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| More on the al-Ghamdis |
| 2003-06-04 |
| Dan Darling picks up our discussion the other day on the al-Ghamdis and runs with it on Winds of Change, uncovering one I'd missed (Al-Walid, in Chechnya — damn the non-standardized spelling of Arabic names!) and fitting it a little more tightly together. This is the same phenomenon we've seen before of terrorism being a family affair, over and over again. Dan equates the phenomenon to November 17th, which had the same blood ties, though Qaeda is on a much larger scale. It'd be interesting to trace the lines of marriage and other tribal ties among these guys... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #3 Interestingly enough, wasn't Abu Walid's org (the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment) involved in the Moscow theaters festivities last September? Those would certainly put those phone calls to their controllers in the Gulf in quite a different context. Additionally, the guy that JUS says is the "Amir of the Iraqi Mujahideen" is Abu Iyad, who was last cited, per TIME Magazine, in the Pankisi Gorge. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2003-06-04 20:20:51 |
| #2 One need only follow who's getting prayed for on Fridays in Mecca to realize that the Chechens are part and parcel of the terror package. The money lines from the same charities, the links to al-Tawhid->Ansar al-Islam->Al-Qaeda running through Chechnya only reinforce the conclusion. |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-06-04 19:46:04 |
| #1 I agree with you about it being on a larger scale, but keep in mind that November 17 had to be more of a tight circle because most Greeks don't think of it as a good idea to go around assassinating people, whereas being mujahideen fighting abroad against the Great Satan (and associates) carries an aura of heroism to it within certain quarters of the Arab world, so more people can be included in the organization (in this case entire Saudi clans or tribes) without running a serious risk of compromise by the authorities. More to the point, because family, clan, and tribal ties are a lot stronger in the Arab world than any concept of extended families in the West, it makes recruiting additional remembers of your family for the group that much easier. The Chechnya/Dagestan connection is interesting, though, because it would tend to back up Russian claims of how tight bin Laden and Khattab were (remember, Abu Walid was Khattab's second-in-command before he was iced) on more than just ideology. If a guy whose family members have been linked to at least three al-Qaeda plots is leading a group of Chechen jihadis, it helps to confirm what we already suspect about the nature of the Wahhabi internationale. |
| Posted by: Dan Darling 2003-06-04 16:31:27 |