Al-Qaeda magazine calls for setting wildfires

It’s not unusual to run into someone in Northwest Montana who moved here after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Getting away from population centers, and particularly places like New York City that have already been targets of terrorists, was a common explanation.

Now an online magazine believed to be the work of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks, is advising would-be jihadists to set wildfires in Montana.

“It is your freedom to ignite a firebomb,” runs the headline of an article in the Winter 1433 issue of Inspire magazine (Winter 2012 in the Gregorian calendar).

Citing the destructive forces of fires in Australia in 1983, with a photo of “Sydney city on fire,” the article provides both an anarchist’s cookbook of firebombing technology and the religious justification for using fire against al-Qaeda’s enemies.

The article goes on to describe wildfires that raged across Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest in 2000 and the housing and population boom the state has witnessed over the past decade.

“In America, there are more houses built in the countrysides than in the cities,” the Inspire article says. For a terrorist’s target, “it is difficult to chose a better place other than the valleys of Montana, where the population increases rapidly.”

Inspire is an English language magazine thought to be the work of two members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, U.S.-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awaki and Samir Khan, who grew up in Queens, N.Y. and was a chief propagandist for al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.

The magazine first appeared in July 2010 and was believed to be gone for good after al-Awaki and Khan were killed last year by U.S. drone missile attacks in Yemeni. But two new issues recently surfaced online.

The article referencing Montana gives a three-part answer to the rhetorical question how is it possible to create a destructive forest fire? First, “ask for the assistance of Allah,” the article states. Next, choose the right time and suitable circumstances, such as drought, wind and steep slopes. And third, “use the ember bomb,” the construction of which the article describes in some detail.

Some online news articles reporting on the latest issues of Inspire belittle the magazine for its typographical errors and quaint references to places in the U.S. But Northwest Montana residents who have been through the wildfires of 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2007 will likely find little humor in that criticism.