We haven't heard from him since 2002 so I sorta hoped he'd met an untimely demise. No such luck it seems, but where's Sully? I've still got my seatbelt already to go ...THE al-Qaeda network is waging jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan to restore the Islamist Taliban regime, a senior al-Qaeda operative said in an audiotape posted today on the Internet. "We, members of the al-Qaeda organisation, ... are currently waging jihad in Afghanistan alongside our brethren from the Taliban," Abu Laith al-Libi said in the recording, whose authenticity could not be independently confirmed.
Libi, a Libyan Islamist who joined the Afghan mujahedeen (fighters) in the 1980s, said the aim was "to defeat the occupier and the government it installed in Kabul, and to reinstate the Islamic state". The war was being waged "from bases inside Afghanistan against positions located deep inside Afghan territory", said Libi, believed to be an explosives and guerrilla warfare expert. According to Libi, the joint operations are being carried out by al-Qaeda and the Taliban "under the command of Mullah Saif al-Rahman al-Mansur". He was "a renowned leader in Afghanistan who occupied (public) posts and assumed responsibilities in the Islamic emirate" declared by the Taliban, Libi said. His remarks were recorded during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan last October. He surfaced in a recording aired on Saudi-owned MBC television in July 2002, saying at the time that al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar were "in good health".