Taliban. - Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: beyond Bin Laden and 9/11

INSIDE AL-QAEDA AND THE TALIBAN

Inside Al-Qaeda and the
Taliban

Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11

Syed Saleem Shahzad

First published 2011 by Pluto Press

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CONTENTS

MAPS

PREFACE

I have never worked for any well-funded international news organizations. Nor have I worked for the mainstream national media. My affiliations have always remained with alternative media outlets. This has left me with narrow options and very little space to move around in. Those who loom large on the political horizon by and large target mainstream information outlets and well-financed news organizations for the launch of their media campaigns, interviews and/or disclosures. Alternative media persons need to work twice as hard as others to draw their attention. However, independent reporting for the alternative media best suits my temperament as it encourages me to seek the truth beyond conventional wisdom. As a result, I study people and situations from a relatively uncompromised position, in isolation and seclusion. For instance, I have avoided repetitive reflection on well-known figures in the Al-Qaeda ambit and instead chosen to focus on those close to the bottom of the ladder, looking to share their understanding of the world, their lives, and their behind-the-scenes contributions, which are what actually what determine the fate of movements. (Some little known figures I explored and interviewed included Commander Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri, They all later emerged as the real leaders of the movement.)

The world of today primarily pictures Osama bin Laden, who launched a resistance movement against Western imperialism, as the embodiment of Al-Qaeda, but there is more to Al-Qaeda than just bin Laden. There are as many characters, personalities, and twists in the tale of Al-Qaeda as were narrated by Queen Scheherazade to her husband King Shaharyar of the legendary Alf Laila Wa Laila (or A Thousand and One Nights). In these fables, there surface thousands of lesser-known characters who shaped the world of their time through the type of love and loyalty that even today constitutes the essence of humanity.

Alf Laila Wa Laila is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. They are of uncertain date and authorship. The framing device of the collection, however, hinges on the vengeful King Shaharyar, having been cuckolded by his promiscuous first wife, determining to marry and execute a new wife each day as a lesson to womanhood. The resourceful Scheherazade, understood to be of Indian extraction, brought an end to this. She captivated King Shaharyar with stories spread over a period of a thousand and one nights both to avert an early execution and to restore the kings faith in the virtues of womanhood.

Scheherazades odyssey encompassed stories from India, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, and possibly Greece. It is believed that the collection is a composite work originally transmitted orally and developed over a period of several centuries. The collection has a long and convoluted history which mirrors complex narrative structures and draws the reader into a whirlpool of celebrated sagas from which there is no easy escape.

I have tried to unravel some of Al-Qaedas Alf Laila legendary figures to present them in parallel fashion. These are the stories of characters who performed behind the scenes, but at the same time, played a decisive part in creating an environment through which Al-Qaeda, an organization believed to be buried under the rubble of the Tora Bora mountains as a result of US bombing in 2001, was able to spread its wings from North Africa to Central Asia and emerge as a real global resistance movement against Western hegemony.

I visited Iraq, Lebanon, North Waziristan, and Afghanistan to meet with Al-Qaeda personalities, but to my surprise found the source of my real inspiration in a little-known person, retired Captain Khurram Askhiq (since killed fighting UK troops in the Helmand province of Afghanistan), who had once been a member of the Pakistan Armys Special Services Group (SSG), Pakistans elite commandos. When I met him, Captain Khurram had resigned from the army and joined forces with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Kurrams imprint on Al-Qaeda was unmistakable. On his death, his friend, retired Major Abdul Rahman and Khurrams brother, retired Major Haroon, who later became the two main strategists of the attacks in Mumbai on 26 November 2008 (often referred to as 26/11) and turned around Al-Qaedas war against the Western coalition, met me and broadened my views and perception on Al-Qaedas strategy.

After meeting them I began to see the world of Al-Qaeda from an entirely new perspective that of unmeasured energy emerging purely on the strength of conviction and human ingenuity against the sophisticated might of advanced technology to provoke the United States (the worlds sole surviving superpower) with 9/11. The aim was to draw the United States to fight in a region where people lived in the stone age an age where hi-tech meant nothing and untutored wisdom for survival was all that was to be had. It was not surprising, then, that Al-Qaeda lost hundreds of adherents in the initial battle, while the survivors retreated rapidly into caves to watch the US victory celebrations.