Bin Laden Commands over 110,000 Zealots

[Guest guest]

"This is not a ragged rabble, but a well-drilled, dedicated Islamic

legion of at least 110,000 zealots, raring to take on Western armies

and unafraid of elite US Delta, Rangers and Seals or British S.A.S.

commandos descending on their strongholds."

 

 

Knowing the Enemy

23 September: As US sea-air armadas, destroyers, air fleets and

Special Service units speed east to make war on terrorism, the

opposition makes its own preparations quietly and in the dark. The ex-

Saudi terror master Osama Bin Laden is generally presented as being

on the run, dodging with a small band from one hideout to another in

the UruzgaMountains north of Kahandar and south of Hindu Kush, to

escape the mighty force out to get him. Some reports place him in

hiding in Somalia. The truth is that no one – including western

intelligence agencies – knows where he is.

What DEBKAfile 's intelligence and military sources can say is that

Bin Laden and his senior commanders, far from giving up the flight,

are in fact busy preparing their next offensive against the US,

Britain, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Emirates, Egypt and Israel – all

affirmed targets of the jihad he has declared against America and

everything its stands for.

Bin Laden and his ilk do not practice Western military doctrines. The

concepts of military hierarchy, with its generals and colonels,

general staffs and operational, air intelligence and naval

intelligence branches, are all alien to Bin Laden and his band.

This is quite deliberate. Bin Laden keeps his men untouched by

Western military thinking and formats for two reasons:

1. To prevent his men's exposure to Western culture, while creating

a milieu in which any Western penetration agent will soon be spotted.

2. A preference for traditional Islamic fighting methods, mostly

taken from the early days of conquering Islam - the 7th century, when

the Caliph Omar prevailed over the Byzantine Empire, and the 11th

century, when Saladin defeated the European Crusaders.

Saladin, who was not an Arab but a Seljuk from Asia Minor, built his

army around a very small command of adherents and a large

international pool of reservists, who were called up for major

battles by a dozen or so runners, who traveled to the different

countries and activated local couriers in relays for posting call-up

summons in the towns and villages.

DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources report that Bin Laden's

courier squad of half a dozen runners went into action on September

9, two days before the four hijacked airliners rammed the

WorldTradeCenter in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. They

spread out in two destinations. One group headed for the Islamic

madrassas, Islamic schools and colleges of Afghanistan, where 40,000

of the more than one million students, Afghans and foreigners, have

embraced the jihad mission under Bin Laden's leadership. A second

group went round the 10,000 madrassas of Pakistan, where Bin Laden

can count on a further 70,000 jihad devotees.

The conscripts were issued with their personal weapons early last

week from central armories serving each cluster of madrassas.

These schools are not colleges in the Western sense, but training and

indoctrination academies breeding militant zealots for battle and

self-sacrifice. These future recruits to Bin Laden's Moslem

internationale are subjected to rigorous training disciplines in

guerrilla and urban combat, sabotage, the making and use of bombs,

simple weaponry for use against planes, helicopters and tanks and

endurance in harsh conditions deprived of water and food for long

periods.

This is not a ragged rabble, but a well-drilled, dedicated Islamic

legion of at least 110,000 zealots, raring to take on Western armies

and unafraid of elite US Delta, Rangers and Seals or British S.A.S.

commandos descending on their strongholds.

Indeed some of the instructors teaching the students the arts of war

may have received their own training at the hands of American Moslem

commando instructors, attached at different periods to US 101st or

82nd Airborne Divisions. How these Moslem Americans reached the most

violent Islamic training grounds in the world will be described

elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the Islamic army congregating in

Afghanistan under the Bin Laden banner is a fighting force as

formidable in its own way as the military might the United States and

the British are assembling to eradicate it.

Some 3,500 hard core senior officers serving in Bin Laden's training

bases in Afghanistan have taken command of the gathering army.

DEBKAfile's military sources confirm at least one initial engagement

between US elite forces who have crossed from neighboring

Tadjikistan, a former Soviet republic, into southeast Afghanistan

since Saturday, September 22. They were Led through the mountains by

Russian intelligence officers familiar with Afghan frontier terrain

and Tadjik and Pushtun smugglers associated with Russian

intelligence. There was another brush Saturday, between British SAS

units who entered Afghanistan from the north and linked up with the

Afghan general Rashid Dustum, an Uzbek, and a Bin Laden band. Members

of the British force penetrated Afghan military lines and reached the

outskirts of Kabul.

DEBKAfile's military sources are quite clear that the coming war will

be fought both inside and outside Afghanistan, and that its tempo,

scale, arena and intensity will not be dictated by the Americans

alone.

Al Qaeda is an international association of allied groups operating

in many parts of the world.

Its top commanders are:

YAMAN AL ZAWAHAR, head of the Egyptian Jihad Islami, who is Bin

Laden's senior deputy and heir apparent

JUMMA MAMANGANI, an Uzbek, who was recently appointed Al Qaeda chief

of operations. He is former commander of the Moslem Army for the

Liberation of Kyrgistan. Three key Afghan training camps, at

Jalalabad, Farmada and Daronta, are under his command.

FATEH KAMEL, who leads the most militant cells of the extremist

Algerian GIA. In the name of Al Qaida, he controls terrorist cells in

the United States, Canada and Algeria.

MUHAMMED ATIF aka SUBHI ABU-SITTAH, who is nominal chief of staff of

the network and its brightest military brain. He comes from the

Egyptian Jihad Islami

IMAD MUGHNIYEH, the former Lebanese Hizballah hostage-taker and

bomber, who is in charge of the combined terrorist campaign around

the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Europe and Israel.

On top of the 3,500 hard core commanders and 110,000 Afghan and

Pakistani troops, Al Qaeda retains another 6400 commanders in 12

centers: North America, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Albania, Kosovo,

Algeria, Chechenya, Tadjikistan and all the former Soviet republics

of Central Asia, the Philippines, Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia.

The numbers of Bin Laden can muster differs from place to place. In

North America, together with his closest ally, the Egyptian Jihad

Islami, some 2,500 hard core fighting men; in Yemen, where his family

originated before migrating to Saudi Arabia – 2000 directly. But Bin

Laden has a special relationship with the commanders of the 20,000-

man strong irregular "Moslem Liberation Army, which hold a monopoly

of the arms trade of the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, the

Red Sea and East Africa. Its reach sometimes goes as far as Iran.

Bin Laden often serves as the MLA's clearing bank and ready bankroll

for arms deal.

In Saudi Arabia, where the privileged and affluent Bin Laden clan

lives, Osama commands some 200-250 hard-core commanders, but many

more potential partisans among the disaffected tribes in the central

and eastern provinces, especially the Nejd, as well as in the Saudi

armed forces and national guard.

An intensive Al Qaeda recruitment effort in those two Saudi forces

could cause their collapse and drop in Bin Laden's lap their

arsenals, with some of the most sophisticated hardware in use today.

According to conservative estimates, the millionaire-terrorist could

most probably rally around the world roughly the same number of

fighting men as those flocking to his flag in Afghanistan and

Pakistan, namely an army of over 200,000 men. Many members of his

overseas legions are available for both sustained and for one-time

operations. In between, they simply go back to their normal pursuits

and their homes in host countries. They are also available for

terrorist operations on their home ground.