I/II. http://tribune.com.pk/story/160658/the-curious-case-of-osama-bin-laden
<http://tribune.com.pk/story/160658/the-curious-case-of-osama-bin-laden>The curious case of Osama bin Laden<http://tribune.com.pk/story/160658/the-curious-case-of-osama-bin-laden/> By Pervez Hoodbhoy <http://tribune.com.pk/author/1769/pervez-hoodbhoy/> The writer is professor of physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad Published: May 3, 2011 Osama bin Laden, the figurehead king of al Qaeda, is gone. His hosts are still rubbing their eyes and wondering how it all happened. Although scooped up from Pakistani soil, shot in the head and then buried at sea, the event<http://tribune.com.pk/story/160514/osama-bin-laden-killed-live-updates/> was not announced by General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani or by President Asif Ali Zardari. Instead, it was the president of the United States of America who told the world that bin Laden’s body was in the custody of US forces. Suggestions that Pakistan played a significant role ring hollow. President Obama, in his televised speech on May 1, said “our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden”. But no sooner had he stopped speaking that his top national security aides declared that the United States had not told Pakistani leaders about the raid ahead of time. Significantly, Obama did not thank Pakistan. An American official pointedly declared that the information leading to bin Laden’s killing was shared “with no other country” and this top secret operation was such that “only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance”. Today, Pakistan’s embarrassment is deep. On numerous occasions, our military and civilian leaders had emphatically stated that bin Laden was not in Pakistan. Some suggested that he might be in Sudan or Somalia. Others hinted that he might already have died from a kidney ailment, or perhaps that he was in some intractable area, protected by nature and terrain and thus outside the effective control of the Pakistani state. But then it turned out bin Laden was not hiding in some dark mountain cave in Waziristan. Instead, probably for at least some years, he had lived comfortably smack inside the modern, peaceful, and extraordinarily secure city of Abbottabad<http://tribune.com.pk/story/160482/unsafe-haven-why-was-abbottabad-the-final-destination/>. Using Google Earth, one sees that the deceased was within easy walking distance of the famed Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul. It is here where General Kayani had declared on April 23 that “the terrorist’s backbone has been broken<http://tribune.com.pk/story/155076/kayani-says-militants-back-broken/> and *inshallah* we will soon prevail”. Kayani has released no statement after the killing. Still more intriguing are pictures<http://tribune.com.pk/multimedia/slideshows/160846/> and descriptions of bin Laden’s fortress house. Custom-designed, it was constructed on a plot of land roughly eight times larger than the other homes in the area. Television images show that it has high walls, barbed wire and two security gates. Who approved the construction and paid for it? Why was it allowed to be away from the prying eyes of the secret agencies? Even the famous and ferocious General Hamid Gul (retd) — a bin Laden sympathiser who advocates war with America — cannot buy into the claim that the military was unaware of bin Laden’s whereabouts. In a recorded interview, he remarked that bin Laden being in Abbottabad unknown to authorities “is a bit amazing”. Aside from the military, he said “there is the local police, the Intelligence Bureau, the Military Intelligence, the ISI — they all had a presence there”. Pakistanis familiar with the intrusive nature of the multiple intelligence agencies will surely agree; to sniff out foreigners is a pushover. So why was bin Laden sheltered in the army’s backyard? General Pervez Musharraf, who was army chief when bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad was being constructed in 2005, unwittingly gives us the clearest and most cogent explanation. The back cover of his celebrated book, *In The Line Of Fire*, written in 2006, reads: “Since shortly after 9/11 — when many al Qaeda leaders fled Afghanistan and crossed the border into Pakistan — we have played multiple games of cat and mouse with them. The biggest of them all, Osama bin Laden, is still at large at the time of this writing but we have caught many, many others. We have captured 672 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars. Here, I will tell the story of just a few of the most significant manhunts”. So, at the end of the day, it was precisely that: A cat and mouse game. Bin Laden was the ‘Golden Goose’ that the army had kept under its watch but which, to its chagrin, has now been stolen from under its nose. Until then, the thinking had been to trade in the Goose at the right time for the right price, either in the form of dollars or political concessions. While bin Laden in virtual captivity had little operational value for al Qaeda, he still had enormous iconic value for the Americans. It was therefore expected that kudos would come just as in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Kuwaiti-born senior al Qaeda leader who was arrested in Rawalpindi, or Mullah Baradar, the Taliban leader arrested from Karachi. Events, however, have turned a potential asset into a serious liability. Osama’s killing is now a bone stuck in the throat of Pakistan’s establishment that can neither be swallowed nor spat out. To appear joyful would infuriate the Islamists who are already fighting the state. On the other hand, to deprecate the killing would suggest that Pakistan had knowingly hosted the king of terrorists. Now, with bin Laden gone, the military<http://tribune.com.pk/story/160406/obl-pakistani-military-stumped/> has two remaining major strategic assets: America’s weakness in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. But moving these chess pieces around will not assure the peace and prosperity that we so desperately need. They will not solve our electricity or water crises, move us out of dire economic straits, or protect us from suicide bombers<http://tribune.com.pk/story/160496/charsadda-blast-kills-four/> . Bin Laden’s death should be regarded as a transformational moment by Pakistan and its military. It is time to dispense with the Musharraf-era cat and mouse games. We must repudiate the current policy of verbally condemning jihadism — and actually fighting it in some places — but secretly supporting it in other places. Until the establishment firmly resolves that it shall not support armed and violent non-state actors of any persuasion — including the Lashkar-e-Taiba — Pakistan will remain in interminable conflict both with itself and with the world. *Published in The Express Tribune, May 4th, 2011.* II. From: shamsul islam <[email protected]> The creation called Osama By Shamsul Islam Published in 'The Hindu' (India) September 27, 2001 ======================================= THE UNPRECEDENTED deaths and destruction in two cities of the U.S. on September 11 has stirred the conscience of the world. It was the most lethal, ruthless and daring terrorist strike on the nerve centre of the world's most powerful nation today. The U.S., which promises to guarantee security to the world, was found wanting in checking the terrorist strikes at home or more than 40 minutes when the terrorists had the free run of its major airports, highjacking not one or two but four domestic planes to be used as flying bombs. It did not take long for the U.S. establishment to identify the culprits who masterminded these terrorist acts. These were the `evil' forces of `Islamic terrorism' led by Osama bin Laden. The mainstream U.S. media went on to explain these terrorist attacks in the context of the `clash of civilisations' thesis of Samuel Huntington. There were urgent calls for "forming a global alliance that will use all tools - diplomatic, political, economic, educational, investigative, and where appropriate, force - to pursue and root out the terrorist criminals and their supporters...'' But it is really surprising that the U.S., mecca of information technology with its super computers and all kinds of data bases, should be so greatly short of memory about Osama bin Laden. The media in the U.S. these days is full of biographical sketches of Osama bin Laden in which he appears on the world scene in 1990 opposing the Gulf War and then is shown growing into an anti-West monster, finally, targeting the U.S. on `Black Tuesday'. However, it may be news to many ears that Osama's journey as a terrorist did not start in 1990-1991. Any honest biographical description of Osama should not overlook his activities in the 1980s when he was deputed by the CIA to Afghanistan to finance and oversee the resistance to the Soviets. He was groomed as a theocratic-terrorist by the U.S. openly. In fact, there is lot of weight in the thesis that the modern Jehadi-Islam is a byproduct of intrigues by the West to keep the Islamic world under its suzerainty, devoid of any kind of democratic processes. And also to use it as a whipping boy occasionally whenever attention needs to be diverted from issues raised by anti-globalisation campaigners. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which has a long tradition of opposing the Taliban regime and paying for it with blood, raised this issue in its September 14 press statement. While condemning the terrorist attack, the statement went on to underline the fact that "the people of Afghanistan have nothing to do with Osama and his accomplices. But unfortunately we must say that it was the Government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged. In the similar way, as is clear to all, Osama has been the blue-eyed boy of the CIA''. How the U.S. and the CIA created Osama and his network has been well-documented in the book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia'' by Ahmed Rashid who is the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph of London. This book which has been published by the Yale University Press clearly shows who in reality created Osama. Ahmed Rashid in his superb expose is able to present the factual linkages between the U.S. and the `monster' which it created. Some of the excerpts are too revealing too be missed. In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures. He had persuaded the U.S. Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes and provide U.S. advisers to train the guerrillas. The CIA, Britain's MI6 and the ISI (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence) also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in Afghanistan received their supplies. Casey was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with President Zia to review the Mujaheddin groups. "Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. Washington wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was fighting the Soviet Union alongside the Afghans and their American benefactors.'' The book also goes on to show in graphic detail how harmless madrassas were turned into factories for breeding religious guerillas. "... between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan Mujaheddin. Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas that Zia's military government began to fund in Pakistan and along the Afghan border. Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad... "In camps near Peshawar and in Afghanistan, these radicals met each other for the first time and studied, trained and fought together. It was the first opportunity for most of them to learn about Islamic movements in other countries, and they forged tactical and ideological links that would serve them well in the future. The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism''.Interesting details of Osama's recruitment by the CIA for jehad in Afghanistan are also available in this book. "Among these thousands of foreign recruits was a young Saudi student, Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Yemeni construction magnate, Mohammed Bin Laden, who was a close friend of the late King Faisal and whose company had become fabulously wealthy on the contracts to renovate and expand the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. The ISI had long wanted Prince Turki Bin Faisal, the head of Istakhbarat, the Saudi Intelligence Service, to provide a Royal Prince to lead the Saudi contingent in order to show Muslims the commitment of the Royal Family to the jehad. Only poorer Saudis, students, taxi drivers and Bedouin tribesmen had so far arrived to fight. But no pampered Saudi prince was ready to rough it out in the Afghan mountains. Bin Laden, although not a royal, was close enough to the royals and certainly wealthy enough to lead the Saudi contingent so when Bin Laden decided to join up, his family responded enthusiastically. He first traveled to Peshawar in 1980 and met the Mujaheddin leaders, returning frequently with Saudi donations for the cause until 1982, when he decided to settle in Peshawar. In 1986, he helped build the Khost tunnel complex, which the CIA was funding as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medical center for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistan border.'' The book also demolishes the CIA claim that after 1990 there were no contacts with Osama. Surprisingly, just a few weeks before the U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, the book tells us, "the Saudi conundrum was even worse. In July 1998 Prince Turki had visited Kandahar and a few weeks later 400 new pick-up trucks arrived in Kandahar for the Taliban, still bearing their Dubai license plates''. This all shows that any meaningful fight back against world terrorism today will have to begin from the backyard of the U.S. (The writer is Reader, Department of Political Science, Satyawati College, University of Delhi.) Original URL http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/05272524.htm -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
