At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Indian intelligence officials estimated there were over 120 Al Qaeda training camps operating in Afghanistan, as well as some camps in Pakistan that may have been operated by Al-Badr, a possibly related group.[1]
According to a CIA report, by early 2001, Al Qaeda had trained as many as 5,000 militants, who in turn had created cells in 50 countries.[2]
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At the al-Badr camp in Afghanistan during the 1990s, recruits were trained in use of high-tech explosives.[3]
Hamza al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Ghamdi, and other "muscle" hijackers are known to have trained at the al-Farouq camp in Afghanistan.[4] There, Mohammed Zein Abu Zubaydah selected the participants for the 9/11 attacks.
Ten to twenty thousand men came to Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, between 1996 and 2001. Those that came tended to be young, unmarried, Sunni and included men from Algeria as well as Europe.
When they arrived, Al Qaeda interviewed them about their skills and background so that Al Qaeda could determine assignments for the recruits.
Recruits endured strenuous physical training, and they were "indoctrinated with the al-Qaeda worldview."
Death was the main attraction for many of the recruits.
At the camps, recruits learned about both successful and unsuccessful past operations. They studied from a 180-page manual, Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants which included material on counterfeiting, weapons training, security, and espionage.
There were three main stages of training for recruits:
New recruits spent fifteen days in boot camp, where they "were pushed to exhaustion, with only a couple hours of sleep some nights."
The second stage lasted forty-five days. Recruits received basic military training in "map reading, trenching, celestial navitagion, and the use of an extraordinary variety of weapons, including light machine guns, Claymore mines, mortars, shoulder-fired rockets, and anti-aircraft missles." The "targets" in the exercises were "enemies of Islam", mainly Americans (soldiers or vehicles), but they also considered Israel, Heretics ("Mubaraks of the world"), and Shiites as enemies.
In the third stage, recruits had the option of attending guerrilla warfare school (45-days). There were also specialty camps in hijacking and espionage, and a ten-day course in assassination. Another camp specialized in making bombs, and another called the "Kamikaze Camp" was reserved for suicide bombers who wore special white or gray clothes and lived alone, speaking to no one.
There was a well-supplied library of military books, as well as movies.
Zawahiri was particularly keen on the use of biological and chemical warfare. He established a program, code-named "Zabadi" -- "curdled milk" -- to explore the use of unconventional techniques for mass murder. He pored over medical journals to research various poisons. He noted, "Despite their extreme danger, we only became aware of them when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing concern that they can be produced simply." One of his men, Abu Khabab, set up a laboratory near Jalalabad where he experimented on dogs with homemade nerve gas and videotaped their agonizing deaths. Zawahiri set up another laboratory near Kandahar where Malaysian businessman Yzid Sufaat worked on cultivating biological weapons, particularly anthrax.
Bin Laden was cool at first to the use of biological or chemical weapons, but he found himself at odds with Abu Hafs, who led the hawks in the al-Qaeda debate about the ethics and consequences of using such indiscriminating agents. The doves also argued that the use of any weapon of mass destruction would turn the sympathy of the world against the Muslim cause and provoke a massive American response against Afghanistan.
On the other hand, the "hawks" pointed out that Americans had already used nuclear bombs twice. "If the United States decided to use nuclear weapons again, who would protect the Muslims? The UN? The Arab rulers? It was up to al-Qaeda to create a weapon that would inoculate the Muslim world against Western imperialism."
Mes Aynak was an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. The camp was located in an abandoned Russian copper mine near Kabul. The camp opened in 1999, after the United States had destroyed the training camp near Khost with cruise missiles in August 1998, and before the Taliban granted al Qaeda permission to open the al Faruq camp in Kandahar.[5]
The Mes Aynak camp also offered special, elite training. The special training session at Mes Aynak was rigorous and spared no expense. The course focused on physical fitness, firearms, close quarters combat, shooting from a motorcycle, and night operations. Although the subjects taught differed little from those offered at other camps, the course placed extraordinary physical and mental demands on its participants, who received the best food and other amenities to enhance their strength and morale. The Mes Aynak camp is where Bin Laden's first selected operative for the 9/11 plot were sent, including Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.[5]
For a brief period in 1999, Mes Aynak was the only al Qaeda camp operating in Afghanistan. It offered a full range of instruction, including an advanced commando course taught by senior al Qaeda member Sayf al Adl. Bin Laden paid particular attention to the 1999 training session. When Salah al Din, the trainer for the session, complained about the number of trainees and said that no more than 20 could be handled at once, Bin Laden insisted that everyone he had selected receive the training.[5]
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