Counterterrorism Blog

An unauthorized disclosure on 7 September that revealed the existence of an Al Qaeda Internet-based communications network received extensive coverage at the time. In the context of earlier reporting by The Jamestown Foundation (see Terrorism Monitor, August 16), however, the 7 September leak points also to the likelihood of a much closer working relationship between AQ and another Jihadist group - the London-headquartered Hizb ut Tahrir (Party of Liberation) (HT) - than had been known previously. The relationship may in fact be that of Superior-Subordinate rather than that of merely independent groups espousing the same ideology.

On 7 September, four days before its apparent intended publication date on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, the ABC News website reported excerpts from a videotaped address by Usama Bin Ladin. Subsequent reporting revealed that the 7 September compromise had alerted AQ to the ability of non-members to acquire its intra-group communications and that AQ had shut down the network in very short order. Since the Internet-based network was used also to convey revenue- and personnel-related matters, that shutdown reportedly resulted in the loss of insight into far more than just pre-publication Bin Ladin videotapes. The order to shut down the AQ network reportedly was originated by Al Qaeda´s internal security apparatus and was issued to a team of technical workers in Malaysia (9 October, quoting The New York Sun).

Hizb ut Tahrir, founded in 1953 in Jerusalem and now headquartered in the UK, presently has branches in approximately 45 nations. From its beginning in then-Jordanian Jerusalem, it has become a multi-continent entity of growing power and reach (globalpolitician.com/, October 11). From Southeast Asia, through Europe and into the United States, HT is an organization on the ascendancy in terms of membership and revenues. HT has also gained considerably in notoriety, having been banned in a number of Central Asian and Western European nations because of its activities.

The similarities between AQ and HT are both numerous and striking, beginning with the public expressions of each group’s philosophy and aims. HT’s often-stated hatred of the nation of Israel, its frequent use of the term “Crusader” to characterize its opponents, and even its touting of the superiority of business and economic activity under Islam are eerily reminiscent of Al Qaeda’s pronouncements.

Membership is another area that points to a very close association between the two groups. The results of HT’s recruitment and indoctrination efforts are perhaps most visible in the number of its members who went on to greater notoriety, including ranking AQ members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Omar Khan Sharif, the attempted bomber of a bar in Tel Aviv in 2003, is another HT alumnus, as is attempted “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid.

HT’s focus in recent years, and perhaps the greatest threat posed by the group, has been on the recruitment of youth members. In that regard and as reported in the August Jamestown, HT has been producing videos that include hip-hop fashion boutiques and hip-hop bands, as well as the use of online social networks, video-sharing networks, chat forums and blogs (Terrorism Monitor, August 16). A number of observers, including those in the public sector, have remarked over the past year and a half on the increase in the number of videotaped messages released by AQ and the higher technical quality of the presentations.

It is in the context of HT’s use of and expertise in technology that the latest clue lies with respect to what is probably its true relationship to AQ. The aforementioned coverage of the 7 September disclosure included the reported AQ order to shut down its Internet-based communications network. That order, it was said, went to “a team of technical workers in Malaysia.” It is likely highly significant, then, that the first words to appear on the screen of the YouTube video are “HIZBUT TAHRIR MALAYSIA.”

Because of its worldwide presence, AQ exhibits a “distributed” form of organizational architecture to reflect the locations of its subordinates and affiliates. It is also to AQ’s advantage to disperse its subunits in order to reduce the damage if, for example, a catastrophic military strike were to be carried out on its leadership cadre and facilities in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area. AQ oversees a dispersed (and covert) financial network; its affiliates’ training camps are spread out across a number of nations. It is, therefore, absolutely vital to AQ that it maintain the capability to stay in touch with its membership. Distancing that capability geographically from the leadership cadre and placing it, for example, in another Muslim nation - Malaysia - with the expertise and the technology needed to maintain AQ’s communications capability makes very good sense from the group’s standpoint.

It is to be expected that both AQ and HT would deny that HT is a subordinate unit of AQ. Just as AQ would not publicly expose the locations of its financial holdings to negative actions, AQ would not voluntarily wittingly divulge the location, identity, or capability of the key node in its Internet-based communications network. The revelation of the destination (Malaysia) of the 7 September AQ order to shut down its network, paired with the knowledge of the location (Malaysia) of HT’s sophisticated media production facility have likely removed the last “veil” from the true nature of the hidden relationship between the two groups.