Mideast Roundup

Nov. 21, 2003

Most Dangerous Terror Group

Al Qaeda's Turkish Knife Slices through Europe

Call it a fatal case of shortsightedness. Back in early October, top officials of the Turkish intelligence service, MIT, sat down with several of their Western counterparts to discuss the number one terrorist threat facing Turkey — the heads of the Kurdish PKK-KADEK group, Abdullah Ocalan, captured in 1999 and serving a life sentence as the sole inmate of a remote island prison since his death sentence was commuted last year, and his brother Osama. Together they control 5,000 Kurdish fighters scattered across northern Iraqi Kurdistan and southern Turkey.

(The intelligence chiefs convened mainly because at the time, the US government viewed Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq as a threat to key transportation routes and planned to root them out. Washington also believed an attack against Kurdish forces would weaken the bargaining position of the other two top Kurdish leaders in the area, Jalal Talabani and Mustapha Barzani).

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and counter-terrorism sources, PKK-KADEK topped the list of what Turkey regarded as the 10 most dangerous terrorist organizations laid before Western colleagues.

A group called the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front (IBDA-C) was last on the list.

"Don't you think they should be ranked higher," a senior Western intelligence official asked his Turkish colleagues.

"No. I can give you my personal guarantee that this organization is toothless. It can't do anything. All its members are sitting in our Metsian jail," a top MIT man replied.

He was referring to some 300 members of the group, including its leader, Salih Mirzabeyogly. Arrested on December 24, 1998, Mirzabeyogly was put into solitary confinement and the rest of his men were thrown into the dungeon-like cells of the prison, some 50 miles (80 km) south of Istanbul.

On Saturday, November 15, IBDA-C detonated truck bombs outside the Neve Shalom and Beit Israel synagogues in Istanbul, killing 25 people and wounding more than 300. The attack's planners and chief bomb-maker left the country via Istanbul international airport three hours before the blast. Their destination: Abu Dhabi, where they apparently caught a flight to Iran or Pakistan.

Just five days after the synagogue bombing disaster, IBDA-C struck again. This time, two truck bombs exploded outside the British consulate in Istanbul, the headquarters of the HSBC bank and the Metro Center mall in the north of the city. At least 27 people were killed and about 450 wounded.

Trotskyists, Islamists & terrorists

In the space of six days, the "toothless" terrorist group managed to kill 52 people and wound more than 750.

Adding insult to injury, IBDA-C carried out Thursday's attack to coincide with President George W. Bush's visit to London, declaring the bombings were "a gift to Al Qaeda".

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources note the relationship between the two terrorist groups is relatively new, dating back only three to four years. After Mirzabeyoglu and his men were arrested in 1998, about 50 to 70 members of the organization managed to flee Turkey for Afghanistan, Chechnya, Greece, Bosnia and Germany. Some of the Turkish terrorists teamed up with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Chechnya and fought alongside Osama bin Laden's men. Other IBDA-C members underwent training in Bosnia, while those who escaped to Greece came under the wing of local intelligence officers who, back in the 1980s when Greek-Turkish tensions were high, had used the organization for sabotage missions in Turkey.

In Germany, the IBDA-C fugitives set up logistical and intelligence networks to support members of the group working with Al Qaeda.

Far from the prying eyes of Turkish security services and Western counter-terrorism agencies, IBDA-C and Al Qaeda established one of Europe's most dangerous terrorist networks.

IBDA-C followed Thursday's attacks against British targets in Istanbul with an ominous warning: "This is just the beginning."

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-intelligence sources have learned that a high state of alert for terrorist attacks has been declared in Germany and Britain, where Bush is still visiting. Both countries fear that the Turkish terrorists will activate their sleeper networks in Germany and that some had transferred recently to Britain. IBDA-C operatives are Turkish Kurds who can easily blend into Europe's large Kurdish population.

Despite its cooperation with Al Qaeda, IBDA-C is very different from the fundamentalist Islamic group. Although it is comprised of Muslims, the group espouses the Trotskyite version of communism. Mirzabeyoglu, a professional boxer in his youth, has written 42 books, including "Diary of a Fox" — compulsory reading for all new recruits who are required to memorize it. The terrorist-boxer-author has described his doctrine as a mixture of Plato, Hegel, Trotsky and Sufi Islam, the last based on the belief that there is no real difference between good and evil and that Allah determines the will of man. The Sufi sect is particularly strong among Kurds and in Turkey, making that country a fertile ground for the IBDA-C.

Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have little use for the IBDA-C's philosophy. It is just one more fringe organization under the radar and at their beck and call. Their willingness to use the group points again to their operational flexibility and shows how little Western intelligence services really know about what is happening in the labyrinth of Islamic terror.


Secret US-Iraq Transition Contact

US Begins Government Handover to Iraqis — in Ramadi

US Iraq administrator Paul Bremer flew into Baghdad on November 13 from the top-level policy-making conference he attended at the White House carrying a three-page document covering the accelerated transfer of Iraqi sovereignty from the United States to Iraqi authority.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington and Baghdad describe the American administrator as handing the document forthwith to current president of the Iraqi Interim Governing Council, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, to circulate among his fellow councilors for their approval. If accepted, he would sign it on behalf of the ICG and Bremer would affix his signature for the United States, thereby validating the document as a contract covering the transition and its unfolding stages up until the end of 2004.

Events rushed forward from that point on.

Sunday, 15th of November, Talabani brought the document back. It was then duly signed by both parties. The transition of government had been set in motion.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals the key points of this confidential document:

The civil administration headed now by the US-led coalition will be handed over to a provisional government of selected members.

The provisional government's mandate will be bound by riders containing a declaration on human rights, a guarantee of judicial independence and a commitment to constitutionally subordinate the armed forces to civilian authority.

The provisional government will undertake not to alter a word of the main three-page document and its riders as long as no elected government is installed.

The clauses covering the presence of US military forces in Iraq require their evacuation by 2004 or 2005 — a loose timeline that is subject to the degree of security attained in Iraq. The US command retains the prerogative of staging troop evacuations according to Iraq's security needs.
President George W. Bush explained on November 20, during his visit to London, that the numbers of US troops in Iraq would be matched to security needs. Regarding the handover process, he said that more than 130,000 Iraqis were now holding down a wide variety of security functions and their number was expanding.

A new body called a Transitional National Assembly will assume Iraqi sovereignty on June 30, 2004 — not the provisional government. The TNA has been given a time frame from June 30, 2004 to 15 March 2005 to create Organizing Committees in each of Iraq's 18 governates and appoint five members to each from the local councils of the five largest cities. Each Organizing Committee will then select a Governate Selection Caucus of local notables, which in turn will select the new assembly.

From March 16 2005, the new assembly will take over the final formulation of the constitution (with no deadline) and put it to national referendum.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iraq sources note that, while these undertakings embody high principles, they are cagey about dates.

For instance, no date is set for elections. Furthermore, the constitution must be drafted by February 28th, 2004, but there is no date for approval.

Bremer and Talabani estimated that this process would bring the country to its first general election at the end of 2005 or early 2006. In the meantime, the US military would be available to pitch in case of trouble. Every effort would be made by the Americans to ease the process along smoothly during the US presidential election campaign and until a president is installed in the White House in January 2005.

Ramadi experiment encounters sabotage

The signing of the Transition of Authority document did indeed act as a spur for the process to march forward. One day later, on November 16, the first experimental transfer of authority was staged at Ramadi in the very heart of the troublesome Sunni Triangle, where the tribal leader Sheik Amer Ali Suleiman was handed the keys of local authority.

The plan was to use Ramadi as a pivot for fanning out similar handovers across all of western Iraq up to the Syrian and Jordan borders in the next few weeks. Such strategic locations as Haditha, al Qaim and Mosul will be given over to Iraqi local authority, step by careful step, location after location, the pace depending on how smoothly it goes. The Iraqi council will be supported by Kurdish forces. Planning hinges on the assumption that Saddam does not have enough strength, loyalists, hired fighters, Arab volunteers and Al Ansar and al Qaeda terrorists in this region to upset the transfers - particularly when Kurdish troops are there to secure the process and US forces present over the horizon in case of emergencies. The deposed dictator is believed to have little real weight outside pockets of the Sunni Triangle and sections of Baghdad.

So much for the planning.

Hours after the three-page top secret document was signed, it had reached Saddam Hussein's headquarters. A team of saboteurs stood waiting for Sheik Suleiman to start taking over the new nerve center at Ramadi from the US authorities. No sooner was that accomplished when on November 19, a bomb went off outside his home. He escaped unscathed but seven people were reported killed in the blast.

A few hours later, a car-bomb blew up outside Talabani's PUK headquarters in Kirkuk leaving five dead.

The bombs carried potent messages to local leaders that they played ball with the American power transfer operation at their peril. The mayor of Falujja caught on fast and stepped down Thursday, November 20. While short of the military resources to obstruct the process, the deposed Iraqi leader appears to have sufficient intelligence assets to find out exactly where and when to strike to cause the most serious upsets to American plans.

This secret information would be available to his spies in three possible places:

1. Inside the Interim Governing Council, some of whose members are suspected of working both sides.

2. Agents who have penetrated the "Green Zone" coalition administration headquarters.

3. Local informers, each of whom is able to deliver a vital fragment. Some may have penetrated the very coalition forces which recruit Iraq agents .


Recycling Saddam's Spooks

Bremer Builds Iraqi Intelligence Agency

Human Intelligence — HUMINT - is the key to success. That is the mantra heard from civil authority, military commanders, coalition counter-insurgency forces and every single US ground unit. Resources are still woefully inadequate but some sectors report an increasing number of Iraqis are willing to be hired as undercover sources of information against the former regime and its armed campaign.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources have discovered a quiet initiative embarked on by US administrator Paul Bremer. Apart from his overall efforts to foster improved US intelligence in the field, he is building a separate elite Iraqi intelligence apparatus. Our sources estimate its strength as around 1,000 agents, most of them professionals from the services run by the former regime who are carefully vetted before they are hired. So far 800 have been recruited.

The man chosen to head the new service is Nouri al-Badran, who spent time in exile as a member of the opposition National Iraqi Alliance. He will be in charge of this special intelligence corps in his capacity as interior minister in the future provisional government due to take office on June 30, 2004 under the Power Transition Contract signed this month (See separate <#2>article in this issue.). The intelligence service scheme was presented to and approved by US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz when he visited Baghdad last month and consists of the following branches:

A.
A domestic intelligence unit whose members are in training in Jordan as group controllers.

B.
An external intelligence unit headed by Hussein Mohsein, who was briefly head of Iraqi counterintelligence under the former regime. He is recruiting agents whom he worked with during that period. They are being trained by the CIA.

C.
A religious unit which will keep an eye on radical and extremist subversives of the various denominations and communities. Its members performed similar functions in Saddam Hussein's clandestine service.

Bremer, as architect of the new service, is under no illusion, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts, that it can be hermetically sealed against penetration by Saddam's double agents. Such infiltrations are deemed inevitable and have been taken into account. But to limit the damage engendered by betrayals, the new service will operate on a separate basis and refrain from liaison with any other agencies in the field.

In reporting to his superiors in Washington, Bremer said that the new clandestine agency would not aspire to 90 percent success rates but aim for a more realistic 70-80 percent.

US Army divisions learning fast to run Iraqi assets

What is happening in all the divisions is that the Iraqi police and Iraqi Civil Defense Forces going into action are providing proliferating sources of intelligence, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources reveal. Organization of sources and assets is improving and adapting to a form of warfare — guerrilla-cum-terror - with which these US commanders were unfamiliar. They have learned to move away from technical intelligence geared to conventional combat and come to rely on human intelligence better suited to low intensity warfare, albeit supported by spy drones and other eyes in the sky. As a result, data input is expanding and sources multiplying, with the result that US military operations are more precisely focused.

These advances are hampered by a serious shortage of analysts and translators. That lack in turn is slowing down the efficient use of databases in all the divisions. US agents on the ground have learned to run Iraq assets and are competent to judge which are credible and which to discard. But the task of alphabetically filling into their databases the Arabic names of tribes, clans, families and informants defeats them all. Attempts to create indexing software have so far failed.

The same problem afflicts David Kay's Special Survey team of weapons of mass destruction hunters, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources. Its efforts to work with local terminology for analyses have run aground. Intelligence officers in the field share the difficulties encountered by Kay's experts and scientists They find they need a permanently attached translator to tap every source of intelligence and unravel each separate piece of information before they can be put to any use. The Kay team needs translators with scientific or technical training to boot.

Existing computer software does not work for technical terms in Arabic. The shortage of translators is generating a permanent data bottleneck in all fields. Despite the improvement here too, no more than 50 percent of needs is covered. The CIA has therefore started running crash courses for translators in the emirates and in Iraq. This procedure is time-consuming, particularly as trainee translators are selected only after receiving security clearance.

The Polish led-International Division, whose 9,000 men from 17 countries control the sector immediately south of Baghdad and up to Iranian border, focuses heavily and successfully on local intelligence. Its intelligence branch draws intensively on a helpful, largely Shiite population. According to the data gathered by this intelligence branch, the main threat to this area of control comes from the outside, unlike other sectors. They estimate 500 Al Ansar and other foreign combatants are fighting alongside Saddam loyalists. They also put the figure of foreign fighters in all of Iraq at 2,000, which is higher than some other sources.

The Polish-led unit judges the maverick Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr to be a declining threat and reports that the Shiite power structure is fast assuming a new shape at the local and national level.

The 4th Infantry Division centered on Tikrit north of Baghdad has been busy adapting its tactics and intelligence gathering from scratch. The impression gained from this division's sources is that the foreign and Islamist threat is minor compared to Saddam loyalists, paid guerrilla fighters and criminals.


Iraq's Unstoppable Guerilla War

US Military Wants More Mobile, Lighter Equipment

After initial false starts following the fall of Baghdad, helmeted American troops in all units are proving have evolved into surprisingly effective civilian administrators, much better than the civilians and consultants of the Green Zone in cultivating ties with local populations, tribes and religious figures and pushing forward civil action programs and reconstruction projects.

Their presence on the ground and day-to-day local contacts also yield useful sources of intelligence.

During the transfer of power to Iraqi control — as laid down in the confidential Transition of Power Contract signed this week in Baghdad (See separate <#2>article in this issue.), the US army is designated the vital safety net in case the process goes awry. Trouble could come from feuds among the communities getting out of hand, personal agendas, rivalries inside ruling bodies. Pro-Saddam or foreign elements may well use violence, subversion or agitation to spike Iraq's transition to indigenous provisional government.

Already, field commanders are showing themselves to be resilient adapters to constantly changing situations and unforeseen problems. Their familiarity with the terrain and recommendations, according to a variety of DEBKA-Net-Weekly sources, provided a strong background for the pivotal White House policy conference on Iraq on November 10-11 that produced the three-page document that Bremer carried back to Baghdad.

Some of the military's key findings and recommendations:

There is no way to stop all attacks and casualties — even after power is handed over in full to an Iraqi administration. In Baghdad in particular, home to an estimated 5.6 million people, small groups of resisters, disrupters and criminals will always be available to hostile forces to challenge the powers-that-be and try and muscle in on urban neighborhoods. Most Iraqis in central Baghdad, including Sunni blue collar and Shiite slums do not split along religious or ethnic lines but are nationalistic. The key contact points are tribal leaders who often cut across religious lines. This leadership is in a state of flux since the war

As time goes by, the organization and weaponry of hostile forces will improve — larger car bombs, more missiles, longer-range mortars and better intelligence for sabotage. While major problems are posed by improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades, the attack on the al Rashid Hotel last month marked the first use of an improved rocket launcher.

US reprisals and anti-insurgency operations will correspondingly escalate — especially as the Iraqi Interim Governing Council thinks Americans are too soft and is demanding tougher action.

By the same token, Iraq's borders can never be sealed impermeably. The Iranian frontier is wide open, and the Syrian, Saudi and Kuwait borders abound in easy crossing points. At best, 80-85 percent of illicit traffic can be controlled. For the rest, al Qaeda, other terrorist groups, criminal gangs, including oil rustlers, and agents of foreign powers, will continue to enter the country illicitly, whether to fight, stir up trouble, steal or lean on the government in Baghdad to pressure Washington. At the White House conference, Bremer pointed out that deploying troops for perfect border security in Iraq is as pointless as trying to block immigration from Mexico to US.

There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein and his former deputy Izzat Ibrahim al Douri or any other central body is directly organizing attacks. But there are still plenty of funds afloat to hire guerrillas. Many are motivated by rising fee per attack, up from $25-100 to $100-500.

Strykers versus RPGs

The army does not have all the Military Police, civil action, intelligence and trained counterinsurgency units it needs. But the commanders insist there is no need for more troops on the ground. The problem does not lie in numbers of troops but in their special skills.

Wanted most of all is lighter and more mobile equipment in place of the cumbersome Bradleys and M-1 tanks, more armored Humvees, vests and other special operations equipment.

Work is going on around the clock at Camp Udairi, Kuwait, to bolt slat armor onto a fleet of more than 300 Strykers before they move into Iraq. The armor that looks exactly like a huge green cage is meant to protect the combat vehicles and soldiers manning them from Saddam's guerillas' ubiquitous rocket-propelled grenades that plague military convoys, arm ambush squads and even shoot down helicopters with greater accuracy than Strela anti-air missiles. US troops hope the steel contraptions will absorb the worst of the RPGs in the way that a catcher's mask does a baseball. But the green cage has never been tested in combat conditions and has still to prove its worth.

The idea behind the cage armor goes back to the Vietnam War, according to John Funk, logistics support manager of the manufacturers, General Dynamics. Troops in that war improvised with chicken wire and other means to counter the RPG threat. The idea is to detonate the propelled grenade at a distance from the vehicle and prevent its hot chemical reaction from boring through and causing burns, shock and shrapnel wounds.

The US army is also working on a kind of plate armor that will defeat RPGs. But that's not due until the army develops the third of its six planned Stryker brigades in 2005. In the meantime, they are working on the interim slat armor solution in two huge hangars with room for eight Strykers. The soldiers working on the project are mostly infantrymen.

The extra armor weighs about 5,200 pounds, about 3,000 pounds lighter than the add-on anti-RPG armor that is under development for later Stryker brigades.


4th Infantry Division

Pacifying the Sunni Triangle

The 4th Division, that covers the Sunni Triangle from Kirkuk to north of Baghdad, and the 1st Armored division deployed in Baghdad are the two key front line units of the Iraqi War.

Although fully engaged in intense combat in the least hospitable region of Iraq for any American force, the 4th has built valuable bridges to local leaders in the heart of Saddam Hussein's stronghold.

Its commanders spend hours of long palaver with local and tribal leaders in an ongoing process of interaction with the civilian populace. In an area covering the Sunni section of Mosul and the Sunni towns of Huwaiyat, Baiji, Tikrit, Ar Dawa, Samarra, Balad and sections of the Iranian and Syrian borders, their efforts to win Iraqi sentiment have produced an exceptionally high level of recruitment: more than 2,500 Iraqis for the Civil Defense Force, close to 9,000 police officers, 1,000 border police and army units. Since the 4th Division entered the Sunni Triangle region, the communities have sent representatives to multiethnic provincial and local councils and held some elections. Kirkuk has an Interim Government run along ethnic lines. Schools, social services and infrastructure goals are in progress on a vast scale.

A uniquely digitalized force

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military experts single this division out on another score: it is fully digitalized, the only one of its kind in the world. Computer networks and monitors in all its vehicles and command centers have proved invaluable tools of combat. Increasing its men's security, these devices help the force focus its raids more precisely and respond more rapidly to danger and emergency situations. It is especially important to pinpoint targets in pro-Saddam towns like Tikrit, Baquba and Samarra. The 4th also has a fleet of drones at its beck and call at all times, integrated at the brigade level. The data they record can be analyzed and integrated with digital location data. The drones also interact efficiently with mortar locating radar and helicopters.

Like other units, this division also finds the M-1 tank too big for cities. The Humvee is not a favorite either. Even if fitted with heavier armor and guns, it is considered too light on armor and firepower. Men of the 4th are looking forward to the arrival of the Stryker brigade next month.

The 4th Division — again like other units - does not want more troops, only quality in some areas. Its officers look to Iraqi Civil Defense, police, army and border guards to boost manpower as well as human intelligence.

Escalation of tactics predicted

The most common threat is posed by improvised explosives. But since August, the guerrillas have added mortars and rockets. With the help of newly-recruited Iraqi Civil Defense and Border Patrol personnel, more and more explosive caches are being unearthed or defused before they go off. Dozens of mortar and rocket attacks were recorded in the first week of November.

However, there is every expectation in this division that the enemy will improve its tactics, skills and intelligence over time. Attacks will become better planned and more use made of foreign fighters.

Future threats are seen from shoulder-launched anti-air missiles, artillery, heavier mortars, more sophisticated explosive devices, mines and anti-tank missiles - all supported by improved intelligence.

Random checks are conducted to locate Saddam Hussein who is believed to be constantly on the move.

Roughly three quarters of the enemy combatants captured so far are paid attackers and criminals. However, a stream of foreigners is reported coming in through Mosul from Syria and also from Iran.

Muhammad's Army (as DEBKA-Net-Weekly has reported in the past) is present but not thought to be genuine Islamists only a cover for Saddam diehards.

Winning over the tribes

Officers of the 4th Division are careful to defer to the tribal notables. Recruiting officers consult the intertribal council before drafting volunteers. All eight tribes of the region are represented in proportion to size. However, they also apply a carrot and stick. Tribal leaders are rewarded with money and influence according to the level of their cooperation, denied perks if they prove obstructive. The men in khaki have made a study of indigenous Sunni tribes and clans and the lore of the region, finding this knowledge crucial for effective intelligence. They have coaxed local sheiks to take charge of guarding oil pipelines that run through their terrain. However, nothing has availed the American force in Tikrit, where tribal leaders and young men remain implacably hostile. This has not stopped the division's commanders from approaching former generals and colonels who served the deposed ruler and drafting them into local government and consultative roles.


HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives

15 November: European Commission President Romano Prodi hurried Saturday November 11 to condemn the terrorist car bombings at two Istanbul synagogues, Neve Shalom and Beit Israel, even before the final tally of the dead. But last month, the European Union turned down a Turkish request to list the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front — IBDA-C — as a terrorist organization. This is the group that claimed the Istanbul synagogue bombings. The EU rejected Ankara's request on the grounds of "human rights."

The same European sources have generously funded the privately-instigated Geneva Understandings to be posted in every Israeli mailbox Sunday, November 16, in a massive drive to break down popular Israeli resistance to the initiative. The bombers that Europe refused to categorize as terrorists later attacked Istanbul synagogues. This fact, plus the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe, discourages most Israelis from trusting in the judgment and fairness of European governments individually and as a union with regard to any of its Middle East policies.

The Front is one of several Turkish illegal Islamist terrorist groups who use terrorist tactics to fight for the establishment of an Islamic republic in Turkey that is based on strict Shariah or religious law. However the IBDA-C is unique in that it also espouses a Trotskyist version of Communism — a doctrinal mishmash that might be described as left-wing Wahhabism.

Since the 1970s, the IBDA-C has carried out a steady three to four attacks a year — like its fellow groups, with an unexpected variety of logistic bedfellows. In the 1980s, a period of high Turkish-Greek friction, it accepted the backing of Greek intelligence. In the waning years of the Soviet Empire, the Islamic Raiders Front worked with the Armenian Asala underground which was linked to KGB elements operating in West Europe and the Middle East. Of late, the Turkish group is associated with the "Jerusalem Brigades", the clandestine terrorist arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. One of the Brigades' current responsibilities is to guard the senior al Qaeda operatives hiding up in Iran.

DEBKAfile's counter-terror experts believe it very likely that while moving in these murky circles, the Turkish IBDA-C formed a relationship with the Iraqi Kurdish extremist Ansar al-Islam which operates in northern Iraqi near the Turkish frontier, or directly with Iran-based al Qaeda leaders, such as Abu Musab Zarqawi, who in addition to being Osama bin Laden's top bio-weapons and chemical warfare expert, is commander of the organization's anti-Israel and anti-Jewish front.

Sought by the American authorities for masterminding major terrorist operations against the Jordanian embassy and UN Headquarters in Baghdad, Zarqawi or one of his comrades in Iran may very well have helped the Turkish terrorists pinpoint their Istanbul targets and plan the operational side of the attacks on the two synagogues.

15 November: A confidential report by a UN panel of experts finds that the only thing holding al Qaeda back from using chemical and biological weapons is its lack of technical know-how. But the decision has already been taken to use them in forthcoming attacks.

Because of the lack of this technical ability, the panel believes Osama bin Laden's organization is now focusing on developing new conventional explosive devices such as bombs that can evade scanners.

The experts cite no specific new evidence apart from the recent discovery of several canisters of unidentified chemicals and possible residues of a "tetanus virus-carrying chemical" and a bio-terror manual in a police raid on a Jemaa Islamiyah hideout in the southern Philippines.

But the risk of terrorist using weapons of mass destruction continues to grow.

The expert group adds al Qaeda ideology is spreading worldwide and has found fertile ground in Iraq.

The funding is there for al Qaeda to continue developing its WMD capabilities. According to the UN report, despite progress made towards cutting off al-Qaeda financing, the money continues to flow through the serious loopholes of "charities, deep pocket donors, business and the drug trade." The group has shifted its financial activities to areas in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia that can't track this activity. But sanctions are also failing because many governments refuse to add names to the sanctions list. Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen arrested individuals linked al Qaeda and the Taliban but did not submit their names for the sanctions list.

17 November: As Israeli eyes were riveted on the appalling effects of the synagogue bomb attacks in Istanbul on Saturday, November 15, their air force executed a stunning demonstration of might over Lebanon lasting several hours Sunday, November 16. DEBKAfile's military sources reveal exclusively that 30-40 Israeli fighter-bombers zipped through the length and breadth of Lebanon — from the northern regions and Tripoli, across to the Lebanese-Syrian border, the Beqaa Valley and Syrian bases, through Djebel Druze in the center, to Beirut and down to the south. The aircraft made low passes in quartets, buzzing key points. There was no response from the ground.

The first planes thundered over Beirut at 11 a.m. just as Hassan Nasrallah was preparing to address a large Hizballah gathering to honor Bashar Assad's third anniversary as Syrian president. The Hizballah leader abruptly cancelled his appearance and dumped his speech in the hands of his deputy, Sheikh Naim Qassem.

DEBKAfile's Middle East sources report the high points of that address:

1. The Hizballah was not frightened by the large-scale military exercise Israel staged last week along its borders with Syria and Lebanon.

2. The organization and Syria stand together in a single front.

3. If Israeli attacks Syria again, Hizballah undertakes to retaliate.

4. Hizballah forces have been placed on a high state of preparedness.

Friday, November 21, the last day of Ramadan is also marked by the Hizballah and Iran as "Jerusalem Day." Intelligence had reached Israeli policy-makers that this year, the Hizballah is preparing trouble for Israel with the Syrian army and air force ready to intervene if needed. There is a strong sense that the week ahead is fraught with danger because of coming events. This feeling is shared by the Americans and the British as well as other governments in the Middle East. US president George W. Bush will be on a state visit to London. In Baghdad, the US administrator Paul Bremer is building up momentum for the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis. Sunday, Saddam Hussein's purported voice returned to urge Iraqis to fight the Americans in a holy war.

16 November. The 30,000-strong Turkish Jewish community's largest synagogue, Neve Shalom, is described Sunday, November 16, as a broken relic of its former self. The narrow street where it once stood is littered with the debris of houses, shops and cars. Heavy damage was also suffered by the second targeted synagogue, the newly-renovated Beit Israel in the Sisli neighborhood of Istanbul. A morose Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, declared after viewing the ruined sites together with foreign minister Abdullah Gul that the attacks were aimed at destabilizing Turkey. Gul also accompanied Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom on a visit to the ruined places of worship, aware that the attacks were aimed against Turkey, Israel and the Jews.

Because of the tight Turkish security cordon around the buildings, the bombers resorted to hugely powerful charges of 150 kg each packed into vehicles parked in the streets outside — thus also accounting for the heavy Turkish Muslim casualty toll provisionally estimated at eleven out of 23. Quantities of ammonia were used to magnify the blast, causing injuries consistent with gas inhalation. Israeli secret service agents as well as police forensic experts are assisting the Turkish inquiry, both teams moved by the same urgent objective of tracking down the perpetrators of an assault that outraged both peoples.

18 November: For two months less one day, Saddam Hussein's gravelly voice was not heard once over the airwaves. What kept him silent from September 17?

DEBKAfile's intelligence sources have two answers: 1.The inability of US intelligence to penetrate the inner circle Saddam Hussein kept with him when he went into hiding.

2. That inner circle's superior ability to keep track of American moves.

American commanders, running out of leads, decided to launch a massive effort to track the elusive former president through the movements of the audiotapes which he was somehow able to deliver whenever he wanted at the Qatari TV station Al Jazeera and the Al Arabiya TV studio in Dubai. They waited for his taped voice to materialize and signal a fresh stage in the anti-US guerrilla campaign. Various experts were assigned to trying to identify the person who handed in the tapes, their recipient and their route to the broadcasting studios as a means of tracing the wanted man's whereabouts.

Staffers of the two Arab stations were placed under around- the-clock surveillance, their phones and computers tapped and their cars shadowed. Angry confrontations ended more than once with cameras and film being confiscated.

None of this availed. No sooner was this blanket surveillance in place, when the flow of audiocassettes dried up. Clearly, Saddam's contacts among the TV personnel and other objects of surveillance had warned him to lie low and observe total electronic hush so as not to give his hideout away.

When Ramadan began last month, US intelligence expected Saddam to go into his Muslim leader mode and broadcast a message to the Iraqi people. Hoping he would break silence and cover, physical and electronic observation was tightened. But he sidestepped the spies and re-appeared when he was no longer expected — on the first day of the last week of Ramadan, leaving American undercover watchers no wiser than before.

19 November: The Jordanian gunman who cut down a group of Ecuadorian pilgrims with automatic gunfire at the border crossing from Jordan to Israel north of Eilat on Wednesday, November 19, did much more than shatter the calm of a border terminal normally bustling with goods, tourist and business traffic. The assault dashed any illusions about Osama bin Laden holding off from drawing blood in Israel. Five of the pilgrims were injured — one later died of her wounds - as they prepared to cross into Jordan in al Qaeda's first direct strike inside Israel.

The attack bore the fingerprints of Abu Musab Zarqawi, believed to be Al Qaeda's top terror "contractor."

A spokesman in Amman insisted the gunman acted on his own. His acknowledgement that the killer hailed from the Zarka area in the north of the kingdom let the cat out of the bag. According to DEBKAfile's counter-terrorism sources, Zarqawi and Al Qaeda run a strong and well organized terrorist network out of the Zarqa area, Zarqawi's home ground. It is hardly plausible that the gunman was not part of this setup.

Jordan's King Abdullah is beset with trouble - no matter which way he looks In Saudi Arabia to the south, the government is reeling from a wave of Al Qaeda bombings. To the east in Iraq, Saddam Hussein's guerrillas, aided by Arab fighters that include members of Al Qaeda, carry out daily attacks against US occupation forces. In Israel to the west, an Israeli-Palestinian war continues unabated. And Arab fighters continue to use Syria, to the north of Jordan, as their primary transit route into Iraq. Furthermore, US forces in Tikrit and Fallujah turned up lists of Jordanians on their way to fight Americans in the Sunni Triangle — or there already.

The Jordanians, whose military intelligence is usually excellent when it comes to Muslim subversive activities, hadn't a clue Al Qaeda had been running a recruitment network inside the kingdom through a small and relatively obscure organization called the Muslim Labor Party — a radical branch of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. Jordan scrambled to declare a state of military emergency and is currently chasing party radicals and al Qaeda recruits who have not yet left for Iraq.

Zarqawi is a citizen of Jordan, escaped from a death sentence imposed for organizing a failed millennium terror campaign in December 1999. Later, he became Al Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons expert and in 2003 was known to have been put in charge of attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets in Israel and overseas.

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