The new face of al-Qaeda

ON THE night of July 10, 2005, an obscure militant preacher named Abu Yahya al-Libi escaped from an American prison in Afghanistan and rocketed to fame in the underworld of jihadists.

The breakout from the Bagram Air Base by Libi and three cellmates embarrassed US officials as deeply as it delighted the jihadist movement – they had picked a lock, dodged their guards and run across the base's vast grounds to freedom.

In the nearly three years since then, Libi's meteoric ascent within the leadership of al-Qaeda has proved to be even more troublesome for the authorities.

The Libyan, who is believed to be in his late thirties, is now considered to be a top strategist for al-Qaeda as well as one of its most effective promoters of global jihad, appearing in a dozen videos on militant websites in the past year. At a time when al-Qaeda seems more inspirational than operational, Libi stands out as a formidable star whose rise to prominence tracks the group's growing emphasis on information in its war with the West.

"I call him a man for all seasons for AQ," said Jarret Brachman, a former analyst for the CIA who is now research director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point US Military Academy. "He's a warrior. He's a poet. He's a scholar. He's a pundit. He's a military commander. And he's a very charismatic, young, brash rising star within AQ, and I think he has become the heir apparent to Osama bin Laden in terms of taking over the entire global jihadist movement."

The secrecy that envelops al-Qaeda's leadership structure makes such estimates speculative. But Islamist insiders say that in addition to youth and charisma, Libi possesses one skill that al-Qaeda's leaders have been lacking: religious scholarship. Perhaps with this in mind, al-Qaeda is featuring Libi, who spent two years in Africa studying Islam, in as many of the videos as the group's two top leaders, Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.

"Bin Laden is an engineer and Zawahri is a medical doctor," said Dr Muhammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident who lives in London. "So it is important that they also present someone who has the role of scholar."

The varied roles that Libi plays in these videos, from recruiter to ideological enforcer, also shed light on al-Qaeda's shifting tactics. In recent months, those have come to include defensive manoeuvres aimed at defusing the media counter-operations of the United States and its allies.

Astute and comfortable on video, Libi delivers his message with a preacher's cadence. His black turban drapes down his chest, and he alternates between white Arabic robes and camouflage jackets.

"O Muslim youth in the East and West, who listen to God calling you: 'Go forth to war, whether it be easy or difficult for you, and strive hard in God's cause with your possessions and your lives," he said in a video sermon released this year.

But increasingly Libi uses his videos not to expand al-Qaeda's base, but to shore it up. He has lashed out at moderate Muslim scholars who accuse al-Qaeda of using false interpretations of the Quran to justify jihad. He has mocked Saudi Arabia's efforts to persuade jailed militants to give up the fight.

In a 93-minute speech released last autumn, Libi urged al-Qaeda's supporters to brace themselves for a surge in psychological warfare loaded with false propaganda. He cited a rumour that al-Qaeda's constitution calls for killing anyone who breaks from the group: "Al-Qaeda and its leaders are too noble and pure to descend to the rotten level of such nonsense."

These and other frank communications by Libi have led intelligence analysts at West Point and elsewhere to pore over his videos like Kremlinologists looking for operational clues to Soviet intentions.

Libi began his career as a militant on a scholarly path, according to a Libyan man who says he knew him. His older brother, now imprisoned in Libya, had been a crucial figure in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, whose members went to Afghanistan to help defeat the Soviet Union.

Libi, who went to Afghanistan in the early 1990s, was sent back to northern Africa to study Islam in Mauritania. When he returned two years later, Afghanistan was no longer a battleground for militant Libyans, but rather a haven: the Taliban controlled most of the country.

Libi's training in warfare was minimal, and his early work as an Islamic preacher rarely touched on militant action, according to the Libyan man who said he had met Libi in Afghanistan, and who spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns. "He started to visit training camps and talk about Shariah," the man said.

One year after the September 11 attacks, Libi was captured by Pakistani authorities and turned over to US authorities, who eventually placed him in the Bagram prison.

In one video produced after their escape in 2005, Libi and his fellow fugitives recounted their breakout, crediting God with distracting their captors. A new version now circulating on jihadist websites re-enacts some of the escape with dramatic flair.

Libi, who has also gone by the names Hasan Qaiid and Yunis al-Sahrawi, is assumed to be in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He appears to have worked his way quickly into the inner circle of al-Qaeda.

Libi was among the al-Qaeda leaders who sent letters of rebuke to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant leader who was killed in Iraq in 2006, who they felt was undermining the group's global strategy by attacking too many civilians.

"I share with you your great jihad," he wrote in a letter dated November 20, 2005, according to an English translation obtained from the West Point group. "I hope that you will lay open your heart for the acceptance of what I say."

In subsequent video appearances, Libi cast himself as a utility man for al-Qaeda. He rebutted Muslim scholars who criticised suicide bombers in Algeria; he urged Muslims to carry out attacks in Europe in revenge for the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Asked to assess Libi's stature, the State Department's counter-terrorism chief Dell L Dailey, who retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant general, said: "Abu Yahya is a senior al-Qaeda member, a top strategist for the group, and trusted and presented as one of the group's most effective promoters of jihad."

He has also become the leader of a Libyan contingent of fighters in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region, particularly after the death this year of another key militant who went by the name of Abu Laith al-Libi, said Evan F Kohlmann, an analyst who testifies as a government witness in terrorism trials. (The two Libis were not related.)

Abu Yahya al-Libi's most frank discussion of al-Qaeda's information war with the West came in the video released last autumn, 'Dots of the Letters'.

In assessing the state of Islamic militancy worldwide, Libi dwelled on "defectors" who have denounced violent jihad, internal spats among militants and fatwas, or Islamic legal pronouncements, from moderate Muslims who seek to criminalise jihadists. He went so far as to specify six ways that the United States and its allies might try to exploit this disharmony through psychological warfare.

Efforts by the Pentagon to undermine al-Qaeda have been intensified in recent months in Iraq, according to military officials in Baghdad, including using imams to meet with US-held detainees for religious discussions before they are released and publicising militants who disavow their violent ways.

In his video last autumn, Libi sought to brace al-Qaeda's adherents for tactics like this, which he said would fail. The retractions of captured militants would be particularly ineffective, he argued.

"Tell me," Libi said, "what do you expect from someone who sees the sword above him, the rug in front of him and the sheik dictating to him the proof and evidence for the obligation of obeying the ruler?"

US plans substantial increase in Afghanistan troop levels

The United States intends to send "many more" combat forces to Afghanistan next year, regardless of whether next week's report by General Petraeus recommends that troop levels in Iraq are cut further this year, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said.

Gates said that President George Bush made the pledge to other Allied leaders at a Nato summit in Bucharest on Thursday.

Bush was not specific about the number of additional troops that would go to Afghanistan in 2009.

The US now has about 31,000 troops there – the highest number since the war began in October 2001 – and has been pressing the Allies to contribute more.

Until now, the heavy commitment of US forces in Iraq has been a constraint on the ability to increase US troop levels in Afghanistan, but Gates said he did not believe that would be the case in 2009.

He expects a Bush decision "fairly soon" on a proposal to reduce soldiers' combat tours from 15 to 12 months, a move the Army deems urgent to relieve stress on troops and their families.

Gates indicated for the first time that there are drawbacks to plans outlined by a senior administration official on Friday which would see soldiers deployed for 12 months and then given 12 months' rest at home.

"It really is whether we're prepared – and ultimately the President – to sign up to something that clearly imposes some limits on what we could do in the future," Gates said. "The bottom line is, we're all still looking at that."

Gates' comment suggested a link between reducing tour lengths and the prospect of substantially expanding the US troop presence in Afghanistan next year.

Such an expansion could make it difficult, if not impossible, for the Army to maintain troop rotations for both wars in 2009 and beyond if it is unable to substantially cut forces in Iraq in the near term, while tour lengths are shortened by three months. While Gates acknowledged he couldn't commit the next President to honour the pledge to send more troops to Afghanistan in 2009, he stressed that "this is one area where there is very broad bipartisan support."