Militant Leadership Monitor - Volume I Issue 4

TTP COMMANDERS PROVIDE THEIR OWN PROOF OF LIFE

Several Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commanders whom the Pakistani Interior Ministry claimed were killed in an aerial assault earlier this year have been providing their own proof of life—their voices. In early March, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad called local reporters in Pakistan to let them know he was unscathed in a recent offensive. “I am alive and same is the case with the two other commanders, Qari Ziaur Rahman and Fateh [Mohammed],” Faqir Mohammed assured news outlets [The News International [Islamabad], March 12). Several weeks later Faqir Mohammed’s colleague, Qari Ziaur Rahman, made a similar phone call saying, “I think you would now believe that I am alive as I am personally speaking to you” (The News International [Islamabad], April 13). Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik had trumpeted Fateh Mohammed’s demise in early March as a sure thing, while heavily speculating that Maulvi Faqir Mohammad and Qari Ziaur Rahman had also been “most likely” killed (Dawn, March 7). Malik proudly announced from Peshawar that Vice amir Maulvi Faqir Mohammad was killed along with 30 other fighters in a barrage by Pakistani military gunships in an anti-Taliban offensive launched in the Mohmand Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (The Nation [Lahore], March 6). Faqir Mohammed later telephoned Pakistani daily Dawn and said defiantly, “Qari Zia and Fateh are alive. We were not there,” Faqir Mohammad said. “We are still in Bajaur [Agency]” (Dawn, March 12). TTP commanders purportedly fled Bajaur Agency to Mohmand Agency while the

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IN THIS ISSUE:

BRIEFs.......................................................................................................................................1

umaR patEk: IndonEsIa’s most wantEd By Zachary abuza......................................................................................................................2

In thE shadow oF al-ZaRqawI: a pRoFIlE oF thE saudI mIlItant salEh al-qaRa’wI By murad Batal al-shishani......................................................................................................4. aqap’s man In thE south: nasIR al-wuhayshI By Rafid Fadhil Mohammed Ali...............................................................................................6

kIshEnjI: a pRoFIlE oF thE lEadER oF thE IndIan maoIst InsuRgEncy By Derek Henry Flood..............................................................................................................8

Volume I u Issue 4 u APRIl 30, 2010

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Maoist Rebels

Militant Leadership Monitor Volume I u Issue 4 u April 30, 2010

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Bajaur offensive was underway, believing Mohmand could have been a temporary safe haven.

All three men are significant TTP leaders. Afghan Qari Ziaur Rahman’s claim to infamy was that he gave Osama bin Laden instruction about the life and times of Prophet Mohammed (Asia Times, May 23, 2008) and that, compared to many other Taliban higher ups of his generation, he is both literate and learned. For Faqir Mohammed, once a disciple of Sufi Mohammed and temporary leader of the TTP following the assassination of Baitullah Mehsud (BBC News, August 19, 2009), denying his officially announced death is a practiced routine. In early August 2008, Faqir Mohammed, who is the primary TTP commander in Bajaur (Reuters, March 6), called news outlets in Pakistan to let them know that he was alive after an airstrike in Bajaur Agenncy on a vehicle in which he was thought to be traveling killed several of his companions (GEO TV, August 15, 2008). How soon these men, if alive as claimed, will return to the battlefield is a vexing question for both the Pakistani military leadership and NATO forces in the adjacent Afghan provinces west of the Durand Line.

NEW KUNDUZ SHADOW GOVERNOR KILLED

In February, Militant Leadership Monitor reported that the Taliban’s Shadow Governor for northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, Mullah Abdul Salam, “a spiritual leader to the insurgents” was arrested in Pakistan (Der Spiegel, February 18). Now, Mullah Yar Mohammed, also referred to as Mullah Noor Mohammed, who many believe was tapped to replace the out-of-action Salam, has reportedly been killed by Afghan and International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) in the province on April 26 (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, April 29). It is not clear whether Yar Mohammed was anointed by what remains of the Quetta shura to take over critical insurgent operations in Kunduz or whether he rose to recent prominence of his own volition (RTT News, April 29). According to a now unclassified internal state department cable online from George Washington University’s National Security Archives [1], Mullah Yar Mohammed was a Durrani Pashtun from the Popalzai subgroup and he demonstrated an independent, perhaps disobedient streak when he served at various posts in the Taliban administration from 1995-2001 under Mullah Mohammed Omar. Yar Mohammed had served as governor of Herat province after the ousting of mujahideen leader and notorious warlord Ismail Khan but was removed from his post and sent to lead Ghazni province clear on the other side of Afghanistan.

Yar Mohammed had fought in the anti-Soviet jihad as a member of Hezb-I-Islami under the command of the ruthless Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the 1980s and joined the Taliban movement in the mid-1990s. The reasoning for Mullah Omar moving Yar Mohammed may have been to prevent Yar Mohammed “from developing an independent power base in Herat.” [2] This was likely a way for Omar to monopolize control and ensure that a challenger with a strong personality and following did not emerge to challenge him within the shura’s power structure. Later Yar Mohammed was listed as the Minister of Communication during the regime’s demise in 2001 (Dawn, October 7, 2001). Yar Mohammed may have seen the disarray within the Quetta core after the string of arrests in Pakistan as a chance to lunge for power in one of the regions most critical to the Taliban in destabilizing northern Afghanistan and keeping ISAF busy in the north. ISAF issued a press release from its Kabul headquarters stating that, “a senior militant commander of Kunduz province and two senior advisors were killed in a precision air strike in northern Kunduz this morning [Monday, April 26]” and described the men as traveling 18 miles northeast of the provincial capital when they were liquidated by an airstrike. [3]

Notes:

[1] A PDF of the original cable can be accessed here: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB295/doc04.pdf

[2] Ibid.

[3] The original ISAF statement can be seen here: http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=news/news_show.php&id=48696

Umar Patek: Indonesia’s Most WantedBy Zachary Abuza

On March 10, Indonesian authorities killed one of the most wanted members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), Joko Pitoyo, commonly known as Dulmatin, in a shootout in a Jakarta internet café (see Militant Leadership


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Monitor, March 2010, Christian Science Monitor, March 10). The presence of Dulmatin in Indonesia was highly significant and portended a dire need for leaders with Afghan experience to rebuild JI’s depleted ranks, especially following the September 2009 death of Noordin Mohammad Top. Dulmatin’s death is also significant because it catapults his compatriot, Umar Patek, to the top ranks of JI.

Dulmatin and Umar Patek were the deputy field commanders for the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people. The 40 year-old Dulmatin was a protégé of JI’s top bomb-maker, Dr. Azahari bin Husin, who himself was killed when counter-terrorism authorities raided his safe house in 2007. Patek, also known as Umar Kecil, is Javanese of Yemeni-extraction. Like Dulmatin, he was born in 1970 in Central Java. The two trained in al- Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s before returning to Indonesia. In addition to being close friends, they were brothers-in-law as Dulmatin married Patek’s sister.

According to Nasir Bin Abbas, the former head of JI’s Mantiqi III, in 1995 Umar Patek was dispatched to Mindanao to succeed him, and to work with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). By 1998, a full-scale training facility for JI members, known as Camp Hudaibiyah, had opened. Patek returned to Indonesia, around 1999-2000.

Following the 2002 Bali bombing, the two fled Indonesia in mid-2003, and arrived in the southern Philippines where they were first given sanctuary in camps run by the MILF, according to Dulmatin’s wife, who was arrested by Philippine authorities in an October 2006 in the town of Patikul on Jolo island in a raid where they sought to capture Dulmatin (Mindanao Examiner, October 9, 2006). There they trained both JI and MILF members, until late-2004, when their continued presence was impeding the MILF’s peace talks with Manila and bringing unwanted attention to the MILF’s continued ties with JI. Umar Patek and Dulmatin were forced out of the MILF’s territory and sought refuge with the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) in the Sulu archipelago, in early 2005, where they remained until sometime between 2008 and 2009. In the Philippines, the two were implicated in a string of bombings throughout the last decade.

Despite his post-Bali exile in the southern Philippines, Patek remained very engaged in JI’s operations in Indonesia. Dulmatin focused on bomb making and

logistics, while Patek was responsible for recruitment, fundraising and cell formation.

Patek maintained active communications in 2003-2005 with Abdullah Sunata, a leader of a Central Javanese cell, and a former head of the Ambon branch of a JI-linked civil society organization KOMPAK. [1] On Patek’s orders, Sunata dispatched Indonesian militants to Mindanao for training. [2] Indonesian counter-terrorism officials broke up Sunata’s cell in June and July 2005, arresting 17 people in total. Sunata admitted, he “was tasked by Patek to solicit funds for terror arracks in the Philippines and recruit suicide bombers in Indonesia to be sent to central Mindanao.” Through Sunata’s cell, Patek had a limited role in organizing the September 9, 2004 bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

The communications between Patek and Sunata revealed a fascinating exchange of funds and materials between the cells in the Philippines and Indonesia. Patek was soliciting funds for both JI and the ASG’s operations, including from a Saudi Arabian donor known as Abu Mohammad. One of Patek’s letters warned his colleagues in Indonesia that the ASG might revert to kidnappings if they could not get funds from external supporters- something that the ASG has eschewed since 2002-2003. In return, the Indonesian cell wanted assistance in purchasing explosives as well as increased training for members in the southern Philippines. [3]

At some point in 2008-2009, Dulmatin slipped back into Indonesia. Indonesian counterterrorism police learned of his presence following a February 22 raid of a terrorist training camp in the westernmost province of Aceh. There is some speculation that Dulmatin’s return was necessitated by the September 2009 death of Noordin Mohammad Top, which created a leadership vacuum, especially among the hard-line faction that articulates a strategy that focuses on Western targets. Although Noordin’s followers were able to perpetrate simultaneous suicide bombings on two luxury hotels in Jakarta in July 2009, their last successful attack was a triple bombing in Bali in 2005. [4] Though the group came close to perpetrating attacks in 2006-2008, it was thwarted and crippled by arrests, causing a rift amongst the organization’s leaders.

Noordin Mohammad Top established a breakaway group, al-Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago, to signal his dissatisfaction of the proponents within JI of a strategy of sectarian bloodletting. The camp in Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, was ostensibly run by “al-Qaeda in Aceh,”


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and in a recruitment video put online, the members actually denigrate JI leaders as being too moderate (AP, March 16). The Afghan-trained Dulmatin, who had front line experience in the southern Philippines against the American troops working alongside and training the Armed Forces of the Philippines, was an obvious choice to succeed Noordin Mohammad Top.

It is unclear whether Umar Patek joined Dulmatin. Although it is unlikely that they would have traveled together for security reasons, there is considerable suspicion that such close colleagues would remain together. But others are not so sure. In March, Indonesian police asserted that Patek remained in Sulu province in the far southern Philippines with the ASG (Jakarta Post, March 27). If that is the case, with Dulmatin’s death, there is even greater pressure on Umar Patek to return to Indonesia to fill JI’s current leadership void if he is not already there.

Patek, along with Indonesian national named Zulkarnaen, is one of the last senior JI commanders with significant experience in the original Afghan al-Qaeda camps and long standing ties to the international jihadist network and its donors. His history of attacks on the “far enemy” – Western targets in the region – including US forces in the southern Philippines – makes him a considerable risk, and therefore, one of the region’s most wanted men and the present speculation on his precise whereabouts only heightens his infamy in Southeast Asia.

Zachary Abuza is one of the leading scholars on Terrorism in Southeast Asia. He is currently Associate Professor for Political Science and International Relations at Simmons College.

Notes:

[1] Komite Aksi Penanggulangan Akibat Krisis- The Action Committee for Crisis Response- An Islamic charity based in Central Sulawesi Province, Indonesia that is also involved in jihadist activities (The Age, October 5, 2005).

[2] A three-man cell was arrested in the Philippines in December 2004 and a two-man cell was arrested in Malaysia in June 2005.[3] On October 13, 2005, Indonesian authorities arrested three Malaysians and an Indonesian who were caught smuggling 175 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, 900

detonators and fuses, entering Nunukan, Kalimantan province (Indonesia) from Sabah.state (Malaysia) on the island of Borneo.

[4] On October 1, 2005, a series of three simultaneous suicide bombs attributed to JI rocked the resort island of Bali killing approximately 25 at restaurants in Kuta beach and Jimbaran beach (ABC News [Australia], October 2, 2005).

In the Shadow of al-Zarqawi: A Profile of the Saudi Militant Saleh al-Qara’wiBy Murad Batal al-Shishani

The late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, who was killed on June 7, 2006 in a U.S. missile strike, always had ambitions to

create a Salafi-jihadi movement in the Levant region. [1] Zarqawi worked to achieve his goal since the establishment of his al-Matar military training camp in Afghanistan’s Herat province in 1999. At al-Matar, he was recruiting and training individuals primarily from the Levant region to form the now-defunct Jund al-Sham (“Soldiers of the Levant”) (Reuters, July 15, 2007) with the express purpose of exporting jihad to their home countries (Lebanon Wire, March 28, 2005). Inspiring many Arab fighters in Iraq through his violent activities, his anti-Shi’a and anti-Western ambitions became heightened after his death as the returnees from the Iraq theater continued to spread his virulent ideas. A small but dangerous group of radical jihadis who consider themselves the heirs of Abu Mus`ab al-Zarqawi’s legacy are now focusing their efforts throughout the Levant region. This group is referred to as the neo-Zarqawists. Saudis have consistently represented the majority of young Arabs who have volunteered to fight American and allied troops in Iraq. Their numbers began to increase in Iraq because of pressure being applied by the Saudi security services on domestic jihadists who fought in multiple clashes with the Kingdom from 2003-2007. The core jihadists of Saudi Arabia were initially reluctant to go to Iraq, preferring to fight in the “the land of the


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two holy mosques.” Opinions supporting this notion can be found in the magazine that was considered to be the mouthpiece of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, “Sawt al-Jihad”. One of the most active contributors to Sawat al-Jihad was Saleh al-Qarawi.

The 27 year-old al-Qarawi was born in the ultra conservative Saudi city of Buraidah in al-Qasim province. According to friends, he was not especially pious at the time of the 9/11 attacks against the eastern United States but, within months of the aftermath of that attack, he began to gravitate toward “extremists ideas.” In 2003 he drifted away from his childhood friends and became fond of speeches and lessons given by a figure named Sheikh Sulaiman al-Elwan, who was later jailed for “inciting youngsters to go to Iraq for fighting” (Islamonline.net, February 11, 2009).

Around this time, al-Qarawi moved north to a broken Iraq. He reportedly took part in bitter fighting in Falluja, and then Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi sent him away from the battlefield for “something to do” in Syria (al-faloja.net, April 4) [2], where he was arrested and handed back to his country’s authorities who jailed him for two months before he left for UAE using a fraudulent passport. The Saudi authorities claim that he has used up to 14 aliases in his movements and the Saudis have stated that he has been based in Iran since September 2006. They also report that al-Qarawi is trained to use electronically-controlled explosives, and that he is the crucial link between al-Qaeda in Iraq and Lebanon (Asharq al-Awsat, February 5, 2009, Islamonline.net, February 11, 2009, Okaz, September 15, 2009).

In an interview published on jihadi web forums, al-Qarawi confirmed that he was sent by Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi to facilitate activities outside of Iraq, especially facilitating the flow of fighters into Iraq from abroad. He was allegedly responsible for organizing the escape of seven jihadis from al-Malaz prison in the Saudi capital Riyadh before smuggling them to either Iraq or Lebanon. [3]

In February 2009, al-Qarawi appeared as number 34 on a list of the 85 most-wanted jihadists in Saudi Arabia. His whereabouts remain unknown. He said vaguely that he is in “the land of Allah,” without giving any clues to his location. [4] His family members stated that they received a phone call from him on September 4, 2009, two years after his disappearance and a few days after the attempted assassination of Saudi Deputy Interior Minister the Prince Muhammad bin Nayef by an al-

Qaeda operative (see Militant Leadership Monitor, February 2010). Al-Qarawi’s father said that his son told him he is in Afghanistan. When his father dialed the same number it was not an Afghan one but another country code that the elder Qarawi did not reveal. (Okaz, September 15, 2009).

Al-Qarawi seems to be a seminal figure in today’s configuration of al-Qaeda. Aside from being one of the operatives that was closely allied to al-Zarqawi, he is also now rooted in al-Qaeda central in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region since his marriage to Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah’s daughter, which took place while he was hiding in Iran. Al-Hakaymah was one of the key leaders of the Egyptian terrorist group al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah (G.I.), leading a merger with al-Qaeda that was refused by the mainstream leadership of G.I. Such a divisive merger shows how easily al-Qaeda generates its new operatives by splitting older organizations and pulling factions into their orbit.

Al-Qarawi appears to be in charge of al-Qaeda foot soldiers in the Levant region with a particular focus on Lebanon. In his latest interview, he confirmed several reports about the possible involvement of al-Qaeda in Iraq in the launching of missiles into northern Israel. He also, as one of the most militantly anti-Shia neo-Zarqawist leaders, criticized Hezbollah’s position, stating that the “rafidah” [5] -- a derisive term used by fundamentalist Sunnis to describe Shi’ites -- are defending Israeli borders. He considers the Sunni communities in Lebanon and Syria to be the victims of Shi’a ascendancy, arguing that Sunnis should not listen to “enemies”, and that the jihadis are not against them. Al-Qarawi threatened to attack the Lebanese army and UNIFIL peacekeepers [6], and sent a message to Gazans promising them that they would not be forgotten. He has asked the jihadis in the Levant to work on gaining the trust of local people using grassroots techniques, and warned them of being lured into irrational behavior. [7]

Al-Qarawi is one of the leading operatives of the neo-Zarqawist school of thought and his prominence is an indicator of the increasing importance of the Levant in the strategy of al-Qaeda and affiliated Salafi-jihadi movements. The role of the neo-Zarqawists is expected to strengthen in the near term as those indoctrinated in Zarqawist ideology disperse from the battlegrounds of central Iraq and move across the greater region.

Murad Batal al-Shishani is an Islamic groups and terrorism issues analyst based in London. He is a


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specialist on Islamic Movements in Chechnya and in the Middle East.

Notes:

[1] The Levant, known as Sham in Arabic, consists of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine/Israel, southern Turkey’s Hatay Province, and sometimes can include Iraq’s western reaches and the northern Sinai peninsula in Egypt.

[2] Interview with Saleh al-Qarawi online at Al-Fajr Media Center (Arabic), April 4. http://shamikh1.net/vb/showthread.php?p=347284[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Rafidah is a derisive term applied by Sunni fundamentalists and sectarian militants to Shi’ites whom the consider “deserters of Islam’s true path”.

[6] United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon-UNIFIL was created by the UN Security Council in March 1978 to confirm Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, restore international peace and security and assist the Lebanese Government in restoring its effective authority in the area. http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unifil/.

[7] Al-Fajr Media Center. Op.cit.

AQAP’s Man in the South: Nasir al-WuhayshiBy Rafid Fadhil Mohammed Ali

In January 2009, Nasir al- Wuhayshi (a.k.a Abu Basir) appeared on a video to announce the merger between al-Qaeda branches in Saudi Arabia and Yemen under

his command. The new organization was given the name Qaedat al-Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula, or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Wuhayshi

was surrounded by three leaders of AQAP, his fellow Yemeni Qasim al-Rimi, who was reportedly killed in an airstrike in January (Yemen Observer, January 16) and the Saudis Said al-Shihri and Mohammed al-Ofi. Each of the four men made a statement about the evolution of their group (Al-Jazeera, January 29, 2009). [1] The leadership of AQAP made it clear that, in addition to targeting the near enemy in Sana’a and Riyadh, it would target Western interests and ultimately the West itself. But before the end of the year, the organization went even further, conducting the most serious terrorist operation to affect the American homeland since 9/11.

Nasir Abdul Kareem al-Wuhayshi was born 34 years ago in the town of Mukayris, which was part of the South Yemeni governorate of Abyan. The area is now part of the northern governorate of al-Bayda after Yemen was united in 1990. In a rare interview with the Yemeni journalist Abdul Elah al-Shayea [2], al-Wuhayshi talked about his personal history after he decamped from his native Yemen and traveled to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s:

I stayed in the Taliban’s Afghanistan for about five years. With Allah’s grace we lived under that state… After we withdrew from Torah Bora in 2002, I left Afghanistan and went to Iran. I stayed in the areas of the Sunni community inside Iran until the rafidah [2] arrested me. The Iranians kept me in custody for about one month and a half and then turned me over to the Yemeni government.

During those five years al- Wuhayshi was Osama Bin Laden’s secretary. But this fact remained hidden until al- Wuhayshi assumed his position as the leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen. He became the head of the group (amir) while in prison in 2006.

While the group was struggling after a series of setbacks between 2003 and 2006, al-Wuhayshi and 22 other inmates escaped from their prison in Sana’a in February 2006 (Asia Times, January 8). Although many of the runners surrendered, were captured or killed, al-Wuhayshi and his most trusted lieutenant Qasim al-Rimi (a.k.a Abu Huraira al-Sana’ani) stayed on the run and managed to rebuild the organization. The group developed significantly under al- Wuhayshi. (see Terrorism Focus, March 18, 2008), launching a number of attacks, mainly on tourists and Yemeni forces but also on the American embassy in Sana’a, which it attacked twice in 2008. (Alwasatnews.com, September 18, 2008)


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As a leader of al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, al-Wuhayshi has been very ambitious. In 2008, the group changed its name to al-Qaeda in South Arabian Peninsula. The escalating economic and military difficulties the Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh was facing created the circumstances that al-Wuhayshi needed to consolidate the presence of his group; Yemen was under pressure from the Houthi rebellion in the north and the secessionist movement in the south.

Under al-Wuhayshi, AQAP has been very adept at producing its own brand of literature and propaganda. The group started its bi-monthly magazine Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of the Battles) in late 2007. In addition to al-Wuhayshi, many leaders, scholars and activists of AQAP contribute to the online publication, which can be found on various Islamist websites. The content propagates AQAP’s views on contemporary and theological issues facing those in the convoluted jihadist landscape.

Al-Qaeda’s New Weapon

The failed assassination attempt on the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef was executed using a bizarre a new weapon. The assassin, Mohammed al-Assiri (a.k.a Abu al-Khair) was able to pass through the security search with explosives planted inside his body. When he met with bin Nayef, in the Prince’s own house, he looked clean and clear to the guards (see Militant Leadership Monitor, February 2010).

Al-Wuhayshi then urged his followers to use the new formula and tactic. In the eleventh issue of Sada al-Malahim, published in September-October 2009, al- Wuhayshi’s wrote an article entitled “War is deception.” It centred on lauding the assassination attempt on bin Nayef. But al-Wuhayshi also outlined the new tactic, to be used again about two months later in a failed attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian student trained in Yemen, who, on Christmas Day, tried to blow up an airplane traveling between Amsterdam and Detroit just minutes before it landed. Al-Wuhayshi wrote:

You do not need to make a big effort or a huge amount of money to manufacture 10 Grams or so of these explosives. And do not waste much time looking for the raw material, they are in your mother’s kitchen. Manufacture it as a bomb to throw, a time bomb, an electric device, a picture, a paper folder or an envelope.

More significantly, al-Wuhayshi went on to list the favorite targets for such attacks including airplanes and airports:

Blow it up on any target of evil; intelligence headquarters, a prince, a minister, a crusader (Christian especially Western) wherever you find those. Also explode them in the airports or the airlines of the western crusade countries which participated in the war against Islam. Or target residential compounds or underground trains of those countries. You will find the way if you think and depend on Allah. And do not worry that those explosives could be discovered after you hide them properly. It is impossible to discover them.

AQAP refuses to label the two attacks as thwarted efforts. They argue that they both succeeded on the grounds that they shocked aviation security and returned America to the atmosphere of anxiety and fear spawned by 9/11, despite the untold sums of taxpayer funds and manpower efforts that have been spent since that era to consolidate the security situation.

The Palestinian Question

Long before the emergence of al-Qaeda, the Palestinian question has been a central challenge within circles of Salafi-jihadi thought in the Muslim world. They frequently had to answer fellow Muslims asking different versions of the same question: why do you not fight the Israelis in Palestine?

Al-Wuhayshi has placed the ongoing Palestinian crisis at the centerpiece of his propaganda campaign. A video accnouncing the merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al-Qaeda to form AQAP contained the wording, “From here we will begin and in al-Aqsa we shall meet”, referring to al-Aqsa mosque in heavily disputed Jerusalem. In the video, he stressed that Palestine has always been the cause that al-Qaeda has fought for, even when it was waging jihad on differing fronts. He echoed Abu Musa’ab al-Zarqawi’s words that while fighting in Iraq, he never took his eye off of Jerusalem (al-Quds in Arabic), and stressed that Osama Bin laden swore that America will remain unsafe until the people of Palestine are safe. But al-Wuhayshi’s vision for his group’s involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is typical of the indirect approach of the wider al-Qaeda grand strategy:


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We went to Afghanistan in order to prepare for the liberation of Palestine but, before we enter Palestine, we have to break the blockade that the Arab rulers, the betrayers, are imposing on it…. Also, the actual supporters of the Israeli occupation are America and Europe. So we have to destroy the Crusaders’ interests in the Arabian Peninsula, including Yemen, and prepare the generation that the Prophet Mohammed said would come out of Yemen to liberate al-Aqsa mosque.

South Yemen

AQAP is more active and operative in the eastern and southern governorates, which historically made up the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (otherwise known simply as South Yemen or PDRY) until the unity of Yemen in 1990. The frustration and resentment of the population in those governorates, against what they consider a northern domination by President Saleh’s regime, provided AQAP with the population-centric raison d’etre that they needed to operate against Saleh. Al-Wuhayshi, who is from the south himself, supported the struggle of the South Yemenis but condemned both Saleh and the former Marxist rulers of South Yemen, the leaders of the Yemeni Socialist Party who currently lead the secessionist movement (see Terrorism Monitor, November 19, 2009). Future developments in Yemen’s southern governorates will play a major role in the future of al-Wuhayshi’s organization. While President Saleh still has a considerable amount of support from the tribes in the north, minus those supporting the Houthi rebellion in the Sa’adah governorate, his southern support has been on the wane for some time as evidenced by the increase in north-south agitation by southern political actors.

Conclusion

After the attempt made by Abdulmuttalleb and the shooting spree of Nidal Malik Hasan [3], particularly the AQAP link with both, al-Wuhayshi and his group have found themselves at the center of the international conflict between America and the salafi-jihadists. The impact of the three airstrikes last year on Abyan, Arhab and Shabwa have yet to be completely understood. [4] AQAP denied that al-Wuhayshi was killed in one of them but he did not release a statement and he did not compose his usual editorial in Sada al-Malahim’s January-February 2010 issue. Al- Wuhayshi succeeded in rebuilding and reordering al-Qaeda in Yemen,

benefiting from the difficulties that President Saleh’s regime faces on the economic and security fronts. He also can be credited for the successes of a major regional organization by unifying the Yemeni and Saudi branches of al-Qaeda. But this honeymoon phase is now over and Nasir al-Wuhayshi and his group are facing more direct challenges by virtue of increased American, Saudi and international support for the Yemeni government. The capacity and developments of this conflict will be of critical importance to the regional and international scene for years to come.

Rafid Fadhil Mohammed Ali is a freelance journalist based in Iraq who specializes in Iraqi insurgent groups.

Notes:

[1] Video footage available on Youtube.

[2] A derisive term denoting Shi’ites used by Sunni militants; in this case implying the Iranian authorities.

[3] The interview was placed on al-Shayea’s blog on May 14, 2009, Abdulela.maktoobblog.com

[4] On November 5, 2009, the American Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on the Fort Hood camp in Texas, killing 13 of his colleagues. Hasan, a Muslim of Palestinian descent, is believed to have had contacts with the Yemeni-based radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

[5] On December 17, 2009, an airstrike by the United States followed by a raid by the Yemeni ground forces was launched on a suspected al-Qaeda target in Abyan. Another airstrike hit a target in the city of Arhab in the Sana’a governorate. On December 23, 2009, yet another strike occurred on targets in Shabwa. Dozens were killed in those offensives including women and children according to both Arab and international media. (al-Jazeera December 18, 2009, AFP, December 23, 2009). AQAP claimed that the Christmas day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab was launched in response to these air strikes.


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Kishenji: A Profile of the Leader of the Indian Maoist InsurgencyBy Derek Henry Flood

Mallojula Koteshwar Rao, better known by the nom de guerre Kishenji, is the military leader of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-M) and may have recently surpassed the leaders of Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Tayyba as the biggest security headache for India’s ruling elites in New Delhi. Kishenji is 53 years old and was born in Karimnagar, Andhra Pradesh state’s northern Telangana region in South India. Kishenji is an exceptionally savvy commander who gives regular interviews to the Indian media showing the cameras only his cotton clad back with a scarf around his head and a Chinese manufactured Type 56 Assault Rifle always draped over one shoulder. Kishenji has been fighting the Indian state for 34 years and although reports of him being missing from the front after a recent injury have led to speculation about his future in the Maoist movement, judging by his audacious, repeated public statements, he displays no intention of abating armed struggle at any time in the near future if the status quo of cat-and-mouse warfare with the Indian state remains unchanged.

After emerging in the ranks of the Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist during the mid-1970s in the midst of “The Emergency,” [1] Kishenji co-founded the People’s War Group in 1980 and in 2004 successfully merged his movement with the then ideologically divergent Maoists Communist Centre of India to form the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) (Times of India, February 17). Kishenji often describes his father in interviews as a “freedom fighter,” meaning that he was part of the struggle to oust European rule in colonial India in the 1940s. Kishenji’s wife Sujata is also purportedly a committed Maoist working in close concert with her husband to consolidate his power. Sujata is now in charge of a unit dedicated to protecting Kishenji from the security forces (Indian Express, April 23).

Ideology

Kishenji leads a peasant insurgent force which seeks to overthrow India’s parliamentary democracy through a “protracted people’s war” in a manner outlined by the late Chinese revolutionary and ideologue, Mao Tse Dong. He seeks to use violence or “counter-violence”

as he terms it (Tehelka, November 21, 2009), to attain political power in a landscape of contiguous districts throughout India’s impoverished central Deccan Plateau and along the steamy coast of the Bay of Bengal. He advocates the nationalization of both Indian and global cooperate business concerns within and adjacent to Maoist territories and redistribute the wealth of India’s most powerful men such as Ratan Tata and Anil Ambani (Tehelka, November 21, 2009), heads of the Tata Group and the Reliance Group respectively. Kishenji’s armed insurrection though primarily confined to the “red corridor” stretching from the Nepali frontier to the northern boundary of Tamil Nadu state which will spread beyond the current most heavily insurgency-plagued states of West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, parts of Maharashstra, and northern Andhra Pradesh. Kishenji has told the Indian press that he currently has no plans to cease his war of attrition. What began 43 years ago as a highly localized revolt against agrarian feudalism is being re-branded as a war against globalization after India’s Prime Minster Manmohan Singh began the process of opening up Indian markets for foreign direct investment and generally liberalizing the economy from the Nehruvian model in his previous post as Finance Minster in 1992. [2] India’s embrace of market capitalism and corporate multinationals in the last two decades has only further accelerated Maoist fury toward the state.

Western analysts may still believe that India’s increasingly aggressive Maoist insurgents solely pose a grave threat to India’s often tumultuous internal political dynamics though Kishenji told New Delhi Television Limited, “U.S. imperialism is our first and foremost enemy and second is the Congress [Party] and the UPA [United Progressive Alliance] led by the Congress” (NDTV, October 23, 2009). Kishenji claims to be fighting for the disaffected aboriginal tribal populations, known locally as Adivasis, who have been largely neglected by the central government since India’s independence in 1947 and who have the most to lose with the expansion of exploitation of natural resources in the country’s poorer, less developed eastern and central states. Kishenji stated in an interview last year:

… We feel the independence that we [Indians] acquired is a fake one. It only strengthened those in power. The rich became richer and the poor, poorer. Those in power are not doing anything for the lot of the tribals [Adivasis]. Take the case of Lalgarh [West Bengal], for instance. The problem rose from the state government’s [West


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Bengal state’s] negligence and indifference. The ruling party never did anything to help the tribals of the area” (Rediff.com, October 22, 2009).

Tactics

The estimated 22,000 insurgents believed to be under Kishenji’s command have traditionally used hit-and-run attacks and ambushes on Indian security forces comprised of small arms fire, laying anti-personnel and anti-vehicular mines, and in the last several years have become quite adept at using improvised explosive devices to inflict mass casualties on their opponents who often travel and congregate in large groups. Maoists have overrun police installations and run security forces out of their barracks thus holding these areas temporarily and further emboldening Kishenji’s “People’s War.” Insurgents use these attacks to replenish ammunition and stockpile more weapons that they are able to abscond with before order is restored. Regular kidnappings and beheadings of police officers have become a hallmark of Kishenji’s movement. He considers those kidnapped by his followers as “prisoners of war” and the capture of enemy forces to be arrests. In 2009, during the Lalgarh siege he was chastised by the Indian press for releasing one such POW, West Bengal policeman Atindranath Dutta (NDTV, October 23, 2009) while, on the other hand, beheading a Jhakhand policeman named Francis Induwar which Kishenji lamented as “a mistake” and described his war as a largely just one where such mistakes were made in the process of enacting different operational strategies (Tehelka, November, 21, 2009).

A primary non-kinetic tactic for Kishenji is to call for what is known in South Asia as a bandh, or a general strike. A bandh is generally a form of non-violent civil disobedience used to India’s political parties to keep business closed and damage the local economy until their point is heard by the local or national government. When the CPI-Maoist called a bandh to protest the killing of five civilians by Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) [3] last year, Maoist insurgents staged perhaps their largest attack in terms of scale in the history of the movement. On April 22, 2009, an initial group of 50 Maoists hijacked a passenger train in Jharkhand state and held close to 500 commuters hostage for four hours in which no one was harmed and the attackers simply let the train go and melted back into the forest, infuriating the central government. The Maoist official reasoning for the attack was apparently that the state railways, by merely functioning during the supposed state-wide strike, violated the Maoist diktat and were therefore fit to

be punished (The Telegraph [Kolkata], April 22, 2009). No one was killed in the incident but the insurgents apparent ease with which they embarrassed state actors making them appear enfeebled as the insurgents showed a massive display of strength and tactical agility.

Lalgarh: Naxalbari Redux?

Naxalites, as Maoist rebels are know throughout South Asia, gained their name from Naxalbari, the now quiet place name in far northern West Bengal on the Nepali frontier that is infamous as the epicenter of India’s initial Maoist uprising in 1967. West Bengal was ruled locally by a communist government that had broken away from the mainstream Communist Party of India that was assuredly on the Soviet side of the Sino-Soviet split following the Sino-Indian war of 1962. According to historian Ramachandra Guha, the new Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) tried to strike a balance between Soviet communism (Marxism) and Sino communism (Maoism) [4] which backfired and radicalized an already disenfranchised rural poor who had grown tired of being abused by feudal landlords and received no assistance from West Bengal’s Marxist rulers. The aggravated peasants of Naxalbari fell on the Maoist side of the split in Eurasian communism that took place in the mid-twentieth century in reaction the West Bengal’s ruling Marxists not aligning with them. An initially small-scale dispute that flared into a full-scale uprising that would come to symbolize the anger of Indian lower caste farmers and tribal populations in perpetually underserved parts of the country for decades to come.

Lalgarh, meaning “red fort” in Hindi, is a cluster of several dozen villages far west of Kolkota (formerly Calcutta) in West Bengal state near the border with perennially troubled Jharkhand state. Lalgarh stood in the control of Maoists for eight months from November 2008 until June 2009 when Operation Lalgarh restored state control over the district by force (BBC, June 19, 2009). Many analysts thought the continued siege of Lalgarh to represent a neo-Naxalbari. The temporary control of Lalgarh became a symbol of the Maoists, and Kishenji’s, power. While the end of Lalgarh as a Maoist “liberated zone” may have to looked to be a victory for the central and state governments, for Kishenji it was a victorious, although temporary, show of his strength and cunning.

Jawaharlal Mahato, a doctor captured by local police in the Lalgarh area, claims to have treated Kishenji after


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he suffered a bullet wound to his left leg in a recent clash (Press Trust of India, April 8). On March 25, he was injured in a shootout with government forces in the Lakhanpur forest outside of Lalgarh which has limited his normally fluid movement between India’s least developed states where the Maoists hold sway (Indian Express, April 23). Kishenji’s brother, Venugopal Rao (a.k.a. Bhupati), who is suspected to be behind the large-scale attack in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, has been anointed to be the new insurgent leader in Lalgarh though Kishenji will still consult on operations undertaken by his cadres (Daily News and Analysis [Mumbai] April 20).

From Red Corridor to Golden Corridor

One of the core elements of India’s Maoist insurgency is the persistent expansion of the Red Corridor through the creation of what are known as Compact Revolutionary Zones where they run parallel systems of local government in the areas that contain the bulk of India’s natural resources (see Terrorism Monitor, February 9, 2009). Along India’s west coast sits, what is now termed the “Golden Corridor” in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. This is the India that has benefited from integration into the global economy and where from most of the Indian diaspora in the West hails. The Golden Corridor is where much of India’s industrial and tech industry resides and although the idea of the Maoists expanding their operations that far from the Red Corridor may seem far-fetched, the idea that the Secretary General of India’s radical Maoists, Muppalla Lakshmana Rao (a.k.a. Ganapathy), stated in recent communiqué to his politburo intercepted by authorities in Bihar state to “focus on the area near the Golden Corridor” (The Economic Times [Bangalore], April 6). The idea to launch attack in the country’s much more prosperous west may be intended to either throw the authorities off their trail or it may be a genuine way of dispersing Kishenji’s forces in reaction to Operation Green Hunt.

Operation Green Hunt: Blow to Blowback

Operation Green Hunt and the wider paramilitary offensive launched by Delhi in late 2009 was meant to strike a decisive blow to Kishenji’s guerrilla cadres operating with relative impunity throughout the so-called “red corridor” but the massive attack that killed no less than 75 Indian paramilitaries, signaling that the Maoist forces retained the ability to hit back hard

against the Indian state while under tremendous duress. When asked of peace talks with Delhi, Kishenji had this to say:

…they declared war and started Operation Greenhunt in entire India. Not in Lalgarh only. There are two-and-a-half lakh (250,000) forces in our area. More than 2000 ordinary people and five or six hundred of our comrades are behind bars in [West] Bengal, Chhattisgarh, and other states. Without their release, there is no scope for talks. Their (Delhi’s) condition is that Maoists should surrender arms. Surrendering arms is out of the agenda. We never accepted it as part of our agenda. So we are not ready for peace talks. In the name of peace, they declared war (NDTV, October 23, 2009).

Following a massacre of 24 paramilitary security men in their encampment in the town of Silda, West Bengal on February 15, Kishenji called local television stations in Kolkata and told them, “This is our ‘Operation Peace Hunt’. It is our retaliation against the ‘Operation Green Hunt’ of the government” (Asia Times, February 23).

As if the Silda camp massacre were not brazen enough, on April 6, “red rebels” slaughtered 76 CRPF jawans (young infantrymen) in a precision two-stage ambush while on a patrol in a Maoist stronghold deep in Chhattisgarh state’s Dantewada district. The CRPF jawans became ensnared in a series of booby-trapped mines followed by unrelenting small arms fire killing many of them where they stood. When CRPF reinforcements arrived in the area, they were caught in the next stage of the operation (Hindustan Times, April 7). A regional Maoist commander calling himself Gopal speaking on Kishenji’s behalf stated, “The attack in Chhattisgarh and the earlier one in Orissa [5] is a direct consequence of the central government persisting in Operation Green Hunt” (Zee News, April 6).

Alleged Links

According to India’s Minister of Home Affairs Palaniappan “P.” Chidambaram, weapons emanating from Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) have been reaching Kishenji’s Maoist insurgents in the dense forests of central India stating that, “… there is certainly evidence of weapons being smuggled from abroad through Myanmar or Bangladesh which reaches


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the Maoists” and “it is possible” weapons may also be coming down from Nepal (Press Trust of India, October 24, 2009) though Chidambaram provided no clear evidence of precisely these logistical feats of arms trafficking could be mapped. There has been talk of the CPI-M having tenuous links with Lashkar-e-Tayyba (LeT). On this allegation, Kishenji stated last year; “We may support some of their demands, but their methods are wrong and anti-people. LeT should stop its terrorist acts because it cannot help accomplish any goals.”

The Philippine’s National Intelligence Coordinating Agency has asserted that trainers from the Philippine’s own communist insurgency, the New People’s Army (NPA), have traveled to India to train Maoists there (Asia Times, April 22). Two Maoist insurgents recently arrested in western India’s Gujarat state claimed they had knowledge of Philippine communist militants training Indian Maoists in Kerala state in India’s deep south (Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 6)

Conclusion

Kishenji has regularly vacillated about the concept of peace talks on the national level with Delhi all the while issuing statements that he refuses to lay down arms as a pre-condition of arriving at the negotiating table. On the local state level Kishenji claims to have personally made contact with West Bengal’s Marxist Chief Minister Buddhabeb Bhattacharjee, a statement the Chief minister’s office strongly denies (Tehelka, November 21, 2009). The lifelong rebel seems to be an eternal one believing that anyone who is even a shade less radical than himself has become part of the despised bourgeoisie or a class enemy. Kishenji believes that the Nepali Maoists led by the charismatic Prachanda, once his ideological brothers in arms, have compromised themselves. After the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist’s successful overthrow of the monarchy of King Gyanendra, by joining in a coalition government with the Nepali Congress party to build a republican Nepal they have sold out genuine Maoism and their path to peace should not be used as a model for ending his own People’s War (Tehelka, November 21, 2009). Kishenji is under immense pressure since the start of Operation Greenhunt and like counterinsurgency operations throughout the Red Corridor that are ongoing at present. Normally in regular communication with the media, as of this writing, he has recently fallen silent. Ganapathy stated in the captured Bihar orders that Maoist leaders should remain invisible from both the

press and the public and go into a “strategic retreat” (The Economic Times [Bangalore], April 6). Whether due to Ganapathy’s orders or his reported injury, or a combination of the two, Kishenji may lay low for the time being but unless the underlying grievances of India’s desperately poor tribal tracts and struggling agrarian peasantry are properly addressed, if not resolved, Kishenji’s People’s War appears to have absolutely no end in sight on the horizon.

Derek Henry Flood is an independent author and journalist who blogs at the-war-diaries.com. Derek is the editor of Jamestown’s Militant Leadership Monitor publication.

Notes:

[1] The Emergency was a period of 21 months from June 1975 to March 1977 when a state of emergency was declared during the rule of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

[2] Steve Coll, On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (New York: Penguin Books, 1994, 2009), p. 277.

[3] The Central Reserve Police Force is a paramilitary force under the command of India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and is tasked with taking on internal insurgencies within the republic among other law and order duties.

[4] Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), p. 422.

[5] On April 4, Maoists killed 11 elite Special Operations Group state police with an improvised explosive device in Orissa state as they traveled in their vehicle in the interior Koraput district near the border with Chhattisgarh state.

Documents

Militant Leadership Monitor - Volume I Issue 4