Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis (CTTA) – Volume 6, Issue 10

The five articles in this issue detail the lives and personalities of five prominent terrorist leaders from some of the major theatres of violence in the world today and the nature of the deadly organisations they run:

(1) Syed Huzaifah Bin Othman Alkaff examines the genealogy of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, leader of the most feared terrorist organisation today, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), especially in the context of the claim that he is a descendent of the Prophet Muhammad;

(2) Abdul Basit profiles Asim Umar, the newly appointed head of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), as a former TTP commander with connections to local militant organisations across the region who could attempt to prove his group’s relevance by staging high-profile attacks especially in India and Pakistan;

(3) Abdul Basit also studies Fazlullah, the ski-lift operator who is now the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP); Basit estimates the Fazlullah-led TTP not only as a long-term threat to Pakistan but also to be detrimental to Afghanistan-Pakistan relations;

(4) Emeka Okereke demonstrates how, under the leadership of Abubakar Mohammed Shekau, the Nigerian group Boko Haram could grab global headlines through its extreme acts of violence, and how despite uncertainty about Shekau’s current status, the group continues to carry out attacks and abductions;

(5) Robi Sugara in his article demonstrates the uniqueness of Santoso, the leader of East Indonesian Mujahidin (MIT), in terms of his rise from relative obscurity to become Indonesia’s most wanted terrorist, and that with his expanding network, the terrorist threat posed by MIT can only increase in scale and scope in Indonesia.