Abdul Rasul Sayyaf

Afghan Mujahideen leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf is the Saudi backed Wahhabi Law Professor who employed, trained, mentored and financed a host of global terrorist entities. He was the founder (1985) and Dean of the University of Jihad / Dawa al-Jihad near Peshawar Pakistan that ran bomb making classes and everything! Sayyaf's alumni from there and his other training camps include:

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

But post-9/11 Sayyaf was still put on America’s payroll. First contact was made by CIA officer Gary Schroen during the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, while the World Trade Center still burned in New York:

“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 became a 'strongly supported' NATO ally for the next twenty years and was given sanctuary with NATO member Turkey when the Kabul government fell in August 2021. He had been a powerful member of parliament since 2003 and even ran for President in 2014:

“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.” - original report

That was the first time I'd heard of Sayyaf despite spending six months in 2012 Afghanistan with the British army myself. It was my awakening, when I finally realized the entire War-on-Terror was a duplicitous farce.

The Devisive Unifier

Born near Kabul in 1946 Sayyaf became an Islamic scholar, attending university in the capital before studying at the illustrious Al Azhar University in Egypt. At some point he adopted Wahhabi doctrine and that appears to have endeared him to the Saudis. He returned to Kabul University as a professor of Islamic Law and was a member of the Ikhwan al-Muslimin (an Afghan Muslim Brotherhood). He’s said to have taken part in a failed 1975 coup attempt and was forced into exile in Pakistan. He was arrested and jailed in 1978 Kabul after trying to return but was released before the Soviet invasion. Sayyaf was a significant Mujahideen leader in the 1980s, as per this declassified 1985 CIA 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.”

Sayyaf’s Insurgent Organization

The CIA's assessment was accurate. As well as heading the Seven Party Fundamentalist Alliance in Peshawar Pakistan, Sayyaf was also building his own Insurgent Organization - what I believe to be the real Al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission report (page 150/151) details how Indonesia’s Jamaah Islamiyah ( JI) leader / 2002 Bali bomber Hambali became one of Sayyaf’s first recruits in 1986. He trained in Sayyaf’s Sada camp near Peshawar Pakistan, where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would train too. After getting his engineering degree at university in America KSM was introduced to Sayyaf by his brother in 1987. 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 - the four years he worked for Sayyaf managing the foreign volunteers who arrived at the Maktab al-Khadamat (aka the Peshawar Services Office).

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 brutal conflict that followed was a civil war and factional in-fighting, 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 / consequence of tension at the Maktab al-Khadamat; it certainly demonstrates a parting of ways from those who continued to fight. 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 Jamaah Islamiyah leadership trained too. A 2005 US Department of Justice funded report (page 47) states:

By 1992 Sayyaf had his insurgents trained and regional groups established thanks to generous Arab financing. 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.

While his international forces were bombing New York, 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 his terrorist spree. Below are a selection of some key terrorist attacks I attribute to Sayyaf's Insurgent Organization. The full list would be far, far longer:

Sayyaf's work in 1993 New York
- the first WTC bombing

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

1994/95 Philippines - the Bojinka Plot: Ramzi Yousef had lived in the Philippines in 1991 while teaching Abu Sayyaf bomb making. He returned to Manila in 1994 with a smal terrorist cell. Their plan to bomb a dozen trans-Pacific airliners was busted in January 1995 but not before they'd bombed a cinema for practice and killed a random Japanese businessman on their first test bombing of a plane - Philippine Airlines Flight 434. It is also where Ramzi Yousef talked about (but didn't plan) using a hijacked civilian airliner as a missile to attack targets in the USA. I was in the Philippines for four months in 1994 and remember the cafe front in Manila's tourist area pictured left. It was in the same area the Bojinka cell lived in and I suspect it inspired Ramzi Yousef's musings about kamikaze attacks.

4 April 1995 Philippines - the Ipil Massacre: In their first attack two hundred heavily armed Abu Sayyaf terrorists attacked the remote southern Philippines town of Ipil. They fired at residents, strafed civilian homes, plundered banks then took up to 30 hostages before burning the center of the town to the ground. The final death toll was fifty-three and about as many again wounded. Because Abu Sayyaf and the Bojinka plotters had trained together it appears very likely this attack was in retaliation for the Bojinka Cell arrests. Or it had been pre-planned to coincide with the airline bombings. Every subsequent Abu Sayyaf attack can ultimately be attributed to Sayyaf too. There was a bin Laden link in the Philippines but not Osama. His brother-in-law Jamal Khalifa ran a branch of the International Islamic Relief Organization that funded mosques, schools and the Abu Sayyaf Group. I believe Khalifa was working for Sayyaf, not OBL.

7 August 1998 Africa - the US Embassy Bombings: Shortly after the bombs in Kenya and Tanzania detonated a foreign government sent the CIA a list of individuals who flew into Nairobi before the attack. The CIA recognizes that one of the names was an alias for KSM, the managing director of Sayyaf's Insurgent Organization. Twelve months earlier I met KSM and his two Pakistani chemical engineers in Yemen, in a factory supplied with TNT component chemicals via the US State Department in Washington, as detailed here.

9 September 2001 Afghanistan - Ahmad Shah Massoud's Murder: In April 2001 Massoud traveled to Europe and warned world leaders that "The Taliban and Al Qaeda are planning something big... they will not stop with Afghanistan, the world must be ready." He would have been America's most acceptable ally after 9/11 and that's undoubtedly why he was killed. The foreign assassins were posing as journalist and had (an allegedly forged) letter of introduction from London's Islamic Observation Centre. They were hosted by Sayyaf who urged Massoud to grant them an interview. They received that invitation in August, around the same time the hijackers booked their 9/11 flights. This was Sayyaf shaping the battlefield he knew was coming and I think he used Massoud to frame OBL and his enemies the Taliban for a plot he was commanding.

11 September 2001 USA - the 9/11 Attacks: Sayyaf's links to 9/11 are prolific, the most obvious being Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, his protege since 1987. He also sent the assassins who murdered Ahmad Shah Massoud on 9 September 2001, a 9/11 precursor shaping the impending battle in Sayyaf's favour. He got access to Massoud for the assassins in mid-August, at the same time the hijackers purchased their 9/11 tickets. The two events are undoubtedly connected, as reflected in one of the hijackers last messages. While reading it please remember Sayyaf is a Professor:

“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

- it is a clear confirmation of their attack plan, 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.

12 October 2002 Indonesia - the Bali Bombs: Hambali is a principle defendant in the US military court / prison at Guantanamo Bay. As detailed above Hambali was one of Sayyaf’s first students, training with him in 1986-88 Afghanistan before establishing Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia. Three more of the Bali bombers (Imam Samudra, Ali Imron and Sarjiyo) trained in 1991 Pakistan at Sayyaf’s Sada camp – taught bomb making by Ramzi Yousef. The Bali bombings were clearly carried out by Sayyaf’s Insurgent Organization.

Sayyaf, Asadullah Khalid & US/NATO General Scott Miller

Sayyaf & NATO's Senior Civilian Representative Stefano Pontecorvo

Sayyaf & US/NATO General John Nicholson

Misogynistic Sayyaf Chairs 2019 Kabul Peace Conference

Sayyaf in the Media

Despite Sayyaf being named as KSM's employer, trainer and mentor in the 2004 9/11 Commission report, EVERY section of the media - mainstream and alternative - appears to have studiously ignored that fact to this day. It's one of the biggest open-9/11 secrets I know of and remains beyond my comprehension to be honest. A few exceptions that have highlighted Sayyaf's other activities are worthy of note:

The New Yorker magazine wrote this brilliantly
detailed article on Sayyaf's role in Massoud's murder.

Britain's Telegraph newspaper's 2014 article
on Sayyaf running for president woke me up.

Journalist Kathy Gannon, one of the most qualified of commentators, went to town on Sayyaf in her 2005 book I is for Infidel. She highlighted his role in Massoud's murder, the Hazara massacres and Sayyaf training international terrorists. She also recounts a meeting of massive significance that Sayyaf attended in 1996. An Afghan policeman at a check-point targeted Gannon during the 2014 election in an attack I suspect may have been directed by Sayyaf in retaliation for her reporting. Kathy Gannon survived seven bullet wounds from that assassination attempt; her colleague Anja Niedringhaus died from her injuries.

Sayyaf is already exposed; the current challenge is getting someone to hold him to account by getting enough people to raise this as an urgent matter (before the 9/11 trials at Guantanamo actually start). If more evidence is needed I know one potential source: the recipient of the Regards to the Professor message from the 9/11 hijackers. That's Guantanamo detainee Ramzi bin al-Shibh whose double I met in 1997 Yemen. Based on my photo, conversations and visit to Al Qaidah town in Yemen, I believe that I could turn al-Shibh to state witness within a couple of hours. He would then confirm that the Professor in that message was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf.