For days after september11,2001 i wondered if Osama Bin Laden alongwith the rest of the world had watched the real time footage of those fully fueled airliners,hijacked by suicidal pilots and their henchmen,as they rammed in to the pentagon and the twin towers of Manhattan’s WTC.Then less than a fortnight before christmas,a partly inaudible amateur videotape was released by Bush administration.The casset’s contents were literally too good to be true.
In the videotape,Osama Bin Laden accurately listed the nationalities and names of the 19 men suicide squad.Osama confirmed about 4 hijacking teams.He explained their division among the 4 pilots and the Saudi ‘Muscle’ who Osama chuckled,learned the exact nature of their suicide mission only just before boarding the 4 airliners to cow their passengers in to submission with box cutters once the planes were in the air.Osama said he knew 5 days in advance that the operations would take place on september 11 and had a radio tuned in ready to hear the first plane hit the trade centre’s north tower.He recounted that in the planning stage his engineering training had helped him calculate the number of likely deaths from the explosive impact of a fully fueled airliner on the twin tower’s metal structures.He acknowledged his surprise that they collapsed completely.’all that we hoped for’ was the destruction of ’3 or 4 floors’ where the aircraft hit and those adjoining floors above the impact.
Indeed Osama Bin Laden was watching the crashes on television.His spokesman Sulaiman Abu ghaith had turned on a TV set in an adjoining room and seen the first run of the footage of planes hitting the twin towers,tried to tell Osama bin laden about what he saw’but Osama made a gesture with his hands,meaning’I know,I know’.
Al-Qaeda’s daring,patience,dedication,statecraft,stealth and pure luck were as breathtaking as was this most massive intelligence failure of America,the only super power of the world.
The specialist literature long ago concluded that the objective of modern terrorism was to inflict maximum casualties with maximum publicity.In those terms Osama Bin Laden had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
Labanese christian terrorism,Israeli terrorism,Islamic terrorism,Arab nationalist terrorism,Iranian and Palestinian terrorism,Hindu terrorism,Sikh terrorism,State sponsored terrorism,to those who ask for a definition of terrorism-as per the U.S code it means-’Premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents,usually intended to influence an audience.
Let’s recall that American president Ronald Reagon in 1980s recognised as freedom fighters all those fighting the Soviet Occupation of afghanistan and that included Osama Bin Laden and Afghan Mujahideens.
Afghanistan was America’s first experiment at franchising war,a practice employed again on a grander scale in the conflict to recover Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991.Prize catch was Saudi Arabia,the biggest oil producer of the world.The Al-Saud did payments and provided Osama Bin Laden to America,to fight Soviets who invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.Osama that time was an employee of Bin-Laden group of construction companies owned by his father and George Bush a share holder of the companies.Here was a chance for america to enlist muslims and arabs from all corners of the world,to get even for the defeat in Vietnam from communists in 1975 and the overthrow of Shah of Iran(American imposed Monarch)in 1979.For Saudi Arab also Jihad in Afghanistan was literally a God-given chance to be on the winning side,a rare phenomenon in contemporary muslim history.
Osama Bin Laden formed Al-Qaeda,which in his mind was to be a kind of ready reserve,a standing islamic force prepared to serve at a moment’s notice not just in Afghanistan but many jihads to come.Once Soviets lost and ousted,arab and muslim volunteers turned increasingly anti-American.”No Arab or muslim in the jihad was happy with America,principally because of blind american support for Israel”.
On August 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait.Boiling over with ideas inspired by his Afghan jihad experience,Osama Bin Laden insisted that his Al-qaeda should fight with Sddam Hussein in case Saudi Arabia was invaded by Iraq and no American or western army be allowed to sully the sacred land of the two holy mosques.The kingdom did not need to rely on the Americans to defend itself or to liberate kuwait.The saudi kings were not convinced that Osama and his Al-qaeda would be able to protect them against the huge military power of Sddam Hussein.Osama Bin Laden was angry with saudi monarchy for not accepting his just proposals.
The die was cast on August6,1990 when Dick Cheney flew to Riyadh and read out to king Fahad a message from george Bush”We are prepared to deploy American and other allied forces to defend the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.If you ask us to come we will come,and when you ask us to leave,we will go home.We seek no permanant bases.”King Fahad accepted the President of america’s offer then and there.Osama Bin Laden and younger clerics questioned the King’s call,upper most in their minds were the Prophet Muhammed’s dying words”Let there be no two religions in Arabia”.Osama’s personality from then onwards changed radically”From a butterfly doing good deeds to a bloody revolutionary willing to sacrifice human lives for his islamic cause”.
American military presence in Holy soil of Prophet Muhammed,given the koranic injunctions became the turning point in Osama’s life.Osama Bin Laden the dreaded terrorist was the product of said scenario in Saudi Arabia.But no amount of radical islamist violence inspired by Osama could shake the pentagon’s convictions.After each terrorist attack,be it 19 air force men killed at Al-khobar in june 1996,or the 17 sailors killed in USS cole in Aden(Yemen) in october 2000,the pentagon covered up by excuses and warned that world’s only super power(U.S)could not be pushed out of the region.
After august 20,1998 cruise missile attacks on Osama’s camps in Afghanistan and Khartoum(Sudan)in which Osama survived,Ayman al-Zawahiri his right hand man told a Pakistani reporter”Osama is alive and kicking.Tell the Americans we are not afraid.We survived Soviet bombings for 10 years in Afghanistan and we are ready for more sacrifices.”Soon after 60 American cruise missile attack failures,thousands of muslim volunteers were flocking to Afghanistan for training in Al-Qaeda camps from one end of muslim world to the other end.Osama’s reputation had assumed cult proportions.The Americans with their high tech weapons had missed their targets in Sudan and Afghanistan.The muslims were convinced that Al-lah had intervened to spare Osama Bin Laden’s life.
Thanks to the quadrupling of oil prices in 1970s the gulf was awash with floos(Arabic word for money).Osama first came to the attention of American intelligence as a financier to terrorism.Many countries soft on terrorist financing ignored hawala transactions.In Saudi Arabia foreign workers accounted for $15 billion the kingdom sent abroad every year.Hawalas(a process of money transfer from one country to other country,called Hundi in India and Pakistan) were ideal for terrorists.IMF has estimated that between$500 billion to $1.5 trillion is laundered every year equal to as much as 5% of gross world product.
Beyond America’s pleasure in punishing an enemy they equated with pure evil,it remains far from sure that Osama Bin Laden’s killing would provide any durable relief.Similar hopes had been expressed when American troups captured Saddam Hussein in his home town Tikrit.But resistance to the U.S occupation of Iraq failed to subside because basically it is an opposition to foreign and western occupation.
Beyond perpetuating his legend,Osama Bin Laden had succeeded in isolating America internationally in ways the soviets never managed in their heyday.Even the Bush administration was obliged to accept that its muscular post 9/11 foreign policy and military hegemony had damaged american prestige abroad so thoroughly that it will take us many years of hard focused work to restore America’s international standing.Particular hurtful were disclosures in 2004 of torture and humiliation meted out by Americans to prisoners in Iraq,Guantanamo and Afghanistan.
Smarter policies in dealing with the muslim world are essential to curb terrorism starting with Palestine.Some Arab world experts estimate that as much as 70% of muslim anti-Americanism would disappear if only Washington would help bring about a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.Many muslims question the existance of Israel in otherwise wholly Arab world.Many Arab and muslim countries don’t even recognize the existance of Israel,and they say that it is not their promised land but a forcible occupation with the help of Britain and America.
The palestine problem remains the single greatest irritant in muslim american relations and an encouragement for Jihadi terrorism..