NOTES
1 . Osama Rushdi, quoted in Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know
( New York: Free Press), p. 106.
2 . Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
( New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 151.
3 . Abu Walid al Misiri, in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 109.
FIGHTING THE GREAT SATAN 89
4 . Turki and Clarke quoted in Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian
Family in the American Century ( New York: Penguin, 2008), p. 46.
5 . Bruce Riedel, The Search for al-Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future
( Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press, 2008), p. 47.
6 . Ibid., p. 47.
7 . Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s body guard, in ibid., p. 112.
8 . Prince Turki in ibid., p. 112.
9 . Ibid., p. 49.
10 . Wright, Looming Tower , p. 161.
11 . Coll, Bin Ladens , p. 381.
12 . Osama Rusdi in ibid., p. 106.
13 . Wright, Looming Tower , p. 164.
14 . Coll, Bin Ladens, p. 381.
15 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 49.
16 . Sherifa Zuhur, A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the Future of
Counterinsurgency (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005),
pp. 19–23.
17 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 49.
18 . Wright, Looming Tower , p. 332.
19 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 16.
20 . Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader ( New
York: Broadway Books, 2007), p. 70.
21 . Ibid., p. 94.
22 . Ibid., p. 130.
23 . Ibid., p. 133.
24 . Ibid., p. 169.
25 . Ibid., p. 142.
26 . Ibid., pp. 145–146.
27 . Quoted in John Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 22.
28 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 51.
29 . Ibid., p. 51.
30 . Coll, Bin Ladens , p. 409.
31 . Bakr bin Laden, quoted in ibid., p. 408.
32 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 54.
33 . Osama bin Laden, “Open Letter to Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Baz on the
Invalidity of His Fatwa on Peace with the Jews,” translated by the Counter Terrorism
Center, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, http://en.wikisource.org/
wiki/Open_Letter_to_Shaykh_Bin_Baz_on_the_Invalidity_of_his_Fatwa_
on_Peace_with_the_ Jews (accessed May 31, 2009).
90 OSAMA BIN LADEN
34 . UN Security Council Document, S/ RES/1054 (1996), April 26, 1996,
http://daccessdds.un.org /doc / UNDOC/GEN/N96/107/86/ PDF/ N9610786.
pdf ?OpenElement (accessed May 31, 2009).
35 . Account of Vahid Mojdeh, who held various posts in the Afghan government,
in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 164.
36 . Osama bin Laden, “ Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying
the Land of the Two Holy Places,” in Al Quds Al Arabi [news paper published
in London], August 1996, http:// www.pbs.org /newshour/terrorism /inter
national /fatwa_1996.html (accessed June 1, 2009).
37 . Osama bin Laden, “ Jihad against Jews and Crusaders,” February 23, 1998,
http://www.fas.org /irp/world /para /docs /980223-fatwa.htm (accessed June 1,
2009).
38 . Esquire interview with Osama bin Laden, February 1999, in Compilation
of Osama bin Laden Statements, 1994 –January 2004 (Washington, DC: Federal
Broadcast Information Service, 2004), p. 99, http:// www.fas.org /irp/world /
para /ubl-fbis.pdf (accessed June 1, 2009).
39 . Osama bin Laden, Al Jazeera interview, October 2001, aired by CNN,
February 5, 2002, http://archives.cnn.com /2002/ WORLD/asiapcf /south /02/05/
binladen.transcript /index.html (accessed August 1, 2009).
40 . Osama bin Laden, Letter to the American People, in Compilation of
Osama bin Laden Statements , p. 216.
41 . Ibid.
42 . Unidentified detainee, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know ,
p. 227.
43 . Darul Ulon Haqqani, quoted in ibid., p. 227.
44. The Report of the 9/11 Commission (Washington, DC: Government Printing
Office, 2004), p. 149, http:// www.9-11commission.gov/report /911Report.
pdf (accessed June 17, 2009).
45 . Yosri Fouda, in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 303.
Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.
Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.
Osama bin Laden is shown in Afghanistan in this April 1998 photograph. Two
months earlier he had issued a fatwa, or religious declaration, calling on Muslims to
attack American interests in the Muslim world. “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.” AP Photo/File.
Osama bin Laden addresses a 1998
meeting at an undisclosed location in
Afghanistan, according to the source,
a Pakistani photographer who chose
to remain anonymous. In the background
is a banner with a verse from
the Qur’an. AP Photo.
After the nearly simultaneous August
1998 bombings of the American
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,
ascribed to bin Laden’s al-Qaeda
network, the U.S. government
sought to apprehend him. Bin Laden,
shown here in an undated photograph,
remained in Afghanistan
under the protection of the Taliban,
who later condemned the devastating
9/11 terrorist attacks in the United
States and rejected suggestions that
Osama bin Laden could be behind
them. AP Photo.
U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, right, joins Lewis Schiliro, assistant director in
charge of the FBI’s New York offi ce, at a November 4, 1998, press conference in
New York City announcing the indictments of Osama bin Laden, shown in the illustration
at left, and Muhammad Atef for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. AP
Photo/Marty Lederhandler.
A poster on sale in Rawalpindi,
Pakistan, in 1999 depicts Osama
bin Laden as a near-mythic Islamic
hero. The poster’s striking imagery
juxtaposes modern military destruction
with very traditionally conceived
heroic motifs. The inscriptions read
“Osama bin Laden” and “Warrior of
Islam.” AP Photo/B. K. Bangash.
Released by Qatar’s Al Jazeera Television on October 5, 2001, this photo is said to
show a near-contemporary image of Osama bin Laden, center, at the time of the 9/11
terrorist attacks on the United States. At left is bin Laden’s top associate, Ayman
al-Zawahri. Al Jazeera stated that the scene was believed to show a celebration of the
union of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network and al-Zawahri’s Egyptian jihad group. At
right is a young bodyguard. AP Photo/Courtesy of Al-Jazeera via APTN.
In a videotaped statement recorded at an undisclosed location and aired on October
7, 2001, after a military strike launched by the United States and Britain in
Afghanistan, bin Laden praised God for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and swore that
“America will never dream of security” until “the infi del’s armies leave the land of
Muhammad.” AP Photo/Al-Jazeera/TV.
Osama bin Laden, left, is shown with Ayman al-Zawahri at an undisclosed location
in this television image broadcast on October 7, 2001. AP Photo/Al-Jazeera/TV.
This image, broadcast on Qatar’s Al Jazeera Television, is said to show the wedding
of Mohammed bin Laden, center, a son of Osama bin Laden, seated at right. The
ceremony took place in January 2001 in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
Seated at left is the bride’s father. AP Photo/Al-Jazeera/TV.
Supporters of the Pakistani religious parties’ alliance gathered at a March 2004 rally
in Lahore, Pakistan, to protest against the Pakistani government’s anti–al-Qaeda
operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Troops demolished the homes of those accused
of sheltering al-Qaeda fi ghters. The poster shows an often-used image of Osama bin
Laden. AP Photo/K. M. Chaudary.
At a May 2005 demonstration at
the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee
camp near Sidon, in southern
Lebanon, a young boy carries a placard
bearing the image of Osama bin
Laden with the Arabic inscription,
“The Quran shouts: O Osama.”
Thousands of Shi’ia and Sunni Muslims
took part in separate demonstrations
around the country against the
alleged desecration of the Qur’an by
American soldiers at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, earlier that month. AP
Photo/Mohammad Zaatari.
In Miran Shah, capital of the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, videostore
customers examine the cover of a militant DVD. The store’s window display is dominated
by a poster showing Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, right. At
the time this photograph was taken (June 2006) Taliban activities were proliferating
in Pakistani border areas, which were already serving as a base for militants fi ghting
in neighboring Afghanistan. AP Photo/Abdullah Noor.
Chapter 6
BIN LADEN AND
AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11
APRAISING 9/11
Osama bin Laden was initially elated by his successful attacks on New
York and Washington. Operationally, the strikes had succeeded beyond
his expectations. True, the fourth airplane never made it to its target,
which may have been the White House or the Capitol Building, but the
collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center had more than
compensated for that failure. With all his experience in the family construction
business, bin Laden had not expected the towers to collapse.
The intense heat of the fi re destroyed the steel skeleton, and the weight
of the building above the impact point caused the upper fl oors to topple
down on the fl oors below, bringing the entire structure to the ground in
a pancake effect. Devastating as the attack was, it could have been much
worse. Casualties proved unexpectedly light. The hijackers had attacked
a bit too early in the day. New Yorkers characteristically come to work
later and work later than people in other cities, so the towers had not been
full. More important, the city and the occupants of the towers had learned
from the 1993 bombings how to evacuate quickly and effi ciently. Most
of the people who worked on the fl oors below the impact points of the
airplanes got out before the buildings collapsed.
92 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Bin Laden later refl ected on how much the attacks had accomplished.
“I was thinking that the fi re from the gas in the plane would melt the iron
structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all
the fl oors above it only. This is all we hoped for,” he told a Saudi supporter
in late 2001. On the day of the attack, he told his gleeful followers,
who cheered as they watched the fi rst plane hit the north tower, to “be
patient.” More attacks would unfold in the next hour and a half.1 Another
follower raced to tell bin Laden what he had seen of the attacks on
television. Bin Laden responded with a hand gesture meaning, “I know,
I know.”2
Despite indisputable evidence of his involvement, bin Laden initially
denied responsibility for the attacks as he had with the East Africa embassy
bombings. Unlike most terrorist organizations, which eagerly claim
responsibility for their operations, al-Qaeda preferred to keep its enemies
guessing. “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September
attacks in the United States,” bin Laden told a correspondent in Pakistan
on September 28, 2001.
As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. Neither had I any
knowledge of these attacks nor do I consider the killing of innocent
women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam
strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and
other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a
battle.3
Bin Laden could tell such a lie with a straight face and clean conscience
because radical clerics had issued fatwas allowing deception of Islam’s
enemies.
Deny responsibility for the attacks though they might in the immediate
aftermath of 9/11, al-Qaeda’s leaders did not maintain their denials
once the U.S. air campaign against Afghanistan began. In April 2002
the Al Jazeera television network aired excerpts from an al-Qaeda tape
in which bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri,
voiced their true feelings about the operation. “This great victory, which
was achieved, is due, in fact, to the grace of Allah alone,” Zawahiri proclaimed.
BIN LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 93
It was not due to our skillfulness or superiority, but it is due to Allah’s
blessing alone. Allah Almighty grants his mercy to whoever
He wants. Allah looks into the hearts of his slaves and chooses
from them those who are qualifi ed to win His grace, mercy, and
blessings. Those 19 brothers, who left [their homes], made efforts,
and offered their lives for Allah’s cause — Allah has favored them
with this conquest, which we are enjoying now.4
For his part, bin Laden promised more attacks and linked them to his
favorite grievances against the United States, in particular the plight
of Palestinians and the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. “The
United States will not even dream of enjoying security if we do not experience
security as a living reality in Palestine, the land of the two holy
mosques, and all Muslim countries,” he declared.5
OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM
Gleeful though he was about the destruction, loss of life, and economic
impact of his attacks on New York and Washington, bin Laden had not
launched airplanes into buildings just to achieve those immediate results.
More than anything else, he wished to draw U.S. forces into a protracted
war. He had studied the U.S. failure in Vietnam and personally
contributed to the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. He had also seen how
quickly President Clinton withdrew U.S. forces from Somalia after the
death of Army Rangers in Mogadishu. Perhaps he also recalled America’s
precipitous withdrawal from Lebanon following the bombing of the Marine
barracks in Beirut in 1983. Bin Laden had approved the 9/11 attacks
for the expressed purpose of provoking the United States into invading
Afghanistan. History suggested that al-Qaeda could sap U.S. strength in
an unconventional war in which Islamist insurgents would wear down
the U.S. military as the Viet Cong had done in Southeast Asia and the
mujahedeen had done to the Soviets in Afghanistan.
In April 2001, bin Laden confi ded to his future Pakistani biographer
this ulterior motive behind the 9/11 attacks. According to Hamid Mir,
bin Laden told him that if al-Qaeda attacked its homeland the United
States would invade Afghanistan, the Taliban would fall, and al-Qaeda
94 OSAMA BIN LADEN
would wage jihad against the occupying U.S. force as it had against the
Soviets.6 Sayf Adel, an al-Qaeda military commander, explained this
strategy in greater depth. “Our ultimate objective of these painful strikes
against the head of the serpent was to prompt it to come out of its hole,”
Adel declared.
This would make it easier for us to deal consecutive blows to undermine
it and tear it apart. It would foster our credibility in front
of our nation and the beleaguered people of the world. A person
will react randomly when he receives painful strikes on the top of
his head from an undisclosed enemy. Such strikes will force the
person to carry out random acts and provoke him to make serious
and sometimes fatal mistakes. This was what actually happened.
The fi rst reaction was the invasion of Afghanistan and the second
was invasion of Iraq.7
Although the strategy provoked the desired response, the invasion of
Afghanistan did not unfold as bin Laden had hoped. The U.S. military
may have learned from its own experience in Vietnam and decided that
a large-scale operation with U.S. ground forces was not desirable. The
Pentagon also had no plan for a full-scale conventional invasion. It had
to improvise. A ground assault by U.S. forces from the north was feasible
but would take longer to stage than the White House was prepared to
wait. Washington decided to exploit the civil war that had been raging
since the Soviets left Afghanistan. U.S. Special Operations Command
and the CIA deployed small teams of operatives to support the Northern
Alliance of Tadjik and Turcoman tribes, which had been fi ghting the Pashtun
Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies. The Northern Alliance controlled
only 10 percent of Afghanistan, but its territory was adjacent to former
Soviet central Asian republics. Eager for a free hand against Chechen
rebels, Russian president Vladimir Putin supported allowing the United
States to lease old Soviet air bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. These
bases became staging areas for U.S. operations within Afghanistan.
Direct support combined with military supplies and funding turned
the tide of the war. Northern Alliance forces provided with close air support
rolled back the Taliban in a matter of weeks. The war combined the
BIN LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 95
tactics of the 13th century with those of the 21st. Special Forces teams
called in airstrikes using laptops with satellite communications, and
Northern Alliance forces followed up on bombings with cavalry charges
to fi nish off the shell-shocked Taliban. Afghan forces did most of the
fi ghting against the Taliban and suffered most of the casualties. The widespread
unpopularity of the Taliban also contributed to its rapid collapse.
A former Taliban Foreign Ministry offi cial who wrote a book on the Taliban
noted that, because the group never enjoyed popular support and
ruled through brutality and terror, it feared revenge from the Afghan
populace.8 Television cameraman and former British army offi cer Peter
Jouvenal described the mood in Kabul after the city fell to the Northern
Alliance. “The people were overjoyed to be relieved of such a suppressive
regime,” he concluded.9
Even so, the speed of the Taliban’s collapse shocked its supporters and
its opponents alike. “No one believed the country would fall so quickly,”
a Kuwaiti captured during the fi ghting told U.S. interrogators. Osama
bin Laden narrowly escaped capture. He responded to Operation Enduring
Freedom by threatening more attacks on the United States. The day
the U.S. bombing campaign against the Taliban began, he appeared on
television in a video tape that may have been made some time earlier.
“To America, I say only a few words to it and its people,” he proclaimed.
“I swear by God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither
America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we
live it in Palestine, and not before all the infi del armies leave the land of
Muhammad, peace be upon him.”10
Although bin Laden did not get his war of attrition, he did disappoint
his pursuers. He escaped from Kandahar to the rugged Tora Bora region
along the Pakistan border, terrain he knew well from the time he had
spent there during the 1980s. U.S. forces could not easily reach this remote
area, and the region’s many caves provided protection from U.S.
air strikes. If necessary, he and his forces could slip over the Pakistan
border into the country’s remote and largely ungoverned Federally Administered
Tribal Areas. An operation in December failed to capture
bin Laden or destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Operation Anaconda,
launched the following March, infl icted heavy casualties on insurgent
forces in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Ama Mountains, but once again bin
Laden and Mullah Omar escaped.
96 OSAMA BIN LADEN
The failure of the Tora Bora operation came under criticism at the time
and will be the subject of discussion by military analysts for years to come.
Army Times reporter Sean Naylor argues that the decision not to deploy
heavy artillery to the valley fl oor contributed signifi cantly to the failure.
11 Reliance upon local forces that may have been unwilling to pursue
the fugitives was probably also a factor. In an area where revenge has been
the law of the land for centuries, and blood feuds can last decades, few
Afghans wanted to make enemies of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, especially
since they could not be sure how long the U.S. forces would stay to protect
them. “America’s special forces are very good, but the mistake they
made [at Tora Bora] was they relied on Afghans for information,” concluded
cameraman and former British army offi cer Peter Jouvenal. “And
so it was pretty easy for Osama to slip out. It’s no criticism of the Special
Forces. I think there weren’t enough of them on the ground.”12 A local
Afghan militia leader who fought in the battle identifi ed yet another tactical
failure: “My personal view is if the Americans had blocked the way
out to Pakistan, al Qaeda would not have had a way to escape.”13
Despite the disappointment of bin Laden’s escape, the rapid conquest
of Afghanistan offered the United States and its allies a golden opportunity
to reduce the Taliban to a localized, containable threat and perhaps
to destroy al-Qaeda central as an effective organization. However, the
Bush administration wasted the opportunity. Considering major combat
operations at an end, it handed responsibility over to NATO’s International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a collection of units from more
than 20 nations, few of which had the resources, training, or stomach
for a protracted fi ght. The United States also provided very little development
money to the impoverished country. Seeing an opportunity to
remove Saddam Hussein under the guise of the “Global War on Terrorism”
(GWOT), President Bush and his advisors, especially Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, wanted to
concentrate troops in the Persian Gulf for the invasion of Iraq. The decision
to begin a new war before the old one had been fi nished would cost
the United States dearly. Taking the pressure off al-Qaeda and the Taliban
allowed these organizations much needed breathing room in which
to regroup. They would wage an insurgent campaign that would grow
more intense over the next eight years.
BIN LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 97
GLOBAL JIHAD
While al-Qaeda “central” spent the next several years regrouping in Pakistan,
its global network of cells and affi liate organizations continued to
wage a campaign of terror against the West. According to former CIA
analyst Bruce Riedel, al-Qaeda has pursued a three-pronged strategy since
9/11: tie down U.S. forces in wars of attrition (Afghanistan and Iraq);
consolidate its base in South Asia; and establish “franchises” around the
Muslim world. These franchises would continue to attack apostate regimes
and Western countries, perhaps baiting them into more quagmire
wars.14 The attacks might also produce a strong backlash against Muslim
communities in Western countries, thus increasing support for the global
jihad and confi rming bin Laden’s claim that the real target of the United
States and its allies was not al-Qaeda but Islam itself.
The specter of another 9/11 would haunt the United States for years
to come. As devastating as the attacks were, they forced the West and
its allies to consider an even more frightening scenario. Unlike past terrorist
and insurgent organizations, al-Qaeda would use a weapon of mass
destruction (WMD) if it could acquire one. Weapons of mass destruction
include chemical agents, germs, and nuclear bombs or radioactive material.
Chemical agents were fi rst used in battle during World War I, when
poisoned gas caused much suffering but accomplished little else. Chemical
weapons have limited use unless the enemy can be trapped in a confi ned
space. The only major terrorist attack with a chemical weapon occurred
in 1995, when the Japanese terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo released Sarin
gas in the Tokyo subway; the attack killed 54 and injured hundreds of
others. Biological agents are potentially much more lethal but far more
dangerous to use. Terrorists who decide to employ them would risk the infection
spreading to their own country. Only anthrax kills in a controlled
manner without serious risk of such a back lash. For example, an anthrax
attack immediately after 9/11 turned out to be home grown and largely ineffective.
Nuclear weapons present the greatest threat. During the Cold
War, the Soviet Union developed suitcase-size nuclear bombs capable
of destroying the heart of a city. A conventional warhead could also be
smuggled into the country in a shipping container. Another alternative
is a “dirty bomb,” radioactive material dispersed over a wide area by a
98 OSAMA BIN LADEN
conventional explosion, rendering the area uninhabitable for years. Bin
Laden made his interest in WMD clear as early as 1999. “Acquiring nuclear
and chemical weapons is a religious duty,” he proclaimed.15 So far,
it seems, he has not been able to fulfi ll that duty.
AL-QAEDA’S BOMBING CAMPAIGN
Attractive as WMD may be, however, diffi culty acquiring and using
them has confi ned al-Qaeda to the conventional bomb. This weapon has
proved deadly enough. In the four years following 9/11, al-Qaeda cells and
affi liates struck from Asia to Europe. For each successful attack, Western
security agencies would foil dozens of others. The attacks themselves and
the cost of preventing others like them have run to billions of dollars
and have changed, perhaps irrevocably, how millions of people live their
lives day to day.
The world did not have long to wait to learn that al-Qaeda was alive
and well. On October 12, 2002, terrorists from Indonesian-based Jemaah
Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda, bombed
a nightclub in the resort area of Bali. The attack killed 202 people and
wounded more than 100 others. Australian tourists made up the largest
number of those killed. Bin Laden was quick to praise the attack and to
remind the world of its motivation. “We warned Australia before not
to join in [the war] in Afghanistan, and [against] its despicable effort to
separate East Timor,” bin Laden proclaimed in a taped message aired on
Al Jazeera television on November 12, 2002. “It ignored the warning
until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali.”16
A wave of al-Qaeda-sponsored attacks ensued. During the same
month as the Bali bombings and throughout the following year, Russia
suffered from a series of terrorist attacks. Though perpetrated by Chechen
separatists, these bombings probably enjoyed al-Qaeda support and
perhaps direct assistance. In November 2003, al-Qaeda carried out two
deadly bomb attacks against targets in Istanbul, Turkey. On November 15,
terrorists detonated truck bombs at two synagogues, and, on November
20, two more bombs rocked the HSBC bank and the British consulate.
The attacks killed 57 civilians and wounded more than 700. On
November 16, bin Laden sent a statement to Al Jazeera television claiming
responsibility for the synagogue bombings, which the Martyr AbuBIN
LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 99
Hafs al-Masri Brigades, affi liated with Al-Qaeda, carried out because, he
said, Israeli intelligence operated out of the buildings.17
If the incidents in Bali, Moscow, and Istanbul seemed far removed
from the centers of Western power, the next attacks would occur much
closer to home. On March 11, 2004, terrorists detonated a series of bombs
on commuter trains and in an airport terminal in Madrid Spain, killing
191 people and wounding more than 600. Spanish police cornered the
terrorist cell in an apartment as it was preparing to carry out a second
attack. The cornered terrorists committed suicide by detonating their explosives.
A group, affi liated with al-Qaeda, claimed that it carried out the
attacks to punish Spain for its participation in the U.S.-led invasion of
Iraq.18 It had planned its operation to coincide with Spanish elections.
Unfortunately, Spanish voters did what al-Qaeda wanted, but not because
of the Madrid bombings. They voted Prime Minister Azner out of
offi ce, and his successor withdrew the Spanish contingent from the Iraq
war coalition. The Spanish people had never favored the deployment in
the fi rst place.
A month after the Madrid bombings bin Laden issued an offer of peace
to the Europeans in which he explained the rational for the attacks. “There
is a lesson [to be learned] regarding what happens in occupied Palestine
and what happened on September 11 and March 11,” he lectured. “Our
actions are merely reactions to yours — represented by the murder and
destruction of our people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine.”19 When
Spain announced that it would withdraw its troops from Iraq, al-Qaeda
declared that the country would no longer be targeted. The terrorists appeared
to have won another substantial victory.
A year after the Madrid attacks, Britain came into the terrorists’ crosshairs.
An al-Qaeda cell in the United Kingdom carried out a sophisticated
attack on the London transit system. On July 7, 2005, three suicide bombers
detonated backpack bombs on three different trains in the London
Underground during rush hour. A fourth terrorist detonated his bomb on
a bus in Tavistock Square after discovering that the Underground station
he was supposed to have entered had been closed for repairs. The attack
killed 52 people and injured more than 770. Three of the four terrorists
had been born in the British Isles, and the fourth had emigrated there
with his parents as an infant. Two of the bombers had traveled to Pakistan
in November 2004 and February 2005, where they probably received
100 OSAMA BIN LADEN
support and instructions from al-Qaeda members.20 On July 21, another
terrorist cell launched four more attacks on London Underground trains.
This time, however, their bombs failed to detonate, and all the terrorists,
along with their support cell, were arrested. Although the men denied
any relationship to the July 7 bombers, most analysts agree that al-Qaeda
intended the operations to be linked.
Bin Laden’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, praised the attackers
and chastised the United Kingdom for supporting the United
States in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he called the “blessed raid that,
like its illustrious predecessors in New York [9/11], and Madrid [3/11],
took the battle to the enemy’s own soil.”
After long centuries of his taking the battle to our soil and after his
hordes and armed forces occupied our lands in Chechnya, Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Palestine, and after centuries of his occupying our
land while enjoying security at home. This blessed raid, like its illustrious
predecessors, came to pass thanks to the racing of the vanguards
of Islam to achieve martyrdom in defense of their religion
and sanctities and security.21
These major incidents represent the most serious in a steady stream
of al-Qaeda attacks since 9/11. At the time each attack occurred, it provoked
considerable debate over who had instigated it. Despite much talk
of “leaderless resistance,” considerable evidence suggests that al-Qaeda
central decided which operations would be launched and approximately
when they should be carried out. Even after the disruption caused by the
invasion of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda remained a formidable terrorist organization.
At the same time that it maintained strategic direction over operations,
however, it left much of the planning and execution of attacks
to local cells and affi liates. Dubbed “centralization of decision making
and decentralization of execution,” this management style proved highly
effective.22 Because the United States and its allies applied relentless
pressure on them, bin Laden and the other leaders could no longer easily
move resources around the world as they had done for the East Africa
embassy bombings. They had to rely on local talent. Much of this talent
BIN LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 101
had been pre-positioned during the 1990s as the thousands of young
men who had passed through al-Qaeda training camps returned home to
await further instructions. The dramatic success of 9/11 coupled with the
efforts of these al-Qaeda training camp graduates facilitated recruitment
of new terrorists. The leader of the group that carried out the Madrid
train bombings was a former drug dealer who had been radicalized by
other Muslims while serving time in prison. Mohammed Saddique Khan,
who led the suicide attack on the London Underground, was recruited
through a youth center at his local mosque in Leeds.
IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
In the eight years since 9/11, the U.S. homeland has not been attacked
by al-Qaeda. The cause of this long period of security has been the subject
of considerable debate. The Bush administration and its supporters
insist that security measures put in place since 9/11 and aggressive interrogation
of terrorist suspects (including use of torture) have kept the
country safe. Their critics have pointed out that with U.S. servicemen
and women dying in Iraq and Afghanistan each day, al-Qaeda does not
need to strike the homeland in order to kill Americans and further the
cause of jihad. They also note that the Islamist terrorists have demonstrated
great patience, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Eight
years elapsed between the unsuccessful 1993 attack on the World Trade
Center and the destruction of the twin towers.
Security against terrorism has improved in a number of areas since
9/11. Creation of the Department of Homeland Security brought disparate
security and disaster management organizations under one roof
and improved coordination of their activities. A new Director of National
Intelligence and a National Intelligence Center facilitated sharing
of information between the FBI and CIA (a serious weakness before
9/11) and among numerous other intelligence agencies. Interrogation of
prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility may have yielded information
that foiled terrorist plots, but this contention is diffi cult to prove
since whatever intelligence it garnered remains classifi ed. Any such gains
must, of course, be weighed against the adverse international reaction and
loss of legitimacy harsh interrogation methods produced.
102 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Open sources do suggest that the United States and its allies have
enjoyed some success in disrupting al-Qaeda’s global operations. The
terrorists who bombed the London transit system in July 2005 combined
brilliant planning with amateur execution. They carried out their dry
run too far in advance of the actual attack and, as a result, did not realize
that the Underground station the fourth bomber was supposed to have
entered would be closed for repairs. They detonated two of their bombs in
older “cut and cover” tunnels near the surface, where the space provided by
adjacent tracks dissipated the force of the explosions. Twenty-six of the
52 fatalities occurred on the one train bombed in a deep tunnel. More
careful attention to target selection could have produced far greater loss
of life. The failure of the second set of attacks on July 21 occurred because
the explosive mixture was too old and had become inert. This odd blend
of professional and amateur terrorism indicates that al-Qaeda’s capacity
to move experts around its global network has been diminished. Despite
these successes, problems within various British intelligence services remain.
The year before the London bombings, MI5 (Britain’s domestic
intelligence service) arrested a number of terrorists in an undercover operation
dubbed “Crevice.” Two of the young men under surveillance during
that operation went on to bomb the Underground the following year.
MI5 had deemed them too insignifi cant to operate on their own. The men
arrested in March 2004 probably included the masterminds of British
al-Qaeda operations. Had they not been caught, the July 2005 attacks
would probably have been much worse. MI5 had made a mistake in letting
two of the terrorists fall off its radar, but, with some 2,000 young British
men who had been to Afghanistan to watch, it simply lacked the
resources to track everyone.
The United States also enjoyed some dramatic successes and captured
a number of terrorist operatives. The most prominent of those apprehended
was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 plot.
On March 1, 2003, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate in
cooperation with the CIA, captured Mohammed in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
The United States transported him to its detention facility at the
Guantanamo Bay naval base, where they subjected him to intense interrogation,
including waterboarding him numerous times. He probably
provided some useful intelligence on al-Qaeda, though how much and
precisely what remain classifi ed. In February 2008, the Department of DeBIN
LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 103
fense charged Mohammed with multiple counts of murder. He will be
tried in New York in 2010.
Improved security, better intelligence sharing, and the capture of al-
Qaeda members alone do not, however, explain why the U.S. mainland
has not been attacked by al-Qaeda since 9/11. Bin Laden and his associates
have repeatedly stated that their express purpose in launching the
attacks was to provoke a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. They could not
have expected that the United States would invade Iraq, as well, but
they certainly welcomed the invasion. Al-Qaeda and its affi liates could
concentrate on killing Americans in the occupied countries. At the same
time attacks on the United States ceased, at least for the time being, they
increased dramatically in Western Europe. This pattern of violence suggests
that the security of the U.S. homeland during the past eight years
stems at least in part from a shift in al-Qaeda strategy. Osama bin Laden
would still like to attack the U.S. homeland and would certainly do so
given the opportunity, but he seems to be concentrating his efforts on Iraq
and Afghanistan and on weakening the resolve of the European allies of
the United States by attacking them.
Osama bin Laden has issued a number of statements on the Iraq war.
On October 18, 2003, Al Jazeera television aired his message to the American
people. In it he accused the Bush administration of invading Iraq to
gain control of the country’s oil and to serve the needs of the Zionists. He
gloated over the quagmire in which the infi dels found themselves and
promised devastating consequences for any nation that supported the
Americans. The U.S. invasion was exactly the sort of response to 9/11 bin
Laden wanted, a gift from God that allowed him to continue his jihad.
“But Allah sent him [Bush] to Baghdad, the seat of the Caliphate, the
land of people who prefer death to honey,” bin Laden proclaimed. “They
[the Iraqis] turned his profi ts into losses, his happiness into misery, and
now he is merely looking for a way [to go] home.” Bin Laden went on to
threaten attacks against America’s European allies. “We have the right
to retaliate at any [given] time and place against [any and] all countries
involved — particularly England, Spain, Australia, Poland, Japan, and
Italy.”23 Bin Laden proved true to his word. He had already killed Australians
in Bali and would bomb the Madrid trains the following March and
the London transit system a year later. Following the Madrid bombings,
Spain withdrew from the coalition fi ghting in Iraq. Even though this
104 OSAMA BIN LADEN
1 . Osama Rushdi, quoted in Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know
( New York: Free Press), p. 106.
2 . Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
( New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 151.
3 . Abu Walid al Misiri, in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 109.
FIGHTING THE GREAT SATAN 89
4 . Turki and Clarke quoted in Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian
Family in the American Century ( New York: Penguin, 2008), p. 46.
5 . Bruce Riedel, The Search for al-Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future
( Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press, 2008), p. 47.
6 . Ibid., p. 47.
7 . Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s body guard, in ibid., p. 112.
8 . Prince Turki in ibid., p. 112.
9 . Ibid., p. 49.
10 . Wright, Looming Tower , p. 161.
11 . Coll, Bin Ladens , p. 381.
12 . Osama Rusdi in ibid., p. 106.
13 . Wright, Looming Tower , p. 164.
14 . Coll, Bin Ladens, p. 381.
15 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 49.
16 . Sherifa Zuhur, A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the Future of
Counterinsurgency (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005),
pp. 19–23.
17 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 49.
18 . Wright, Looming Tower , p. 332.
19 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 16.
20 . Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader ( New
York: Broadway Books, 2007), p. 70.
21 . Ibid., p. 94.
22 . Ibid., p. 130.
23 . Ibid., p. 133.
24 . Ibid., p. 169.
25 . Ibid., p. 142.
26 . Ibid., pp. 145–146.
27 . Quoted in John Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 22.
28 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 51.
29 . Ibid., p. 51.
30 . Coll, Bin Ladens , p. 409.
31 . Bakr bin Laden, quoted in ibid., p. 408.
32 . Riedel, Search for al-Qaeda , p. 54.
33 . Osama bin Laden, “Open Letter to Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Baz on the
Invalidity of His Fatwa on Peace with the Jews,” translated by the Counter Terrorism
Center, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, http://en.wikisource.org/
wiki/Open_Letter_to_Shaykh_Bin_Baz_on_the_Invalidity_of_his_Fatwa_
on_Peace_with_the_ Jews (accessed May 31, 2009).
90 OSAMA BIN LADEN
34 . UN Security Council Document, S/ RES/1054 (1996), April 26, 1996,
http://daccessdds.un.org /doc / UNDOC/GEN/N96/107/86/ PDF/ N9610786.
pdf ?OpenElement (accessed May 31, 2009).
35 . Account of Vahid Mojdeh, who held various posts in the Afghan government,
in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 164.
36 . Osama bin Laden, “ Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying
the Land of the Two Holy Places,” in Al Quds Al Arabi [news paper published
in London], August 1996, http:// www.pbs.org /newshour/terrorism /inter
national /fatwa_1996.html (accessed June 1, 2009).
37 . Osama bin Laden, “ Jihad against Jews and Crusaders,” February 23, 1998,
http://www.fas.org /irp/world /para /docs /980223-fatwa.htm (accessed June 1,
2009).
38 . Esquire interview with Osama bin Laden, February 1999, in Compilation
of Osama bin Laden Statements, 1994 –January 2004 (Washington, DC: Federal
Broadcast Information Service, 2004), p. 99, http:// www.fas.org /irp/world /
para /ubl-fbis.pdf (accessed June 1, 2009).
39 . Osama bin Laden, Al Jazeera interview, October 2001, aired by CNN,
February 5, 2002, http://archives.cnn.com /2002/ WORLD/asiapcf /south /02/05/
binladen.transcript /index.html (accessed August 1, 2009).
40 . Osama bin Laden, Letter to the American People, in Compilation of
Osama bin Laden Statements , p. 216.
41 . Ibid.
42 . Unidentified detainee, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know ,
p. 227.
43 . Darul Ulon Haqqani, quoted in ibid., p. 227.
44. The Report of the 9/11 Commission (Washington, DC: Government Printing
Office, 2004), p. 149, http:// www.9-11commission.gov/report /911Report.
pdf (accessed June 17, 2009).
45 . Yosri Fouda, in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 303.
Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.
Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.
Osama bin Laden is shown in Afghanistan in this April 1998 photograph. Two
months earlier he had issued a fatwa, or religious declaration, calling on Muslims to
attack American interests in the Muslim world. “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.” AP Photo/File.
Osama bin Laden addresses a 1998
meeting at an undisclosed location in
Afghanistan, according to the source,
a Pakistani photographer who chose
to remain anonymous. In the background
is a banner with a verse from
the Qur’an. AP Photo.
After the nearly simultaneous August
1998 bombings of the American
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,
ascribed to bin Laden’s al-Qaeda
network, the U.S. government
sought to apprehend him. Bin Laden,
shown here in an undated photograph,
remained in Afghanistan
under the protection of the Taliban,
who later condemned the devastating
9/11 terrorist attacks in the United
States and rejected suggestions that
Osama bin Laden could be behind
them. AP Photo.
U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, right, joins Lewis Schiliro, assistant director in
charge of the FBI’s New York offi ce, at a November 4, 1998, press conference in
New York City announcing the indictments of Osama bin Laden, shown in the illustration
at left, and Muhammad Atef for the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. AP
Photo/Marty Lederhandler.
A poster on sale in Rawalpindi,
Pakistan, in 1999 depicts Osama
bin Laden as a near-mythic Islamic
hero. The poster’s striking imagery
juxtaposes modern military destruction
with very traditionally conceived
heroic motifs. The inscriptions read
“Osama bin Laden” and “Warrior of
Islam.” AP Photo/B. K. Bangash.
Released by Qatar’s Al Jazeera Television on October 5, 2001, this photo is said to
show a near-contemporary image of Osama bin Laden, center, at the time of the 9/11
terrorist attacks on the United States. At left is bin Laden’s top associate, Ayman
al-Zawahri. Al Jazeera stated that the scene was believed to show a celebration of the
union of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network and al-Zawahri’s Egyptian jihad group. At
right is a young bodyguard. AP Photo/Courtesy of Al-Jazeera via APTN.
In a videotaped statement recorded at an undisclosed location and aired on October
7, 2001, after a military strike launched by the United States and Britain in
Afghanistan, bin Laden praised God for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and swore that
“America will never dream of security” until “the infi del’s armies leave the land of
Muhammad.” AP Photo/Al-Jazeera/TV.
Osama bin Laden, left, is shown with Ayman al-Zawahri at an undisclosed location
in this television image broadcast on October 7, 2001. AP Photo/Al-Jazeera/TV.
This image, broadcast on Qatar’s Al Jazeera Television, is said to show the wedding
of Mohammed bin Laden, center, a son of Osama bin Laden, seated at right. The
ceremony took place in January 2001 in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
Seated at left is the bride’s father. AP Photo/Al-Jazeera/TV.
Supporters of the Pakistani religious parties’ alliance gathered at a March 2004 rally
in Lahore, Pakistan, to protest against the Pakistani government’s anti–al-Qaeda
operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Troops demolished the homes of those accused
of sheltering al-Qaeda fi ghters. The poster shows an often-used image of Osama bin
Laden. AP Photo/K. M. Chaudary.
At a May 2005 demonstration at
the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee
camp near Sidon, in southern
Lebanon, a young boy carries a placard
bearing the image of Osama bin
Laden with the Arabic inscription,
“The Quran shouts: O Osama.”
Thousands of Shi’ia and Sunni Muslims
took part in separate demonstrations
around the country against the
alleged desecration of the Qur’an by
American soldiers at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, earlier that month. AP
Photo/Mohammad Zaatari.
In Miran Shah, capital of the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, videostore
customers examine the cover of a militant DVD. The store’s window display is dominated
by a poster showing Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, right. At
the time this photograph was taken (June 2006) Taliban activities were proliferating
in Pakistani border areas, which were already serving as a base for militants fi ghting
in neighboring Afghanistan. AP Photo/Abdullah Noor.
Chapter 6
BIN LADEN AND
AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11
APRAISING 9/11
Osama bin Laden was initially elated by his successful attacks on New
York and Washington. Operationally, the strikes had succeeded beyond
his expectations. True, the fourth airplane never made it to its target,
which may have been the White House or the Capitol Building, but the
collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center had more than
compensated for that failure. With all his experience in the family construction
business, bin Laden had not expected the towers to collapse.
The intense heat of the fi re destroyed the steel skeleton, and the weight
of the building above the impact point caused the upper fl oors to topple
down on the fl oors below, bringing the entire structure to the ground in
a pancake effect. Devastating as the attack was, it could have been much
worse. Casualties proved unexpectedly light. The hijackers had attacked
a bit too early in the day. New Yorkers characteristically come to work
later and work later than people in other cities, so the towers had not been
full. More important, the city and the occupants of the towers had learned
from the 1993 bombings how to evacuate quickly and effi ciently. Most
of the people who worked on the fl oors below the impact points of the
airplanes got out before the buildings collapsed.
92 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Bin Laden later refl ected on how much the attacks had accomplished.
“I was thinking that the fi re from the gas in the plane would melt the iron
structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all
the fl oors above it only. This is all we hoped for,” he told a Saudi supporter
in late 2001. On the day of the attack, he told his gleeful followers,
who cheered as they watched the fi rst plane hit the north tower, to “be
patient.” More attacks would unfold in the next hour and a half.1 Another
follower raced to tell bin Laden what he had seen of the attacks on
television. Bin Laden responded with a hand gesture meaning, “I know,
I know.”2
Despite indisputable evidence of his involvement, bin Laden initially
denied responsibility for the attacks as he had with the East Africa embassy
bombings. Unlike most terrorist organizations, which eagerly claim
responsibility for their operations, al-Qaeda preferred to keep its enemies
guessing. “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September
attacks in the United States,” bin Laden told a correspondent in Pakistan
on September 28, 2001.
As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. Neither had I any
knowledge of these attacks nor do I consider the killing of innocent
women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam
strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and
other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a
battle.3
Bin Laden could tell such a lie with a straight face and clean conscience
because radical clerics had issued fatwas allowing deception of Islam’s
enemies.
Deny responsibility for the attacks though they might in the immediate
aftermath of 9/11, al-Qaeda’s leaders did not maintain their denials
once the U.S. air campaign against Afghanistan began. In April 2002
the Al Jazeera television network aired excerpts from an al-Qaeda tape
in which bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri,
voiced their true feelings about the operation. “This great victory, which
was achieved, is due, in fact, to the grace of Allah alone,” Zawahiri proclaimed.
BIN LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 93
It was not due to our skillfulness or superiority, but it is due to Allah’s
blessing alone. Allah Almighty grants his mercy to whoever
He wants. Allah looks into the hearts of his slaves and chooses
from them those who are qualifi ed to win His grace, mercy, and
blessings. Those 19 brothers, who left [their homes], made efforts,
and offered their lives for Allah’s cause — Allah has favored them
with this conquest, which we are enjoying now.4
For his part, bin Laden promised more attacks and linked them to his
favorite grievances against the United States, in particular the plight
of Palestinians and the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. “The
United States will not even dream of enjoying security if we do not experience
security as a living reality in Palestine, the land of the two holy
mosques, and all Muslim countries,” he declared.5
OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM
Gleeful though he was about the destruction, loss of life, and economic
impact of his attacks on New York and Washington, bin Laden had not
launched airplanes into buildings just to achieve those immediate results.
More than anything else, he wished to draw U.S. forces into a protracted
war. He had studied the U.S. failure in Vietnam and personally
contributed to the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. He had also seen how
quickly President Clinton withdrew U.S. forces from Somalia after the
death of Army Rangers in Mogadishu. Perhaps he also recalled America’s
precipitous withdrawal from Lebanon following the bombing of the Marine
barracks in Beirut in 1983. Bin Laden had approved the 9/11 attacks
for the expressed purpose of provoking the United States into invading
Afghanistan. History suggested that al-Qaeda could sap U.S. strength in
an unconventional war in which Islamist insurgents would wear down
the U.S. military as the Viet Cong had done in Southeast Asia and the
mujahedeen had done to the Soviets in Afghanistan.
In April 2001, bin Laden confi ded to his future Pakistani biographer
this ulterior motive behind the 9/11 attacks. According to Hamid Mir,
bin Laden told him that if al-Qaeda attacked its homeland the United
States would invade Afghanistan, the Taliban would fall, and al-Qaeda
94 OSAMA BIN LADEN
would wage jihad against the occupying U.S. force as it had against the
Soviets.6 Sayf Adel, an al-Qaeda military commander, explained this
strategy in greater depth. “Our ultimate objective of these painful strikes
against the head of the serpent was to prompt it to come out of its hole,”
Adel declared.
This would make it easier for us to deal consecutive blows to undermine
it and tear it apart. It would foster our credibility in front
of our nation and the beleaguered people of the world. A person
will react randomly when he receives painful strikes on the top of
his head from an undisclosed enemy. Such strikes will force the
person to carry out random acts and provoke him to make serious
and sometimes fatal mistakes. This was what actually happened.
The fi rst reaction was the invasion of Afghanistan and the second
was invasion of Iraq.7
Although the strategy provoked the desired response, the invasion of
Afghanistan did not unfold as bin Laden had hoped. The U.S. military
may have learned from its own experience in Vietnam and decided that
a large-scale operation with U.S. ground forces was not desirable. The
Pentagon also had no plan for a full-scale conventional invasion. It had
to improvise. A ground assault by U.S. forces from the north was feasible
but would take longer to stage than the White House was prepared to
wait. Washington decided to exploit the civil war that had been raging
since the Soviets left Afghanistan. U.S. Special Operations Command
and the CIA deployed small teams of operatives to support the Northern
Alliance of Tadjik and Turcoman tribes, which had been fi ghting the Pashtun
Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies. The Northern Alliance controlled
only 10 percent of Afghanistan, but its territory was adjacent to former
Soviet central Asian republics. Eager for a free hand against Chechen
rebels, Russian president Vladimir Putin supported allowing the United
States to lease old Soviet air bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. These
bases became staging areas for U.S. operations within Afghanistan.
Direct support combined with military supplies and funding turned
the tide of the war. Northern Alliance forces provided with close air support
rolled back the Taliban in a matter of weeks. The war combined the
BIN LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 95
tactics of the 13th century with those of the 21st. Special Forces teams
called in airstrikes using laptops with satellite communications, and
Northern Alliance forces followed up on bombings with cavalry charges
to fi nish off the shell-shocked Taliban. Afghan forces did most of the
fi ghting against the Taliban and suffered most of the casualties. The widespread
unpopularity of the Taliban also contributed to its rapid collapse.
A former Taliban Foreign Ministry offi cial who wrote a book on the Taliban
noted that, because the group never enjoyed popular support and
ruled through brutality and terror, it feared revenge from the Afghan
populace.8 Television cameraman and former British army offi cer Peter
Jouvenal described the mood in Kabul after the city fell to the Northern
Alliance. “The people were overjoyed to be relieved of such a suppressive
regime,” he concluded.9
Even so, the speed of the Taliban’s collapse shocked its supporters and
its opponents alike. “No one believed the country would fall so quickly,”
a Kuwaiti captured during the fi ghting told U.S. interrogators. Osama
bin Laden narrowly escaped capture. He responded to Operation Enduring
Freedom by threatening more attacks on the United States. The day
the U.S. bombing campaign against the Taliban began, he appeared on
television in a video tape that may have been made some time earlier.
“To America, I say only a few words to it and its people,” he proclaimed.
“I swear by God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither
America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we
live it in Palestine, and not before all the infi del armies leave the land of
Muhammad, peace be upon him.”10
Although bin Laden did not get his war of attrition, he did disappoint
his pursuers. He escaped from Kandahar to the rugged Tora Bora region
along the Pakistan border, terrain he knew well from the time he had
spent there during the 1980s. U.S. forces could not easily reach this remote
area, and the region’s many caves provided protection from U.S.
air strikes. If necessary, he and his forces could slip over the Pakistan
border into the country’s remote and largely ungoverned Federally Administered
Tribal Areas. An operation in December failed to capture
bin Laden or destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Operation Anaconda,
launched the following March, infl icted heavy casualties on insurgent
forces in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Ama Mountains, but once again bin
Laden and Mullah Omar escaped.
96 OSAMA BIN LADEN
The failure of the Tora Bora operation came under criticism at the time
and will be the subject of discussion by military analysts for years to come.
Army Times reporter Sean Naylor argues that the decision not to deploy
heavy artillery to the valley fl oor contributed signifi cantly to the failure.
11 Reliance upon local forces that may have been unwilling to pursue
the fugitives was probably also a factor. In an area where revenge has been
the law of the land for centuries, and blood feuds can last decades, few
Afghans wanted to make enemies of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, especially
since they could not be sure how long the U.S. forces would stay to protect
them. “America’s special forces are very good, but the mistake they
made [at Tora Bora] was they relied on Afghans for information,” concluded
cameraman and former British army offi cer Peter Jouvenal. “And
so it was pretty easy for Osama to slip out. It’s no criticism of the Special
Forces. I think there weren’t enough of them on the ground.”12 A local
Afghan militia leader who fought in the battle identifi ed yet another tactical
failure: “My personal view is if the Americans had blocked the way
out to Pakistan, al Qaeda would not have had a way to escape.”13
Despite the disappointment of bin Laden’s escape, the rapid conquest
of Afghanistan offered the United States and its allies a golden opportunity
to reduce the Taliban to a localized, containable threat and perhaps
to destroy al-Qaeda central as an effective organization. However, the
Bush administration wasted the opportunity. Considering major combat
operations at an end, it handed responsibility over to NATO’s International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a collection of units from more
than 20 nations, few of which had the resources, training, or stomach
for a protracted fi ght. The United States also provided very little development
money to the impoverished country. Seeing an opportunity to
remove Saddam Hussein under the guise of the “Global War on Terrorism”
(GWOT), President Bush and his advisors, especially Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, wanted to
concentrate troops in the Persian Gulf for the invasion of Iraq. The decision
to begin a new war before the old one had been fi nished would cost
the United States dearly. Taking the pressure off al-Qaeda and the Taliban
allowed these organizations much needed breathing room in which
to regroup. They would wage an insurgent campaign that would grow
more intense over the next eight years.
BIN LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 97
GLOBAL JIHAD
While al-Qaeda “central” spent the next several years regrouping in Pakistan,
its global network of cells and affi liate organizations continued to
wage a campaign of terror against the West. According to former CIA
analyst Bruce Riedel, al-Qaeda has pursued a three-pronged strategy since
9/11: tie down U.S. forces in wars of attrition (Afghanistan and Iraq);
consolidate its base in South Asia; and establish “franchises” around the
Muslim world. These franchises would continue to attack apostate regimes
and Western countries, perhaps baiting them into more quagmire
wars.14 The attacks might also produce a strong backlash against Muslim
communities in Western countries, thus increasing support for the global
jihad and confi rming bin Laden’s claim that the real target of the United
States and its allies was not al-Qaeda but Islam itself.
The specter of another 9/11 would haunt the United States for years
to come. As devastating as the attacks were, they forced the West and
its allies to consider an even more frightening scenario. Unlike past terrorist
and insurgent organizations, al-Qaeda would use a weapon of mass
destruction (WMD) if it could acquire one. Weapons of mass destruction
include chemical agents, germs, and nuclear bombs or radioactive material.
Chemical agents were fi rst used in battle during World War I, when
poisoned gas caused much suffering but accomplished little else. Chemical
weapons have limited use unless the enemy can be trapped in a confi ned
space. The only major terrorist attack with a chemical weapon occurred
in 1995, when the Japanese terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo released Sarin
gas in the Tokyo subway; the attack killed 54 and injured hundreds of
others. Biological agents are potentially much more lethal but far more
dangerous to use. Terrorists who decide to employ them would risk the infection
spreading to their own country. Only anthrax kills in a controlled
manner without serious risk of such a back lash. For example, an anthrax
attack immediately after 9/11 turned out to be home grown and largely ineffective.
Nuclear weapons present the greatest threat. During the Cold
War, the Soviet Union developed suitcase-size nuclear bombs capable
of destroying the heart of a city. A conventional warhead could also be
smuggled into the country in a shipping container. Another alternative
is a “dirty bomb,” radioactive material dispersed over a wide area by a
98 OSAMA BIN LADEN
conventional explosion, rendering the area uninhabitable for years. Bin
Laden made his interest in WMD clear as early as 1999. “Acquiring nuclear
and chemical weapons is a religious duty,” he proclaimed.15 So far,
it seems, he has not been able to fulfi ll that duty.
AL-QAEDA’S BOMBING CAMPAIGN
Attractive as WMD may be, however, diffi culty acquiring and using
them has confi ned al-Qaeda to the conventional bomb. This weapon has
proved deadly enough. In the four years following 9/11, al-Qaeda cells and
affi liates struck from Asia to Europe. For each successful attack, Western
security agencies would foil dozens of others. The attacks themselves and
the cost of preventing others like them have run to billions of dollars
and have changed, perhaps irrevocably, how millions of people live their
lives day to day.
The world did not have long to wait to learn that al-Qaeda was alive
and well. On October 12, 2002, terrorists from Indonesian-based Jemaah
Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda, bombed
a nightclub in the resort area of Bali. The attack killed 202 people and
wounded more than 100 others. Australian tourists made up the largest
number of those killed. Bin Laden was quick to praise the attack and to
remind the world of its motivation. “We warned Australia before not
to join in [the war] in Afghanistan, and [against] its despicable effort to
separate East Timor,” bin Laden proclaimed in a taped message aired on
Al Jazeera television on November 12, 2002. “It ignored the warning
until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali.”16
A wave of al-Qaeda-sponsored attacks ensued. During the same
month as the Bali bombings and throughout the following year, Russia
suffered from a series of terrorist attacks. Though perpetrated by Chechen
separatists, these bombings probably enjoyed al-Qaeda support and
perhaps direct assistance. In November 2003, al-Qaeda carried out two
deadly bomb attacks against targets in Istanbul, Turkey. On November 15,
terrorists detonated truck bombs at two synagogues, and, on November
20, two more bombs rocked the HSBC bank and the British consulate.
The attacks killed 57 civilians and wounded more than 700. On
November 16, bin Laden sent a statement to Al Jazeera television claiming
responsibility for the synagogue bombings, which the Martyr AbuBIN
LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 99
Hafs al-Masri Brigades, affi liated with Al-Qaeda, carried out because, he
said, Israeli intelligence operated out of the buildings.17
If the incidents in Bali, Moscow, and Istanbul seemed far removed
from the centers of Western power, the next attacks would occur much
closer to home. On March 11, 2004, terrorists detonated a series of bombs
on commuter trains and in an airport terminal in Madrid Spain, killing
191 people and wounding more than 600. Spanish police cornered the
terrorist cell in an apartment as it was preparing to carry out a second
attack. The cornered terrorists committed suicide by detonating their explosives.
A group, affi liated with al-Qaeda, claimed that it carried out the
attacks to punish Spain for its participation in the U.S.-led invasion of
Iraq.18 It had planned its operation to coincide with Spanish elections.
Unfortunately, Spanish voters did what al-Qaeda wanted, but not because
of the Madrid bombings. They voted Prime Minister Azner out of
offi ce, and his successor withdrew the Spanish contingent from the Iraq
war coalition. The Spanish people had never favored the deployment in
the fi rst place.
A month after the Madrid bombings bin Laden issued an offer of peace
to the Europeans in which he explained the rational for the attacks. “There
is a lesson [to be learned] regarding what happens in occupied Palestine
and what happened on September 11 and March 11,” he lectured. “Our
actions are merely reactions to yours — represented by the murder and
destruction of our people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine.”19 When
Spain announced that it would withdraw its troops from Iraq, al-Qaeda
declared that the country would no longer be targeted. The terrorists appeared
to have won another substantial victory.
A year after the Madrid attacks, Britain came into the terrorists’ crosshairs.
An al-Qaeda cell in the United Kingdom carried out a sophisticated
attack on the London transit system. On July 7, 2005, three suicide bombers
detonated backpack bombs on three different trains in the London
Underground during rush hour. A fourth terrorist detonated his bomb on
a bus in Tavistock Square after discovering that the Underground station
he was supposed to have entered had been closed for repairs. The attack
killed 52 people and injured more than 770. Three of the four terrorists
had been born in the British Isles, and the fourth had emigrated there
with his parents as an infant. Two of the bombers had traveled to Pakistan
in November 2004 and February 2005, where they probably received
100 OSAMA BIN LADEN
support and instructions from al-Qaeda members.20 On July 21, another
terrorist cell launched four more attacks on London Underground trains.
This time, however, their bombs failed to detonate, and all the terrorists,
along with their support cell, were arrested. Although the men denied
any relationship to the July 7 bombers, most analysts agree that al-Qaeda
intended the operations to be linked.
Bin Laden’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, praised the attackers
and chastised the United Kingdom for supporting the United
States in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he called the “blessed raid that,
like its illustrious predecessors in New York [9/11], and Madrid [3/11],
took the battle to the enemy’s own soil.”
After long centuries of his taking the battle to our soil and after his
hordes and armed forces occupied our lands in Chechnya, Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Palestine, and after centuries of his occupying our
land while enjoying security at home. This blessed raid, like its illustrious
predecessors, came to pass thanks to the racing of the vanguards
of Islam to achieve martyrdom in defense of their religion
and sanctities and security.21
These major incidents represent the most serious in a steady stream
of al-Qaeda attacks since 9/11. At the time each attack occurred, it provoked
considerable debate over who had instigated it. Despite much talk
of “leaderless resistance,” considerable evidence suggests that al-Qaeda
central decided which operations would be launched and approximately
when they should be carried out. Even after the disruption caused by the
invasion of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda remained a formidable terrorist organization.
At the same time that it maintained strategic direction over operations,
however, it left much of the planning and execution of attacks
to local cells and affi liates. Dubbed “centralization of decision making
and decentralization of execution,” this management style proved highly
effective.22 Because the United States and its allies applied relentless
pressure on them, bin Laden and the other leaders could no longer easily
move resources around the world as they had done for the East Africa
embassy bombings. They had to rely on local talent. Much of this talent
BIN LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 101
had been pre-positioned during the 1990s as the thousands of young
men who had passed through al-Qaeda training camps returned home to
await further instructions. The dramatic success of 9/11 coupled with the
efforts of these al-Qaeda training camp graduates facilitated recruitment
of new terrorists. The leader of the group that carried out the Madrid
train bombings was a former drug dealer who had been radicalized by
other Muslims while serving time in prison. Mohammed Saddique Khan,
who led the suicide attack on the London Underground, was recruited
through a youth center at his local mosque in Leeds.
IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
In the eight years since 9/11, the U.S. homeland has not been attacked
by al-Qaeda. The cause of this long period of security has been the subject
of considerable debate. The Bush administration and its supporters
insist that security measures put in place since 9/11 and aggressive interrogation
of terrorist suspects (including use of torture) have kept the
country safe. Their critics have pointed out that with U.S. servicemen
and women dying in Iraq and Afghanistan each day, al-Qaeda does not
need to strike the homeland in order to kill Americans and further the
cause of jihad. They also note that the Islamist terrorists have demonstrated
great patience, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Eight
years elapsed between the unsuccessful 1993 attack on the World Trade
Center and the destruction of the twin towers.
Security against terrorism has improved in a number of areas since
9/11. Creation of the Department of Homeland Security brought disparate
security and disaster management organizations under one roof
and improved coordination of their activities. A new Director of National
Intelligence and a National Intelligence Center facilitated sharing
of information between the FBI and CIA (a serious weakness before
9/11) and among numerous other intelligence agencies. Interrogation of
prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility may have yielded information
that foiled terrorist plots, but this contention is diffi cult to prove
since whatever intelligence it garnered remains classifi ed. Any such gains
must, of course, be weighed against the adverse international reaction and
loss of legitimacy harsh interrogation methods produced.
102 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Open sources do suggest that the United States and its allies have
enjoyed some success in disrupting al-Qaeda’s global operations. The
terrorists who bombed the London transit system in July 2005 combined
brilliant planning with amateur execution. They carried out their dry
run too far in advance of the actual attack and, as a result, did not realize
that the Underground station the fourth bomber was supposed to have
entered would be closed for repairs. They detonated two of their bombs in
older “cut and cover” tunnels near the surface, where the space provided by
adjacent tracks dissipated the force of the explosions. Twenty-six of the
52 fatalities occurred on the one train bombed in a deep tunnel. More
careful attention to target selection could have produced far greater loss
of life. The failure of the second set of attacks on July 21 occurred because
the explosive mixture was too old and had become inert. This odd blend
of professional and amateur terrorism indicates that al-Qaeda’s capacity
to move experts around its global network has been diminished. Despite
these successes, problems within various British intelligence services remain.
The year before the London bombings, MI5 (Britain’s domestic
intelligence service) arrested a number of terrorists in an undercover operation
dubbed “Crevice.” Two of the young men under surveillance during
that operation went on to bomb the Underground the following year.
MI5 had deemed them too insignifi cant to operate on their own. The men
arrested in March 2004 probably included the masterminds of British
al-Qaeda operations. Had they not been caught, the July 2005 attacks
would probably have been much worse. MI5 had made a mistake in letting
two of the terrorists fall off its radar, but, with some 2,000 young British
men who had been to Afghanistan to watch, it simply lacked the
resources to track everyone.
The United States also enjoyed some dramatic successes and captured
a number of terrorist operatives. The most prominent of those apprehended
was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 plot.
On March 1, 2003, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate in
cooperation with the CIA, captured Mohammed in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
The United States transported him to its detention facility at the
Guantanamo Bay naval base, where they subjected him to intense interrogation,
including waterboarding him numerous times. He probably
provided some useful intelligence on al-Qaeda, though how much and
precisely what remain classifi ed. In February 2008, the Department of DeBIN
LADEN AND AL-QAEDA, POST-9/11 103
fense charged Mohammed with multiple counts of murder. He will be
tried in New York in 2010.
Improved security, better intelligence sharing, and the capture of al-
Qaeda members alone do not, however, explain why the U.S. mainland
has not been attacked by al-Qaeda since 9/11. Bin Laden and his associates
have repeatedly stated that their express purpose in launching the
attacks was to provoke a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. They could not
have expected that the United States would invade Iraq, as well, but
they certainly welcomed the invasion. Al-Qaeda and its affi liates could
concentrate on killing Americans in the occupied countries. At the same
time attacks on the United States ceased, at least for the time being, they
increased dramatically in Western Europe. This pattern of violence suggests
that the security of the U.S. homeland during the past eight years
stems at least in part from a shift in al-Qaeda strategy. Osama bin Laden
would still like to attack the U.S. homeland and would certainly do so
given the opportunity, but he seems to be concentrating his efforts on Iraq
and Afghanistan and on weakening the resolve of the European allies of
the United States by attacking them.
Osama bin Laden has issued a number of statements on the Iraq war.
On October 18, 2003, Al Jazeera television aired his message to the American
people. In it he accused the Bush administration of invading Iraq to
gain control of the country’s oil and to serve the needs of the Zionists. He
gloated over the quagmire in which the infi dels found themselves and
promised devastating consequences for any nation that supported the
Americans. The U.S. invasion was exactly the sort of response to 9/11 bin
Laden wanted, a gift from God that allowed him to continue his jihad.
“But Allah sent him [Bush] to Baghdad, the seat of the Caliphate, the
land of people who prefer death to honey,” bin Laden proclaimed. “They
[the Iraqis] turned his profi ts into losses, his happiness into misery, and
now he is merely looking for a way [to go] home.” Bin Laden went on to
threaten attacks against America’s European allies. “We have the right
to retaliate at any [given] time and place against [any and] all countries
involved — particularly England, Spain, Australia, Poland, Japan, and
Italy.”23 Bin Laden proved true to his word. He had already killed Australians
in Bali and would bomb the Madrid trains the following March and
the London transit system a year later. Following the Madrid bombings,
Spain withdrew from the coalition fi ghting in Iraq. Even though this
104 OSAMA BIN LADEN
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