The Taliban in My Inbox

The Taliban in My Inbox

Early Sunday morning, May 2, I awoke and followed my usual routine: Grabbed a cup of coffee, logged onto my computer, scanned the news for major developments in the war, and checked my email. It was no ordinary morning, though, as the evening before someone had attempted to set off a car bomb in Times Square in New York City.

Normally I have a couple of dozen messages in my inbox: notes from readers, an occasional tip or link to a news story, and some spam. But something I found sitting in my inbox that morning made me catch my breath: an email from someone claiming to be a representative of the Pakistani Taliban, who was notifying me that one of their top leaders had released a tape claiming responsibility for the attempt to murder U.S. citizens in Times Square.

The email had been sent at 2:37 a.m., just eight hours after the bomb was discovered. The emailer’s handle was Taliban News and the subject line read: “Qari Hussain Mehsud from Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan accepts the responsibility of recent Attack on Times Square Newyork USA.”

“You’re the first one to know” the cryptic email stated.

The email included a link to a 1:21-length video posted on a YouTube site called the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (“the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan”) is an al Qaeda-linked group waging war against the Pakistani state and against NATO forces in Afghanistan.

“We Tehreek-e-Taliban with all the Pride and Bravery, TAKE full responsibility for the RECENT ATTACK IN THE USA,” Qari Hussain states at the beginning of the tape, which was accompanied by English subtitles.

“This attack is a revenge for the great & valuable martyred leaders of mujahideen,” he goes on, while images of recently slain Taliban and al Qaeda leaders appear. He listed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who was killed in a Predator strike in August 2009 and Abu Omar al Baghdadi, the leader of al Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq who was killed by Iraqi forces in mid-April of this year. An image of Abu Ayyub al Masri, Al Qaeda in Iraq’s leader, who was killed with Baghdadi in April, also flashed on the screen.