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Recent news stories reveal an Iranian regime eager to assert hegemony over neighboring Iraq and less willing to accommodate U.S. efforts to promote the stability needed to pull out 20,000 troops by July.

• Iraqi officials announced that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will travel to Iraq on March 2 for a visit of two to three days to discuss bilateral relations.
• Iran postponed the fourth round of trilateral talks with the U.S. and Iraq to discuss ways to improve Iraq's security. Mirembe Nantongo, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said:

  "We are happy to sit down for the talks, but it is increasingly clear Iran is not. We've been ready to participate for weeks."

  Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the Iranians did not provide a reason for the postponement. (See In a First, Ahmadinejad To Visit Iraq Next Month: Iran Postpones Fourth Round of Talks With U.S..)
• Lieutenant-General Ray Odierno, the outgoing deputy to General David Petraeus and soon to be Army Vice-Chief of Staff expressed concern about Iranian influence on Iraq:

  “I think Iran wants a weak Iraq....They want a weak government of Iraq. It is probably in their best interests.”

  (See Surge general accuses Tehran of backing militias to weaken Iraq.)
• The U.S. military linked the explosions in an open-air market in Sadr City to the Iranian-backed Special Groups. (See Special Groups behind Sadr City bombing.)

Yossef Bodansky's hypothesis -- discussed in this space yesterday -- that the U.S. and Iran had cut a deal signaled by the December release of the NIE report -- is looking increasingly far-fetched. Not so, alas, his fears of increased Iranian dominance in the Gulf.

Labels: David Petraeus, Iran, Iraq, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ray Odierno, Yossef Bodansky

Was the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which declared that Iran had “halted its nuclear weapons program” in 2003, a signal of a secret deal between Iran and the Bush administration? Yossef Bodansky argues in Defense & Foreign Affairs’ Strategic Policy (January 2008) that it was and that the Bush White House thereby sealed a “Faustian deal” with the Mahdist regime of Iran led by Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamene’i and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. According to Bodansky, the Iranians agreed to help the U.S. achieve a face-saving and safe withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq by 2009 in exchange for the U.S. permitting the ascent of Iran as the region’s hegemonic power. [The Bodansky thesis is echoed by a report – based on anonymous sources – that appeared in Insight Report, Top Officials fear administration reached secret deal with Iran.]

Here is a timeline, drawn primarily from the Bodansky report:

• Mid-July 2007: In Damascus, three insurgent groups – the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Ansar al-Sunna and Iraqi Hamas -- announced a united front of seven Sunni-led insurgent organizations fighting the U.S. occupation in Iraq were ready to “negotiate with the Americans in anticipation of an early U.S. withdrawal. Abd al-Rahman al-Zubeidy, political spokesman of Ansar al-Sunna announced opposition of his group to al-Qaida:

  "Resistance isn’t just about killing Americans without aims or goals. Our people have come to hate Al-Qaida, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists."

  Wayne Wright of Washington’s Middle East Institute and an expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group commented at the time:

  "This does reveal that despite the widening cooperation on the part of some Sunni Arab insurgent groups with US forces against al-Qaida in recent months, such cooperation could prove very shortlived if the US does not make clear that it has a credible exit strategy."

  (Insurgents form political front to plan for U.S. pullout, Seumas Milne, The Guardian, July 19, 2007.)
• August, 2007: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Khamene’i, and Ahmadinejad agreed to an “experimental reduction” in anti-U.S. violence in order to expedite the U.S. withdrawal by “providing the Bush Administration with ‘success’ and no excuse to linger in Iraq.”
• Early September 2007: As they prepared for their report to Congress on the success of the surge in U.S. combat troops, Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus, commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), were apprised of Tehran’s proposal and decided “to give it a try.”
• Early November 2007: Mokhtar Lamani, Arab League Ambassador to Iraq, lamented the increasing Iranian power over Iraq:

  Meanwhile, Iranian influence is becoming more and more palpable. Iraq has become a winning card in the hands of the theocratic regime of Tehran. As the French saying goes, “little by little the bird makes its nest.”

  (My lost year in Baghdad, Mokhtar Lamani, Ottawa Citizen, November 1, 2007)
• Mid-November 2007: Violence and U.S. losses came down to the level of February 2006, due in part to a significant reduction in Iranian-made road-side bombs, IEDs, and other Iran-origin weaponry.
• Mid-November, 2007: Iraqi spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh commended Iranian “restraint in sending people and weapons to destabilize Iraq.” Al Dabbagh claimed the turning point was the visit by Nouri al-Maliki to Iran in August. (see Teheran curtailing alleged support for insurgents, Associated Press, November 18, 2007.)
• Mid-November 2007: General James Simmons, Deputy Commanding General, Multinational Corps-Iraq, joined in the Iraqi government’s praise for Iran.

  We believe that the commitments that the Iranians have made appear to be holding up,” Simmons said, adding that Iranian-made weaponry still found in Iraq appeared to have been smuggled in months ago.

  After the news conference, Simmons told The Associated Press that the Iranian move followed “a significant amount of negotiations.” He would not give details, however, saying he was not privy to the discussions.

  (U.S. general: Iran sticking by pledge to stem flow of weapons, explosives to Iraq, Robert H. Reid, Associated Press, November 15, 2007)
• November 2007: Professor Karim Kamar of the Kurdish Salaheddin University in November 2007 remarks indicate that the Kurdish state in the north is de facto an independent state:

  "It is simple, for my students Iraq does not exist …

  "To feel part of a country, its language should be spoken. However Arabic is no longer even taught. Or if it is, then as a foreign language—a little less even than English…

  "For them Iraq is far away, and associated with bad memories. For the man in the street, it is a neighbour one must get along with because it could turn malicious. That’s all. Their country is here."

  (For Kurds, Iraq is a distant memory, Kurdish Media, November 17, 2007. See also: Iraq Kurds defy Baghdad on oil deals, Kurdish Media, November 26, 2007.)
• Mid-November, 2007: Iraqi Islamic Council Chairman Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim is summoned to Tehran for “crucial discussions” with Khamene’i, Ahmadinejad and other senior officials
• November 24, 2007: Ryan C. Crocker, provided a sobering assessment of the prospects for political progress in Iraq:

  “We are seeing encouraging signs of movement,” he said, but added, “This is going to be a long, hard slog.”

(U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity, Steven Lee Myers and Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, November 25, 2007.)
• November 25, 2007: Hakim, having returned from Tehran to Baghdad, challenged American claims that Iran was providing weapons used to kill Americans.

  “These are only accusations raised by the multinational forces and I think these accusations need more proof,” the chairman of the Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council, Sayyid Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, told reporters. Mr. Hakim, who has been undergoing treatment for lung cancer in Iran, said the Iranians have insisted in meetings with Iraqi officials that “their true will is to support the Iraqi government” and to promote stability. “They have a long history of standing by the Iraqi people and that is their official stance that is presented to the press without any hesitation,” he said.

  (Iraqi Shiite Politician Defends Iran Against U.S. Accusations, Sameer N. Yacoub, Associated Press, November 26, 2007)
• November 29-30, 2007: Hakim met with President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington. Though the meeting did not receive media attention in the U.S., Bodansky claims that Hakim delivered Tehran’s olive branch of cover for an “honorable” withdrawal and a veiled ultimatum that the alternative would be a “cataclysmic regional war on Tehran’s terms.”

  Some confirmation of Bodansky’s claims are provided by an Al-Arabiya television interview of Hakim on December 3, 2007 (translated by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, available through subscription). The interviewer, Pierre Ghanim remarks:

  “following your meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice two days ago, you said that Iran supports Iraq, while the United States accuses it of killing or helping kill US soldiers.”

  Hakim responds:

  “The Americans do not deny that Iran has taken positive positions and backs the Iraqi Government. However, the United States accuses Iran of [interference] and Iran denies them. Iraqis have succeeded in getting the two countries to open a constructive dialogue in the interest of Iraq, its security, and its stability. During the dialogue, the two sides can determine whether or not Iran interferes in Iraqi affairs. The best way to settle this issue is for the two sides to resume the dialogue.”

  Asked if he is mediating between Tehran and Washington, Hakim says:

  ”I was among the first to call for a dialogue, and I am endeavouring to get the two sides to open productive, constructive, and useful dialogue in the interest of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi Government.”

  Bodansky describes Hakim’s talks with Rice as:

  ”focused on Iraq’s security, national reconciliation, and Iraq’s reconstruction and issues related to neighboring countries”. Hakim said that he convinced official Washington that “Iran plays a positive role in establishing security in Iraq”. Hakim also disclosed that he had delivered to the Bush White House “documents proving that Iran has supported Iraq”. Meanwhile, Tehran accepted that the agreement, or understanding, with the Bush White House would be most secret. Nevertheless, Tehran now expected a clear signal from Washington that the threat of a US strike on Iran was over.

Bodansky claims that Washington’s signal was loud and clear:
• December 3, 2007: release of the latest National Intelligence Estimate that completely reversed the US position on Iran. “We judge with high confidence that in Fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” Bodansky points out that the US intelligence community started drafting the NIE in August 2007, when Maliki brought the first Iranian offers.
• Early December 2007: [Not cited by Bodansky]Mohammad Kharroub, in Jordanian al-Ra'i (translated in "A Miserable Policy," Mideast Mirror, December 5, 2007, available through subscription) reports:

  Ambiguity reins [sic] supreme; so much is certain. But to spread such a climate in the Middle East...only raises further questions about the aims that the Bush administration hopes to achieve. This is especially true since the [Iran intelligence] report opens the door wide open to numerous ‘compromises’ between Washington and Tehran in light of the stalemate over the various explosive files (Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine) that have exhausted Washington.

  Also in the Mideast Mirror, there is this report of [Israeli PM] Ehud Olmert's response to the NIE [also not reported by Bodansky]:

  After returning from Annapolis and a long meeting with Bush, he said in an interview with [the Israeli daily] Yedioth Aharanot: ‘Those in the know are not speaking. What happened in the great drama of which we are speaking, also applies to Iran. I prefer those who fight on the ground to those who speak in salons.’

• Early December, 2007: A key Sunni insurgent leader using the nom de guerre Dr Abdallah Suleiman Omary told the Guardian that the indigenous Sunni insurgency groups—now known as al-Sahwa (the Awakening) -- were taking money and weapons from the Americans in return for confronting al-Qaida militants.

  ”Al-Sahwa has made a deal with the US to take charge of their local areas and not hit US troops, while the resistance’s purpose is to drive the occupiers out of Iraq. We are waiting in al-Sahwa areas. We disagree with them but do not fight them. We have shifted our operations to other areas”.

  (Iraqi insurgents regrouping, says Sunni resistance leader,Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, December 3, 2007)
• December 3-5, 2007: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an invited guest at the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Doha, Qatar. Having Iranian representation at this meeting is unprecedented, inasmuch as the group was formed as a counterweight to Persian geopolitical influence in the gulf. Bodansky claims that Iranian opposition sources report that Ahmadinejad and Secretary of State Gates met secretly at this time. Bodansky claims a deal was reached in which the U.S. recognized Tehran's hegemony over areas surrounding Iran in return for a stable flow of oil and gas from these regions as well as a guarantee of an honorable withdrawal from Iraq. Bodansky claims that senior Gulf Arab officials confirm that senior U.S. and Iranian officials met in Doha and agreed on such a deal.
• December 8, 2007: Senior Iranian security official Ali Larijani claims on Iran's state-run television that Iran has helped improve security in Iraq:

  "This time around, if the Americans pay attention to the fact that Iran has a prominent role in the Iraqi issue and can help -- because of its moral influence in Iraq and its political influence -- it can help the Iraqi government."

  In the IPS News article reporting the above quote, there is also this additional piece of confirmation of high-level contacts between Iran and the U.S. and of the proposed December 18 meeting:

  Despite their mutual animosity, however, Iran and the U.S. have held three rounds of high-level talks on Iraqi security. On Sunday, Iran's foreign ministry announced that Iraqi officials have proposed holding the next round Dec. 18.

  (Iran eases support to radical group – for now, Roxana Saberi, IPS News)
• December 8, 2007: Not cited by Bodansky are the tough and at times sarcastic comments of Secretary of State Gates on Iran in his speech to a security conference in Manama, Bahrain: "Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents."
  Iran aims 'To foment instability'Washington Post, December 8, 2007.
• December 10, 2007: Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari confirmed that the U.S., Iraq and Iran would meet on December 18, 2007 for high-level security talks. Zebari is quoted as saying: "As for the cooperation of Iran, we indeed have many indications to see that it has provided assistance…[Tehran is now convinced that] instability in Iraq will affect their interests sooner than later."
• Mid-December 2007: the U.S., Bodansky reports, got "cold feet" about a high-level tripartite meeting that would include senior officials of the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] and MOIS [Ministry of Intelligence and Security]. Instead, a secret "non-meeting" in Baghdad's Green Zone is held with a high-level delegation led by IRGC Commander Major-General Mohammed Ali Jafari
• December 18, 2007: The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to extend the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq for one year. The Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki promised this would be the nation's "final request" for help.
• December 23, 2007: David M. Satterfield, Iraq coordinator and senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is quoted by the Washington Post as saying that Tehran has decided "at the most senior levels" to rein in the violent Shiite militias and that this decline "has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision…. "We are confident that decisions involving the strategy pursued by the IRGC are made at the most senior levels of the Iranian government." (Iran Cited in Iraq's Decline in Violence, Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, December 23, 2007.

Bodansky concludes with a depressing set of prophecies, no less apocalyptic than that of the Mahdists in Iran:

For the elites of the Greater Middle East, left to be determined are only the modalities for the US withdrawal.

Irrespective of the outcome of the 2008 elections in the United States, the US has committed to withdrawing from Iraq, and, as far as the Greater Middle East is concerned, from the entire region as well….

However, withdrawal from Iraq will entail a great strategic price for the United States, its friends and allies.

The post-US Greater Middle East will – in the view of this analyst – be characterized by the profound and at this stage largely irreversible weakening of the centralized states and their ruling elites. In their stead, the region will see the empowerment of religious-clannish elites, all beholden to Mahdist Tehran and dependent on the mullahs for their survival. The ascent of militant Shi'ism will affect the entire Greater Middle East, as well, for it will empower the Islamist-jihadist trend and elites also in the Sunni heartlands.

A major war for the "liberation" of Jerusalem and the ensuing destruction of Israel would consolidate the Islamist-jihadist hold over the Greater Middle East for centuries. Tehran is eager to escalate any grassroots reaction to the enduring US presence in Iraq into such an anti-Israel war. Even if such a war was to be averted by a speedy and smooth US withdrawal, this would only be postponement of the inevitable….

Adamant on saving his own political legacy, Pres. Bush made his Faustian deal with Mahdist Tehran. Thus, the Bush White House will be able to tout success; the US will be able to declare victory and withdraw safely. Left behind will be a tormented region now having to face on its own both the wake of the US adventure and the vacuum created by its withdrawal. Cognizant, all aspirant regional powers arre already posturing and surging in order to seize the historical opportunities virtually at all cost.

This cataclysmic struggle, which I believe will dwarf all regional wars to date, has barely begun.

There is no denying that the release of the NIE report last December was puzzling. David Kay, the veteran arms inspector who in 2003 could not find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, comments on the NIE in an interview for the Council on Foreign Relations:

“I cannot believe that anyone who worked on nuclear proliferation for any period of time would make a statement like that.

(Kay: Recent Iran NIE Recalls Erroneous 2003 Iraq Estimate)

It is dismaying to believe that the bureaucrats in the intelligence services were able to produce a flawed NIE report in order to preempt the administration from any possible military move against Iran in the remaining months of the Bush term. It is far more disheartening to think that the report signaled a secret deal with Iran that gives that fanatical regime hegemony over a large swath of the Middle East in exchange for a face-saving withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Yet, whether or not the Bush administration has entered into such a "Faustian" arrangement, the dire, even apocalyptic outcome Bodansky envisions may ensue anyway should Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton be in a position to carry out their promised hasty Iraqi retreat.

Labels: Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamene'i, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, National Intelligence Estimate, NIE, Nouri al-Maliki, Yossef Bodansky

Though opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko was officially declared the winner in Ukraine's third round of presidential elections late Monday, a representative for his competitor, Viktor Yanukovych, vowed to make an immediate appeal to the Supreme Court. Yanukovych's campaign manager alleged on Monday that a massive legal action was being prepared to prove widespread fraud in the re-runoff was responsible for the apparent victory of Yuschenko over Yanukovych. The Central Election Commission declared Yushchenko to be the winner on the basis of returns that showed him to have garnered 52 percent of the vote to just over 44 percent for Yanukovych.

The allegations of fraud received corroboration from Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor of Global Information System. Bodansky, an election observer for all three rounds of the Ukrainian Presidential elections, filed a report in Monday's Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily and claims that his team of observers witnessed serious fraud in a mental hospital in Vinnytsya, 200 miles south of Kiev. Reports of comparable fraud at other hospitals were reported by Ukrainian, Russian and East European monitors. In the mental hospital in Vinnytsya, Bodansky reports, a list of patients eligible to vote had been drawn up three days prior to the election. Just a day before the election, after many hospitals had failed to produce a list of patients who had the mental capability to vote, lawyers for the Yushchenko camp persuaded the Ukrainian supreme court to rule that such a list deprived patients of the basic right to vote and thus that no list could be a precondition for voting. Consequently, individuals seeking to vote in the hospital did not need a voter's permit form, mailed in advance to the voter's residence, but could simply fill out a short form declaring their intention to vote in the hospital. Their names were then added to the list by hand, and no attempt was made to check if these voters had voted in the polling station associated with their primary residence. Bodansky writes that he witnessed a stream of people coming in from the street, filling out the form, and voting. The list of voters had well over 800 names by late morning, even though the hospital records showed only 400 patients. Bodansky claims that by the end of the day of polling, the number of voters in the "Orange counties" exceeded the head count of voters by about three percent. Since the regular stations reported no great discrepancies in the two counts, Bodansky concludes that the added votes came from the "extraordinary" stations, such as ones in hospitals like the one he visited in Vinnytsya.

Bodansky doubts that the alleged fraud accounted for the entire eight percent lead Yushchenko achieved. He thinks the remainder of Yushchenko's lead resulted from fatalism on the part of many Yanukovich voters who thought there was no point in resisting the pressure from the West. He cites a joke that was making the rounds on the eve of the election as evidence of widespread cynicism:

The Ukrainian Central Elections Committee requested several governments in
the West to assist in preparing the right kind of form for the polls. The US
State Department sent the following text: "Dear voter, You have to chose one of
the following two options: 1. Viktor Yushchenko is elected the next president of
Ukraine; or 2. There is going to be a fourth round of presidential elections."

Bodansky deplores the pressure Washington has exerted to secure a quick resolution in favor of Yushchenko. He reports that on December 28, the U.S. State Department "prodded" the Ukrainian courts "to uphold the re-run election victory" of Yushchenko. While sources say Washington will wait for the Supreme Court's ruling before formally congratulating Yushchenko, the Bush administration is plainly more interested in seeing Ukraine move away from Moscow's orbit than in a thorough investigation of the process that produced the favored result.

Labels: Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, Yossef Bodansky

Ukrainians return for a third time to vote in their Presidential elections tomorrow, December 26. Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, Global Information System, reports in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily (December 24, 2004) on his observations as part of a team of election monitors in the first two rounds. Bodansky contends that the elections were free, fair, and legal (though, significantly, he does not mention the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko). He sees the unprecedented move of repeating a Presidential election to be caused by the pressure of Western Europe and the United States, along with a pre-planned post-election propaganda war by the Yushchenko campaign. He notes that no one on his team saw anyone conducting exit polls in the second round, undermining the claims of the Yushchenko campaign that the results of these polls are evidence of fraud. On the subject of exit polls, see Which Side Attempted a Fraud in the Ukraine? for a discussion of an earlier story in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily: "Extent of Soros-Linked Involvement Becoming Clear in Attempting to Seize Ukraine Elections for Yuschenko (December 3, 2004).

Bodansky is perplexed that the United States would side with the Western European support for Yuschenko's "coup attempt." He notes that Yuschenko, on the eve of the elections, gave assurances to the leaders of Germany, France and Spain that once elected he would immediately withdraw Ukrainian troops from Iraq. On the other hand, Viktor Yanukovich told Washington and Moscow that the Ukrainian contingent would not leave Iraq until the last U.S. troops left.

My guess is that U.S. statements of support for the "Orange Revolution" were initiated unilaterally by factions within the State Department that are dubious of, if not opposed to, the Bush Administration's Iraq policies. Continuing speculations about the source of the dioxin poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko prevent the Administration from any action other than awaiting the results of Sunday's third round of elections.

Labels: Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Global Information System, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, Yossef Bodansky

A Russian parliamentary commission claimed this week that a foreign special service was involved in the Beslan hostage-taking (Interfax) The Russians did not identify the country, but Iran is an obvious suspect. (Hat tip to Headland reader No Dhimmi.) Evidence of indirect Iranian assistance to the terrorists in Beslan can be found in the article by Yossef Bodansky, discussed in part on Headland in Monday's post ("Russia's Chechnya Terrorism Highlights Broader Links and Objectives, Linking to anti-US and Palestinian Terrorism," Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, November 29, 2004). Bodansky maintains that the Beslan hostage-taking was not about promoting Chechen independence, but an act of escalation in the global Islamist jihad against the West. Bodansky further argues that the strikes against Russia were planned by the al-Qaeda high command, with key support from Iran, after a decision in the summer of 2003 to broaden the anti-western jihad, beyond the anti-U.S. resistance in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, to include terrorist strikes against Russia.

All sides agree that the hostage-takers were a multinational team. Russian intelligence claimed, soon after the attack, that the strike force was composed of 35 terrorists, including "Chechens, Insushes, Kazakhs, [ten] Arabs, Uzbeks and Slavs." Arab Islamist sources tend to agree with this original Russian claim of the large number of Arabs among the hostage-takers.

According to Bodansky, in mid-August 2003, Zawahiri and his aides were in Tehran to coordinate anti-American resistance in Iraq. "Then, on August 17 or 18, 2003, the eve of the first spectacular strikes in Baghdad, Ali Younessi, the chief of Iranian intelligence, personally instructed a special team of Iranian senior intelligence operatives to organize Zawahiri's clandestine trip back to Pakistan." The mullahs allegedly wanted Zawahiri to leave Iran because they did not want to be directly associated with a marked escalation in Islamist terrorism. Iranian intelligence gave Zawahiri the disguise and documents that helped him travel across the Turkish border, to stay in a safe house in eastern Turkey. Using a route upon which Islamists volunteers may travel to Chechnya, with the tacit approval of Ankara and Baku, Iranian intelligence escorted Zawahiri to al-Qaida's bases in the Pankisi Gorge in northern Georgia on the border of Russia. Zawahiri is then said to have traveled to the Fergana Valley, through northern Afghanistan, to Pakistan.

On the way to Pakistan, Zawahiri inspected command cells of jihadists that were under a command center of senior al-Qaida commanders in Tehran. Bodansky identifies the key members of this command group as: Saad bin Osama bin Laden (son of Osama bin Laden), Seif-al-Adl, Muhammad Shawqi al-Islambuli (a.k.a. Abu-Khalid) and the Mauritanian Mahfuz Ould Waleed (a.k.a. Abu-Hafts).

On the eve of his departure from Tehran, Zawahiri organized a new command cell for the Caucasus. Among the commanders of this cell were the Saudi, Muhammad Abu-Omar al-Seif, nominated by Zawahiri as "al-Qaida's emissary" in Chechnya and the northern Caucasus. Though he was deployed in summer 2003, he assumed the formal title "Commander of the Eastern Province and the Mujahedin and Al-Ansar in Chechnya" in September 2004. Bodansky mentions, but has no information about, another key commander in Chechnya, the Saudi Abu Hajr.

The first claim of responsibility for the strikes against Russia was issued via authoritative Islamist-jihadist channels that are associated with bin Laden's elite command. The claims were written in Arabic and explained that the anti-Russia jihad was an integral part of the global anti-Western jihad. The first such communique was issued from "Kataeb al-Islambuli" [The al-Islambuli Brigades] and claimed responsibility for the downing of the two aircraft. The Al-Islambuli Brigades are associated with the Iran-based Muhammad Shawqi al-Islambuli.

Next came a claim of responsibility for the Beslan massacre from "Ansar al-Zawahiri" [The Supporters/Devotees of al-Zawahiri] on September 5, 2004. The al-Zawahiri group tried to link their grievances against Russia with those they hold against all whom they regard as enemies of Islam.

The last communique in Arabic regarding the anti-Russian jihad and its connection to the global jihad was issued by "The Chechnya al-Khattab Group" on September 18, 2004. It declared:

"In consideration of the Russian and US parties exceeding the limits of their aggression against the honor and dignity of Islam and Muslims in Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, Indonesia, Afghanistan, and other Muslim countries, within sight of the international community and without awakening the conscience of any Arab leader ... the commanders of the Chechen mujahedin and al-Ansar in Chechnya declare the beginning of simultaneous attacks against Russian and US interests."

Bodansky sardonically notes that the goal of an independent or Islamic Chechnya was not even mentioned in these statements. He also notes that the Chechen leader Shamil Basayev did not acknowledge responsibility for the strikes until after the Islamist-jihadist leadership had already done so. Basayev's first message was posted on September 19, 2004, though it was dated September 17. In an interview published on November 1, 2004, and prepared by the Kavkaz-Tsentr, Basayev acknowledge he had only "a degree of responsibility for the strikes" and did not think he was "guilty of that outcome." Yet his threats of future escalation became more bold, and he even gave a veiled warning of the use of weapons of mass destruction: "I would like to note," he said, "that the Russians had many times used chemical and bacteriological weapons against us as well as various poisons, and we feel free to retaliate."

Bodansky does not doubt any of these claims of responsibility. He sees a tight integration of the al-Qaeda high command with the Chechen resistance, not only operationally but ideologically. He cites the mentor of Basayev, Magomed [Muhammad] Tagayev, as calling for an anti-Russian jihad not in the context of an independent or even an Islamist Chechnya. According to Tagayev, "[The] Chechen state is ... the forward springboard for the liberation of the entire Caucasus."

Thus, the strikes against Russia in Autumn 2004 reveal how the international Islamist-jihad cause is closely integrated with the regional Islamist jihad in Chechnya.

Labels: Abu-Hafts, al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahri, Beslan, Chechnya, Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Shamil Basayev, Yossef Bodansky

Careful inspection of the wave of terrorism that hit Russia in August 2004 reveals how closely the network of Islamist-jihadists has integrated the objectives and resources of the international jihadist movement with local Islamist causes and assets. That is the lesson of a lengthy special report in today's Defense & Foreign Affairs by Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor of Global Information System ("Russia's Chechnya Terrorism Highlights Broader Links and Objectives, Linking to anti-US and Palestinian Terrorism," Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, November 29, 2004 -- no link can be provided, since the article is not publicly available on the web).

The spectacular assaults on Russia in August 2004 displayed a "mix and match" of local and imported contributions. The two Chechen women who served as martyr-bombers were identified as members of the "regional Shakhid unit of Moscow of the battalion of Shakhid, Riyad us-Salihin" by Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel leader (whose top aide, Akhmed "White Arab" Sambiyev was just killed late Thursday by Russian security forces). Forensic evidence reveals that the bombs used on the two Russian planes were similar to the bomb that was seized from the shoes of Richard Reid, after he attempted to bomb an American Airlines flight on December 22, 2001.

Remarkably, Bodansky also claims that the bombs used on the Russian planes were also similar to the "bomb used by Abderraouf Jdey, a Canadian citizen also known as Farouk the Tunisian, who, on November 12, 2001, brought down an American Airlines aircraft soon after taking off from JFK to the Dominican Republic." The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has maintained that the crash of AA 587 was accidental, and argues that the detachment of the vertical fin could not been the result of an event within the cabin. Suspicion that the crash was the result of sabotage has persisted, however, and just last August, Daniel Pipes reported in FrontPage Magazine the information (which Pipes called "not exactly rock-hard") that AA 587 was the result of an Al-Qaida operation with "Farouk the Tunisian" as the bomber.

Bodansky also reveals the source of Richard Reid's shoe bomb. The details illustrate the close cooperation between Iranian and Palestinian jihadist forces and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.

Reid's shoe bombs were based on Iranian-origin technology and were made of new type of high-explosives. Reid -- then an acknowledged bin Laden operative -- received his shoe-bombs in the Palestinian Jebalya camp in the Gaz Strip. At the time, he was a trainee-guest of Nabil Aqal, a senior commander of the Hamas' Izz al-Deen al-Qassim Brigades and a protege of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin. The key components of the bombs had been smuggled to Gaza from Lebanon via Egypt by then-Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasir Arafat's ally and confidante, Jamal Sema Dana. The Hamas support for Reid a major deviation from Yassin's long-standing insistence that the Hamas cadres limit their operations to the Palestinian theater in order to contribute to international operations under the banner of a global jihadist entity. However, by the late 1990s, the Hamas needed foreign support from the global Islamist-jihadist movement and Yassin was willing to "pay" by increasing its direct involvement in the international jihad.

Some of this foreign support Hamas received from international Islamist-jihadists was from Chechnya. Just after the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000, Shamil Basayev and Hattab, the "Black Arab" (who was later poisoned by the Russian secret service in 2002), sent 150 Chechen and Arab-Chechen "expert bomb-makers, snipers and fortification-builders" to Gaza and the West Bank. The extremely powerful bombs that Palestinians used to destroy several Israeli tanks were provided by the Chechens. Muhammad Dahlan, now head of Palestinian security services in Gaza, ran a program of smuggling into the Gaza Strip al-Qaida fighters and Chechens from Afghanistan-Pakistan. Each of the al-Qaida transplants received a $5,000 cash bonus, contributed from Saudi Arabia. A few of the Arab-Chechens had even been members of the Hamas Iss al-Din al-Qassim Brigades before they left Gaza and Nablus for advanced training in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

The ideological solidarity between the Palestinians and the Islamists in Chechnya became more public in 2004 when Hamas recruitment posters and videos featured portraits of bin Laden, Yassin and Hattab as the key leaders of the Islamist movement. The Hamas video also contained a fatwa by the Chechen Mufti Muhammad Abdullah Al-Seif sanctioning martyrdom-terrorism and even authorizing the recruitment of female martyr-bombers.

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Chechnya, Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, Gaza, Hamas, Osama bin Laden, Richard Reid, Russia, Shamil Basayev, Yassir Arafat, Yossef Bodansky

Nine Bosnian officials have been indicted for illegally allowing hundreds of foreign Islamic fighters to gain Bosnian citizenship after the 1992-95 war. According to the police officials who announced the charges in Sarajevo on Wednesday, the abuses of power occurred between 1995 and 1997, when fighters of African and Asian origin, who had fought with local Muslim troops against Serb and Croat forces, were illegally allowed to become Bosnian citizens. The names and positions of the officials charged were not released.

Robert Cvrtak, spokesperson for the Federation Police Administration, signaled that more indictments are in the offing. "The case," Cvrtak declared, "is part of a wider probe into the naturalization of 741 Arabs who obtained Bosnian citizenship illegally." Report of the announcement appeared on the web site of the Bosnian news agency ONASA, and was translated into English by the BBC Monitoring International Reports ("Bosnian Officials Indicted for Granting Citizenship to Foreign Islamic Fighters," November 25, 2004). According to an official source, Bosnian prosecutors are preparing indictments against 100 of the foreigners whose Bosnian citizenships are expected to be revoked. The mujahideen who entered Bosnia during the war against the Serbs and Croats were required to leave the country under the Dayton peace agreement, yet many are known to have remained.

Related headland stories:

• "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Linked to Bosnian Islamists" (November 24, 2004) [Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the reported "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, obtained a Bosnian citizenship certificate in 1994 and a Bosnian passport soon thereafter.]
• "Bodansky: Al-Qaeda-Linked Terrorists Active in Bosnia" (October 28, 2004) [Yossef Bodansky, a noted terrorism expert, told the Serbian daily Glas Srpske that a terrorist network, answering to Osama bin Laden, is active in Bosnia-Hercegovina.]

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Bosnia, Croatia, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Serbia, Yossef Bodansky

There is growing anticipation in Islamic-jihadist circles of an imminent cataclysmic terrorist strike against a major urban center within the United States. That is the report of Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, Global Information System, in a special report in today's Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily.

Bodansky reports that a communique was disseminated throughout the Islamist-jihadist elite of Western Europe and the Arab world before it was first publicized on November 9 by an "Abu-Hamzah al-Filastini" on an Islamist website. The message was allegedly from the "Al-Shaykhayn Brigade" of the "Al-Qaida Organization," and contained a warning that the U.S. would face the consequences of "Allah's wrath" in the form of a nuclear strike against a U.S. city.

"Let everyone know," the communique warned, "that we shall not hesitate to strike against the Americans and the rest of the Crusaders in their own countries. Their dens, their towers, and their hideouts will not be of use to them. The towers of New York continue to bear witness to that and continue to stand in silence dumbfounded by the intensity of the tragedy and the horror of death."

"We, in the Al-Qaida Organization, are in the process of preparing operations that will be more than painful," read the translation of the communique. The author(s) then proceeded to warn the U.S. and the West that "after they refused the truce offered by our Sheikh and the advice given by our leader Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, in his latest oral message in which he advised the Americans not to elect the reckless Bush and to contemplate the outcome of the enmity against the Muslim world, we say that by this refusal they warrant the wrath of God."

The form of the threatened attack was also identified. "We conclude by bringing the Islamic Nation good news by saying that nuclear and atomic production and enrichment is not a monopoly limited to the Crusaders and the Romans or the tyrants of the world, and that we are moving forward with the production of small but very powerful bombs.... the first target and application will be inside the U.S., which has gone too far with its tyranny and oppression, and [against] the American people who refused the advice of our Sheikh and accepted humiliation and enmity towards us and crushed the bones of our children in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, and Muslim countries as a whole."

Bodansky reports that when the authenticity of this communique was questioned on the forum to which it was posted, a "Liwa al-Shaykhayn" identified the source on November 11 as follows: "the Al-Qaida Organization, Europe and America Branch. [The] Media Official in Charge [is] Abu-Ans al-Maghribi."

One would trust, and should expect, that the leaders of the Mideast states should be no less terrified by these threats.

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, jihadists, Yossef Bodansky

An Islamist group calling itself "Abu-Hafs Al-Masri Brigades, Al-Qa'idah Organization -- The Europe Unit" has posted a statement on fundamentalist web sites threatening retaliation against America for its reelection of George W. Bush.

The statement reads in part: "Despite the fact that criminal Bush sanctioned the spilling of Muslims' blood during the past four years, and despite the massacres he committed and is still committing in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq, we see that his popularity is rising and the clapping of his people is getting louder. This demonstrates the nature of the American people, who support the campaign launched by the criminal America against Islam... The American people, at the end of the road, are the ones who will bear the consequences of the policy of their president during the coming four years.... The coming days will show you [the American people] that the one you preferred will lead you to an unbearable hell and that rallying behind that criminal will not bring you the security you are looking for and will not prevent the mujahedin from reaching your strongholds. And days will prove this to you." [Translation from Yossef Bodansky, "Osama bin Laden's Real Message: The Trends Following the U.S. Elections," Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, November 9, 2004.]

Nonetheless, the BBC reports that even some fundamentalists have raised doubts about the credibility of this group's threats. One was quoted as asking: "How would you believe those who claimed responsibility for the power blackout in New York and Canada last year, while later on it transpired that it had nothing to do with any terrorist operations?"

Labels: Abu-Hafs Al-Masri Brigades, al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, George W. Bush, Yossef Bodansky

Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor of Global Information Service, argues in Monday's Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily that Osama bin Laden's main audience in his recent speech was the Arab world, not Americans, and that his main message was the heralding and defense of a mass-killing spectacular strike against the United States.

Bodansky takes bin Laden's message to be an anticipatory moral defense:

He emphasized that the key to the security of all Americans was in their own hands: "Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaida . Your security is in your own hands." This can be done if Americans, through the electoral process, profoundly changed the policy of the US and ended the war on terrorism. "Each and every state that does not tamper with our security will have automatically assured its own security," bin Laden noted. Left unstated was the most important point: namely, that if US voters chose to support the continuation of the war on terrorism in one form or another they would be held responsible for the inevitable retaliation. This was the logic behind the spectacular strikes of September 11, 2001, and this logic remains valid.

In a November 2001 interview by Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, Bin Laden made the argument that given their participation in the democratic process, no US citizen was actually an innocent civilian.

"This is a major point in jurisprudence," bin Laden explained. "In my view, if an enemy occupies a Muslim territory and uses common people as human shield, then it is permitted to attack that enemy. ... The American people should remember that they pay taxes to their government, they elect their president, their government manufactures arms and gives them to Israel and Israel uses them to massacre Palestinians. The American Congress endorses all government measures and this proves that the entire America is responsible for the atrocities perpetrated against Muslims: the entire America, because they elect the Congress."

Bodansky reports that in the summer 2004 there began a crescendo of threatening messages, referring to the forthcoming use of weapons of mass destruction against the West, with a strong hint of the use of a nuclear weapon. He also notes that the threats delivered in American English by Azzam al-Amriki in late October of spectacular strikes against American cities have been echoed in numerous messages delivered in Arabic, Dari and a host of other languages.

A note from the Editor reports that GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources within the Islamist movements in the Balkans all report, on October 31, 2004, an upsurge in the rumors of a planned nuclear strike by Islamists on one or more U.S. targets. The note adds that Bosnian groups linked to the radical Islamist party SDA were active in supporting the terrorists who carried out the attacks on September 11 in the United States and in March 2004 in Madrid.

Bodansky concludes that taken together, these warnings have created great expectations among those faithful to the Islamic jihadist movement and that the leadership is not likely to ignore or fail to fulfill these expectations.

[Ed. In the full text of the speech posted on Aljazeera.Net, there is a grisly attempt by bin Laden to lay the blame for 9/11 on the victims. He claims to discern in their gestures before the collapse of the towers this message: "How mistaken we were to have allowed the White House to implement its aggressive foreign policies against the week..." Bin Laden then sees the victims imploring living Americans to hold their leaders to account, thereby implying that if we do not, we too will be guilty and thus deserving of the attacks of the Islamists.]

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, George W. Bush, Global Information System, John Kerry, Osama bin Laden, Yossef Bodansky

Agence France Presse and BBC Monitoring International Reports report that Yossef Bodansky, a noted terrorism expert, has told the Serbian daily Glas Srpske that a terrorist network, answering to Osama bin Laden, is active in Bosnia-Hercegovina. [Ed.: Bodansky has steadfastly insisted that OBL is still alive.]

According to Bodansky, director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the U.S. Congress and author of The Secret History of the Iraq War, terrorists responsible for bombing the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad last year were trained near Zenica in central Bosnia and then sent to Iraq via Italy.

Bodansky claimed that cells used Bosnia as a training ground and gateway to send terrorists to western Europe or to hide those who had arrest warrants issued for them in the West, before they were transferred to the East. Bodansky also claimed that terrorists captured in a series of raids in London this year had conceded to having links with Bosnia-Hercegovina. Bodansky, who met with Bosnian officials last week, complained: "Representatives of the international community in Bosnia and (local) authorities are aware of this, but they do not work enough to fight international terrorism."

Labels: Bosnia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Iraq, Osama bin Laden, Serbia, United Nations, Yossef Bodansky