By Abdel Bari Atwan
12 May 2011
We are still waiting for the details of the assassination of Shaykh Osama Bin Laden in early May by a US commando unit that stormed the house where he had been residing with some of his wives and children in Abbottabad near the Pakistani capital Islamabad. Up to this moment, the US authorities have not released the photo they said they had taken of Shaykh Bin Laden, after opening fire at him, on the pretext that it so graphic that it might arouse the fury of his organization's loyalists who are scattered around the world.
The latest proposal circulating in the United States is that Shaykh Bin Laden's photo might be shown to a selected group of the US congressional Security Committee and Intelligence committee at the CIA headquarters to prove that he was killed. If this proposal is actually implemented, it will not change our conviction and the conviction of millions like us in many parts of the Islamic world.
The US Administrations, which have lectured us for decades about the need for us - we the sons of the Third World - to adhere to transparency and freedom of information, is telling the ugliest type of lies and is imposing a blackout regarding the assassination of an unarmed man who was caught off guard in his bedroom and in front of his wife and children.
There must be a "serious secret" that the US Administration does not want us to know, and is trying all it can to divert attention from it, counting on the assumption that people will forget. This is evident from the release of poor videotapes that included clips lacking any news value or information, such as the one that showed him as elderly man with graying beard watching one of his videotapes aired by the Al-Jazeera satellite channel on a very old television set, which one would only find in trash dumps.
According to his loyalists, Shaykh Bin Laden is being exposed to character assassination even after his martyrdom. At first the Americans said that he was residing in a plush palace only to discover that it was an extremely modest home, not worth more than $150,000. They then said that he was narcissist who enjoyed watching himself and videotapes on television. Who of us or of them, particularly politicians and media men, would not watch videotapes of his interviews again to learn when he was right and when he was wrong, and when he did well and when he did not?
The vilest type of character assassination of a dead man is perhaps the revelation that "herbal Viagra" was placed among his medicines, as though this were a great discovery that would make the world safer and more stable. This demonstrates utterly sheer lack of ethics of a state that claims to be the leader of the Free World and of the world's cultural and democratic values.
The series of lies is continuing and the latest lie is the retraction on the story of the martyrdom of Shaykh Bin Laden's son, Hamzah, with him, saying that the one who was killed was his other youngest son, Khalid. (Osama Bin Laden had 25 sons and daughters from five wives). Hamzah, who had been residing in the compound just before or during the assault on the compound, has disappeared.
I have met with Shaykh Osama Bin Laden, but I did not find him a narcissist or vain, but extremely humble and shy. He imposed austere lifestyle on all members of his family, and even refused to have air conditions at his house in Khartoum, while living there before moving to Afghanistan, where the temperature rises to above 55 centigrade, in order not to distinguish himself from the majority of the poor in Sudan. His son, Umar, who could not tolerate that austere living condition and returned to Saudi Arabia, stressed that his father denied his children toys, soft drinks, sweets, and chocolates.
Shaykh Osama Bin Laden has passed away. Yet what we differ over, or what we want to know now are the details. Why was he not buried like all human beings regardless of their faith, creed, or nationality? The Americans and the Britons did not bury Nazi members who caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions of people, at sea after bringing them to fair trials. Is it fear that hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions of people, might have taken part in his funeral if he were to be buried in Pakistan or in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, his birthplace?
The Pakistani authorities, which connived with the Americans in the assassination of Shaykh Bin Laden, although they claimed they did not, did not defend the sanctity and sovereignty of their territories, since they failed to confront the four US helicopters that carried out the operation. These authorities have detained the wives and children of Shaykh Bin Laden on the pretext that they wanted to interrogate them, and it is reported that the Pakistani government may hand them over to the US Administration. Shaykh Bin Laden's wives and children are our kinsfolk and honour. They did not commit any sin or make any mistake. Every Muslim is duty bound to defend their honour. We must not forget his youngest wife, Amal al-Sadah, that virtuous Yemeni national who bravely defended her husband and exposed her life to death, and was severely wounded. That heroic woman, who brings to mind the venerable female companions of Prophet Muhammad, deserves that we stand by her and safeguard her dignity and honour, along with Shaykh Bin Laden's other wives.
More pressure must be put on the Pakistani government to immediately release those women and refuse to hand them over to the United States under any circumstances. The continued detention of those wives is a big crime because they are innocent and guiltless just for being wives of a man who humbled [dawwakha] history's greatest superpower. He dragged that superpower to two great wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, causing it to lose trillions of dollars in material losses, and more than 5,000 soldiers dead, and tens of thousands wounded. And the wound continues to bleed.
Regrettably, after nearly two weeks, [since the death of Bin Laden], we have not yet heard the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia request the release of the wives and children of a Saudi national. More regrettably, the Saudi ambassador to Islamabad has not condescended to ask about his compatriots and arrange for their travel to the country of their father and forefathers to live among their families in dignity like the rest of human beings after years of unbearable suffering. It is not easy to be a son, daughter, or wife of a man who had been pursued by all the world's intelligence services for more than 15 years, and who succeeded in evading them all those years until his end came.
The Al-Qa'idah Organization will not be weaken by the assassination of its leader; in fact, it may become stronger because it is no longer a centralized organization, and because the new generation of its leaders are more militant than the founding old guard. We should recall that HAMAS did not weaken by the martyrdom of its founder, Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, nor, for that matter, has the Muslim Brotherhood declined by the execution of Shaykh Dr. Sayyid Qutb or the assassination of its founder, Shaykh Hasan al-Banna. In fact, it has become stronger and more powerful.
The world is not safer after the assassination of the leader of the Al-Qa'idah Organization, as President Barack Obama said after the news of his [death] was announced, not only because the organization will inevitably avenge the killing of its leader, but because the reasons that led and will lead to the emergence of militant movements and organizations in the Islamic world - primarily the Israeli terrorism and US support for it - have not changed.
Stability and security will not prevail in the world as long as the greatest superpower does not abide by the rule of law, and as long as it continues to resort to killing and liquidation to eliminate [adversaries] like mafia gangs and outlaws. The unarmed man deserved to be placed in the dock in front of independent judiciary to defend himself like other more dangerous men who committed more terrorist acts. We should not forget that those in London and Texas who killed a million Iraqi people still enjoy freedom and prosperous living conditions in the countries of wise, democratic rule.
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
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