ji·had·ica

Abbottabad Insights: How al-Qa‘ida in Iraq Was Formed (Part 1)

Kévin Jackson April 7, 2022

*Editor’s note: The “Abbottabad Insights” series aims at analyzing the files recovered from Usama bin Ladin’s compound in 2011 which have remained largely understudied to date, aside from the first batches released between May 2012 and January 2017. The first two articles of this series will deal with the inside story of the founding of al-Qa‘ida in Iraq, providing unique insights into the negotiation process between al-Qa‘ida Central and Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi in 2004. A third piece will tackle the relationship between Bin Ladin’s group and al-Zarqawi’s during the last months of the Jordanian’s career. Other articles covering a wide range of issues, from al-Qa‘ida’s external operations to its ties with other militant groups, will follow.

On October 17, 2004, al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad, the precursor organization to the Islamic State, issued a statement announcing with much fanfare that its leader Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi had pledged “allegiance” (bay‘a) on behalf of his group “to the mujahid Shaykh Usama bin Ladin, to listen and obey in times of difficulty and prosperity”. The communiqué specified that for eight months there had been “communications between Shaykh Abu Mus‘ab […] and the brothers in al-Qa‘ida and views were exchanged [between the two parties]”. The result was the creation of “al-Qa‘ida in the Lands of the Two Rivers”, better known as al-Qa‘ida in Iraq.

More than seventeen years later, much of the story behind these eight months of talks remains unknown. To date, the most widely known primary source on the topic has been a seventeen-page letter from al-Zarqawi to Usama bin Ladin and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. Intercepted by the U.S. in January 2004, the text is a blueprint for insurgency in which the Jordanian outlines his vision for jihad in Iraq and proposes to join al-Qa‘ida if its leaders agree to his strategy. While important for understanding the beginning of the process, this letter is just one piece of a much larger correspondence in which a merger was discussed both between al-Qa‘ida Central and its counterpart in Iraq and among the al-Qa‘ida senior leadership. The question remains as to how the two groups eventually agreed to join forces.

Over the past two years, I have been digging into the materials recovered from Bin Ladin’s compound in Abbottabad and came across a number of documents which add significant new pieces to the puzzle. One document proved particularly illuminating. Written by a certain “Wakil Khan”, it is a five-page Arabic letter dated October 18, 2004 in which the author essentially updates Bin Ladin on al-Qa‘ida’s latest developments worldwide to keep his leader in the picture and seek his guidance on key issues. While a good portion of the document deals with the group’s various fortunes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, the most pressing matter to Khan was clearly the Iraqi battlefield, which he described as “ablaze”.

This post focuses on the Iraqi angle of the letter. As will be seen, the letter provides the most detailed first-hand account of the negotiations between al-Qa‘ida Central and al-Zarqawi’s group leading to their union. It also presents new information on some of the lesser known players who were active in these talks between al-Qa‘ida in Pakistan and al-Zarqawi’s group in Iraq. In addition to the letter by Wakil Khan, the post draws on some additional Abbottabad letters cited here for the first time, including ones by Bin Ladin and al-Zarqawi, further helping to chronicle this milestone in the history of the global jihadi movement.

Wakil and ‘Abdallah Khan

If the name Wakil Khan sounds unfamiliar, it is because it is just one of the multiple aliases of Abu al-Faraj al-Libi. This Tripoli-born al-Qa‘ida veteran joined the organization after he was trained at its al-Faruq camp in Khost in early 1990. A member of al-Qa‘ida’s military committee, al-Libi emerged as a major figure in the group’s training efforts in Afghanistan during the 1990s, serving as an instructor for future cadres and operatives, from Fadil Harun to some of the 9/11 hijackers, and running the group’s training camps and guesthouses.

After the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, al-Libi resettled in Pakistan along with another central player in the Khurasan-Iraq nexus, namely ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, whom al-Libi refers to as “‘Abdallah Khan” in his letter. A former Iraqi army officer, al-Iraqi fought in the ranks of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar during the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s before participating in the training of Tajik volunteers in Khost, alongside al-Libi and others. After Bin Ladin’s return to Afghanistan in 1996, he joined up with the Saudi and became al-Qa‘ida’s frontline commander in Afghanistan and a member of its Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Council).

In Pakistan, according to another Abbottabad document written on November 19, 2002, al-Libi initially acted as al-Iraqi’s deputy. By the time he composed his letter to Bin Ladin, however, the Libyan had been promoted, according to the U.S., to the position of al-Qa‘ida Central’s “general manager subordinate only to Usama Bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri”. Meanwhile, al-Iraqi continued to play a leading role in the organization’s military efforts in Afghanistan.

Besides their portfolios in Khurasan, the two also managed al-Qa‘ida’s “Iraq file” and were instrumental in cementing ties with al-Zarqawi’s group in Iraq. For example, it was al-Iraqi who dispatched Hassan Ghul—a prominent Pakistani facilitator formerly affiliated with the Khaldan camp in Khost—as al-Qa‘ida’s emissary to al-Zarqawi. Ghul served in this role until his capture in Iraqi Kurdistan on January 23, 2004; with him was found the seventeen-page letter from al-Zarqawi to Bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri. Around this time, al-Iraqi considered traveling to Iraq himself but al-Zarqawi rejected the idea.

Al-Iraqi’s involvement in al-Qa‘ida’s Iraq dossier would eventually lead to his capture. In June 2006, Bin Ladin instructed him to go to Iraq but al-Iraqi was arrested in Gaziantep, Turkey, on October 16, 2006, in an episode well-documented by Brian Fishman. 

One of the things that the Abbottabad files reveal is that his 2006 failed attempt was not the first time al-Iraqi was supposed to travel to Iraq. A letter from Bin Ladin to al-Libi  indicates that as early as June-August 2004, al-Iraqi was preparing his departure for Iraq from Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. “We are eager for him to depart as quickly and safely as possible”, says the leader of al-Qa‘ida, who also advises that once in Iraq al-Iraqi should primarily focus on bolstering jihad against the U.S.-led coalition while “[preventing] the opening of other secondary fronts, such as [against] the Shi’ites”.

If Bin Ladin was enthusiastic about al-Iraqi heading to Iraq, al-Libi’s letter to Bin Ladin (the one he signs as “Wakil Khan”) shows that this sentiment was far from being shared by everyone inside al-Qa‘ida. According to al-Libi, the plan sparked opposition from “many of the brothers” within the group’s senior cadre, including the two Egyptian commanders Khalid al-Habib and Abu al-Hasan al-Misri. At the time, al-Habib headed al-Qa‘ida’s military operations in Afghanistan—a portfolio he had recently inherited from al-Iraqi—while al-Misri was in charge of the Zabul and Kandahar areas. The brothers, according to al-Libi, worried that al-Iraqi’s arrival might cause troubles in Iraq, citing his problematic “way of dealing” with others. Al-Libi himself refers to the difficulty that al-Iraqi has with taking orders (“he is not easily led”), and later in the letter he mentions “problems” with al-Iraqi’s leadership in Afghanistan, noting that these “problems (…) have significantly decreased” since al-Habib took over for him. 

If al-Iraqi went to Iraq, it was not clear to al-Libi what status he would enjoy once there. Would he serve as al-Zarqawi’s amir? Would he be al-Zarqawi’s “subordinate” (tabi’)? Or would he work independently? Considering all three options to be bad, the Libyan and his inner circle suggested to Bin Ladin that he dispatch al-Iraqi as an “adviser” (mustashar) to al-Zarqawi. Given the sensitivity of the issue, al-Libi urged Bin Ladin to personally weigh in and “to define the mission and role of [al-Iraqi] and to set forth regulations for him and a clear plan for his departure”, especially since contacting al-Iraqi would be more difficult once he is on his way out of Pakistan.

News from Iraq

Al-Libi’s concerns about al-Iraqi’s upcoming journey were not the only reason he wrote his missive. The Libyan also needed to brief Bin Ladin on his meeting with Abu Ja‘far al-Iraqi, a senior facilitator who, like Hassan Ghul, used to be affiliated with the Khaldan camp and worked closely with its leading figures Abu Zubaydah and Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. At the time of his meeting with al-Libi, Abu Ja‘far was acting as al-Zarqawi’s representative to al-Qa‘ida in Khurasan. Following the central organization’s request “to learn about what is happening [in Iraq], and thereby to be able to arrange the work of the brother ‘Abdallah [‘Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi]”, Abu Ja‘far went and saw al-Libi to discuss the “reality of the situation there.”.

Speaking to al-Libi on al-Zarqawi’s behalf, Abu Ja‘far portrayed al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad as the undisputed leading militant group in the field, claiming that “90% of the jihadi operations that are carried out there are arranged by brother [Abu] Mus‘ab” and his allies. “All the major operations and most of the small operations” are attributable to al-Zarqawi, he noted, including the attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, 2003, the double suicide bombings against a Polish military camp in al-Hillah on February 18, 2004, and the suicide boat attacks against the Basra oil terminal on April 24, 2004. He added that “most of the mujahid groups there have joined Abu Mus‘ab”, that these newcomers were bound by “a legal oath to wage jihad”, and that the number of these groups was increasing. “During the meeting I counted with [Abu Ja‘far] the number of members of the groups, which reached thousands, not including the supporters from other countries, and these figures are not exhaustive”, wrote al-Libi.

The Iraqi theater was also promising owing to the ease of access for volunteers from neighboring Arab countries. “The roads are open from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan”, Abu Ja‘far explained, and large numbers of foreign volunteers were pouring in, so many “that the brothers were beginning to stop their influx” and send some back to their home countries.

The leading status of al-Zarqawi’s group was illustrated by the territorial control that it enjoyed in Iraq’s Sunni areas. Abu Ja‘far told al-Libi that they had “complete control” over Fallujah, Samarra, Baqubah and large parts of Ramadi. In Fallujah, where al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad had established its headquarters, the jihadis enjoyed such power that they were the ones patrolling the city at night, allowing Iraqi police officers and soldiers to patrol during the day though these were accompanied by “the mujahidin”.

There was also “no shortage of weapons and ammunition”, as “more than 80% of the Iraqi army’s weapons and ammunition had fallen into the hands of the brothers”, according to Abu Ja‘far. He further claimed that they were in heated competition with the U.S. to buy the explosives and weapons being sold in the markets. As for financing, Abu Ja‘far indicated that the group was able to raise funds internally from the “war booty” acquired during operations and that it still hadn’t used its hostages to obtain ransom payments despite the amount offered by its enemies, including during the detention of the U.S. national Nicholas Berg who was beheaded by al-Zarqawi in the spring of 2004.

The broader insurgency in Iraq was also a topic of discussion between al-Libi and Abu Ja‘far. Among those discussed was Ansar al-Sunna, a Kurdish-dominated jihadi group cooperating with al-Zarqawi’s group and linked to al-Qa‘ida Central. According to al-Libi, “their work appears to be very limited” and “they are unwilling to operate in their areas (Kurdistan)”. This had led many of their members to defect to al-Zarqawi.

The discussion also revolved around non-jihadi elements of the Iraqi insurgency. Regarding the Islamic Army, a Sunni Islamist armed faction, al-Libi was told that it was made up of “unidentified Iraqi brothers” who were not veterans of known jihadi fronts, but that they were “good brothers” and there was “good cooperation” between them and al-Zarqawi’s group. As for the Islamic Party, another Sunni Iraqi armed group, al-Libi was not enthusiastic, saying that “their position is known to you” and adding that some of their members had begun to carry out small operations. 

External Operations

In light of these promising reports from al-Zarqawi’s group, al-Libi was keen on capitalizing on the Iraqi jihad to further al-Qa‘ida’s global ambitions. In the letter he envisages, together with the colleagues he has consulted, relocating the Pakistan-based external operations wing to Iraq, suggesting that “one of the brothers with experience in [the field of] special activity” (i.e. terrorist attacks) redeploy there. Two Egyptian veterans of the first Afghan jihad are mentioned as the top candidates for the job: Hamza al-Al-Rabi‘a and Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Muhajir. A former bodyguard of al-Zawahiri’s, al-Al-Rabi‘a began his career in the Egyptian al-Jihad Group, whose security committee he headed, before joining al-Qa‘ida and running its external operations branch. As for al-Muhajir, he was al-Qa‘ida’s top bombmaker for its attacks in Khurasan and overseas, including the 1998 East Africa bombings, which earned him the nickname “the martyrdom operations engineer”.

To justify this risky shift, al-Libi underlines the difficulties faced by al-Qa‘ida in Pakistan as a result of the growing security pressure on its members in the country. Over the past months, a series of raids against al-Qa‘ida’s infrastructure in Karachi, Lahore and Quetta had battered the network Al-Rabi‘a and al-Libi relied on to facilitate and direct international attacks. Among the losses was Naeem Noor Khan (“Talha”), a Pakistani computer engineer involved in al-Qa‘ida’s plotting in the U.K. As a result of this crackdown, “most of the members of [Al-Rabi‘a’s] group were caught”, laments al-Libi.

In the process, the organization also lost “some important documents”, al-Libi says, referring in particular to the raid against al-Qa‘ida’s “documents office” (maktab al-watha’iq) in Punjab’s city of Gujarat on July 24, 2004. The raid had led to the arrest of Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani (“Haytham”), a senior member of the office from Tanzania involved in the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings, and Abu Tariq al-Pakistani, an al-Qa‘ida trainer. While al-Al-Rabi‘a himself narrowly evaded arrest during the Gujarat raid, “the work of our brother Al-Rabi‘a was severely affected” and “his work has practically halted”, assesses al-Libi.  

By contrast, the Iraqi front presented a new opportunity for al-Qa‘ida to revitalize its transnational attacks. In the eyes of al-Libi and his aides, moving there would enable the external operations department to tap into a massive influx of foreign fighters from diverse backgrounds, train new recruits who could then be deployed in future missions, and more generally develop capacity and experience. Iraq also had the advantage of being easily accessible, unlike Pakistan, where “simply renting a home or bringing in a brother from abroad” could cost as much as carrying out an entire operation. “Unless matters speed up or you agree to relocate the activity to Iraq”, al-Libi says to Bin Ladin, then al-Qa‘ida’s capacity to plan attacks overseas will remain limited.  

Targeting the Near Enemy

During their meeting, al-Libi and Abu Ja‘far also addressed the contentious issue of targeting priorities, i.e., whether to attack the far enemy (the U.S. and the West) or the near enemy (apostate governments and their allies). Al-Libi relates that Abu Ja‘far asked him about “some of the issues pertaining to fighting the apostates”, noting that al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad had been making preparations for neighbouring countries, including Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Besides transporting and storing weapons, these preparations included training large numbers of recruits and sending them back to their countries “in anticipation of the collapses and changes that may occur in the region when the Americans leave”.

Al-Libi answered that it was his understanding that while Bin Ladin “did not oppose fighting the apostates” he viewed it as “an advanced stage” of jihad, believing that “the current stage is the stage of fighting the greater unbelief (the Americans) and that this is the key to our struggle”. Nonetheless, al-Libi had positive feedback for Abu Ja‘far, maintaining that he agreed with al-Zarqawi’s strategy. “What al-Zarqawi is doing”, al-Libi told Abu Ja‘far, namely “striking the Americans in Iraq and all the apostates who help them”, and using “the Iraqi theater to make preparations for neighboring countries in terms of training and arrangements”, is “absolutely correct”.

While al-Zarqawi at least consulted with al-Qa‘ida regarding his plans for the broader region, he appeared more uncompromising when it came to his stance on Iraq’s Shi’a, whom his group had been attacking in hopes of igniting a sectarian civil war. In his letter, al-Libi recounts that he asked Abu Ja‘far specifically about the operations against the Shi‘a, notably in Karbala and Najaf, and that the Iraqi did not shy away from claiming responsibility for “almost all of them”. The justification for this campaign of violence, according to Abu Ja‘far, was the Shi‘a machinations in the post-war political void. In Abu Ja‘far’s words, the Shi‘a had established the Badr Corps which went to Baghdad and took control of Sunni mosques. They had also arrested Sunni religious figures and attacked Sunni men and women. The Sunnis lived in a “state of fear” of the Shi‘a, al-Libi was told, and this was not to mention that they were “the nucleus of the police and army” formed by the “nations of unbelief”. Because of all this, the Sunnis deemed it necessary to “restrain” the Shi‘a, and the situation has since “significantly changed and the Shi‘a have begun to reckon with the mujahidin”.

After his discussion with Abu Ja‘far, al-Libi sent the minutes of the meeting to al-Zawahiri. While the Egyptian responded similarly to al-Libi as regards “the apostates” (meaning neighboring countries), he told the Libyan that he was opposed to “opening a front” against the Shi’a in Iraq—a stance similar to Bin Ladin’s. Given the sensitivity of the issue, however, al-Libi explains to Bin Laden that he refrained from sharing this response of al-Zawahiri’s with al-Zarqawi’s team. This decision was made in consultation with, among others, Hamzah al-Al-Rabi‘a and ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Maghribi, al-Zawahiri’s son-in-law and head of al-Qa‘ida’s al-Sahab Media Foundation. Al-Libi’s view was that it was best to keep al-Zawahiri’s opinion from al-Zarqawi for the time being, given that Zawahiri’s “decision” on the Shi‘a would “clash with the reality there as far as the brothers are concerned”. The Libyan likely reasoned that al-Zawahiri’s instructions would put them between a rock and a hard place, and that in any event it was not necessary to relay them at this point since, as he believed, once the bay‘a process was finalized then such an order would be binding on al-Zarqawi’s group. Since al-Zawahiri’s views were based on al-Libi’s briefing, the Libyan decided to ask al-Zarqawi for a “detailed report” on this issue which would then be sent to Bin Ladin or al-Zawahiri so that they could make a more informed decision which would not “put the brothers in an uncomfortable position with the first order coming from our side”. 

In a subsequent Abbottabad document, almost certainly a letter from al-Zarqawi to al-Libi, the anonymous author explains how important it was for him that al-Qa‘ida understand and support his action in Iraq. “Our strategy here differs from any other location”, he writes, adding that “for this reason, we sent [Abu] Ja‘far to you all to express this”. Part of Abu Ja’far’s mission was thus to dispel any concerns that al-Qa‘ida might have regarding al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad, most importantly regarding the Shi‘a issue, such that “everything would be clear” and there would be no impediment to a merger. Cognisant of al-Qa‘ida’s lingering misgivings about his takfiri-leaning methodology, al-Zarqawi was worried that if there were “some opinions that oppose the nature of our work here, then undoubtedly this would lead to disturbance and conflict that we are in no need of during this trying time”. The fact that al-Zawahiri did have concerns with his strategy was deliberately withheld from al-Zarqawi by al-Libi.

Joining al-Qa‘ida

When he dispatched his representative Abu Ja’far to meet with al-Libi, al-Zarqawi entrusted Abu Ja‘far not only with conveying the “reality of the situation” in Iraq to al-Qa‘ida Central but also, more importantly, with offering his allegiance (bay‘a) to Bin Ladin on his behalf. Abu Ja’far informed al-Libi that al-Zarqawi was waiting for Bin Ladin’s approval before announcing the good news. In his letter, al-Libi provides Bin Ladin with a detailed picture of how the merger process was finalized, attaching the latest correspondence— written in code words—between himself and al-Zarqawi’s group that paved the way for the latter’s bay’a declaration on October 17, 2004. 

As recounted to Bin Ladin, al-Libi told Abu Ja‘far that as far as he was concerned, “the subject of the bay‘a, God willing, has been completed”, and the only issue requiring consultation with al-Qa‘ida’s senior leadership related to the framing of the announcement. After the meeting, al-Libi discussed the matter with al-Zawahiri, who gave his blessing to the union but added a caveat: the announcement should not be made in al-Zarqawi’s name alone but rather on behalf of  “the collectivity of the mujahidin in Iraq”. Al-Libi and his entourage, including Hamza al-Al-Rabi‘a and ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Maghribi, disapproved of al-Zawahiri’s idea. In his letter, the Libyan explains to Bin Ladin that given that al-Zarqawi could not claim authority over those outside his own group, any statement on behalf of “the mujahidin in Iraq”, as if representing the entire insurgency, could create a backlash and weaken the initiative. These concerns may have been driven by what al-Libi knew of al-Zarqawi’s limited reach within the local militant environment. An “Iraqi leadership” was nowhere to be found in the Jordanian’s group, and veteran Iraqi jihadis had turned their back on the fight.

After these consultations with al-Zawahiri and other close companions, al-Libi sent a message to al-Zarqawi’s group to inform them about the al-Qa‘ida leadership’s final deliberations. “The companion of the father [al-Zawahiri] tells Ahmad [al-Zarqawi] to put his trust in Allah and announce what has taken place. And he suggests that the announcement be made in the name of your group [al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad].” In addition to giving al-Zarqawi the go-ahead, al-Libi informed him that al-Qa‘ida needed “a more detailed report concerning your conditions in order to put our brothers here in the picture and enable them to consult with you on some of the issues”, alluding to the divergences between al-Qa‘ida and al-Zarqawi on the Shi’a in Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi replied to al-Libi in a six-line message in which he said: “We are gladdened by your response and pleased by your message, and God willing we will announce publicly in the next 48 hours that we are children of the father [Bin Ladin] and a branch of the root [al-Qa‘ida] as you suggested, provided that the new name becomes ‘Kata’ib al-Tawhid’ instead of ‘Jama’at al-Tawhid’”. Al-Libi recounts to Bin Ladin that after receiving this message “we were awaiting the announcement” when he received another message from al-Zarqawi—which is not attached—saying that his group wanted “full incorporation” such that it would retitle itself and “claim operations in the name of al-Qa‘ida and under such-and-such a battalion or battalions”. Al-Libi replied that this was “exactly what we sought” and that al-Zarqawi’s group should claim operations in “the well-known company name [al-Qa‘ida] and under the name of a battalion or battalions belonging to our well-known company name”, insisting that the merger be proclaimed “in the name of your company, not just its director”.

In his last (oral) message sent to al-Libi before the merger, al-Zarqawi asked the Libyan to push for an official release from al-Qa‘ida in which the organization would bless the initiative and advise other militants in Iraq and the Levant to join and support it. The Jordanian wanted this statement to be delivered by Bin Ladin personally.

In his letter, al-Libi suggests that Bin Ladin do something along the lines of what al-Zarqawi requested. Given the hardships facing the brothers in Fallujah, he explains, Bin Ladin should make a statement that would “encourage the youth there” and urge Muslims in Iraq and the Levant to join al-Qa‘ida’s new franchise. According to al-Libi, this would also be an opportunity for Bin Ladin to officially sign off on the joining of al-Zarqawi’s group with al-Qa‘ida. Given the weight his words carry, Bin Ladin’s “blessing” would “strengthen [al-Zarqawi’s] position”.

Bin Ladin Out of the Loop?

Judging from the Abbottabad files, it appears that the leader of al-Qa‘ida was virtually left out of the talks between his organization and al-Zarqawi’s group.

First, it is worth highlighting that al-Libi composed the letter to bring Bin Ladin up to date about the negotiation process after the merger had taken place. The announcement by al-Zarqawi’s group had been made on October 17, 2004, the day before al-Libi was writing. The timeline of events discussed is also telling. While al-Libi does not date his meeting with Abu Ja‘far, he tells Bin Ladin that the number of al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad’s members provided by the Iraqi was from “four months ago”, i.e. June, and he notifies his leader about the death or capture of operatives that occured between May and July. This is probably the same “mid-2004 meeting” mentioned by Abu Ja‘far during his detention—he was arrested in Iraq in 2005—when he related that al-Libi had “requested al-Zarqawi [to] provide Chinese anti-aircraft missiles for al-Qa‘ida’s use against helicopters and other military aircraft in Afghanistan”. All of this suggests that the Libyan had not written to Bin Ladin in months.

That there had been a lengthy breakdown in communication between the two is further confirmed by al-Libi in his letter when he relates that, after his final correspondence with al-Zarqawi right before the merger, he received a message that ‘Abd al-Khaliq—the “go-between with Bin Ladin since mid-2003” according to al-Libi in his interrogation—was looking for him (i.e., al-Libi). “I was very happy and praised Allah for providing this opportunity to apprise you of this issue with you”, he writes, suggesting that he had not been able to do so previously. 

The significance of this breakdown lies in the nature of al-Libi’s duties. Given that the Libyan was the gatekeeper connecting Bin Ladin to the rest of the organization, any communication disruption between the two meant that the leader of al-Qa‘ida had very few options left to be kept informed or to send instructions in a timely manner. At this time, contacting Bin Ladin was not easy, even for someone as senior as al-Libi. The latter acknowledges as much in his letter, noting in response to al-Zarqawi’s request that Bin Ladin personally sanction the merger, “Of course, the brothers there [in Iraq] are not aware of how long our correspondence with you takes”.

With the amir of al-Qa‘ida being unable to oversee the merger process, it seems that the task befell his deputy. Indeed, it was al-Zawahiri, not Bin Ladin, whom al-Libi first updated and consulted with on the negotiations after his meeting with Abu Ja’far. It was also al-Zawahiri who greenlit the union and provided the final directives to the Jordanian’s group before the announcement. In al-Zarqawi’s letter mentioned above, he tellingly refers to the the issue of “the elder brother’s [Bin Ladin’s] delay in knowing about what happened between us”, adding that it is no worry “so long as the doctor [al-Zawahiri] is in the picture”. Delegating authority to the Egyptian presumably allowed al-Qa‘ida to speed up the decision-making process, as al-Zawahiri and al-Libi were both reported to be based in Bajaur, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, while Bin Ladin was hiding in Haripur.

There were other communications shortcomings plaguing al-Qa‘ida Central as well, as is shown in the opening of al-Libi’s first attachment where he apologizes to al-Zarqawi’s group for “the delay in responding due to circumstances that recently affected us here”. This difficulty was most likely related to al-Libi’s own predicament at the time: by 2004, he had become one of Pakistan’s most wanted fugitives, having escaped several raids on his hideouts in Abbottabad where he had been living since mid-2003. This had prompted him to go underground and relocate to Bajaur in mid-2004. 

Conclusion

Taken together, the Abbottabad files studied in this article offer a rich and seminal layer to the history of the al-Qa‘ida-al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad relationship. Until now, only some of the early stages of the negotiations between the two had been examined. As was known before, the al-Qa‘ida commander ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, from his base in Shkai, South Waziristan, was communicating with al-Zarqawi’s group throughout 2003, discussing personnel and technology transfer between Pakistan and Iraq. But contacts were cut off when al-Iraqi’s envoy Hassan Ghul, carrying al-Zarqawi’s proposal to al-Qa‘ida’s leadership, was arrested in January 2004 on his way back to Waziristan.

Thanks to the Abbottabad files, we now have a better view of what happened next and a fuller understanding of the players involved and the negotiation-related command-and-control dynamics inside al-Qa‘ida. As we saw, Bin Ladin remained largely absent during the process and likely heard of its successful outcome in the media. To be sure, the Saudi appeared very much eager to get closer to al-Zarqawi. In his June-August 2004 letter, he told al-Libi, in a likely reference to al-Zarqawi: “We emphasize the necessity of working with al-Tanbul [the short] and providing him with everything he needs”. But it was al-Zawahiri who actually oversaw the negotiation and was entrusted with executive decision making, a prominent role he would keep playing in relation to Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and Somalia.  

The Abbottabad files also reveal that, beyond Bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri, al-Qa‘ida’s “general manager” Abu al-Faraj al-Libi was the one micromanaging the negotiation. Unlike the other players involved, al-Libi had direct access to al-Zarqawi’s group, meeting with the Jordanian’s emissary and sending messages to Iraq. Bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri thus relied on him to be  updated and to convey their directives to al-Zarqawi. We also learn from the Abbottabad files that al-Libi involved a small cadre of senior aides in these talks. While these names—Hamza al-Al-Rabi‘a, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Maghribi, Khalid al-Habib, Abu al-Hasan al-Misri, Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Muhajir—were already known, this is the first time that they are shown to have been associated with the negotiations with al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad. Together, these figures represented an informal council advising the process, including al-Libi’s critical decision to hold back al-Zawahiri’s stance on the Shi’a to al-Zarqawi.

The Abbottabad files further illustrate how the difficult security environment faced by al-Qa‘ida in Pakistan pushed the organization to eye Iraq as an alternative terrain for its operations, as exemplified by its willingness to dispatch key figures such as al-Rabi‘a to hatch external attacks from there. The files also underline how Islamabad’s 2004 crackdown hampered the negotiation process by disrupting the organization’s communications channels and prompting al-Libi to go deeper into hiding. This might largely explain why, if al-Zarqawi’s bay‘a was accepted by al-Libi around June, it took four additional months for the union to be announced publicly. Finally, the files indicate that, even when the “good news” was announced to the world in October, the process was not finished, as unresolved issues remained between the two parties. Indeed, al-Libi had taken the initiative to conceal al-Zawahiri’s disapproval of al-Zarqawi’s sectarian agenda from al-Zarqawi’s team. At this time, he was then still waiting for the Jordanian’s “detailed report” so that Bin Ladin or al-Zawahiri could make a final decision on the issue. This highlights how eager to compromise al-Qa‘ida—or at least al-Libi and his informal council of advisers—appeared to be during the negotiations, as it chose to sweep its differences with al-Zarqawi under the rug to speed up the merger process, thinking that these issues could be resolved later.

The Propaganda of Jihadist Groups in the Era of Covid-19

Daniele Garofalo November 1, 2021

Since the very beginning of the pandemic, jihadist groups have been addressing and discussing the issue of Covid-19 in their propaganda, seeking to interpret it for their constituencies and exploit it for their cause. As we shall see in detail below, these groups have sought to use the pandemic as an opportunity to denigrate their enemies, spur recruitment, and inspire attacks. They have also tried to cast the pandemic as a warning from Allah to mankind, including Muslims, and in many cases have detailed strategies for preventing the virus’s spread.

Jihadist messaging regarding the pandemic has not been uniform, however, as the following survey of the different groups’ propaganda will show.[1] The main difference is seen between those groups focused more on stopping the spread (e.g., the Taliban, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) and those focused more on exploiting the pandemic to stoke violence and amplify their message (e.g., the Islamic State, al-Qaida). All of these groups, however, have benefited from one of the main effects of the pandemic, which is the considerable increase in time spent on the internet and social media as people were forced to isolate themselves at home. To that extent, the pandemic has created fertile ground for jihadist propaganda and proselytising campaigns.

The Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP)

Among the first groups to speak publicly on the issue of Covid-19 was the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), a Uyghur jihadist organisation with links to al-Qaida.[2] In a video published in February 2020 on the Islam Awazi media channel, titled “The Perspective of the Mujahedeen Regarding the Corona Outbreak in China,” the TIP states that the outbreak in China is a “punishment from Allah” for the Chinese oppression of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang: “They destroyed mosques and turned them into  places of dancing, vice and insolence, they trampled on the Koran and burned them, transgressed honour and raped women […] God’s vengeance came against these criminals and sent them the deadly coronavirus […] the whole world knows that what happened in China, is simply part of God’s punishment.” In the video, the group gives an overview of the pandemic and rebukes the Chinese state for allowing the consumption of “meat forbidden by the Quran.” The TIP video ends with the spokesman’s hopeful statement that the pandemic will lead to the destruction of the atheistic Chinese state.

Figure 1 – A snapshot of the TIP video (Source: Islam Awazi Telegram channel)

The Islamic State

The Islamic State has addressed the issue of Covid-19 in several statements, not explicitly naming the Coronavirus or the term Covid but rather speaking about pandemics in general.

The first statement, an infographic titled “Sharia Guidance for Managing Pandemics,” was published in the second week of March 2020 in issue 225 of the weekly newsletter al-Naba’. The infographic cites various hadith to emphasize hygiene and other precautionary measures regarding contagious diseases. The advice for militants includes instructions to “cover your mouth when yawning and sneezing” and to “wash your hands.” The infographic also warns healthy militants not to go to countries affected by the pandemic and those who are sick not to travel. At the same time, it reminds the militants that the pandemic is ultimately under the control of God, stating that “it is necessary to believe that diseases are not infectious on their own but are by Allah’s command and decree,” and it further emphasizes the necessity of “relying upon God and seeking refuge in him to be spared from disease.” Soon after, during the same month, the Islamic State published a 2-minute-and-13-second video reiterating the same guidance as the infographic. In both the infographic and the video, the lettering and banners are either purple or green, purple indicating a hadith of the Prophet and green indicating advice of a hygienic nature.

Figure 2 – The infographic of the 225th issue of al-Naba’ (Source: Telegram and Rocket.Chat channels)

Figure 3 – A snapshot of the IS video (Source: Telegram and Rocket.Chat channels)

The Islamic State would return to the subject of the pandemic in issue 226 of the al-Naba’ newsletter, which was published on March 19, 2020. The issue included a lengthy editorial on the spread of the contagion showing how the organisation was seeking to exploit the pandemic in service of its strategy. The editorial makes a number of points about the nature and implications of the pandemic and how the mujahideen ought to go about exploiting it:

  • The pandemic is an example of Allah’s torment, which strikes especially at idolatrous nations and unbelievers.
  • The Crusader (i.e., Western) nations are concerned about the current and potential consequences for the economy, including the prices of goods and services.
  • The Crusaders face pressure on their military deployments abroad at a time when they have been trying to bring their troops home. There is also the fear that with the pandemic come terrorist attacks in their own countries.
  • The Crusaders hope that the mujahideen will not carry out attacks even as they feign ignorance of their own crimes against Muslims; the latter should feel no sympathy for unbelievers and apostates but should seize the opportunity to free Muslim prisoners from the prison camps in which they suffer terribly.
  • Muslims should also remember that obedience to Allah allays His torment and wrath, so performing jihad and striking enemies is the best way to protect oneself from the pandemic.

Figure 4 – The editorial of the 226th issue of al-Naba’ (Source: Telegram and Rocket.Chat channels)

The following week, the Islamic State’s propaganda again took up the matter of Covid-19, this time with a twist. In the editorial of al-Naba’ issue 227, the group talked almost exclusively about the United States, casting doubt on the United States’ ability to deal with global events, to contain the pandemic, and otherwise to anticipate risks and protect itself. Also in February, the English-language magazine The Voice of Hind, associated with the Islamic State’s Wilayat al-Hind, or Hind Province, devoted a page to the pandemic. The brief editorial, titled “Verily, it is a Punishment sent by Allah on whom he wished, and Allah made it Mercy for the believers,” echoes many of the Islamic State’s earlier points, including the idea that the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on non-Muslim countries and the importance of seizing the opportunity to attack enemies. “The ever-increasing rate of COVID-19 that we are witnessing,” reads the editorial,

is a torment for the disbelievers and has brought the glad tidings for the believers. O Muwahideen, prepare with whatever you have and Rise up! and make it worse for the Kuffar […] Allah has made this disease a source of chaos among the nations of disbelief, and so their military and police have been deployed in their streets and alleys making them an easy target. So use this opportunity to strike them with a sword or a knife or just a rope to stop their breathing, fill the streets with their blood.

For the Islamic State, then, Covid-19 was at this stage a welcome development since it was seen as mainly affecting unbelieving nations and possibly providing additional incentive to wage jihad. There was some concern about the spread of the virus among Muslims, as the first Islamic State publications on the subject stressed mitigating measures drawn from prophetic guidance. But for the most part the group’s tone was one of optimism and schadenfreude.

Figure 5: The editorial of issue 2 of the magazine The Voice of Hind (Source: Sawt al-Hind. Channel present on Telegram, Hoop, Tam Tam and Rocket.Chat).

In the same period, several unofficial pro-Islamic State media channels published posters and messages on various platforms recalling and reiterating the information previously spread by the organisation on its official channels, including the theme of divine punishment of the unbelievers and the idea of the virus as being the will of Allah. Among the most active of these channels were “Coronavirus: A Soldier of Allah” and “GreenBirds” on the Rocket.Chat platform.

Figures 6, 7, 8: Posters published by pro-IS channels

The Taliban

The Taliban’s approach to the pandemic has been quite different from the Islamic State’s, the group’s leadership being concerned above all with stopping the spread of the contagion in Afghanistan, particularly in government prisons where thousands of Taliban militants were being held. In a statement issued on 3 March 2020, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid expressed dismay at the rapid spread of the virus, stating that the blame for infections and deaths “will be the responsibility of the Kabul government and its foreign supporters.” The group has since repeatedly issued security guidelines to counter the spread of the virus and has asked all Afghans returning to the country from abroad to have themselves tested.

On March 18, 2020, the Taliban’s official website, “Voice of Jihad,” published a “Statement concerning the fight against coronavirus” in which the group mixed religious observations about the nature of the virus with practical recommendations about how to fight it and protect people from it. “The Coronavirus is a disease ordered by Almighty Allah because of disobedience and sins of mankind or other reasons,” the statement read. “According to the directives of the scholars, people should recite effective prayers frequently and increase the reading of the Holy Quran, give alms and charity and turn to Allah in repentance for their past sins. […] In addition, safety guidelines issued by health organisations, doctors and other health experts should be adhered to and all safety precautions should be followed to the best of their ability.” Since the end of March 2020, the Taliban have refrained from offering such religious assessments of the pandemic, rather issuing rules and regulations to help counteract it.

Figures 9, 10: Meetings organized by the Taliban to provide instruction in anti-Covid measures (Source: official website of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, al-Emara).

Meanwhile, the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which presents itself as a subsidiary of the Afghan Taliban, has promoted the theory that the Jews and their allies were secretly behind the pandemic. The eighth issue of the Urdu-language magazine Mujalla Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, published in December 2020, includes an article by mufti Abu Misbah titled “The Coronavirus and the Background Realities,” in which “the Jews and their puppets” are blamed for releasing the coronavirus in order to harm Muslims. According to this conspiracy theory, the virus was developed in the 1960s by a Scottish virologist, and afterwards “the COVID-19 virus was kept in a safe place and properly concealed so that it could be used as an atomic bomb, especially against Muslims.” It was released as part of “the work of those dreaming of establishing […] a Jewish superpower government.”

Figure 11: TTP magazine editorial on Covid-19 (Source: Umar Media Telegram channels and official UmarMedia.co website)

Al-Qaida

As for al-Qaida, which, like the TTP, bills itself as a jihadist entity subordinate to the Afghan Taliban, the group’s propaganda has focused on several themes, from the importance of hygiene and cleanliness to the idea of the pandemic as being the just rewards of the unbelievers.

The first remarks by al-Qaida on the subject, published in March 2020, took the form of a six-page statement by al-Qaida Central’s al-Sahab Media titled “The Way Forward: A Word of Advice on the Coronavirus Pandemic.” In the statement, both the Islamic world and humanity at large are described as having invited the pandemic by means of their wicked behavior. “It must be said,” the statement reads, “that the arrival of this pandemic to the Muslim world is only a consequence of our own sins and our distance from the Divine methodology.” Several pages later it affirms that “this pandemic is a punishment from the Lord of the Worlds for the injustice and oppression committed against Muslims specifically and mankind generally.” The statement also takes the opportunity to invite Westerners to embrace Islam in light of the evident failure of their societies to stop the pandemic, a failure that is attributed to “your usury-based economy.” As the pandemic has revealed, “Your governments and armies are helpless, utterly confused in the face of this weak creature. Allah (swt), the Creator, has revealed the fragility and vulnerability of your material strength.” From there the al-Qaida statement turns to the issue of hygiene, noting how “Islam places great emphasis on the principles of prevention to protect against all forms of disease. This is implemented through a system of personal hygiene that takes the form of a regular routine that is repeated several times throughout the day.” The statement concludes on an optimistic note, addressing the Crusaders, Zionists, and apostates by saying, “The fear and panic that has befallen you bodes well for us, and we ask Allah to hasten your fate.”

Figure 12: Al-Qaida Central statement (Source: As-Sahab Media)

Subsequent statements by al-Qaida and affiliated groups have tended to focus on the devastating effects of the pandemic on the West and the opportunities created for terrorist attacks. In April 2021, al-Qaida Central’s flagship magazine, One Ummah, devoted an issue to the subject of “America Burns.” The opening article exulted in the economic, political, and social hardships facing the United States due to Covid-19, noting that the number of deaths in America from the pandemic has crossed the half million mark. Joe Biden is quoted calling the distribution of the vaccine under the Trump administration “a catastrophic failure.” Several months later, in August 2021, Iyad Ag Ghali, the leader of the Sahelian al-Qaida affiliate Jama‘at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin, appeared in a video that touched on the pandemic and its effects on the United States. In the video, Ag Ghali states that “what is happening to its [France’s] master, America, scourged by the Corona plague era […] this is because of their continuous attrition for their war on jihad.”

Figure 13: Issue 5 of One Ummah magazine (Source: As-Sahab Media)

Figure 14: Screenshot of Ag Ghali’s video message (Source: Az-Zallaqa Media’s channel on Rocket.Chat and Chirpwire)

The previous year, in November 2020, the pro-al-Qaida media group al-Malahem Cyber Army published the first issue of its new Wolves of Manhattan Magazine, calling for attacks to exploit the complex security situation created by the pandemic. Lone attackers were encouraged to disguise themselves with masks (so as not to be identified) and to kill and injure enemies by poisoning the stocks of face masks. The following year, in August 2021, al-Malahem Cyber Army again sought to promote attacks in the new Covid environment, publishing a statement on anti-lockdown demonstrations in the West. The demonstrations, according to the statement, were a “golden opportunity” for the Muslims to attack “the enemies of God,” particularly the police. Those unable to kill a policeman, it added, can at least destroy their vehicles.

Figure 15: Page 3 of Wolves of Manhattan Magazine (Source: Telegram channels al-Malahem Cyber Army,  Sawt al-Qaida).

Figure 16: Statement by al-Malahem Cyber Army (Source: Telegram channels Al-Malahem Cyber Army, Sawt al-Qaeda and Jaish al-Malahem).

Al-Shabaab, al-Qaida’s affiliate in Somalia, has issued statements both exulting in the damage done by the pandemic to the West and providing guidance on how militants and those under al-Shabaab’s authority can protect themselves. In May 2020, the group announced the creation of a special committee of doctors, scientists, and local officials to manage the response to Covid-19 in the territories under its control. In March 2021, al-Shabaab warned in a statement against the Astrazeneca vaccine, the vaccine that was being distributed by “the apostate Somali regime.” The warning came not because of anti-vax sentiment but rather because of the alleged “ineffectiveness and adverse side effects” that had led a number of European countries to suspend the administration of the vaccine. “Do not allow your children and family members to be used as guinea pigs in the race to develop a potent vaccine for the coronavirus pandemic,” the statement advised, suggesting instead that Muslims “adhere to the medications prescribed in the Qur’an and Sunnah of the Prophet (peace be upon him), such as black seed and honey […] Until a safe and effective vaccination becomes available, the Office of Politics and Wilaayaat urges the Muslims of Somalia to repent and supplicate to Allaah in order to alleviate their suffering and uplift them from the disease.”

Figure 17: Al-Shabaab statement on the formation of the anti-Covid committee (Source: al-Kataib Media and Telegram channel Shahaada).

Figure 18: Al-Shabaab statement warning against the AstraZeneca vaccine (Source al-Kataib Media and Telegram channel Shahaada).

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham

Like al-Shabaab, the Syrian jihadist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was once affiliated with al-Qaida but has since become independent and now holds territory in north-west Syria, has been focused on preventing the spread of Covid-19 in its propaganda. While boasting in one statement that the virus has killed some of those who have “killed and shed the blood of the Muslims all over the world,” most of HTS’s attention has been devoted to emphasizing anti-Covid measures. In one poster released by HTS’s media outlet, al-Ebaa, Syrians in HTS-controlled territory are instructed to wear masks, wash their hands, and refrain from touching their faces, among other measures.

Figure 19: Poster released by HTS (Source: Ebaa news)

Conclusion

Jihadist organisations have devoted a great deal of attention to the Covid-19 pandemic in their propaganda. For the most part, however, this has had little favourable impact on the operations of jihadist groups. Jihadist activity has not significantly declined in the era of Covid-19, but neither has it increased dramatically either. The most that can be said is probably that increased time spent on the internet and social media has been conducive to greater radicalisation and recruitment. Jihadist organisations have sought to use the pandemic as an opportunity to strengthen themselves but do not seem to have achieved the desired result. Strategically, perhaps, only the Taliban and HTS have been able to exploit the pandemic operationally, providing governance services, medical aid, and infrastructure improvements in the territories they control, thus improving their credibility and popularity and demonstrating that they are more capable and prepared to meet the challenges of Covid-19 than the governments in Kabul and Damascus. In this way, jihadist organisations have sought to present themselves as a viable alternative to established governments, again showing that their aims are not limited to perpetrating violence alone.

 

[1] The images and statements included in the analysis were retrieved directly by the author while monitoring jihadist media channels. Where possible, links to sources are provided for researchers who wish to view or further investigate the material.

[2] The TIP has mainly been operating in Syria in recent years. See more at https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2018/07/analysis-the-turkistan-islamic-partys-jihad-in-syria.php.The Syrian branch of the TIP has collaborated with HTS and Abu Muhammad al-Jolani. In recent months there seems to be a split within the Syrian branch of the TIP (due to the choice of a part of the militants and leaders to participate in the fight of HTS against the other jihadist groups operating in the Syrian theatre). Many leaders and militants who disagree with the line adopted by HTS seem intent on moving towards the TIP strongholds in Afghanistan.

 

 

The Syrian Jihad, al-Qaida, and Salafi-Jihadism: An Interview with Muzamjir al-Sham

Daniele Garofalo September 23, 2021

In early June, the much-awaited interview with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani was released by Frontline.[1] American journalist Martin Smith asked al-Jolani a number of questions ranging from the jihadi leader’s personal trajectory and relationship with al-Qaida and the Islamic State to the subsequent transformation of HTS from a group invested in global jihadism to one focused on local struggle in Syria and Idlib in particular. The interview revealed what HTS is seemingly becoming more and more every day: a third model of jihadism that is departing from Salafi-Jihadi ideology and in opposition to both al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

In light of the Frontline interview, the authors decided to interview a prominent jihadi source who actively monitors the ongoing conflict between HTS and Hurras al-Din (HaD), the new Syrian al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, and the state of al-Qaida and the Salafi-Jihadi movement globally. The source, who goes by the name Muzamjir al-Sham, is known for revealing, via his Twitter account, detailed information about the inner workings of the various jihadi groups in Syria. While his identity remains unknown, his Twitter page describes him as “a shami voice from within the jihadi current.” According to Aaron Zelin, he is believed to have once belonged to Ahrar al-Sham, a Syrian Islamist militant group.

The interview, which was conducted remotely between 11 and 18 June 2021, covered a number of topics, ranging from whether the jihadi groups opposed to HTS can form a united front (Q1) and whether al-Jolani will tolerate foreign jihadis in his territory (Q4) to the possibility of a reconciliation between al-Qaida and HTS (Q6) and the current state of HaD (Q7). Muzamjir al-Sham further discussed the state of the al-Qaida leadership and its control of its affiliates (Q10-12), as well as Ayman al-Zawahiri’s oath of allegiance, or bay‘a, to the Taliban (Q8-9). Finally, he touched on the differences between al-Qaida and the Islamic State (Q13-14) and the capabilities of these groups to conduct international terrorist operations (Q16-17).

Perhaps the most remarkable detail to emerge from the interview is the assertion that the leader of the Taliban, Hibatullah Akhundzadeh, refused to accept al-Zawahiri’s bay‘a, meaning that the leader of al-Qaida’s pledge of allegiance to the Taliban was rejected. While the source did not substantiate his claim (and has not responded to further queries regarding the matter), it is a potentially significant revelation if proven true. As of now, no other jihadi source has corroborated the assertion, and the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaida is widely seen as strong and enduring. Muzamjir al-Sham appears to disagree, arguing that there will be little al-Qaida activity in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

It is also interesting to note that, according to this source, al-Qaida made the unofficial decision to dissolve HaD and to operate in smaller cells in Syria, thereby avoiding a fratricidal confrontation with HTS. This would seem to confirm the weakened state of al-Qaida in Syria as reported by the United Nations Security Council sanctions monitoring team for al-Qaida and the Islamic State.[2] The source indicates that this decision came from Sayf al-‘Adl, the Egyptian al-Qaida leader in Iran who appears to manage and communicate with al-Qaida central and the al-Qaida affiliates. Given al-Zawahiri’s rumored ill-health, al-‘Adl’s current role is significant as it could undermine the idea of a power vacuum in the event of a leadership transition.

The source was skeptical of the rumors that al-Zawahiri had died, suggesting rather that he could be merely ill. On 10 September 2021, an 852-page book by al-Zawahiri was published by al-Qaida central, and the introduction is dated 21 April 2021. Presumably, therefore, the al-Qaida leader is alive—or least he was until that date—though the text does not reveal anything about his health. The rumors about his death or serious illness could be exploited in an instrumental way by the organization to create confusion around its real condition, allowing al-Qaida to continue to work under the radar.

Jihadi organizations remain a threat not to be underestimated. Al-Qaida’s strategy of keeping a low profile has facilitated its reorganization, allowing it to build ties with other jihadi groups, tribes, clans, and minorities. The Islamic State was too quickly declared defeated; it was also forming new alliances and planning new strategies. In Muzamjir al-Sham’s words, “fighting and struggle are a lung with which Salafi-Jihadism breathes, as it thrives in such circumstances.” Cutting off the air will require specifically tailored policies for each local condition.

 

Q1: After the separation of the Islamic State from al-Qaida, and the subsequent separation of al-Jolani from al-Qaida, al-Qaida’s position in Syria has become very precarious. HaD found itself fighting alone on multiple fronts, squeezed between the Asad regime, the international coalition, and al-Jolani’s HTS. HTS has imprisoned several members of the al-Qaida shura council and several HaD leaders, transforming Idlib into a new Guantanamo. In your opinion, what are the chances that al-Qaida and HaD will be able to form a united front with the other Salafi-Jihadi factions of Idlib, such as Ansar al-Islam, Ansar al-Tawhid, Ahrar al-Sham, Jundullah, and al-Ghuraba, against HTS?

There will be no united front between al-Qaida and the rest of the Salafi-Jihadi factions in Syria for several reasons.

First, some of these factions have been won over by al-Jolani by his providing some support to them, and thus he neutralized them from the conflict with al-Qaida. Ansar al-Tawhid is an example.

Second, there are some Salafi-Jihadi factions that do not agree with al-Qaida in terms of ideology and consider it deviant. This is the case with Jundullah, which is close in ideology to ISIS.

Third, entering into a front or union with al-Qaida means entering into a comprehensive war with HTS, and this is something the results of which these factions are currently not able to bear.

I expect the formation of something that looks like an alliance, not a merger or a single front. I mean an alliance that looks like a joint operations room, similar to the previously formed Wa-Harrid  al-Mu’minin room[3] that HTS was able to dismantle.

This is a step [the formation of an alliance or united front] that cannot take place right now for several other reasons. The position of al-Qaida and the factions that could ally with it is very weak because of arrests and security operations against them and because of a lack of funding.

However, I believe that the regime’s assault on Idlib will strengthen the position of al-Qaida and the factions that could ally with it, as these factions thrive in chaos.

Q2: Is Ahrar al-Sham still close to al-Qaida and HaD?

Al-Zawahiri sent a letter to Ahrar al-Sham calling for the unification of all factions in Syria. But the factions fell into heresy or deviation.

They are no longer close to al-Qaida, especially after the murder of its first leaders.

Q3: Going back in time to the early quarrel between al-Qaida and ISIS, the Khurasan cell [i.e., a group of senior al-Qaida members who travelled from Iran to Syria in 2013 involved in the reconciliation process between al-Qaida and ISIS] and many of its prominent members from Iran were very critical of the way al-Jolani ran the al-Qaida branch in Syria. It seems that al-Jolani may have facilitated or helped in the killing of a number of members of the Khurasan cell in Aleppo and Idlib, before separating from al-Qaida in 2016. Given the high rank of the members of the Khurasan cell, one would think that it would have been very difficult to betray them without consequences. Does anyone suspect al-Jolani?

The Khurasan cell was not satisfied with al-Jolani’s management of al-Qaida in Syria. Al-Jolani is in origin a son of the Iraqi school [of jihadism], and al-Qaida did not know him or anything about him. Neither did al-Qaida know anything about al-Baghdadi’s policy and management of the [Islamic] State group. Its relationship to the Iraq branch was only superficial. Thus when al-Qaida got the opportunity to get to know al-Jolani and the Iraqi school closely, it did not like any of it. What they were being told was one thing, and what they saw was something else.

Al-Jolani is unknown to the leadership of al-Qaida, unlike the Khurasan cell or members of al-Qaida’s shura council who came to Syria, and unlike Abu al-Hammam [al-Suri], the current leader of HaD, who was a leader in the al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan. So all of them are known to al-Qaida, while al-Jolani was completely unknown and his bay‘a to al-Qaida occurred suddenly and without complete coordination.

As for how they [the Khurasan cell’s members] were killed, some were killed in coalition strikes, while others were killed by improvised explosive devices. Others were deliberately pushed into battles with the [Asad] regime and were killed.

Even those who were killed in the coalition strikes, I think that they were betrayed from within by HTS, because some of the leaders were liquidated while walking on the road without using any machinery or electronic device. Some of them, such as Abu Firas [al-Suri], were targeted minutes after meeting with al-Jolani and his leaders.

Q4: According to some sources, HTS specifically targeted foreign fighter groups in Idlib, most notably Omar Omsen of al-Ghuraba [Omar Diaby, the leader of the French foreign fighters]. What is the current status of Salafi-Jihadi groups made up of foreigners in Idlib? Do you think they will have to leave Syria and move to other theaters?

Yes, al-Jolani is pushing them to leave Syria by putting great pressure on them: arresting and kidnapping them, preventing them from fighting, and preventing them from working to earn money.

Al-Jolani is pushing them to leave for two reasons: (1) foreign agreements with some countries; (2) the presence of these emigrants hinders his project in Idlib, and therefore it is necessary to get rid of them.

Indeed, the condition of the [foreign] jihadi groups is very bad. They are completely surrounded and prevented from working or raising funds, and they are being arrested, pursued, and severely restricted. They have become just scattered cells.

Q5: Moving away from the Syrian theater, many analysts and researchers claim that there is no longer an al-Qaida group in Iraq. Is this true? Is Ansar al-Islam[4] still operating in Kurdish areas? Are they still connected to al-Qaida? Are there any brigades or battalions linked to al-Qaida in Iraq?

There are no groups connected to Iraq except for ISIS and Ansar al-Islam. Ansar al-Islam is a very old group with popular support and roots in the areas of Kurdistan, so it is difficult to completely eradicate. However, most of its members are now working in Syria, being in contact with their cells in Iraqi Kurdistan. In Syria they are operating in the western areas of Idlib.

Q6: It is quite clear that reconciliation between al-Qaida and HTS is currently impossible, at least as long as al-Jolani remains HTS’s leader. Do you think that al-Qaida’s opposition to HTS is limited to al-Jolani and his entourage (such as controversial members like Abu Ahmad Hadd, Abu Muhjen al-Hasakawi, Abu Hafs Binnish), or does it also extend to the model of the Salvation Government? If al-Jolani weren’t the leader of HTS, do you think that HaD and other Salafi-Jihadi factions in Idlib would be ready to hold peace talks, similar to what is happening in Afghanistan with the Taliban or what has been proposed by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) in Mali in the past? Will HaD be willing to join the Salvation Government or a similar authority?

No, this is almost impossible. I mean the possibility of reconciliation between HTS and al-Qaida in the event of al-Jolani’s death. This is for a simple reason: when al-Jolani defected from al-Qaida, the entire current that adopted his position left with him. Meanwhile, the other group opposed to al-Jolani’s line and his orientation formed al-Qaida with its new name, Hurras al-Din.

The issue, then, is not about people only; it is about difference in ideology, thought, and methodology. Even if al-Jolani were killed, all the leaders of HTS today are people who have completely severed their ties with al-Qaida.

As for the HaD’s willingness to join a government or authority, this is also entirely out of the question. HaD does have permission from al-Zawahiri to merge with [other] factions, but only after consulting with and obtaining permission from the al-Qaida leadership. However, al-Qaida does not want to repeat the al-Jolani scenario.

Q7: And do you think that HaD will be able to resist in such a hostile environment? Or will it be disbanded?

HaD has already been dissolved, though it was an unofficial decision. It now takes the form of small cells only.

Al-Qaida’s policy was to avoid confrontation with al-Jolani, directing many of its members to remain within the ranks of HTS—a kind of flexibility for absorbing al-Jolani’s attacks.

Q8: And do you think that HaD could eventually migrate from Syria to other areas, such as Afghanistan? What is HaD’s view on what is happening there?

Both HTS and HaD glorify what the Taliban are doing in Afghanistan, and they sing the praises of their victories. HTS thinks that they are the Syrian Taliban, while HaD thinks that the Taliban are the same Taliban of yesterday that embraced al-Qaida.

However, the emir of the Taliban recently rejected the bay‘a of al-Qaida. Therefore, there will not be significant al-Qaida activity in the areas of the Taliban. It is completely unlikely that fighters will leave the base in Syria for Afghanistan, with the possible exception of the fighters of the Turkistan Islamic Party [TIP, a Uyghur jihadi group].

Q9: What do you mean that the Taliban rejected al-Zawahiri’sbay‘a? Did Akhundzada explicitly say he rejected al-Zawahiri’s bay‘a? We only know that Suhail Shaheen recently said that there is no allegiance between al-Qaida and the Taliban[5]. Can you explain to us what you mean?

The emir of the Taliban rejected al-Zawahiri’s bay‘a to him.

Q10: I see. Back to HaD. Is al-Qaida central controlling these new cells? Because many researchers and analysts claim that al-Qaida does not have control over its affiliates, and therefore that they operate independently from the central leadership. Do you agree?

Yes, that is correct. Al-Qaida now operates in a decentralized manner. Al-Qaida central is disconnected from the branches and does not interfere much in their policies or operations. Thus most of the branches operate without referring to al-Qaida central.

As for the Syrian branch, it is still linked to al-Qaida central through Sayf al-‘Adl, who is in Iran and is the supervisor of the Syrian branch. However, the contact with him is weak as well.

Q11: During the last several months, several intelligence services and researchers have reported that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri could be seriously ill or even dead. There are also rumors that his possible successors could be Sayf al-‘Adl and ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Maghribi. What is your opinion?

Recently, al-Zawahiri appeared in an audio recording after the news reports speaking of his death. Al-Qaida also released a statement regarding the recent events in Gaza.[6] Therefore, I don’t think he has died. It is possible he is just ill.

Regarding his possible successor, there is a document by some al-Qaida leaders from a number of branches entrusting the leadership to a number of persons. I have it, though I cannot remember where it is right now. Perhaps I can find it for you.

In light of the killing of Abu al-Khayr [al-Masri] and Abu Muhammad al-Masri, Sayf al-‘Adl is certainly the most likely successor. However, some branches do not support this.

Q12: And apart from Sayf al-‘Adl, is there any other senior member of the Hittin Shura[7] who is still connected with Syria?

Abu Abd al-Karim al-Masri[8] is still based in Syria.

Q13: For many years, both official and unofficial Islamic State propaganda accused al-Qaida of having a too populist, sort of wait-and-see strategy, of not applying the Sharia, and of betraying the Salafi-Jihadi ideology. What is your opinion on this?

Indeed, al-Qaida does not agree with ISIS on many matters. Al-Qaida is more populist because of the ideological revisions that took place among the al-Qaida leaders—I mean here the Egyptian leaders. And al-Qaida was influenced by the ideas of Abu Yahya [al-Libi] and Atiyatullah [al-Libi].[9]

Therefore al-Qaida appears to be more realist as it takes into account some aspects of society. However, the difference between them is not huge as regards the issue of applying the Sharia. Jabhat al-Nusra was also close to ISIS when it came to implementing the Sharia in the liberated areas, where it established the role of the judiciary and carried out some of the canonical punishments. But it did not follow ISIS’s policy of giving media coverage to them.

Q14: You say that the difference between al-Qaida and ISIS on the matter of Sharia rulings is not that huge. However, the Islamic State has repeatedly published magazines and videos in which they declare al-Qaida and its leader to be apostates for their operational choices, such as their alliance with the Taliban. What do you think?

ISIS’s relationship with al-Qaida has passed through three stages:

[First,] a stage in which there was a kind of agreement. This was the stage that preceded the establishment of Jabhat al-Nusra and the outbreak of the Syrian revolution. Al-Qaida continued to recognize the [Islamic] State of Iraq as its branch in Iraq, and ISIS continued to regard al-Qaida with a kind of appreciation, despite the reports that reached al-Qaida concerning violations and abuses committed by the [Islamic] State of Iraq.

As for the second stage, this is the stage of discord. It began with al-Jolani’s announcement of his bay‘a to al-Qaida and opposition to al-Baghdadi, and al-Qaida’s judgment in support of al-Jolani. Here ISIS began to view al-Qaida as a competitor, given that it had encouraged al-Jolani to defect from the [Islamic] State, and accusations began to be hurled between the two sides.

The third stage began after the killing of Abu Khalid al-Suri, the leader in Ahrar al-Sham who was the person appointed by al-Qaida central as arbiter between al-Baghdadi and al-Jolani. This stage came after the fighting between ISIS and the rest of the Syrian factions, including Jabhat al-Nusra, and here the dispute reached the point of accusing ISIS of being on the path of the Kharijites, while ISIS accused al-Qaida in Syria of showing loyalty to apostates and allying with them, and thus of having apostatized as well. Then all of al-Qaida was accused of apostasy.

As for the Taliban, they have been apostate for ISIS for a long time, even before the dispute with al-Qaida … But these matters were not leaked to the media.

Q15: Today, many Salafi-Jihadi groups, including al-Qaida, are still engaged on several fronts, fighting a number of different actors. However, in some areas, some groups appear to be inclined towards abandoning the armed struggle and concluding peace agreements with the governments they are fighting. Do you think such a strategic choice could be a valuable option for Salafi-Jihadi groups, or do you think that there can be no peace deal between them and their opponents?

There are several interrelated factors regarding this issue.

First, fighting and struggle are a lung with which Salafi-Jihadism breathes, as it thrives in such circumstances.

Second, there are many elements that used to be part of jihadi factions that made [reconciliation] agreements.

Third, it seems that after years of conflict Salafi-Jihadism has lost much of its momentum and strength, especially with the disintegration of Ahrar al-Sham, the decline of ISIS, and the cutting of ties between Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida.

Fourth, there is no doubt that ending a conflict in an unjust manner and without equitable solutions will generate a backlash among many factions and elements that do not belong to Salafi-Jihadi groups. Thus, the slogans raised by Salafi-Jihadism to the effect that it is necessary to continue the struggle will appear as truthful slogans and will attract more elements to them from beyond Salafi-Jihadism. Thus Asad’s success in regaining control of the country and resolving the conflict in his favor, or imposing unfair solutions, will strengthen the Salafi-Jihadi narrative and position.

Q16: Do you think that al-Qaida and ISIS are still capable of waging a global armed struggle against the far enemy? Or will they decide to exclusively concentrate their attacks on the near enemy?

I believe that ISIS is still capable of launching external attacks despite its weak state at the present time. ISIS has gone through similar stages previously and it was eventually able to reassemble its ranks and restore its activity, and this is what it is doing now in Syria, Iraq, and Africa.

As for al-Qaida, external operations are limited to the Yemen branch only, and to a lesser extent to the North African branch. As for the Syrian branch, it is forbidden from launching any external attacks, and it is in a very weak state now.

Q17: So, you say that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and maybe al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghrib (AQIM) are still capable of conducting external attacks, as they are allowed to do so. But as you may be aware, many scholars and politicians claim that al-Qaida no longer has the strength to carry out attacks in the West. What is your opinion? Does al-Qaida still have the capability to attack the West?

I think that al-Qaida is still capable of launching small attacks in Europe, such as stabbings or tramplings. As for major operations, I do not think that it is capable of that at the present time.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/abu-mohammad-al-jolani/.

[2] https://undocs.org/S/2021/68.

[3] The operations room referred to by the interviewee is the “Rouse the Believers Operations Room,” a coalition of Salafist-Jihadi groups that rose up in northwest Syria during the Syrian civil war. The coalition included Hurras al-Din, Jabhat Ansar al-Din, Ansar al-Islam, and Ansar al-Tawhid. On 12 June 2020, the member groups of the “Rouse the Believers Operations Room” (excluding Ansar al-Tawhid), along with two other Salafi-Jihadi groups (the al-Muqatileen al-Ansar Brigade and the al-Jihad Coordination Group) led by former HTS commanders, reorganized into a new operations room called “So Be Steadfast,” which was quickly routed by HTS.

[4] Ansar al-Islam is a historic Salafi-Jihadi group originally based in Iraqi Kurdistan. In 2014, it shifted its operations to Syria. In February 2015, it announced the creation of a branch in the north-western Syrian province of Idlib that has been mainly active in the northern area of Latakia. It cooperates with HaD in their fight against the Syrian regime and Russian troops.

[5] See Nihad Jariri’s interview with Suhail Shaheen https://mobile.twitter.com/NihadJariri/status/1391155623534989314

[6] The video referenced here is from 12 March 2021, “The Wound of the Rohingya is the Wound of the Islamic Nation”; see https://jihadology.net/2021/03/12/new-video-message-from-al-qaidahs-dr-ayman-al-%e1%ba%93awahiri-the-wound-of-the-rohingya-is-the-wound-of-the-islamic-nation/.

[7] The core leadership of al-Qaida.

[8] Abu ‘Abd al-Karim al-Masri is a veteran member of al-Qaida and a senior leader of HaD. In 2018, al-Masri, was a member of HaD’s shura council, the group’s senior decision-making body, and served as a mediator between it and Jabhat al-Nusra.

[9] Abu Yahya al-Libi was a prominent al-Qaida leader who rose to become al-Qaida’s second in command. He was killed in a drone strike in 2012 in Mir Ali, Pakistan. Atiyatullah al-Libi was a senior member of al-Qaida who worked as general manager for the organization. He was killed in a drone strike in 2011 in North Waziristan, Pakistan.

Hamas and the Jihadis

Cole Bunzel June 24, 2021

The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has long been a source of controversy in the world of Sunni jihadism. Especially since it participated in and won the elections of the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006, going on to form a unity government with Fatah, the dominant faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the following year, the group has generally been shunned by jihadis. Hamas’s roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, its embrace of the “polytheistic” religion of democracy, its perceived failure to rule by Islamic law in Gaza, its unholy alliance with Shiite Iran—all of this has made it unpalatable, if not anathema, to the adherents of Jihadi Salafism (al-salafiyya al-jihadiyya). The question that divides jihadis is exactly what level of condemnation is called for. Is the right approach to pronounce takfir (excommunication) on Hamas, or on certain elements of it? Is Hamas to be supported when it faces off against the Jewish state? Are its war dead to be considered martyrs?

The recent hostilities between Hamas and Israel have brought the controversy over Hamas back to the fore, shedding new light on the jihadi movement’s ideological fault lines. The first division is that between al-Qaida and the Islamic State, and as one would expect it is the Islamic State that takes the harder line against Hamas. There is another fault line, however, that runs between two ideological camps on the pro-al-Qaida side of the jihadi movement. It is here, as will be seen, where the most intense debate has taken place. One of the camps has not shied away from criticizing al-Qaida itself.

Al-Qaida vs. the Islamic State

Shortly after the conflict between Israel and Hamas began on May 10, when Hamas fired more than 150 rockets into Israel and Israel responded with airstrikes, most jihadi groups, including the various branches of al-Qaida, issued statements of solidarity with the Palestinians. The statements also decried the perceived Israeli aggression on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, where clashes had been taking place between worshippers and Israeli security forces since May 7. Al-Qaida central, through its al-Sahab media outlet, issued three such statements between mid-May and early June.

The first statement appeared on May 11 in the form of an issue of al-Qaida’s occasional newsletter, al-Nafir. Titled “Al-Aqsa in the Care of the Descendants of al-Bara’ ibn Malik,” it appears to have been written before the air war began as its focus is the Palestinian demonstrations around the al-Aqsa mosque. Al-Qaida here likens the fearlessness of the demonstrators to that of the Prophet’s companion al-Bara’ ibn Malik, who was launched into a walled area of thousands of apostates in the so-called “wars of apostasy” in early Islam. The issue also quoted at length from a March 2002 speech by Osama bin Ladin in which he inveighs against normalization with the Jewish state and encourages Muslims to kill Americans and Jews by any means possible.

Several days later, on May 17, came a more controversial statement from al-Qaida’s “general leadership,” titled “Statement of Love, Honor, and Support for Our People in Palestine.” The purpose of the statement was to salute the “mujahidin” in Gaza and their launching of “jihadi missiles toward the Zionists.” The statement never mentions Hamas, but it does mourn the death of one of its military commanders. Toward the end, the al-Qaida leadership offers its condolences (or congratulations) to the Palestinians on “your pious martyrs, foremost among them the heroic leader Basim ‘Isa Abu ‘Imad.” Basim ‘Isa, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on May 12, was a top military commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing. As noted by the analyst Wassim Nasr on Twitter, the praise for Basim ‘Isa here was in keeping with a preexisting al-Qaida policy to distinguish between the political and military wings of Hamas. That policy was elucidated over a decade ago by the al-Qaida commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (d. 2010) after he made the mistake of saying in an interview that “we and Hamas share the same thinking and the same methodology.” Following criticism of his remark, Abu al-Yazid issued a clarification acknowledging that he had misspoken and explaining that the approach of the al-Qaida leadership is to distinguish between Hamas as a political organization, which had committed terrible methodological errors such as embracing democracy, and the righteous mujahideen fighting under Hamas’s banner (i.e., the al-Qassam Brigades, or at least some of them).

The third al-Qaida statement appeared on June 2, two weeks after a ceasefire was reached between the warring parties on May 21. Once again taking the form of an issue of al-Qaida’s al-Nafir newsletter, the statement hailed Hamas’s “sword of Jerusalem” campaign as a great victory that should be seized on “to revive the duty of jihad” in the youth of the Muslim umma. The model of initiating battles to defend mosques under siege from unbelievers and apostates was one to be followed across the Islamic world. The statement went on to praise “the mujahidin in Gaza” and in particular “their heroic leader Muhammad al-Dayf,” the supreme military commander of the al-Qassam Brigades. The singling out of al-Dayf further exemplified the al-Qaida leadership’s fondness for Hamas’s military wing to the exclusion of its political wing.

Taken together, the three statements show al-Qaida posturing as the ally of the al-Qassam Brigades and trying to portray the hostilities with the Jewish state as part of al-Qaida’s larger war with the Americans, the Zionists, and the “client” Arab regimes. Nowhere in these statements is there any hint of criticism of Hamas as a political organization, unless that is to be read in the omission of Hamas’s name. In the past al-Qaida has issued harsh condemnations of the Hamas political leadership, but here no such thing is to be found.

The Islamic State could not have responded more differently to the war between Hamas and Israel. After more than a week of silence on the matter, the official line came in the editorial of the May 20 issue of the Islamic State’s weekly newsletter, al-Naba’. Titled “The Road to Jerusalem,” the editorial condemned Hamas (never mentioned by name) as a proxy of Shiite Iran and as part of its axis of “resistance.” Hamas’s warfare was not to be considered jihad as it served the interests of the Iranians and their plot for regional domination. “The difference between jihad and resistance is as the difference between truth and falsehood,” the editorial read. “Whoso allies with those who curse the Prophet’s wives [i.e., the Shia] will never liberate Jerusalem … and whoso differentiates between the Rejectionists [i.e., the Shia] and the Jews will never liberate Jerusalem … Indeed, we consider the mujahid who lies in wait for the Rejectionists in Iraq to be closer to Jerusalem than those who show loyalty to the Rejectionists and burnish their image.” The editorial went on to claim that all of the Islamic State’s battles “east and west are in fact steps in the direction of Jerusalem, Mecca, al-Andalus, Baghdad, Damascus, and all other captured Muslim lands.” In other words, it is the Islamic State, and not Hamas, that holds the promise of liberating Jerusalem.

Perhaps the most notable line in the editorial was a remark toward the end rejecting the idea of Palestinian exceptionalism. “The soldiers of the caliphate,” it stated, “have not exaggerated the issue of Palestine and have not made it an exception among the issues of the Muslims … They have not differentiated between the blood of their Muslim brethren in Palestine and the blood of their brethren in other lands.” This is a remarkable statement, and one that illustrates a stark difference between the Islamic State and al-Qaida regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike al-Qaida, the Islamic State is not interested in posing as the ally of whatever Sunni Muslim group is waging war against the Jewish state. For the Islamic State, any group that deviates from its methodology (manhaj) is simply not worthy of honor and support.

On June 21, the Islamic State’s official spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurashi, delivered an audio address that echoed much of the sentiment of the editorial. Al-Qurashi ridiculed the idea that Hamas could ever bring victory to Palestine and urged the Palestinians not to be deceived by the rockets launched by Hamas “in service of their Iranian masters.” Hamas was hypocritical for condemning the Gulf states’ normalization with Israel when it had normalized relations with “Zoroastrian, Safavid Iran.” As in the editorial, the idea here is that it is folly to differentiate between the Jews and the Shia.

Al-Maqdisi vs. Abu Qatada

Among jihadis opposed to the Islamic State and generally aligned with al-Qaida, a divide has emerged in recent years between two competing ideological camps—namely, those who side with the more hardline ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, and those who ally with the relatively more moderate Abu Qatada al-Filastini. Both men, who are Palestinian-Jordanians, have active social media presences and devoted followings. Much of their disagreement has revolved around the issue of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria, which al-Maqdisi has condemned and Abu Qatada praised. The matter of Hamas has proven equally controversial.

The war of words over Hamas, which played out on the messaging app Telegram, began on May 13 when al-Maqdisi responded to a comment by the jihadi scholar Na’il ibn Ghazi Musran, who is aligned with Abu Qatada. Musran had written that Gaza was “the standard of distinction between faith and unbelief, and the line separating monotheism (tawhid) in its entirety from apostasy in its entirety.” The author was referring to the different reactions in the Arab world to the Gaza conflict, his point being that those unsupportive of the Palestinian belligerents were in “the camp of apostasy” and those supportive were in “the camp of truth.” In his response, al-Maqdisi ridiculed the idea that “Gaza is the standard,” as the ongoing battle was not one between tawhid and unbelief. He cited what he saw as the outright apostasy of some Palestinian youth and their adherence to pagan nationalism. Addressing the people of Palestine, he wrote: “Do not expect victory from God so long as you are silent about the reviling and cursing of God around you.”

Later that day, Abu Qatada authored a brief response in which he objected to such casual dismissal of unspecified Palestinian youth as apostates. “It is incumbent upon us,” he wrote, “to treat the Muslim youth, even if they are people of sin, as belonging to us. We should understand them as belonging to us and being of us, for the call to expel them from the umma means making them the soldiers of Satan, and making them against us and against Islam. This is a profound error.” Abu Qatada did not believe that Hamas’s efforts would achieve “complete victory and the elimination of the Jewish state,” but nonetheless “these winds of faith in Palestine,” he said, referring to Hamas’s military operations, keep “the spirit of jihad” alive and renew faith in “the necessity of waging jihad against the unbelievers and the apostates.” And likewise, “they teach us to keep in check our quarrels with the Muslim sinner, the Muslim innovator, and the Muslim who errs.”

If Abu Qatada’s view was that the Gaza conflict ought to teach jihadis to be more tolerant and openminded, al-Maqdisi’s view was the opposite. In a post published on May 14, al-Maqdisi accused a certain unnamed shaykh (ba‘d al-shuyukh) of “exploiting these events to spread error and confusion.” “What is necessary,” he retorted, “is that these occasions and battles and wars be exploited to teach people their tawhid and their true religion, not to dilute it, change it, and distort it with false conceptions.” The problem with “making Gaza and Palestine the measure of unbelief and faith,” he reiterated, was that it overlooked the transgressions of the those purporting to wage jihad. “It is impossible for victory to come,” he declared, “from the exaltation of the Rejectionists of Iran and its affiliated parties that attack the honor of the Prophet’s wives, pronounce takfir on the Companions, and kill the Sunnis in Iraq and al-Sham.” In a subsequent post published the next day, al-Maqdisi clarified that while he supports the military efforts of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad against the Jews, he nonetheless does not consider them “jihad in the path of God”; for the path of these groups is not “tawhid and dissociation from all forms of polytheism and idolatry,” but rather “exalting and burnishing of the image of Rejectionist Iran.”

Al-Maqdisi vs. al-Qaida (and Abu Qatada)

The war of words between al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada went on hiatus for about two weeks. It resumed on June 1 when al-Maqdisi authored a post condemning al-Qaida’s statement mourning the death of the Hamas military commander Basim ‘Isa. In the post, titled “Questions Posed to the Brothers at al-Sahab,” al-Maqdisi presented his criticism in the form of questionings attributed to others. “Many mujahid brothers, shaykhs, and preachers were displeased,” he wrote, “by the al-Sahab statement’s exaltation of the al-Qassam leader who was killed in the recent war in Gaza, and they wondered astonishedly: ‘Are our brothers not aware of the deviation of Hamas and its leadership from the path of tawhid in favor of the path of democracy, and their alignment with Hizb al-Lat [i.e., Hizbullah] and Bashar [al-Asad] and Iran?’” Al-Maqdisi continued in this way, referring to the “surprises, shocks, and perturbations” that have succeeded one after the other since the mourning of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi by some of the al-Qaida leadership. “Has the methodology (manhaj) changed?” he asked. “Or have the ranks of al-Qaida been penetrated by those who pay no heed to the purity of the manhaj? … It is presumed that al-Qaida continues to condemn the advocates of democratic Islamism and to dissociate from their manhaj, so how can it mourn their dead when they died on behalf of democracy? And how can it exalt their military leaders who in turn exalt Iran and Bashar and choose the path of democracy?” Al-Maqdisi was putting it out there that a lot of supporters of al-Qaida, himself included, were aghast at such praise for Hamas, even if the praise was restricted to Hamas’s military wing.

The following day, Abu Qatada responded to al-Maqdisi with a brief post implicitly rebuking him for suggesting that Hamas’s war dead were not martyrs (al-Maqdisi had pondered how al-Qaida could “mourn their dead when they died on behalf of democracy?”). Hamas was far from perfect, Abu Qatada explained, yet it nonetheless deserved praise for having “returned the Islamic identity” to the Palestinian cause that had been dominated by leftist and secularist parties. For this reason, he said, and because the secularist alternative is far worse, the critics of Hamas have generally been restrained in their criticism. The right way to deal with them, he declared, was to seek their improvement (ta‘dil) and not their destruction (tadmir). “Their dead are martyrs and their legal status is Islam,” he concluded. “Patience concerning their errors, together with the proffering of advice, is the right-guided sunni way.”

Al-Maqdisi’s response, which appeared the next day, was to insist that “whoso is killed in the path of democracy, and in support of a group that refrains from implementing the Sharia and chooses democracy, is not a martyr; rather he is a corpse (fatis), bother some though it will.” In the same post, al-Maqdisi launched into a comparison of Hamas and the Islamic State, both of which, as he explains, have killed their opponents and exposed their civilian populations to bombardment. Though al-Maqdisi has long been a critic of the Islamic State, here he suggests that the caliphate is superior to Hamas in that it has implemented the Sharia as opposed to democracy and does not show loyalty to idolatrous tyrants (tawaghit). Why then, he asks, addressing Abu Qatada (though not by name), is it your view that we must approach the Islamic State as something to be destroyed (tadmir) but Hamas as something to be improved (ta‘dil)? Al-Maqdisi’s point here was not that the Islamic State is improvable while Hamas is not. His point, rather, was that if the Islamic State is irredeemable then Hamas is doubly so, since Hamas is worse than the Islamic State in certain ways.

This time Abu Qatada did not respond. Al-Maqdisi would follow up to reaffirm that “whoso dies in the path of democracy is a corpse, not a martyr,” and later he would author a long post quoting some of Abu Qatada’s older works that were highly critical of Hamas and its ilk. The most recent post by Abu Qatada regarding Hamas was actually a statement condemning the group for allying with Iran and its Shiite proxies, and particularly the Houthis whom a Hamas representative had recently honored with a medal. Yet even here it was clear that Abu Qatada considered Hamas a Muslim group; the criticism was harsh but still intended as constructive.

Whither al-Maqdisi and al-Qaida?

As noted above, the jihadi reactions to last month’s Israel-Hamas war point to two fault lines in the Sunni jihadi movement: one between the Islamic State and al-Qaida, and one in the pro-al-Qaida side of the movement between the followers of al-Maqdisi and the followers of Abu Qatada. Al-Qaida, as I have written before, almost certainly would like to hold on to both ideological camps, but increasingly it is alienating al-Maqdisi and his followers. The change in approach appears to be by design. With the Islamic State representing the more extreme and intolerant version of Jihadi Salafism, al-Qaida is intent on presenting itself as the movement’s more moderate face. To that end, it has taken a softer line on mainstream Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and played down the emphasis on ideological exclusivism promoted by al-Maqdisi and his camp.

Al-Qaida has long wavered between a more pan-Islamist and a more Salafi (i.e., doctrinally exclusivist) tendency, and today the pan-Islamist tendency has the edge. Al-Maqdisi has taken note of this development, hence his questioning whether al-Qaida has “changed its methodology.” For the supporters of the Islamic State, the answer to this question is obvious and al-Maqdisi knows it. As one Islamic State supporter recently wrote, addressing al-Maqdisi, “Yes, it has changed, and you have ceased to have any value to them and they no longer pay any heed to what you say. Soon they may issue a statement in which, implicitly or explicitly, they dissociate from you and your extremism.” The writer was probably overstating the divergence between al-Maqdisi and al-Qaida; neither is eager for a divorce. But if al-Maqdisi continues to express outrage at what he see as the accumulating deviations of al-Qaida, then a breakup of sorts may well be inevitable.

Is Ayman al-Zawahiri Dead?

Cole Bunzel March 17, 2021

In November 2020, reports emerged on social media and in the Pakistani press that al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri had recently died of natural causes, possibly in Afghanistan. Born in 1951, the Egyptian jihadi veteran has been at the helm of al-Qaida since Osama bin Ladin’s death in the raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011. During this time he has been highly visible as the face of the organization, delivering numerous audio and video addresses and offering written guidance to its members and branches. While there have been periods when he was incommunicado and his fate uncertain, never before have rumors of his demise swirled with such intensity. The release last week of a new video featuring al-Zawahiri has only reinforced those rumors, raising questions about the future of al-Qaida’s leadership and its future as an organization.

The Wound of the Rohingya

The new video, released on March 12, 2021 and titled “The Rohingya Are the Wound of the Entire Umma,” is peculiar in several respects. First, though it is advertised as a video address by al-Zawahiri, he is not in fact the main speaker. That role is played by an unidentified narrator, who introduces the subject (the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar and the world’s failure to do something about it) and provides the vast majority of the commentary. Al-Zawahiri’s voice can be heard (he does not actually appear in the video) on just six occasions, in snippets ranging from eleven seconds to a minute and a half. In total, he speaks for just three minutes and forty-five seconds in the nearly 22-minute video. While news coverages clippings take up a lot of this time, and that is normal in these sorts of videos, it is not normal for al-Zawahiri to play second fiddle to another speaker.

Al-Zawahiri, it seems, did at some point record an address on the subject of the Rohingya genocide. But the impression given by the video is that this was recorded so long ago that it needed trimming and repackaging in order not to seem dated and timeworn. In one of the six snippets, al-Zawahiri speaks of “the democratic government of Myanmar,” indicating that his recorded words are not recent. The narrator, by contrast, refers to “the military coup in Myanmar,” showing that at least he is up to date on current affairs. Al-Zawahiri’s words are indeed so general that they could have been recorded as long ago as 2017. Nothing in his three minutes and forty-five seconds offers anything remotely approaching proof of life.

In his last video, al-Zawahiri also did not refer to recent events. Released on September 11, 2020, this was a most unusual video for al-Qaida to put out on the anniversary of 9/11. Billed as the first installment of a series titled “Deal of the Century or Centuries of Campaigns?” its general subject is the Trump administration’s policies regarding Israel. At the beginning of the video, al-Zawahiri describes some of the Trump administration’s recent moves, such as relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as part of “the long-running struggle between the Muslims and the Crusaders.” Yet the bulk of his address takes the form of an extended refutation of an al-Jazeera documentary from July 2019 that asserted links between al-Qaida and Bahraini intelligence. Al-Zawahiri made no reference to anything more recent than that.

Another peculiarity of the Rohingya video, as pointed out by Wassim Nasr, is the omission of the phrase “may God preserve him” from its usual place after al-Zawahiri’s name, both in the announcement for the video and in the video itself. In jihadi media products, the words “may God preserve him” usually follow the name of a speaker/author who is alive, whereas the words “may God have mercy on him” usually follow the name of a speaker/author who is dead. The absence of either of these expressions here is striking, particularly in the context of rumors of al-Zawahiri’s death. The phraseology was also missing from al-Zawahiri’s “Deal of the Century” video. By contrast, “may God preserve him” followed al-Zawahiri’s name is his video from May 2020, as it did in nearly all of his videos from 2019. While occasionally al-Qaida has neglected to include the phrase in videos of al-Zawahiri in the past, to do so twice in a row under the current circumstances is to give the impression that he very well could be dead.

Video from March 12, 2021

Video from September 11, 2020

Video from May 19, 2020

Video from December 27, 2019

Jihadi reactions

Following the release of the video, supporters of the Islamic State trolled supporters of al-Qaida on Telegram, sometimes using the hashtag @where_is_al-Zawahiri (#أين_الظواهري). Sawt al-Zarqawi, a prominent commentator, urged those in the Islamic State camp to use the hashtag and to give the “apostate” al-Qaida lovers hell in retaliation for how they responded to the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019. “Flog them and gloat over them,” he wrote, “as those accursed ones did before when they rejoiced and exulted in the martyrdom of Shaykh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, may God accept him … today the shoe is on the other foot.”

Another prominent supporter of the Islamic State, known as Baha’, called the video a failed attempt “to prove that al-Zawahiri is alive.” While the video was presented as being a new address by al-Zawahiri, he wrote, it obviously was not, and “even the supporters of al-Qaida recognized this time that it is an old production.” More discouraging for them still, he continued, was the absence of the phrase “may God preserve him,” an omission that “invites speculation.” In another post, Baha’ wrote that the video, rather than reassuring al-Qaida supporters about their emir’s status, instead had the effect of “fueling speculation about al-Zawahiri’s fate and the fate of al-Qaida in its entirety.”

Baha’s own take is that al-Zawahiri is long dead and that al-Qaida, for whatever reason, is trying to cover it up: “All of this muddling … confirms that which is already established, which is that al-Zawahiri died a long time ago. Foolish al-Qaida’s current efforts are akin to trying to cover up the sun with a sieve.” But al-Qaida may not be ready, he added, to announce the death of its leader. Alluding to the two-year period from 2014 to 2015 when al-Qaida urged its members to give bay‘a, or allegiance, to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as their supreme authority even though he had been dead since 2013, Baha’ quipped that “giving bay‘a to the dead is a registered al-Qaida trademark.”

The online supporters of al-Qaida, as Baha’ correctly noted, made no effort to convince themselves that al-Zawahiri’s video was new and that it furnished proof of life. To the contrary, some of them began to entertain the possibility that al-Zawahiri had died. In a post released the day after the video, Jallad al-Murji’a, one of the more outspoken pro-al-Qaida commentators on Telegram, praised al-Zawahiri as one of the giants of the jihadi movement while minimizing the significance of his possible death. Jihad is not about any particular leader or organization, he reminded his readers, and all of us, including al-Zawahiri, will one day die. “There will come a day when [al-Zawahiri] dies,” Jallad al-Murji’a wrote, “whether that is today or tomorrow, for death will afflict all of us.” In that event, al-Qaida “may pass through stages of weakness,” but in one form or another it will endure. This is because al-Qaida “is more than just an armed group; rather, it is an idea and methodology and creed that will not expire with the death of its adherents.” None of this, he said, was to affirm or deny the rumors of al-Zawahiri’s death, only to remind everyone that his death will eventually come and that the jihad will continue.

A similar sentiment was expressed by another pro-al-Qaida personality, Warith al-Qassam, who in a post informed al-Qaida’s unbelieving adversaries that the organization does not  fight on behalf of any particular individual. “If for the sake of argument we accept your claims that the jihad will end with the death of our shaykh,” he wrote, “then the jihad would have ended more than fifteen years ago with the death of the Imam Abu ‘Abdallah [i.e., Osama bin Ladin].”

These kinds of statements  do not constitute acknowledgment of al-Zawahiri’s death, but they do show that al-Qaida supporters are beginning at least to take seriously the idea that their leader has passed.

The Problem of succession

The possibility of al-Zawahiri’s death raises the question of who will succeed him. The process of choosing a successor could be a difficult one.

Several years ago, al-Qaida put in place a succession plan providing for an orderly transition, but it may be of little help today. The plan was detailed in a set of documents leaked by the Syrian-based jihadi al-Zubayr al-Ghazzi in the course of the dispute between Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the group of al-Qaida loyalists in Syria. The documents, from 2014, are the handwritten statements of six high-ranking members of al-Qaida pledging to honor the succession plan. The line of succession to al-Zawahiri is described as follows: First, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, then Abu Muhammad al-Masri, then Sayf al-‘Adl, then Nasir al-Wuhayshi, and then another person to be chosen by al-Qaida’s shura council. Out of the four men named here, three are now dead: Nasir al-Wuhayshi was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2015, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri was killed by the same means in Syria in 2017, and Abu Muhammad al-Masri was gunned down in Iran (most likely by Israeli agents) in 2020. That leaves Sayf al-‘Adl as the only surviving candidate, but his elevation could be complicated by the fact that he is living in Iran.

The six documents detailing the succession plan clearly state that for a candidate to be given bay‘a as emir he must be present in Khurasan (i.e., the Afghanistan-Pakistan region) or in one of al-Qaida’s branches. That would seem to rule out anyone living in Iran, including al-‘Adl, who is forbidden from leaving the country in accordance with the terms of a 2015 prisoner exchange deal. However, the deal with Iran was reached after these succession documents were written, leaving open the possibility that the restriction on his candidacy no longer applies. While the prisoner exchange deal forbade al-‘Adl from leaving Iran, it also enabled him to live a more normal life and to operate more freely. Thus he may feel perfectly comfortable claiming the mantle of al-Qaida’s global leadership. Even so, it would be problematic for ‘Adl to assume the emirship while still living in Iran, a country routinely described by al-Zawahiri as an enemy state and seen as such by the vast majority of al-Qaida’s supporters. Such a situation would almost certainly alienate al-Qaida’s support base of hardline Jihadi Salafis and possibly some of its commanders. So if al-‘Adl were indeed to succeed al-Zawahiri, he would be wise to do so discreetly—and to try to leave Iran for another safe location as soon as possible.

If al-‘Adl is disqualified, however, on the basis of his location, then perhaps the decision on a successor would fall to al-Qaida’s shura council. In that case the picture becomes more obscure. One possible candidate in this scenario is ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Maghrebi, al-Zawahiri’s Moroccan-born son-in-law who is in charge of al-Qaida’s main media platform, al-Sahab. But he too, according to the U.S. State Department, is based in Iran. Incidentally, al-Maghrebi is the author of one of the six pledges outlining the 2014 succession plan. Two of the other authors of these pledges, Abu Ziyad al-‘Iraqi and Abu Dujana al-Basha, are no longer alive. Perhaps one of the other three authors (Abu Hammam al-Sa‘idi, Salih ibn Sa‘id al-Ghamidi, and Abu ‘Amr al-Masri) is a possible candidate, but there seems to be no publicly available information about who or where they are.

Another complicating factor in the succession process is the Taliban’s ongoing negotations with the Afghan government and its hopes for a complete U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, as is well known, has long enjoyed a close relationship with the Taliban and even presents itself as ultimately subservient to the Taliban leader. Yet in seeking to get the United States to agree to a military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban has sought to minimize the relationship with al-Qaida, going so far as to deny that any al-Qaida members are present in Afghanistan. That is of course false (in summer 2020 CENTCOM commander Kenneth McKenzie located al-Zawahiri in eastern Afghanistan, and in fall of last year Afghan special forces eliminated al-Qaida’s media chief in Ghazni Province), but the Taliban’s interest in making it seem that al-Qaida is of little significance could have an effect on succession.

The Taliban appears to have asked the al-Qaida central leadership to keep a low profile while it negotiates a U.S. exit. Hardly any al-Qaida videos have been released since the signing of the Doha accord in February 2020. So if al-Zawahiri were to have died, and especially if he died while living in Afghanistan, the Taliban might request that al-Qaida not announce it—and thus delay announcing a successor. That delay could grow into a long one, as the Biden administration may never agree to a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Three distinct possibilities

While al-Zawahiri’s death is not confirmed, all signs seem to be pointing in that direction. Even al-Qaida itself, by leaving out the words “may God preserve him” from its latest video, seems to be signaling that he could be dead. The first and most likely possibility, then, is that al-Zawahiri has died but that al-Qaida does not yet wish to confirm it, either because it is playing for time as it manages a succession or because the Taliban has asked it not to, or both—or perhaps for some other reason.

Yet if this is the case, the question remains why al-Qaida would put out the Rohingya video in the first place. What possible benefit is there in fueling speculation that al-Zawahiri is dead? Is the purpose to send a message to al-Qaida’s global membership that a transition may be underway? Perhaps that is so, but another explanation is also possible.

The second possibility is that al- Zawahiri is not dead but that al-Qaida wants us to think that he might be. In other words, al-Qaida is deliberately fostering ambiguity for some strategic purpose, perhaps because al-Qaida (in cooperation with the Taliban) wants to broadcast to the United States and the international community that al-Qaida is weak and fragile—and thus not worth sticking around in Afghanistan for. That, however, may be a bit too conspiratorial to countenance. As the saying goes, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence.

That leads to the third possibility, which is that the al-Qaida leaders responsible for the group’s media production simply do not know if al-Zawahiri is dead or not. They have heard the rumors of his death but are just as in the dark as the rest of us. If this were true, it would account for the withholding of “may God preserve him” or “may God have mercy on him” from after al-Zawahiri’s name, but it would not account for the decision to release the video in the first place.

Whatever the case may be, al-Qaida’s supporters cannot be feeling very good about their organization right now. What is going on at the top of al-Qaida is not entirely clear, but it appears to be a symptom of a deeper dysfunction and existential crisis afflicting the group. Several of al-Qaida’s local affiliates are doing quite well today, but as a centralized organization al-Qaida has the look of a group in disarray. Over the past decade it has lost control of its affiliates in Iraq and Syria. It has lost numerous leaders in decapitation strikes or assassinations, and those who have survived appear powerless and constrained. Sayf al-‘Adl, the presumptive successor to al-Zawahiri, lives in a country that al-Qaida claims to be at war with. Other al-Qaida leaders live under the authority of a group, the Taliban, that seems interested in reigning it in (at least temporarily). Meanwhile, al-Qaida’s principal stated objective remains attacking the United States, though it has not succeeded in doing so on a large scale since 9/11. And while it is generally thought of as a Jihadi Salafi group, al-Qaida occasionally makes overtures to the Muslim Brotherhood, as it did in this most recent video. In short, there is a lot of dissonance here. Whether al-Zawahiri is dead or alive, al-Qaida has a lot of problems it needs to sort out. Any successor might find the challenge insurmountable.

Al-Qaeda’s Leaders Are Dying, But a Greater Challenge Looms

Charles Lister November 20, 2020

A string of top-level al-Qaeda leaders have been killed this year in U.S. counterterrorism operations extending from Afghanistan to Iran and Syria. The frequency of the strikes, together with the seniority of those lost, has dealt a crippling blow to the old guard responsible for founding al-Qaeda back in the 1980s. After nearly 20 years of relentless counterterrorism pressure following the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda’s central leadership has grown older, more distant and disconnected, and, it seems, increasingly vulnerable.

Most prominently, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (better known as Abu Mohammed al-Masri), was reportedly killed in August by a team of elite Israeli assassins acting on U.S. intelligence in the Iranian capital of Tehran. The targeting of al-Masri, the most likely successor to overall leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, was one of the most significant operational successes against al-Qaeda since Osama Bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011. That it took place in Iran, where he had been present since 2003 (first in prison and strict house arrest, then from 2015 living freely in Iranian territory), was additionally significant, given the widespread assumption that senior al-Qaeda figures in Iran were virtually invulnerable to foreign threats. Beyond the U.S.-Israeli operation, al-Qaeda has also recently lost its media chief, Hossam Abdul Raouf, in Afghanistan, and Khaled al-Aruri (Abu al-Qassam al-Urduni) and Sari Shihab (Abu Khallad al-Mohandis) in Syria, among many others.

How and why now?

This flurry of losses raises the question of how and why now. First of all, the U.S. appears to have developed extremely potent lines of human and signals intelligence in northwestern Syria, given the frequency with which drone strikes run jointly by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) have taken out prominent al-Qaeda operatives there, including Aruri and Shihab. Effective intelligence in Idlib is nothing new for the U.S., having been used effectively to neutralize the so-called Khorasan Group between 2014 and 2015, and additional high-level targets like Rifai Taha in April 2016 and then al-Qaeda deputy leader Abu al-Khayr al-Masri in February 2017. Intriguingly, Taha’s death in a drone strike may in fact have been a case of accidental—or coincidental—targeting, as he was killed after unexpectedly swapping vehicles and driving a car belonging to the presumed target, Ahmed Salameh Mabrouk (Abu Faraj al-Masri).

Beyond extraordinary intelligence penetration, it also appears feasible that some if not all of this year’s high-level U.S. strikes against al-Qaeda were linked. Notwithstanding the likelihood of linkages in the spate of strikes in Syria, the killing of al-Qaeda media chief Hossam Abdul Raouf in Afghanistan in October could be a central puzzle piece. Public and leaked al-Qaeda communications, and even more so a very public spat between al-Qaeda’s former affiliate in Syria and al-Qaeda loyalists in 2017, revealed the centrality of al-Qaeda’s media network to facilitating transnational communications between affiliates and the central leadership. It is highly likely that Abdul Raouf and his associates maintained open and regular channels to key al-Qaeda operatives worldwide. According to a well-placed intelligence source, Abdul Raouf’s deputy was captured and a large quantity of documents and data seized—which could easily reveal a plethora of intelligence leads for future strikes.

This disruption of the media network could explain rumors that have been swirling in al-Qaeda circles in recent weeks that Zawahiri is dead—rumors based in large part on claims that al-Qaeda’s present-day Syrian affiliate, Tanzim Hurras al-Din, has lost contact with him for roughly two months, after having enjoyed steady contact with him for at least two years. For now, no evidence exists to substantiate rumors of Zawahiri’s death. What appears more likely is that his already poor health has put him temporarily out of action, or that the deaths of Abu Mohammed al-Masri and Hossam Abdul Raouf have forced him into lockdown. If al-Qaeda’s most prized channels of communication—both human couriers and a variety of innovative online methods—were compromised, as one would assume they would be following such high-level losses, one would expect surviving leaders to go dark for some time. It is also possible, given his apparent basing in eastern Afghanistan, that Zawahiri has been forced to go off-grid by the Taliban amid intensifying scrutiny over the U.S.-Taliban agreement and the intra-Afghan peace talks. Though constraining him in this way would unquestionably throw a spanner into the Taliban-al-Qaeda relationship, it would be a strategically smart move by the Taliban—and one that gives the  impression of a Zawahiri crisis.

Succession crisis

Assuming Zawahiri is still alive, he is now faced with an existential succession crisis. For years, al-Qaeda maintained a three-man council of deputies, but two of those—Abu Mohammed al-Masri and Abu al-Khayr al-Masri—are now dead. Only one survives: Mohammed Salah ad Din Zeidan (Sayf al-Adel), who remains based in Iran, more or less living freely but prohibited from leaving Iranian territory. Were Zawahiri gone, it is virtually impossible to imagine any Iran-based leader, even one with the veteran clout of Sayf al-Adel, being capable of exerting any meaningful influence over widely dispersed affiliates deeply distrustful of Iran and its possible influence over leaders still assumed to be in some form of captivity. In the process of breaking ties with al-Qaeda, the senior leaders of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) claimed to be highly suspicious of any instructions coming from Iran-based leaders, and on these grounds they ultimately refused to abide by them. Were that dynamic to go global, al-Qaeda could swiftly fall apart.

Worse still for al-Qaeda, Iran is highly unlikely to remove its travel restrictions on Sayf al-Adel—his presence on Iranian soil equates to strategically significant leverage, not just on al-Qaeda itself, but also potentially on the U.S. If the incoming Biden administration seeks to resume some form of negotiations with Iran, as is assumed, the fate of the highest-known leader after Zawahiri would represent a valuable card on the table.

For the sake of al-Qaeda’s future, Zawahiri needs to foster a new generation of leaders capable of assuming the mantle of leadership, but for now it is unclear who they might be—or where.

The principal base of operations for the central leadership has long been South Asia, and any shift away from there appears unlikely in the near future. In this context, deciphering the dynamic between al-Qaeda core and the Taliban, and determining the extent to which the U.S. will retain effective intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities in Afghanistan amid troop drawdowns, have become more crucial than ever. Given al-Qaeda’s bay’a to Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, it is virtually impossible to envision the relationship turning hostile, as the Trump administration has done its best to suggest it could. But if ties become more convoluted, and if the Taliban’s factionalism becomes more pronounced on this and similar issues, the prospect of shifting—or even distributing—the core leadership abroad may rise.

Decentralization and localization

Thanks in large part to sustained U.S. counterterrorism successes against al-Qaeda leaders over the past nearly two decades, al-Qaeda has proceeded—willingly or unwillingly—down a steady path of decentralization. Whereas the al-Qaeda responsible for 9/11 was a rigidly structured and tightly controlled organization, the al-Qaeda of today could more accurately be described as a loosely networked movement, comprising likeminded but regionally distinct groups, each pursuing increasingly local agendas. While Zawahiri and the Shura that he represents clearly still exert a powerful aura and form a focal point for the cause, the actual practical value that they represent in terms of controlling and directing appears to be minimal at best.

Bin Laden presided over the start of this decentralization, but his charisma and “star status” ensured a degree of authority when it came to asserting strategic control over affiliate activities. The spread of Internet access and the rapidity of developments and information dissemination; the explosion of instability that followed the “Arab Spring”; continued U.S. counterterrorism pressure; and Zawahiri’s deathly boring character have all contributed to an exponential progression in al-Qaeda’s decentralization.

Nowhere have the consequences of this been more clear than in Syria, where the dilemmas and challenges presented by an extraordinarily complex and highly fluid operating environment saw al-Qaeda’s once most powerful affiliate defect. It took a year for that defection to take full form, and attempts by Zawahiri in Af-Pak and both Sayf al-Adel and Abu Mohammed al-Masri in Iran to stop it revealed the extent to which distance and communications delays had crippled prospects of central control. Most importantly, these leaders of the old guard were deemed insufficiently familiar with the every-day operational realities in Syria, such that their views meant little to the decisionmakers on the ground.

But evidence of al-Qaeda’s likely irreversible decentralization has been evident everywhere, with affiliates dedicating themselves to locally-focused agendas that run almost entirely against the grain of Zawahiri’s strategic commands. Though HTS’s “pragmatic” approach to the jihad continues to draw a great deal of criticism within al-Qaeda circles, the fact that al-Qaeda affiliates are treading paths once trodden by HTS’s predecessor Jabhat al-Nusra is inescapable. From forming alliances with irreligious bodies; mediating local communal conflicts; espousing non-violent tactics for political gain; seeking to engage nation-state governments; and establishing long-term semi-legitimate business investments, these affiliates are not at all being guided by the likes of Zawahiri.

The current trajectory of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), led by Iyad Ag Ghaly, a former Malian diplomat known as “the strategist,” is especially emblematic of this trend. Its guiding ideology differs little from that of al-Qaeda’s, but the methods used to expand its influence have evolved dramatically when compared to the earlier days of Ansar al-Din-al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb cooperation. In parts of the Sahel, particularly in northern Mali, JNIM has arguably molded itself into a more accepted, more credible actor, trusted by non-ideological community groups to mediate conflict more than the central government. In a similar vein, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), in embracing tribal alliances and focusing on hostilities with the Houthis and ISIS, has been accused of not just failing to act on its hostility towards Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates but even negotiating mutually suitable arrangements with them.

Of course, al-Qaeda’s decentralization has also resulted in individual affiliates turning to more extreme agendas, as when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) chose a more extreme path than Bin Laden desired. Similarly, al-Shabab in Somalia has been critiqued internally in the past for its excessive brutality. Yet similar examples do not appear to exist today. Rather, the trend appears to be focused on growing sustainable local and/or regional roots, socio-politically out-competing rivals, and slowly and methodically transforming society to fit Salafi-jihadist ideals in hopes of one day collectively forming an Islamic state.

The coming challenge

Therefore, while we should all be celebrating the string of recent counterterrorism successes against al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, we should be doing so while simultaneously shifting our attention to the challenge of tomorrow: deeply rooted, locally-oriented jihadist groups pursuing more sustainable agendas. While this localism trend may well reduce the prospect of 9/11-style plotting—at least temporarily—it is not a sign of counterterrorism success. Rather, it is a sign of terrorism’s adaptation, and the embrace of strategies that promise equally significant instability but require far more complex and long-term countermeasures, for which we are frankly ill equipped. Worryingly, ISIS appears to be learning this lesson too.

The challenge on the horizon has little of anything to do with combating extremist ideologies, and much more to do with tackling the problems of ungoverned spaces, failed and corrupt governance, economic strife, underdevelopment, and long-standing hyper-local conflicts – all of which provide fuel for jihadists displaying more flexibility and political intelligence than ever before. To put our hands up and declare victory would be to miss the coming challenge altogether.

Jihadi Reactions to the U.S.-Taliban Deal and Afghan Peace Talks

Cole Bunzel September 23, 2020

On September 12, 2020, the Taliban and the Afghan government began negotiations in Qatar over the political future of Afghanistan. In accordance with the “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan,” signed by the United States and the Taliban on February 29, the negotiations are expected to produce “a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire” between the warring Afghan parties, as well as an “agreement over the future political roadmap of Afghanistan.” In return for the Taliban’s participation in the negotiations and its guarantee that “Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies,” the United States agreed to withdraw all its forces from Afghanistan within fourteen months of the original agreement.

In the world of Sunni jihadism, the U.S.-Taliban deal and the associated peace talks have elicited a range of reactions, from celebration to condemnation. This divergence of views reflects the fractured state of the jihadi movement—or its “tri-polar” character—split as it is between the three poles of the Islamic State, al-Qaida, and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria. The cautiously optimistic views of certain jihadi scholars add another layer of complexity to the picture.

The Islamic State

The Islamic State, it will be recalled, considers the Taliban to be a movement that has abandoned Islam and taken up the cause of Afghan nationalism. Its media routinely portray the Taliban as a nationalist and polytheist group, one that is theologically flawed, tolerant of the Shia, and in bed with Pakistani intelligence. The Islamic State’s “Khorasan Province” has also fought with the Taliban on numerous occasions. It thus comes as no surprise that the Islamic State has represented the recent deal and negotiations as further evidence of the Taliban’s apostasy.

An early response came in the form of an editorial in the Islamic State’s al-Naba’ newsletter in mid-March in which the Taliban were condemned for taking the “Crusaders” (i.e., the Americans) as their “new allies.” Unlike the Taliban, the Islamic State, the editorial boasted, would not cease to attack the Americans in Afghanistan, citing a recent Islamic State attack on the Bagram Air Base. This was a message to the Crusaders, the editorial continued, that the Islamic State’s war on them would continue despite the peace agreement with the “apostate” Taliban, who would also continue to be targeted.

In a speech two months later, in May 2020, the Islamic State’s official spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurashi, commented further on the U.S.-Taliban agreement, alleging a conspiracy between the two sides to destroy the Islamic State in Afghanistan. “The agreement regarding the withdrawal of the American military from Afghanistan,” he said, “is a cover for the standing alliance between the apostate Taliban militia and the Crusaders for fighting the Islamic State, and a basis for establishing a national government that brings together the apostates of the Taliban with the polytheist Rejectionists [i.e., Shia] and other apostate and unbelieving sects.” In al-Qurashi’s view, the deal was to be understood in light of the purported preexisting alliance between the United States and the Taliban to root out the “caliphate” in Afghanistan. What the Taliban sought was a “national government” in which it could share. The Islamic State, however, would stand in the way of all this, intent on fighting “the Crusaders and the apostates” until true Islamic rule is established throughout the land.

Al-Qaida

Al-Qaida has portrayed the agreement in an entirely different light. On March 12, the “general leadership” of the group released a statement hailing the U.S.-Taliban deal as a “great historical victory” for the Taliban, focusing on the agreed-to withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. The Taliban, the statement argued, by remaining steadfast and true to their faith, have defeated and brought low an enemy of far greater size and strength. Theirs is thus a lesson to be heeded by all jihadis fighting oppression and occupation.

Noticeably absent from this statement, however, was any mention of the Taliban’s pledge regarding al-Qaida or the coming negotiations with the Afghan government. Al-Qaida proceeded as if none of that mattered. As it had in the past, it described the Taliban in terms of the future caliphate, as “the nucleus of the Islamic state that will rule by God’s pure law.”

Since 2014, al-Qaida has repeatedly portrayed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan—the Taliban’s official name—as the seat of the anticipated caliphate and the Taliban leader as the caliph-in-waiting. In July 2014, for instance, it released a newsletter renewing the bay‘a (i.e., pledge of allegiance) to Mullah Omar, affirming “that al-Qaeda and its branches in all locales are soldiers in his army acting under his victorious banner.” A few months later, when al-Qaida in the Islamic Subcontinent was announced, its leader emphasized that he had given bay‘a to both al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar. The next year, when it was discovered that Mullah Omar had actually been dead since 2013, al-Zawahiri released an audio message giving bay‘a to his successor, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur. The exercise was repeated for the next Taliban leader, Haybat Allah Akhundzadah, after Mullah Akhtar was killed in an airstrike in mid-2016. In both of these statements, al-Zawahiri indicated that everyone who gives bay‘a to the leader of al-Qaida has in effect given bay‘a to the leader of the Taliban, and that the latter bay‘a is to be understood as al-bay‘a al-‘uzma, or “the supreme bay‘a,” meaning the kind of bay‘a that one gives to a caliph. In 2017, when the subsidiary group of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Jama‘at Nusrat al-Islam al-Muslimin, was proclaimed, its leader articulated three bay‘as—one to the leader of AQIM, one to al-Zawahiri, and one to Akhundzadah. In his speeches, al-Zawahiri has continued to emphasize the theme of al-Qaida’s bay‘a to Akhundzadah. The issue even played a role in the debate between al-Qaida and HTS, the former al-Qaida affiliate in Syria, over the latter’s decision to leave al-Qaida. In a speech in November 2017, al-Zawahiri condemned HTS’s move, saying: “O brothers. By God’s grace and favor you belong to a greater union than the union you have. You are in the Qa‘idat al-Jihad group that is pledged in bay‘a to the Islamic Emirate in an expansive jihadi confederation.” The argument did not persuade, however. In a response, HTS’s representative rejected the idea that the Syrian group had ever owed loyalty to the Taliban.

As all of this shows, the relationship with the Taliban is of central importance to al-Qaida. In its self-presentation, al-Qaida is little more than a global military unit in service to Akhundzadah, whom it sees as its quasi-caliph. It would thus be a pretty big blow to al-Qaida, in material and propaganda terms, if the Taliban were to cut all ties with the group. That is not what the text of the U.S.-Taliban agreement requires, though it comes fairly close. The agreement states that the Taliban “will prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan from threatening the security of the United States and its allies, and will prevent them from recruiting, training, and fundraising and will not host them in accordance with the commitments in this agreement.” Threatening the United States and its allies is the raison d’être of al-Qaida, and the Taliban is supposed to be its supreme “host.” If the Taliban were to honor this pledge—and it has repeatedly said that it will—it would be embarrassing for al-Qaida.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham

On September 13, the head of HTS’s Sharia committee, Abu ‘Abdallah al-Shami (aka ‘Abd al-Rahim ‘Atun), issued a statement congratulating the Taliban on the start of negotiations with the Afghan government. “This great victory that the Muslims in Afghanistan have achieved,” the statement read, “brings us joy as it brings joy to every free and passionate Muslim.” The key to the Taliban’s success, according to al-Shami, in addition to its extraordinary perseverance in resisting the American occupiers, was its ability to translate military success into political gains, and to do so by maintaining a united front. The implication of al-Shami’s words was that the Taliban’s approach was a model for HTS. Recently, the more hardline jihadi factions in Syria have criticized HTS for seeking a monopoly on violence in the territory it controls. Such an approach, al-Shami seems to be saying, is vindicated by the experience of the Taliban.

Other voices within HTS made similar comments, some of them more explicit in presenting the Taliban as a model for HTS to follow. On September 14, another HTS Sharia official, Muzhir al-Ways, commented that “the Taliban’s example” was “inspiring for all,” the Taliban being “a model in jihad and a model in political activity, a model in methodology and approach and respect for religious knowledge and jurisprudence.” While “every theater has its particularities,” he added, and no one example ought to be emulated in its entirety, the case of the Taliban offered lessons worthy of consideration.

Supporters of al-Qaida were quick to respond that HTS and the Taliban were in fact nothing alike. “The matter of likening the Taliban to [HTS] is entirely invalid,” wrote Jallad al-Murji’a on Telegram. In another post he supported his claim by citing the example of HTS’s cooperation with “the secular Turkish army … which was a participant in the war on the Muslims in Afghanistan under the banner of America and the Crusader NATO alliance.” Another al-Qaida supporter would point out that HTS, in its cooperation with Turkey and Russia, has fallen victim to “the game of international politics.” This was quite contrary to the successful experience of the Taliban. “Do not be deceived,” he wrote, “by what you have done, and don’t take pride in your victories, from which we have seen only destruction and devastation.” “How great is the difference,” wrote another, “between humbling oneself before the unbelievers and humbling the unbelievers.”

In response to these sorts of comments, HTS supporter al-Ifriqi al-Muhajir took issue with this characterization of the Taliban’s policy as one of uncompromising jihadism. There were elements of the Taliban’s policy, he said, that these voices failed to appreciate. The Taliban were not even forthright about their relationship with al-Qaida. He quoted an excerpt from a letter by the al-Qaida ideologue ‘Atiyyat Allah al-Libi (d. 2011), who wrote as follows about the nature of the Taliban’s dealings with al-Qaida: “Of course, the Taliban’s policy is to avoid being seen with us or revealing any cooperation or agreement between us and them. That is for the purpose of averting international and regional pressure and out of consideration for regional dynamics. We defer to them in this regard.”

Scholarly reactions

The senior scholars of the jihadi movement, including the Palestinian-Jordanians Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filastini, have expressed both praise and concern for the Taliban’s recent doings. While deeply divided over the issue of HTS—Abu Qatada is generally supportive, al-Maqdisi fiercely opposed—the two men’s views on this subject are not so far apart.

Back in February, Abu Qatada heaped praise on the Taliban for signing the agreement with the United States. In a statement on Telegram, he wrote that “the Afghan situation” is “an important example” and one that “deserves to be studied.” While rejecting the idea that every jihadi group should follow the Taliban’s path “step by step,” he highlighted several admirable aspects of the Taliban’s approach. These included the Taliban’s commitment to “staying the course” on the battlefield, its strong connection to the society in which it operates, and its status as a scholarly movement, that is, as a “movement of scholars.” On September 13, Abu Qatada continued in this vein in another statement, praising the Taliban’s success in securing the release of thousands of prisoners. “This is a jihadi victory the like of which has not been seen in our modern history,” he wrote.

Yet with regard to the negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government, he was much less enthusiastic. “The Taliban’s agreeing to sit down with the [Afghan] government is an American victory,” he wrote in the September 13 commentary. “This has to be acknowledged.” For Abu Qatada, this was a potentially troubling development, for any concession to the Afghan government from this point forward would strip the Taliban of its status as “a legitimate emirate for Afghanistan.” The worst possible outcome, in his view, would be for the Taliban to enter into a power-sharing arrangement. He held this possibility to be remote, however, hoping that the negotiations would continue only as a “tactic” for achieving the American withdrawal.

Al-Maqdisi was similarly boastful about the Taliban’s initial agreement with the United States. In late February, he wrote that it was only the Taliban’s unrelenting “will to fight” that had forced the United States to negotiate with them, and that this was a “clear lesson” for jihadis. It showed that “the solution is not in democracy and ballot boxes! Rather it is in jihad and ammunition boxes.”

The next day, on March 1, al-Maqdisi published an “open letter to the Taliban,” sounding a more critical and cautionary note. In the letter he objected to the open-ended nature of the Taliban’s agreement with the United States, including the clause regarding al-Qaida, arguing that a non-aggression pact with unbelievers should be for no more than ten years in keeping with prophetic practice. This was, in his view, no more than “a jurisprudential transgression.” It was certainly the Taliban’s right to restrict al-Qaida, he said, particularly as Mullah Omar had never given his blessing to the 9/11 attacks. But should the “peace agreement” with the United States lead to the abrogation of jihad, this would speak to a deeper, more theological problem with the Taliban. Al-Maqdisi further faulted the Taliban for giving thanks to Qatar, Pakistan, and China, among other countries, in a statement issued by its leader upon the signing of the agreement. Such expressions of gratitude to states whose rulers are at war with Islam, he wrote, leave one to wonder about possible changes in the Taliban’s methodology.

Particularly troubling, in his view, was the clause in the agreement stating that the United States and the Taliban “seek positive relations with each other and expect that the relations between the United States and the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government … will be positive.” Perhaps all of this, he speculated, is nothing more than “maneuvers and political steps to achieve important interests.” But like Abu Qatada, he was concerned about what would come once the Taliban and “the client Afghan government” actually sat down to negotiate. More recently, after the negotiations got under way in September, al-Maqdisi reiterated his concerns. “What worries me,” he wrote on Telegram on September 12, “is not the sitting down [at the negotiating table] in itself, but rather the results of the sitting down!” He would wait to pass judgment, however, until the results were clear and documented.

Another jihadi scholar, the London-based Egyptian Hani al-Siba‘i, who is close ideologically to al-Maqdisi, has been somewhat more upbeat in responding to the Taliban’s recent moves. He also has contributed a somewhat different take on the Taliban’s pledge regarding al-Qaida. In a sermon delivered in March, al-Siba‘i pointed out that the Taliban, to its credit, “did not dissociate from [al-Qaida] and did not hand them over [to the Americans].” The Taliban’s commitment in the agreement was in reality nothing new, since the Taliban were already forbidding al-Qaida from launching attacks on the United States from Afghan soil.

In a more recent sermon in mid-September, al-Siba‘i added a few comments on the matter of al-Qaida’s bay‘a to the Taliban leader. The bay‘a, he explained, is conditional. When al-Zawahiri gave bay‘a to Akhundzadah, he stipulated certain conditions, including that the Taliban adhere to the Sharia. Therefore, if the Taliban were to deviate from its current path, al-Qaida would be within its rights to withdraw the bay‘a. For al-Siba‘i, however, this was a worst-case scenario, and a remote one. Let us wait, he suggested, and see what happens. For as of now, the Taliban have conceded nothing.

No consensus, uncertain future

If one thing is clear from this motley of views concerning the Taliban’s deal with the United States and its negotiations with the Afghan government, it is that there is little consensus in the jihadi world on what the nature of the Taliban truly is. For the Islamic State, the Taliban is an ungodly movement ready and willing to renounce jihad and share power with the Afghan government. For al-Qaida, it is the future Islamic caliphate. And for HTS, it is a model of jihadi realpolitik. The scholars, for their part, wary as they are of where the negotiations will lead, reflect a deep uncertainty about the future of the Taliban. Their worst fear is that the Taliban will make peace with the Afghan government and shed its character as “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” Their greatest hope is that the negotiations will turn out to be a time-saving ruse. They are not so hopeful, however, as to assume this outcome as a given.

Striving for Hegemony: The HTS Crackdown on al-Qaida and Friends in Northwest Syria

Al-Muraqib September 15, 2020

Introducing Al-Muraqib: Al-Muraqib is a new author platform for Jihadica authors and guests. Contact jihadica@protonmail.com if you are interested in contributing.

The first indication that something was about to happen—again—came on June 17, when Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) security officers arrested Abu Salah al-Uzbeki (Sirajuddin Mukhtarov). Abu Salah, the founder of the mainly Uzbek Katibat al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad, is a prominent Jihadi commander and ideologue who shortly before his arrest had defected from HTS and, together with approximately 40 fighters, joined Ansar al-Deen, a rival Jihadi faction sympathetic to al-Qaida.

The atmosphere within the rebel landscape in Syria’s northwest was growing increasingly tense even before Abu Salah’s arrest. In a surprise move on June 12, the five groups Hurras al-Deen, Ansar al-Islam, Ansar al-Deen, Tansiqiyat al-Jihad, and Liwa al-Mouqatilin al-Ansar announced the establishment of the new operations room “So Be Steadfast” (Fa-thbutu), much to the displeasure of HTS. According to an insider, the operations room was created in response to the recent losses of territory to the Syrian regime and the implementation of the Sochi agreement.

After the arrest of Abu Salah, a series of events ensued that exacerbated tensions even further, leading to episodes of infighting between HTS and the operations room between June 22 and 27. The true trigger of conflict at this specific time remains unknown. One purported reason is that HTS instigated its crackdown when it became aware that the groups constituting the new “So Be Steadfast” operations room had their eyes set on taking control of Idlib city. Another explanation is that tensions grew due to a combination of (1) the operations room starting to see HTS as a new sahwa (“awakening”) movement on account of HTS’s strengthening of ties with Turkey and (2) HTS’s arrest of prominent commanders of the operations room and the rumours that HTS was involved in the assassination of high-ranking al-Qaida figures in June. A third and related argument is that the HTS crackdown played to Turkey’s desire to fulfil its responsibility as part of the Sochi Agreement to control the M4 highway.

 

Escalating tensions

Throughout June, tensions between HTS and rival al-Qaida-linked groups were mounting. Among al-Qaida sympathisers there is a feeling that HTS continues to defer to Turkey’s interests as part of the political negotiations between Turkey and Russia. This deference, they believe, is not only a transgression of religious principles but a threat to the Jihadi project in Syria. The recent killings of three senior al-Qaida members in US drone strikes have only further aggravated the situation. First, Abu al-Qassam, a military commander and shura council member of Hurras al-Deen, was killed together with Bilal Al-San‘ani, the former amir of Jaysh al-Badiya, on June 14. Eight days later Abu Adnan al-Homsi, Hurras al-Deen’s head of logistics, was similarly killed in a drone strike. According to al-Qaida members (and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi), HTS likely played a role in leaking details about the location of the al-Qaida leaders. Most recently, on August 13, a drone strike killed the al-Qaida military trainer Abu Yahya al-Uzbeki.

Nearly a year earlier, on September 9, 2019, Abu al-Abd Ashida had delivered a stinging critique of HTS in a video entitled “So as Not to Sink the Ship.” Ashida used to be HTS’s head of Aleppo City and the administrator of its Umar bin al-Khattab army, but defected mainly because of the group’s reliance on external actors. At some point during spring 2020, he established Tansiqiyat al-Jihad. When announcing his defection, Ashida complained that HTS was no longer a movement for the ummah since it had been seized by individuals who have made the group their own little kingdom. “Whoever has different opinions, they marginalize him,” he said.

Abu al-Abd Ashida’s ‘So as Not to Sink the Ship’

These tensions between HTS and its more ideologically hardline rivals had been several years in the making. In November 2017, HTS established the Syrian Salvation Government (Hukumat al-Inqadh al-Suriyya) with a view to taking total control of Idlib and western Aleppo. Heavily criticised for not tolerating rival political entities and for implementing contested policies, the Salvation Government quickly came to be viewed as HTS’s exclusive political project. Examples of exclusivist policies include banning the books of al-Maqdisi, restricting communication within areas under its control, and, from December 2018, banning Islamic education unless it was under the Salvation Government’s authority. Prior to its establishment, however, HTS had already made several declarations intended to control the political environment and discipline its own members. First, it prohibited its preachers and ordinary members from proclaiming takfir without an official fatwa from the sharia council (the prohibition for preachers was issued on June 19, 2017; the prohibition for rank-and-file members was issued on July 12, 2017). Then it prohibited its members from watching Islamic State videos and, most controversially of all, forbade the establishment of any new factions in its territory.

 

Infighting begins

On the morning of June 22, HTS moved to arrest Abu Malik al-Tali, a former Jabhat al-Nusra commander in Qalamoun and subsequently a prominent HTS commander in Idlib. A few months earlier, al-Tali had defected from HTS and established Liwa al-Mouqatilin al-Ansar, which later became part of the So Be Steadfast operations room with al-Tali as its leading military commander. This was followed by an official statement from HTS prohibiting its members from leaving the group without getting permission from its “Monitoring and Overseeing Committee.” Even if an HTS member is allowed to leave, according to the statement, he is prohibited from forming a new military faction or joining any existing group in the area.

These events led the So Be Steadfast operations room to issue a statement warning HTS of any further provocations and accusing it of taking actions that pleased the Assad regime and foreign occupiers. Speculating about HTS’s intentions, the statement remarks, “This raises the question about the motives of the arrests, particularly in times when we are witnessing the full implementation of the terms of the Astana process, the latest being the completion of joint patrols on the M4 highway.” The operations room ended the statement by demanding the release of its detained members and the establishment of independent courts to ensure fair trials.

During the night of June 22, the first bout of infighting broke out in Arab Saeed, and over the following days the infighting would spread to several cities and villages in Idlib. The rival parties reacted by mobilizing their fighters and establishing checkpoints around the governorate. (For examples of So Be Steadfast operations room checkpoints outside of Idlib city, see here, here, here and here.) Over the following days, the contending parties began using heavy weapons, with HTS targeting the headquarters of Hurras al-Deen, Ansar al-Deen, and Ansar al-Islam. Apparently in reaction to the HTS leadership’s appeal to the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), a prominent Jihadi group in Idlib with longstanding ties to al-Qaida but that sided with HTS in recent years, to set up road blocks in and around Jisr al-Shughour, the So Be Steadfast operation asked TIP to remain neutral.

In terms of numbers, HTS is typically assessed to command between 10,000 and 15,000 fighters, while Hurras al-Deen—the largest of the factions comprising the operations room— numbers approximately 3,000. The numerical advantage of HTS meant that from the beginning the operations room had an interest in ending the conflict quickly. But neither did HTS seek a prolonged conflict as fighting rival Jihadis is not a popular cause among its base. Nonetheless, in this case HTS deemed it necessary in order to cement its local hegemony. Casualty numbers for the period June 22-27 are hard to ascertain. An interview with an operations room member revealed the number of killed fighters from the operations room to be between 10 and 15. This is likely too low, and the combined casualty number probably exceeds 100.

 

Managing conflict

Interest in settling the conflict was visible from the beginning. Already on June 24, Sami al-Uraydi, a senior Hurras al-Deen ideologue, called on the warring parties to halt the violence and implement a judicial process to settle their disagreements. Al-Uraydi has been the fiercest critic of HTS among al-Qaida loyalists in Syria in recent years, so for him to take a leading role in de-escalating tensions indicates that Hurras al-Deen saw no benefit in fighting HTS.

On the same day, in a statement titled “Allah Has Forbidden Me From Killing a Believer,” al-Qaida Central weighed in on the conflict with criticism and advice. Accusing HTS of being the aggressor, al-Qaida writes that it was alarmed to see how the group started targeting the mujahideen, who like al-Qaida are dedicated to jihad, despite continuous calls to settle the parties’ differences through arbitration. Al-Qaida reminds HTS that “unity among the mujahideen is a Quranic duty and an indispensable legal necessity,” one that it is “not permissible to neglect.” Therefore it is “not a legitimate solution to overcome the Muslims and violate the blood of the believers.” In a direct reference to the fact that HTS considers itself the dominant faction in northwestern Syria, al-Qaida writes that not even the strongest groups “have a verse from Allah’s book, a Hadith from the traditions of the Messenger of Allah, or a consensus from the Muslims on considering the blood of their believing brothers permissible.”

Commenting on another issue leading to tensions between HTS and rival Jihadis, al-Qaida affirms that no group has the right to forbid an individual from fighting Jihad under the banner of the group of his choice. This is in direct opposition to HTS’s ruling from two days before that prohibited fighters from leaving and joining other Jihadi groups. The statement continues, “The mujahideen are now preoccupied with fighting each other while the enemy surprises them and prepares to eradicate them (…) For this reason, we call on all the mujahideen to fear Allah for the sake of the blood of their Muslim brothers in all factions, and to apply the language of reason and sharia, and to quickly initiate the application of the rule of Allah the Almighty through an independent judiciary.” Addressing the al-Qaida supporters who still remain within HTS, al-Qaida prohibits them from taking part in the ongoing conflict. An to the “people of pride” within HTS, it says, “so take as your slogan, ‘you are forbidden from killing your mujahideen brothers.’” In a final note, al-Qaida calls on Jihadi scholars to intervene and fulfil their responsibility to end the fitna.

Just one day after, a scholarly peace initiative was proposed by a group of nine scholars, the best known of the group being Abd al-Razzaq al-Mahdi. The initiative called for an immediate ceasefire and a judicial process to rule in the conflict between HTS and the So Be Steadfast operations room. While the latter was quick to accept the proposal, it took HTS several hours to do so (page 1 and 2), and when it eventually did respond it blamed its opponents, and Hurras al-Deen and Ansar al-Deen in particular, for instigating the conflict. HTS specifically mentions the prohibited defections from HTS, the presence of checkpoints set up by the groups operating outside the al-Fatah al-Mubin operations room, and the fact that these groups previously arrested some of HTS’s members. While accepting the scholars’ call to de-escalate tensions, the group placed the responsibility on the So Be Steadfast operations room, arguing that a solution to the conflict depends on dismantling the checkpoints not administered by al-Fatah al-Mubin and the aggressors’ being held accountable in court.

The So Be Steadfast operations room quickly responded, arguing in a statement that HTS’s statement was built on lies and that HTS had in fact rejected the scholarly peace initiative by demanding the disbandment of So Be Steadfast-controlled checkpoints. Nonetheless, the operations room declared itself ready to disband its checkpoints for three days under the supervision of Jund al-Sham and Ajnad al-Kavkaz, to foster an environment where peace negotiations and a judicial process could be initiated. At the top of its list of priorities was the resolution of the situation of Abu Salah al-Uzbeki and Abu Malik al-Tali.

In the end, as both groups were wary about the negative impact of prolonged conflict, it only took a few days to de-escalate tensions through various local ceasefire agreements. The first of these agreements was reached in the village of Arab Saeed in the Sahl al-Rooj area on June 26. Signed by Abu Hafs Binnish (HTS) and Abu Abdullah al-Suri (So Be Steadfast operations room), the agreement stipulated five points: (1) a ceasefire in Arab Saeed and Sahl al-Rooj and the lifting of checkpoints from both sides, (2) that the fighters from the village of Arab Saeed be allowed to remain in the village and keep their weapons, (3) that those required to leave Arab Saeed be allowed to do so and be allowed to bring their weapons, (4) that those fighters accused of crimes be transferred to the Turkistanis (likely TIP) who are to manage the legal proceedings, and (5) that Hurras al-Deen’s headquarter in Arab Saeed be closed and the group not be allowed to establish new checkpoints in the village. Other local ceasefires were also signed in the villages of Yaqubiya and Hamama and in the Harem area.

Despite these various local ceasefire agreements, the infighting did not stop immediately. In the ensuing hours there were several complaints about continued aggression. For instance, it was reported that HTS forces attacked the headquarters of Ansar al-Islam in Sarmada and in the village of Hamama. Later in the day came reports that HTS had launched attacks north of Idlib in Armanaz and that these had been repelled by factions of the So Be Steadfast operations room. This prompted the operations room to issue a statement in the evening of June 26 criticizing HTS for violating the terms of the ceasefires, specifically mentioning the attack in Sarmada.

While tensions did for the most part subside, there would continue to be reports of new episodes over the following days, one example being HTS cracking down on the headquarters of Tansiqiyat al-Jihad in Western Aleppo, leaving the small group on the brink of survival.

 

Who’s the aggressor?

Like he has done so many times before, Abu Abdullah al-Shami, the right-hand man of HTS-leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani, would of course weigh in. As Hassan Hassan explained, al-Shami argued that HTS was not the aggressor. HTS and Hurras al-Deen had, according to al-Shami, signed an agreement regulating the al-Qaida affiliates’ activities in Syria. Following these regulations, Hurras al-Deen would not be allowed to set up checkpoints or conduct intelligence or security operations—yet this was exactly what Hurras al-Deen was doing, al-Shami writes. The purpose of these regulations was for Syria’s northwest to be dominated by a unified militant movement led by HTS. From the perspective of HTS, the establishment of new groups and operations rooms would be counterproductive to unification.

HTS would also issue an official statement through its Ebaa News Network on the conflict, accusing Hurras al-Deen of behaving like the Islamic State— an accusation others have previously directed against HTS. According to the alleged eyewitness account of a certain “Abu Dujana”—an HTS fighter—in one incident a group of fighters from HTS surrounded a Hurras al-Deen checkpoint. Abu Asid, the leader of the HTS contingent, offered the Hurras fighters a safe way out if they surrendered, which they agreed to do. What allegedly happened next was that one of the Hurras fighters approached Abu Asid and, instead of leaving peacefully, fired his weapon, killing Abu Asid and injuring three other HTS fighters. According to the HTS statement, this “treacherous” behavior was a clear reminder of how the Islamic State under al-Baghdadi failed to adhere to such agreements.

In the days following the ceasefire, HTS and the National Salvation Government would issue several new decrees in an attempt to further limit the space and activities of rival Jihadi groups. On June 26, HTS published a highly controversial, if not unprecedented, declaration prohibiting the formation of new groups and operations rooms and requiring any existing group to operate under the authority of HTS’s own al-Fatah al-Mubin operations room. On June 28, the National Salvation Government ordered the closure of all military bases in Idlib city except those under the command of al-Fatah al-Mubin. This was followed later that day by another order to close all Hurras al-Deen bases in and around Jisr al-Shughour, the group’s stronghold. The statement also prohibits any Hurras al-Deen-controlled checkpoints in the area.

 

Arresting critical voices

Alongside its efforts to cement institutional and organizational hegemony, HTS also began to target critical voices in the Idlib region. The first person to be targeted was the former British national Tauqir “Tox” Sharif, better known as Abu Husam al-Britani, who is often described as an “aid worker” but who is also affiliated with Tansiqiyat al-Jihad. His arrest on June 22 led to major protests in several cities throughout Idlib in reaction to the perceived injustice of HTS’s unilateral power projection.

Over the following days, social media was flooded with calls for the release of “Tox.” Most surprising was on June 30 when Hani al-Sibai, a London-based Egyptian Jihadi ideologue, joined the chorus decrying HTS’s arrest of Tox. Since 2018 al-Sibai had sought, unlike his colleagues Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filastini, to take a neutral position in the conflict between HTS and al-Qaida members in Syria. Yet the arrest of Tox appeared to provoke al-Sibai to issue a strong condemnation of HTS’s aggressive behavior.

Al-Sibai wrote that “the aqidah and manners of your brother who is detained in Idlib, Tauqir Sharif otherwise known as Abu Husam al-Britani, have been praised by virtuous & trustworthy non-Arab & Arab brothers in Britain who know him and who I have personally known for years.” “Abu Husam al-Britani,” he continued, “preferred to live in roughness rather than luxury! He preferred to share in the grievances of the people of Shaam, and how many they are! He preferred to share in their joyous occasions, how rare they are! And now he has been arrested for so-called security reasons! The correct thing to do would have been to present him to an impartial Sharia judge who has full right to give permission for an arrest or to deny it! Even if he were to order his arrest based on, for example, the seriousness of the accusations, he [Tox] should be presented to the judge to defend himself!” In a direct message to HTS, al-Sibai ends by saying, “Do not be deluded by your power or numbers! Hasten towards releasing your brother Abu Husam al-Britani and all your brothers detained recently even if they disagreed with you. Let your problems be solved by reform and ruling with Sharia.”

On July 15, Tox was finally released after having been subject to torture during his incarceration according to his wife and himself. This provoked Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American journalist operating in Idlib, to interview Hani al-Sibai on the legality of torture in Islamic law. Unsurprisingly, in the interview, al-Sibai, who has previously written extensively on torture, explained that torture is indeed prohibited. Tox’s freedom would last less than a month. On August 11, HTS security officials once against arrested him, and two days later, the group also moved to arrest Bilal Abdul Kareem at his home in Atmeh.

Finally, on September 1, HTS announced in an official statement that it had also arrested Omar Diaby, better known as Omar Omsen. Originally known as the “French super-recruiter,” Omsen had established the group Firqat al-Ghuraba, a French-dominated faction close to Hurras al-Deen. According to HTSs’ media department, Omsen had on more than one occasion violated the rules in northern Syria and HTS had filed several court cases against him. Specifically, HTS complained that Omsen was running his own administration, bringing charges against people in his local court and incarcerating them in his prison. For HTS, considering itself the ultimate authority in Syria’s northwest, this was intolerable.

 

The future of the Jihadi project in Idlib

Given these recent developments , it appears that the struggle between Jihadi pragmatists—or realists—and purists will continue to define the militant landscape in Syria’s northwest in the coming years.

HTS is likely to continue to pursue a pragmatic approach to the political context in which it operates. The group and its leaders argue that understanding this context, or this “reality” (waqi‘a), is essential, and that the group’s methodology must necessarily be adjusted in order to survive. Importantly, an ideological corpus, mainly authored by Abu Qatada al-Filastini and his student Abu Mahmoud al-Filastini, is slowly emerging to support the direction HTS is taking, thus giving ideological backing to Abu Muhammad al-Julani’s political project.

Similar to its competitor the Islamic State, HTS’s ambition is to establish a state, yet its approach to how such a state should be established and what form it should take is different. This is particularly evident in its relations with external actors—most of all Turkey—with which the group has shown itself willing to engage and negotiate agreements. However, when it comes to internal competitors, HTS’s approach is similar to that of the Islamic State, which tried to suppress and control any competing actors including other Jihadis such as Jabhat al-Nusra.

This dual strategy is likely to continue as recent events testify. HTS will do anything in its power to control the actions and undermine the support of al-Qaida elements in Idlib. In response, al-Qaida supporters will attempt to take advantage of HTS’s pragmatism, which remains controversial in Jihadi circles. On numerous occasions, senior figures have defected from HTS, either becoming “independent” or joining al-Qaida-aligned groups. In addition to these senior figures, HTS still comprises ideological hardliners among its rank and file whose sympathy remains in line with al-Qaida’s ideological project. Thus, when al-Julani makes deals with the Turks and moves away from sporting traditional religious clothing, he repels segments of his own constituency.

In June 2020, in the midst of the infighting between HTS and the So Be Steadfast operations room, al-Maqdisi published an article titled “The Predicament of the Supporters of the Sharia between the Client Factions and the Manipulated Factions.” In it he advises true Jihadis, meaning al-Qaida loyalists, to concede defeat and disband. HTS’s suppression, he says, has become too severe. True Jihad in Syria, in his view, can only be successful when HTS is defeated.

 

Living Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain: The Case of Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi

Aaron Zelin September 9, 2020

It has become a trope within the jihadi studies field to describe Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (born ‘Isam Bin Muhammad Bin Tahir al-Barqawi) as being the most important jihadi ideologue alive. Part of this derives from a study written by Will McCants in 2006 that notes he is the most cited living jihadi ideologue within jihadi primary source literature. At the time, in many ways, al-Qaeda (AQ) was also the unipolar leader of the jihadi world. Since then, cracks in the foundation of AQ’s leading role have created alternative visions for the future of the jihadi movement. Most notable has been the case of the Islamic State (IS), but another is that of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). In attempting to bolster their legitimacy, these different currents have moved away from al-Maqdisi and even derided him. The story of al-Maqdisi’s issues with the leader of IS’s predecessor, Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, and of IS toying with him during fake negotiations over the Jordanian pilot Mu‘adh al-Kasasbah, are well-trodden at this point. But more recent recriminations between al-Maqdisi and HTS are also worth exploring since they signal a change in tone. Although there have been vigorous debates between al-Maqdisi and HTS over decisions to move away from AQ and HTS’s alleged “diluting” of its ideology, this latest round of argument augurs another broken chain within the jihadi movement and further cements the fact that claiming HTS is some kind of front for AQ is incorrect in the same way that saying ISIS was still within AQ in 2013 was wrong.

Background: HTS Dismantles Hurras al-Din and the So Be Steadfast Operations Room

Hurras al-Din (HD) was established in February 2018 as AQ’s official branch in Syria, after HTS publicly distanced itself from its parent organization. Later, in October 2018, HD set up the Wa-Harridh al-Mu’minin (And Incite the Believers) Operations Room in conjunction with two smaller AQ-aligned groups, Jabhat Ansar al-Din and Jama‘at Ansar al-Islam. HD and the operations room were allowed to operate at the behest of HTS and received food and ammunition provisions from HTS. Therefore, as I noted in September 2019, “If [HD] were to grow significantly stronger, HTS may try to suppress it and arrest its leaders in order to preserve its own power base. In that sense, HD’s local growth potential is somewhat limited.”

And in many ways this is what happened. On June 12, 2020, HD, alongside its two partners in the operations room, established a new operations room called “Fa-thbutu” (So Be Steadfast) that also included the groups Tansiqiyat al-Jihad and Liwa’ al-Muqatilin al-Ansar. The leaders of these latter groups, Abu al-‘Abd Ashida’ and Abu al-Malik al-Talli respectively, both had falling-outs with HTS over the direction of the jihad, relations with Turkey, and corruption issues. Similarly, ahead of this announcement, Abu Salah al-Uzbeki, leader of Katibat al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad, switched its alliance from HTS to Jabhat Ansar al-Din, thereby adding another strength to this alternative jihadi bloc.

As a consequence of these shifting alliances and the bolstering of the HD-led alternative jihad, HTS arrested al-Uzbeki on June 17 and al-Talli on June 22. This led the new Fa-thbutu operations room to warn HTS that it would “bear the consequences” if it did not release its leaders or subject itself to a religious court. HTS retroactively claimed, in a circular by its Higher Follow-Up and Supervision Committee, that individuals needed authorization to either leave the group or join other groups. Anticipating a policy that would be set out in a statement days later, HTS was showing that it would not allow others to have a monopoly on violence in the territories it controlled. The arrests and perceived lack of transparency behind them led to infighting between the two factions in the towns of ‘Arab Sa’id, al-Hamamah, al-Ya’qubiyah, Jdaydah, Armanaz, Kuku, and Shaykh Bahar over the next few days until truces were brokered due to HTS overpowering HD and its allies.

This led HTS on June 26 to proclaim that the only military efforts that could be conducted would be via itself or through its own al-Fatah al-Mubin (The Clear Conquest) military operations room, thereby banning any other efforts outside this infrastructure such as HD and its own operations room. As a result, HD’s military bases were shut down by HTS. Since then, neither HD nor its Fa-thbutu operations room have publicly operated, frustrating the ability of AQ to return to the forefront of the insurgency in Syria (for now, at least).

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi Responds

Two days later al-Maqdisi responded to these events. In an online essay he described two categories of groups that he sees as working against the interests of the true jihadis in northwest Syria: overt and covert client groups. The former are those directly backed by Turkey such as the Syrian National Army/National Liberation Front, which is operating in the Turkish-controlled zones that were taken from the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in parts of northwest and northeast Syria. The latter groups are an unstated reference to HTS, which al-Maqdisi sees as more dangerous since it claims the mantle of being a jihadi group but in reality is helping Turkey pursue its aims in the region. In particular, al-Maqdisi highlights how HTS protects Turkish patrols and forbids the true jihadis from targeting the Russians when Russia conducts joint patrols with Turkey. Furthermore, al-Maqdisi alludes to the above infighting and dismantlement of HD and the Fa-thbutu operations room by noting that these so-called “manipulated factions have killed the jihad of al-Sham, broken it up, and subjected it to the secular Turks.”

In response, al-Maqdisi suggests two possible ways of overcoming these assaults on the legitimate jihadis. The first involves eradicating the overt client groups and reforming the covert client groups by getting defections from sincere individuals among them and then slowly replacing and overtaking their leaders. Of course, this is easier said than done. Therefore, al-Maqdisi advises that the true jihadis follow the second possible course of action, which is to disband themselves and lay in wait for the right opportunity to return. It is plausible that new and more clandestine formations like Kata’ib Khatab al-Shishani (which announced itself in mid-July) and Sariyat Ansar Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (which announced itself in late August) are examples of this at play.

Al-Maqdisi Disavowed By HTS

Two months later, on August 21, the feud between al-Maqdisi and HTS was reignited when al-Maqdisi shared a post on his Telegram channel by an AQ supporter called Ya Sariyat al-Jabal (Oh Mast of the Mountain). The post repeats claims and affirmations about secret dealings between HTS and Turkish intelligence. The most controversial part is about how these alleged actions have essentially pushed HTS away from faith: “Everyone with knowledge of the nullifiers of Islam who is aware of these details [in relation to actions HTS has allegedly taken with Turkey] will see after considering them carefully that the leadership of [HTS] day after day gets closer to disbelief and draws farther away from faith.” Members and partisans of HTS thus interpreted al-Maqdisi’s sharing of this as his excommunicating HTS from Islam.

One of HTS’s top ideologues, Dr. Muzhir al-Ways, responded that day to this in a Twitter post, republished by the unofficial HTS support media outlet al-Bayyinah under the title “After Being Accused of Diluting and Deviation and Stultifying the Jihad [in Syria], al-Maqdisi is Now Excommunicating HTS.” Al-Ways writes that al-Maqdisi’s false accusations against HTS today are no different from those that IS lodged against the jihadi groups in Syria some years ago. Therefore he is the “shaykh of the khawarij.” More damning and possibly embarrassing if true for al-Maqdisi is al-Ways’s suggestion that the account al-Maqdisi shared was in fact something he himself created to try and amplify the message while making it seem like he didn’t say it himself. The charge is not far-fetched since al-Maqdisi has been known to write content under pseudonyms before.

The next day al-Bayyinah released a fuller take down of al-Maqdisi by al-Ways derisively titled “The Monotheism of Barqawism,” a reference to al-Maqdisi’s real last name and a way of stripping him of honorific legitimacy. Here al-Ways calls al-Maqdisi out for having his own version of monotheism (tawhid) that he uses to attack and discredit his opponents. Al-Ways also states that al-Maqdisi is not only out of touch in regard to sharia and scholarly limits related to excommunication (takfir), but also ignorant of what is going on the ground in northwest Syria since he is basing his views of events on television reports and social media. Interestingly, al-Ways claims that al-Maqdisi practices taqiyyah (dissimulating one’s true beliefs) by using euphemisms such as “dilution” of ideology instead of outright doing takfir on HTS.

Al-Bayyinah Media shared a number of other anti-al-Maqdisi releases in the following week via its Telegram channel. Of note is the claim that al-Maqdisi is in fact an asset of Jordanian intelligence and that his attacks on other jihadis are intended to damage and break up the movement. Al-Bayyinah Media highlights examples of suspicious timings in the past when al-Maqdisi has been released from prison and the fact that he has legitimized his dealings with the Jordanian government over the negotiations with IS regarding the captured Jordanian pilot in 2015.

To further discredit al-Maqdisi, al-Bayyinah Media set up a mock website that appears to look like al-Maqdisi’s old Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad library of jihadi primary sources. Yet unlike the original, this is a spoof that seeks to delegitimize al-Maqdisi by highlighting articles that expose his extremism and incorrect views. On the top of the site, the creators of it state that the original Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad website was set up as a “cartoon media platform for himself” and sarcastically exclaim that “tawhid is a trademark registered in the name of al-Maqdisi,” who was allowed at his own whim to determine who was legitimate. The site is clearly set up to expose al-Maqdisi’s problematic views over the years. Interestingly, the site also features quotes from IS’s founder Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi and one of AQ’s top ideologues historically, Atiyat Allah ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Libi, discussing al-Maqdisi as being important and having made a contribution to the jihadi movement but rejecting the idea that his word is infallible truth on everything.

As a consequence of all of this, Jallad al-Murji’ah (Executioner of Those Who Postpone), a pro-AQ supporter on Telegram, complained that HTS was essentially conducting a disinformation campaign and that HTS is like the “pharaoh’s magicians, when they were bewitching the eyes of people, misleading them, making the truth void, and falsehoods correct.”

A Splintered Jihadosphere

Based on all of this, unlike in the past when HTS was willing to tolerate al-Maqdisi’s broadsides and even responding civilly, a redline has clearly been crossed. With accusations of creeping apostasy and extremism going back and forth, it appears unlikely that some form of reconciliation is a possibility. Back in 2013-14 we saw similar dynamics play out between jihadi groups and the ideologues of the jihadi movement, leading to an irrevocable split and the division of jihadism into a bipolar world, one torn between AQ and IS. It seems in many ways that we are now entering an era of a tri-polar jihadosphere.

Although some perceived HTS’s initial breaking of ties with AQ as a fig leaf to cover up a strong and enduring relationship, evidence from the past few years in northwest Syria—of arrests, infighting, ideological arguments, and now these latest dynamics between HTS and AQ factions since June—run counter to such a view. The dynamic between HTS and AQ is not similar to that between the Taliban and AQ, whose relationship has been tight and never foundered. HTS truly has created its own pole of jihadism outside the framework of the historical AQ network or the more contemporary IS network. What this means for the future of the broader movement is difficult to say since it does not appear (yet) that HTS has ambitions beyond Syria in comparison with the globalized networks of AQ and IS. The implications for al-Maqdisi are clearer. Considering the antipathy that both IS and now HTS have for him, al-Maqdisi’s influence continues to diminish due to the erosion in consensus amongst the broader jihadi movement over the past 15 years. And although there is no one who has likely eclipsed al-Maqdisi’s influence, it does not make sense anymore to say that al-Maqdisi is the most important jihadi ideologue in the world today when two of three jihadi poles are against him.

Rehabilitating the Bin‘aliyya: al-Maqdisi and the Scholarly Remnant of the Islamic State

Cole Bunzel December 11, 2019

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada al-Filastini, the two preeminent jihadi scholars living in Jordan, have repeatedly clashed in recent years over the proper scope and nature of Jihadi Salafism, the movement to which both helped give rise. While agreeing that the Islamic State is too extreme, they have departed over the issue of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former al-Qaida affiliate in Syria previously known as Jabhat al-Nusra. In short, al-Maqdisi has accused HTS of abandoning al-Qaida and diluting jihadi ideology, while Abu Qatada has praised HTS as the harbinger of a more practical and more inclusive jihadism. This has led to mutual recriminations. Al-Maqdisi and his allies routinely accuse Abu Qatada and his followers of “fusionism” (talfiq), that is, of attempting to fuse jihadi ideology with mainstream Islamism, including its tolerance of democracy and ideological diversity. The so-called “fusionists” (mulaffiqa), in turn, have cast al-Maqdisi and his friends as purveyors of “extremism” (ghuluww), that is, as being too inclined to engage in the excommunication (takfir) of fellow Muslims. In this view, al-Maqdisi is seen as too close in ideology to the Islamic State. In the words of one al-Maqdisi supporter, Abu Qatada is “the shaykh of fusionism” (shaykh al-talfiq), while in the words of one Abu Qatada supporter, al-Maqdisi is “the shaykh of extremism” (shaykh al-ghuluww).

Recently, the two men and their supporters have feuded over another matter, namely, the network of religious scholars previously associated with the Islamic State. Sometimes known as “the Bin‘ali current” or “the Bin‘aliyya,” these are men who, beginning with the eponymous Turki al-Bin‘ali himself, the head of the Islamic State’s Office of Research and Studies until his death in 2017, emerged as critics of the caliphate’s drift towards an even more extremist theology in 2016-2017. Those who survived the ensuing turmoil grew more critical still in 2018 and 2019, publishing numerous commentaries online accusing the Islamic State’s leaders of extremism and oppression. Ultimately, in early 2019, they turned against the caliphate entirely.

In October 2019, al-Maqdisi began expressing his admiration for al-Bin‘ali and the so-called Bin‘aliyya, praising them for opposing the Islamic State’s “extremism.” Predictably, Abu Qatada and his allies were up in arms at this ostensible embrace of a group of “Kharijites.” One of their number has speculated that al-Maqdisi is trying to form a new jihadi group.

Praising al-Bin‘ali

To be sure, this is not the first time that al-Maqdisi has spoken kindly of al-Bin‘ali. The latter, as will be recalled, was a student of al-Maqdisi’s and wrote prolifically for his website. The two fell out in 2014 over the matter of the Islamic State, which al-Bin‘ali had joined. Even though al-Bin‘ali, in 2015, accused al-Maqdisi of “falling away from the religion,” this did not prevent al-Maqdisi from eulogizing his former pupil upon the latter’s death in an airstrike in May 2017. In a brief note on Telegram, which included the phrase “may God have mercy on him,” al-Maqdisi praised al-Bin‘ali for having raised “objections to the extremists” in the Islamic State. At the same time, he was careful to dissociate himself from al-Bin‘ali’s “errors.”

It was Abu Qatada’s indirect praise for a certain Mauritanian Islamist, Muhammad al-Hasan Wald al-Dadaw, that inspired al-Maqdisi to return to the subject of al-Bin‘ali. On October 11, 2019, Abu Qatada reposted a Telegram message noting the death of al-Dadaw’s father and in so doing praising the son, who is known for his favorable view of democracy. (Al-Maqdisi has written several refutations of al-Dadaw; see, for instance, here.) Later the same day, al-Maqdisi responded on Telegram, remarking that al-Bin‘ali’s “sandal covered in dust” from fighting jihad is “better than an earth’s full of Wald al-Dadaw and the likes of him who argue on behalf of the idol-rulers and defend democracy.” Al-Bin‘ali, he wrote, “advised his state, condemned its errors, and sought reform.” He asked God to forgive al-Bin‘ali his trespasses and to reunite them in paradise.

Al-Maqdisi’s post touched off a new round of refutation and counter-refutation regarding al-Bin‘ali. The London-based Abu Mahmud al-Filastini, one of Abu Qatada’s chief supporters, retorted that al-Maqdisi was misrepresenting al-Bin‘ali as some kind of moderate. The reality, he contended, was that al-Bin‘ali’s differences with the senior Islamic State leadership were an intra-Kharijite affair: “Al-Bin‘ali to the last moment of his life proclaimed the unbelief of al-Qaida, the Taliban, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the religious scholars … and his final words contained a clear excommunication of Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaida.” This second point was a reference to an audio statement by al-Bin‘ali observing the degeneration of al-Qaida and describing al-Zawahiri as “the fool who is obeyed” (al-ahmaq al-muta‘). What is more, added Abu Mahmud, al-Bin‘ali had “disparaged” al-Maqdisi “in the worst possible terms,” as indeed he had. For instance, al-Bin‘ali described al-Maqdisi as “abominable” (khabith) in a letter sent to the Delegated Committe in May 2017.

Another response to al-Maqdisi’s post came from the Syrian Islamist scholar and HTS supporter ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Mahdi, who took exception to al-Maqdisi’s imagery. “It is never permitted to compare a Muslim to a sandal,” he wrote. Al-Maqdisi replied that it is indeed permitted in the case of Wald al-Dadaw and those like him who promote the polytheistic system of democracy.

On October 19, Abu Qatada himself entered the fray, writing an essay on his secondary Telegram channel, “The Pearls of Shaykh Abu Qatada,” and signing it “the administration.” In the essay, Abu Qatada chided al-Maqdisi for preferring “the Kharijite al-Bin‘ali” to the well-respected al-Dadaw and for excommunicating the latter. It was this quickness to engage in takfir, he averred, that had led al-Maqdisi’s students, al-Bin‘ali among them, to slander him and call him an unbeliever. “Don’t you see, o shaykh,” he continued, addressing al-Maqdisi, “that you have made very light of the matter of the extremists and their bloodshed?” “Don’t you see that your output in recent years has been confined to generating tensions and stirring up hatreds?”

The next day, al-Maqdisi returned fire with an essay of his own, published in like fashion on his own secondary Telegram channel. The essay derided Abu Qatada for trying to distance himself from a piece that was so obviously his. It was not true, al-Maqdisi claimed, that al-Bin‘ali had excommunicated him; nor was it true that he had excommunicated al-Dadaw. Abu Qatada, he shot back, was the one inciting hostilities, not him. “Don’t you see, o shaykh,” he wrote, imitating Abu Qatada’s language, “that you have begun to make very light of the matter of the defenders and advocates of democracy, endorsing many of its chief figures, even publicly proclaiming your love for them?” “Don’t you see, o shaykh, that most of your output in recent years has been devoted to arguing on behalf of the chief figures of democracy, venerating them, and asking God to have mercy on those of them who have died?”

To make things even more personal, al-Maqdisi recalled Abu Qatada’s enthusiastic support in the 1990s for the radical Algerian Armed Islamic Group, or Groupe islamique armé (GIA), including in particular his 1995 fatwa permitting the killing of women and children—“the likes of which not even the most recalcitrant extremists in our time have issued.” Al-Maqdisi reproached Abu Qatada for his refusal to retract this fatwa, as well as for claiming that his former views are entirely consonant with his present ones. The dispute between the two men would appear to be very deep indeed.

Praising the Bin‘aliyya

Following the exchange with Abu Qatada, al-Maqdisi began extending his praise to the other Islamic State scholars in al-Bin‘ali’s circle. On October 21, he shared a letter from al-Bin‘ali to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from January 2017, in which the former warned against a policy of appeasing the “extremists” in the Islamic State. In an accompanying commentary, al-Maqdisi described this as “part of the efforts and attempts of shaykh Turki al-Bin‘ali to push back against the influence of the extremists in the State,” noting that it had been shared with him by one or more of “the supporters of shaykh Turki who opposed the extremists alongside him.” Al-Maqdisi went on to describe these struggles at some length:

[Al-Bin‘ali] contended a great deal with the extremists of the State and opposed them, especially the minister of media, Abu Muhammad al-Furqan. Al-Furqan considered Turki a mortal enemy; the extremists were not pleased with Turki’s work in the research center [i.e., the Office of Research and Studies]. Thus they sought to restrict the authority of the research [center] and to weaken it, because Turki was working through it to confront their extremism, sometimes openly, sometimes through debate, and sometimes by complaining to al-Baghdadi and warning him, as in this document … Al-Bin‘ali represented the tie between the scholars and al-Baghdadi; he hoped and was determined to bring about reform, but al-Baghdadi forsook him.

A-Maqdisi then turned his attention to these other scholars:

The scholars in the State, or those known as the al-Bin‘ali current, were suppressed by the Media Department and its minister, al-Furqan. He punished them severely, to the point that some of them were imprisoned and killed. Among the distinguished scholars who stood up to extremism (and it is just that they be cited, mentioned, and not eradicated physically, ideationally, or literarily) were:

  • Abu Hafs al-Hamdani al-Yamani (killed)
  • Abu Ya‘qub al-Maqdisi (killed)
  • Abu Muhammad al-Masri (most likely killed)
  • Abu Mus‘ab al-Sahrawi (killed)
  • Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Zarqawi (fled, then killed by the State’s security officials)
  • Bilal al-Shawashi (fled)
  • Abu ‘Isa al-Darir (fled)

And many more besides them. The people of the State ought to know why it was that they were killed or fled! Among them were outstanding and distinguished scholars. One of them [i.e., Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Zarqawi] was around during the [Islamic] State of Iraq and was a judge for Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi … May God have mercy on those of them who were killed, and may God confirm on the clear truth those who have fled.

As if anticipating the ensuing criticism, al-Maqdisi added that “none of this conflicts with our previously known reservations and well-known refutations of the errors of the State Group.”

In the following days, al-Maqdisi continued his trumpeting of the Bin‘aliyya by sharing more relevant files. On October 23, he shared the recently published “testimony” of a former Islamic State scholar, Abu Jandal al-Ha’ili, regarding the massacre of intended “penitents” in Iraq in 2014. Abu Jandal, according to al-Maqdisi, had worked closely with al-Bin‘ali and was one of the scholars who “condemned the oppression and transgressions” of the Islamic State. A week later, al-Maqdisi posted a short biography of the Yemeni Islamic State scholar Abu Hafs al-Hamdani, authored by an anonymous admirer of al-Hamdani’s. A few days after that, on November 3, he shared an essay by the pseudonymous Ibn Jubayr, likely a former Islamic State scholar who fled eastern Syria in 2018, titled “The Collapse of the Fiction.” The essay is a refutation of the Islamic State’s appointment of a new and anonymous caliph. Its importance, al-Maqdisi said, lies in the fact that it is “an internal criticism.” He was not sharing it, he emphasized, because he agreed with it in its entirety, but because it was “from within the State.”

By sharing and commenting on the these works, al-Maqdisi revealed not only his enthusiasm for this group of erstwhile Islamic State scholars but also his familiarity with their struggles and writings. Furthermore, he showed himself to be well plugged in to their network. When one of the Bin‘aliyya, Abu Ya‘qub al-Maqdisi, was executed by the senior Islamic State leadership back in 2018, he was charged with, among other things, communicating with al-Maqdisi. The charge is not so difficult to believe.

A new group?

On November 5, one of Abu Qatada’s allies, a certain Abu ‘Umar ibn Sihman al-Najdi, came out with an essay attacking al-Maqdisi’s recent efforts on behalf of the Bin‘aliyya. Titled “al-Maqdisi and the Bin‘aliyya: Refuting al-Maqdisi’s Rehabilitation of Kharijite Bin‘ali Current,” it sought to debunk the notion that al-Bin‘ali and his allies were waging a war against extremism in the Islamic State. Al-Bin‘ali, the author wrote, did not oppose the takfir of the Taliban and al-Qaida or the shedding of innocent Muslim blood. What al-Bin‘ali was against, as seen in his letter to al-Baghdadi, was the notion of chain takfir, or takfir in infinite regress (al-takfir bi’l-tasalsul), which some members of the Islamic State were promoting and which was leading some of them to pronounce takfir on al-Baghdadi himself.

Speculating as to his motives, the author mused that al-Maqdisi was dissatisfied with al-Qaida and the Taliban, deeming them insufficiently ideologically pure. His cheerleading for the Bin‘aliyya was thus part of an effort “to create a new entity that he could defend” without embarrassment, one that would be “an effective alternative on the ground.”

Later in the month, on November 20, Abu Qatada wrote an essay referring to al-Maqdisi’s support for the “remnants of the Kharijites,” warning against their reintegration before they are made to repent. In his characteristically oblique style, he denounced the efforts of “the one who is known for making light of extremism” (i.e., al-Maqdisi) to rehabilitate and organize the Kharijite remnant (i.e., the Bin‘aliyya).

According to one member of the Bin‘ali current, Abu Qatada had caught wind that al-Maqdisi might be trying to form a new group. A number of mostly Jordanian jihadis had sent a letter to al-Maqdisi and Bilal Khuraysat, a scholar associated with Hurras al-Din (the new Syrian al-Qaida branch), asking for their help in establishing a “group” (jama‘a) that would be free of both the “dilution” of al-Qaida and the “extremism” of the Islamic State.

The letter in question, which was later published, did not in fact propose the formation of a “group” (jama‘a). It did, however, ask al-Maqdisi and Khuraysat, and “all the shaykhs of the intermediate path,” to “bring together the monotheist brothers under one banner, far from the unbelieving parties such as the Brotherhood group … and from the waywardness of extremism and takfir of the Muslim masses.” The authors, who described themselves as former Islamic State supporters and students of Mahdi Zaydan (a Jordanian scholar who joined the Islamic State in 2014 and died in 2017), expressed their disapproval of the “creed” of the Taliban and the “dilution” of the “Brotherhoodized” al-Qaida.

The letter was sent to a media agency affiliated with Hurras al-Din, the “Bayan Foundation” (Mu’assasat Bayan). An image of the correspondence on Telegram shows a representative of Mu’assasat Bayan saying that he showed the letter to Khuraysat, and that the latter sent it to al-Maqdisi. Curiously, Khuraysat denied any knowledge of the letter, as did al-Maqdisi. One of Abu Qatada’s supporters thereafter collected these sources in an essay accusing al-Maqdisi and Khuraysat of lying.

The jihadi homeless

As this correspondence suggests, a number of jihadi intellectuals are currently without an organizational home, having been turned off by the perceived moderation of al-Qaida and the hyper-extremism of the Islamic State. The Bin‘aliyya fall into this category, as do the men who wrote to al-Maqdisi and Khuraysat, these  “shaykhs of the intermediate path.”

Al-Maqdisi would appear to be the natural leader of this current, though some among the Bin‘aliyya, it is worth noting, still bear him ill will. In time, these wounds may heal, but none of this necessarily portends the creation of a new group. What it does suggest is that the two leading groups in the Sunni jihadi universe—al-Qaida and the Islamic State—are out of step, each in its own way, with the “intermediate path” represented by al-Maqdisi. In the short term, this is likely to limit these groups’ appeal; in the long term, it may well leave the door open for the emergence of an alternative.

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