Al-Banshiri, Abu Ubaydah: Abu Ubaydah’s real name was Ali-Amin al-Rashidi. He was an Egyptian national, a former Egyptian security officer, and left Egypt in 1983 for Afghanistan. He was a senior member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), was a talented combat commander of Osama bin Laden’s forces during the Afghan jihad, and served for a time as a senior commander for Ahmed Shah Masood’s forces in northern Afghanistan, thereby establishing the link between bin Laden and Masood. Also a man of ideas, Abu Ubaydah worked to unite the EIJ and the Gama’at Al-lslamiyah (IG) into a single Islamist force and apparently helped conceive the plan for organizing and training a professional, multiethnic “Islamic Army” that could be deployed around the world to support Muslim insurgencies. During the Afghan jihad, he became bin Laden’s top military commander and later led attacks on U.S. forces in Somalia. In May 1996, Abu Ubaydah drowned in Uganda’s Lake Victoria.
Bin Laden, Bakr: Osama bin Laden’s eldest brother and the current chief of the multibillion-dollar Saudi Bin Laden Group of companies. He is a confidant of the Saudi royal family.
Bin Laden, Muhammed: Osama bin Laden’s father. Muhammed was a devout, puritanical Muslim and a brilliant businessman. He was born in Yemen and emigrated to Saudi Arabia in the late 1920s, where he started the construction company that formed the core of today’s multibillion-dollar Saudi Bin Laden Group. Muhammed established close personal and business ties to the Saudi royal family, and his company became and remains the “king’s contractor.”
Bin Laden, Osama: Born in 1957, he is the youngest son of Muhammed bin Laden. Educated at King, Abdul Azziz University, he fought in the Afghan jihad and organized the al Qaeda group to assist armed Muslim insurgents around the world. Following the precedent set by the medieval Muslim military leader Saladin, bin Laden declared a defensive jihad against what he called the Crusaders—predominately Christian Western countries led by the United States—in the summer of 1996.
Crusades: Military campaigns by Catholic European forces meant to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslim control. The concept of the crusade was sanctioned by Pope Urban II in 1085, and between 1096 and roughly 1300 there were eight crusades focused on the Holy Land. Many Crusaders shared a view of their efforts that today is held by bin Laden and his associates. As Arthur Jones has written in the National Catholic Reporter, the Catholic knights saw themselves traveling a “novom salutis genus”—a new path to heaven.2 In the Muslim world, the crusades were and are viewed as Christian military offensives meant to expand Christendom’s domain and eliminate Islam. Osama bin Laden’s description of the United States as leader of the “Crusaders” is evocative and resonates with Muslims who associate the term with the history of bloody Catholic aggression against Islam.
Darraz, Issam: An Egyptian journalist who on occasion traveled with Osama bin Laden during the final years of the Afghan jihad. His 1991 book, Osama Bin Laden Recounts Arab Al-Ansar Lion’s Lair (Masadah) Battles in Afghanistan, is the fullest study of bin Laden’s combat experience during the war.
Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ, or Al-Jihad): A relatively small group that evolved from the Islamist movement in Egypt’s universities in the late 1960s. Because of its limited size, the EIJ, unlike the IG, has stressed the need for clandestinity and quick decision making. Many EIJ members initially belonged to the IG but formed their own organization in part because of their unwillingness to accept Shaykh Rahman as their leader. The dissenters believed that the Koran forbid leadership being given to a blind man. In Egypt, the EIJ primarily has operated in the cities and has specialized in precision attacks such as assassination attempts on Egyptian cabinet ministers. Outside Egypt, the group has a strong presence in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf, Yemen, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Western Europe, and Afghanistan. During the Afghan jihad, the EIJ also developed a cadre of excellent insurgent commanders, and these fighters have since participated in multiple Muslim insurgencies and in attacks on the United States. The EIJ is closely allied with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda; indeed, the line between the two organizations has long been barely visible and there are reports that the two groups have merged. Some senior EIJ leaders declared a ceasefire in 2000.
Al-Faqih, Sa’d: A leading Saudi dissident living in exile in London. Al-Faqih heads the U.K.-based anti-al-Saud organization Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA), which publishes literature and propaganda attacking the Saudi royal family for its corruption, venality, political repressiveness, and un-Islamic practices. Al-Faqih generally supports Osama bin Laden.
Fatwa: A binding religious ruling made on the basis of Islamic law by a qualified Islamic scholar or jurist.
Al-Gama’at Al-Islamiyah (IG, Islamic Group, or Gama’at): Egypt’s largest lslamist group, the IG evolved from the Islamist movement in Egypt’s universities and has been active since the late 1960s. It is strongest in Cairo, Alexandria, and the country’s southern provinces. The IG has attacked Egypt’s Coptic Christians, Egyptian police, military, and security officials, and foreign tourists inside Egypt. It has a worldwide presence, and especially is strong in Western Europe, North and South America, the Persian Gulf countries, Yemen, the Balkans and Caucasus, eastern and southern Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Philippines. The IG has a large cadre of veteran insurgent fighters who have fought in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Sudan, and Bosnia. Generally, the IG’s attacks are meant to cause large numbers of casualties, although its well-planned but unsuccessful 1995 attack on President Husni Mubarak in Ethiopia shows it can operate with precision. The Gam’at’s imprisoned leaders declared a cease-fire in 1997, a call that has caused debilitating and seemingly endless public debate, bickering, and name-calling among the multitude that identify themselves as “IG leaders.”
Hadhramaut: The mountainous Yemeni province that runs along the country’s Arabian Sea coastline. The province is the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden’s family. He enjoys strong support in the province.
Hamza, Mustafa: Trained as an agricultural engineer, Hamza spent the years between 1981 and 1987 in jail in Egypt for his role in the assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat. In 1989 he went to Afghanistan and received insurgent training. He worked for Osama bin Laden there and in Sudan, and was so employed in Khartoum when he engineered the Gama’at’s June 1995 attempt to assassinate President Mubarak in Ethiopia. The failure prompted his removal as the IG’s operations chief and he returned to Afghanistan. Rehabilitated in the late 1990s, Hamza is now the IG’s senior leader outside Egypt. He avoids the media, appears to be the Gama’at member who is closest to bin Laden, and is deputy military commander of the World Islamic Front.
Haqqani, Jalaluddin: A major Afghan insurgent commander and Pashtun tribal leader in the Khowst area during and since the Afghan jihad. He welcomed non-Afghan Muslim fighters to his training camps in Paktia Province and has remunerative ties to wealthy Gulf Arabs. Haqqani has had a long and close relationship with Osama bin Laden, the Pakistani military, and the Taliban movement. Haqqani was educated and teaches at the Darul-Uloom, an influential Islamic seminary near Peshawar. Many Taliban leaders graduated from the school, and at one time, Haqqani was the Taliban’s minister of tribal affairs. Bin Laden has described Haqqani as a “hero struggler” and as “one of the most prominent former commanders of the jihad against the Soviet Union, who has rejected the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.” Haqqani himself has said that Soviet troops were tough and brave fighters, but “on the contrary, the Americans are very voluptuous and faint-hearted.”3
Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin: An Afghan Pashtun, Hekmatyar has led a faction of the Hisbi Islami party since early in the Afghan jihad. A staunch Islamist and an exceptionally talented political opportunist, Hekmatyar commanded effective fighting forces during the jihad, but he was a consistently disruptive factor in any plans for politically uniting the Afghan resistance. He was and is a favorite of Pakistan’s intelligence service. Hekmatyar’s devoutness and political talents have turned the nifty and unusual trick of simultaneously attracting fundi
ng and other assistance from both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Hekmatyar has long had close ties to Osama bin Laden. He outspokenly supported the Taliban’s identification of bin Laden as a “Great Mujahid” and a protected guest of the Afghan people, and backed Mullah Omar’s refusal to deport bin Laden.
Ibn Taymiyah, Taqial-din: A revered medieval Islamic theologian and jurist, Taymiyah was educated in Damascus, taught there and in Cairo, and believed that Islam had replaced Judaism and Christianity. He is the author of the famous anti-Christian religious tract, The Correct Answer to Those Who Have Changed the Religion of Christ. Taymiyah argued that jihad is the personal responsibility of each Muslim when Islam is attacked. Taymiyah’s teachings inspired the puritanical eighteenth-century Wahabi movement in what today is Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden is a devoted follower and strong advocate of Taymiyah’s teachings and literal interpretations of the Koran.
Interservices Intelligence Directorates (ISID): Pakistan’s premier intelligence organization, and the agency that managed the program of dispensing international military and financial assistance to the Afghan insurgents during the 1979–1989 jihad. ISID has had ties to Osama bin Laden, Sayyaf, Haqqani, and Hekmatyar since the early 1980s, and with the Taliban since its inception. ISID remains the Pakistani government’s action arm in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
Jihad: Often translated as “Holy War,” the word is more accurately rendered “striving in the cause of God.” The term is divided into two categories: the greater jihad is the individual’s struggle against evil and temptation; the lesser jihad is the armed defense of Islam against aggression.
Julaidan, Wail: A Saudi national who abandoned graduate studies in the United States to serve as Osama bin Laden’s logistics chief during the Afghan jihad. Julaidan also represented bin Laden’s interests among Islamic nongovernmental organizations during the war, and since 1989 has been active in organizing and directing Islamic nongovernmental organizations in the Middle East, South Asia, and the Balkans. He resides in Saudi Arabia.
Kandahar: The main province of southern Afghanistan. The city of the same name is the province’s capital and was the major stronghold and administrative center of the Taliban movement.
Khalifah, Muhammed Jamal: A Saudi national and Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Khalifah is a successful businessman and entrepreneur, and has long been associated with running Islamic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), particularly in the Philippines. He is reported to have used NGOs to fund and orchestrate insurgent and/or terrorist attacks in the Philippines and Jordan. He resides in Saudi Arabia.
Khowst: The capital of Paktia Province in eastern Afghanistan, adjacent to the country’s border with Pakistan. The area around the city was the scene of extensive combat throughout most of the Afghan jihad. It also housed multiple insurgent training camps, including some run or sponsored by Osama bin Laden.
Maktab Al-Khidimat (MAK, or Services Bureau): An Islamic nongovernmental organization formed in the mid-1980s by Shaykh Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden. The MAK helped Afghan refugees, but primarily assisted the travel, training, and deployment of non-Afghan Muslim volunteers to fight in the Afghan jihad. The MAK is the model on which a host of other Islamic NGOs have been based. The MAK appears to have first developed the modus operandi of delivering humanitarian aid that provided relief to refugees, while affording legitimate local documentation to fighters posing as relief workers and hiding the simultaneous delivery of ordnance and funds to Islamist insurgents.
Masood, Ahmed Shah: An ethnic Tajik and the most famous commander of the Afghan jihad, Masood had been the military commander of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance until he was killed by suicide attackers on 9 September 2001. A brilliant strategist and tactician, Masood held off the Soviets in northern Afghanistan with force and cease-fires until the much more numerous and better-armed Pashtun insurgents in southern and eastern Afghanistan defeated the Red Army and its Afghan Communist allies. Masood also was a master media manipulator and kept a number of prominent Western correspondents on his leash for more than twenty years. Masood consistently misled these journalists—and some U.S. and European politicians—to believe that he was a pro-Western Muslim who would install democracy, diversity, and feminist policies in Afghanistan. His assassination appears to have been planned and executed by al Qaeda.4
Al-Masri, Abu Hafs: Abu Hafs’s real name is Subhi Abu-Sita (aka Mohammed Atef). He is an Egyptian national, a former Cairo police official, and a senior member of the EIJ. Abu Hafs was a prominent combat commander during the Afghan jihad, planned attacks on U.S. forces in Somalia, and succeeded Abu Ubaydah as Osama bin Laden’s top military commander. He most recently was bin Laden’s right-hand man and appears to have run al Qaeda’s day-to-day activities. Abu Hafs appears to have been killed by U.S. bombing in Afghanistan in late 2001.
Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA): The U.K.-based Saudi opposition organization that is headed by Sa’d al-Faqih. MIRA provides a base for Saudi dissidents of all stripes, publishes scholarly and propaganda pieces criticizing the Saudi royal family, and generally has supported Osama bin Laden.
Mujahid: Most often translated as “Holy Warrior,” the term describes a Muslim who takes part in jihad. The collective term is mujahedin.
Northern Alliance: The Taliban’s major armed opposition in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance was led by Masood and is primarily made up of ethnic Tajiks, with a smattering of Uzbeks, Pashtuns, and Hazara Shias. By early 2001, the loyalty of the Alliance’s major Pashtun leaders—Abdur Rasul Sayyaf and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—was wavering under inducements from the overwhelmingly Pashtun Taliban movement and their mutual friend Osama bin Laden. The Alliance is strongest in northeastern Afghanistan, and has grown increasingly odious to many Afghans by accepting aid from the country’s most-hated historical enemies: Iran, Russia, and India. The Alliance, led by Masood’s senior lieutenants, now forms the core of the Afghan Interim Administration, an unrepresentative regime dominated by Afghan minority groups and tainted by its lack of Islamic credentials, lack of credible majority representation, and economic and military dependence on foreign powers.
Omar, Mullah Muhammed: An insurgent commander during the Afghan jihad, Mullah Omar was educated in Pakistan’s religious schools and was the supreme leader of the Taliban movement. Omar is close to Osama bin Laden, and the latter pledged his loyalty to Mullah Omar as “the Prince of the Faithful.” Omar also is close to the Saudi clerical establishment, having been taught by Pakistani scholars trained in the Wahabi tradition in the kingdom’s universities.
Peshawar: The capital of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. The city was host to much of the Afghan Islamist insurgents’ logistical and political activities during the Afghan jihad. It also served as a transit point through which non-Afghan Muslim volunteers entered Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Peshawar also served as the home base for many of the Islamic nongovernmental organizations that supported the Afghans during their jihad.
Al Qaeda (The Base): Formed about 1988 by Osama bin Laden and Abu Ubaydah al-Banshiri around a core of bin Laden’s longtime lieutenants and Egyptian Islamists, al Qaeda was meant to be a multiethnic Sunni Islamist insurgent organization that would last beyond the end of the Afghan jihad. Al Qaeda’s primary missions are to militarily assist Muslim insurgents fighting infidel regimes across the Islamic world, and to attack U.S. targets. Al Qaeda has performed in exactly this manner. It has supported Muslim insurgents in Kashmir, Central Asia, the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, and the Balkans, and has attacked U.S. interests in Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, and the United States. Al Qaeda is reported to have representatives in more than sixty countries.
Al-Qaradawi, Muhammed Yusuf: A respected Egyptian Islamist scholar who is now living in exile in Qatar, al-Qaradawi is a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and reaches a broad audience across the Muslim world through his presentations on Qatar’s Al-Jazirah Satellite Channel television. Al-Qaradawi has issued a w
idely accepted religious decree declaring that martyrdom—suicide—attacks are permissible under the tenets of Sunni Islam. Until this decree, many Sunni scholars—unlike Shia scholars—maintained these attacks violated the Koran’s prohibition against suicide. Al-Qaradawi’s pronouncement and its subsequent wide acceptance among Islamic scholars have implicitly validated attacks by Osama bin Laden, the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), the EIJ, various Kashmiri and Chechen insurgent groups, and other Islamist organizations in religious terms.
Qutb, Sayid: A much-revered Egyptian Islamic scholar, Qutb was the theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood until he was jailed and then executed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime. Qutb’s most famous and influential work is titled Signposts along the Road. In it, he damned Western and Christian civilization and urged jihad “against the enemies of Islam.” Osama bin Laden has been much influenced by Qutb’s teachings.
Rahman, Shaykh Omar Abdul: Now imprisoned for life in the United States for terrorism-related crimes, Shaykh Rahman—also known as the Blind Shaykh—remains the spiritual leader of the Egyptian Gama’at. An al-Azhar-trained Islamic scholar, Shaykh Rahman visited Afghanistan during the jihad and met Osama bin Laden there. Since the shaykh’s arrest and conviction, bin Laden has been outspoken in calling for Rahman’s freedom and for attacks on the United States to force his release. Currently, bin Laden cares for Shaykh Rahman’s two eldest sons and is reported to treat them as his own children. Since 2000, Shaykh Rahman has issued statements from his U.S. prison that track with bin Laden’s goals. He has, for example, called for Muslims to “kill Jews wherever they find them” and has told Muslims that jihad to liberate Palestine is the duty of each Muslim and that any “Muslim who can do this duty and fails to do it is a sinner who deserves God’s wrath.” Rahman also has withdrawn his personal support for the IG’s cease-fire.
Saudi Bin Laden Group: The multibillion-dollar Bin Laden group of companies, currently headed by Bakr bin Laden. Among other interests, the group is involved in construction, infrastructure development, light manufacturing, and telecommunications. The group’s businesses are active in the Middle East, southern Africa, Central Asia, the Far East, Europe, North America, and South Asia. The group employed about 35,000 people in 1999.
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