DURING THE LATE SPRING of 1999 the security services of the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western European states, as well as those of Israel and India, were working fiercely to prevent Osama bin Laden’s Islamist terrorists from launching any of several spectacular, horrendous strikes they were readying. What makes this struggle unique are the diversity and scope of the planned operations that Western security services know about—and not all of them are known—because if any of these operations is carried out, the magnitude of casualties and carnage will be unprecedented. The Western security services are certain that the key terrorism-sponsoring states and the terrorists themselves are ready to withstand the retaliation such strikes will entail.
The current crisis is primarily the result of two factors: (1) the marked intensification of the “Talibanization” of Pakistan, which reached a crisis and turning point in early December 1998; and (2) the impact of the U.S. bombing of Iraq in the middle of the month. While the “Talibanization” of Pakistan—the growth of radical Islamist influence on the policy of the nation—has created an overall climate conducive to the escalation of spectacular terrorism, the US. bombing of Iraq, as interpreted throughout the Muslim world, introduced a sense of both rage and urgency. Osama bin Laden has emerged as a key leader, not only the deniable instrument of the terrorism-sponsoring states and the willing perpetrator of the most outrageous strikes but a popular hero whose mere involvement builds grassroots support for the strikes and a willingness to endure retaliation. As a result bin Laden has come to symbolize the Islamist surge against and confrontation with the West. This posture, irrespective of the outcome for bin Laden himself or any of his key commanders, is the realization of his aspirations and manifest destiny—he cannot and will not avoid a confrontation.
THE “TALIBANIZATION” of Pakistan—the transformation of the state and society into the kind of harsh ultraconservative regime run by the Taliban in Afghanistan—has been in progress since late summer 1998. Faced with insoluble social, political, and economic crises that threatened the very existence of Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif sought to compensate by adopting a strict version of the Sharia as the country’s legal system. In late August he vowed to replace the country’s British-influenced legal system with one of “complete Islamic law” based on the Koran and the Sunnah (the traditions attributed to the prophet Muhammad, on which Sunni Islam is based). “Simple changes in laws are not enough,” Sharif told Parliament. “I want to implement complete Islamic laws where the Koran and the Sunnah are supreme.”
By mid-September, Islamabad was arguing that Islamization offered the only chance of holding Pakistan together as it slid toward political and social collapse amid technical bankruptcy and increasing political assertiveness by the local Islamist parties. Relying on their powerful militias and allied Kashmiri terrorist organizations, the Islamist parties flexed political muscle Nawaz Sharif could no longer confront. By the end of the month the Pakistani government was hanging by a thread, and the crisis was exacerbated by economic disaster and a collapsing social order that brought the country to the verge of a civil war. The Islamist members of the army and ISI high command warned Nawaz Sharif that the only alternative to chaos was to implement “Talibanization”—the transformation of Pakistan from a formally secular pseudo-democracy into a declared extremist Islamic theocracy. Shortly afterward the National Assembly voted 151 to 16 to pass the constitutional amendment formalizing the Talibanization of Pakistan. Within days Sharif orchestrated a profound purge of the entire military and ISI high command, throwing out the Westernized elite and replacing them with Islamists who are ardent supporters of bellicosity toward India, active aid for the war by proxy in Kashmir, and assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan and other Islamist jihads. By mid-October, Pakistan was formally an Islamist theocracy committed to the spread of militant Islam.
This transformation took place in the midst of a profound social upheaval that has had a direct impact on Pakistani grand strategy. By mid-1998 the flow of Taliban, students of the small, largely private religious schools in Pakistan, reached a volume the country could no longer endure. According to Pakistani authorities, the nearly 4,000 religious schools registered have more than 540,000 Taliban students at any given time. Many more unofficial Taliban “schools” exist, with a student body of about two million. Most of these schools—both registered and unregistered—are run by militant ulema who indoctrinate their Taliban in the obligation to fight for Islam and Islamist causes. By the time these Taliban leave school, they lack skills for jobs other than manual labor. Many remain unemployed. And so they form an ideal pool for the recruitment of terrorists for local and foreign jihads. Former interior minister Nasirullah Babar, himself a supporter of the Afghan Taliban as well as Pakistani sponsorship of Islamist and jihadist causes, considers some of these schools to be “hotbeds of terrorism” that endanger Pakistan. “The fact is that it affects the entire society.… You can see the result in the sectarian clashes that take place,” Babar said. “There are not only Afghan Taliban but there also are Pakistani Taliban.… There are no frontiers in Islam,” pointed out Qari Shabir Ahmed, head teacher at Markaz-Uloom-i-Islamia, one of Pakistan’s leading Islamist schools. “We stress peace, but if there is a hurdle to Islam, then it is their [the students’] duty to fight.” The Pakistani Taliban have no doubt of the direction their country must take. “We are struggling for Islam in Pakistan like in Afghanistan,” explained one of them. “It is our duty to enforce it using any means.”
The political might of the militant Islamist resurgence was clearly demonstrated in late October when about a half million supporters of Jamaat-i-Islami converged on Islamabad for a three-day rally aimed at enforcing “a true Islamic order” in Pakistan. The organizers announced that Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan had formally invited “the hero of the Muslim world, Osama bin Laden,” to attend the conference and that it also had “made extensive security arrangements in case of Osama bin Laden’s visit to Pakistan and [had] formed special squads of mujahideen.” Bin Laden did not attend but sent a fiery message of support. Other speakers were equally militant. “We need an Islamic revolution in Pakistan,” said a participant. The first step in the thorough Islamization of Pakistan would be to combat the influence of Western culture in Pakistan, including a boycott of Western-style fast food and soft drinks. “Can’t we live without Pepsi, Coke, and Fanta?” asked Qazi Hussein Ahmad, the chief of Jamaat-i-Islami. “They are now forbidden for us,” he decreed. More ominously Qazi Hussein Ahmad urged a public uprising against the government if Islamization was not completed. He also urged the army high command to join the revolt because the government was “trying to barter away” Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program “in deals with the United States.”
Another Islamist group, Lashkar-i-Tuiba, rallied 500,000 supporters in Lahore. The Lashkar has a well-armed militia and a large ISI-sponsored force actively fighting in Indian Kashmir, and its participation in the Islamist pressure on the Sharif government indicated the ISI’s endorsement and support. Another Pakistani Islamist group implicated in terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere, Markaz-al-Daawa wal-Irshad, had a massive rally in Muridke in which violence and terrorism were advocated. Professor Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the Markaz leader, stressed that “jihad is not terrorism; rather it is the guarantee of peace in the world. Jews and Christians are inflicting [the] worst brutalities on the Muslims. Jihad is the only solution to all the problems faced by the Muslims.” Surveying the enemies of Islam, Saeed emphasized that “the White House is the source of all mischief in the world” and anticipated that “the day is not far off when the mujahideen will blow it up through their jihad.” Representatives of other Islamist terrorist organizations, such as the Palestinian HAMAS, HizbAllah, the Islamic Jihad of Egypt, the Islamic Front of Jordan, and the Iraqi al-Dawa participated in these gatherings, expressing their solidarity with and support for the Islamist jihad in South Asia. Ibrahim Ghawusha, a prominent HAMAS leader from Jordan, led the delegation to Pakistan. “What we are doing in occupied Palestine [is being] done by Kashmiris in Indian-occupied Kashmir,” he said. He also noted that “Islamic understanding exists between the two sides” even though at the time there was no operational coordination. The visit of the HAMAS delegation would change this situation, asserted both Palestinian and Pakistani Islamist leaders.
By late fall 1998 Pakistan was mired in a vicious cycle that caused Islamabad to be increasingly dependent on the support of and legitimization by the radical Islamist power base. The Islamists, however, constitute a largely disenfranchised, unskilled segment of the population, with no prospect of self-betterment in impoverished Pakistan. Islamabad must provide an outlet for their frustration and justification for their support by sponsoring foreign jihads—international terrorism—in which these Pakistani Taliban can participate. The Taliban taking part in remote struggles are not in Pakistan, where they would threaten the stability of the regime and be on hand to participate in an Islamist revolution against Islamabad. The mere existence of ostensibly independent terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden greatly simplifies Islamabad’s predicament because bin Laden provides deniable venues for both Pakistani sponsorship and placement of the local Taliban.
Under these circumstances Prime Minister Sharif visited the United States in early December. Pakistan was ripe with rumors that he might strike a deal with Washington for Pakistani assistance in capturing and/or killing bin Laden in return for American recognition of Pakistan as a nuclear power; removal of American sanctions imposed because of Pakistan’s involvement in drug trafficking, military-nuclear development, and sponsorship of terrorism; and the massive economic assistance Pakistan desperately needs for survival. For the Islamists an agreement on funds for embargoed F-16s—a contentious issue between Washington and Islamabad for nearly a decade—only served as a confirmation of deal making. In reality the Clinton administration did make such an offer regarding bin Laden and strongly pressured Sharif to accept it. He adamantly refused, and then the White House came up with the F-16 deal to prevent a total breakdown of relations.
Hosting Sharif, the Clinton administration should have known better than to raise false expectations. Washington cannot offer Islamabad anything that would be worth provoking a major confrontation with the Pakistani Islamists. Even if Sharif gave an order to apprehend bin Laden, his order would not be carried out by the Pakistani security services because they are riddled with, even actually controlled by, militant Islamists. For them bin Laden is a hero, not a villain. These Islamists are also the new army and ISI elite Sharif just empowered. The Pakistani security establishment knows that any cooperation with Washington will place it in a “state of war” with the local Islamist militias, the Arab “Afghans,” and the Kashmiri terrorist organizations they sponsor. With the Afghan Taliban providing safe haven to these groups, they can easily destabilize Pakistan and drag it into a fratricidal civil war the Islamists are sure to win.
To sustain pressure on the Sharif government to remain pro-Islamist, the Islamists spread rumors—some loosely based on facts and some pure imagination—about a myriad of conspiracies against bin Laden in which the Pakistani security and secret services had a role. These rumors included covert attempts by Arab and Afghan mercenaries to assassinate bin Laden, with several of the attackers caught and summarily executed by the Taliban; Western Europeans caught by bin Laden’s Arab bodyguards spying on behalf of the CIA; several police raids in Pakistan, mainly in Lahore and Islamabad, in an attempt to capture the visiting bin Laden; and even deployments of CIA-FBI special forces to Pakistan and Tajikistan in preparation for raids into Afghanistan. These rumors spread as intelligence activities by American, Western European, and conservative Arab services intensified, serving to confirm the most outrageous rumors. The periodic raids by the Pakistani security services against Islamist subversive organizations conspiring against Islamabad are habitually presented as parts of the campaign against “the heroic mujahid Osama bin Laden” on behalf of the hated CIA. Given Sharif’s dependence on the Islamists, the immediate outcome of these rumor campaigns has been the scaling down of whatever anti-Islamist actions the ISI was really contemplating.
The relationship between Islamabad and the Islamists came to the fore soon after Sharif’s return from Washington, as Islamist leaders openly made their support for Islamabad conditional on Pakistan’s support for the Islamist jihad. An early December editorial in the Islamabad al-Akhbar, a respected Islamist paper, elucidated the Islamists’ approach to their government. “[The] United States’ enmity toward Pakistan [had] been exposed” during Sharif’s visit to Washington, the editorial argued. The paper surveyed the tenets of the hostile U.S. policy, primarily in regard to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the Islamic struggle for Kashmir, and concluded that “under the influence of the Jewish lobby, the U.S. is supporting India because of the alliance of Jews and Hindus and is demonstrating its enmity toward the Muslims.” The Islamists believed not only that “the U.S. has adopted an opposing attitude to Pakistan” but also that “the U.S. has purposely tried to raise a new conflict in Pakistan’s internal politics” to eliminate the Islamists’ influence. The al-Akhbar editorial considers the primary indication of this American policy to be “the U.S. insistence throughout the talks that Pakistan should [pressure] the Taliban and arrange for his [Osama bin Laden’s] extradition to the U.S.”
The al-Akhbar editorial concludes with an offer of cooperation with Sharif provided he adopts the policy advocated by the Islamists. “This insulting attitude by the U.S. should spark a moment of thought for those claiming the leadership of the nation. The time has come for us to announce a war against the hypocritical policy of the U.S. This treatment of Pakistan on the occasion of the U.S. visit requires that the rulers and leaders supporting the U.S. should forget that the U.S. will do something for Pakistan. Now we will do everything on our own. But for this purpose, we will have to unite all our forces and will have to promote national thinking. And after uniting as a nation, we will have to announce war against the American imperialists and to give up the dream of friendship with the U.S.” Sharif’s dependence on the Islamists’ support of his Islamization policy forces him to accept their advice.
Despite rumors of plans for his capture, bin Laden’s visits to Pakistan continued. Since early winter the primary change in bin Laden’s posture has been his emergence as a major political player in Southwest Asia. Because of his unique standing among all Islamists and his diverse, intimate relationship with all of the region’s powers, bin Laden has emerged as a troubleshooter and mediator of key disputes. At present he is involved in mediating the face-off between Iran and the Taliban-Pakistan over Afghanistan. He succeeded in convincing both Tehran and Islamabad of the overriding importance of building a regional anti-U.S. strategic bloc using their respective nuclear and ballistic missiles arsenals, and he argued that any disagreement they have over Afghanistan only serves the interests of the United States. As a consequence Pakistani-Iranian strategic cooperation has resumed. Bin Laden is also negotiating with various Afghan Islamist mujahideen organizations that are opposed to the Taliban in the hopes of establishing a wide Islamist solidarity front. All of these maneuvers not only strengthen his patrons but also build his position as a leader. In mid-January bin Laden, Zawahiri, and the Islamist terrorist movement, having consolidated active support from Pakistan, were gearing up for a major escalation—the launching of a series of spectacular operations.
THE U.S. BOMBING of Iraq and the grassroots rage it engendered throughout the Muslim world did not come as a surprise to bin Laden’s operational elements. In the wake of the relationship established between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, Zawahiri, their lieutenants, and also Turabi and his inner circle began to pay closer attention to the situation in Baghdad, in particular the continued face-off between Saddam and the United States–United Nations. Sometime in fall 1998 Turabi concluded that the international dynamics in and around Iraq could not continue for long. Assuming, and rightly so, that the United States would not let Saddam “go free,” he saw in the inevitable confrontation an opportune catalyst for the escalation of the Islamist jihad with massive grassroots support. The Muslim world’s rallying behind Iraq and the Islamists in February-March 1998 served as a precedent for the populist dynamics he could expect. Turabi was determined to prepare for and properly capitalize on what he was now confident was the inevitable, imminent eruption of a crisis.
Operational preparations for the next wave of Islamist spectacular terrorism to be launched in conjunction with a U.S.-Iraqi crisis began in early October. At the core of the planned terrorist offensive are the “bin Laden plans”—a series of thoroughly delineated, validated contingency plans to be executed by networks built around key commanders. In the first half of October, in preparation for the activation of these operational plans, about fifteen of bin Laden’s close senior operatives arrived in Khartoum from several countries, including Yemen, Qatar, Dubai, Jordan, and Cyprus. They traveled clandestinely, using Sudanese and Albanian travel documents they picked up at several Sudanese diplomatic legations. Most of these terrorist commanders received instructions and special briefings in Khartoum on the forthcoming operations and then returned to their countries before the end of the month.
The United States had some inkling of these and related activities concerning the Arabian Peninsula, because on October 7 all U.S. missions in Saudi Arabia closed for a four-day thorough review of their security procedures. This unusual step was prompted by intelligence that the U.S. embassy in Riyadh was under threat of an imminent terrorist attack. The warning specified that such an attack would be in retaliation for the U.S. cruise missile attack on Sudan and Afghanistan in August; thus it would most likely be a bin Laden operation. On October 14 Attorney General Janet Reno organized a crisis management exercise at FBI headquarters to plan for a possible terrorist attack by bin Laden against targets in Washington and New York. The four scenarios examined by the 200 participants were an assassination attempt on the secretary of state, a car bombing, a chemical weapons strike on a Washington Redskins football game, and the explosion of a “device” in a federal building. But as Time reported, “the war game—intended to help the agencies practice working together—quickly melted down into interagency squabbling and finger pointing.” It was clear to all that the United States was far from ready to deal with a spectacular terrorist strike even at a time when intelligence indicated that bin Laden was planning strikes in Washington and/or New York.
In the second half of October, Turabi sent emissaries—small delegations of terrorist commanders and Sudanese senior officials—to Saddam Hussein and bin Laden with handwritten letters containing both Turabi’s analysis of the strategic-political situation in the Middle East and suggestions about the launching of the terrorism campaign. Turabi stressed that the United States was extremely vulnerable to a resolute confrontation with militant Islam. Washington’s preoccupation with domestic crises made it confused and therefore susceptible to a surprise launch of terrorist strikes, Turabi argued. Building pressure on Washington on many fronts would make the United States lose its orientation. The more confused and angry the United States became, the more serious diplomatic mistakes Washington would make, both exacerbating the hostility and militancy throughout the Muslim world and alienating local governments. Turabi estimated that the application of pressure on the United States could start immediately so that by the end of December—the time of Ramadan (starting December 19) and Christmas—the Islamist terrorist system would be ready to launch the first operations in this wave. Then, according to Turabi’s plan, bin Laden’s terrorists would capitalize on the first crisis between the United States and Iraq to launch their campaign against Americans and America.
Toward the end of October, Qusay Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s son, sent a close confidant, along with Turabi’s emissary, to Peshawar, where they linked up with an ISI official and together traveled to Kabul. There they conferred with bin Laden in a safe house provided by Mullah Omar and discussed the implementation of their joint plans in accordance with Turabi’s analysis and sense of urgency. According to a well-connected Arab source, “the meeting was extremely serious.” Bin Laden and his guests “laid down the details of the biggest act of cooperation and coordination between the extremist Islamic organizations and Baghdad for confronting the United States, their common enemy.” The use of chemical and biological weapons in the anticipated terrorist strikes was explicitly addressed. Bin Laden promised to activate the entire Islamist movement—in the Middle East, Africa, East Asia, Europe, and the United States—as part of the joint campaign. In addition bin Laden sought Iraqi help for expediting the construction of special bombs containing chemical and biological agents. He was promised anything Baghdad could deliver. To better understand bin Laden’s needs, the group traveled to the Khowst area and visited some of the local secret hideouts, weapons’ stores, and laboratories. Afterward Baghdad promised to provide bin Laden with weapons that would combine major explosions with chemical calamities. These were not empty promises. Between late November and early December, in preparation for the anticipated operations, a total of twelve Iraqi chemical weapons experts arrived in Afghanistan and began working with bin Laden’s own experts.
In early November the next incident in the face-off between Iraq and the U.N. weapons inspectors took place. By then Baghdad’s crisis management and intransigence were being timed according to the operational requirements for launching another wave of terrorist attacks on American targets and possibly other terrorist/subversive activities in the Middle East, such as assassination attempts on leaders and major sabotage operations. As part of these preparations, Iraqi intelligence dispatched a delegation to Pakistan and Afghanistan to further the operational coordination with bin Laden. The Iraqi team was led by an Iraqi senior intelligence official known by the nom de guerre Abu-Walid and included an Iranian-born operative—ostensibly a senior member of the Iraq-based Mujahideen ul-Khalq opposition group, which had been to Afghanistan repeatedly since August 1998, assisting the Taliban with the interrogation of captured Iranian officials and diplomats and broadcasting anti-Iranian propaganda on radio Kabul. In Pakistan the delegation was joined by a retired Pakistani senior officer close to former ISI chief Hamid Gul, who maintains contacts with the Taliban leadership on behalf of the ISI. In Qandahar, Abu-Walid and the Pakistani escort held a lengthy, frank meeting with Mullah Omar, bin Laden, and Zawahiri in which the Iraqi sought to ascertain the extent of the Islamists’ commitment and resolve to assist Baghdad in its forthcoming confrontation with the United States. Within days a senior Taliban official visiting the Gulf sheikhdoms met a high-ranking Iraqi envoy who arrived clandestinely. They reached an agreement on close cooperation “in the security, military, and intelligence spheres.” Local intelligence services learned about this meeting.
During the first half of November the U.S. government was warned by more than one allied government about Turabi’s plans and the steps already undertaken to implement them. There were also ample indications of a buildup and mobilization of terrorist assets throughout the Arab sheikhdoms along the Persian Gulf. The U.S. embassies in Riyadh and several Gulf sheikhdoms issued warnings on November 13 about “continuing threats of attacks by leading Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden against Americans in Saudi Arabia.” Not surprisingly, Arab leaders showed little appetite for supporting the proposed U.S.-led military strikes against Iraq. The Clinton administration’s insistence that it had international support for the use of force was of no interest or relevance for these leaders. Nevertheless, the Clinton administration continued to pressure the United Nations to refuse to compromise with Baghdad. The confrontation with Iraq reached the point that the White House authorized a strike on November 14—only to call it off as some of the bombers were already in the air. By then the United Nations had succeeded in reaching a compromise with Iraq on a revived inspection regime.
In retrospect, the U.S.-Iraqi crisis of mid-November was the turning point in galvanizing Baghdad’s resolve to strike out and sponsor an unprecedented terrorist campaign. A well-connected Arab source stated that “Saddam Hussein became convinced for the first time that Washington was seriously seeking to topple him and had decided to bring him down in any possible way. He chose to confront [the United States] with all possible means, too, particularly extremism and terrorism, since he had nothing else to lose.” Convinced that he had to act urgently, Hussein held lengthy discussions with the two people he truly trusts—his sons Qusay and Uday—on how to confront the United States and spoil its designs against their family. Qusay argued, and Saddam ultimately agreed, that there was no way emaciated Iraq could deflect a determined American attempt to assassinate them and bring down the regime. The key to their survival was in deterring such a campaign in the first place through a series of devastating anti-American terrorist attacks that would persuade Washington of the futility of challenging the Hussein regime. The option of conducting such a terrorist campaign under bin Laden’s “deniable” banner was irresistible.
A few days after this conversation Qusay dispatched two of his most loyal intelligence operatives—al-Jubburi and al-Shihabi—to Afghanistan. They held a series of lengthy meetings with bin Laden, Zawahiri, Abu-Hafs, and other senior Islamist terrorist commanders in an isolated building not far from Kabul. Al-Jubburi and al-Shihabi brought with them detailed lists of Iraq’s contributions to the joint effort, including the anticipated arrival of the chemical weapons experts. They then worked out a detailed, coordinated plan for a protracted anti-American war. They decided that spectacular and martyrdom operations should be carried out throughout the world. In addition bin Laden agreed that Islamist hit teams should hunt down Iraqi opposition leaders who cooperated with the United States and the West against the Hussein regime. Bin Laden assured the Iraqis that the Islamists could now reach areas that Iraqi intelligence could not. The series of meetings concluded with an agreement to study closely and formulate details of specific operations and then meet again to decide on the first round of strikes.
At the same time the Islamist terrorist system associated with bin Laden and Zawahiri was accelerating preparations for a new wave of spectacular terrorist strikes virtually all over the world. In Afghanistan the network of recruitment centers, theological tempering sites, military training camps, and weapon stores had been markedly expanded. “The training of Islamic radicals has been fully reactivated inside Afghanistan,” a Pakistani intelligence official acknowledged in mid-December. Two new camps of significance were opened in fall 1998. The first was the Tora Boora base—originally a CIA-funded ISI-run mujahideen camp near Jalalabad—rebuilt to serve as a dedicated installation for handling the flow of terrorists traveling clandestinely to and from Afghanistan via Pakistan. The second site was a new, completely isolated installation in the general area of Galrez, some thirty miles west of Kabul. There a small number of select terrorists receive special training for the most sensitive operations under complete secrecy.
Meanwhile Islamist networks throughout Europe and the Middle East had activated a large, diverse system for clandestine travel by terrorists. In fall 1998 this system shipped hundreds of new recruits and dozens of expert terrorists from North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, and Western Europe to and from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Yemen. This system acquired numerous genuine passports and other travel documents in Western European cities and smuggled them to Pakistan and Afghanistan for use by the terrorists deploying for operations worldwide. In addition the Islamists actively recruited hundreds of Pakistani Taliban for a “new jihad” to be launched “soon.” Thousands of volunteers joined their ranks and received basic training in camps in eastern Afghanistan. Several expert terrorists were also redeployed from the forward camps of the Kashmiri terrorist organizations in the Muzaffarabad area. The flow of recruits and veteran terrorists traveling via Pakistan reached such a level that in fall 1998 Zainul Abideen—a thirty-eight-year-old Palestinian known as “the schoolteacher”—established special facilities in the Peshawar area to streamline and ease the safe flow of people, funds, and goods to bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan. The ISI began shielding this buildup in early November. In a series of security sweeps it arrested several suspects from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Bosnia who were carrying stolen and forged travel documents and were hanging around Abideen’s facilities without explanation.
As this buildup and preparation accelerated, Osama bin Laden did not remain silent about his ultimate objectives. In mid-November he was invited to attend an Islamist conference in Pakistan but decided against it when Islamabad suggested that such an affront would adversely affect Prime Minister Sharif’s forthcoming visit to the United States. Instead he sent a short note to the organizers in which he elucidated once again his objectives and goals. Bin Laden brought together the various struggles facing Islam and stressed the centrality of jihad and sacrifice to their solution:
We are thankful to God who blessed us with the wealth of faith and Islam. We are pleased to express our gratitude to you and the Pakistani mujahid nation. We thank you for your efforts to support the mujahideen’s struggle to expel the U.S. forces from the sacred land [of Saudi Arabia]. I do not need to tell you that this sacred struggle should continue until Bait-ul-Muqaddas [the Temple Mount in Jerusalem] and other holy places of Muslims are liberated from the occupation of non-Muslims and the Islamic Sharia is enforced on the land of God. Obviously, for the enforcement of Sharia, it is essential for all Muslims that they should establish an Islamic system on the basis of teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. At this moment, Israel and [the] United States are dominating Palestine and other holy places in such a way that mujahideen are being killed and besieged and Muslims have been economically ruined. Therefore, it is obligatory for all Muslims to continue Jihad by sacrificing their wealth and life as long as their holy places are not liberated from the subjugation of Jews and Christians. This freedom is not possible until we sacrifice all our wealth and our lives. As it is a religious obligation for every Muslim to support the mujahideen fighting for freedom of sacred places, similarly they are also obligated by their religion to support the Taliban government in Afghanistan, because by enforcing Sharia in Afghanistan, Taliban have established the system of God on God’s land. They are busy in Jihad to rid the Muslims of Afghanistan from the tyranny of non-Muslims. In conclusion, I pray that God may enlighten us with the light of faith and forgive our sins and help us all the time.
For their part, the Taliban reciprocated bin Laden’s endorsement and declared their support for his jihad in a major fatwa. In Qandahar in late November the Taliban convened the country’s key ulema, who operate as the Ittehad Ulema-i-Afghanistan under the leadership of Maulana Abdullah Zakiri, one of Afghanistan’s most distinguished and respected religious scholars. On December 1 the Ittehad Ulema-i-Afghanistan issued a fatwa that decreed “armed jihad against America by the Islamic world” was “mandatory” and “all the Muslims [are] ordered to rise against America and kill Americans.” The fatwa also made it “compulsory” that “no steps for total elimination of America by force should be avoided”—clearing the way for possible use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States and/or Americans anywhere else in the world. To make sure that there was no misunderstanding, the fatwa was reinforced by an edict from the country’s eminent ulema and scholars, according to which America is “an enemy of the Islamic world [that] should be eliminated.” The Taliban leadership concurred with this fatwa, and the Supreme Court of Afghanistan declared that it complied with “the principles of Sharia” and therefore “its legal position” should be accepted by Afghanistan. The Court issued a legal opinion clarifying that the fatwa also “[called] upon all the Muslim states to prepare for jihad against America and forces of infidelity the world over” and ordered all Islamic governments “to demand [that] America … immediately withdraw its forces from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia and stop interfering in the Islamic countries.” Both the fatwa and the Court’s legal opinion were issued in Arabic and have since been widely distributed in Islamist circles throughout the Hub of Islam as well as emigré communities in Europe.
By early December, Osama bin Laden had already acknowledged that he was ready for the escalation of his jihad. The Taliban’s fatwa clearly demonstrated that he had a solid base and safe haven to operate from. It did not take long for bin Laden and Zawahiri to demonstrate their self-confidence and assertiveness. At this time an Iraqi intelligence official held a series of meetings in the Iraqi Embassy in Islamabad with the leaders of several Pakistani militant Islamist movements and representatives of the Taliban. These meetings took place with the full knowledge and endorsement of the ISI.
In the first half of December bin Laden and Zawahiri arrived in Peshawar, Pakistan, to chair a periodic meeting of the Arab “Afghan” leaders residing in Pakistan. About a dozen people participated, including Asadallah Abdul Rahman, the son of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman of World Trade Center fame, who was seated next to Zawahiri, symbolizing the enduring importance of Sheikh Omar. Bin Laden’s visit was not a clandestine surge into Pakistan. He was the guest of NWFP (North-West Frontier Province) senior officials, including relatives of his fourth wife, and as before during his frequent visits, Pakistani security authorities provided him with a special escort. Bin Laden’s other recent visits had been kept quiet, but the Pakistani Islamists highlighted the early December visit as proof of the cooperation they enjoy with Sharif’s Islamabad. As for official Islamabad, the NWFP authorities “appeared to be ignorant about the reported presence of Saudi dissident, wanted by [the] U.S.A., Osama bin Laden in Pakistan,” when they were contacted by a correspondent from Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper.
Participants at the meeting discussed the anticipated escalation in the jihad against the United States, including specific operations in various stages of preparation. They resolved to deploy more than fifty Arab mujahideen from the Peshawar area to the training camps in Afghanistan so that they could be used in these operations. This was not an idle gathering. On December 11 the Islamists issued a communiqué in the name of Zawahiri’s Islamic Group, vowing to fight the Americans “ferociously in a long and sustained battle.” The communiqué defines the United States as “the biggest enemy which is seeking to uproot Islam.” Alarmingly, the communiqué alluded to a role for weapons of mass destruction in the evolving confrontation with the United States. “We must demonstrate the strength of the Muslim nation by deterring those committing aggression against it, first and foremost the United States and Israel. Our Muslim nation has in its possession numerous weapons to fight the United States, Israel, and their agents.” The Islamic Group emphasized that the role of spectacular terrorism was still important. They reminded all Muslims of the importance of “training in the use of arms” and that “the door to training is open.” The communiqué also called for an increase in the terrorists’ intelligence and support system, urging “every Muslim to consider himself a vanguard for the mujahideen everywhere by detecting the movements of the Americans, the Jews, and their agents and then informing the mujahideen of them [their movements].”
The Islamic Group communiqué stressed the growing vulnerability of the United States to Islamist terrorism: “Our Muslim nation should know that the United States—even if it pretends that it has not learned a lesson from the blows that the mujahideen have dealt it, as attested by the Americans themselves—is extremely scared and unable to stop the mujahideen. The Americans are convinced that the young men of Islam are competing to die for God’s cause in pursuit of martyrdom in the jihad against the Americans, the Jews, and their agents.” There is a good reason for this fear of the Islamists’ rage, the Islamic Group concluded: “Let the Americans know that we are determined to fight them ferociously in a long and sustained battle in which generations will pass the trust to one another … so if the remains of the Americans are scattered, and if the planes carry coffins to them containing a mixture of charred parts of their criminals, they should blame no one but themselves.” The communiqué concluded with the reiteration of the warning that the Americans must “brace themselves for a ferocious, long war.”
If there had been any doubt that bin Laden and the Islamist terrorist elite were behind this warning, ostensibly issued by the Egyptian Islamic Group, Islamist sources in London hurried to put the communiqué in the proper context. They noted Zawahiri’s decision to break his silence “after the measures taken by the United States in the wake of the bombing of its embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August.” Most authoritative was the analysis of Adil Abdul-Majid, Zawahiri’s friend and confidant. He stated that recent U.S. policies “prompted Islamic movements to react violently.” He explained that “the Islamic movements have fundamental issues that collide with U.S. positions. Injustice; the lack of justice in the U.S. Administration’s handling of the Palestinian issue; the United States’ claim that it supports freedoms in the world while it continues to ignore what is happening to the Islamists in their own countries; and the involvement of U.S. intelligence in pursuing the Islamists, rounding them up, arresting them, and handing them over to their own states … all these increase the Islamic movements’ hostility toward the United States.” Abdul-Majid also hinted at bin Laden’s responsibility for the communiqué, saying that the limitations imposed on bin Laden by the Taliban did not apply to Zawahiri’s Egyptian organization. “As is known, the Jihad Group is Egyptian, and its main entity and weight are not in Afghanistan. Al-Zawahiri’s presence there does not negate the fact that the group has elements in other places, and al-Zawahiri’s case differs from bin Laden’s.”
THE ISLAMISTS’ PREPARATIONS suddenly became urgent in mid-December when, on orders from President Clinton, the United States and the United Kingdom launched a bombing campaign against Iraq, alleging an unacceptable breakdown of the U.N. weapons inspection regime. That the bombing were launched on December 16, the very same day the U.S. House of Representatives was debating and ready to vote on the impeachment of President Clinton, did not go unnoticed. In Washington several former and current government officials openly charged that the Clinton White House had orchestrated events so that Saddam Hussein was provoked into defying U.N. weapons inspectors and President Clinton could justify air strikes, diverting American public attention away from his predicament in Congress. “What Richard Butler [the chief of U.N. weapons inspections] did last week with the inspections was a set-up,” former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter told the New York Post. “You have no choice but to interpret this as ‘Wag the Dog.’ You have no choice.”
The Islamists never had any doubt that the U.S. bombings were not a reaction to Saddam Hussein’s latest confrontation with the United Nations but yet another stage in the United States’ relentless confrontation with Islam. One of the first to elucidate this argument was Abdul-Bari Atwan, the editor of al-Quds al-Arabi. “Once again U.S. President Bill Clinton is using the Iraqi people as a ‘scapegoat’ to extricate himself from his own domestic crises and avoid—or postpone—Congress’s decision on his impeachment,” Atwan wrote. “Clinton’s survival in the White House for two more years is more important than the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and their children who will be killed by cruise missiles and bombs dropped by U.S. aircraft in all directions.” Although prompted by the president’s current crisis, the bombing campaign should be considered as a component of the overall policy of the United States. “This [campaign] represents U.S. arrogance in its ugliest form. It is aimed against the Arabs, and no one else, with a view to humiliating and weakening them in preparation for plundering their riches and imposing the Israeli mandate on them. When the Pentagon experts talk of killing at worst 10,000 Iraqis in the early days of the attack, they talk as though these martyrs are not human beings, but rather insects.” Atwan wondered what the Iraqis did to warrant such disdain and hostility from Washington and concluded that their only sin was that they were proud Arabs trying to stand up to the United States. Therefore the entire Arab world should consider the U.S. bombing as aimed at them: “It is a bloody attack aimed against the Arab nation as a whole, represented in the Iraqi people, and the responsibility for confronting it by all legitimate means lies on the shoulder of every Arab, whether he is a government official or not.”
Atwan stressed that this all-Arab aspect was the reason the future development of the Iraqi crisis would not be under Washington’s control. “It will definitely be a long war that will not be limited to a few missiles as has happened in the past.” The primary challenge facing the United States was not the direct outcome of the actual bombing of Iraq. “The United States might solve a problem by hitting Iraq, but it will definitely create numerous other problems that will adversely affect its interests and those of the West, let alone the states of the region and their geopolitics.” Atwan identified an outburst of Islamist violence and terrorism as the most significant and lasting outcome of the U.S. attack on Iraq and blamed Washington for instigating this far-reaching imbroglio. “It is U.S. terrorism that will undermine the stability of a region containing 65 percent of the world’s oil reserves. It is terrorism because it does not enjoy any international authorization or any moral or legal justification. It is likely to lead to the fire of extremism being ignited in a region full of frustration, disappointment, and groups that are ready to translate this frustration into violent actions and terrorism against the United States and all the Western states.” Atwan concluded by wondering, “Does Clinton’s survival and remaining in power warrant all these catastrophic and destructive results?”
Throughout Pakistan the Islamists’ reaction built on existing themes. Most of the Friday sermons delivered on December 19 emphasized that the U.S. bombing campaign reaffirmed American hostility toward the entire Muslim world. This theme dominated the several rallies held that afternoon. All over Pakistan marchers shouted “Death to America” and agreed with the calls to launch avenging jihads against the United States. “We consider the American attack on Iraq an attack on the entire Islamic world,” Qazi Hussein Ahmad told a Jamaat-i-Islami rally in Lahore. He spoke under a banner reading, “Muslims are bleeding in Kosovo, Bosnia, Kashmir, Palestine, and Iraq. America, we are coming. Russia has lost the war and it is the turn of America.” In Peshawar speakers at a rally jointly organized by Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat-i-Ulema-Islam spelled out the anticipated Islamist revenge. Because nobody had “struck fear into the heart of America” like Osama bin Laden, he should lead the avenging campaign, making Washington “terrified about the reaction to its Iraq attacks by militant Islamic states.” The revenge would not be limited to bin Laden. “Osama is only one mujahid and America is afraid of him,” one speaker noted. “America is also fearful of Iraq.”
The harsh reaction to the U.S. bombing throughout the Muslim world was not limited to Islamist circles. Religious luminaries expressed the exasperation and hostility of “establishment” Islamists, strengthening the hands of militant Islamists eager to translate their rage into violence and terrorism. One of the first religious leaders to publicly “denounce the aggression against the Iraqi people” was Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Grand Imam of al-Azhar University in Cairo. He declared that “the al-Azhar and the Egyptian President, Government, people, men, and women stand alongside the Iraqi people to defend them with all the means of defense, adding that we can never abandon them under any circumstances.” The Egyptian government did not deny or challenge Tantawi’s statement. In a major step toward legitimizing revenge against the United States by “establishment” Islamism, Tantawi decreed that “whoever of the Iraqi people is killed is a martyr because whoever defends his land, honor, and property is a martyr.” And Islam stipulates that the blood of martyrs must be avenged against those who shed it—the United States. The continuation of the bombing into the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan served to further exacerbate the situation. “The Americans and the British, of course, don’t care about Ramadan and the feelings of one billion Muslims,” Egyptian Islamic theologian Sheikh Abdel Sabur Shahin opined. “The Americans do want to hit during Ramadan. They get pleasure out of putting down the Arabs,” added Sheikh Abdel Adhim Dib, another Egyptian professor of theology.
Cairo went public on the Friday before Ramadan. In his sermon at al-Azhar Mosque, Sheikh Tantawi openly called for the mobilization of the Muslim world in support of Iraq and against the United States. “The duty of Muslims is to help, by all means, the Iraqi people face up to the unfair aggression and the humiliation they are being subjected to,” he decreed. He urged Allah “to ensure the victory of the Iraqi people against the unjust.” Sheikh Tantawi then led the 5,000 worshipers in reciting a special prayer for the Iraqis martyred in the air attacks. The emotionally weighted prayer triggered a passionate response that soon evolved into calls for a jihad. “Allah-hu-Akbar. Open the doors to the jihad,” the worshipers chanted. “Jihad, jihad against the usurper,” they added. “With our blood and souls we will redeem you, O Islam,” and “Death to the enemies of Allah!” The chanting continued as the worshipers emerged from the mosque. By then somebody had begun distributing inflammatory leaflets and placards reading, “Must the Iraqi people die for Monica?” Egyptian police and security forces did not intervene in the spontaneous rally. Official Cairo signaled its endorsement of the Islamist position through the government-controlled media. For example, an editorial in the newspaper al-Gumhuriya warned that the U.S. bombing campaign would trigger “a new wave of terrorism against Washington.” The blame for the widespread carnage would lie with the United States—“the mother of terrorism”—and its British “puppet,” the editorial concluded.
There was widespread outrage throughout the Arab world. In Damascus heavily armed security forces stood aside as a young mob broke into the U.S. Embassy’s compound and tore and burned the American flag. Marine guards had to rescue the ambassador’s wife from a mob rampaging through the ambassador’s residence area. In Gaza, shouting “Death to Clinton!” the mob tore down and burned the American flags that had been hanging since President Clinton’s unprecedented visit only a few days before. Palestinian police participated in the riots. Similar displays of grassroots rage and violence were reported from virtually every Muslim state. Government-owned and/or -supervised media blasted the United States for its bombing of Iraq and urged revenge. A concurrent theme in the media was the assertion that since Arab governments were intimidated into passive action and lame protests by the display of massive American firepower and the resolve to bomb Arabs at will, it would take dedicated non-state Islamist forces to avenge the American crimes and restore Arab/Muslim honor. Street vendors and preachers from Morocco to the Philippines urged and expected Osama bin Laden to rescue Muslim honor by striking out against the United States and its allies.
At some of the rallies there were explicit calls for revenge and anti-American terrorism. Very important were the calls for terrorism among bin Laden’s Pakistani Islamist supporters. In the Friday sermons delivered in Jamaat-i-Islami mosques and rallies, the speakers warned that the continuation of the U.S. bombing of Iraq would lead to attacks on its embassies in Muslim countries. The address of Jamaat-i-Islami’s Naib Amir Liaqat Baloch to a protest demonstration at Masjid-i-Shuhada in Lahore is indicative. “Islamic movements all over the world will target U.S. embassies and make life hell for Americans if Clinton does not stop the attacks immediately,” Baloch stated. The enmity between Muslims and the United States was already irreconcilable because of the inherent character of the U.S. bombing of Iraq. Baloch argued that “the U.S. acted … as if only the blood of American citizens was precious while that of Muslims was worthless.” In reality “Clinton was shedding the blood of thousands of Muslims in Iraq who were already the victims of the U.S.-backed international food and medicine sanctions for the last eight years.” The U.S. bombing was actually “an attack on the entire Muslim world.” Baloch stressed that “Clinton opted to kill thousands of innocent Iraqis only to avoid his impeachment.” And Baloch had “a message to the U.S. citizens,” amounting to a warning that “their government was promoting hatred between them and the Muslim world under a conspiracy which they must thwart for the sake of peaceful relations with the Muslim world.”
In London, a bastion of bin Laden’s Islamist supporters, reaction to the U.S. and British bombing of Iraq was more than just vocal. The Muslim Council of Britain accused President Clinton of “cynically putting innocent lives in danger to divert attention away from his domestic difficulties” and criticized the British government for its uncritical support of the United States. The Council’s statement emphasized the all-Islamic aspects of the grievances against the United States and the United Kingdom: “The scale and swiftness of the action is in marked contrast with the other serious violations of international legality in, for example, Kosovo, Kashmir, and Palestine. Regrettably, this policy of double standards does not bode well for the future of international order.” The themes of the Friday sermons in the London mosques were as virulent as in their Middle Eastern counterparts. In London the rallies after the Friday prayers also led to mob violence. A demonstration arranged by al-Muhajiroun outside 10 Downing Street turned into a scuffle with police, and Scotland Yard arrested six al-Muhajiroun members on security-related charges. Amir Mirza, a nineteen-year-old al-Muhajiroun member, was arrested by the Yard after he threw an incendiary bomb at a military barracks in west London at dawn. By the weekend the Islamist organizations were reporting a crackdown by the Yard.
On December 21 the London-based Hizb-ut-Tahrir issued a communiqué because “America, the head of Kufr [apostasy], and its British poodle launched sudden strikes against the Muslims in Iraq without any warning.” The communiqué attributed the timing of the attack to President Clinton’s domestic problems: “As for the domestic position of Clinton, it was known that there would be a vote in the House of Representatives to try him on the same day the attack happened. So he took his speedy decision to attack to influence the voting result, under the pretext that it is not allowed to weaken the President at a time when the military forces are at war.”
Ultimately, Hizb-ut-Tahrir emphasized, the bombings of Iraq were undertaken largely in pursuit of the U.S.-British quest for dominance over the Persian Gulf, and it was in this context that the United States demonstrated its intense hostility toward the Arab world. In pursuit of its strategic interests the United States “made Saddam a pariah to the Gulf. She used the imposition of the sanctions and the terms of the inspectors as a continuous source of crises and to spread terror, anxiety, and disturbance amongst the peoples of the Gulf states. She went on to steal the resources of the Gulf states through weapons contracts worth tens of billions of dollars, which exceed the capacities of their armies by many times. She also imposed oppressive security pacts over these peoples, which were signed secretly by their rulers. She made of the rulers symbols that have no more say than to sign on the legality of the American intervention and pay the bill of the cost of their intervention. She also established military bases for the purpose of training, accumulating arms, maintaining American hegemony and her continuous presence under all … circumstances and conditions.” This list of American transgressions against the people of the Arabian peninsula is not different from bin Laden’s.
Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s communiqué states that except for the date of commencing the air strikes, the U.S. campaign against Iraq was optimized toward furthering Washington’s strategic objectives, which are inherently detrimental to the Arab world. “The military attack that Clinton ordered against the Muslims in Iraq is not because of Iraq’s dispute with the inspection team regarding the exposure of some locations. Neither is it to protect the neighbors of Iraq from the threats of Saddam. Nor is it in fear of the chemical and biological weapons as claimed. Rather it is because of the first American objective, which is the strengthening of the American presence in the Gulf and tightening control over it and the attempt to be alone in terms of influence in it.”
And while it stands to reason that the United States would stop at nothing to further its own interests and realize its own objectives, Hizb-ut-Tahrir points the accusing finger at the local conservative Arab leaders whose alliances with the United States facilitate the U.S. presence in Arabia. “This is just a little of the conspiracy of the traitors and agents who govern Muslims. Is it not time for the sincere people of the sons of the Ummah and the leaders to avenge her honor and dignity which were rolled in dust? Is it not time for the Islamic peoples to know that their rulers are agents who find pleasure in humiliation, and that it is time for the peoples to discard them and to clean the country of their disgrace and betrayal? Is it not time for the armies stationed in the camps to destroy the seats of oppression and transgression, and to protect the power of Islam and Muslims from the tyranny of the treacherous rulers and the filth of the criminal Kuffar [apostates]?” Hizb-ut-Tahrir echoes bin Laden’s original call for action against the Arab leaders cooperating with the United States.
THE TERRORIST LEADERSHIP was laying the ground for the implementation of the “bin Laden plans” when the December U.S.-Iraqi crisis occurred. In the aftermath of the “compromise” reached in mid-November about the resumption of the U.N. inspections and with growing pressure in the United Nations to lift the sanctions—pressure imposed by France, China, and Russia, and endorsed by most Arab states—Baghdad was convinced that it would have a few months of routine low-key U.N. activity before Washington instigated another crisis. The White House’s decision to use Iraq ostensibly as an instrument for diverting attention from the president’s domestic problems caught Baghdad by surprise and, given the close coordination between Baghdad, Khartoum, and Qandahar, must have surprised the Islamist leadership as well. As a result, as bombs and cruise missiles were finding their marks throughout Iraq, the Islamists were scrounging to accelerate their operational preparations. Within hours after the beginning of the bombing bin Laden and Zawahiri convened an emergency meeting in Qandahar with several key terrorist and Arab “Afghan” commanders, such as Abu-Said al-Masri from Egypt, to activate their reaction plans. They all signed a message to “the Muslim masses throughout the world” in which they urged their followers “to hit U.S. and British interests and stage demonstrations in protest at the U.S.–British attack on Iraq.” This message was sent clandestinely to Islamist leaders and commanders worldwide.
The Clinton administration seemed to have instigated the mid-December crisis knowing that the bombing of Iraq would spark a terrorism campaign. The White House did have timely knowledge of the arrangements between Turabi, bin Laden, and Hussein earlier in the fall to use the first crisis involving an actual U.S. military strike as a green light for a terrorism campaign. Even though the exercises of mid-October demonstrated that the United States was not ready to withstand a spectacular terrorist strike on its soil, the White House went ahead with the provocation in Iraq and the ensuing bombing campaign.
On December 13 U.S. embassies in the region issued warnings about the possible terrorist threat. “The embassy has information indicating a strong possibility that terrorist elements are planning an attack against U.S. targets in the Gulf, possibly in the next thirty days,” read the message issued in Riyadh to Americans. U.S. officials identified bin Laden as the suspected perpetrator of such an attack. These warnings showed that the Clinton administration anticipated possible retribution for the crisis with Iraq that had just started to escalate. After all, there was no irregular activity in the region at the time. Moreover, these warnings were issued at about the same time the Pentagon was ordered by the president to update its strike plans and expedite preparations for the Iraqi operations.
The Islamist leadership deliberated on the proper reaction to the bombings for a few days and resolved that the only response to the new American challenge would be a confrontation in which they seized the strategic initiative through a series of spectacular operations. They fully expected such a war of terrorism to be protracted. Using Zawahiri’s Egyptian organizations as their primary venues, bin Laden and his lieutenants began issuing communiqués outlining the Islamists’ doctrine for confrontation.
The first communiqué was issued by Zawahiri’s Jihad Movement—The Vanguards of Conquest on December 18. The communiqué, signed by Abdallah al-Mansur, the organization’s secretary general, stressed the urgency of action because the Arab nation would “not be content with the empty words of denunciation and condemnation that we are accustomed to hearing from the [Arab] regimes.” The main message was short and to the point: “In the name of all the sons of the Islamic movement in Egypt, and with the participation of our brothers throughout the great Islamic world, we openly and loudly declare that we will retaliate for what is happening to the sons of our nations in Iraq, since the crimes committed by the United States against our Islamic nation will not go unpunished.”
It took bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their lieutenants two more days to formulate a comprehensive response to the unfolding crisis. The response was pure bin Laden—emphasizing pan-Islamic action without relinquishing the role and responsibility of the terrorist elite. That strategy was elucidated in a communiqué from Zawahiri’s Islamic Group issued on December 20. The communiqué defined fighting the United States as a “divine course and decree,” and so there would be no alternative to waging the jihad against the United States as a sacred duty for all Muslims. The Islamic Group saw no end in sight for the confrontation with Washington because, as demonstrated by the recent events in Iraq, “whenever the White House rulers want to conceal their scandals from their own people, they hit the Islamic peoples.” The communiqué stated that the Muslim world “will not attain glory or stop U.S. arrogance except through it [the divine course].” The communiqué stated that the bombing of Iraq should be examined in the context of the greater struggle between Islamism and the West: “What is happening in Iraq is shameful for the Islamic nation, because Almighty God assigned to it the task of promoting virtue and repudiating abominable actions, and is there any abominable action worse than annihilating an entire Muslim people? What abominable action is worse than the atheists’ raiding and destroying our factories, killing our women and children, and plundering our riches?”
For the current challenge to be met, the communiqué argued, an all-Islamic response was required. “The Islamic movements should play their role in supporting our Muslim people in Iraq, and they should unite to resist the U.S. arrogance.” Because of the gravity of the crisis, theological guidance was required, “and the Islamic nation’s ulema are urged to play their role in the light of this ferocious onslaught … since the nation’s ulema are the guardians and thus have a responsibility.” The communiqué concluded by stressing the significance of the crisis and the Islamists’ expectations from the Muslim world. The Islamic group stated that “what is happening in Iraq today should prompt the [Islamic] nation to rise to the level of the event; it should also compel it to inflict the obligatory punishment on the United States and its supporters and then work to bring the residents of the U.S. White House to trial as war criminals.”
Echoes of agreement with and adoption of bin Laden’s themes resounded from all over the Muslim world, especially in the December 25 Friday sermons. For example, Sheikh Akramah Sabri, the Arafat-approved imam of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, paid more attention to the Iraqi crisis than to the Palestinian problem. Sheikh Sabri did opine that current circumstances make the destruction of Israel more likely. “Let us pray for the day when Jerusalem and the entire holy land of Palestine are liberated from Israeli occupation,” he told the crowd of about 200,000 worshipers. These circumstances were the result of the all-Muslim reaction to the bombing of Iraq. “The aggression against Iraq was designed to divert attention from the shameful things happening in the United States, where the president has been involved in nauseating activities,” Sheikh Sabri explained. The decision to bomb Iraq accurately reflected the West’s inherent hatred “worthy of the Crusaders” toward Islam and Muslims. Sheikh Sabri explained that unless Arab leaders led the forthcoming confrontation with the United States, Britain, and Israel, the enraged masses would topple them as the masses rose up to meet the sacred challenge of jihad. “Some Arab leaders have gone down on their knees to America and England, but their peoples will never do so,” he warned. “They will rise against them, and cast them down, to liberate the Muslim Arab world from American-British influence.” The struggle ahead, Sheikh Sabri concluded, would be over the survival of Islam in the face of the Western onslaught. One triumphant outcome of this confrontation would be securing Palestine in Muslim hands—in other words, the destruction of Israel.
The launching of anti-American Islamist terrorism in retaliation for the bombing campaign against Iraq was no longer a theoretical contemplation. Senior Iraqi officials addressed this threat as a near certainty while denying any connection to the terrorists. Iraqi trade minister Muhammad Mahdi Salah expected “terrorist activities” against the United States to increase as a result of its bombing of Iraq. “When the United States is helping terrorist activities against Iraq, then this will enhance terrorist activities against the United States,” he said. “It is not a threat; it is a consequence of their policy.” Salah stressed that Iraq condemned and did not practice “terrorism.” However, “by adopting [an] aggressive policy against Iraq and against Arab people and against Muslims, and by using sanctions as a means of destroying this society and by using military aggression,” Washington was creating the environment that spurred terrorist attacks.
Al-Quds al-Arabi first raised, ostensibly on the basis of Western media reports, the possibility of cooperation between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden. A late December editorial predicted that “President Saddam Hussein, whose country was subjected to a four-day air strike, will look for support in taking revenge on the United States and Britain by cooperating with Saudi oppositionist Osama bin Laden, whom the United States considers to be the most wanted person in the world.” The editorial noted that this type of cooperation was very likely considering that “bin Laden was planning to move to Iraq before the recent strike.” Al-Quds al-Arabi went on to quote unnamed Western officials, noting that while Saddam Hussein lacked the capabilities to strike back at the West, the Islamists did have the capabilities and were eager to strike out. Cooperation between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden would be the best approach for both of them.
The moment the bombing campaign stopped, Saddam Hussein dispatched Faruq al-Hijazi to Qandahar. Hijazi, Iraq’s ambassador to Turkey and formerly deputy chief of Iraqi intelligence, has been dealing with bin Laden since 1994. He is also the chief of Iraqi intelligence in Turkey, in charge of acquiring strategic technologies and weapons throughout Europe and smuggling them to Iraq and of smuggling Iraqi assets (people, money, oil) into Europe. In Qandahar, Hijazi met with bin Laden to discuss future terrorist strikes against the United States and Britain. He recommended better coordination of operations with Baghdad and offered bin Laden every possible assistance from Iraqi intelligence. Hijazi gave bin Laden concrete examples of the support Iraqi intelligence could offer by covering issues under his responsibility. In addition Hijazi repeated Saddam Hussein’s offer of shelter and hospitality for bin Laden and his people. Bin Laden agreed in principle to spearhead the revenge campaign against the West in accordance with the recently agreed to operational plans but suggested further study and coordination of specific contingency plans and proposed operations. Both sides agreed on the urgent imperative to expedite the unleashing of the anti-American terrorist war.
To demonstrate Baghdad’s commitment to cooperating with bin Laden, Hijazi brought with him and gave bin Laden a pack of blank genuine Yemeni diplomatic passports supplied to Iraqi intelligence by their Yemeni counterparts. Such passports are invaluable for the safe international travel of key terrorist leaders. Hijazi also promised to expedite additional Iraqi professional support. Soon afterward several Iraqi military-intelligence officers arrived in Afghanistan via Pakistan to assist in the advance training and preparation of the Islamist terrorists. The most important were the experts from Unit 999 of Iraqi intelligence. They selected four teams, each consisting of twelve veteran terrorists, for advanced and intense training in sabotage and infiltration techniques for operations in the West in cooperation with Iraqi intelligence. In early January 1999 these teams were already being trained in a barracks on the outskirts of Baghdad.
In late December, Saddam Hussein and his intimate circle concluded that there was no escape from escalating the confrontation with the United States, or Arab countries would gradually accept Washington’s dominance. Repeated attempts by the Iraqi air defense and air force to defy the no-fly zones failed to shoot down a single aircraft—Islamist terrorism seemed the only viable mode of confrontation. The prudent Hussein determined to measure the Islamists’ commitment, however, before daring both the U.S. and the Arab regimes. Around the first of the year Qusay Hussein dispatched his confidants, al-Jubburi and al-Shihabi, back to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden, Zawahiri, and the Islamist terrorist elite. Baghdad offered a joint open-ended, vigorous jihad against Americans throughout the world and against all Arab regimes allied with the United States. In return Iraq asked for an iron-clad guarantee of Islamist cooperation and support—that is, that no Islamist revolution would take place in Iraq throughout this jihad. Bin Laden and Zawahiri assured the Iraqi emissaries that Saddam’s regime would be safe for as long as Iraq actively participated in their jihad. The Iraqis’ trust and confidence in the Islamists was reflected in Hussein’s assertive, defiant actions.
In late December senior government and security officials in several Gulf sheikhdoms cited intelligence data confirming that Saddam Hussein would “contract [with] Islamic terrorist groups,” and specifically bin Laden’s, “to exact retaliation” against the United States, Britain, and their regional allies. British security officials concurred, pointing to the active preparations for something spectacular the Islamist leaders would be able to “agree with,” Saddam Hussein would be able to “understand,” and all would deny responsibility for to reduce the likelihood of a massive retaliation against Iraq. In early January 1999 Kuwaiti intelligence confirmed that there were “hundreds of Arab ‘Afghans’ receiving advanced military training” in camps near al-Nasiriyah in southern Iraq “in preparation for playing a crucial role in a military confrontation that is expected to take place quite soon.” These Arab “Afghans” are being trained by Iraqi intelligence within the context of an alliance Baghdad struck with what Kuwaiti intelligence described as “a front comprising six militant organizations whose ranks include former fighters in the Afghan war effort”—a euphemism for bin Laden’s World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders. The Kuwaitis learned that this agreement called for “the move of hundreds of the members of that front to Iraqi territory” for advanced training in preparation for their imminent participation in “the battle against the United States and its allies.”
Also in late December, Iraqi official media alluded to Baghdad’s penchant for terrorist revenge. On December 24 al-Thawrah, the official organ of Iraq’s ruling Baath party, published an article by Basil Hassun al-Sadi extolling international terrorism as the logical and fitting reaction to the U.S. bombing of Iraq. “As soon as the forces of evil fired their last missile on Iraq on the night of 19 December 1998, the U.S. and British rulers began to express their disappointment, frustration, and fear of retaliation,” Sadi opened. The article then surveyed pronouncements by U.S. and British leaders about the threat of terrorism and special security precautions undertaken. The article emphasized that the driving force behind the worldwide quest for revenge against the United States was the grassroots rage against U.S. policies worldwide—a trend that peaked with the bombing of Iraq. “The motive for any retaliatory attack against U.S. interests in the world will be the injustice, which the getaway U.S. Administration is practicing against all the voices that call for justice, as well as the voices that reject tyranny, the domination of the world by one state, and the confiscation of people’s liberties and the legitimacy of the United Nations. Therefore, as long as the United States insists on tyranny, it will continue to live in fear, abandon its embassies or surround them with security cordons, evacuate its nationals, and intensify security around its planes, ships, and military bases. Thus, every American and every supporter of U.S. aggression will always be haunted by fear of attack.” Sadi then surveyed the precautionary measures undertaken by the United States, from the closing of embassies to evacuation of citizens from several spots around the world, and approvingly quoted Defense Secretary William Cohen “admitting that all these measures are useless against any retaliation.” Sadi agreed, stressing that recent U.S. actions had already earned the ire and wrath of people throughout the world, in essence bringing about a long-term campaign of terrorism against the United States. “By their savage aggression, the Washington rulers violated all international laws and pacts as well as the bill of human rights. This violation deserves punishment. But, they do not know from where the punishment will come. Thus, they are haunted by fear of punishment every hour of the day,” Sadi concluded.
Several Islamist terrorist organizations endorsed the concept of revenge outlined by Baghdad. For example, the next day—December 25—the Palestinian Islamic Jihad published its analysis of the essence and ramifications of the U.S. bombing of Iraq in an editorial in the Gaza paper al-lstiqlal. “This new crisis is no longer a personal difference between the Iraqi leader and the leaders and chiefs of the West,” the Islamic Jihad decreed. The current crisis was yet another phase in a historical confrontation between the West and Islam. “The memories of the Crusader wars have not left the minds of the politicians and soldiers of the West, which is why today, they are trying to seek vengeance for what happened centuries ago, benefiting from this terrible imbalance of power, which was primarily and basically created by the West. It was only natural for the spirit of violence and control and the desire to impose hegemony, which has characterized Western civilization and its industrial revolution, to take control of affairs there and return to this imbalance of power, in order to prepare for Western hegemony on our resources and the resources of the oppressed nations.”
In contrast, according to al-lstiqlal, the Arab governments remained silent and inactive throughout the crisis because Arab leaders were too fearful of the United States to do anything. And that was the quintessence of the ramifications of the attack on Iraq for the entire Muslim world. “What happened over the past few days in Iraq reveals in a clear-cut and flagrant manner the depth of the crisis the ruling Arab regimes are going through. These regimes are moving further and further away from their masses and the interests of these masses, which emerged in an impulsive and natural manner to curse the United States and declare its full solidarity with the Iraqi people. This crisis will become more and more impossible so long as these regimes continue with their same policy and trends and so long as the state of incompetence and disregard continues to shackle the stances of the regimes and govern their decision-making process.” The popular grassroots outburst of rage against both the West and the pliant Arab regimes was critical in understanding the forthcoming response from the Muslim world. “It is a throttling crisis, and the U.S. missiles did not strike the Iraqis alone, but were directed at every Arab, Muslim, and other person who refuses to submit to the conditions of the civilization of bestiality and the policy of Americanizing the world. The protracted battle truly requires patience, faith, and tolerance.” Having been exacerbated by the recent bombing of Iraq, Islam’s real battle against the reincarnation of the Crusaders’ onslaught had only begun, the Islamic Jihad concluded.
Ultimately the key to effective terrorism in and out of the Arab world is firmly in the hands of the two main sponsoring states—Iran and Syria. How Tehran and Damascus analyze the ramifications of the U.S. bombing of Iraq will determine the intensity of reaction. The primary strategic outcome of the bombing campaign has been the further consolidation of the tripartite axis that bands Iraq, Syria, and Iran together. Given the Clinton administration’s claim that these bombings contributed to the emergence of a new, pro-U.S., Middle East, a conservative Arab analyst noted, “it would be in the natural course of things that the Iraqis, Syrians, and Iranians would react strongly and move so as to counterbalance the new reality. Their reaction would have been prompted by strategic considerations related to the security of the Middle East region.” Neither Syria nor Iran wants to see Iraq dismembered or taken over by a pro-Western regime that would break the on-land connection between them. They are also afraid that the Iraqi Liberation Act enacted by the U.S. Congress—unlikely to cause the downfall of Hussein’s regime but bound to become a headache for Baghdad—will be followed by an “Iranian Liberation Act” and a “Syrian Liberation Act.” Hence it is imperative for both Tehran and Damascus to deter the Washington-led West from continuing the onslaught against Iraq. “This is because Iran’s and Syria’s security is to a large extent bound up with that of Iraq,” the Arab analyst explained.
Committing terrorist assets to the indigenously popular revenge campaign against the United States is an expedient strategic move for the two sponsoring states. It did not take long for both Damascus and Tehran to divert assets and resources recently earmarked for an escalation in the struggle against Israel to the building campaign against the United States. Already in November 1998 the uppermost Iranian leadership, including Khamenei, held a secret summit meeting with the leadership of HAMAS to define frameworks in which they could work jointly and closely with the HizbAllah against Israel and to determine the new levels of advanced terrorist training HAMAS terrorists would now be receiving in Iran to prepare them for the required missions. In a separate meeting Tehran informed Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the HizbAllah secretary general, of the modalities of cooperation. Then in late December, capitalizing on the grassroots reaction to the bombing of Iraq and bin Laden’s latest fatwas, Tehran mobilized its key assets. With help from Syrian intelligence the HizbAllah Special Operations Command started activating dormant cells all over the world, primarily in Western Europe and Latin America. The Syrians called “old friends” back into active service, such as the Armenian ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia), including ASALA’s leader, Simon Sakarian, and West European radicals. Sakarian, also known by the nom de guerre Abu-Mesto, is in exile in Argentina and runs a criminal-cum-terrorist network throughout Latin America and into the United States. Concurrently intelligence reports indicated that Imad Mughaniyah, bin Laden’s counterpart in the Committee of Three, had arrived in Lebanon to coordinate the spectacular terrorist operations from there.
The extent of the international reach of HAMAS was demonstrated through the activation of its support resources in Lebanon and Pakistan. This infrastructure was organized within a few months with professional and financial support from Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the Iranian intelligence official responsible for sponsoring Islamic liberation movements. For Tehran the HAMAS infrastructure in Pakistan, closely intertwined with the resources of such organizations as the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, serves as a unique springboard into Pakistan and in Central Asia. The HAMAS presence in Pakistan has operational ramifications. Back in November a special detachment of the Heroes of the Islamic Jihad, comprising eight HAMAS members and five Pakistani followers of bin Laden’s, returned to Pakistan from intensive terrorist training in Iran. The Heroes of the Islamic Jihad were established by Tehran with bin Laden’s help in winter 1997–98 to conduct spectacular operations overseas, including the subsequently aborted operations in Argentina and France. Now the Palestinian-Pakistani detachment was sent to an ISI-sponsored Hizb-ul-Mujahideen camp in the Muzaffarabad area, where they received final training for a month, pending a specific spectacular operation. Additional “Heroes” detachments had already arrived in Pakistan. Concurrently numerous Taliban from the Far East and the Middle East, then studying in Pakistan, were recruited jointly by HAMAS and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and sent for accelerated training in the ISI-run camps in Afghanistan. Technically and operationally, these terrorist forces are in the final stages of readying for operations.
Related preparations for major state-sponsored terrorist operations have been reported. U.S. intelligence had already monitored a satellite-telephone conversation between Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and a commander overseas in which they discussed an imminent bomb attack on a Western target. Immediately after the cessation of the U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq, representatives of bin Laden arrived in the Bekáa, Lebanon, for a conference with senior commanders of HAMAS and Palestinian terrorist organizations long sponsored by Iraq, such as Abu-Nidal’s Fatah Revolutionary Council and Abu-Ibrahim’s “May 15 Group,” a small group of expert bomb makers. They discussed the launching of spectacular terrorist operations in the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms, Western Europe, and the Far East as revenge for the U.S. and British bombing of Iraq.
At the same time a major summit was being planned in Qandahar for the last week of December 1998. Hassan al-Turabi was expected to be among the participants, along with the Taliban leadership, bin Laden, Zawahiri, senior ISI officers, and leading terrorist commanders. Turabi would arrive on a special plane from Khartoum. According to a senior Islamist source, Turabi “would focus during his talks with bin Laden and the Taliban leaders on coordinating ways of confronting Washington, ‘the common enemy.’ ” The expectation that Turabi would attend the meeting in Qandahar suggests that monumental decisions were on the table—presumably authorizing the use of weapons of mass destruction and/or striking out at the United States. Islamist sources also expected Turabi to invite bin Laden to return with him to Sudan. But the early exposure of Turabi’s plans compelled him to postpone his own trip and send senior confidants to attend the summit in Qandahar.
Islamabad introduced a sense of urgency to the process. The ISI leaked to Ausaf, an Islamist paper, that in mid-December, American diplomats led by Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth threatened Afghanistan with a bombing campaign like that on Iraq unless the nation extradited bin Laden and his lieutenants. “The U.S. has given a deadline of 15 January 1999 to deport eighteen mujahideen leaders including Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan and has threatened action if they are provided shelter after this deadline,” the paper wrote. In these discussions the U.S. diplomats also demanded that the Taliban incorporate other Afghan parties into their government and liberalize their Islamist form of government. Having failed to subdue Iraq and with crises at home, Ausaf wrote, “the U.S. is planning to attack Afghanistan under the cover of Osama and other mujahid leaders.” The editorial argued that the U.S. fixation with bin Laden was a manifestation of its overall hatred toward Islamism. “Osama bin Laden has become a big challenge for the U.S. and its Arab allies and it is trying to get rid of this perpetual threat at any cost.” But the U.S. challenge was far greater because “wherever in the world an Islamic system is established, the U.S. declares it a violation of human rights. This has only one meaning: that wherever Muslims are living, they should follow a code of life based on liberalism which has the consent of the U.S. This means that if Muslims all over the world adopt the Christian way of life, they are acceptable; otherwise, they are terrorists and murderers of human rights.” Under these circumstances Muslims must draw the line—in Afghanistan—and with their Arab mujahideen allies block the U.S. encroachment into the Muslim world.
In response to this situation Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri gave a series of interviews to Arab and Pakistani papers and to Western electronic media, using trusted Pakistani and Arab correspondents. All these interviews covered the same issues and seem to have been granted in a single session in a tent in the Helmand Valley, the center of poppy growing in southwestern Afghanistan. Three themes were dominant: (1) bin Laden is not responsible for the East Africa bombing even though he supports the action; (2) weapons of mass destruction are admissible in the struggle against the West, although again bin Laden has nothing to do with them; and (3) in the aftermath of the strikes on Iraq, jihad against the West is an urgent obligation. A close look at the Arabic text of bin Laden’s replies shows deep thought and fine, precise phrasing aimed to influence his Muslim audience. Although bin Laden was also anxious to get his message across to the West, the objective there was to issue a veiled threat, not to convince.
Bin Laden defined his own role within the Islamist movement in the interview that Rahimullah Yusufzai, a friendly Pakistani journalist based in Peshawar, conducted for ABC News. Bin Laden saw his greatest contribution to the worldwide jihad in guiding and instigating the masses into action, not in actual command over specific operations. He explained that “we, in the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, have … issued a crystal clear fatwa calling on the Nation to carry on jihad aimed at liberating Islamic holy sites … and all Islamic lands.” He was gratified that the Muslim Nation “has responded to this appeal and this instigation.” Bin Laden vowed to “continue this course because it is a part of our religion,” particularly since God “ordered us to carry out jihad so that the word of God may remain exalted to the heights. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans, in order to liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the Holy Ka’aba is considered a crime, let history be a witness that I am a criminal.” His possible involvement in any terrorist operation should be judged accordingly.
As to the bombing in East Africa, bin Laden disassociated himself from the terrorist strike while endorsing it. “I had no hand at all in the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania,” he told an Afghan correspondent. “But I feel no sorrow over the blasts.” He did not rule out that militant Muslims were responsible for the blasts. To the Arab correspondent of al-Sharq al-Awsat, bin Laden reiterated his denial of involvement in the bombing but expressed support for those behind these attacks “and whoever carries out military actions against American forces,” such as the embassy bombings.
In his interview with Yusufzai, bin Laden went further to rationalize and justify spectacular terrorist strikes in which large numbers of innocent bystanders, including Muslims, might be injured. He said that these bystanders should be considered as human shields held hostage by the Americans to facilitate the United States’ plunder of Muslim lands. “According to Islamic jurisprudence if we abstain from firing on the Americans lest we should kill these Muslims (used by them as shields), the harm that could befall Muslims at large, who are being attacked, outweighs the good of saving the lives of these Muslims used as shields. This means that in a case like this, when it becomes apparent that it would be impossible to repel these Americans without assaulting them, even if this involved the killing of Muslims, this is permissible under Islam.” Bin Laden stressed that he would have done this even if his own children were being used as human shields. He used this reasoning to reiterate his understanding of “the motives of those who carried out these acts [the bombing of the U.S. embassies in East Africa].”
Bin Laden dodged questions from al-Sharq al-Awsat’s interviewer on whether he was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. He told the Pakistani correspondent that obtaining chemical and nuclear weapons “is a religious duty. How we use them is up to us.” To the Arab correspondent, he stressed the importance and urgency in acquiring weapons of mass destruction for the entire Muslim world. “Our [Muslim] nation is facing aggression and it has the right to possess what is necessary to defend itself.” The acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, which bin Laden denied, “is not a charge. Instead, it means preparation and the fulfillment of a duty.”
Bin Laden’s discussion of the jihad as an urgent imperative for the Muslim world leaves no doubt about his intentions and role. To al-Sharq al-Awsat’s interviewer, he explained the importance of the recent U.S. and British bombing of Iraq as a catalyst for the rejuvenation of an armed jihad. “The American and British peoples stated widely that they support their leaders’ decision to attack Iraq. This means that all individuals of these two nations, as well as the Jews in occupied Palestine, are belligerent people and every Muslim must stand against them and must kill and fight them. Anything that can be taken from them by force is considered booty for the Muslims.” In a subsequent interview with al-Jazirah television in Qatar, he urged all Muslims to kill all Americans, including noncombatants. “If it is made possible by Almighty God to Muslims, every American man is targeted. They are enemies to us, whether they are involved in direct combat against us or pay taxes. Perhaps you heard in recent days that the rate of those who support Clinton in striking Iraq is about three-fourths of the American people.” This definition and justification of legitimate targets amounts to sanctioning indiscriminate terrorism in the United States.
Bin Laden defined his position on the recent bombing of Iraq in the context of the priorities of the jihad. There should be no confusion about the ultimate objective of the jihad, bin Laden told Yusufzai: “Our work targets world infidels in the first place. Our enemy is the Crusader alliance led by America, Britain, and Israel. It is a Crusader-Jewish alliance. However, some regimes in the Arab and Muslim worlds have joined that alliance, preventing us Muslims from defending the holy Ka’aba. Our hostility is in the first place, and to the greatest extent, leveled against these world infidels, and by necessity the regimes which have turned themselves into tools for this occupation of [Islamic lands].” The bombing of Iraq and the proper Islamist reaction should be understood in this context. Bin Laden explained that “the treacherous attack perpetrated a few days ago against the Muslim people of Iraq by the United States and Britain has confirmed several things, the most important of which is that Britain and America are acting on behalf of Israel and the Jews, to strike at any power in the Islamic world, with a view to paving the way for the Jews to divide the Muslim world once again and enslave it and boost the rest of its wealth. As is known, a great part of the force that carried out the attack came from certain Gulf countries, which underlined the fact that these countries have lost their sovereignty.” Bin Laden had no doubt that the people will rise up to defend Islam. “Many of these rulers could face the fate of the Shah of Iran,” he anticipated. “Under these circumstances, Muslims should carry out their obligations [to wage the jihad], since the rulers of the region have accepted the invasion of their countries. But these countries belong to Islam and not to those rulers. May God exact his revenge against all of them.” As for bin Laden and the World Islamic Front, they would concentrate on direct confrontation with the United States and Israel. “The main focus of the Front, as its name indicates, are the Jews and Crusaders because they are the biggest enemy. The main effort, at this phase, must target the Jews and the Crusaders.”
Insisting that he was obeying Mullah Omar’s instructions not to be directly involved in any act of violence while in Afghanistan, bin Laden regretted to al-Sharq al-Awsat’s interviewer that he would have no direct involvement in this sacred jihad against Americans. He did acknowledge having influence on the waging of jihad. Bin Laden said he continued to “guide [Muslims] toward holy war against Jews and Christians,” which was a duty from a Muslim legal point of view. He added that the perpetrators of the East Africa bombing and other terrorist operations might have been influenced by his writings and guidance, but that did not mean he was responsible for their actions although he took pride in their trust.
Pakistani Islamist leaders announced that they were ready to distribute all over the Muslim world a special message Osama bin Laden had recorded on videotape. “This message would expose the U.S. conspiracies against the Taliban and emphasize the need for evacuation of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia,” the Pakistani Islamists stated. Bin Laden expected this message to further exacerbate the Islamist anti-American campaign.
On January 5, 1999, Saddam Hussein, clearly emboldened by bin Laden’s backing, delivered a defiant speech commemorating the foundation of the Iraqi Army. This speech, which was widely reported throughout the Hub of Islam, further assured the Islamists of Hussein’s resolve to wage the jihad they advocate. Hussein repeated many Islamist themes. For example, he urged the Arabs to overthrow those governments allied with the United States, in particular those permitting the stationing of foreign troops on their soil. “Revolt against foreign powers, their aggression and their armies and chase them. Kick out injustice and its perpetrators,” Hussein urged. “Revolt against those who boast of friendship with the United States. The dwarfs on their thrones will be forced to hear you, or else they will step down to give way [to] the people to say their opinion and take their action.” Hussein also called attention to the dire state of Islam’s holy shrines. Jerusalem was a “humiliated hostage” to Jewish occupation, while the holy shrines in Saudi Arabia were “wounded by the presence of foreign soldiers and their spears. Look around to see how mischievous persons have humiliated your sacred places, which are now trodden by foreign powers after conniving with them so as to hit the great Iraq.”
On Friday, January 8, Ausaf carried a message recently conveyed by “Arab Mujahid Osama bin Laden” in which he urged Muslims all over the world “to continue their jihad against the oppression of the United States, Britain, and international Zionism.” Bin Laden also clarified his role in the jihad in the context of his agreement with Mullah Omar. He explained that because of his agreement with the Taliban he “[would] not indulge in any kind of activities here [in Afghanistan], [but] he [would] in other parts of the world continue his struggle for achieving his goal.” Bin Laden emphasized that “in my struggle against the oppressive activities of the United States and Britain and international Zionism, Mullah Omar fully supports me.” This is because “it is the United States which has started a war against the Muslims. We are striving only to give it a fitting reply.” Although he said he had nothing to do with the August bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, bin Laden could certify that “the people involved in these explosions had just given a slight warning to the United States. A full-fledged reply is still to come forth.” In this context, Ausaf commented, he “did not term attacks on Americans in the Gulf improbable.” Osama bin Laden concluded, “It would be better for the United States if it gives up its activities against the Muslims, apologizes to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Sudan for its attacks, and calls back its troops from the Gulf.”
These themes were simultaneously repeated and endorsed by Islamists all over the world in their Friday sermons. For example, the preacher in the al-Aqsa mosque devoted his sermon to the situation in Iraq, clearly identified as America’s victim, and in particular Saddam Hussein’s speech. “Two days ago, Saddam had appealed to the young generation in the ruling families to topple their corrupted rulers because they had conspired with the West against their brothers and sisters,” the preacher said. But this would not happen because the entire Arab establishment was so afraid of the United States, they would not dare challenge its hold over their country. The only salvation for Iraq, and the entire Arab world, was in the fold of militant Islam. “O, Saddam: now your head is wanted; the Americans and the British want to replace you with a new agent for them. You should defend yourself in order to survive. And the way to survive is not through nationalism, or Baathism.… The only way to survive is to deal with Allah directly, to return to the path of Allah. You may declare Islam or step aside and invite His people to take over. You don’t have plenty of time.” The only salvation for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq could come from “Allah, and the soldiers of Allah. O Muslims, Allah has ordered us to work. We know that the great battle is coming. Iraq may or may not be the spark, but the sincere Muslims will one day reach the rule in Baghdad, Damascus, Amman, Cairo, Istanbul, and Pakistan. Islam will rule the world, one day, against the will of the infidels and the hypocrites. We are trying to avoid bloodshed, but these wolves feel an appetite for the blood of Muslims.” The al-Aqsa preacher reaffirmed that the battle for Iraq was the catalyst for the eruption of the Islamist confrontation with the U.S.-led West over the future of Islam. “There will be many battles with the infidels, but we will be victorious by the will of Allah.” For the al-Aqsa preacher the building tension in the Muslim world “is a sign that the revenge of Allah is near; that the victory of Allah is near.”
Before long a spate of terrorist strikes and narrowly averted strikes took place all over the world. The common denominator of the myriad of perpetrators was their belief in and commitment to the teachings of Osama bin Laden. The Islamist terrorist activities of the first months of 1999 are precursors of the new era of Islamist rage and revenge.