"Al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody"

Nashwan Abdulrazaq Abdulbaqi

aka Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi

(Image from Wikipedia)

Or so states the headline of a Yahoo! News blurb (Reuters) that I've just read early this morning.

Okay, what about him? This:

An Iraqi al Qaeda member accused of assassination plots against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and other attacks was transferred by the CIA to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo this week, the Pentagon said on Friday.

Sounds like a big fish. Has he done anything else? Does he have a name?

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was also accused of commanding al Qaeda's paramilitary operations in Afghanistan and launching attacks on U.S. and coalition forces from Pakistan, the Defense Department said.

Okay, he's done some big stuff. And he has two names. If correct, then he would know about al Qaeda's paramilitary tactics, among other things. What other things? These:

With al-Hadi, the Pentagon is now holding 15 men it considers "high-value detainees" -- a classification that indicates U.S. officials believe the capture had a significant effect on al Qaeda operations and the prisoner is capable of providing high-quality intelligence.

High-quality intelligence? More than tactics? Strategy perhaps? Or the inner workings of al Qaeda?

According to a U.S. government summary on al-Hadi, the detainee was "known and trusted" by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Inner workings, at the very least. But don't we already know a lot about al Qaeda's tactics, strategy, and inner workings? What I find most revealing about this man al-Hadi -- elsewhere known as al-Iraqi -- is how smart he is. A Newsweek article from last year, "Terror Broker" (Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, April 2006) informs us about al-Hadi al-Iraqi:

Born in Iraqi Kurdistan about 1960, he rose to the rank of major in Saddam Hussein's Army before joining the jihad in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. He speaks not only Arabic but Urdu, Kurdish, the Waziri tribal dialect of Pashtu and a courtly form of Persian. In the palatial salons of the gulf states he has raised millions of dollars for Al Qaeda. But dressed for the part he can easily pass for a mountain tribesman. "He's just like any Afghan," says Zabihullah[, an Afghan who acts as a liaison between the Taliban and Al Qaeda]. "He doesn't have the arrogance and formality of other Arabs."

So, who is this guy? Wikipedia identifies him as Nashwan Abdulrazaq Abdulbaqi (نشوان عبد الرزاق عبد الباقي). The Wikipedia article links to a US wanted poster, which add this to what we know:

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi is one of Usama bin Laden's top global deputies, personally chosen by bin Laden to monitor al Qaeda operations in Iraq. Al-Hadi was the former Internal Operations Chief for al Qaeda. He has been associated with numerous attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and has been known to facilitate communication between al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda. Al-Hadi rose to the rank of Major in Saddam Hussein's army before moving to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union. He has a reputation for being a skilled, intelligent, and experienced commander and is an extremely well-respected al Qaeda leader. He has commanded numerous terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Al-Hadi is reportedly still in contact with Usama bin Laden.

Neither Wikipedia nor the Newsweek article clarify whether al-Hadi is Arab or Kurd, but since Zabihullah remarks that al-Hadi "doesn't have the arrogance and formality of other Arabs," then I'm assuming that he is an Arab who grew up bilingual among Kurds, which may partly account for his fluency in the Indo-Iranian languages Urdu, Pashto, and Persian.

That al Qaeda and Islamists generally are able to draw such brilliant men as al-Hadi, Abu Musab al-Suri, and Abu Bakr Naji suggests that a body count of big fish captured should not lull us into thinking that we're winning the struggle against Islamism. Rather, it should focus our minds on some stubborn facts. The Muslim world accounts for at least one billion individuals, and some studies show that up to 10 percent or more strongly sympathize with Islamism. If we assume that for the most part, women are not involved, then the 5 percent of Islamist sympathizers means that at least 50 million Muslim men might be willing to join the jihad. From that 50 million can be drawn many very highly intelligent individuals. Assume that 1 percent are "very highly intelligent." This would mean that at least 50,000 very highly intelligent men are potential recruits for Islamist jihad.

Of course, this is speculative, but whether the number is higher or lower, it still represents an enormous pool of highly intelligent, potential leaders for Islamism. Such statistics imply that the battle cannot succeed if we imagine it restricted to the battlefield. More importantly, the battle is an ideological one that will require non-Muslims to learn a lot about Islam. The intelligent tend to respect intelligence, and if non-Muslims know their Islamic sources, then they will gain insight into dealing with intelligent Islamists and perhaps learn how to dry up that pool.

As Marc Sageman concludes in "Understanding Terror Networks" (E-Notes, FPRI, November 1, 2004), "The war of ideas is very important and this is one we haven't really started to engage yet."