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A US drone strike which officials said killed a core al-Qaeda leader actually killed a leading Egyptian Islamist who was trying to convince the group's affiliate in Syria to set aside its global ambitions and focus on fighting the Assad government.
Middle East Eye can reveal that at the time of Rifai Taha's death on 5 April, the Egyptian was attempting to persuade Nusra Front fighters face-to-face that their infighting with other rebel groups and focus on emirate-building was damaging the war-torn country.
Taha, a co-founder of the Egyptian militant group al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, was in Syria to stop infighting that had erupted between Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, the most powerful rebel group in Syria, over theological differences and territory gained in Idlib in late March, according to two well-informed sources. One was in close contact with Taha days before he crossed into Syria. The other fights for an armed group in Syria.
The source who was in close contact with Taha before his trip said the Egyptian planned to persuade fighters from Nusra, which shares al-Qaeda's vision of a global struggle, to join Ahrar, which believes in fighting only the Syrian government and the Islamic State (IS) group, or at least scale back their al-Qaeda representation in Syria.
Taha was a credible person to carry out this mission, both sources said, because of his influence within al-Qaeda after many years earning the respect of Osama bin Laden and other key al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan.
The final moments of the alleged mediator’s life raise key questions over who ordered his death. Taha passed through Atmeh, a crossing into Syria which is only accessible with permission from the Turkish military or intelligence, one of the sources said.
On 5 April, two days after a US drone strike killed 21 people including Abu Firas al-Suri, a Nusra spokesman, in the village of Kafr Jales, Taha met members of Nusra in nearby Idlib city. According to one of the sources, Nusra leader Mohammed al-Golani was present.
Early that evening, residents in Idlib heard the hum of drones overhead. After the meeting ended, Taha drove away in a Toyota pickup which contained an Egyptian commander of Ahrar-al-Sham, Abu Omar al-Masri, and three bodyguards, the source said.
The pickup was hit by missiles as it stopped at a petrol station, and before the men had a chance to get out of the cars. The occupants were “vapourised” by the strike, said one of the sources.
Abu Adnan, a resident and witness interviewed by Bilal Abdul Kareem, an MEE contributor, said he was on his way home from work and was about to pray when he saw three drones in the sky and then heard a series of explosions.
One rocket, as Abu Adnan described it, landed on the Toyota pickup and another on the petrol station. He said five people, including a female bystander, were killed and 10 injured.
Abdul Kareem's video shows body parts and the charred remains of a vehicle, as well as blood spatters on a nearby bus and shrapnel blast marks.
A missile had struck the Toyota where Taha had been sitting, one of the sources said. This suggested that Taha had been closely tracked by the US, which he reportedly confirmed to friends and family shortly before his death.
A day after the attack, the Washington Post, citing Pentagon officials, reported that the drone had killed “core al-Qaeda” members. A senior US defense official cited in the same report said it was “unclear if the strike eliminated any leadership figures”.
Two days after the Post report, US Central Command said on Twitter that “core al-Qaeda operatives” who threatened US national security had been killed in strikes conducted against the group, referring to both the 3 April and 5 April hits.
Given Taha’s access to the Atmeh border and the precise nature of the drone strike, one of the sources familiar with his trip said he believed the Gamaa al-Islamiyya leader was set up.
“I think he was sent to Syria to die – either by the Turks or his own people,” he said.
Fighters turned mediators
Aside from the mystery over the exact chain of events that led to the drone strike, Taha’s death also raises critical questions about whether the US has blinded itself to a group of Islamists who some believe could rally rebels to work together towards bringing the Syrian civil war to an end and keep them away from a global agenda.
Thought to be in his early 60s, Taha co-founded the Egyptian militant group Gamaa al-Islamiyya in the 1970s. He spent several years in Afghanistan, supporting fighters, and also lived in Sudan. Taha was close to Osama Bin Laden and friends with other al-Qaeda’s leaders, but was not a member of the group, one of the sources familiar with this trip said.
In July 1995, Taha was the mastermind behind a Gamaa al-Islamiyya attempt to assassinate then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak who was visiting the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, and he was the head of the group’s military wing in 1997 when it killed 62 people, mostly tourists, at an archaeological site in Luxor.
In late 1997, the US State Department added Gamaa al-Islamiyaa for the first time on list of foreign terrorists organisations, where it remains.
Just weeks after the September 2001 attacks, he was picked up at Damascus airport in the CIA’s abduction programme, and sent to Egypt. A member of Gamaa al-Islamiyya, who asked to remain anonymous, told MEE that Taha was tortured over many years, leaving physical and psychological scars.
“They put him under the ground for many years,” the Gamaa al-Islamiyya member said.
A 2005 State Department report on terrorist organisations singles out Taha, saying that he published a book in 2001 advocating mass casualty attacks and then "disappeared" several month later. While members of the group in Egypt renounced the use of violence in March 2002, according to the report, "disaffected" members like Taha might still "be interested in carrying out attacks against US interests".
For unknown reasons, references to Taha are dropped from similar State Deparment reports and discussion of Gamaa al-Islamiyya more recently.
When Mubarak was toppled in 2011, Taha was freed and Gamaa al-Islamiyya formed the Building and Development Party, which won 13 of 508 parliament seats in the 2011 elections.
But soon after Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s only democratically elected president, was removed in a military coup in 2013, Taha was smuggled into Turkey where he stayed and applied for asylum despite the Turks asking him to leave.
Most recently, he served as the head of Gamaa al-Islamiyya's shura council overseas.
In recent years, as he watched the Syrian civil war unfold from Istanbul, he grew frustrated as Nusra militants alienated Syrians and fought against other rebels rather than together against Assad, according to the two sources familiar with Taha’s Syria visit.
He was also, said one of the sources, concerned about some Nusra hardline element who were more ideologically closer to IS.
“He saw the situation in Syria heading in that direction – that people have not learned from what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq and they are just repeating step-by-step the same mistake,” said the fighter in Syria who spoke regularly with Taha over the past year as he planned his visit.
“He could not turn away and just watch.”
‘Soften the urge’
Syria's five-year civil war began as a standoff between peaceful protesters and the government, but quickly morphed into a regional proxy war involving warring rebel factions, Syrian rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The groups have competed for foreign funding and military support, while on the other hand seeking local support and legitmacy.
To mediate these disputes, high-profile global militants as well as religious scholars have entered the country from time to time to calm fights and finesse alliances – and some, said the fighter in Syria familiar with Taha’s mission, in search of redemption.
“That’s an aspect that the West doesn’t understand – there is this negative notion of the word Islamist or jihadist which needs to be explained and demystified,” he said.
Many of those entering Syria followed ideologies in their youth that they have realised, he said, are not “applicable in all times and space”.
“Some of those trying to fix things are ex al-Qaeda – those are the fiercest ones in attacking al-Qaeda,” he said.
Taha’s visit to Syria came after years of tensions between Nusra and other rebels groups, particularly Ahrar al-Sham, largely over Nusra’s ties to al-Qaeda and the group’s ambitions to build an emirate in Syria, forming a base from which to plot foreign attacks.
Over the past three years, the thinking of Nusra’s leadership has ebbed and flowed over whether – or for some, when - to launch such an initiative. In parallel, there have been on-and-off collaborations between Nusra and other rebels groups on the battlefield.
Last March, Nusra, Ahrar and several others in northern Syria formed an alliance called Jaish al-Fatah – or Army of Conquest. Two months after its formation, the alliance took control of Idlib province.
Several months later, Nusra broke away from Jaish al-Fatah when a new leader, Abo Yehia - less willing to look the other way at Nusra’s connection to al-Qaeda - took over Ahrar, said one of the sources familiar with Taha’s visit.
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