by Ben Venzke
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Main
Introduction
Table of Contents
al-Qaeda Excerpts
Illustrations
Look Inside
- Below you will find a small sampling of al-Qaeda excerpts from the book. We are releasing one excerpt a day for the next couple of weeks. You can receive these directly by signing up for our IntelCenter Announcement List. You can subscribe to the list for free by clicking here.
Tactics - Assassination/Biological Attack
Targets - General
Tactics - Biological Attack/Chemical Attack
Targets - Critical Infrastructure, etc.
Tactics - Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) Attack
Targets - Oil Industry
Tactics - Nuclear Attack
Tactics - Assassination/Biological Attack (back to the top)
al-Qaeda Training Manual
Undated
Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants
Excerpted Text:
Assassination with Poison: We will limit [the discussion] to poisons that the holy warrior can prepare and use without endangering his health. ... The substance ricin, an extract from castor beans, is considered one of the most deadly poisons. ... It is a simple operation to extract ricin, and castor beans themselves can be obtained from nurseries throughout the country.
Targets - General (back to the top)
Ayman al-Zawahiri - Book
December 2001
Knights Under the Prophet's Banner
Excerpted Text:
"Choosing the Targets and Concentrating on the Martyrdom Operations
Changing the method of strikes:
The mujahid Islamic movement must escalate its methods of strikes and tools of resisting the enemies to keep up with the tremendous increase in the number of its enemies, the quality of their weapons, their destructive powers, their disregard for all taboos and disrespect for the customs of wars and conflicts. In this regard, we concentrate on the following:
1. The need to inflict the maximum casualties against the opponent, for this is the language understood by the West, no matter how much time and effort such operations take.
2. The need to concentrate on the method of martyrdom operations as the most successful way of inflicting damage against the opponent and the least costly to the mujahideen in terms of casualties.
3. The targets as well as the type and method of weapons used must be chosen to have an impact on the structure of the enemy and deter it enough to stop its brutality, arrogance and disregard for all taboos and customs. It must restore the struggle to its real size.
4. To reemphasize what we have already explained, we reiterate that focusing on the domestic enemy alone will not be feasible at this stage."
Tactics - Biological Attack/Chemical Attack (back to the top)
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith - Article
June 2002
"In the Shadow of the Lances"
Excerpted Text:
"According to the numbers I noted in the previous section of the lives lost from among the Muslims because of the Americans, directly or indirectly, we still are at the beginning of the way. The Americans have still not tasted from our hands what we have tasted from theirs. The [number of] killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were no more than fair exchange for the ones killed in the al-‘Amiriya shelter in Iraq, and are but a tiny part of the exchange for those killed in Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya and Afghanistan.
We have not reached parity with them. We have the right to kill four million Americans – two million of them children – and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of the [Americans’] chemical and biological weapons.
America knows only the language of force. This is the only way to stop it and make it take its hands off the Muslims and their affairs. America does not know the language of dialogue!! Or the language of peaceful coexistence!! America is kept at bay by blood alone…"
Targets - Critical Infrastructure, etc. (back to the top)
Ahmed Ressam - Testimony
3 July 2001
Questions by Assistant US Attorney Joseph Bianco
Excerpted Text:
"Bianco: What did the sabotage part of the training consist of?
Ressam: How to blow up the infrastructure of a country.
Bianco: What types of targets were you trained on?
Ressam: The enemies’ installations, special installations and military installations, such installations such as electric plants, gas plants, airports, railroads, large corporations, gas, gas installations and military installations also."
Tactics - Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) Attack (back to the top)
al-Qaeda Political Bureau - Statement
2 December 2002
“Statement Concerning the Two Mombasa, Kenya Attacks Against the Jews”
Excerpted Text:
"These two operations [SAM attack and vehicular bombing in Mombasa, Kenya] put a thousand question marks and exclamation points in front of the allied countries that spent millions on programs to protect airplanes from the inside. Here are the fighters attacking them from the outside, so how could they defeat that?"
Targets - Oil Industry (back to the top)
al-Qaeda Political Bureau - Statement
13 October 2002
“Statement Regarding the Explosion of the Christian Oil Tanker in Yemen”
Excerpted Text:
"At this time, and in Yemen specifically, close to where the destroyer exploded at Aden and at a close distance to Bab al-Mandab which is of strategic importance, the mujahideen attacked anew at a strategic Christian target. Attacking a commercial target of this size, at this time, under these circumstances and in this way has more significance and meaning. For it means:
1) All the military, security and political, etc. efforts that America and its allies have done to protect their strategic interests in this area have been futile.
2) The mujahideen, by the grace of God, no longer have restraints on action and are capable of surprising their enemy and [carrying out] attacks that are decisive, lethal and strategic and in the appropriate time and place they determine.
If al-Qaeda were the entity that carried out that attack, or if it were another of the mujahideen bases that adhere to the same ideology, thought and methodology, both assumptions are disfavorable with respect to the Americans and their Christian allies. Because, the assumption that al-Qaeda is the one that carried out the attacks means, first, that al-Qaeda remains strong, and is able to attack in the same place in which it attacked before, and all the international glory the Americans are known for in what they call their “war on terrorism” and their extraordinary successes in “uprooting terrorism and eradicating its leaders, its bases and its roots” is merely (propaganda) and their deceptive words went up in the first cloud of smoke rising from the ship.
And if it were mujahideen other than al-Qaeda that carried out the attack, then the situation is graver because that simply means that al-Qaeda that is led by Sheikh Osama bin Laden is only one base of the many bases that are prevalent in this Ummah. So America and its Christian allies should strongly heed this.
So that we do not grant a complimentary security consultation to the enemy, we will not specify which assumption is the correct one, but we leave [the enemy] to drown in all the assumptions and possibilities that have arisen in the two years without arriving at anything in the case of the attack against the destroyer, the USS Cole.
3) Likewise, the operation revealed the true danger the mujahideen pose to the strategic, commercial and military interests of the enemy.
If a boat that did not cost US$1,000 previously managed to ruin a destroyer worth over US$1 billion, and its symbolic value cannot be measured, and a similar boat managed to devastate an oil tanker of that magnitude, so imagine the extent of the danger that threatens the West’s commercial lifeline which is petrol. This region sits on the largest [oil] reserves, owns the largest quantities and contains [the industry’s] most important passages and lanes.
The operation of attacking the French oil tanker is not merely an attack against a tanker - it is an attack against international oil transport lines and all its various connotations.
4) And beyond the security, military and commercial significance, the attack carried a strong political message to the alliance of Washington and its enemies in their war against the Islamic Ummah - that they will never be far away from the hand of God’s retaliation through the mujahideen."
Tactics - Nuclear Attack (back to the top)
Abu `Ubeid al-Qurashi - Article
13 February 2002
“The Nightmares of America”
Excerpted Text:
[The nightmares of America include] the attainment by the mujahideen of weapons of mass destruction.
… Large quantities of material used to make nuclear bombs are considered 'lost' each year especially from countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. And it is known that [the quantity] of radioactive material required to build a nuclear weapons is not large; rather, it is essentially 20 kg for radioactive plutonium or 40 kg if one uses enriched uranium. And even the required skill is no longer limited to highly skilled engineers, for any skilled student of physical sciences can do it.
And all the studies done on this matter agree on the fact that the attainment by the mujahideen of weapons of mass destruction is the biggest nightmare that is facing America - meaning, that possibility is truly conceivable.
There was a study conducted by William Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, after a visit to 10 Russian storage centers of nuclear material in 1998. He discovered that a number of the buildings that are specific to storing large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium, enough to produce 70,000 nuclear weapons, are not under armed guard, are not within a secured perimeter, do not have cameras installed and do not have equipment to detect radiation at their entrances and exits.
And, [there was] a building in Moscow that holds 100 kg of enriched uranium without being guarded because the budget of the nuclear program is insufficient to cover the expenses of security.
Rather, even if the mujahideen do not have the necessary technology to get radioactive material and assemble it, there is a real opportunity to acquire a complete (ready-made) nuclear bomb. In 1997, General Lebed, the security advisor to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, verified that in the 1970s, the Soviet Union produced a fair amount of nuclear bombs whose size is not larger than a small suitcase.
These suitcases were in the possession of the Soviet intelligence, but they "disappeared" after the fall of the Soviet Union without a trace. The duty of the mujahids in this situation is difficult to execute but not impossible, and common sense in this situation as in others is the logic of selling and buying.
… to whomever wants to bring this form of weapon into the US. For in 1996, 254 million persons, 75 million cars and 3.5 million trucks entered the US from Mexico and at the 38 official points of entry, not more than five percent of this sum total were inspected…"
