Abdul Rasul Sayyaf

Afghan Mujahideen leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf is the Saudi backed Wahhabi Law Professor who has trained and mentored a host of global terrorist entities since the 1970s. They included:

- the 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef -
- 9/11's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -
- most of the 2002 Bali bombers -
- the founder of the Filipino Abu Sayyaf Group -

But amazingly Sayyaf was one of the first Afghans put on to America’s payroll post-9/11. He became a 'strongly supported' NATO ally for the next twenty years and was given sanctuary in Turkey when the Kabul government fell in August 2021. CIA officer Gary Schroen first visited Sayyaf in October 2001:

“I produced a $100,000 bundle of cash from my backpack and handed it across the table to Sayyaf, who instinctively took the package... Sayyaf looked at me and his eyes narrowed. “That is the first time I have ever accepted cash directly from anyone.” He shook his head as if he had been tricked, eying me carefully, a slight smile on his lips. We rose and thanked him for agreeing to assist the US government, and we shook hands.” - from Schroen’s 2005 book ‘First In: How Seven CIA Officers Opened the War on Terror in Afghanistan’

Sayyaf ran for President in the 2014 election but was knocked out in the first round with a 7.1% share of the vote. That was the first time I heard of Sayyaf, after my summer 2012 tour of Helmand with the British army, when I read this news headline:

“Former Islamist warlord who brought bin Laden to Afghanistan to run for president: A former Islamist warlord who reputedly invited Osama bin Laden to live in Afghanistan has joined the race to become the next Afghan president.”

The evidence for those claims from official sources is below. Draw your own conclusions about the CIA / NATO alliance with Sayyaf.

The 2004 9/11 Commission report (page 146/147) states:

“KSM plunged into the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad soon after graduating from college. Visiting Pakistan for the first time in early 1987, he traveled to Peshawar, where his brother Zahid introduced him to the famous Afghan mujahid Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, head of the Islamic Union Party. Sayyaf became KSM’s mentor and provided KSM with military training at Sayyaf’s Sada camp… Between 1988 and 1992, KSM helped run a nongovernmental organization [Maktab al-Khadamat] in Peshawar and Jalalabad; sponsored by Sayyaf, it was designed to aid young Afghan mujahideen.”

That quotation proves KSM had intimate links to Sayyaf from the very start of his militant career (1987). It also tells us when KSM built his global terrorist network, during the four years he worked for Sayyaf managing the foreign volunteers who arrived at the Maktab al-Khadamat (aka the Peshawar Services Office). That would not have been a surprise to the CIA as they already knew about Sayyaf's activities, as per this now declassified 1985 assessment:

“Sayyaf has used his role as principal conduit of Arab money to the jihad (holy war) to build his own insurgent organization, in competition with and at the expense of other resistance leaders. They, in turn, accuse him of corruption and misuse of funds, resent his position as the Arabs’ 'fair-haired' boy, and have increasingly refused to cooperate with him.”

The timing of KSM’s entry into Sayyaf’s insurgent organization is critical: 1987 marked the effective end of the Afghan Jihad after the Soviet occupiers announced their withdrawal under a ceasefire respected by most but not all Mujahideen factions. And KSM’s management of the Peshawar Services Office on Sayyaf’s behalf coincided with Osama bin Laden’s split from that same office. That falling-out is noted in the minutes of the August 1988 meeting chaired by OBL (the Sheikh) in Peshawar:

“Mismanagement & bad treatment in Maktab al-Khadamat.
Why is the Arab element being secluded? ...disagreement is present
…the Sheikh's military gang has ended. ”

The Afghan Jihad ended on 15 February 1989 when the USSR withdrew its last troops – the Jihad’s goal complete. The fighting that followed was a civil war, Afghan against Afghan, and that’s why Osama bin Laden left within a couple of weeks. He clearly wanted no part in it, even taking all his construction machinery back with him. Perhaps that was the cause of tension at the Maktab al-Khadamat; it certainly demonstrates a parting of ways from those who continued to fight, specifically Sayyaf and KSM.

The 9/11 Commission report (page 150/151) details how Indonesia’s Jamaah Islamiyah ( JI) leader Hambali (the 2002 Bali bomber) became one of Sayyaf’s first recruits in 1986. He trained in Sayyaf’s Sada camp near Peshawar Pakistan where KSM trained too. But Sayyaf’s big recruitment drive occurred after the Soviet withdrawal. KSM’s brother had introduced him to Sayyaf in 1987 and in turn KSM introduced their nephew Ramzi Yousef to Sayyaf’s insurgent organization in 1990, amongst many other recruits via the Peshawar Services Office. Yousef was studying electronic engineering in Britain and used those skills to learn bomb making in Afghanistan, at Camp Khaldan where Abu Sayyaf and JI leadership trained too. A 2005 US Department of Justice funded report (page 47) states:

Insurgents trained and regional groups established thanks to generous Arab financing. By 1992 everything was in place for Sayyaf’s insurgent organization to begin its terrorist spree. The first evidence of that was a money transfer on 3 November 1992, when KSM sent $660 from Qatar (where the ruling al-Thani family was his new host, employer and protector) to Ramzi Yousef’s 1993 World Trade Center bomb group in New York (that was already infiltrated by the FBI but still left free to operate). That first attack, an attempt to murder 250,000 Americans because of their government’s support for Israel, was carried out by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf’s alumni, not Osama bin Laden’s followers. And it wouldn't have happened if the FBI had listened to its informant's warnings, Egyptian army officer Emad Salem. That massive Intel agency failure(?) is significant because it was repeated time and time again. It appears Sayyaf's insurgent organization was very deliberately left free to operate. There was an arrest within days of the attack but only because one of the bombers tried to get a deposit back from the rental agency whose van they'd just blown up. The group claimed responsibility under the name of The Liberation Army Fifth Battalion, sounding like something from a Steven Spielberg movie. It was the Middle East they wanted to liberate from American dominance. Their methods were murderous but, to their minds, so was Western interference in the Middle East since World War One.

While his international forces were bombing Manhatten in February 1993, Sayyaf's militia in Kabul were committing one of the worst massacres in the forty years of conflict that Afghanistan suffered. Sayyaf's Wahhabi fighters raped and butchered their way through the Shia Hazara district - a tactic typical of Daesh today. Despite being Pashtun Sayyaf sided with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. Very craftily he offered Osama bin Laden sanctuary in 1996 when OBL was forced to leave Sudan but then passed OBL over to the Taliban's responsibility. Maybe it was an act of revenge for OBL's swift departure in 1989. And perhaps it was Sayyaf shaping the battlefield, setting-up OBL and the Taliban to take the blame for Sayyaf's insurgent organization terrorist spree. Coincidentally... Western Intel agencies / the Deep State had been trying to do exactly the same thing since at least 30 May 1993 when they planted a fake report with the French AFP news agency. It contained the first mention of Al Kaida in the international news. It claimed a Jordanian militant had told them about the secret organization training in Afghanistan that was financed by Ossama ibn Laden.

Sayyaf's work in 1993 Manhatten - the first WTC boming

Sayyaf's work in 1993 Kabul - the brutal Afshar massacre

30 May 1993: Al Ka'ida is 'invented' to frame Osama bin Laden
for Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and KSM's terrorist spree (my opinion)

Sayyaf and 9/11

There’s three pieces of evidence I’ve found linking Sayyaf to 9/11. The first and most obvious is Sayyaf’s relationship with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed whom he employed, trained and mentored between 1987 and 1992. And according to the 9/11 Commission report Sayyaf and KSM renewed their relationship after Qatari government officials helped KSM avoid capture by the FBI in 1996.

The second link between Sayyaf and 9/11 is circumstantial, relating to the murder of Ahmad Shah Massoud two days before 9/11, an event that appears to have been a prerequisite for the attacks. Sayyaf had hosted, vouched for and urged Massoud to meet with his assassins posing as journalists, as detailed in a New Yorker magazine article copied here.

The final Sayyaf / 9/11 link I’ll cite is damning in my opinion, proving his absolute complicity and commanding role in the attacks. Around the same time Sayyaf had gained access to Massoud for the assassins – mid August 2001 – the hijackers in America sent Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Germany a coded message via an online messaging service (very likely setup by Mohamedou Slahi) that stated:

“The first semester commences in three weeks.
Two high schools and two universities.
This summer will surely be hot.
Nineteen certificates for private education and four exams.
Regards to the professor. Goodbye.”
Source: 2002 Al Jazeera report

- the 9/11 hijacker message above is a clear confirmation of their attack plan and signed off with “Regards to the Professor”. Abdul Rasul Sayyaf is a Professor of Islamic law, and given his relationship with KSM and role in Massoud’s murder, I have no doubt that Sayyaf is the Professor referred to in the 9/11 hijackers' message.