US, Al Qaeda Share Same Enemies

From Pepe Escobar, writing in Asia Times :

Seven years after bringing down steel buildings with jet fuel - using planes as missiles - and outwitting the most high-tech air force and the most protected airspace in the world for nearly two hours, the historic al-Qaeda leadership is "celebrating" 9/11 with an hour-and-a-half video special titled "Seven Years of Crusades".

Washington, meanwhile, is stepping up the revamped "war on terror" deep inside Pakistani territory, with special forces commandos targeting the tribal areas. While US corporate media are absolutely transfixed by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, a new war in the shadows seems destined

to acquire its own irreversible momentum. Investigative military historian Gareth Porter (US warned over raids in Pakistan Asia Times Online, September 10, 2008) has already examined the deep disconnect between the George W Bush administration and the US intelligence community. On top of it, al-Qaeda in 2008 is a vastly different enemy from the al-Qaeda of 2001.

The new video, "hosted" by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, is a sort of who's who talk show on the state of jihad around the world - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Chechnya, Algeria, Palestine.

Qatar-based al-Jazeera got the video, showed only some short takes, and has been unusually quiet about it - as if it didn't want to shock US sensibilities. Same with Western corporate media. A version with German subtitles simply disappeared from YouTube. It's as if this whole business - Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri still at large, holed up in their mythical cave (with broadband and video equipment) - was a recurrent bad dream.

The key point in the video is that Zawahiri accuses Iran and the US of being partners in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Zawahiri also blasts Iraqi Shi'ites for not launching a jihad in Iraq against the "Crusader occupier". In his recent messages this is a recurrent theme: the "Persians" are the enemy of the Arabs and they're part of the occupation of Iraq.

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Seven years after 9/11, for all practical purposes, al-Qaeda remains the golden motive that justifies the Bush administration threatening, invading, bombing or occupying Muslim countries. But, in fact, al-Qaeda's top strategic enemy nowadays, in a battle to seduce Muslim hearts and minds, are Shi'ites - be it Tehran or Hezbollah - and not the US.

Similarities are eerie. Iran is part of Bush's "axis of evil" as well as al-Qaeda's "axis of evil". The US tries very hard to pit Sunnis against Shi'ites all over the Middle East while al-Qaeda also incites a war between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

What Zawahiri is basically saying is that al-Qaeda - fundamentalist Saudi Wahhabis - want a "long war" as much as the Bush administration and its extension, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. Al-Qaeda's birth was midwifed by US intelligence in Peshawar in Pakistan in the early 1980s; by the mid-1980s, president Ronald Reagan was ecstatic with his mujahideen "freedom fighters". Fundamentalist al-Qaeda is as much against an independent, nationalist, Shi'ite Iranian regime as the fundamentalist Bush administration.

As for the "surge" in Iraq, it has now morphed into the surge in Afghanistan. Bush is withdrawing only 8,000 troops from Iraq by February 2009, while adding more to Afghanistan. So much for the so-called "success" of the Iraq "surge".

Top US commander in Iraq General David Petraeus told the Washington Post in Baghdad that Iraq remains the "central front" for al-Qaeda. Petraeus is the new head of Central Command starting this month. He will oversee Afghanistan and Pakistan - and also Iran. He believes al-Qaeda's historical leadership remains, in his words, "somewhere in the western border region of Pakistan".

Thus the recent attack by US special forces in the Pakistani tribal areas - killing women and children as well as alleged "terrorists", and alienating the tribals beyond any redemption.

We should expect more of the Petraeus method in Pakistan: high tech counter-insurgency plus widespread bribes in cash. That was his methodology during the "surge" in Iraq. The high-tech special ops - which killed a lot of Sunni guerrilla leaders - revolved around a program called Tagging, Tracking and Locating: in sum, a sophisticated assassination campaign. Robert Parry, writing at consortiumnews.com, was one of the very few in US media to pinpoint it.

That's essentially what Petraeus is already implementing in Pakistan, against the better judgement of the US intelligence community, with potentially devastating consequences. Westerners never learn: any war against the fierce Pashtun nation is essentially unwinnable.

The national security sweepstakes

Anyway, the Pentagon's "long War" - the remixed denomination of the "war on terror" - lives on. With a new chapter in Pakistan, the pressing possibility of an attack on Iran, a war for control of Eurasia, and a new cold war with Russia. Not to mention the militarization of American life, and smashing any form of dissent - as seen in the streets of St Paul, Minnesota, during the Republican convention.

Both the Barack Obama-Joe Biden and the McCain-Sarah Palin tickets avidly pose to see who is tougher on terror. Both pay lip-service to national security. Palin has been drafted by McCain with a key destination: to mobilize the rural and suburban so-called "national security moms", terrified of slimy, dangerous Muslims threatening their way of life.

But what if a Predator drone, under Petraeus orders, incinerated Zawahiri and bin Laden - seven years too late? Absolutely nothing would change. Dozens of new bin Ladens would rise from the ashes. Washington has done nothing to help the desperate Afghan population or suggest an alternative for the neo-Taliban - just as the billions of dollars showered on the Pakistani military have done noting to help dire living conditions in Pakistan.

The only "winners" in this "long war" are, and will continue to be, selected players in the gargantuan US military-industrial complex. That's the sorry legacy of 9/11, seven years on.

Seven Years Later, Is 'The War' Being Won Against Al Qaeda?

Der Speigel asks seven terrorism experts their opinions on the progress of the
WoT :

Most of the world now has a new understanding of "security." Global terrorism of the sort practiced by al-Qaida finds targets that are not always easy to comprehend: a Danish embassy in Pakistan, nightclubs on Bali, trains in London and Madrid, wedding parties in Jordan, a synagogue in Tunisia, a British bank in Istanbul.

To protect themselves, Western as well as non-Western states have passed new laws, some of them draconian. The United States set up a prison at Guantánamo Bay which has yet to be dismantled.

The CIA has kidnapped and transported terror suspects all over the world, including people who weren't especially suspect and have long been proved innocent. Arab nations have signed dubious extradition treaties to move terrorist suspects back and forth. Russia and China use the "war on terror" for their own purposes -- to declare Chechens and Uighurs potential terrorists, for example. The debate over torture, once thought to be settled in civilized nations, has enjoyed an unexpected and in some ways ignoble renaissance.

And al-Qaida?

Al-Qaida is not beaten. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large. A number of high-ranking members of the organization have been killed or arrested, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and others. But terrorism hasn't stopped. Al-Qaida has retreated in Iraq, perhaps, but in Pakistan as well as North Africa, it has gained influence and space.

But there is no single, clear image of al-Qaida or its current status. It has changed from an organization of militias into something nobody recognizes. Is it more of a movement? Are al-Qaida's capabilities weaker than before, or is another 9/11 still possible? Are there fewer members of al-Qaida now, or more?

The Full Story Is Here

Al Qaeda's New Strategies In Its 'War On Infidels'

Pepe Escobar, Asia Times :

Al-Qaeda is back - with a vengeance of sorts. Listen to Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed - a senior al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, in a very rare interview with Pakistan's Geo TV, shot in Khost, in eastern Afghanistan.

"At this stage this is our understanding - that there is no difference between the American people and the American government itself. If we see this through sharia [Islamic] law, American people and the government itself are infidels and are fighting against Islam. We have to rely on suicide attacks which are absolutely correct according to Islamic law. We have adopted this way of war because there is a huge difference between our material resources and our enemy's, and this is the only option to attack our enemy."

The interview is not only about defensive jihad. Yazeed delves into classic al-Qaeda strategy - inciting a cross-border Taliban jihad against the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces and blasting a state, in this case the government of Pakistan. According to him, "Sadly, it is the government of Pakistan which has most damaged our cause. President [Pervez] Musharraf violated the trust of Muslims and contributed to the destruction of the Islamic government of Afghanistan ... Musharraf and his government have made big mistakes, there is no such example in other Islamic states."

Yazeed also said al-Qaeda was responsible for the suicide car bombing on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad in early June, when six people were killed.

So why is al-Qaeda feeling so emboldened to have one of its top commanders on camera - and on a foreign TV network to boot, not as-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media arm?

Jihadis now assess that the new Afghan jihad - against the "infidel" US and NATO troops combined - is more important at the moment than Iraq. So in this sense, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has got it right - Afghanistan, and not Iraq, is "the central front in the war on terror".

But it's much more complicated than that. The central front is actually in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda basically wants a pan-Islamic caliphate. The neo-Taliban, based in Pakistan, are not that ambitious. They already have their Islamic Emirate - it is in the Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. What they want most of all is to expand it. They also know they would never stand a chance of taking over the whole of Pakistan. A Pakistani expert on the tribal areas, currently in Washington, describes it as "a class struggle - almost like an evolving peasant revolution. Baitullah Mehsud [the neo-Pakistani Taliban leader] is but a peasant from a poor family."

What is startling is that the neo-Taliban are now practically in control of North-West Frontier Province on the border with Afghanistan - whose capital is fabled Peshawar. They already control several Peshawar suburbs.

The Pakistani state has virtually no power in these areas. The Taliban enforce strict sharia law. If local security people refuse to obey, they are simply killed. No wonder the neo-Taliban now have subdued scores of middle- and low-ranking Pakistani officials. They even issued a deadline to the new secular and relatively progressive regional government to release all Taliban prisoners - or else. As for the government, the only thing it can do is to organize some sort of neighborhood watch to prevent total Taliban supremacy. This state of affairs also reveals how the Pakistani army seems to be powerless - or unwilling - to fight the Taliban.

Across the border, in Kunar and Nuristan provinces in Afghanistan, the Taliban now control almost all security checkpoints. No wonder Yazeed - speaking for al-Qaeda, envisions a war without borders. He said, in his Geo TV interview, "Yes, we cannot separate the tribal area people from Afghanistan which are part of Pakistan and the Pakistani people. Yes, we are getting support from tribal people in Pakistan, and in fact it is obligatory for them to render this help and it is a responsibility that is imposed by religion. It is not only obligatory for residents of the tribal regions but all of Pakistan."

In a recent high-profile al-Qaeda meeting in Miramshah in North Waziristan, the al-Qaeda leadership made it clear it not only expects - it wants the new Afghan war/jihad to spill over to the tribal areas in Pakistan.

And this is what al-Qaeda will get - according to what Obama told CBS News' Lara Logan, "... what I've said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value al-Qaeda targets and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those targets, then we should."

The Pentagon for its part is preparing the battlefield - it has already sent Predator drones, repeatedly, over the tribal areas. An air war is in the works - not to mention scores of Pentagon covert special ops.

Al-Qaeda's strategy is to suck in the US military - this is classic Osama bin Laden ideology, according to which the US should be dragged to fight in Muslim lands. Al-Qaeda is reasoning that an attack on the tribal areas, in fact a real third front in the "war on terror" (so dreaded by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen) will have Pakistani public opinion so outraged that the Pakistani army would be powerless to follow the US track. And al-Qaeda, in the end, would be left with an even freer hand.

Read The Full Story Here

Afghanistan : Taliban Turn Back From Pakistan To Fight NATO

Preparing For New Spring Offensive

According to this story from the Asia Times, the Taliban are preparing for their spring offensive against NATO troops in Afghanistan, following months of heavy conflict against Pakistan security forces the tribal regions of Pakistan :

...Taliban leader Mullah Omar has put his foot down and reset the goals for the Taliban: their primary task is the struggle in Afghanistan, not against the Pakistan state.

Mullah Omar has sacked his own appointed leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, the main architect of the fight against Pakistani security forces, and urged all Taliba commanders to turn their venom against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, highly placed contacts in the Taliban told Asia Times Online.

This major development occurred at a time when Pakistan was reaching out with an olive branch to the Pakistani Taliban. Main commanders, including Hafiz Gul Bahadur and the main Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan, Sirajuddin Haqqani, signed peace agreements. But al-Qaeda elements, including Tahir Yuldashev, chief of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, undermined this initiative.

"We refused any peace agreement with the Pakistani security forces and urged the mujahideen fight for complete victory," Yuldashev said in a jihadi video message seen by Asia Times Online. Yuldashev's closest aide and disciple, Mehsud, last week carried out an attack on a Pakistani security post and then seized two forts in the South Waziristan tribal area.

As a result, Pakistan bombed South Waziristan and sent in heavy artillery and tanks for a major operation against Mehsud. Other important commanders are now in North Waziristan and they support the peace agreements with the Pakistani security forces.

Pakistan's strategic quarters maintain the planned operation in South Waziristan is aimed particularly at eliminating Mehsud.

According to Taliban quarters in Afghanistan that Asia Times Online spoke to recently, the Taliban have well-established pockets around Logar, Wardak and Ghazni, which are all gateways to the capital Kabul.

Many important districts in the southwestern provinces, including Zabul, Helmand, Urzgan and Kandahar, are also under the control of the Taliban. Similarly, districts in the northwestern, including Nimroz, Farah and Ghor, have fallen to the Taliban.

Certainly, the Taliban will be keen to advance from these positions, but they will also concentrate on destroying NATO's supply lines from Pakistan into Afghanistan. The Taliban launched their first attack in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province on Monday, destroying a convoy of oil tankers destined for NATO's Kandahar air field.

"If NATO's supply lines are shut down from Pakistan, NATO will sweat in Afghanistan," a member of a leading humanitarian organization in Kabul told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity. "The only substitute would be air operations, but then NATO costs would sky-rocket."

Attacks On NATO Forces By Taliban, Al Qaeda Rose By 30% In 2007

Young Journalist Sentenced To Death In Afghanistan For Downloading And Printing Out Media Story About Women's Rights

NATO Chief Angry At American Demands For More Troops In Afghanistan

NATO Allies Divided On How To Tackle Growing Afghanistan Crisis

Taliban, Al Qaeda Keep Low, But Violent, Profile In Southern Afghanistan

Al Qaeda Leader In Afghanistan Killed By American Flying Robot

For Al Qaeda, Bhutto Was "A Precious American Asset" In Pakistan They Simply Had To Kill

Al Qaeda-Linked Militant Leader Blamed By Pakistan Government Denies Involvement

Syed Saleem Shahzad, writing in the Asia Times shows once again why he is one of the better best 'War on Terror' reporter in the world today :

”We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahideen.”

These were the words of al-Qaeda’s top commander for Afghanistan operations and spokesperson Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, immediately after the attack that claimed the life of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto on Thursday (December 27).

Bhutto, with Western backing, had been hoping to become prime minister for a third time after general elections next month.

“This is our first major victory against those [eg, Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf] who have been siding with infidels [the West] in a fight against al-Qaeda and declared a war against mujahideen,” Mustafa told Asia Times Online by telephone.

He said the death squad consisted of Punjabi associates of the underground anti-Shi’ite militant group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, operating under al-Qaeda orders.

The assassination of Bhutto was apparently only one of the goals of a large al-Qaeda plot, the existence of which was revealed earlier this month.

On December 6, a Pakistani intelligence agency tracked a cell phone conversation between a militant leader and a local cleric, in which a certain Maulana Asadullah Khalidi was named. The same day, Khalidi was arrested during a raid in Karachi. The arrest, in turn, led to the arrest of a very high-profile non-Pakistani militant leader, which, it is said, revealed an operation aimed at wiping out “precious American assets” in Pakistan, including Musharraf and Bhutto.

The operation is said to have involved hundreds of cells all over Pakistan to track targets and communicate with their command, which would then send out death squads.

Mustafa referred to a recent address by Bhutto in North West Frontier Province, in which she lambasted Islamic extremism and asked the people to stand against it. Bhutto was the only Pakistani leader who regularly spoke against al-Qaeda.

Bhutto’s killing, it would seem, is only the first major incident in al-Qaeda’s war against “American assets”, which is likely to plunge the country into further chaos and divert it from the democratic path.

Read The Full Story Here

Another Al Qaeda-linked leader fingered by the Pakistan government denies having anything to do with the murder of Benazir Bhutto, claiming "we don't kill women" :

Al-Qaeda linked Pakistani militant Baitullah Mehsud was not involved in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, his spokesman said.

"He had no involvement in this attack," Mehsud's spokesman Maulvi Omar said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

"This is a conspiracy of the Government, army and intelligence agencies," he said.

"I strongly deny it. Tribal people have their own customs. We don't strike women."

The Pakistan Government has claimed that Mehsud was responsible for Benazir Bhutto's killing as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said the Government yesterday recorded an "intelligence intercept" in which Mehsud "congratulated his people for carrying out this cowardly act".

Mr Cheema described Mehsud as an "al-Qaeda leader" and said he was also behind the October 18 bombing against Ms Bhutto's homecoming parade through Karachi that killed more than 140 people.

Mehsud is a commander of pro-Taliban forces in the lawless Pakistani tribal region South Waziristan, where al-Qaeda fighters are also active. His forces often attack Pakistani security forces.

He was recently quoted in a Pakistani newspaper as saying he would welcome Ms Bhutto's return from exile with suicide bombers. Mehsud later denied that in statements to local television and newspaper reporters.

Mr Cheema said Mehsud was "behind most of the recent terrorist attacks that have taken place in Pakistan".

Maulvi Omar said the transcript released by the Government, allegedly of a phone call between Mehsud and a militant discussing Bhutto's death after the fact, was a "drama".

He said it would have been "impossible" for militants to get through the security cordon around the campaign rally where she was killed.

"Benazir was not only a leader of Pakistan but also a leader of international fame. We express our deep grief and shock over her death," Maulvi Omar said.

Pakistan Government Claims Bhutto Died From "Skull Fracture" Not Assassin's Bullets Or Suicide Bomber Blast

Al Qaeda In Europe - Terror Propaganda And Thirst For Vengeance Prove To Be Powerful Recruiting Tools

The UK Observer's Jason Burke, one of the more level-headed and analytical writers on Al Qaeda, takes a solid look at the spread of Al Qaeda ideology and recruitment across Europe, and how young Muslim men, fired up on Al Qaeda propaganda, find their way to Pakistan to complete their training, before returning home. But a disturbing new trend has emerged, and Burke digs deep and uncovers a trove of new information - young European men are converting to Islam and quickly traveling down the indoctrination road towards violent jihad :

The Observer has learnt that senior Islamic militant leaders based in Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan have decided to step up attacks in Europe. This summer, European intelligence agencies issued a series of warnings about attacks orchestrated from what one source last week called 'the Grand Central station of jihad': the lawless tribal-run regions on Pakistan's western borders with Afghanistan.

Though the most recent alleged terrorist plot in Britain - the so-called 'Doctors' Plot' of June - did not involve any confirmed links to Pakistan, many other high-profile attacks or attempted attacks have done so. Key figures in the 7 July bombings and the plot, uncovered by the police's Operation Crevice, to bomb targets in south-east England with fertiliser bombs trained in camps along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Osama bin Laden and his close associates are believed to be hiding in the area - it is thought that the video released yesterday by al-Qaeda and featuring their leader was filmed there - as are a range of other militant leaders from countries as far apart as Libya and Uzbekistan. Bin Laden's video was titled, in English, 'an address to the American people'.

'America remains the number one target, but is hard to hit. If they could get on a plane and arrive in Cincinnati, they would. But they can't, so Europe is the next best option,' the source said.

Striking Europe serves other purposes too: militants hope that a successful attack on a western country that has troops deployed in Afghanistan might force a government to pull them out from the fight against the Taliban, helping Afghan fighters whose relations with the international militants based in the region are often tense. Equally, bombs in London, Frankfurt or Madrid have a powerful propaganda effect on Muslims in the Middle East and in central and south-west Asia, which have always been the 'core audience' for al-Qaeda and other groups. Finally, anything that can be done to further a 'dynamic of confrontation' in Europe is helpful.

'The militants know that tens of millions of happily integrated European Muslims is a big problem for them and that a massive upsurge of radicalisation of Europe's Muslims is a huge problem for us,' said a second, US-based, intelligence source. 'The best way to rile things up and set communities against each other is to have bombs going off left, right and centre.

'Ten years ago there was no real homegrown terrorism problem in western Europe. Now there is. The militants see that as a major achievement and something to build on. They have limited resources so are looking to maximise the return on any investment,' the US source said.

This weekend, Germans are agonising over the possibility that the nation's three million Muslims, hitherto largely untouched by the sort of radicalism seen in Britain and France, has been affected by the al-Qaeda ideology and global tensions. Along with a second convert, the third suspect arrested last week is a Turkish immigrant.

However, many analysts insist that seeing Pakistan as 'the source of all evil' is not right. They stress that the volunteers are radicalised at home and make their way to the camps 'under their own steam'. This means that militants simply exploit 'the raw material'. One intelligence source described the targeting of attacks as 'opportunistic'.

Current analysis is that the bulk of the volunteers in the region are south Asian or Arab and will be sent into action in the primary local theatre, which is Afghanistan. Equally, volunteers with Western passports will BE exploited as particularly valuable assets, and will be turned around and sent back to their countries of origin to commit attacks or develop networks. Britain is particularly vulnerable in this regard because of the historic links it has with Pakistan and the large Muslim population of Pakistani origin.

At least seven Germans and 18 individuals with British nationality are currently detained in Pakistan. Bin Laden has threatened virtually every western European country - making an exception for Sweden - in communications over recent years. In the most recent video, released on Friday, he referred specifically to the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The alleged plot uncovered last week in Germany is doubly worrying as it involves both 'homegrown' suspects and converts. Germany has only seen a handful of conspiracies before: it was the staging ground for the 9/11 hijackers and the scene of a failed attempt to detonate bombs on trains last year, allegedly by two Lebanese men. This was believed to be an initiation test aimed at proving their ability before travelling to Iraq. Until last week, most Germans believed the threat to their nation to be relatively low.

Converts have already figured significantly in terrorism in Europe, comprising 8 per cent of militants arrested in Europe according to a recent survey by Dutch analysts. In Britain, one of the 7 July bombers was a convert, as was Richard Reid, the 'shoe bomber' in prison in America for attempting to blow up a transatlantic jet in 2001.

Converts have also been bit players in conspiracies in the Netherlands and America. A US-born convert is believed to be based in Pakistan playing a key role in al-Qaeda's propaganda.

According to some recent studies of militancy, converts are also more likely to be radicalised. 'Converts have played a prominent role... and tend to be the most zealous members of groups,' a recent report by the New York Police Department noted. 'Their need to prove their religious convictions to their companions often makes them the most aggressive [and] conversion also tends to drive a wedge between the convert and his [natural] family, turning the radicalising group into his 'surrogate family'.'

Four thousand Germans converted last year, compared with just 1,000 in 2005, according to government statistics, bringing the total of Muslim converts in the country to 15,000.

British security services have taken a particular interest in converts. The large number of Islamic militants who convert in prisons is of deep concern to them. 'Converts are a very important sub-group,' one security source told The Observer. 'We see this starting out as a social problem, with people looking for a meaning in their life. This is not a Muslim issue.'

Pakistan - The New Al Qaeda Central

Al Qaeda-Linked Group Kills 28 In Algeria - Were Aiming For Algerian President

Iraq : US Bribe Insurgents To Fight Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda Leader Says The Killing Of Its Commanders Will Not Stop Its Worldwide War Against "The Infidels"

Organised Al Qaeda Now Flexing Its Media Arms Muscles

Jason Burke : 'Islamism' Has No Place In Terror's Lexicon

The New Nazis : When Al Qaeda And The Taliban Merge Their Fighting Tactics And Media Strategies

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been so thoroughly hyping the role of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and its allegedly expanding co-operation with the Taliban in Afghanistan, they sound like they are praying for such a Coalition Of Terror so as to have an enemy worthy of the full force of the United States.

While the Taliban has proven to be a resilient and extremely tough enemy in Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda is expanding its operational scope and using Iraq as a training ground for a new generation of international terrorists, neither enemy has lived up to the ultra-hype of the NeoCons as 'The New Nazis'. But they soon may. Which will make it far easier for Bush Co. to sell 'The Long War' back home. Perhaps. Americans are sick, literally, to death of war, and while the new Nazis may emerge, it's debatable whether or not Americans will rally behind their president, even if Al Qaeda managed to carry off what Dick Cheney claims they want to do : explode a nuclear device in a major American city.

From Afghanistan comes news that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not only sharing war-fighting tactics, but all important PR strategies, for fighting the war in the media :

The Taliban, the fanatical Islamist movement that seized power in the 1990s as an ethnic-based jihad in southern Afghanistan, has in recent months merged its propaganda and field operations with those of al Qaeda, which flourishes across the border in Pakistan, say senior Afghan officials and the group´s former leaders.

The transformation of the Taliban provides a study in how a local, once xenophobic and home-grown Islamist insurgency has re-emerged as a force for al Qaeda´s global interests, say Afghan security officials.

Fighting against the violent backdrop of the well-publicized U.S.-led global war on terror, the Taliban movement is feeding off the larger global jihad to hone previously nonexistent media skills and new fighting tactics.

"The Taliban have changed immensely in the last year due to the mentoring they are getting from leading Arab jihadists in Pakistan with al Qaeda, both in the realm of battlefield tactics and media operations," said Lutfullah Mashal, a senior official in Afghanistan´s National Security Council,

"They are doing what works in Iraq and often succeeding," said Mr. Mashal, who as director of strategic communications designs media operations to oppose the Taliban.

Afghan and Western analysts familiar with the changing face of the Taliban say the local movement is gaining sustenance through recruiting, propaganda and tactics such as suicide bombing. The strategy is gleaned from the godfathers of the global jihad, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri and from battlefield skills honed in Iraq.

Before his violent death this month at the hands of Afghan and U.S. Special Forces, the Taliban's military commander, Mullah Dadullah, claimed that the Taliban's planning and operations are one and the same with those of al Qaeda.

Afghan officials also said the Taliban´s suicide bombing attacks in Kabul and other large cities are approved in advance by senior al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.

"The Taliban is now an integral part of an internationalized jihad," said Waheed Mujda, an Afghan writer who served as a deputy minister in the Taliban´s government between 1997 and 2001.

"The Taliban´s war has now moved outside the boundaries of Afghanistan and is part of a global struggle."

Pakistan denies that al Qaeda is running its global terrorist network from its side of the border.

The transformation is best exemplified through the Taliban´s changing battle tactics and slick videotapes depicting training exercises and attacks on NATO, Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces.

A cameraman travels with Taliban fighters on most major operations, a major step for a group that once banned television.

In one recent video, Abu Laith al Libi, a senior Libyan trainer for the Taliban in Afghanistan, sends a message of encouragement to Iraqi insurgents from an al Qaeda and Taliban training base inside Afghanistan.

The Taliban, a movement that once mangled its own media operations, is regularly featured in the independent Afghan media for its press statements and military gains -- so much so that officials from the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai are threatening to muzzle the free press in their country for being too sympathetic toward "the enemy."

The Taliban insurgents, mimicking Al Qaeda´s own Web sites and video production wing, Al Sahab, are producing daily news articles covering events in Afghanistan and the Muslim world and slick videotapes that depict Iraq-style beheadings and the lives of young militants in schools and al-Qaeda training camps.

But Mullah Zaeef denied that the Taliban "in their hearts" had global jihadist intentions. He said Afghans would not attack the U.S. soil as long as the U.S. military abandons Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda's Global Media War Strategy Grows More Nuanced, Sophisticated And Focused On American Political Disunity

A comprehensive, in-depth look at Al Qaeda's latest excursions in their multi-market media war, by Michael Schuer, the man who headed US intelligence's Bin Laden Unit in the 1990s, before it was disbanded by the Bush administration, just before the 9/11 attacks.

The article shows just how effectively Al Qaeda is waging their media war, and how enthusiastically US politicians and media feed off every word of every threat that Al Qaeda issues. While Al Qaeda obviously cannot be ignored, why do American and Australian politicians, in particular, reflect and enhance the threats made by Al Qaeda, when so very few of them turn out to be real or actionable?

That such credibility is given to people like Al Qaeda's deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri by everyone from Bush downwards in the US government certainly makes the terrorist organisation stronger. Bush Co. try to sell the threat of Al Qaeda to the American public like they are the new Nazis. By doing so, the Americans give Al Qaeda far too much credibility, and power.

There are relatively few politicians brave enough to try and undermine the Al Qaeda message, by pointing out how little support the group actually has amongst Muslims around the world, and how often its threats of attacks turn out to be nothing more than wishful thinking :

In an hour-plus videotaped interview broadcast last Saturday, al-Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri answered questions from an unnamed interviewer from al-Qaeda's video arm, Al-Sahab Productions. The topics addressed covered the range of issues usually focused on by al-Qaeda leaders in videos, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and most other ongoing Islamist insurgencies.

Zawahiri also again attacked the perfidy of Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for cooperating with, respectively, the Arab-state allies of the United States - calling them US Secretary of State "Condoleezza Rice's boys" - at the recent Riyadh conference on Palestine and Egyptian Hosni Mubarak's regime.

In the video, however, Zawahiri's presentation introduces several new elements that may portend an increasing al-Qaeda effort to make itself part of domestic US politics and to appeal to the religious sentiments and societal and economic dissatisfactions of American Muslims, especially black Muslims.

The new video maintains the high tempo of Zawahiri's media appearances in 2007. Zawahiri's May 5 appearance is his seventh of the year, of which two have been on videotape and five on audio. Overall, Al-Sahab media organization has released 35 videotapes in 2007, which is a rate of one video every 3.6 days.

Zawahiri's May 5 statements, however, were much more specifically targeted than bin Laden's message, and were meant to inflame further the ongoing confrontation between President George W Bush's administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the future of the Iraq war.

While accurately reflecting al-Qaeda's goals, Zawahiri's words were likely meant to provide quality fodder for those in US politics who argue that the Iraq war must be won to prevent the rise of a new Islamic caliphate that will be ruled by a doctrine of "Islamofascism" and threaten the United States and Israel.

For US politicians opposed to the war, Zawahiri offered grist of a similar quality. When asked about his view of the US troop surge in Baghdad and those who claim it is beginning to bear fruit, al-Qaeda's No 2 claimed that the surge certainly is "bearing fruit", but only in Bush's "pockets and the pockets of Halliburton".

Zawahiri's May 5 statements greatly expanded previous al-Qaeda efforts to portray the Islamist movement as part of a world liberation campaign that is meant to destroy US imperialism - "the most powerful tyrannical force in the history of mankind" - and assist "all the weak and oppressed in North America and South America, in Africa and Asia, and all over the world".

Al-Qaeda wants all people to know, Zawahiri said, "that when we wage jihad in Allah's path, we aren't waging jihad to lift oppression from Muslims only; we are waging jihad to lift oppression from all mankind, because Allah has ordered us never to accept oppression, wherever it may be". He concluded this part of the interview by inviting "all the world's weak and oppressed ones to Islam, the religion of freedom and rejection of tyranny, the religion which ... produced the 19 martyrs [of September 11, 2001], who demolished the symbol of America's arrogance".

Beyond this expansion, Zawahiri clearly sought to begin a process of sowing political and racial discontent among American Muslims, focusing primarily on blacks, who form the single most numerous group in the US Muslim community.

Zawahiri's May 5 interview is, to date, al-Qaeda's most sophisticated and nuanced attempt to bedevil US domestic politics, and it highlights the long-standing fascination that al-Qaeda and many other Islamist groups have had with the position of black Americans in US society, and the access they could potentially provide thereto.

Go Here To Read The Full Story

Afghanistan : NATO Claims 136 "Taliban Fighters" Killed During 14 Hour Battle

Afghanis Claim Civilians Massacred During Air Strikes

When NATO claims, as it has today, that its forces have killed "scores" of Taliban fighters, do they mean men who recieved training under the Taliban, or unemployed farmers who were paid a few dollars a day to pick up a gun and act as a guard for a Taliban outpost?

The controversy over whether all fighters killed in clashes in Afghanistan can be called Taliban, or Al Qaeda, has not gone away in more than six years of fighting, but it is clear that persons aligned or employed by the Taliban are falling in great numbers to NATO forces is a reality.

As the conflict stands today, NATO has deployed more than 36,000 troops into Afghanistan, with a focus of operations in the south of the country. The US has deployed an 'extra' 11,000 or more troops into the east, to try and stem the flow of new fighters entering across the borders with Pakistan.

The Taliban, meanwhile, claims it holds the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of Afghanis, many tens of thousands of whom, it claims, are fighting NATO forces or are willing to fight. In addition the Taliban, and Al Qaeda, claim they have at least two thousands suicide bombers waiting for their moment of opportunity to strike as lethal a blow as they are able.

The presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan met in Turkey today and are said to have agreed to work together to stop jihadists entering Afghanistan, or crossing the borders from Pakistan. President Karzai and President Musharraf didn't shake hands at the meeting, and didn't take any questions during a 'media conference'.

President Karzai's fading popularity in Afghanistan is viewed by Pakistan and NATO countries as being a key factor in the decay of the country's security.

From the New York Times :

United States Special Forces said they killed more than 130 Taliban in two recent days of heavy fighting in a valley in western Afghanistan, but hundreds of angry villagers protested in nearby Shindand on Monday, saying dozens of civilians had been killed when the Americans called in airstrikes.

The protesters sacked and burned government buildings, said Noor Khan Nekzad, a spokesman for the provincial police. He said none of the demonstrators were injured, but news reports said a number of protesters were hurt as the police and the army moved in to subdue the crowd.

The American military said that the fighting against the Taliban occurred Friday and Sunday in the Zerkoh Valley, near the Iranian border about 30 miles south of the city of Herat, and that the Special Forces called in airstrikes on at least two occasions. An American soldier was killed in the fighting on Friday, the military said, but there were no other reported casualties on the coalition side.

Forty-nine Taliban fighters, including two leaders of the group, were killed in the first bombardment on Friday, and 87 militants were killed in bombing during a second battle on Sunday that raged for 14 hours, the military said in a statement from the United States-led coalition headquarters at the Bagram air base.

But the local residents said that civilians were killed in the bombardment and that some drowned in the river as they fled, according to a local member of Parliament, Maulavi Gul Ahmad. News agencies reported that demonstrators said women and children were among the dead.

Mr. Ahmad condemned the bombing and said that the fighting angered local residents because the Americans raided their houses at night.

“They should not do that,” he said in a telephone interview. “The number that they claim — that 130 Taliban were killed — is totally wrong. There are no Taliban there.”

Raiding houses touches a nerve in Afghanistan, especially in conservative tribal areas, because the local custom dictates that men who are not family members cannot enter the parts of homes where the women stay. Such raids were upsetting local sensibilities so much several years ago that the American forces made an agreement with the Afghan government that they would not raid houses without the presence of Afghan elders or the police. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission says that the agreement is still in effect, but that American troops do not always adhere to it.

But an Afghan military official, who asked not to be identified, presented a different version of events from that of Mr. Ahmad. He said that the Special Forces had run into trouble on Friday, when they were surrounded by insurgents, and that they requested support from the Afghan National Army.

Afghan Army and police officials denied any involvement in the fighting.

From the London Times :

In what was reportedly the deadliest fighting in the country since January, US and Afghan army forces claimed to have destroyed seven Taleban positions and killed at least 87 fighters at Herat province yesterday, after receiving a tip-off about Taleban activity in the area's Zerkoh Valley. The attack, which Nato said was a combined ground and air strike, reportedly lasted 14 hours.

No coalition troops were believed to have been killed or injured in either attack.

Gul Aqa, the district's police chief, told the AFP news agency that the attacks had killed "a large number of people," but could not confirm the exact number.

Confirmation of the weekend's operations came as Britain announced today that about 2,000 troops - made up of both UK and Afghan forces - had launched a new operation to flush Taleban fighters out of a valley in Helmand province.

Operation Silicon, which will be focused on the Sangin Valley area, aims to clear the fundamentalist group's forces from Afghanistan's premier opium-producing province.

The province produces about 40 percent of the total amount of opium from Afghanistan, which illegally supplies more than 90 percent of the world's supply of the drug.

Fall Of Popularity For Karzai Could See Failure Of NATO War In Afghanistan

Thousands Of Afghanis Protest US-Led Attacks That Killed Civilians, Storm Government Buildings

317 US Soldiers Killed In Afghanistan, Pakistan And Uzbekistan During 'War On Terror'

Pakistan, Afghanistan Presidents Agree To Work Together To Fight Terrorism, Though Tensions Remain

Pakistan To Continue Fencing Its Borders With Afghanistan

3000 Militants & Fighters Killed In 2006, And More Than 1000 Civilians

They're Back : The Return of Al Qaeda

Jihadists Take On American Military In Iraq And Return Home Trained For International Terrorism

Pakistan Looms As The Home Of 'Nuclear Al Qaeda'


Al Qaeda, such as it was, had been pretty well neutralized as a viable fighting force by the end of 2001.

The Australian, British and American SAS in Aghanistan, and hundreds of deep-cover agents in Pakistan, saw to that. The Brits, Americans, French and Germans had shut down most of Al Qaeda's international financing and money transfers and holding banks.

By the start of 2002, Al Qaeda had lost most of its training camps in Afghanistan and the border regions with Pakistan; it could no longer transfer money around the world with virtual impunity, and it had lost thousands of its fighters in fighting, with tens of thousands more who had once pledged allegiance changing their minds about the 'international struggle'.

Al Qaeda shocked the Muslim world with 9/11's huge civilian casualties and disgusted jihadists who wanted to only focus on military targets. They became their own worst enemy, and most of the world backed the US-led invasion to wipe out Al Qaeda in Iraq. This began with special forces operations launched only days after 9/11.

The Afghanistan War mopped up the remains. It would have taken a few more years, but deep-cover agents would have effectively picked off the remaining power centres of Al Qaeda, from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia.

The reason Bush said he didn't care where Osama was, or if he was alive, was because that was what his intelligence agencies were telling him in 2002 : Osama was irrelevant and he had destroyed his own cause. Bin Laden was finished.

But then came the Iraq War.

We know the story. Once the bombs started falling and the women and children were shown blown to pieces, and the rich cultural heritage of Mesopotamia was allowed to be publicly vandalised and degraded by looters (including international looters and antique traders), what remained of Al Qaeda had all the visual propaganda they needed to build back up their forces and support bases and ramp up the rhetoric.

Al Qaeda tried to tell the Muslim world that America wanted to destroy them through the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the vast majority of Muslims knew they were full of crap. Because they were.

But Iraq allowed Al Qaeda to claim they were right about 'The Great Evil'. America and its allies were at war with Islam.

The Iraq War transformed what was once a fringe terror group of well-financed and well-trained operatives who had scored some major hits (African embassies, The USS Cole, WTCs) into a decades long threat to international order. And it all happened off the back of the Iraq War.

Considering all that, it is easy then to believe that some in the Bush inner circle wanted Iraq to create an enemy worthy of half a trillion a year in defence spending.

After all, getting US defence spending back up to Cold War levels again was outlined clearly and precisely in a number of the NeoCon-centric Project For A New American Century policy statements in the late 1990s. That the NeoCons wanted to cause chaos in the Middle East as a means to increase American defence spending is neither a secret, nor a conspiracy.

Overthrowing Iraq was key to the NeoCon Grand Plan to reshape the world and pump up defence spending to incomprehensible levels.

It worked.

They got the war they wanted, and that gave the NeoCons the enemy they needed.

And now, Al Qaeda is growing, and some claim they are stronger and more dangerous than ever before. In report after report, Pakistan is now being mentioned as a relatively secure and popular base of operations for Al Qaeda Mk 2.

But Pakistan is a nation armed with nuclear weapons, and it is already well on the way to being destablised, and eventually over-run, by the forces of what may soon become known as 'Nuclear Al Qaeda.'

From the New York Times :

As Al Qaeda rebuilds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, a new generation of leaders has emerged under Osama Bin Laden to cement control over the network’s operations, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

The new leaders rose from within the organization after the death or capture of the operatives that built Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, leading to surprise and dismay within United States intelligence agencies about the group’s ability to rebound from an American-led offensive.

It has been known that American officials were focusing on a band of Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan’s remote mountains, but a clearer picture is emerging about those who are running the camps and thought to be involved in plotting attacks.

American, European and Pakistani authorities have for months been piecing together a picture of the new leadership, based in part on evidence-gathering during terrorism investigations in the past two years. Particularly important have been interrogations of suspects and material evidence connected to a plot British and American investigators said they averted last summer to destroy multiple commercial airliners after takeoff from London.

Intelligence officials also have learned new information about Al Qaeda’s structure through intercepted communications between operatives in Pakistan’s tribal areas, although officials said the group has a complex network of human couriers to evade electronic eavesdropping.

Many American officials have said in recent years that the roles of Mr. bin Laden and his lieutenants in Pakistan’s remote mountains have diminished with the growing prominence of the organization’s branch in Iraq, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and with the emergence of regional terrorism networks and so-called home-grown cells.

That view, in part, led the C.I.A. in late 2005 to disband Alec Station, the unit that for a decade was devoted to hunting Mr. bin Laden and his closest advisers, and to reassign analysts within the agency’s Counterterrorist Center to focus on Al Qaeda’s expanding reach.

Officials say they believe that, in contrast with the somewhat hierarchical structure of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, the group’s leadership is now more diffuse, with several planning hubs working autonomously and not reliant on constant contact with Mr. bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, his deputy.

“The jihadis returning from Iraq are far more capable than the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets ever were....They have been fighting the best military in the world, with the best technology and tactics.”

Jason Burke is a leading world expert on Al Qaeda and Islamist terrorism. His views and insights are always worthwhile, and invaluable, in forming a clearer picture of what Al Qaeda is today, and the level of threat they constitute to the West.

Jason Burke writing in the UK Observer (excerpts) :

The continuing evolution of the phenomenon of 'al-Qaeda' continues to surprise - and deeply worry - those charged with keeping us safe.

· Britain is universally considered to be the nation 'most threatened by a major terrorist strike' outside the Middle East or southwest Asia because of its strong support for American foreign policies, relative accessibility compared to the US and strong historic connections to Pakistan which allows in hundreds of thousands of British subjects to travel virtually unmonitored every year. Though only a tiny minority are involved in militancy, the ease of access to the country for Urdu-speaking Britons is a huge advantage to those bent on violence.

· Al-Qaeda has re-established its 'nerve centre' in the lawless tribal areas of western Pakistan. The country is now considered the 'centre of gravity' of al-Qaeda by security services and the 'critical battlefield' in the years to come.

· Contrary to the British government's public claim, every source spoken to by The Observer, official or otherwise, in Britain and elsewhere believes the Iraq war has exacerbated the threat to the UK specifically and to the West generally. 'It is a huge part of the problem,' one senior British government counter-terrorism specialist said. However, contrary to exaggerated reports, the number of Westerners who have gone to Iraq to fight is said to be 'a handful'.

· Major co-ordinated attacks on the critical infrastructure of Western nations, such as the Channel Tunnel or passenger jets, are 'within the capability and ambition' of militants close to the al-Qaeda leadership and acting independently and are being actively planned.

· All sources consulted believe Osama bin Laden to be alive. However, his death would 'make little operational difference', analysts say, possibly damaging 'the organisation' but not 'the movement'.

· All thought the struggle against Islamic terrorism was growing and would last 'many decades'.

Western government analysts now usually split al-Qaeda into three elements. The first is a 'hard core' of well-known leaders such as bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his Egyptian-born associate, in Afghanistan. Security officials believe key decisions and operations take place on a new 'middle management' level dedicated to training volunteers who make their way to Pakistan and to co-ordinating both propaganda and bomb attacks around the world.

'Al-Qaeda as an operational, technically capable network, with chains of command leading back to Pakistan from many places, is very much alive and well and continuing to plot,' said one security source. 'This is very, very surprising given the damage they have suffered but they are a very resilient organisation.'

The second element is the 'network of networks', defined as the series of groups affiliated to the al-Qaeda hard core in Iraq, elsewhere in the Middle East and, increasingly, in some North African countries. These 'franchises' have links to individuals inside Western European countries, particularly the Algerian-based Groupe Salafiste de Predication et le Combat, and are seen as a potentially major threat. Analysts see a 'clear convergence, practically and ideologically, among militant groups globally' with greater co-ordination between them.

'The national barriers are falling by the wayside,' said one Pakistani official. 'Once a group was just dedicated to jihad in Kashmir or Afghanistan. Now it has a far broader agenda and engagement.' With Kashmiri groups historically having a significant presence in the UK, this growing unity is of great significance for British domestic security.

Significantly, the Taliban in Afghanistan is not considered to be closely linked to the al-Qaeda hard core, though there is reported to be ad hoc co-ordination between the various groups comprising the insurgency, including some transfer of technical and tactical know-how and cash. One civilian source in Kabul described links between Afghan and Iraqi militants as 'sketchy'.

The third element of 'al-Qaeda Mk2', say security officials, is ideology. This has mobilised thousands of young Muslims from a wide variety of backgrounds around the world in the last five years. Analysts now say their radicalisation is occurring far faster, aided by the internet. 'We are talking about a group of guys deciding to do something in West Yorkshire, Paris, Casablanca or Montreal', said one Western intelligence official. 'It's still amateur.'

But it can be horribly effective. According to France's Chaboud, the largest source of danger 'is the home-grown extremist'. Belgian officials point to a recently arrested teenager who had 'gone from no engagement at all to full commitment to a suicide attack' in the space of a few weeks 'alone with a computer in his bedroom'.

British officials talk of suspects so young that '11 September is virtually a childhood memory' being radicalised by 'slick, effective' propaganda and contacts with older people. 'Teenagers' bedrooms are difficult to penetrate,' said one UK official.

Group thinking plays a major role.

It is not the poorest people who are drawn to militancy either. The standard profile is male, mid-twenties, often with a degree and with parents who have migrated, often from southwest Asia or north Africa to the West. There are also an increasing number of converts.

'For a few years it looked like the core of al-Qaeda had been destroyed as a genuine physical presence by the war of 2001 and all that remained were its ideas, powerful though they were,' said one senior Western European security source. 'Yet we have seen the core element returning as a major force. They can provide the critical legitimacy and direction that volunteers need.'

It is the continually evolving interaction between the three main elements - the hard core, the network of networks and the ideology - that make it so resilient.

Jason Burke also supplies a comprehensive, essential list of key Al Qaeda figures at large, who've been killed and who are now in prison.

At large:

Osama bin Laden
Accused of masterminding the 11 September atrocities, he has been indicted for the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa and the attacks in 2000 on the guided missile destroyer USS Cole. Last confirmed sighting in Afghanistan, 2001.

Ayman Al-Zawahiri
Egyptian al-Zawahiri is seen as the strategic thinker of al-Qaeda. He was a key figure in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which merged with al-Qaeda.

Saif Al-Adel
A former Egyptian army officer, was Bin Laden's security chief and ran al-Qaeda's training programmes.

Abu Mohammed Al-Masri
The 45-year-old Egyptian ran the training camps in Afghanistan.

Believed dead:

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi
A Jordanian, he rose to notoriety as head of militant Islamic groups in Iraq. Killed in a US airstrike on an Iraqi safe house in June 2006.

Mohammed Atef
Al-Qaeda's military commander, died in an airstrike near Kabul in 2001.

In prison:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Captured in Pakistan in 2003, he is to be tried at Guantanamo, accused of being an architect of the 11 September attacks. Born in Pakistan, Mohammed joined al-Qaeda in the mid-1990s.

Ramzi Binalshibh
Also to be tried as a key plotter of 11 September . The former bank clerk from Yemen was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002.

Abu Zubaydah
A Saudi of Palestinian origin, he ran the logistics for bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Implicated in the USS Cole attack. Captured in Pakistan, he is to stand trial.

Ali Abdul Rahman Al-Ghamdi
Said to be al-Qaeda's leader in Saudi Arabia. Suspected of masterminding the 2003 Riyadh bombings. Surrendered to Saudi authorities shortly afterwards.

The Christian Science Monitor has a comprehensive round-up of Al Qaeda attacks, and its most significant losses and gains during 2006. A few of the most important on the list :

Afghanistan

Terrorism experts say that militant jihadists shifted focus to the original Al Qaeda base to utilize experience and tactics gained in Iraq - as reflected in the increase in suicide bombings from 27 in 2005 to 139 in 2006, according to US estimates. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are widely believed to be hiding in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Indonesia

Hundreds of members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a major terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, were arrested, while more radical members split from the group in early 2006 to form Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad. The biggest blow to counterterrorism efforts was the release of Abu Bakar Bashir from jail in June 2006 after he spent 26 months in prison. The radical Islamic cleric, who is said to lead JI, was cleared of conspiracy charges in December for his role in the 2002 Bali hotel bombings. "Indonesian counterterrorism law is gravely weak," says Mr. Gunaratna. "Abu Bakar Bashir is the leader of the most dangerous group in Southeast Asia. His group has killed more than 250 people."

Iraq

The most violent offshoot of bin Laden's global organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, seemed to suffer a major blow in 2006 with the killing of former chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June.

But the loss of his leadership may have actually strengthened the group, says Gunaratna.

Al Qaeda in Iraq is small but vicious...It was linked to the February bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra - the impact of which ratcheted up sectarian killings in 2006.

Pakistan

In September 2006, President Pervez Musharraf arranged his most recent peace deal with pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan's remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border. Mr. Musharraf's peace-brokering, critics warn, has allowed the Taliban to move freely between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Philippines

The Philippine military killed two top members of the Al Qaeda-linked militant group Abu Sayyaf. Military officials say that the killing of the group's leader, Khadaffy Janjalani, in September 2006, and his deputy Abu Sulaiman, who was killed in January 2007, have rendered the group ineffective. Still, US-trained Philippine soldiers continue to regularly engage Abu Sayyaf militants.

Saudi Arabia

In February, Saudi Arabia thwarted a bombing on an oil-processing plant. Raids and gun battles throughout the country netted more than 100 suspected Al Qaeda militants, but US officials have said that the kingdom could do more to curb terrorism, including stopping the flow of militants and funds across its borders.

USA

North America saw no Al Qaeda attacks. American security forces working around the world have seen "an awful lot of victories," says Arnaud de Borchgrave, director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "The CIA has carte blanche to track terrorists around the world," he says.

Border Region Between Afghanistan And Pakistan Now Thoroughly 'Talibanised' - Musharraf Did Deal With Pro-Taliban Tribal Leaders, And Bush Gave Him The Okay To Do So

The Talibanisation Of Pakistan

Bin Laden's "Walking Dead" Cross Into Afghanistan As Suicide Bombings Quadruple

The Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan are finding no shortage of new recruits in Pakistan, as jihadists gear up, and bomb up, for what are expected to be increasingly deadly clashes with NATO forces in the coming months.

While Pakistan's President Musharraf appears to remain a 'favourite' of the United States and the UK, there was a swirl of rumours last month that he, the leader of a military coup, was going to fall victim to another military coup, off the back of some extremely public protests by white collar professionals, mostly lawyers and doctors, in open defiance his dictatorship.

For now, Musharraf appears to have crushed any such dissident plans to overthrow him. But the pressure grows on Musharraf to do something about the steadily increasing number of jihadi militants crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan, and infiltrating the neighbouring nation of Waziristan, where a small-scale tribal war has erupted.

Musharraf did a deal last year with supposedly non-Taliban aligned tribal leaders near Pakistan's border that was supposed to see a decrease in manpower support for the Taliban. The Taliban and Al Qaeda simply went recruiting in Pakistan instead.

The Pakistan military are sometimes openly aligned with the Taliban, and Afghanistan's President Karzai now accuses Musharraf of allowing Al Qaeda and the Taliban to train and recruit inside Pakistan's borders.

The much-hyped 'Spring Offensive' in Afghanistan appears to be drawing near, at least in propaganda terms. The Taliban now claims it has deployed thousands of suicide bombers to all of Afghanistan's cities, where they will wait for the right foreign targets to show themselves before attacking. Such claims are dismissed by the Afghan government as the stuff of fantasies, but NATO forces are clearly gearing up for some major confrontations.

The Australian government is about to announce a new deployment of SAS, which will double Australia's troop commitment to the war. Such SAS forces are highly regarded by both NATO country armies and the Taliban itself. They respect Australian SAS because they've killed so many Taliban fighters during 2001, 2004 and 2006.

Germany, meanwhile, is sending over new fighter jets, and the United States is still pressuring EU nations not already committed to deploy military forces into Afghanistan if they want to see the 'War on Terror' ever get a recognisable victory.

Meanwhile, dozens of Taliban fighters are being killed each week, on average, while NATO forces lose three or four troops to gun fights and suicide bombings, the incidence of which has increased four-fold in the last twelve months from the year before.

The death toll on all sides, however, is expected to increase dramatically in the coming months, previewed by the defence ministers of NATO countries with forces already deployed hitting the local media hard and talking of sacrifice in order to prepare their constituents for what is expected to be a brutal increase in fighting, and dying.

The Washington Times has a curious, disturbing story on new Al Qaeda fighters, known as Bin Laden's "walking dead". They are suicide bombers, trained in Pakistan madrassas, who then literally walk into Afghanistan loaded with explosives. When they've completed their missions, they leave behind only "two feet and a lot of flesh" :

Orphaned by war and schooled in anti-American religious madrassas, the bombers often smile for a final video testament in Pakistan before walking or riding to their deaths in Afghanistan. As new explosives technology and tactics from the war in Iraq arrive in this remote corner of South Asia, suicide bombing attacks in the past 12 months have more than quadrupled from fewer than half a dozen in the previous year.

At least some of the bombers cross the border with a blessing from Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's bespectacled ideological lieutenant, said Lutfullah Mashal, a senior intelligence official with Afghanistan's National Security Council.

Afghan and U.S. officials say the bombers are trained in Waziristan, a tribal-administered border region of Pakistan. Several weeks of reporting along the rugged border suggests that al Qaeda and its affiliates are regrouping with charitable funds from Gulf Arab states, assistance from rogue elements of Pakistan's intelligence services and profits from the heroin trade.

Pakistan, which sanctioned U.S. bombing raids on suspected al Qaeda hide-outs last year, has all but retreated from its effort to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda in border areas, say Western diplomats.

Suicide bombing was unheard of during the long war against Soviet forces in the 1980s, when locals prided themselves on their skill in shooting down Soviet helicopters, rows of which still line the edge of the airport here.

As elsewhere in the Islamic world, al Qaeda is usually a facilitator of terrorism, rarely the direct instigator. Bin Laden's operatives exploit anti-American sentiment within home-grown Islamist groups and dispatch young men over the mountains toward martyrdom.

Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in nearby Pakistani community of Miram Shah, mimicking similar martyrdom celebrations in the West Bank and parts of the Arab world, throw lavish parties for the families of the suicide bombers...

Time Magazine has an excellent, in depth look at the 'Talibanisation' of Pakistan 's border frontiers leading into Afghanistan. This is easily one of the most important investigative stories they've run in the entire history of the 'War on Terror', but in a blinding sign of just how little importance the US mainstream media places on the Afghanistan war, Time use the 'Talibanisation' story as its international edition cover story, but buried this historical feature behind a celebrity fluff piece cover story for its American edition.

Time Magazine's 'Talibanisation' (excerpts follow) :

...the tribal region of Pakistan, a rugged no-man's-land that forms the country's border with Afghanistan (is) rapidly becoming home base for a new generation of potential terrorists.

Fueled by zealotry and hardened by war, young religious extremists have overrun scores of towns and villages in the border areas, with the intention of imposing their strict interpretation of Islam on a population unable to fight back.

Like the Taliban in the late 1990s in Afghanistan, the jihadists are believed to be providing leaders of al-Qaeda with the protection they need to regroup and train new operatives. U.S. intelligence officials think that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may have found refuge in these environs. And though 49,000 U.S. and NATO troops are stationed just across the border in Afghanistan, they aren't authorized to operate on the Pakistani side.

Remote, tribal and deeply conservative, the border region is less a part of either country than a world unto itself, a lawless frontier so beyond the control of the West and its allies that it has earned a name of its own: Talibanistan.

Since Sept. 11, the strategic hinge in the U.S.'s campaign against al-Qaeda has been Pakistan, handmaiden to the Taliban movement that turned Afghanistan into a sanctuary for bin Laden and his lieutenants. While members of Pakistan's intelligence services have long been suspected of being in league with the Taliban, the Bush Administration has consistently praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his cooperation in rooting out and apprehending members of bin Laden's network. But the Talibanization of the borderlands--and their role in arming and financing insurgents in Afghanistan--has renewed doubts about whether Musharraf still possesses the will to face down the jihadists.

Because Musharraf also heads Pakistan's army, it's unlikely that he will be forced from office. But a loss of support from his moderate base could deepen his dependence on fundamentalist parties, which are staunch supporters of the Taliban. If the protests against Musharraf continue, he will be even less inclined to crack down on the militants holding sway in Talibanistan--grim news for the U.S. and its allies and good news for their foes throughout the region. Says a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan: "The bottom line is that the Taliban can do what they want in the tribal areas because the [Pakistani] army is not going to come after them."

In fact, the territory at the heart of Talibanistan--a heavily forested band of mountains that is officially called North and South Waziristan--has never fully submitted to the rule of any country.

After 9/11, Islamabad initially left the tribal areas alone. But when it became obvious that al-Qaeda and Taliban militants were crossing the border to escape U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan sent in the first of what eventually became 80,000 troops. They had some success: the Pakistani army captured terrorist leaders and destroyed training camps. But the harder the military pressed, the more locals resented its presence, especially when civilians were killed in botched raids against terrorists.

As part of peace accords signed last September with tribal leaders in North Waziristan, the Pakistani military agreed to take down roadblocks, stop patrols and return to their barracks. In exchange, local militants promised not to attack troops and to end cross-border raids into Afghanistan. The accords came in part because the Pakistani army was simply unable to tame the region. Over the past two years, it has lost more than 700 troops there. The change in tactics, says Gul, was an admission that the Pakistani military had "lost the game."

The army isn't the only one paying the price now. Since Pakistani forces scaled back operations in the border region, the insurgency in Afghanistan has intensified. Cross-border raids and suicide bombings aimed at U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan have tripled, according to the senior U.S. military official. He concedes that "the Pakistanis are in a very difficult position. You could put 50,000 men on that border, and you wouldn't be able to seal it."

The troop drawback has allowed Pakistani militants allied with the Taliban to impose their will on the border areas. They have established Shari'a courts and executed "criminals" on the basis of Islamic law. Even Pakistani-army convoys are sometimes escorted by Taliban militants to ensure safe passage...

The emergence of Talibanistan may directly threaten the West too. Locals say the region has become one big terrorist-recruitment camp, where people as young as 17 are trained as suicide bombers.

"Here, teenagers are greeted with the prayers 'May Allah bless you to become a suicide bomber,'" says Obaidullah Wazir, 35, a young tribesman in Miranshah. National Intelligence Director John McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that "al-Qaeda is forging stronger operational connections that radiate outward from their camps in Pakistan to affiliated groups and networks throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe."

....the Bush Administration is beginning to recognize that to stabilize Afghanistan and prevent the rebirth of al-Qaeda, it has to contain the growth of Talibanistan.

Bin Laden's "Walking Dead" Quadruple Rate Of Suicide Bombings In Afghanistan Over Past Twelve Months

Taliban Claim They Have Deployed "Thousands Of Suicide Bombers" To Cities To Attack Foreigners

12 Taliban, 3 Nomads Killed in Clashes With Afghan/Coalition Forces In Helmand

Suicide Bomber Rams Army Convoy, Kills Five Children

Waziristan : 10 Killed, Scores Injured in Fighting, Tribal Leaders Call For All Foreigners To Be Expelled From Region

Taliban Execute Three NATO-Linked Informants - Body Hangs In Town's Main Street

Australian Special Forces, Fully Rested, Prepare For Return To Afghanistan

Pakistan Says It Wants And Needs A Stable Afghanistan - 3 Million Afghan Refugees In Pakistan