Al Qaeda after Bin Laden - Abdel Bari Atwan

Al Qaeda after Bin Laden

By Abdel Bari Atwan
Published on 8 May 2011
Essay of the Week Scottish Herald

I AM probably the only man in Britain who can honestly claim to have slept in the same cave as Osama bin Laden.It was November 1996 and I had come to the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan to interview the al-Qaeda leader, who was then comparatively unknown. As night fell, he indicated that I should bed down on a battered mattress suspended over crates of hand grenades, amid a forest of guns and other weaponry. He was similarly accommodated at the other end of the cave. Frankly, I was terrified and woke every five minutes, expecting the ammunition to explode or the CIA to raid the hideout at any moment. My companion had no such trouble, slumbering peacefully, his Kalashnikov rifle by his side.

Let me make it clear that I am no apologist for al-Qaeda and abhor the loss of innocent lives they have caused. I mention these details because my experience of the man - with whom I spent three days - is so very much at odds with the various accounts of his assassination in Abbottabad last Monday.

Although he had already masterminded several acts of terrorism against US military targets when I met him, Osama bin Laden behaved in a curiously gentle manner with those around him. He spoke quietly and listened intently. He had a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder everywhere he went. When he sat down, to talk or eat, the gun lay across his knees. He had no interest in comfort - how else could he have forsaken his family's billions for the sake of jihad - and seemed to subsist on bread and eggs.

During my interview with bin Laden, he told me that his greatest desire was to "die a martyr". Later, one of his bodyguards revealed in my newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi that he had been tasked with shooting the al-Qaeda leader dead in the event of his imminent capture. There was even a special pistol for the purpose, loaded with just two bullets.

When I heard the version of events in Abbot-tabad first suggested by President Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, I sensed immediately they were untrue. I simply could not imagine the Osama bin Laden I had met using his wife as a human shield, or living a life of "luxury". Because the story has changed many times now, I am still not sure what to believe. It is interesting in all the accounts, bin Laden died from two bullet wounds, which allows for the possibility that whoever was in possession of the "special pistol" shot his "Sheikh" rather than see him captured.

Clearly, the circumstances of Osama bin Laden's death are being "managed" by the White House to such an extent that they risk a total credibility meltdown. And in the absence of truth, how can we be assured that justice has been done?

The main evidence, the body, was "buried at sea" - a practice which is un-Islamic. The explanation, that bin Laden's tomb may become a holy shrine for his followers, ignores the Salafist form of Islam al-Qaeda espouses, which regards the veneration of tombs as haram (sin). Meanwhile, the much-publicised and photographed house in Abottabad has already become a magnet for followers, mourners and the curious.

Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theories have abounded in the absence of proof as to how Osama bin Laden died. The White House fears we are too squeamish to view the photographs, but we are used to gruesome images of dead enemies: Saddam Hussein on the gallows, for example, or the corpses of his sons Uday and Qusay, which were displayed for the world's media in 2003.

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has questioned the legality of the US undertaking this raid unilaterally on Pakistani soil and the killing of bin Laden without a trial if, as is claimed, he was unarmed. Thursday's official version of events suggests he was shot in the back: "Bin Laden then turned and retreated into the room before being shot twice - in the head and in the chest."

The situation reminds me of the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. The Sunday Herald was the first British newspaper to reveal that Kurdish special forces actually captured Saddam long before the arrival of the US forces. He was then sedated and placed in the "spider hole" for the world's press to get its photo opportunity and for US administrator Paul Bremer to announce: "We got him." Eight years later, Obama uttered exactly the same phrase to colleagues assembled in the White House bunker.

America thrives on the simplistic "good guys/bad guys" paradigm - from "Reds" to al-Qaeda - but it is unlikely that the death of Osama bin Laden, however it is spun, will mark the end of "the war on terror". The USSR's ultimate implosion had nothing to do with America's sustained campaign against communism, or the wars it fought to defeat it (in Vietnam, for example). Saddam's execution did not vindicate America's invasion of Iraq but saw the insurgency enter a much bloodier phase, which endures today.

Historical precedents suggest that far from extinguishing a militant Islamist movement, eliminating its leader can have the opposite effect. When the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's theologian, Said Qutb, was hanged in 1956, Islamism enjoyed a renaissance - both Osama bin Laden (born in 1957) and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, revered Qutb and subscribed to his ideology. The Israelis assassinated Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin in 2004 hoping his death would diminish the movement's fortunes, but by 2006 Hamas was so popular that it won the majority of seats in Palestinian parliamentary elections.

Following his flight from Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, bin Laden's involvement in al-Qaeda was restricted to decision-making and strategy planning within the central Shura (consultative council). His symbolic importance as the semi-mythical figurehead of a global jihadist movement expanded, however. His image - like an Arab Che Guevara - adorns T-shirts, scarves, even cigarette lighters, for sale in Middle Eastern bazaars.

The aura of invincibility that surrounded him during the 10 years it took the US to track him down will now be replaced by the glow of martyrdom and a treasury of legends - it is this that the US rightly fears and seeks to obscure by "managing" the details of his death.

Al-Qaeda is a robust organisation that has existed for more than 20 years. The pyramid structure - which saw Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri at the top - was long ago replaced by a horizontal network of loosely affiliated "branches", cells and individuals. Power is widely delegated, so that if one leader is killed or captured it will have a minimal impact on the group's survival. It is ironic that this structure was suggested to the Afghan-Arab mujahideen by US military advisers during their decade- long fight against the USSR.

Al-Qaeda's most active "branches" at present are in Yemen (where al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - AQAP - is based), Somalia (where it has a formal alliance with al Shabaab) and North Africa (home to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb - AQIM). The chaotic situation in Libya may provide new opportunities for AQIM, which last month killed 15 in a suicide attack on a Marrakesh cafe, and whose proximity to Europe must worry us all if reprisals for bin Laden's assassination are being considered.

Al-Qaeda has an energetic online presence and uses the internet to pursue "cyberjihad", recruiting, training and communicating with increasingly devious encryption techniques. It has a high quality independent media network, with its own film production house (As- Sahab) and glossy monthly English language magazine, Inspire, produced by AQAP and aimed at Western recruits. It seems unlikely that such a complex, diversified network will simply collapse with the demise of Osama bin Laden.

That bin Laden was able to live undisturbed in Abbottabad, home to the prestigious Kakul military academy, suggests that his presence was, at the very least, tolerated by the Pakistani military and the intelligence agency, the ISI. In September 2006, ABC news reported the Pakistani army was pulling out of North Waziristan as a result of a "peace deal" with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told journalists then that if bin Laden was in Pakistan he "would not be taken into custody ... so long as one (sic) is being a peaceful citizen".

While the US and British troops were fighting "the war on terror" in Afghanistan, neither bin Laden nor the Taliban leadership were actually based in that country. Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and his Shura have been based for several years in Quetta, Pakistan, from where they direct attacks on Western forces over the border.

Al-Qaeda's survival has long depended on the semi-official protection of governments - Osama bin Laden and other key figures lived openly in Sudan from 1992-1996, moving from there to Afghanistan (under the Taliban) where they were allowed to establish their Tora Bora lair.

Nor is al-Qaeda generally unpopular in the Middle East. I was once mobbed by Osama bin Laden fans in the Yemeni capital Sana'a because I had been in the presence of "the Sheikh". While many do not espouse al-Qaeda's brand of radical Islam, the organisation champions many deeply felt, shared causes under the appealing banner of the Umma (global Muslim community).

Recently, however, the resentments and aspirations of Arab youth have found a new channel in the so-called "Arab Spring". Having overcome the barrier of fear engendered by brutally repressive regimes, thousands of brave citizens have taken to the streets to demand reform, their human rights, democracy and the departure of unelected dictators and tyrants.

This secular, spontaneous, mass movement arguably presents a far greater threat to al-Qaeda's future than the US military. If, on the other hand, the Arab Spring is derailed - by the ferocious crackdowns it has met with in Libya, Bahrain and Syria, or by achieving only partial regime change which sees the same rotten forms of government glossed over by new faces - then radical Islam might represent the only remaining conduit for all the new recruits to resistance and their frustration and unspent anger.

The US administration has pledged to "bury the rest of al- Qaeda", but given that it took 10 years to track down bin Laden and cost more than a million civilian lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention $1trn of US taxpayers' money, we might do better to look at the causes of militant Islam - rather than the effects - and see if they can be dealt with more peaceably.

Many of the problems which caused the rise of al Qaeda still exist. Among them, Western military intervention and US hegemony, which has often seen the superpower arming and backing the region's most repressive regimes. The absence of justice for the Palestinians in their conflict with a US-backed Israel is another concern, as is the rise of "Islamophobia" in the West and global media.

As long as there are battles to be fought, the final question is, who will succeed Osama bin Laden and what effect will that have? His deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri is, if anything, more militant than bin Laden, as is the younger generation of potential leaders - some of whom have spent most of their lives as fugitives and jihadists - such as bin Laden's son, Saad. AQAP leader al-Awlaki, the so-called "Sheikh of the Internet", is another possibility.

Any internal power struggle will inevitably weaken the organisation. It may opt, instead, to unite under the banner of its dead icon, bin Laden, who once expressed the wish that "my blood would become a beacon that arouses the zeal and determination of my followers". This would be the most dangerous outcome.

Abdel Bari Atwan is editor-in-chief on the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi and the author of The Secret History Of al-Qa'ida