Another senior al-Qaeda leader killed in Pakistan

The death of Sheikh Khalid Abdul Rahman al-Hussainan - aka Abu Zaid al-Kuwaiti - in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan's tribal areas yesterday is a serious blow to al-Qaeda. According to some accounts, the Kuwaiti cleric, part of a recent trend of 'internet imams',  was a likely successor to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and played an important role as religious advisor to the organisation and member of al-Qaeda's religious committee.

Sheikh Khalid Abdul Rahman al-Hussainan

He was well known for his lectures and videos, many of which were put out by the As-Shahab organisation. He was also the last known Arab with a serious religious  background living in Pakistan's tribal territories.
According to reports 46-year-old al-Hussainan was killed whilst taking his early morning meal. A statement on an al-Qaeda-linked web forum, posted on Friday, stated: "“We celebrate to you the news of the martyrdom of the working scholar Shaykh Khalid al-Hussainan (Abu Zaid al-Kuwaiti) while eating his suhoor (dawn time) meal, and we ask Allah to accept him in paradise."
More detail on his background can be found in an interview published earlier this year by Flashpoint Partners.
The death of al-Hussainan comes in the wake of the killings of at least three contenders for the leadership role in al-Qaeda since the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011. Ilyas Kashmiri, Atiyah Abd-al Rahman and Ayman al-Awlaki have all been killed in drone strikes, leaving a serious gap in the top leadership of the organisation.

Syed Shahzad's informative but flawed final work

Abducted and murdered in Pakistan in May by persons as yet unknown, Syed Saleem Shahzad was a remarkable journalist. Over many years while reporting for Asian Times Online he had won the trust of elements of the Pakistan Taliban and even of al-Qaeda. Ilyas Kashmiri, the former Pakistan Army captain who had formed al-Qaeda's 313 Brigade and Shadow Army (Lashkar-e-Zil) and who was behind many of that organisation's most devastating attacks in Pakistan, gave Shahzad his one and only published interview, along with other important figures from the jihadist movement who refused to speak to anyone else.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the most significant Afghan guerrilla faction, and Qari Ziaur Rehman - another important guerrilla commander and al-Qaeda recruit - both spoke to Shahzad. His access was legendary and he broke many important stories.
His posthumously published book, Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond bin Laden and 9/11 (Pluto Press, London, 2011), contains much new material and is chiefly important for the insight it provides into the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai. Shahzad explains this as a Pakistani intelligence operation that was hijacked by al-Qaeda, or at least a number of former Pakistani Army officers who had allied themselves with al-Qaeda.
Principal amongst these was Major Haroon Ashik, also a former Lashkar-e-Toiba commander, whose intention was to provoke war between India and Pakistan and hence force Pakistan to move troops from anti-guerrilla actions along the Afghan border. Major Haroon was recently named in the US trial of David Headley and Tahawwur Rana. He is now believed to be in prison in Adiala, Pakistan where he is facing abduction charges.
It was Haroon who also came up with the strategy of attacking NATO convoys in Pakistan in an attempt to strangle the Coalition forces in Afghanistan by cutting off their supplies.
Shahzad's book also outlines in detail the way al-Qaeda has burrowed into the Pashtun tribes along the Afgthan-Pakistan border and attempted to break down the old tribal structures and subvert them to its own goals. This is undoubtedly true and one day will be seen by the Pashtuns as their greatest mistake and greatest tragedy.
However, the book is marred in two major respects. 
First, it has not been edited and is very repetitive and contains a mountain of irrelevant material. In addition, the book is incomplete - for example, it only contains footnotes for the first three chapters. Considering Shahzad's untimely death this can perhaps be forgiven.
The second weakness is more substantial. Shahzad seems to have fallen for much of al-Qaeda's propaganda. He offers few criticisms and sees the last five years as an unbroken chain of success after success. He refers to the devastating drone attacks that have wiped out most of the al-Qaeda leadership in FATA, but still believes they are on the verge of driving the Coalition forces out of Afghanistan. He suggests that al-Qaeda has subsumed both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban beneath its black banner and dominates them politically, militarily and ideologically.
Shahzad thinks 2012 will be the year of victory for al-Qaeda, but couches it in the language of mystical Islam. In some ways we should thank him for exposing the wackiness that is at the heart of al-Qaeda's misbegotten form of Islam, even if he appears to have succumbed to it himself. You need look no further than the last couple of paragraphs of the book to see this:
"Al-Qaeda's next aim is to occupy the promised land of ancient Khurasan, with its boundaries stretching from all the way from Central Asia to Khyber Paktoonkhwa, through Afghanistan and then expand the theatre of war to India.
"The promised Messiah, the Mahdi, will then rise in the Middle East and al-Qaeda will mobilise its forces from Ancient Khurasan for the liberation of Palestine, where a final victory will guarantee the revival of a Global Muslim Caliphate."
That is literally Shahzad's conclusion. No word here of the Arab Spring and the rejection by the Arab Street of Islam as a vehicle for revolution. He sees al-Qaeda's predicted success as the fulfilment of an ancient religious prophesy. But while this messianism at the heart of al-Qaeda's religious philosophy is something that has not received the attention it deserves, it also firmly puts that organisation into the camp of failed revolutions and crackpot religious fantasies. It is only a pity that an astute and well informed writer like Shahzad should fail to see the essential idiocy of such thinking. Roll on 2012.

Ilyas Kashmiri's big mistake

How was it that Ilyas Kashmiri, the much-feared commander of al-Qaeda's 313 Brigade - so-named after the 313 companions that stood at the Prophet's side at the Battle of Badr - came to be killed, along with seven others in an orchard south of Wana in South Waziristan last week (see below)?
According to some reports, Kashmiri was discussing what al-Qaeda and its allies should do in the event of a Pakistani incursion into neighbouring North Waziristan. Pakistan's military has been under American pressure for months to launch attacks against the notorious Haqqani network and its supporters in North Waziristan, from where they launch attacks on Coalition forces in Afghanistan. Significant elements of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan from the Mahsud tribe who were formerly based in South Waziristan are also sheltering there, ever since they were chased out of their traditional tribal lands in a 2009 army offensive.
Kashmiri had only been in the district a few hours when he was killed in a targeted drone strike. Hardly surprising really; his very presence in South Waziristan was a threat to a 2007 peace agreement between the Ahmadzai Wazirs and the government under which the tribe agreed not to attack Pakistani forces or to allow foreign militants into their district. The Waziris had previously risen up against the Arabs and many Uzbeks from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who had settled amongst them and who had become notorious for their cruelty. More than 200 Uzbeks were killed by the Waziris and the survivors were forced north, where they were given shelter by other Pashtun tribes.
As recently as March this year the nine clans of the Ahmadzai Waziris agreed to stick to the terms of the 2007 treaty, although the local district officers were pushing for it to be made tougher on the tribes.
So when Ilyas Kashmiri, a former Pakistani army officer who was reknowned for his brutality and who was certainly involved in serious attacks on the Pakistani armed forces - including the recent attack on the PNS Mehran naval base - arrived in the district, trouble was likely to follow.
Kashmiri was staying at the home of a tribesman known to be a supporter of Maulvi Nazir, an Ahmadzai Wazir and leader of the local chapter of the Tehreek-e-Taliban. Nazir had also signed the 2007 peace deal, but is known to be sympathetic to both al-Qaeda and the TTP.
However, other tribesmen in the area are unlikely to have taken such a sympathetic attitude towards Kashmiri, correctly realising that his presence would only bring further trouble to the area, particularly if he was the part of an advance guard of Punjabis and foreign fighters fleeing an army offensive further north. It would not have been long before someone reported his location to the military authorities. And they in turn, anxious to provide proof to the Americans that they are serious about fighting terrorism, and also determined to settle scores with a perceived turncoat, tipped off the CIA.

Another blow for al-Qaeda as Kashmiri is killed

Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri pictured in July 2001

"On behalf of Harkat Jihad al-Islami 313 Brigade we confirm the fact that our leader and commander-in-chief Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, along with other companions, have been martyred in an American drone attack at 11:15 pm on June 3, 2011 and Insha Allah (God willing) the present pharoah America will see our full revenge very soon. Our only target is America.
Spokesperson
(Harkat Jihad alIslami) 313 Brigade
Abu Hunzala
June 4, 2011"
With those few words, sent by fax to Pakistani news outlets, the death of one the region's most notorious militants appears to be confirmed. Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri and eight of his comrades were killed when three drone missiles struck two rooms in a compound in Ghwa Khwa, about 20 miles south of Wana in South Waziristan late on Friday night. It was the first such strike for nine days and the eighth since Osama bin Laden was killed on 2 May in Abbottabad.
The compound belonged to Mir Ajam Khan Tozikhel, an associate of the Mullah Nazir group of Waziris. Mullah Nazir, who signed a peace agreement with the Pakistan military in July 2009 in which he agreed not to shelter members of al-Qaeda or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, continues to support both organisations.
Most of those killed appeared to be Punjabis, named locally as Mohammad Usman, Ibrahim, Farooq, Amir Hamza and Imran. Two of them, Amir Hamza and Mohammad Usman, are known to be close associates of Kashmiri and usually travelled with him.
The group was meeting late at night to discuss what to do in the event of a Pakistani army offensive in North Waziristan when the missiles struck.
If the reports are accurate - Kashmiri was falsely reported dead in September 2009 - this is a major blow to the remnants of al-Qaeda in Pakistan. A Pakistani by birth, he was a former special forces soldier who had been decorated by General Musharraf for beheading an Indian soldier in 2000 along the Line of Control in Kashmir.
However, he had thrown in his lot with al-Qaeda and was thought to be behind the March 2006 suicide bombing of the US consulate in Karachi and was also connected to the November 2009 attacks on Mumbai - according to recent testimony from David Coleman Headley.
He was also thought to be behind the attack on the PNS Mehran naval base in Karachi at the beginning of May and three deadly bus bombings targeting naval personnel in the preceding weeks.
He was important because he had extensive military experience dating back to the time of the Afghan war against the Soviets, during which he lost an eye and the end of his index finger.
Some reports say it was a tip-off from the Pakistan military that led to the missile strike that killed Kashmiri. If so, it is clear that the ISI had finally got fed up with a man who was once considered an asset, but who had since gone 'off message'. The Americans regarded him as so important that he had a $5 million bounty on his head.

Murder of one of Pakistan's finest journalists

Syed Saleem Shahzad

The murder of Asia Times Pakistan bureau chief Syed Saleem Shahzad, who was abducted on Sunday evening, is a tragedy for reporting in that country. Shahzad was on his way to take part in a TV talk show in Islamabad when he disappeared. His body, which showed signs of torture, was found by a canal in Mandi Bahauddin in Punjab, 80 miles south of the capital. He leaves a wife, two sons and a daughter.
Shahzad had been warned in the past by Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency about critical articles he had written and had told friends and colleagues he feared for his life. A recent article he wrote on al-Qaeda infiltration in the Pakistan Navy is thought by some to have been the reason for his kidnap and murder.
This article suggested that al-Qaeda carried out the 18-hour siege on the PNS Mehran naval air station in Karachi on 22 May after talks between the navy and al-Qaeda over the release of naval ratings who had been arrested on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda had broken down.
The attack, in which two US-supplied Orion surveillance aircraft were destroyed and ten soldiers killed, was a huge embarrassment to the Pakistan military and followed three attacks on navy buses in the last month in which nine service personnel were killed. Clearly the attackers were trying to make a point. Shahzad said in his article that they came from Ilyas Kashmiri's 313 Brigade, the military section of al-Qaeda.
Shahzad went on to say that Pakistani naval intelligence had recently traced an al-Qaeda cell operating within several navy bases in Karachi. When messages were intercepted hinting at an attack on visiting American officials it was decided to arrest at least ten ratings, mostly of lower rank. Almost immediately the officer in charge received death threats from al-Qaeda which made it clear that they knew where the ratings were being held. The prisoners were quickly moved to a safer location, but the threats continued.
Shahzad says that such was the threat that a senior-level naval conference was held at which it was decided to open up negotiations with al-Qaeda. An approach was made to Abdul Samad Mansoori, a member of 313 brigade who lives in North Waziristan. He demanded the immediate release of the ratings, but the navy wanted to interrogate them and then discharge them from the armed services. Al-Qaeda's response was the attacks on the naval buses.
This in turn was followed by more arrests, including a naval commando from the Mahsud tribe of South Waziristan with close links to Tehreek-e-Taliban leader Hakimullah Mahsud. Following the death of bin Laden on 2 May, the militants decided to launch an attack on PNS Mehran. Shahzad says that insiders at the base provided maps, pictures of exit and entry routes, the location of hangars and details of the likely reaction from external security forces. Three groups entered the base: one targeted the aircraft, one engaged the response force and a third section escaped as the others provided covering fire. Up to six escaped, while four were killed on the base.
Shahzad was a superb journalist and despatches like this one will be sorely missed. Pakistan remains a deadly place for serious journalists.