22 - 28 November 2001
Issue No.561
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 22 - 28 November 2001 Issue No.561 |
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Arab-Afghans battered
The death of Al-Qa'eda's military commander, Mohamed Atef, and the arrest by the Northern Alliance of Ahmed Omar Abdel-Rahman, the son of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya's spiritual leader, have dealt two severe blows to Arabs fighting with the Taliban
After a few days of confusion, the Taliban's only ambassador to the outside world, Mullah Abdel-Salam Zaeef, confirmed on Sunday the death of Mohamed Atef, the alleged military leader of Osama Bin Laden's Al- Qa'eda network. Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, said Atef died in a US raid while fleeing Kabul on Wednesday after the Northern Alliance captured the city, writes Khaled Dawoud.
Atef was third-in-command of Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network. Little is known of his life before he left Egypt in the mid-1980s to join a "jihad" or holy war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Atef's original name is Sobhi Abu Sitta, but he came to be known as Mohamed Atef or Abu Hafs Al-Misri. Al-Misri, which means the Egyptian in Arabic, was clearly added to his name in reference to his country of birth, and to distinguish him from the thousands of young "mujahidin" (those taking part in a jihad) from all over the Muslim world who flocked to Bin Laden's Al-Qa'eda. Egyptians were known to be Bin Laden's favourite recruits and his closest circle of aides is mostly Egyptian.
Other pseudonyms used to conceal his identity were El- Kabir (the big man), Taysir, Sheik Taysir Abdullah and Abu Khadija.
US intelligence claims Atef was Al-Qa'eda's "military planner," and masterminded the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who recently met Bin Laden, said that he met Atef in 1997. At the meeting, Atef proudly recalled how he organised resistance against the US presence in Somalia in 1992, Mir added. That included downing a US helicopter, killing 18 US soldiers.
Atef's life in Egypt is harder to unravel. According to Montasser El-Zayyat, an Islamist lawyer who has worked on scores of cases involving Muslim militants, Atef was born in the governorate of Menoufiya in the Nile Delta in 1944.
Although reports say that Atef worked as a policeman before he left Egypt, interior ministry officials say this is untrue. Atef only served as an army conscript for two years, performing his compulsory military service.
Abu Hafs
To prove that he had no police record before fleeing from Egypt, El-Zayyat said that he was not among hundreds of militants who were arrested by police following President Anwar El-Sadat's assassination by members of the Egyptian Jihad group in 1981. The only sentence he has ever been given by an Egyptian court was in 1999, when he was tried in absentia among 107 defendants accused of membership in Egyptian Jihad, led by Bin Laden's trusted lieutenant and second-in-command of Al- Qa'eda, Ayman El-Zawahri. Atef was sentenced to seven years in prison, indicating again that Egyptian authorities knew little about his activities until recently.
El-Zayyat, the lawyer, said Atef met El-Zawahri shortly after his arrival in Afghanistan. He was immediately sent to one of several military training camps that Bin Laden was financing to fight the Russians, with the blessing of the United States, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. El-Zayyat says El- Zawahri introduced Atef to Bin Laden, "and since then he has become one of his most trusted men."
After Al-Qa'eda's first military commander, Ali Al- Rashidi (known also as Abu Obeida Al-Bansheeri), died in a boat accident on Lake Victoria in Africa while on a mission to recruit new members, Atef inherited his post. Atef was also reportedly responsible for Bin Laden's personal security and it was he who personally searched journalists willing to meet the Saudi dissident after the United States bombed Afghanistan in 1998. According to El-Zayyat, the man now expected to take Atef's position is another Egyptian close to Zawahri, Mohamed Mekawi, known also as Seif El-Adl. He is also a member of Egyptian Jihad.
Atef, according to a number of militants who got to see him while they were training in Afghanistan, was a quiet man who rarely spoke. In the first tape which Bin Laden released after the US started its bombing campaign against Afghanistan on 7 October, El-Zawahri, Atef and Al- Qa'eda's spokesman, the Kuwaiti Suleiman Abu Ghaith, sat next to each other, and only Atef made no speech blasting the United States and promising more attacks. "He is a devout man whose hope, like that of all members of Al- Qa'eda is to die a martyr," El-Zayyat said. Although El- Zayyat said Atef's death in a US raid was "a great loss," he was certain "that it would not be difficult for Bin Laden to come up with a new commander."
Atef, for whom Washington had offered a $5 million reward, sought to strengthen his relations with Bin Laden by following a tradition used by the Prophet Mohamed himself. He married his daughter to one of Bin Laden's many sons, and the two men were seen sitting smiling and sipping tea during the wedding ceremony on a videotape released by Al-Qa'eda early this year. In that tape, Bin Laden indirectly claimed responsibility for the first time for the suicide attack against the US destroyer, the USS Cole, in Yemen, which killed 17 US soldiers.
El-Zayyat also confirmed in statements to the London- based Arabic daily, Al-Hayat, on Monday reports on the arrest of Ahmed Omar Abdel-Rahman, the son of the spiritual leader of Egypt's largest militant group, Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, by Northern Alliance forces in Kabul more than a week ago. Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Al-Gama'a leader, is currently serving a life sentence in New York for his role in plotting attacks against key buildings in 1993.
El-Zayyat, who has been defending Abdel-Rahman senior in Egypt and knows all the members of family, said he saw the sheik's son in a videotape showing Arab prisoners arrested by the Taliban. In the tape, El-Zayyat added, he saw Taliban soldiers severely beating him before he was taken to a car, blood pouring from his nose.
Another of Abdel-Rahman's other sons, Mohamed, was also among the thousands of Arab youths who fought in Afghanistan against the Russians and stayed after the Russian withdrawal. Ahmed Abdel-Rahman was better known as Seif-Allah, while his brother Mohamed, was also known as Assad-Allah. Al-Hayat said that Mohamed managed to flee Kabul at the last minute before the Northern Alliance take- over, and was now in Kandahar, the Taliban's last stronghold in Afghanistan and the movement's headquarters.
Abdel-Rahman's only remaining son in Egypt, Abdullah, also confirmed the arrest of his brother in Kabul in statements to Al-Hayat on Monday. He appealed to international human rights groups to intervene immediately to ensure the safety of Arabs arrested by anti-Taliban troops in Afghanistan.
While the Northern Alliance has said it is ready to negotiate the surrender of Taliban forces, it has also announced that it will severely punish Arabs who fight alongside them.
Shortly after the Northern Alliance entered Kabul on 13 November, several Arab fighters were arrested, shot dead on the spot and their bodies left to rot in the streets. Several television stations also showed footage last week of Northern Alliance soldiers beating the dead body of a man believed to be an Arab fighter. These pictures prompted protests by human rights groups, but were ignored by the US whose officials have praised the Northern Alliance's conduct and their treatment of civilians since they took Kabul.
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