 Pakistan appears to have replaced Afghanistan as Al Qaeda’s “centre of gravity”, according to a report by CNN.
| Picked right up on that, didn't they? |
Al Qaeda’s production company, As Sahab, does much of its work in Pakistan, the report says, and the latest Al Qaeda video was probably uploaded in one of the thousands of Internet cafes in Pakistan. “Waziristan is one of the places where Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are thought to have hidden out and where As Sahab produces its work,” says CNN. Their latest video featured a message from American Adam Gadahn calling on his countrymen to convert to Islam.
| Gadahn's another of those misunderstood California boyz. When he's caught, Mom and Pop will no doubt plead that he be released, since he's suffered enough... |
Whether this was Al QaedaÂ’s fifth-anniversary message after 9/11 wasnÂ’t clear, but the video had been anticipated since a flashing graphic had advertised it on Islamist websites two days earlier. As Sahab had struck again, showing how easily and effectively Al Qaeda was in getting its message out.
| What's hard about posting messages on the internet? Did we miss something here? |
Al-Zawahiri was on the tape, but Gadahn was the star of the show. The 28-year-old bearded and chubby-cheeked Californian prefers to use his alias, Azzam the American.
Gadahn grew up in Riverside County, California, on a goat farm. His father was a rock guitarist before starting the farm with his wife.
| Whoa! Heavy, dude! I suppose the goat farming's good training for becoming a Muslim, though... |
Gadahn left when he was a teenager, according to his father. After a heavy metal phase, he turned to Islam in 1995 and wrote about it on the Internet. “As I began reading English translations of the Quran, I became more and more convinced of the truth and authenticity of Allah’s teachings contained in those 114 chapters.”
| "And those goats just kept looking better and better!" |
Gadahn’s call on Americans to convert came with an explicit warning of what would happen if his call went unheeded. “Anyone who pays any attention to the messages of the leaders of the jihad, like Sheikh Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God protect them, will know that they have been consistent in inviting the Americans and other unbelievers to Islam and in pressing upon them that they want the best for them. And making it clear to all that we have no choice but to fight those who fight us,” Gadahn said.
| There's the difference between Muslims and the rest of us. It's the only religion whose adherents claim a right to kill anyone who doesn't agree with them... |
GadahnÂ’s family had no comment about the latest tape. In the past, his father has said Gadahn moved to Pakistan in 1998 and that the family lost touch with him in 2002.
| We're sure he's a good boy, though, and that he's suffered enough. |
The report says As Sahab also produced the “martyrdom video” of Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London subway bombers. “What the tape made clear was that when Tanweer and Mohammad Siddique Khan came to Pakistan in late 2004 (both were the children of Pakistani immigrants in Britain), they had been given training and direction from Al Qaeda to carry out their plot,” says the report.
| That'd be courtesy of Lashkar-e-Taiba... |
The report’s authors also visited Punjab’s Chak 477, Tanweer’s family village. “Chak 477 has just a few houses and a mosque with mostly dirt roads that quickly give way to lush farmland … Outside the mosque, we try to find out how the villagers feel about Tanweer. “One man kept telling us that Tanweer’s acts had brought trouble to the village because it meant that journalists kept coming to ask questions. But he wouldn’t be pinned down on whether he condemned Tanweer’s actions.
“Another man in the crowd kept asking him, in Urdu, why he was even talking with us. Inside the mosque, after news of Tanweer’s death reached the village last summer, prayers were said for him in something resembling a memorial. When we knocked on the door of the Tanweer family home, one of the biggest in town, a woman answered. Her voice was full of anger as she asked when she would get her son back. This wasn’t the bomber’s mother but an older relative who did not believe that Tanweer had been the suicide bomber. After a few more words, she shut the door. As we drove out of town, we stopped at the village cemetery. The largest marker was for Tanweer. At the gravestone’s bottom was inscribed the date of his death, when he blew himself up on a London subway. It was a reminder of the troubling connection between Pakistan and Al Qaeda.” |