Worldandnation: Notes tell terrorists how to live in West

FARM HADA, Afghanistan -- Handwritten notes found Saturday in a house abandoned by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization amount to a detailed handbook for operating undercover in the West, advising agents on such varied topics as traveling with a false passport, how to scout out a target and the proper way to apply deodorant.

The notes, written mostly in error-filled English with a few passages in Arabic, provide specific instruction in activities such as setting up a safe house, buying a plane ticket and forming a "good cover story." General in nature, the notes do not mention specific terrorist actions, but they do warn that Muslims "are facing a war of security" as they "target kuffar," the Arabic word for non-believers.

No detail appears too small to have escaped attention, down to the "normal" underwear an agent should wear and the hand on which he should put his watch. The notes place painstaking emphasis on covering up signs that an agent is an Islamic fundamentalist, advising recruits to shave their beards one week before traveling to a targeted country and engage in such forbidden practices as playing music to "show that you are not a Islamic person."

The documents offer an unusual window into the clandestine lives of al-Qaida operatives sent to carry out secret missions to the West, suggesting the meticulous preparation that went into setting up terrorist cells like those that are suspected in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. They also suggest the the global aspirations of bin Laden's terrorist network, indicating how his recruits living in Afghanistan were assigned to infiltrate targets around the world.

The notes are the latest documentary traces found in places abandoned by the al-Qaida network and the ruling Taliban militia which hosted bin Laden. After the Taliban fled Kabul last month, reporters found documents in houses there describing how to make weapons such as suitcase bombs. The notes found Saturday, however, appear to be the first discovered here which instruct adherents to go to the West to carry out their activities, and could add to the evidence linking al-Qaida to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The instructions in the notes found are also similar to the techniques which a defector from bin Laden's network described during a New York trial this year of four bin Laden associates convicted of plotting the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright