Will Hayat Tahrir al-Sham succeed in “marketing” the concept of a “Sunni entity” in Idlib?
- Who were the ISIS leaders killed in Anbar last August?
Welcome to this week’s episode of the Observatory, covering the period from September 9 to 15, 2024. To the headlines:
On the second anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in Tehran, what has changed in Iran? We revisit interviews with: Amna Hani, Ahwazi activist, and Mithaq Abdullah, head of the Renaissance Pioneers Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz.
Hamza bin Laden
The newspaper reported The Mirror British: Hamza bin Osama bin Laden is alive and well, and is even preparing to revive the network The base To carry out attacks around the world. The newspaper did not clarify the source of the information, and merely indicated that it was an “analysis” prepared by Western intelligence experts.
The most important thing in this report is that Hamza bin Laden survived the American attempt to kill him in 2019; that he lives in Afghanistan, specifically in Jalalabad in the east; and that he received support from the influential Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, with whom he and other Taliban members meet periodically.
The report also said that Hamza is not alone. His brother Abdullah is supporting him in building 10 training camps in Afghanistan that include an unknown number of fighters and suicide bombers prepared to infiltrate countries around the world and strike Western targets.
What does this mean? How did the supporters receive it? The base This news? In one of the support groups on Telegram, the news was published, quoting the Shahada Agency of the Shabaab group, Al-Qaeda’s representative in Somalia. A supporter doubted the authenticity of the news on the grounds that it was old; another replied, “May God forgive him, we were happy.” From here, a supporter asked what it meant for Hamza to be alive or dead. He said, “If Hamza has been alive since 2019, why is he hiding? Great events occurred after the news of his death spread and many jihadi leaders were killed. If he were alive, he would have emerged to fill the void that exists these days.”
The response to this comment came in two forms. The first is that Hamza is not a leader at all, so his life or death would not spark a discussion, even if it was limited to a page on Telegram. The second is that Al-Qaeda leaders generally do not appear, and Hamza is no exception.
Neither response is satisfactory. What matters is not whether Hamza survived or died, but what the al-Qaeda leadership did about his death if he died and what he did about the organization if he lived.
Therefore, proof of life or death depends on the leadership of Al Qaeda. Did Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri survive the American Hellfire in Kabul? Did Abu Muhammad al-Masri survive the sniper attack in Tehran? No one knows for sure unless the General Command speaks.
Even senior local Al-Qaeda leaders like Khabib al-Sudani in Yemen do not know for sure when he mourned Hamza and Abu Muhammad in his book, “Shudharat”! But what the leadership cannot avoid is that its silence may constitute a systematic violation of the core doctrine of the organization, which is the emirate and the pledge of allegiance. So who is the emir? What is the ruling on the pledges of allegiance that legitimize this emirate and what its members and supporters issue in word or deed? This is exactly what an account in one of the Ansar groups asked. It asked: What is the ruling on jihad in the organization without a pledge of allegiance?
We believe that this orphan question, which the participants did not criticize, direct, or even delete, goes back to the interpretations that some supporters have been presenting, citing efforts here and there, regarding Al-Qaeda’s pledge of allegiance to the Taliban under the Doha Agreement. Is the “grand” pledge of allegiance that Osama bin Laden and later Al-Zawahiri made to the Taliban emirs still valid? And what does it mean for the Taliban to reject it? On the other hand, there is another pledge of allegiance between Al-Qaeda fighters, its supporters, their local emirs, and their greatest emir, the leader of the organization. Amid the ambiguity of this leader’s fate, what is the legitimacy of that pledge of allegiance? Let us remember here that Al-Qaeda and its supporters hold ISIS accountable for their pledge of allegiance to someone whose name and identity are unknown; so what do they say about their pledge of allegiance to an emir whose fate is unknown?
Al-Qaeda and the suppression of the truth
Can these issues bear all this ambiguity and back and forth? Probably not. We borrow the answer from the Jassim News account, which says it is a son of Al-Qaeda but seeks reform within the organization. More than once, the account called for dialogue within Al-Qaeda and to dot the i’s and cross the t’s without fear or hesitation, simply because there are scenarios that save the leadership from any embarrassment in any matter.
In a post on the X platform dated September 5, Anbaa Jassim spoke about the debate that has been going on for weeks with some Al Qaeda supporters about an undeclared “truce” in Yemen with the Iranian-backed Houthis, given that attacks against them have stopped since September 2022, while they have increased against Sunni Yemeni forces; and given the Iranian influence on Saif al-Adel, the de facto emir of Al Qaeda. Anbaa Jassim says, “If the leadership sees it necessary to cooperate or coordinate with the Houthis or the axis against Israel during this stage, then there is no shame in proposing that because everyone has the right to be aware.”
September 2024 attacks
On the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Hamas-affiliated al-Qaeda supporters continue to equate 9/11 with October 7 as another way out of the doctrinal impasse over Hamas’s relationship with Iran.
This approach came in two forms. The first was that Al-Qaeda supporters exploited the event to criticize a group that supported September and opposed Hamas, which started October 7. They said: “You must either support or reject both operations… It is a despicable bias, abhorrent fanaticism, and blatant contradiction to speak out against the mujahideen in #Gaza under the pretext of recklessness and haste… and you yourself supported the operation to strike the towers.” On the other hand, Al-Qaeda’s official media exploited the event to achieve a gain with clear popular support for October 7 from outside the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Khabib al-Sudani, a leader in al-Qaeda in Yemen, said in a post titled “Pauses Between Two Invasions” that the New York attacks in 2001 and the Gaza attacks in 2023 were “worth” the lives lost and the consequences they brought.
However, his words draw attention to a repeated reference in Al-Qaeda literature to the position of Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban at the time, regarding the handing over of Osama bin Laden. We would like to mention here that Mullah Omar was confident that bin Laden was not responsible for the attacks and therefore did not hand him over to America without evidence. In contrast, bin Laden continued to deny his responsibility for the attacks until 2004.
In this program, we reviewed evidence of this from reliable sources, including the godfathers of Al Qaeda themselves. Today, we add what the Dutch journalist and researcher Bette Dam mentioned in her “Searching for the Enemy – Mullah Omar – The Unknown Taliban,” published in 2021, quotes the same words from Mullah Omar’s aides at the time, such as Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil, the Taliban’s foreign minister, and Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan.
DAM reports that Afghanistan was among the first countries to condemn the attacks and offer condolences to the victims. But Mullah Omar did not realize the “danger” of bin Laden. He used to say that if America insisted on striking Afghanistan without evidence, the chances of that happening would not exceed 10%. In the early days of the attacks, Mullah Omar continued to live his life as normal, unperturbed, which worried his followers. What happened next was a mixture of stubbornness and miscalculation on the part of both the Americans and Mullah Omar.
The “Sunni entity” in Idlib
Statements by media figure Ahmed Zidan, loyal to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib, have sparked controversy among the Syrian opposition.
In a symposium titled “The Issue of Identity and Belonging in Syria,” on the sidelines of the Idlib Book Fair, Zidane called for accepting the concept of the “Sunni entity” that has emerged there. Zidane’s logic is that the Sunnis are “crushed” and unable to achieve any ambition of any kind. Therefore, what the “revolutionary or mujahid” in Syria has been hoping for since 2011 is no longer available today except in Idlib. Hence the importance of this “Sunni entity” “in order to temporarily preserve the “geography” that has been out of the control of the Syrian regime for years “until God opens… Damascus and other places.”
Thus, Zidane sees that the Sunnis in Syria are “the main revolutionary force, if not the only one (that is) being subjected to real genocide, in light of the complicity of other minorities and silence.” What is the problem of the opponents of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham with this talk? They also do not give weight to Syrians from other sects? The irony is that their problem is that they see Zidane’s talk as “dwarfing” or “reducing” the movement that has been raging since 2011. Abu Yahya al-Shami, the Sharia scholar who defected from the organization, sees Zidane’s call as a compromise in Idlib and northern Aleppo “so that after that there will be no liberation of what the enemy occupied,” meaning the Syrian regime; and therefore the people of Idlib must submit to al-Julani’s authority in the region as a de facto rule. Bassam Sahiuni, who was one of the organization’s senior employees before leaving them, commented, “The revolution is over and the cake has been divided by al-Julani and Zidane.” Abu Malek al-Tali, a former leader in the organization, considered that “launching” the concept “is a tickling of emotions at the expense of the loss of principles.”
Anbar .. ISIS graveyard
US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced the killing of “ISIS leaders” in a joint raid with Iraqi forces in western Anbar.
The August 29 raid killed 14 ISIS members, including four prominent figures: Ahmed Hamid Hussein Abd al-Jalil al-Ithawi, who was in charge of operations for all of Iraq; Abu Humam, who was in charge of operations for western Iraq; Abu Ali al-Tunisi, who was in charge of technical development; and Shakir Abd Ahmed al-Issawi, who was in charge of military operations for western Iraq. Among them was Abu Ali al-Tunisi, who specialized in making explosives, suicide belts, and chemical weapons. In November 2022, the U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to his capture.
The account of the channel to expose the worshippers of al-Baghdadi and al-Hashemi opened the Anbar file this week. It published pictures that it said were of Abu Muslim al-Ithawi or Abu Hafs, who was the deputy to the current governor of Iraq and the emir of the Rafidain office, Abu Abdul Qadir; and others of Abu Hammam or “Abu Malik al-Faraji,” who was the governor of Anbar.
The account commented that what happened in the Al-Hazimi area east of Wadi Al-Ghadaf last August was the result of “security and intelligence breaches” that affected the organization in Iraq, considering that the August landing comes as a continuation of a campaign of raids, arrests, and landings in Anbar in recent years. On the other hand, the account blames the organization’s leaders there for not addressing this “security failure” except by taking the measure of “preventing the use of phones.” In another location, the account spoke about “disks” or GPS chips that have in recent years become “the most malicious means used by the organization’s supporters who have been infiltrated by the Rafidah intelligence to determine the locations of the organization’s guesthouses, the locations of the organization’s vehicles, and the places where barrels of weapons and food are stored in the Anbar provinces… (which caused) a loss of trust between the organization’s members and their supporters in the villages (and)… a complete paralysis in some sectors due to the inability to work or even bring food in some cases.”
ISIS and Somalia’s gold
The Somali website Garow Online reported that there is evidence that ISIS Somalia is now able to export limited quantities of locally mined gold, earning $6 million in profits over the past two years. The website commented that despite the limited exports, this indicates the organization’s ability to recover and manage economic activities that generate income for the organization’s global network to fund attacks in Africa and beyond.
ISIS West Africa… No Immunity for Life
The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) has claimed responsibility for a massacre in Yobe, northeastern Nigeria, that killed at least 120 people. ISIS said the dead were “combatants,” but others said they were civilians. Researcher Pavel Wycek notes that ISWAP propaganda has become more violent than before, featuring massacres of civilians, demolition of villagers’ homes, and summary executions.
Guardians of the Night Journey
In the last episode, we said that since last August, Al-Qaeda supporters have been searching for Salafi jihadist groups fighting in Gaza in an attempt to overcome the problem of “supporting” the pro-Iranian Hamas that is at the forefront of the confrontation with Israel. Two groups emerged: the Salafi Army of the Nation in Jerusalem and the Saraya Guardians of the Masjid. One said that the two were one and the same. In any case, what was published about the two at the time dates back about two years. During the week that Al-Qaeda supporters celebrated the September attacks, the Guardians of the Masjid account posted that they had carried out an attack on Israeli settlements north of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, September 14.
