crucial

  

Jane's security report on Al-Qaeda

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir010726_1_n.shtml

Janes Security has excerpts of security reports, intended for multi-national companys, shipping firms etc. They do security and consultaion.

Al-Qaeda ('The Base') is a conglomerate of groups spread throughout the world operating as a network. It has a global reach, with a presence in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, Jordan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Xinjiang in China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Mindanao in the Philippines, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Dagestan, Kashmir, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Azerbaijan, Eritrea, Uganda, Ethiopia, and in the West Bank and Gaza.

Since its creation in 1988, Osama bin Laden has controlled Al-Qaeda. As such, he is both the backbone and the principal driving force behind the network. . . .

. . . Vertically, Al-Qaeda is organised with Bin Laden, the emir-general, at the top, followed by other Al-Qaeda leaders and leaders of the constituent groups. Horizontally, it is integrated with 24 constituent groups. The vertical integration is formal, the horizontal integration, informal. Immediately below Bin Laden is the Shura majlis, a consultative council. Four committees - military, religio-legal, finance, and media - report to the majlis. Handpicked members of these committees - especially the military committee - conduct special assignments for Bin Laden and his operational commanders. To preserve operational effectiveness at all levels, compartmentalisation and secrecy are paramount.

Jane's description of the birth of Al-Qaeda.

http://www.janes.com/regiional_news/americas/news/jdw/jdw010914_1_n.shtml

basically, formed out of the forces that were left from the US funded and trained anti-communists forces.

"afghanistan borders the former Soviet Union, the successor states of which have undoubtedly the world's least secure stockpiles of weapons-grade nuclear material. "

Bin Laden British cell planned gas attack on European Parliament

(charges were dropped, reportedly at the urging of MI5 (uk cia) so as to monitor the group more carefully).

http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/16/wbin16.xml

a man who has contact with bin laden

http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/16/wbin116.xml

excerpt:

"He would very much like you to interview him for the BBC," said one of his Pakistani contacts, answering my hopeful question. "But the Taliban won't let him, you know." There are Taliban liaison officers stationed with bin Laden. Mostly they let him do what he wants - short, that is, of inviting television crews round.

Bin Laden has one of the most sophisticated communications systems in the region. A communications vehicle is stationed at a distance from him, and his calls are routed through it. That way, if they are intercepted, he won't be hit by some smart weapon fired from a distance.

But he makes few calls anyway; instead, when he wants to speak to people in Pakistan, he sends his Afghan spokesman quietly across the border. No amount of international eavesdropping can detect that.

Other bin Laden agents make for the internet cafes that have sprung up in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar. They use the most common service providers, all of them American, and refer to each other and to bin Laden himself by their first names. In the welter of e-mail traffic their messages go unnoticed. If approval for the World Trade Centre operation came from bin Laden, then this is how it would have been done.

Life as the most wanted man on earth has changed him. It has made him clinical and cold. But people who have seen him recently say he has an extraordinary aura.