Post-9/11 Qaeda ideologue handed over to US by Pakistan
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: The ideologue of the post-9/11 “jihad,” a Syrian-Spaniard named Mustafa Semariam Nasar, with a price of $5 million on his head, was captured in Quetta last year and handed over by Pakistan to the Americans.
According to a front-page report in the Washington Post on Tuesday, Nasar (47) is to be credited with the concept of terrorist war through local, self-sustaining cells in different countries. He wrote a 1,600 page book on the subject called ‘The Call for a Global Islamic Renaissance’ that has been in circulation on Islamist sites on the Internet. He wrote it under the pen name of Abu Musab al-Suri. He advocates a strategy for a truly global conflict on as many fronts as possible through small cells of individuals, rather than traditional guerrilla warfare. To avoid penetration of the cells by the other side, he advocates the organisational links should be kept to an absolute minimum.
Nasar wrote, “The enemy is strong and powerful; we are weak and poor, the war duration is going to be long and the best way to fight it is in a revolutionary jihad way for the sake of Allah. The preparations better be deliberate, comprehensive and properly planned, taking into account past experiences and lessons.”
According to Norwegian terrorism expert Brynjar Lia, “He is the best theoretician among the jihadi ideologues and strategists out there. Nobody is as systematic and comprehensive in their analysis as he is. His brutal honesty and self-criticism is unique in jihadi ciricles.”
After the bombings in Madrid and London, investigators suspected Nasar as the possible hands-on organiser of those attacks, because he had lived in both cities in the 1990s. But so far, investigators have unearthed no hard evidence of his direct involvement in those attacks or any others, although they suspect he established sleeper cells in Spain and other European countries, reports the Post.
According to Rogelio Alonso, a Spanish terrorism expert, “He’s pretty much designed the structure of the cells that have operated in Europe. He was the one with the prominent role as the individual who had the links with the higher echelons of Al Qaeda.”
“My guess is that he saw Bin Laden as a narrow-minded thinker,” said Jarret Brachman, a US expert. “He clearly says that Al Qaeda was an important step but it’s not the end step and it’s not sufficient.”
The Post reports that Nasar’s theories of war also called for the most deadly weapons possible. In Afghanistan, he worked with Al Qaeda leaders to train fighters in the use of “poisons and chemicals” at two camps near Jalalabad and Kabul, according to the State Department. After the Sept 11 hijackings, Nasar praised the attacks. But he said a better plan would have been to load the hijacked airplanes with weapons of mass destruction.
“Let the American people - those who voted for killing, destruction, the looting of other nations’ wealth, megalomania and the desire to control others - be contaminated with radiation,” he wrote. “We apologise for the radioactive fallout,” he declared sarcastically. |
