The main Web sites that normally carry messages from the al-Qaida terror group remain inoperable more than a month after they went down just ahead of the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Only a site called Hesbah and a new one named Faloja now function intermittently, more than a month later, and carry messages from Al-Qaida and its allies in Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories about recent operations.
Halliburton is toying with them.
Al-Fajr Media Center, the extremist group's communications wing, issued a terse statement on Sept. 29 blaming the problems on "technical reasons" and denying the sites had come under a cyber attack as has been widely speculated in the media.
No, no! Cerainly not!
"We deny reports published by the media of the tyrants regarding the fall of some of the headquarters of these networks into the hands of the enemy," the statement said, according to the U.S-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist sites. Contributors to the forums also have worried publicly that some kind of Western cyber attack targeted the sites.
One prominent jihadi poster, quoted by SITE, suggested extremists should strike back by infiltrating other, more-moderate Islamic discussion forums and flood them with extremist rhetoric to turn them into al-Qaida discussion groups.
Terror analysts have long seen al-Qaida's media arm as a powerful tool for rallying the network's followers and sympathizers, churning out videos and audiotapes even though the top leadership is mostly out of touch, hiding in the mountainous border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The videos have grown in technical sophistication, featuring computer animations and clips from international television media.
I wonder if they could do reconstructions of bin Laden speeches...
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has issued three audiotapes himself this year, the most recent in May. |