Mideast RoundupOctober 18, 2002
Terror
Bin Laden Is Alive - And Back Home in Saudi Arabia!
Proving that reports of his death were exaggerated, the al Qaeda leader, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden reached Saudi Arabia three weeks ago, shortly before the latest upsurge of international terrorist attacks against the French oil tanker Limburg and the shooting of American Marines in Kuwait.
This exclusive information has just reached DEBKA-Net-Weekly from its most credible intelligence and counter-intelligence sources.
They report two sightings of the elusive terrorist chief ö both of them in the wildest, most inhospitable regions of southern Saudi Arabia. In the first, he was seen on horseback - the way he was often depicted in Afghanistan before the American 2001 invasion - in the 220,000- sq. m Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter of southern Arabia. This vast sand sea, the largest on the face of the earth, straddles Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Yemen and Oman. He was reported riding through the barren Shaybah lands of the nomadic Al Murrah tribe, about 100 m southwest of the Al Ghawar oil field. No signs of disability or ill health were on view.
The Al Murrah are renowned as first rate field scouts. They are also among the fiercest elements of the extremist Muslim Wahabi sect, Saudi Arabia's state religion, and number some of Bin Laden's most fervent followers. Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, who established the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, found refuge with the Al Murrah in 1902. From there he mounted the assault that conquered a kingdom for the Sauds and the Wahabis. Aramco carried out thorough anthropological surveys of the tribe and paid out good money to hire its services. Without friends in the Al Murrah, this empty wasteland is impassable and uninhabitable.
The second bin Laden sighting took place in the Najran, a region lying across the frontier between the south Saudi province of Asir and north Yemen. This time, he was observed on Saudi Bani Yam Saudi tribal land, on the fringes of the Empty Quarter. The Bani Yam are close allies of the neighboring Yemeni tribes of the Hadhramauth, the Saudi-born terrorist's ancestral homeland.
In the Najran, Bin Laden is not only within reach of his friends and kinsmen in the Yemen, but in a position to control and deploy the 700 al Qaeda fighters who escaped Afghanistan at the end of 2001 and early 2002 and set up base in the Asir province.
(This new al Qaeda base in southern Saudi Arabia was first revealed in the last DEBKA-Net-Weekly No. 80.)
Al Qaeda fugitives from the Afghan War have settled at strategic points in the Gulf and Middle East Region, a fighting legion of close to 2,000 battle-seasoned zealots, ready and waiting for orders. Intelligence estimates reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly place around 1,000 fighting men inside Saudi Arabia, most concentrated in the Asir, the rest scattered round the kingdom; 300-400 in Yemen; 150 in the south Lebanese Palestinian refugee camp at Ein Hilwa; 300 in Mashhad, northern Iran; and 150 in the north Iraqi Kurdish districts of Bayara and Tawalla, where Iraqi instructors trained al Qaeda operatives in chemical warfare earlier this year.
With Companions and Family
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources are also certain that Bin Laden has arrived with his close companions - his Number Two and chief of operations, the Egyptian Ayman Zuwahri, the hard core of the Islamic terror group's command, his close family and his bodyguard. The size of this party informs those sources that the al Qaeda leaders believe they have found a safe hideout, situated in the Rimar Ar Rakabh (Rider's Dunes), deep inside the Empty Quarter. The gravel dunes typical of this patch of desert rise to heights of 240 to 600 ft between the 20th and 21st latitudes, creating narrow crevasses with wadis at the bottom, a natural fortress through which men can move freely without disturbing the surface of the desert. The area is too desolate to support human habitation. Only the Al Murrah know the way to the scarce waterholes and are believed to have laid in supply stores of water and food in several locations for Bin Laden and party.
The terror chief's re-appearance in Saudi Arabia brings to a close the debate and speculation over whether he is alive or dead, and his whereabouts if alive.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly alone reported on December 12 that Bin Laden and family had made good their escape from Tora Bora and reached Pakistan between December 6 -9 2001 and that Bin Laden was alive. No evidence to the contrary was ever forthcoming.
His presence in Saudi Arabia explains the easy flow and frequency of statements and messages reaching the Arabic satellite TV station al Jazeera and other media in the region this month from Bin Laden and his lieutenant. The first pre-taped message from Bin Laden was carried to al Jazeera in the first week of October by Saudi journalist Yousri Fudah. According to our Gulf intelligence sources, in the last week of September, Fudah received an invitation to visit Afghanistan from relatives close to al Qaeda, who promised him an interview with Bin Laden or at least an important taped message from him that would show he was alive. In Afghanistan, the Saudi journalist was handed a cassette-recording of a statement in Bin Laden's voice. The key phrase translated literally was:
Osama ben Ladin is a quarter and he will appear a near and (the asleep cells) she will wake and the firebrands under the ash.
It now appears that the Fudah invitation was a ruse to lead US intelligence in the wrong direction. While the journalist was in Afghanistan, Bin Laden made his move to Saudi Arabia. The word "quarter" was taken by intelligence analysts to be an error or a mix-up in wording. In fact, Bin Laden in an apparently cryptic message threw out a precise hint to his whereabouts, a sort of morale-boosting clue to his followers, telling them he was alive and well and would soon have work for the sleeper cells.
Days after his landing in the Empty Quarter, al Qaeda was back in action in the Persian Gulf region.
Washington Checks out Sniper's Terror Link
A theory is current among some Middle Eastern intelligence and terrorism experts, some in Israeli intelligence, claiming that the unidentified sniper ö or sniper team - who murdered nine Americans and injured two in the Washington area are terrorists. The sniper's mission would have been to immobilize American law enforcement and public attention to the exclusion of every other concern shortly after Bin Laden relocated. The sniper's first attack occurred on October 2. He missed his target, a man standing in front of a Michaels craft store in the Aspen Hill area just north of Washington, shattering the store window.
On October 2, Yousir Fudah returned to Jeddah with the Bin Laden recording. Before he went to hand it in to al Jazeera, he notified the official Saudi newspaper Okaz of its content. To his surprise, they refused to publish.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, October 2 was exactly one week after Bin Laden landed in the kingdom.
There is no real evidence tying the sniper campaign to al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. However, intelligence experts are finding it hard to believe that the killer in the Washington area is acting alone or that a private individual has the expertise to carry out so many murders without giving himself away. They postulate a group of snipers who take turns for shooting victims. Law enforcement investigators in Washington say that at this stage they cannot rule out the terror option. It was only a matter of time before al Qaeda detainees were questioned, as they were on Thursday, October 17.
New Headache for Bush
Bin Laden's presence in Saudi Arabia confronts President George W. Bush with fresh complications as he plans the US campaign against Iraq. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's analysts enumerates some:
1.
How does it affect Washington's order of priorities? Should America reshuffle them, namely, start by stalking Bin Laden, Zuwahri and the top al Qaeda command, ahead of the Iraqi campaign? After all, they were the missed targets of the Afghan War whose long lost whereabouts are known at last. Or should the Bush team proceed with its current plan of action and keep Saddam Hussein's overthrow at the top of its agenda?
If they were asked, the American people might well opt for closure of the Afghan War by nabbing Bin Laden. That course would also be endorsed by the critics, domestic and foreign, of the Bush-Cheney war plan for Iraq. European and Arab leaders would much prefer the Americans to chase after bin Laden than fight Iraq.
2.
By turning up on Saudi soil, the fundamentalist super-terrorist throws Washington-Riyadh relations into fresh turmoil after a brief period of calm. Those relations settled down somewhat after Saudi crown prince Abdullah came round to understanding, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported, that refusing to play ball with the Bush administration over the Iraq offensive would land him personally as well as the kingdom in hot water, especially in view of the escalating Iraqi threat to Saudi oil fields. (See separate <#3>item on how Saddam Hussein dabbles in terror)
But to target Bin Laden, the United States would have to obtain Saudi permission for American special forces to enter the kingdom and pursue their quarry. A favorable response to Washington's request could produce a backlash that would shake the throne to its foundations. Most of the kingdom's young ö 70 percent of the Saudi population of 22.5 million are under 30 ö admire bin Laden and identify with al Qaeda's ideals, ideals that are in fact an extreme form of the strict and puritanical Wahabi tenets. Furthermore, Saudi ruling clerics, the Ulama, and the tribal leaders harboring bin Laden would never tolerate American forces landing on Saudi soil for hunting down the al Qaeda leader.
3.
Ignoring the al Qaeda's incendiary presence in Saudi Arabia ö should Washington and Riyadh decide on this course ö is a non-option. Our experts have no doubt that Bin Laden will gladly upset this tactic by forcing his presence into the limelight in public appearances. Indications that one is impending are contained in the latest of his and Zuwahri's statements and messages. Once Bin Laden is out in the open, Bush will have to take the bull by the horns and send American troops to Saudi Arabia to catch him, even if that means throwing relations with the Saudis to the winds.
4.
The US president's failure to act expeditiously will leave bin Laden free to strike from his Saudi base ö both to step up his terrorist operations against other countries in the region and to try and topple the Saudi throne in fulfillment of a longstanding threat.
The most intriguing question is this: How did the Islamic terror master manage to slip into Saudi Arabia? What political and intelligence elements lent him a hand? The American and British maintain an extensive military intelligence presence in the Gulf region for the buildup to the war on Iraq. Without a helping hand from some governmental body or official, Bin Laden and his top staff could not have touched land undetected in any part of the Persian Gulf region, let alone reach Saudi Arabia. Who is the intelligence entity that smoothed his way to circumventing the intricate system of pits and snares the Americans laid for him?
Moscow-Washington
On His Way to Baghdad, Bush Loses an Ally
President George W. Bush, anxious to correct the sour note that has crept into his exchanges with Russian president Vladimir Putin ö especially on Iraq ö asked two friendly prime ministers to intercede on his behalf in Moscow. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, two weeks ago, followed this week by British prime minister Tony Blair, came away empty-handed.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington and Jerusalem report that the two were given different missions. Blair tried to persuade Putin to endorse a UN Security Council resolution that would empower Bush to go to war against Iraq if the Saddam government failed to disarm. Sharon's task was to talk the Russian leader round to halting the transfer of sophisticated nuclear and missile technologies to Iran. The transfers if they continue at their present rate will transform Iran into a nuclear power in three years.
Our sources say that Putin told Blair that his opposition to the American offensive on Iraq ö and most of all to regime change in Baghdad - was final and irrevocable. He handed Sharon the same assurances given routinely to American and Israeli emissaries since 1996, that Moscow will stop short of letting Iran use Russian technology to develop nuclear weapons.
When Sharon refuted this argument with the help of particulars of the latest Russian-Iranian transactions, Putin retorted that America and Israel would not be allowed to interfere in Moscow's relations with Tehran.
This animosity between Moscow and Washington is a far cry from the friendship hailed by Bush at the beginning of this year as immutable, firmly based on personal trust and destined to endure as long as the two presidents held office. This deeply personal understanding came to be accepted in the course of this year as a permanent feature of international diplomacy. Even the European Union became inured to the Washington-Moscow axis making the rules in Central Asia, especially in the energy field, Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent.
The abrupt shift from amity to acrimony has scarcely registered as yet. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Moscow report that for years no one had heard so much tension and anger as came from Putin in his conversations with Blair and Sharon in the past two weeks. The tone was clearly meant for the ears of George Bush.
Our sources in the Gulf indicate the rationale behind Putin's U-turn:
Russians interests in the region are advancing apace in two directions:
One, a strenuous effort by Moscow to help Saddam Hussein boost production from his oil wells in order to raise more cash. Some of the extra Iraqi revenue is flowing directly to Russian oil firms and weapons manufacturers.
Notwithstanding Putin's flat denials to the British prime minister, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Gulf sources reveal that Russian is pumping into Iraq some of the military equipment Saddam needs to stand up to an American assault. The supplies are going through Russian straw companies fronted by Hungarian, German, Czech, Ukrainian, Croatian and Belarusian firms. Some 3,000 Russian experts and technicians are now operating in Iraq, attached to military units or civilian bodies serving the armed forces.
In the estimate of American intelligence experts, Moscow's earnings from its deals with Baghdad may soar to two to three billion dollars by the end of 2002.
The Kremlin will not pull its technicians out of Iraq as it did in Gulf War One in 1991. They will be told to stay on until the outcome of the war is known. Putin appears to believe that the presence of Russian personnel will act as insurance for Russian post-war interests in Iraq and for the implementation of the huge contracts the Saddam regime signed with Moscow for the joint development of Iraqi oil fields.
Two, from mid-September, the Kremlin lifted every last restriction on the quality and quantity of the equipment and military technology it is selling Iran, including nuclear and missile know-how. This is agreed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's American and Israeli intelligence sources.
The Russian deals with Iran were high on the agenda of the talks Bush and Sharon held in the White House on Wednesday, October 17.
The US president interprets Putin's conduct as arising from Russian hopes of cashing in on Iran's massive withdrawals of money and gold from American and European banks, in advance of the Iraq war. In the last few weeks, Iran has removed some 3 to 3.5 billion dollars of deposits from banks in New York, London and Frankfurt. Bush believes Putin is counting on siphoning off some of this money by selling the Iranians more of the technologies they want. Sharon, however, sees in the Russian president's tactics far-reaching strategic objectives that the Americans would do well to keep in mind. If the flow of Russian technology to Iran continues at its present pace, Iran will soon be in possession of the biggest missile arsenal in southwest Asia, standing level with India and Pakistan. Putin's purpose in this buildup of Iran is to create a counterweight to the post-war American military presence in Iraq as well as offsetting the US footprint in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea basin.
Iraq
1. Saddam's Terrorists-for-Hire
Some American intelligence experts estimate that the sight of the US inexorably inching ever closer to crushing his regime is driving Saddam Hussein to desperation. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror and intelligence sources confirm that in the last two weeks he did in fact hire terrorists for mass-casualty terrorist attacks on American and Israeli military targets. He demanded operations on a scale that would lead to Washington calling off its assault on Iraq.
The assignments were awarded to Ramadan Shalah, the Jihad Islami leader who is based in Damascus, and Muhammed Abu al Abbas, the Palestinian chief of the Baghdad-based Arab Liberation Front. They were summoned to his underground quarters in Tikrit and each was offered between 10 and 15 million dollars to execute a mega-terror attack against an American target in the Middle East and Persian Gulf or inside Israel. They were required to cause a shocking hundreds ö if not thousands ö of deaths and injuries.
Saddam promised the necessary intelligence and logistic backing for the operations from his own military intelligence, whose overseas networks he has ordered to stand ready to render assistance to either or both terror organizations.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that, to Abu al-Abbas, Saddam complained bitterly that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians had let him down. Their output of anti-Israeli terror operations had dropped off at the very moment that time was running out for the Arab nation.
Al Abbas explained that, with the Israeli military posted in battle array in every Palestinian town and village on the West Bank, it is practically impossible for terrorist operations to take off. Shalah, speaking for his Jihad Islami, reported the Israelis have sewn up the Gaza Strip, where his group is strongest, as tight as a drum. There is no way, he said, to get enough weapons, explosives or bombers through to Israeli towns. As things stood now, only imported foreign terrorists had any chance of executing strikes in Israeli cities.
Saddam handed the two terror chieftains a down payment of $150,000 each. He promised more cash when his intelligence officers reported that the preparations for mega-terror attacks were sufficiently well advanced.
The leaking of this sensitive data from top-secret conferences between the Iraqi ruler and two terrorists raises questions in the minds of US intelligence agencies in the Gulf. However, the two terrorists are not top caliber or capable of operating outside the region. What US intelligence is really after is to plumb the workings of the operational collaboration set up by Iraqi military intelligence and al Qaeda. A senior intelligence officer confided to DEBKA-Net-Weekly that this had nothing to do with any legitimacy the Bush administration might require for its offensive against Iraq. "The US government," said the source, "has all the damning evidence it needs on the Iraqi military intelligence's role in al Qaeda's preparations for the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11."
What is of concern is the damage this deadly partnership can wreak in the present. It enables Saddam to vicariously hit US Gulf forces, including warships and carriers, and strike at US targets outside the region, as well as giving him the power to manipulate oil prices by sabotaging oil installations and routes, using al Qaeda as his proxy.
This new threat was embodied in two recent occurrences.
One was the explosion and fire that gutted the French oil tanker the Limburg near Yemeni shores on October 6. While al Qaeda suicide operatives carried out the attack, our high-placed intelligence source is certain the speedboat which struck the tanker and the explosives aboard were purchased by agents hired in Yemen by Iraqi intelligence officers. The Aden Abyan Islamic Army, which claimed responsibility for the attack, is no more than a shell army - more sinister in some ways than a genuine organization in that it serves as a central clearing house for clandestine dealings among Yemeni military officers close to President Abdullah Saleh, Iraqi military intelligence officers and al Qaeda operatives.
The Yemeni officers have only one interest, to keep their hand in the international arms smuggling trade, of which Yemen is a regional center.
The working assumption for the counter-terror investigators is that two or three of these groups combined to carry out the Limburg operation, timing it to coincide with Bin Laden's advent on the scene.
The second occurrence took place some 750 miles distant from Yemen in northern Iraq.
In early September, the Pentagon released a video film captured in one of al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan that showed the organization's operatives carrying out experiments in toxic chemical substances. The attached text described the experiments as being part of an Iraqi training course held in the summer of 2000 at two Kurdish towns in northern Iraq, Bayara and Tawalla.
In the last two weeks, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that the al Qaeda are back in northern Iraqi in force, some 150-180 fighting men assembling in the same two Kurdish towns no more than 200 miles from the advancing US-Turkish special forces vanguard in the north. No sooner had they landed than they were joined by a large group of Iraqi military intelligence officers. Together they set up a new pro-Saddam enclave of al Qaeda, Iraqi intelligence and Kurdish Islamic extremists in northern Iraq to act as a thorn in the side of the American campaign.
Our intelligence source comments: If Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda are so successful an item, there is nothing to stop them expanding their joint operation to other places, even the United States itself."
2. Red Sea Shipping and Ports as WMD Targets
Saddam Hussein's initial riposte for an American strike was meant as a surprise.
Instead of using his scarce missiles for hitting Riyadh or Tel Aviv, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources report he intended saving his long-range missiles for the last stage of the war. Instead, while the Americans invaded Iraq from Kuwait in the south and from Jordan in the west, Iraq intended a comeback from the rear. Its L-29 planes fitted with spray canisters laden with chemical and biological agents were to head for the Red Sea, striking the US warships firing up to send cruise missiles against Baghdad and Tikrit and the Israeli and Jordanian ports of Eilat (50,000 population) and Aqaba (75,000 inhabitants).
To this end, Iraq concentrated its fleet of L-29 craft far from potential American front lines, relocating them to Jal al Batn, in southwest Iraq, on the 30th latitude opposite the Saudi frontier. They were tucked into specially built underground sheds, to each of which a short runway is attached.
Saddam intended to send them over Saudi Arabia by night to cross the roughly 450 miles to target. He counted on the Saudis not allowing American and Israeli aircraft to intercept the Iraqi planes in mid-flight. He believed that a fall of poisonous substances on the Jordanian port of Aqaba would cut off the American supply route by sea to the Western and central fronts and force the Americans to fall back, willy-nilly, on Israeli ports.
Upon receipt of this intelligence information, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report American fighter and surveillance craft units sped to the Sinai air base at Sharm al Sheikh, from which to provide the American Red Sea fleet with air cover. Anti-air missile batteries, including improved Patriots, were deployed at Aqaba, while the Israelis next door, provided the resort town of Eilat and neighboring communities with a protective air defense screen made up of missiles of various types and self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery. More Israeli air force fighter squadrons were deployed at air bases near Eilat.
At the moment, therefore, the Red Sea ports of Aqaba and Eilat at the southernmost tips of both Jordan and Israel, which are normally reserved for sun-lovers, deep sea divers and pleasure seekers, turn out to be the most heavily protected holiday resorts in the world.
Europe
Master-Terrorist on the Prowl
In his speech on October 7 defining the Iraqi threat to the United States, President George W. Bush spoke of several al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan and reached Baghdad, among them a commander who was given medical treatment and linked to the planning of chemical and biological warfare.
That man is reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and counter-terror sources to have been seen the next day, October 8, walking rapidly across the central square of Brussels. Two days later, he was seen in Paris, hurrying from the Ritz Hotel towards the Place de La Opera.
Our sources name this al Qaeda commander as Abu Maswab Zarkawi, a man in his forties, who has been appointed his organization's master planner for a series of terrorist attacks ö possibly with chemical or biological weapons - in Europe's main cities.
His estimated targets aside from Brussels and Paris are Rotterdam's oil harbor, the City of London or Piccadilly Circus and a location in Frankfurt. The same sources suggest he may also be plotting mass terror strikes ö again with the help of chemical and biological toxins ö in Jordan and Israel, as well as Europe.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's terror experts, Zarkawi is the hottest name in the international Islamic terror league and the target of every counter-terror force in the West. Although Bush held Zarkawi up as the personification of al Qaeda's collaboration with Iraq, he is at present working on behalf of his network hand in glove with Tehran.
A Palestinian named for his place of birth, Zarka in Jordan, Zarkawi is an example of how al Qaeda compartmentalizes its operations. The regional tentacles and affiliates, be they in the Gulf, Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia, or the Far East, operate autonomously and separately from one another. Zarkawi, after leaving Baghdad, moved into his next operational sphere, known only to a small group in Tehran and unbeknownst to Baghdad.
He was also provided with his own force of 20 or 30 terrorists, some whom are the very sleepers Osama bin Laden threatened to "wake up" in his last message. Most are already in position undercover in the vicinity of potential targets.
HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives
13 October: Saddam Hussein wasted no time before calling his leadership and parliament into emergency sessions Saturday, October 12, in response to the congressional endorsement US president George W. Bush gained for waging war on Iraq. DEBKAfile's Gulf sources report that the Iraqi ruler demanded a mandate to go to war and his son Uday named successor be named in case he comes to harm.
While these moves are essentially ritualistic, they point to the Iraqi government's realization that the time has come for their country to gear up for military action. It will not immediately take the form of unconventional warfare against American forces in the field or other pro-American targets like Israel, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. But a message is being broadcast that the time for using them is not far off.
The debate going back and forth in Washington last week over what kind of government will rule Iraq after Saddam Hussein is gone distracted attention from important military developments:
A.
The US-Turkish special forces takeover of northern Iraq with the help of pro-American Kurdish and Turkmen units is complete. The stretch of territory now in US hands ranges from Sinjar near the Syrian border in the west and runs east as far as 10-15 miles north of the oil town of Mosul. Then, still further east, US-led forces have by-passed the friendly Kurdish stronghold of Erbil, which commands the highway to the second northern oil city of Kirkuk, to fetch up on a line roughly 20 miles south of Erbil, 35-40 miles north of Kirkuk.
B.
In the west, a military standoff has developed along Iraq's Jordanian border region, an area considered the strategic gateway to the Iraqi heartland - Saddam's hometown Tikrit and Baghdad around the H-2 and H-3 bases, centers of command cores, air defense installations, missile bases and air force facilities.
C.
In the south, the American war command continues to beef up its troop concentrations in bases ranging from Cairo-West, Jordan ö mainly in the air-ground base of Ruwayshid near the Iraqi border, Eritrea and Djibouti in East Africa, the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, Socotra (Yemen), and Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain along the Gulf.
D.
DEBKAfile's military sources report a slowdown in the US-UK air offensive against Iraq's air and air defense resources. While air raids continue against Basra and Talil in the south and H-2 and H-3 in the west, Iraqi air command and control centers in the north near Kirkuk and at Taj in central Iraq have not been touched..
E.
Most alarming are signs that the Islamic extremist al Qaeda is back in action and its initiation of a fresh wave of strategic terrorist strikes. The group's two chiefs, who appeared to vanish off the face of the earth eleven months ago in the thick of the Tora Bora battle, began to surface in the first week of October and signal that they are very much alive and as threatening as ever.
From that moment on, the terror attacks have been coming thick and fast.
13 October: On the day of the Zawahri interview, October 6, the French oil supertanker Limburg was struck on its way into a Yemen port in an attack similar to the crippling of the USS Cole frigate two years earlier at Aden port. Responsibility was claimed by the Yemeni Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, an umbrella organization for pro-al Qaeda Yemeni extremists operating around Aden, in the Hadhramauth and in northern regions bordering on Saudi Arabia. Among them are 300 or 400 who fought the Americans in Afghanistan and made good their escape home through Iran. DEBKAfile's military sources report that, since early September, US special forces have been operating in Yemen to break up the terror networks the Afghanistan veterans have been building among Yemeni tribes. In recent weeks, clashes occurred in Hadhramauth and on both sides of the Yemen-Saudi frontier, between American commandos and high-ranking al Qaeda fighters.
The fact that the all-out American campaign against al Qaeda has not reduced the network's ability to bring off a strike as meticulously planned and strategically damaging as the attack on the Limburg, means that the sea traffic passing through the region - tankers, US warships and aircraft carriers and commercial shipping, some of it carrying equipment and supplies to American forces in the Gulf of Aden - are vulnerable to terrorist attack.
Two day after the Limburg was struck, Kuwaiti terrorists fired on US Marines on joint maneuvers in Kuwait, killing one and injuring two. The oil emirate abutting Iraq is an important point of concentration for a US troop invasion of Iraq. Yet a large and high-placed al Qaeda cell, its members drawn from some of the emirate's most prominent families, including even the Mufti of Kuwait's Grand Mosque, struck under the noses of US and Kuwaiti intelligence
What is more, the American military buildup for war on Iraq has seemingly become the magnet of a resurgent al Qaeda campaign, begging such questions as:
1.
Is the current wave of terror the product of joint pre-planning between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahri and the rest of the al Qaeda command?
2.
What are the chances of the current wave of terrorism spreading to American targets in other parts of the world and America itself? This is to be expected in the near future.
3.
Are other terror groups likely to join al Qaeda's campaign of terror? The Palestinians and the Hizballah are likely to back up bin Laden by targeting Israel and Jordan.
Some of the difficulties now facing the US campaign to win over Saddam's followers in the army are largely generated by Washington itself. Talk of replacing the Saddam regime with a new, democratic administration, is perceived by Iraq's Sunnis, the backbone of the existing regime, as a threat to dilute the authority of central government, dissolve the army and secret services and fragment the country into autonomous Shiite, Kurdish and Turkmen sectors. However much many Sunni tribal leaders and generals may detest Saddam and his family, they find the Bush vision dismaying in that it will force them out of the privileged positions they enjoy, thanks to Baghdad's repression of Iraq's non-Sunni peoples.
Therefore, the road to a democratic Iraq ö even assuming the war is quickly won ö is bound to be uphill and tortuous.
13 October: The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon's visit to Washington on Monday, October 14, is officially described as being to coordinate the two countries' actions in the coming war against Iraq. However, certain voices, some coming from the Israeli foreign ministry too, are trying hard to force Sharon's talks in the White House into the frame of the What's Next after Saddam debate in Washington. They advise him to settle for a deal on the Palestinian issue with President George W. Bush now, or else face much steeper demands after the war is over.
These voices come from the Israel circles who are anxious to preserve the Palestinian Authority, albeit after certain reforms. They echo voices in the US State Department who advocate building the future of Palestine on the existing Palestinian Authority. They do so in the same breath as they urge basing the future central government in Baghdad on incumbent institutions.
These groups of opinion are fully supported in Europe and the United Nations secretariat ö but completely at odds with President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney.
Five months ago, DEBKAfile began reporting on the vision the top Bush team entertains of a clean sweep of the current Palestinian leadership and its institutions and their replacement by new governing bodies untainted by terror and corruption.
Bush and Cheney feel the same way about Iraq.
Since Bush and Sharon are of one mind on the Palestinian question, their conversation will most probably focus on the coming war.
The ground they will need to cover will include American and Israeli military responses to chemical, biological or nuclear attack by Iraq or terrorists; the action to be taken in the event of American being subjected to a major terror attack like 9/11, and what will happen if Israel is attacked by Iraq or terrorists, whether al Qaeda, Hizballah or the Palestinians.
The two leaders will seek maximum military-strategic understanding and coordination in the face of these threats.
13 October: No group claimed responsibility for the two car bombs that turned the Indonesian island paradise of Bali into a fiery inferno Saturday, October 12, killing close to 200 and maiming many hundreds. But the hand of al Qaeda was hard to miss.
According to DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources, Osama Bin Laden's own brother in law, Mohammed Khalifa, overall operations chief for al Qaeda in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and other parts of South East Asia, engineered the Bali horror
Not only did the brutal massacre bear all the hallmarks of Osama bin Laden's deadly network, it occurred on the second anniversary of the day that a suicide cell in a speedboat struck the USS Cole in Aden harbor, six days after a copycat strike against the French oil tanker Limburg off the Yemeni coast, four days after a US Marine was killed and another wounded in a shooting attack in Kuwait, and just about a week after the recorded voices of Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahri scattered dire threats over the Arab satellite TV station, Al Jazeera.
The time spread is too tight to be random; the geographical spread too broad for any but a far-flung network. The ability to strike where least expected is a recurring feature in Osama bin Laden's blood-spattered record. But the Islamist movement's affinity with Iraq is the common thread running through the al Qaeda terror offensive erupting this month.
The Indonesian government, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has failed to stand up to the strong opposition to preventive arrests of suspected terrorists without irrefutable evidence. In the days of President Suharto, the Muslim right was at the forefront of the political opposition. Its leaders were imprisoned, to emerge after his resignation in 1998 as popular heroes. Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, who fled to Malaysia, returned home to found the Jemaah Islamiya, the JI, whose aim it is to set up an Islamic state in Indonesia. Inspired by Hasan al-Banna, founder of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, he preached jihad as the means to that end. Later, falling under the influence of al Qaeda, the JI went international. Malaysia and Singapore say it is the aim of Jemaah Islamiya, to set up an Islamic state in South East Asia covering Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the southern Philippines. They accuse the Megawati government of being soft on the group because Ba'asyir has sympathizers in her government.
One of Ba'asyir's closest associates, Abu Jibril aka Fihiruddin is believed to be the financial bagman for al Qaeda in the region. Another, Hambali, aka Nurjaman, described by Lee as Ba'asyir's senior lieutenant, has been linked to a wave of bombings in Indonesia in December 2000 and attacks in Manila. Suspected of direct links with al Qaeda, his current whereabouts are unknown
The writing was on the wall for those who would read it. The government in Djakarta was warned by Washington that terrorist attacks were brewing. Australian Prime Minister John Howard declared the war on terror must go on with unrelenting vigor. He ordered an urgent security review. "People should get out of their minds that it can't happen here; it can and it has happened to our own on our doorstep," he said.
Ba'asyir does not hide his admiration for bin Laden, but denies any terror connections.
14 October: A shocked Indian prime minister, Behari Vajpayee, condemning the terrorist brutality perpetrated in the Indonesian resort island of Bali, urged the international community to end the practice of "conflicting views on terrorism." Speaking in London, on Monday, October 13, the Indian leader denounced Western double standards. "The problem," he said, "is that Western countries see their own terror better and do not see our terrorism as quite so serious."
He pointed out that the free, fair elections he promised Kashmir and Jammu, had taken place, despite "militants trained, readied and armed by a neighboring country. They call it a freedom struggle, but who is fighting for freedom, for whom?'
The double standard Vajpayee picked up on his European tour is old hat for Israeli visitors. At the cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Sunday, October 13, Israel science and sports minister Matan Vilnai complained that during his recent visit to Paris he had encountered an anti-Israel tide prompted by its fight against Palestinian terror. Minister without portfolio Dan Meridor suffered a similar experience in London. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres defended his department's information strategy. Israel's unpopularity, he explained was the result of its counter-terror campaign in Palestinian areas. Is it necessary, he asked, for us blow up Palestinian houses every day? Couldn't we do them all at once?
The foreign minister seemed to be saying that if Israel demolished, say, 100 terrorist homes all in one day, his colleagues' visits to Europe would be a lot pleasanter.
Monday, October 14, defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer set off regardless for the French capital. He described his mission as being: to prevent the almost daily Hizballah cross-border attacks on northern Israel flaring out of hand. He intends asking the French government to restrain Syria and Lebanon and trusts the Chirac government to oblige with this favor.
The day Ben Eliezer landed in Paris, the French government announced a boycott on farm products produced by Israeli Jordan Rift Valley farmers - unless they are labeled Made in Palestine.
DEBKAfile suggests a change of course. Instead of bidding for sympathy and support where it is denied ö the views of French president Jacques Chirac on Israel vis a vis the Palestinians will not change in the near future ö why don't they go east, to New Delhi, for instance. Behari Vajpayee leads a not inconsiderable nation with whom Israel has much in common. He might even give them some constructive advice on how to deal with the Hizballah.
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