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Prime
Suspects By Yehudit Barsky
"Fast and light forces must be used and must operate in absolute
secrecy. All effort must be directed at this enemy; kill it, fight it,
destroy it, break it down, plot against it, ambush it, God the Almighty
willing, until it is gone." Osama bin Laden’s "Declaration of War Against the Americans," August 1996. "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it..." Osama bin Laden in a fatwah issued February 23, 1998. While no organisation has yet taken responsibility for the September 11 terrorist attack against America, all signs point to Osama bin Laden. Indeed, Bin Laden has made a number of threats against the US and its citizens over the past several months.
On May 29, the US State Department issued an international warning cautioning American citizens that they could become the targets of terrorist groups linked to Bin Laden. The US Embassies in Manama, Bahrain and Dakar, Senegal were closed, and US military installations in the Gulf were ordered to the highest state of alert, "Threatcon Delta." On June 24, the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation reported that followers of Bin Laden were planning strikes against US and Israeli targets in the weeks to come. Most recently, followers of Bin Laden told the editor of the Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Abd Al-Bari Atwan, in late August that there would be "a huge and unprecedented attack, but they did not specify." Atwan continued, "We usually receive this kind of thing. At the time we did not take the warnings seriously as they had happened several times in the past and nothing happened. This time it seems his people were accurate and meant every word they said." Osama bin Laden is the 44-year-old leader of Al-Qaeda, an Islamic extremist terrorist organisation that was founded in the late 1980s in Afghanistan. By that time, Bin Laden had already established his reputation as a supporter of the mujahideen — "holy warriors" — Arab recruits from around the world who fought against Soviet forces after the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Between 1986 and 1989, the US and Saudi Arabia each sent $500 million annually to fund the mujahideen, and private Saudi benefactors, including Bin Laden, sent a total of $240 million each year. Despite the wartime alliance among the US, Saudi Arabia and the mujahideen, following the conclusion of the Afghan war Bin Laden and the mujahideen focused their energies on their next target: the United States. Ideology Since the early 1990s, Bin Laden and his followers have targeted the United States as part of their declared jihad, or holy war, against the West that is fuelled by an extremist interpretation of Islamic theological texts. Bin Laden is reported to have been particularly influenced by the writings of Islamic extremist ideologues such as the Palestinian preacher Abdullah Azzam and Muhammad Qutb, both of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. From the standpoint of the radical theology of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, Christians and Jews are infidels allied with Satanic forces, and they will be the eternal enemies of Muslims until the Day of Judgment when they are destroyed. In a 1996 interview with Nida’ul-Islam, an Islamic extremist magazine published in Australia, Bin Laden explained his motivation for targeting the US. He charged that Islam as a religion had been targeted for destruction by the US, and accused the Saudi government and the official Muslim clergy in that country of being apostates who were influenced by the "Judeo-American alliance": "After the end of the Cold War, America escalated its campaign against the Muslim world in its entirety, aiming to get rid of Islam itself. Its main focus in this was to target the [Islamic] scholars and the reformers who were enlightening the people to the dangers of the Judeo-American alliance, and they also targeted the mujahideen [holy warriors]." Bin Laden went on to explain that his jihad against the US was divinely sanctioned: "However, our gratitude to Allah, their campaign was not successful, as terrorizing the American occupiers is a religious and logical obligation. We are grateful to Allah Most Exalted in that He has facilitated jihad in His cause for us, against the America-Israel attacks against Islamic sanctities." On three separate occasions, Bin Laden formally declared his intention of waging war against the US. In August 1996 he released a fatwah, or Islamic religious edict. It declared jihad against the United States and was entitled, "Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places — Expel the Infidels from the Arabian Peninsula — A Message from Osama Bin Muhammad Bin Laden to His Muslim Brethren All Over the World Generally and in the Arab Peninsula Specifically." The second fatwah was published on February 23, 1998, in the name of the "International Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders," an international coalition of Islamic extremist terror organisations that are aligned with Bin Laden. The fatwah declared: "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Mosque [in Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, ‘and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,’ and ‘fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.’" The fatwah continued, "We, with God’s help, call upon every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulama [clerics], leaders, youths and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan’s US troops and the Devil’s supporters allying with them." Bin Laden’s third declaration of war against Americans was his participation in an official endorsement of a fatwah issued by the "Ulama [Islamic Clerics] Union of Afghanistan" in May 1998. The fatwah characterized US military forces as the "enemies of Islam" and declared jihad against the United States. Capabilities In February 2001, CIA Director George Tenet testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Bin Laden’s organisation posed "the most immediate and serious threat" to US national security. Al-Qaeda is considered to be responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and the subsequent plot to bomb the UN and other New York area landmarks, the shooting down of a US military helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993, the bombing of the US military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1996, simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the October 2000 bombing attack on the USS Cole. Despite the fact that Al-Qaeda does not have state sponsorship, it is a sophisticated terror organisation. Its operatives and cells are loosely affiliated with the leadership of the organisation and operate in a semi-autonomous fashion, providing for compartmentalisation of vital information about the group. Bin Laden maintains the command and control structure of his organisation by employing a sophisticated communications network, including the use of satellite telephones and powerful encryption devices that are available on the open market. He has also used the Internet to send coded maps and signals to Web sites that provide pornography and sports news to their regular customers. Al-Qaeda is composed of some 5,000 loosely affiliated operatives from around the world. These operatives are mostly Arab, but there are some Pakistanis as well. Bin Laden is reported to personally supervise the training of approximately 300 of his operatives at any one time at his base in Khost, Afghanistan. Following their training, the operatives either remain in Afghanistan or go to other Al-Qaeda bases in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia or Pakistan. From an operational point of view, Al-Qaeda has been successful in extending logistical or financial support for "jihadi," or holy war movements throughout the world, including Islamic radicals in Chechnya, Hizb Al-Tahrir — the Islamic Liberation Party in Uzbekistan, the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, and the Hamas movement in the Palestinian Authority controlled areas. It has also been successful in recruiting American citizens such as Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden’s personal secretary, who was tried and convicted earlier this year for his involvement in the 1998 embassy bombings. Funding Apart from his personal fortune — estimated at between $250 million and $300 million— Osama bin Laden has six other sources of funding for his organisation: 1) US and Saudi funds diverted or retained from the Afghan war; 2) funds from Islamic groups based in the West, particularly in the US and Britain; 3) monies diverted from charities that are the recipients of donations from Arab states in the Gulf; 4) funds from wealthy patrons in the Gulf states including members of the Saudi royal family; 5) revenues from the businesses that he owns; and 6) protection money. International efforts to disrupt Osama bin Laden’s sources of funding have been only partly successful. Furthermore, Al-Qaeda’s activities are funded by employing innocuous-sounding front organisations that pose as charitable institutions. One year after the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Nairobi, prominent Saudi businessmen were reported to be continuing their efforts to transfer tens of millions of dollars to bank accounts linked to that of Osama bin Laden. In 1999, five top Saudi businessmen ordered the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia to transfer funds from their personal accounts, together with $3 million that was diverted from a Saudi pension fund to bank accounts in New York and London belonging to two Islamic charities — Islamic Relief and Blessed Relief — that serve as front organisations for Bin Laden. His activities are also funded through protection money. During the summer of 1998, two wealthy Saudis visited Bin Laden and reportedly paid him not to carry out terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia. More recently, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service were reported to be investigating a flurry of large money transfers overseas by Somali immigrants who had recently arrived in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Somali immigrants had reportedly sent $75 million outside of the US in sums averaging between $2 million and $4 million per month. Some of the money is believed to be going to Al-Ittihad, an Islamic extremist organisation that is linked to Bin Laden.
Yehudit Barsky is Director of the American Jewish Committee’s Division on Middle East and International Terrorism and author of the forthcoming book, Jihad is the Way: The Terror of Hamas. |
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Copyright
© AIJAC 2001 |
