FOR THE INTERNATIONAL Islamist movement, in particular its upper-level leadership, 1998 was a turning point. Although besieged by a growing Western presence and penetrating Westernization, made possible through satellite TV and the Internet, the Islamists surged, conducting several spectacular strikes and actively planning others. During the spring and summer of 1998 the Islamists prepared for a host of operations, from the World Cup to East Africa, and the Pakistanis were escalating their war by proxy in Kashmir. Moreover, the Islamists were considering new approaches to confronting the conservative regimes in the Arabian Peninsula. These intense activities were manifested in the plethora of theological and ideological declarations issued during the year. This doctrinal documentation placed the various activities in the context of the dominant trend sweeping the Muslim world.
By mid-March 1998 the Iraqi crisis had passed and the Islamists were once again preoccupied with overall doctrinal issues and long-term objectives. The planning and preparations for a host of spectacular operations covered not only East Africa but the entire world. In mid-March 1998 bin Laden and his colleagues sent a threatening letter to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. Although this letter was not of great theological significance, it served to assert the “end” of the February Iraqi crisis and the return of the Islamists to confrontation with the United States and the West over the main issue of contention—the presence of the West in the Muslim world.
Tehran also addressed the new realities of the Middle East and the Muslim world as a whole. In April 1998 Ayatollah Khamenei ordered Intelligence Minister Najafabadi and Muhsin Rafiq-Dust, chief of the Foundation of the Oppressed, Iran’s main instrument for clandestine financing, to prepare to launch the international terrorism campaign that would confront the United States and Israel rather than other Arab/Muslim regimes, meeting the new demands of Islamist revivalism. Toward this end Najafabadi convened a secret meeting at the security and intelligence building in Daraj. Among the officials attending were several senior Iranian intelligence officers. They discussed the challenges ahead and novel methods to consolidate a new, much larger, terrorist and intelligence infrastructure. To better study the matter, Najafabadi instructed all Iranian installations—the Islamic centers, Iranian embassies, study and information centers, trade and tourism corporations, and cultural centers of the Iranian cultural attaché offices—to conduct surveys of suitable conditions for resumption of terrorism and prepare for their eventual use as cover for any clandestine operation. Special case officers were nominated for various parts of the world, who would analyze the results of these surveys and recommend further improvements.
Both bin Laden’s note and the Iranian intelligence conference coincided with a profound change in the alignment of forces in the Middle East—the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement. Riyadh had finally begun to confront reality. The aggregate impact of the overall dynamics in the region—in particular the growing military power of Iran, the building Islamist radicalism and militancy throughout the Arab Gulf States, the growing threats of local terrorism, and the Clinton administration’s regional policies toward Iran and Islamist militancy—convinced the House of al-Saud it must reexamine its own regional posture. With the summit of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) due in Tehran in December, Riyadh had to study its political options. After fall 1997 Riyadh was no longer oblivious to the dynamics throughout Islamist circles, and, with the succession crisis worsening, the House of al-Saud decided to reduce the threat by striking a deal with the real master: Tehran.
The turning point in this process took place in March 1998 with the dramatic, ten-day visit to Riyadh by former Iranian president Ayatollah ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who is now the chairman of Iran’s Expediency Council. The declared objective of the visit was the opening of a new era in Saudi-Iranian relations, emphasizing common stands on regional and economic (oil price) policies. The driving force on the Saudi side was Crown Prince Abdallah bin Abdul-Aziz, who strove to reconcile Riyadh’s need for U.S. forces to protect against Iranian and Iraqi strategic aspirations with the threat from the rapidly expanding, indigenous Islamist opposition—whose strength and popular support derived from widespread grassroots opposition to the American presence. To resolve these contradictory trends Riyadh had to reduce the need for a U.S. presence by improving relations with Tehran, enhancing internal stability.
Crown Prince Abdallah initiated the Saudi drive for rapprochement with Iran when he attended the eighth OIC Summit in Tehran in December 1997. He emerged from several meetings with Iranian leaders convinced of the sincerity of his hosts. The crown prince’s visit led to a series of bilateral agreements, such as the resumption of direct scheduled flights between the two countries, the signing of a $15 million industrial cooperation deal, and the formation of a joint economic committee to formulate strategies to raise the price of oil. In early March 1998 the new relationship was formalized during the brief visit to Saudi Arabia of Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazi. Kharazi had an audience with King Fahd bin Abdul-Aziz—a major honor Riyadh accords only to allies and superpowers—who extended a formal invitation to President Muhammad Khatami.
The real turning point was the ten-day visit to Saudi Arabia by Hashemi-Rafsanjani. On the public side of his visit, he performed the Hajj and visited other holy shrines of Islam, including the main mosque in Medina; there the local Imam subjected Hashemi-Rafsanjani to an attack on Shiism, but he disregarded it so as not to insult his Saudi hosts. Saudi authorities fired that Imam soon afterward.
Critical were the meetings Hashemi-Rafsanjani held with King Fahd, Crown Prince Abdallah, Defense Minister Prince Sultan, Interior Minister Prince Nayif, and Prince Turki, the chief of intelligence, who is responsible for antiterrorism and security matters. Hashemi-Rafsanjani held extensive, wide-ranging talks that covered all key aspects of the Saudi-Iranian bilateral relations, “practical” cooperation in stopping the continued decline in oil prices, and regional and global issues.
Hashemi-Rafsanjani surprised his hosts with a revolutionary offer in the name of the highest authorities in Tehran: the Islamic Republic of Iran formally pledged to stop all its terrorist and subversive activities against Arab countries—in particular Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms, Egypt, and Jordan—in return for Riyadh’s joining the all-Islamic campaign to determine an Islamic future for the region. He vowed that Tehran would end its support for the regional Islamist terrorist organizations once these governments adopted “proper” Islamic policies.
Hashemi-Rafsanjani stressed that Tehran had nothing in principle against the House of al-Saud or any of the other governments at present under assault by Iranian-sponsored Islamist subversion, except for their reneging on the sacred duty of jihad. Once any of these governments resumed living up to its Islamic obligation to contribute to the liberation of al-Quds (Jerusalem)—meaning the destruction of Israel—Iran would have no reason to encourage Islamist terrorism and subversion against that government. Significantly this message was also expressed by HAMAS leader Sheikh Yassin and his entourage during their triumphant tour throughout the Arab world. Sheikh Yassin repeatedly endorsed governments that still oppressed their own Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organs, most notably the Assad regime in Syria, solely because they actively contributed to the armed struggle against Israel.
To drive his point home, Hashemi-Rafsanjani not only gave the Saudis “full and formal” assurances about Iran’s “determination and pledge” to stop sponsorship of terrorism against them but also delivered a letter from President Khatami affirming that Tehran had decided “to stop exporting the revolution, supporting terrorism, undermining the Middle East, or destabilizing neighboring countries” under the right circumstances. The only exceptions were the organizations fighting Israel—such as HAMAS, the Islamic Jihad, HizbAllah—all financed, equipped, and backed by Iran. The Saudis, who currently provide extensive financial and organizational help for HAMAS and other Palestinian Islamist terrorist organizations, had no problem with these exceptions.
Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s discussions with the leaders of Saudi Arabia also touched on the Khobar bombing. Evading explicit acknowledgment of Tehran’s involvement or responsibility, Hashemi-Rafsanjani could tell both Prince Nayif and Prince Turki that the terrorists’ motive was despair over Saudi Arabia’s cooperation with the United States and virtual peace with Israel—and not a challenge to the al-Sauds’ hold on power. He suggested that Riyadh and Tehran study the available evidence to ensure that it was not misinterpreted in a way that would only aggravate an already delicate situation. To guarantee that no such misunderstanding happened and to show its “good will,” Riyadh provided the Iranians with a copy of Saudi findings about the Khobar Towers bombing. (Saudi Arabia has adamantly refused to share this information with the United States despite several personal requests by senior officials visiting Riyadh.)
The “clarification” of the Khobar issue led to an immediate improvement in intelligence and security cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. To further such cooperation, Iranian interior minister Abdollah Nuri visited Saudi Arabia in early April at the invitation of Prince Nayif. With the Khobar issue “resolved,” Nuri declared in Riyadh, both governments “believe that if more rapprochement takes place between the two major countries in the region, we will be able to achieve security and peace of mind for the people of the region.” He highlighted the new era of cooperation between Riyadh and Tehran in which “the two interior ministries can discuss ways to fight drugs and terrorism, security cooperation, the movement of both countries’ citizens, and the exchange of information to help clarify the positions.”
The new rapprochement was endorsed by the highest echelons in Tehran. Even Ayatollah Khamenei expressed his “satisfaction” at the state of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in a public speech in mid-April. He then called for the “further promotion and development” of cooperation between the two regional powers. For Tehran the primary common objective of Iran and Saudi Arabia is to further reduce mutual tensions and strive for better cooperation in the anticipated campaign to evict the “Great Satan” [the United States] from the region and destroy its “Illegitimate Offspring” [Israel] as preconditions for the Muslim liberation of al-Quds.
Riyadh reciprocated on May 24, 1998. Saudi Arabia announced the results of its investigation into the June 1996 Khobar bombing in which nineteen American servicemen were killed. The Saudi investigation, Saudi interior minister Prince Nayif told the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Rai al-Amm, conclusively proved that the Khobar bombing “was executed by Saudi hands.… No foreign party had any role in it.” Prince Nayif added that Riyadh now rejected any implication of Iranian and Syrian involvement. Prince Nayif’s interview left many issues unresolved, including such basic ones as the extent of Riyadh’s knowledge of who the actual perpetrators were, let alone whether they had been arrested, tried, and, with customary Saudi justice, already summarily beheaded.
The release of these findings by Prince Nayif was extremely important, but not for setting the record straight—there is airtight evidence that Iran and Syria were the masterminds and facilitators of this terrorist strike. As a key political-strategic event, Prince Nayif’s assertion that no foreign power was involved in the Khobar bombing formally absolved Iran of any involvement in terrorism against Saudi Arabia, which constitutes a major event in the consolidation of a Tehran-led all-Islamic front. Prince Nayif’s statement was the latest in a series of milestone events unfolding over some six months.
Officials throughout the region explained this rapprochement among the Muslim and Arab states in terms that anticipated fateful events. Very significant was the frequent invocation by Arab leaders of the Muslim defeat of the Crusaders as a metaphor to describe the challenges currently facing the Arabs in their confrontation with Israel. For example, Yassir Arafat compared his position vis-à-vis Israel to that of the Islamic conquerors who defeated both the Jews of Arabia and the Crusaders. “We respect agreements the way that the Prophet Muhammad and Salah al-Din [Saladin] respected the agreements which they signed,” Arafat explained. The truce agreements in question were signed at a time of weakness and unilaterally violated by both leaders once circumstances were ripe for defeating their enemies. Arafat used these examples to justify a possible unilateral violation of his agreements with Israel in order to revive the war against Israel whenever the Arabs were ready.
Islamist leaders were even more explicit in comparing current circumstances in the Middle East with those in the days of the Crusaders, when the entire Muslim world united behind a single (non-Arab) leader—Saladin—in order to defeat and evict the Crusaders and liberate al-Quds. In Jordan the Islamic Action Front (IAF) issued a statement in mid-May that stressed this point: “The conspiracy partners are Zionists and Crusaders, who are helped by the fact that the Arabs are divided among themselves and dominated by colonialist powers.” The IAF stressed the all-Islamic character of both the historic struggles and the forthcoming one: “The causes of Jerusalem and Palestinian people never were the exclusive concerns of the Palestinians; they are the concern of the entire [Muslim] Nation. Neither Omar bin-al-Khattab nor Salah-al-Din al-Ayyubi or Qutuz hailed from Palestine. All were Muslims whose Islamic faith and responsibility toward their God prompted them to surmount all the obstacles that had blocked their path as they sought to liberate Palestine.” The IAF argued that the same commitment and effort should be embarked on by the Muslim world.
Concurrently HAMAS leader Sheikh Yassin emphasized the significance of an all-Muslim front unified in order to destroy Israel, again comparing the prospects of such an alliance to the Muslims’ triumph against the Crusaders under the leadership of Saladin. In striving to liberate Palestine from the Israeli occupation, Sheikh Yassin explained in mid-May, “the [Muslim] Nation can play an effective role. I have not lost confidence in this Nation. Who liberated Palestine from the Crusaders? The Arab Nation, of course, specifically Egypt and Syria when they united and formed a strong force and front that Salah al-Din used in his battle against the Crusaders. The Arab and Islamic Nation can play this role at present. However, this requires the unification of the ranks and the achievement of more freedom and justice for their people so that mercy and victory may come from Almighty God.” The new Iranian initiative to suppress Islamist terrorism and subversion in the Arab world was aimed to expedite exactly this kind of all-Arab rapprochement and, possibly, unity.
It did not take long for the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders to come up with an authoritative statement, emphasizing the growing importance of the Israeli issue and, even more significantly, the unity of messages from all Islamist movements. On May 17, 1998, this group issued its statement urging all Muslims to wage “the Jihad against the Americans and the Israelis wherever they are.” The statement identified the role of the Front in the Muslim world as that of “one of the trenches pooling the [Muslim] Nation’s energies in order to perform the duty imposed by God, namely the Jihad against the atheists among American Christians and Israeli Jews.” Special emphasis was put on supporting the Islamist struggle against Israel in a segment titled “Wounds of al-Aqsa Mosque.” The Front urged greater support for “the sons of Muslim Palestine and their blessed Intifadah, through which they have renewed their rejection of capitulationist solutions.” The Front was convinced that “despite the scale of the catastrophe, the glimmer of hope has become a reality and hopes are kept alive through the martyrs’ blood, the pain of the sufferers, and the bullets of those fighting for the sake of God’s cause.” The statement portrayed the struggle against Israel in the greater context of the global jihad against the United States: “The U.S. Jews and Christians are using Israel to bring Muslims to their knees.… The Jewish-Crusader alliance led by the United States and Israel is now operating blatantly.… The United States, government and parliament, has always worked to spoil Israel and bolster its economic and military power.”
Oblivious to the reality in the Middle East but following Saudi “advice” and in line with the pro-Arab tilt of its policy, the Clinton administration hailed the “moderation” of Khatami’s Tehran and sought rapprochement with Iran. As a result the United States not only lifted the threat of sanctions from Europeans doing business with Iran but also made it easier for U.S. companies to use European “fronts” as well. Little wonder that even the most conservative Arab leaders no longer feared Washington’s wrath as they struck deals with Tehran to reduce the Islamist threat to themselves while joining the all-Arab–all-Muslim quest to defeat the contemporary Crusaders and liberate al-Quds.
Taken together, these seemingly unrelated developments and esoteric events constituted the overt part of a profound change in the Islamist terrorist movement—among both the sponsoring states and the key perpetrators. The ramifications of these changes in Tehran’s policy for bin Laden and the Islamist terrorist elite were ideologically far-reaching but in practice nil: the United States, not the local rulers, was reaffirmed as the ultimate foe and thus an object of terrorism. The Arab/Muslim rulers, including the House of al-Saud, were now defined as victims, to one extent or another, of U.S. oppression and presence. In the Islamist view once the United States and Westernization were evicted from the Hub of Islam, even these rulers would adopt Muslim ways and rejoin the Muslim Nation. This was a very slight difference between past and current perceptions of threat. This distinction, however, was not lost on official Riyadh, and once again Prince Turki was sent to make “deals” to enhance the stability and survivability of the House of al-Saud.
SAUDI ARABIA has been second only to Pakistan in the extent of its support for the Taliban. Saudi funds have been instrumental in the Taliban’s rise to and hold on power. Saudi support for the Taliban has stemmed from Riyadh’s determination to find an outlet—as far away from Saudi Arabia as possible—for the Islamist zeal of Saudi radicalized youth. Support for the propagation of Islamism also cleansed the collective conscience of the House of al-Saud, the declared guardians of the quintessence of conservative Islamism, for whatever infringements of Islamism’s strict code of conduct they carry out in Saudi Arabia to ensure their own hold on power. The Taliban’s brand of Islamic revolution, with its strong conservative Islamist connotations and desire for a greater Arabic coloration, is perfect for Riyadh. The Taliban’s affinity with Saudi Arabia is also strong because the hard core of the Taliban are the Afghan refugees from the Pakistani Islamist schools whose teachers and clerics received their formal schooling and degrees from Islamist institutions in Saudi Arabia. They brought with them and instilled in their Afghan and Pakistani students a strict, conservative brand of Islamist theology and jurisprudence. And the Saudi support is also formal. “According to a high-ranking official in the [Saudi] ministry of justice, Sheikh Mohammad bin Jubier [current chairman of the Saudi Consultative Council], who has been called the ‘exporter’ of the Wahhabi [conservative Islamist] creed in the Muslim world, was a strong advocate of aiding the Taliban,” Saudi opposition scholar Nawaf Obaid explained.
The Taliban’s affinity for Saudi Islamism is also manifested in their declared support for the basic demands of Saudi Islamist opposition. For example, one of the Taliban’s supreme commanders demanded “a removal of all U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia.” Ominously, Obaid noted, “this is the same call made by Wahhabi fundamentalists in the Kingdom before the Riyadh and Dhahran bombings. And if Mr. bin Laden actually was behind these attacks, there is even more reason to fear Taliban-inspired terrorism.” For Riyadh this ideological commitment of the Taliban warranted generous subsidies to ensure that neither the Taliban nor the Arab guests actively turned against the kingdom.
In early summer 1998 Riyadh consulted with Islamabad about ways to contain the anti-Saudi revolutionary zeal in Afghanistan. Pragmatic Islamabad connected Riyadh’s trepidation over an Islamist revolt in Saudi Arabia with the ascent of the Taliban. Riyadh made the first major move in early June. Prince Turki and Mahmud Safar, the Saudi Hajj and Awqaf (religious property) minister, arrived in Qandahar, leading a delegation of intelligence and religious officials. The Saudis broached various ways to improve relations, including the possibility that the Taliban would extradite bin Laden and a group of Saudi “Afghans” in return for lavish Saudi support and U.S. recognition; joint containment of the Saudi Islamists in Afghanistan was also considered. The Taliban would hear nothing about extraditing anybody, but the delegations decided to work jointly to ensure that the Arab “Afghans” did not constitute a threat to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States. Just to be on the safe side, two representatives of leading Saudi families arrived at bin Laden’s compound soon after with a large sum of money as a “donation” on the “understanding” that he would not conduct operations in Saudi Arabia. The two emissaries told him that the “donations” they brought also included backing from members of the House of al-Saud.
Crisis erupted barely a month later, when Salman al-Umari, the Pakistan-based Saudi chargé d’affaires for Kabul, came to Qandahar for a special meeting with a Taliban senior official. At first al-Umari complained that he had been shot at by Taliban forces near Jalalabad. The official responded that had these been the Taliban, al-Umari would already be dead. Then al-Umari demanded that the Taliban extradite bin Laden to the United States, stressing that Saudi Arabia was not interested in bin Laden. When the Taliban official queried how a Muslim emissary could suggest that a fellow Muslim be extradited to a non-Muslim state, a heated quarrel ensued. “Are you an ambassador for Saudi Arabia or the United States?” the Taliban official asked, adding, “If you are an ambassador for the United States, I am honored to be ambassador for bin Laden.”
The Taliban immediately notified Islamabad of the apparent drastic changes in Riyadh’s policies. An alarmed Riyadh assured Islamabad that there had been no change in Saudi policy and offered to reassure the Taliban. In the second half of July 1998 Islamabad mediated a meeting in Qandahar that led to a far-reaching deal between Saudi Arabia and the Taliban. The key participants were Prince Turki—chief of Saudi intelligence—and Taliban leaders, as well as senior ISI officers and representatives of Osama bin Laden. The agreement stipulates that bin Laden and his followers will not use the infrastructure in Afghanistan to subvert the Saudi kingdom, and the Saudis will make sure that no demands—including American—for the extradition of individuals and/or the closure of (terrorist) facilities and camps are met. Prince Turki also promised to provide oil and generous financial assistance to both the Taliban’s Afghanistan and Pakistan. For Islamabad the high-level negotiations with Riyadh and the long-term promises amount to Saudi recognition of the Taliban reign over Afghanistan. Russian sources noted that soon after this agreement was reached, large sums of money were transferred from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to Ukraine as payment for the purchase and quick delivery of weapons for both Pakistan and the Taliban. These weapons played a crucial role in the Taliban’s swift offensive in early August 1998 that consolidated their hold over all of Afghanistan.
Then on August 7 the two car bombs demolished the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. As far as the Pakistanis and the Taliban are concerned, bin Laden should not be blamed for these bombings. Islamist sources stressed the centrality of the Afghanistan base for the anti-American jihad but denied any direct involvement in or responsibility for the bombs in East Africa. Although the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders and the fatwas issued in February 1998 over the signatures of bin Laden and Zawahiri were very important, they argued, and despite the explicit call for jihad in them, the bombings in East Africa had been claimed by the previously unknown Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places. The Islamist leaders were determined to “prevent Washington from submitting an official request to the [Taliban] movement for the extradition of bin Laden, Zawahiri, or both if they openly claim responsibility for the two operations.” But Islamabad had no intentions of helping Washington anyway.
On August 20 the U.S. Navy launched seventy-five to eighty cruise missiles at the training-camp complexes in the Khowst area of Afghanistan. According to surveys done on the ground by Pakistanis, Afghans, and the British, thirteen of the missiles hit an area called Markaz Khalid bin Wa-heed, ten missiles hit an area called Markaz Amir Muavia, and five hit a base belonging to Jalaludin Hakkani. The other missiles hit nearby villages. According to eyewitness reports, “a large number of villagers” were killed not only by flying shrapnel but also by collapsing homes and shattered windows. About 1,200 members of the ISI-controlled Harakat ul-Ansar—all of them Pakistanis, Indian Kashmiris, and Afghans—were in these camps, about 200 of Hakkani’s Afghan mujahideen, and “a score” of Arabs. Between them they suffered twenty-six dead and thirty-five wounded. Fourteen Afghans, eight Pakistanis, three Egyptians, and one Saudi died. (According to bin Laden, there were twenty-eight fatalities—fifteen Afghans, seven Pakistanis, two Egyptians, three Yemenis, and one Saudi.)
Little wonder that Mullah Jalaludin Hakkani, the original commander of the Khowst area, ridiculed the U.S. claim that the missile strike inflicted heavy damage. “The camps at Zhavara survived two air and ground offensives by the Red Army and couldn’t be captured or destroyed despite frequent air raids and shelling. What can about 60 or 70 long-range, largely inaccurate American missiles do to a fortified place built into mountains?” he asked. According to Hakkani, the Salman Farsi camp “emerged largely unscathed”; the al-Badr camps, also known as Abu Jindal or the Arab camps, “suffered minimum damage”; and the Khalid bin Waleed and Amir Muawiyya camps “suffered some damage.” The ammunition dumps, in deep caves near these camps, “were almost all intact.”
Hakkani noted that five mosques were built in the camps’ area and that they offered religious services not only to the mujahideen in the camps but also to the villagers living in the vicinity. Four mosques in the camps and nearby villages were destroyed and, in the words of an on-site observer, “the burned pages of 200 Korans” were strewn over the area. Militant Islamists, particularly those associated with the ISI-sponsored organizations, began circulating in Pakistan pictures of two damaged buildings, which could be easily identified as the local mosques when compared to old pictures of the camps. The Islamists also had pictures showing fragments of Korans scattered about the area. “America has desecrated our mosques and holy books,” said a member of Harakat ul-Ansar. “President Bill Clinton will be hanged for this.” These sentiments were shared by others. “The U.S. has invited death by attacking our mosques,” said Ahmad Sarwar, a survivor from the Harakat ul-Ansar camp. “They have destroyed our holy things and turned the religious schools we had at the camps to rubble. The U.S. has lit a fire and the U.S. will itself burn in that fire.” Within a couple of days Islamist propaganda throughout the Muslim world was contrasting the widespread damage, particularly to the local mosques, with the U.S. media’s gloating over the precision of guided munitions during the Gulf War—the inevitable implication of this comparison being that the U.S. destruction of the mosques and the defiling of the Korans were intentional.
Immediately after the strike Taliban and Pakistani officials also disputed the U.S. claims about the camps’ population. According to a Harakat ul-Ansar official, the bombed camps were “staffed by members of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence—the country’s foreign intelligence agency—who assisted in the training of Harakat-ul-Ansar militants for the war against Indian rule in Kashmir.” “The Arabs were not there,” said another Harakat militant. “That is why almost none of them died and why many of the martyrs were Pakistanis and local Afghans. This operation has done more to embarrass the Pakistani government than hurt bin Laden.” Taliban leader Mullah Omar claimed he had ordered the removal of the Arab “Afghans”—Saudis, Egyptians, Sudanese, and Yemenis—to a more secure base just south of Kabul two months before the bombing. Not surprisingly, the local Islamists were vowing revenge. “America has invited its own death upon itself,” declared Maulvi Fazl-ur-Rehman Khalil, head of Harakat ul-Ansar. “If we don’t get any justice from the world court we know how to get our own justice.”
On the other side of the world, in an effort to justify the U.S. cruise missile strike on terrorist training facilities in the Khowst area of Afghanistan, President Clinton and several U.S. officials alluded to intelligence information that determined the timing of the strike. U.S. intelligence had learned that a major terrorist conference was to take place in the area, and the strike was timed to hit the participants, including Osama bin Laden and his close lieutenants. They all survived; they and many other terrorists being trained in these facilities were simply not there when the cruise missiles hit. There is good reason to believe that high officials in Pakistan warned the terrorist elite about the impending U.S. strike.
According to a chronology published by the New York Times of the White House activities leading to the August 20 strike, the president was notified on August 12 about the evidence connecting Osama bin Laden to the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and of the essence of the planned retaliatory missile strikes. U.S. intelligence had already proposed August 20 as the strike date based on knowledge that a high-level terrorist gathering was planned for that day. Appearing on PBS on August 21, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger noted that much of the data that prompted the U.S. strike had been accumulated by monitoring telephone conversations of bin Laden and others.
However, on August 12, when the strike plan was originally presented to the president, both U.S. intelligence and the national decision makers should have questioned the validity of the information. Starting on August 8, U.S. intelligence had learned of unusual movements at terrorist bases and camps throughout Afghanistan. There was “a [dispersal] of people away from bin Laden’s bases of operation within Afghanistan in the aftermath of the explosions,” a U.S. official told CNN on August 13. This information served to reinforce Washington’s conviction that bin Laden was responsible for the bombing in East Africa. Pakistani security sources told al-Hayah that “some moves ha[d] been detected among bin Laden’s Arabs between their headquarters in Qandahar and Jalalabad and their stronghold in the mountain province of Paktia.” Then in the days leading to the U.S. strike, usually reliable Saudi intelligence sources throughout the Middle East and Western Europe widely and openly discussed the latest movements among bin Laden’s people, stressing that Riyadh had learned about them from the ISI. Even al-Hayah wrote that Pakistani “sources did not rule out that there may be preparations for a large meeting of militants which bin Laden himself might attend, and hinted that the Americans may be aware of this meeting.”
Concurrently evidence surfaced that the Taliban had moved bin Laden far from any potential danger. On August 13 Abdol Rahman, an Afghan citizen interrogated by Iranian intelligence in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, claimed that “Osama bin Laden toured Mazar-e Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, for an hour Wednesday [August 12] evening.” Abdol Rahman claimed he had seen how bin Laden “arrived at Shadian quarter of Mazar-e Sharif in a Datsun pickup truck, escorted by a large number of Taliban militia.” After the U.S. strike Dr. Saad al-Faqih, leader of the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA), confirmed that “a Taliban official said bin Laden was 500 km [more than 300 miles] away from the strike site.”
Both the movements and the rumors that the United States knew about a terrorist meeting should have raised doubts about the reliability of the intelligence on the forthcoming terrorist summit. It does not make sense that senior commanders would convene in camps from which lowly trainees had already been evacuated for fear of American retaliation or that a “summit” would take place when the chairman—bin Laden—was far away in northern Afghanistan. Nor does it make sense that the world’s most wanted terrorists would attend a “secret meeting” after it had been written about, with the observation that the United States knew about it, in al-Hayah—a newspaper owned by the son of the Saudi minister of defense and the brother of the Saudi ambassador to Washington. The United States should have suspected a hidden agenda behind the publicity bin Laden was suddenly getting from the Pakistanis and Saudis.
There was no apparent impact on the U.S. preparations. Indeed, Washington began delicate negotiations with Islamabad—in particular with the office of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the ISI—about the arrest of Muhammad Sadiq Odeh and the material he might have divulged about the embassy bombings. This issue was very delicate, given Pakistan’s sponsorship of and direct involvement in Islamist terrorism, primarily against India but also throughout Asia and the Balkans. Moreover, Pakistanis run and train terrorist forces in the same camps the United States was now planning to strike.
At first there were conflicting reports about the extent of Islamabad’s foreknowledge of the U.S. strike. Initially, on the night of August 20, Pakistani officials insisted Islamabad was shocked and surprised by the news of the attack. Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz stated that Pakistan had not been warned by the United States about the strikes. “We were not aware of anything and no facilities were provided by Pakistan,” he said.
It did not take long, however, for the more complex reality to emerge. Pakistani officials noted intense direct contacts between Washington and Islamabad on the eve of the strike: (1) President Clinton and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif spoke on the telephone, (2) U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright contacted Nawaz Sharif on the eve of the attack, and (3) Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, who is Nawaz Sharif’s brother and confidant, held talks in Washington with senior U.S. officials in the White House, the State Department, and other parts of government.
A reliable military source in Islamabad confirmed that “State Department officials had informed their Pakistani counterparts of their plans for a military strike” several days beforehand. Several Pakistani military and intelligence sources confirmed that President Clinton had briefed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif about the U.S. plans by August 14. All the Pakistani sources consulted believe this was the date “the countdown for the strike” began. They stress that the United States decided to launch the strike against Afghanistan on August 18 in the wake of consultations with Islamabad. The U.S. attack, they note, was carried out “with the full knowledge of Pakistan.” The New York Times chronology of activities in Washington identifies August 14 as the date “Clinton [met] with his foreign policy advisers to begin planning military action.” On August 18, according to this chronology, “Clinton call[ed] Berger to confirm that the military actions [we]re in place.”
Western diplomatic sources in Islamabad also confirmed that Shahbaz Sharif “made an unscheduled visit to Washington late last week for talks with U.S. officials.” They attributed great importance to the visit because of the close relations between the Sharif brothers. They had no doubt that Washington had notified Islamabad through this and/or other channels. “Given the close relations with Washington, Pakistan would have been privy to U.S. plans,” a senior Western diplomat stated.
Fazal-ur-Rehman Khalil, chairman of the ISI-sponsored Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, said on August 22 that he believed Pakistan knew beforehand about the U.S. attacks. Other sources within the Afghan-based terrorist movements concurred, noting that key ISI officials and instructors evacuated the camps in eastern Afghanistan during the week preceding the strikes.
Not only did Islamabad have advance knowledge of the impending strikes, but at the very least it warned the Taliban leadership—whom Islamabad created and is sponsoring—so that they could ensure that bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their lieutenants were not harmed in the strike. According to Arab sources, the ISI even sent a senior official to Afghanistan to personally warn bin Laden about the impending U.S. strike. After the strikes no effort was made to conceal the Pakistani warning to bin Laden himself and not just the Taliban. “Informed sources in Islamabad and Afghanistan” readily acknowledged to al-Sharq al-Awsat, a London-based paper affiliated with the Salman-Nayif faction in Riyadh, that “bin Laden had left the Khowst region, which was hit by U.S. missiles, two or three days before the bombing after he received ‘signals’ from Pakistani sources that the United States [might] fire missiles at sites which he frequents.” The sources added that bin Laden was also assured by Islamabad that there would be no commando raid on him because “the United States is not willing to risk sending commandos to the region and because Pakistan would not allow the United States to use its territory as a springboard.”
The widespread leak campaign by Pakistani and Saudi official and security sources about the secret meeting of terrorists to be chaired by bin Laden and Zawahiri raises doubts about whether such a meeting was ever really planned; no terrorist would even have considered attending such a well-advertised event. The “terrorist summit” did not take place at the time of the U.S. strike, no key commander was harmed, and no sensitive equipment was damaged.
Most telling, however, is the behavior of both bin Laden and Zawahiri in the hours preceding and soon after the U.S. strike. On August 20 at 9 P.M. local time—about an hour before the cruise missile strike—Zawahiri placed a call from bin Laden’s satellite phone to Rahimullah Yusufzai, a friendly Pakistani journalist based in Peshawar. In English, Zawahiri spoke for bin Laden, who speaks only Arabic. At first Zawahiri read a brief statement: “Osama bin Laden calls on the Ummah to continue Jihad against Jews and Americans to liberate their holy places. In the meantime, he denies any involvement in the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam bombings.” Then he stayed on the line for a jovial conversation that lasted about a quarter of an hour. He acknowledged he was calling from Afghanistan and that bin Laden “was somewhere in the area.” Yusufzai got the impression that “bin Laden was sitting next to al-Zawahiri” during their telephone conversation. Despite the prospects of monitoring and homing in on such conversations, bin Laden and Zawahiri were clearly not bothered by the U.S. threats.
Barely forty-five minutes after Zawahiri ended his conversation with Yusufzai, on August 20 at 10 P.M. local time, the cruise missiles struck the terrorist camps in the Khowst area. Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and the terrorist elite were not there. Tehran was the first to provide a clue about their safety. On August 21 Mullah Muhammad Omar, the chief of the Taliban, explained why bin Laden was not hurt. “Osama bin Laden [had] been moved to a safe place before the U.S. strike on his bases,” he told the official Iranian news agency, IRNA. The next day, August 22, the Taliban issued a formal reaction to the U.S. strike. The American strike was nothing but proof of the U.S. “enmity against Islam and the Muslim world.” Reiterating their pledge never to forsake bin Laden, the Taliban emphasized that he was safe. “Before the attack, Osama [had] been transferred to a safer place and no force and no attempt can force Afghanistan to hand him over to the American government,” the Taliban announced. “Osama is a guest of the Afghan people who has assured that he will not act from the territory of Afghanistan against any country.”
On August 21, at around 11 P.M. local time, Zawahiri called Rahimullah Yusufzai again, using the same satellite telephone. Zawahiri confirmed that he was together with bin Laden “somewhere in Afghanistan,” where they were all “safe and sound.” The main purpose of Zawahiri’s call was to deliver bin Laden’s warning in English: “The war has just started. The Americans should wait for the answer.… Tell the Americans that we aren’t afraid of bombardment, threats, and acts of aggression. We suffered and survived the Soviet bombings for ten years in Afghanistan and we are ready for more sacrifices,” Zawahiri declared. He then reiterated bin Laden’s call to all Muslims to continue their jihad against the Americans and Jews, as well as liberate Islam’s holy places. “The whole Ummah must change its attitude and fight the challenges posed by America and its agents. We should strengthen bin Laden’s hands in this struggle,” Zawahiri stressed. As was the case on August 20, Zawahiri talked in a leisurely manner and displayed no concern about possible interception and tracing of his call.
The same day, August 21, bin Laden further clarified the issue of the terrorist conference the United States had attempted to hit. This clarification came in the form of a satellite telephone conversation between bin Laden’s confidant, known only as “Abu-Haq” or “Dr. Haq,” and Abdul-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, who is close to bin Laden. A conference had indeed been planned for that Friday, August 21, Abu-Haq acknowledged. (All Islamist events of significance start with the Friday midday prayers and sermon and then proceed to discussion of the issues at hand. There is no precedent for an event taking place on a Thursday.) Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and numerous senior commanders were to participate. While a gathering was to have taken place at the Zhawar Kili al-Badr training camp near Khowst, the key summit meeting would have taken place off the camp compound itself. (For security reasons, most recorded Islamist terrorist conferences in Pakistan-Afghanistan were held in isolated tents or remote buildings to ensure that the trainees and other occasional bystanders could not see the participants.)
Thus, whether or not such a terrorist summit was ever planned, bin Laden effectively exploited its use by the United States as an excuse for the strike in order to ridicule and dare Washington. Abdul-Bari Atwan quoted Abu-Haq’s admission that “President Clinton was correct. There was going to be a meeting at Khowst last Friday, but it was canceled because bin Laden knew a raid was being planned by the Americans. He called it off.” Abu-Haq asked Atwan to convey bin Laden’s defiance and resolve. “We will answer Bill Clinton in deeds not words. The battle has not started yet,” Atwan quoted bin Laden’s message. “Osama bin Laden is unhurt and the American attack failed to accomplish its aim in eliminating him,” Abu-Haq also told Atwan.
It is not difficult to surmise that bin Laden, Zawahiri, and the Islamist terrorist elite were not harmed because they and the Taliban had been forewarned by Islamabad. The reason for the Pakistani breach of American trust goes beyond the Pakistani sponsorship of and commitment to Islamist terrorism. Pakistan’s direct involvement in Islamist terrorism should not be belittled, however. About a quarter of the terrorist casualties were Pakistani trainees for the ISI-run proxy war against India in Kashmir. But the safety of these terrorists could not have been Pakistan’s reason for betraying the U.S. strike plans to the Taliban—after all, many of them were left in the Khowst area camps and were subjected to the strike.
In fact, by the time Islamabad was formally told by Washington, through General Joseph Ralston, of the U.S. intent to strike bin Laden and the terrorist camps in Afghanistan, Islamabad had already committed itself to protecting the terrorists. As far as Islamabad and Riyadh were concerned, bin Laden and Zawahiri had not violated their part of the recent agreement concluded with Prince Turki. With Saudi support so crucial to consolidating the Pakistani control by proxy of Afghanistan, Islamabad could not afford to permit the Clinton administration to negate their July agreement with Prince Turki, who, after all, claimed to have been negotiating with Washington’s concurrence. Both Islamabad and Riyadh had no doubt that if any harm were to befall bin Laden, Zawahiri, or any of the other charismatic Islamist leaders scheduled to convene in the Khowst area, an intense Islamist Intifadah and insurrection would erupt throughout the Arabian Peninsula and most of the Arab world. The Saudis wanted to prevent this prospect at all cost, especially given the prevailing tension and uncertainty in Riyadh, where King Fahd’s health is in sharp decline. Islamabad had no choice but to issue the warning and provide assistance to bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their lieutenants. Therein lies the essence of Pakistan’s support for the U.S. war against terrorism.
Ultimately the U.S. cruise missile strike on the training camps in Afghanistan—particularly in view of the repeated hints and allegations in the U.S. media that the Clinton administration had hoped to kill bin Laden and his lieutenants in the attack—has had a major, long-term strategic impact. Whether back in July Prince Turki had misspoken or overstated or exaggerated Prince Bandar’s ability to “deliver” the Clinton administration for the Pakistanis, bin Laden, and the Taliban, for the Islamic world the fact remained that as a pious Muslim, Prince Turki had given his word, and that word could not be disputed. So it had to have been the United States that broke its promise. The strike was yet another proof of the duplicity of the Clinton administration, no different from the unilateral violation of the “deal” agreed on with Abu-Umar al-Amriki. This American shaming of all Muslims involved—the Saudis, the Pakistanis, bin Laden, Zawahiri, and the Taliban—would have to be avenged.
Formulation of the Islamists’ revenge doctrine and legitimization had begun even before the first cruise missiles slammed into the Khowst area. Pakistani sources had defined the period between August 14 and 18 as when President Clinton consulted with Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif about the forthcoming American retaliation. During those same days bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their allies formulated their first communiqué discussing the next phase of their anti-American jihad.
On August 17, in their first major announcement since the bombing in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders endorsed and praised the operations of the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places (IALHP). Moreover, the Front’s statement was delivered virtually simultaneously with three messages from the army, leaving no doubt of their connection. This communiqué is vital because it further shifted Islamist emphasis toward attacking the United States.
The August 18 message of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders said that the East Africa bombings were only the beginning of a long campaign. Anti-American “Jihad operations,” like those conducted against the embassies, would continue until “the U.S. troops withdraw from the land of the Muslims.” The statement endorsed the operations of the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places as the kind of jihad the Front was referring to without admitting any links to the perpetrators themselves. “When the formation of the [Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places] was announced through these deeply significant operations, it became clear to everyone, including the American people, that we did not lie to them when we warned them,” the statement read. The Front held the entire American public responsible for the actions of the U.S. government, making everybody a legitimate target for terrorism. The statement clarified that “when the American people believed their dishonest and disgraced leadership, which has led them to destruction and ruin, they faced a succession of blows. The American people were distracted by the Jews’ talk of interests and designs which threw them into the furnace of a holy war between militant Islam and the United States, the occupier and the usurper.”
In its statement the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders also sought to establish continuity between earlier Islamist operations and the East Africa bombing. “These two embassies that were blown up by the [Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places] had supervised the killing of at least 13,000 Somali civilians in the treacherous aggression led by the United States against that Muslim country,” the statement explained. The August 1998 operations were not motivated by revenge, however, but were just punishment for “the U.S. Government’s injustice against the peoples of Islam.” The statement concluded with a warning and a threat for further escalation: “The coming days will, God willing, make the United States face a dark fate similar to that which has befallen the Soviet Union. It will face successive blows from everywhere and Islamic groups will emerge and follow other groups, and all will be fighting U.S. interests which are still based on theft and pillage. Islamic armies will follow armies in the fight against the criminal U.S. forces; and tomorrow will soon come.”
The statement issued by the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places was titled “An Open Letter to the Kenyan People” and sought to apologize for the losses suffered by Kenyan civilians during the operation of the “Martyr Khalid al-Said Company” in Nairobi by stressing that “the operation targeted only the U.S. presence.… The objective of an Islamic army is not to strike at Kenyan citizens. All their capabilities were focused on killing and humiliating the American tyrants and plunderers,” the IALHP explained. The statement emphasized that the responsibility for the civilian casualties “lies with the United States” and that the United States “must compensate the Kenyan people for bringing onto their land the consequences of war.” The IALHP added that the Kenyan people should blame their own government for the casualties suffered in the blast. “It is your government that has brought death to you and ruin to your country when it allowed the Americans to use its territory to kill the neighboring Islamic peoples and besiege their economy.… Israel’s role in the tragedies which have befallen the Muslims and which have originated from Kenya, Tanzania, and other states in North Africa [sic] is no secret to anyone. Cooperation with the Israelis while they occupy the al-Aqsa Mosque amounts to a declaration of war against all Muslims throughout the world.” The statement added that the two specific U.S. embassies were selected as targets because “Kenya and Tanzania have become the biggest U.S. bases used against the Muslims.”
In another statement the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places declared that their battle with the American Crusaders and the Jews was a “battle to the death.” They promised more spectacular and lethal operations. “Our method thus far in this battle has been to continue to pile up more American corpses onto their unjust government until we break the arrogance of the United States, crush its pride, and trample its dignity in the mud of defeat.” The IALHP urged all Muslims “not to get near anything American in order to avoid a repeat of what happened in Nairobi and so that they are not unwittingly affected by the flames of God’s Army.”
Immediately after the U.S. strike, bin Laden reiterated the relevance of the Front’s statement in a personal message delivered to Abdul-Bari Atwan of al-Quds al-Arabi. In his message bin Laden threatened President Clinton with further attacks on U.S. targets in retaliation for the raid in Afghanistan. Bin Laden warned the president that “the battle has not yet started and that the answer is what you see, not what you hear.” Bin Laden’s statement ridiculed the impact of the U.S. strike and the casualties inflicted because “the human losses within the ranks of the Arab ‘Afghans’ is a natural thing to which they have grown accustomed. They all seek martyrdom and want to meet God as soon as possible.” Bin Laden also used the satellite phone call made from Afghanistan to reassure Atwan and his other friends that he, bin Laden, and his people had survived the strike. Atwan concluded that it was his impression that “bin Laden has gained popularity and become an ‘Islamic symbol’ in the face of U.S. arrogance in the wake of the latest attack.”
Islamist leaders in London were of the unanimous opinion that “the U.S. strikes will increase the fundamentalists’ determination to attack U.S. interests all over the world.” Omar Bakri, leader of al-Muhajiroun, said, “The U.S. attacks on sites in Sudan and Afghanistan [are] an attack against Arabs and Muslims everywhere.” Mustafa Kamil, also known as Abu-Hamzah, of the Partisans of the Sharia, emphasized the mobilizing effect of the U.S. strike: “If there were differences between the fundamentalists in Afghanistan and the fundamentalist leaderships in Europe on ways to deal with Muslim countries and regimes, the U.S. aggression against Sudan and Afghanistan has now unified the stand of all the fundamentalist trends.” Yassir al-Sirri, also known as Abu-Ammar, of the al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah in Egypt, anticipated escalation of international terrorist operations: “The cooperation of the governments that have offered logistical support to the U.S. aggression will not go by in peace.” The Islamists in Afghanistan “will be more alert for more strikes against them; as for the countries that have offered support, they too are not safe from retaliation.” Concurrently the International Islamic Front issued a statement demanding that all U.S. embassies throughout the Muslim world be shut down, all their employees kicked out of Muslim lands, and an economic boycott imposed on the United States. The statement concluded that “this savage act will not be left unanswered.”
On August 23 a confidant of Zawahiri’s called al-Hayah in the name of both Zawahiri and bin Laden. He stressed that “although Osama bin Laden will continue with his call for Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jews, he was not involved in the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam operations.” He also noted that “none of the Egyptian and Arab Islamists [affiliated with bin Laden and Zawahiri] in Afghanistan have been harmed by the U.S. shelling.” The confidant also repeated the Taliban leaders’ guarantee of protection to bin Laden and all his people. Zawahiri’s confidant now expected the U.S. strikes “to cause a new escalation by the Islamists against U.S. targets.” Echoing bin Laden and Zawahiri, he opined that the Clinton administration “was mad to embark on a reckless action which has only increased the Islamists’ anger against the Americans. This suggests that new confrontations between the two sides in the future will take a dangerous turn.”
On the night of August 26, to ensure that the gravity and seriousness of the warning message was comprehended in the West, Ayman al-Zawahiri called Rahimullah Yusufzai once again from Afghanistan. “Assalam-o-Alaikum, brother. I am all right. Brother Osama bin Laden sends his regards to you and he has a message for you,” Zawahiri said. “Osama bin Laden calls on the Muslim Ummah [Nation] to continue Jihad against the Jews and Americans to liberate their Muqamat-i-Muqadassa [holy places]. Meanwhile, he denies any involvement in the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam bombings.”
Several Islamist movements added their analyses of the implications of the U.S. strike. The August 24 bulletin of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) is noteworthy because it reflected the sentiments of the Saudi Islamist opposition. The group considered the U.S. strikes the beginning of a major confrontation with the United States. MIRA stressed that the strike played into the hands of the Islamists. “It seems that America has started implementing, without being aware of it, parts of the program of the Jihad groups. It is perhaps one of the things pre-destined by God that Clinton’s scandals increased in this period and added this factor to the timing of the American strike. Thus, the American strike is turned into another factor of increase of anger and hostility against America in the Islamic world and this is the very thing wanted by the Jihad groups.”
Moreover, the political dynamics was extremely beneficial for bin Laden because of the immense publicity in the Western media. “This representation will give a strong impulse to those who are regarded as belonging to the Jihad movement, particularly the followers of bin Laden, will lift their morale and their impressions that they are a major power confronting America. For them, these wrong and hasty attacks will be regarded as evidence that America has lost its reason and does not know where to strike. The situation is not so different regarding Arab and Islamic public opinion, since people are experiencing a crisis of heroism and a crisis of readiness to make sacrifices. They are awaiting someone to satisfy their feelings of vengeance against America and [desire] to subdue it and terrorize it, just as it terrorized the Muslims and oppressed them in Palestine, Iraq, the [Arabian] peninsula, Africa, Turkey, and other places. Therefore, the sight of American officials admitting their confusion and fear of bin Laden during these strikes was tantamount to satisfying these feelings and increasing bin Laden’s popularity.”
The same dynamics occurred in Pakistan. Rahimullah Yusufzai noted that the strike had made bin Laden a “cult hero” throughout Pakistan, creating widespread endorsement for the jihad he advocates: “In an Islamic world desperately short of genuine heroes, Osama bin Laden has emerged as a new cult figure.” He symbolized the defiance and hostility toward the United States the Muslim world aspires to. Since Osama means “lion” in Arabic, many speakers in mass rallies declared that “Osama the Lion had come out of his cage to devour the enemies of Islam.” This popular support and adulation created an expectation among the Islamists that they had to live up to the popular sentiments: “Lastly, the U.S. attack has made bin Laden and his World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders desperate to reply in kind.” And there should be no doubt that the Islamists will soon satisfy their supporters.
On August 25 al-Murabitun, a London-based group affiliated with the Egyptian al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah, issued an important communiqué addressing the aftermath of the bombing. “The U.S. President made a gross mistake when he thought he could divert attention from his sexual and ethical scandal through barbaric, unjustified missile attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan.” The communiqué ridiculed Washington’s claim that the strike was in retaliation for bin Laden’s part in the bombings in East Africa and earlier terrorist operations: “It remained only for Washington to accuse bin Laden of assassinating John Kennedy!” The communiqué then criticized U.S. support for the oppression of Islamists in Egypt and its coercion of Riyadh to keep U.S. troops despite growing public discontent. This state of affairs made the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt active puppets of Washington: “The Americans in turn have found their long-awaited prize, and they are using those governments to fight Islam and the Muslims under the pretense of aiding them.” This dynamics is creating a dangerous situation: “The policy America is conducting is the only cause for the atmosphere of hostility that has become evident against it. And America is the party which must reconsider its racist and arrogant view toward everything Islamic.” The only way to remedy the current crisis is for the United States to withdraw from the Muslim world, al-Murabitun’s communiqué concludes. With this communiqué al-Murabitun joined the Islamist organizations concentrating on ending the U.S. presence in the Muslim world rather than the overthrow of the Arab governments hostile to them.
The intensity of the grassroots anger toward the United States created a demand for religious guidance on what to do next. Throughout the Muslim world is widespread conviction that the U.S. strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan must be answered by striking back, so hard that even a superpower like the United States will take notice. The Islamists capitalized on this thirst for guidance and intensity of emotions, distributing fatwas and other inciting literature. One such fatwa was written by Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and smuggled out of jail:
Cut all links with their country [the United States]. Destroy them thoroughly and erase them from the face of the earth. Ruin their economies, set their companies on fire, turn their conspiracies to powder and dust. Sink their ships, bring their planes down. Slay them in air, on land, on water. And (with the command of Allah) kill them wherever you find them. Catch them and put them in prison. Lie in wait for them and kill these infidels. They will surely get great oppression from you. God will make you the means of wreaking a terrible revenge upon them, of degrading them. He will support you against them. He will cure the afflicted hearts of the faithful and take all anger out of their hearts.
Copies of this and similar fatwas can be obtained in all religious schools in Pakistan, where they are in great demand. As a consequence those who had not even heard of Abdul Rahman now read his works and admire his courage. And bin Laden and his jihadist movement offer them venues to implement their rage and hatred. At present the terrorist schools are overflowing with volunteers.
On August 29 al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah issued its own warning to the United States in response to the U.S. strikes and the continuation of the “American-Jewish conspiracy against Islam and our holy sites.” Since they were ultimately aimed at covering up “the scandals of the White House,” the strikes were “a crime that would not go unpunished.” The Jamaah urged the Arab masses to “express their anger and to support our people in Sudan and Afghanistan by besieging U.S. embassies in Islamic countries and forcing their rulers to close them down and expel the spies inside.” Furthermore, the Jamaah promised, “Islamic movements, and those embracing Jihad in particular, [would] carry out their duties in facing this arrogance and address the United States in the language it understands.” Islam’s might was unstoppable, for “one billion Muslims are capable of turning their bodies into bombs which are equal in force to all the weapons of extermination and mass destruction possessed by the Americans.” The message of al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah left no doubt about Islamist commitment to a prolonged, lethal terrorism campaign.
In early September an emboldened Hassan al-Turabi summarized the outcome of the recent crisis. “The [American] President wanted a target, and on his list Sudan was there,” he told the Christian Science Monitor. “He finished his battle with Iran [a reference to the rapprochement with Khatami], and now it’s our turn. This is a terrorist act against Sudan, a terrorist act.” But with the rejuvenation of militant Islamism throughout the Muslim world, Turabi no longer needed to worry about the survival of Islamist Sudan. “Islam now is entrenched, and no one can remove it by force anymore,” he said. “If you use force, we can defend ourselves. If you come in peace, we welcome you; if you come to fight us, we can fight back. We are powerful.” Turabi attributed this positive and encouraging development to the rise of bin Laden’s stature, in itself partially an outcome of the U.S. strike. Bin Laden “lives in a very remote place there, but now—ho, ho!—you [Americans] raised him as the hero, the symbol of all anti-West forces in the world,” Turabi noted. “All the Arab and Muslim young people, believe me, look to him as an example.” The widespread hatred of the United States would “create 10,000 bin Ladens,” Turabi predicted.
IN EARLY SEPTEMBER 1998 the Islamist struggle in Kosovo began escalating again. The UCK (the Kosovo Liberation Army) was bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters arriving via Albania. The key trainers and elite-unit fighters of the UCK include many veteran “Afghans” and “Bosnians”—Iranians, Afghans, Algerians, Saudis, Egyptians, and even Chechens who had fought in Afghanistan and/or Bosnia. These forces are now about 7,000 mujahideen strong. Most of them are loyal to bin Laden and Zawahiri, and the financial and logistical system that sustains them in Albania and into Kosovo is run by bin Laden. The London-based Islamic Observation Center (IOC) warned that “a major campaign is being waged under U.S. intelligence supervision against Islamic activists of various nationalities in Macedonia, Kosovo Province, and in Albania.” Under the guidance of U.S. officials, local police forces continued raiding Islamist institutions as well as “the apartments and homes of Islamists who were active in Bosnia for a while and who left after the signing of the Dayton agreement” and continued arresting many Islamists. Some of these Islamists were swiftly “extradited” to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The IOC also accused the United States of “setting up an intelligence center in the Albanian capital to coordinate positions with the authorities in the Balkans with the aim of hunting down and apprehending Islamists.” The IOC repeated previous warnings that the suppression of Islamists in the Balkans “will not produce any good results and instead will only exacerbate the feelings of Muslims against everything American.” With the Islamists yearning for excuses to strike out, the Clinton administration could not have been more accommodating.
In late 1998, despite the growing pressure from U.S. intelligence and its local allies, the Islamist terrorist networks operating in and from Albania continued to expand. Starting in late November, a new network made up of bin Laden’s supporters was being established in Albania under the cover of various Muslim charity organizations. According to Fatos Klosi, the head of ShIK, the Albanian intelligence service, this network was using Albania “as a springboard for operations in Europe.” Klosi said that the network is made of “Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, Algerians, Tunisians, Sudanese, and Kuwaitis” operating under the cover of several different humanitarian organizations. Klosi explained that the network’s “terrorists had already infiltrated other parts of Europe from bases in Albania through traffic in illegal immigrants, who have been smuggled by speedboat across the Mediterranean to Italy in huge numbers.”
The senior supervisor of these activities is engineer Muhammad al-Zawahiri, the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri. That a relative of Ayman al-Zawahiri is running the activities in the Balkans testifies to their growing importance to both bin Laden and Zawahiri and the Islamist leadership. Muhammad al-Zawahiri is a graduate of advanced terrorist training in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, where, according to Egyptian security officials, he was “trained in the use of weapons, in drawing up plans to assassinate officials and security men, and in carrying out attacks on public establishments.” Recently he moved to Albania, ostensibly to work for a relief agency in Tirana. In reality he established an organization similar to the one bin Laden formed in Pakistan in the early 1980s—receiving the Islamists arriving in the Balkans and providing them with shelter until they deploy to operational cells or units. Muhammad al-Zawahiri also travels between Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Sudan, meeting with aides of Ayman al-Zawahiri and supervising local preparations for activities in the Balkans.
Bin Laden’s Arab “Afghans” also have assumed a dominant role in training the Kosovo Liberation Army. In late November a few dozen Arab mujahideen joined UCK forces at the heart of Kosovo as part of preparations for a spring offensive. Most of these mujahideen deployed from Bosnia and are hardened combat veterans. “I interviewed one guy from Saudi Arabia who said that it was his eighth jihad,” a Dutch journalist said. By mid-December these mujahideen were overseeing a major training, organizational, and logistical buildup of the UCK forces, estimated at about 1,000 trained soldiers (mostly veterans of the war in Bosnia) and a few thousand armed supporters. These mujahideen oversee the still growing flow of significant amounts of antitank rockets, antiaircraft guns, shoulder-fired Stinger antiaircraft missiles, and long-barreled sniper rifles, all smuggled in from Albania. As a consequence the UCK forces are now far better armed, better equipped, and better organized than in the seven months of fighting in the spring and summer of 1998. But the ultimate objective of these Arab mujahideen is far more sinister than helping the anti-Serb struggle of their Muslim brethren in Kosovo. According to a senior Croat security official, “there are ‘indications’ that they are planning to mount operations against U.S. objectives in the Balkans, particularly since most of the new Arab ‘Afghan’ arrivals are supporters of Osama bin Laden.”
THE TIMING of the anticipated Islamist escalation is all the more significant given the recent deterioration in the health of King Fahd. The round of problems that started in early August has already exacerbated the succession crisis, and bin Laden’s activities strengthen the hands of the Islamists and anti-Americans. The Saudis seek compromises such as the deals negotiated by Prince Turki to help reduce the likelihood of a challenge to al-Saud power.
The Islamists are fully aware of this dynamics. The August 24 bulletin of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) addressed the Saudi context of the strike: “The Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] has an ailing monarch, and a dispute [over the succession] is on the point of breaking out in the [Saud] family. Oil prices have collapsed, the situation is fragile, and America is unable to deal with all this in the midst of these dangers. If the current American administration was aware of these dangers, it would have avoided rushing into this strike and would have absorbed the problems for a limited period. But we say once more that it was predestined by God that the [U.S.] President’s scandals should occur at this time so that the cards got mixed up and the administration confused, or at the very least so that haughtiness overcame study, planning, and farsightedness.”
At the core of the current crisis in Riyadh is a realignment of the key forces that enhanced the power of the Abdallah faction, reinforcing their Islamist and anti-American policies. This process started in the early summer, even before King Fahd’s latest medical decline. The promotion of Prince Abdallah bin Abdul-Aziz, King Fahd’s youngest and most-loved son, to minister status was interpreted by insiders in Riyadh as an indication that “King Fahd had decided to step down before the end of this year.”
Prince Abdallah began looking for expansion of his power base, especially for allies who would serve as a buffer against the Americans. He found a key ally in Prince Khalid al-Faisal, the son of the first wife of the late King Faisal bin Abdul-Aziz and presently the governor of Asir, near the Yemenite border. Prince Khalid has recently emerged as the mouthpiece of Prince Abdallah. To demonstrate his power over defense matters—the prerogative of the Sultan faction—Prince Khalid instigated border clashes with Yemen in late July. Prince Khalid’s brother is Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, who is considered the most prominent among the Faisal clan. One of the stories making the rounds in Riyadh is that back in 1996, when Prince Abdallah was formally in charge, the United States, realizing that Prince Sultan’s posture was rapidly declining, tried to promote Prince Saud as the next crown prince to the future King Abdallah (the present crown prince). The gravitation of both prominent al-Faisal brothers toward the Abdallah faction represents a major realignment.
Then in early August, King Fahd collapsed once again while in Jedda. The situation was so grave that he was flown to Riyadh, accompanied by two of his sons and his brothers, Defense Minister Prince Sultan and Prince Salman. Prince Abdallah was also rushed to Riyadh. Officially the king received minor treatment. Then on August 12 a special medical team, led by an American surgeon (always an indication of a major complication), removed King Fahd’s gallbladder. He was released from the hospital on August 17, but on August 24, in the predawn hours, he was readmitted to the hospital. Again he was reported to have received routine postsurgery treatment. Meanwhile, without any special announcement, Crown Prince Abdallah formally resumed managing the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom. If anybody in the House of al-Saud needed a reminder of the instability in Riyadh, the continued deterioration of the king’s health provided it.
Rumors that the king intended to abdicate the throne revived. With anti-American sentiments sweeping the country and the rapprochement with Iran working, the posture of the Sultan faction was on the decline. Prince Saud al-Faisal made a master gambit. His sister Hayfa is married to Prince Bandar bin Sultan. With Prince Bandar visibly losing influence in the wake of King Fahd’s illness, Prince Saud offered Bandar a private deal through his sister. Although Prince Saud would remain foreign minister, Prince Bandar would take active charge of the kingdom’s foreign affairs. In return he would not stand in the way of the Faisal brothers. Given the climate in Riyadh, Bandar had to accept the deal. As a consequence, noted a Riyadh insider, the “al-Faisal family seems to have become reinvigorated, while their brother-in-law the ambassador [Bandar] has started to become marginalized.”
With the growing popularity of bin Laden and the Islamist trend and promises by Tehran and Islamabad not to challenge the House of al-Saud’s hold on power as long as they pursue an anti-American policy and embark on the eviction of U.S. forces, both the Abdallah-Faisal and Salman-Nayif factions have every incentive to adopt such a policy. The pragmatic, prudent Islamists—from the leaders in Tehran to bin Laden—know that it would be impractical to expect a sudden U.S. withdrawal. They have settled for a series of quiet guarantees from Riyadh accompanied by some visible initial moves. In the meantime the uppermost echelons in the House of al-Saud will continue to appease the Islamists through indirect actions, from funding the Taliban and other Islamist jihads to containing Washington. In mid-September 1998 Riyadh was actively formulating a new anti-American strategy that would enable it to satisfy the Islamists without arousing Washington’s ire. Those in the House of al-Saud have no illusion, however, that if forced to choose between pacifying bin Laden or the Clinton administration, they would pacify, placate, and appease bin Laden.
Saudi policy was put to the test toward the end of September, when Crown Prince Abdallah made an official visit to Washington as part of a worldwide trip intended to introduce him and his policies pending King Fahd’s anticipated death. According to high-level Saudi officials, on the eve of the visit the White House assured Prince Abdallah that the Clinton administration would favorably consider Abdallah’s position on a host of key issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the rapidly warming Saudi-Iranian relations, and even Abdallah’s opposition to the presence of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf if Saudi Arabia could “deliver” Osama bin Laden. Eager to ensure the successful outcome of the visit, Saudi officials assured their American counterparts that Prince Abdallah had already secured a promise from the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, that bin Laden would be extradited to Saudi Arabia as a result of his responsibility for the bombing in Riyadh and the Khobar Towers. Since the victims were American, the Saudi officials added, Riyadh would then extradite bin Laden to the United States. Prince Abdallah’s visit to Washington proved most successful, as the ensuing changes in U.S. Middle Eastern policy—in particular the distinctly pro-Palestinian position in the proposed negotiations with Israel and the ensuing presidential visit to Gaza—aptly demonstrate.
Riyadh’s problem, of course, was that there had never been such a deal with the Taliban. Moreover, having learned about these maneuvers, Islamabad feared that as the Taliban’s patrons, they would be blamed by Washington for the inevitable collapse of the deal that never existed. The legacy of the recent U.S. cruise missile strike on the ISI’s own training camps in Khowst did not add to Pakistan’s incentives to help the United States. Riyadh was apprised of the situation, and a high-level delegation led by Prince Turki and Mahmud Safar was immediately dispatched to Pakistan and Afghanistan. At first the Saudis offered an incentive package. If the Taliban would extradite bin Laden to the United States, their government would be recognized by the United States and numerous other states, granted lavish foreign aid, and assume Afghanistan’s seat in the United Nations and the Organization of the Islamic Countries. Riyadh also offered to mediate for both the Taliban and Islamabad in their mounting dispute with Tehran. At the time joint Taliban-Pakistani forces were advancing in northern Afghanistan, committing atrocities against the local Shiite population—Iran’s proteges. Tehran reacted by mobilizing and deploying large forces on its border with Afghanistan. In fall 1998 a tense near-war situation existed.
The Taliban’s response was alarming. The head of the Taliban’s delegation in essence questioned Riyadh’s Islamic credentials because of the Saudi suggestion that a Muslim be extradited to the United States. Instead he suggested that three delegations of senior Muslim legal scholars—from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia—meet to study both the possible guilt of bin Laden and his supporters and the validity of their claim that the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia was un-Islamic. The Taliban’s position amounted to tacit support for bin Laden’s interpretation of the situation in Saudi Arabia, a most dangerous situation for Riyadh in view of the large number of Arab terrorists in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s sponsorship of Islamist terrorism. An exasperated Prince Turki told the Taliban they were wasting his time. At this point Salman al-Umari intervened in the conversation, accused the Taliban of being ungrateful for the Saudi assistance, and threatened them with dire consequences if they did not extradite bin Laden to the United States. The Afghans demanded that al-Umari leave the country immediately on Turki’s plane. For honor’s sake, they relented and gave al-Umari a few days to leave.
Two days later Riyadh announced the withdrawal of al-Umari from Kabul for security reasons and the concurrent expulsion of the Afghan chargé d’affaires from Riyadh. At the same time Riyadh embarked on massive damage control. The reason for the crisis with the Taliban, Saudi officials intimated, was “attributable to several factors, most importantly the Taliban’s failure to deal in an acceptable manner with the tireless endeavors made by Saudi diplomacy to mediate in the crisis between Iran and Afghanistan.” The crisis had nothing to do with bin Laden, let alone the question of his extradition. Even al-Umari was compelled to take part in the charade. Meeting Saudi journalists in Pakistan while on his way back to Saudi Arabia, he insisted that “the deteriorating situation in Kabul” was the cause of his leaving Afghanistan. He then stressed that bin Laden’s extradition had never been an issue between Saudi Arabia and the Taliban. “Osama bin Laden is a Yemeni,” he explained, and so not subject to Saudi jurisdiction.
In late September 1998 Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, seized the initiative and moved swiftly to resolve the bin Laden issue. He convened an Afghan Ulema Council meeting in Kabul to decide what to do about bin Laden. The council resolved that because bin Laden had been made an Afghan citizen and granted an Afghan passport, only an Afghan Islamic court should determine his guilt or innocence. The Taliban stressed, however, that the only issue at hand was the U.S. accusation that bin Laden was responsible for the bombings in East Africa. As for the possibility of his involvement in terrorism in and against Saudi Arabia, the Taliban offered to send a delegation of their ulema to study the evidence available to their Saudi counterparts. Specifically this would be an interaction between the religious authorities of both countries—and thus a snub to official Riyadh. Saudi Arabia began to distance itself from the bin Laden issue. Prince Nayif, the interior minister, refused to address it, stating that “Bin Laden is not a Saudi, and I speak only about Saudis.” Nevertheless, the Taliban increased their pressure on Riyadh. In early October, Kabul sent a formal request that a meeting be arranged for Afghan ulema with families of Saudi casualties of the Khobar bombing so that they could request a trial pending demand for blood vengeance—a procedure the Taliban maintain in Afghanistan. Riyadh turned down this proposal as well.
Prince Abdallah arrived in Islamabad in late October for major discussions with Nawaz Sharif on a host of issues, ranging from the Pakistani nuclear program to resolving the conflict with Iran. The Saudis agreed with the Pakistanis that the bin Laden extradition issue should be brought to a quick, conclusive end. Islamabad promised to have the Taliban resolve the issue once Riyadh disengaged. There was a flurry of Saudi-inspired leaks about Riyadh’s enduring interest in resolving the Riyadh and Khobar bombings. Then Mullah Mohammad Hassan, the Taliban foreign minister, stated that Riyadh had not asked the Taliban to extradite bin Laden. Saudi officials did not deny the assertion. The Taliban’s position was clarified in early November by a Kashmiri confidant of Mullah Omar’s. The Taliban, he explained, would not extradite bin Laden or even ask him to leave Afghanistan “as long as Mulla Muhammad Omar is alive and remains in his official post because he is the only person who has allowed Osama bin Laden and other Arab groups to officially stay in Afghanistan.” The Kashmiri also noted that all other Taliban leaders were united in refusing to hand him over to any foreign country.
On October 28 the Taliban announced the convening of a special Muslim court directly under Higher Court Judge Mowlawi Nur Mohammad Thaqib—the highest Islamic judicial authority in Afghanistan—to study whether there was any basis for the accusations leveled against bin Laden. In essence, the mandate of this court was the Islamic equivalent of an American grand jury convened to examine available evidence and, should the evidence merit, indict. In a rare move Mowlawi Thaqib appealed to non-Muslim countries, a move aimed primarily at the United States, and asked that all available evidence against bin Laden be shared with the Afghan court.
On November 5 Saudi Arabia formally extricated itself from the bin Laden issue. Saudi interior minister Prince Nayif bin Abdul-Aziz exonerated bin Laden of all involvement in the Riyadh and Khobar bombings. “It has been reported that the two explosions in Riyadh and Khobar were planned by Osama bin Laden. This is not true. But maybe there are people who adopt his ideas. That is possible,” Prince Nayif explained, echoing the Islamist “logic” used in the aftermath of the East Africa bombing. Prince Nayif stated that Saudi Arabia disowned bin Laden and no longer had any interest in him. “He is no longer a Saudi citizen. He lives outside and we are not concerned with him,” Nayif stressed. “He does not constitute any security problem to us and has no activity in the Kingdom. Regarding his external activity, we are not concerned because he is not a Saudi citizen and constitutes no security risk to the Kingdom.”
With that, the only accusations pending against bin Laden were the American ones over the bombing in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. The Islamists now shifted the burden of proof to the United States as Kabul decided to permit direct U.S. participation in the investigation of bin Laden. Using Saudi intermediaries, Mowlawi Thaqib appealed directly to the U.S. government.
He assured American officials that they would be permitted to participate in the hearings as a formal part of the prosecution, provided they submitted detailed accusations supported by evidence. He also emphasized that any trial of bin Laden, if one were to take place, would be public and open for attendance by the international media and any interested foreign officials.
It is here that the peculiarities of the U.S. legal system, coupled with official Washington’s insensitivity to Muslim issues, played into the hands of the Islamists. On November 5 Osama bin Laden and his military commander Abu-Hafs were formally indicted in New York, with the U.S. authorities presenting a 238-page document to bolster the case. The Taliban immediately asked for these documents. Fearing a claim of double jeopardy by the defense in case bin Laden were ever brought to justice in the United States, Washington refused the request. But instead of explaining this legal consideration, Washington chose to ignore the Taliban while U.S. officials leaked derogatory remarks about the “kangaroo” Islamic court in Kabul. On November 19, the day before the deadline set by the Kabul Sharia court, Taliban officials again appealed to the United States to deliver “the documents proving bin Laden’s involvement in two attacks against American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam” that Washington claimed to have.
The next day, as expected, Mowlawi Thaqib declared that in the absence of any evidence against him, bin Laden would not face charges by any party and so was free to go anywhere he wished in the Taliban-controlled areas. The Taliban immediately exploited the anticipated court’s decision for political purposes. Mullah Amir Khan Mottaqi, the Taliban’s acting minister of culture and information, stated Kabul’s position:
As required, the Islamic Emirate [of Afghanistan] has fulfilled its responsibility in relation to Osama bin Laden. Firstly, the Islamic Emirate announced that Osama bin Laden will not use the territory of Afghanistan against other countries, and Osama bin Laden himself accepted it. Secondly, the Islamic Emirate’s body for dealing with Osama bin Laden’s case passed the task to the highest judicial body to investigate the issue and collect documents. More than one month has elapsed and no document has been presented to the Supreme Court and no one has brought an action against him. The Islamic Emirate [of Afghanistan] has fulfilled its major responsibility, and on the other hand, before the Taliban victory Osama was also living in Afghanistan and when he was fighting against Russia, America was pleased but after that the issue of Osama bin Laden was raised and this is a pretext for creating difficulties for the Afghans.… On the other hand, if anyone attempts to worsen the good relations with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and raises the issue of Osama again it means that they are acting against the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan through the issues of Osama bin Laden and this is an unreasonable action.
The outcome of the Taliban’s legal exercise is of great importance for future Islamist terrorism. Bin Laden’s exoneration was inevitable, because it was in the interests of both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. By ignoring the court’s appeal for evidence, however, the Clinton administration aggravated the problem by shifting the propaganda line away from grappling with the American accusations, which are based on facts and evidence, to the easy, palatable claim that the United States never had any evidence against bin Laden and that its ensuing campaign, including the bombing of Khartoum and Khowst, was fueled by hatred for Islamism. The Saudi opposition group the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia elucidated this theme: “The Taliban has announced that it has set 20 November as a deadline for the acceptance of evidence of bin Laden’s implication in any terrorist act. Therefore, it has called on the Americans and others to provide evidence so as to present it to an Islamic court, which will be open to the public.… Following this logic, the Taliban won the argument and the Americans were embarrassed, as they rely solely on their strength, hegemony, and threats to deprive the Taliban of recognition and incite other forces against them.” Legally the road is open for revenge and retribution against the United States by the wrongly accused and maligned Islamists—retribution that will be implemented through spectacular acts of terrorism.
THROUGHOUT THE MUSLIM WORLD, from the Philippines to Morocco and in numerous Muslim emigre communities from Western Europe to the United States, Islamist terrorist and subversive cells are getting ready to strike out. As of late 1998, with the confrontation escalating between the United States and the Islamist international terrorist system as represented in the person of Osama bin Laden, the terrorists have become increasingly ready with redundant and resilient networks, weapons of mass destruction, and powerful bombs, as well as zeal and readiness for martyrdom—all for what they perceive to be the noble cause of bringing the United States suffering and pain.