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What the jihadis left behind


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what-the-jihadis-left-behind

Nelly Lahoud

23 Jan. 2020

US Special Forces recovered thousands of messages exchanged between members of al-Qaida during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011; many ended: ‘destroy after reading.’ There was also a 220-page handwritten document inaccurately described by the CIA as bin Laden’s ‘journal’: for the most part, it is a transcription of family discussions during the last two months of bin Laden’s life. It gives us a lot of information about the contribution of bin Laden’s family – especially some of its female members – to his public statements. The most closely involved were his third wife, Siham, and their daughters, Mariam and Sumayya. He asked them, for example, to ‘start thinking about the public statement’ he wanted to release in response to the Arab Spring, and ‘to put together the ideas’ that should be included. Sumayya pushes her father to think whether the Arab Spring might undermine the need for jihad. A couple of pages later, we read what seem likely to be the thoughts of Mariam, who probably transcribed the document, on the ‘new vision’ of al-Qaida that her father was planning to announce on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

(Snip)

Sumayya worried that al-Qaida’s lack of involvement in the Arab Spring would be noticed. She pushed her father: ‘some points need to be addressed,’ she told him. ‘What are the negative and positive effects on the jihadis as a result of these revolutions? It is possible,’ she warned, ‘that some among the new generation will believe that political change could occur without jihad’. Bin Laden admitted the organisation’s political and operational impotence: ‘We are now somewhat constrained, our capacities are limited, and we have problems with the rank and file,’ as well as being weakened by ‘the multitude of deaths among the brothers’. He seems to have appreciated his daughter’s contribution. ‘Sumayya co-authored the statements,’ it says in the document. Siham was also proud of her daughter, and in one of her poems describes Sumayya as having ‘erected an edifice in Islam that would last until the End of Days’.

(Snip)

The last discussion noted in the document took place hours before the raid on the compound at 1 a.m. on 1 May. During that session, bin Laden said that he had told ‘Khalid and I shall say the same to Hamza that it is not appropriate to make a public appearance unless it is carefully executed’. If his sons were to assume a public role, their statements needed to be ‘precise and significant’ and should ‘serve as a signpost for the future they are seeking to establish ... We shall not release public statements for Hamza or Khalid,’ he went on, ‘unless we are in a position that would allow us to sustain it on a regular basis and to have a high standard.’

(Snip)

 

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