A senior al Qaeda official has called on the Taliban to wage a campaign of kidnapping foreign civilians in Afghanistan in order to force U.S.-led forces to negotiate prisoner exchanges, Australian media reported.
The directive has been issued by veteran al Qaeda adviser Mustafa Hamid, also known as Abu Walid al Masri, and stems from the U.S. detentions in Guantanamo Bay, former counter-terrorism analyst Leah Farrall told the Australian newspaper on Wednesday.
Farrall, who had worked for the Australian Federal Police, said she had uncovered the al Qaeda internet document, written in late July, while completing a PhD on al Qaeda at Monash University in Australia.
The document, "The U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan - the first step for the release of all prisoners of the war on terror," argues the capture of a U.S. soldier earlier this year should be used as a precedent in a campaign of abducting Western civilians to negotiate the release of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners.
"Directing his article at the Taliban's leadership, Masri said it was time for them to start targeting foreign civilians as well as military personnel," Farrall wrote in the Australian.
"He suggested that they, too, change the rules of the game as America had done. He told them it was permissible to now start taking foreign civilians from the street. Using this strategy, he advised, could result in the liberation of all prisoners held by America in its war on terror," she said.
"Masri argued America's detention and torture of Muslims, and its failure to distinguish between civilians and the military, justified the use of this new strategy. He said the Taliban should do as its enemy does."
Australia's Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism Bill Paterson said that while kidnapping campaigns had been used by al Qaeda, militants in north Africa and the Philippine's Abu Sayyaf rebels, it was unclear whether the Taliban would adopt such a tactic.
"The Taliban learn from al Qaeda and possibly vice versa. But the Taliban are their own people and there is some evidence that some in the Taliban see al Qaeda in their midst in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan as intruders and foreigners," Paterson told Reuters in Sydney.
"Many Taliban and many in Afghanistan would like to be rid of al Qaeda," said Paterson.
Hamid has been detained in Iran since 2003 but remains an influential figure in the militant movement and maintains contact with his followers through jihadist websites, said Farrall.
Six weeks after his directive was released, New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell and his Afghan colleague were kidnapped in Afghanistan.
"This suggests there are now demonstrable consequences of this strategy on the ground in Afghanistan. There will be more kidnappings if it is fully embraced by the Taliban," she said.
British journalist Farrell was freed, but his colleague was killed in a rescue raid in early September.
Farrall said the article was the first public sanction by any senior militant figure of a systematic, long-term kidnapping campaign targeting civilians and military personnel in direct response to U.S. detention policy in its war on terror.
"This shows Guantanamo blowback now has strategic consequences," she wrote.
Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Tomasz Janowski
sculpture in central London. REUTERS/Toby Melville
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