al Qaeda yard sale

al Qaeda yard sale

By Gerald: Internet Anthropologist Think Tank

03.16,09

al Qaeda ia in fancinal straits,

Al-Qaeda's Financial State

Al-Qaeda leaders, unlike their Taliban hosts who are heavily involved in the lucrative drug trade, ( AND THEY ARE NOT SHARING, G) do not currently have significant financial resources. (Their current financial state contrasts sharply with the situation before the September 11 attacks, when the annual al-Qaeda budget was between $20 and 30 million a year, of which several million went to the Taliban.) The financial crisis is most likely affecting the amount of donations al-Qaeda receives, as donor resources fall and requests from other supplicants increase.

Because of its tenuous financial state, al-Qaeda often asks for money. Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, also known as Shaikh Said, whom the 9/11 Commission Report identified as al-Qaeda's chief financier, and who is now considered the head of al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan, often makes direct appeals for donations. For example, in an interview in mid-2008, he stated that al-Qaeda had many potential suicide bombers but lacked the resources to equip them. Abu Yahya al-Libi, considered the principal religious authority in al-Qaeda, also often appeals for money in his statements, arguing that donating is a perfectly adequate and acceptable alternative to fighting.

Financial problems take a serious toll on al-Qaeda's ability to run its organization effectively. Even the group's leadership in the Afghan-Pakistani border area must pay for food, living quarters, accommodations for families of fallen comrades, and security, both in terms of hiring guards and in buying the silence of their neighbors. In addition, the leaders need money to recruit and train operatives and to mount operations....

Changes in Message

Prompted by the financial crisis, al-Qaeda leaders also have begun reaching out to people facing economic hardship. Until now, al-Qaeda has appealed to the individual as a member of a community, but recent statements by al-Zawahiri and Abdulmalek Droukdel, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, have tried to persuade individuals in financial difficulty that their personal hardship is the result of the West's exploitation. This change of emphasis -- from threat to the community to threat to the individual -- challenges a central tenet of al-Qaeda's message, which has until now always focused on an individual's duty toward God rather than to himself.

( al Qaeda has always twisted and spins the Quran to al Qadea's needs, G )

SOURCE:

KHALID AL-HUBAYSHI: “The problem is not jihad, it is how you do the jihad,” he says now. “I regret the way I went about it and I regret that I said nothing when I saw things that I knew were wrong.”, ( Bombing Mosques, market places, killing women and children.G)

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Shirwa Ahmed, a 27-year-old university student who had been living in the midwestern state of Minnesota, blew himself up last October in an attack in Somaliland carried out by al-Shabaab, an Islamist group with links to al-Qaeda. It was believed to be the first suicide bombing ever executed by a US citizen.

Several other young Somalis whose families emigrated to the United States have gone missing in the past few months. And there is evidence they have travelled to Somalia after being recruited in Minnesota and other parts of the US by agents of al-Shabaab.

Somali pirates funding this adventure?

Or maybe Binny just had a yard sale?

G

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