A curious Al Qa'ida story

This is really an "I don't know what to make of this" post. El País has an intriguing article, Pulso en el interior de Al Qaeda de Loretta Napoleoni 09/09/2007, about a document proporting to be a description by dissenters within Al Qa'ida against Osama bin Laden. The document complains about Bin Laden's "Saudi arrogance" and his obsession with the US and with Western media.

You always have to be cautious about these reports. All but a handful of experts are forced to rely to a large degree on that handful of experts for making judgments about this type of report. Napoleoni's article invites skepticism in the very first line when it says this report appeared in the fall of 2004, three years ago, in a London Saudi paper, Al-Sharq al-Awsat. So it's hardly new stuff.

I became even more skeptical when I got to the following paragraph:

La disputa terminó con el asesinato del jeque Azzam el 24 de noviembre de 1989. A partir de ese momento, Bin Laden y Al Zauahiri se hicieron poco a poco con el control de la Oficina Árabe-Afgana y convirtieron Al Qaeda en una organización terrorista financiada con dinero saudí. El asesinato fue el primero de una serie que acabó con la vida de varios miembros de la Oficina, con reminiscencias de las purgas realizadas por Stalin entre los dirigentes bolcheviques. Estas purgas prepararon el terreno para el primer atentado contra las Torres Gemelas, en 1993. Según Muhamad Sadeq Awda, miembro de Al Qaeda en prisión, Bin Laden ordenó el asesinato de Azzam porque sospechaba que tenía lazos con la CIA. Sin embargo, muchos creen que fue Al Zauahiri, y no Bin Laden, quien ordenó las purgas. Hoy sigue siendo uno de los grandes misterios sin resolver.

I won't translate the whole paragraph here. But among other things it says that Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri, the two main Al Qa'ida leaders today, orchested some assinations and purges from 1989 onward - which by the way were a lot like the Soviet purges under Stalin, she writes - that cleared the way for them to order the first attack on the Twin Towers in 1993.

Although Bin Laden later praised Azzam as a great jihadist leader, it has been widely suspected that he was behind Azzam's killing, seeing him as a rival for leadership in the Al Qa'ida organization that was then in formation in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

From what I understand, it's pretty much only the neocon hardliners (in the US, anyway) who push the idea that Al Qa'ida as we know it today organized that action.

Bin Laden had been associated since 1980 working with the Saudis and the CIA to channel money to the mujahadeen (Islamic fundamentalist) groups fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, as part of the Reagan-Bush administration's battle against the Evil Empire. From 1991-6, he was based in the Sudan. Al Zawahiri, with whom he had worked in Afghanistan, had joined him there. Bin Laden would later claim to have been behind the deadly attacks on American troops in Somalia in 1993, though the actual evidence for that appears to be slim. His first public message intended for a broad public audience in the Islamic world was "The Betrayal of Palestine", released at the end of December 1994.

As I said, this is an "I don't know what to make of this" post. But I thought the article was worth noting in a blog post.

Tags: al qaida