Gains for Insurgencies
Special attention must be paid to the Islamist insurgencies in which bin Laden’s cadre, funds, or inspiration play a part. While destroyed embassies in Africa, disemboweled tourists in Luxor, heavily listing naval combatants in Aden, and collapsed skyscrapers garner the lion’s share of media coverage, the survival and, in most cases, the progress of the world’s multiple ongoing Islamist insurgencies are likely the events that will have the most long-term positive effect for bin Laden’s al Qaeda movement. As shown in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Chechnya, the in-God’s-name struggles are magnets for devoted Muslim youths, incubators that breed international connections and loyalties, and schools for inculcating military training, combat experience, and theology. By mid-2001, the balance sheet showed bin Laden was very much in the black vis-à-vis insurgencies.
The Philippines
The Philippine insurgency remains vibrant, with frequent heavy fighting between the Abu Sayyaf Group and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Manila’s military since fall 1999. In November 1999, for example, fighting in North Catabato had displaced six thousand people from their villages, and the MILF’s Afghanistan-trained leader, Hashim Salamat, confidently rebuffed Philippine defense minister Orlando Mercado’s request for intensive peace negotiations. The MILF’s leaders, Salamat said, “are not keen on accelerating the [peace] talks,” and, in any event, the MILF would continue strengthening its military forces during the government’s “peace venture.” By early 2002, combat had increased to the point where Manila had asked for U.S. assistance and the United States had deployed a training force of 650 soldiers, 160 from the Special Forces. The presence of U.S. forces appears to be promoting cooperation among the Abu Sayyaf Group, the MILF, and other Muslim forces.89
Kashmir
The Islamist insurgents in Kashmir likewise were active, and they were directly assisted in summer 1999 by Pakistani forces. Together they staged an incursion into the Kargil area of Indian-held Kashmir, embarrassing the government in New Delhi and giving the plight of Kashmiri Muslims unprecedented worldwide media exposure. While the incursion was ultimately repelled by a combination of coercive U.S. pressure on Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif—which led to the coup that toppled his government—and India’s combined-arms operations, the Kargil incursion was a huge substantive success for Pakistan, the Kashmiri insurgents, and the Kashmiris’ foreign supporters, particularly Osama bin Laden.
In terms of casualties, Jane’s Intelligence Review has reported India’s forces suffered nearly five hundred officers and men killed and about one thousand wounded in the two-month campaign, and that since the end of the Kargil campaign, attacks by Kashmiri insurgents on Indian soldiers and policemen in Kashmir have quadrupled the pre-Kargil rate. More important in the long run, according to an unidentified Indian army officer, is that the need to keep larger forces deployed in the area to prevent another Kargil “will bleed India financially” to the tune of more than $2 million per day. “India may have pushed back the Pakistani invasion [of Kargil],” the officer concluded, “but it has lost the battle as it frantically prepares for the formidable and hugely expensive task of permanently manning the LoC [Line of Control] to prevent further intrusions.”90
Indian government, security, police, and military officials also have claimed that media coverage of the Kargil fighting stimulated a steady influx of Islamist fighters from Afghanistan, Burma, Bangladesh, Sudan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. The Hindustan Times wrote in late November 1999, for example, that Kashmiri guerrilla groups had been significantly strengthened by “foreign mercenaries whose presence has been noted in many areas of Kashmir,” while the Indian Express claimed “about 3,500 foreign insurgents continue to stay put in Kashmir and are planning to step up their activities in [the Kashmiri capital] Srinigar to gain greater [international] focus on their presence.” This development, the Hindustan Times argued, has given the insurgency in Kashmir “a more overt appeal to Islam.”91
International media coverage of Kashmir was sharpened again at year’s end in 1999, 2000, and 2001. In 1999, the hijacking of an India Air flight to Kandahar and New Delhi’s decision to exchange three imprisoned Kashmiri insurgent leaders for the release of the aircraft yielded a propaganda coup for the Kashmiris. In December 2000, Kashmiri attacks between 22 and 25 December again produced physical damage and humiliating media coverage for India. On 22 December, the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e Toiba attacked the historic “Red Fort” in the heart of New Delhi. The attackers killed three and escaped after striking a blow against what the Indian media termed “the nation’s most important symbol of invincibility.” On 25 December, Kashmiri insurgents detonated a car bomb in the headquarters compound of India’s 15th Corps in Srinigar, the capital of Kashmir. The attack killed eleven and wounded twenty-six.92 On 13 December 2001, Kashmiri fighters—apparently from the Lashkar-i-Taiyibah—again humiliated the Indian government by launching a suicide attack on the parliament building in New Delhi. This attack on the “very soul of Indian democracy,” in turn, sparked the largest-ever Indian military mobilization, leaving the subcontinent a hairsbreath from war.
Overall, the 1999–2001 period saw major gains for the Kashmir insurgency. “Just six months ago,” Pamela Constable wrote in January 2000 in the Washington Post, “Indian authorities declared the local insurgent movement vanquished” but “today a newly revived rebel movement has Indian forces on the defensive.” The revitalized insurgents are well armed, well trained, and well financed, courtesy of Pakistan, the Taliban, bin Laden, and wealthy Gulf Muslims, and are no longer “the hodge-podge of Kashmiri youths with rifles and grenades who once dreamed of driving Indian forces from this part of their homeland.” A senior Indian military officer told Al-Quds Al-Arabi that “60 percent of the [insurgent] movement members in Kashmir are foreign mercenaries and Afghan mujahedin”—an exaggeration but indicative of the internationalization of the struggle—and the BBC’s correspondent in Kashmir, Altaf Husayn, has said “the involvement of foreign fighters (meaning non-Kashmiris) in the conflict has completely changed the map of the separatist movement. At the beginning of the 1990s, the movement operated like an amateur body, but now it is more skillful and its fighters are more committed and loyal.”93
Supporting Husayn’s judgment, Constable reported that since November 1999 the insurgents have attacked half a dozen compounds defended by Indian security forces, and that several attacks used suicide car bombs, a heretofore-unknown tactic in Kashmir. These hard-target attacks suggest the Kashmiris have abandoned their previous preference for soft targets—Hindu civilians, off-duty servicemen, and so forth—and have validated the prediction of an Indian military officer about the impact of aid from bin Laden.94
“Bin Laden is funding a sophisticated fighting force,” an Indian security officer told the media in August 1998. “This is not a riff-raff operation.” In seeking foreign assistance to defeat this “sophisticated fighting force,” the Indians have presented the Kashmiris and their supporters an enormous and unanticipated windfall by reaching out in a very public way to Israel’s security and intelligence services for counterterrorism training; to Israel’s military to modernize India’s fighter aircraft and naval combatants; and to the Israeli government for a “nuclear relationship.” It is hard to imagine a better gift from Allah to the Kashmiri Islamists and their foreign backers than a highly publicized intelligence, military, and nuclear “special relationship” between the Hindu hegemonists and the Zionist entity.95
Algeria
In Algeria, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported in mid-1999 that bin Laden was “financing and arming the Armed Islamic Group [GIA], [and] urging it not to join the truce declared by the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front.” To sharpen the GIA’s military efficiency, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported, bin Laden developed the group’s international logistics infrastructure, a network that is “smuggling large quantities of weapons, ammunition, and funds into Algeria.” By the end of 1999, the pace of attacks in
Algeria by the GIA and the bin Laden-backed Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC)—which has been called al Qaeda’s arm in Algeria—was increasing, and the media was giving “more weight” to previous speculation that there is “a connection between Osama bin Laden and the surge of violence in Algeria.” Algiers’ El-Watan was warning that the “security situation had deteriorated in recent weeks,” and AFP reported that more than seventy people were killed in the first week of Ramadan, which began in December 1999. In 2000 the Algerian insurgency claimed over twenty-five hundred deaths and saw the Islamists focus on hard targets—as have their Kashmiri brethren—“to weaken the military establishment and prove its incompetence,” killing nearly five hundred officers in the process. As in the past, the month of Ramadan was bloody in 2000, with more than 250 deaths. In 2001, the insurgency claimed about two thousand lives.96
Indonesia
The pace and violence of Islamist guerrilla activity accelerated in Indonesia’s overwhelmingly Muslim Aceh Province—known as the “verandah of Mecca”—where the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has been fighting since the mid-1970s to create an independent Muslim state and where GAM leaders are now seeking international support for that goal. The Aceh fighters receive some weapons from supporters in the Indonesian military, a military-to-insurgents pipeline also seen in the Philippines and Kashmir, and funds are flowing to the insurgents from wealthy expatriate Acehnese businessmen in Malaysia and Thailand. In the first quarter of 2000, combat between the Islamists and the Indonesian military resulted in more than three hundred deaths, the suspension of petroleum exploration by Exxon-Oil, and the initiation of attacks by Christian militias on Muslim civilians similar to those contemporaneously occurring in the Philippines. As fighting intensified, the media reported bin Laden was sending support to the Acehnese, perhaps backing with actions the words he used in 1998 to applaud the Muslim people of Indonesia “where Suharto, a despot who has ruled 30 years, was overthrown.” By mid-June 2000, Melbourne’s Age reported growing regional concern that bin Laden is “funding Islamic groups in the Indonesian provinces of Aceh and Ambon.” Finally, resentment still is simmering in Muslim Indonesians over the UN referendum that gave birth to an independent Christian state in East Timor. Anger over the vote seemed to foreshadow a revanchist Muslim insurgency, and the referendum itself is already causing trouble for New Delhi and Manila, because the Kashmiris and Moros have demanded identical UN referenda.97
Downside of al Qaeda’s Battle Ledger, 1996–2005
Notwithstanding the successes just discussed, there is a substantial downside to al Qaeda for the period from 1996 through early October 2005. Likewise, the U.S.-led military offensive against the Taliban and al Qaeda has cost bin Laden the lives or services of several senior lieutenants and has denied the Islamists—at least temporarily—full freedom of movement in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda and its closest allies suffered substantial attrition in the period. Fighters were killed, captured, and jailed; cells and networks were disrupted and sometimes dismantled; large financial and human resources were spent on the Taliban’s war effort and at least a half dozen Islamist insurgencies; and steady U.S. rhetoric about bin Laden presumably alerted security and police services worldwide, thereby making operational travel and procurement somewhat more difficult. Bin Laden and his allies have suffered telling setbacks, and—until the enormous amount of death and economic damage inflicted on the United States on 11 September 2001—the Crusaders had more physically battered the Islamists than the Islamists had battered the Crusaders.
• Spring 1997: Sidi al-Madani al-Tayyib, who is married to bin Laden’s niece, was captured by or surrendered to Saudi authorities. Tayyib was bin Laden’s chief financial officer in Sudan, and, as Abu Hajir noted, he approved all transactions over $1,000. Tayyib’s admissions “severely harmed” bin Laden’s organization and gave Saudi officials information on “all of his [bin Laden’s] investments abroad and the names of several of the movement’s members inside Saudi Arabia.” In 1997 Tayyib was pardoned “in return for exposing some of bin Laden’s financial operations.”98
• May 1996–March 1999: In this period, Saudi authorities “detained … a large number of jihad youth, including many followers and supporters of the Shaykh [bin Laden]. The authorities discovered that some of the detainees were on the verge of carrying out specific and targeted operations.” In early 1999, for example, “300 companions and supporters of bin Laden” were arrested as they prepared to attack “U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia.” Press reports said Saudi authorities had been lucky to stumble on nascent operations. Reports quoting official Saudi documents show “the existence of large numbers [of bin Laden followers] who have not and will not be rounded up or even have their locations, provisions, logistics, or plans and directives identified by Saudi authorities.” Bin Laden gave an idea of al Qaeda’s size in the kingdom in 1998, telling the daily Pakistan that “800 of his mujahids are under arrest [in Saudi Arabia] and he prays that may God bless them with shahadat martyrdom.” Bin Laden said most arrests occurred near Mecca and that Saudi security forces had confiscated “a sizable quantity of arms used by our mujahedin, including seven rockets and Stinger missiles.” He added, however, “what was captured was much less than what was not captured.”99
• August 1997: Kenyan police and FBI agents raided bin Laden lieutenant Wadih el-Hage’s home in Nairobi, seizing his personal papers and computer. U.S. authorities claimed, according to the New York Times, that El-Hage’s records showed that he had met bin Laden in early 1997 and, when the raid occurred, was preparing “300 activists” for military activity. El-Hage left for the United States soon after the raid.100
• June 1998: Saudi authorities deported bin Laden financial aide Sa’id Sayyed Salamah to Egypt; Salamah is an Egyptian and an EIJ member. He had worked for bin Laden in Sudan and was an accountant for the bin Laden family company when he was arrested. The Saudis acted after noticing Salamah traveled frequently to Pakistan, Sudan, and Europe. He apparently “visited several countries, including some African countries, and carried funds belonging to ‘The Base’ organization [al Qaeda] in the countries he visited.”101
• 20 August 1998: The United States attacked bin Laden-related targets in Afghanistan and Sudan with cruise missiles. The strikes caused casualties and varying degrees of damage to several training camps near Khowst. The U.S. attack also destroyed the El-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, which was reported to have been involved in bin Laden’s efforts to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.102
• August 1998: Bulgarian authorities captured and deported to Egypt EIJ member Issam Abdel-Alim on the basis of an “American charge” and “after days of interrogation at the hands of Bulgarian and U.S. intelligence agents.”103
• August 1998: Two alleged bombers of the U.S. embassy in Kenya were arrested and sent to the United States for arraignment: Mohammed Sadiq Odeh from Pakistan and Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owali from Kenya.104
• June–September 1998: Four EIJ-bin Laden fighters were arrested in Albania and sent to Egypt: Ahmad Ibrahim al-Najjar, Majed Mustafa, Mohamed Hassan, and Mohamed Huda. When caught, the four had “material indicating that they intended to bomb the American embassy in Tirana.” All four had been working in the Tirana branch of the Kuwaiti Society for the Revival of the Islamic Heritage, an Islamic nongovernmental organization.105
• 10 September 1998: Al Qaeda weapons trainer Ali Muhammed was arrested in the United States. Muhammed is a former Egyptian army officer and a former noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Special Forces. Muhammed trained and fought in Afghanistan when on leave from the U.S. Army. He is a specialist in surveillance, obtaining false documents, and “trained Islamic militants in basic military techniques in the New York City area.”106
• 16–24 September 1998: On 16 September German authorities arrested senior bin Laden lieutenant and chief weapons and communications procurer Mamdouh Mahmud Salim—aka Abu Hajir—in Munich, Germany. He was extradited to the United
States on 20 December 1998. On 24 September Ugandan authorities detained twenty suspects, including two ringleaders, who are believed to have been planning to bomb the U.S. embassy in Kampala. The plot’s leaders reportedly are tied to Osama bin Laden.107
• 23 September 1998: British authorities arrested seven Islamists, all “believed linked to the Saudi terrorist kingpin.” Four have since been released, but the United States has requested the extradition of bin Laden’s U.K.-based lieutenant Khalid Fawwaz, and senior EIJ members Ibrahim Husayn Eidarous and Adil Abd-al-Majid Abd-al-Bari. Fawwaz is a civil engineer and headed bin Laden’s Advice and Reform Committee, which was founded in August 1994. Fawwaz earlier served as bin Laden’s representative in Kenya and is believed, according to Al-Majallah, to have “issued direct orders to one of the cells belonging to Osama bin Laden in East Africa to carry out the operation in [August 1998].” By May 2000, the United Kingdom had agreed to extradite Fawwaz, Eidarous, and al-Bari, and by late 2001, each had lost his appeal and was awaiting movement to the United States.108
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