What Do You Think?

[jerrys1960]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/osama-bin-laden-s-hand-written-journal-seized-during-u-s-raid-1.361147


Published 11.05.11


Osama Bin Laden's hand-written journal seized during U.S. raid

U.S. officials say Bin Laden's journal, filled with planning ideas and details of operations, was part of huge cache of intelligence taken by U.S. Navy SEALS at Bin Laden's compound.

By The Associated Press Tags: Israel news US

U.S. officials say that Osama bin Laden kept a hand-written journal filled with planning ideas and details of operations. The journal was seized in the dramatic U.S. raid.

The journal was part of a huge cache of intelligence that included about 100 flash drives and five computers taken by U.S. Navy SEALs after they swept through the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about what was found in bin Laden's hideout.

Bin Laden has long been known to record his thoughts and had been thought to keep a diary. Bin Laden's son, in a memoir, has described his father as recording his thoughts and plans when the family lived in Sudan and Afghanistan.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/bin_ladens_preoccupation_with_us_said_to_be_source_of_friction_with_followers/2011/05/11/AFy8zAuG_story.html?wprss=rss_world


Bin Laden’s preoccupation with U.S. said to be source of friction with followers

may 11 2011

By Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung


Osama bin Laden was preoccupied with attacking the United States over all other targets, a fixation that led to friction with followers, according to U.S. intelligence officials involved in analyzing the trove of materials recovered from the al-Qaeda leader’s compound.

In handwritten journals and long-winded compositions saved on computer hard drives, the officials said, bin Laden always seemed to be searching for a way to replicate the impact of al-Qaeda’s most devastating strike.


He exhorted followers to explore ways to recruit non-Muslims “who are oppressed in the United States,” in the words of one official — particularly African Americans and Latinos — and to assemble a plot in time for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Even while sealed inside a cement compound in a Pakistani city, bin Laden functioned like a crime boss pulling strings from a prison cell, sending regular messages to his most trusted lieutenants and strategic advice to far-flung franchises, including al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. Some followers pledged their fealty to him; others, however, chafed at his exhortations to remain focused on U.S. targets instead of mounting less risky operations in places such as Yemen, Somalia and Algeria.

“Bin Laden is saying, ‘You’ve got to focus on the U.S. and the West,’ ” said a senior U.S. intelligence official who was involved in reviewing the stockpile, adding that some of bin Laden’s followers seemed more concerned with regional issues and were reluctant to conduct an attack that would provoke an American response.

A little over a week after obtaining one of the largest intelligence hauls on a terrorist group, U.S. officials involved in reviewing the trove said they are learning more about bin Laden and the al-Qaeda bureaucracy than about the locations of operatives or specific plots that might be unfolding.

Overall, the officials said, the new information — as well as the lack of any apparent effort by bin Laden to prevent it from falling into U.S. hands — provides a strikingly rich portrait of the al-Qaeda chief.

“Bin Laden got lazy and complacent,” said the senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. “I don’t think he thought he would meet his maker in that house. And he certainly didn’t make any preparations” to escape a raid or destroy the information found inside, the official said.

Officials said they are still in triage mode as they sift through the contents of more than 110 flash drives, laptops and other digital storage devices, in addition to piles of paper documents. The trove, which represents millions of pages that must be translated from Arabic, is being scrutinized at a secret CIA facility in Northern Virginia. Analysts and Arabic linguists from other agencies are being brought in to review the materials.

The early effort has focused on searching the most recent materials for key words, including the names of major American cities. Analysts are also scanning for references to names of al-Qaeda figures, phone numbers and other details that could provide clues for CIA operatives and military counterterrorism teams working overseas.


= page 2 =

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/bin-ladens-preoccupation-with-us-said-to-be-source-of-friction-with-followers/2011/05/11/AFy8zAuG_story_1.html



U.S. officials said bin Laden had a relatively short list of senior al-Qaeda members whom he was in touch with frequently and directly, albeit through messages smuggled out of the compound by couriers.

Among them were Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian physician who had long functioned as bin Laden’s second in command, as well as Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan operative who is the latest to fill the organization’s vulnerable No. 3 slot.

Bin Laden’s directions tended to be big-picture in nature, officials said, focusing more on broader objectives than on granular operational details. “I wouldn’t call it command and control” that bin Laden was exercising, the senior U.S. intelligence official said. Indeed, there is no indication that bin Laden even knew the specific whereabouts of Zawahiri and others. Al-Qaeda’s fragmented nature and operational security appear to have kept its leader substantially in the dark.

“We’re not going to find operational manuals or Excel spreadsheets” with rosters of operatives and points of contact, the senior intelligence official said. Bin Laden served as a “chief executive who is giving fairly generic, broad instructions and guidance rather than tactical orders,” the official said.

Even so, the communications are expected to help the CIA and other organizations, including the National Counterterrorism Center, gain significant insights into al-Qaeda’s structure and relationship to regional affiliates.

The U.S. intelligence official said bin Laden’s records have “confirmed our view that AQAP is first among equals in terms of relationships with al-Qaeda core.” The acronym refers to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based group that has been behind a series of plots targeting the United States, including the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009.

Bin Laden does not appear to have been in communication with the most widely recognized AQAP figure, the American-born cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, a relative newcomer who never met the al-Qaeda leader, U.S. officials said. But bin Laden did relay messages to others in Yemen whom he appears to have known personally.

Largely because of Aulaqi’s influence, AQAP has emerged as what U.S. counterterrorism officials have described as the most immediate threat to American interests.

Because bin Laden “was the author and prime proponent of global jihad,” a central question among counterterrorism analysts is “whether some of that ebbs” with bin Laden’s death, the U.S. official said.

A second U.S. official familiar with the data review said that, based on the records, bin Laden also seemed to have placed a low priority on operations inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, urging his network to focus on efforts that will “make America weak, using Latinos and African Americans, people who are oppressed in the United States.”

Al-Qaeda has articulated such goals before. In 2007, Zawahiri issued a message that appealed in part to African Americans, saying, “We are waging jihad to lift oppression from all mankind.”

Al-Qaeda appears to have done little to recruit minorities beyond issuing such appeals, officials said. “Their recruiting has been extremely passive” in recent years, the senior U.S. intelligence official said. “It’s not like they have talent scouts at mosques in the United States.”

The trove does not point to any contact between bin Laden and members of the Pakistani military or intelligence services. The fact that bin Laden appears to have spent the past six years hiding in a compound surrounded by Pakistani military installations, including the country’s top military academy, has fueled speculation that Islamabad was protecting bin Laden or knew his whereabouts.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/bin_laden_videos_other_data_released_by_obama_administration/2011/05/07/AFb2qLJG_story.html?nav=emailpage


Bin Laden videos released by Obama administration


By Greg Miller
Published: May 8


The Obama administration released a collection of videos Saturday of Osama bin Laden that were seized at the compound where he was killed, part of a vast collection of data that U.S. intelligence officials said show that bin Laden remained highly active in directing the terrorist group.

The trove of data shows that “this compound in Abbottabad was an active command and control center for al-Qaeda’s top leader,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said in a briefing at the Pentagon. “It is clear . . . that he was not just a strategic thinker for the group. He was active in operational planning and in driving tactical decisions.”

The videos provide postmortem glimpses of bin Laden in settings that are familiar and surreal. In one, a noticeably gray-bearded bin Laden huddles under a wool blanket and uses a remote control to flip through news footage of himself on a small television propped up on a broken desk.

Another was described by the senior U.S. intelligence official as a previously unreleased “message to the American people,” in which bin Laden stands before a blue backdrop, wearing a gold robe and delivering a speech in which he “repeats the usual themes by condemning U.S. policy and denigrating capitalism.”

The administration did not release any audio from the segments or a transcript of what bin Laden said. The official said the government was reluctant to broadcast the messages contained on the videos or give the al-Qaeda chief a propaganda platform after his death.

The decision to release the footage — and the choice of which segments to share from a broader collection now in the possession of the CIA — appeared designed to provide new evidence that bin Laden was killed in the U.S. operation, and perhaps to present the al-Qaeda leader in settings that might embarrass him or at least minimize his mystique.

The videos are part of a broader library of recordings that “would only have been in his possession,” said the U.S. intelligence official, who described other segments as fumbling “outtakes” from a terrorist leader who was “very interested in his own image.”

The official disclosed few details about the contents of the more than 100 computers, drives and assorted digital storage devices recovered at the compound, except to say that they show a continued focus on planning attacks against the United States and other Western nations.

The CIA has created a task force involving at least nine other agencies, including the FBI and the Defense Department, that are likely to spend months combing through a collection that includes “printed material, computer equipment, recording devices and handwritten documents,” the official said.

Already this week the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin based on intelligence gleaned from the bin Laden materials suggesting al-Qaeda was plotting an attack on railways in the United States, perhaps to coincide with the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bin Laden was killed in a pre-dawn raid Monday in Pakistan by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs. His corpse was carried away by the assault force and later buried in the Arabian Sea.

The U.S. official said DNA comparisons of bin Laden’s body with samples taken from known relatives prove with near-perfect certainty that the man killed at the Pakistani compound was the al-Qaeda leader. The chance of a false positive from the DNA comparisons is “approximately one in 11.8 quadrillion,” the intelligence official said.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.arabnews.com/world/article409491.ece

Bin Laden raiders knew mission a one-shot deal

Bin Laden raiders knew mission a one-shot deal




By KIMBERLY DOZIER
AP

Published: May 17, 2011

WASHINGTON: Those who planned the secret mission to get Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan knew it was a one-shot deal, and it nearly went terribly wrong.

The US deliberately hid the operation from Pakistan, and predicted that national outrage over the breach of Pakistani sovereignty would make it impossible to try again if the raid on Bin Laden’s suspected redoubt came up dry.

Once the raiders reached their target, things started to go awry almost immediately, officials briefed on the operation said.

Adding exclusive new details to the account of the assault on Bin Laden’s hideout, officials described just how the SEAL raiders loudly ditched a foundering helicopter right outside Bin Laden’s door, ruining the plan for a surprise assault. That forced them to abandon plans to run a squeeze play on Bin Laden — simultaneously entering the house stealthily from the roof and the ground floor.

Instead, they busted into the ground floor and began a floor-by-floor storming of the house, working up to the top level where they had assumed Bin Laden — if he was in the house — would be.

They were right.

The raiders came face-to-face with Bin Laden in a hallway outside his bedroom, and three of the Americans stormed in after him, US officials briefed on the operation told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a classified operation.

US officials believe Pakistani intelligence continues to support militants who attack US troops in Afghanistan, and actively undermine US intelligence operations to go after Al-Qaeda inside Pakistan. The level of distrust is such that keeping Pakistan in the dark was a major factor in planning the raid, and led to using the high-tech but sometimes unpredictable helicopter technology that nearly unhinged the mission.

Pakistan’s government has since condemned the action, and threatened to open fire if US forces enter again.

On Monday, the two partners attempted to patch up relations, agreeing to pursue high-value targets jointly.

The decision to launch on that particular moonless night in May came largely because too many American officials had been briefed on the plan. US officials feared if it leaked to the press, Bin Laden would disappear for another decade.

US special operations forces have made approximately four forays into Pakistani territory since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, though this one, some 90 miles (145 kilometers) inside Pakistan, was unlike any other, the officials say.

The job was given to a SEAL Team 6 unit, just back from Afghanistan, one official said. This elite branch of SEALs had been hunting Bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan since 2001.

Five aircraft flew from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, with three school-bus-size Chinook helicopters landing in a deserted area roughly two-thirds of the way to Bin Laden’s compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, two of the officials explained.

Aboard two Black Hawk helicopters were 23 SEALs, an interpreter and a tracking dog named Cairo. Nineteen SEALs would enter the compound, and three of them would find Bin Laden, one official said, providing the exact numbers for the first time.

Aboard the Chinooks were two dozen more SEALs, as backup.

The Black Hawks were specially engineered to muffle the tail rotor and engine sound, two officials said. The added weight of the stealth technology meant cargo was calculated to the ounce (gram), with weather factored in. The night of the mission, it was hotter than expected.

The Black Hawks were to drop the SEALs and depart in less than two minutes, in hopes locals would assume they were Pakistani aircraft visiting the nearby military academy.

One Black Hawk was to hover above the compound, with SEALs sliding down ropes into the open courtyard.

The second was to hover above the roof to drop SEALs there, then land more SEALs outside, plus an interpreter and the dog, who would track anyone who tried to escape and to alert SEALs to any approaching Pakistani security forces.

If troops appeared, the plan was to hunker down in the compound, avoiding armed confrontation with the Pakistanis while officials in Washington negotiated their passage out.

The two SEAL teams inside would work toward each other, in a simultaneous attack from above and below, their weapons silenced, guaranteeing surprise, one of the officials said.

They would have stormed the building in a matter of minutes, as they’d done time and again in two training models of the compound.

The plan unraveled as the first helicopter tried to hover over the compound. The Black Hawk skittered around uncontrollably in the heat-thinned air, forcing the pilot to land. As he did, the tail and rotor got caught on one of the compound’s 12-foot (3.6-meter) walls. The pilot quickly buried the aircraft’s nose in the dirt to keep it from tipping over, and the SEALs clambered out into an outer courtyard.

The other aircraft did not even attempt hovering, landing its SEALs outside the compound.

Now, the raiders were outside, and they’d lost the element of surprise.

They had trained for this, and started blowing their way in with explosives, through walls and doors, working their way up the three-level house from the bottom.

They had to blow their way through barriers at each stair landing, firing back, as one of the men in the house fired at them.

They shot three men as well as one woman, whom US officials have said lunged at the SEALs.

Small knots of children were on every level, including the balcony of Bin Laden’s room.

As three of the SEALs reached the top of the steps on the third floor, they saw Bin Laden standing at the end of the hall. The Americans recognized him instantly, the officials said.

Bin Laden also saw them, dimly outlined in the dark house, and ducked into his room.

The three SEALs assumed he was going for a weapon, and one by one they rushed after him through the door, one official described.

Two women were in front of Bin Laden — yelling and trying to protect him, two officials said. The first SEAL grabbed the two women and shoved them away, fearing they might be wearing suicide bomb vests, they said.

The SEAL behind him opened fire at Bin Laden, putting one bullet in his chest, and one in his head.

It was over in a matter of seconds.

Back at the White House Situation Room, word was relayed that Bin Laden had been found, signaled by the code word “Geronimo.” That was not Bin Laden’s code name, but rather a representation of the letter “G.” Each step of the mission was labeled alphabetically, and “Geronimo” meant that the raiders had reached step “G,” the killing or capture of Bin Laden, two officials said.

As the SEALs began photographing the body for identification, the raiders found an AK-47 rifle and a Russian-made Makarov pistol on a shelf by the door they’d just run through. Bin Laden hadn’t touched them.

They were among a handful of weapons that were removed to be inventoried.

It took approximately 15 minutes to reach Bin Laden, one official said. The next 23 or so were spent blowing up the broken chopper, after rounding up nine women and 18 children, to get them out of range of the blast.

One of the waiting Chinooks flew in to pick up Bin Laden’s body, the raiders from the broken aircraft and the weapons, documents and other materials seized at the site.

The helicopters flew back to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and the body was flown to a waiting US Navy ship for Bin Laden’s burial at sea, ensuring no shrine would spring up around his grave.

When the SEAL team met President Barack Obama, he did not ask who shot Bin Laden. He simply thanked each member of the team, two officials said.

In a few weeks, the team that killed Bin Laden will go back to training, and in a couple of months, back to work overseas.

[jerrys1960]

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20110518a1.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+japantimes+%28The+Japan+Times%3A+All+Stories%29


Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Osama bin Laden's ghost

By MAI YAMANI

LONDON — Osama bin Laden's death in his Pakistani hiding place is like the removal of a tumor from the Muslim world. But aggressive followup therapy will be required to prevent the remaining al-Qaida cells from metastasizing by acquiring more adherents who believe in violence to achieve the "purification" and empowerment of Islam.

Fortunately, bin Laden's death comes at the very moment when much of the Islamic world is being convulsed by the treatment that bin Laden's brand of fanaticism requires: the Arab Spring, with its demands for democratic empowerment (and the absence of demands, at least so far, for the type of Islamic rule that al-Qaida sought to impose).

But can the nascent democracies being built in Egypt and Tunisia, and sought in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, see off the threats posed by Islamic extremists? In particular, can it defeat the Salafi/Wahhabi thought that has long nurtured bin Laden and his ilk, and which remains the professed and protected ideology of Saudi Arabia?

The fact is that before the U.S. operation to kill bin Laden, al-Qaida's symbolic head, the emerging democratic Arab revolutions had already, in just a few short months, done as much to marginalize and weaken his terrorist movement in the Islamic world as the war on terror had achieved in a decade. Those revolutions, whatever their ultimate outcome, have exposed the philosophy and behavior of bin Laden and his followers as not only illegitimate and inhumane, but actually inept at achieving better conditions for ordinary Muslims.

What millions of Arabs were saying as they stood united in peaceful protest was that their way of achieving Arab and Islamic dignity is far less costly in human terms. More importantly, their way will ultimately achieve the type of dignity that people really want, as opposed to the unending wars of terror to rebuild the caliphate that bin Laden promised.

After all, the protesters of the Arab Spring did not need to use—and abuse—Islam to achieve their ends. They did not wait for God to change their condition, but took the initiative by peacefully confronting their oppressors. The Arab revolutions mark the emergence of a pluralist, post-Islamist banner for the faithful. Indeed, the only people to introduce religion into the protests have been rulers, such as those in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria, who have tried to use fear of the Shiite or Sunni "other" to continue to divide and misrule their societies.

Now that the United States has eradicated Bin Laden's physical presence, it needs to stop delaying the rest of the therapeutic process. For the U.S. has been selectively—and short-sightedly—irradiating only parts of the cancer that al-Qaida represents, while leaving the malignant growth of Saudi Wahabism and Salafism untouched. Indeed, despite the decade of the West's war on terror, and Saudi Arabia's longer-term alliance with the U.S., the kingdom's Wahhabi religious establishment has continued to bankroll Islamic extremist ideologies around the world.

Bin Laden, born, raised and educated in Saudi Arabia, is a product of this pervasive ideology. He was no religious innovator; he was a product of Wahhabism, and later was exported by the Wahhabi regime as a jihadist.

During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent $75 billion for the propagation of Wahhabism, funding schools, mosques and charities throughout the Islamic world, from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Yemen, Algeria, and beyond. The Saudis continued such programs after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and even after they discovered that "the Call" is uncontrollable, owing to the technologies of globalization. Not surprisingly, the creation of a transnational Islamic political movement, boosted by thousands of underground jihadi websites, has blown back into the kingdom.

Like the hijackers of 9/11, who were also Saudi/Wahhabi ideological exports (15 of the 19 men who carried out those terror attacks were chosen by bin Laden because they shared the same Saudi descent and education as he), Saudi Arabia's reserve army of potential terrorists remains, because the Wahhabi factory of fanatical ideas remains intact.

So the real battle has not been with bin Laden, but with that Saudi state-supported ideology factory. Bin Laden merely reflected the entrenched violence of the kingdom's official ideology.

Bin Laden's eradication may strip some dictators, from Libya's Moammar Gadhafi to Yemen's Ali Abdallah Saleh, of the main justification they have used for their decades of repression. But the U.S. knows perfectly well that al-Qaida is an enemy of convenience for Saleh and other American allies in the region, and that in many cases, terrorism has been used as a pretext to repress reform. Indeed, now the U.S. is encouraging repression of the Arab Spring in Yemen and Bahrain, where official security forces routinely kill peaceful protesters calling for democracy and human rights.

Al-Qaida and democracy cannot coexist. Indeed, bin Laden's death should open the international community's eyes to the source of his movement: repressive Arab regimes and their extremist ideologies. Otherwise, his example will continue to haunt the world.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43085911/ns/world_news-death_of_bin_laden/

Bin Laden lauds Arab Spring in posthumous tape

However he laments 'great catastrophe' that many Muslims don't agree with him

msnbc.com staff and news service

5/19/2011

CAIRO — Al-Qaida has released a posthumous audio recording by Osama bin Laden in which the Islamist group's ex-leader praises the revolutions sweeping the Arab world.

In the audio, the former al-Qaida leader, who was killed in a U.S. raid on May 2 in Pakistan, expressed joy at the victory of uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia amid the so-called Arab Spring, Reuters reported.

In the audio, bin Laden talks about how the movement started in the Maghreb region of North Africa.

"The sun of the revolution has risen from the Maghreb. The light of the revolution came from Tunisia. It has given the nation tranquility and made the faces of the people happy," he says.

Tunisia's president was overthrown in January, and this was then followed by Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak's departure after mass protests centered on Cairo's Tahrir Square.

"Tunisia was the first but swiftly the knights of Egypt have taken a spark from the free people of Tunisia to Tahrir Square," said bin Laden, adding: "It has made the rulers worried."

He celebrated the reasons behind the uprising, saying it "wasn't one about food and clothes, but a revolution of glory and defiance; revolution of sacrifice and giving."

'Big ignorance'
Bin Laden urged people to "continue the march and don't fear the hardships."

"Sons of my Muslim Ummah (community): You are before a dangerous crossroads and a great, rare and historic opportunity to raise the Ummah and be liberated from enslavement to the wishes of the rulers and the man-made laws and the Western domination," he added.

"It is of great sin and big ignorance that this opportunity gets lost, which the Ummah has been waiting for faraway decades. So take advantage of it and destroy the idols and statues and establish justice and faith," he said.

However he also lamented "the great catastrophe" that "lack of awareness exists in many of the Ummah's sons, which results from the wrong culture the rulers have been broadcasting for long decades."

Terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann, speaking on msnbc's "The Rachel Maddow Show," said that the audio was real.

"There is no doubt whatsoever this is authentic, this is real, this is bin Laden, this is his last message," he said.

Kohlmann said it was not clear why al-Qaida had chosen to release the 12-minute recording now, although he noted the release came in advance of a speech that President Barack Obama was scheduled to give Thursday about the Mideast.

"If you look at this recording, at the way it was packaged forensically, the last touches on this were put on within the last 24 hours," he said.

"Which means they probably were aware of the fact that President Obama is planning this major speech coming tomorrow, perhaps the idea was to try to preempt that with a final message from bin Laden instead," Kohlmann added.

[jerrys1960]

Bin Laden dead: Who will lead al-Qaida?

this seems to be the current most likely choices according to the media.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43085911/ns/world_news-death_of_bin_laden/



Name: Ayman al Zawahiri
Age: 59
Country of origin: Egypt
Reward: $25 million
No. 2: He is the longtime second in command to bin Laden. Many in the counterterrorism community say they were surprised that Zawahiri was not named leader soon after bin Laden was killed May 2 and every day he isn’t lessens the chances he will succeed to the top position.

A pediatrician who was jailed and tortured in Egypt in the roundup following the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, Zawahiri is seen as prickly, arrogant and pedantic by many in al-Qaida. He is also Egyptian, and that is not a positive in an organization dominated by Gulf Arabs. By his own count, he has been targeted by the Americans for attacks six times. They came closest in Domodola, Pakistan, in early 2006.



Name: Abu Yahya al Libi
Age: 47
Country of origin: Libya
Reward: $1 million
Hardliner: The leading propagandist of al-Qaida, he is the most charismatic leader in the terrorist group. Although he has no operational position, his videos have outnumbered those of both bin Laden and Zawahiri. He has a great deal of “street cred,” according to one U.S. official, because he fought against the U.S. in Afghanistan. He was captured and then escaped from Bagram prison in July 2005.

Al Libi is one of a number of Libyans who have risen in al-Qaida ranks over the past decade. Abu Faraj al Libi was the organization’s No. 3 until he was captured, and Abu Laith al-Libi was the No. 4 until he was killed in a Predator strike in 2008. Another Libyan, Abu Gaith al Libi served as bin Laden’s press spokesman after Sept. 11. He is believed to have died.



Name: Ilyas Kashmiri
Age: 46
Country of origin: Pakistani
Reward: $5 million
Rising star: Kashmiri has risen quickly in the al-Qaida hierarchy. He has his own terrorist group, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, which operates in Indian-held Kashmir. More importantly, he is known to have been invited to high-level al-Qaida councils in North Waziristan. There were reports in the Pakistani media that he’d been killed in September 2009 in a Predator strike, but those turned out to be false. “They know their enemy well,” he said at the time. “They know what I am really up to.”

Kashmiri was indicted along with Pakistani-American David Headley, in October 2009, on two counts, for "conspiracy to murder and maim in Denmark" (against the newspaper Jyllands-Posten) and "conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism in Denmark."




Name: Anwar al Awlaki
Age: 40
Country of origin: United States, leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula
Plugged in: Born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to Yemeni-American parents, al Awlaki speaks perfect English, is a charismatic speaker and is more heavily involved in social media than any of the others. He has reportedly been involved, either directly or as an inspiration, in several AQAP-linked attacks, including Maj. Nidal Hassan’s killing of 15 soldiers at Fort Hood in November 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab’s attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, and Faisal Shahzad’s attempt to kill and maim hundreds in Times Square in May 2010. He had his own website and Facebook page, which had more than 5,000 “friends” until Facebook shut it down following an NBC News report. He has directed messages at African Americans in recent speeches, comparing anti-Muslim bias to slavery and segregation.

Days after Bin Laden was killed, al Awlaki was the reported target of a Predator strike in Yemen, which killed two other members of his tribe in an SUV. Al Awlaki was not in the vehicle.





Name: Atia Abd al Rahman
Age: Late 30s
Country of origin: Libya
Reward: $1 million
Bin Laden's gatekeeper: A North African, Atia was promoted to No. 3 in 2010 after his predecessor, Sayed Sheikh, was killed in yet another Predator strike.

He was personally close to bin Laden, going back to the late 1980s when he was a teenager fighting against the Soviets. He is known as an explosives expert and Islamic scholar. He retreated with bin Laden to the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border region in the fall of 2001, according to the FBI.

He was reported killed in a Predator strike — only to show up alive. One stain on his legacy: He was in charge of bin Laden’s couriers.


Name: Saif al-Adel
Age: 51
Country of origin: Egypt
Up close: As military commander of al-Qaida, al-Adel was part of the al-Qaida Management Council, which bin Laden instructed to go to Iran in November 2001 as Afghanistan collapsed. U.S. officials in the past have told NBC News that al-Adel is in some kind of custody in Iran. Iranian officials went further, saying he and the rest were "in jail." There were reports last year that he had somehow left Iran, but U.S. officials then and now said they cannot confirm that.

Al Jazeera reported this week that al-Adel had been appointed interim leader of al-Qaida.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13448589


US: No evidence senior Pakistanis knew about Bin Laden

18 May 2011

US officials have said there was no evidence indicating leaders in Islamabad knew Osama Bin Laden had been hiding in Pakistan.

But defence secretary Robert Gates said he believed "somebody" in Pakistan knew the whereabouts of the al-Qaeda chief.

Top military officer Adm Mike Mullen said it might take a while to find out if Bin Laden had Pakistani protectors.

Amid increasing pressure from US lawmakers, both men advised against cutting off aid to Pakistan.

In a joint news conference at the Pentagon, Mr Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm Mullen said the US must continue to work with Pakistan and provide aid to the country.

But the officials said Pakistan must take action to eliminate the safe havens where militants are allegedly hiding along the border with Afghanistan.
'Somebody knew'

Mr Gates said that though he believed "somebody knew" Bin Laden was hiding in the country, he had seen "no evidence at all" that the senior leadership knew before the raid.

"In fact, I've seen some evidence to the contrary," he said.

The Pentagon has come under increasing pressure from US lawmakers to find out if Pakistan knew of Bin Laden's whereabouts.

US intelligence agencies have been analysing notebooks, computer data and other materials taken from Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad since it was raided by American forces early on 2 May (1 May US time).

Mr Mullen said the Pakistani military's image had been tarnished by the US operation, which took place without the knowledge of the Pakistani government.

On Saturday, Pakistan's parliament condemned the raid and called for an end to unilateral action within its borders, including attacks on suspected militants by US drones.

[jerrys1960]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/a-new-test-for-taliban-al-qaeda-ties/2011/05/16/AFD5cP7G_story.html?wprss=rss_world

A new test for Taliban and al-Qaeda ties

By Joshua Partlow, Published: May 20 2011

KABUL — In their missives to the world, the Taliban greeted Osama bin Laden’s death as a call to arms — a killing that would incite “waves of jihad.” Privately, many Taliban commanders are probably breathing a sigh of relief.

The ties that bound al-Qaeda and the Taliban were anchored by their two leaders — bin Laden and Mohammad Omar — but the relationship was never seamless. The two groups co-existed despite rivalries and divergent agendas: the Taliban, a largely Pashtun movement focused on grievances within Afghanistan; al-Qaeda, the cosmopolitan Arab visionaries of terrorism with eyes always to the West.

Bin Laden’s death could free up the Taliban to distance itself from al-Qaeda, as U.S. military officials have argued, and allow the group to pursue negotiations with the United States. At the same time, the Taliban could take inspiration from bin Laden’s killing and double down on a fight that appears closer to a conclusion as U.S. officials argue for a speedier American withdrawal after the al-Qaeda chief’s death.

In public statements since bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by Navy SEALs, the Taliban has showed no sign of a willingness to abandon its al-Qaeda partners. “The Afghans will not forget the sacrifices and struggle of Sheik Osama, this great patron of Islam,” one statement said.

But many have cast doubt on what actual benefit al-Qaeda brought to the Taliban, particularly in recent years. The number of al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan has consistently been estimated at 100 or fewer. There is a larger al-Qaeda presence in Pakistan, but still far fewer than the tens of thousands of Taliban fighters who operate on both sides of the border.

Stark differences

Although al-Qaeda and the Taliban have a common enemy in the United States, their differences remain stark. U.S. military officials say the vast majority of Taliban fighters operate a short distance from their homes — and are focused primarily on local grievances, rather than international terrorism.

“The Taliban have a whole different agenda. They’re concerned about what’s going on in their valley or their district or their province,” said Col. Joseph Felter, who was the head of Gen. David H. Petraeus’s counterinsurgency advisory team in Kabul and is now with Stanford University. “With bin Laden, there was a sense of connection to the broader jihadi movement. With him gone, the equilibrium will kind of default back.”

The current generation of young Taliban fighters, many of them boys when the Taliban government fell in late 2001, do not have “a memory of this close relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda that some of the older generation saw,” Felter said. “The current 19-year-old Taliban doesn’t have any real connection to al-Qaeda.”

The scope of al-Qaeda’s support for the Taliban or other local insurgent groups in Afghanistan is difficult to assess. Al-Qaeda has run training camps, provided technical expertise and has had the ability to attract fighters from across the broader Muslim world. But the amount of money al-Qaeda could have funneled to the Taliban — a CIA estimate in 2009 put the annual figure at $106 million — is probably outmatched by other sources such as extortion, kidnapping, opium trafficking, and the timber and gem trades.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/a-new-test-for-taliban-al-qaeda-ties/2011/05/16/AFD5cP7G_story_1.html



“I’m hard-pressed to think that [al-Qaeda] carries much credibility with the Taliban now unless they are able to give the Taliban something that they don’t have, which probably is money, weapons, material or perhaps expertise,” said one U.S. official in Kabul, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. “If they’re not doing that, then it’s not clear what they bring.”

Within the Taliban’s leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura, there has been an ongoing debate about whether to renounce al-Qaeda, causing significant divides. Detainees in Afghanistan have told interrogators that they resent al-Qaeda for provoking the U.S. invasion that helped to overthrow the Taliban.

“I’m of the opinion that [al-Qaeda] has become more of a burden on [the Taliban] and the other networks,” Matt Sherman, a former adviser to Petraeus, said in an e-mail. “I question how much [al-Qaeda] really brings / brought to the fight, in terms of quality fighters, resources and money.”

A former head of Pakistan’s intelligence service, Gen. Ziauddin Butt, told a Pakistani newspaper last week that Omar had once told him that bin Laden had “become a bone in the throat that can neither be swallowed nor thrown out.” Omar claimed that he was unable to break ties with bin Laden, Butt said, because “he is considered a heroic figure by some people within Taliban.”

Subject of speculation

In the past decade, the relationship between bin Laden and Omar — and al-Qaeda and the Taliban — has been the subject of much speculation but little fact. During the Taliban’s reign from 1996 to 2001, the Saudi millionaire funded terrorist training camps, and Omar refused to give him up despite intense international pressure. The two men escaped U.S. bombardments by fleeing to Pakistan.

U.S. and Afghan officials said they thought bin Laden and Omar communicated during their years in hiding, most likely through messages passed by intermediaries.

“Our intelligence indicates the relationship between the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda was between Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, not the organizations,” said one U.S. military official in Kabul. “It’s too early to tell whether the groups will disassociate in the wake of bin Laden’s death.”

Afghan critics of the Taliban assert that it is just as ideologically rigid and supportive of international terrorism as al-Qaeda. One former senior Afghan official involved for years in the fight against the Taliban likened bin Laden’s relationship with Omar to that of then-President George W. Bush and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. “Breaking Taliban ties with al-Qaeda is really like breaking the British and American ties. Is that possible?” he said.

Near the end of the Taliban’s reign, Abdul Salam Rocketi, a burly Taliban commander, went to lunch at a friend’s house outside Jalalabad, where he sat down to dine with bin Laden. As Rocketi recalls, their hour-long conversation went poorly, and he left in anger before the others gathered around a small television to watch propaganda videos of Palestinian fighters.

“I told him, ‘The whole world is against you and looking for you; one day you will become a headache for the Afghan people,’ ” Rocketi said. “He told me, ‘I am just here for jihad.’ ”

Rocketi, who has renounced his Taliban connections, held out little hope that his former comrades would give up the fight after bin Laden’s death.

“His killing will not stop fighting in this country,” Rocketi said. “It will go on.”

[jerrys1960]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-pakistans-army-anger-simmers/2011/05/18/AFU8yB7G_story.html?wprss=rss_world


By Karin Brulliard,
Published: May 19 2011
Updated: Saturday, May 21, 2011


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — As Pakistan’s powerful military leaders seek to overcome extraordinary public criticism after the killing of Osama bin Laden this month in a Pakistani garrison city, they are also facing seething anger in barracks across the country.

Some of the outrage among the ranks stems from shame that the Pakistani military failed to locate bin Laden or detect the stealth U.S. raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, according to officers and military analysts. But most of it is directed toward the United States, an ally that has given billions of dollars to help sustain Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts but is voicing rising concern that the country’s military is not dedicated to that fight.


Members of Pakistan’s army, which by some accounts is the world’s fifth-largest, have said little publicly about the U.S. operation. But interviews with officers suggest that there is a raucous and broad internal debate — one that is unlikely to undermine the institution, military analysts said, but that bodes poorly for U.S. hopes of an expanded Pakistani effort against Islamist militants.

To head off the discontent, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan’s army chief, made town-hall-style appearances last week at five garrisons, where he faced barbed questions from officers about the U.S. raid, according to some who attended. After a 45-minute address to the 5th Corps in the southern port city of Karachi, Kayani took queries for three hours. Attendees said questioners focused on the perceived affront in Abbottabad — and why Pakistan, in the words of one officer, did not “retaliate.”

In a meeting Sunday with visiting Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Kayani relayed the “intense feelings” of the rank and file, according to a two-sentence military statement. Those sentiments have sparked fears of morale and discipline problems, retired Pakistani defense officials said.

“It’s never good for a military of that size to have a feeling of resentment,” said retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, a security analyst. The discovery of bin Laden, he added, “has stung them as much as it has stung the whole world.”

Even so, no officers interviewed said that the bin Laden killing had convinced them that Pakistan needs to work harder to find terrorists or shift the focus of its defense strategy from archenemy India. Instead, some expressed hope that their superiors would stand up to the United States, by either cutting ties or extracting guarantees of an end to unilateral U.S. actions.

Pakistan should “immediately suspend cooperation with the U.S.,” said one officer in the country’s north, who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss the matter publicly. “In the lower ranks, anti-Americanism is at its highest.”

The United States, officers said, too rarely acknowledges that 140,000 Pakistani troops are deployed in the militant-riddled northwest, tasked with fighting fellow Muslims and compatriots. Nearly 3,000 Pakistani soldiers have been killed battling Islamist insurgents since 2001, according to the army. Recent accusations from Washington about Pakistani complicity with insurgents have prompted fresh reflections about that mission, they said.

[jerrys1960]

and now we find out which side our "friends" are on.

actually this should have been expected. after all remember the rules about Muslims siding with non-muslims. and the rule about muslims should never side with non-muslims against any muslim.

copied from:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/15/pakistan.cia.informants.arrested/index.html


Pakistan arrests several who helped CIA in bin Laden case
From Reza Sayah, CNN
June 15, 2011


Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's intelligence agency has detained several people who gave information to the United States before it killed Osama bin Laden, officials in Pakistan said Wednesday.

The agency detained several people who cooperated with the CIA, a Pakistani official said; the official did not know the precise number. One rented a safe house to the CIA in Abbottabad, the Pakistani city where U.S. special forces killed bin Laden early May 2, a Pakistani source familiar with the arrests said Wednesday.

News of the arrests, first reported by The New York Times, is likely to further strain an already rocky relationship between the two countries.

The United States has complained that Pakistan has not done enough to fight al Qaeda and other militants. Senior U.S. officials also suspect that some in Pakistan helped bin Laden live there. CIA Director Leon Panetta reportedly has told legislators that Pakistan was either involved in helping the world's most wanted fugitive avoid detection or was incompetent for not knowing he was living on Pakistani soil.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has protested unilateral action by the United States in Pakistan, such as the raid that killed bin Laden: The United States did not tell Pakistan about it until the raid was over. It also has complained about civilian casualties caused by suspected U.S. drone strikes that have targeted Islamic militants in northwestern Pakistan.

Now comes news that Pakistan has detained some of the very people who helped the United States find and kill bin Laden.
Pakistan arrests bin Laden informants
Bin Laden considered Pakistan deal
Explorer searches for bin Laden's body
RELATED TOPICS

Pakistan
Espionage and Intelligence
Osama bin Laden

Panetta discussed the arrests Friday with Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Pakistan's head of military intelligence, the official said. A U.S. official confirmed that the discussion had taken place but would not give details about the arrests.

The first Pakistani official did not say whether the owner of the safe house was suspected of being a CIA informant. He asked not to be identified because he was discussing sensitive internal matters. The second Pakistani official asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.

A Pakistani military spokesman confirmed that there were "a number of people arrested in Abbottabad after the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound" but said he could not say what relationship, if any, they may have had with the CIA.

Some were seized at "a house in Abbottabad that was used to monitor the bin Laden compound activities," said Syed Azmat Ali, the military spokesman. "They could have been Pakistanis who were informants to the CIA."

Ali said those arrests were made by Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, "immediately after the raid, so this is not a new piece of information."

He and the intelligence official who asked not to be named were responding to a report in The New York Times that Pakistan had arrested five CIA informants who gave information to the United States before the raid on bin Laden's hideout.

The newspaper attributed the report to "American officials" without naming them.

It said one of those arrested was a Pakistani army major who had kept records of license plate numbers on cars that stopped at the bin Laden compound. Ali, the Pakistani military spokesman, said that assertion was "categorically" not true.

The newspaper also cited a top CIA official's damning assessment of Pakistan's cooperation with American counterterrorism efforts.

Asked last week at a private briefing of the Senate Intelligence Committee to rate Pakistan's cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations, using a scale of one to 10, Deputy CIA Director Michael J. Morell gave it a three, the Times said, quoting "officials familiar with the exchange."

Asked Wednesday by CNN to rate the Pakistani spy agency's relationship with the CIA on a scale of one to 10, military spokesman Ali gave it a four.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that maintaining the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is "complicated," but "helps our national security interest."

He called the cooperation "vital," and said Pakistan is "an important partner in fighting terrorism."

"They have been reliable in providing information that's led to successful missions against terrorists," he said.

At the State Department, spokesman Mark Toner said that, despite the challenges, "more terrorists have been identified and killed on Pakistani soil than anywhere else in the world. And that's, in part, due to this counter-terrorism cooperation that we have. So it's in our interest to work through these challenges as they arise and to move forward."

Panetta, who has been nominated to be secretary of defense, defended the relationship to Congress in confirmation hearings last week.

"They maintain relationships with certain terrorist groups," he said, adding: "They continue to not take aggressive action with regard to these safe havens, and ... they're concerned about the sovereignty results and criticisms of the United States when, in fact, my view is that the terrorists in their country are probably the greatest threat to their sovereignty."

During a visit last week to Pakistan, Panetta raised the issue of two raids that appear to have failed because of intelligence leaks in recent weeks, a U.S. official said.

The United States had shown the Pakistanis evidence of two bomb-making sites near the Afghan border, the official said, asking not to be named discussing intelligence and diplomatic issues.

The Americans believed the sites were being used to stage attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

When the Pakistanis raided the sites, both were empty.

"The targets appear to have been tipped off," the U.S. official said.

The relationship between the two countries has been in a downward spiral over disputes about how to pursue counterterrorism efforts.

One reason Pakistanis have supported militants in the tribal region is that the fighters are seen as a bulwark for Pakistani interests. That includes a focus against the influence of longtime rival India in Afghanistan. Despite fears that elements sympathetic to militants are working for the ISI, American officials have argued that maintaining an alliance with Pakistan is crucial to the success of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.

The United States is suspected of carrying out routine strikes by unmanned aircraft targeting suspected terrorists in Pakistan: two suspected strikes Wednesday killed 15 suspected militants, two Pakistani officials said.

Pakistani officials have said there were more than 100 such strikes in their country last year, a record, according to CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen. They think most of the casualties were foot soldiers or civilians, not high-value terrorism targets, he said.

The New America Foundation in Washington, which maintains an independent count of reported drone strikes, says there were 118 of them in 2010, killing 600 to 1,000 people.

Polls show that nine of 10 Pakistanis view the strikes unfavorably.

Many Pakistanis were angered by the case of Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who was charged with killing two Pakistani men but then released after compensation was paid to their families.

Davis described the two men as attackers and said he shot them in self-defense. Lahore Police Chief Aslam Tareen, however, said the case was "clear-cut murder."

According to Davis, the shooting occurred January 27 after two men attacked him as he drove through a busy Lahore neighborhood, the U.S. Embassy has said.

U.S. officials originally said Davis was a diplomat and tried to claim diplomatic immunity but then revealed that he was a CIA contractor.

CIA chief Panetta's unannounced visit last week was the latest in a series by U.S. officials -- including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and Sen. John Kerry -- efforts to smooth things over after bin Laden was killed in the Navy SEAL raid.

The Pakistani military said in April that drone strikes "not only undermine our national effort against terrorism but turn public support against our efforts, which remains the key to success."

The United States has regarded Pakistan as a top ally in its fight against the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network and other Pakistan-based militants who have launched attacks against international and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.

Washington has argued that Pakistan has not done enough to go after al Qaeda and other extremists. U.S. officials have expressed impatience with the Pakistanis and suspicions that elements of the ISI directorate are sympathetic to militants.[/url]