Keeping Score Against al Qaeda(Great Al Qaeda primer)

Strategypage ^ | February 20, 2005 | James Dunnigan

[Destro]

We got some nobodies - while al-Qaeda's "operations chiefs in Kosovo" are at large. Maybe they escaped camp Bondsteel like the mad bomber did?

[Hoplite]

Maybe you're just talking clueless smack, like usual.

[mark502inf]

Straight, I saw the discussion above on the Kosovo/Macedonia Al Qaeda ops chief at large, looked it up on your list and was surprised to see it was Ali Ahmeti. I was on a military team working in Macedonia in 2001 and have some familiarity with the cast of characters. Ahmeti was a honcho in the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army in 2001, but was not a member of Al Qaeda. He helped negotiate the Ohrid Agreement, is the head of an Albanian political party in Macedonia and is now a member of parliament. Because of his NLA activities, he was on the US Treasury terrorist list, but was taken off on 29 May 2003. That's him on the right meeting later in 2003 with Lord Robertson, the Secretary-General of NATO.

You can follow his career here and here and here.

Besides the head of NATO he has also met in the last 6 months with Secretary Rumsfeld and Under Secretary of State Grossman who would both certainly be surprised to hear of Ali Ahmeti's status as the Al Qaeda "Kosovo/Macedonia operations chief" currently "at large", but probably not as surprised as Ahmeti would be himself!

Somebody who is not on your list is [mentioned by Hoplite above] Claud al-Cader (Kader?), a North African (Algerian?) who was bin Laden's emissary to the KLA in 1998. When the USA told the KLA not to cooperate with Al Qaeda, they booted al-Cader & he is now serving a 20 year prison sentence in Albania.

[Straight Vermonter]

Thanks. There are just too many of these guys to keep track of them all.

I haven't updated the list for more than a month since my wife has been ill. Now that I have her home again I will be doing a big update soon.

[pythagorean]

Kader and other individual Al Qaeda operatives are expendable and happily sacrifice themselves to the grand cause of Islamic jihad. The emphasis of Islamists (whether or not under the Al Qaeda banner) is mainly placed on long-term penetration by building grassroots support. In Albania there is apparently increasingly fertile ground and they are about to make a big step of progress, as happily reported by islamonline:

Albanians to Have First Islamic University.

Since the Albanian state is not funding this university, there are some pretty good guesses who will jump to fill the void.

[joan]

It seems Destro's account has been banned or suspended. What happened - does anyone know?

[Incorrigible]

Awww man! Not again!

Destro please come back!

[DTA]

>>>>>>Al-Qaeda’s military committee has also been decimated. One is dead (killed by a CIA Predator firing Hellfire missiles), fourteen, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, have been captured. These include the commanders in Singapore, Java, Southern Europe, and Japan. Several are at large, including the operations chiefs in Kosovo, Tunisia, and Somalia.<<<<<

Mark, accortding to NATO intel "there is no AQ in Kosovo. Never."

[mark502inf]

DTA, overall Straight Vermonter does a pretty good job on his terrorist scorecard, but if you look at who is listed as the "operations chief in Kosovo" on his matrix, it is Ali Ahmeti. As discussed in post 23 above, Ahmeti is not a member of Al Qaeda and is not in Kosovo, but is a member of parliament in Macedonia and as a leader of one of the political parties in Macedonia has been meeting and hob-nobbing with such notorious Al Qaeda sympathizers as the Secretary General of NATO, U.S. Ambassador Grossman, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

As for Al Qaeda in Kosovo, we've been through that before--you can find more Al qaeda in just about any mosque in London. Or in Islamic high schools in northern Virginia!