The Capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Update from AIJAC

The Capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

March 6, 2003
Number 03/03 #02

Today's shocking terror attack in Haifa clearly spells the end of a period in which the Israeli military has been highly successful in stopping terror attacks, preventing almost all of them. Heartwrenching as the scenes of carnage again on the streets of Israel, it is too early yet to add much analysis to the news reports available from other sources, so we will have to follow up tomorrow.

In the meantime, we have three good pieces of analysis on the good news story of the capture of al-Qaeda Number 3 Khalid Shiekh Mohammed. While this may seem to have received saturation coverage, there is still some good analysis to be added on its place in the war in terror.

First, Yoram Shweitzer, the terror expert who recently visited Australia, looks at who Mohammed is and the importance of his capture, both operationally and symbolically. He argues the latter is surprisingly important in the current ideological conflict, HERE

Next, Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institution for Near East Policy writes in the New York Post that Mohammed's capture, along with the trial of a group of American University Professors active in funding and organising the attacks of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, shows that the US government gets 2 important points about the war on terrorism. Firstly, terror is indivisible, you can't just focus on al-Qaeda, and secondly, that it is the financiers and facilitators of terror who are at least as important as those who actually plan or carry out bombing attacks. To read his view, CLICK HERE

Finally, Mansoor Ijaz offers some inside intelligence information about how Shiekh Mohammed was actually captured in Pakistan, and says that his removal and the information found with him will destroy a planned campaign of mega-error to accompany any US-led attack on Iraq, thus freeing the US to make such a necessary move, he argues, in greater security. To read his argument, CLICK HERE

The Capture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad

Yoram Schweitzer

Tel Aviv Notes, March 3, 2003

At the beginning of March, American-Pakistani security cooperation resulted in the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the operational commander of the September 11 terrorist attack in the United States. President George Bush, Jr., described this development as a "fantastic achievement," and it is undoubtedly a major accomplishment for the United States and its allies in their war against international terrorism, in general, and al-Qaeda and its affiliated terror networks, in particular. For while Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's capture is but the latest in a long series of arrests of terror activists, including senior operatives from al-Qaeda and other organizations supported by it, over the last eighteen months, it is nevertheless much more significant than any that went before it, in terms of both symbolic and operational implications.

In the struggle against international terrorism, symbolic victories are extremely important in raising morale and demonstrating the ability of governments to cope with what world public opinion sees as the virtually unlimited capacity of terrorists to strike at defenseless targets whenever they want. The symbolic value of capturing Khalid Shaykh is therefore no less significant than is its operational value. For it sends an unambiguous signal to Americans who have been watching the provocative media performances of Usama bin Laden, still on the loose since September 11 and still threatening to inflict mass casualties, that whoever harms them will be hunted down and made to pay the price. It also signals the capability of the American security forces to disrupt and respond, thus strengthening public confidence that real power and determination lie behind President's Bush's declarations of an uncompromising war against international terror. This same message is also conveyed to various terrorist organizations around the world, including al-Qaeda, and to states supporting terrorism.

Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's arrest was the result of close cooperation between American and Pakistani security agencies, and that clearly points to international intelligence and operational cooperation as the only way of dealing effectively with the international terrorist threat. It is particularly noteworthy that the main American partner in the fight against al-Qaeda and its offshoots is that same Pakistan whose previous support for the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda make it possible for the "Afghan" terror industry to flourish in the international arena.

For American security agencies, bogged down since September 11 in a long, exhausting and frustrating hunt for the ghosts of international terrorism, the arrest of Khalid Sheikh not only provides a major boost to morale but also constitutes a serious blow to the "Afghan Alumni" terrorist network that set for itself the objective of killing as many Americans as possible, at home or abroad. This network was responsible for the attempt to explode the World Trade Center in 1993, under the command of Ramzi Yusif (who is Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's nephew). In 1995, those same two conspired to plan a major campaign aimed at blowing up about a dozen American aircraft en route from Southeast Asia to the United States. They also planned to dispatch a suicide pilot to crash into CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. But while Ramzi Yusif and other conspirators were arrested, Khalid Sheikh managed to get away, and since 1996, has featured on the FBI most wanted list. But rather than abandoning the terror business, he studied the lessons of those failures, and in September 2001, he directed and commanded, on behalf of al-Qaeda, the terrorist attack that combined two operations into one massive assault. As such, he is directly responsible for the death of over three thousand people.

Khalid Sheikh's arrest may well help expose his organizational infrastructure, communications, and operating methods. It could also reveal information he has kept to himself, and more information may be gleaned from the documents and equipment in his possession seized during his arrest. These could help preempt future terrorist attacks.

Khalid Sheikh did not rest on his laurels even after September 11 but continued to plan and direct a world-wide terrorist campaign. He was behind several particularly ambitious operations, including the abortive attack in December 2001 that involved the use of seven truck-bombs to blow up the American, British, and Israeli Embassies and several American company headquarters in downtown Singapore, as well as the use of a suicide-driver of a car-bomb to blow up a synagogue in Jerba, Tunisia, in April 2002. Shaykh Muhammad may also have been implicated in the October 2002 bombing in Bali, Indonesia, that resulted in the death of over 200 people.

His arrest therefore constitutes a serious blow to al-Qaeda, which has lost its most experienced operational commander and the one with the most extensive network of contacts. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's interrogation and the investigation of the materials found in his possession are likely to tighten the ring around other commanders in the organization and may even turn up information about the location of bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri thought they can certainly be expected to change their hiding place.

This event has refocused public attention on the threat posed by terrorism to the stability of the international system. That has particular resonance in an era characterized by non-conventional terrorism, that is, by terrorism carried out with conventional means but with "non-conventional" results (as in September 11), or even by acts of "mega-terrorism" using non-conventional means.

However, the arrest of one senior operative, however prominent, does not constitute an end to the threat but rather just one stage in a prolonged effort to cope with a problem that has been neglected for many years. That effort now entails a world-wide, comprehensive and systematic campaign with intelligence, judicial, economic and diplomatic dimensions. One of its requirements is a reformulation of behavioral norms and rules in international relations that would permit action, not only against the terrorists themselves, but also against states supporting terrorism, whether actively or just "passively" (by allowing terrorists to be present in or to act freely from their territory). This may well be the next challenge facing President Bush after Iraq. And to meet it, he will need the same kind of cooperation from other allies as he received from Pakistan in the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.

Dr. Yoram Schweitzer is a terrorism expert at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. He served as an advisor on terrorism to the organising committee for the Sydney Olympic Games.

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To Win the Terror War

By Matthew Levitt

New York Post, March 4, 2003

The capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is great news for the War on Terror: The United States continues to take out al Qaeda's top leaders. But last month's federal indictment in Tampa, Fla., of eight members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is vital, too: It shows that the Bush administration has learned two key lessons of the War on Terror. Unfortunately, many of our allies, especially in Europe, have not. The eight are charged with various conspiracy charges surrounding their membership in and association with, and activities on behalf of, Palestinian Islamic Jihad -- an illegal enterprise engaged in murder and other crimes. In essence, the Tampa case is an indictment of PIJ itself.

But here are the signs that the U.S. government has learned how to take the War on Terror seriously: 1) These operatives are not charged with detonating bombs, but simply with providing financial and logistical support to facilitate those bombings. 2) PIJ has no known links to al Qaeda.

Lesson No. 1: The War on Terror must target all terrorist groups, not just al Qaeda and its affiliates.

PIJ warrants scrutiny in its own right as a designated Foreign Terrorist Group responsible for murdering and injuring civilians.

Neither the victims' nationality nor the cause that "justified" their deaths should play any role in the decision to target a terrorist group. All terror is beyond the pale, and any cause that employs terror to achieve its goals -- however legitimate those goals may be -delegitimizes itself. Case in point: Palestinian terror groups such as PIJ and Hamas.

Like different criminal gangs that use the same fence, international terrorist groups that cooperate in nothing else often still have strong logistical links. For example, al Qaeda and Hamas raise, launder and transfer funds via many of the same channels, including the al Taqwa Bank, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and more.

Moreover, in February 2002, CIA Director George Tenet told Congress that if Palestinian groups "feel that U.S. actions are threatening their existence, they may begin targeting Americans directly, as Hezbollah's terrorist wing already does." Last month, he updated Congress on the threat: "The days when we made distinctions between terrorist groups are over."

Lesson No. 2: We must target those who fund and facilitate terrorism, not just those who carry out the attacks.

America began to learn this on 9/11: Those 19 men could never have succeeded without money and other aid, from travel documents to training, from a sophisticated and wellentrenched support network.

Such support networks are essential to large-scale operations. Individuals, groups and states that provide funds and other support for terrorist activity are no less guilty than whoever completes the attack by detonating the bomb, pulling the trigger or crashing the plane.

Both these lessons are critical to the success of the War on Terror -- and our European allies have learned neither. Unless an individual is either linked to al Qaeda or attempting to detonate a bomb, European authorities still hesitate to take action.

This was the case last spring, when German officials finally cracked down on the al-Tawhid terrorist group operating under the command of the now-infamous Abu Musab al Zarqawi, but only after discovering -- luckily in time -- that the group planned to conduct bombing attacks in Germany.

Until then, the group was allowed to run a sophisticated logistical and financial support network raising funds for Zarqawi's network and procuring false documents for al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives escaping Afghanistan. It remains unknown how many terrorists the al-Tawhid cell exfiltrated from Tora Bora to Europe and elsewhere until European authorities finally busted the cell.

Last October, a delegation of senior U.S. Treasury Department officials went to Europe to seek trans-Atlantic cooperation in freezing the accounts of 12 or so terror financiers. Headed by Undersecretary for Enforcement Jimmy Gurule, the delegation provided detailed information of the funding this "dirty dozen" provided to terrorist groups.

Such financiers openly fund Palestinian groups like Hamas, but are wary of publicizing their support for al Qaeda. So as not to jeopardize intelligence sources and methods, the U.S. request relied mainly on data on their Hamas ties. Not enough, says Europe: It demands evidence they fund "more than just" Palestinian terror groups. So the trans-Atlantic effort to freeze the funds of these terror financiers is on hold.

No effort to "drain the swamp" in which terrorists operate can succeed if nations around the world continue to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate terrorism, or if they decline to treat terrorism's financiers as the actual terrorists they are.

The Tampa indictments make clear that the United States will fight vigorously against those who resort to terrorism or assist it, no matter what the cause and no matter who the victim. Our allies across the pond would do well to learn the lesson: The success of the War on Terror depends on it.

Matthew A. Levitt is a senior fellow in terrorism studies at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Brain Drain

What the arrest of KSM means for the war on terror

By Mansoor Ijaz

National Review, March 4, 2003

Pakistan's intelligence services have a notorious reputation for being indistinguishable from the hoodlums they chase in the name of preserving national security for the country's 155 million citizens. So it was in the wee hours of last Saturday morning that a masterful raid on an al Qaeda safe house near Islamabad by Inter-Services Intelligence officials netted one of the world's most dangerous men, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He left behind a veritable gold mine of information about al Qaeda's current and future terrorist operations.

In the process, the ISI may have recast its tarnished image as a stalwart in the global war against terrorism and strengthened Gen. Pervez Musharraf's hands in rooting out terror cells on his soil.

The raid was a product of months of patient and deliberate planning in close coordination with U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement authorities to unearth terrorist hideouts throughout the region. It marked the first time since September 11, 2001 that ISI had used strategic surveillance and stalking techniques to flush out an al Qaeda bigwig.

And while U.S. signals intelligence and other monitoring equipment were crucial in expanding the scope of the operation and gleaning vital statistics prior to the arrests last Saturday, there was a marked shift inside ISI to employ its cultural expertise and deep knowledge of Pakistan's underground in order to bring down senior al Qaeda leaders.

The trail got hot after Osama bin Laden's spokesman, Abul Baraa Qarshi, issued instructions in code over the terror group's underground Internet system, which revealed in some detail the next "big operation" against the United States and its allies. Reference was repeatedly made to follow the path of "Mukhtar" (translated: the "authorized one") amid Qarshi's bin Laden-inspired exhortations to heed calls for jihad.

Mukhtar is the codename of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ("KSM").

Armed with this finding, Pakistani authorities immediately started tracking known KSM associates and found a stunning correlation between the coded underground message and activities of al Qaeda operatives above ground. KSM and his key al Qaeda cells around the world were planning significant new attacks against the United States, with never-before-employed terror tactics.

That is why the Bush administration's Homeland Security Department raised the terror alerts three weeks ago. My intelligence sources confirm that the planned attacks were on the order of magnitude of a September 11 operation, with nearly as many cells involved in various parts of the United States as were recently uncovered in Europe. Weapons of mass destruction were not contemplated for use in these acts on U.S. soil.

As tracking and surveillance continued, a little help from lady luck entered the equation. In the al Qaeda-infested border town of Quetta, an elderly couple motivated by large offers of reward money reported unusual movements of young Arab men into and out of what turned out to be an al Qaeda safe house next door to their home. Hours later, Pakistani police officials and the ISI had a pretty clear idea that KSM was in residence.

Rather than swoop in and capture him then, a strategic decision was made by ISI chief Gen. Ehsan ul Haq to blanket KSM's entourage with surveillance and stalk them to see how far and wide the network was operational inside Pakistan. KSM was flushed out of the safe house in such a way that his computers and other evidence would be left behind.

On the hard drive of KSM's Quetta safe-house computer, Pakistani police officials found a goldmine of information ó names of other senior al Qaeda operatives, e-mails, telephone numbers, wire-transfer information (KSM is also Chief Financial Officer for all al Qaeda operations around the world), travel itineraries, future terror scenarios ó the list goes on.

One e-mail was addressed to Abdul Qadoos, the son of a microbiologist in Rawalpindi and resident of the house where a haggardly but clean-shaven KSM was nabbed on Saturday morning when ISI, CIA, and FBI officials had concluded the stalking and surveillance was no longer yielding sufficient data to warrant the risk of losing him. A series of lightning raids followed, netting KSM, an as yet unidentified Egyptian man known only as "Ahmed" (and some suspect, possibly a relative of Egyptian-born al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri), and Abdul Qadoos in round one, and seven Arab and Pakistani men, as yet unidentified, in round two. More arrests of significant al Qaeda operatives are expected in the coming days.

So unaware was KSM that he was being stalked that even his cell phones and audiotapes, some reportedly with instructions from bin Laden, were found amid the mess in his uptown flat. The data his computers, audiotapes, and handwritten notes yield will in all likelihood supersede in importance what we get from his hardened criminal mind, even under the most severe interrogation. As Husain Haqqani at the Carnegie Endowment has articulated with great clarity, KSM is not chief executive officer of a corporation called al Qaeda. He is a franchise owner who knows all the other franchisees. Or at least his computer knows where the key ones are.

And that's just fine for U.S. purposes, because a lesser al Qaeda operative found through decoding the franchise network may yield more important and highly localized data about the next planned attacks than a hardened senior leader would. This is precisely how the poisons network was dismantled in Europe, a network whose chief franchise owner was an Iraqi resident and a key evidentiary link between Iraq and al Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

So, what does the arrest of this terror mastermind mean for America's war on terror?

When Osama bin Laden spoke from the ether three weeks ago, the Islamist phraseology and verses of the Koran he chose to convey his jihadist message demonstrated, for the first time since September 11, a growing sense of urgency and fear about al Qaeda's ability to retaliate in the event of a U.S.-led war to disarm Iraq. His original thinking (my hypothesis) was to use the event of U.S. troops storming Baghdad as justification for a series of retaliation strikes around the world, starting in Europe and the Middle East (to effect political divides within NATO and between the U.S. and its stalwart Arab allies), and then later in the U.S. and possibly even Canada.

The retaliation infrastructure al Qaeda had set in place was extensive, very hard to build up with the proper expertise (for biological and chemical weapons), and increasingly more expensive to maintain as the U.S. succeeded in progressively shutting down sources of financing available to bin Laden.

With much of bin Laden's European network systematically dismantled by Western intelligence and bin Laden himself trying to nebulously link al Qaeda to Iraq in order to provoke the "Islam vs. West" confrontation, retaining whatever was left of the terror group's retaliation infrastructure in the Middle East and North America became a paramount concern in recent weeks.

Musharraf also apparently felt bin Laden's anxiety, and ISI profilers sensed an opportunity to get an upper hand in their own backyard against al Qaeda's hidden cells. This, coupled with a little well-timed pressure from Washington about towing the line in rooting out senior al Qaeda cells before the military campaign against Iraq was to start (a message delivered by our able Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca on her recent trip to Islamabad), sparked the sea change inside ISI about the emerging national-security threat posed by nuts the agency had once helped to create.

KSM's arrest therefore represented an opportunity, if done right, to dismantle the Middle East retaliation infrastructure before launching the war to disarm Saddam. Pentagon planners have long fretted about the cauldrons of fire al Qaeda's Saddam-enabled retaliation cells could unleash on weak Middle East governments if and when the U.S. decided to move against Iraq.

Decapitating al Qaeda's nerve center with KSM's capture could lead to a collapse of its Middle East cells, much the same way one intercepted phone call between al Qaeda biochemical czar Zarqawi and one of his Jordanian operatives led to the dismantling of much of the ricin-poison network throughout Europe.

Musharraf should now seize on the success of this capture to squeeze the warlords in his ungovernable tribal regions to cough up what remains of al Qaeda's senior leadership in their midst, including bin Laden. He could easily choke economic supply routes into the areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border, thereby raising the cost of harboring terrorists there, as well as conduct repeated lightning raids in border towns such as Quetta and Peshawar, where lesser al Qaeda leaders are still hiding, to send a message that Pakistani soil is no longer available for terrorist planning.

Maintaining the vigil in large, densely populated urban centers where al Qaeda is known to have safe houses is also an imperative.

The ISI should effect a veritable quarantine on Pakistan's rivers and exits at Karachi's seaports to insure al Qaeda is not able to use its sea vessels to get key leaders, including a possibly disguised bin Laden and Egyptian mastermind Ayman Zawahiri, out of the country.

With KSM's capture and all that it implies for war in the Middle East, Musharraf may have delivered an invaluable gift at an opportune time to his embattled friend, U.S. President George W. Bush ó the possibility that a U.S.-led strike on Iraq can no longer be met with large-scale al Qaeda reprisals. He must not let that message be diluted by either abstaining or voting against the U.S. in upcoming deliberations on Iraq at the United Nations Security Council.

It cannot be overstated how the operation to capture KSM demonstrates the Bush administration's deliberate and calibrated efforts to root out those responsible for murdering 3,000 of our fellow citizens on that bright September morning.

Rooting out Saddam's weapons of mass destruction so they never make their way into the hands of people like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is not a separate task or detour along the way in fighting terror. It is the next most important step.

America must not let its guard down in the understandable need to rejoice in this major triumph of good over evil. We are finally ahead of the terror curve aligned against us ó it's time to get on with finishing the job.

ó Mansoor Ijaz, chairman of Crescent Investment Management in New York, negotiated Sudan's offer to provide terrorism data on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to the Clinton administration in 1997. He also proposed the blueprint for the July 2000 ceasefire in Kashmir between Muslim separatists and Indian security forces.