AL QAEDA TO CUT AT LEAST 5,000 JOBS

KABUL (Voice of Sharia) -- Citing worldwide reaction to last week's terrorist attacks, multi-national terror network Al Qaeda announced Thursday that it would lay off 5,000 or more holy warriors.

The "holy war" concern said the move was necessary because of an expected 20 percent fatwah reduction and cost and complexity of thwarting new airport and immigration security procedures, according to a statement broadcast on Afghanistan's Voice of Sharia radio.

"This is, without a doubt, the most difficult thing I have had to do in my over two decades as a mujahad," said Al Qaeda mastermind and chief operations officer Osama bin Laden in a letter to employees. He added, "Some of these people are my friends, who have been fighting the infidel by my side since we were living in caves in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. We are still living in caves in Afghanistan, but I believe the bottom is forming and we will see a turnaround soon, provided we can meet the challenge by getting both leaner AND meaner."

"I have declared a state of emergency at Al Qaeda," he said. "This declaration is an official recognition that, hard as it may be to accept, our network's very survival depends on dramatic change to our operations, our jihad and worst of all our staffing levels."

The cuts, bin Laden said, would include both mujahadin (holy warriors) and ulema (clerics). They will impact Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

Some mujahadin will be notified immediately, others won't be notified until the end of next week as they finish attacks in progress or in late stages of planning, according to Taliban spokesman Wakil Ahmed.

Staff cuts for suicide pilots, car bombers, petty religious clerics and other Al Qaeda holy warriors will be based on seniority, Ahmed said, in a deal worked out at a meeting between bin Laden and union officials from the IBIJ (International Brotherhood of the Islamic Jihad).

Mujahadin and others who lose their jobs will not receive any sort of severance package, according to the Al Qaeda statement. Pakistan, which oversees Al Qaeda and its subsidiary Taliban organization, is the world's largest country with a pre-medieval culture and justice system. The country's latest quarterly report said the different units of the Al Qaeda/Taliban organization, including the madrassas (schools Pakistan has been running for twenty years to turn ordinary children into suicidal holy warriors) had at total of 30,000 employees, meaning the cut represents a 16 percent reduction in staff.

Al Qaeda is the latest in a string of Islamic terror network layoff announcements, pushing the total of announced cuts in the last five days to 10,000.

Referring to massive U.S. troop movements involving three carrier groups in the Mediterranean and Arabian Sea, worried Afghani ulemas in testimony during the emergency sharia council in Khandahar on Thursday told their spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar that the number is likely to cross the 20,000 threshold in the coming days, through attrition, with none of the expected openings slated to be refilled.

OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) and bin Laden are considering spending billions on emergency aid to the industry, distributed through a vast network of corrupt Saudi emirs, international prostitution rings and drug smugglers. The current exchange rate is approximately 100,000 afghanis to the dollar.

The PLO announced Tuesday it will reduce its workforce by 200 to 300 sleeper agents worldwide by end of 2002 at its commercial bus bombing division and restaurant theater operations.