Thomas Foley, executive officer of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Jordan, was shot dead last year outside his home in a western Amman neighbourhood. The 60-year-old diplomat was about to enter his car when he was hit by a volley of bullets fired from close range. Soon after, Jordan and the USA charged Al-Qaeda with responsibility for the attack. In an audio recording released several weeks later, believed to be by Osama Bin Laden, the speaker mentioned Foley's murder among a list of other attacks committed by Al-Qaeda.
| Yeah. You might consider that grounds for tying the killing to Al-Qaeda. So what's the problem? |
However, the indictment specifies Al-Zarqawi, as the key figure behind the attack. Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian national, together with 10 other defendants — Libyans, Syrians and another Jordanian — are charged with the murder of Foley and with plotting to commit other attacks against US and Israeli targets in Jordan. Only five of the 11 suspects are in custody, among them Saad Salem Bin-Suawayed, a 40-year-old Libyan, suspected to have been the gunman.
| Still not sure I see a problem... |
According to the indictment, Al-Zarqawi visited Syria last year, where he met the operatives involved in the plot. They were trained in Syria, supplied with guns and grenades, and then returned to Jordan with instructions to locate a suitable target. Suawayed and his accomplices began searching the diplomatic neighbourhood of Amman for possible targets. By chance, they spotted Foley's diplomatic licensed car and followed it until he arrived at his home. The team waited outside the house until Foley emerged again and then shot him. The indictment does not attribute the attack to Al-Qaeda, and regional intelligence sources have pointed the finger at Al-Zarqawi's own independent faction, Jund al-Shams. "The Jordanians are experts when it comes to Al-Qaeda," a senior intelligence source told JTIC. "If they say it's not Al-Qaeda -then it isn't."
So Zarqawi is the emir of Jund al-Shams, and also of al-Tawhid, so are these different names for the same organisation, or are they independant of each other, with Al-Zarqawi as the glue that holds these and other small Jihadi groups in the region together?
In recent months, Israeli intelligence agencies have ceased the use of the term `Al-Qaeda' and began referring to what they call `World Jihad' - "a series of dozens of small affiliated organisations that operate in different levels of co-operation", according to a senior intelligence source who spoke to JTIC. "Al-Zarqawi embodies the complexity of this matrix," the source added.
One only has to look at Thugburg to get a hint at the dozens of affiliated groups in the global Jihad, and for every one listed, there are probably at least a couple more still waiting to be noticed by the international media. I mean Pakistan alone has dozens of groups, and Indonesia probably has nearly as many. But they all want to see the Khalifate back, so they can get that permanant Jihad thing going until Dar-ul Harb becomes Dar ul Islam
They might consider calling it, ummm... the "World Islamic Front," in fact. That's what Binny called it in his declaration of war on us. I was under the impression Jund al-Shams was a false nose and moustache for Jund al-Islam, which was a separate group from Tawhid, but I could be wrong. It could be that when the same bunch meets on Mondays they're al-Islam, on Wednesdays they're al-Shams, and on Fridays they're Tawhid. (Tuesdays they're Ansar al-Islam, and Thursdays they go bowling.) Confuses the hell out of the poor analyst, especially when you add in the fact that some of them are also Ikhwanis and some are Hizb ut-Tahrir and some are adherents of Takfir wal-Hijra, and some are all of them at the same time...
I sometimes think there are a total of 150 Bad Guys in the entire world, all of them inbred related, grouped together in 115,765 different organizations. Each Bad Guy changes his name and his organization more frequently than he changes his underwear. |
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