by Dore Gold
Joby Warrick, The
Washington Post’s correspondent who specializes in intelligence, wrote a
story on Dec. 3 about how the Syrian rebellion was already spilling
over and having an impact on neighboring countries. He focused in
particular on Jordan. According to interviews he conducted, last month
Jordanian security forces arrested 11 men and thus foiled a massive
planned terrorist attack in the heart of Amman.
The Amman attack was
supposed to begin with suicide bombings at two shopping malls to be
followed by strikes against luxury hotels used by Westerners. But the
main target in Amman was the U.S. Embassy, which was to be assaulted
with mortar shells. Most of the suspects captured were Jordanian
Salafists, who fought in Syria, which served as their new training
ground. Moreover, the same explosives that were to be used in the Amman
attacks were found in Syria as well.
But the key player
orchestrating many operations in Syria, and also now in Jordan, was the
Iraqi branch of al-Qaida. It had been incorrectly assumed that al-Qaida
had been vanquished in 2007 by General David Petraeus during the surge
of U.S. forces in Iraq. Recent events in Syria and Jordan demonstrate
that it has been rehabilitating itself.
James Clapper,
President Obama's director of U.S. National Intelligence, noted this
past February that al-Qaida in Iraq was infiltrating the Syrian uprising
and extending its network into Syrian territory. This process was
supported by the al-Qaida leadership. For at about the same time, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, the leader of the global al-Qaida network, appeared in a
video and urged jihadists in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon to fight
the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
The Iraqi branch of
al-Qaida was the natural partner to take up Zawahiri's call. During the
Iraq War, al-Qaida there used Syria as a rear base for its insurgency
operations against the U.S. armed forces. It had a logistical network of
safe houses and sympathizers it had built. Bruce Reidel, who
specialized on the Middle East and counterterrorism when he served at
the CIA, told The Washington Post recently that al-Qaida in Iraq was now
rebuilding these old networks "at an alarming rate." He also warned
that the new Iraqi branch of al-Qaida was coming back as a "regional
movement." What he meant was that its targets would be in neighboring
countries and not just in Iraq.
Specialists looking
into the Syrian rebellion have pointed out that several of the jihadi
groups fighting Assad rely on al-Qaida's Iraqi branch. For example,
there are the Abdullah Azzam Brigades (named for Osama bin Laden's
mentor), which was originally established in 2005 as a branch of Iraqi
al-Qaida. Its current commander, a Saudi named Majid bin Muhammad
al-Majid, fought with the former al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
It has been involved in Southern Jordan and in the Sinai Peninsula. It
also launched rocket attacks on Israel. It is now also beginning to
raise its profile in Syria.
There is also Jabhat
al-Nusra, the most deadly of the Syrian jihadist organizations, which
has been joined by operatives from al-Qaida's Iraqi branch. The stature
of Jabhat al-Nusra, in particular, has grown lately because of a string
of battlefield successes in Aleppo and Damascus. When the U.S.
designated the Jabhat al-Nusra as an international terrorist
organization, most of the other opposition groups strongly protested,
despite its al-Qaida connections.
The involvement of the
Iraqi branch of al-Qaida in the Syrian rebellion is important to follow
for another reason. Al-Qaida has proven itself to be an organization
with a strong interest in chemical weapons. In April 2004, Jordanian
security forces foiled a plot by the Iraqi branch of al-Qaida to attack
the Jordanian intelligence headquarters and the Office of the Prime
Minister in Amman with tons of chemical agents. One captured terrorist
confessed on Jordanian television to be part of Zarqawi's al-Qaida
network.
Should Syria's chemical
weapons stockpiles fall into the hands of jihadi forces, with
connections to al-Qaida in Iraq, it is likely that these
non-conventional capabilities could spread further. The Zarqawi network
operated in Europe and planned in the past to use chemical weapons in an
attack on the Paris subway system. Thus given the ideological
orientation of the groups currently operating in Syria, what happens in
the next few weeks will have broader implications for the rest of the
Middle East and even beyond.
Dore Gold
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3058
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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