One of the Kouachi brothers, who mounted the attack last week on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, cited al-Awlaki as his operational commander. Before he died on Friday, one of the brothers told a French news network, “I was sent, me, Cherif Kouachi, by al Qaeda in Yemen. I went there and Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki financed my trip.”
U.S. officials say that the other Kouachi brother, Said, spent several months in Yemen in 2011, receiving training from al Qaeda.
Al-Awlaki was both the instigator of the al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen’s plots to attack the West and also one of the most influential clerics in the world of militant Islam. Indeed, al-Awlaki is the key influence behind many of the major terrorist attacks and plots of the past half decade in the West, and he has continued to retain that influence even after President Barack Obama made the decision five years ago to kill him with a drone strike.
Awlaki is the key influence behind many of the major terrorist attacks and plots of the past half decade in the West
Peter Bergen
Al-Awlaki was an influence on the two Tsarnaev brothers, who are alleged to have killed three people at the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013.
He also influenced Carlos Bledsoe, who shot up an Army recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, killing an American soldier in 2009. After the attacks, Bledsoe said his spiritual inspiration was al-Awlaki.
Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 after sending 18 emails to al-Awlaki in Yemen, a correspondence that was known to the FBI. Al-Awlaki did not direct this attack, but he was the key inspiration for Hasan.
–
Killing the man did not kill his ideas or his influence. It seems, if anything, only to have magnified them among Islamist militants living in the West. Some two dozen militants indicted in the States since al-Awlaki’s death have cited his influence or possessed his propaganda, according to a count by New America. Quazi Nafis, a 21-year old Bangladeshi on a student visa, was arrested in 2012 for plotting to bomb the New York Federal Reserve. Nafis said that al-Awlaki’s ideas had influenced him.
In 2013, the government filed an indictment against Terry Loewen, a 58-year-old man from Wichita, Kansas, alleging that he attempted to explode a car bomb at Wichita Airport.
Loewen told an undercover informant, “I have read Anwar Al-Awlaki’s ’44 Ways of Jihad,’ and like everything l’ve ever read of his, it’s very informative.”
And now we have the terrible attack in Paris at the Charlie Hebdo magazine, again inspired by al-Awlaki.
Read CNNOpinion’s new Flipboard magazine.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.
Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.
