Russell Seitz

March 26, 2008

Few have heard of Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, yet the Syrian ranks as al-Qaeda?s most formidable strategist. He played a key role in establishing its European presence in Europe and securing the cooperation of Islamic radicals from North Africa and the Balkans and Chechenya to East Asia.

Sometime spokesman for the Groupe Islamique Arm? Algerienne, OBL’s London press attach?  and an adviser to Mullah Omar in Kabul, he is the man behind thef aliases in books by foreign correspondents escorted to meet OBL in Tora Bora. Until captured in Quetta by Pakistani intelligence agents in 2005 and remanded to the CIA, he went wherever the jihad did.  All-Suri was the first jihadi to argue that al-Qaeda ‘s survival hinged on mobile, nomadic, flexible cells operating independently of one another though united by a common ideology ? and a sense of shared grievances that the GWOT has alas amplified. The ?leaderless jihad?, now in analytic vogue is largely al-Suri?s invention

The London Review Of Books features a lucid account of the career of this latter day Master Of Assassins
in Adam Schatz’s review of Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of al-Qaida Strategist Abu Musab al-Suri by Brynjar Lia