Note on Sources
As one trained as a professional historian specializing in the diplomatic history of the British Empire, I am accustomed to having mounds of private and public documents at my disposal. While costly travel to one archive or another is often required, as is now and then dickering with a relative for access to a great-uncle’s previously unused papers, the most difficult aspects of my research usually is dealing with the volume of documents and, once in a while, deciphering faded or nearly illegible handwriting. Primary sources are available in quantity and are exploitable if one expends time and industry. As a result, with adequate brains, effort, prose, and an esoteric topic, an author in the field of British imperial history can write a credible book. He or she can even dream of that rapturous review in a learned journal that concludes: “In sum, this brilliantly researched and elegantly written work may well be the definitive book on the subject for this generation.”
Undertake a study of Osama bin Laden, however, and the pleasant, primary-source-rich world of the professional historian flies out the window and said historian finds himself harrowingly ensnarled in material that is overwhelmingly secondary, translated with varying degrees of accuracy, and sensationalized or embellished by the need to sell copies or by the sloth of those doing insufficient research. In addition, the Internet-era author can never be sure that he has consulted all sources or even a fair cross-section of sources. My uncertainty in this regard was geometrically increased by the flood of writing about bin Laden that appeared after 11 September 2001. Researching material running the gamut from the brilliant scholar of Islam Bernard Lewis, to conspiracy-mongering “terrorist experts,” to sensationalist Pakistani tabloids leaves me absolutely confident my work on this topic will not remotely approach the status of a definitive book. Abundant satisfaction, in fact, will accrue if this study provides a fairly comprehensive and accurate description, and some understanding, of Osama bin Laden, of what he has been up to, and of why he was up to it. I also hope that this study will be a baseline for those better versed in Islamic politics, history, and theology to produce more sophisticated and enduring studies.
Still, for a historian there is at least one supreme bright side to researching bin Laden. It has been my great good fortune to find that bin Laden is the only so-called Islamic terrorist who has given the world a detailed explanation of what he is doing and why he is doing it. Bin Laden has spoken at length about his mission in interviews given to Muslim and Western journalists. This series of interviews and published statements gives the historian a set of detailed primary-source documents; according to a leading analyst of Islamism, bin Laden “evokes the prophetic tradition” and has produced “a written corpus of work that is likely to motivate the faithful for years to come…. And his ideas will survive martyrdom.”1 Bin Laden’s intentions and goals are grounded in his reading of the Koran, the Prophet’s sayings and practices, and the interpretations of classical and contemporary Islamic scholars and jurists. Bin Laden has spoken in simple, precise prose that allows the non-Muslim to understand the religious duties and requirements he believes compel his activities. In my view, bin Laden wants Muslims and Islam’s foes to understand what he is concerned about and acting against. Bin Laden’s own words help to sort, weigh, and assess the mass of reporting, and I, educated in a tradition where even secondary imperial functionaries merit two-volume biographies, have allowed bin Laden to speak for himself as often and fully as possible.
The secondary material about bin Laden, his beliefs and intentions, and his organization, allies, and associates is voluminous but of uneven quality. The U.S. and European media are of modest value. While they have produced a large number of articles, their coverage is sporadic, their understanding of bin Laden is minimal, and their attempt to educate their publics about him and the threat he poses is virtually nonexistent. The Western media, however, are invaluable as a source of facts—dates, times, places, names, types of weapons, chasers. Reading the Western media on bin Laden is like reading the police blotter; they pay close attention to the who, what, when, and where, but the why takes the hindmost, if it takes anything at all. The Western media, therefore, are of great assistance in providing names, dates, places, quotes from Western government officials and documents, and so forth, much more so than the Islamic media.
There are exceptions to this fairly barren Western journalistic landscape of which the following, in my view, are most significant. ABC’s John Miller, in his Esquire article and televised interview with bin Laden, has given Americans a sense of the man and a strong analysis of what bin Laden believes and intends to do, and Miller has done so in direct, brash, and clear prose. The Independent’s Robert Fisk—a consistently harsh critic of U.S. foreign policy in the Islamic world—has done several interviews with and articles about bin Laden and has provided extremely useful insights into the man and his growing influence in the Muslim world. Fisk also has been fair-minded in presenting to his English-speaking audience a persuasive explanation of the issues he believes are fueling the Muslim world’s anger toward the United States and its allies, and why that anger has created a receptive environment for bin Laden. The Wall Street Journal, which provided steady, thoughtful reporting on the Afghan jihad and always sought to assess its impact on overall U.S. foreign policy, has done good, if so far limited, work on bin Laden.
The Journal has explained that bin Laden is not just another terrorist, but rather an Islamist leader who poses multiple dilemmas for the U.S. government. As during the Afghan war, the Journal is trying to educate its readers about bin Laden’s importance in the larger context of U.S. relations with the Muslim world, as well as to the fact that not all the world sees bin Laden as a terrorist. “Many [world] leaders,” the Journal said in August 1999, “see Mr. Bin Laden as the core of an impassioned Islamic insurgency that threatens their own status quo.” More recently, the New York Times’ John F. Burns has written an excellent series about the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen and, as important, about the depth of pro-Islamist and pro-bin Laden sentiment in that strategically located country, and for more than a year Reuel Marc Gerecht has produced in the Weekly Standard a stream of thoughtful articles about Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan, and militant Sunni Islam. In what largely has been superficial coverage of bin Laden by the West’s electronic media, two fine exceptions stand out: John Miller’s ABC interview of bin Laden and an episode of the Public Broadcasting Service’s program Frontline titled “The Terrorist and the State.” Frontline also published a wonderfully useful, though woefully edited, compendium of background pieces and interviews done for the episode. This work is a primary source and is a laudable effort to educate Americans about the many dimensions of the bin Laden issue.2
The media in the Muslim world have provided the context and education missing in the Western media, though their reporting is at times tainted by government sponsorship, virulent anti-Americanism, sensationalism, and conspiracy theories. Still, the Islamic media—in Europe and around the world—have taken the position that it is important to listen to and understand what bin Laden and his allies are saying and doing, and to understand how those words and actions are being received on the Muslim “street.” In a sense, the Islamic media are simply saying that these people—bin Laden and other leading Islamists—say what they mean, mean what they say, and intend to act on their beliefs in a concerted and patient fashion until the United States fundamentally alters its foreign policy toward the Islamic world. Muslims apparently have not yet accepted the Western notion that no political leader ever says what he or—rarely—she means, and that he or she will be consistent only while consistency serves personal or political goals. As a result, the Islamic media provides extensive space to simply reporting, without analytical dissection and uninformed speculation, what bin Laden says and how his words influence Muslims. It also has produced many cogent editorial and op-ed pieces explaining why U.S. policy toward the Muslim world is giving bin Laden’s statements, actions, and goals
increasing emotional, religious, and intellectual appeal.
At this point, I, since I speak only English, must take a moment to thank and salute the men and women of the U.S. government’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). If the present work serves at all to help Americans understand the threat bin Laden poses to their country, it will be due in large measure to the painstaking and tireless efforts of FBIS officers to ensure that their countrymen are informed. Words are powerful weapons, and it is FBIS’s genius that it reliably identifies, translates, and publishes the words Americans need to read to protect their nation, homes, and kin.
On balance, the Islamic media’s taste for what the West terms sensationalizing and conspiracy mongering is less than meets the eye. Based on my research, it is apparent that the Islamic media’s correspondents and editors work harder, dig deeper, and think more than most of their Western counterparts. This is not to say that the Islamic media do not suffer from sensationalized conspiracy theories, but they probably are no more prone to those faults than their Western colleagues.
Pakistani journalist Jamal Ismail caught two themes—bin Laden’s importance in the Muslim world and the West’s denigration of Muslim journalism—in the London newspaper Al-Zaman in summer 2000. When asked why he had not sold his December 1998 interview of bin Laden to the Western media, Ismail answered,
I said that I would rather have Al-Jazirah [Satellite Channel Television in Qatar] broadcast the interview first in Arabic to Arab viewers [and] then to the world to fulfill the right of the Arab and world viewers to hear the views of this man [bin Laden]. The world has heard many charges against this man, but had not heard his views about these charges. The world had also heard and saw many programs about him, but had not heard or seen him speak directly in these programs to explain his objectives. I told them [the managers of Al-Jazirah] that this would make the world understand that the question of press scoops was not a monopoly of the Western media. This would show that we [Muslim journalists] are more daring than they are and more courageous than their journalists in enduring the hardships of searching for the truth and the news.3
In addition to Jamal Ismail, there are several journalists and editors in the Islamic media who stand out for the time, effort, and thought they have put into trying to understand and explain bin Laden. A 1991 book by the Egyptian journalist Issam Darraz, Osama Bin Laden Recounts Arab Al-Ansar Lion’s Lair Battles in Afghanistan, is essential for understanding bin Laden’s activities in Afghanistan, the wide ring of his associates there, and the effect the Afghans’ culture and victory have had on bin Laden’s thinking and worldview. Several other Muslim journalists also have excelled in telling the world about why bin Laden thinks and acts as he does, about the nature, structure, and capabilities of his organization, and about the role of his closest allies, especially the Egyptian Islamists. Topping this list are Muhammad Salah of the London-based Al-Hayah; Ahmad Muwaffaq Zaydan, also of Al-Hayah and a perceptive analyst of the enduring impact of the Afghan war on the Muslim world; Rahimullah Yusufzai of Pakistan’s the News and Hamid Mir of the same country’s Ausaf; and Sa’id al-Qaysi of the Paris-based Al-Watan Al-Arabi. Several of Al-Watan Al-Arabi’s reporters also have done interesting work in the opaque world of bin Laden’s finances and his search for weapons of mass destruction. Reporting on these two aspects of the bin Laden issue has been simultaneously the most desired, sensational, ridiculed, and least verifiable.
In addition, the editor in chief of the prestigious U.K.-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Abd-al-Bari Atwan, has provided insightful and provocative commentary on bin Laden, his effect on Muslims, and on what both mean for relations between Christendom and Islam. Atwan also conducted one of the first interviews of bin Laden in Afghanistan, and it is still one of the best. Finally, numerous insightful but usually unsigned editorials and op-ed pieces in the Muslim media—from London to Amman to Karachi—have sounded a similar refrain; namely, the Islamic world, at all societal levels, is fed up with what it views as a U.S.-led Western/Christian attack on the Muslim world’s religion, people, dignity, and economic resources. Many of the pieces urge the West to recognize that these grievances have created a warm welcome for bin Laden’s inciting words, as well as a growing tolerance for his use of force.
The body of work on bin Laden by Western academics and political analysts was not extensive before 11 September 2001. Head and shoulders above the rest stands an essay in the November–December 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs by Professor Bernard Lewis titled “License to Kill: Osama Bin Laden’s Declaration of Jihad.” In the essay, Professor Lewis seeks not to demonize bin Laden but to explain what he has said and why what he has said—especially about the Islamic holy places in Saudi Arabia—is influencing the Muslim world. Aside from this essay, there are slim pickings in the groves of academe. Scottish professor Magnus Ranstorp has produced in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism an insightful article that dissects bin Laden’s fatwa, but this article misses the point that bin Laden has never claimed to be a “religious” scholar or leader. Dr. Michael Dunn, in Middle East Policy, has published an essay that is a glib regurgitation of the invalid mantra: “Bin Laden is important because of his money and the way to defeat bin Laden is deny him his money.” The two pre-September 2001 book-length studies of bin Laden were written by Yossef Bodansky4 and Simon Reeve.5 The Bodansky book—titled Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America—appears to draw on many of the materials used in the present study, although Mr. Bodansky’s refusal to cite sources in order to protect his “sources and methods” makes his book of little use as a basis for further investigation. The information he uses, moreover, is shaped to fit the author’s thesis that there is an Iranian-Syrian-Iraqi “terrorist international” that is out to destroy America and Israel, and that bin Laden is mainly a cog, albeit an important cog, in that state-sponsored organization. I share Bodansky’s belief that bin Laden has been a greater threat than has so far been recognized, but I believe bin Laden has posed this threat because he was motivated by ideas and had no need or desire to associate with state sponsors.
In contrast, Simon Reeve’s book—titled The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama Bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism—presents data he gathered on Yousef and bin Laden in a straightforward manner without spinning conspiracy theories. Reeve had excellent access to senior FBI officials who dealt with Yousef and have been tracking bin Laden. Reeve’s portrait of Yousef is well done, graphically portraying Yousef’s genius for disguise, organization, leadership, and designing unique explosive devices. As important, Reeve painstakingly describes the worldwide Sunni community in which Yousef moved at will and undetected until he was undone by his own cockiness. Traveling unnoticed, and finding hubs of support in North America, the Middle and East Asia, South Asia, Europe, and North Africa, Yousef used the same Sunni Islamist milieu that supports bin Laden’s leadership and activities, and that in part explains bin Laden’s success. Reeve’s discussion of bin Laden is not as complete as that of Yousef, but his bottom line is accurate. “His [bin Laden’s] influence within the Muslim world cannot be underestimated,” argues Reeve. “Even among moderate Muslims bin Laden is viewed with grudging respect as a man prepared to stand up to the arrogance of the world’s only remaining superpower.”6
Since 11 September 2001, a book and several essays have appeared that make strong contributions to our understanding of bin Laden and his international impact. Peter L. Bergen’s book, Holy War, Inc., shows signs of rushed publication but presents useful discussions of bin Laden’s personality and beliefs; his roots and strength in Yemen; and the influence of Shaykh Abdullah Azzam on the jihad movement. I think that Bergen underestimates the depth of bin Laden’s hatred for American culture and the breadth of his appeal among the world’s Muslims, but these are points for further research and debate. Bergen writes with wit and provides a point of departure for those intending to study Afghanistan. Describing travel in Afghanistan, Bergen notes the trips always took longer than e
xpected. “Like all estimates about time in Afghanistan,” Bergen wisely advises, “the more pessimistic are proved accurate.”7
Among a mass of newspaper and periodical literature, Robert Fisk, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Adb-al-Bari Atwan, Ahmad Muwaffaq Zaydan, and Muhammed Salah have continued producing thought-provoking analysis. Gerecht’s essay “The Gospel According to Osama Bin Laden” is especially useful—and ominous. Four essays by others have, in particular, broken new ground and advanced our understanding of bin Laden and the historical, cultural, and religious contexts in which he is acting: Bernard Lewis’s “The Revolt of Islam”; Michael Scott Doran’s “Somebody Else’s Civil War”; Milt Bearden’s “Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires”; and Daniel Pipes’s “God and Mammon: Does Poverty Cause Militant Islam?” The latter essay will, I hope, prompt a discussion that will start to undermine the tenet of U.S. foreign policy that decrees that poverty and unemployment cause terrorism, and thereby make room for an effort to understand the overwhelming centrality of religion in all of bin Laden’s activities.
It also was my good fortune to discover an essay by Ralph Peters that I earlier missed. Peters’s 1999 essay in Parameters, “Our Old New Enemies,” brilliantly encapsulates the dilemma facing America and really should be the first piece read by those charged with confronting bin Laden and his ilk. “We maintain a cordon sanitaire around military operations,” Peters warned,
ignoring the frightening effect of belief on our enemy’s will and persistence. We accept the CNN reality of “mad mullahs” and intoxicated masses, yet we do not consider belief a noteworthy factor when assessing our combat opponents…. We shy away from manifestations of faith, suspecting them or ignoring them, or, at best, analyzing them in the dehydrated language of the sociologist. But if we want to understand the warriors of the world and the fury that drives them, we had better open our minds to the power of belief.8
Through Our Enemies' Eyes Page 46