AQ Update: Wealth of Intel Data from Al Tunisi’s House

In the wake of killing Al Qaeda’s senior leader in Iraq a treasure trove of intel date has been uncovered in his safe house. They have a roster of Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq, including their Biographies and photos.

This will lead to further finds as intelligence agencies and governments track those leads back to sources and originations in other countries. From USA Today:

tunisidocs_2.jpgThese images show documents that the U.S. military says it obtained after killing a senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The one of the left is said to show a list of foreigners who entered the country to carry out “martyrdom” operations, while the one on the right is described as a biographical entry for one such foreign recruit.

The images were released earlier today by the Pentagon during a briefing on the death of Abu Usama al-Tunisi, an al-Qaeda in Iraq leader who they described as the emir of foreign fighters.

We’ve already seen a major AQ financier and recruiter captured, and as each lead is followed up more and more will be discovered. Iraqi forces also broke up a major meeting of AQ forces in northern Iraq, capturing an Iraqi Member of Parliament (un-named,) at the meeting.

The physical nature of groups that operate in cells is fragile and it takes a great deal of time to heal communications if a cell is fractured and if they truly follow the ideal dictates of inter-cell communications structure; which Al Qaeda does not always do.

It’s easier to ignore tight standards for inter-cell oversight for logistics purposes — and the hard fighting from Anbar Awakening and the US forces has created the need for AQ to break it’s inter-cell communications structure just to stay in the fight. One leader having a full roster is proof of that.

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