A report of contact with al-Awlaki since the underwear attack

In Yemen.

Robert F. Worth at New York Times

Excerpt --

Mr. Awlaki said he had met and spoken with the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in Yemen last fall, according to the journalist, Abdulelah Hider Sha’ea, who played a digital recording of the cleric’s comments for this reporter.

Update 2 February: Sha'ea has sold Anwar's latest batch of threats to al-Jazeera. This is Sha'ea's personal website.

Update 7 February: To the suprise of nobody, al-Jazeera is now broadcasting al-Awlaki's terrorist rhetoric and incitement. As I predicted, al-Awlaki has suddenly become less mealy-mouthed and more overtly vicious.

Anwar al-Awlaki is wanted dead or alive

The claim by Dana Priest at the Washington Post and at CBS that subsequent to the airstrike in Shabwah on 24 December "he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC" is correct.

Comment 2010.01.27:

Now that al-Awlaki is wanted by the USA, other al-Qa'ida members can trust him more than they could previously. AQ could well use a new anglophone propagandist; at the moment all they've got are Adam Gadahn and Omar Hammami. Meanwhile al-Awlaki would be safer in Somalia with the vicious Wahhabi Shabaab gang with whom he has at least a little affiliation, and he would then be able to communicate with his followers in the English-speaking world via the internet and via al-Jazeera.

Anwar al-Awlaki still unaccounted for

After years of nursing the self-pity and grandiosity of his anglophone gutter audience, Anwar al-Awlaki's career took an abrupt turn on 24 December 2009 when an airstrike was delivered to his al-Qa'ida friends in spite of the chance of killing al-Awlaki in the process. The "martyrdom" that he encourages other Islamists to pursue, he himself nearly received and is now in line for, assuming that he is still alive. If I understand that cult leader, and I think I do, he will be deeply shocked -- shocked into silence, temporarily, and shocked into hiding, possibly at Eman University in Sana'a (a cult compound run by terrorism financier and gun-runner Abdul-Majid az-Zindani).

At present the facts available about al-Awlaki are mostly negative ones. No terrorist cleric or terrorist financier, nor any of the Londonistani al-Qa'ida people, has jumped up to protest the Shabwah raid and make dire imprecations about a forthcoming AQ response. The raid in Shabwah is getting relative little enemy discussion and no reliable reporting in the internet forums, presumably because (1) it was a disaster for al-Qa'ida, and (2) not many enemy in that location lived to tell about what happened, and those who did are on the run.

If al-Awlaki was privy to the Christmas Day airliner plot, then he must be in a state of consternation to know Abdulmutallab is still alive and in American custody. That wasn't in the script. Al-Awlaki wants all his followers dead, not only because he never saw a corpse he didn't love, but also because dead terrorists tell no tales.

Update: CNN is now looking at Eman University and Zindani.

Update: Fox too.

If al-Awlaki reaches the safety of Zindani's bizarre "university", he will be able to communicate on the internet. If he does so communicate, then his words may well be shaped to ingratiate himself with Zindani. Specifically, if al-Awlaki goes out of his way to make excuses for Hamas, then it can be taken as evidence that he is in Eman U. That is because, although Hamas has been in al-Qa'ida's bad books since August 2009 when they killed off the AQ startup group called Jund Ansar Allah, Hamas still has the firm support of Zindani's money and his weapons-smuggling apparatus.

Don't go the website of Eman University unless you have reliable security software running.

Shabwah, Yemen, 24 December 2009

The reports all agree that the target was a gathering of Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, and the death toll was upwards of 30. But they don't agree on much else. It is firm that Muhammad Ahmad Salih al-'Umur is dead, just one day after al-Jazeera broadcast some of his propaganda. Several other emirs or semi-emirs are probably dead, including the last two of the four members of the original shurah of the reconstituted AQAP. Those are Naser Abdul-Karim al-Wahishi and Sa'id al-Shihri.

It would excellent news if Anwar al-Awlaki was killed, but that is no certainty from where I'm sitting.

The general cloak of silence over this important development makes me suspect that additional attacks against AQAP are in preparation or under way. Al-Jazeera's terrorist forum, where AQ would be very quick to make its routine eulogies and threats of revenge, is offline, and some Yemeni private news outlets seem to be in the dark more than is usual for them. So, I figure there are not just some pieces yet to fill in to this good story, but additional good news in the offing.

Update: The al-Jazeera terrorist forum is back up, but up to this moment it contains nothing about the Shabwah affair except a rather small volume of the predictable Arab bombast.

Al-Awlaki's fans raising money

11-12 April 2009 in London
24-25 May 2009 in Birmingham

£65 for students and the unemployed, £70 for others.

This thing is being advertised at YouTube and on a few Sunni Islamist forums, but only in English.

Update 15 April 2009: The show in London got a small amount of local press attention. The MP for that area spoke up a little.

Al-Awlaki's fan club in the UK

has a new name and some new mock-Salafist preachings from their cult leader.

www.alwasatiyyah.com

Anwar al-Awlaki of Yemen and the USA is a longtime proponent of Islamist terrorist aggression throughout the world. In particular, he lionizes the early AQAP chief Yusuf al-Ayyeri and he endorses what he calls "martyrdom operations". Al-Awlaki's followers are mostly immature and uneducated anglophones recruited from the gutter, many of them converts, plus a few immigrant Pakistanis and self-pitying Palestinians, but few of his fellow Arabians. He endorses al-Qa'ida but in general al-Qa'ida does not return the favour. Al-Awlaki's internet presence relies on help from others, in particular some of the Tibyan people in the UK.

Kavkaz endorsing al-Awlaki and vice versa

Everything that Anwar al-Awlaki writes on his blog gets copied immediately (and without a word of criticism) to numerous other websites operated by his Anglophone cult followers. But lately a different sort of element has joined into this practice: the English-language section of Kavkaz Center. Kavkaz is part of the web presence of the network that calls itself the Causasus Emirate. Today al-Awlaki made the unusual move of copying and pasting some of Kavkaz's English stuff to his own blog.

Kavkaz original
al-Awlaki's copy

The piece is a scripted "interview" of the CE member Supyan Abdullayev, translated from Russian into English by Kavkaz I'm pretty sure.

Evidently one of Abdullayev's aims is to discredit Hamas and paint his own group as the real champions of the Gazans. I am a little surprised that al-Awlaki would include this anti-Hamas material on his own blog.

Abdullayev also talks about the main recurring theme in CE's English-language propaganda: their rivalry with other Islamists who have ambitions against Russia.

Al-Awlaki's stuff is not yet being ported to the Russian and Arabic sides of Kavkaz.

Appendix 7 March 2009: I very much doubt that al-Awlaki has any serious following among Umarov's people in Daghestan or any other part of Russia. None of those people has ever mentioned him, to my knowledge. But his appearances on Kavkaz indicate that the English Kavkaz webmaster is one of al-Awlaki's fans in the UK. That person seems to have no languages other than English. Al-Awlaki definitely has the services of another British Muslim propaganda and incitement group, who go by Tibyan Publications, one or more of whom is probably also doing the English Kavkaz stuff. The English Kavkaz condemns their Russian rival Ahmed Zakayev rather often, as it would if the Kavkaz web person were in the same country as Zakayev, i.e. the UK.

The more serious (but equally dishonest) side of Kavkaz is written in Russian and uploaded by Chechen fugitives elsewhere, particularly Istanbul. Somebody in that group closely follows the Turkish press. Much of the Russian material gets translated into Turkish.

NEFA recap on Anwar al-Awlaki

Eight-page pdf here.

Supplement 18 February 2009:
Lately al-Awlaki and a few other anglophone troublemakers have been condemning Tawfique Choudury of the UK for a less-than-terrorist policy suggestion that he made in December 2008. I will copy here an excerpt from al-Awlaki's page, in which Choudury himself seems to be replying.

Tawfique's response on February 13th, 2009 at 12:49 pm #
Assalamualaikum,
InshaAllah this will be the last post on this article and we can carry on discussion at a near future when I have more time to write a detailed part 2 to clarify how our terms of engagement should be.
1. No doubt, the points that I have made are clouded by people’s interpretation of the particular words that I have used to phrase them. Based on this, people have jumped to conclusions and yet others have read through my clarifications and understood what I intended in the article - and we hope for guidance for everyone.
2. Sh Anwar’s article on my piece is largely sensationalism and picking on wordings devoid of context - except for one important point which I believe is the core argument that I will address - that of maslahah of the dawah and the maqasidus-Shariah versus core principles of our deen such as wala and bara and tawheed. This is really the main issue - because categorically in no case was I ever suggesting that we ever work for anti-terror agencies, take funding from them, take our agenda from them, let them dictate our mandate, let them tell us what deen to follow and what not to, tell us who to work with and who not to, tell us what is extremism and what is not. Never at all. If we were to do that, we would cease to be independant and would loose all credibility. And if I knew of an individual who does that, then I would distance myself from him and would never work with him much the less associate with him. It is under these and similar conditions Yusuf alaihis salam cooperated with the non-Muslim government of his time.
3. Lastly, I urge everyone including myself to be objective in their criticism and to not draw conclusions on an individual. We may disagree on the manner of engagement of the authorities but that does not mean that anyone is a sell out or anyone has left being the people we once were.
Jazakallahulkhair and I will inshaAllah ponder deeply on what everyone has written and hope to carry on discussion of these points in the future when time permits.
Tawfique

Tibyan's "Slicing Sword" document has appeared

Anwar al-Awlaki appears on page 8 of 56, as follows:

Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki's Foreword

This book "The Slicing Sword" represents the answers given by Shaykh Abd Alluh Abd al Bari al Ahdal to questions on the topic of Hijra (migration for the sake of Allah) and al-wala and al-bara (loyalty to Allah and disavowal of the enemies of Allah.) The importance of this book lies in the fact that the situation that the Shaykh was faced with is similar to our circumstances today which gives relevance to his answers. Aden was occupied by the British in 1837 and the author died around 1854. So his time was one in which the power of the Ottoman Khilafah was waning while the Western powers were on the rise. Therefore, this was a time when there were some Muslims who were replacing their pride in being Muslims and being subjects of Muslim rule with being subjects of Western occupiers and sailing under Western flags.

The author belongs to the Ahdal family who are descendants of al Imam Hussain bin Ali and are a family steeped in Islamic scholarship. They are from the Shafi'i school and live on the Western coast of Yemen on the Red Sea. The same land as the companion of the Prophet Abu Musa al Ashari.

I have studied this book under two scholars from the family of al Ahdal and I would encourage my brother and sisters to benefit from it.

Anwar al-Awlaki

He has been rather quiet on the internet lately, but his "Tibyan" followers in Londonistan just announced a forthcoming piece from Anwar al-Awlaki: his commentary on a book of threats written more than 100 years ago by one of his fellow Yemenis.

Anwar al-'Awlaki

Anwar al-'Awlaki
أنور العولقي
is the subject of this good article at Washington Post from February 2008, to which I will add a little.

Most of al-'Awlaki's followers are in the UK, but some are in other English-speaking countries, and a few anglophones are elsewhere in Europe. His work in terrorist incitement, at least on the internet, is almost entirely in English; few of his followers have any knowledge of Arabic. About forty of his talks are available for download from the British group that named themselves after al-Qa'ida when their previous name "al-Muhajiroon" was banned. Al-'Awlaki's material gets copied to a multitude of pro-terrorism English-language blogs. He also operates his own blog-style website, in English.

As the article says, al-'Awlaki is more dangerous than most of his fellow rabble rousers, but his methodology is broadly the standard one:

-- indulging his audience in self-pity

-- eulogizing dead assassins and terrorists

-- promising his followers a Muhammadan paradise in return for their anti-social violence

-- promising eternal torture in hell to anybody who opposes him or his followers.

Death is al-'Awlaki's favorite topic.

The lecture about Yusuf al-'Ayeeri is entitled Constants on the Path of Jihad. Yusuf al-'Ayeeri
يوسف العييري
was the first leader of al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (as it later became known) and one of AQ's first webmasters. He was eliminated in 2003 in KSA.

The article mentions the bizarre Abdul-Majid az-Zindani
عبد المجيد الزنداني
with whom al-'Awlaki has been affiliated. See
United States Designates bin Laden Loyalist from the US Department of the Treasury, for some information on him. Az-Zindani is the richest man in Yemen.