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Al-Qaeda tales: The North African
connection
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - With intelligence flowing in
concerning al-Qaeda cells still active in Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Iran, Europe and the US, well-placed
sources maintain to this correspondent that it is the
cell in North Africa - with tentacles in Mauritania,
Somalia, Algeria, Morocco and Egypt - that is today most
dangerous, most active and in best position to take
command of al-Qaeda's operations and strike at US
interests.
There are three key
leaders connected to this North African cell: Mahfouz Ould
Walid, a Mauritanian whom US officials had initially,
and mistakenly, reported killed in January near Khost in
eastern Afghanistan; Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian on the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) most-wanted
list; and Shiekh Hasan, originally of Somalia, whose
contacts with underworld mafias throughout the African
region give him access to international resources and
manpower.
Ould Walid's and al-Adel's involvement
was revealed after a relative of Ould Walid, Mohammed
Ould Slahi, was arrested by Mauritanian authorities
either late last year or early this year. Slahi is
married to the sister of Ould Walid's wife, and the FBI
suspects that he, too, has been involved with terrorist
activities.
It's not the first time Slahi has
attracted the interest of Western police. He studied engineering in Germany
in the 1990s, and it has been reported
that at least twice he visited bin Laden-sponsored camps in
Afghanistan. He was first arrested in January 2000
in Mauritania in connection with the so-called
"millennium plot" to blow up Los Angeles International
Airport in December 1999. More recently, he was released
a few weeks ago by Mauritanian authorities after having
helped a team of FBI agents reconcile the statements of
Abu Zubaida made during interrogation.
Well-placed sources maintain that the North
Africa angle fits in with the overall al-Qaeda strategy
formed even before September 11. As that attack was
being planned, al-Qaeda leaders organized a series of
fallback defensive positions in North Africa to serve as
a regrouping point in the event of a US campaign against
bases in Afghanistan. It was this strategy which helped
to protect al-Qaeda's most powerful cells in North
Africa, cells that are now coming to the forefront.
African-based operatives have travelled recently
to Pakistan and Afghanistan, sources say, as well as to
several other Middle Eastern countries, in order to
organize further attacks against US interests in tandem
with the anniversary of September 11. It is believed
that, in particular, a team of al-Qaeda planners,
possibly including Hasan, have reached Pakistan to carry
out operations there, including the assassination of top
political leaders in both that country and Afghanistan.
One difference with pre-September 11 planning, however,
is said to involve target selection: today there are no
plans to launch strikes on the scale of the WTC and
Pentagon attacks; instead, targets are now regional, and
smaller in scale - ie, individual assassinations.
Sources said that Ould Slahi also revealed a
connection between remaining al-Qaeda members and
officials in the Iranian religious ruling class. As Asia
Times Online reported on December 19, 2001, immediately
after the Taliban were routed from Kandahar, many
al-Qaeda leaders were provided a safe passage to Iran
through various smuggling routes. They were given
shelter in Zabol, an Iranian border town inhabited by
Arab nationals, where Arabic is the lingua franca.
Al-Qaeda's Iran connections today,
however, are among the Iranian religious ruling junta -
not the Iranian government. US authorities and
media have recently asserted that Iran has become a
safe sanctuary for al-Qaeda and would be used as a launching
pad. The US-based Washington Post in fact published a
story this week in which it maintained that many
al-Qaeda operatives are still freely roaming all around Iran.
"Two figures who have assumed critical roles in the
al-Qaeda hierarchy in recent months, including one
reported dead by the Pentagon, are being sheltered in
Iran along with dozens of other al-Qaeda fighters in
hotels and guesthouses in the border cities of Mashhad
and Zabol," the Post reported.
Contrary to the
Post's account, however, sources in German intelligence
insist that no al-Qaeda operatives have stayed for long
in Iran, which was and is being used solely as a transit
point by operatives bound for other destinations.
Although Iran may continue to be used for transit, it
has not served as a hub or launching pad, these sources
maintain.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All
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