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In the Name of God, Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate 
Thanks to God, the God of all, God bless our prophet Muhammad, 
His Family, and His friends. 
 
To the Generous Brother Abu Basir, God bless you  
Peace and Mercy upon you  
 
I hope you will get this letter and all brothers and their 
families are in good health and working your way to God 
Almighty. 
 
We received your letter and our brother‟s letter (Abu Hurirah 
al-San‟ani) through our brothers (NFI). We were very happy to 
receive your letter that answered our questions. The letter 
provided us with information about you and your situation, and 
we were following your news very closely through the media.  
In reference to your statement, “If you want Sana‟a, today is 
the day,” we want Sana‟a to establish an Islamic State, but 
first, we want to make sure that we have the capability to gain 
control of it. Even though we were able to militarily and 
economically exhaust and weaken our greatest enemy before and 
after the eleventh (TN: September 11), the enemy continues to 
possess the ability to topple any state we establish.  
 
Page 2 
 
Our greatest enemy is unable to provide stability in those 
countries and the mujahidin, with the help of God, are fighting 
it (TN: greatest enemy) with its allies. At the same time, we 
have to remember that the enemy toppled the Taliban and Saddam's 
regime. Additionally, you know the experiences in (Syria, Egypt, 
and Libya) and the enemies‟ alert in Yemen can‟t be compared 
with the enemies‟ state of alert in Afghanistan. The enemies 
considered Yemen as one of its own because of its geographical 
location, which is in the heart of the Gulf where the largest 
store of oil is in the world. We do not want to trouble 
ourselves and our families in Yemen concerning this matter at 
this time. Things needed to be prepared and will organize for it 
(NFI) to be successful because if we fail, people will not help 
us the second time. I believe that Yemen should be peaceful and 
kept as reserved military for the Ummah (TN: Islamic State). It 
is well known that wars need reserve military and to keep the 
enemy in the open fronts until the enemy becomes weak, where we 
would be able to establish Islamic State. Therefore, the more we 

SOCOM-2012-0000016-HTcan conduct operations against America, the closer we get to 
uniting our efforts to establish an Islamic State, God willing.  
 
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Based on this, our opinion is to appoint scholars and tribal 
shaykhs to accomplish a practical truce among them, which will 
help the stability of Yemen. Even though we learned that „Ali 
„Abdallah ((Salih)) will not be able to agree on the truce, 
proving that the government is escalating the situation to an 
internal fight and the government has no authority. Therefore, 
the people of Yemen will continue supporting the mujahidin. The 
government will be responsible for the war, not us, and it will 
show the people that we are careful in keeping the Islamic Ummah 
united and the Muslims safe on the basis of peace.  
 
- We do not see escalation as necessary at this point because we 
are in the preparation stage; therefore, it is not in our 
interest to rush in bringing down the regime. In spite of this 
regime's mismanagement, it is less dangerous to us than the one 
America wants to exchange it with. „Ali „Abdallah Salih has been 
unable to suppress the Islamic activity and has been considered 
to be a non-Muslim man and supporter of the West during the past 
years. On the contrary, the salafists and the jihadist salafists 
were able to take advantage of his regime and target America 
from Yemen, as some of the mujahidin went to Somalia or traveled 
to us, which allowed us to assign our brothers to conduct 
international operations.  
 
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If the government does not agree on a truce, concentrate on the 
Yemeni emigrants who come back to visit Yemen and have American 
visas or citizenship and would be able to conduct operations 
inside America as long as they have not given their promises not 
to harm America. We need to extend and develop our operations in 
America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes.  
 
- We would not be able to send you a brother to help you at this 
stage. We should keep our movement low for security reasons and 
not move unless under extreme, necessary circumstances, 
especially the leadership, who are in the media. They need to 
avoid meeting people. If they need to move, they have to stay 
away from gas stations and restaurants. The driver should have 
plenty of gas and food before leaving the city to avoid stopping 
on the road. The intelligence services place officers in the gas 
stations, rest areas, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. 

SOCOM-2012-0000016-HT 
- Avoid killing anyone from the tribes. 
  
- It is crucial to have one of the organization‟s leaders in the 
south.  
 
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- Do not target military and police officers in their centers 
unless you receive an order from us. Our targets are Americans, 
who kill our families in Gaza and others Islamic countries. The 
soldiers (TN: Yemenis) need to be careful and not protect the 
Crusaders. We have to protect ourselves, especially if they try 
to stop us during an attack on the Crusaders. This is a very 
important point, which allows people to support the mujahidin 
and will reduce the soldiers‟ morale.  
 
- It is important to attempt to take a vow and truce from 
supporters of al-Qaida without enforcing it and accept them as 
your coworkers. With time they might join you.  
 
- The first commanders should be screened well (TN: background 
investigation).  
 
- In reference to the issue of abandoning weapons, this would 
never happen because, with education and iron, our religion will 
be victorious. Weapons are part of our survivors and history. 
Men without weapons are incomplete, and any men who leave their 
weapons have no respect by others. 
 
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I need to remind you about the general politics of al-Qaida 
concerning the military sector and media. Al-Qaida concentrates 
on its external big enemy before its internal enemy. Even though 
the internal enemy is considered to be a greater nonbeliever, 
the external enemy is more clearly defined as a nonbeliever and 
is more dangerous in this stage of our life. America is the head 
of the nonbelievers. If God cut it off, the wings would be 
weakened as 'Umar, peace be upon him, asked al-Harmazan, as he 
knows more about the land of Faris (TN: Iran). He replied, "Yes, 
the Faris of today has one head and two wings." He asked him, 
"Where is the head?" He replied, "It is in Nahawand." Then he 
mentioned the location of the two wings. He suggested to the 
commander of the faithful, "If you cut the wings, the head will 
fall down." 'Umar replied to him, "You liar. You, the enemy of 
God, because I will go straight to the head, and I will cut it 

SOCOM-2012-0000016-HToff, as has been said, if God cuts the head off the wings will 
be weakened."  
 
Even though these politics are clear in the minds of our leader 
brothers, it is very important to remind all of our brothers 
about it with a note to the new generation, who joined the jihad 
road and were not advised about this issue. Thus, they conduct 
separate operations rather than concentrating on the main 
objective as we heard in the news about operations in Ma‟rib and 
„Ataq against the government forces. I hope these operations 
were important for the mujahidin‟s self-defense only.  
 
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I provide an example to clarify al-Qaida's general political 
policy in concentrating on America, which means that the enemies 
of the Ummah, for example, is a malicious tree with a huge trunk 
of 50 cm around and has many different sizes of branches, 
including the countries of NATO and other regimes in the 
regions. We want to cut this tree at the root. The problem is 
that our strength is limited, so our best way to cut the tree is 
to concentrate on sawing the trunk of the tree. We need to 
concentrate on cutting around 30 cm in the bottom of America‟s 
leg (trunk). Even though we have the chance to attack the 
British, we should not waste our effort to do so but concentrate 
on defeating America, which will lead to defeating the others, 
God willing. 
 
Here is an example for you, the mujahidin were able to cut the 
root of the Russian tree, and after that, all the branches fell 
one after the other, … 
 
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…from the south of Yemen to Eastern Europe, without spending any 
effort on these branches at that time. Therefore, any arrow and 
mine we have should be directed against Americans, disregarding 
all other enemies, including NATO, and concentrating on 
Americans only.  
 
For example, if we were on the road between Qandahar and Helmand 
and army vehicles of Afghanis, NATO, and Americans drove by, we 
should choose to ambush the American army vehicles, even though 
the American army vehicles have the least amount of soldiers. 
The only time you are allowed to attack the other army vehicles 
is if those army vehicles are going to attack our brothers. In 
other words, any work to directly defend the mujahidin group 

SOCOM-2012-0000016-HTwill be excluded from al-Qaida's general politics policy because 
the mujahidin group should be able to carry out its mission, 
which is striking American interests.  
 
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Anyone following up with the latest events should know that our 
work and messages concentrate on exhausting and straining the 
American, especially after September 11. We will continue to 
pressure the Americans until there is a balance in terror, where 
the expense of war, occupation, and influence on our countries 
becomes a disadvantage for them (TN: Americans) and they become 
tired of it, and finally withdraw from our countries and stop 
supporting the Jews.  
 
It is very important to remember that timing is very important, 
as the present history confirms. We should realize by now that 
in order to establish an Islamic State, we should destroy the 
international infidels because they are against an Islamic State 
no matter how little it (TN: State) is, as happened in Morocco. 
Shaykh al-Khatabi established an Islamic Emirate in Morocco, but 
the Crusaders blockaded and terminated the Emirate. The reason 
they do not want an Islamic State is because they know that 
Muslims are special, and for a short period of time during 
Prophet Muhammad and his successors, the whole world respected 
the Muslims. 
 
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Today, the head of the infidels (TN: America) is controlling and 
supporting the countries in the region. Additionally, it has the 
ability to topple the Islamic State in Afghanistan and the Iraqi 
regime. Even though it is exhausted, its strength to destroy an 
Islamic State in the region remains high during this time. The 
most important thing is that local and international 
professional adversaries are planning to destroy the Islamic 
movements; therefore, we need to be proactive and face all of 
their plans and continue to deplete and exhaust it throughout 
the open battlefield in Afghanistan and Iraq to get it to a 
weaken point, which will stop it from destroying the country 
that we want to establish. Also, we might have to wait for a 
year or longer to establish this objective (TN: Islamic State) 
through the Muslims' unity and their effort to join the jihad.  
 
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SOCOM-2012-0000016-HTYou know that many jihadist groups did not succeed in gaining 
their objective because they concentrated on their internal 
enemy. Therefore, the Syrian Muslim Brothers got themselves in 
trouble, especially in Himah, when thirty years ago the event 
(NFI) shocked the people. Additionally, other events took place 
as of the Islamic group attempt in Egypt, including the 
situation with our brothers in Libya, Algeria, and the Arab 
Peninsula. Even though some of the work was targeting the 
American centers, not the regime, and was useful in getting 
America to leave its huge military bases in Saudi Arabia and in 
educating young men about the jihad. Then the jihad started 
facing problems for the abovementioned reasons.  
 
Meanwhile, the resistance movements against the foreign 
occupation enemy were able to accomplish huge successes during 
the last ten years in the Islamic world, and the latest one was 
in Afghanistan. The reason for this success is that… 
 
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…the Russian occupation of Afghanistan allowed us to gain the 
people's heart. It was very important to us to gain the 
Afghanis‟ support because the people's support to the mujahidin 
is as important as the water for fish; therefore, any movement 
has to have the people's support in order to survive, as 
happened in Gaza when all the people supported the Islamic 
Resistance Movement; even though, the people are unaware of the 
wrongdoing by the mujahidin. The enemy entered Iraq without any 
knowledge of the area or the Iraqi people, who have a strong 
tribal background; therefore, the Iraqis supported the 
mujahidin. Many Iraqis joined the mujahidin against the 
Americans until some mistakes happened when some of al-Anbar 
tribe‟s children were attacked without a reason of self-defense 
(they were not a threat to the mujahidin), but they were 
registering in the security force compound. This attack resulted 
in the tribe working against the mujahidin. At this time, the 
mujahidin learned their lesson, which is not to kill any of the 
tribe members.  
 
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There is a very important point that needs to be addressed and 
understood, which is that God‟s law needs to be obeyed by all 
the mujahidin stating that there was no imminent threat from the 
tribe‟s members, and they were going to join the security forces 
for financial reasons. This lesson should be taken into 
consideration because members of the tribe were planning to join 

SOCOM-2012-0000016-HTthe security force and might be a threat in the future, but they 
would not kill themselves to protect Americans. Additionally, 
these people have no problem killing their own cousins; 
therefore, if they attack us and we kill one of them, we will 
have no problem with them. But we should avoid killing a group 
of them during their presence in the security force compound to 
avoid any desire for revenge against us. It is important to 
study all the mujahidin's attempts and efforts to learn from 
their mistakes.  
 
It is clear that the Arabs are in the depths of intolerance and 
revenge. Some of the mujahidin brothers worked with us in the 
past and returned to Yemen and got involved in some of the 
tribes‟ fights. 
 
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They were unable to separate themselves from this culture 
(revenge). America pressured the Yemeni government to attack the 
tribal areas as happened in al-Mahfad and Shabwah, which led 
some of the tribes to be against the government. On the other 
hand, the mujahidin were able to work with the tribes and 
establish a good relationship with them because the mujahidin 
have a good understanding of the meaning of revenge among the 
tribes. As Prophet Muhammad ordered Abu Hudhifah not to kill al-
„Abas Bin „Abd-al-Mutalab, but Hudhifah refused to abide by the 
order.  
 
A friend of Prophet Muhammad, „Abdallah Bin „Abdallah Bin Abu 
Bin Salul, asked the prophet if he was going to kill „Abdallah 
Bin Abi and requested to kill him. 
 
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He stated that he would not be able to see his killer because he 
would kill his killer and go to hell. The prophet told him that 
we will be his friend as long he is with us. When „Umar became 
the leader of a tribe (Ibn Abi Majazatah), Prophet Muhammad 
asked him “How things with you „Umar? If I had killed him when 
you told me to kill him, you would have honor, and if you order 
me now to kill him, I would kill him.” This hadith proves that 
anyone fighting under the American flag against the Muslims 
should be killed, but the argument here is the timing as Prophet 
Muhammad stated, “If I had killed him when you told me to kill 
him.”  
 

SOCOM-2012-0000016-HTThe time to establish an Islamic State is near, and the jihadist 
ideology is spreading abroad, especially among the youth and the 
new generation in comparison to other Islamic movements that did 
not fulfill the redundancy among the Ummah except the jihadist 
Salafi ideology that works well with Ummah issues. We should 
develop the speech of al-Qaida to be convincing, easy and clear. 
Additionally, it has to be sensitive to the people‟s issues and 
suffering and to the general public. 
 
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Some of our brothers might have provided harsh statements to 
some of the Salafists, God bless them, concerning the 
establishment of an Islamic State. We need to understand our 
present circumstance, which is different from theirs, and we 
need to understand the difference between our strength and our 
weakness. We have to concentrate our statements on the most 
important, which is the meaning of only one God, and steer 
people away from praying to more than one God. Also, we need to 
pay attention to the words and meaning of our statements in 
order to avoid words that could be used for different meanings 
within the Islamic law without giving up any of our principles 
by using words that will relate the intended message, for 
example, using the word "clients" rather than the word "agents." 
During this stage, we need to relay the truth to the people in 
the easiest and nicest words. Some people do not like the word 
agents and consider it insulting. Therefore, if we use the word 
"clients" instead of the word "agents," and say that they 
(clients) betrayed their religion and their Prophet instead of 
using the traitor rulers, it would help more Muslims listen to 
us. That way we would be able to alert the Muslims about their 
loyalty to oppressor rulers, which is our goal. 
 
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…We need to stay away from words that will affect the people‟s 
support to the mujahidin. Additionally, the mujahidin should 
feel that they are in the international Crusaders‟ propaganda 
against them, which is concentrating on giving the wrong 
impression about the mujahidin to Muslims. Therefore, it is 
important to carefully write our statements in order to avoid 
all accusation against us from the enemy, who accuse us of being 
animals and killers. The Muslim people should feel that they are 
part of the battle, and they are in need of speeches that fit 
their conditions without forgetting that the Ummah (Muslims) are 
the main supporters of the mujahidin. Thus, we should be careful 
and provide statements that would be welcomed by the people and 

SOCOM-2012-0000016-HTstay away from flagrant attacks, criticism, or disrespect of the 
opponents.  
 
In reference to Hamas, we should understand that Hamas has many 
supporters who are supporters of Islam even though they forgot 
the meaning of some of the important Shari'ah law. We do not 
want to help the devil against them. As time passes, we will 
explain their leaders‟ mistakes, which will help them to pay 
attention to their mistakes and avoid them (NFI).  
 
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We need to understand that a huge part of the battle is the 
media, and the cable channels today play a stronger role than 
the Hja‟in poets during the ignorant era. If the cable channels 
concentrate on promoting a specific person, they will have 
success, and the opposite is correct. If those channels do not 
want that person to be successful, they will destroy him. This 
shows that we are at odds with most of the channels and al-
Jazeera has a different agenda than ours. It would be better for 
us to stay neutral, even though this channel sometimes commits 
mistakes against us. These mistakes are limited, and if we 
confront it, al-Jazeera will raise propaganda against us and 
could hurt our image within the Muslim world. Therefore, it is 
important not to have an enemy in the moderate poets if there is 
no reason to do so.  
 
Conclusion: Even though the government is weak and might fall, 
the opportunity to let it fall and establish a different 
government is open to others but not to us. The reason for this 
is very simple: It is not possible to compromise on any part of 
our religion or bargain on our religion in order to satisfy 
America to support the new government. Many people will say 
anything and leave their religion under the pretext of being in 
the best interest of al-Da'wah. Please discuss the matter of 
conducting a truce with government with the others. 
 
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…If you decide on the truce, you should announce it with its 
justification and its conditions, which includes the closing of 
the American counterintelligence offices, expelling all American 
security and military forces in Yemen, and preventing the 
Americans from violating the sovereignty of Yemen through the 
Yemeni scholars and the tribal shaykhs, so people will 
understand your position and their position.  
 

SOCOM-2012-0000016-HTFinally, I would like to remind you that America will have to 
withdraw during the next few years because of many reasons, the 
most important of which is America‟s high deficit.  
 
In closing, I send my greetings to all of our brothers in your 
area, and I ask God to help us all for what He wants and likes 
us to do, make you follow the correct directions, make you stay 
in your area, keep us on the road of jihad, and give us victory 
against the infidels. I hope to meet with you in the near 
future, God willing. God bless our prophet Muhammad, his Family, 
and his friends, and the last of our prayer is thanks to God.  
 

SOCOM-2012-0000016-HT