Guest Post: Charles Cameron on Farrall and al-Masri
By Charles Cameron
Something veeery interesting is breaking in the blogosphere: Leah Farrall is talking with Abu Walid al-Masri.
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Leah Farrall blogs with verve and insight. She has been a “senior Counter Terrorism Intelligence Analyst with the Australian Federal
Police and the organization’s al Qaeda subject matter expert” who served as “senior Intelligence Analyst in the AFP’s Jakarta Regional
Cooperation Team (JRCT) in Indonesia and at the AFP’s Forward Operating Post in response to the second Bali bombings”. She’s now working on here PhD thesis on “Al Qaeda and militant salafist jihad”.
One of the leading figures in the interwoven tales of Al Qaida and the Taliban is Abu Walid al-Masri, who also blogs. According to his West Point CTC bio, Abu Walid fought for eleven years as a muj against the Soviets in Khost, Afghanistan, where he “gained a reputation as a skilled and pragmatic strategist and battlefield tactician”. He criticized bin Ladin’s 1991 decision to relocate AlQ to the Sudan, and was an early member of Mullah Omar’s circle. He also served as a reporter for Al-Jazeera, and (as the profile puts it) ended up wearing “several hats: Taliban propagandist, foreign correspondent, and al-Qa’ida trainer and strategist.” He strongly opposed 9/11.
In his early writings, he quoted Lenin, Mao, and Sun Tzu — and his writings have been extensive. Leah writes that in her view:
“….his work (12 books in all plus articles) was the most comprehensive and accurate of all memoirs or first hand accounts of al Qaeda and more broadly the history of Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion. I reached this conclusion after literally spending years and years cross checking his work with other accounts and all manner of sources, from both sides, for use in my thesis…”
And now for the drama:
As Leah notes with understandable excitement, Abu Walid has begun to respond to her blog posts with his own.
Readers of Zenpundit already know the power of multi-blogger conversations, and indeed it was one such conversation that gave rise to the Boyd Roundtable book that Zen himself edited.
This engagement between Leah and Abu Walid takes things a step further — two enemies, one an intel analyst and the other an insurgent strategist, are now holding a debate in public across the blogs.
That’s an interesting conversation to watch in its own right — and I trust Leah will bring Abu Walid’s side of it across into English. It is
also, it seems to me, an historic moment in the use of cyberspace.
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Postscript:
Leah on Abu Walid responding to her blogging:
Text of Abu Walid’s response in Arabic — Leah notes she hopes to put up an English digest, if not a full translation, shortly:
It’s worth noting that there’s a somewhat similar conversation developing between some UK-based Sunni Salafist supporters of the Baluch action and western analyst-bloggers:
Again, it’s fascinating if you’re interested in web-based discourse, and with a nice Mahdist strand in there to please little old me.
I hope to pick up on that aspect with a post here shortly.
And then there’s blogger friend John Robb, who has recently been emailed by the Nigerian Henry Okah, whom Robb considers “hands down the most innovative and successful guerrilla entrepreneur in the world today”:
October 27th, 2009 at 7:43 am
[…] guest-blogged about this over at Zenpundit with an emphasis on the intelligence side of things, but it’s equally fascinating in terms of […]
October 27th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Leah Farrall has now posted an English translation of Abu Walid’s first response here. As she notes, he’s quite a witty fellow. His view of the discussion in terms of the objectives of the two parties:
"So we become ready for an intellectual dialogue with the security beauty and the terrorist fighter, Mrs Farrall, we take a tour with her in the different field of terrorism. She wants a tour so she can get a more accurate knowledge of the enemy so she can target them in a better way. I want the dialogue to clarify the truths to our Arab public and to all the people of the world if possible."
October 27th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Hi Charles,
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Interesting. An elicitation dance directed at Farrell from a wordy fellow, well educated but also an auto-didact; maybe his writing style in Arabic is influenced by classical Arabic and youthful readings of Persian poetry. Hard to analyze someone’s writing third hand with no language skills of my own, LOL! Transliteration choices figure, context figures.
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It is also reminds me of reading the the tedious journal and newspaper debates among 19th century Russian Social Democrats in the European revolutionary underground where Plekhanov and Chkheidze are taken to task for…blah..blah….blah….while also addressing the onlooking imperialist bourgeoisie. Lots of subtexts here from a figure writing for a multiplicity of audiences, with a need to justify his authenticity to some of them while misdirecting others. This "al-Masri" though, comes across to me as a deliberately contructed persona for the blogging format/Islamist activist readership. Just my two cents.
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Any Arabists and ex-intel folks in the audience feel like taking a crack at this? Farrell has the original arabic link too. Interested in hearing your professional opinions.
October 27th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Whoa….
October 27th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Hi Zen — That phrase "the security beauty and the terrorist fighter" reminds me of the Beauty and the Beast motif. I’ll try to track down some folkloric / archetypal links.
October 27th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
This reminds of a conversation I had with Zen, where I said, I wonder if some Al Qaeda guys have gone to lectures by T.X. Hammes or David Kilcullen, sat near the front, asked questions, had cheese and crackers afterward … . .
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This series of conversations across the trenchlines is precisely the kind of thing that the Internet SHOULD make possible.
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But, still, it is mindblowing when it happens, for some reason.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:42 am
Hi Zen, Please pass my contact info to Lex Green—his comments in your book changed the focus of my efforts for almost two years. (Hayek and Boyd were very close on many levels. )I’m new with you guys and our work is sort of tangental, but I’ve been checking your blog, and as I’ve said, plan to start one of my own—and I like your model. BTW, your comments to Charles above a clever by half; well-done!
October 28th, 2009 at 1:11 am
I’m not sure that if roles were reversed if they would offer Kilcullen or Hammes some hummus on a pita.
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Lex, will send u a note re: Scott shortly…..
October 28th, 2009 at 1:59 am
Groovy, looking forward to "meeting" Scott. Glad to hear that post was of value to someone. As with every "serious" post I have ever done, all I think when I am done is how far short it falls of what I would have liked to have said … .
October 28th, 2009 at 2:28 am
[…] Zenpundit points to the amazing happening of al Qaeda strategist, tactician, and theorist Abu Walid al-Masri guest blogging at at All Things Counter-Terrorism. An excerpt: So we become ready for an intellectual dialogue with the security beauty and the terrorist fighter, Mrs Farrall, we take a tour with her in the different field of terrorism. She wants a tour so she can get a more accurate knowledge of the enemy so she can target them in a better way. I want the dialogue to clarify the truths to our Arab public and to all the people of the world if possible. The experiences of our fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets was a world experience that affected the lives of all people, but was decisive for many of them. Therefore our Arab experience in Afghanistan, concerns every person on this planet. […]
October 28th, 2009 at 2:57 am
Her translation is a bit queer. Of course good Arabic style is rather more flowery than English style (although so is good French style for that matter). Before anyone spends much time on turns of phrase, I’d warn some seem more artefacts of the translator than the original.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:31 am
Hey Col – welcome back! Glad that you came by to take a look at the original. How are things on your end these days?
October 28th, 2009 at 10:11 am
[…] guest-blogged about this over at Zenpundit with an emphasis on the intelligence side of things, but it’s equally fascinating in terms of […]
November 1st, 2009 at 6:13 pm
[…] Afghanistan that has beaten the West will look to the East, as the posting from Zen shows they already have gone there in their […]
December 20th, 2009 at 11:24 am
The Athenian Arts…
…an interesting post over at . …..
January 31st, 2010 at 1:31 am
[…] questions. I’d already written up the correspondence between the two of them on this blog and on Zenpundit some time back, shortly after it began, and Leah has graciously invited me to post my own responses […]
February 6th, 2010 at 7:31 am
[…] time back, I posted here about the conversation between Leah Farrall, until recently a senior analyst with the Australian […]