Briefs
A Look at Abd al-Hakim Belhadj’s Transformation from Jihadi to Libyan Revolutionary
“Demonstrating the continuation of the battle against the apostate regime of [Mu’ammar] al-Qaddafi through deliberate and planned action, and with the emphasis on the principle of strategic action, [we carried out an operation] against the tyrant Qaddafi in the city of Barak…last month, which had... MORE
September 2011 Briefs
FORMER AFGHAN MUJAHIDEEN LEADER KILLED IN SUICIDE BOMBING Former major mujahideen figure, one-time Afghan president, and current head of Hamid Karzai’s High Council for Peace Ustad (Professor) Burhanuddin Rabbani was killed in a suicide bombing at his home in Kabul’s relatively posh Wazir Akbar Khan... MORE
Boko Haram’s Radical Ideologue: An In-Depth Look At Northern Nigeria’s Abu Shekau
Imam Abu Muhammad Abubakar bin Muhammad Shekau (a.k.a. Abu Shekau) has made clear that he is the sole leader of the northern Nigeria-based Islamist movement called Jama'atu Ahlis Sunnah Lidda'awati w’al Jihad, more commonly referred to as Boko Haram. However, he may be pulling the strings... MORE
A Threat to the Khyber Pass: An Extended Portrait of Mangal Bagh Afridi
Coming from obscurity, Mangal Bagh Afridi rose to power and notoriety by controlling Lashkar-e-Islam (LI- the Army of Islam), the biggest and most influential militant group in Pakistan’s Khyber Agency. Khyber Agency is the most strategically important of the seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in... MORE
Jihad in Bangladesh: Profiling Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami’s Maulana Shaykh Farid
Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) forces, the country’s elite anti-terror police, achieved a much awaited breakthrough barely within a week’s time in late April this year, when they apprehended three of the most wanted terror masterminds from different areas of the Dhaka Division. The RAB’s... MORE
Still at Large Ten Years After 9/11: Said Bahaji, Mohammed Atta’s Right Hand Man
Background On the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, Said Bahaji, one of two known members of the Hamburg cell, remains at large. [1] Said Bahaji was born in Lower Saxony, Germany to a Moroccan father and a German mother in... MORE
August 2011 Briefs
PAKISTANIS DOUBT LIBYAN AL-QAEDA LEADER KILLED After the United States announced the death of Attiyah Abd al-Rehman - the Libyan national Washington describes as al-Qaeda’s new number two ranking figure - in a drone strike in North Waziristan Agency on August 22, a U.S. official... MORE
A Profile of Sudanese Rebel Leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hilu: Continuing the Civil War in the Nuba Mountains
Since the mid-1980s, Abd al-Aziz al-Hilu has been one of the leading rebel commanders in Sudan. Well known for his organizational skills and dedication to replacing the Arab-dominated central government of Sudan, al-Hilu has advocated for a more broad-based federalist system that would recognize the... MORE
The Man Who Knew Bin Laden: A Biographical Sketch of Hassan Ghul
There is not much known about Hassan Ghul, the alleged conduit whose information led to the killing of former al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. The mysterious Hassan Ghul was an important al-Qaeda facilitator, financier and messenger of Pakistani descent with Saudi residency. Ghul... MORE
Fazal Saeed Haqqani: A New Player on the Jihadi Scene in Pakistan’s FATA
The split in the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on the eve of a military operation in the Kurram agency is a victory for the Pakistan army. In a surprising move, Fazal Saeed Haqqani, a relatively lesser known TTP commander in Kurram Agency, announced on June 27... MORE