SPEAKING FREELY Better alive than dead
By Farooq Hameed
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Osama bin Laden is again in the headlines after a long absence. In what is said
to be his most recent audio message, aired on al-Jazeera satellite television,
bin Laden claimed responsibility for the abortive December 25, 2009 attempt by
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, to blow up a US airliner in
flight over Detroit. In his statement, bin Laden warns the US about further
such attacks as long as the US supports Israel in its atrocities against the
people of Gaza.
As usual, Washington has announced that it has yet to confirm the audio's
genuineness, which will be subject to verification of the
speaker's voice with the original bin Laden speech characters. The White House,
however, denounced bin Laden, vowing to bring him to justice.
Why did bin Laden take almost a month to release this public message? Is he
asserting that he is still alive and kicking and in full control?
Where is bin Laden and why does he or his "ghost" surface "occasionally" to
haunt the Americans? These remain trillion-dollar questions. It is difficult to
believe that with all its super high-tech, worldwide satellite and electronic
intelligence capabilities, the US remains unaware about the status (dead or
alive) and whereabouts of bin Laden.
The last the world ever knew about bin Laden's location was in the Tora Bora
mountain ranges near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, after the Taliban were
driven out of Kabul in the post-September 11, 2001 US invasion. Did bin Laden
survive those intensive B-52 bombing strikes that blasted the Tora Bora
mountains? The lethality index of one B-52's bomb and missile arsenal is known
to be comparable to the devastating effect of a few kiloton tactical nuclear
warhead. So deadly were those bombings that the words Tora Bora now represent
death and destruction.
Since Tora Bora, bin Laden's trail went cold. During president George W Bush's
second term, the US almost forgot bin Laden. The US obsession with bin Laden
seemed on the decline. Rarely did bin Laden figure out in news reports, except
the odd audio/video cassette recordings, denouncing the US and vowing to
continue jihad against the US forces in Afghanistan and striking their
interests the world over.
The pattern of these tapes/recordings did raise eyebrows. Such messages came in
public on important occasions, like as before the US presidential elections or
when the US government was under domestic pressure, including the uproar over
losses to US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. From among the world media,
al-Jazeera was generally the preferred channel to air his tapes.
There were typical controversies regarding the authenticity of some of the
earlier bin Laden video tapes. How could bin Laden look younger as he aged? His
face wrinkles looked different from the last video! The black patches under the
eyes suddenly disappeared! Were those videos the wonders of computer wizards
and forensic artists? Was there a bin Laden look-alike doing the job? Are the
bin Laden tapes genuine or engineered? Are these tapes part of a US strategic
deception plan to keep the bin Laden phenomenon alive to pursue a greater
agenda?
Is bin Laden in Pakistan? Western intelligence experts and analysts still
propagate that bin Laden is holed up somewhere in the mountainous border
between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Pakistani leadership has emphatically
rejected bin Laden's presence in Pakistan and had even indicated that bin Laden
may not be alive, let alone being present in Pakistan's tribal areas.
With an extensive US intelligence network in Pakistan's tribal belt since 9/11,
including their system of intelligence-sharing and coordination with their
Pakistani counterparts and the local informers etc, bin Laden has yet to be
located in Pakistan. Scores of drone attacks against suspected al-Qaeda targets
in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, especially North Waziristan,
have not been able to locate or target bin Laden, or even his deputy, Ayman
al-Zawahiri.
What then is the bin Laden mystery. Is he alive, hale and hearty? Is he hiding
in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border belt or residing somewhere in a remote
northern Afghan province? Has he migrated to some distant land like Somalia or
Yemen? Is bin Laden such a genius that he has successfully eluded the might of
US intelligence all these years? Is bin Laden their (US) man of "convenience'
to be used whenever the situation so demands?
Is al-Qaeda a myth or reality? Why does the al-Qaeda threat suddenly seem to
emerge in areas where there is oil or near to the world's oil passage lanes?
Yemen, that lies at the mouth of the Red Sea oil shipping route, has become the
new "safe haven" for al-Qaeda. Is Nigeria, which is an Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries member and one of the world's leading oil
producers, the next emerging al-Qaeda bastion? With a Nigerian national
involved in the failed US airliner attempt, is Nigeria next on the US hit list?
Pakistanis are seething with anger for being subjected to enhanced humiliating
body searches along with passengers from thirteen other Muslim countries, at US
airports in the aftermath of 25/12. The hijackers that rammed those airliners
into the twin towers on 9/11, were mostly Saudis and not Pakistanis. Yet,
Pakistanis have suffered disgraceful body searches at US airports ever since.
Pakistanis are saying, "Enough is enough. This discriminatory and unfair
treatment to a country that has remained a US ally and suffered the most, is no
longer acceptable."
Reportedly, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation used a photograph of Gasper
LLamazares, a Spanish lawmaker, to approximate bin Laden's current appearance.
LLamazares was taken aback to learn that his online photograph resembling bin
Laden was used to create an image of what bin Laden would look like today. This
image appeared on a "Wanted" poster updating the US government's earlier photo
of bin Laden promising a reward of up to $25 million.
How many more years will pass by with the US hunting for bin Laden is anybody's
guess. But one thing is certain: the Americans would love to keep bin Laden
alive and on the run!
Brigadier (retired) Farooq Hameed Khan is chairman of the editorial board
of the National Defence Times in Pakistan.
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Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
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