The war on Islamic terror achieved its biggest breakthrough ever with the mass arrests of dozens of al Qaeda suspects in 11 countries in a roundup ongoing since November.More than 50 senior operatives are known to have been detained so far (Dec.10,2005) and the circle is widening. Not all the arrests have been announced. The roundups , are believed to have broken the backs of seven networks and their regional headquarters, the most resounding blow ever inflicted on Osama bin Laden’s organization. Important al Qaeda operatives were picked up in Belgium – Brussels, Antwerp, Charleroi and Riemst ; Morocco – Rabat, Casablanca and Agadir, and Spain -Alicante, Granada and Murcia, as well as France, Denmark, Holland and Turkey.
Detentions took place more quietly in the UK, Tunisia and Algeria.Close collaboration among the anti-terrorist forces of Europe and NATO- in step with American agencies - lent the crackdown depth and scope. In the space of two weeks, Western counter-terror agencies, after years of groping in the dark, are looking deep into the structure assumed by al Qaeda now.
1. Osama bin Laden’s return to Afghanistan, where he first established and developed al Qaeda. He is not hiding on the Pakistan-Afghan border as believed by American intelligence hitherto. Instead, his new training camps are busy turning out new recruits. This discovery was confirmed by three reformed Saudi al Qaeda followers interviewed by Saudi TV Tuesday Nov. 29. They reported they had recently spent time in bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan where they met European tyro members.
2. Al Qaeda’s founder is far from being the iconic figurehead busy with theological doctrine and superseded by a younger generation of leaders - as depicted by many pundits in the West. Intelligence input hot off the hob of current interrogations explodes this myth and portrays him as vitally active and in supreme command of al Qaeda’s operations worldwide.
His is the deciding voice on operational policy and execution; he picks the targets for attacks, orchestrates the campaign against US forces in Iraq, orders the movements of units from place to play and allocates funding. Bin Laden is fully abreast of al Qaeda’s activities and the war waged on his organization.
New commanders have indeed emerged - and will be exposed for the first time in the next article in this issue - but they are bin Laden’s appointees and he keeps them on a tight rein by efficient methods of communication, which I will examine.3. Even Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, commander of the Iraq branch, is subordinate to bin Laden and acts under his orders.
4. Al Qaeda is a dynamically expanding organization, constantly building new regional commands for the dual purpose of manpower recruitment and the staging of terrorist attacks. The detainees have revealed that in the last year alone, three new commands were created according to bin Laden’s planning: al Qaeda of the Levant, al Qaeda-Palestine – which extends from the Sinai Peninsula to Palestinian-controlled areas, and al Qaeda-Arabian Maghreb (North Africa).
5. They also reported that, as of the winter of 2005-2006, a new al Qaeda operational tactic was to have gone into effect to correct a weakness. When a lone bomb-vested suicide attacker is caught, the operation is forfeit; this problem is to be overcome by fielding a large band of suicide killers against a single target, some of whom have a chance of getting through to complete the assigned mission even if some are seized.
6. While arrests were made in Algeria’s towns, the desert bases of al Qaeda’s branch in Algeria, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, Algeria’s largest radical jihadist movement – known also by its combat name of Al Muktaliya – proved unreachable. This group is the most covert and inaccessible of all the networks, but its impact is widespread. The detained network commanders all attested to the fingerprint of this dangerous group on all their organizations.
7. Al Qaeda has finally reached into the heart of the Berber people of Morocco and set up clandestine terror cells among its radical groups – and not just among the almost 7 million-strong nation in Morocco (one-fifth of the population at large), but also in expatriate communities living in Antwerp and other parts of West Europe.
8. Operational links are now confirmed between Russia’s Chechen rebels and al Qaeda networks in Turkey. Russian president Vladimir Putin has long claimed this tie-in, but Washington and London were never convinced.
The seven al Qaeda networks partially rolled up this month were found to have operated in Syria, Turkey, France, Morocco, Tunisia, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Britain, Denmark and Algeria.
The Results
Khalid Abu Basir, Emir of al Qaeda in Europe, was the kingpin of the syndicate of the seven networks. With another Moroccan-born terror operative, Khalid Asiq, he was assigned in mid-2004 to rebuild the run-down cells in West Europe and North Africa into thriving operational networks. In the first stage, they were not given terrorist commissions; working out of Brussels and Antwerp, Charleroi and Riemst, they brought the seven networks into sync and collected a pool of volunteers willing to carry out terrorist and suicide strikes.
Both men were arrested in Brussels. My sources reveal they immediately launched into detailed descriptions of their activities, spilling everything they knew about al Qaeda’s activities and mode of operation.
Al Qaeda penetrated the Berber people through the Belgian network, which recruited suicide bombers from among radicalized elements in the expatriate community in Antwerp. It also found Berbers who volunteered to go back to Morocco and mobilize to al Qaeda more of their countrymen among disaffected Berber elements.
Brussels and Antwerp were the second communications stations for Osama bin Laden’s orders that were transmitted first to the Istanbul center. Belgium relayed those orders to the European, North African and Middle East cells, including bin Laden’s instructions for Abu Musab al Zarqawi in Iraq.
This week, Moroccan security service agents visited Brussels to study the data procured from the interrogations of the chiefs of the Brussels network and their ties to Morocco.As part of the investigation into the Belgian terrorist network, the Paris police arrested a 27-year old Tunisian man Wednesday, Nov. 30, with alleged links to the Belgian cell.
Last month , the trial began of 13 Belgian and Moroccan nationals accused of providing logistics for the Islamic fundamentalist group which carried out the 2004 Madrid rail attacks in which 191 people died and the 2003 Casablanca bombings that killed 45. They were charged with supplying a safe house, false papers and logistical aid to the al Qaeda-linked Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.
Belgium had clearly emerged by then as a center for supplying terrorists with fake Belgian passports, among the myriad functions provided the fundamentalist terror movement.Just as Brussels was the operations and planning center for West Europe and Morocco, Istanbul turns out to be the communications and money distribution center.
Chechens living in Turkey ran the two vital services from Istanbul, although the two were so strictly compartmented and secretive that neither knew about the other.As al Qaeda’s financial center, this network was responsible for the collection and distribution of funds, most streamed from the various networks to Istanbul through regular postal bank deliveries picked up from post offices in Istanbul, or brought in by special courier. Couriers also collected the allocations for Zarqawi’s operations in Iraq, which were sent to Istanbul from Damascus by Khalid Salibi, or picked up by Salibi in person on visits to Istanbul.
Moroccan security officials found in possession of the al Qaeda operatives they detained the round sum of $40,000 in cash which had been remitted from Istanbul. In Morocco this is a vast sum, enough to pay for large and numerous terrorist attacks.
The Chechen communications section in Istanbul was much larger and more sophisticated than the financial center. The fundamentalist organization was discovered to have kept its network commanders connected and relayed orders from Afghan headquarters by means of an army of couriers and coded messages through the Internet.
The arrested suspects revealed that these couriers carried bin Laden’s instructions to senior al Qaeda commanders in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, North Africa and Europe from Afghanistan to Istanbul.
They had regular geographic beats which they traversed with letters or funds with relay stations en route. A courier heading into Iran from Afghanistan, for instance, would hand his burden over to the next messenger at a regular handover station. Pick-ups were arranged by dates or coded signals transmitted by Internet. The chain extended from Afghanistan to Istanbul and thence to other points in the Middle East and Europe. Couriers would cross from Syria into western Iraq at al Qaim with messages and instructions from bin Laden in Afghanistan to Zarqawi in Baghdad.
Under interrogation in Brussels, Khaled Azig recounted how he visited Istanbul to pick up bin Laden’s letters for the terrorist networks in Morocco and Europe. He revealed that the letters were written in the supreme leader’s own handwriting. The Istanbul center would request couriers from Morocco to carry Bin Laden’s letters to al Qaeda terror chiefs in Saudi Arabia.
Aziq’s frequent calls on the Chechens in Istanbul were his undoing. The suspicions of Turkish intelligence were aroused and they began to follow him. They were led to the Chechen cell and uncovered its link to Brussels and alerted Belgian intelligence who took it from there.
Most of the Moroccan network’s members were recruited outside that country, primarily among expatriates teaching and studying at the madrasses and theological seminaries in and around Damascus.
The al Qaeda executive in charge of their recruitment is Khalid Salibi aka Abu Za’im, Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s principal contact man in Damascus. Salibi takes care of all of Zarqawi’s logistical requirements for manpower, weapons and funds. He also coordinates the activities of Zarqawi’s henchmen outside Iraq and handles Zarqawi’s interchanges with bin Laden and network commanders in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.
Abu Zaim obtained from Khalid Abu Basir and Khaled Asig in Brussels the names of all the Moroccan teaching staff and students at schools in Damascus, including lists of those attached to Damascus University’s religious studies faculty. The lists were relayed to the Brussels headquarters by the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. Mohammed R’ha and Khalid Azig paid regular trips to the Syrian capital to keep track of recruitment and get their orders from Zarqawi.
Azig spent some time in Damascus this year and in June traveled to Morocco after setting up a link with Khaled Abu Basir at the Brussels headquarters.
R’ha arrived in Morocco on Sept. 29 at the head of a group of terrorists who had completed their training in Iraq and Syria. The group passed first through Istanbul where they were given funds for activating the Moroccan network and mounting terrorist attacks. But this group was caught. The American CIA tipped off Moroccan intelligence on the date of arrival. Its members were followed and arrested and the Moroccan network broken up.
Other members of the Moroccan network are named here as Mohammed Mazouz, 32, Brahim Benchekroun, 26, and Redouane Chekkouri, 33.
The latter two were held in the American Guantanamo Bay terrorists facility in Cuba and released later, only to return to Morocco in August 2004 to pick up their former terrorist activities. All three were picked up in Morocco on Nov. 11This network had been given several missions. Its bombers were told to carry out suicide attacks on US warships based at Essaouira (Mogador) on Morocco’s Atlantic coast south of Casablanca, opposite the Portuguese Madeira Islands.
In Agadir, they were to target de luxe hotels hosting American, Israel and British tourists.
In Tangiers – the casino was their objective. In Rabat, suicide bombers were ordered to blow up the Moroccan parliament during a well-attended session. In Casablanca, they were to have blown up the US consulate and the Jewish synagogue when it was filled with worshippers.This network’s field of operation included also Mauritania and Tunisia. The Berber network was an integral part of the Belgian and Moroccan rings.
The seven networks just broken up were nearly four years old. They were established in 2002 after US-led coalition forces destroyed al Qaeda’s Afghanistan bases in the wake of the September 11 attacks in America. The capture of a large number of their senior commanders in November has provided a rare opportunity to study how al Qaeda re-organized and recovered from the loss of its Afghanistan base and how it developed from early footholds in Iraq and Damascus established well before the US invasion of March 2003.
The Unfolding Process
In early 2002, al Qaeda commanders on the run from Afghanistan congregated in eastern Iran and northern Iraq. Through roving radicals of the Algerian fundamentalist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, they were brought in touch with Moroccan-born Khalid Salibi aka Abu Za’im. They retained him to funnel jihadi fighters from North Africa to North Iraq. This was the first contact made between the Moroccan Salibi and the ex-Jordanian Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
It quickly sprouted a multinational mishmash that came to be the quintessence of many of al Qaeda’s frameworks. Salibi set up his first operation in northern Iraq, backed by a rear base he established in Damascus and staffed with a band of fellow-Moroccans engaged in smuggling al Qaeda’s Arab fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan via Iran to Turkey and thence to Syria.
Some of those fugitives then continued to Saudi Arabia; others joined Zarqawi.
Salibi received help, some of it financial, from a group of Chechens living in Istanbul. He repaid them by diverting a number of al Qaeda fighters from Istanbul to Chechnya to help them fight the Russians.In the early summer of 2002, the same Algerian group directed another Moroccan asset through Istanbul to Al Qaeda’s Damascus base. The arrival of Khalid Abu Basir was the last piece to be fitted into the Moroccan network that masterminded the March 2004 Madrid railway bombings.
This operation therefore took two years to set up. It was plotted several months before the US invasion of Iraq, which was presented at the time as the prime motivation behind the Madrid attack.
That same summer of 2002, the Damascus base was joined by the student of a local religious seminary, a Moroccan with Belgian citizenship called Mohammed Behar. In between classes, he ran a lucrative smuggling business in textile goods from Turkey to Syria through northern Iraq and Kurdistan. In the course of this pursuit, he came upon another branch of al Qaeda operating in Iraq and Iran, the violent ultra-fundamentalist Ansar al Islam.
Together these elements formed the nucleus of an efficient smuggling-cum-communications routing system that works perfectly up until the present for Osama bin Laden, wherever he may be hiding - in Afghanistan at the moment - and Zarqawi in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein who ruled Iraq at the time had no control over this underground net, any more than does Syrian president Bashar Assad at present. Perhaps this routing system could have been broken up at first, but no longer; today, the aggregate of pacts and accords that bind al Qaeda to local tribes, ethnic groups and sects would soon slide away from any hand seeking to root it out.
At the end of 2002, Behar returned to Morocco with instructions to build a terrorist network able to carry out a series of bombings in Casablanca in 2003.
The detainees rounded up in November revealed under questioning that Iraq before the American-led invasion and since is al Qaeda’s main source of the fake passports of all Middle East countries as well as stamps of entry and exit and work permits.
The big Palestinian Yarmuk refugee camp in Damascus is another good place to find fake passports. An Egyptian-born Palestinian refugee known as Abu Firas handles the false passports coming from Iraq and touches them up to make them appear more genuine.The picture taking shape of the seven al Qaeda networks is far from complete, although it is being filled in as the interrogation of dozens of senior terrorist operatives progresses. What is beginning to emerge is a terrorist organization strung between two focal points – Osma bin Laden at the northern end and Zarqawi in the south.
Damascus and Istanbul are the two hubs of activity and money and weapons movements. Messages and orders are routed through Istanbul.This vast organization stretches from Europe and North Africa down to the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. It maintains a dark and dangerous core hidden deep in the Algerian desert lairs of the jihadist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.