Song Hong
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2020
- Messages
- 5,058
- Reaction score
- -25
- Country
- Location
Some interest excerpts
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Iran is big enemy of Al Qaeda
After fleeing to Pakistan following the Taliban’s defeat, many al Qaeda fighters and operatives were arrested by authorities there. Fearing the same fate, the remaining al Qaeda leaders and many members of bin Laden’s family covertly crossed the border into Iran in early 2002. Once there, they were assisted by Sunni militants who helped them rent houses using forged documents. But by the end of 2002, the Iranian authorities had tracked down most of them and had placed them in a secret prison underground. They were later moved into a heavily guarded compound, along with their female relatives and children.
In 2008, bin Laden’s son Saad escaped from Iran and wrote a letter to his father detailing how Iranian authorities had repeatedly ignored the al Qaeda detainees’ medical conditions and how “the calamities piled up and the psychological problems increased.” When Saad’s pregnant wife needed to be induced, she was not taken to a hospital until after “the fetus stopped moving”; she was forced “to deliver him after he died.” Saad was convinced that the Iranians “were masters at making us lose our nerve and took pleasure in torturing us psychologically.” So desperate were their conditions that when a Libyan jihadi leader, Abu Uns al-Subayi, was eventually released in 2010, he wrote to bin Laden that Iran is where the “greatest Satan reigns.” Detention there felt like being “exiled from religion,” he wrote, admitting that he had even begged his Iranian captors to deport him to “any other country, even to Israel.”
Bin Laden is no longer leader in Al Qaeda quite shortly after 911
By 2004, Zarqawi, and not bin Laden, was the leader of the world’s most powerful jihadi group. Things went from bad to worse for al Qaeda after Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in 2006. His successors declared themselves the Islamic State of Iraq without consulting bin Laden, Zawahiri, or any other senior al Qaeda figures. In 2007, ISI leaders stopped responding to al Qaeda’s letters altogether,
Bin Laden wanted al Qaeda to make headlines by killing and injuring Americans, not Iraqi civilians—even if they were Shiites, whom Sunni jihadis saw as heretics.
www.foreignaffairs.com
******
Iran is big enemy of Al Qaeda
After fleeing to Pakistan following the Taliban’s defeat, many al Qaeda fighters and operatives were arrested by authorities there. Fearing the same fate, the remaining al Qaeda leaders and many members of bin Laden’s family covertly crossed the border into Iran in early 2002. Once there, they were assisted by Sunni militants who helped them rent houses using forged documents. But by the end of 2002, the Iranian authorities had tracked down most of them and had placed them in a secret prison underground. They were later moved into a heavily guarded compound, along with their female relatives and children.
In 2008, bin Laden’s son Saad escaped from Iran and wrote a letter to his father detailing how Iranian authorities had repeatedly ignored the al Qaeda detainees’ medical conditions and how “the calamities piled up and the psychological problems increased.” When Saad’s pregnant wife needed to be induced, she was not taken to a hospital until after “the fetus stopped moving”; she was forced “to deliver him after he died.” Saad was convinced that the Iranians “were masters at making us lose our nerve and took pleasure in torturing us psychologically.” So desperate were their conditions that when a Libyan jihadi leader, Abu Uns al-Subayi, was eventually released in 2010, he wrote to bin Laden that Iran is where the “greatest Satan reigns.” Detention there felt like being “exiled from religion,” he wrote, admitting that he had even begged his Iranian captors to deport him to “any other country, even to Israel.”
Bin Laden is no longer leader in Al Qaeda quite shortly after 911
By 2004, Zarqawi, and not bin Laden, was the leader of the world’s most powerful jihadi group. Things went from bad to worse for al Qaeda after Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in 2006. His successors declared themselves the Islamic State of Iraq without consulting bin Laden, Zawahiri, or any other senior al Qaeda figures. In 2007, ISI leaders stopped responding to al Qaeda’s letters altogether,
Bin Laden wanted al Qaeda to make headlines by killing and injuring Americans, not Iraqi civilians—even if they were Shiites, whom Sunni jihadis saw as heretics.
Bin Laden’s Catastrophic Success
A close reading of Osama bin Laden's correspondence offers a portrait of the U.S. “war on terror” as it was seen through the eyes of its chief target.
