That Zawahiri prevailed was verified by EIJ fighter al-Najjar. “He [al-Najjar] confirmed,” Al-Hayah said in early 1999, “that these two [bin Laden and Zawahiri] are now cooperating to confront U.S. tyranny and injustice…. He [al-Najjar] said that he expects more operations against U.S. targets in the coming stage.”9 Another EIJ fighter, Nabil Nuaym, told an Egyptian court “operations against the officials and installations in Egypt would gradually decline until they disappear” because “experience has shown that action inside Egypt is extremely costly.”10 In July 1998 Zawahiri foreshadowed al-Najjar’s confirmation of the EIJ’s shift in focus using phrases echoing bin Laden. “America insists on humiliating the [Muslim] nation, robbing its resources, and imposing sanctions on it” the EIJ chief said. “Therefore the only choice that is available to the Muslim nation is to wage a holy war against America and Israel.”11
The persuasiveness of bin Laden’s worldview was strengthened by the more nuts-and-bolts arguments he made to Zawahiri. Bin Laden told Zawahiri, for example, that he believed “operations against Americans and Israelis would widen the scope for Islamists’ actions,” and that “announcing U.S. interests are the targets and then carrying out operations against them will boost Arab and Islamic morale.” Bin Laden also told Zawahiri that attacks in Egypt were hurting the EIJ and making it less effective militarily. Al-Najjar has said bin Laden did this in strong terms because he had “reservations” about attacks in Egypt instead of against the United States and even showed “displeasure whenever Jihad members carried out operations inside Egypt.” Bin Laden argued that attacks on Americans
were economically better, since any operation against an American or Israeli target would need only a few persons, while Jihad’s operations inside Egypt required huge amounts of money to buy and smuggle weapons, shelter the perpetrators, and then smuggle [them] out of the country, and [the] care of their families in addition to taking care of the other families of other Islamists usually arrested by Egyptian authorities whenever one of the operations was carried out inside the country.12
For Zawahiri it was tough to deny bin Laden had the better of the argument, but, as will be seen, the cost of bin Laden’s war in 1997–1998 was severe for al Qaeda and its allies in terms of disrupted cells and captured fighters. As a result, then, of bin Laden’s urgings and the high financial and human costs of attacks in Egypt, Zawahiri concurred and after an EIJ fighter was killed in September 1998 resisting arrest in Tirana, Albania—in a police action the EIJ says was “run by U.S. intelligence”—the EIJ issued a statement that clearly displayed movement toward an “America First” orientation. Praising the courage of the slain fighter, the EIJ statement claimed the Americans had killed him because he “refused to yield to its [U.S.] arrogance and to keep silent about its aggression against his religion and nation.” “We too have learned the lesson [from the fighter’s death], praise be to God, Lord of the worlds,” the statement said, and “we call on our Muslim brothers to learn the lesson with us; let us all fight this Crusader onslaught on Islam…. We consider the United States primarily responsible for all these crimes, and thus it has to bear the bulk of the retaliation.”13
Bin Laden’s success with the Gama’at has been much less complete. Although he has spent a decade trying to win the group’s loyalty and promoting reconciliation with the EIJ, he has not enjoyed with the IG the “extremely special” relationship he has had with Zawahiri’s group.14 That said, bin Laden has continued cultivating the Gama’at. He has been, for example, a frequent and outspoken advocate of imprisoned IG spiritual leader Shaykh Rahman. “The imprisonment of Shaykh Omar is an attack on the Muslim religion and countries,” bin Laden said. “He is a Muslim scholar well-known all over the Muslim world. He represents the kind of injustice that is adopted by the U.S. A baseless case was fabricated against him even though he is a blind old man…. He is now very badly treated and [is treated] in no way fit for an old man like him or any Muslim scholar.”15 Bin Laden also has been taking care of Shaykh Rahman’s two eldest sons for several years, and suspected Nairobi embassy bomber Mohammed Sadiq Odeh has said that bin Laden “treats [Shaykh] Omar’s sons as his own children.”16 He also has hosted such IG luminaries as Mohammed Shawqi Islambouli and senior IG leader Rifa’i Taha in Afghanistan and has long worked closely with current IG chief Mustafa Hamza.
These ties notwithstanding, most IG leaders remain determined to keep an arm’s-length relationship with bin Laden. There are several reasons for this decision. First, the IG leaders still resent the EIJ’s theologically justified refusal to accept Shaykh Rahman’s leadership because he is blind; the EIJ made sure the anger would run long and deep by publishing a sixty-four-page anti-Rahman indictment titled “The Case for the Ineligibility of a Blind Man to Govern,” which contained “arguments based on the Koran, the Prophet’s teachings, and Islamic legal rulings.” Second, the IG believes that bin Laden has given too much prominence to Zawahiri and the EIJ; the IG is larger and historically has been more militarily active in Egypt. Third, the IG suffered many fewer significant losses than the EIJ in the late 1990s and so felt less need to shelter under bin Laden’s wing. Fourth, the IG’s roots are more populist and rural than the EIJ’s and its Egypt-centric focus—the IG has reasserted its belief that “the liberation of Jerusalem begins with the liberation of Cairo”—consequently is more durable.17
A final reason for bin Laden’s not-fully successful wooing of the Gama’at lies in its internal disarray. Since 1997, the group has been embroiled in an internal battle between some overseas leaders and IG members known as the “historic leaders.” The latter founded the group and/or participated in the attack on Sadat, have long been jailed in Egypt, and sparked the imbroglio with a 5 July 1997 call for a cease-fire in Egypt and abroad. Bin Laden, in the midst of the intra-Egyptian acrimony—Zawahiri’s EIJ roundly condemned the IG’s decision to stop fighting—caused by the cease-fire call, took advantage of an unexpectedly auspicious media environment to announce, on 23 February 1998, the founding of the “World Islamic Front against Jews and Crusaders.” This media opportunity had surfaced because it appeared certain the United States and the United Kingdom would resume aerial attacks on Iraq because it was again blocking weapons of mass destruction (WMD) inspections. Although the strikes were not launched, bin Laden’s fatwa designated the United States as the front’s primary target, justifying this decision by citing “the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people, using the [Arabian] Peninsula as a staging base.” The fatwa was signed by bin Laden, EIJ chief Zawahiri, Shaykh Mir Hamza of Pakistan’s Jamaat Islami party, Fazul Rahman of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh, and the IG’s Taha. Later, when criticized by the IG’s historic leaders, Taha claimed that he had signed for himself and not on behalf of the Gama’at.18
While not a stellar list of signatories aside from bin Laden and the Egyptians—Algerians, Somalis, Sudanese, Kashmiris, and Afghans are notably absent—the fatwa provided focus and, as bin Laden explained, would be “an umbrella to all organizations fighting the jihad against Jews and Crusaders.” It also could be that bin Laden again was trying to moderate intra-Egyptian quarreling by focusing them on U.S. targets, to put America on the bull’s-eye of all Islamists, and to create what Al-Watan Al-Arabi called “an organizational configuration” regularizing “past ad hoc cooperation among the groups.”19
Islamist reaction to formation of the World Islamic Front sympathized with bin Laden’s aims—particularly for attacking the United States—but displayed reluctance to sign on with bin Laden until more groups joined. It also exhibited a continuing preference for destroying national regimes before attacking the United States. From the United Kingdom, the Vanguards of Conquest, an EIJ faction, called the creation of the front “a step forward and in the right direction,” but asked bin Laden to “expand its membership to include other tendencies on the scene … [and] all colors of the fundamentalist movement wishing to join such an alliance in the Arab and Islamic worlds.
”20 In regard to the proper priority target for the front—either the United States or what Sa’d al-Faqih has called the “unjust governments in the region”21—several U.K.-based Sunni extremist leaders differed with bin Laden. The U.K.-based Al-Mujahroun leader and bin Laden advocate, Omar Bakri Mohammed, agreed that an “international army—Mohammed’s Army” must be formed, but said it first should be used “to combat occupying governments.”22 Also from London, Shaykh Abu Hamzah al-Masri, the Egyptian leader of the Followers of the Sharia, said, “We all agree with bin Laden on the issue of hitting the Americans and their bases. But I differ with him over one issue, namely that it is the ruling regimes that must be fought first because they are the ones letting the Americans run amok in our countries and then a war of attrition on the Americans will follow the war on the regimes.”23
Bin Laden also encountered resistance closer to home. The chief of Pakistan’s hard-line Sunni party Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, simply told the editors of Ausaf, “The Holy Koran has set the itinerary for the holy war. It asks Muslims to start their holy war with those infidels who live nearby. Therefore, our first target should be India, according to the Holy Koran.” More recently, Maulana Masood Azhar—the Harakat al-Mujahedin (HUM) leader freed in December 1999 in return for the release of a hijacked Air India aircraft—told cheering crowds in Pakistan that war against India is the first order of business. “I need mujahedin who can fight for the liberation of Kashmir,” Azhar said in January 2000. “So marry for jihad, give birth for jihad and earn money only for jihad till the cruelty of America and India ends. But India first.”24
Despite the lack of unanimous support among Islamist leaders for the World Front’s U.S.-first focus, bin Laden did successfully alert the Muslim world to a new pole around which anti-American sentiment could rally. In addition, Zawahiri’s allegiance to the front signaled bin Laden’s success in getting the militarily proficient EIJ to refocus on the U.S. target.25 EIJ fighter Ibrahim al-Najjar and other “Returnees from Albania” have said that at bin Laden’s request, the Jihad’s leaders “expanded the scope of their targets. They stopped limiting them to Egyptian and Arab figures and included the interests of the major powers, especially U.S. and French.”26 The expansion apparently was rapid and successful, because EIJ operatives would play roles in attacking the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam later in 1998.27
The primacy of U.S. targets, moreover, gave bin Laden yet another chance to make hay in terms of publicity. Captured bin Laden operative Said Salamah has told an Egyptian court that bin Laden believed that “targeting these countries’ interests was bound to have massive media value, and [that] this would confirm the organization’s capabilities, which some quarters had begun to doubt.” Salamah also said the list of targeted U.S. interests was not limited to “blowing up installations” but now also “included the kidnapping of figures and hostages.”28 Salamah’s claim of expanded targeting is supported by an August 1998 World Front communiqué that said the list of U.S. and Israel targets now includes plans to “bring down their aircraft; prevent the safe passage of their ships; orchestrate occupation of their embassies; [and] force the closure of American and Israeli companies and banks.”29
Expanding al Qaeda’s Reach
After creating the World Front, bin Laden and his lieutenants continued to expand al Qaeda’s international reach. This expansion occurred in the organization’s worldwide physical presence, its and bin Laden’s reputation, and the degree of international awareness of the existence, activities, and goals of both. Where once bin Laden and al Qaeda had been on the scope of world governments in a general, media-driven way—bin Laden as Time’s shadowy “Paladin of the Jihad” and the Independent’s stealthy “Anti-Soviet Warrior”30—by mid-1999 bin Laden was counted among the top enemies of the United States, the West, Israel, and the Muslim regimes cooperating with them. By summer 1999, moreover, Osama bin Laden’s name had been added to the FBI’s internationally known “10 Most Wanted List”—a hybrid combination, one supposes, of a Bedouin Dillinger and a more ambitious, less precise Unabomber—and a former senior U.S. government counterterrorism official was bemoaning Washington’s portrayal of bin Laden: “He’s 10 feet tall, he’s everywhere, he knows everything, he’s got lots of money, and he can’t be challenged.”31
From mid-1996, bin Laden and his allies are reported to have established a “new” presence, or, alternatively, various national security authorities have discovered their presence, in countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Gulf, and East Asia. From late 1996, for example, the media reported that bin Laden’s organization in Albania has contacts with Muslims in Fiji; that he “has his sights set on Kashmir” and is funding “three fundamentalist groups now well-entrenched in West Bengal”; that he sent an Iraqi operative named Hamoud Abaid al-Anezi to recruit Muslims in Melbourne, Australia, to “join a jihad … in Kosovo and Chechnya”; that he was sponsoring the paramilitary training of Malaysian Muslims in the Philippines; that he had a network of supporters in Mauritania; that he was active in Bangladesh and had established a cell in Jordan; and that he “is planning to turn Kuwait into a major center of extremist fundamentalists in the region.”32 As if this was not enough, bin Laden had associates in the United Kingdom who “concentrated their efforts on recruiting volunteers to fight in China … to support the Uighur Muslims who are being persecuted and oppressed by the Chinese government”; he was “planning a future reliance on Eritrean [Islamic] groups”; the alleged planner of the Nairobi embassy bombing was from the Comoro Islands, suggesting a presence in the Indian Ocean; retired Iraqi military officers trained bin Laden-related fighters in northern Nigeria and EIJ operatives collected information about and monitored “U.S. installations and interests” in that country; and he has sent “Egyptians, Saudis, Algerians, Tunisian, Sudanese, and Kuwaiti fundamentalists … to back the Kosovo Liberation Army.”33 As the ever-cheeky, but cleared-eyed John Miller has written, in today’s world “wherever Muslims are in trouble, it seems, Usama Bin Ladin will be there, slaying enemies, real or perceived. A modern nightmare really—a big-screen villain, a free-lancer with the resources of a state, but without all the nasty obligations.”34
Whether bin Laden did all the things noted above is unknowable, but some exaggeration is likely. He could not have been everywhere at once. That said, bin Laden did not receive much media ink until the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993, and then only small amounts until al Qaeda bombed the Office of Program Management-Saudi Arabian National Guard (OPM-SANG) building in Riyadh in November 1995. Thus, bin Laden enjoyed nearly sixteen years of virtual anonymity in which he went about his business largely unnoticed and unimpeded. In addition, bin Laden and Zawahiri appear to have expanded al Qaeda not only to project power, but also to disperse assets, thereby making it more flexible and redundant and thus more difficult for its foes to strike a truly disabling blow. In July 1999 Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported “the group is based on the idea of spreading the organization with the aim of scattering the Western and Arab intelligence services’ activities. If one or more of these services scores some successes from time to time, the group’s own infrastructure prepares it to resume its activities because it is capable of growing and multiplying.” While the precise dimensions of al Qaeda’s international organization are unclear, it is accurate to say that bin Laden expanded an already-substantial al Qaeda presence in Somalia and the Philippines. Both merit attention because they have been cited as likely emergency safe havens for bin Laden if he chooses, or is forced, to leave Afghanistan.35
Al Qaeda Expansion in Somalia
Africa has remained a high-interest locale for bin Laden since the 1994 withdrawal of UN and U.S. forces from Somalia, and his operatives have remained active there in—at least—Sudan, Somalia, Morocco, South Africa, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Nigeria, Madagascar, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.36 Given al Qaeda’s August 1998 attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, bin Laden obviously has strong bas
es in each of those countries. Somalia, however, seems a case apart, and bin Laden expended sizable amounts of time, money, and manpower to expand there after he returned to Afghanistan. At his death in 1996, according to the U.K.-based journal Al-Hawadith, Abu Ubaydah left a strong al Qaeda presence in Africa, although the article exaggerates when it says he created a formal “federation of African fundamentalist groups, which rallied financially and organizationally around bin Laden’s al Qaeda banner.”37 What seems fair to say is that Abu Ubaydah built a mature al Qaeda presence in Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, and a growing infrastructure in Somalia. Bin Laden’s still-functioning infrastructure in Sudan, for example, is now more than a decade old, and there is every chance that his organization in Kenya is still active—at least in the port of Mombassa—notwithstanding the September 1997 departure of Wadih el-Hage and the arrest of some cell members after the August 1998 bombing. Somalia, however, now seems the focus of al Qaeda’s efforts in Africa.
In Somalia, the media have reported that anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred of bin Laden’s Arab Afghans remained in and around Mogadishu after UN and U.S. forces departed.38 The stay-behinds’ mission appears threefold. First, to consolidate and expand the Somali base al Qaeda built while attacking UN forces; second, to expand its liaison with armed Somali Islamist groups; and, third, to reach out from Somalia and build al Qaeda’s organization elsewhere in Africa.39
Through Our Enemies' Eyes Page 28
