Qa’ida remained capable of conducting lethal attacks regionally and globally. According to a CIA assessment of al Qa’ida, “the group’s cadre of seasoned, committed leaders has allowed it to remain fairly cohesive and stay focused on its strategic objectives.”34 In fact, they began opening new channels of communication by issuing propaganda directed specifically at American audiences, either in translation or given directly by English-speaking al Qa’ida members based in Pakistan. One of the spokesmen most visible to the West was Adam Gadahn, an American raised in Southern California who converted to Islam at the age of seventeen and moved to Pakistan in 1998. With his head wrapped in a black turban and sporting a jet-black beard, he expressed profound rage in his video exposes on YouTube. “We love nothing better than the heat of battle, the echo of explosions, and slitting the throats of the infidels,” he thundered in one video. In another, he callously quipped: “It’s hard to imagine that any compassionate person could see pictures, just pictures, of what the Crusaders did to those children and not want to go on a shooting spree at the Marines’ housing facilities at Camp Pendleton.”35
A Force Multiplier in Afghanistan
Afghanistan remained the most important strategic component for al Qa’ida. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, “Al-Qa’ ida remains committed to reestablishing a fundamentalist Islamic government in Afghanistan and has become increasingly successful in defining Afghanistan as a critical battleground against the West and its regional allies.” Al Qa’ida was also able to leverage its resources through its “increasingly cooperative relationship with insurgent networks.”36 Al Qa’ida personnel met with wealthy Arab businessmen during the Tablighi Jamaat annual meeting in Raiwind, Pakistan, which attracted one of the largest concentrations of Muslims after the
The Golden Chain provided financial backing, but bin Laden offered Afghan fighters much more than financial assistance. Afghan groups were able to tap into the broad international jihadi network. For example, al Qa’ida was instrumental in improving the communications capabilities of Afghan groups. These groups leveraged Al-Sahab, al Qa’ida’s media enterprise, to distribute well-produced video propaganda and recruit supporters. “Al-Qa’ida spreads its propaganda through taped statements,” a CIA assessment reported, “sometimes featuring relatively sophisticated production values.”39 A UN report similarly found that there was an “increasing level of professionalism achieved by Al-Sahab, the main Al-Qaida media production unit.” It continued by noting that Osama bin Laden’s September 2007 video was “expertly produced and, like previous videos, was subtitled in English and uploaded almost simultaneously onto hundreds of servers by what must be a large group of volunteers.”40 In January 2007, federal prosecutors in Chicago indicted Rockford, Illinois, resident Derrick Shareef (also known as Talib Abu Salam Ibn Shareef) on one count of attempting to damage or destroy a building by fire or explosion and one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He had been inspired by watching one of Adam Gadahn’s propaganda videos that justified killing women and children.41
Senior Afghan leaders began to appear in videos produced with the help of al Qa’ida, reciting passages of the Qur’an and outlining their ideology. Taliban leaders such as Mullah Omar increasingly adopted al Qa’ida’s global rhetoric. In a statement in December 2007, for example, Omar turned to Muslims across the globe: “We appeal to Muslims to help their Mujahideen brothers against the international invader economically…. Now you know both religion and country are in danger, you follow the way of good and religious leaders and leave the way of bad and dishonest and do Jihad.”42 And jihadi Websites with links to al Qa’ida, such as those run by Azzam Publications (including www.azzam.com and www.qoqaz.net, which were eventually shut down), helped raise funds for the Taliban.43 Some solicited military items for the Taliban, including gas masks and night vision goggles.44
Insurgent groups also used al Qa’ida support to construct increasingly sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs), including remotely controlled detonators.45 For example, al Qa’ida ran a handful of manufacturing sites in the Bush Mountains, the Khamran Mountains, and the Shakai Valley in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. They ranged from small facilities hidden within compounds that built IEDs, to much larger “IED factories” that doubled as training centers and labs where recruits experimented with IED technology. Some of this explosives expertise came from Iraqi groups that provided information on making and using various kinds of remotely controlled devices and timers. In return for this assistance, al Qa’ida received operational and financial support from local clerics and Taliban commanders in Waziristan. They recruited young Pashtuns from the local
There is even evidence of cooperation between insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Islamic militants in Iraq apparently provided information through the Internet and face-to-face visits with Taliban members, Hezb-i-Islami forces, and foreign fighters from eastern and southern Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas. In addition, there is some evidence that a small number of Pakistani and Afghan militants received military training in Iraq, and Iraqi fighters met with Afghan and Pakistani extremists in Pakistan. It is clear that militants in Afghanistan had great success with homemade bombs, suicide attacks, and other tactics honed in Iraq.46
One effective IED was the “TV bomb,” which was pioneered by Iraqi groups. The bomb was a “shaped”- charge mechanism that could be hidden under brush or debris on a roadside and set off by remote control from 300 yards or more. It was useful for focusing the energy of a bomb toward a specific target. Taliban commanders learned from Iraqi groups to disassemble rockets and rocket-propelled-grenade rounds, remove the explosives and propellants, and repack them with high-velocity shaped charges—thus creating armor-penetrating weapons. In addition, Afghan groups occasionally adopted brutal terrorist tactics, such as beheadings, used by Iraqi groups. In December 2005, insurgents posted a video of the decapitation of an Afghan hostage on al Qa’ida-linked Websites. This was the first published video showing the beheading of an Afghan hostage, and it sent the message that the Taliban was no less serious about repelling the Americans than Iraqi insurgent groups were.47 The
