ONE BIG UNHAPPY FAMILY….Newsweek has a short piece in its current issue about squabbling at the highest ranks in al-Qaeda:
This summer [Omar] Farooqi and other Taliban sources told Newsweek that a split had emerged in Al Qaeda between the organization’s powerful Egyptian faction, led by Zawahiri, and its Libyan wing over jihadist strategy. Ever since the 2001 collapse of the Taliban, Zawahiri has been plotting to kill his nemesis, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, narrowly missing twice in 2003. But the Libyans, led by Abu Yahya al-Libi, had argued that Al Qaeda’s resources should be focused on supporting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq and fomenting terrorism in the West.
The Egyptian-Libyan feud may now be history, though, thanks to Musharraf’s decision in July to storm the radical Red Mosque in the heart of Islamabad, during which the mosque’s radical leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed. Within days, Zawahiri issued a video calling on Pakistanis to “revolt.” Soon afterward, al-Libi followed suit. Even bin Laden, who had never before called on Pakistanis to rise up against Musharraf, did so in his latest audiotape.
According to this story, bin Laden finally got tired of his underlings sidelining him on the pretext that it was necessary for security reasons, and that’s why he began speaking out again. I don’t have anything in particular to say about this, but just thought it was interesting terrorist gossip. Make of it what you will.
