Osama bin Laden showed disdain for al-Qaeda affiliates, fretted about his organization’s image and was deeply worried about its security, according to documents seized from his hideout in Pakistan and released publicly on Thursday.
The Combating Terrorism Center, a privately funded research center at the US Military Academy at West Point, posted on its Web site 17 declassified documents seized during the raid on bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad in which he was killed by US commandos a year ago.
“Bin Laden was bothered by the incompetence of al-Qaeda’s affiliates, such as their failure to win public support, their ill-advised media campaigns, and their poorly planned operations that led to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Muslims,” said Lieutenant Colonel Liam Collins, director of the center and one of the report’s authors.
“He appeared to struggle to exercise control over the actions of the affiliates, as well as their public statements,” Collins said.
The seized correspondence shows that bin Laden worried about affiliate group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and urged its leadership to focus on attacking the US, rather than the Yemeni government or security forces.
The material also shows that the actions of another affiliate, al-Qaeda in Iraq, especially its ruthless attacks on Shiite civilians following the US invasion of Iraq, greatly distressed him.
Bin Laden also wanted to keep al-Qaeda’s Somalia-based affiliate, al-Shabaab, at arm’s length, because he was concerned about its poor organization, management and brutality, the study said.
The analysis also revealed that bin Laden’s relationship with the TTP, one of the main Pakistan-based Taliban groups, was so strained that the group almost came into “direct and public confrontation” with al-Qaeda’s central leadership over its indiscriminate attacks on Muslim civilians.
The letters also show the al-Qaeda leader worried about the operational security of militants and about Muslims being killed in al-Qaeda operations, saying that he wanted women and children kept away from danger.
The report found that bin Laden thought children of militants who lived in cities were “one of the most important security issues” and advocated not taking them out of their homes, except for medical care. Parents were also urged to teach their children the local language so they would blend in.
In a letter dated Oct. 20, 2010, bin Laden was worrying about militants’ cars being targeted.
“A warning to the brothers: They should not meet on the road and move in their cars because many of them got targeted while they were meeting on the road. They also should not enter the market in their cars,” he wrote.
In an undated letter in 2010, bin Laden asked that two teams tasked with targeting the aircraft of US President Barack Obama should not target US Vice President Joe Biden because if Obama were gone, Biden would be “totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis.”
The findings led the center to conclude that bin Laden “was not, as many thought, the puppet master pulling the strings that set in motion jihadi groups around the world.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese