Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 13, 2006
Introduction: Al Qaida's death manual
Of the several Al Qaida documents recovered
worldwide, few are more explicit and detailed in covering all aspects of setting
up a terror organisation as the one found by the Manchester metropolitan police.
The book of terror begins by noting that "socratic
debates" and "platonic ideals" have no place in the struggle
to establish what it describes as "Islamic governments". "The
dialogue has to be one of assassination, bombing, destruction ... the diplomacy
of the cannon and machine gun."
The manual has amazing details on securing
city apartments right down to prearranged codes for answering telephones,
changing locks, preparing secret spaces for storing weapons, preference for
ground floors, using newly-developed areas where neighbours do not know one
another, special knocking signals and keeping curtains well drawn.
There are invocations to keeping the "message
of God" pure and to guard against heresies. Then a long list of grievances,
of atrocities perpetuated by "apostate rulers" who replaced colonialists
and who cracked down on Islamists. It speaks of young men who came to see
that "Islam does not coincide or make a truce with unbelief, but rather
confronts it".
After an ideological grounding, the brass
tacks about a "military organisation". The requirements include
forged documents, apartments, communication, transport, information (gathering)
and arms and ammunition. The missions could mean spying, abducting enemies,
assassinations, freeing jailed "brothers", spreading rumours, planting
bombs.
Members of the organisation have to be indoctrinated
as this resolves "conceptual problems", they must be psychologically
tough to withstand pressures of working in dangerous circumstances, be willing
to embrace martyrdom and be unquestioning in carrying out orders. They must
be "calm" so as to endure "bloodshed, murder and arrest".
There are instructions on prudent use of finances
and "proper" procedures for falsifying documents as there are instructions
on use of "bases" which would function as command centres for secret
operations. "Hiding places in mountains and harsh terrain are to be used
to dispatch jehad groups for assassinations and bombings."
