The Longest War

by Peter L. Bergen

  Even with the capture or death of key al-Qaeda leaders in both Iran and Pakistan, al-Qaeda can continue to sustain blows because the members of the group firmly believe that they are doing God’s work. In their own narrative of their struggle, setbacks here on earth simply recall the Prophet Mohammed’s many years of exile in the wilderness fighting the enemies of Islam. For al-Qaeda’s leaders and foot soldiers, setbacks are, in fact, simply more evidence of their part in God’s plan to prevail over the infidels.

  Despite the difficulty it remains a vital interest of the United States to catch or kill bin Laden. While bin Laden is on the lam, al-Qaeda is far from defeated. Ahmed Zaidan, the Al Jazeera reporter who has written an Arabic biography of bin Laden, explains, “As long as Osama bin Laden is alive he has defeated America.” “How do we close the 9/11 chapter with him still being out there?” says Roger Cressey, who was responsible for the coordination of counterterrorism policy at the time of the September 11 attacks. John McLaughlin, the deputy director of the CIA until 2004, pointed out that there would be other advantages in taking al-Qaeda’s leader out of commission: “It would create fractures within the movement, renew a debate on broad strategy, and remove the one figure best able to inspire new recruits.”

  Should bin Laden be eliminated, that would likely trigger a succession battle within al-Qaeda. While Ayman al-Zawahiri is the deputy leader of the terror group and therefore technically bin Laden’s successor, he is not regarded as a natural leader. Indeed, even among his fellow Egyptian militants Zawahiri is seen as a divisive force and so he is unlikely to be able to step into the role of leader of al-Qaeda and of the global jihadist movement that is occupied by bin Laden.

  It may take years but it’s likely bin Laden—who turned 54 almost a decade after 9/11—will eventually be apprehended or killed. So what are the implications of either of those outcomes? If bin Laden were to be captured alive, where, for instance, should he be put on trial? A U.S. official involved in the hunt for bin Laden said that if al-Qaeda’s leader were captured, it would likely produce a subsequent significant problem—Americans being taken hostage with the aim to free him. And in the unlikely event that bin Laden ever was put on trial, he would inevitably try to turn the proceeding into a platform for his views.

  Of course, capturing bin Laden alive is, in any event, less likely than him being killed. His former bodyguard Abu Jandal explains that al-Qaeda’s leader gave him a pistol that “had only two bullets, for me to kill Sheikh Osama with in case we were surrounded or he was about to fall into the enemy’s hands so that he would not be caught alive.” In a tape posted to Islamist websites in 2006, bin Laden confirmed his willingness to be martyred: “I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don’t want to die humiliated or deceived.”

  In the short term bin Laden’s death would likely trigger violent anti-American attacks around the globe, while in the medium term his death would be a serious blow to al-Qaeda, the formal organization, since bin Laden’s charisma played a critical role in the success of his group. As Julie Sirrs, a former intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, put it, “No one can fit into his size twelve shoes.” (However, bin Laden does have eleven sons, some of whom might choose to go into Dad’s line of work. Saad bin Laden, one of his older sons, has already played some kind of role in al-Qaeda.)

  In the longer term bin Laden’s “martyrdom” would likely give a boost to the power of his ideas. Sayyid Qutb, generally regarded as the Lenin of the jihadist movement, was a relatively obscure writer before his execution by the Egyptian government in 1966. After his death, Qutb’s writings, which called for holy wars against the enemies of Islam, became influential. The same process will likely happen with the death of bin Laden, but to a larger degree, as bin Laden’s prestige and fame far eclipses Qutb’s. And so, in death, bin Laden’s ideas will likely attain some lasting currency. As bin Laden himself put it to his bodyguard, Abu Jandal, in death “his blood would become a beacon that arouses the zeal and determination of his followers.”

  “Bin Ladenism” will never enjoy the mass appeal of other destructive ideologies of the modern era, such as communism, but it certainly enjoys some measure of support today. And this is important, because many thousands of underemployed, disaffected men in the Muslim world will continue to embrace bin Laden’s doctrine of violent anti-Westernism. In a telling 2008 survey of opinion in the Muslim world in countries as diverse as Morocco, Indonesia, Jordan, and Turkey, people expressed more “confidence” in bin Laden than in President Bush by significant margins. Thus while eliminating the top leadership of al-Qaeda will be useful in terms of seeking justice for the victims of 9/11 and heading off other spectacular attacks by the group, make no mistake: This will not end the war of the terrorists. Bin Laden’s ideas have circulated widely and will continue to attract adherents for years to come. Arresting people is generally a relatively simple matter. Arresting ideas is another thing entirely.

  Whatever the ultimate fate of bin Laden, and even of al-Qaeda itself, Michael Scheuer, who founded the bin Laden unit at the CIA in 1996, points this out: “Their mission is accomplished: worldwide instigation and inspiration.”

  The Longest War continues.

  Note on Sources

  I was able to interview many of the sources in the book on more than one occasion and the dates and places of all those interviews are noted in the footnotes. A partial list of the several hundred interviews I conducted for this history can be found in the next section. (A number of the people I interviewed were subsequently jailed, killed by security services, assassinated, or have gone into hiding, and I have noted those in the list of interviewees.) Of course, many interviewees chose to remain anonymous.

  I have also drawn on documents filed in criminal cases involving jihadist militants in the United States, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And I have mined books written by al-Qaeda’s leaders and former Taliban officials; thousands of pages of transcripts of U.S. military tribunal proceedings of prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay; first-hand accounts about al-Qaeda from newspapers from around the Muslim world; and a trove of al-Qaeda-related documents and publications going back to the late 1980s that I have collected over the years.

  I also used material derived from several hundred books that touch on aspects of the story and thousands of articles and government documents and other reports that I have collected on this subject, the most useful of which are referenced in the endnotes and bibliography. Also useful were the many publications and statements by al-Qaeda’s leaders or other militant strategists.

  When it comes to transliterating Arabic names or terms, I have used conventional English spellings, for instance, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman.

  Interviewees

  Hassan Abbas

  Dr. Abdullah

  Zachary Abuza

  David Albright

  “Matthew Alexander”

  Sydney Alford

  Hazarat Ali

  Imtiaz Ali

  Jason Amerine

  Abdullah Anas (Boudjema Bounoua)

  Peter Arnett

  Abdel Bari Atwan

  Hussein al-Awadi

  Salman al-Awdah

  Hutaifa Azzam

  Mahfouz Azzam

  Robert Baer

  Omar Bakri Mohamed

  Kenneth Ballen

  Arianna Barbazza

  David Barno

  Khaled Batarfi

  Milt Bearden

  Noman Benotman

  James Bernazzan

  Gary Berntsen

  Benazir Bhutto (Assassinated in Pakistan in 2007)

  Stephen Biddle

  Cofer Black

  Antony Blinken

  Jason Burke

  Daniel Byman

  Vincent Cannistraro

  Yigal Carmon

  Frank Cilluffo

  Peter Clarke

  Richard A. Clarke

  Jack Cloonan
/>
  Eliot Cohen

  David Cohen

  Daniel J. Coleman

  Aukai Collins

  Elizabeth Colton

  Conrad Crane

  Roger Cressey

  Henry “Hank” Crumpton

  Robert Dannenberg

  Mohammed Daud

  Essam Deraz

  James Dobbins

  Brian Doyne

  Joshua Dratel

  Assad Durrani

  Jason Dye

  Paul Eedle

  Karl Eikenberry

  Charles “Sam” Faddis

  Saad al-Fagih

  Christine Fair

  William J. Fallon

  Mahmoun Fandy

  Khaled al-Fauwaz (Jailed in the UK in 1998)

  Yosri Fouda

  Tommy Franks

  Joe Frost

  “Dalton Fury”

  Brad Garrett

  Baltasar Garzon

  Fawaz Gerges

  Abdul Rashid Ghazi (Killed by Pakistani security forces in 2007)

  Susan Glasser

  David Gordon

  Karen Greenberg

  Robert Grenier

  Stephen Grey

  Alain Grignard

  Abdul Rahman al-Hadlag

  Stephen Hadley

  Mohammed Hafez

  Moinuddin Haider

  Hamid al-Haiys

  Kemal Halbawy

  Abu Hamza (Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, jailed in the UK in 2004)

  Abdul Haq Hanif (Jailed in Afghanistan)

  Sami ul-Haq

  Husain Haqqani

  Ali Hatem

  Neil Herman

  Thomas Hegghammer

  Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (In hiding)

  Andrew Higgins

  Bruce Hoffman

  Richard Holbrooke

  Pervez Hoodbhoy

  Ed Husain

  Zahid Husain

  Mansoor Ijaz

  Faraj Ismail

  Jamal Ismail

  Imdadullah (Jailed in Afghanistan)

  Abd al-Jabbar

  Saad al-Jabri

  Wael Jalaidan

  Sadritdin Jalilov

  Said Jawad

  Sterling Jensen

  Seth Jones

  Sydney Jones

  Peter Jouvenal

  Fred Kagan

  Hekmat Karzai

  Rita Katz

  Art Keller

  Jack Keane

  John Kerry

  Mullah Abdul Samad Khaksar (Assassinated in Kandahar in 2006)

  Jamal Khalifa (Murdered in Madagascar in 2007)

  Rhamad Khan

  Ismail Khan

  Jamal Khashoggi

  Khalid Khawaja (Assassinated by Taliban in 2010)

  David Kilcullen

  Daniel Kimmage

  Osama bin Laden (In hiding)

  Arif Lalani

  William Lambert

  Robert Lambert

  Patrick Lang

  Carie Lemack

  Clare Lockhart

  Douglas Lute

  Norine MacDonald

  Jean MacKenzie

  Michael Maloof

  Michele Malvesti

  Omar Khan Masoudi

  Ahmad Shah Massoud (Assassinated in Afghanistan in 2001)

  Brett McGurk

  John McLaughlin

  Richard Melton

  Joseph Melrose

  John Miller

  Khary Miller

  Hamid Mir

  Assaf Moghadam

  Haji Deen Mohammed

  Saad Mohseni

  Vahid Mojdeh

  Rolf Mowatt-Larssen

  Philip Mudd

  Ursula Mueller

  Abdul Hakim Mujahid

  Mohammed Musa

  Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil

  Muzhgan

  John Nagl

  Syed Mohsin Naqvi

  Octavia Nasr

  Vali Nasr

  Maajid Nawaz

  Shuja Nawaz

  Raymond Odierno

  Michael O’Hanlon

  Abu Omar (Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr)

  Meghan O’Sullivan

  Ralph Paredes

  David Petraeus

  William Pierce

  George Piro

  Kenneth Pollack

  Mohammed Asif Qazizanda

  Amir Rana

  Ahmed Rashid

  Joel Rayburn

  Bruce Riedel

  Nic Robertson

  Michael A. Rolince

  Eric Rosenbach

  Barnett Rubin

  Osama Rushdi

  Thomas Ruttig

  Marc Sageman

  Omar Samad

  Habiba Sarabi

  Michael Scheuer

  Michael Semple

  Mohammed al-Shafey

  Michael Sheehan

  Mitch Silber

  Steven Simon

  Yasser al-Sirri

  Julie Sirrs

  Emma Sky

  Leonid Smirnov

  Ali Soufan

  Armando Spataro

  Frank Sturek

  Barbara Sude

  Abu Musab al-Suri (Mustafa Setmariam Nasar—captured in 2005, now jailed, location not known, perhaps Syria)

  Jassim Suwaydawi

  Camille Tawil

  Frances Fragos Townsend

  Tom Tullius

  Ben Venzke

  John Vines

  Hussein al-Wadi

  Doug Wankel

  Dale Watson

  Matthew Waxman

  Gabriel Weimann

  Mary Jo White

  Andy Worthington

  Daoud Yacub

  Judith Yaphe

  Jameel Yusuf

  Rahimullah Yusufzai

  Asif Zadari

  Mohammed Zahir

  Mohammed Haji Zahir

  Ahmed Zaidan

  Juan Zarate

  Montasser al-Zayyat

  Notes

  Part I

  1 “As a general rule”: Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), p. 538.

  1 “No one loves”: Maximilien Robespierre, “On the War,” Speech to the Jacobin Club, Paris, January 11, 1792.

  Chapter 1

  3 a riddle: Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror: The Truth Behind the Most Devastating Attack The World Has Ever Seen (New York: Arcade, 2003), p. 140.

  3 turned down: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Final Report (Washington, D.C.: 2004) (“9/11 Commission Report,”), p. 168.

  3 “Jenny”: Fouda and Fielding, Masterminds of Terror, pp. 158, 139.

  4 dispatched a messenger: ibid. pp. 140–141.

  4 trainers at the facility said: Musad Omar is a Yemeni being held at Guantánamo Bay. Omar claims to have gone to Afghanistan “to observe the situation” under the Taliban after being recruited to do so by an acquaintance in Yemen. In extracts from his testimony before a U.S. military tribunal at Guantánamo he recalls what it was like to be in al-Qaeda’s camps around the time of the 9/11 attacks. He says he saw bin Laden in Khost in mid-October 2001 a month before the fall of Kabul on November 12, 2001. Guantánamo Bay tribunal transcripts. Author’s collection.

  4 In Kandahar: According to Abu Musab al-Suri, the Syrian jihadist who had sometimes had clashed with bin Laden, in September 2001, the al-Qaeda leader told some of his followers that it was time to leave Kandahar and go back to Yemen. Abu Musab al Suri, The Call for Global Islamic Resistance, published on jihadist websites, 2004.

  4 Feroz Ali Abbasi: Feroz Ali Abbasi, Guantánamo Bay Prison Memoirs, 2002–2004.

  4 Lindh heard an instructor: FBI report, “Interview of John Philip Walker Lindh,” December 9–10, 2001. Author’s collection.

  4 Atyani asked bin Laden: Bakr Atyani, phone interview, Islamabad, Pakistan, August 22, 2005.

  4 an open secret: Vernon Loeb, “U.S. forces in Gulf on highest alert; threats also prompt travel warning,” Washington Post, June 23, 2001.

 
; 4 tightly held: 9/11 Commission Report, p. 532 fn 180. According to KSM, only bin Laden, Mohamed Atef, Abu Turab al-Jordani, Ramzi Binalshibh, and a few of the senior hijackers knew the specific targets, timing, operatives, and methods of attack. Intelligence reports, interrogations of KSM, Oct. 27, 2003.

  4 formally contracted its alliance: 9/11 Commission Report, op. cit., p. 470, fn. 82: Intelligence report, interrogation of KSM, Jan. 9, 2004.

  5 learned about the attacks: Osama bin Laden, December 13, 2001, op. cit.

  5 for a suicide mission: Osama bin Laden, December 13, 2001, op. cit.

  5 suicide “wills”: Fouda and Fielding op. cit., p. 141; Such tapes were released in April 2002, September 2002, September 2003, and September 2006. Joel Roberts, “Video shows bin Laden, 9/11 hijackers,” CBS News, September 7, 2006, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/

  09/07/terror/main1982773.shtml.

  5 Despite his increasing militancy: Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), pp. 50–53; “personality clashes”: 9/11 Commission Report op. cit., p. 246; “the Ayatollah”: McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, p. 37.

  5 “How do you feel?”: Yosri Fouda interview with Ramzi Binalshibh, Karachi, Pakistan, April 20–21, 2002. Aired in Al Jazeera documentary, September 11, 2002. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/09/

  september11.afghanistan.

  5 “Holy Tuesday”: Yosri Fouda, “We left out nuclear targets, for now,” The Guardian, March 4, 2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/mar/

  04/alqaida.terrorism.

  5 three or four floors: Tape transcript available from CNN.com, December 13, 2001. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/U.S./12/13/tape.transcript/. The tape was translated by George Michael, a translator at Diplomatic Language Services and Dr. Kassem M. Wahba, of Johns Hopkins University for the Department of Defense.

  6 gathered around radios: United States of America v. Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul. Obtained through www.findlaw.com.

  6 “Be patient”: Osama bin Laden, mid-November 2001, Kandahar, Afghanistan. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,40750,00.html.

  6 “Our brother Marwan”: Fouda, Yosri. “Top Secret: The Road to September 11.” Al-Jazeera (Qatar). First aired: September 11, 2002. Author collection.

  6 Binalshibh remembers: Fouda and Fielding op. cit., p. 159.