What do his strategy and tactics tell us about where we are in
the war on terror, and how war is seen from his point of
view?
By Janadas Devan
Nov 12, 2005
The Straits Times
ANYONE who took the trouble to read Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in
the 1930s, would not have been surprised how history unfolded after
he became the German Fuhrer. Germany's need for lebensraum or
living space; his plan to seize much of Eastern Europe and Russia
to provide that space; his hatred for Jews - all these were clearly
stated in Mein Kampf.
Now, Osama bin Laden has not graced us yet with his Mein Kampf, but
he too has been astonishingly clear about both his strategy as well
as tactics. What do they tell us of where we are in the war on
terror? What do they tell us of how the war looks from Osama's
point of view?
What follows is a brief checklist of the ends and means of jihad,
according to Osama:
Political aims: Osama has never hidden his chief political aims -
nothing less than the overthrow of the 'unjust and renegade ruling
regimes' of the Arab/Muslim world, and the establishment in that
world of a purified form of Islam.
He has targeted the United States in particular and the West in
general - the 'far enemy', he has termed them - not because he is
out to conquer or convert them, but because they stand in the way
of his ultimate aim: defeating the 'near enemy', the 'apostates'
who rule Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other Muslim
countries.
None of these regimes, Osama believes, would survive if the US did
not support them. If the credibility of American power were
destroyed, the 'apostates' would be bound to fall.
Thus far, Al-Qaeda has failed to overthrow a single Arab/Muslim
regime. Indeed, it lost one - Afghanistan. If one compared its
fortunes to those of another of history's famous conspiratorial
groups, the Russian Bolsheviks, Al-Qaeda has yet to achieve its
1905, Russia's abortive revolution, let alone 1917, when the Czar
finally fell.
Uses of terror: Osama has argued that because of 'the imbalance of
power between our armed forces and the enemy forces, a suitable
means of fighting must be adopted - that is, using fast-moving
light forces that work under complete secrecy. In other words, to
initiate a guerilla warfare'. Terror, he has said, would be used to
'prepare and instigate the ummah (community) against the
enemy'.
The critical notion here is 'instigation', as Mr Mark Danner noted
in a brilliant piece in the New York Times Magazine on the fourth
anniversary of Sept 11 this year: 'The purpose of terror is not to
destroy your enemy directly but rather to spur on your sleeping
allies to enlightenment, to courage and to action. It is a kind of
advertisement' - 'a way of talking' even - 'meant to show those
millions of Muslims who sympathise with Al-Qaeda's view of American
policy that something can be done to change it'.
There is no doubt that this tactic has worked to some extent. The
ability of Al-Qaeda and its affiliate groups to carry out
spectacular terrorist raids has served to attract new recruits to
their cause.
But it is also possible that the tactic may be backfiring, as a
letter sent recently by Osama's deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, to Abu
Musab Al-Zarqawi, the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, indicated.
Intercepted by US intelligence, the letter warned Zarqawi that the
indiscriminate killing of Iraqi Shi'ites and the televised
beheading of hostages could turn Muslim opinion against
Al-Qaeda.
'I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of
this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. And
that we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of
our ummah,' Zawahiri pleaded.
He seemed aware that Al-Qaeda's 'way of talking' can sound like a
vicious screech, even to ears otherwise attuned to its
message.
Strategy to defeat the 'far enemy': A text attributed to Saif
Al-Adel, believed to be Osama's military chief, which appeared
shortly before the US invaded Afghanistan, declared that Al-Qaeda's
'ultimate objective' in attacking the US on Sept 11 was to 'prompt
it to come out of its hole' and directly invade Islamic countries.
Al-Qaeda believed it could do to the US what the mujahideen
(warriors) did to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan - drag a superior
military power into a quagmire, weaken its political will, and
thereby expose to the Muslim world America's vulnerability.
Osama himself was convinced the US had a low threshold of pain,
declaring in 1996: 'The Defence Secretary of the crusading
Americans has said that 'the explosions at Riyadh and Al-Khobar had
taught him one lesson: that is, not to withdraw when attacked by
cowardly terrorists'. We say to the Defence Secretary: Where was
this false courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place
in 1983?
'But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia. When tens of your
soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was
dragged in the streets of Mogadishu, you left the area carrying
disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you... The
extent of your impotence and weakness became very clear.'
In the event, Osama's strategy failed in Afghanistan. But to his
surprise perhaps, it seems to be succeeding in Iraq, which he has
characterised as a 'golden opportunity' to start a 'third world
war' against 'the crusader-Zionist coalition'.
In a broadcast beamed to the world on the eve of last year's US
presidential election, he also indicated he did not think this war
would be fought on only the military front. He aimed also to bleed
'America to the point of bankruptcy', he said.
'Al-Qaeda,' he asserted, 'spent US$500,000 on the Sept 11 attacks,
while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost - according
to the lowest estimate - more than US$500 billion. Meaning that
every dollar of Al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the
permission of Allah.'
Osama's figures may be altogether fanciful here, but it is
difficult to dismiss his larger point, which was that the Bush
administration's fiscal policies were 'helping Al-Qaeda' by
'bleeding America'.
'Those who say that Al-Qaeda has won against the administration...
or that the administration has lost in this war have not been
precise,' he said generously. 'Because, when one scrutinises the
results, one cannot say that Al-Qaeda is the sole factor in
achieving these spectacular results.'
That echoed eerily an argument former US president Richard Nixon
made during the height of the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese
could not defeat America, Nixon said then. Only America could
defeat America. Osama would agree.
Both supporters and critics of the Bush administration ought to
bear this mind as they ponder how the US is going to extricate
itself from the self-created morass that is Iraq. It blundered into
precisely the situation that Osama was hoping the US would blunder
into, and it cannot now compound that error by blundering
out.