p u l it z e r p r i z e e n t r y : i n t e r n ati o n a l affai r s
File Photo • AP
Fighters from the al-Qaida-linked Islamist group Ansar Dine stand guard in Timbuktu, Mali.
al-Qaida’s Papers
By Rukmini Callimachi
The Associated Press
al-Qaida’s Papers
1. Al-qaida the multinational
Dec. 29, 2013: $0.60 for cake: Al-Qaida records
every expense.
2. Prima Donna Terrorist
May 28, 2013: AP Exclusive: Al-Qaida rips into prima
donna terrorist for failing to deliver big operations.
5
3. Love in the Time of Shariah
Feb. 6, 2013: In a Timbuktu terrorized by Islamist
occupiers, one couple tries to hide forbidden love.
4. Al-Qaida’s Sahara Playbook
Feb. 14, 2013: Left behind in a house in Timbuktu, alQaida’s manifesto, outlining strategic vision for Mali.
5. The First Battle
Jan. 22, 2013: Fight for Mali town reflects Islamist
tactics.
4
6. A Dangerous Weapon
supplemental material
June 11, 2013: Mali manual suggests al-Qaida has
feared weapon.
Interactive
7. How to avoid Drones
Feb. 21, 2013: Al-Qaida tipsheet on avoiding drones
found in Mali.
8. Al-Qaida Papers — Yemen Letters
July 9, 2013: AP Exclusive: 1 year before embassy closures, al-Qaida’s Yemen boss left blueprint for jihad.
9. Sparing Muslims
Sept. 29, 2013: Terrorists used new tactic to spare
some Muslims.
10. Finding the bodies
Dec. 9, 2013: An AP reporter’s quest to find bodies of
victims killed by Malian military ends in the desert.
http://http://hosted.ap.org/interactives/2012/alqaida/?START=al-qaida-papers
Broadcast interviews
NPR: Reporter tracks down bodies
NPR: Al-Qaida letter reprimands difficult employee
BBC: Bodies discovered hidden in Malian desert
PRI: Al-Qaida ‘memo’ left behind by fleeing militants
AP NEwsbriefs
US “concerned” at censorship of ‘Bodies’ investigation
Mali government launches investigation after ‘Bodies’
Poynter Blog Reactions
Rukmini Callimachi: Not how a journalist
normally operates.
Abandoned documents yield big scoop for
AP reporter
Dec. 30, 2013
1
$0.60 for Cake: Al-Qaida records every
expense
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — The convoy of
cars bearing the black al-Qaida flag came at
high speed, and the manager of the modest
grocery store thought he was about to get
robbed.
Mohamed Djitteye rushed to lock his till
and cowered behind the counter. He was
dumbfounded when instead, the al-Qaida
commander gently opened the grocery’s
glass door and asked for a pot of mustard.
Then he asked for a receipt.
Confused and scared, Djitteye didn’t
understand. So the jihadist repeated his request. Could he please have a receipt for the
$1.60 purchase?
This transaction in northern Mali shows
what might seem an unusual preoccupation
for a terror group: Al-Qaida is obsessed with
documenting the most minute expenses.
In more than 100 receipts left in a building occupied by al-Qaida in the Islamic
Maghreb in Timbuktu earlier this year, the
extremists assiduously tracked their cash
1 Al-Qaida • Multinational | The Associated Press
AP
Receipt for groceries, which includes prices paid for
tomatoes, onions, charcoal, meat and a lightbulb.
flow, recording purchases as small as a single
light bulb. The often tiny amounts are carefully written out in pencil and colored pen
on scraps of paper and Post-it notes: The
equivalent of $1.80 for a bar of soap; $8 for
a packet of macaroni; $14 for a tube of super
glue. All the documents were authenticated
by experts.
The accounting system on display in
the documents found by The Associated
Press is a mirror image of what researchers have discovered in other parts of the
world where al-Qaida operates, including
Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. The terror
group’s documents around the world also
include corporate workshop schedules, salary spreadsheets, philanthropy budgets, job
applications, public
relations advice
and letters from
Al-Qaida is
the equivalent of a
attempting to
human resources
behave like a
division.
multinational
Taken together,
corporation.
the evidence suggests that far from
being a fly-by-night, fragmented terror organization, al-Qaida is attempting to behave
like a multinational corporation, with what
amounts to a company-wide financial policy
across its different chapters.
“They have to have bookkeeping techniques because of the nature of the business they are in,” said Brookings Institution
fellow William McCants, a former adviser
to the U.S. State Department’s Office of the
Coordinator for Counterterrorism. “They
have so few ways to keep control of their
operatives, to rein them in and make them
do what they are supposed to do. They have
to run it like a business.”
The picture that emerges from what is
one of the largest stashes of al-Qaida docu-
2 Al-Qaida • Multinational | The Associated Press
ments to be made public shows a rigid bureaucracy, replete with a chief executive, a
board of directors and departments such
as human resources and public relations.
Experts say that each branch of the terror group replicates the same corporate
structure, and that this strict blueprint has
helped al-Qaida not just to endure but also
to spread.
AL-QAIDA’S GROCERY LIST
Among the most revealing documents
are the receipts, which offer a granular view
of how al-Qaida’s fighters lived every day as
well as its larger priorities.
“For the smallest thing, they wanted a
receipt,” said 31-year-old Djitteye, who runs
the Idy Market on the sand-carpeted main
boulevard in Timbuktu. “Even for a tin of
Nescafe.”
An inordinate number of receipts are
for groceries, suggesting a diet of macaroni
with meat and tomato sauce, as well as large
quantities of powdered milk. There are 27
invoices for meat, 13 for tomatoes, 11 for
milk, 11 for pasta, seven for onions, and
many others for tea, sugar, and honey.
They record the $0.60 cake one of their
fighters ate, and the $1.80 bar of soap another used to wash his hands. They list a broom
for $3 and bleach for $3.30. These relatively
petty amounts are logged with the same care
as the $5,400 advance they gave to one commander, or the $330 they spent to buy 3,300
rounds of ammunition.
Rebecca Blackwell • AP
United Nations peacekeepers search a house suspected to have been used by members of al-Qaida.
Keeping close track of expenses is part
of al-Qaida’s DNA, say multiple experts,
including FBI agents who were assigned to
track the terror group in the years just after
its founding.
This habit, they say, can be traced back
more than three decades to when a young
Osama bin Laden entered King Abdul Aziz
University in Saudi Arabia in 1976 to study
economics, and went on to run part of his
millionaire father’s construction company.
After he was exiled to Sudan in 1992, bin
3 Al-Qaida • Multinational | The Associated Press
Laden founded what became the country’s
largest conglomerate. His companies and
their numerous subsidiaries invested in everything from importing trucks to exporting
sesame, white corn and watermelons. From
the get-go, bin Laden was obsessed with
enforcing corporate management techniques
on his more than 500 employees, according
to al-Qaida expert Lawrence Wright, author
of a well-known history of the terror group.
Workers had to submit forms in triplicate
for even the smallest purchases — the same
requirement bin Laden later imposed on the
first al-Qaida recruits, he said.
In Afghanistan, detailed accounting
records found in an abandoned al-Qaida
camp in 2001 included salary lists, stringent
documentation on each fighter, job application forms asking for level of education and
language skills, as well as notebook after
notebook of expenses. In Iraq, U.S. forces recovered entire Excel spreadsheets, detailing
salaries for al-Qaida
fighters.
“People think
Middle
that this is done
managers chide
on the back of an
a terrorist for
envelope. It isn’t,”
not handing his
says Dan Coleman,
[invoices] in
a former FBI special
agent who was in
on time.
charge of the bin
Laden case file from 1996 to 2004.
One of the first raids on an al-Qaida safe
house was led by Coleman in 1997. Among
the dozens of invoices he found inside the
operative’s home in Kenya were stacks of gas
station receipts, going back eight years.
TERRORIST EXPENSE REPORTS
This detailed accounting system allows
al-Qaida to keep track of the significant sums
of money involved in feeding, training and
recruiting thousands of fighters. It’s also an
attempt to keep track of the fighters themselves, who often operate remotely.
The majority of the invoices found on a
4 Al-Qaida • Multinational | The Associated Press
cement floor in a building in Timbuktu are
scribbled by hand, on post-it notes, on lined
math paper or on the backs of envelopes, as
if operatives in the field were using whatever writing surface they could find. Others
are typed, sometimes repeating the same
items, in what may serve as formal expense
reports for their higher-ups. Al-Qaida clearly
required such expense reports — in a letter
from the stash, middle managers chide a terrorist for not handing his in on time.
In informal open-air markets such as
those of Timbuktu, vendors didn’t have receipts to hand out. So, traders say, members
of al-Qaida came in pairs, one to negotiate
the sale, and the other to record prices on
a notepad. This practice is reflected in the
fact that almost all the receipts are written
in Arabic, a language few residents of Timbuktu know how to write.
The fighters would ask for a price, and
then write it down in their Bloc Note, a
notebook brand sold locally, said pharmacist
Ibrahim Djitteye.
“It surprised me at first,” he said. “But
I came to the conclusion that they are here
for a very specific mission.... And when you
are on assignment, you need to give a report. They have their own higher-ups, who
are expecting them to account for what they
spent.”
The corporate nature of the organization
is also on display in the types of activities
they funded.
For example, two receipts, for $4,000
and $6,800, are listed as funds for “workshops,” another concept borrowed from
business. A flier found in another building
occupied by their fighters confirms that
al-Qaida held the equivalent of corporate
training retreats. It lists detailed schedules:
Early morning exercise from 5 to 6:30 a.m.;
lessons on how to use a GPS from 10 to
10:30 a.m.; arms training from 10:30 a.m.
to noon; and various afternoon classes on
preaching to other Muslims, nationalism
and democracy.
$3,720 for 20 barrels of diesel for the city’s
power station.
There’s also an advance for the prison
and a detailed budget for the Islamic Tribunal, where judges were paid $2 per day to
hear cases.
Along with the nuts and bolts of governing, it’s clear that the fighters were actively
trying to woo the population. They set aside
money for charity: $4 for medicine “for a Shiite with a sick child,” and $100 in financial aid
for a man’s wedding. And they reimbursed
residents for damages, such as $50 for structural repairs, with a note that the house in
question “was hit by mujahideen cars.”
And it’s obvious that the fighters spent
a good part of their time proselytizing, with
THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF GOVERNING
A relatively small ratio of the receipts are
expense reports for fighters and weapons.
One unit presented a politely worded request
for funds, entitled: “The
list of names of mujahideen who are asking
for clothes and boots to
protect themselves from
the cold.”
Far more deal with
the mundane aspects of
running a state, such as
keeping the lights on.
Al-Qaida in the Islamic
Maghreb invaded Timbuktu in April 2012, and
took over its state-run
utilities, paying to have
fuel trucked in from
neighboring Algeria. One
Rebecca Blackwell • AP
invoice shows they paid
A French soldier stands guard during a patrol through the central market in Timbuktu.
5 Al-Qaida • Multinational | The Associated Press
expense reports for trips to distant villages
to impart their ultra-strict vision of Islam.
One receipt bluntly lists $200 for a “trip for
spreading propaganda.”
While not overtly explained, the sizable
receipts for car repairs suggest regular missions into the desert. The many receipts for
oil changes, car batteries, filters and parts
indicate the tough terrain battered the fighters’ Toyota Land Cruisers.
Finally, the names on the receipts reveal the majority of fighters on the group’s
payroll were foreign-born. There’s a $1,000
advance to a man identified as “Talhat the
Libyan.” Another is issued to “Tarek the
Algerian.”
The names furthermore confirm that
the top leaders of al-Qaida in the Islamic
Maghreb were based in Timbuktu. Among
them is Abou Zeid, probably the most feared
of al-Qaida’s local commanders who orchestrated the kidnappings of dozens of Westerners until his death this spring.
“In the name of Allah, the most merciful,” begins a request for funds dated Dec.
29, 2012, and addressed to Abou Zeid. “We
are writing to inform you that we need
rockets for our camp — a total of 4 is needed.
May God protect you.”
The extent of the documentation found
6 Al-Qaida • Multinational | The Associated Press
here, as well as in the other theaters where
al-Qaida operates, does not mean the terror
group runs as a well-oiled machine, cautions
Jason Burke, author of the book “Al-Qaida.”
“Bureaucracy, as we know, gives senior
managers the illusion they are in control
of distant subordinates,” Burke said. “But
that influence is much, much less than they
would like.”
Al-Qaida’s accounting practices left a
strong impression on at least one person in
Timbuktu: Djitteye, the convenience store
manager.
The al-Qaida commander who came in
for mustard was Nabil Alqama, the head of
al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb’s “Southern
Command.” He became a regular. One day,
he asked the store employee to get a receipt
book printed so he could provide more
official-looking invoices.
Djitteye obliged.
The green receipt book with neat boxes
now sits under his cash register. These days,
whenever customers come in, he always asks
if they would like a receipt.
No one ever does.
The documents can be viewed here:
https://www.documentcloud.org/
documents/998496-the-multinational.html
May 28, 2013
2
AP Exclusive: Al-Qaida rips into prima donna
terrorist for failing to deliver big operations
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — After years of
trying to discipline him, the leaders of alQaida’s North African branch sent one final
letter to their most difficult employee. In
page after scathing page, they described how
he didn’t answer his phone when they called,
failed to turn in his expense reports, ignored
meetings and refused time and again to carry
out orders.
Most of all, they claimed he had failed
to carry out a single spectacular operation,
despite the resources at his disposal.
The employee, international terrorist
Moktar Belmoktar, responded the way talented employees with bruised egos have in
corporations the world over: He quit and
formed his own competing group. And within
months, he carried out two lethal operations
that killed 101 people in all: one of the largest
hostage-takings in history at a BP-operated
gas plant in Algeria in January, and simultaneous bombings at a military base and a
French uranium mine in Niger just last week.
1 Al-Qaida • Prima Donna Terrorist | The Associated Press
The al-Qaida letter, found by The Associated Press inside a building formerly occupied by their fighters in Mali, is an intimate
window into the ascent of an extremely
ambitious terrorist leader, who split off from
regional command because he wanted to be
directly in touch with al-Qaida central. It’s
a glimpse into both the inner workings of a
highly structured terrorist organization that
requires its commanders to file monthly expense reports, and the internal dissent that
led to his rise. And it foreshadows a terror-
SITE Intel Group • AP
Terrorist leader Moktar Belmoktar.
ism landscape where charismatic jihadists
can carry out attacks directly in al-Qaida’s
name, regardless of whether they are under
its command.
Rudolph Atallah, the former head of
counterterrorism for Africa at the Pentagon
and one of three experts who authenticated
the 10-page letter dated Oct. 3, said it helps
explain what happened in Algeria and Niger,
both attacks that Belmoktar claimed credit
for on jihadist forums.
“He’s sending a message directly north
to his former
bosses in Algeria saying, ‘I’m a
The letter
jihadi. I deserve
describes
to be separate
the group’s
from you.’ And
relationship with
he’s also sendBelmoktar as “a
ing a message to
al-Qaida, saying,
bleeding wound.”
‘See, those bozos
in the north are incompetent. You can talk to
me directly.’ And in these attacks, he drew a
lot of attention to himself,” says Atallah, who
recently testified before Congress on Belmoktar’s tactics.
Born in northern Algeria, the 40-something Belmoktar, who is known in Pentagon circles by his initials MBM, traveled to
Afghanistan at the age of 19, according to his
online biography. He claims he lost an eye in
battle and trained in al-Qaida’s camps, forging ties that would allow him two decades
later to split off from its regional chapter.
2 Al-Qaida • Prima Donna Terrorist | The Associated Press
Over the years, there have been numerous reports of Belmoktar being sidelined or
expelled by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
The letter recovered in Timbuktu, one of
thousands of pages of internal documents
in Arabic found by the AP earlier this year,
shows he stayed loyal to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, until last year, and
traces the history of their difficult relationship.
The letter, signed by the group’s 14-member Shura Council, or governing body, describes its relationship with Belmoktar as “a
bleeding wound,” and criticizes his proposal
to resign and start his own group.
“Your letter ... contained some amount
of backbiting, name-calling and sneering,”
they write. “We refrained from wading into
this battle in the past out of a hope that the
crooked could be straightened by the easiest
and softest means. ... But the wound continued to bleed, and in fact increasingly bled,
until your last letter arrived, ending any
hope of stanching the wound and healing it.”
They go on to compare their group to a
towering mountain before raging storms and
pounding waves, and say Belmoktar’s plan
“threatens to fragment the being of the organization and tear it apart limb by limb.”
They then begin enumerating their complaints against Belmoktar in 30 successive
bullet points.
“Abu Abbas is not willing to follow anyone,” they add, referring to him by his nom
de guerre, Khaled Abu Abbas. “He is only
File • AP
Nigerien soldiers walk near debris after suicide bombers blew themselves up inside a military barracks, in Agade.
willing to be followed and obeyed.”
First and foremost, they quibble over
the amount of money raised by the 2008
kidnapping of Canadian diplomat Robert
Fowler, the highest-ranking United Nations
official in Niger, and his colleague. Belmoktar’s men held both for four months, and in
a book he later published, Fowler said he did
not know if a ransom was paid.
The letter says they referred the case to
al-Qaida central to force concessions in the
U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, a plan stymied
3 Al-Qaida • Prima Donna Terrorist | The Associated Press
when Belmoktar struck his own deal for
700,000 euros (about $900,000) for both
men. That’s far below the $3 million per hostage that European governments were normally paying, according to global intelligence
unit Stratfor.
“Rather than walking alongside us in the
plan we outlined, he managed the case as he
liked,” they write indignantly. “Here we must
ask, who handled this important abduction
poorly? ... Does it come from the unilateral
behavior along the lines of our brother Abu
Abbas, which produced a blatant inadequacy: Trading the weightiest case (Canadian diplomats!!) for the most meager price
(700,000 euros)!!”
The complaint reflects how al-Qaida in
the Islamic Maghreb, initially considered
one of the group’s weaker wings, rose to
prominence by bankrolling its operation
with an estimated $89 million raised by
kidnapping-for-ransom foreign aid workers
and tourists. No less than Osama bin Laden
endorsed their business model, according to
documents retrieved in the terror leader’s
hideout in Pakistan.
The letter also
confirms for the
He aired the
first time that payorganization’s
ments from Eurodirty laundry in
pean governments
online jihadist
went directly toward buying arms
forums.
to carry out attacks
against Western targets, as long speculated
by experts. The council chides Belmoktar for
not following this practice.
“(The chapter) gave Abu Abbas a considerable amount of money to buy military material, despite its own great need for money
at the time. ... Abu Abbas didn’t participate
in stepping up to buy weapons,” the letter
says. “So whose performance deserves to be
called poor in this case, I wonder?”
The list of slights is long: He would not
take their phone calls. He refused to send
administrative and financial reports. He ig-
4 Al-Qaida • Prima Donna Terrorist | The Associated Press
nored a meeting in Timbuktu, calling it “useless.” He even ordered his men to refuse to
meet with al-Qaida emissaries. And he aired
the organization’s dirty laundry in online
jihadist forums, even while refusing to communicate with the chapter via the Internet,
claiming it was insecure.
Sounding like managers in any company, the Shura leaders accuse Belmoktar of not being able to get along with his
peers. They charge that he recently went to
Libya without permission from the chapter,
which had assigned the “Libya dossier” to
a rival commander called Abou Zeid. And
they complain that the last unit they sent
Belmoktar for backup in the Sahara spent a
full three years trying to contact him before
giving up.
“Why do the successive emirs of the
region only have difficulties with you? You
in particular every time? Or are all of them
wrong and brother Khaled is right?” they
charge.
The letter reveals the rifts not only between Belmoktar and his superiors, but also
the distance between the local chapter and
al-Qaida central. The local leaders were infuriated that Belmoktar was essentially going
over their heads, saying that even AQIM has
had few interactions with the mother brand
in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a region they
refer to by the ancient name of Khorasan.
“The great obstacles between us and the
central leadership are not unknown to you.
... For example, since we vowed our alle-
giance, up until this very day, we have only
fighters like himself, who wanted to join the
gotten from our emirs in Khorasan just a few
global jihad, and an older generation whose
messages, from the two sheiks, bin Laden
only goal was to create an Islamic state in
(God rest his soul) and Ayman (al-Zawahri),”
Algeria, according to Islamic scholar Mathey write. “All this, despite our multiple letthieu Guidere, a professor at the University
ters to them.”
Belmoktar’s ambition
comes through clearly not only
in the bitter responses of his
bosses, but also in his own
words: “Despite great financial
resources ... our works were
limited to the routine of abductions, which the mujahedeen
got bored with.”
In another quote, he calls
bin Laden and al-Zawahri “the
leaders of the Islamic nation,
not the leaders of an organizaAnis Belghoul • AP File
tion alone. We love them and
Algerian firemen carry the coffin of a person killed during the gas facility hostage
we were convinced by their
situation in Ain Amenas.
program. ... So it’s even more
now that we are swords in their
hands.”
of Toulouse.
To which AQIM replies with more than
The younger faction won, but Belmoktar
a hint of sarcasm: “Very lovely words. ...
felt slighted because his contemporary, AbDo you consider it loyalty to them to revolt
delmalek Droukdel, was named emir of the
against their emirs and threaten to tear apart
GSPC, instead of him.
the organization?”
Soon after, the group petitioned to join
Belmoktar’s defection was a long time
al-Qaida. The terror network announced a
in the making, and dates back to his time
“blessed union” on the anniversary of the
as a commander of Algeria’s Salafist Group
Sept. 11 attacks in 2006.
for Preaching and Combat, or GSPC. When
Both Belmoktar and Droukdel wrote
the Iraq war started in 2003, his ambition
“candidacy letters” to bin Laden asking to
created friction between younger Algerian
be emir, according to Guidere’s book on the
5 Al-Qaida • Prima Donna Terrorist | The Associated Press
subject. Again, Droukdel won.
Frustrated, Belmoktar drifted farther
south. He set up in the ungoverned dunes
of neighboring Mali, took a Malian wife
and tapped into the smuggling routes that
crisscrossed the Sahara, amassing arms and
fiercely loyal fighters who called themselves,
“The Masked Brigade.”
His fighters killed more than a dozen
soldiers at a military garrison in Mauritania
in 2005 and gunned
down four French
The unit foretourists there in
2007. On multiple
shadowed the
occasions Belmokterrorist vision
tar was declared
that led to the
dead, including
fall of the Twin
most recently in
March, and each
Towers in
time, he re-emerged
New York.
to strike again.
The sharpest blow in the council’s letter
may have been the accusation that, despite
this history of terrorism, Belmoktar and his
unit had not pulled off any attack worthy of
mention in the Sahara.
“Any observer of the armed actions (carried out) in the Sahara will clearly notice the
failure of The Masked Brigade to carry out
spectacular operations, despite the region’s
vast possibilities — there are plenty of mujahedeen, funding is available, weapons are
widespread and strategic targets are within
reach,” the letter says. “Your brigade did not
achieve a single spectacular operation target-
6 Al-Qaida • Prima Donna Terrorist | The Associated Press
ing the crusader alliance.”
In December, just weeks after receiving
the letter, Belmoktar declared in a recorded
message that he was leaving the al-Qaida
chapter to form his own group. He baptized
it, “Those Who Sign in Blood.”
With that name, he announced his global
ambition. “Those Who Sign in Blood” was
also the name of an Algerian extremist unit
that hijacked an Air France flight leaving
Algiers in 1994. Though their goal to fly
the plane into the Eiffel Tower in Paris was
thwarted, the unit foreshadowed the terrorist vision that led to the fall of the Twin Towers in New York.
On Jan. 11, French warplanes began
bombarding northern Mali, the start of a
now 5-month-old offensive to flush out the
jihadists, including Belmoktar’s brigade.
Five days later, suicide bombers took more
than 600 hostages in Ain Amenas in far eastern Algeria and killed 37, all but one foreigners, including American, French and British
nationals. Belmoktar claimed responsibility
in a triumphant recording.
It was no accident that he chose Ain Amenas, Guidere said. The area is in the home
province of Abou Zeid, Belmoktar’s longtime
rival who commanded a different Saharan
brigade and was always in step with the
Algeria-based emirate.
“It’s a punch in the gut,” Guidere said. “It’s
saying, ‘You’ve never been able to do anything
even in your native region. Watch me. I’ll
carry out the biggest hostage operation ever
in that very region. ... Ain Amenas is the illustration of his ability to do a quality operation,
when he is under no authority other than his
own, when he doesn’t have to turn in expense
reports or answer to anybody.”
As if to turn the knife even further, last
week Belmoktar also claimed responsibility
for a May 23 attack at a French-owned uranium mine in Arlit, Niger. It was in Arlit in
2010 that Abou Zeid carried out his boldest
operation and seized seven foreign hostages,
including four French nationals who are still
in the hands of AQIM.
In an apparent attempt to raise the
stakes, Belmoktar’s men slipped past a truck
entering the mine and detonated explosives
inside. More than 100 miles to the south, a
different unit of fighters under his command
killed 24 soldiers at a military camp, with
help from another local al-Qaida off-shoot,
called the Movement for Oneness and Jihad
in West Africa.
Jean-Paul Rouiller, the director of the
7 Al-Qaida • Prima Donna Terrorist | The Associated Press
Geneva Center for Training and Analysis
of Terrorism, compared the escalation in
attacks to a quarrel between a man and a
woman in which each tries to have the last
word. “They accused him of not doing something,” Rouiller said. “His response is, ‘I’ll
show you what I can do.’”
Belmoktar might have seen a certain
justice in the coverage of the last week’s attack in Niger in the leading French daily, Le
Monde. Among the adjectives used to describe the event: “Spectacular.”
Rukmini Callimachi, AP’s West Africa
bureau chief, reported this article in Dakar,
Senegal and Timbuktu, Mali. Lee Keath,
AP’s Mideast enterprise editor in Cairo,
translated the Arabic letter into English.
The letter can be found in Arabic and
English at: http://hosted.ap.org/specials/
interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaidabelmoktar-letter-english.pdf
3
Rukmini Callimachi • AP
24-year-old Salaka Djicke reflects on the horror she endured during Islamist rule in her hometown of Timbuktu.
Feb. 6, 2013
Woman in Timbuktu punished
for forbidden love
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — The love story
in this fabled desert outpost began over the
phone, when he dialed the wrong number. It
nearly ended with the couple’s death at the
hands of Islamic extremists who considered
1 Al-Qaida • Love in the Time of Shariah | The Associated Press
their romance “haram” — forbidden.
What happened in between is a study
in how al-Qaida-linked militants terrorized
a population, whipping women and girls
in northern Mali almost every day for not
adhering to their interpretation of the strict
moral code known as Shariah. It is also a
testament to the violent clash between the
brutal, unyielding Islam of the invaders and
the moderate version of the religion that has
long prevailed in Timbuktu, once a center for
Islamic learning.
Salaka Djicke is a round-faced, big-boned
girl with the wide thighs still fashionable in
the desert, an unforgiving terrain that leaves
many women without curves. Until the
Islamists came and upended her world, the
24-year-old lived a relatively free life.
During the day, she helped her mother
bake bread in a mud oven, selling each puffy
piece for 50 francs (10 cents). In the afternoon, she grilled meat on an open fire and
sold brochettes on the side of the road. She
saved the money she earned to buy herself
makeup and get her hair styled.
Like her sisters and friends, she spoke
openly with men — including the stranger who
Harouna Traore • AP
Salaka Djicke stands in the town square where she was
publicly whipped.
2 Al-Qaida • Love in the Time of Shariah | The Associated Press
called her by mistake more than a year ago.
The man thought he was calling his cousin. When he heard Salaka’s voice, he apologized. His voice was polite but firm, with the
authoritative cadence of a man in his prime.
Hers was flirtatious, and her laugh betrayed
her youth.
They started talking.
A few days later, he called her again. For
two weeks, they spoke nearly every day, until
he asked for directions to her house.
She explained how to find the mud house
on Rue 141, past the water tower also made
of mud, in a neighborhood less than a mile
from where he sold gasoline from jerrycans
by the roadside. She had time to put on a
yellow dress.
He arrived on his motorcycle.
He was older — she does not know how
old — and already married, a status that
bears no taboo in a predominantly Muslim
region where men can take up to four wives.
She found him handsome.
From that day on, he ended phone conversations with the phrase, ‘Ye bani,’ or “I
love you” in the Sonrai language. Instead
of Salaka, he called her “cherie” — sweetheart in French, still spoken in this former
French colony.
He showered her with gifts, starting with
a 6-yard-long piece of bazin fabric, the handdyed, polished cotton which is the mainstay
of Malian fashion. It was a royal violet, and
he paid to have it tailored into a two-piece
outfit, with a flame-like flourish of orange
brocade on the bodice.
She put it on for him, and they went to
the photo studio one street over. They stood
against the poster backdrop of an enamelblue waterfall. He put his arms around her
and invited her to sit on his lap.
By the time the first group of rebel fighters carrying the flag of the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad drove
past her house on April 1, the two had been
seeing each other for several months. He
called to see if she was OK.
These fighters in military uniforms made
clear their goal:
They wanted to creA woman was
ate an independent
homeland known as
no longer
Azawad for Mali’s
supposed to
marginalized Tutalk even to her
areg people.
own brother on
Only days later,
the stoop of her
a different group
of fighters arrived,
house.
wearing beards and
tunics that looked like the kurtas common in
Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their black flag
resembled the one people had seen on YouTube videos posted by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. They called themselves Ansar
Dine, or “Defenders of the Faith.”
They produced a pamphlet outlining
how a woman should wear the veil, and
whom she could and could not be seen with.
Eschewing any contact with women, they
handed the leaflets out to the men.
3 Al-Qaida • Love in the Time of Shariah | The Associated Press
One of them was Salaka’s boyfriend. He
drove his motorcycle to her house to give it
to her.
She didn’t have enough money to buy
the plain, colorless veil prescribed to cover
the entire body. So her boyfriend went to
the market and paid for two, one red and
one blue. The women of sub-Saharan Africa
are so used to wearing vibrant colors, he
couldn’t find any that were black.
As their love affair grew more in-
tense, so did the crackdown by the Islamists
in northern Mali, an area equal in size to
Afghanistan.
Three months after they arrived, they
arrested an illiterate man and woman, both
dirt-poor herders living together for years
with their animals outside the town of Aguelhok. The man had left his wife to reunite
with his teenage love, and they had two
children out of wedlock, the youngest just six
months old.
In the last week of July, the Islamists
sped into their nomadic camp and arrested
them. They drove them to the city center,
where they announced the couple would be
stoned to death for adultery.
They dug a hole the size of a man and
forced them to kneel inside. They made the
villagers come out to see what Shariah was.
Then they cast the first stone.
The fear was now palpable on the
streets of Timbuktu. Salaka and her boy-
friend stopped seeing each other in public.
When he came, they sat in the enclosed
courtyard of her parents’ home, behind the
veil of its chrome-red dirt walls.
Even in relatively modern Timbuktu, it
was not considered appropriate to leave the
couple alone in a room. So he arranged for
a friend to loan him the keys to his empty
house in a neighborhood less than a mile
away.
Would she please join him there, just for
an hour, once a week?
She hesitated. He begged her, saying he
couldn’t be without her. They determined
that the Islamic police stopped their patrols
at 10 p.m.
She went once and got home safely. She
went again.
They began meeting once a week. She insisted on staying no longer than 40 minutes.
He brought her on his motorcycle, stopping
close to the house and pushing the bike
through a blanket of sand to avoid attention.
By this time, the Islamists were beating everyone from pregnant mothers and
grandmothers to 9-year-olds for not covering themselves fully. A woman was no longer
supposed to talk even to her own brother on
the stoop of her house.
At a certain point Salaka knew they were
going to get caught. She planned out what
they would say.
In one version, she would say he was her
uncle. In another she would call him her
older brother. In yet another, they would try
4 Al-Qaida • Love in the Time of Shariah | The Associated Press
Harouna Traore • AP
Salaka Djicke stands at the entrance to the women’s jail
where she was held by Islamic police.
to pass off as a married couple.
On the night of Dec. 31, the two left
Salaka’s house on a motorcycle, headed west
and turned onto Road No. 160.
They passed the bread oven belonging to
one of her mother’s competitors. They skirted an alley crowded with handmade bricks
laid out to dry. They turned left, and then
right again, taking a circuitous path to confuse anyone who might be following them.
When they got close, they chose the narrowest alleyways, used only by motorcycles
and donkey carts instead of the Toyota pick-
up trucks of the Islamic police. They passed
the house where they planned to meet and
doubled back in an alley. He cut the motorcycle’s engine, told her to stay 100 yards
behind him and pushed the bike through the
sand as usual.
She watched him leave. She was breathing so hard she was afraid the stars could
hear her. He passed the first intersection,
then the second, and then the third.
The bearded
men came on foot
via the third interThey told her
that if they ever section. There were
four of them. Her
saw her with a
lover jumped on
man again, they his motorcycle and
would kill her.
gunned it across the
sand. He was the
married one and would have paid the higher
price.
She knew she couldn’t outrun them. So
she stood. And in the moments it took for
them to descend on her, she realized it would
be futile to lie.
They took her to the headquarters of
the Islamic police, inside a branch of the local bank. They shoved her into the closet-like
space where the ATM machine is located and
locked the gate behind her.
When she didn’t come home that night,
her worried sister called her cell phone. The
Islamic police answered and told her where
Salaka was.
5 Al-Qaida • Love in the Time of Shariah | The Associated Press
In the morning, her family came to slip
her a piece of bread through the grills of the
gate, feeding her like an animal at the zoo.
Later that day, the police transferred her to
a prison they had set up just for women in
a wing of the city’s central jail. For the next
three nights, she slept alone on a hard floor
in a large, cement room.
On Jan. 3 they took her to the Islamic
tribunal. Just eight days before French
President Francois Hollande unilaterally
approved a military intervention in Mali
on Jan. 11, Salaka was convicted of being
caught with a man who was not her husband
and sentenced to 95 lashes. It was a severe
punishment even by the standards of the
Islamists.
They took her to the market at noon on
Jan. 4, the same place where she bought the
beef for the brochettes she sold and the flour
used to make her mother’s flatbread. She
recognized the meat sellers. One of them used
his phone to record what happened next.
The police made her kneel in a traffic circle. They covered her in a gauze-like
shroud. They told her to remove her dress,
leaving only the thin fabric to protect her
skin from the whip. Curious children jostled
for a better view.
What they did to her was witnessed by
dozens of people in Timbuktu, and can still
be heard on the meat seller’s cell phone.
The executor announced Salaka’s crime
and her punishment. Then he began flogging
her with a switch made from the branch of
a tree. Her high-pitched cries are contorted
with pain. You can hear the slap of the whip.
You can hear her labored breathing.
They hit her so hard and for so long that
at one point she wasn’t sure if the veil had
fallen off. She could feel the blood seeping
through.
When it was over, they told her that if
they ever saw her with a man again, they
would kill her.
Her lover called as soon as she got home.
The night she was caught, he ran away to
Mali’s distant capital, becoming one of an estimated 385,000 people who have fled their
homes from the north.
He said over and over: “I’m sorry.” He
promised to marry her. But he has not yet
returned. She still will not name him, fearing
the Islamist extremists will be back.
Her face warms when she speaks of him
and contracts when she describes her pain
and humiliation. There isn’t a child in Timbuktu who doesn’t recognize her, she says.
Even now she avoids the market, sending
her sisters to buy the meat instead.
“This was a tyrannical regime, which had
no pity towards women,” she says. “I’m not
the only one that went through this. I did
this because I was in love.”
Last week, Salaka was among the thou-
6 Al-Qaida • Love in the Time of Shariah | The Associated Press
sands of people who poured into the streets
to cheer French soldiers as they liberated the
city. She folded and put away her blue and
red veils.
In recent days, she pulled out her lover’s
gift of the violet bazin with the flame-patterned brocade from the bottom of a pile of
clothes she was not allowed to wear under
the city’s occupiers. She painted her lips a
translucent fuschia. She went to the newly
opened hairdresser.
The photo studio where she and her lover
posed by the cardboard waterfall remains
closed, so instead her brother snapped a
picture of her.
If you look closely, you can see the
marks left by the whip across her now-naked shoulders.
Salaka’s story was pieced together
from interviews with her over three days.
Salaka took AP journalists to the rendezvous
house, the place where she was arrested,
the ATM machine, her prison cell and the
market. Her family, city officials and several witnesses confirmed the whipping, and
a meat seller shared with the AP a sound
recording that captures the sentencing and
her screams. The account of the stoning in
Aguelhok is from the city’s mayor.
4
Rukmini Callimachi • AP
Neighborhood resident Mohamed Alassane sifts through documents left behind.
Feb. 14, 2013
In Timbuktu, al-Qaida left behind
a manifesto
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — In their hurry
to flee last month, al-Qaida fighters left
behind a crucial document: Tucked under a
pile of papers and trash is a confidential letter, spelling out the terror network’s strategy
for conquering northern Mali and reflecting
internal discord over how to rule the region.
1 Al-Qaida • Sahara Playbook | The Associated Press
The document is an unprecedented window into the terrorist operation, indicating
that al-Qaida predicted the military intervention that would dislodge it in January
and recognized its own vulnerability.
The letter also shows a sharp division
within al-Qaida’s Africa chapter over how
quickly and how strictly to apply Islamic law,
with its senior commander expressing dismay over the whipping of women and the de-
struction of Timbuktu’s ancient monuments.
It moreover leaves no doubt that despite a
temporary withdrawal into the desert, alQaida plans to operate in the region over the
long haul, and is willing to make short-term
concessions on ideology to gain the allies it
acknowledges it needs.
The more than nine-page document,
found by The Associated Press in a building occupied by the Islamic extremists for
almost a year, is signed by Abu Musab Abdul
Wadud, the nom de guerre of Abdelmalek
Droukdel, the senior commander appointed by Osama bin Laden to run al-Qaida’s
branch in Africa. The clear-headed, pointby-point assessment
resembles a memo
from a CEO to his
He scolds his
top managers and
fighters for
lays out for his jihadbeing too
ists in Mali what they
forceful.
have done wrong in
months past, and
what they need to do to correct their behavior in the future.
Droukdel, the emir of al-Qaida in the
Islamic Maghreb, perhaps surprisingly argues that his fighters moved too fast and too
brutally in applying the Islamic law known
as Shariah to northern Mali. Comparing the
relationship of al-Qaida to Mali as that of an
adult to an infant, he urges them to be more
gentle, like a parent:
“The current baby is in its first days,
crawling on its knees, and has not yet stood
2 Al-Qaida • Sahara Playbook | The Associated Press
on its two legs,” he writes. “If we really want
it to stand on its own two feet in this world
full of enemies waiting to pounce, we must
ease its burden, take it by the hand, help it
and support it until its stands.”
He scolds his fighters for being too forceful and warns that if they don’t ease off, their
entire project could be thrown into jeopardy:
“Every mistake in this important stage of the
life of the baby will be a heavy burden on his
shoulders. The larger the mistake, the heavier the burden on his back, and we could end
up suffocating him suddenly and causing his
death.”
The letter is divided into six chapters,
three of which the AP recovered, along with
loose pages, on the floor of the Ministry
of Finance’s Regional Audit Department.
Residents say the building, one of several the
Islamic extremists took over in this ancient
city of sundried, mud-brick homes, was particularly well-guarded with two checkpoints,
and a zigzag of barriers at the entrance.
Droukdel’s letter is one of only a few
internal documents between commanders
of al-Qaida’s African wing that have been
found, and possibly the first to be made
public, according to University of Toulouse
Islamic scholar Mathieu Guidere. It is numbered 33/234, a system reserved for al-Qaida’s internal communications, said Guidere,
who helps oversee a database of documents
generated by extremists, including Droukdel.
“This is a document between the Islamists that has never been put before the
Rukmini Callimachi • AP
Neighborhood resident Mohamed Alassane walks through the Ministry of Finance’s Regional Audit Department, a site used by
Al-Qaida-linked Islamists for more than a year.
public eye,” said Guidere, who authenticated
the letter after being sent a two-page sample.
“It confirms something very important,
which is the divisions about the strategic
conception of the organization. There was a
debate on how to establish an Islamic state
in North Mali and how to apply Shariah.”
While the pages recovered are not dated,
a reference to a conflict in June establishes
that the message was sent at most eight
months ago.
The tone and timing of the letter suggest
that al-Qaida is learning from its mistakes
in places like Somalia and Algeria, where
3 Al-Qaida • Sahara Playbook | The Associated Press
attempts to unilaterally impose its version
of Islam backfired. They also reflect the
influence of the Arab Spring, which showed
the power of people to break regimes, and
turned on its head al-Qaida’s long-held view
that only violence could bring about wholesale change, Guidere said.
The letter suggests a change in the thinking, if not the rhetoric, of Droukdel, who is
asking his men to behave with a restraint
that he himself is not known for. Droukdel is
believed to have overseen numerous suicide
bombings, including one in 2007 where alQaida fighters bombed the United Nations
building and a new government building in
Algiers, killing 41 people. The same year, the
U.S. designated him a global terrorist and
banned Americans from doing business with
him.
In a video disseminated on jihadist forums
a few months ago, Droukdel dared the French
to intervene in Mali and said his men will
turn the region into a “graveyard” for foreign
fighters, according to a transcript provided by
Washington-based SITE Intelligence.
The fanaticism
he exhibits in his
It is very
public statements
is in stark contrast
probable,
perhaps certain, to the advice he
gives his men on
that a military
the ground. In his
intervention
private letter, he
will occur.
acknowledges that
al-Qaida is vulnerable to a foreign intervention, and that international and regional pressure “exceeds our
military and financial and structural capability for the time being.”
“It is very probable, perhaps certain, that
a military intervention will occur ... which in
the end will either force us to retreat to our
rear bases or will provoke the people against
us,” writes Droukdel. “Taking into account
this important factor, we must not go too far
or take risks in our decisions or imagine that
this project is a stable Islamic state.”
According to his own online biography,
Droukdel was born 44 years ago into a reli-
4 Al-Qaida • Sahara Playbook | The Associated Press
gious family in the Algerian locality of Zayan.
He says he enrolled into the technology department of a local university before turning
to jihad, and his first job was making explosives for Algerian mujahedeen. In 2006,
the group to which he belonged, known as
the GSPC, became an arm of al-Qaida, after
negotiations with Ayman al-Zawahri, bin
Laden’s lieutenant.
As Droukdel rose through the ranks, he
came into direct contact with bin Laden,
Guidere said.
In the document found in Timbuktu,
he cites a letter he received from bin Laden
about the al-Hudaybiyah deal, a treaty
signed circa 628 by the Prophet Muhammad
and the Quraish tribe of Mecca, an agreement with non-Muslims that paved the way
for Muslims to return to Mecca.
“The smart Muslim leader would do these
kinds of concessions in order to achieve the
word of God eventually and to support the
religion,” he says.
Perhaps the biggest concession Droukdel urges is for his fighters to slow down in
implementing Shariah.
When the Islamic extremists took over
northern Mali 10 months ago, they restored
order in a time of chaos, much as the Taliban did in Afghanistan, and even created a
hotline number for people to report crimes.
But whatever goodwill they had built up
evaporated when they started to destroy the
city’s historic monuments, whip women for
not covering up and amputate the limbs of
suspected thieves.
“One of the wrong policies that we think
you carried out is the extreme speed with
which you applied Shariah, not taking into
consideration the gradual evolution that
should be applied in an environment that
is ignorant of religion,” Droukdel writes.
“Our previous experience proved that applying Shariah this way, without taking the
environment into consideration, will lead
to people rejecting the religion, and engender hatred toward the mujahedeen, and
will consequently lead to the failure of our
experiment.”
Droukdel goes on to cite two specific
applications of Shariah that he found prob-
lematic. He criticizes the destruction of
Timbuktu’s World Heritage-listed shrines,
because, as he says, “on the internal front we
are not strong.” He also tells the fighters he
disapproves of their religious punishment
for adulterers — stoning to death — and
their lashing of people, “and the fact that you
prevented women from going out, and prevented children from playing, and searched
the houses of the population.”
“Your officials need to control themselves,” he writes.
Droukdel’s words reflect the division
within one of al-Qaida’s most ruthless affiliates, and may explain why Timbuktu,
under the thumb of al-Qaida in the Islamic
Rukmini Callimachi • AP
Mohamed Alassane and a doctor from the local hospital said the wheelchair had been used by an injured Islamist.
5 Al-Qaida • Sahara Playbook | The Associated Press
Maghreb, experienced a slightly less brutal
version of Shariah than Gao, one of the three
other major cities controlled by the extremists. There was only one amputation in Timbuktu over their 10-month rule, compared to
a dozen or more in Gao, a city governed by
an al-Qaida offshoot, MUJAO, which does
not report to Droukdel.
Droukdel’s warning of rejection from
locals also turned out to be prescient, as
Shariah ran its course in Timbuktu. The
breaking point,
residents say, was
the day last June
By June, the
when the jihadIslamic extremists descended on
ists had chased
the cemetery with
the secular
pickaxes and shovels and smashed
rebels out of
the tombs of their
northern Mali’s
saints, decrying
main cities.
what they called the
sin of idolatry.
Many in Timbuktu say that was the
point of no return. “When they smashed our
mausoleums, it hurt us deeply,” said Alpha
Sanechirfi, the director of the Malian Office of Tourism in Timbuktu. “For us, it was
game over.”
Droukdel’s letter also urges his followers to make concessions to win over other
groups in the area, and in one case criticizes
their failure to do so. For several months, the
Islamic extremists controlling northern Mali
coexisted with the secular National Move-
6 Al-Qaida • Sahara Playbook | The Associated Press
ment for the Liberation of the Azawad, or
NMLA, the name given to Mali by Tuareg
rebels who want their own state. The black
flag of the extremists fluttered alongside the
multi-colored one of the secular rebels, each
occupying different areas of the towns.
In late May, the two sides attempted
to sign a deal, agreeing to create an independent Islamic state called Azawad. The
agreement between the bon vivant Tuareg
rebels and the Taliban-inspired extremists
seemed doomed from the start. It fell apart
days later. By June, the Islamic extremists
had chased the secular rebels out of northern
Mali’s main cities.
“The decision to go to war against the
Azawad Liberation Movement, after becoming close and almost completing a deal with
them, which we thought would be positive, is
a major mistake in our assessment,” Droukdel admonishes. “This fighting will have a
negative impact on our project. So we ask
you to solve the issue and correct it by working toward a peace deal.”
In an aside in brackets, Droukdel betrays
the frustration of a manager who has not
been informed of important decisions taken
by his employees: “(We have not until now
received any clarification from you, despite
how perilous the operation was!!)”
Droukdel also discusses the nuts and
bolts of how territory and control might
be shared by al-Qaida and the local radical
Islamic group known as Ansar Dine, or Defenders of the Faith. For much of last year,
Ansar Dine claimed to be the rulers of both
Timbuktu and Kidal, although by the end,
there was mounting evidence that al-Qaida
in the Islamic Maghreb was calling the shots.
The reason for this is now clear in his
letter: Droukdel asks his men to lower their
profile, and allow local groups to take center stage.
“We should also take into consideration
not to monopolize the political and military
stage. We should not be at the forefront,”
he says. “Better for you to be silent and
pretend to be a ‘domestic’ movement that
has its own causes and concerns. There is
no reason for you to show that we have an
expansionary, jihadi, al-Qaida or any other
sort of project.”
The emir acknowledges that his fighters
live on the fringes of society, and urges them
to make alliances, including fixing their bro-
7 Al-Qaida • Sahara Playbook | The Associated Press
ken relationship with the NMLA. He vows
that if they do what he says, they will have
succeeded, even if an eventual military intervention forces them out of Mali.
“The aim of building these bridges is to
make it so that our mujahedeen are no longer isolated in society,” he writes. “If we can
achieve this positive thing in even a limited
amount, then even if the project fails later, it
will be just enough that we will have planted
the first, good seed in this fertile soil and put
pesticides and fertilizer on it, so that the tree
will grow more quickly. We look forward
to seeing this tree as it will be eventually:
Stable and magnificent.”
Associated Press writer Baba Ahmed in
Timbuktu, Mali, and the Associated Press
News Research Center contributed to this
report.
Jan. 22, 2013
5
Fight for Mali town reflects Islamist tactics
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
DIABALY, Mali (AP) — Abou Zeid, the
shadowy and feared emir of one of al-Qaida’s
most successful cells, commandeered the
packed-dirt home of a family here last week,
embedding himself and his hundreds of
men in this community of rice growers. He
ate spaghetti and powdered milk, read the
Quran and planned a war.
His bearded and turbaned men parked
cars under the mango trees of the farmers,
slept in their bedrooms and turned their
courtyards into command centers and their
warehouses into armories. And it took eight
days before French air strikes finally drove
them out of Diabaly, a pinprick of a town, in
the first major showdown of the struggle to
reclaim Mali’s al-Qaida-occupied north.
The tactics used by the Islamist fighters
in Diabaly offer a peephole into the kind of
insurgency they plan to lead, and suggest
the challenges the international community
will face in the effort to dislodge them. They
show how the Islamists are holding their
ground despite a superior French force with
1 Al-Qaida • First Battle | The Associated Press
Jerome Delay • AP
A man looks at the charred remains of a truck used by
radical Islamists.
sophisticated fighter jets, a fleet of combat
helicopters and hundreds of soldiers.
“The only thing that prevented the
French planes from annihilating these
people is that they were hiding in our
homes. The French did everything to avoid
civilian casualties,” said Gaoussou Kone, a
resident of the Berlin neighborhood of Diabaly, where Abou Zeid set up his command
center. “That’s why it took so long to liberate Diabaly.”
Testimony from families, statements by
French and local officials and the trash left
behind by the fighters — including a handwritten inventory of weapons — provide a
sketch of how the Islamists operated. The
portrait that emerges is of a determined and
nimble band of fighters, who have adapted
to the terrain around them and instinctively
understand that
France, which uniThe combatants laterally launched
wore bulletproof the intervention 12
days ago in their
vests over an
former West African
unfamiliar style
colony, cannot afof tunic... meant ford to kill civilians.
The strategy of
to evoke that
melting into the
worn by the
communities that
Prophet
house them and
Muhammad.
winning them over
is one al-Qaida has
already used successfully elsewhere, including in Afghanistan. It’s now being perfected
in Mali by a new generation of jihadists, with
help from the terror network’s veterans.
“They have seasoned al-Qaida fighters
that have fought overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan and that are essentially providing
coaching and training,” said Rudolph Atallah, former director of counterterrorism for
Africa at the Pentagon, who has led several
defense missions to Mali.
Diabaly, population 35,000, has only one
of everything — one pharmacy, one road,
2 Al-Qaida • First Battle | The Associated Press
one secondary school.
Kone and his neighbors were woken up
at 3 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 14, by the sound
of gunfire. By breakfast time, the column
of fighters entered the town, and the government soldiers stationed here were seen
fleeing on foot. The combatants wore bulletproof vests over an unfamiliar style of tunic
that stopped at their knees, meant to evoke
that worn by the Prophet Muhammad in the
7th century.
They handed out candy to the children
and took down the Malian flag flapping
above the school. Then they scouted out
houses.
“It was Monday at around 7:30 a.m.
that they came into my house. They gave
out bonbons and gifts to the children, and
told us not to be afraid,” said Hamidou Sissouma, a schoolteacher, pulling out a short,
gray-colored string of prayer beads they had
given him. “Then they made themselves tea.
They used my bucket to wash themselves. ...
I was afraid, so I left and went to stay with
friends.”
Within hours, French jets arrived and
bombed five rebel vehicles parked in the
open, leaving only their charred shells. By
Tuesday, the Islamists were looking for cover
for their fleet of about 30 to 40 all-terrain
vehicles.
When Sissouma returned to his house,
he found they had rammed a pickup
truck into the wall of his compound,
punching a hole large enough to drive two
4-by-4’s into his courtyard. They promised
to reimburse him for the damage.
The men at Sissouma’s house reported to
a light-skinned Arabic-speaking man, whose
unit also took over the home of a neighbor,
Mohamed Sanogo. Both houses seem to have
been chosen for their bountiful mango trees.
The men parked their cars so close to a tree
in Sanogo’s yard that they shaved off a lower
branch, Sanogo said, showing the scarred,
freshly-cut stump. They collected dirt, added
water and painted their vehicles with mud,
further camouflaging them.
When Kone came over to Sanogo’s
house on Wednesday, he stumbled upon
the uninvited houseguests. He immediately
turned to leave. The short, light-skinned
man who appeared to be their leader waved
him in, telling him not to be afraid. “Do you
know who I am?” the man asked. His white
beard pointed out from his chin in a scruffy
goatee, and he spoke only a smattering of
French, using Arabic with his guards.
When Kone said no, the commander told
him to go watch the evening news. Then,
changing his mind, he declared: “I am Abou
Zeid.”
Roughly a dozen other residents con-
Jerome Delay • AP
Malian soldiers check identity papers at a checkpoint set on the outskirt of Diabaly.
3 Al-Qaida • First Battle | The Associated Press
firmed that the man occupying the house
birthplace. He left behind several discarded
had identified himself as Abou Zeid. Their
macaroni packets made by a brand headdescription matches the few photographs
quartered in Algeria, according to the label,
that exist of a man described by the Washalong with packages of Algerian powdered
ington-based Council on Foreign Relations
milk on the floor of the room where he slept.
as “the most violent and radical” of the leadAlthough Diabaly residents were terrified
ers of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
by the fighters, and many came out to cheer
Born in southern Algeria, the 50-somethe French, they said the Islamists had gone
thing jihadist has operated
in Mali since at least 2003,
and is behind dozens of
kidnappings of European aid
workers and tourists, each of
whom earned him an estimated $2 to $3 million, according to Stratfor, an intelligence gathering unit. Known
for his deep-seated hatred
of the West, he has executed
several hostages and is the
subject of United Nations
sanctions due to his associaJerome Delay • AP
tion with al-Qaida.
A Malian soldier walks inside a military camp used by radical Islamists and
bombarded by French warplanes.
In Diabaly, he exuded
authority, residents say, and
fighters approached him
with deference, speaking in a lowered voice,
to lengths to show respect.
almost a whisper, as if addressing a priest.
When fighters entered the compound
He spent the daylight hours sitting on a mat
next to Sidi Toure’s, they addressed Toure
in the shade reading the Quran. At all times,
over the shared wall between the two homes.
he was flanked by at a minimum five guards,
His neighbors had fled.
and at least one stood sentinel at night when
“They explained that they wanted to take
he slept.
over my neighbor’s house, and said they
The rebels were traveling with boxes of
were willing to pay rent,” he said. “Even for
food imported from Algeria, Abou Zeid’s
the water that they took from our well, they
4 Al-Qaida • First Battle | The Associated Press
offered to pay.”
Toure said he told them he did not need
their money and would rather they leave.
They said they would not stay long.
The room they used to stock their arms is
now empty, except for a few cardboard boxes
and a former ammunition crate. What they
forgot to take was a notebook, where they
started writing in the ledger from the back
page to the front, as is customary in Arabic.
The first page of writing begins with an
inventory of weapons: “One 60 mm mortar,
One Toshka machine gun, Three machine
guns, Four Dabekterbov machine guns without a magazine, One armored Bika, 16 Chinese Kalashnikov rifles without magazines,
21 Sardinia 23, 26 RPG shells ...” in a list
that reads like the ingredients for a Sovietera war.
As the French air strikes intensified, the
fighters blended in more and more with the
population, said witnesses. They no longer
drove their cars, borrowing scooters from
locals, and timed their movements to match
those of civilians.
“When the population is outside, they are
outside,” said Kone. “When the population is
indoors, they are indoors.”
Where they managed to bomb, the
French did so with remarkable precision.
They took out five cars parked just yards
from the home of Adama Nantoume without
Jerome Delay • AP
A Malian soldier mans a checkpoint on the outskirt of Diabaly.
5 Al-Qaida • First Battle | The Associated Press
harming his family or damaging his home.
“The explosions were so loud that for a
while I thought I had gone deaf,” Nantoume
said. “I was suffocated by the smoke. And the
light burned my eyes. The gas made me cry.
... But I was not hurt.”
As Diabaly began to empty out, the
Islamists set up roadblocks to prevent civilians from leaving, according to locals whose
families and friends were turned back. Many
made it out anyway, cutting across unpatrolled rice fields.
Then, as suddenly as they had arrived,
the Islamists left on Thursday. It’s not clear if
they went because of the damage done by the
sustained air raids, or in the face of a pending
land assault. Residents said their departing
cars looked like moving bushes because they
had so much foliage attached to them.
6 Al-Qaida • First Battle | The Associated Press
It was another four days before the
French declared the area safe to enter.
As of Monday, life in Diabaly appeared
to have gone back to normal. Women gave
their children bucket baths and washed their
pots and pans in the irrigation canal running along one side of the town. The families
whose properties had been occupied by the
Islamists were cleaning up the trash they left
behind.
One of the few things the Islamists stole,
residents said, was a Canal+ cable television decoder. They wanted access to French
channels to learn what the French were saying about the battle they had just fought.
Associated Press writers Baba Ahmed in
Diabaly, Mali, and Jamey Keaten in Dakar,
Senegal, contributed to this report.
June 11, 2013
6
Mali manual suggests al-Qaida has feared
weapon
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — The photocopies of the manual lay in heaps on the floor,
in stacks that scaled one wall, like Xeroxed,
stapled handouts for a class.
Except that the students in this case were
al-Qaida fighters in Mali. And the manual
was a detailed guide, with diagrams and
photographs, on how to use a weapon that
particularly concerns the United States: A
surface-to-air missile capable of taking down
a commercial airplane.
The 26-page document in Arabic, recovered by The Associated Press in a building that had been occupied by al-Qaida in
the Islamic Maghreb in Timbuktu, strongly
suggests the group now possesses the SA-7
surface-to-air missile, known to the Pentagon as the Grail, according to terrorism
specialists. And it confirms that the al-Qaida
cell is actively training its fighters to use
these weapons, also called man-portable airdefense systems, or MANPADS, which likely
came from the arms depots of ex-Libyan
1 Al-Qaida • Dangerous Weapons | The Associated Press
strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This is the fourth story
in an occasional series based on thousands
of pages of internal al-Qaida documents
recovered by The Associated Press earlier
this year in Timbuktu, Mali.
“The existence of what apparently constitutes a ‘Dummies Guide to MANPADS’ is
strong circumstantial evidence of al-Qaida
in the Islamic Maghreb having the missiles,”
said Atlantic Council analyst Peter Pham, a
former adviser to the United States’ military
command in Africa and an instructor to U.S.
Special Forces. “Why else bother to write the
guide if you don’t have the weapons? ... If
AQIM not only has the MANPADS, but also
fighters who know how to use them effectively,” he added, “then the impact is significant, not only on the current conflict, but on
security throughout North and West Africa,
and possibly beyond.”
This is not the first al-Qaida-linked group
thought to have MANPADS - they were
circulating in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a
ECPAD/Olivier Debes • AP
A French soldier holds the launch tube of an SA-7 surface-to-air missile before its destruction.
terror cell in Somalia recently claimed to
have the SA-7 in a video. But the U.S. desperately wanted to keep the weapons out of
the hands of al-Qaida’s largest affiliate on
the continent, based in Mali. In the spring of
2011, before the fighting in Tripoli had even
stopped, a U.S. team flew to Libya to secure
Gadhafi’s stockpile of thousands of heatseeking, shoulder-fired missiles.
By the time they got there, many had
already been looted.
“The MANPADS were specifically being
sought out,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director for Human Rights Watch, who
2 Al-Qaida • Dangerous Weapons | The Associated Press
catalogued missing weapons at dozens of
munitions depots and often found nothing in
the boxes labeled with the code for surfaceto-air missiles.
The manual is believed to be an excerpt
from a terrorist encyclopedia edited by
Osama bin Laden. It adds to evidence for the
weapon found by French forces during their
land assault in Mali earlier this year, including the discovery of the SA-7’s battery pack
and launch tube, according to military statements and an aviation official who spoke on
condition of anonymity because he wasn’t
authorized to comment.
The knowledge that the terrorists have
the weapon has already changed the way the
French are carrying out their five-month-old
offensive in Mali. They are using more fighter jets rather than helicopters to fly above its
range of 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) from the
ground, even though that makes it harder
to attack the jihadists. They are also making
cargo planes land
and take off more
Since 1975, at
steeply to limit how
least 40 civilian
long they are exposed, in line with
aircraft have
similar practices in
been hit by
Iraq after an SA-14
different types
hit the wing of a
of MANPADS,
DHL cargo plane in
causing about
2003.
And they have
28 crashes.
added their own
surveillance at Mali’s international airport
in Bamako, according to two French aviation officials and an officer in the Operation
Serval force. All three spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized
to comment.
“There are patrols every day,” said the
French officer. “It’s one of the things we have
not entrusted to the Malians, because the
stakes are too high.”
First introduced in the 1960s in the Soviet Union, the SA-7 was designed to be portable. Not much larger than a poster tube,
it can be packed into a duffel bag and easily
carried. It’s also affordable, with some SA-7s
3 Al-Qaida • Dangerous Weapons | The Associated Press
selling for as little as $5,000.
Since 1975, at least 40 civilian aircraft
have been hit by different types of MANPADS, causing about 28 crashes and more
than 800 deaths around the world, according to the U.S. Department of State.
The SA-7 is an old generation model,
which means most military planes now come
equipped with a built-in protection mechanism against it. But that’s not the case for
commercial planes, and the threat is greatest
to civilian aviation.
In Kenya in 2002, suspected Islamic
extremists fired two SA-7s at a Boeing 757
carrying 271 vacationers back to Israel, but
missed. Insurgents in Iraq used the weapons, and YouTube videos abound purporting
to show Syrian rebels using the SA-7 to shoot
down regime planes.
An SA-7 tracks a plane by directing itself
toward the source of the heat, the engine.
It takes time and practice, however, to fire
it within range. The failure of the jihadists
in Mali so far to hit a plane could mean that
they cannot position themselves near airports with commercial flights, or that they
are not yet fully trained to use the missile.
“This is not a ‘Fire and forget’ weapon,”
said Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for
Security Studies at Georgetown University.
“There’s a paradox here. One the one hand it’s
not easy to use, but against any commercial
aircraft there would be no defenses against
them. It’s impossible to protect against it. ... If
terrorists start training and learn how to use
them, we’ll be in a lot of trouble.”
In Timbuktu, SA-7 training was likely
part of the curriculum at the ‘Jihad Academy’ housed in a former police station, said
Jean-Paul Rouiller, director of the Geneva
Center for Training and Analysis of Terrorism, one of three experts who reviewed the
manual for AP. It’s located less than 3 miles
(5 kilometers) from
the Ministry of
Finance’s Budget
Point-by-point
Division building
instructions
where the manual
explain how to
was found.
insert the
Neighbors say
they saw foreign
battery, focus
fighters running
on the target
laps each day, carand fire.
rying out target
practice and inhaling and holding their breath with a pipe-like
object on their shoulder. The drill is standard practice for shoulder-held missiles,
including the SA-7.
As the jihadists fled ahead of the arrival
of French troops who liberated Timbuktu on
Jan. 28, they left the manual behind, along
with other instructional material, including a
spiral-bound pamphlet showing how to use
the KPV-14.5 anti-aircraft machine gun and
another on how to make a bomb out of ammonium nitrate, among other documents retrieved by the AP. Residents said the jihadists
grabbed reams of paper from inside the building, doused them in fuel and set them alight.
4 Al-Qaida • Dangerous Weapons | The Associated Press
The black, feathery ash lay on top of the sand
in a ditch just outside the building’s gate.
However, numerous buildings were still
full of scattered papers.
“They just couldn’t destroy everything,”
said neighbor Mohamed Alassane. “They
appeared to be in a panic when the French
came. They left in a state of disorder.”
The manual is illustrated with grainy
images of Soviet-looking soldiers firing the
weapon. Point-by-point instructions explain
how to insert the battery, focus on the target
and fire.
The manual also explains that the missile
will malfunction above 45 degrees Celsius,
the temperature in the deserts north of Timbuktu. And it advises the shooter to change
immediately into a second set of clothes after
firing to avoid detection.
Its pages are numbered 313 through 338,
suggesting they came from elsewhere. Mathieu Guidere, an expert on Islamic extremists at the University of Toulouse, believes
the excerpts are lifted from the Encyclopedia
of Jihad, an 11-volume survey on the craft
of war first compiled by the Taliban in the
1990s and later codified by Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, who led a contingent of Arab
fighters in Afghanistan at the time, paid to
have the encyclopedia translated into Arabic,
according to Guidere, author of a book on alQaida’s North African branch.
However, the cover page of the manual
boasts the name of al-Qaida in the Islamic
Maghreb.
“It’s a way to make it their own,” said
Guidere. “It’s like putting a logo on something. ... It shows the historic as well as the
present link between al-Qaida core and
AQIM.”
Bin Laden later assembled a team of
editors to update the manual, put it on
CD-ROMs and eventually place it on the
Internet, in a move that lay the groundwork
for the globalization of jihad, according to
terrorism expert Jarret Brachman, who was
the director of research at the Combating
Terrorism Center when the al-Qaida encyclopedia was first found.
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an arms expert in
Australia, confirmed that the information
in the manual in Timbuktu on the missile’s
engagement range, altitude and weight appeared largely correct. He cautions though
that the history of the SA-7 is one of near-
5 Al-Qaida • Dangerous Weapons | The Associated Press
misses, specifically because it takes training
to use.
“Even if you get your hands on an SA-7,
it’s no guarantee of success,” he said. “However, if someone manages to take down a
civilian aircraft, it’s hundreds of dead instantly. It’s a high impact, low-frequency
event, and it sows a lot of fear.”
Associated Press writer Lori Hinnant
contributed to this report from Paris, and
AP journalist Amir Bibawy translated the
document. Callimachi reported this article
in Timbuktu, Mali, and in Dakar, Senegal.
The document from al-Qaida in the
Islamic Maghreb in Arabic and English can
be seen at http://hosted.ap.org/specials/
interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaidapapers-dangerous-weapon.pdf
7
Feb. 21, 2013
Al-Qaida tipsheet on avoiding drones
found in Mali
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — One of the last
things the bearded fighters did before leaving this city was to drive to the market where
traders lay their carpets out in the sand.
The al-Qaida extremists bypassed the
brightly colored, high-end synthetic floor
coverings and stopped their pickup truck in
front of a man selling more modest mats woven from desert grass, priced at $1.40 apiece.
There they bought two bales of 25 mats each,
Rukmini Callimachi • AP
Woven reed mats of the type purchased by fleeing
Islamists.
1 Al-Qaida • Avoiding Drones | The Associated Press
and asked him to bundle them on top of the
car, along with a stack of sticks.
“It’s the first time someone has bought
such a large amount,” said the mat seller,
Leitny Cisse al-Djoumat. “They didn’t explain why they wanted so many.”
Military officials can tell why: The fighters are stretching the mats across the tops
of their cars on poles to form natural carports, so that drones cannot detect them
from the air.
The instruction to camouflage cars is one
of 22 tips on how to avoid drones, listed on a
document left behind by the Islamic extremists as they fled northern Mali from a French
military intervention last month. A Xeroxed
copy of the document, which was first published on a jihadist forum two years ago, was
found by The Associated Press in a manila
envelope on the floor of a building here occupied by al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb.
The tipsheet reflects how al-Qaida’s
chapter in North Africa anticipated a military intervention that would make use of
drones, as the battleground in the war on
terror worldwide is shifting from boots on
the ground to unmanned planes in the air.
The presence of the document in Mali, first
authored by a Yemeni, also shows the coordination between al-Qaida chapters, which
security experts have called a source of increasing concern.
“This new document... shows we are no
longer dealing with an isolated local problem, but with an enemy which is reaching
across continents to share advice,” said
Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the CIA,
now the director of the Intelligence Project
at the Brookings Institution.
The tips in the document range from the
broad (No. 7, hide from being directly or
indirectly spotted, especially at night) to the
specific (No 18, formation of fake gatherings,
for example by using dolls and statues placed
outside false ditches to mislead the enemy.)
The use of the mats appears to be a West African twist on No. 3, which advises camouflaging the tops of cars and the roofs of buildings,
possibly by spreading reflective glass.
While some of the tips are outdated or
far-fetched, taken together, they suggest the
Islamists in Mali are responding to the threat
of drones with sound, common-sense advice
that may help them to melt into the desert in
between attacks, leaving barely a trace.
“These are not dumb techniques. It shows
that they are acting pretty astutely,” said
Col. Cedric Leighton, a 26-year-veteran of
Jerome Delay • AP
French soldiers arrive in Niono, Mali, en route to Diabaly.
2 Al-Qaida • Avoiding Drones | The Associated Press
the United States Air Force, who helped set
up the Predator drone program, which later
tracked Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
“What it does is, it buys them a little bit more
time — and in this conflict, time is key. And
they will use it to move away from an area,
from a bombing raid, and do it very quickly.”
The success of some of the tips will depend on the circumstances and the model
of drones used, Leighton said. For example,
from the air, where perceptions of depth become obfuscated, an imagery sensor would
interpret a mat
stretched over the
It was most
top of a car as one
lying on the ground,
recently issued
concealing the vetwo weeks ago
hicle.
on another exNew models of
tremist website.
drones, such as the
Harfung used by the
French or the MQ-9 “Reaper,” sometimes
have infrared sensors that can pick up the
heat signature of a car whose engine has just
been shut off. However, even an infrared
sensor would have trouble detecting a car
left under a mat tent overnight, so that its
temperature is the same as on the surrounding ground, Leighton said.
Unarmed drones are already being used
by the French in Mali to collect intelligence
on al-Qaida groups, and U.S. officials have
said plans are underway to establish a new
drone base in northwestern Africa. The U.S.
recently signed a “status of forces agree-
3 Al-Qaida • Avoiding Drones | The Associated Press
ment” with Niger, one of the nations bordering Mali, suggesting the drone base may be
situated there and would be primarily used
to gather intelligence to help the French.
The author of the tipsheet found in
Timbuktu is Abdallah bin Muhammad, the
nom de guerre for a senior commander
of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the
Yemen-based branch of the terror network.
The document was first published in Arabic
on an extremist website on June 2, 2011, a
month after bin Laden’s death, according to
Mathieu Guidere, a professor at the University of Toulouse. Guidere runs a database
of statements by extremist groups, including al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, and he
reviewed and authenticated the document
found by the AP.
The tipsheet is still little known, if at all,
in English, though it has been republished
at least three times in Arabic on other jihadist forums after drone strikes took out
U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen
in September 2011 and al-Qaida second-incommand Abu Yahya al-Libi in Pakistan in
June 2012. It was most recently issued two
weeks ago on another extremist website after
plans for the possible U.S. drone base in Niger began surfacing, Guidere said.
“This document supports the fact that
they knew there are secret U.S. bases for
drones, and were preparing themselves,” he
said. “They were thinking about this issue for
a long time.”
The idea of hiding under trees to avoid
drones, which is tip No. 10,
appears to be coming from
the highest levels of the terror
network. In a letter written by
bin Laden and first published
by the U.S. Center for Combating Terrorism, the terror
mastermind instructs his
followers to deliver a message
to Abdelmalek Droukdel, the
head of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, whose fighters
have been active in Mali for
at least a decade.
Jerome Delay • AP
“I want the brothers in
French troops inspect the charred remains of trucks used by radical Islamists, on
the Islamic Maghreb to know the outskirts of Diabaly.
that planting trees helps the
mujahedeen and gives them
cover,” bin Laden writes in the missive.
through his earthen wall to drive right into
“Trees will give the mujahedeen the freehis courtyard. Another resident showed the
dom to move around especially if the enemy
gash the occupiers had made in his mango
sends spying aircrafts to the area.”
tree by parking their pickup too close to the
Hiding under trees is exactly what the
trunk.
al-Qaida fighters did in Mali, according to
In Timbuktu also, fighters hid their cars
residents in Diabaly, the last town they took
under trees, and disembarked from them in
before the French stemmed their advance
a hurry when they were being chased, in aclast month. Just after French warplanes
cordance with tip No. 13.
incinerated rebel cars that had been left
Moustapha al-Housseini, an appliance
outside, the fighters began to commandeer
repairman, was outside his shop fixing a
houses with large mango trees and park their
client’s broken radio on the day the aerial
four-by-fours in the shade of their rubbery
bombardments began. He said he heard the
leaves.
sound of the planes and saw the Islamists
Hamidou Sissouma, a schoolteacher, said
at almost the same moment. Abou Zeid, the
the Islamists chose his house because of its
senior al-Qaida emir in the region, rushed
generous trees, and rammed their trucks
to jam his car under a pair of tamarind trees
4 Al-Qaida • Avoiding Drones | The Associated Press
outside the store.
“He and his men got out of the car and
dove under the awning,” said al-Housseini.
“As for what I did? Me and my employees?
We also ran. As fast as we could.”
Along with the grass mats, the al-Qaida
men in Mali made creative use of another
natural resource to hide their cars: Mud.
Asse Ag Imahalit, a gardener at a building in Timbuktu, said he was at first puzzled
to see that the fighters sleeping inside the
compound sent for large bags of sugar every
day. Then, he said, he observed them mixing
the sugar with dirt, adding water and using
the sticky mixture to “paint” their cars. Residents said the cars of the al-Qaida fighters
are permanently covered in mud.
The drone tipsheet, discovered in the
regional tax department occupied by Abou
Zeid, shows how familiar al-Qaida has become with drone attacks, which have allowed the U.S. to take out senior leaders in
the terrorist group without a messy ground
battle. The preface and epilogue of the tipsheet make it clear that al-Qaida well realizes
5 Al-Qaida • Avoiding Drones | The Associated Press
the advantages of drones: They are relatively
cheap in terms of money and lives, alleviating
“the pressure of American public opinion.”
Ironically, the first drone attack on an
al-Qaida figure in 2002 took out the head
of the branch in Yemen — the same branch
that authored the document found in Mali,
according to Riedel. Drones began to be used
in Iraq in 2006 and in Pakistan in 2007, but
it wasn’t until 2009 that they became a hallmark of the war on terror, he said.
“Since we do not want to put boots on the
ground in places like Mali, they are certain to
be the way of the future,” he said. “They are
already the future.”
Associated Press writers Baba Ahmed
in Timbuktu, Mali, Robert Burns in
Washington and Dalatou Mamane in
Niamey, Niger, contributed to this report.
The document can be seen in Arabic and
English at http://hosted.ap.org/specials/
interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaidapapers-drones.pdf
8
Hani Mohammed • AP
A suspected Yemeni al-Qaida militant, center, holds an Islamist banner.
Aug. 9, 2013
Yemen terror boss left blueprint
for waging jihad
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — A year before
he was caught on an intercept discussing
the terror plot that prompted this week’s
sweeping closure of U.S. embassies abroad,
al-Qaida’s top operative in Yemen laid out
his blueprint for how to wage jihad in letters
sent to a fellow terrorist.
1 Al-Qaida • Yemen Letters | The Associated Press
In what reads like a lesson plan, Nasser
al-Wahishi provides a step-by-step assessment of what worked and what didn’t in
Yemen. But in the never-before-seen correspondence, the man at the center of the
latest terror threat barely mentions the
extremist methods that have transformed his
organization into al-Qaida’s most dangerous
branch.
Instead, he urges his counterpart in
Africa whose fighters had recently seized
northern Mali to make sure the people in the
areas they control have electricity and running water. He also offers tips for making
garbage collection more efficient.
“Try to win them over through the conveniences of life,” he writes. “It will make them
sympathize with us and make them feel that
their fate is tied to ours.”
The perhaps surprising hearts-andminds approach advocated by the 30-something Wahishi, who spent years as Osama
bin Laden’s personal secretary, is a sign of a
broader shift within al-Qaida. After its failure in Iraq, say experts who were shown the
correspondence, the terror network realized
that it is not enough to win territory: They
must also learn to govern it if they hope to
hold it.
“People in the West view al-Qaida as only
a terrorist organization, and it certainly is
that ... but the group itself is much broader,
and it is doing much more,” says Gregory
Johnsen, a scholar at Princeton University
whose book, “The Last Refuge,” charts the
rise of al-Qaida in Yemen. “The group sees
itself as an organization that can be a government.”
The correspondence from al-Wahishi to
Algerian national Abdelmalek Droukdel is
Hani Mohammed • AP
A military vehicle patrols a street next to a building destroyed during fighting with al-Qaida militants in the city of Zinjibar.
2 Al-Qaida • Yemen Letters | The Associated Press
part of a cache of documents found earlier
this year by the AP in buildings in Timbuktu,
which until January were occupied by alQaida’s North African branch. The letters are
dated May 21 and Aug. 6, 2012, soon after
al-Wahishi’s army in Yemen was forced to
retreat from the territory it had seized amid
an uprising against long-time Yemeni ruler
Ali Abdullah Saleh.
At the time, the terror network as a whole
was trying to come to grips with its losses in
Iraq, where people
rose up against
Their extremist
the brutal punishments meted out
occupiers
by al-Qaida’s local
appeared more
affiliate, a revolt
interested in
which allowed U.S.
public works
forces to regain
the territory they
projects than in
had occupied. That
waging war.
failure which was
front and center in how al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula went about governing the two
provinces it held for 16 months on Yemen’s
southern coast, including the region where
al-Wahishi was born, says Robin Simcox,
research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, author of a study chronicling the group’s
attempt at governance.
In the May letter, al-Wahishi warns his
counterpart not to crack down too quickly or
too harshly.
“You have to be kind,” he writes. “You
can’t beat people for drinking alcohol when
3 Al-Qaida • Yemen Letters | The Associated Press
they don’t even know the basics of how to
pray. ... Try to avoid enforcing Islamic punishments as much as possible, unless you
are forced to do so. ... We used this approach
with the people and came away with good
results.”
Al-Qaida’s foray into governance in Yemen began on the morning of Feb. 28, 2011,
when residents of the locality of Jaar woke
up to find an ominous black flag flying over
their town. Fearing the worst, the population
was mystified to discover that their extremist
occupiers appeared more interested in public
works projects, than in waging war.
“There were around 200 of them. They
were wearing Afghan clothes, black robes
that go to the knees, with a belt,” said Nabil
Al-Amoudi, a lawyer from Jaar. “They started extending water mains. ... They installed
their own pipes. They succeeded in bringing
electricity to areas that had not had power
before.”
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula
chronicled their achievements in 22 issues
of an online newsletter and in propaganda
films showing glowing light bulbs and whirring fans inside the homes of villagers who
had never had power before. In one video,
al-Qaida fighters are seen leaning ladders
against power poles and triumphantly yelling “Allah Akbar,” or “God is great,” each
time they connect a downed wire. They took
time to write a detailed report, a kind of alQaida ‘case study’ on their occupation, which
al-Wahashi dutifully enclosed with his letter,
like a college professor giving a handout to a
student.
They were pushed out in June of 2012,
just as al-Qaida’s affiliate in North Africa
succeeded in grabbing an Afghanistan-sized
chunk of northern Mali, giving the terror
network another chance to try their hand at
governing. Adopting an avuncular, almost
professorial tone, al-Wahishi, whose close
relationship with Osama bin Laden allows
him to speak with the authority of someone
who studied at the knees of the master, advises Droukdel to publicize his good deeds.
He advises them to do frequent PR, courting
the media to change people’s perception of
the terror brand.
“The world is waiting to see what you do
next and how you go about managing the affairs of your state,” he writes. “Your enemies
want to see you fail and they’re throwing up
obstacles to prove to people that the mujahedeen are people that are only good for fighting and war, and have nothing to do with
running countries.”
This preoccupation with al-Qaida’s image
is clear throughout the letters. The former
U.S. ambassador to Yemen, Stephen Seche,
says the letters from al-Wahishi are in large
part about the group’s perception of itself.
“These guys are no longer in the business of just trying to take out Western targets. They are in the business of establishing
themselves as legit alternatives to governments that are not present in areas on a daily
business,” says Seche, who served between
4 Al-Qaida • Yemen Letters | The Associated Press
Hani Mohammed • AP
An al-Qaida logo is seen on a street sign in the town of Jaar
in southern Abyan province, Yemen.
2007 and 2010. “I don’t think we should be
fooled by this. ...This is a velvet glove approach. It will come off.”
For many in Yemen, the glove came off
on Feb. 11, 2012, when a man accused of
spying was arrested and sentenced to death
by crucifixion. No amount of time or gradual
application of Shariah could have prepared
the population for what came next.
His body was left to rot, hanging from a
power pole, a scene captured in a YouTube
video, says Katherine Zimmerman, senior
analyst at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, who identifies
the incident as the turning point in public
opinion.
Al-Wahishi does not acknowledge losing the support of the population, though he
concedes his men were forced to retreat, as
Yemen’s army, backed by the U.S. military,
regained control of the south. He explains
that they pulled out after concluding that
resisting would have both drained their resources, and caused high civilian casualties.
Al-Wahishi is blunt in laying out the
cost of al-Qaida’s foray — and how it was
financed.
“The control of these areas during one
year cost us 500 martyrs, 700 wounded, 10
cases of hand or leg amputation and nearly
$20 million,” he writes. “Most of the battle
costs, if not all, were paid for through the
spoils. Almost half the spoils came from hostages. Kidnapping hostages is an easy spoil,
which I may describe as a profitable trade
and a precious treasure.”
In conclusion, al-Wahishi warns Droukdel not to be drawn into a prolonged war. He
effectively recommends the strategy al-Qaida
used in both Yemen and Mali: Melt into
the background while preparing to strike
again: “Hold on to your previous bases in the
mountains, forests and deserts and prepare
other refuges for the worst-case scenario,” he
says. “This is what we came to realize after
our withdrawal.”
A tiny man with a pointy beard, al-Wahishi spent years serving as Osama bin Laden’s
personal assistant, handling his day-to-day
affairs before returning to his native Yemen, where he became emir of al-Qaida in
5 Al-Qaida • Yemen Letters | The Associated Press
the Arabian Peninsula in 2002. In 2009, the
group attempted to send a suicide bomber
with explosives sewn into his underwear
onto a Detroit-bound flight. Recently, U.S.
officials recently intercepted a communication between al-Wahishi and al-Qaida supreme chief Ayman al-Zawahri, causing the
U.S. to shutter 19 embassies and consulates.
Although al-Qaida has been on a learning
curve since Iraq, it still does not seem to understand how to govern populations used to
a far more moderate form of Islam. Al-Qaida
experts say this extremism is a permanent
Achilles’ heel for the terror franchise — their
final destination jars, regardless of how
slowly they drive to get there.
“The question is, are these groups always
fated to overplay their hand?” asks Simcox.
“They are so ideological, that they will always veer in this direction.”
Associated Press writer Adam Goldman
contributed to this report from Washington.
The letters from al-Wahashi and the case
study on their occupation of southern Yemen
can be viewed here: http://hosted.ap.org/
specials/interactives/_international/_pdfs/
al-qaida-papers-how-to-run-a-state.pdf
Sept. 29, 2013
9
Terrorists used new tactic to spare some
Muslims
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
The turbaned gunmen who infiltrated
Nairobi’s Westgate mall arrived with a set of
religious trivia questions: As terrified civilians hid in toilet stalls, behind mannequins,
in ventilation shafts and underneath food
court tables, the assailants began a highstakes game of 20 Questions to separate
Muslims from those they consider infidels.
A 14-year-old boy saved himself by jumping off the mall’s roof, after learning from
friends inside that they were quizzed on
names of the Prophet Muhammad’s relatives. A Jewish man scribbled a Quranic
scripture on his hand to memorize, after
hearing the terrorists were asking captives
to recite specific verses. Numerous survivors
described how the attackers from al-Shabab,
a Somali cell which recently joined al-Qaida,
shot people who failed to provide the correct
answers.
Their chilling accounts, combined with
internal al-Shabab documents discovered
earlier this year by The Associated Press,
1 Al-Qaida • Sparing Muslims | The Associated Press
mark the final notch in a transformation
within the global terror network, which began to rethink its approach after its setbacks
in Iraq. Al-Qaida has since realized that the
indiscriminate killing of Muslims is a strategic liability, and hopes instead to create a
schism between Muslims and everyone else,
whom they consider “kuffar,” or apostates.
“What this shows is al-Qaida’s acknowledgment that the huge masses of Muslims
they have killed is an enormous PR problem
within the audience they are trying to reach,”
said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, director of
the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization. “This is a problem they had documented and noticed going back to at least
Iraq. And now we see al-Qaida groups are
really taking efforts to address it.”
The evolution of al-Shabab is reflected in
a set of three documents believed to be written by the terrorist group, and found by the
AP in northern Mali earlier this year. They
include the minutes of a conference of 85
Islamic scholars, held in December 2011 in
Somalia, as well as a summary of fatwas they
issued last year after acceptance into the al-
Kenya Presidency • AP
The Westgate Mall’s collapsed upper car park.
Qaida fold.
Baptized with the name al-Shabab,
meaning The Youth, in 2006, the group
began as an extremist militia, fighting the
government of Somalia. As early as 2009, it
began courting al-Qaida, issuing recordings
with titles like, “At Your Service Osama.”
Until the Westgate attack, the group
made no effort to spare Muslim civilians,
hitting packed restaurants, bus stations and
a government building where hundreds of
2 Al-Qaida • Sparing Muslims | The Associated Press
students were awaiting test results. And until
his death in 2011, Osama bin Laden refused
to allow Shabab into the al-Qaida network,
according to letters retrieved from his safehouse in Pakistan. The letters show that the
terror leader was increasingly troubled by
regional jihadi operations killing Muslim
civilians.
In a letter to Shabab in 2010, bin Laden
politely advised the Somali-based fighters to
review their operations “in order to minimize
the toll to Muslims.” Shabab did not get the
green light to join al-Qaida until February
2012, almost a year after bin Laden’s death.
In an email exchange this week with
The Associated Press, it made its intentions
clear: “The Mujahideen carried out a meticulous vetting process at the mall and have
taken every possible precaution to separate
the Muslims from the Kuffar before carrying
out their attack.” However, even at Westgate, al-Shabab still
killed Muslims, who
were among the
They learned,
more than 60 civilvia text
ians gunned down
messages, that
inside.
the extremists
Their attack was
were asking
timed to coincide
with the highest
people to recite
an Arabic prayer. traffic at the upscale
mall after 12:30
p.m. on Sept. 21, a
Saturday. More than 1,000 people, including
diplomats, pregnant women with strollers
and foreign couples, were inside when the
fighters armed with grenades and AK-47s
burst in and opened fire. At first the attack
had the indiscriminate character of all of
Shabab’s previous assaults.
Rutvik Patel, 14, was in the aisles at Nakumatt, the mall’s supermarket which sells
everything from plasma TVs to imported kiwis, when he heard the first explosion. “They
started shooting continuously, and whoever
died, died,” he said. “Then it became calm
3 Al-Qaida • Sparing Muslims | The Associated Press
and they came up to people and began asking them some questions. If you knew the
answer, they let you go,” he said. “They
asked the name of the Prophet’s mom. They
asked them to sing a religious verse.”
Just across from the Nakumatt supermarket, a 31-year-old Jewish businessman
was cashing a check inside the local Barclays
branch when he, too, heard the shooting.
The people there ran to the back and shut
themselves in the room with the safe, switching off the lights. They learned, via text
messages, that the extremists were asking
people to recite an Arabic prayer called the
Shahada.
“One of the women who was with us got a
text from her husband saying, they’re asking people to say the Islamic oath, and if you
don’t know it, they kill you,” said the businessman, who insisted on anonymity out of
fear for his safety.
He threw away his passport. Then he
downloaded the Arabic prayer and wrote it
on his palm.
Al-Shabab’s attempts to identify Muslims
are clear in the 16-page transcript from the
conference of Islamic scholars held in the
Somali town of Baidoa, an area known to
be under Shabab control in 2011, according
to Somalia specialist Kenneth Menkhaus, a
political science professor at Davidson College in North Carolina. The scholars issued
several fatwas defining exactly who was a
Muslim and who was an apostate.
The document states it is halal, or law-
ful, to kill and rob those
who commit crimes against
Islam: “The French and the
English are to be treated
equally: Their blood and
their money are halal wherever they may be. No Muslim in any part of the world
may cooperate with them
in any way. ... It leads to
apostasy and expulsion from
Islam,” it says. Further on it
adds: “Accordingly, Ethiopians, Kenyans, Ugandans and
James Quest • AP
Injured
Nakumatt
supermarket
employee
Mwaura,
center,
a
father
of
five
who
was shot
Burundians are just like the
during the attack, later died of his injuries.
English and the French because they have invaded the
Islamic country of Somalia.”
Former FBI supervisory special agent Ali
non-Muslims, chillingly predicting and justiSoufan, who investigated the bombing of the
fying the death of Muslims at Westgate.
United States embassies in East Africa as
“And so all Muslims must stay far away
well as the attack on the USS Cole, said that
from the enemy and their installations so
the gathering of dozens of religious scholars
as not to become human shields for them,
in an area under Shabab control harkens
and so as not to be hurt by the blows of the
back to an al-Qaida conference in Afghanimujahedeen directed at the Crusader enstan around 1997. That conference defined
emies,” it says. “There is no excuse for those
America as a target, Soufan said, leading to
who live or mingle with the enemies in their
the bombing of American embassies in Kelocations.”
nya and Tanzania in 1998.
Yet at the same time it says: “The muja“You see something very similar here,”
hideen are sincere in wanting to spare the
said Soufan. “It’s the same playbook.”
blood of their brother Muslims, and they
In a second document dated Feb. 29,
don’t want a Muslim to die from the bullets
2012 — just two weeks after al-Shabab joins
directed at the enemies of God.”
al-Qaida — the organization warns Muslims
This is a concession for an organization
to stay away from buildings occupied by
that since its inception had killed people
4 Al-Qaida • Sparing Muslims | The Associated Press
Ben Curtis • AP
A mourner walks past portraits of Kenya’s President Uhuru
Kenyatta’s nephew Mbugua Mwangi, left, and Mwangi’s
fiancee Rosemary Wahito, right, who were both killed.
constantly, said Rudolph Atallah, who
tracked Shabab as Africa counterterrorism
director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2003 to 2007.
“They would just go and mow people
down,” Atallah said. “They are now sending
a clear message that, ‘Look, we’re different
... We’re no longer indiscriminately killing.
We’re protecting innocent Muslims and we
are trying to kill quote-unquote ‘infidels,’
nonbelievers.”
A similar tactic paid off in January after
al-Qaida-linked terrorist Moktar Belmoktar
attacked a gas installation in Algeria, Atallah said. When his fighters freed hundreds of
Muslim employees, a Facebook page dedicated to him exploded with “Likes.”
5
Al-Qaida • Sparing Muslims | The Associated Press
Several hours after the gunshots at Westgate Mall, the people cowering inside the
Barclays bank heard a commotion. As the attackers approached, the Jewish businessman
spit on his hand to erase the words he had by
then committed to memory.
The door opened.
He exhaled. It was the police.
Several floors above, 14-year-old Patel
looked for a place to hide on the roof. When
the jihadists came up the stairs and threw
a grenade, he didn’t hesitate. He jumped,
crushing his ankle on the pavement below.
He said he would not have known how to
answer their questions.
Associated Press writers Jason Straziuso
in Nairobi and Andrew O. Selsky in
Johannesburg contributed to this report.
The documents are available in Arabic and
English at http://hosted.ap.org/specials/
interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaidapapers-state-scholars.pdf
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaida-paperssomalia-fatwa.pdf
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_
international/_pdfs/al-qaida-papers-somalian-brothers.pdf
10
Rebecca Blackwell • AP
Sidi Fassoukoy, searching for his missing brother, unearths the remains of two men buried in the desert.
Dec. 9, 2013
AP reporter’s quest to find bodies
ends in desert
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — Across the
desert, the wind combs the sand into smooth
ripples that roll out evenly for miles. So
when a hole is dug, you see it immediately.
The sand looks agitated. Its pattern is disturbed.
That’s how you know where the bodies
are buried.
1 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
Close to three dozen people in northern
Mali disappeared earlier this year, killed or
taken away by the country’s military, according to human rights groups. The victims
were caught in a backlash against Arabs and
Tuaregs, desert people who form a small and
shrinking ethnic minority in Mali. As the
West Africa bureau chief for The Associated
Press, I wanted to know what had happened
to them.
Over six months, my colleagues and I
tracked down what we would rather not have
found: Six bodies in the desert, including
that of a 70-year-old grandfather who had
become a symbol of the killings. In each case,
the victims had last been seen taken away by
the Malian military at gunpoint. And in at
least four of the cases, the military was found
responsible in an internal report described to
me but never released to the public.
The bodies offer concrete evidence for
killings that Mali’s government has so far
denied in public. If the government acknowledges their deaths, it could open a path to
bring those who killed the men to justice. It
also finally could return the bodies to their
bereft families,
who did not know
where their loved
When the army
ones were buried, or
came back, it
were too terrified to
was looking to
recover them.
settle scores.
Mali’s government, which has
been promised $4.2 billion in aid from the
international community, has refused to
comment. The military reacted angrily.
“You have no proof. Show me the proof!”
Col. Diarran Kone, spokesman for Mali’s
ministry of defense, told the AP last week.
After hearing that the AP investigation had
located six of the bodies, he added: “We have
nothing more to say about this.”
We found the first body almost by ac-
cident, after our car got stuck in the sand.
2 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
I was in Timbuktu to report on the end
of an al-Qaida-led occupation, which among
other things had rubbed salt into racial
wounds.
During their 10-month-long rule, alQaida in the Islamic Maghreb had driven out
the Malian army and terrorized this city. Its
Arabic-speaking fighters created racial division by giving key posts to the city’s Arabs
and Tuaregs, who shared their history of
marginalization, as well as their light skin
tone. These traditionally nomadic people
make up less than 10 percent of Mali’s population of 15.9 million, the majority of whom
are black.
When France finally sent troops into its
former colony to drive out the extremists
in January, the city was in ecstasy. Women
tore off their veils. People who had not
heard music for close to a year danced in
the streets, holding up cellphones as improvised boom boxes.
But the bitterness of the invasion lingered. And when the army came back, it was
looking to settle scores. In some cases, those
who happened to share the same skin color
as the extremists paid with their lives.
A week after my arrival at the end of
January, we began hearing rumors of bodies dumped in the desert. My colleague Baba
Ahmed, AP’s correspondent in Mali, drove
north to the dunes, where his car got mired
in the sand.
The children who came to help push it
out pointed him to the spot where a mid-
Rukmini Callimachi • AP
Ani Boka Arby weeps as the body of her husband,
Mohamed Lamine, is unearthed.
dle-aged man’s white robe stuck out of the
ground. He’d been dumped less than a mile
outside the city, a few hundred yards from a
soccer field.
By the time I got there, the people living
nearby seemed to know everything about
the man lying beneath just one foot of sand,
starting with his ethnicity: “L’Arabe,” they
said. Arab.
The man, Mohamed Lamine, turned
out to be the headmaster of a local Quranic
school. We found his frightened wife, who
confirmed that she had seen her husband
loaded into the back of a military truck at
gunpoint.
She agreed to come to the grave in the
dark, before dawn, with her parents. When
she recognized her husband’s robe, Ani Bokar Arby screamed out. Next to his head lay
a spent bullet.
Just a few yards away, we found the body
3 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
of another Arab man, Mohamed Tidiane, a
carpet seller taken the same day and identified by Lamine’s family.
These first two bodies taught us where
and how to look: Drive north to a concrete
cement flame built, ironically, as a memorial
to peace. Then scan the undulating surface,
until the sand gives itself away.
Since January, Human Rights Watch has
reported 24 killings of civilians by the Malian military, 11 disappearances, and more
than 50 cases of abuse. Victims said they
were beaten, electrocuted, waterboarded and
injected with an acid-like substance. Amnesty International released similar findings
last week, citing 24 killings and 11 disappearances, although it’s unclear if they were the
same ones.
Tens of thousands of Arabs and Tuaregs
fled to neighboring countries, leaving behind a maze of boarded-up houses and the
concrete shells of looted businesses. Only a
Rebecca Blackwell • AP
Mohamed Ould Ali holds up a cellphone showing a picture
of his father Ali Ould Kabbad, known as “Vieux Ali.”
handful stayed in Timbuktu.
It was around this time that I heard
about Ali Ould Kabbad, the Arab grandfather
also known to his family and friends simply
as “Vieux Ali” or “Old Ali.”
Despite owning several hundred head of
cattle, Vieux Ali lived simply, wearing the
same plastic sandals so often that the band
over his left toe had given out.
His children begged him to leave, I later
learned from them. But he wouldn’t hear
of it. He shook his Malian identity card in
their faces.
After all, he had already lived through
three military crackdowns on Arabs
and Tuaregs, who
His ancestors
are locked into an
had lived in
unhappy marriage
Timbuktu since
with the counat least the
try’s black majority because of land
1500s.
borders dating back
to French colonial rule. Every time Tuareg
separatists rebelled, the military responded
with blunt force, killing both rebels and
light-skinned civilians who looked like them.
Vieux Ali, a descendant of one of Timbuktu’s oldest Arab families, proudly pointed
out that the graves of his ancestors lay just
feet from the 400-year-old tomb of Sidi
Mahmoud, the city’s patron saint. It was
proof, he said, that his ancestors had lived in
Timbuktu since at least the 1500s.
Why should he flee his own country,
4 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
he asked, where he and his father and his
grandfather were born? Hadn’t his black
neighbors said they would vouch for him?
He took the precaution of presenting soldiers at the Malian military camp with a bull.
He said it was a gift for liberating the city,
though privately his family acknowledged it
was an attempt to buy his safety. The soldiers chased him out.
“That white man, get him out of here!”
one of the soldiers is heard saying in footage captured by television station France 24.
“We don’t want any of their kind here.”
By the time the soldiers came for him, he
had earned the nickname of “The Last Arab
of Timbuktu.”
On the morning of Feb. 14, the troops
barricaded the street and surrounded his
shop, according to witnesses. Vieux Ali was
shaking so much, he couldn’t get into the
back of their pickup. They shoved him inside
and made him lie under a tan-colored tarp.
They were about to drive away when
Maoloud Fassoukoy — one of Vieux Ali’s
black neighbors — pushed his way past the
cordon. He ran to the truck, screaming “No!
No! No! He’s not the enemy!”
The soldiers grabbed Fassoukoy too,
and forced him to lie under the same tan
tarp.
The truck meandered through the sandswept lanes of Timbuktu, and by the end of
the day a total of nine men were missing.
Except for Fassoukoy, all were Arab.
Pascal Guyot • AP Pool
Malian soldiers sit aboard a vehicle near Bourem, northern Mali.
The truck left the city, heading north.
Toward the desert.
After he disappeared, Vieux Ali be-
came a symbol of those who had gone missing. Supporters created a Facebook page. His
lined face, grandfatherly air and insistence
that he considered himself Malian moved
people.
His presumed killing was a “test case,”
according to Corinne Dufka, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch.
5 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
“Mali is hanging in the balance. It could
go either way,” she said. “Depending on how
this case is resolved, it can either reinforce
the rule of law. Or reinforce impunity.”
However, the families of the nine missing men were too petrified to go to the
dunes. And the army denied the killings to
the public.
“What bodies?” asked Kone from the
Ministry of Defense. “The Malian army respects human rights. We are here to protect
the population.”
Among the Arabs who had fled were the
relatives of my colleague, Baba Ahmed, who
is himself an Arab from Timbuktu. It wasn’t
long before concerned childhood friends
began urging Baba to leave too.
Baba insisted on staying, saying he was
protected by his affiliation with an international news organization. But while we were
at the pharmacy counter a few days after
Vieux Ali’s arrest, a military truck sped up. A
soldier burst in and glared at Baba. Then he
paused, realizing we
were together.
We left the solI asked the
dier at the counter.
driver I had
As we went out, I
hired to sleep
noticed a tan tarp
outside my room covering the bed of
the military truck,
for protection.
just like the one that
had covered up Vieux Ali.
I couldn’t escape the conclusion that they
had come to take Baba away.
Baba left, and I stayed in Timbuktu
for another two weeks. Each successive
translator I hired refused to go to the dunes.
Soldiers began making unannounced
visits to my hotel, asking to speak to me.
Late one night, a Malian hotel employee
approached me, smelling of alcohol. “I know
what you are doing,” he said. “Everyone
knows you’re here to sully the reputation of
our troops.”
That afternoon, I asked the driver I had
6 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
hired to sleep outside my room for protection.
I decided it was no longer safe to stay.
Just before my departure, a source inside the
Malian military asked to see me alone. He
drew me a map.
Drive north, he said, past the cement
flame, then veer left. All the other times I
had veered right.
“Just wander around those dunes and
you’ll see them,” he said. “The bodies are
there.”
The next day, as I walked from dune to
dune, I found an area where the dirt had
coagulated. It was harder and darker, as if
someone had poured water over the sand.
The driver grabbed a shovel. We dug a
few feet until we could smell the body and
then stopped. The sand looked wet. Flies
gathered.
Later that day, I brought Ali’s son, Ibrahim Ould Ali, and three relatives of the other
victims to the spot. They took turns digging.
Within minutes, the fingers of the dead man
emerged. The victim had been buried face
down, hands tied behind his back, his eyes
bound with his turban.
I saw the dread leave Ibrahim’s face. It
was not his father.
A second man shared the same grave.
Both were Tuaregs, by their features and
hair. We would later learn the military had
grabbed them from a village outside Timbuktu in January.
I left Mali.
Every few days at first, and then every
few weeks, I received a call from Ibrahim,
Vieux Ali’s son. In broken French, he would
ask me if I had news of his father.
The last time he called, it was to say he
too had fled Timbuktu. He said: “The soldiers told me they would do the same thing
to me as they had to my father.”
In July, when I returned to Timbuktu
to cover the country’s presidential election,
my source inside the Malian military agreed
to meet me at my hotel.
He arrived with a soldier who had helped
investigate the killings of the nine men for
an internal military report, written under
heavy pressure from human rights groups
and the French. Based on the report, he said,
the Ministry of Defense had detained five
soldiers for questioning, but quietly let them
go a few weeks later.
The families never got the bodies. Nor
did the military ever confirm what we presumed by now: All nine were dead.
Nobody would let me use their names,
because they were still too terrified of military reprisals. But finally, I pieced together
what had happened to Ali.
On the day of Ali’s death in February,
Rebecca Blackwell • AP
Mohamed Ould Ali holds a note with the names of the men who were arrested and disappeared on Feb. 14 along with his father.
7 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
they unearthed the nine bodies to
confirm the killings, then reburied them.
The investigator brought the
shepherd to me, while I waited
in my car near the dunes. The
shepherd wore a tightly-wound
black turban that exposed only
his eyes, never taking it off. He
took me to the burial site without
a word.
For the last time, we drove
north past the cement monuRebecca Blackwell • AP
ment to a peace that has long
Mohamed Ould Ali describes what family members witnessed when his father
Ali Ould Kabbad, was arrested.
eluded Mali.
This time we went down a
path I had not travelled before.
a shepherd had just sold a load of charcoal
Near a clump of desert grasses, the shepherd
at the Timbuktu market, according to the
signaled to stop.
investigator. As the shepherd walked back
He walked over to the base of a dune,
across the desert with his donkey to his
bent down and traced an X in the sand with
camp, he saw a military truck parked on the
his finger. He made two more X’s a few paces
other side of a dune.
away. Then he walked off.
He ducked. Then he hurried back to
I yelled after him — which one is Vieux
town, where everyone was talking about the
Ali’s grave? How many feet down? Petrified,
men who had just disappeared.
he kept walking.
He returned the next day. On the other
I left a trail of paper torn from my noteside of the dune, he saw three humps. The
book in order to remember my way back
normally feathery surface of the sand was
to the X’s in the sand. Then I went to Ali’s
stiff with water.
house — but the entire family had fled.
That’s where a unit of Malian troops had
The only victim’s relative I could find
slit the men’s throats with a knife, buried
was Sidi Fassoukoy, the younger brother of
the bodies and washed their hands with a
Maoloud Fassoukoy, the neighbor who had
bottle of mineral water, the shepherd told
tried to stop the soldiers from taking Ali and
investigators. He led them to the spot, where
had been arrested too.
8 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
At the dune, Sidi began peeling away
the layers of sand with a shovel. Something
white poked out of the dirt.
It was the sole of a shoe.
Sidi took the white Reebok off the foot of
the dead man.
“This is my shoe,” he said, holding it up.
“I bought this shoe and gave it to my brother
as a present.”
Nearly half a year after the murder, the
flesh was gone. All that was left were bones,
inside clothes.
Sidi uncovered an orange-and-white
batik fabric covering the man’s chest. He
grabbed his own
trousers to show
It was getting
the same print. The
dark, and I was
same tailor had
made both sets of
starting to
clothes.
panic. What
He pulled the
if the soldiers
dead man up by
found us?
the top of his batik
shirt. What was left
of the body fell away with the sand.
“This is Maoloud Fassoukoy,” he said.
“This is my brother.”
It was getting dark, and I was starting to
panic. What if the soldiers found us? I realized we would only have time to dig under
the first of the three spots marked by the
shepherd.
We were about to leave when we found
another body. The dead man was wearing
rubber sandals, and Sidi recognized them too.
9 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
“These are the shoes of the old man,” he
said. “This is Vieux Ali.”
Vieux Ali left behind 16 children.
His eldest son, Mohamed Ould Ali, lives
in Bamako, Mali’s capital. He hired a lawyer
to try to urge the courts to investigate his
father’s disappearance, but in vain.
His eyes well with tears as he looks at the
digital photographs of his father’s shallow
grave. He instantly recognizes his father’s
sandals — plastic, wide-soled, the closest
thing the old man could find to orthopedic
shoes.
Mohamed calls his younger brother,
Ibrahim, now in exile in Mauritania, who
was with Vieux Ali on the day of his disappearance. Ibrahim recalls how his father had
worn out the plastic band on the left toe of
his sandals.
Mohamed enlarges the photograph.
He points to a slight tear in the plastic just
above the left toe.
“It’s removed the doubt,” Mohamed
says. “It’s like I can finally see the truth. I
was chasing after a mirage. Because of my
love for him, I kept hoping that he would be
found alive.” He adds: “Now can they continue to deny it?”
In his wallet, the son keeps a yellowing
post-it note. It lists the names of the nine men
grabbed that day: Maoloud Fassoukoy, Ali
Ould Kabbad, Mohamed Lamine, Dana Dahama, Hama Ould Dahama, Mohamed Ould
Mahmoud, Tidiane Ould Mahmoud, Sidi Mo-
Rebecca Blackwell • AP
Zeinab Coulibaly, left, mother of Maouloud Fassoukoy, sits with another relative in their home.
hamed Ould Ahmed, Youba Ould Ahmed.
There are still bodies missing.
And there are still two places back in the
desert that a shepherd marked with an X to
show where they may lie.
Even though the wind long ago erased
10 Al-Qaida • Finding the Bodies | The Associated Press
the marks in the sand.
This story was written by Rukmini
Callimachi, the Associated Press bureau
chief for West Africa. Associated Press
writer Baba Ahmed contributed to this
report from Timbuktu and Bamako, Mali.
Rukmini Callimachi is the West Africa Bureau Chief for
The Associated Press. She is based in Dakar, Senegal, and covers a
region that spans 20 countries, including Mali, Niger and Chad.
Callimachi is an award-winning journalist who has worked with the
AP for a decade. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for International
Reporting in 2009 for her series on child trafficking in Africa, and
ranked as a finalist for the Batten Medal the following year. In 2011,
she won the Eugene S. Pulliam national award for writing for her
story about a community that formed across the world in the wake of
the collapse of the Hotel Montana in Haiti’s earthquake.
In 2012, Callimachi won the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage
for her coverage of the conflict in Ivory Coast, including discovering
the scene of an unreported massacre, which also garnered the Best
in Show prize for the National Headliners. In 2013, she won ASNE’s
Distinguished Writing Award, and the Deadline Club’s award for best
feature for a series of stories on hunger in Africa. She has twice been
a finalist for the Michael Kelly Award, and has been honored several
times by the Associated Press Media Editors.
Born in Bucharest, Romania, Callimachi graduated with honors from
Dartmouth College and completed her master’s in linguistics at
Exeter College, Oxford. Her poetry has been published in more than
20 journals, including The American Scholar. In 2000, she co-led the
Royal Geographical Society of London’s expedition to Tibet. She lives
in Dakar, Senegal.
Al-Qaida • Bio | The Associated Press
Al-Qaida’s Papers — Supplemental Materials
Al-Qaida Papers interactive
One of the largest collections of al-Qaida documents ever made public
http://hosted.ap.org/interactives/2012/al-qaida/?START=al-qaida-papers
AP Newsbriefs
Dec 11, 2013: US “concerned” by censorship of Mali Website
Dec 16, 2013: Mali will open investigation into killings
Poynter Blog Reactions
May 30, 2013: Abandoned documents yield second big scoop for AP reporter
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/214611/abandoned-documentsyield-second-big-scoop-for-ap-reporter/
Dec 11, 2013: “Not how a journalist normally operates”
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/233101/ap-reporter-search-formali-bodies-not-how-a-journalist-normally-operates/
NPR Interviews
May 29, 2013: Al-Qaida letter reprimands difficult employee
http://www.npr.org/2013/05/29/187009374/ap-reporter-gathers-al-qaida-documents-in-mali
Dec. 10, 2013: AP reporter tracks down bodies In Mali
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=249920065&ft=1&f=1004
BBC Newsday Interview
Bodies discovered buried in the Malian desert
https://soundcloud.com/bbc-world-service/ap-reporter-finds-hidden
PRI Interview
Al-Qaeda ‘Memo’ Left Behind by Fleeing Mali Militants
http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-02-18/al-qaeda-memo-left-behind-fleeing-malimilitants