Al-Qaeda in Lebanon and Elsewhere

Updates from AIJAC

Al-Qaeda in Lebanon and Elsewhere

September 4, 2002
Number 02/09 #02

As the Sept. 11 anniversary approaches, it is worth asking if al-Qaeda is now neutralised. The answer is, it is not, according to virtually all experts. A UN Report last week said its network was largely intact. (The Washington Post had a recent editorial on the report and other indications of al-Qaeda re-building here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34854-2002Sep3.html)

So where are al-Qaeda's operatives now? One startling answer from the generally highly regarded and reliable Israeli source, Ha'aretz Defence writer Ze'ev Schiff, is in Lebanon. Schiff reports that, with Syrian connivance, Al-Qaeda operatives are now operating in large numbers out of Lebanon's Ein Hilwe refugee camp. Schiff also uncovers further evidence of Syrian cooperation with al-Qaeda, including both contact with lead Sept. 11 bomber Mohammed Atta and sheltering Bin Laden's immediate family.

Iran is also reportedly sheltering at least two senior Al-Qaeda operatives, along with large numbers of foot soldiers, according to Arab intelligence sources quoted in The Washington Post, below. The Post also says these key individuals are preparing new attacks, and Iran is helping other Al-Qaeda activists reach other countries.

Further, Arnaud de Borchgrave of the Washington Times, using mostly Indian intelligence as his source, argues that Pakistan is now Al-Qaeda's most important base and that Bin-Laden and his second in command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, are now there with thousands of al-Qaeda members, with the support of powerful factions within Pakistan.

Finally, readers may be interested in reports that Al-Qaeda is shifting its money in the form of gold to Sudan, using that country as its financial base, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27535-2002Sep2.html. In short, the're in a lot of places and there is a hell of a lot of work left to do to end their terrorist threat, the most important element of which is to end continuing state support and tolerance for them.

Ha'aretz

Syria has allowed hundreds of al-Qaeda men to settle in Lebanon

By Ze'ev Schiff

Sept. 2, 2002

Damascus has allowed some 150-200 al-Qaeda operatives to settle in the Palestinian refugee camp Ein Hilwe near Sidon in Lebanon. The group, including senior commanders, arrived from Afghanistan through Damascus, Iran and directly to Lebanon. These Al-Qaeda operatives are responsible, among other things, for the latest outbreak of fighting inside the refugee camp, as part of their effort to take over the camp.

These details and others have lately been gathered by various intelligence services.

Among the new details now known: Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Al-Qaeda group that conducted the Sept. 11 airplane suicide attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, flying the first plane into the towers, visited Syria twice or three times. The Syrians did not give that information to the Americans on their own volition.

Osama bin Laden's son, Omar, left Syria together with his mother Nagwa, three weeks before the attack on the Twin Towers, after receiving anonymous instructions to do so. The son returned to Syria after 9-11, and has since visited twice more. Bin Laden's wife and son lived in the Alawite stronghold in Latakiya in an arrangement that gave refuge to bin Laden's close relatives. The two are not now in Syria.

Intelligence services have also managed to find detailed information about contacts between one of the leading Hezbollah military figures, Imad Mourghniyeh, and a Al-Qaeda operative in Sudan. There is no evidence yet of that relationship developing into continuing ties, but there is no doubt the meeting could not have taken place without Syrian intelligence knowing of it.

Much evidence now shows that before 9-11, Syria was a stomping ground for Al-Qaeda operatives, considered a place where they could move around in relative freedom. The country served as transit point for them and Al-Qaeda had an infrastructure there. They were able to operate with relatively few of the restrictions that other Arab countries, like Egypt, put on them.

After 9-11, the Syrians initially believed there would be no significant change in the geopolitical developments. Syrian President Bashar Assad told a Lebanese newspaper that "there is no sign that there has been any great change since September 11." He said that "there are ways" to stand up to the military and technological superiority of others. For example, the U.S. "has the most power, the best technology, and the strongest mechanisms, but it has not been able to provide security in its cities because force is not a necessary condition for providing security and stability."

Therefore, said Assad, "the current developments require serious judgment and sticking to basic principles. Following September 11, everything must be examined with better judgment especially when discussing the ramifications of what happened to our region."

Shortly afterward, as American rage grew and the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan began, the Syrians changed position, and said they were ready for intelligence cooperation with the U.S. on the Al-Qaeda issue. But there are now clear indications that it was tactical and only partial cooperation.

Readiness for cooperation mostly came via information about Al-Qaeda cells in other countries and not what Al-Qaeda representatives were doing in Syria. Important information came from Syria, for example, on Al-Qaeda cells in Germany. That apparently is what kept Syria off President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" list.

Most of the Syrian information about Al-Qaeda activities in Germany came from the interrogation of a German citizen of Syrian descent, Mohammed Haider Zemer. He was questioned by Syrian intelligence before 9-11, and the Syrians were ready to hand him over to the Germans, who were not interested at the time.

But the Germans changed their minds after 9-11, after the Americans gave them the information provided by the Syrians, which led to information about Al-Qaeda operatives in Hamburg and elsewhere in Germany, including information about Mohammed Atta. The Germans then asked the Syrians to extradite Zemer so they could continue questioning him and put him on trial, but the Syrians refused, and refuse to do so to this day. Meanwhile, Zemer's passport was found in an apartment in Afghanistan that belonged to a senior Al-Qaeda commander.

Another link between Al-Qaeda and Syria can be found in the arrest in Spain of three Syrians. One says that Mohammed Atta met with another of the three in Spain. The three were found with videotapes of various possible targets in America, and they apparently served as an intelligence gathering cell for Atta before 9-11. One of those arrested, Mohammed Hirel Sak, is an Alawite. Another, Abarash Kaliyon, has been identified as a former member of the Islamic Brotherhood in Syria. The third, Abdel Rahman Arnot, has admitted he had links to the commander of the Al-Qaeda training camps of western Afghanistan. It is also known that Atta's phone number was found in the apartment of one of the Syrians arrested in Spain.

Meanwhile, the Syrians repeatedly changed their position since 9-11. Nowadays, they appear to be deliberately turning a blind eye to Al-Qaeda activity, particularly in Lebanon. A key question so far unanswered is what Atta was doing on his visits to Syria, and whom he met. It's known that he was in Aleppo in northern Syria, but it is not known whom he met. He was in Syria at least twice and possibly three times.

The change in Syrian attitudes can be seen in the permission they gave to Al-Qaeda men on the run from Afghanistan to find refuge in Lebanon, which is under control of the Syrian army and intelligence. After the defeat of the Taliban, Al-Qaeda began fleeing Afghanistan, heading home. Chechnyans, for example, used Turkey as a way station on their way home. Palestinians, Jordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian descent, as well as a few Lebanese, headed back to Lebanon. The Syrians arrested some of them for interrogation and it is known that mostly the Al-Qaeda have gone to Ein Hilwe.

The Ein Hilwe battles last month were initiated by the Al-Qaeda men there, with three of them killed in the fighting. The fight for control over the camp is not over. Meanwhile, the Al-Qaeda there, led by commanders from Afghanistan, is establishing a local infrastructure. One bit of intelligence says they are interested in getting material for chemical weapons.

The gun-battle in the refugee camp was angrily condemned by Lebanese. A Nahar editor Jibran Tuwany wrote on August 15, that "what is happening now in Ein Hilwe camp could become a turning point on the way to the establishment of a state within a state, which would mean a siege of Lebanon and Lebanese territory still in control of the state.

"There are fears that Lebanon will become an isolated island because of all the enclaves created by the Palestinian camps from south to north, through the Bekaa and Beirut. The danger is in all these enclaves managing to connect to one another. What happened in Ein Hilwe is a real war ... reminiscent of the war of 1975," Tuwany wrote.

Very little is known about the connection between Qaeda and the Hezbollah and there is no certainty those contacts were developed. The first evidence came in testimony by Al Rahman Mohammed, who was arrested after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. He said he knows a Hezbollah official met in 1996 in Sudan with someone later identified as a Al-Qaeda representative. The mediator for the meeting was a Sudanese sheikh named Ali Numeini. Bin Laden had extensive activity in the country at the time, as did Iranian intelligence. The intelligence reports say that the initiative for the meeting came from Al-Qaeda, whose leaders were impressed by Hezbollah attacks on foreign embassies in Lebanon and Argentina.

Al Qaeda Deputies Harboured by Iran

Pair Are Plotting Attacks, Sources Say

By Peter Finn

Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, August 28, 2002

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Aug. 27 -- Two figures who have assumed critical roles in the al Qaeda hierarchy in recent months, including one reported dead by the Pentagon, are being sheltered in Iran along with dozens of other al Qaeda fighters in hotels and guesthouses in the border cities of Mashhad and Zabol, according to Arab intelligence sources.

The two -- Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian on the FBI's most-wanted list, and Mahfouz Ould Walid, also known as Abu Hafs the Mauritanian, whom U.S. officials reported had been killed near the eastern Afghan city of Khost in January -- are directly involved in planning al Qaeda terrorist operations, according to the intelligence sources, who are outside Saudi Arabia and did not want their names or countries disclosed.

With Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, in hiding, the sources said, and with the death of the former military chief, Muhammad Atef, the two have assumed operational control of al Qaeda's military committee, which directs attacks, and its ideological or religious committee, which issues fatwas, or statements, to justify those attacks.

The idea of the transfer of power arose after the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, when it became apparent to al Qaeda that the United States might attack Afghanistan and capture or kill some of its senior leaders, the sources said. The need to put the transfer into practice became even more apparent in March with the capture in Pakistan of Abu Zubaida, a Palestinian and senior al Qaeda planner.

The sources also said that one of bin Laden's sons, Saad, who is in his early twenties, is being groomed as his father's successor because of the symbolism offered by the idea of a dynasty. And while the sources said that Saad has not assumed a formal position, he has increasingly been communicating with operatives worldwide in order to burnish his standing with them.

"[Saad] has authority, but Zawahiri is still number two," said a senior Arab intelligence officer.

Dozens of other al Qaeda fighters, and possibly more, are also staying in a cluster of hotels in Mashhad, in northeastern Iran near the borders with Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, and in guesthouses in Zabol, about 400 miles south on the Iranian-Afghan border, the sources said.

The report from these sources supported the Bush administration's long-standing assertion that Iran -- or at least hard-liners in the conservative clerical line of authority that controls the army and intelligence services -- is harbouring al Qaeda fighters.

A spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations denied that al-Adel and Walid are in Iran and added, "Iran's policy is not to permit such people to enter Iran."

Nevertheless, the sources said al-Adel and Walid meet regularly with lieutenants in Mashhad and Zabol, and that Iran has also been used as a way station to other countries for al Qaeda fighters who have fled Afghanistan since the Taliban was defeated in November.

The sources said Iran's transfer of 16 al Qaeda operatives to Saudi Arabia in June, along with small deportations to other countries, were a pretense used to rebutt the Bush administration's charges and encourage the idea that it was cooperating in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, cited the June handover as an instance of such cooperation in an interview this month.

Officials in Arab countries said that captured al Qaeda operatives have said in interrogations that their Iranian hosts had told some of them they had to leave after Bush included Iran in an "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea in his State of the Union address. But crucial al Qaeda figures were allowed to stay, they said, and some of those who left were provided with false papers or had their passports cleaned of incriminating stamps.

Still others, or their wives and children, were turned over to their home governments in a display of solidarity with the United States and its allies.

In one case, the wife of a prominent al Qaeda figure was sent home and told officials when she arrived that her husband was still in Iran, another intelligence officer said.

"There is an Iranian role in hosting al Qaeda and sponsoring the movement of al Qaeda," said the senior Arab intelligence officer. The officer said Iran's reformist government, which may have qualms about aiding al Qaeda, is powerless to prevent the military and the intelligence service from assisting fugitives from Afghanistan.

Iran's motives are not entirely clear. Its seemingly contradictory actions may be explained by tensions between reformers and conservatives within the government, Arab officials said. Moreover, the hard-line conservatives, in sheltering al Qaeda, do not appear to be acting out of any innate sympathy for bin Laden's group, the sources said.

Some elements in the Iranian system seem to believe that they can use al Qaeda for their own unstated purposes, a source said. One intelligence officer noted that a number of captured al Qaeda operatives said the Iranians told them before their departure that they may be called on at some point to assist Iran. But they were not told how.

The two most important figures said to remain in Iran are al-Adel and Walid.

Al-Adel was the head of al Qaeda's security committee, a position he apparently still holds. He has been indicted in the United States for murder, conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and the destruction of buildings and property of the United States, all in connection with the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998.

Walid, a longtime bin Laden lieutenant, is from the North African nation of Mauritania and has played a role in developing the doctrine to justify al Qaeda attacks. He now has assumed control of al Qaeda's religious committee and, because he is in Iran with al-Adel, is also participating in military planning, the sources said.

Pentagon officials said Jan. 8 that Walid had been killed in Afghanistan. But the sources said that assertion was incorrect, and added that reliable information from Iran indicates that he is increasingly important to al Qaeda's future.

They also said al Qaeda is now working on the assumption that its e-mail and phone communications are being monitored. The group is becoming increasingly sophisticated in using electronic communications to send messages and deceive intelligence agencies, and is also relying on human couriers, often women.

Under al-Adel, two other key operatives are rising in the organization's military structure, the sources said. And through them, al Qaeda, traditionally a small, hard-core group, is building alliances with other Islamic extremists who can act as proxies.

Among them is Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a Pakistani born in Kuwait who is also known as "The Brain," has been described as the logistics expert behind the Sept. 11 attacks. He is now said to be operating out of Pakistan. He has been linked by a phone intercept with the incendiary attack on a historic synagogue in Tunisia in April that killed 14 German tourists, six Tunisians and a Frenchman, according to German officials.

Mohammed is also reported to have visited Germany in 1999, but a Western intelligence official said the report was based on information from only one source, although he described the source as "normally reliable."

Mullah Bilal, or Bilal bin Marwan, a Saudi accused of helping plan the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000, was also behind a plan to attack U.S. and British naval ships in the Strait of Gibraltar this year, according to Moroccan officials. The sources said he, like Mohammed, has become critical to the group's current functioning and is also working out of Pakistan.

The sources said al Qaeda has also planned attacks elsewhere in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf this year, including another plan by Bilal to attack U.S. ships in Bahrain. Al Qaeda also planned to kill Americans on the streets of Saudi Arabia, the intelligence officers said. The group had discussed putting silencers on guns to be used in the attacks. The operations were thwarted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the sources said.

Based on interrogation of suspects and other intelligence, one official said al Qaeda saw a real opening to damage U.S.-Saudi relations because of rifts between the two countries since Sept. 11. And he said an atrocity on Saudi soil remains a major al Qaeda goal because of the expectation that the recrimination that could follow would rupture relations between the countries.

The official, from a country other than Saudi Arabia, said that while the Saudi authorities had been "passive" toward al Qaeda financing and recruitment in the past, they have seriously stepped up their efforts against the organization and have broken up al Qaeda plots.

The Washington Times

The new Afghanistan

Arnaud de Borchgrave

Published 9/2/2002

Trying to refocus America's war on terror, Gen. Tommy Franks couldn't mention the country by name without provoking a collective case of gastric distress in the Bush administration. This war "won't be finished," he said during a visit to the Bagram air base near Kabul, until terrorist cells are hunted down throughout the region.

Pakistan, not Iraq, was in the general's cross hairs. The unspeakable is that Pakistan is the new Afghanistan, a privileged sanctuary for hundreds of al Qaeda fighters and Taliban operatives. Some estimates go as high as 5,000.

The Iraqi-al Qaeda connection is yet to be established beyond the fact that so-called Afghan Arabs hailed from 22 Arab countries, including Iraq, and most other Muslim nations. The Pakistani-al Qaeda connection is visible to all but the geopolitically challenged.

To concede the obvious would not only undermine President (for life?) Pervez Musharraf, now busy tailoring democratic sheep's clothing for a military dictatorship, but would be an admission of military failure in Afghanistan. Most al Qaeda fighters slipped out of the Tora Bora trap last December and into the mountainous Pakistani tribal areas where the Pakistani army claimed to have deployed a "watertight" blocking force. Those of us in the area at the time saw no such thing and even Pakistani army officers told us this was "mission impossible."

By mid-December, there were only 4,500 Pakistani troops along several hundred miles of possible escape routes. They were unfamiliar with the terrain as tribal areas had been off-limits to the army since independence. It was hardly surprising that Pakistani military intercepted only a handful of al Qaeda fighters. Further inland, security forces caught some 300 out of several thousand who got away.

Some 15,000 Pakistani jihadis (holy warriors) ‹ not including the 10,000 who were pressed into "volunteering" by their mullahs to assist collapsing Taliban forces last October ‹ were trained in al Qaeda camps since 1997. Most of them are now part of a formidable clandestine network that is made up of mosques and madrassas (Koranic schools) that cover the entire country.

Indian intelligence has verified the claim of a prominent Pakistani tribal leader that Osama bin Laden and some 50 escorts escaped in the second week of December and moved into Peshawar, the teeming capital of the Northwest Frontier Province. Most of its 3.5 million inhabitants are anti-military government and pro-al Qaeda and Taliban. In the past two weeks, according to the same sources, bin Laden and several members of his family moved to Karachi, the sprawling port city of 12 million 900 miles to the south on the Arabian Sea. Bin Laden's second in command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is still with him.

U.S. Special Forces have been working covertly with the Pakistani military throughout FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) for most of the year. It has been slim pickings. Al Qaeda terrorists have long since scattered deep inside Pakistan and in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir where they enjoy the protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. ISI supervises infiltrations of "freedom fighters" into Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim state.

Gen. Musharraf pledged to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage to "permanently" halt these infiltrations across the Line of Control as Pakistan's contribution to lowering tensions with India. But Gen. Musharraf reneged ‹ or ISI did for him ‹ as accusations flew about the land that he had betrayed the "sacred cause" of Kashmir. At a closed meeting with Pakistan's top media editors, three newspaper editors called him "coward" to his face.

Despite last April's rigged plebiscite that gave Gen. Musharraf five more years as president and chief of the armed forces, hostile forces besiege Gen. Musharraf. He has survived six assassination plots. Like Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Greek mythology guarding the entrance of Hades, he is keeping at bay:

(1) The unreconstructed and largely irresponsible political parties that have pushed the country into military dictatorships for half its lifetime since independence.

(2) The medieval clergy whose idea of progress is Taliban.

(3) And the military spooks of ISI whose idea of global power is al Qaeda with nukes.

The man orchestrating hostile extremist forces is the ubiquitous former ISI chief Hamid Gul, who is an admirer of Osama bin Laden and a friend of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the former Taliban leader. In his latest media statement, Gen. Gul said this week: "America should concede defeat in Afghanistan. All it controls is Kabul, and even there it's shaky. The country is slowly but surely coming back to [Taliban] control."

Gen. Musharraf's numerous political opponents point to his appointment of Raja Irshad as deputy attorney general as proof he is keeping his options open on the extremist side of the political ledger. One of Mr. Irshad's sons was a member of al Qaeda and died in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. A posthumous prayer service was conducted by Hafiz Saeed, chief of the extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, banned by Gen. Musharraf. Mr. Irshad is a known defender of the jihadi (holy warrior) cause.

Some of the FBI agents working in Pakistan with their Pakistani counterparts say privately they sometimes get the feeling they are operating in a wilderness of distorting mirrors. The ISI chief and his top lieutenants are with Gen. Musharraf, but part of the 12,000-strong organization is ignoring directives and supporting the religious opposition financially and politically.

Gen. Musharraf remains Pakistan's most popular man in the West. At home, he is now arguably the most unpopular. He has antagonized every key segment of Pakistani society, even his own beloved army. Ambitious corps commanders in the queue for a fourth star are now looking at retirement while Gen. Musharraf still holds the top military job, a situation Gen. Gul keeps exploiting to agitate Islamist generals further down the promotion ladder.

Gen. Musharraf is between two dangers, either of which is difficult to avoid without encountering the other ‹ a classic Hobson's choice. If Gen. Musharraf rigs the national elections, now scheduled for Oct. 10, as is widely suspected he will have to do, he will face a formidable array of opponents, both political and military. And if the elections are free and fair, his opposition will write the music and Gen. Musharraf will have to learn some new political dance steps ‹ or dissolve Parliament, which one of the 29 amendments to the constitution he has decreed permit him to do.

The president can now appoint the prime minister, Supreme Court justices, armed services chiefs, 10 corps commanders and the heads of intelligence and security services. A dictatorial democracy is a chimerical political construct. More worrisome is the bitterness of Islamist generals who backed both Taliban and al Qaeda. It is most likely from their ranks that the seventh assassination attempt will come.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.