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Bin Laden appoints new commander to spearhead al Qaeda's operations against West | | Osama Bin Laden has reportedly appointed a new commander, Saif al-Adel, to carry out al Qaeda's offensive
operations against the West. Al-Adel or 'Sword of the Just,' the new chief of
international operations, is believed to be behind the recent terror alerts across
Europe and the mid-air parcel-bomb plot. The Daily Mail quoted U.S. and Pakistani
sources as saying that al-Adel was running several operations intended to persuade
Western public opinion that the war against terror is unwinnable. This would clear
the road for al-Qaeda to capture power in fragile states such as Somalia and Yemen
. "His strategy is to stage multiple small terror operations, using the resources
of affiliates and allies wherever possible," Syed Saleem Shahzad, a Pakistani
expert on Al Qaeda, said. Five years ago al-Adel reportedly wrote a planning document
which said Islamist movements failed because their 'actions were mostly random,'
and called for a 'greater objective, which is the establishment of a state'. The
new attrition strategy marks the triumph of a minority faction within Al Qaeda
who had opposed the 9/11 attacks, arguing that the inevitable U.S. retaliation
against Afghanistan would cost the movement its only secure base, the paper said.
In 2002, extremist websites carried a letter allegedly from al-Adel criticising
Bin Laden's leadership. Al-Adel was captured by Iranian forces and held along
its Caspian coast with his wife Wafa and five children for several years. But
in April he was released from custody as part of a prisoner swap along with Saad
bin Laden, Osama's son, and top Al Qaeda operatives Suleiman al-Gaith and Mahfouz
al-Walid. The Egyptian born was arrested in his country in 1987, and prosecutors
claimed he had planned to crash an aircraft into the parliament building or detonate
a bomb-laden truck nearby.
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