The terrorist who played a “central role” in the “Black Hawk Down” attack in Somalia and facilitated the deadly U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa in the 1990s could be the next al Qaeda leader following Ayman al Zawahiri’s death in a U.S. airstrike in Kabul.
The State Department has a $10 million reward for Saif al Adel, considered al Qaeda’s second-in-command under Zawahiri and who could soon helm the terrorist group founded by Osama bin Laden and responsible for the deadly terrorist attacks around the world, including the 9/11 suicide hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 Americans and others.
Adel is believed to have hidden out in Iran for many years. A senior Biden administration official said top Taliban leaders knew Zawahiri was hiding in Afghanistan when he was killed. The Taliban — which protected al Qaeda before and after 9/11 — rapidly took over Afghanistan amid a chaotic U.S. withdrawal last year.
FBI agent Jack Cloonan has said that “there was a four or five-man team” inside Somalia that was “operating for bin Laden” and that Adel “was the commander.”
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Nineteen U.S. troops were killed in Mogadishu in 1993 on what had been the deadliest day for U.S. troops since the Vietnam War, with 18 killed in the major battle and a 19th killed two days later. The battle was immortalized in the 1999 book Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden and in the 2001 Ridley Scott film starring Ewan McGregor and Josh Hartnett.
President Bill Clinton had ordered Task Force Ranger into Somalia in August 1993 in response to increasing violence on the part of Habar Gidir clan forces led by warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid. Clinton began a troop withdrawal shortly after the events of Black Hawk Down, which al Qaeda pointed to as a sign of U.S. weakness.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent with extensive experience against al Qaeda, wrote last year that Adel played a “central role in audacious attacks” in Somalia.
“Saif took a small al-Qaeda team to the city. … As he had done in Afghanistan, he proceeded to train fighters to shoot missiles at helicopters. In an inversion of his earlier experience, however, now the weapons were Russian and the targets American,” Soufan wrote. “On the afternoon of October 3, 1993, two MH-60 Black Hawks participating in an anti-terror operation in central Mogadishu were brought down within a few blocks of each other using Soviet-made rocket launchers. It has been reported that one of the rockets was fired by a Tunisian member of Saif’s al-Qaeda squad.”
The FBI agent said: “Saif and his men may have participated directly in the fighting on the ground; at the very least, the downing of the Black Hawks would likely not have been possible without Saif’s military training.”
The FBI Most Wanted Terrorist poster for Adel says he is “thought to be affiliated with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and is believed to be a high-ranking member of the Al-Qaeda organization.” The bureau says the terrorist is “wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.” Those bombings killed 224 civilians, including 12 Americans, and wounded 5,000 others.
Adel spent years living in Iran after 9/11.
“Ayman al-Zawahiri, partly through the agency of senior Al-Qaeda leadership figures based in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Abu Muhammad Al-Masri and Saif Al-Adel, has been able to exert influence on the situation in north-western Syrian Arab Republic,” a United Nations report said in 2018.
Masri had been al Qaeda’s No. 2 but was shot to death in Tehran in August 2020.
Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in January 2021 that “al Qaeda has a new home base: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Pompeo said al Qaeda “has centralized its leadership inside of Tehran,” and so “al Qaeda terrorists like Saif al Adel and the now-dead Abu Muhammad al Masri have been able to place a new emphasis on global operations and plotting attacks all across the world.”
The Long War Journal also noted that “members of Osama’s family, including his son Hamza, fled to Iran after 9/11 as well.”
Another U.N. report in July said that “the international context is favorable to Al-Qaeda, which intends to be recognized again as the leader of global jihad.” The report noted that “next in line of seniority after al-Zawahiri are” Adel and Abd al Rahman al Maghrebi, who is Zawahiri’s son-in-law. The U.S. has a $7 million reward for Maghrebi, and the FBI says that Maghrebi “fled to Iran.”
Whether Adel and Maghrebi remain in Iran or made their way to Afghanistan like Zawahiri is not yet publicly known.
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Zawahiri was also involved in the African embassy bombings and in planning the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, which left 17 U.S. sailors dead.
The Taliban, Haqqani Network, and al Qaeda are deeply intertwined in Afghanistan, and the Taliban have integrated Haqqani leaders and fighters with al Qaeda links into their command structure. Zawahiri and Laden both pledged allegiance to top Taliban leaders.
ISIS-K, the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, was responsible for the late August 2021 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, which killed 13 U.S. service members and dozens of others. The Taliban — including Haqqani forces — were providing security outside the airport when the bomber got through.
