HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------December 17, 2001
Is the gun smoking?
'Experts' disagree on bin Laden home video
Contributing Foreign Editor
WASHINGTON -- In our media age, it was inevitable
we'd finally see terrorist home videos. How long, one wonders, before they come
out in DVD format?
The Osama bin Laden home video released by the U.S.
last Thursday gave a fascinating look at the head of a fanatical Muslim cult
receiving a visiting Saudi sheik. According to the accompanying translation from
Arabic to English - made by the U.S. government and checked by two U.S.-based
Arabic experts - bin Laden clearly appears to voice his culpability for the
suicide attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
In the most damning
admissions, a gleeful-looking bin Laden says, "We calculated in advance the
number of casualties from (sic) the enemy who would be killed based on the
position of the tower." And, "We had notification since the previous Thursday
that the event would take place that day."
The U.S. government is
delighted by the smoking gun tape, which was mysteriously "found" in Afghanistan
a few days ago. The White House says the tape should dispel any lingering doubts
bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 mass killings.
But two other Arabic
experts say the tape's audio quality is so poor that almost nothing bin Laden
says on it can be verified. To my ears, well accustomed to Arabic, half of bin
Laden's words were inaudible. The translation was sometimes out of sync with the
action on screen. Bin Laden's statements looked cut up and edited.
Cynics suggest the tape was a forgery made by Russian intelligence or
the U.S. government, with incriminating statements spliced into an otherwise
boring exchange of pleasantries between bin Laden and a visiting admirer. This
is possible. In 1990, the U.S. used retouched satellite photos to convince the
Saudis that Iraq was about to invade - which it was not.
A KGB
PLANT?
The old Soviet KGB was extremely fond of planting fake
documents to embarrass the West. Russia wants to keep George Bush's crusade
going because it takes heat off Moscow's own brutal war in Chechnya, distracts
the U.S., and earns cash IOUs from Americans.
But regardless of whether
the tape is real or a fake, there remains little doubt that al-Qaida was behind
the attacks on the U.S. But, as Prince Nayef, head of Saudi security observed
last week, Osama bin Laden is largely a figurehead. Its real leaders, said the
prince, echoing this column's view, remain as yet unknown and are likely outside
Afghanistan.
Two of al-Qaida's leaders are in Afghanistan: its Egyptian
CEO Ayman al-Zawahiri - known to all as "the doctor" - and his No. 2, Abu
Zubaydah. They are still believed alive and in hiding with bin Laden. The late
Mohammed Atef, a former Egyptian policeman, was considered the military leader
of al-Qaida until he was killed by a U.S. bomb.
The roots of al-Qaida
and other loosely linked anti-American organizations remain where they
originated: in Egypt. Even though 15 of 19 of the hijackers on Sept. 11 were
Saudis, it's likely the operation was planned in Egypt by members of two
militant groups, Egyptian Jihad and Gamma al-Islamia, with Osama bin Laden
serving as a symbolic spiritual guide.
In this sense, bin Laden was
re-enacting the role of the dreaded medieval head of the cult of the Hashishins,
Hassan al-Sabbah, known as Sheik al-Jebel, or Old Man of the Mountain. From his
lair in the Syrian mountains, the sheik's suicide assassins, crazed on hashish
and armed with poisoned daggers, terrorized much of the Muslim world and the
Crusader states of the Levant. The Mongols finally stormed the sheik's aerie,
Alamut, and put a bloody end to the Hashishins, from whom we get the term
"assassin."
Americans need no more convincing that bin Laden was behind
the 9/11 attacks. Washington released the self-serving tapes to convince the
many doubting Abduls of the Muslim world of bin Laden's guilt.
Some
Muslims will certainly accept the tape at face value and turn with disgust
against bin Laden as a fanatical mass murderer. Few Muslims accepted his wild
claims or calls for jihad against the West. But one suspects many Muslims and
other Third Worlders will still believe bin Laden and his henchmen gave the
United States what it deserved, payback for decades of bloody meddling in their
affairs - revenge, as the tape mentioned, for the "martyrs" of Palestine.
Third Worlders do not always accept our western view that when states
kill huge numbers of innocent civilians, c'est la vie, but when private
enterprise killers strike, that's unacceptable terrorism.
To many, the
fanatical Osama bin Laden will still represent the hand of retribution against
the arrogant western powers and their local satraps. New avengers will follow in
his footsteps. Suicide bombers are the poor man's version of cruise missiles,
helicopter gunships, B-52s, fuel-air explosives and 15,000-lb. bombs.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED].
Letters to the editor should be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED].
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