The NEFA Foundation has published several new items on its website which will be of interest to counterterrorism researchers. First, the NEFA Foundation has obtained video of a conversation with Taliban Deputy Commander Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of the infamous Afghan mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani. Though only in his early thirties, Haqqani is considered one of the most powerful Taliban military commanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and has been rumored as a possible internal political rival to the current Taliban administration of Mullah Mohammed Omar. Haqqani has freely acknowledged his role in organizing recent terrorist attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul, and his partnership with foreign fighters arriving from elsewhere in the Muslim world. This video was made by Rahimullah Yousufzai, a veteran reporter/analyst based in Peshawar.
Second, the NEFA Foundation has released a transcript of the latest audio message from Al-Qaida’s Deputy Commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. Addressing his plea to the Pakistani military, al-Zawahiri spoke for the first time in English and called upon low and mid-ranking soldiers to violently revolt against the leadership of Pervaiz Musharraf and his alliance with the United States. Al-Zawahiri also discussed at length his own experiences and knowledge of Pakistan, though he also conceded that his unfamiliarity with Urdu was forcing him to adopt English, the language of the “enemies of Islam.”
Third, the NEFA Foundation has obtained the responses provided by 9/11 planners Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and "Khallad" to questions submitted by Salim Hamdan's attorneys. Asked whether Hamdan had "any involvement in the planning of attacks outside Afghanistan," KSM stated, "he was not at all a military man." He added, "as a member in Al-Qaeda Council (Shoura) the highest executive committee in Al-Qaeda, I am certain of all who works in the field mentioned..." He later said, "I personally was the executive director of 9/11, and Hamdan had no previous knowledge of the operation, or any other one." Asked about information flow in Al-Qaida, KSM responded, "so many of UBL's inner circles have no knowledge of what he was planning and so many of Al-Qaeda members and even the trainers at the military camps do not have any knowledge of the works of the outside cells. That includes the civilian employees."
Finally, the NEFA Foundation has released additional content drawn from Al-Somood, a monthly Islamic magazine published by the Taliban’s media center. In this piece, dated July 2007, Al-Somood provides a biography of Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah, who was killed by NATO and Afghan troops in May 2007. The biography explains that "“One of the most dangerous (things) the martyr Dadullah had done against the worldwide crusader ally in Afghanistan is coaching the suicide youngsters who had overpowered the crusader forces as soldiers. The number of these youngsters reaches the hundreds and they have been spread in the different counties of Afghanistan. These youngsters have succeeded, with the kindness of the raised God, in filling the hearts of the enemy with fear from everything and in every place, and for that, the enemy saw him (Dadullah) as the master of the suicides and named him as the martyr Zarqawi, the master of the suicides in Iraq.”