The 9/11 Role of Mohammad Fazl, One Of The Taliban Five

The Weekly Standard has a great piece of reporting on one of the Taliban Five, Mohammad Fazl. Fazl was the Taliban army chief of staff and deputy defense minister in the late 1990s and the years leading up to the war in Afghanistan.

The White House has been trying to give the impression that the Taliban Five are largely harmless and unlikely to return to terrorism, at least in so far as it is directed against the United States. (This is directly contradicted by the intelligence community which thought that two of the Five will return to Taliban leadership roles, and two others to some lower level of involvement.) Thomas Joscelyn at the Weekly Standard reminds that Fazl was intimately involved in Osama bin Laden's "September 10" plot, which was a part of his greater 9/11 scheme.

According to a leaked Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessment of Fazl, al Iraqi met with Fazl “on several occasions to include immediately following the assassination of [Massoud] in September 2001.” Al Iraqi “stated the Northern Alliance was demoralized after the assassination and [he] met with [Fazl] to immediately coordinate an attack with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance.”

Al Qaeda viewed both the assassination of Massoud and the offensive launched the following day as necessary components of the 9/11 plot. At first, Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders were said to be wary of any spectacular attack against the United States, as it would likely draw fierce retaliation from the world’s lone superpower. (The 9/11 Commission did find “some scant indications” that Omar “may have been reconciled to the 9/11 attacks by the time they occurred.”)

I can't steal the whole thing, so click over.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 09:28 AM

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