Qaeda Rifts Seen in Documents Found in Bin Laden Hideout

Qaeda Rifts Seen in Documents Found in Bin Laden Hideout
By PETER BAKER



WASHINGTON — The senior leadership of Al Qaeda was riven with divisive
debates about tactics, strategy and even marketing in the months
leading up to the raid that killed its leader, Osama bin Laden, a year
ago, according to a cache of letters and other documents recovered
from his compound and released Thursday.



Department of Defense, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Osama bin Laden, shown in a photograph taken from video and released
by the American military, mapped out a strategy to take advantage of
the Arab Spring uprisings just a week before his death.

A decade after the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade
Center and demolished part of the Pentagon, leaders of the terrorist
group debated how closely to affiliate with other extremist
organizations, how much it should target the United States, how to win
the support of Muslims, whether to attack drug runners to steal their
money and even whether the infamous network should change its name.

One document found in Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan,
suggested that the name Al Qaeda had "lessened Muslims' feelings that
we belong to them" and lacked any religious connection. The name,
Arabic for "The Base," was first used to refer to some of the
muhajedeen fighting the Soviets in the 1980s.

The document proposed a variety of possible alternatives with Islamic
themes, including Monotheism and Jihad Group, Muslim Unity Group,
Islamic Nation Unification Party and Al-Asqa Liberation Group. Such
names, the unknown author argued, would make the American-led war
against Al Qaeda into more of a war on Islam.

The documents were released by the Combating Terrorism Center at the
United States Military Academy at West Point. Seventeen letters
totaling 175 pages were released, dating from September 2006 to April
2011 just before Bin Laden's death at the hands of Navy SEALs.

The center's evaluation of the documents focused on Bin Laden's
efforts from his hideaway to control the sprawling alliance of
militants that operated in his name. Indeed, the center titled its
report, "Letters from Abbottabad: Bin Laden Sidelined?"

"He was at pains advising them to abort domestic attacks that cause
Muslim civilian casualties and instead focus on the United States,
'our desired goal,' " the center's report said. "Bin Laden's
frustration with regional jihadi groups and his seeming inability to
exercise control over their actions and public statements is the most
compelling story to be told on the basis of the 17 declassified
documents."

The documents revealed a roiling debate over the relationship between
the central Qaeda group and the various affiliates over which Bin
Laden exercised little control. Some of his top lieutenants argued for
disassociating with the branch outfits, while others pushed for more
integration. Bin Laden himself wanted to stay in touch with those
groups and provide advice without fully incorporating them into Al
Qaeda itself. He viewed some of these affiliates as incompetent and
decried operations that killed Muslims.

Bin Laden also mapped out a strategy just a week before his death to
take advantage of the Arab Spring uprisings that had thrown much of
the Middle East into turmoil. He wanted to encourage "people who have
not yet revolted and exhort them to rebel against the rulers" while
trying to guide them away from "half solutions" like secular
democratic politics.

The documents give little new insight into Al Qaeda's relationship
with Pakistan, where Bin Laden had managed to find refuge for years,
but did hint at a difficult relationship with Iran. "The detention of
prominent Al Qaeda members seems to have sparked a campaign of
threats, taking hostages and indirect negotiations between Al Qaeda
and Iran that have been drawn out for years and may still be ongoing,"
the report said.

As has been reported recently, the documents show that Bin Laden
sought operations to assassinate President Obama or Gen. David H.
Petraeus when he was the commander of international forces in
Afghanistan. Bin Laden instructed that two units be set up, one in
Pakistan and another in Bagram, Afghanistan, home of a major American
base, to target airplanes carrying Mr. Obama or General Petraeus.

Bin Laden wrote that Mr. Obama's death would result in the ascension
of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was "utterly unprepared,"
and concluded that "the killing of Petraeus would have a serious
impact on the course of the war" because he was "the man of this
phase." Bin Laden explicitly ruled out targeting Robert M. Gates, then
the defense secretary, Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, or Richard Holbrooke, then the president's special
representative for Afghanistan, but did not explain why.

Bin Laden clearly was not informed in advance of the attempted bombing
of Times Square in May 2010, and he passed along remonstrations to the
Pakistani Taliban, which sponsored it. In particular he was bothered
that Faisal Shahzad, arrested in the plot, had said he lied when he
took his oath of American citizenship. That "amounts to betrayal
(ghadr) and does not fall under permissible lying to the enemy," Bin
Laden wrote.

Likewise, Bin Laden did not seem to think much of Anwar al-Awlaki, the
American-born militant killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011, and
he warned of the "dangerous consequences" of "Inspire," the
English-language magazine produced by Al Qaeda of the Arabian
Peninsula, apparently viewing its content as tasteless.

The documents suggested that Bin Laden was not as close to his deputy
and eventual successor, Ayman al-Zawahri, as some had thought. Mr.
Zawahri shows up only occasionally in the letters and does not seem to
be a main point of consultation, at least if the documents are
representative. Indeed, the center suggested that Mr. Zawahri might
have even acted against Bin Laden's wishes by publicly admitting
affiliate groups into Al Qaeda.

Instead, another Qaeda leader named Atiyyatullah, who also went by
Atiyya, appeared to be closest to Bin Laden. The revelation that Bin
Laden used Atiyya as his consigliere was to some who followed Al Qaeda
for years the most surprising insight. At one point, Bin Laden
confided in Atiyya his concern about his legacy. "He who does not make
known his own history," he wrote, runs the risk that "some in the
media and among historians will construct a history for him, using
whatever information they have, regardless of whether their
information is accurate or not."

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/world/recovered-documents-show-a-divided-al-qaeda.html?_r=1

--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy



--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy

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