| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks & Islam |
| The Irrelevance of an Oath |
| 2005-07-22 |
| "You, gracious brothers, are the leaders, guides, and symbolic figures of jihad and battle. We do not see ourselves as fit to challenge you, and we have never striven to achieve glory for ourselves. All that we hope is that we will be the spearhead, the enabling vanguard, and the bridge on which the [Islamic] nation crosses over to the victory that is promised and the tomorrow to which we aspire. This is our vision, and we have explained it. This is our path, and we have made it clear. If you agree with us on it, if you adopt it as a program and road, and if you are convinced of the idea of fighting the sects of apostasy, we will be your readied soldiers, working under your banner,complying with your orders, and indeed swearing fealty to you publicly and in the news media, vexing the infidels and gladdening those who preach the oneness of God. On that day, the believers will rejoice in God's victory. If things appear otherwise to you, we are brothers, and the disagreement will not spoil [our] friendship. [This is] a cause [in which] we are cooperating for the good and supporting jihad. Awaiting your response, may God preserve you as keys to good and reserves for Islam and its people." --Letter from Abu Musab Zarqawi to the al Qaeda leadership, circa January 2004 EVER SINCE HIS INTERNATIONAL DEBUT in October 2002, the origins of Abu Musab Zarqawi and the nature of his ties to Osama bin Laden have been shrouded in controversy. The U.S. Rewards for Justice profile of the man describes him as having "had a long-standing connection to the senior al Qaeda leadership" and states that he is "a close associate of Usama bin Laden and Saif Al-Adel," the latter being the terror network's current military chief. A number of European officials and anonymous individuals within the U.S. intelligence community disagree with this characterization however, with a senior counterterrorism official in the U.S. intelligence community having recently told the Washington Post that "Zarqawi may be a partner [of bin Laden] or a competitor, but it is not like they are close and in a binding relationship." Claims by intelligence analysts, counterterrorism officials, and diplomats that Zarqawi existed separately or in opposition to Osama bin Laden proliferated widely (and were made mostly anonymously) following the February 2004 publicizing of Zarqawi's letter to the al Qaeda leadership--in which he requested their assistance in launching a sectarian war between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni populations. The New York Times reported, citing US intelligence sources, that al Qaeda members operating outside of Iraq had refrained from endorsing Zarqawi's sectarian views, a sign that many observers took as clear indication of the differences between the two. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has even appeared to lend support to this view from time to time, replying in an answer to a question at the Council on Foreign Relations in October 2004 by saying ". . . My impression is most of the senior people [in al Qaeda] have actually sworn an oath to Osama bin Laden, and even, to my knowledge, even as of this late date, I don't believe Zarqawi, the principal leader of the network in Iraq, has sworn an oath, even though what they're doing--I mean, they're just two peas in a pod in terms of what they're doing." To many, these remarks seemed to represent an admission of error, at best, since it was Zarqawi, whom Collin Powell described to the United Nations Security Council as "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants," whose presence in Baghdad prior to the war formed among the strongest elements of the administration's claims of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. If Zarqawi was not an al Qaeda member, wouldn't Powell's warnings about a convergence of threats between Iraq and al Qaeda fall flat? NOT QUITE. Many of the administration's detractors tend to forget that it was not Powell who first labeled Zarqawi as al Qaeda, but rather Hans-Josef Beth, the head of the Germany's International Terrorism Department of the Security Service (BND). Beth stated that Zarqawi was an al Qaeda leader who "has experience with poisonous chemicals and biological weapons" during a meeting of the German-Atlantic Society in Berlin during the fall of 2002, long before Powell's appearance at the U.N. That the head of the German BND regarded Zarqawi as an al Qaeda leader is highly significant, in part because it directly contradicts statements from Shadi Abdallah, a member of a Germany-based Zarqawi cell which was disrupted in early 2002. Abdallah, who told investigators that bin Laden and Zarqawi operated independently and may have even been rivals, appears to have been the source for much of the misunderstanding of the bin Laden-Zarqawi connection. But Abdallah's testimony offers only a glimpse into this relationship and his distinction is ultimately irrelevant to the U.S. prosecution of the global war on terror. As the Washington Post noted in September 2003, "Zarqawi had had a leg amputated at an exclusive Baghdad clinic in 2002, suggesting he had connections to government figures in Iraq, but European officials scoffed at the larger allegation. Zarqawi was an independent operator, they said, citing the interrogation of some of his allies in Germany." The statement of Beth in October 2002 would seem to be in opposition to this view, as would his later comments that the spiritual leader of Zarqawi's German cell was none other than the infamous London-based Sheikh Abu Qatada, long viewed by European authorities as nothing less than "bin Laden's ambassador in Europe." It is thus with great care that one must note Abdallah's seeming contradictory remarks: While he characterized Zarqawi as a terrorist who operated independently of al Qaeda for his own purposes he did note that Zarqawi "could do nothing without the prior agreement of the cleric Abu Qatada" (this according to German court proceedings). If Abdallah's statements were accurate and any actions by Zarqawi had to first be cleared by the head of bin Laden's European network then quite clearly the two men were far from enemies, regardless of any immediate differences between their worldviews or objectives. THIS VIEW appears to have been shared by members of both al Qaeda and Zarqawi's al-Tawhid wal Jihad themselves. In a transcript of an Italian wiretap of a conversation between the Egyptian imam Nasr Usama Mustafa (now at the center of controversy following his abduction from Milan and subsequent rendition to Egypt by the CIA) and an unidentified al Qaeda operative from Germany, Zarqawi is referenced as the man who "is close to Emir Abdullah," an alias among jihadis referring to Osama bin Laden. The German al Qaeda member informs Mustafa that the men in charge of the plan are members of al-Tawhid and if there were any kind of serious animosity that barred cooperation between the two men,neither Mustafa nor his unknown superior appear aware of it. Yet some analysts continue to refuse to accept such a connection between the two organizations, pointing out that Zarqawi never swore a formal oath of allegiance to bin Laden. But this is a distinction without merit. As the September 11 Commission Report details, few of the individuals traditionally thought of as being members of bin Laden's inner circle had sworn an oath of allegiance to him; this includes September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Jemaah Islamiyah operations chief Hambali (who had already sworn allegiance to Abu Bakar Bashir), and al Qaeda's Gulf operations chief Abd Rahim al-Nashiri. The New York Times reported as early as 2002 that Abu Zubaydah, al Qaeda's "dean of students" (who had been thought of as a potential successor to bin Laden, before his capture), had likewise opted not to swear such an oath. If the absence of an oath did not hinder Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from plotting September 11 at bin Laden's behest, why then should Zarqawi's have stopped him from working with bin Laden? MOREOVER, drawing even retrospective distinctions between al Qaeda and allied terrorist groups such as al-Tawhid wal Jihad on the basis of whether or not the leadership of one has publicly declared its allegiance to the other represents a misunderstanding of how international Islamist terrorism functions. As Rohan Gunaratna documented in Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror, al Qaedahas from the very beginning operated as a shadow organization and it was for that reason that even following the group's public debut in February 1998 that "for reasons of security, neither the alliance partners nor Osama wished to disclose the wider composition of the alliance. . . . Unless these terrorist networks were compartmentalized, their usefulness might be compromised." One such example can be found in Algerian GSPC, which according to Jonathan Schanzer in Al-Qaeda's Armies, was "responsible for financing, logistics, and planning attacks for al Qaeda" years before its then-leader, Nabil Sahraoui, declared his allegiance to bin Laden on September 11, 2003. Such public declarations are rare in the world of Islamist terrorism; politicians and analysts ignore this truism at their own peril. Today of course, there is little ambiguity as to who Zarqawi represents. Last October he publicly declared allegiance to bin Laden, whose own response a few months later designated Zarqawi his "emir" inside Iraq. To ignore the body of connections between the two men and their organizations on the basis of whether or not Zarqawi had sworn an oath of allegiance to bin Laden, however, is absurd. There is much that is still unknown as to nature and extent of Zarqawi's ties to Osama bin Laden, but what we do known based on both their statements and their actions, is more than enough to regard the two men as having been co-belligerents, if not allies, in al Qaeda's war against the United States. Dan Darling is a counter-terrorism consultant for the Manhattan Institute's Center for Policing Terrorism. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |