Al Qaeda calls for attacks inside United States
DUBAI - Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-
Zawahri urged small-scale attacks
inside the United States to "bleed
America economically," adding he
hoped eventually to see a more
significant strike, according to the SITE
monitoring service.
In an audio speech released online a
day after the 12th anniversary of the
9/11 strikes, Zawahri said attacks "by
one brother or a few of the brothers"
would weaken the U.S. economy by
triggering big spending on security,
SITE reported.
Western counter-terrorism chiefs have
warned that radicalized "lone wolves"
who might have had no direct contact
with al Qaeda posed as great a risk as
those who carried out complex plots
like the 9/11 attacks.
"We should bleed America
economically by provoking it to
continue in its massive expenditure on
its security, for the weak point of
America is its economy, which has
already begun to stagger due to the
military and security expenditure," he
said.
Keeping America in such a state of
tension and anticipation only required
a few disparate attacks "here and
there," he said.
"As we defeated it in the gang warfare
in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and
Afghanistan, so we should follow it
with ...war on its own land. These
disparate strikes can be done by one
brother or a few of the brothers."
At the same time, Muslims should seize
any opportunity to land "a large strike"
on the United States, even if this took
years of patience.
The Sept 11, 2011 attacks, in which
hijacked airliners were flown into New
York's World Trade Center, the
Pentagon in Washington and a
Pennsylvania field, triggered a global
fight against al Qaeda extremists and
their affiliates. Almost 3,000 people
were killed in the attacks.
In his audio speech, Zawahri said
Muslims should refuse to buy goods
from America and its allies, as such
spending only helped to fund U.S.
military action in Muslim lands. He
added that Muslims should abandon
the U.S. dollar and replace it with the
currency of nations that did not attack
Muslims.
Zawahri spoke approvingly of one of
the worst attacks on U.S. soil since
September 11, 2001, the bombing of
the Boston Marathon in April, which
U.S. authorities say was carried out by
two ethnic Chechen Muslim brothers.
The attack killed three people and
injured 264.
Zawahri sought to paint the bombing
as part of al Qaeda's violent
transnational campaign of jihad or holy
war against U.S. interests, even if it
was relatively small-scale.
"The Boston incident confirms to the
Americans ... that they are not facing
individuals, organizations or groups,
but they are facing an uprising Ummah
(Muslim community), that rose in jihad
to defend its soul, dignity and
capabilities."
"What the American regime refuses to
admit is that al Qaeda is a message
before it was an organization," he said.
Zawahri, suspected by many security
specialists to be living in the Pakistan-
Afghanistan border area, added that
the al Qaeda message simply was that
if Muslims wanted to live in dignity and
"be liberated," then they had to defend
their dignity.
