Cracks in the Foundation:
Leadership Schisms in al-Qa’ida from 1989-2006

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1990-1996: al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia

As is well known, al-Qa’ida was born out of a leadership schism. Though they co-founded the Maktab al-Khidamat (also known as the Afghan Services Bureau), which provided logistical support to the Arab volunteers, by the end of the anti-Soviet conflict in Afghanistan ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam and Usama bin Ladin had come to have differing views about many things, not least of them being the future direction of the jihad.[5] When al-Qa’ida went its own way under Bin Ladin’s leadership, things didn’t get any better. As author Lawrence Wright notes, “The formation of al-Qaeda gave the Arab Afghans something else to fight over.”

Every enterprise that arose in the sparsely populated cultural landscape was contested, and any head that rose above the crowd was a target. The ongoing jihad in Afghanistan became an afterthought in the war of words and ideas that was being fought in the mosques [of Peshawar]. Even the venerable Services Bureau … was slandered as a CIA front and Azzam as an American stooge.[6]

The earliest witness in the Harmony documents to al-Qa’ida’s leadership-cohesion challenges during this early period comes from an analysis of the Afghan situation in 1989 written by the Egyptian jihadi Mustafa Hamid, also known as Abu’l-Walid, some time after 1996. Abu’l-Walid’s single most important characteristic as it emerges from the Harmony documents is his pragmatism. Though a devout Muslim who shared the broad outlines of Salafi jihadi ideology with his al-Qa’ida brethren – essentially that there is a need for a renewal of Shari’a-dominant political structures in the Muslim world, and a concomitant need to fight any perceived interference in this revival – Abu’l-Walid approached jihad as, above all else, a military struggle. For Abu’l-Walid, the foremost requirement of a jihadi strategy is that it be effective, not that it be ideologically pure or symbolically potent. This predilection for a pragmatic approach to jihad would lead Abu’l-Walid to repeated conflicts over the years with members of the al-Qa’ida leadership who took a more ideological or doctrinaire line.

A long-time veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad, during the 1980s Abu’l-Walid personally knew many of the Arab mujahidin, especially fellow Egyptians, who would go on to take leading roles in al-Qa’ida. Of these he was closest to Abu Hafs al-Misri (aka Muhammad Atef), one of the co-founders of al-Qa’ida and perhaps the leading voice of what Abu’l-Walid and others have described as the “hawkish wing” in al-Qa’ida’s early history.[7] In the early spring of 1989, Bin Ladin had joined with his Arab mujahidin followers in the disastrous attempt to attack and seize the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, an attack that had been orchestrated by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Bureau (ISI), allegedly with help from the CIA.[8] Though losses were massive and there was little sign of progress in the early days of the siege, the international network of mujahidin newsletters, itinerant preachers and support organizations touted the battle as being on the verge of victory for the mujahidin, and this sparked the greatest influx of foreign volunteers into Afghanistan since the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. The influential ‘Abdullah ‘Azzam also published accounts glorifying the courageous “martyrs” rushing to “liberate” the city from Najibullah’s communist government, accelerating the rush to the Jalalabad front. In the midst of this surge of support for the attack, a small contingent of prominent mujahidin, including Abu’l-Walid and Abu Mus’ab al-Suri,[9]were trying to sound the alarm and convince the Arab fighters not to join such an ill-prepared and fool-hardy mission, one which Abu’l-Walid likened, in articles he wrote for the jihadi newspapers and magazines at the time, to a horde of children being led to their doom by the pied piper.[10]

Abu’l-Walid was well aware that the attack plan had allegedly been drafted with ISI and CIA support, and he warned that the mujahidin were being savagely manipulated in the service of geopolitical forces having nothing to do with the jihad.[11] Abu’l-Walid was very upset with ‘Azzam for writing his glowing portraits of brave martyrs, but reserved the bulk of his ire for Usama bin Ladin and his military leaders Abu Hafs and Abu ‘Ubayda, who had emerged during the course of the battle as the overall commanders of the Arab forces.[12] After a number of his old mujahidin colleagues were killed in the fruitless attack, Abu’l-Walid let it be known that “had I been in charge, I would have court-martialed Abu ‘Abdullah [Usama b. Ladin], Abu ‘Ubayda and Abu Hafs and sentenced them to death.”[13] Though they’d not met by this point, word of his comments made it to Bin Ladin, who, not surprisingly, became very angry. At one point Abu’l-Walid met with Abu Hafs and Abu ‘Ubayda and asked them to convey a written assessment of the Jalalabad fiasco to Bin Ladin; Abu ‘Ubayda returned with the news that “Abu ‘Abdullah wished it torn to pieces and scattered to the wind, since his men were achieving victories.”[14] Abu’l-Walid’s assessment of the al-Qa’ida leadership formed during this experience – that “their limited mentality will always be disastrous to their operations”[15] – was one that would only be deepened in the following years, as he began to work more closely with and ultimately rose to top of the ranks of al-Qa’ida.

In 1998, by which time Abu’l-Walid was a member of the Shura Council of al-Qa’ida – the umbrella committee of senior leaders that advises Bin Ladin and has subcommittees with various portfolios – he edited together a lengthy series of diaries and notes that he’d written in 1990 during the siege of Khost, an important series of battles that began during the anti-Soviet war and carried over into the 1989-1992 Afghan civil war between mujahidin warlords and the Najibullah regime; beseiged for more than eight years, this eastern Afghan city finally fell to the mujahidin in the spring of 1991.[16] The Afghan mujahidin were led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a skilled commander who operated under the aegis of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami until 1995, at which time he switched his loyalties to the Taliban.[17] Some of the so-called “Arab Afghans,” or mujahidin volunteers from Arab countries, fought around Khost under Haqqani’s leadership during this period, while many of them formed their own groups, the largest of which was led by Abu’l-Harith al-Urduni. Haqqani was widely recognized as one of the most effective mujahidin commanders in Afghanistan and he was heavily supported with money and arms by the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agencies; CIA officers stationed in Islamabad at the time viewed Haqqani “as perhaps the most impressive Pashtun field commander in the war.”[18] Haqqani was also very close to Usama bin Ladin – as he is to this day – and it was during this period that Bin Ladin built his cave complex in Miranshah, North Waziristan, on territory that was then (and is now) under Haqqani’s control. [19]

Abu’l-Walid served as a field commander and propagandist for Haqqani, whom he greatly admired, though he worked with Abu’l-Harith’s group at various times as well.[20] Abu’l-Walid’s pragmatism is evident at the beginning of his Khost memoirs, where he writes that he chose to work with Haqqani because he felt the latter was most likely of all the mujahidin warlords to decisively end the military crisis and in-fighting that followed the Soviet withdrawal and finally put an end to communist rule of Afghanistan.[21] It was in the course of working with Haqqani in the battle for Khost that Abu’l-Walid began his working relationship with al-Qa’ida and its senior leadership.

In early 1990, after meeting with his old colleague Abu Hafs, Abu’l-Walid was invited to address two of al-Qa’ida’s training camps: the Jihad Wal camp in Khost and another across the border in Miranshah, North Waziristan.[22]At Jihad Wal he lectured on the political situation in Afghanistan with the jihadi ideologue Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, who would also go on to hold a position in al-Qa’ida’s Shura Council. Their class was a disaster; according to Abu’l-Walid, the audience, which included “all of the important cadres of the al-Qa’ida organization, including Usama bin Ladin,” broke into arguing factions and began declaring different parties infidels (takfir).[23] While he doubted that their takfiri denunciations extended to him personally, Abu’l-Walid was convinced that the enmity that some of the members of al-Qa’ida’s hawkish wing developed for him at this time played a role in further problems he would have with al-Qa’ida later that year.[24]

During this and subsequent meetings with Abu Hafs, Abu’l-Walid set out a plan to stage a continuous month-long rocket attack on the critically important Khost airstrip, a three-kilometer long landing area that had been an essential part of the Soviet supply line and remained so during the civil war against Najibullah. Surrounded on land by mujahidin, the city relied on the airport as its only source of supplies and thus vital to its ability to resist the siege. Al-Qa’ida agreed to support Abu’l-Walid’s plan, who would serve as the field commander for the operation, but, as he detailed at great length and in daily diary entries during the operation, al-Qa’ida proved to be an utterly incompetent collaborator, forcing Abu’l-Walid throughout the airport attack to rely on his long-standing relationships with Haqqani and Abu’l-Harith to obtain needed supplies and logistical support.[25]

Abu’l-Walid’s attack on the Khost airport lasted from 16 August to 11 September 1990. Just one week before the operation began, while setting up a network of posts that would fire rockets at different points of the airstrip, Abu’l-Walid received a letter from Abu Hafs on behalf of Usama bin Ladin asking him to send all his men originating from the Arabian Gulf to Peshawar. Bin Ladin was gathering an army of Gulf Arab mujahidin that he hoped to send to Saudi Arabia to protect it from Saddam Hussein’s armies, which had invaded Kuwait at the beginning of that month.[26] All Gulf mujahidin were ordered to comply, with the exception of those working as trainers in al-Qa’ida’s camps; in addition, Bin Ladin ordered that a distance-determining telescope that had been given to Abu’l-Walid for the operation be returned to Peshawar. Having already discovered that al-Qa’ida was “not generous at all in supporting the airport project with its staff” and “did not provide enough administrative support,” this request made Abu’l-Walid furious and he came close to severing his relationship with the organization. Rather than sacrifice the operation he sent along the telescope and the personnel, though “once again I was astonished by the al-Qa’ida leadership, that they would pull their cadres from an operation of such vital importance and yet not recall a single trainer from their military camps, full of young tourists from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.”[27]

On August 12 Abu’l-Walid wrote in his diary about al-Qa’ida’s “lack of focus and interest,” and of his continuing frustration in seeking support for the airport operation. He wrote that the organization “was unable to focus on a battle unless Abu ‘Abdullah – Usama bin Ladin – were leading it himself,” an autocratic approach that Abu’l-Walid thought “unhealthy.”[28] Throughout the course of the operation he frequently and angrily relates details of various failures on al-Qa’ida’s part; the latter are too slow in responding to requests, provide less than a third of the supplies Abu’l-Walid requests, fail to send along promised equipment and generally demonstrate complete administrative incompetence.[29] “The way that al-Qa’ida’s administrative people behaved gave me no reason to have any confidence in them whatsoever,” he wrote on August 16.[30] When the attacks on the airport succeeded in forcing Najibullah’s planes to use an alternate landing site, Abu’l-Walid’s plan to shift his attack to that location was unable to proceed, as “al-Qa’ida was silent as the sphinx” and the men under his command would not act without clear orders from Bin Ladin.[31] Abu’l-Walid traveled to Peshawar to personally get a decision from the al-Qa’ida leadership regarding their willingness to increase their participation; “of course,” writes Abu’l-Walid, “I failed in my mission.”[32]

During the middle of his operation against the Khost airport, Abu’l-Walid had a meeting with al-Qa’ida leaders Abu Hafs and Abu Usama al-Libi, and in his revealing account of their conversation one of the recurring themes of al-Qa’ida’s organizational vulnerabilities stands out: Arab chauvinism. Many of the Harmony documents provide evidence that al-Qa’ida is constantly challenged in its efforts to garner popular support by its disdain for non-Arab locals, be they Somalis, Uzbeks or Afghanis.[33] In his meeting with Abu Hafs and Abu Usama, Abu’l-Walid discussed with them the role the Afghani situation was to play in the context of the larger Arab and Islamic jihadi strategy. Abu’l-Walid writes that he took the minority view that, with a well-executed military strategy, the mujahidin could effectively take control of the country and establish an Islamic state, thus thwarting the post-Cold War designs of the United States vis-à-vis the Islamist movement.[34] Abu Hafs and Abu Usama, however, expressed the view that the Afghani people were not qualified for such an undertaking, as they were generally all “thieves and liars,” and that the most that could be hoped from Afghanistan at that stage was space in which to train some Arab cadres who could bring their skills back to their home countries to wage jihad there.[35]

Another Harmony document dating to this period is especially revealing of these particular differences at the leadership level over what the next stage of the jihadi movement should be. This remarkable document, which explicitly corroborates Abu’l-Walid’s just-mentioned account of the views expressed by al-Qa’ida leadership in his Khost memoirs, appears to be a survey of a number of leading Arab individuals and organizations involved in the Afghan jihad, with a series of questions followed by brief answers from each of the respondents. Though garbled with nonsense characters, it clearly lists responses from Usama bin Ladin, Abu’l-Walid, Abu Mus’ab al-Suri and others to a list of questions involving their respective positions on what level of participation the Arab jihadi groups should have in Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal, and toward what end; what they thought about the various Afghan warlords; and what their views were of Benazir Bhutto, whose first term as Prime Minister of Pakistan began in December of 1988 and ended in August of 1990.[36] In each case the longest answer is in response to the question of involvement in Afghanistan. Though there were nine respondents, the following are the five responses of those directly involved at some point in al-Qa’ida’s leadership, addressing the question of “what is your position on battle participation in Afghanistan and for what reasons”[37]:

‘Abdullah ‘Azzam: [there should be] token participation for the purpose of raising the Afghans’ morale, training the Arabs, and spreading the spirit of jihad among the Arabs, with the long-term goal being the waging of jihad against the Jews in Palestine.[38]

Usama bin Ladin: deep participation in the battles in accordance with the political and strategic vision of the leadership in Peshawar, with the long-term goal being the liberation of South Yemen from communism.[39]

Egyptian Islamic Jihad: participation in battles for the purpose of training personnel in a battlefield environment. Nothing is to be hoped for from the war in Afghanistan, nor will there arise an Islamic State there, on account of doctrinal/ideological defects (khalal al-‘aqa’id) among the leaders and the masses. Egypt is the heart of the Islamic world and it is necessary to establish the Caliphate there first.[40]

Egyptian Islamic Jihad: participation in battles for the purpose of training personnel in a battlefield environment. Nothing is to be hoped for from the war in Afghanistan, nor will there arise an Islamic State there, on account of doctrinal/ideological defects (khalal al-‘aqa’id) among the leaders and the masses. Egypt is the heart of the Islamic world and it is necessary to establish the Caliphate there first.[41]

Abu’l-Walid, Mustafa Hamid: total participation with the Islamic mujahidin forces in Afghanistan for the purpose of achieving a military and political victory for the sake of Islam and for transforming Afghanistan into a base (qa’ida) of support for the Muslim peoples, providing them with military cadres and expertise and shelter and support for the needy.[42]

Abu’l-Walid’s was clearly the minority position, and since the prevailing view of the al-Qa’ida leadership was that the jihad in Afghanistan was “a lost cause,” in the following year the entire organization moved to Sudan. Abu’l-Walid remained in Afghanistan and took charge of the remnants of the al-Qa’ida infrastructure – chiefly the network of training camps – and oversaw the training of new jihadi cadres that began at this time to come to the camps from the former Soviet Central Asian countries. In addition to providing training to the jihadis from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) that began streaming to Jihad Wal and other camps, Abu’l-Walid directed al-Qa’ida’s largest operation in Afghanistan during this period: the “Furqan Project,” which provided military training and support to members of Tajikistan’s Nahda Party (also known as the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan), an Islamist political party that fought alongside other anti-government groups in the 1992-1997 Tajikistan civil war.[43]

In a series of five letters addressed to the al-Qa’ida leadership then located in Sudan and Somalia, Abu’l-Walid reveals that al-Qa’ida’s house remained divided throughout this period.[44] n his first letter to the Africa Corps, dated 30 September 1993, he bluntly points to “a chronic error regarding political guidance” that plagued al-Qa’ida’s activities in Afghanistan and continued to do so in Somalia.[45] Abu’l-Walid writes that military action must proceed according to a plan and in pursuit of specific goals, and that “waging jihad like a rhinoceros is stupid and futile.”[46] He returns several times to the question of al-Qa’ida’s objectives in Somalia, chiding the team that was involved in the clash with American forces in Mogadishu (i.e., the “Black Hawk Down” incident) with having forgotten why it was there in the first place in the wake of this “victory.”[47] “Here I remind you yet again,” writes Abu’l-Walid, “of one your fatal mistakes, which is the hasty changing of strategic targets, whereby now every action is tactical and improvised. Despite whatever success some of these operations may have, the general lines of the course of action will vanish, lose their direction, and ultimately all of the gains that were made could be forfeited. This is an oppressive burden on our already afflicted umma.”[48]

Abu’l-Walid repeatedly criticizes the ideological hindrances that al-Qa’ida cadres impose on their selection of local partnerships, suggesting that “al-Qa’ida’s Salafi predilections have led it to seek a political ally in Somalia with the same ideological focus,” an approach he labels “a great calamity.”[49] He argues that the cadres must seek the lesser of various evils, not some hoped-for ideal; the question facing jihadi activism is not whether it will have a Salafi, Sufi or Muslim Brotherhood stripe, but whether it will survive at all.[50] Salafi or not, Abu’l-Walid urges al-Qa’ida in Somalia to find people they could effectively work with.[51]

The five letters also reveal a lack of commitment on the part of the al-Qa’ida leadership in supporting the remaining infrastructure in Afghanistan. Abu’l-Walid rebukes the al-Qa’ida leadership for “having washed its hands of the Central Asian region,” as this was “a complete contradiction of the founding charter of al-Qa’ida and of its very watchword, which is universal jihad.”

Even though I opposed this policy, as it goes beyond the scope of al-Qa’ida’s capabilities, al-Qa’ida committed to it nonetheless and even took steps to realize it. But beware the danger of any organization abandoning its foundational objectives, for such is the beginning of the end.[52]

Withdrawing from its birthplace in South Asia to focus on the “heartland” Arab regions was a betrayal of al-Qa’ida’s original purpose, and Abu’l-Walid writes that he fears al-Qa’ida will go the way of the Egyptian Islamist groups, who splintered into organizations focused on progressively more trivial matters and smaller theaters of action. “I even heard about specific organizations for neighborhoods,” he writes. “These organizations would start out around a ‘fatwa section,’ i.e., some genius suffering from juridical diarrhea who deemed himself capable of resolving any issue in heaven or earth.”

As in the Khost operations, Abu’l-Walid refers again and again to insufficient allocations of resources to the Furqan Project and the training facilities in general, noting in 1994 that he had “appealed constantly to you for very humble human and financial support, but it fell on deaf ears.”[53] In the latter half of 1994, Usama bin Ladin directed most of the remaining al-Qa’ida personnel working on the Furqan Project to relocate to Khartoum. In a letter written to the leadership in Sudan by one Abu ‘Ata al-Sharqi from the Jihad Wal camp in Khost, the author refers to the happiness of most of the “brothers” at this order, as they are weary of the problems facing their work in Afghanistan; in a further indication of al-Qa’ida’s chauvinism, the author writes that “I know with certainty that the problems will never end so long as we remain among our Tatar brothers.”[54] He also notes, however, that Abu’l-Walid was “very upset” by this order, as the latter had already sent a messenger to the Uzbeks inviting them to come and receive training. Abu ‘Ata writes that Abu’l-Walid saw the chance to work with the Uzbeks as a unique opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted; several arguments ensued, and ultimately Abu ‘Ata and the rest of the cadres agreed to remain until they could finish the training of the Uzbeks, and to write a letter to this effect to Bin Ladin giving the latter the option to countermand Abu’l-Walid.[55] Abu’l-Walid refers to this in a letter of his own, in which he asks “that you temporarily freeze your decision to withdraw the cadres until you have the opportunity to discuss the entire matter once more with a representative that will come to you specifically for this purpose.”[56] His entreaty was apparently of no avail, as it was not long after this that Abu’l-Walid himself moved to Khartoum, though within months he had to move back, as the entire al-Qa’ida organization was forced out of Sudan and sought refuge with the newly-ascendant Taliban.[57]

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