Truth, Ambiguity and Covering Terrorism

By Yassin Musharbash (c) 

I trust the ambiguous over that which appears certain; I believe it comes closer to the truth. As a journalist this sometimes causes difficulty, because the ambiguous dwells in cumbrous words: allegedly; supposedly; reportedly... I have spent more than one deadline day shielding words like these from editors. These words don't make for beautiful articles. My hope is they make for more truthful articles. It is rare enough we stumble across something truly true.

The last time I felt this happen was in November 2013. I was standing on a tiny balcony in the city centre of Alexandria in Egypt, smoking a cigarette. Two persons sat in the living room that led to the balcony; over the past two days I had spent a total of 14 hours with them. What went through my head on that balcony was that I wanted to write about how Leah Farrall, a former counter terrorism officer of the Australian Federal Police, and Mustafa Hamid, a former Taliban adviser, had gotten to know each other and built enough trust between them to be able to write a book together over the course of two years, here in Alexandria.

I assume that most professions have their own déformation profesionelle; journalists tend to look for the truth in details: When exactly did you hear about it? What went trough your head in that moment? Was is while you were having coffee? Did you learn about it from the radio, or from television? Or did someone call you? What station was it again? And what were you wearing that day, what did you do after you learned about it? What was the weather like?

I, for one, was walking past a café in Southern Greece on that day, noticing the oddness of patrons sitting at their tables, all eyes glued to the TV set, but no one saying a word. I approached the TV set, only to witness the second tower collapsing.

It is of course not interesting at all how I experienced 9/11. But from that day on I, as a journalist, worked mainly on al-Qaida and Islamist Extremism. On 9/11, I was still a student of Arabic Studies, but I had already begun to work as a freelancer for several papers. I had written about Islamism before. On that day, Terrorism as a topic came to me, and I very much accepted it as my topic.

I could not help but think about that moment in Greece as I was standing on the balcony in Alexandria more than 12 years later. Why? Perhaps because it is always special to meet someone who knew Osama Bin Laden. More, I suspect, because in Mustafa Hamid’s case it is indeed interesting how he experienced that day.

On 9/11, he was in the Afghan city of Kandahar, where sweets were handed out when news about the terror attacks in New York and Washington broke. Others may have been celebrating that day, but Mustafa Hamid wasn't. He was angry. Only three weeks prior, he had met with Osama Bin Laden. On that occasion, the Saudi al-Qaida chief had let on plans were in place for a „big strike“ that would kill thousands. Mustafa Hamid asked Osama Bin Laden to stop his plan: „I knew what this would mean for Afghanistan“, he told me. It was a frosty meeting. It turned out to be their last encounter.

After I got back to Berlin from Alexandria I asked Mustafa Hamid to describe to me in yet more detail how that last encounter took place. What was the weather like that day? Where exactly had they met? What had Bin Laden been wearing? Had he smiled when he talked about his „plan“?

Mustafa Hamid kindly sent me two pages in Arabic. But by the time his email arrived, an unexpected process had already been set in motion: I had begun to sense that the real story was not what I thought it was when I was standing on that balcony in Alexandria.

Detail is usually hard currency in journalism. I remember that I once wrote an article about a German convert to Islam who had joined a militant Jihadi group in Pakistan. On the day before his departure from Germany he had taken his cat to the veterinarian. What a great piece of detail! But unfortunately it didn't reveal anything. And it explained nothing.

So I asked myself: What difference does it make to know what clothes Osama Bin Laden had been wearing that day?

Wasn't it more important that Mustafa Hamid was angry at the Saudi? Wasn't it more important that Mustafa Hamid and Leah Farrall managed to write a book together? Wasn't it more important to ask if there was something to learn from this, for all of us? I don't want to be romantic, but: If a former counter terrorism official and a former Taliban adviser can laugh together, as Farrall and Hamid do – why can't all of us?

I asked them both about the common ground in their endeavour and they agreed it was to set the historical record straight. Hamid, the eye witness; Farrall, the academic who had read literally everything on the role of Arab fighters in Afghanistan from 1979 onwards. This common ground is the reason their book is as powerful as it is (The Arabs at War in Afghanistan will be published later this summer).

But at the same time I sensed another element beyond their shared academic interest. It is significant that Mustafa Hamid recalls he chose to be intentionally discourteous towards Leah Farrall when they first met: „I thought she was like those in Abu Ghuraib“. Soldiers, torturing Iraqis, heaped in naked piles: That, apparently, was what came to his mind when he learned that Leah Farrall had been with the Australian Federal Police – even though neither Australians nor Police were involved in the Abu Ghuraib scandal. „But I quickly realised she was different, she was honest and serious, and she gave me honest answers when I asked her something.“

And how about Leah Farrall? “I remember sitting with colleagues years ago, discussing whom we would most like to talk to from the mujahidin world (a surprisingly common topic of conversation). Mr Hamid topped my list and had done so since I chanced upon two stories he had recounted in his books. In one, he told of forgetting to buy his children sweets while on a trip away and returning to face their wrath; the other, recalling encountering the body of a dead Soviet soldier, and the sadness he felt, even for his enemy.”

When Leah Farrall met Mustafa Hamid in person years later, she addressed him as „Mustafa“, and not by his nom de guerre „Abu Walid“. „That reminded me of my humanity“, says he. What was the bridge that made them trust one another? I daresay: A degree of respect for another person's life. But foremost: Honesty about themselves and openness towards the other.

The US TV series “Homeland” is a global success and critics often praise it, saying that it sheds light on the shades of grey in “Great War on Terror” that unfolded after 9/11. A CIA-Agent, a former US-Marine, who was (or was not) turned by al-Qaida during captivity in Iraq: That's the set-up. It is true that “Homeland” plays skillfully with viewers' expectations. But shades of grey? The truth is that in “Homeland” there is black and there is white. The suspense of the show really only comes from the question of who, behind his last mask, turns out to be evil. And who, at the bottom of it all, is good.

But that is not what shades of grey are about. Shades of grey don't mean that you don't know enough. Shades of grey mean that sometimes there are no simple answers.

Mustafa Hamid makes a point of the fact that he always felt in alignment with the Taliban movement but was never a member of the terrorist network Al-Qaida. Leah Farrall says: “I was happy I worked in law enforcement and not secret services because I never had to lie, and I wasn’t part of an apparatus that was involved in activities now widely viewed as repugnant and very much dictated by this black and white distinction of evil and good and with us or against us that dictated how some of the covert agencies operated in their less accountable space.” That is what shades of grey are about.

In January 2011, when millions took to the streets in Egypt to protest the Mubarak regime, I spent two weeks in Cairo. One morning I spoke to a young revolutionary who had not been attending work for days in order to live in the protesters' camp on Tahrir Square. He was very tired and had all but lost his voice. But he was euphoric. One thing he said touched me in particular: „One day it will be cool to be an Arab!“ There was so much pain mirrored in that sentence. Pain because anywhere outside of the Muslim world for all of his adult life that young man had been considered, as a Muslim and an Arab, a security risk.

Sometimes I ask myself if we can actually remember what life was like before 9/11. And how we used to look at one another and at the world. This “we” I am referring to is an almost global “we”: It encompasses almost all people considering themselves part of “the West” as well as almost all people considering themselves part of the “Muslim world”. Plus those who believe they are part of both worlds - a huge number of people.

I believe that prior to 9/11 we all used to accept shades of grey to a higher degree than after. I believe that 9/11 is the day that killed all shades of grey. The day on which many of us, as individuals, as citizens, as members of nations, consciously or unconsciously organised ourselves in patterns like shards of metal under the influence of a magnetic field.

But if one day, if that day, has such a power, I want to understand it. And by that I mean: Not as symbol; not as warning but in its concrete historical genesis. Not as a deed with its own specific operational history and perpetrators, that's what the US 9/11 commission report is for. But as that which unfolded as opposed to those which did not.

In Alexandria, I asked Leah Farrall about the single most interesting thing she learned from her studies and her conversations with Mustafa Hamid. She replied: “The role of chance.” Chance? Chance is not usually a category that plays a role in the discussions of historians or terror experts when they talk about al-Qaida and 9/11.

In hindsight, it is always tempting to interpret history as an inevitable chain of events. In the case of 9/11, one such “inevitable chain” goes like this: In 1996, Osama Bin Laden declared war upon the United Stated; pronouncing every US soldier anywhere in the world a legitimate target. On August 7^th, 1998, two huge bombs exploded in front of the US embassies in Nairobi and Daressalam, killing more than 200 people. On October 12^th, 2000, 17 US sailors died when al-Qaida operatives attacked the USS Cole off the Yemeni port of Aden in a suicide mission. Given this prehistory, what could 9/11 possibly be other than the next logical step?

That is true. But is also not true. It is only true in as much as all three events have already been the result of a dynamic within the al-Qaida nexus that was all but inevitable. What happened was that Osama Bin Laden gained the upper hand and the means to pursue this particular course of action – even though many in the al-Qaida leadership and close to it were not in favour of attacking the US at all. It is important to understand this: While many inside al-Qaida were against 9/11, some of those who planned the attacks had only reluctantly become members of al-Qaida in the first place. Like Khalid Sheikh Muhammed.

In the summer of 2009, I received an unusual email. “I have a message for you”, it read. Then there was a link to an uploader website. I followed the link and found a letter in which a group of Jihadists from Germany, who had migrated to Waziristan and joined a terrorist group there, invited me to interview them. Naturally, I immediately informed my editors. A short while later my phone rang, a number from Pakistan: It was the spokesman of said group, a Turkish-German militant. He said I should fly to Quetta in Pakistan, and I would be brought to their camps from there. I would be allowed to take pictures, interview who I wanted to interview, etc. My editors and I agreed quickly that I would not take that trip. It was way too risky and we could not trust these people. But we agreed to send them a number of questions. If their answers were more than just propaganda, we would decide how to deal with their proposal later. A few weeks passed. Then I learned the Americans had contacted the German Office of the Chancellery and had supplied them with the complete correspondence I had had with the militants.

The Americans? I suppose, more precisely, the NSA. Honestly, it felt horrible. I remember gesturing my wife into the bathroom and then, like in a bad movie, turning on the tap of the bathtub. I whispered to her that we would have to assume that our communications were being monitored.

"Even if there's just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty”: This is how US journalist Ron Suskind in 2006 cites what he calls the “One per cent Doctrine”, also known as the “Cheney Doctrine”, for then Vice President Dick Cheney was the creator of this doctrine, formulated in the White house in November 2001, only weeks after 9/11.

The Iraq War, Guantanamo, Waterboarding, CIA Black Sites and renditions: Through the prism of the Cheney Doctrine all of these events seem less arbitrary, don't they? The same is true for global surveillance: Until this day, nothing explains NSA's greed for data better than this doctrine.

There is no need to compare Dick Cheney to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad to see that not only inside al-Qaida, but also within the US administrations the more extremist positions had the upper hand. Sure, Al-Qaida never distanced itself from 9/11 whereas in the US there was a process of democratic revision of all of these practices. But again: This isn't a comparison. It's just meant to re-iterate the fact that we are – in neither sphere – talking about inevitable chains of events.

Nobody knows what the world would look like if 9/11 had not happened. But what if we forced ourselves to try and look at the world as if that was the case? Bearing in mind that those responsible for 9/11 and the doctrine by which reaction was shaped are a handful of people – not millions.

I don't want to gloss over things: I am half-Jordanian, and I long for the times I experienced there as a kid. My Jordanian family is part of the country’s Christian minority. And until very recently what my aunt told me at my last visit there would have been unthinkable: That the guy in the bakery who used to bake all the cakes for our family events let it be known that he wouldn't put crosses on cakes anymore.

But by the same token I don't want to withhold that I am nervous whenever I have to travel to the US. Sure, so far I have always been allowed in. But the last time it really helped that the officer who screened me knew me from Twitter and thus was able to understand that my visa entries from Pakistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia didn't mean I was a risk but were proof of my profession.

I believe in a way we are all prisoners – prisoners in a kind of Guantanamo of the Mind. But I don't want to live there. I want to continue to meet with and talk to people like Mustafa Hamid, even if the US decides to designate them as terrorists, and without accepting that judgment as something I have to agree with. Just as I want to keep meeting with and talking to CIA analysts and operatives without immediately categorising them as torturers or murderers. I want to draw my own conclusions. Sometimes I want to pass on drawing my own conclusions. And sometimes I even want to be able to admit that I can't draw my own conclusions.

Because I know and understand that the world is complicated and that almost nothing is either black or white; because I believe that people can change; because I know that our world, really, is a world of shades of grey.

One day we will look back on the “Great War on Terror” and its warpage, and we will realize that it didn't end on the day that Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize; nor on the day that Osama Bin Laden was killed; nor on the day that the last NATO soldier left Afghanistan. The “Great War on Terror” will have ended, because enough people around the world will have understood and remembered that the ambiguous is closer to the truth and to reality than the seemingly certain. 

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NB: This Essay was first published in German by ZEITmagazin on May 28th, 2014. It is copyright-protected. It has been marginally edited for this Blog. 

Zawahiri's "Guideline for Jihad"

September 18th, 2013 - The recent publication by al-Qaida's Al-Sahab Media Wing of a 5-page Arabic document by Al-Qaida's Amir Aiman al-Zawahiri is interesting for several reasons, foremost of which is that publications whose target audience is the actual cadre and body of sympathizers of al-Qaida have become rarer and rarer over the past few years; yet it is these documents that help us understand the organization better than videos and audios directed at a global audience with the intent to warn, scare or intimidate "the enemy".

In this case, al-Zawahiri explicitly asks for this paper to be distributed among the rank and file of supporters, members and leaders of all groups "within in the community of Qaidat al-Jihad". So even though not everything that al-Zawahiris has to say is entirely new, some parts of this document titled "General Explanations about the Jihadi Work" are worthwhile taking a look at.

1.- Al-Zawahiri is trying to reinstall a sense of coherency into al-Qaida's activities. He tries to achieve this by making clear that all actions taken in the name of the organization have to be in line with the general narrative of al-Qaida being the vanguard of resistance against the "crusader onslaught" on Islam. I would say that this is an attempt to try and win back sympathies within societies where many people over the past years have started to mainly perceive al-Qaida as a force that indiscriminately murders people. Al-Zawahiri would like Al-Qaida to be seen instead as a group sticking to a particular mission which it follows on behalf of all Muslims. Thus he needs coherency.

2.- Al-Zawahiri also asks his cadre and fighters to practice restraint. Fewer Muslim and civilian targets and fewer attacks on Muslim "deviant" groups, he apparently hopes, will help serve the same purpose: Improving al-Qaida's image in the Muslim world. It is likely also for this reason that he demands that al-Qaida, as a rule, should only retaliate.

3.- I say "as a rule" here, because al-Zawahiri of course doesn't fail to make clear that attacking US and Israeli targets is always OK. By this, Al-Zawahiri is effectively saying: Listen, you can bomb away, if you like, but please stick to the few rules that I have come up with in the larger, strategic interest of this enterprise! He is not forbidding either violence or terrorism. He just wants it better explained and more targeted.

4.- It is not new that al-Zawahiri (or other AQ leaders, for that matter) ask for restraint. The AQ Central reaction to Abu Musab al-Zarqawis butchering in Iraq is one example. Abu Yahya al-Libi's fatwa against market bombs is another. However, I believe there is an additional factor at play here. Al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian, and he always looks to Egypt with special interest. Given that the Muslimbrothers there have just lost "their" president and claim to power by action of the army, al-Zawahiri knows that there must be hundreds, perhaps thousands of angry, radicalized, disenfranchised MB who are at the tipping point, because they have just learnt the hard way that playing the democracy game doesn't play out. These people are not naturally al-Qaida supporters. But a more civil, more restrained, more focused, more political version of al-Qaida could win their sympathies. I believe this is what al-Zawahiri is (also) aiming at.

Of course it remains to be seen whether al-Zawahiri's initiative will yield any results on the ground; I have doubts. But it may help him strengthen his own position within the organization. Until now his audios and videos have not been very impressive or inspiring. Now he has for the first time left a clear mark since he took over from Bin Laden. That is in itself an important step for him.

PS: This is an English version (not a translation) of a blog post from my German language blog on the website of DIE ZEIT, where I work. 

PPS: Aaron Zelin has both, Arabic and English versions of the document on Jihadology. 

AQ, Mauretani & Internet Cables

March 29, 2013 - Egypt's naval forces yesterday reportedly intercepted scuba divers who were trying to cut submarine internet cables. Some of you noted that in the previously unknown letter of Sheikh Younis al-Mauretani to Osama Bin Laden that I reported about last week attacks of this kind had been floated as ideas. Of course it is way too early to say anything meaningful about the actual background of the operation foiled in Egypt, let alone about a potential connection to Al-Qaida. At this point, I believe it could very well be a coincidence.

But just in case you are interested, here is what al-Mauretani had to say on the issue in the OBL-letter: 

* We will delegate people to study maritime issues and to personally prepare for the fact that the organization will one day need them for Jihadist activities. These people will be asked to specialize, since it is necessary to master the technique of trafficking and everything else in connection with the seas, as we have in mind attacks on maritime targets such as pipelines and internet cables and tankers. 

* ... not to even talk about an operation like the one you have suggested and for which we would need a special apparatus with the highest capabilities... . This apparatus demands the highest degree of precision and simultaneity as well as a huge amount of information and activities. Not to mention the destruction of all cables of the internet at different places worldwide -- we have seen, after all, how a simple problem a year ago led to unrest at the stock exchanges in the Near East. 

You think these passages are somewhat cryptic? I agree. But if anything, these sentences rather clearly corroborate the notion that AQ was at least thinking about targeting internet cables. Can they do it, though? Is it still a live plan? I daresay no-one knows right now. Maybe results of the Egyptian investigation will tell us more. 

Have a good night, 

Y. -

The 18th Document, Part II

March, 27th, 2013 - Some of you have asked me whether the Abottabad document that surfaced in a trial here recently and that I have reported about last week had been declassified. I do assume that the U.S. government had to declassify it in some way or another, at least technically, so as to be able to share it with a foreign government. But I am not familiar with U.S. procedures.

However, as far as Germany is concerned, court documents aren't usually made available by the authorities here, and this document hasn't. It is therefor not in the public domain in this country. It was talked about abstractly in the court room, though (I wasn't at the trial in Düsseldorf. But I gather that this must have been the case from some of the reporting from there.)

Be that as it may, since some of you are experts in the field and as such also interested in details, I am happy to share a few more points mentioned in this letter by Abu Yunis al-Mauretani to Osama Bin Laden. They are not as exciting, naturally, as what I ran in my original report. But maybe some of it relates to a question or two some of you might be working on. 

I will do this is a short list of bullet points. But please bear in mind that this does not represent the chronological order or any other order of the actual letter. The document in question somewhat jumps between points, spheres, places and times, so I feel it is justifiable to impose another kind of order on it. 

1.- When al-Mauretani speaks about his plan to have a group of recruits ready to go back to the West and take up work there, he names the following areas of expertise as examples: "Research and Study", Business, Infiltration, secure recruitment, organizing training. So these are categories important to him. It is not entirely clear, however, whether he is talking about actual or imagined recruits possessing those capabilities. 

2.- Repeatedly, he makes it clear that the recruits he is talking about will need time to settle in or find the positions appropriate for their later task. This is clearly a mid term to long term scheme he is discussing. I don't like the term, but what he really seems to be describing is how he plans to plant "sleepers" in the West. 

3.- Al-Mauretani seems to be hinting at Africa as being the place where recruits would (and perhaps re-group) go if something went wrong along the way. In this context he also mentions the Shabaab, making it sound as if there existed (at the time) working relations betweens them and AQc. But again: This passage is not entirely lucid. 

4.- As far as finances go, al-Mauretani makes an interesting hint in that he talks about plans to start companies, preferably in "remote and poor African states" that are far away from conflict. He even suggests bribing government officials. The backdrop of this idea partly seems to be that al-Mauretani feels that in Arab states the security institutions are too aware and too alert. 

5.- Al-Mauretani talks a lot about maritime terrorism and underwater targets or targets in the oceans. But interestingly he also says that there is a huge black market in the open seas and that he would like AQ to profit from it. 

6.- Al-Mauretani in one passage makes an interesting distinction between those recruits who are "willing to assume martyrdom (shahada)" and those who aren't. He evens mentions a "commission for martyr operations". 

7.- In regard to Abu Yahya al-Libi, back then one of AQ's most important cadres and responsible to a large degree for all things theological and ideological, he says: Abu Yahya will "decide personally about an appropriate place" to be at, or will task a third person with finding such a place. I find this interesting as it tells us a little bit about the degree of autonomy of top leadership as regards their whereabouts in the face of drones. 

8.- Al-Mauretani suggests that there was still a degree of book keeping happening between AQc and the branches at the time. 

9.- He also names as one aim the plan to undermine certain Western policies like "We will not negociate with terrorists". He says that the West did just do that in hostage situations in the Maghreb. And this policy will become obsolete one companies would one day directly negotiate with "us". 

Ok, that's it for tonight. Good night. Y. 

The 18th Document Or: News from Abottabad

March 20^th, 2013 - OK, folks, this is an exclusive: Until today the US government has only published 17 of the probably thousands of documents it seized in Abottabad during the raid on Osama Bin Laden. But now an 18^th document has surfaced – and surprisingy enough here in Germany. I have had a chance to study the document. In this Thursday's issue of DIE ZEIT I have a brief report about it, but there is also an extended online version I did for ZEIT ONLINE, already up on the website. If you can't read German, here are some key points.

• The document is a letter by Junis al-Mauretani to Osama Bin Laden, dated March 2010. It is 17 pages in the original Arabic.
• It was sent to German authorities by the US Department of Justice in April 2012 after the Germans had asked if the US did perhaps have any information about three young men standing trial in Düsseldorf at the moment for alleged membership in al-Qaida.
• The reason the US shared this particular document with the Germans is that in it, al-Mauretani refers to a Moroccan recruit whose date of birth he gives - and which is the same as the date of birth of one of the defendants in said trial.
• In essence, the letter is a sketch or rather a vision of a comprehensive plot against the West, including maritime, economical and other sensitive targets. There is a certain emphasis on critical infrastructure, as al-Mauretani singles out water dams, underwater gas pipelines, bridges between cities and tunnels connecting countries, as well as internet cables as potential targets.
• He even suggests to explore underwater pipelines with civil submarines, and he maintains that the pipelines have safety valves every 10 km – a fact, he says, that would need to be taken into account.
• He also says that airborne terrorism is still a possibility but suggests that AQ cadres after learning how to fly should try to get themselves employed (I assume: by airlines). Then they could, he says, for example put their co-pilot to sleep with a seditive and fly the plane into the intended target. As one possible target he suggests the Saudi oil installation at Abqaiq.
• He also claims that there is a process in place by which followers would be asked to enter into sensitive jobs, e.g. in the transport business for oil and gas. By this, he suggests, it could become easier to attack targets like airports, love parades (sic!) and highly frequented tunnels.
• Other operatives would be asked to study physics or chemistry so that they could be made use of at a later time. The term he uses a lot in this respect is „infiltration“.
• There is also an interesting passage in which he claims that AQIM has enough funds to help finance his ideas and that the cadres there trust him personally.
• He also asks OBL to prepare a speech in which he would threaten Europe. This should be done in sync with the operational planning. Around two weeks after the speech, in which he asks OBL to say that patience with the Europeans had run out, the first strike would happen, al-Mauretani says. And shortly after that, the US would be struck.

These are the key facts in the documents. If you are interested in my analysis, I will say the following:

• First of all, the stlye (and some of the content) of the document does seem generally reconcilable with the 17 documents published thus far. For example, Mauretani addresses OBL as "Zamarai". 
• The content also seems to fit rather nicely with information gleaned from other terror trials. It seems to support the notion that AQ was in and around 2010 trying rather hard to plot attacks against the West. For example, two German Jihadists after their apprehension stated that they had met al-Mauretani in Waziristan and that he had spoken about a plot against the West in which no-one would have to die and that it would concentrate on economic targets.
• I have the impression that al-Mauretani was trying to achieve three objectives by his vision: being economically hurtful; being original; and being risk avert.
• The document as such though is not what most in the West would consider a coherent memo. It is much rather the typcal AQ mixture of megalomania and micromanagement that is also reflected in other documents. This is why I call it a vision or attack sketch rather than a plan. There are fairly wild jumps between what I would consider viable ideas (like letting people train how to fly and have them employed by airlines) and the fantastic – like passages about the future military generals of the future Islamic State.
• In essence, the document has definitely great historical value: It offers a rare glimpse into AQ thinking at that ca. 2010. I daresay though that is not operationally important in the now, even if some ideas may have trickled down and be alive elsewhere in the network. This is mainly for four reasons: Al-Mauretani was captured in September 2011; OBL is dead; many recruits from Western countries possibly involved with this very scheme have been arrested; and AQ 2013 is under much more pressure than AQ 2010. And this is not even taking into consideration other factors like the Arab spting and its repercussions.

Apart from the other 17 Abottabad documents, there is one other set of documents that I suggest should be read together with this new letter, and that's the three English documents German authorities believe to stem from AQ core and which were found on a memory device of another terror suspect. I wrote about those documents in March last year on this blog, too. If you then take into consideration what apprehend terror suspects have said in trials or at other occasions, the Euro Plot Scheme of AQ of 2009/2010 becomes almost palpable. I would argue that three aspects of it are now grounded evident due to what we have seen, heard and observed:

1.- Al-Mauretani seems to have been responsible for the reporting to OBL, perhaps the finances, most likely the "grand vision", too. He seems to have wanted to strike economic targets and infrastructure in the West, using Western recruits who he wanted to infiltrate into potentially interesting positions.

2.- AQ during that time actively recruited Westerners - even from among other Jihadist groups like the IMU. I think this means that they wanted this to be large and comprehensive effort - probably sending all of them back around the same time but not striking immediately but rather asking them to recruit even more people and then lie down until told to act. Al-Mauretani in several cases made sure there would be secure means of communications.

3.- The other set of documents seized here in Germany strongly suggest that there was also a Pakistani contingent working inside the larger AQ effort, probably clustered around Rashid Rauf. It could, I believe, also have included Ilyas Kashmiri.

The whole thing, of course, failed in a lot of ways, as you all are aware. But then again: Our visibility is not very good at the moment. So I will only say it is unlikely the Euro Plot is still on the table in its original form.

Lastly, a little aside:

Johannes Pausch, an attorney for one of the defendants, in fact the one possibly mentioned in the document, told me that he was „doubtful“ of the authenticity of the document. He said he couldn't believe that AQ would be careless enough to e.g. put a real date of birth into writing just like that. Today, three FBI agents will be called as witnesses in the Düsseldorf court and they will be asked to describe how the document was seized, transported and logged and who had access to it. This is supposed to help answer questions like: Was the document put into the right context? And did somebody have a theoretical chance to manipulate it?

What I would say in this regard is that in fact there does remain an issue of authenticity. But this issue relates to all of the Abottabad documents. We now know 17 (– well, 18 –) of what are very likely thousands of documents seized on that day in May 2011. Obviously, there is no material acquired by independent sources to compare it against. We have never really seen documents of this kind before. It is therefor near impossible to prove beyond doubt that any of these documents are authentic. We can believe it and work with them. Maybe we even should. And I am certainly not a conspiracy theorist. But for the sake of academic purity I will nonethelesse maintain that there is no proof of authenticity in the true sense of the word.

But be that as it may, I have to say I had a few very interesting days with this one document. And of yourse I am very interested in your thoughts. So, bring it on, please!

(PS. Please bear in mind that this is my private blog. You can't attribute any of it to DIE ZEIT, the paper I work at. At least not without asking.)

Cheers, Yassin  

Attiyat Allah Obituary in Talai' Khorasan

Good day!

There is a four page obituary for Attiyat Allah Al-Liby in the current edition of Talai' Khorasan, written by a certain Abu al-Bara'a al-Kuwaiti. Interesting! I have just read it, and for those of you interested in this sort of thing, here are a few points from the text that I found noteworthy (most of the text isn't exciting, as a matter of fact, but very redundant).

- So apparently Attiyat Allah was born in 1969 in Misurata in Libya
- One of his teachers is named as Abdallah al-Faqih
- But he also had several teachers in Mauretania
- In late 1988 he is said to have gone to Afghanistan and have joined al-Qaida, as a very early member, as the text notes. His base was Camp Jaji, at least then, it seems
- He is said to have taken part in the Khost campaign
- learned explosive techniques
- He then went to Algeria in 1995 to take part in the leadership of "Jihad" there. But this didn't work out well, it seems, and he left again for Afghanistan
- In 2006 Osama Bin Laden asked him to go to Iraq to lead the "Jihad" there "side by side" with Abu Mu'sab al-Zarqawi. But that also didn't work out, he never made it there.
- He again returned to Afghanistan and became the second man behind Mustafa Abu al-Yazid for five years
- He is then described, somewhat oddly, as the "Number Two" (or literally from the Arabic: "The second man") of the organization after the deaths of Bin Laden and Abu al-Yazid. Would love to know what this is supposed to mean exactly.
- He had two sons, the author says: Ibrahim, who died two years before him, and 'Issam, who died with him. Both were teenagers.
- He is portrayed as computer and internet savvy and is said to have read tech magazines.
- He is also described as the "engineer" of the attack of Abu Dajana al-Khorasani on the CIA base in Afghanistan.

OK folks, would love to hear your thoughts!

Cheers, Y.

-August 22nd, 2012

Abbottabad Maths

For all that's interesting in the Abbottabad Documents, there are two reasons why they should be treated with caution. I know that I am not the only one who has pointed that out, but if you are interested, I still would like to share one piece of maths with you. After OBL's death, reports quickly emerged about the amount of documents and data seized. Several news reports stated that 100+ digital storage devices had been secured. Several quality newspapers put the number of pages seized at "several million".

Let us assume it was just one million.
Let us, for argument's sake, farther assume that 98 % are irrelevant, redundant or just not interesting.
That would still leave us with 20.000 pages we would all very much like to read.
The 17 documents now published spread over 175 pages.
That is less than 1 % of what I would consider to be a very low estimate of substantial material.

It is simply impossible to base a picture of AQ on such a portion. The stuff we now get to read should be treated as anecdotal evidence, not as proof.

This is more so, because apart from the quantitative argument, there is a qualitative one: The 17 documents have been cleared by government agencies. We can safely assume that they have three interests: nothing will go out that can still be used operationally; the publication of the documents is a golden opportunity for disinformation in order to send certain message to the adversary; all of what goes out will be material that don't contradict government expert opinion full-on. That said, it should be clear that the 17 documents in question will neither be representative nor the most chilling ones.

I am still not saying we should disregard them. And I am the first one to admit that they are very interesting. I am just saying we should treat them for what they are: anecdotal evidence.

As such, they still yield important information.

One such example is that OBL seems to have been a rather strange mixture of both, a global strategist and a total micro manager (who, e.g., discusses wording of Bay'a oaths on more than one occasion).

Other interesting nuggets that one is bound to neglect in the first reading:

- Jaish al-Islam in Gaza claims that Fatah has offered them financial support
- OBL wants German recruit Abu Talha al-Almani (that's the one with the videos directed towards Germany in autumn of '09) to know that should he wish to postpone his planned suicide attack, he, OBL, would be interested in his suggestions for "external work", i.e. attacks in the West.
- OBL orders brother 'Azzam to translate Robert Fisk's new book into Arabic. I think that must be Adam Gadahn. And if so, I am quite surprised that his Arabic is that good.
- Talking about Gadahn: His long letter outlining what could or should be done in terms of getting Western media interested in 9/11 anniversary coverage is bizarre in and of itself. Am I the only who thinks that Adam and OBL are totally misreading Western media when they believe that they can hook them with "exclusive material"? Apart from that it is interesting of course that Adam seems to have been taken rather seriously by OBL. Not everybody thought that possible.
- Passing mention of the work of a certain "Yunis" seems to track with information surrounding al-Mauretani and the Euro Plot scare.

That's all for now. For those of you who read German, you can find a more readable version of this blogpost in tomorrow's edition of Die ZEIT.

Cheers, Y.

OBL, One Year After, or: Show us the Documents!

(NOTE: Please read the Update at the end of this post)

One year after the death of Osama Bin Laden I don't feel I have to contribute a whole lot to the question of the repercussions of this fact or its long term consequences, mainly because most what I would have said has been said by others already – and perhaps more eloquently.

There is one thing, though, that keeps bothering me, and that's the allegedly huge pile of documents which was seized during the raid on the OBL safe house in Abottabad in Pakistan.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that I doubt its existence. But it annoys me that so little about it is known. And the little that is known isn't known in any true sense of the word, because it was leaked – and leaked at that by people who pretty much by definition have interests that collide at times with those of the general public, the informed public, academic debate or the free press.

I understand that it is out of the question to just publish the whole stack and let all of us, who are no secret agents or homeland security personell, sift through it. Important and sensitive information may be hidden within that pile and I understand why it could be potentially harmful if it was out in the open unvetted and in full.

But precisely because this is so, it is even more annoying if, every now and then, one such piece is being made public – and tadaa – you already knew about it! („Already“ meaning: before the raid in Abottabad.) Now how can this be? I have only two answers: Either because this particular piece of information already existed but has now been confirmed by the documentation found in OBL's safe house. Or because this particular piece of information already existed but has now been made to look as if it was gleaned from the Abbotabad treasure trove.

The problem I have is that a) we can't know and b) if the second was the case, we would be tricked and wouldn't even know. This is not satisfactory.

As you probably guessed, I am blogging about this because I have a suspicion. Let is suffice here to say that two (not major, but also not exactly minor) particular pieces of information I have read about in the course of the past 12 months and that were allegedly gleaned from the Abbotabad raid I had already heard about before the raid – by people I trust and whose sources I also trust. Agreed: the latter with the necessary caveat. But be that as it may, the question is: Is it conceivable that secret services are using the known fact that documents were found in Abottabad as an excuse to make public other stuff that they think should be in the open but where they can't take the risk to publish this information in a different (and more truthful) context because they feel that that would pose certain risks? I think the answer is yes. And even if I can understand in theory why they would argue that way (given that I am right in my assumption here) – it is still unsatisfactory.

Now I guess that there is not much we („we“ in this case meaning: non-governmental people devoting a lot of their time to trying to understand AQ) can do about this. But there is two things we can do – and perhaps should: We should definitely be very careful in our dealings with whatever alleged pieces of information are being leaked from the raid. And those of us who are in a position to voice this sort of demand should probably try and help to convince those in decisive positions to at least make haste with assessing whatever they did retrieve in Abottabad – so as to allow for a publication of at least a portion of that material as early as possible.

Because one thing I am convinced about is: The collective analysis power of the larger community of experts is much bigger than that of a few government-cleared experts.

UPDATE (and thanks to Twitter probably the quickest update ever): J M Berger (@intelwire) just pointed out to me that CTC is apparently planning to publish a chunk of the Abbottabad documents very soon. Thanks for the shout out!!