 A Taliban fighter: ready to sacrifice for Osama ? |
  WASHINGTON D.C. -- Sept. 14, 2001 As the U.S. government prepares to strike back at its terrorist enemies, it is clear that this will be a campaign whose advances, if any, will be measured in inches, not the miles marched off in a conventional military operation. Tough talk, demonstrations of firm resolve and expressions of global solidarity from NATO partners and other nations is only the beginning, just the easy part. The key issues are much tougher: deciding who and where to strike, and when. Two decades of fashioning his terror network on the run has made the American's prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, a maddeningly elusive target. And even as U.S. intelligence agencies use all the technology at their command to try to fix the precise location of bin Laden and his associates, President George W. Bush and his team find themselves boxing shadows in the ring of Southwest Asian and Middle Eastern politics. Unlike the Gulf War, where the President's father could swiftly marshall the support of regional allies against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and confront his armies at point-blank range on the borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Bush Jr. has to project U.S. power beyond two of the most chaotic dictatorships in the world -- Pakistan and Afghanistan -- to reach Osama bin Laden. It's little comfort that Afghanistan's Taliban regime will likely itself be declared a target due to harboring bin Laden, thereby reducing America's obstacles to one country, Pakistan. That's because everything about Pakistan, from its huge land mass to its volcanic social and religious terrain, spells only trouble for any kind of sustained U.S. military deployment. Despite promises from Pakistan's President Musharraf that his country shuns terrorists and those who shelter them, his weak administration has only nominal control over its military intelligence branch, the I.S.I., which has been the Taliban's most important strategic partner. The I.S.I.'s objectives are purely territorial: Afghanistan is the sole foreign arena where Pakistan's military has enjoyed anything like lasting influence. The I.S.I.'s hand is plainly visible on Afghanistan's battlefields in terms of arms, logistical support and fresh recruits to the Taliban cause from Pakistan's fundamentalist Muslim religious schools, the Madrassas. And it is on that front -- Pakistan's own internal struggle with militant Islam -- that the menacing challenges of grappling with terrorist groups comes to a vicious full circle. Since a sizeable minority of Pakistani and Asian Muslims view Osama bin Laden as a hero, President Musharraf risks provoking a violent response within his own borders should he allow himself to be seen aiding the U.S. military in any way. That kind of an uprising could well push Pakistan beyond critical mass, given the ongoing ethnic war in the streets in Karachi and the Muslim insurgency in neighboring Indian Kashmir. The central dilemma of counter-terrorism, that a misdirected response only compounds the terrorist's impact, is both a sheild and a sword for bin Laden. If the U.S. strikes out blindly, if collateral damage overshadows the valid targets that are destroyed, the consequences could well prove more catastrophic than this week's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Should the U.S. lose the moral high ground, bin Laden and other anti-Western extremists would find everything from sanctuary to material support easier to come by. This psychology has been key to the growth of Osama bin Laden's al Qaida organization and its associated groups throughout the Arab world. The U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 were tragically spectacular, but the rash and ineffective American response, the firing of 75 cruise missiles at bin Laden's Afghan training camps, enhanced the terrorist's image in the view of militant Islamists. He became more, not less influential within the Taliban, confounding the Clinton administration's reckoning that such a show of U.S. force would persuade the Afghan regime to shun their dangerous guest. Indeed the pattern of ascending militancy of the Taliban itself reveals how emboldened Osama bin Laden has become. According to elders within the Afghan population and diplomatic observers in the region, actions such as the destruction of the statues of Buddah earlier this year, to the policy of ethnic tagging in Kabul and the current prosecution of Western aid workers for allegedly promoting Christianity, are the result of bin Laden and his fellow Arab extremists gaining advantage over more tradition-minded Afghans within the Taliban leadership. The extremist tail is now wagging the dog. This rise to power represents a huge change in fortunes for the Saudi militant, whose first forays in to Afghanistan in the 1980s were marked by misadventure and outright hostility from many homegrown Afghan resistance fighters of the anti-Soviet Mujahideen guerrilla parties. During the war against Soviet occupation, most young Afghan fighters viewed bin Laden and his imported Arabic dogma as entirely foreign to their concept of faith and defence of home, family and nation. He was condescending and dictatorial, a super-wealthy young Saudi telling determined Afghan farm boys that they had to measure up to a higher Islamic calling. Not surprisingly, the chip on Osama bin Laden's shoulder didn't come from divine inspiration but from his family life. Born far, far down the pecking order among the 57 children of Saudi construction billionaire Mohammed bin Laden and his four wives, Osama was an awkwardly tall young man, virtually an outcast among his older half-brothers, who ruthlessly competed for control of their father's business empire. To those who met him, including this reporter, at the bin Laden company headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in the early 1980s, Osama appeared to be like a lot of twenty-somethings -- a bit lost, resentful of others and anxiously looking for something, anything to help him stand out among the crowd. In 1980s Saudi Arabia, where sentiment was quietly growing against the all-powerful royal family, Osama bin Laden found his cause in religious activism. The opportunity of living out his crusader's dream in Afghanistan, combined with the repressive atmosphere within his family and homeland, set him on a course of violent adventure. He dubbed his movement al Qaida, "the base," with the intention of attracting other Sunni Muslim groups to one purpose: the establishment of an Islamic Caliphite, or kingdom, that would eventually embrace the entire world. His personal wealth (even as an outcast he secured hundreds of millions of dollars from his father's fortune) bought him friends among the arch-fundamentalist parties of the Afghan resistance. But attacks on his followers by rival, more progressive guerrilla bands inspired bin Laden to adopt and develop the amorphous cell structure that makes his organization so difficult to locate today. Through the 1990s, al Qaida's cells transformed themselves from the gang that couldn't shoot straight in Afghanistan to a frighteningly capable underground terror network. When U.S. forces were invited to Saudi Arabia to lead the counterattack against Iraqi forces in Kuwait, bin Laden was able to focus added vigor to his anti-Americanism. This culminated in his 1998 Fatwah, or religious decree, stating that it is the duty of Muslims to kill U.S. citizens and their allies. Unquestionably, bin Laden's deadliest, darkest accomplishment is in the field of the suicide bomber -- or pilot, as is suspected now. Much more than simply identifying desperate young men who might swiftly be convinced to make the ultimate sacrifice for some obscure Islamic purpose, Osama bin Laden has nurtured a much more lethal cadre of warriors: well-educated, mature and capable men who can execute carefully laid plans to devastating effect. If, as U.S. investigators believe, the hijackers of the four airliners seized this week are associated with bin Laden's terror cells, the patience and skills required to conduct the operation mark a dramatic, but logical, refinement to those seen in the African embassy bombings and the attack in Yemen last year on the USS Cole. Practice makes perfect holds true, as well, for the black art of terror. Even without the steady flow of material evidence investigators have already assembled in the case, it seemed from the beginning that the sophistication and chilling accuracy of the attacks, with three out of four commandeered aircraft striking objectives, pointed to these outrages being the work of the world's most seasoned professional terrorist. Osama bin Laden has acheived his fondest dream: creating a living nightmare for Western civilization. It is through these poisonous, twisting currents that the American military will try to project its power. For all the satellite imagery, smart bombs and special forces it can deploy, the world's superpower has come face to face with an enemy that confounds both logic and technology. As Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, the battle ahead will be a long one. |