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Report: Al-Qaida calls for attacks at sea

An article posted on an Islamist Web site in April urged Muslim fighters to begin attacking warships and merchant traffic in the strategic choke points around the Arabian Peninsula, according to a project that monitors online extremist activities.

The Middle East Media Research Institute, based in Washington, reported the article in the e-newsletter “Jihad Press” on its Islamic Websites Monitor Project [http://memriiwmp.org/content/en/blog_personal.htm?id=378]. “The article argues that gaining control over the seas and sea passages — especially around the Arabian Peninsula — is a vital step towards renewing the global Islamic caliphate,” MEMRI wrote.

The Jihad Press article, the equivalent of an op-ed column, names a few areas that al-Qaida considers “of supreme strategic importance in the campaign to expel the enemy:” the Red Sea, Yemen’s Gulf of Aden and the Bab Al-Mandeb strait, “the gate of tears,” which connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

“If the enemy loses these key areas,” the Jihad Press explains, “he will not be able to defend himself on land and [to protect] his naval bases from the mujahidins’ attack,” according to MEMRI’s translation.

The Jihad Press column cites the October 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole, which killed 17 sailors; and the 2002 attack on the French oil tanker Limburg — both in Yemeni waters — as proof that Islamist fighters can have an effect at sea.

Terrorists are also known to have planned other maritime attacks. The destroyer The Sullivans was to be the target of a suicide bombing in 2000, but the attack boat was overloaded with explosives and sank before it could get close to the warship. And an ex-sailor, Hasaan Abujihaad, was convicted in March of leaking the details of warship movements to a terrorist network when he served as a signalman aboard the destroyer Benfold.