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THE ROVING EYE
OSAMA AT LARGE, 1: Get
him before Sept 11
By Pepe
Escobar
BRUSSELS - He was branded as the new
anti-Christ. He was the supreme embodiment of evil. He
was the planetary public enemy number one. He was the
villain on the cover of any magazine. But then he
vanished. And the man who holds the most powerful job on
earth still wants him badly - dead or alive.
But
Osama bin Laden is not dead. He is very much alive.
Somewhere in Pakistan.
Pictorial variations can
be found in any Pakistani bazaar: in the collective
sub-consciousness of millions of Muslims he has been
elevated into the new prophet, riding a white horse
between Mecca and Jerusalem, leading the Islamic cavalry
to smash the Infidels.
Twice last October he
materialized, like a high-tech ghost, on the Qatar-based
Al-Jazeera television network, which aired video tapes
of him delivering messages. Twice in December he was
back - on one occasion on the famous tape supposedly
found in Jalalabad in Afghanistan, which, for the
Pentagon, proved that he was in fact the mastermind of
September 11. In April, he was back one more time. Since
then, nothing.
A little more than two weeks ago,
though, his Kuwaiti-born spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Graith,
showed up on Al Jazeera in a pre-recorded tape to
confirm what many already suspected: yes, he is very
much alive "and will soon make a televised address to
the Muslim world". Another Al Jazeera exclusive, of
course.
As long as bin Laden remains at large -
despite the efforts of the most powerful army in the
history of the world - he remains the subject of intense
debate. From Bangkok to Buenos Aires, live or on the
Internet, conspiracy theories abound. He remains a CIA
agent. His al-Qaeda network is a ghost brand, totally
virtual. He will never be found because he is the
supremely convenient excuse for any American military
excesses. President George W Bush, on the record, has
once again reissued his orders: he wants bin Laden dead
- and before September 11, 2002.
Al-Qaeda,
virtual or not, is by no means smashed. It will strike
again - and it will choose "the right time, place and
method", according to Graith. He emphasized that
al-Qaeda was prepared for an American offensive, and its
military, security, economic and media network were
intact. "Ninety-eight percent of the leadership" is also
intact, and Graith confirmed that the "Surgeon", Ayman
al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, had not been killed
at Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December. And the Taliban
supremo, Mullah Omar - last seen escaping from American
ballistic fury in December on the back of a Honda 50cc -
is also very much alive. It's no secret that Omar bought
his way to a perfect hideout in the mountains of Uruzgan
province in Afghanistan, where he is being fiercely
protected by local warlords. All of this has been
confirmed by Pakistani sources close to Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The American media
would never dare face the obvious, but the fact is that
the hunt for bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership is a
major embarrassment for the US to date. The US record on
the attack on Tora Bora (December), Operation Anaconda
(March) and Operation Snipe (May) is dismal. Bin Laden
himself, the al-Qaeda leadership and thousands of Arab
fighters managed to escape from Tora Bora - by bribing
eastern Afghani warlords. Anaconda - employing 2,000
GIs, 2,000 Afghans and loads of B-52s and Apache
helicopters - supposedly cleared out the Chah-e-Kot
valley in Paktia province. But most Arabs and Taliban
eventually managed to escape east. Snipe - employing
1,000 Royal Marines - intervened in Khost, and just
managed to push al-Qaeda fighters further inside the
tribal areas of Pakistan. There they have blended in
everywhere, in Miram Shah, deep in the tribal areas.
Last November, the Taliban announced the death
of Muhamad Atef, bin Laden's military commander and
personal security chief who helped set up al-Qaeda
networks in East Africa. Atef was installed at bin
Laden's side by al-Zawahiri. He is believed to be the
chief strategist of September 11. But he didn't die last
year: in April, the Pentagon tried again, stating that
Atef "might" have been a target of aerial bombing near
Kabul.
A few months ago, Indian intelligence
services assured that they had proof that the ISI had
ordered UK-born Sheikh Omar to send US$100,000 to
Muhamad Atta, the alleged chief pilot on September 11.
Sheikh Omar was arrested in Karachi in February and
charged with the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl in the same city. The US wants him
extradited at any cost.
The biggest fish caught
so far is Abu Zubaida, arrested in Faisalabad in the
Pakistani Punjab in April. Zubaida, a former resident of
the Gaza Strip in Palestine, had headed al-Qaeda's
international operations, and was to have become
al-Qaeda's leader in the event of bin Laden or
al-Zawahiri being killed. Zubaida was based in Peshawar
and was the main contact for all Arabs transiting to
Afghanistan.
Long past are the days when a young
Saudi, armed with petrodollars and the holy Koran,
arrived in Pashtun country - from the western margin of
the Indus to the Hindu Kush mountains and the great
deserts of Baluchistan - to wage jihad. An Asia Times
Online investigation with European and Afghan-Pakistani
sources confirmed that he is back - but not necessarily
in Pashtun country. The al-Qaeda leadership has already
moved the de facto battlefield from Afghanistan to
Pakistan. Karachi, Lahore and provincial capitals such
as Faisalabad are slowly being turned into an urban
guerrilla theater, against both the West and Pakistani
President General Pervez Musharraf's rule.
Sheikh Omar, born in the UK, son of Muslim
immigrants from the Pakistani side of Kashmir, highly
skilled and tech-savvy, is typical of a key al-Qaeda
operative. While in Pakistan, he was an active militant
for the Kashmiri cause. When facing Pakistani justice,
he talked at length about his contacts with the ISI -
which Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider took no time to
rebuff ("Moin" as he is known in Pakistan, is regarded
as a no-brainer). Al-Qaeda, Afghan training camps,
Kashmir and the ISI remain inter-related in myriad ways.
During the 1990s, at least 20,000 people - mostly Arabs
- transited through Pakistan for Afghanistan to "offer
their services" to a number of Afghan-based Arab jihadi
outfits. At least 5,000 passed all the tests, made an
oath of allegiance to bin Laden and joined al-Qaeda,
according to a source close to the ISI. The source adds,
"About 5,000 Arabs, a few Bangladeshis and Somalis and
very few Pakistanis are the hardcore support of
al-Qaeda." The majority are still alive, well and
waiting.
The US military actions so far have
killed, trapped or arrested no more than 2,000 fighters.
The majority are laying low, behaving as law-abiding
residents of various Arab, European and North American
cities. They usually communicate through steganography -
"hidden writing" in Greek, today transposed to secret
Internet messages. Through steganography, messages are
embedded in picture and music files. European
intelligence sources in Brussels think that the messages
could even be hidden in online porn sites.
A
surefire way to track bin Laden is to follow the money.
ISI-related sources point out that over the past Muslim
holy month of Ramadan, for the first time since the
mid-1980s, bin Laden did not receive the usual mountain
of contributions from wealthy Arab citizens, derived
from their mandatory zakat and fikra
Islamic contributions. The money, apparently for charity
work in Afghanistan, was always collected by bin Laden
agents in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and
Kuwait. This is how bin Laden literally controlled
Afghanistan, with the help of his global armada of fund
managers.
But now the CIA and European
intelligence services are monitoring each and every wire
and cash transfer from anywhere in the world to
Pakistan. As much as is feasible, the hawala
(unofficial money transfer) business in Pakistan and in
the Arab word is under strict Western surveillance.
Sources in Pakistan confirm that at present there are no
Arab clients for foreign moneychangers in Peshawar and
Quetta. And Pakistani diplomatic missions all over the
world have been instructed not to issue Pakistani visas
to Arabs without their application being examined by
Pakistani intelligence in Islamabad. Arabs can no longer
use the excuse of tabligh - preaching - to obtain
a visa.
So al-Qaeda is now opening up even more,
and subcontracting tasks to Pakistani jihadi
organizations - as Asia Times Online has reported. Even
before September 11 and the subsequent American
response, bin Laden knew that he could not keep al-Qaeda
as a purely Arab organization. Ma'askar - the Arab
training camps in Afghanistan, run by the Arab veterans
of the Afghan jihad - trained volunteers of at least
three key Pakistani jihadi outfits.
Al-Qaeda may
have been smashed in Afghanistan and may have relocated
to Pakistan, but the US is very far from winning the new
Afghan war. The US is shifting its military strategy,
concentrating now on special operations troops working
with the Pashtun-illiterate CIA to track down Taliban
leaders in southern Afghanistan and al-Qaeda fighters
who crossed to the tribal areas in Pakistan. But at the
same time the US is still bombing Afghanistan, with the
inevitable string of blunders, like last week's when
more than 100 Afghan civilians were wounded or killed by
an American strike. A single not-culturally-impaired
American operative on the ground could have warned that
this was a marriage celebration - not a bunch of fleeing
Taliban.
Pashtuns of all colors are fuming. The
aerial hunt for Mullah Omar will go nowhere. ISI-related
sources confirm that he is in hiding in Afghanistan's
eastern Uruzgan province, but the Americans will have to
crawl there to get him. Pashtun leaders are also
convinced that the US heavily favors the Tajiks of the
Northern Alliance. And now that the war has de facto
expanded to Pakistan, Pashtuns feel vulnerable on both
sides of the border. Neither the US military nor the
Musharraf government allows independent observers in the
new war theater.
Musharraf and his leadership
are cracking down internally on al-Qaeda. But bin Laden
- and the Taliban - still have many powerful supporters
inside the army and the ISI. This means that the US is
even further away from winning the war in Pakistan - due
to the ISI's ambivalence. The US has also not won the
war in Yemen. Bin Laden even managed to strike a - now
dormant - active partnership with some hardcore Iranian
mullahs. Islamists are still very much active in
Chechnya and in Java. If bin Laden could not risk being
a refugee in Iran - even protected by hardcore mullahs -
Pakistan was the next best option. He did go in, and he
has not come out.
He may cut an anonymous figure
in the rivers of humanity of any Pakistani big city - a
much better refuge than the volatile and
American-scrutinized Pashtun tribal areas. He is now
Musharraf's nemesis. If he is arrested, his inevitable
extradition to the US will destroy the ultra-precarious
Pakistani state. If American special forces go and get
him, that's the end of any cooperation with the
Americans by the Pakistani army. If he abandons his
hideout, he can be captured. Otherwise, no matter the
spin, there is no victory in the war against terrorism.
For the moment at least, there's every indication that
bin Laden will celebrate September 11's first
anniversary alive, well - and on Al Jazeera.
Tomorrow: What is bin Laden up to?
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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Get Osama! Now! Or else ...
