Al-Qaeda and the Zimbabwe nexus

[Virginian]

Is this where Osama has been hiding, too?

Al-Qaeda and the Zimbabwe nexus

R W Johnson ponders the existence of a political triad linking Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qadaffi via Robert Mugabe


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This was how it came about in September 2000 that Qadaffi asked Mugabe to receive an al-Qaeda contact, Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's Egyptian deputy. "In a way there'd been a dry run," Walter said. "Mugabe already had close relations with Yasser Arafat and when Arafat visited Mugabe in 1998 he brought with him six Lebanese members of Islamic Djihad, one of the most fanatical anti-Zionist groups. These guys were all men wanted by the Israelis but they stayed on in Harare for two weeks after Arafat left before exiting via Zambia to Libya (a fact later confirmed to me by another ex-CIO operative). Qadaffi learnt all about this from Arafat - the two men are close - and clearly realized that Mugabe might be willing to host wanted Arab terrorists."

Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is one of the world's most wanted men. A former paediatrician, he is regarded as the brains of al-Qaeda - besides his nine aliases the FBI also records that he is known as The Doctor and The Teacher, as befits a man who has been a fundamentalist militant since 1966. Fully one third of al-Qaeda's fighters come from his Al-Djihad movement, including Mohammed Atta, the man who flew the first airliner into the twin towers. But why should Qadaffi want to introduce Zawahiri to Mugabe? "We surmised that what had happened was that Osama had sent Zawahiri to Qadaffi to ask for his help," said Walter. "At the time, of course, we were in the dark but after the September 11 attack everything suddenly made sense. You see, this was exactly a year before 9/11 and al-Qaeda must have been planning that event well over a year ahead. They must have known that one of the things they needed most were safe bases far from the action. Qadaffi could hardly provide anyone with that - he would be an immediate suspect and anyway was eager to keep the Americans off his back. But Zimbabwe would have occurred to him right away - by then he was very close to Mugabe - and because we're not a Muslim country no one would suspect us." The logic was indeed obvious. From al-Qaeda's point of view Zimbabwe would have had many advantages. Once an atrocity on the scale of September 11 took place the US would clearly scan the Muslim world for possible al-Qaeda hideouts. Sudan and Afghanistan were clearly already potential targets, as were African countries with large Muslim populations. But Zimbabwe was not in that category - and it also had, as most African countries don't, the modern communications and banking facilities al-Qaeda needed.
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