á In October 1999, Gama’at leader Rifai’i Taha urged action “to force the United States to curtail its policy of kidnapping leaders of the [Egyptian Islamic] Jihad movement and pursuing them on behalf of the Egyptian government or any other regime in the region.” These sentiments were kept to the fore by what are seen in the Islamic world as the CIA-orchestrated late-1999 deportation of Islamists Abdul Latif Salah and Khalid al-Deeq to Jordan—from Albania and Pakistan, respectively—because of their ties to bin Laden and Washington’s policy of “seeking to completely eliminate the Jihad group [EIJ]”; by the May 2000 British decision to extradite EIJ leaders Eidarous and al-Bari to America; and by the Lebanese government’s May 2000 deportation to Cairo of an EIJ fighter named Jamal Tantawi, the leader of a bin Laden unit in Lebanon. After Beirut’s action, the Egyptian Islamists’ attorney Muntasir al-Zayyat warned, “If the United States continues to lead the efforts to eradicate the Islamic movements and hunt down Islamic symbols” the result would be steady increases in “the feelings of hostility and hatred toward the United States which could result in reprisal actions.” Needless to say, the U.S. capture in Afghanistan of several hundred al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, and their subsequent relocation to a detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, will further fuel this sentiment and give al Qaeda another reason to go the 11 September 2001 attacks one better.30
Moreover, bin Laden’s call on individual Muslims to defend Islam against U.S. aggression by killing Americans wherever possible raises the danger to U.S. civilians, intelligence officers, diplomats, and military personnel who are known, or easily identified, in their foreign communities. Clearly, overt U.S. government officers and their families in the United States would be even easier targets; in particular, the U.S.-based FBI officers and Department of Justice prosecutors who have caught, tried, and convicted EIJ and bin Laden fighters must be atop al Qaeda’s hit list. In either scenario, a Muslim unconnected to but inspired by bin Laden and obligated by the Koran to defend Islam could act on his own to find and kill an American, therefore affording no opportunity to be detected and preempted. Bin Laden’s strengthening international stature as a respected “man of the call”—an Islamic proselytizer—produces an unquantifiable threat to U.S. citizens. As Kamil Yusuf Husayn wrote in his book Osama Bin Laden: Legend of the Century, bin Laden’s catalogue of potential operatives
includes thousands of people not only concentrated in the countries we mentioned earlier [countries listed in the U.S. indictment of bin Laden], but within a much broader geographical domain. They look to Osama bin Laden as the source of inspiration or ideology on operational levels. Clearly, they have no organizational connection to him and do not maintain secret contacts with him. They view themselves as individuals committed to obey his general orders, particularly the fatwas issued by religious scholars at Bin Laden’s request.31
Threat from bin Laden’s Peers
Another largely undiscussed source of potential problems for the United States must be presumed to exist among those of bin Laden’s peers who accompanied him to Afghanistan or separately made their way there to fight God’s fight against the Soviets. The bin Laden family, of course, is not the only immensely wealthy nonroyal Saudi merchant, business, or banking family. The al-Olayans, al-Amoudis, Jamjoons, al-Rajhis, Kamels, bin Mahfouzes, and other families are as large, as religiously committed, and nearly as wealthy as the bin Ladens. Forbes Magazine listed these families as billionaires in July 1999. The bin Mahfouz family is particularly interesting, because, like the bin Laden family, it has Yemeni origins and because the family patriarch, Khalid bin Mahfouz, is or was married to one of bin Laden’s sisters. The bin Mahfouz family also holds a large share of the Saudi banking industry, and, as noted, has been tied to a U.K.-based Islamic charity accused of supporting bin Laden.32
Because bin Laden has been outspoken, confrontational, and militarily active, he has been the focus of media coverage that, in turn, has made the West see him as a solo Saladin whose organization would fall apart without him. While there is no gainsaying bin Laden’s demise would disrupt his organization and perhaps paralyze the World Front, it is far from certain there is no one out there who could replace him. Beyond the strong and varied talents of his lieutenants, bin Laden’s fame and success have created a shadow in which others of like pedigree may be operating anonymously and growing in ability. Bin Laden told ABC’s John Miller that “During the days of the [Afghan] jihad, thousands of young men who were well off financially left the Arabian Peninsula and other areas and joined the fighting.” While bin Laden said hundreds of Islamist youths died in Afghanistan and later in Chechnya and Bosnia, it is unlikely in the extreme that all these young men did their duty by dying in battle to please the regimes that happily packed them off to war.33
With or Without bin Laden and Our Allies
While it is unlikely that there are “hundreds” of individuals with bin Laden-like leadership capabilities—as a Taliban official once told journalist Ahmed Rashid—it certainly is true that the movement led by bin Laden will continue with or without him. As noted earlier, bin Laden’s senior lieutenants are a talented and experienced group; there is no lack of military, political, theological, scientific, technical, or propaganda know-how in the inner circle. Moreover, because the Islamic movement that today is symbolized by al Qaeda is international in scope, there surely are talented Islamist leaders in areas of the world that have so far received little attention from the West—in East Asia, Africa, and Central Asia, for example.
If, then, bin Laden is killed or captured during the Afghan war, al Qaeda will survive. In the aftermath of his departure, al Qaeda’s leaders are likely to pull in their horns a bit to protect the organization’s structure as the new leader—probably Ayman al-Zawahiri—takes over and comes up to speed. Given al Qaeda’s marked professionalism, it is unlikely that the new leadership would launch a series of ill-planned or inconsequential revenge attacks, although random attacks by grieving groups or individuals not under al Qaeda’s direct control must be anticipated. For al Qaeda, bin Laden’s patient credo of “excellent preparation … for operations of a specific type that will make an impact on the enemy”34 will prevail with or without his presence.
If bin Laden survives the present war, al Qaeda’s operations are likely to continue to follow the long-established pattern of incrementally increasing lethality. Bin Laden announced this doctrine in 1996 when he said that though he believed the attacks on OPM-SANG and Dhahran had been “a sufficient signal for people of intelligence among American decision-makers,” such was not the case, and therefore attacks of greater lethality were necessary.35 Bin Laden intends to apply whatever level of destructiveness is necessary to force the United States to withdraw from Saudi Arabia, terminate aid to Israel, and end the embargo on Iraq.
In addition to the death and destruction the United States will suffer if bin Laden survives, Washington also is likely to find support for its anti-al Qaeda efforts withering over time. The longer the Afghan war continues, for example, the more difficult Pakistani president Musharraf will find it to support U.S. policy and military operations. He already is running out of fingers to put in the dike. Only an immediate economic renaissance in Pakistan or a massive infusion of U.S. arms to redress the military balance with India will prevent the undoing of Musharraf’s unprecedented initiatives and the resurgence of the virulently anti-American forces he has sought to control, if not suppress. Elsewhere in the Islamic world, bin Laden’s survival and continued attacks—as long as they focus on U.S. interests—will enhance his leadership appeal among Muslims and simultaneously erode the ability of Islamic states to support U.S. policy. Support from these states has been tepid since the latest Afghan war began, and, according to Jane’s Intelligence Review, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia “are taking the opportunity presented by the ‘war on terrorism’ to repress their opponents [Islamists and secularists alike] and delay reform”—actions that also will increase bin
Laden’s appeal.36
Support from Europe, perhaps with the exception of the United Kingdom, may decline more quickly than that from Muslim nations because the latter hate us for what we do—especially vis-à-vis Israel and Palestine—while the former hate us for our power and wealth in what amounts to a rather blatant racism. While bin Laden’s 11 September 2001 attacks temporarily silenced Europe’s anti-Americanism—what the writer William Shawcross describes as the “one racism that is tolerated … not just tolerated but often applauded”37—bin Laden’s survival and the Afghan war’s unexpected duration have prompted the steady reemergence of this sentiment. The movement of captured al Qaeda and Taliban fighters to detention camps at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prompted a massive and ferocious storm of anti-American abuse from Europe. From behind their banner of protecting human rights—always a sign Europe wants to avoid or disengage from doing hard but necessary things—media and/or government spokesmen in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Canada assailed what the Paris daily Le Figaro called an effort by “the United States to avoid international legal constraints.”38 Two headlines from the British press suffice to show the Europeans’ joy at finding a vehicle for distancing themselves from U.S. policy and their unbounded zest for abusing America: from London’s Guardian, “We Will Not Tolerate the Abuse of War Prisoners; Guantanamo Could Be Where America and Europe Part Company,” and from the same city’s the Independent, “Spare Us Wild West Justice.”39 With friends like these …
With or without Osama bin Laden and with or without our allies, the clash of civilizations—Islam versus what-passes-for Christendom—appears to be as inevitable as it will be bloody. On this issue, bin Laden has again staked out a position that makes him largely immune from criticism in the Islamic world. While Muslim leaders and clerics will genuinely deplore attacks on Christians, bin Laden’s description of Christians as rapacious Crusaders bent on converting or annihilating Muslims has the ring of historical truth—as noted, the Crusades are still a fresh memory and wound across the Islamic world—and is validated by CNN’s real-time coverage of events that always seem to leave Muslims battered, bloodied, or dead at the hands of non-Muslims, particularly Christian and Jewish hands.
Historically, proselytizing and military force are seen by Muslims as integral parts of Western imperialism and as the main tools of the contemporary Christian West’s approach to its relations with Islam; Professor Lewis has written, for example, that the term “imperialist,” when used by contemporary Islamists, is often “given a distinctly religious significance, being used in association, and some times interchangeably with ‘missionary.’” For many Muslims, Christian efforts to convert Muslims are “a systematic effort to erase their identity and turn them away from their faith.” The Taliban’s voice in Kabul, Hewad, for example, argued that “anyone who calls our people to Christianity embarks on an act against our Muslim nation, and which is considered an attack on our values.”40
Christian proselytizing, when teamed with the provision of basic health and education services, is seen as a quiet and especially insidious form of imperialism that saps the Islamic world’s future strength by converting its youths. In this context, it is understandable why bin Laden-associated Yemeni Islamists have twice bombed a nonprofit health clinic run by the only Christian church in Aden, the Christ Anglican Church. Many Islamic scholars, moreover, view Christian-sponsored humanitarian aid as a conscious effort to exploit the fact that low literacy rates mean that “not all Muslims are versed in religion” and so are vulnerable to persuasive missionaries.41
There is a perception in the Muslim world—which bin Laden has fed—that the Christian West is always ready to use economic coercion and military force if proselytizing does not work, or does not work quickly. The latter is an intense irritant in the Islamic world and is, as Professor Samuel Huntington noted, grounded in fact: from 1980 to 1995 “the United States engaged in seventeen military operations in the Middle East, all of them directed at Muslims. No comparable pattern of U.S. military operations occurred against the people of any other civilization.”42 Tough economic sanctions have been simultaneously enforced by the West against several Muslim states. As noted, bin Laden has been outspoken in condemning the Crusaders’ eagerness to put sanctions on Sudan, Iraq, and Libya; to tolerate prolonged military aggression against Muslim Bosnians, Somalis, Kashmiris, and Kosovars; and to conspire to divide Muslim states such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. In voicing these views, bin Laden is more virulent than most Muslims, but he is not a lone voice. In denouncing any Muslim-Christian dialogue as “nothing but bait to lure us into renouncing our religion—a scheme to uproot Islam and Christianize the world,” the Saudi journal Al-Madinah said in February 2000 that Pope John Paul II “seeks to lead the entire world to reach his dream of Christianizing the world by the third millennium.”43 Aligning the official Saudi position with bin Laden’s claim that “Christian powers are busy in conspiracies against Muslims,” Al-Madinah warned that if the pope could not force apostasy on Muslims by proselytizing, more aggressive measures would be forthcoming.
The Christianization process was not exclusive to apostasy. It took the form of liquidation and uprooting as well. We saw proof to that in what happened since 1995. Battles with Muslim minorities developed into massacres to annihilate Muslims in India, Burma, the Philippines, and Somalia, as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina. The same thing is now happening in Chechnya and other places. It is a synchronized undertaking under the name of religion, although this kind of violence runs adversary to the spirit of Christ, may God’s peace be upon him.44
Thus, with or without bin Laden, and whether or not the West accepts it, many Muslims appear to think a war against Islam is under way. Events of early 2002 reinforced this notion as U.S.-led forces fought in Afghanistan, Russian and Chinese troops battled Muslim insurgents, and Israel invaded the West Bank. “Misfortunes are befalling us one after another,” bin Laden said. “[T]he Christian Crusade is … the fiercest battle. Muslims have never faced anything bigger than this.”45 Again, this is not to say bin Laden is correct, but the daily events Muslims watch on CNN, BBC, and Al-Jazirah make it hard for them to accept the West’s contention that the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam. Perhaps Ayman Zawahiri best described the difficulties Muslims have in reconciling the contention with reality. “How can we forget,” Zawahiri asked in late 2001,
that the very name Israel—which is supported by the United States—is based on a religious belief. For Israel is one of the prophets of God, may God’s peace and blessings be upon them. It [Israel] captures our land and kills our children and women on a religious basis, as they claim. It considers Jerusalem its eternal capital on a religious basis. It calls on the United States to transfer its capital [sic—embassy?] to Jerusalem on a religious basis. After all this, the United States claims that its campaign against jihad—which it terms terrorism—and in defense of Israel is not a religious war.46
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SPRING 2002: WHERE ARE WE? WHERE ARE WE GOING?
Just as they are killing us, we have to kill them so there will be a balance of terror. This is the first time that the balance of terror has been close between the two parties, between Muslims and Americans in the modern age. We will do as they do. If they kill our women and innocent people, we will kill their women and innocent people until they stop.
Osama bin Laden, October 2001
They [bin Laden and al Qaeda] can no longer conceive a new operation in Afghanistan…. We have basically eviscerated their capacity to project power outside Afghanistan. They are now in a survival-only mode…. Unable to communicate with their global cells, the two [bin Laden and Zawahiri] constantly move from cave to brick hut to cave, their survival now the prime operational goal…. They [al Qaeda] are severely disrupted. About all they can do is hide out and not get caught. They are not in a position to conduct operations.
Unnamed U.S. officials and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general,
December 2001–January 20021
As spring 2002 arrives, the quotations above present two starkly different views of reality. If bin Laden’s reality is closer to fact—he says “God’s relief and victory are coming soon”2—Americans can count on al Qaeda attacks that will surpass those of September 2001 in terms of death, destruction, and humiliation. If the current and retired U.S. officials are on the mark, bin Laden, al Qaeda, and Mullah Omar’s Taliban are already little more than a painful and embarrassing memory. Some of America’s experts, in fact, have adopted a triumphant tone, claiming that Islamic fundamentalism “has suffered a grievous blow”3 and celebrating the dimensions of a U.S. victory that “didn’t just wipe out the Taliban experiment to create the world’s purest Islamic state. In a ripple effect, it is also rolling back the tide of political Islam in the religion’s heartland, the Arabian Peninsula.”4 Perhaps we should cordon off Pennsylvania Avenue and erect bleachers for a victory parade. Perhaps we should despair.
Where Are We?
AL QAEDA AND THE TALIBAN: As this is written, Osama bin Laden apparently is alive and his forces remain largely intact. The losses al Qaeda has suffered since 7 October 2001—outlined in chapter 13—have been serious but not debilitating. The death of bin Laden’s right-hand man, Abu Hafs al-Masri, hurts al Qaeda, but he has been succeeded by Muhammed Makkawi, a senior EIJ member and a former colonel in the Egyptian army’s Special Forces. He was cashiered when it was discovered that he was helping to plot a coup against the government and planning to free fellow EIJ members from prison.5 Makkawi may not yet have the personal rapport Abu Hafs had with bin Laden, but he brings far more pertinent military experience to the position. Al Qaeda also lost an unknown number of fighters to U.S.-led bombing, nearly five hundred more are in captivity, and presumably the group lost much military materiel to the bombing.6 In addition, al Qaeda’s freedom of movement inside Afghanistan and internationally has been constrained.
Through Our Enemies' Eyes Page 40