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UPDATE: 1/6/2010 - Al-Qa’ida has issued a statement on the forums this evening, signed by Mustafa Abu’l-Yazid on behalf of AQ General Command, and dated January 2, 2010, affirming that Abu Dujana al-Khurasani, ”the famous propagandist and writer on the jihadi forums,” carried out the attack in Khost. The statement also claims that Abu Dujana left a martyrdom testament saying that he acted in revenge for the killings of Baitullah Mehsud, Salih al-Somali, ’Abdallah Sa’id al-Libi ”and their brothers.”  The statement also promises the release of further information in due course. AFP has more on the release here.

 * * *

The jihadi forums are in a frenzy today over breaking news that one of their own may have been the suicide bomber that killed seven CIA employees in Khost, Afghanistan on December 30, 2009. First reported by al-Jazeera yesterday, and picked up in the Wall Street Journal today, it appears that a spokesperson of the Pakistani Taliban has claimed that the suicide bomber at Forward Operating Base Chapman was Jordanian national Hammam Khalil Abu Milal, famous in the jihadi blogosphere as Abu Dujana al-Khurasani. If true, this news is sure to galvanize the online jihadi community, and would represent the most dramatic case to date of the potential for virtual-to-actual jihadi activism.

Even before his alleged role in the Khost attack, Abu Dujana was well known to jihadis for having made the transition from keyboard to Kalashnikov earlier last year. He quickly rose to prominence - and eventually an adminstrator position - on the elite al-Hisba forum in 2007, and has long been widely regarded for a series of popular essays he wrote on the forums, especially on the course of the jihad in Iraq and in praise of al-Qa’ida in Iraq. In September of 2009, it was announced on the forums that Abu Dujana had joined the mujahidin in “Khurasan” (Afghanistan and western Pakistan), and the al-Qa’ida magazine “Vanguards of Khurasan” ran an interview with Abu Dujana about his jihadi career that same month in its fifteenth issue.  Another famous cyber-jihadi and former Hisba admin, Ziad Abu Tariq, posted a glowing encomium to Abu Dujana soon thereafter. In October, a compilation of his essays was produced in high-quality pdf format and distributed on the forums, an extremely unusual mark of distinction for an e-jihadi with otherwise no religious or military credentials.

In his interview with Vanguards, Abu Dujana described himself as in his early thirties, originally from the north of the Arabian Peninsula, married and with two daughters. He charts his jihadi trajectory in a familiar manner; outraged by the violent repression of Muslims in Palestine, Iraq and Pakistan (he specifically cites the summer 2007 attack on the Red Mosque in Islamabad), Abu Dujana felt increasingly alienated from mundane existence and nurtured a violent vengefulness. “How,” he asks, “after all of this [repression], can we be expected to just carry flowers and don festive clothes? No, by God! We will carry nothing but weapons and don naught but military vests and bomb belts!” He found a community of common sentiment in the online jihadi forums, meeting virtual “brothers” whom he came to “love more than some of my own family.” He says that his early postings on the Iraq conflict were noted by the Hisba adminstrators, who encouraged him to write more and eventually invited him to become an administrator himself. Ultimately, says Abu Dujana, devoting his time to inciting and recruiting for jihad left him facing the obvious question, “how can I urge others to the battle while I sit idly by?” By autumn of 2009, Abu Dujana had answered that question, and was somewhere on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

All of the major forums have active threads right now on this story, though no confirmation from anything resembling an “official” source has yet been released. The Pakistani Taliban source cited by al-Jazeera – one al-Haj Ya’qub – has promised to release a video that he claims will prove Abu Dujana’s role in the attack.  A number of well-informed sources, such as Abu al-Hawra, a functionary of the Falluja forum, have pointed out that Abu Dujana represented himself online as having come from the Arabian Peninsula, not Jordan, while in the same thread “al-Dusari,” a Falluja regular, writes cryptically that he has personal knowledge on which he cannot elaborate that leads him to believe that the bomber could not have been Abu Dujana. The Afghan Taliban, meanwhile, have issued claims that conflict with the Abu Dujana story. In press releases on the official Taliban-IEA website, as well as in their Arabic magazine al-Sumud, the Afghan Taliban have stated that the Khost suicide bomber was one Samiullah, a soldier in the Afghan National Army.  Given the symbolic and instrumental significance of the attack, a variety of interested parties, including the Taliban-IEA, the TTP, al-Qa’ida and the Haqqani Network (Taliban-IENW) will perceive an advantage in laying claim to this jihadi “victory,” and we can reasonably expect further claims and counter-claims in the coming days.

The Jihadica crew would like to wish all our readers a very happy new year. 2009 was an exciting year for the blog. Our readership grew, and some of our postings made news. One post even inspired a front page story in the New York Times. Other posts were widely noted in the policy community. Posting was irregular in the second semester, but at least we kept afloat, much thanks to our guest bloggers. Our readership is not enormous, but it seems to be loyal, something for which we are extremely thankful. We are also very grateful for all your comments and emails. We probably don’t respond as often as we should, but we read them all.

I suspect 2010 is going to be an eventful year in the world of jihadism. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a major breakthrough against AQ Central in Pakistan. AQ in Yemen will be put under severe pressure in the next six months; exactly what the fallout will be I dare not predict. In Algeria, I think AQIM will continue to weaken. I am less optimistic about Somalia, and I am nervous about Iraq. As for attacks in the West, all we can say is that they will be few, but they might be big. (There is so much contingency involved that predictions are impossible). On the jihadi Internet, I don’t expect much to change, except that we will hear from new jihadi ideologues and we will probably see more experiments with government cyberattacks against major jihadi websites.

Whatever happens, Jihadica will be there to report and reflect on it. See you in the new year!

The Malahim Foundation, the media wing of al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has issued a statement on the forums today claiming responsibility for the attempted attack on a Detroit-bound commercial airplane on Christmas Day. 

The statement claims that the “martyrdom-seeking mujahid brother ‘Umar Faruq” attempted the attack “in coordindation with mujahidin in the Arabian Peninsula” in retaliation for US airstrikes on AQAP targets in Yemen.  The message boasts that Faruq’s successful negotiation of airport security in getting on the plane was further proof that the AQAP had perfected its detection-resistant bomb technology, claims that a technical fault frustrated Faruq’s attempt, and vows that “we will continue on this path with God’s permission until we have obtained our objective.”

The message then addresses appeals to various audiences to take up arms against Americans and American interests. “All Muslims of fervid faith and belief” are called upon to help expell infidels from the Arabian Peninsula, by killing “Crusaders” in their embassies or elsewhere.  All soldiers and others employed by Crusader and Crusader-puppet governments are called on to follow the example of Nidal Hassan, who “won a victory for the religion of God” by seeking to “kill the Crusaders will all available means.”  Americans are warned of retribution for the killing of Muslims by their leaders, ominously promising that women and children are fair targets, for “as you kill so shall we kill.”

The message ends with calls on God for the safety and release of Umar Faruq and all Muslim prisoners everywhere, and is signed Qa’idat al-Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula, 9 Muharram 1431 (12/26/2009).

In what has turned out to be a rather prescient quip, the Arab journalist Abd al-Ilah Sha’i, who has conducted interviews for al-Jazeera with both Nasir al-Wuhayshi and Anwar al-Awlaqi and who is an occasional commentator on the jihadi forums, wrote last week on the Falluja forum that South Yemen was becoming the “Waziristan of the Arabian Peninsula.” This comment was made in connection with the US-supported airstrike on an alleged AQAP training camp in Abyan, Yemen, early on December 17, corresponding with the Islamic calendar’s New Year’s day (1 Muharram 1431).  Events that have unfolded since then have unfortunately only strengthened the aptness of the comparison.

This past Wednesday, December 23, Abu ‘Umayr Muhammad Ahmad bin Salih ‘Umayr al-‘Awlaqi, described variously as a “mid-level figure” in AQAP, or as the “al-Qa’ida leader for Shabwa Province,” appeared in an al-Jazeera video taken at a protest rally in Abyan, seeking to stoke the audience’s ire against “America and its lackeys”[1].  The following morning, a second US-backed airstrike against what were reportedly AQAP targets was carried out, this time in the Rafd valley of Shabwa Province.  Early reporting suggested  that Anwar al-Awlaqi and the top two leaders of AQAP, Nasir al-Wuhayshi and Sa’id al-Shihri, were among the thirty or more people killed in the strike, but local sources only mention five victims [1]; [2].

Aside from an urgent request for prayers for the mujahidin of AQAP, the only confirmation from jihadi sources about AQAP losses in the Shabwa strike came in a “tidings of martyrdom” post that appeared on the Shamikh and Falluja forums late on Friday.  This post confirmed what had already been reported in Arab news sources: that the Shabwa strike killed Abu ‘Umayr al-‘Awlaqi and two of his younger kinsmen.  This and many subsequent posts have refered to Wuhayshi and Anwar al-Awlaqi with the traditional invocation may God protect him, indicating that they survived the strike.

The first official communication from AQAP regarding these events was released via al-Fajr Media this morning on the forums, but the statement, entitled “A Message Regarding the Massacre of Muslims in the State of Abyan,” is about the December 17 Abyan strike and says nothing about the Shabwa attack.  The statement asserts that around fifty civilians were killed in the airstrikes; expresses condolences to the Bakazim tribe, identified as having suffered the worst losses; charges that a conspiracy between the governments of the US, Yemen, Egypt and Saudi Arabia is behind these current instances of a “war on Islam” in the Arabian Peninsula, which the statement links to broader conflicts in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Waziristan; says the strikes show up the Yemeni authorities as un-Islamic puppets of America; and vows that the blood of Muslims killed in the strikes will not go unavenged.

So far there has been little chatter on the forums regarding the news of a possible AQAP link in the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airplane on Christmas, though Arabic-language news reports on these events have been posted to the forums.  Early this morning a regular on Falluja posted an open letter to Wuhayshi and AQAP’s media organization (the “Malahim Foundation”) urging them to capitalize on popular sentiment against the US and put out a short video on the strikes as soon as possible.  One can expect that the AQAP will be loath to pass up the opportunity presented by the week’s events to make Abu Basir Nasir al-Wuhayshi a household name worldwide.

Earlier this month a new and expanded edition of a popular jihadi text collection was released on the forums (e.g., here). Called “A Mujahid’s Bookbag” (Haqibatu’l-Mujahid), the collection of over 2000 jihadi texts was compiled by Zubayr al-Ghazi, a functionary of the Falluja forums, and consists of searchable, indexed Word files. Some of these texts are thousands of pages long, others are brief letters, fatwas or interview transcripts.  The list of authors whose works are compiled here is of note, and provides a useful benchmark for currently-influential ideologues in the Arabophone Salafi jihadi movement.  When cross-referenced to the Militant Ideology Atlas (MIA), our best benchmark of influence circa 2006, I found that 21 of the 53 named authors in this collection were not cited in the works we canvassed for the MIA. I also cross-referenced the list of 19 scholars identified by Zawahiri in the Exoneration as supportive of al-Qa’ida; 8 of those scholars are included in the Mujahid’s Bookbag.

Most of the prominent new names not found in the MIA research have emerged on the Salafi jihadi scene since 2006. These include Abu’l-Nur al-Maqdisi, the late ideologue of the Jund Ansar Allah jihadi tanzim in Gaza.  Several of the new names come out of al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI), indicating that al-Qa’ida’s Iraqi jihad has lead to the rise of some influential jihadi voices.  There are however no new voices here from AQAP, AQIM or the Horn of Africa, nor are any contemporary South Asian authors included. Note also that Mustafa Abu’l-Yazid is missing from this list, underlining his operational rather than ideological importance in the movement. Other al-Qa’ida senior leadership (AQSL) voices represented here include Bin Ladin, Zawahiri, Abu’l-Walid al-Ansari (not to be confused with Abu’l-Walid al-Masri), Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (AQI), Abu Yahya al-Libi, and Sulayman Abu’l-Ghayth (in GITMO); one could add a few more to this list, such as QAP’s ‘Uyayri, but of course the lines quickly get blurred in this select group of jihadists. The prominent presence of Dr. Fadl (as ‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Abd al-’Aziz) underscores the continued importance of his massive literary output for the jihadi movement, despite the recent disavowal of his earlier positions; not surprisingly, his newer “revisionist” writings are not included in the Bookbag.

As in the MIA, three names stand out - here for their disproportionate share of the total volumes collected: Abu Basir al-Tartusi, with nearly 200 titles represented; Abu Qatada al-Filistini, with about 180; and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, with around 175 titles. Maqdisi continues to have the highest profile in the Salafi jihadi movement, and has emerged lately as a distinct pole of influence vying with AQSL within the larger Salafi jihadi milieu. Zawahiri’s recent output via al-Sahab has taken a noticably Maqdisian tone, and is very clearly echoing Maqdisi’s seminal work Millat Ibrahim in its articulation of an Abrahamic model for shari’a-state revolutionaries.  For instance, in both of his recently-released messages “The Idol of National Unity” and The Dawn and Lamp, Zawahiri prominently uses the opening verses about Abraham from Qur’an 60 (surat al-mumtahinah) to situate his position vis-à-vis the illegitimacy of constitutional politics, the same verses from which Maqdisi developed his ideologically innovative positions on these issues in Millat Ibrahim in mid-’90s Peshawar.

The following is the list of authors in the Mujahid’s Bookbag, in the table of contents’ alphabetical order of appearance. Authors not cited in MIA are indicated with an asterisk after their names, while authors appearing in Zawahiri’s Exoneration list are identified with a “(Z)”. The number of works by each author included in the Mujahid’s Bookbag are also indicated:

Abu Ahmad ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Masri*
21 works

Abu’l-Ala al-Mawdudi
9 works

Abu’l-Nur al-Maqdisi*
3 works

Abu’l-Walid al-Ansari* (Z)
31 main works, 7 letters, 12 articles from a series of lectures

Abu Basir al-Tartusi
161 main works (with 12 smaller works of excerpts from these); 19 volumes of compendia of legal opinions on a variety of issues; 28 further collections of legal opinions on various issues.

Abu Bakr Naji*
4 works

Abu Jandal al-Azdi (sometimes Azadi)
20 works

Abu Hafs al-Jaza’iri*
6 works

Abu Hamza al-Muhajir*
4 works

Abu Sa’d al-’Amili
42 works

Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Athari Sultan al-’Utaybi*
10 works

Abu ‘Abd Allah al-Tunisi*
9 works

Abu ‘Abd Allah al-Sa’di*
13 works

Abu ‘Umar al-Sayf
15 works

Abu ‘Amr ‘Abd al-Hakim Hasan* (Z)
25 works

Abu Qatada al-Filistini (Z)
81 main works; 98 articles under the title “articles between the two ideologies” (maqalat bayn minhajayn); 13 collections of hadith

Abu Mariya al-Qurashi*
10 works

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi (Z)
4 interviews; 18 collections of poetry; 35 collections of fatwas and polemics (rudud); 23 books and studies; 2 pamphlets; 60 articles and letters; 9 works drawn from Maqdisi’s prison diaries; 7 works of jihadi hagiography; 4 debates; 5 personal letters; 3 addresses to imprisoned comrades; 7 statements on ideology/methodology (minhaj) 

Abu Mus’ab al-Suri (’Umar ‘Abd al-Hakim) (Z)
51 works

Abu Hajir al-Libi*
3 works

Abu Humam Bakr bin ‘Abd al-’Aziz al-Athari*
23 works

Abu Yahya al-Libi* (Z)
32 works

Abu Yunis al-’Abbasi*
40 works

Abi Anas al-Shami (’Umar Hadid, ‘Umar Yusuf Jum’a)*
15 works

Ahmad bin Hammud al-Khalidi
11 works

Ahmad Shakir
4 works

Usama bin Ladin (”God protect him”)
26 works

Ayman al-Zawahiri (”God protect him”)
37 works

Bakr Abu Zayd
36 works

Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’l-Jihad and Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi*
4 works

Juhayman bin Sayf al-’Utaybi
8 works

Hamid al-’Ali
39 works

Husayn bin Mahmud
57 works

Hammud bin ‘Uqla al-Shu’aybi
59 works, 20 hagiographies about Shu’aybi

Khalid ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Husaynan*
3 works

Dr. ‘Abd al-’Aziz Al ‘Abd al-Latif
19 works

Rifa’i Surur*
12 works (one of them - “On the Soul and Preaching” - broken out into nine separate files/parts)

Sulayman Abu’l-Ghayth*
9 works

Sulayman al-’Alwan (”may God break his bonds”)
101 works

Sayyid Qutb
10 works (with “In the Shade of the Qur’an” broken out into 18 files)

‘Abd al-’Aziz bin Salih al-Jarbu’
20 works

‘Abd al-’Aziz bin Nasir al-Jalil
9 works

‘Abd al-Qadir ‘Abd al-’Aziz  (Z)
14 works (with al-Jami’ - “The Compendium” - broken into 8 files)

‘Abd Allah al-Rashud
13 works

‘Abd Allah bin Nasir al-Rashid
24 works

‘Abd Allah ‘Azzam
50 works

‘Ali bin Khudayr al-Khudayr
45 works

Muhammad Qutb
21 works

Muhammad Mustafa al-Muqri*
23 works

Nasir al-Fahd (Z)
46 works

Hani al-Siba’i
33 works

Wasim Fath Allah*
36 works

Yusuf al-’Uyayri [sometimes 'Ayiri, etc.]
30 works, and 13 biographies and hagiographies

[A further 197 miscellaneous works are then listed, many of them written anonymously]

Read part 1

What does Youssef al-Qaradawi say about waging war against non-Muslims at least once a year as part of fard kifaya, a task some classical jurists believed was incumbent upon the ruler? Al-Qaradawi does not believe that the classical jurists reached a consensus on this matter.

Instead, he believes that their opinions were dictated by the circumstances of their time, namely ‘the relationship between the Islamic state and its neighbors that were constantly threatening it, especially Byzantium.’ Muslims then had to ‘engage in skirmishes along their borders every once and a while, to ensure the security of their borders and assert their presence.’

This, he believes is akin to ‘what scholars today call “preemptive war”, which they consider to be justifiable and lawful.’ (issue 7) Preemptive war is more controversial in international law than al-Qaradawi implies. Some Israeli and US military strategists though might agree with al-Qaradawi that preemptive war is lawful.

Though the modern (political science) reader might be forgiven to assume that al-Qaradawi, in part, shares some of the political values of the Realist school of thought – the school that emphasizes the security of the state over ethical and moral concerns – al-Qaradawi is nevertheless keen to add a moral dimension to the concept of offensive jihad in Islam. ‘What is it that Muslims seek to obtain through offensive jihad?’ He asks. ‘Is it a thirst for blood on the Muslims’ part, and an overwhelming desire to attack others? In other words: is jihad [nourished by] an oppressive power common to all empires across history, those which sought to swallow up everything around them’ (issue 25)?  The answer, he says, is a categorical ‘no’, and he devotes a section in which he argues that Islam and peace are one and the same.

However, al-Qaradawi laments that Islam ‘cannot prevent war’; that is why Islam commands its followers ‘to prepare for war’ so that they could be ready to fight their enemies when it is necessary for them to do so.The world has many Qabil(s) (Cain), he believes, and ‘is it possible’, he asks, ‘that all other people should take the same stand as his kind brother Habil (Abel)?’ That would not be sensible, in his mind. Instead ‘evil (sharr) must be repelled with evil’ (I suspect that al-Qaradawi inadvertently used the term ‘evil’ instead of ‘force’ (‘unf) in this context, for he must surely realize the implications of associating Islam and jihad with evil).

Thus, reminiscent of a Hobbesian view, al-Qaradawi believes that ‘reality reveals that life could not be made upright without a [coercive] power that would protect the truth, resist falsehood, impose justice, fight oppression and prevent the Cains from attacking the Abels of this world.’

In essence, the objective of war in Islam, he holds, is to repel attacks with force, whether such attacks are on the nation, its territory or its religion. Al-Qaradawi is keen to stress that it is the Muslims’ duty to repel attacks against the dhimmis (i.e., Christians and Jews), and also defend their rights to worship in their churches and synagogues. This, he believes, is because there is a mutual obligation between Muslims and dhimmis to defend each other (issue 27).

(to be continued)

It appears that this year’s Ramadan was one of the least violent in the nearly two decades of jihadi activism in Algeria. While this period is hailed by militants and their leaders as the most propitious one for jihadi attacks, Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was not able to wage a major operation. The threat is still vibrant in the organization’s mountainous strongholds east of Algiers, but AQIM’s ability to strike the capital has been significantly reduced. (By contrast, the relative calm of Ramadan in 2007 was followed by the combined suicide attack against the UN headquarters and the Constitutional Court in Algiers, on December 11). This evolution fits the general trend, documented by Hanna Rogan (see also Thomas’s post on April 3), about the decreasing violent record of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), the Algerian jihadi organization that turned into AQIM in January 2007.

Going global was obviously the option adopted by the GSPC leadership to reverse this trend, but the Al-Qaida boost was only temporary. And Abd al-Malik Drukdal, AQIM’s emir, failed to live by his commitment to energize an “Islamic Maghrib” dynamics: Moroccan and Tunisian jihadi networks are operating out of his realm, while Libyan activists are looking East. So AQIM had to rely on the jihadi networks that the GSPC had already developed in the Sahara, especially in Mauritania. But the control exerted by the AQIM leadership on those desert commandos is debatable: the killing of 4 French tourists in Eastern Mauritania on the eve of Christmas in 2007 probably jeopardized the more ambitious planning of a terror attack against the Paris-Dakar car-race, that was then cancelled.

AQIM dreams of striking the French or Spanish “Crusaders” on their own turf, while Al-Qaida central fuels the anti-European intensity of the jihadi propaganda. But Spanish and French security are well aware of this, and a large number of the jihadi networks dismantled North of the Mediterranean had Algerian connections (Javier Jordan concluded that 13 out of the 28 jihadi cells neutralized in Spain in the four years following the Madrid bombings were linked to GSPC/AQIM). So AQIM, frustrated so far in its “infidel” plotting, and contained in its Algerian safe havens, increasingly looked southward. After years of abducting Western tourists in the Sahara and releasing them against ransoms (quite a profitable activity for a relatively poor organization, see the jihadica posting on February 24), AQIM decided to sharpen its “jihadi” profile and executed a British hostage, at the very end of last May. AQIM also intensified its activities in Northern Niger, and even more in Northern Mali, where it suffered heavy losses in July at the hand of the regular army.

AQIM is therefore facing quite a dilemma: emir Drukdal is focusing his public attacks against the “Crusaders” and what he describes as their puppet or “apostate” regimes in North Africa. His mid-2008 New York Times interview was a fascinating and delusive piece of global rhetoric.

But the organization has to find a way to address the growing confrontation with local forces in the Sahel. Although AQIM has already proclaimed “jihad” against the Mauritanian regime, it is much less vocal about Mali and Niger. The opportunistic logic of global jihad, which exploits any available room to maneuver, can prove hard to package.

The Somali Shabab al-Mujahidin just released its “Eid gift” to all Muslims: a video dedicated and pledging allegiance to Usama Bin Laden. (The video is also on youtube).

The production is subtitled in English and features the now famous Abu Mansour al-Amriki. One of the targeted audiences is obviously the English-speaking one, which makes sense now that the number of Somali-Americans killed fighting for the Shabab has reached six. But the main message is the commitment to al-Qaida’s global jihad, which  is not new in essence, but was never previously expressed with such emphasis. My initial analysis is that the Shabab, despite its conspicuous allegiance to Al-Qaida’s emir, is meeting the latter halfway, while echoing his harsh attack, last March, against the Somali president. The release of the video may also be an effort to counter the negative impact of the killing of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan on 14 September (even though the video was produced before the US strike).

In the latest edition of al-Qalam, the weekly online magazine of the Pakistani militant group Jaysh-e-Mohammed, columnist Naveed Masood Hashmi lashes out at Hillary Clinton for linking madrassas, or religious seminaries, to suicide bombings. In an article entitled “Hillary, Madaris and Hanging/Execution,” Hashmi asks: “… who is she [Hillary Clinton] to accuse Pakistani madrassas of sponsoring suicide attacks?” and wonders if the US ambassador to Pakistan, N. W. Peterson, will offer an apology to the Pakistani people for this immensely “provoking” statement made by their Secretary of State.

The author delves into a lengthy praise of madrassas, their popularity and social benefits, and goes on to emphasize that at no point during the long and glorious history of madrassas did they produce terrorists or encourage suicide strikes. Instead, he argues, it is the U.S. that is to blame for the ongoing suicide missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan:

“After 9/11 when U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan, they not only made the Muslims there victims of their viciousness, but also ensured that their slave, Pervez Musharraf, enact the same barbarity in Pakistan’s tribal areas [...] So, it wasn’t madrassas that created suicide bombers, rather they were borne of American evil-doing and are thirsty for vengeance.”

Therefore, Hashmi advises, the solution is not to change Pakistan’s education sector with the help of American dollars or the propaganda being played out by Pakistani “liberals” or any schemes such “devilish minds” can concoct. Instead, the only fool-proof method of preventing suicide bombings is to alter US policy:

“If the Secretary of State stops accusing madrassas of propagating extremism and tells the Pentagon and White House to end their brutality against Muslims… then I can assure you, suicide bombing shall cease.”

Yesterday there was an assassination attempt on the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Muhammad Bin Nayif. An unidentified wanted militant, pretending to surrender to authorities, blew himself up as he was being searched. The blast occurred in Bin Nayif’s private office in Jidda, close enough to the Prince himself for the latter to be lightly wounded (although no wounds were visible his subsequent TV appearance).

The attack is obviously noteworthy, not least because it is the first confirmed jihadi assassination attempt on a senior prince in Saudi history. There have been rumours of such attempts in the past, but none have ever been confirmed. This shows that al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula (QAP) is definitely after the royal family, and the incident underlines the QAP’s ideological turn to a more revolutionary direction. Their campaign started off in 2003 focusing exclusively on Western targets, but has gradually shifted to include more and more regime targets.

It is also worrying that there are still militants with access to explosives and bomb-making expertise. It remains to be seen whether the attacker had many local helpers and whether he had links to the QAP headquarters in Yemen. If he did, it would be more serious.

Having said all this, I don’t think the incident itself tells us very much at all about QAP’s operational capability or Saudi regime stability. This was essentially a stupid security slip-up, whereby the bomber was allowed to get deep into the building without any security inspection. I would be very surprised if this happened again.

To understand how this could occur, one needs to understand Muhammad Bin Nayif’s role in the Saudi counterterrorism apparatus. In addition to being the top CT official, he is also the main contact point between the state and the radical Islamist community. He is the one that militants go to see when they want to surrender. He has been doing personal behind-the-scenes liaison work with the jihadi community since at least the late 1990s. He has made a point of always being personally accessible to militants wanting to talk. And he has a reputation in the Islamist community (outside of al-Qaida) for discretion, kindness and financial generosity.

Bin Nayif has received hundreds of jihadis in his office in this way, and by all accounts there have never been any security problems.  I suspect that over time, this made the Prince and his staff overconfident about their security. In this particular case, the fact that it was 11.30 at night during a popular Ramadan reception probably made security even more lax. The bottom line is that it didn’t take operational genius or a high-ranking mole get close to the Prince.

By the way, media are referring to an al-Qaida claim of responsibility reported by SITE, but neither I nor Greg over at Waq al-Waq have been able to find it on the forums this morning.

PS Apologies for my long absence from jihadica. Family vacations, house moves and paper deadlines have made blogging difficult. I am now back at work, but I will be contributing infrequently this fall for reasons I will explain later.