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February 28, 2006
Islam: Osama bin Laden's Recruitment Policies
A few days ago, the UK Telegraph featured articles on Osama bin Laden, based on 28 Pentagon papers, recently declassified and published by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), based at West Point Military Academy. More documents are to be released in the near future.
The papers which have been released come from a dossier of thousands of documents relating to the activities of Al Qaeda, kept on a database called "Harmony".
From the released documents, it appears that Al Qaeda is running itself as a business, paying $17 a month to jihadists if they are unmarried, and about $105 if they have wives, and an extra $8 for every child they have. Additional wives can earn a jihadist 700 rupees a month ($11), with extra allowances made available for the purchase of furniture, health care and for disability rehabilitaion.
The "firm" pays for air tickets to allow home leave. These cannot be redeemed in cash, but can be transferred if a jihadist wants to go on Haj.
One hitherto unknown writer, Abdel-Halim Adl, wrote to a man identified only as "Mukhtar" in June 2002 complaining of Osama bin Laden's stubbornness and "the capture of a large number of brothers". He said: "We will become the laughing stock of the world."There are also details of how personnel are expected to behave, written into a "contract". Potential jihadists must swear an oath: "I pledge by God's creed to become a Muslim soldier to support God's religion, and may God's word be the most supreme."He urges al-Qa'eda to "stop rushing into action and take time out to consider all the fatal and successive disasters that have afflicted us during a period of no more than six months". All too often little is known about the documents - such as when they were written, who read them and how they were obtained.
Nevertheless, West Point academics argue that they add significantly to the body of knowledge about al-Qa'eda. "The overwhelming majority of the documents, to the best of our knowledge, have not been publicly available," said Jarret Brachman, the CTC director of research.
The Harmony database is also the subject of dispute in Congress over demands that tape recordings of Saddam Hussein be fully released.
Recruits must be obedient, observant of secrecy, with no links to other groups, and be in physical health and of religious and moral integrity.
Additionally the Telegraph provides details of an attempt made by a member (Abdel-Halim Adi) to attempt to make Osama change some of his policies, and complains about Osama bin Laden's inflexibility and intransigence.
"During six months, we lost what we built in years. Does not that merit that we pause and sit down to identify the errors that have been behind these disasters, and not to blindly ignore them and become a joke for all the intelligence agencies in the world?Some of the bizarre questions asked by novices to Al Qaeda in 2002 are also reproduced:"My beloved brother, stop all foreign actions, stop sending people to captivity, stop devising new operations, regardless of whether orders come or do not come from Abu Abdallah [bin Laden]."
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 28, 2006 7:51 AM
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