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Terrorism.com ========== How does al-Qaida stay organised when its members are in hiding and scattered across the world? Easy - it runs a website, says Paul Eedle Paul Eedle Wednesday July 17, 2002 The Guardian For a secret organisation hunted by the intelligence services of the most powerful nations on earth, al-Qaida has a remarkably public face. It is a website run by the Centre for Islamic Studies and Research. Since the start of the war on terrorism, the site has been producing hundreds of pages of material to rally support among radical Muslims, scare the west and enable al-Qaida cells to operate independently of Osama bin Laden and other leaders now in hiding. The site is entirely in Arabic, which means that tens of millions of people who hate American policies on the Middle East can read it, but almost nobody in either the governments or the media of the west can understand a word. The website is central to al-Qaida's strategy to ensure that its war with the US will continue even if many of its cells across the world are broken up and its current leaders are killed or captured. The site's function is to deepen and broaden worldwide Muslim support, allowing al-Qaida or successor organisations to fish for recruits, money and political backing. The whole thrust of the site, from videos glorifying September 11 to Islamic legal arguments justifying the killing of civilians, and even poetry, is to convince radical Muslims that, for decades, the US has been waging a war to destroy Islam, and that they must fight back. "America is the cause of every injustice, every wrong, every tyranny that afflicts Muslims... It is steeped in the blood of Muslims," wrote Sulaiman Bu Ghaith, an al-Qaida spokesman, in a series of articles published on the site last month entitled Under the Shadow of Spears. "America does not understand dialogue. Nor peaceful coexistence. Nor appeals, nor condemnation, nor criticism. America will only be stopped by blood." The site works to maintain the morale of al-Qaida supporters in the face of obvious reverses since September 11. In a letter to "brother mojahedin everywhere" in late May, Bu Ghaith warned: "My dear brothers: the path of principles and prayers is surrounded by calamities and obstacles, full of dangers and misfortunes, prison, death, banishment and exile. One day the believers are victorious over the infidels, the next day the infidels are victorious over the believers. Victory will never be the ally of either side, although definitely in the end the believers will triumph." He repeated the message in an audio recording on the site late last month. He also warned of new attacks on the US and promised a television appearance soon by Bin Laden. The story topped world headlines when the satellite TV channel al-Jazeera broadcast the recording, although it did not mention the website as the original source. Al-Qaida has also been using the site to launch diatribes against Muslims who question its strategy of total war with America. Although there is deep, broad anger in the Muslim world against US policies, there has been a surprising amount of criticism of al-Qaida from radicals who were once its allies and even its religious mentors. Shaykh Salman al-Oadah, for instance, who was admired by Bin Laden as one of the two religious leaders of Saudi Arabia's opposition movement in the mid-1990s, condemned the September 11 attacks for killing civilians. In April, he coordinated an open letter by 150 Saudi intellectuals entitled How We Can Coexist, calling for a dialogue with the west. Muntasser al-Zayyat, a lawyer for Egypt's radical Islamic Group, part of which merged with al-Qaida in the 90s, criticised al-Qaida for releasing a video featuring one of the September 11 hijackers explaining his motives for martyrdom at a time when Israeli-Palestinian violence was at its peak in April. He said the video, broadcast by al-Jazeera, diverted attention from the Palestinian issue and risked alienating potential supporters of the Palestinian cause in the west. Al-Qaida reacted furiously with a deluge of polemic on its website defending the entire conduct of its war against the west and dismissing any approach to the west other than violence. One statement on the subject of "the legality of the operations in Washington and New York" laid out seven grounds in Islamic law on which it is permissible to kill "sacrosanct infidels" - essentially civilians - and six grounds on which it is permissible to kill Muslims. These polemics explain why the site is so important to al-Qaida and why the real action in radical Muslim politics is now in a jungle of websites, bulletin boards, email lists and chatrooms on the internet. Al-Qaida knows it has to engage people there if it is to dominate debate. The Centre for Islamic Studies and Research website is a substantial undertaking. It has 11 sections, including the centre's own reports of fighting in Afghanistan, a regular digest of world media coverage of the conflict, books of jihad theology to download, videos such as the hijacker's testament, information about prisoners held in Pakistan and Guantanamo Bay, and poetry about jihad. The site has been hosted by legitimate internet service providers in Malaysia and, more recently, the US, at addresses such as www.alneda.com and www.drasat.com. The site has been shut down three times, each time because CNN was researching a story about the site and emailed the ISP for comment. As soon as the ISPs realised what they were hosting, they closed it. The site is now offline, but it is of such importance to al-Qaida that it is likely to try to find a new way to publish it. There has been media speculation that the site is being used to direct al-Qaida operational cells, and it has certainly carried low-level operational information. In February it published the names and home phone numbers of 84 al-Qaida fighters captured by Pakistan after their escape from fighting in Afghanistan, presumably with the aim that sympathisers would contact their families and let them know they were alive. More broadly, the site supports al-Qaida's effort since the war in Afghanistan to disperse its forces and enable them to operate independently. It provides all the strategic guidance, theological argument and moral inspiration - in a word, leadership - that a cell of trained al-Qaida operatives would need to plan an attack on western targets. A statement signed by Qaidat al-Jihad ("the Base of Jihad", al-Qaida's official name), published on the site in April, said: "God has enabled al-Qaida by his grace to reorganise its ranks, distribute its forces and arrange cooperation with the Afghan mojahedin. Serious work has begun inside Afghanistan. As for work abroad against the Americans and the Jews, matters have been arranged so that if one link is removed, however large its organisational importance, the organisation will not be struck by fatal blows, for new units have been formed..." Whether Bin Laden, al-Qaida's Egyptian theorist Ayman al-Zawahiri and their colleagues are on a mountain in the Hindu Kush or living with their beards shaved off in a suburb of Karachi no longer matters to the organisation. They can inspire and guide a worldwide movement without physically meeting their followers - without even knowing who they are. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bacIlu Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================