Al Qaeda’s second-in-command said in an Internet video the US financial crisis was caused by Washington’s military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and taxpayers were paying the price.
“This crisis is one of … the series of American economic haemorrhages after the strikes of September 11… And these … will continue as long as the foolish American policy of wading in Muslim blood continues,” Ayman al-Zawahri said on the video, posted on Islamist websites on Friday.
“The ones shouldering the burden are taxpayers, whose money was spent to rescue senior capitalists and to protect the fraudulent interest-based system from collapse,” Zawahri said. Asked by an off-camera interviewer whether Washington would be able to resolve the crisis, Zawahri said: “They might be able to lighten their losses if they were to stop the insane haemorrhaging of funds which they are spending on wars against Muslims.”
Zawahri said the US military action against militant tribal forces in Pakistan would fail despite more troops being sent by President George W Bush to neighbouring Afghanistan.“I challenge you (Bush), if you are really a man, to send the entire American army to Pakistan and the tribal regions for it to end up in hell,” Zawahri said on the video, which carried English subtitles.
Zawahri called for a general strike in Egypt to pressure the government to open the Gaza border to defeat an Israeli siege of the area ruled by militant Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Zawahri said Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s attempt to negotiate with the Taliban as a sign of the government’s weakness. About Pakistan, Zawahri suggests that the government has been weakened but remains a US puppet.
On Iraq, Zawahri believes that US gains are temporary, claiming that Iraq’s Shia-majority administration will not accept the US-funded Sunni militias — locally known as Sahwa, or Awakening — into the government.
Zawahri “defends Al-Qaeda’s reputation of killing innocent civilians in their attacks, maintaining that such disparaging reports are merely the propaganda of the West.”
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