Local links to master Taliban strategist

Sally Neighbour

THE veteran mujaheddin leader once married to Australian woman Rabiah Hutchinson has re-emerged as a key political and military strategist for the Taliban in its insurgency in Afghanistan.

Egyptian Mustafa Hamid, also known as Abu Walid al-Misri, has authored a series of articles in the official Taliban magazine and on Islamist websites in the past two months, outlining the Taliban's push to retake Afghanistan and re-establish the Islamic Emirate overthrown by US forces in 2001.

Hamid ran al-Qa'ida's training camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s and was a senior adviser to the al-Qa'ida leadership and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in 2000-01. A hard-headed pragmatist who was often critical of al-Qa'ida's zealous ideology, Hamid fell out with the al-Qa'ida leadership over the September 11 attacks on the US and became a vehement critic of Osama bin Laden.

His re-emergence is seen by al-Qa'ida and Taliban experts as a significant development in the Afghan insurgency.

Jihad-watchers say it is further evidence of a strategic shift by the Taliban.

Hamid's writings are being closely monitored by former Australian Federal Police counter-terrorism expert and al-Qa'ida specialist Leah Farrall.

She says Hamid is "coming out against al-Qa'ida quite strongly in some of his responses", indicating the Taliban might be dissociating itself from al-Qa'ida as part of "trying to build itself up as a ruling party".

Hamid is living in Iran, where he fled into exile after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and where he was placed under house arrest and later imprisoned. He is believed to be under some form of detention but his whereabouts are unknown.

A prolific writer and the self-appointed historian of the jihadist movement, Hamid in 2007 began posting articles on a blog site and earlier this year began writing for official jihadist publications.

Vahid Brown, a historian at the US Military Academy at West Point, says Hamid has effectively "taken up one of his old jihadi jobs: official Taliban propogandist and media strategist" and his latest writings show he is still at odds with the al-Qa'ida leadership on a wide range of ideological and strategic issues.

Hamid is believed to have been instrumental in speeches made recently by the Taliban leadership, asserting it is a "responsible force" that has no quarrel with the West and wants to have "good neighbourly relations" in Central Asia.

The tone of these overtures is seen as signalling to the West that if the Taliban returns to power in Afghanistan, now a distinct possibility, it will not provide a new launchpad for al-Qa'ida attacks.

Hamid married Ms Hutchinson in Afghanistan in 2001. They separated after escaping to Iran amid the US bombardment of Afghanistan in late 2001. She declined to comment on his recent activities.

The Australian

Australia - Join Muslim Asia or perish: Taliban

Abraham Rabinovich

AN official Taliban publication warns Australia that it will have to assimilate into a dominant Asia or face the prospect of being overpowered and forced to take population overspill from Asia.

The choice is spelled out in the latest issue of the online Taliban monthly magazine, Al Sumud (Steadfastness), whose lead article offers a sweeping view of a post-war order in which a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan becomes a moral pivot for a pan-Asian renaissance that will coincide with the decline of Western power.

"The end of European leadership in the world will place the white settler diaspora in Australia before two choices," writes the author, Mustafa Hamid, a former senior al-Qa'ida member who in 2001 married Australian Rabiah Hutchinson, a Sydney mother with links to Islamic extremists.

"It can either return to its motherland in Europe or reconcile with its Asian surroundings and assimilate into it as a wealthy and active member."

Otherwise, he warns, a lengthy conflict will ensue in which Australia will be overpowered "by Asian waves that are better armed and more numerous".

"There is no doubt that the huge growth in the population of Asia, together with its economic and military development, will make Australia into lebensraum -- to use the European term," writes Mr Hamid. Lebensraum, meaning living space, was a term used by Nazi Germany as a motivation for territorial conquest.

Asia, Mr Hamid writes, is facing a population explosion "while Australia is nearly empty of people, apart from scattered groups of white residents".

Residents of "the Israeli outpost" at the other end of Asia are likewise warned to return to their countries of origin or face an "unequal conflict".

These warnings, however, are marginal to the central vision offered in the article -- the emergence of a vibrant pan-Asian identity in which Islam, and the Taliban in particular, constitutes a powerful moral and cultural force but not an exclusive one. Its emphasis on pan-Asian political identity rather than pan-Islamic sets it apart from al-Qa'ida ideology. The Taliban article does not call for jihad, although it hints at the possibility of "peaceful Islamic expansion" and the linchpin role in the "Asian Age", as the author terms it, is ceded to non-Islamic China.

Western power is fading fast, he writes, "to the benefit of Asian giants, and first and foremost among them the colossal economic and human power of China".

Even Russia, whose invasion of Afghanistan 30 years ago would prove a milestone in the emergence of militant Islam, is depicted as an ally arraigned with Asia against the "arrogance" of the West.

"Today, Russia is taking a defensive position against the Western advance which aims to break (Russia) up into statelets and to cross it on the way to China to break it up as well. Russia desires a coalition with China, with India, with Iran if possible, and even more so with Afghanistan, and even more so with the Taliban movement (which) is a serious, realistic and victorious leadership in that vital country (Afghanistan)."

In the article, "The Return of the Islamic Emirate: A vision of Afghanistan's role in the coming international order", Mr Hamid depicts a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan having a fundamental leadership role in the new Asian order -- "not in the field of finance, industry and interest-bearing banks" but as a moral force.

"This was demonstrated by the ability of Islam to inspire a small, poor people to resist and defeat five military campaigns of the largest armies on earth."

Source: The Australian

Muslim matriarch Rabiah Hutchinson's suburban nightmare

Sally Neighbour | May 02

THE Mudgee girl who became a surfie chick as a teen only to now be described by security agencies as the "matriarch" of radical Islam has spoken for the first time of her "nightmare" living under constant surveillance, branded a threat to national security and barred from travelling abroad.

Sydney mother Rabiah Hutchinson had her passport cancelled after returning from Iran in 2003, because of her links with al-Qa'ida and Indonesian militant group Jemaah Islamiah.

The ASIO assessment says Ms Hutchinson "has directly supported extremist activities" and, if allowed to travel, is "likely to engage in conduct that might prejudice the security of Australia or a foreign country".

Ms Hutchinson recently applied for a new passport to visit her daughters in Afghanistan, one of whom has a baby she has not yet seen. She said she was told that her application would be considered only if she agreed to meet officers from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, which she has declined to do, having met them numerous times in the past.

"They've said this to me so many times," she said. "How many times do I have to meet them? There's nothing for me to tell them. I've told them everything."

Ms Hutchinson has been kept under surveillance by ASIO, but has never been charged or accused of any offence, or interviewed by the Australian Federal Police. She claims her confinement in Australia is tantamount to house arrest.

"They don't need to charge me with anything," she said. "They don't need to put me in jail. They've taken away everything from me that means anything to me. I have been separated from my children and my grandchildren, from my people, my country. For what? What crime have I committed? What's the justification for what's happened to me?"

Ms Hutchinson has spoken frankly for the first time about her 20 years on the frontlines of the global jihad movement, in a new book, The Mother of Mohammed.

It began when she joined a student Islamic group involved in the resistance against then Indonesian president Suharto in the 1990s.

Through the student movement, she met cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who later co-founded JI. She was employed as an English teacher at Bashir's Ngruki Islamic boarding school and became a close friend of his family.

Bashir's wife Ecun remembers Ms Hutchinson well. "She was really enthusiastic, very highly motivated and energetic," she said. "And she was very direct. Rabiah will say anything. If she likes something, she says so. If she doesn't like it, she says so as well."

Ms Hutchinson became a mentor to younger women in the Islamist movement and a confidante of senior leaders such as Bashir's lieutenant Fihiruddin, also known as Abu Jibril. His brother, Irfan Awwas recalled: "Rabiah was very famous among young Muslims because she was very motivated."

In 1990, after divorcing her third husband, Indonesian-born Abdul Rahim Ayub, Ms Hutchinson travelled to northwest Pakistan with her six children to "join the jihad".

She spent four years working in a mujaheddin hospital and orphanage run by Afghan warlord Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf, whose patron and financier was Osama bin Laden.

Ms Hutchinson's family met bin Laden, who bought them an airconditioner to cool their mud-brick home. She later received an offer of marriage from an anonymous Saudi suitor, rumoured to be bin Laden.

In 2000, Ms Hutchinson and her family travelled to Afghanistan, where the Taliban was in power. After volunteering her services as a health worker, she says she was advised by bin Laden to settle in Kabul, where she ran a medical clinic and worked on health and humanitarian projects.

Ms Hutchinson married a member of al-Qa'ida's governing shura (council), Mustafa Hamid, known as Abu Walid al-Masri, and was asked by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to set up a new women's hospital in Kandahar. One of her closest friends was Zawahiri's wife, who was later killed in the US bombing of Afghanistan.

Ms Hutchinson was living in Kandahar when the September 11 attacks took place. When the US struck back in retaliation, she and her children were evacuated with other al-Qa'ida families and spent three months on the run. They eventually crossed the border into Iran, where they were detained under house arrest by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They were finally repatriated in 2003 to Australia, where Ms Hutchinson's passport was frozen.

Since then ASIO has maintained its assessment that there is "a strong likelihood" that further travel by her would involve "participation in, or support and preparation for, acts of politically motivated violence".

Ms Hutchinson denied she supported terrorism or had ever been involved in politically motivated violence, and no evidence to support this assertion has been produced.

"How would you like it if the Government said to you, 'right, we don't like the way you think'," Ms Hutchinson said. "Then they picked you up, separated you from your children, forced you to live somewhere you don't want to live for the rest of your life until you die - just because they don't like the way you think and your beliefs. And you have no way of refuting it."

Ms Hutchinson said if she were free to travel she would return to Afghanistan. "This is not reality to me; it's not real," she said. "This is just a nightmare that I hope I'm going to wake up from one day and find it's not true."

Source: The Australian

Muslim convert slurs Bali victims

By Tom Allard

RABIAH HUTCHINSON, the Mudgee-born grandmother accused of being the "grand dame" of extremist jihadis in Australia, says she has limited sympathy for the victims of the Bali bombings because those holidaying on the Indonesian island engaged in pedophilia and drug taking.

And her close friend, Raisah bint Alan Douglas, another Australian convert to radical Islam who also married a suspected terrorist supporter, has praised Osama bin Laden, saying he followed a "correct" version of Islam.

The women are featured in a documentary to be aired on ABC television tonight, Jihad Sheilas. Read more ...

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
H/T: Atlas
Update: Second 'jihad sheila' faces losing passport