There appears to be something new afoot in al-Qaida, and it all points towards Turkestan on the one hand, and leadership elements of al-Qaida on the other.
Here are the data points.
1. al-Fajr Presents... a website?
On or about about 5 October 2006 the al-Fajr Media Center - currently the official content distribution network of al-Qaida - announced a new web site: kanzhassan.com. This is not normal behavior. al-Fajr is best known for turning the content distribution system pioneered by the likes of Irhabi007 into a well-oiled machine. The result of this was that the brothers dutifully posted links to the site, and then sat around asking: "Um, what site is this and who is this brother Abu Amrw?" Call it Insta-Cleric™
kanzhassan.com, site of Abdel Hakim Hassan (Abu Amrw)
The cleric Abdel Hakin Hassan appears to have been laboring in relative obscurity for some time now. His site is not hosted by a web hosting outfit, but rather by person or persons who claim to be in Pakistan and who also operate the official site of the Islamic Party of Turkistan - also known as, a part of, or affiliated with - the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
For more information regarding this matter, see the previously restricted-access SoFIR report kanzhassan.com: site of cleric Abdel Hakim Hassan (Abu Amrw)
2. al-Fajr Presents...
On or about 5 November 2006 the al-Fajr Media Center did what they do best - they announced and distributed a video.
lynx --head --dump http://www.up-f.org/x/JHYGG330.rar
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2006 21:02:37 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwl
imited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635.SR1.2 mod_ssl/2.8.28 OpenSSL/0.9.7e
Last-Modified: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 21:24:16 GMT
ETag: "7edc39-f6f09e2-454e5680"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 258935266
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain
The subject of the video? The activities and beliefs of a jihadist group that has been laboring in relative obscurity for some time now. Where? In eastern Turkestan (aka western China). Within a few days the usual suspects took note and released reports regarding this video. Take particular note of SITE's report regarding the books in the background.
...Click image to view archive of announcement.
On the archived page you will also find a long list of download locations for the video - no need to put up with streaming video feeds that don't let you save the file, watermarks that obscure possibly significant content, or other attempts to turn open source intelligence into proprietary product.
As for the video itself, we admit to having little interest in such as this:
Uncorroborated attack claim one
Uncorroborated attack claim two
Finger-wagging for Allah
More finger-wagging for Allah
"and now for something completely different..."
"for more info about Turkmenistan, read al-Suri's book"
The logo you see is that of Setmariam Naser/Abu Musab al-Suri:
Logo of al-Suri, from the al-Ansar forum
thread 25634, 19 January 2005
Makes one wonder where, exactly, Setmariam Naser/Abu Musab al-Suri was hiding out after the US invasion of Afghanistan and before his capture last year in Pakistan. If we were inclined to speculate, it would be somewhere in the Ferghana valley, perhaps with Abdel Hakim Hassan.
3. Meanwhile, back in Pakistan...
The following UPI report (citing Pakistani paper The Dawn) notes a Turkoman connection to the recent attempt to launch attacks in Islamabad:
Over the weekend, the Dawn newspaper -- citing an unnamed senior investigator -- reported that the leader of a shadowy Uzbek extremist splinter group, the Islamic Jihad Group, had given the go-ahead for a planned series of attacks in Islamabad last month.The attacks were foiled when a number of artillery shells, wired to be detonated by mobile phones, were found by authorities less than a mile from the parliament building and Musharraf's residence, on Oct. 5.
The Uzbek was named by Dawn as Nadzhmiddin Kamilidinovich Janov. The enwspaper said he used the aliases Yakhyo and Commander Ahmad and was based in Mir Ali, in North Waziristan -- one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal agencies that lie on Pakistan's lawless and inaccessible border with Afghanistan. Dawn said Janov was the leader of a splinter from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
The Islamic Jihad Group has been designated a terror group by the U.S. government, but little is known about it. The group claimed responsibility for several attacks in Uzbekistan in April 2004, but has not been heard from since.
Eleven people have been charged in the plot and Dawn said interrogations had revealed the link to Janov. "While the fingers were in Islamabad, the tail was in Mir Ali," the anonymous investigator told the newspaper.
Posted on 11 November 2006 @ 17:52
