24 September 2014 Middle East

What is the Khorasan Group?


US cruise missiles struck al-Qaeda strongholds in
north-western Syria on 23 September

Shortly before the United States and its Arab
allies launched air strikes on Islamic State (IS)
positions across Syria on Tuesday, cruise
missiles launched from US warships in the Gulf
and Red Sea struck two areas west of the city of
Aleppo.
The targets were not leaders of IS, the jihadist
group that has declared the creation of a
caliphate in the large swathes of Syria and Iraq
under its control, but seasoned al-Qaeda
operatives who the US says had established a
safe haven to plot attacks on the West.
The missiles targeted training camps, a bomb
factory, a communication building, and command-
and-control facilities belonging to what
Washington calls "the Khorasan Group" .
Until then, very little information about the
shadowy organisation had been made public,
although American politicians had been given
classified briefings.
"This is a group that has been known to us for
two years," US Attorney General Eric Holder told
Yahoo News.
"We hit them last night out of a concern that they
were getting close to an execution date of some
of the plans that we have seen."
'Low profile'
The Khorasan Group - a name apparently coined
by the US - is believed to be made up of about
50 veteran militants from Afghanistan and
Pakistan, which jihadists refer to as Khorasan, as
well as North Africa and Chechnya.


Khorasan Group militants are believed to have
embedded themselves within the al-Nusra
Front

US officials said they had been sent to Syria by
al-Qaeda's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, not to
fight the government of President Bashar al-
Assad but to "develop external attacks, construct
and test improvised explosive devices and recruit
Westerners to conduct operations".
The militants are thought to have embedded
themselves within al-Qaeda's local affiliate, the
al-Nusra Front, and obtained land and buildings
in its strongholds.
Several al-Qaeda veterans - including al-Nusra's
spokesman Abu Firas al-Suri and its top military
commander, Abu Humam al-Suri - moved to
Syria over the past year and appeared in al-
Nusra propaganda.
The Khorasan cell's alleged leader, Muhsin al-
Fadhli, was also believed to have arrived last
year , but he kept a low profile.
The 33-year-old Kuwaiti was a confidante of the
late Osama bin Laden and one of the few al-
Qaeda operatives to receive advanced warning of
the 11 September 2001 attacks, according to the
US.


The US offered a $7m reward in 2012 for
information that led to the capture or killing of
Muhsin al-Fadhli


In 2005, the US treasury department said Fadhli
was based in the Gulf and had been providing
support to al-Qaeda militants fighting US-led
forces in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Seven years later, the state department offered a
$7m reward for information that led to the
capture or killing of Fadhli, saying he had become
the leader of al-Qaeda's network in Iran and was
responsible for the movement of money and
fighters for its operations in the region.
Despite his senior role, analysts have expressed
doubts about US assertions that Fadhli
subsequently assumed the leadership of the
Khorasan Group. Mustafa Alani of the Dubai-
based Gulf Research Centre said he was "more a
preacher than a commander" .
'Major attacks'
US officials were hopeful that social media
reports that Fadhli was among those killed in the
recent missile strikes were true, but cautioned
that the group would remain a threat.
"His loss would be significant, but as we've seen
before, any decapitation is only a short-term
gain. The hydra will grow another head,"
Congressman Adam Schiff, a member of the
House Intelligence Committee, told the New York
Times .

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula made a
bomb concealed in the underwear of Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab

Classified US intelligence assessments said the
Khorasan Group was collaborating with the
Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP) to test ways to get explosives past
airport security, according to the Associated
Press .
AQAP's Saudi bomb-maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri , is
believed to have built the device that Nigerian
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab concealed in his
underwear and tried to detonate in an aircraft
over Detroit in 2009.
US officials say the intelligence that Asiri might
be helping the Khorasan Group was the reason
the Transportation Security Administration's
decided in July to ban uncharged mobile phones
and laptops from flights to the US originating in
Europe and the Middle East.
By September, intelligence reports indicated that
the Khorasan Group was "in the final stages of
plans to execute major attacks", Pentagon
spokesman Lt-Gen William Mayville said.
Although it was not clear when, where or how the
militants intended to strike, one US report said
they were planning to build an bomb that would
be difficult to detect by lacing non-metallic
objects like toothpaste tubes and clothes with
explosives.
The US Director of National Intelligence, James
Clapper, told a recent intelligence gathering that
"in terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan
may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic
State".
Mr Holder said strikes on the Khorasan Group
would "probably continue until we are at a stage
where we think we have degraded their ability to
get at our allies or to the homeland".

Source: http://m.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29350271?ocid=socialflow_twitter