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Bin Laden’s Son Is Poised To Unify Terrorists Worldwide 3 by samebony1: 3:00pm On Sep 14, 2017
Inside the Islamic State tunnel network
The next voice on the tape was that of Hamza. He hailed the “martyrdom” of his father and his brother Khalid; praised al-Qaeda’s leaders in Syria, Yemen, and North Africa; lauded the attacks on Fort Hood and the Boston Marathon; and called for jihadis to “[t]ake the battlefield from Kabul, Baghdad, and Gaza to Washington, London, Paris, and Tel Aviv.”
Further statements appeared in May, July, and August 2016, prompting the U.S. State Department in January 2017 to place Hamza on its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. Two more messages then emerged in May 2017.
The theme of encouraging attacks on Jewish and Western interests is one to which Hamza has returned again and again in his messages. For example, the first of his May 2017 statements is entitled “Advice for Martyrdom-Seekers in the West.”
Over footage of the aftermath of the Fort Hood massacre, a television reconstruction of events leading up to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and images connected with other attacks, Hamza encouraged jihadis all over the world to “Sell your soul cheaply for the pleasure of [God]” and urged them to read Inspire magazine, the online publication of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that taught the Boston bombers how to turn a pressure cooker into a weapon. A caption in the video montage encourages “stabbing with knives and using vehicles and trucks” as an alternative to guns and bombs.
Strikingly, Hamza directs followers not to travel to theaters of war within the Muslim world, but instead to attack targets in the West and Russia. “Perhaps you are longing for emigration,” he says. “Perhaps you yearn for sacrifice in the battlefields. Know that inflicting punishment on Jews and Crusaders where you are is more vexing and severe for the enemy.” He urges “martyrs” that “the message you intend to convey through your blessed operation must be explained unequivocally in the media” and suggests talking points to align these explanations with al-Qaeda’s own propaganda.
In the same statement, Hamza sets up a hierarchy of targets to be attacked, starting with those who “transgress” against Islam (such as the editors of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo), followed by Jewish interests, the United States, other NATO member states, and, lastly, Russia. It is noteworthy that Hamza accords attacks on Jewish interests a higher priority than those against Americans, whereas Osama bin Laden in his 1998 fatwa relating to “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders” depicted them as coequal targets.
This hierarchy may reflect Hamza’s renewed emphasis on the Palestinian cause, dramatically stated in the title of his May 2016 statement, “Jerusalem Is a Bride and Our Blood Is Her Dowry.” However, this should not be taken as evidence that al-Qaeda is about to begin attacking Israel directly. It should be recalled that Osama bin Laden himself was quite cynical about the matter, admitting privately to his lieutenants that al-Qaeda’s rhetoric about Palestine was no more than “noise” designed to drum up popular support in the Arab world.
In two of his statements, Hamza, like his father before him, urges regime change in Saudi Arabia. The first, released in August 2016, bemoans AQAP’s ouster the previous April from Mukalla in Yemen, alleging that it was accomplished “with direct American participation.” (In fact, Mukalla was liberated by a Saudi-led coalition of Arab forces.) The second statement was released during U.S. President Donald Trump’s state visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, although Hamza does not mention the trip in the text itself. In the latter statement, Hamza reiterates his call for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy, claiming that the House of Saud has been doing the bidding of foreigners ever since the Kingdom’s founder, Ibn Saud, received British aid during World War I.
Hamza’s messages frequently repeat, almost word-for-word, sentences uttered by the elder bin Laden during al-Qaeda’s heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This tendency can be heard, for example, in Hamza’s diatribes on the Palestinian Territories, on what he calls the “occupation” of Saudi Arabia, and on the idea that the United States is “stealing” the wealth of the Muslim world.
(President Trump, no doubt unwittingly, played into the last of these narrative strands on his visit to Saudi Arabia, when he thanked King Salman for his “massive investment in America, its industry, and its jobs” and boasted of a new arms deal that would transfer a further $110 billion to U.S. companies.)
Hamza even makes an effort to sound like his father, intoning his words with the same quiet intensity.
In his first statement, Hamza speaks of “following my father” by pledging allegiance to the leader of the Taliban. This is noteworthy in itself; whereas al-Qaeda’s other senior leaders pledge bayat to the emir of the organization (currently al-Zawahiri) who then swears fealty to the Taliban on behalf of al-Qaeda as a whole, Hamza gives his bayat directly to the Taliban leader, suggesting that, as the heir to bin Laden, he belongs to a higher class.
Other aspects of the statements confirm the impression that Hamza is being elevated to leadership. In his earlier messages, al-Qaeda’s media arm referred to Hamza as a “Brother Mujahid,” a rank-and-file designation. But beginning with his two statements released in May 2017, the organization has started calling him “Sheikh,” a title reserved for its topmost brass.
None of Hamza’s messages have been accompanied by pictures of the man himself. In fact, the most recent known images are still those of Hamza sifting through helicopter wreckage in the weeks following 9/11, when he was just 12 years old; today, he would be 27 or 28. For a recent episode of 60 Minutes, CBS News commissioned a forensic artist, Stephen Mancusi, to take images of Hamza in his boyhood and subject them to an age-progression technique.
The resulting portrait is of a young man who looks unsettlingly like his father around the same age, when he was raising money for the Afghan struggle against the Soviets. Another clue to Hamza’s appearance may come from the fact that he seems to have borrowed his half-brother Khalid’s Pakistani ID card for the abortive journey from Waziristan to Abbottabad. Khalid, as depicted in grisly photographs of his corpse lying on the stone floor of the Abbottabad house, shared his father’s long, thin nose and full lips. If Hamza does indeed resemble his father, and is willing in due time to show his face, no doubt the likeness will prove an asset in rallying jihadi support around al-Qaeda.
When Hamza’s first statement came out in August 2015, confidence in al-Zawahiri had reached an all-time low. It had just emerged that Mullah Omar had died in 2013, a year before al-Zawahiri had renewed al-Qaeda’s bayat to the Taliban leader. In other words, either al-Zawahiri had been unaware of Omar’s death—in which case he was too far out of the loop to lead—or he had known about it all along and had intentionally sworn allegiance to a dead man—a grave sin in al-Qaeda’s brand of Islam.
This revelation brought dismay and ridicule from jihadis all over the world, at a time when the Islamic State was still capturing all the headlines and attracting the lion’s share of recruits. Raising the profile of the heir to bin Laden was thus an inspired move on the part of al-Zawahiri and the other al-Qaeda top brass. But Hamza’s return will have far broader and longer-term repercussions.
Future Standard Bearer of Global Jihad?
As the Islamic State continues to crumble, many of its adherents will be looking for new banners under which to fight. They are unlikely to pledge allegiance to al-Zawahiri, whom they see as an interloper unworthy of bin Laden’s legacy. It would be an understatement to say that al-Zawahiri lacks the charisma of his predecessor. Moreover, as an Egyptian, he will always struggle to inspire loyalty among other Arabs, especially those from the Arabian Peninsula.
Hamza, by contrast, suffers from none of these handicaps. His family pedigree, not to mention his dynastic marriage to the daughter of an al-Qaeda charter member, automatically entitles him to respect from every jihadi who follows bin Laden’s ideology, which includes every Islamic State fighter. As a Saudi descended from prominent families on both his father’s and his mother’s side, he is well-placed to pull in large donations from patrons in the Gulf, particularly at a time when sectarian fervor is running high in Saudi Arabia. It is significant in this regard that Hamza has returned to his father’s rhetoric castigating the House of Saud. As with bin Laden’s 1996 declaration of jihad, this is not just a political message; it is designed to inspire potential donors.
One final aspect of Hamza’s messages is noteworthy here. Unlike other leading al-Qaeda figures, he has never once explicitly criticized the Islamic State. True, he bemoans “strife” between the various groups fighting in Iraq and Syria and calls repeatedly for unity among jihadis to face down what he describes as a “unified enemy” of “Crusaders, Jews, Alawites, rejectionists, and apostate mercenaries.”
But he carefully avoids naming the self-styled caliphate or its leaders. The Islamic State, for its part, reciprocates the favor; even as its propaganda castigates al-Zawahiri as a traitor to the cause, it never directly references Hamza. It is significant, too, that many Islamic State supporters who denounce “al-Zawahiri’s al-Qaeda” nevertheless profess admiration for Osama bin Laden. This is the best evidence that Hamza could be a unifying figure.
It is true that Hamza has never fought on the frontlines—something of which, as is seen in his letters to his father from captivity, he himself is painfully aware. This distinguishes him from the elder bin Laden, whose warrior myth was built on his exploits against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. But it is not as much of a weakness as might be thought. Hamza is not coming out of thin air; he is the favorite son of the most famous jihadi in history. And in a culture where leadership typically descends through a bloodline, pedigree trumps experience.
Moreover, while Hamza has not actually fought, he has been featured in al-Qaeda propaganda from a very young age, in videos that depict him as having been very close to his father. Perhaps most importantly of all, Hamza clearly has al-Qaeda’s senior leadership behind him. During his Iranian captivity, Hamza received training from some of al-Qaeda’s top operatives, including al-`Adl and al-Masri. Both of these men are now reportedly free and presumably available to give Hamza their counsel, something bin Laden himself lacked during the last nine years of his life.
Hamza’s ascendancy comes at a moment when al-Qaeda affiliates are growing in resources and influence across the Islamic world. Al-Nusra, the Syrian franchise now nominally subsumed into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, may have more than 20,000 militants under its command. AQAP controls or has a presence in large swathes of Yemen’s coastline and highway network. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb recently concluded a merger with several other factions, creating a jihadi conglomerate whose constituent groups collectively carried out over 250 attacks in 2016 alone.
However, since AQAP’s threats against U.S. embassies in 2013, these franchises have apparently not sought to use their power to mount attacks against the West. While al-Zawahiri has mostly limited himself to threatening the United States rhetorically, if Hamza takes the reins, there is reason to think that could change, given that his messages repeatedly call for more attacks on American soil, praising previous atrocities like the Fort Hood massacre and the Boston Marathon bombing. As has been seen, Hamza has turned to his father’s well-worn anti-American rhetoric, accusing the United States of “occupying” the Arabian Peninsula and “stealing” Muslim wealth.
Many factors suggest that Hamza could be a highly effective leader: his family pedigree, his dynastic marriage, his longstanding jihadi fervor and obvious charisma, and his closeness to al-Qaeda’s most senior operatives. It remains to be seen how, exactly, the organization will make use of him, but it is clear that his star is on the rise. That should worry policymakers in the West as well as in the Muslim world.

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