After much speculation that he was killed in an American airstrike, al-Qaeda's American-born spokesman Adam Gadahn (AKA "Azzam the American") has shown up in a new video released this past weekend. While focusing on Pakistan, he makes several references to the "Zio-Crusader" enemy and calls on Muslims to set aside their temporal national, ethnic or tribal differences for the sake of unity in the jihad for Islam. Soldiers are called upon to disrupt anti-jihad operations. The convert to Islam, born Adam Pearlman, is wanted by the FBI for his alleged role in developing al-Qaeda propaganda in Pakistan. In addition to Gadahn, the new recording also contains video of Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the chief al-Qaeda terrorist responsible for coordinating with the Taliban, as well as audio of Osama Bin-Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. In the video, filmed by al-Qaeda's media arm al-Sahab, Gadahn ridicules the new Pakistani government as a puppet of the Crusaders and Jews. He and others appearing in the video call on Pakistan's soldiers and people to refuse to aid in the fight against the jihadists and to attack caravans belonging to Western forces traveling through Pakistan. The soldiers are called upon to disrupt anti-jihad operations and to work for the imposition of Islamic law in Pakistan. Gadahn states that jihadist victory in Indian Kashmir and in Afghanistan has been prevented thus far by Pakistani "hypocrites" fighting against the jihad. Kashmir is mentioned several times, with calls to liberate the jihad in Kashmir from the control of the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency. In addition, he says, the West's main concern is that nuclear-armed Pakistan not fall to the jihadists - an outcome al-Qaeda is seeking to foment with the help of local cells. The Pakistani military is carrying out a campaign against Taliban jihadist forces in the tribal regions along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, as American airstrikes have been carried out in Pakistani territory against Taliban bases. Pakistan has formally complained about the American incursions, but Gadahn dismissed the complaints as hypocritical because Pakistan is itself carrying out attacks on the same groups as the Americans. A massive bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on September 20, which killed 54 people, has been blamed on al-Qaeda. In the wake of that attack, and previous terrorist actions in Pakistan, many Western nations have withdrawn the families of diplomats stationed in the country. The new al-Qaeda video did not touch on Israel at all, although there have been persistent rumors of al-Qaeda-affiliated cells operating within the Palestinian Authority and several Israeli Arabs have been arrested for attempts to link up with the jihadist group. Earlier this year, al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, said that he endorsed "every operation against Jewish interests" and promised to "strive as much as we can to deal blows to the Jews inside Israel and outside it, with Allah’s help and guidance."
