Gannon

Poison gas.  Explosives.  Hand-to-hand combat.  Knives.  And religious exhortations.  The 11-volume “Manual
of Afghan Jihad,” or holy war, makes chilling reading - a how-to guide to what it calls the “Basic rules of
sabotage and destruction.”
 
Most of the information can be gleaned from Internet Web sites, experts say, and another manual, written for
Muslim operatives abroad and not part of the 11-volume set, was discovered last year during an investigation of
Osama bin Laden.
 
But intelligence analysts from two Western countries who read part of the “Manual of Afghan Jihad” and who
spoke on condition of anonymity, said its highly technical detail, including diagrams, represents a new level of
sophistication in the training apparatus of bin Laden’s network.
 
The volumes were obtained by The Associated Press from a former Afghan guerrilla who said he got them from
a Libyan fighter.  He said the Libyan, who had fallen out with his comrades stole them in July from the
headquarters of bin Laden’s organization in Kandahar, also the home base of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers.
 
The preface to Mouswada al Jihad al Afghani, the Arabis name of manual, says it was compiled by “The
services Office of the Training Camps,” and that this “Services Office” was founded by bin Laden.  It is meant
for use in the battle against “the enemies of our movement, the enemies of Allah, for any Islamic group.”
 
Each volume begins with dedications to, among others, bin Laden, who “took part in jihad with his life and
money in Afghanistan;” Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian killed during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan;
Islamic leaders in Afghanistan; and the people and government of neighboring Pakistan, which has long
supported the Taliban regime.
 
The 11 volumes, ranging from 250 to 500 pages each, are written in Arabic, with occasional indexes in English.
Excerpts were translated for the AP.
 
Each has a specific area of expertise.  “What’s your desire?” the text asks - then takes the reader step by step
through the acquiring and mixing various explosive materials.  Other sections tell how to blow up a plane,
engage an armored vehicle, surround an airport, spy on a military base.
 
A volume on hand-to-hand combat has a chapter on “hot to threaten with a knife, piercing with a knife.”  In the
Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States, in which bin Laden is the suspected mastermind, hijackers were
believed to have been armed with knives or box-cutters.
 
In the chapter on security and intelligence, the authors say that “in preparedness for war, security and
intelligence-gathering of the enemy’s power and strategy have been emphasized, according to the instructions
of the Quran.”

In a chapter on “basic sabotage and destruction,” would-be assassins are offered various options, including
“poison-making, poisonous gases and poisonous drugs.”
 
They are instructed on specific plant life that can be used to make poison gas, hot to make the gas and what
quantity is needed to kill a man.  They are told that a room full of a particular odorless gas will kill someone in
30 seconds.
 
The “armaments section” leads the reader through a virtual history of 20th century weaponry, from British Lee-
Enfield rifles of 1928 vintage to the U.S.-made Stinger antiaircraft missiles supplied to the anti-Soviet rebels in
the 1980's.
 
“This research is for all mujahedeen (holy warriors) in the world who are struggling to establish Islamic law
wherever they are,” says one passage in the manual.  “According to the Quran, you should fully prepare
yourselves to fight with your enemies.  So wherever the mujahedeen are fighting, their training in explosives in
(sic) necessary.”
 
A volume on tactics urges the faithful “to adopt the path of jihad according to the teachings of Islam against the
un-Islamic and satanic states, as well as against those Muslim states where true Islam has not been introduced.”
 
The former guerrilla who gave the AP the manual retains close ties with some of the estimated 4,000 Arab
fighters in Afghanistan, and he requested anonymity.