Al-Qaida in the Maghreb Responds to the Call of Abu Yahya al-Liby: “We Are At Your Disposal, O’ Abu Yahya”
By Evan Kohlmann
The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new audiotape from Abu Anas Al-Shanqiti of Al-Qaida's Committee in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). In this speech, Al-Shanqiti stated that AQIM's "swords will not be put down until they purify the Islamic Maghreb from the atrocities of the impure apostates and their grudge-filled crusader masters and their mediocre man-made laws. If they [mujahideen] achieve that, their Jihad will not just stop there, but we are initiating the race with our mujahideen brothers in East and West of Earth: in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Caucuses, Iraq, Indonesia, Palestine, the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia; we initiate the race with them to see who can first make prayer in the White House."
Al-Shanqiti's message appears to be in direct response to a June 25, 2009 Al-Qaida video featuring Shaykh Abu Yahya al-Liby entitled, “Algeria; Between the Sacrifice of Fathers and Loyalty of Children.” In the video, al-Liby sent “a greeting of love, kindness, honor, brotherhood, loyalty and support to the Muslim Algerian people and its pure selected people in al-Qa'eda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, and atop them the mujahid sheikh our brother Abu Musab Abdulwadud.” He added, “O Muslim people of Algeria, your period of sacrifice is recent, and many of the wounds of that era are still bleeding, and is it possible for a deep wound the blood remained flowing in its depth for more than one hundred and thirty years to become forgotten or erased? No!”
English transcripts of both recordings (Abu Yahya al-Liby here and Abu Anas al-Shanqiti here) are now available on the NEFA Foundation website.
