Tag Archives: Osama bin Laden

The Jihad Factor in Bosnia

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 20 January 2021

Last week, as one of his last acts in office, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech about Iran’s collaboration with Al-Qaeda. It was unfortunate that Pompeo did this at this time and in this way, with such blatant political intent, because the factual content of Pompeo’s speech was unassailable: the Islamic Republic’s long relationship with Al-Qaeda does stretch back about three decades, the killing of Al-Qaeda’s deputy Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (Abu Muhammad al-Masri) in Tehran in August 2020 is demonstrative of a shift in the strategic positioning of the organisation away from Pakistan to Iran, and even the part of Pompeo’s speech that got the most pushback—about Tehran’s contact with the 9/11 killers—is not controversial and is not new.

Unmentioned in Pompeo’s speech was one of the crucibles that forged this relationship, and forged Al-Qaeda into something more than a regional menace, namely the Bosnian war of 1992-5. Continue reading →

The Death of Al-Qaeda’s Leaders and the Iran Factor

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 November 2020

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (Abu Muhammad al-Masri) and Ayman al-Zawahiri. // Image sources: FBI, AFP

Credible reports over the last few days indicate that Al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is dead, and there are even clearer reports that two of his most senior deputies have been killed. The terrorist network itself, however, will survive. Al-Qaeda has, in the last ten years, survived the killing of its charismatic founder Usama bin Laden, the upheaval of the “Arab spring”, and the rise of the Islamic State (IS)—all of them greater challenges than whatever short-term turbulence might attend the succession process. Continue reading →

Iran Admits Collaborating with Al-Qaeda in Bosnia

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 February 2020

The Mujahideen Battalion (El-Mudžahid) in Bosnia in the early 1990s [image source]

The clerical regime in Iran established a relationship with Al-Qaeda shortly after its foundation thirty years ago. One of Tehran’s and Al-Qaeda’s first joint projects was in Bosnia during the war (1992-5), where Iran helped to make Al-Qaeda a truly global phenomenon—with a foothold in Europe. For various reasons—some well-intended, some not—this fact has been either unknown or (shall we say) “controversial” in the West in the decades since. It is, therefore, important to note that there have been several recent revelations from in and around the Iranian regime itself that confirm the Islamic Republic’s involvement in the Balkans in the early 1990s. Continue reading →

Qassem Sulaymani and the Future of Iran’s Imperial Project

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 7 January 2020

At 1 AM on 3 January, an American drone strike killed the head of Iran’s Quds Force, the division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) charged with exporting the Islamic revolution, and his Iraqi deputy, Jamal al-Ibrahimi (Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis). Sulaymani was the strategic driver of Iran’s expansionist policy in the Middle East, as well as the orchestrator of its terrorism and assassinations further afield. Unlike with the killing of Al-Qaeda’s Usama bin Laden in 2011 or the Islamic State’s Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) in October, where the dynamics shifted little, Sulaymani’s death opens up questions about the direction in which the Middle East will now move. Continue reading →

The First Speech of Islamic State Spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 7 November 2019

Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) [right] appearing in an Islamic State video alongside Tarkhan Batirashvili (Abu Umar al-Shishani, 3 June 2017, displaying a scene from 2014 when IS demolished the borders between Iraq and Syria. Falaha was killed in August 2016. It is common for IS to hold back pictures and footage of its leaders for time-spans that can reach over a decade.

Taha Falaha was the effective deputy of the Islamic State (IS) when he was killed on 30 August 2016, by which time he was also overseeing the foreign attacks campaign by IS and serving as governor of the IS-held areas in Syria. Likely, however, Falaha, is best-known internationally by his kunya, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, and for his role as IS’s official spokesman, particularly his speech in September 2014 inciting Muslims in the West to commit terrorist attacks against their native countries. Falaha had been recruited in Aleppo in 2002 by IS’s founder, Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) and steadily advanced through IS’s media department, eventually being announced as the official spokesman with his first speech, released on 1 August 2011. An English-language transcript of that first speech, an hour-long audio message entitled, al-Dawlat al-Islam Baqiya (“The Islamic State Remains” or “The Islamic State Endures”), was released by “Ansar al-Mujahideen English Forum Language and Translation Department” and was posted to their forum on 4 March 2012. The transcript is reproduced below with some editions from the Arabic transcript and some important parts highlighted in bold. Continue reading →

The Memoir of a British Spy in Al-Qaeda

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 July 2019

The main issue with that Nine Lives has to overcome is the one that has attended Aimen Dean (a pseudonym) since he went public in March 2015 with an interview he gave to the BBC, claiming he had been a British spy within Al-Qaeda between 1998 and 2006. That issue is overcoming the doubts about his story. Nine Lives goes a long way to solving this by bringing in Paul Cruickshank, the editor-in-chief of CTC Sentinel, one of the premier academic resources in the terrorism field, and Tim Lister, a terrorism-focused journalist with CNN, as co-authors. As well as helping structure the book from Dean’s memories, the two co-authors note they had been able to “corroborate key details” that convinced them: “In the years immediately leading up to and following 9/11, Aimen Dean was by far the most important spy the West had inside al-Qaeda”. Continue reading →

The Reappearance of the Caliph

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 10 May 2019

The leader of the Islamic State, Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) appearing in an Islamic State propaganda video, “In the Hospitality of Amir al-Mu’mineen, 29 April 2019

The leader of the Islamic State (IS), Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), appeared in an eighteen-minute video on 29 April, the first time Al-Ibrahim has appeared since 4 July 2014 when he gave the Friday prayer at the Nuri Mosque in Mosul, days after IS had announced the restoration of the caliphate. Al-Ibrahim has given semi-regular speeches over the years, but with these two exceptions they have been audio addresses. The video was released by IS’s premier media outlet, Al-Furqan Media Foundation, which is also the group’s oldest media platform. An English translation was released by IS’s Halummu outlet and is republished below with some interesting and/or important sections, plus names of IS operatives, highlighted in bold. Continue reading →

Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Terrorism

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 29 April 2019

In the wake of the horrific bombings by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Sri Lanka on Eastern Sunday, which killed 250 people, an image has circulated purporting to show a terrorist connected to the attack in the company of the Qatar-based cleric of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. In fact, the image shows no such thing. But Al-Qaradawi’s influence in creating the ideology that motivates Islamist terrorists cannot be doubted. Continue reading →

Al-Qaeda and Global Terror

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 16 April 2019

Ahmad al-Shara (Abu Muhammad al-Jolani) [image source]

Several years ago, Al-Qaeda made a strategic decision to refrain from foreign terrorist operations, refocusing away from these global spectaculars towards integrating more closely into local conflicts. The 2014 rampage across Iraq and Syria by Al-Qaeda’s rebellious former Iraqi branch, the Islamic State (ISIS), provided both the opportunity and additional incentive for a long-mediated rebranding effort. However, there have recently been signs of a shift back towards external terror operations, just as ISIS undergoes a setback and Al-Qaeda has a chance to reassert its dominance over the jihadi scene. Continue reading →