Al Qaeda Mouthpiece On Prewar Cooperation With Saddam
Dan Darling sends along this interesting piece, "Inside the new al Qaeda," from The Sunday Times (UK). (I intentionally linked to page 3 of the piece, which I find most interesting.) The piece is excerpted from Abdel Bari Atwan's The Secret History of al Qaeda. Atwan is the editor in chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a paper which is anything but friendly to the U.S. And that's putting it mildly.
While I think the piece gets some things wrong, it adds some important new information as well. One of the items that I think is intriguing is what Dr. Muhammad al-Masri has to say about prewar cooperation between Saddam and al Qaeda. (Note: Some accounts use "Massari" as an alternative spelling for "Masri".) Masri is a well-known al Qaeda mouthpiece living in Londonistan. He and his Saudi oppositionist group, the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, have been connected by investigators to the al Qaeda terror empire in numerous ways throughout the years.
Atwan reports:
Like Zarqawi, many Arabs fleeing American retaliation in Afghanistan after 9/11 found refuge with Ansar al-Islam. But then came an unexpected development. According to Dr Muhammad al-Masari, a Saudi specialist on Al-Qaeda’s ideology, Saddam established contact with the “Afghan Arabs” as early as 2001, believing he would be targeted by the US once the Taliban was routed.
In this version, disputed by other commentators, Saddam funded Al-Qaeda operatives to move into Iraq with the proviso that they would not undermine his regime. Sources close to the Ba’ath regime have told me that Saddam also used to send messengers to buy small plots of land from farmers in Sunni areas. In the middle of the night soldiers would bury arms and money caches for later use by the resistance.
According to Masari, Saddam saw that Islam would be key to a cohesive resistance in the event of invasion. Iraqi army commanders were ordered to become practising Muslims and to adopt the language and spirit of the jihadis.
On arrival in Iraq, Al-Qaeda operatives were put in touch with these commanders, who later facilitated the distribution of arms and money from Saddam’s caches.
Of course, I and others have written many times on the relationship between Saddam's regime, Zarqawi and Ansar al-Islam. The meme that Saddam had no relationship with the al Qaeda operatives on Iraqi soil prior to the war is still very popular, however. I don't expect it to go away any time soon, but it is interesting to note that it is at odds with what one very influential al Qaeda mouthpiece has to say.
For more on Masri's ties to al Qaeda you can read Evan Kohlmann's thesis on the Arab Afghans. Discussing the CDLR's changing and increasingly anti-Western rhetoric under Masri's leadership, Kohlmann explained:
This change, however, is not altogether shocking when one examines the clear links that al-Massari has established in London with Usama bin Laden and the “Afghans.” In the U.S., the “Action Committee for the Rights of Middle East Minorities,” a Denver-based group headed by Dr. al-Massari, is directly connected through shared addresses to Khalid al-Fawwaz. Not surprisingly, London has been the site of other numerous links between CDLR and ARC. In November 1999, Muhammed Sohail, a British Muslim who was responsible for the construction of the CDLR website and the publication of CDLR material on the Internet, admitted to British reporters, “I work for two people, really… Mr. Massari and Osama Bin Laden.” Sohail was also the Internet publicist for another CDLR-affiliated anti-Saudi group called “Muslims Against Saudi Tyranny” (MAST), which he described as “an alliance of concerned Muslims opposed to the saudi-whitehouse regime in Arabia.” In addition to a close MAST alliance with CDLR, Sohail added that the organization actively supports Usama bin Laden. In another e-mail message, Sohail admitted that several MAST fundraising events had actually been organized “with kind assistance from Friends of Osama bin Laden.”
While I think the piece gets some things wrong, it adds some important new information as well. One of the items that I think is intriguing is what Dr. Muhammad al-Masri has to say about prewar cooperation between Saddam and al Qaeda. (Note: Some accounts use "Massari" as an alternative spelling for "Masri".) Masri is a well-known al Qaeda mouthpiece living in Londonistan. He and his Saudi oppositionist group, the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, have been connected by investigators to the al Qaeda terror empire in numerous ways throughout the years.
Atwan reports:
Like Zarqawi, many Arabs fleeing American retaliation in Afghanistan after 9/11 found refuge with Ansar al-Islam. But then came an unexpected development. According to Dr Muhammad al-Masari, a Saudi specialist on Al-Qaeda’s ideology, Saddam established contact with the “Afghan Arabs” as early as 2001, believing he would be targeted by the US once the Taliban was routed.
In this version, disputed by other commentators, Saddam funded Al-Qaeda operatives to move into Iraq with the proviso that they would not undermine his regime. Sources close to the Ba’ath regime have told me that Saddam also used to send messengers to buy small plots of land from farmers in Sunni areas. In the middle of the night soldiers would bury arms and money caches for later use by the resistance.
According to Masari, Saddam saw that Islam would be key to a cohesive resistance in the event of invasion. Iraqi army commanders were ordered to become practising Muslims and to adopt the language and spirit of the jihadis.
On arrival in Iraq, Al-Qaeda operatives were put in touch with these commanders, who later facilitated the distribution of arms and money from Saddam’s caches.
Of course, I and others have written many times on the relationship between Saddam's regime, Zarqawi and Ansar al-Islam. The meme that Saddam had no relationship with the al Qaeda operatives on Iraqi soil prior to the war is still very popular, however. I don't expect it to go away any time soon, but it is interesting to note that it is at odds with what one very influential al Qaeda mouthpiece has to say.
For more on Masri's ties to al Qaeda you can read Evan Kohlmann's thesis on the Arab Afghans. Discussing the CDLR's changing and increasingly anti-Western rhetoric under Masri's leadership, Kohlmann explained:
This change, however, is not altogether shocking when one examines the clear links that al-Massari has established in London with Usama bin Laden and the “Afghans.” In the U.S., the “Action Committee for the Rights of Middle East Minorities,” a Denver-based group headed by Dr. al-Massari, is directly connected through shared addresses to Khalid al-Fawwaz. Not surprisingly, London has been the site of other numerous links between CDLR and ARC. In November 1999, Muhammed Sohail, a British Muslim who was responsible for the construction of the CDLR website and the publication of CDLR material on the Internet, admitted to British reporters, “I work for two people, really… Mr. Massari and Osama Bin Laden.” Sohail was also the Internet publicist for another CDLR-affiliated anti-Saudi group called “Muslims Against Saudi Tyranny” (MAST), which he described as “an alliance of concerned Muslims opposed to the saudi-whitehouse regime in Arabia.” In addition to a close MAST alliance with CDLR, Sohail added that the organization actively supports Usama bin Laden. In another e-mail message, Sohail admitted that several MAST fundraising events had actually been organized “with kind assistance from Friends of Osama bin Laden.”
posted by Thomas Joscelyn at 1:36 PM
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