Found in Mali
Documents suggest al-Qaida has anti-aircraft missile Enlarge Image
Request to buy this photoOlivier Debes | French army photo via AP
A French soldier holds the launch tube of an SA-7 missile before its destruction in Timbuktu, Mali.
By Rukmini Callimachi
• Sunday June 16, 2013 8:14 AM
TIMBUKTU, Mali  -  The photocopies of the manual lay in heaps on the floor, like Xeroxed, stapled
handouts for a class.
Except that the students in this case were al-Qaida fighters in Mali. And the manual was a
detailed guide, with diagrams and photographs, on how to use a weapon that concerns the United
States: a surface-to-air missile that can shoot down a commercial airplane.
The 26-page document, recovered by the Associated Press in a Timbuktu building that had been
used by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, strongly suggests the group possesses the SA-7
surface-to-air missile, known to the Pentagon as the Grail, according to terrorism specialists. And
it confirms that the al-Qaida cell is training its fighters to use these weapons, also called
man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS, which likely came from the arms depots of ex-Libyan
strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
"The existence of what apparently constitutes a 'Dummies Guide to MANPADS' is strong
circumstantial evidence of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb having the missiles," said Atlantic
Council analyst Peter Pham, a former adviser to the U.S. military command in Africa and an
instructor to U.S. Special Forces. "Why else bother to write the guide if you don't have the
weapons?"
The United States was so worried about this weapon that the State Department set up a task force
to track and destroy it as far back as 2006. In the spring of 2011, before the fighting in Tripoli
had stopped, a U.S. team flew to Libya to secure Gadhafi's stockpile of thousands of heat-seeking,
shoulder-fired missiles.
By the time they got there, many had already been looted.
The manual is believed to be an excerpt from a terrorist encyclopedia edited by Osama bin Laden.
It adds to evidence for the weapon found by French forces during their assault in Mali this year,
including the discovery of the SA-7's battery pack and launch tube, according to military
statements and an aviation official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The knowledge that the terrorists have the weapon has already changed the way the French are
carrying out their 5-month-old offensive in Mali. They are using more fighter jets rather than
helicopters to fly above its range of 1.4 miles from the ground, even though that makes it harder
to attack the jihadists. They are also making cargo planes land and take off more steeply to limit
how long they are exposed.
Introduced in the 1960s in the Soviet Union, the SA-7 was designed to be portable. Not much
larger than a poster tube, it can be packed into a duffel bag and easily carried. It's also
affordable, with some selling for as little as $5,000.
Since 1975, at least 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by different types of MANPADS, causing
about 28 crashes and more than 800 deaths around the world, according to the U.S. Department of
The SA-7 is an old model, so most military planes have a built-in protection mechanism against
it. But that's not so for commercial planes. Favorite