Internal problems in Al Qaeda
 

Short, interesting article about Al Qaeda's strategy, internal divisions, and Zarqawi.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/conten...ta_talk_wright

Among those quietly celebrating the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week, no doubt, were Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leaders of Al Qaeda, who have watched their nominal ally wreck the standing of their organization among Muslims around the world. After Zarqawi began his bloody operations in Iraq, in 2003, support for suicide bombings—the signature of Al Qaeda since the destruction of the American embassies in East Africa, in 1998—plummeted in Islamic countries. Muslims surveyed in the 2005 Pew Global Attitudes Project reported in substantial numbers that Islamic extremism was a threat to their own countries. Jordan, Zarqawi’s homeland, seemed to be the exception. Then Zarqawi sent suicide bombers to three hotels in downtown Amman, killing sixty people, including prominent Jordanians and Palestinians, many of whom were celebrating a wedding. The next day, tens of thousands of Jordanians poured into the streets to denounce Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi was the herald of a new generation of terrorists whose roots were in street crime, not in Islamic militancy. A former thief and sex offender, he memorized the Koran while he was in prison, and began issuing fatwas and calling himself “sheikh.” “There’s certainly been a downgrading of ideological purity,” Niall Brennan, a special agent on the joint terrorism task force in the New York office of the F.B.I., told me on the morning that Zarqawi’s death was announced. “The next generation is in many respects less disciplined and doesn’t have the same respect for command and control.” Bin Laden, despite his own appetite for slaughter, disdained Zarqawi’s rough manners, prison tattoos, and unruly independence. But after the American invasion of Afghanistan Al Qaeda’s founders were immobilized, reduced to making occasional videotapes designed to rouse aspiring jihadis and berate Western leaders. Deprived of the managerial oversight of bin Laden, an international businessman, Al Qaeda began to shape itself around Zarqawi’s organizational experience, which is to say that it turned into a gang. This was a model easily replicated by would-be jihadis—as in Madrid, London, Toronto—wherever alienated young Muslims yearned for destruction.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian and the No. 2 man in Al Qaeda, was always closer to Zarqawi than bin Laden was. In 2000, Al Qaeda’s Egyptian security chief, Saif al-Adl, helped Zarqawi establish a camp in Afghanistan, near the Iranian border. Young fighters from Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon—the area historically called the Sham—gravitated to the camp and formed the Army of the Sham. Although Zarqawi was not yet a member of Al Qaeda, he remained under the protection of the Egyptians. According to Iraq’s former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who claims that he discovered the information in the archives of the Iraqi secret service, Zarqawi travelled to Iraq in 1999, around the same time as Zawahiri. Saddam Hussein was courting Al Qaeda at the time. Inspired, perhaps, by Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah, he may have believed that he could use terrorists to conduct his foreign policy without undermining his rule. Contrary to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertion before the U.N. Security Council, in February, 2003, that Zarqawi provided the link to Al Qaeda in Iraq, bin Laden and Zawahiri spurned Saddam’s overtures.

After Saddam was overthrown, Zarqawi installed himself as the leader of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. His ability to act was an affront to the founders in hiding, who were no longer able to control their own organization. Although Al Qaeda was an exclusively Sunni association, neither bin Laden nor Zawahiri had ever authorized an attack on Shiites. One of Zarqawi’s first actions, in August, 2003, was to send his father-in-law on a suicide mission to the Imam Ali Mosque, killing nearly a hundred Muslims at prayer. Among them was Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who was expected to be a unifying force in Iraq. Zarqawi explained that his goal was to awaken the Sunnis by dragging the Shia “into the arena of sectarian war.” Ten days earlier, Zarqawi had destroyed the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, effectively driving the international-aid community out of the country. These attacks were characteristic of Zarqawi’s method, which was to target the people who could turn Iraq into a functioning society—teachers, doctors, courageous political thinkers, anyone with the skill and education to pull the country away from chaos.

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Good article. The only thing I would comment on is the part about OBL rejecting Saddam's ovetures. Translated documents from the Iraqi Intellegence service, show that Mullah Omar and OBl were seeking to work with Saddam.

Thanks for posting.

Who the hell cares what they think or say, KILL the bastards before they KILL more of us.

The Iraq Intelligence service is a puppet of the George Bush administration.
The "translated" documents is a part of another propaganda to re-link Saddam to OBL.


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The documents are listed on a government website in there original state for the world to translate, so anyone can translate them. So if you think they are lying find someone who speaks arabic and have them translated for you then you can determine for yourself who is telling the truth. An independent guy who has a lot of middle east knowledge has assembled a team to start translating the documents.

They are all "Muslim Terrorists" who the hell cares where they come from or who they play with, America is at war with "Muslim Terrorists" why do the damn Bush Haters ignore that?

The filthy swine smelly bastards are all sleeping in one bed, what is wrong with you pandering whiney liberals.

Muslim Terrorist Killers are all over the world, some of them are right here in America, WAITING, they pray to Allah each day that the Liberal Democrats will come into power.

Osama Bin Laden sent a message to America during the last election the message was "VOTE KERRY"

You and your fantasy "documents" again. yes, yes, I know...we've had them in 2003, but didn't have translators, so these boxes and boxes of documents have been sitting in the basement of the Pentagon for three years. Documents that probably have lists of terrorist contacts in this country, and discussions of the next 9/11-style attack are just sitting in boxes, assigned a low priority, because there's no people in this country who speak Arabic, and people who speak Arabic take months to translate a single document. And these documents always back up the point you're trying to make.

OBL himself has said, many times, most recently about three months ago when he was talking about US GI crimes against civilians, comparing the Occupying forces to Saddam's Gestapo, that he did not like Saddam, thought Saddam was corrupt, thought Saddam was in violation of Islamic law, thought Saddam should be overthrown, and refused to do any kind of business with him. THAT is documented, and by the W. administration Department of Defense.

Maybe these "documents" are untranslated because W and friends don't want people to know what they say. Probably "Milk, Cheese, Lamb, Hummus, Dry Cleaning"

Maybe these "documents" were created by the Arabic-speaking translators who have been supposedly hard at work at the Pentagon.

Furthermore, what kind of Defense Department scans National Security documents to the public internet? Stop being so naive. There is approximately a zero percent chance that these documents exists as you believe them to.

The docs are online (PDF's of the originals). If you choose to ignore them that is your problem. If you choose to entertain paranoid conspiracy theories be my guest.

As I said before on these new (proofs, that fox initially posted as fact's have yet been validated) when and if they are it will be run on the world media , until then it;s like all the other s--t that fox throws at the wall hoping it will stick..Remember the aluminum tubes, made specifically for a centrifuge that would help make the nuclar bomb as bush said in one of his many speeches that proved untrue, those aluminum tubes were rocket sleeves ,not centrafuge tubes, doh.

Again the PDF of the originals are there in Arabic for anyone to review and translate. If Fox or anyone else were lying, why not just show the alternate translation?

Why would the goverment go to the trouble of creating phony documents in Arabic? Why then post them in PDF format?