ON DECEMBER 28, 1998, a little-known Yemeni group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Badge abducted sixteen Western tourists—twelve British, two American, and two Australian—in the remote district of Abyan in Yemen. Most of the members of the Islamic Jihad were trained in Afghanistan but are too young to have participated in the war against the Soviets. They have training camps in the mountains of Abyan, about 250 miles south of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. The tourists were abducted when about twenty heavily armed mujahideen attacked their five-vehicle convoy some 60 miles northeast of Aden. The hostages were transferred to the group’s remote mountain hideaway. The kidnappers issued a specific demand that was ignored by Sanaa. Instead the next day Yemeni security forces stormed the Islamic Jihad’s camp. The hostages were used as human shields, forced to stand with their hands up on open ground in the path of the army’s attack. Three Britons and an Australian tourist died, and one Briton, one American, and one Australian were injured—most of them by the army’s fire. At least three of the kidnappers were killed, including an Egyptian “Afghan” known as Osama al-Masri. Three others, including 28-year-old Zain al-Abdin Abu Bakar al-Mihdar, the Islamic Jihad’s leader, known by the nom de guerre Abu-al-Hassan, were captured. That night, December 29, the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan, an obscure Islamist group, issued a statement in Dubai criticizing both the attack of the Yemeni security forces and Sanaa’s reason for ordering the attack. “The [Yemeni] Government could not tolerate a group of young Yemenis demanding that the aggression against Iraq be halted and that the British and U.S. forces be chased out of the Arabian Peninsula,” the statement read.
The kidnapping operation was actually rooted in the brief history of the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan, an offshoot of the Yemeni Islamic Jihad. The Islamic Jihad is one of five or six Islamist organizations that were formed for internal power-politics purposes in about 1993 with the backing of Sanaa. Each of these “Armies” comprised a mix of veteran “Afghans”—predominantly Yemenites, but also Egyptians, Algerians, and other Arabs—and young Yemenites. In mid-1998 Sanaa sought to integrate the Islamist forces into the armed forces. The Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan announced its existence as an independent entity and declared that it was coming out “raising the flag of jihad for God in order to establish God’s rule in the land of faith and wisdom, which was corrupted by the ruling, unjust, and renegade gang [the Yemeni government], and to purge Yemen of the latter’s corruption and abuses.” It called on all Yemenites to join the struggle to uproot “the renegade secular government.”
In late August, in the aftermath of the U.S. cruise missile attack on Sudan and Afghanistan, the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan declared its support for bin Laden and the jihadist cause he was espousing. Abu-al-Hassan announced in a communiqué that the Islamic Army “declares its support and backing for Sheikh Osama bin Laden and the brothers in Sudan … and appeals to all sectors of the Yemeni people, the descendants of the mujahideen conquerors, to kill the Americans and seize their possessions, for their blood is proscribed and their possessions are the Muslims’ spoils. The Aden Islamic Army pledges to destroy U.S. possessions and bases that are being equipped in Socotra, al-Hudaydah, and Aden.” But there was no communication between Abu-al-Hassan and the Islamist leadership in Afghanistan.
On October 11, 1998, the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan issued another communiqué warning tourists and foreigners of the dire consequences of visiting or staying in Yemen. As an “Islamic land,” the foreigners in Yemen are infidels and propagators of atheist, corrupt, and vicious ideas. Sanaa, who had failed to comprehend the Islamists’ rage, reacted with offers to improve the conditions of their integration into the armed forces. The Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan maintained its stance, and the Yemeni security forces began a crackdown of the Islamists. In a clash on December 18 the security forces arrested the Army’s supreme leader, Saleh Haydara Atawi. The Islamists had no option but to escalate the confrontation.
But by December the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan was mired in international terrorism, a development beyond its actual capabilities. Back in November London-based Abu-Hamzah al-Masri, a lieutenant of bin Laden’s, approached Abu-al-Hassan and asked for support for a terrorist detachment made up of U.K.-based Islamists that was preparing to strike British and American targets in Aden. Many members of the teams had already arrived in Yemen disguised as students, with genuine British papers. Abu-al-Hassan promised Abu-Hamzah that he would protect the terrorists as his “guests.” The U.K.-based network was activated on December 19 as part of the first round of Islamist revenge against the United States and Britain. On December 23 three terrorists in Aden were arrested after being stopped for a traffic violation. The car was full of explosives, and the terrorists were on their way to blow up the British consulate in the port of Aden. Abu-al-Hassan felt compelled to do everything in his power to save his “guests” from government hands.
Abu-al-Hassan decided to seize American, or Western, hostages in order to trade them for both the three terrorists and other leaders of the Islamic Jihad, such as Atawi. “The action,” according to the Islamic Army’s statement, “was taken to take revenge for the injustices and arrogance which the Muslims of Iraq and Palestine and other countries were being subjected to by the infidels.” In London, Islamist sources reported that the kidnapping was carried out “in response to a fatwa made by Osama bin Laden that sanctioned the killing of Westerners.” This statement was later confirmed by Abu-al-Hassan himself. After his capture he admitted to his interrogators that he had ordered both the kidnapping and ultimately the killing of the Western hostages as acts of jihad. “We regard what we have done and opening fire on the Christians a form of jihad in the cause of God.” Although he had no direct contact with bin Laden, Abu-al-Hassan emphasized that his actions were “based on a fatwa issued by Osama bin Laden that sanctioned the killing of Americans and Britons whether these were civilians or military.” This is exactly the kind of dynamics bin Laden hoped his fatwa would inspire.
In addition to inspiring the kidnapping and killing, bin Laden’s position also strongly influenced the demands issued by the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan. The Army demanded the release of both old and recent prisoners but also made political demands. One of the first demands came from the bin Laden-affiliated Islamic Observation Center in London. The Center was informed by “the one in charge of the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan’s Political and Information Office” that the Islamic Army wanted “to resolve the issue peacefully and also to demand that the hostages be exchanged for the nine detainees.” The Islamic Army stressed that “the operation was also designed to demand that the blockade imposed on the Iraqi people be lifted and that the privileges and facilities granted to U.S. forces on Yemeni territory be abolished.” In another communication with a London-based Islamist leader, the Islamic Army added that they had demanded “the lifting of the blockades imposed on Iraq, Libya, and Sudan.”
Sanaa reported that Yemeni officials had been presented with two demands not related to the prisoners’ release. The first demand was removal of the sanctions against the Muslim people of Iraq. The Islamic Army noted that “the nations to which their hostages belonged were engaged in a systematic effort to starve and hurt the Muslim people of Iraq.” The second demand was to ease “the pressure that the government was applying against some of the mujahideen who are on the run and pursued by security agencies.” The second demand is missing from all other communiqués and might have been added by the terrorists in the field, but otherwise the logic and language used by the Islamic Army are identical to that of bin Laden and his followers.
The interrogation of the three terrorists captured on December 23 led the Yemeni security authorities to three more terrorists who were planning more bombings of Western targets in the Aden area. The interrogation of these six Islamists clarified the complex relationship between the Islamists in Yemen and those in England. Of the six, one had a valid French passport and the other five had valid British passports. They confessed to being members of Abu-Hamzah’s Partisans of the Sharia and that the organization assisted in their travel to Yemen.
In London, Abu-Hamzah rallied to the defense of both the arrested Islamists and the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan while insisting he had not broken British law. In essence he denied sending the group to Yemen but justified their recourse to terrorism. He also confirmed that he “had been contacted” by Abu-al-Hassan a few times, including “just before the gun-fight.” Abu-Hamzah denied any links between his organization, the Partisans of the Sharia, and the Islamists who were arrested in Yemen, but he readily acknowledged that he would “love it” if the Yemeni regime were overthrown and replaced with an Islamic regime. While denying having anything to do with the terrorist plans in Aden, Abu-Hamzah stated that he had no objection to the terrorists’ plans to blow up British institutions “if they believe in it, and they know they do it for the sake of God, and they know it will stop the state terrorism of Britain and America.” Following the Friday prayers on January 15, Abu-Hamzah stepped up his threats. He warned that “if Abu-al-Hassan al-Mihdar is harmed, his followers in the Islamic Aden Army throughout the world would avenge him.” He also reiterated his endorsement of Islamist terrorist revenge for the air strikes against Iraq, delivering a veiled threat to the Gulf sheikhdoms that permitted U.S. and British aircraft to operate from their bases. Abu-Hamzah stressed that “it is not permissible—neither by religion or tradition—[to allow] the aircraft of the Americans and the Britons to bombard Muslims in Iraq, or to let them roam our [the Muslims’] countries and territory freely and in peace.”
Sheikh Omar Bakri, leader of the U.K.-based Islamist organization al-Muhajiroun and a self-professed follower of Osama bin Laden, tried to put a spin on Abu-Hamzah’s statements. He acknowledged that the Islamists were recruiting young followers in London and throughout Western Europe, sending them to military training camps in such places as Afghanistan and Yemen. “They learn how to shoot, to swim, to ride a horse,” he said. “They came across the Islamic obligation in the Koran that when they reach the age of fifteen, they must get military training. Some of them may be recruited by mujahideen.” He acknowledged that the training some of the recruiting organizations provide is considered terrorist in the West. Sheikh Bakri confirmed that he had sent British Muslims to be trained in Afghanistan and Kashmir but insisted there was nothing illegal in such training. As for the British Islamists captured in Yemen, Bakri claimed that they had gone there “with the aid of [Abu-]Hamzah.” He also confirmed that the hostage takers “had had contacts” with Islamist leaders in London in order to “guarantee the safety of British hostages.”
The pretense of distance and disengagement from terrorism maintained by the London-based Islamist leaders vanished in early January 1999, the moment British security authorities began to examine closely the activities of the U.K.-based leaders in connection with recent events in Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Abu-Hamzah has threatened retaliation against the British if they interfere with the Islamists’ efforts to target “oppressors” abroad. He stated that at present his own group, the Supporters of Shariah, “had no direct intention of attacking targets in Britain.” He warned, however, that if the British authorities “got in the way” of the attempts of the Partisans and other Islamist organizations to overthrow un-Islamic regimes in the Arab world and replace them with Islamic regimes, the British could expect a “whack.”
Taken together, the events in Yemen and Britain clearly demonstrate the wide acceptance of the principles of jihad as advocated by bin Laden and the willingness of Islamists to rely on them as religious authorization for acts of terrorism. The existence of a solid, capable Islamist terrorist infrastructure in the West, capable of operating both at home and overseas, was confirmed. These terrorist groups are controlled by bin Laden followers and loyalists. All of the activities took place in Yemen and Britain without precise instructions from Osama bin Laden, who served only as the guiding force.
THE UNITED STATES and its allies were once again reminded of the magnitude of the Islamist terrorist threat in mid-January 1999, when Indian security authorities thwarted a complex plan to simultaneously blow up the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and the U.S. consulates in Chennai and Calcutta. The car bombings, planned by a multinational detachment of about a dozen terrorists relying on a larger support network in place, were scheduled to take place on January 26, when India celebrates its Republic Day. The operation was organized in accordance with the bin Laden–ISI deal of spring 1998, according to which the Islamists would carry out spectacular terrorist strikes in the heart of India in return for the ISI’s support, protection, and sponsorship.
The terrorist plan collapsed following the arrest in New Delhi of one of the key operatives, Syed Abu Nasir, a 27-year-old Bangladeshi national. He was arrested while carrying over four pounds of RDX high explosives and five detonators, which he had received from an ISI agent already in India. Abu Nasir is a veteran terrorist and intelligence operative whose career epitomizes the evolution of Islamist terrorism. He became an activist Islamist in about 1990. His zeal, recognized by recruiters, landed him a job in the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), one of the Islamist “charity” entities organized by bin Laden. Between 1992 and 1994 he worked for the IIRO in Dhaka and traveled to Thailand for some “operations” on behalf of the IIRO. All this time he was being watched by ISI talent spotters. In early 1994 he was transferred to the IIRO branch in Lahore, where he was responsible for delivering financial aid to over forty training camps for Islamist mujahideen from all over the world in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. During these visits he was approached by an ISI officer and offered military-terrorism training in Afghanistan. Abu Nasir agreed and was immediately sent to a specialized weapons-training camp in Kunar, Afghanistan. While in the camp Abu Nasir, like many of the other foreign trainees, was identified as a member of the Lashkar-e-Tuiba, a Pakistani militant Islamist movement involved in ISI-sponsored terrorism and subversion in Kashmir. The senior commanders of the Lashkar-e-Tuiba, in particular those responsible for operations in India, visited the camp frequently and closely followed the trainees’ progress. The trainees were also closely watched by ISI operatives throughout the training process. A promising few, including Abu Nasir, were formally recruited by Brigadier Malik as ISI operatives. Abu Nasir was then sent for additional intelligence-gathering training in Pakistan. He returned to Bangladesh with the assignment of gathering intelligence about the Indian Army’s deployment and arsenals in the Eastern Sector, the area surrounding Bangladesh. Gradually his tasks were expanded to include cross-border operations into India. All this time he retained his affiliation with the IIRO. By now the ISI and the Islamist leadership trusted him fully.
Since the mid-1990s the ISI has been expanding the use of infiltration and exfiltration routes between Bangladesh and eastern India and has markedly increased its support for regional terrorist organizations, such as the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), the Khaplang and Isaac Swu-T Muivah wings of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), and the Tripura insurgents, all in Northeast India. For the supervision and conduct of these operations the ISI maintained a forward-office-cum-transit center in an upscale part of Dhaka. The center fell under the cover of the Jamiat-e-Tulba office, also in Dhaka. The Dhaka office coordinated the operations of half a dozen other transit centers, providing sanctuary and support for terrorists from various parts of northeast India. In the late 1990s ISI activities expanded to include the clandestine exfiltration of key Islamist operatives from as far away as Kashmir for training in Pakistan and the infiltration of people and equipment back into India. These sensitive operations concerning Kashmir and other networks deep within India were run separately by Sheikh Eklakh Ahmed, a Pakistani-Kashmiri who himself shuttled in and out of India. Before long Abu Nasir began participating in these operations.
Abu Nasir joined the terrorist elite in mid-September 1998. On September 17–18 he and a few fellow operatives, including Arab “Afghans,” attended a high-level planning meeting in the Dhaka office of the Al-Haramanian Islamic Foundation, a Saudi Islamist charity affiliated with bin Laden’s web of charities. Key participants were Sheikh Ahmed Al-Gamdi, the president of the IIRO; Professor Hafiz Muhammad Sayeed, head of Lashkar-e-Tuiba; Sheikh Ahmed Heddeshi, president of the Al-Haramanian Islamic Foundation; Dr. Saleh Saud Al-Ansari and Mohammad Tahir, both of the International Islamic Federation of Students; and Azam Chima, one of the legendary “Launching Commanders” of Lashkar-e-Tuiba, who runs operations throughout India. Abu Nasir had met some of the Lashkar commanders back in Kunnad. Abu Nasir and the others were told they had been selected to bomb U.S. diplomatic missions in Bangladesh and India in the near future.
The mission of Abu Nasir and a few Egyptian and Sudanese associates was the U.S. consulate in Chennai, India. In Dhaka they were provided with the layout of the consulate and a list of American officials working there. On October 2 Abu Nasir’s group crossed into India from Bangladesh and proceeded to Chennai. There they conducted lengthy observations and obtained still and video footage of the consulate. Their preliminary plan was to focus on the Bank of America on the consulate’s premises. The plan called for loading explosives on the Tata Safari jeep that they observed visiting the bank on a daily basis. The overall logic and structure of their proposed operation were very similar to those of the August attacks in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam.
The operational plan called for Abu Nasir to lead the expert terrorist team to Calcutta first. His team comprised three Indian terrorists (Mohammad Gulab, Mohammad Nawab, and Aga Khan) and six “Afghans”—four of whom were Egyptians (Mustafa, Ibrahim al Hazaraa, and Ismail and Zainul Abedeen), one Sudanese (known only as Lui), and one a Burmese Islamist from Arakan (Hafeez Mohammad Saleh). The three Indians are identified as members of the ISI-sponsored Lashkar-e-Tuiba. The Arab “Afghans” were all drawn from the Islamist terrorist force in Afghanistan commonly identified with bin Laden.
In December, Abu Nasir brought the entire force to Calcutta. From there he sent the three Indian terrorists to the resort town of Siliguri, east of Calcutta, to establish a forward support base, where they made contact with a locally based support network of over a dozen operatives loosely affiliated with the IIRO and other Islamist “charities.” The Indian security authorities later described them as “a well-entrenched network of agents who, like [Abu] Nasir, owe allegiance to the Pakistani ISI as well as the International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO).” Abu Nasir brought the rest of his team to Chennai, where the six expert terrorists could be hidden in safe dwellings until the strike time. In early January Abu Nasir himself continued on to New Delhi, where he received the RDX and detonators from an ISI contact and was promptly arrested.
Based on material extracted from Abu Nasir’s lengthy interrogations, police were able to arrest both the three Indian operatives and their immediate support network in Siliguri. Another support operative, Sher Khan, was arrested in Bangladesh and extradited to India. By then the six “Afghans” had vanished from Chennai, and they are still at large. Abu Nasir also told his interrogators about the plans to bomb the embassy in New Delhi and the consulate in Madras. Enhanced security resulted in the Islamist terrorists abandoning these operations as well.
Although Indian security authorities prevented the bombings, the operation merits close attention. The structure of the network exposed—Abu Nasir’s—confirms the close relationship and cooperation between the intelligence services of the sponsoring states—Pakistan’s ISI in this case—and the ostensibly “independent” terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. The planned operations also reaffirm the length to which terrorism-sponsoring states and their Islamist operatives are willing to go in order to strike at the United States and evict it from their midst. Although the spectacular operations in India were prevented, the next round of spectacular operations may not be.
SOME OF THE next spectacular terrorist operations may be a joint effort of bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence. In mid-January 1999 their joint plan for such operations was in an advanced stage of preparation, as shown by Iraqi intelligence Unit 999’s intensity of operations. The unit reorganized their front “offices” and activated old import-export companies throughout Europe to cover the movement of funds and people. Iraqi citizens, all longtime residents of European cities who had been sympathetic to Iraq in the 1980s, were activated and summoned to Iraq for intense indoctrination and psychological pressure. They were then sent back to Europe to await further orders. Iraqi intelligence also revived contacts with numerous West European terrorists and mercenaries, including some who had worked for Iraq in the past, and began using them to facilitate clandestine travels in the West so that Arab intelligence operatives would not be involved. Together with Iraqi intelligence officers accredited to Iraqi diplomatic missions in Western Europe, they began scouting for safe houses, vehicles, and other support systems and to resolve any logistical problems.
The preparations picked up in late January when bin Laden dispatched abu-Ayub al-Masri, one of his senior commanders, for a series of meetings in Dubai and Turkey. For this trip he was given one of the Yemeni passports provided by Hijazi. Abu-Ayub al-Masri spent from January 25 to January 27 in Ankara and then continued to Istanbul. In Ankara he held talks with Hijazi and the locally based members of Unit 999. Together they went over Iraqi progress in finding safe apartments, communications routes, and arms caches. Baghdad recommended that Turkish territory be used as a strategic outpost for operations into Europe. Satisfied with his on-site inspections, abu-Ayub al-Masri recommended to bin Laden that the first four Islamist teams then being trained in Baghdad deploy to their destinations in Western countries via Istanbul. These key operatives arriving from the Middle East are expected to activate the numerous veterans of the jihads in Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina now spread throughout the Muslim emigré communities in Europe. Abu-Ayub al-Masri assured the Iraqis that these “Afghans” and “Bosniaks” would form bin Laden’s “secret army” that would strike out against both bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s enemies.
The viability and magnitude of bin Laden’s European networks was soon demonstrated through a surge of warnings attributed to the previously unknown Armed Islamic Front, originating in many West European capitals. In early February the Armed Islamic Front issued a threat in London to bomb Western and Arab embassies “in all European capitals.” A communiqué issued in Rome stressed that the Front’s objective was confronting those governments that were “the heads of atheism, hypocrisy, malice, and deception and also tyrants of the world.” Echoing bin Laden’s arguments, the statement paid special attention to regimes in Muslim countries cooperating with the United States and the West. The statement singled out Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria, Albania, Egypt, and Turkey as “puppets, subservient, and world ‘hamanat’ [a Koranic depiction of tyrants betraying their people], and trumpets.”
This statement stressed that the Front, comprising European-based Islamists who had been working secretly for the last five years on “spiritual, moral, and material [military] training” and monitoring “the movements of the enemies of God” (collecting intelligence), was now ready for action. The Front’s networks “exist and are entrenched in all parts of the world.” The Front had also completed its theological preparations. “We have made new communication arrangements, and we have a shura council which makes no decisions before consulting trustworthy ulema from all countries,” the statement explained. Because of these preparations the current threats must be taken seriously, the statement warned: “Time will tell, since the situation will produce nothing except something new.”
Two ideological issues addressed by the Front’s statement echo theological precepts advocated by bin Laden. Bin Laden and other Islamist leaders are always ready to accept the repentance of Muslim leaders currently serving the West. The Front’s statement included a similar warning to leaders of Muslim states: “Apply God’s law so that the machine guns and explosives will remain silent and so that the swords and knives will return to their sheaths.” In contrast these Europe-based Islamists are unable to find any redeeming qualities in the Western governments they target, and according to the Front’s statement, its strikes will be revenge for the pressure to westernize and sanctions imposed by these governments on their Muslim enemies in the Hub of Islam. The Armed Islamic Front’s statement concluded with the vow to “take revenge against every stubborn tyrant for the mujahideen in the mountains, jungles, and valleys and also for the besieged, prisoners, homeless, exiles, and every free woman whose honor they wanted her to sell.” This is a veiled reference to the Western siege of bin Laden, his followers, and such patron states as Afghanistan and Iraq.
Another theater of common interest for bin Laden and Baghdad is Kuwait. Not only Saddam Hussein’s nemesis, Kuwait is a growing priority of bin Laden’s because of the ongoing purge of Egyptian Islamists there. Most of these Islamists are innocent cheap labor, although a few actively agitate against the U.S. presence. In early February, Zawahiri’s Jihad Group warned Kuwait by expanding the group’s “path of Jihad against the United States and Israel” to also include “their lackeys.” Kuwait was singled out because it constitutes no more than “an oil pipe which is plundered by the United States.” Zawahiri’s message concluded with the warning: “We reiterate here that the United States should pay the price for all of this: Blood for blood and destruction for destruction. The United States and its agents are well aware of Jihad Group, which will not give up retaliation even if a long time passes.… The Jihad Group is aware of the extent of the US cowardice and of the fact that the so-called superpower is only a myth. The coming days have many things in store.” The Kuwaiti security authorities took these threats very seriously, prompting a new cycle of suppression of Egyptian and other Arab and Pakistani Islamists that led to the expulsion from the country of numerous guest workers and a few notable religious preachers. Several Egyptian suspects were handed over to Egypt. Undaunted, Egyptian Islamists in Kuwait continue to disseminate inflammatory leaflets urging “revenge against the United States and its agents in the region and condemning the strikes against Iraq.”
The building momentum for a major strike put bin Laden’s Afghan and Pakistani patrons and defenders in a bind. These preparations were going on as the Taliban were promising emissaries from several countries to reign in bin Laden. Bin Laden’s disappearing act, announced by the Taliban on February 13, the day after the Armed Islamic Front issued its first warning, constituted a dramatic breakout from this quandary. Bin Laden had actually initiated his disappearance already in early February so that he would not cause the Taliban leadership embarrassment and difficulties as they were negotiating the resumption of international aid and the construction of the oil pipeline from Central Asia to Pakistan. In the first days of February several convoys of twenty to twenty-five land cruisers and other heavy vehicles passed through Kharkiz and other villages in the Sheikh Hazrat mountains, some fifty miles north of Qandahar. These convoys traveled by night, carrying Arab passengers, construction materials, cases of weapons and ammunition, and other provisions. They were preparing bin Laden’s new base. On February 10 bin Laden “vanished” from Qandahar along with Zawahiri, some twenty-five trusted Arab aides and guards, and ten Taliban officials from the interior, foreign, and intelligence ministries assigned by Mullah Omar “to guide and protect bin Laden.” Bin Laden’s wives and children and the families of some of the Arabs with him withdrew to the protected compound near the Qandahar airport.
On February 13 the Taliban insisted that bin Laden was not in Qandahar. At first bin Laden and his entourage went to a forward base in the mountains overlooking the Helmand Valley, the center of Afghanistan’s drug production. There the group received extensive military protection from the Taliban, who explained away the reinforcements rushed to the area as antidrug operations. From Helmand bin Laden prudently checked out two escape routes in case of emergency. Over the next few days two convoys were sent to test the roads—first, westward to the Herat area near the Iranian border, and next to northeast Afghanistan, where bin Laden can secure sanctuaries in Tajik areas not controlled by the Taliban. The bin Laden group then returned to their main base in Tora Boora, where they remained for a few days in order to collect their computers and other key equipment and complete the transfer of their communication networks to the new hideaway. From there the bin Laden convoy traveled to Islam Dara, an abandoned underground base in numerous fortified caves deep in the Sheikh Hazrat Mountains, surrounded by minefields and other entrap-ments, some fifty miles north of Qandahar. The area’s governor, in nearby Khakriz, is Mullah Ghulam Dastagir, a wartime friend of bin Laden’s and a Hizb-i Islami commander. Legitimately the Taliban can claim that bin Laden is no longer in their area.
Meanwhile Pakistani government sources began spreading rumors about a crisis between the Taliban leadership and bin Laden to expedite completion of the economic deals between the Taliban and the West. These sources stated that the Taliban had confiscated bin Laden’s satellite phone. He had just shut it down for fear of intercept and homing by the United States after senior U.S. officials attributed their success in preventing terrorist attacks to “phone tapping.” “American spy satellites tapping into bin Laden’s phone calls from his hideout in Afghanistan were able to pick up details of [bin Laden’s] planned raids in time to prevent them,” stated Ian Brodie of the Daily Telegraph. Other rumors claimed that bin Laden was being snubbed by and alienated from Mullah Omar; that only the intervention of bin Laden’s daughter, Mullah Omar’s wife, and her mother prevented the Taliban’s extradition of bin Laden; and that bin Laden’s guards and Taliban troops exchanged fire. All of these rumors, some of which were repeated in key American newspapers and Arab magazines, were planted to create the impression of a gap between the Taliban elite and bin Laden so that Afghanistan would not be subjected to massive retaliation when bin Laden reappeared and the Islamist terrorists struck out.
In early March even Taliban leaders stopped denying that bin Laden was in Afghanistan and acknowledged that they had chosen not to know his exact whereabouts. Mullah Mohammad Tayyib, a member of the Taliban leadership, admitted, “It seems that [bin Laden] is still on Afghan territory.” He said that the leaders did not know bin Laden’s exact position because the Taliban officials and guards with him “received orders not to tell their commanders about his whereabouts. And they have not returned to us, which indicates that he is still in Afghanistan.” Concurrently Islamist leaders in both Afghanistan and Pakistan vowed to protect bin Laden against American capture and assassination attempts. “Mujahideen would sacrifice their lives to defend the hero of Islam. The Taliban will never hand over Osama to the enemies of Islam. He is in safe hands. And if the US tries to take him to their land, they would have to pass over the bodies of Mujahideen,” warned Omar Farooq, the leader of Lashkar-e-Tuiba.
The momentum for action has been building throughout the Hub of Islam. In early February bin Laden dispatched an envoy to Pakistan to confer with several Islamist leaders. One of these leaders later recounted that the objective of these discussions was “to coordinate positions with them in the face of US hegemony in the Islamic world.” A Harakat ul-Ansar leader from Karachi said that subsequent warnings by Pakistani Islamist leaders, including calls for revenge for the U.S. bombing of the camps in Afghanistan, shed light on the issues discussed with bin Laden’s envoy. “The veterans of the Khost bombing form the nucleus of a group of Osama bin Laden loyalists whose sole mission in life is to settle score with the United States,” he stated. “For each of us killed or wounded in the cowardly US attack, at least 100 Americans will be killed. I may not be alive but you will remember my words.” Pakistani security officials urged the West to pay close attention to these threats. “Whether Pakistanis or Arabs in Afghanistan, they consider themselves as ‘Jihadi’ brothers, whose main [aim] now is to take revenge from the Americans,” explained a retired ISI senior officer.
This Islamist modification of priorities—putting the struggle for the banishment of the United States from the Hub of Islam ahead of local causes such as the liberation of Kashmir, Palestine, or Arabia—has already become apparent in the rejuvenated Islamist activities in Chechnya and the Islamists’ surge into Central Asia and the Caucasus. The ultimate objective, furthered by Pakistan and Iran and actively supported by the Taliban, is to evict the United States from this strategically important region, the untapped energy resources of which are considered a substitute for Persian Gulf resources. Tehran and Islamabad are convinced that by applying pressure on the local governments in the form of Islamist subversion and terrorism, they will be able to convince these governments to rely on lucrative energy development deals with West European and East Asian companies to the detriment of America’s strategic interests. Afghanistan and Chechnya are the springboards for this audacious gambit.
In mid-February, Chechnya president Asian Maskhadov assured Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Qabbani, chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council in the United States, that “Chechnya will not offer any form of refuge or settlement to Osama bin Laden, whatever this decision costs the Chechen Government, even if that meant war.” But the buildup of Islamist terrorist forces in Chechnya, including Arab, Afghan, and Pakistani mujahideen supported by bin Laden, has continued unabated. Bin Laden’s mujahideen activate Islamist units that constituted the elite strike forces of key Chechen commanders during the war against Russia, who are now the leaders in Chechnya. Such forces include the Soldiers of the Orthodox Caliphs, which served under now president Maskhadov; the Abd-al-Qadir Forces, which fought under former vice president Shamil Basaev; and the Islamic Liberation Party forces, which answer to Salman Raduyev, Chechnya’s extremist terrorist in whose “territory” bin Laden was offered asylum. Given the gratitude Chechnya owes these “Afghan”-dominated forces for their contribution to its war against Russia, no government in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, would dare confront them.
These Chechnya-based networks have already started to operate throughout the region. Strategically significant was the elaborate effort to assassinate President Islam Karimov, who is considered key to fighting Islamist radicalism and militancy in Central Asia and the Taliban’s Afghanistan. The assassination attempt was conducted with a series of four car bombs that exploded throughout Tashkent on February 16. The expert terrorists in the network that ran this sophisticated operation were Chechnya-trained Islamist Uzbeks. Another audacious operation aimed at increasing tension throughout the Caucasus was the March 6 kidnapping of Major General Gennady Shpigun, the top Russian interior ministry envoy to Grozny. Shpigun was seized by masked men who boarded his plane when it was preparing to take off from the Grozny airport. This kidnapping was accomplished with the participation of members of the Chechen secret services. Ostensibly in response to Moscow’s threats to Chechnya over Shpigun’s fate, Islamist militant forces throughout the Caucasus rallied to the support of Grozny, promising to launch a jihad against any Western presence in the area, not just Russian forces.
Despite the growing efforts of the United States and its allies to contain bin Laden’s Islamist terrorist networks, the Islamists keep opening new fronts and launching new campaigns. The numerous setbacks they suffered as their networks were exposed and their operations prevented, and the international pressure on bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their Afghanistan-based commanders and Taliban guardians, have not reversed the Islamists’ overall surge toward dominance worldwide.
STARTING IN LATE DECEMBER, while bin Laden was walking the fine line of definitions in his encounter with the Western media, on-site observers were sounding the alarm. According to several Pakistani and Western security and intelligence officials, bin Laden had already dispatched several terrorist detachments on missions to bomb American targets in the Middle East, Western Europe, and perhaps even the United States. “We believe bin Laden may use the month of Ramadan … as the starting point for new operations,” said a senior ISI official. Bin Laden had already informed a senior member of the Taliban leadership that his forces were “preparing to act” but that Afghanistan would not be implicated. “The region has never been more unstable,” the ISI official said. “Bin Laden has never been more dangerous.”
U.S. and friendly security forces thwarted numerous bomb attacks on U.S. facilities overseas, including the embassies in Tirana, Albania; Baku, Azerbaijan; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Kampala, Uganda; and Montevideo, Uruguay, as well as the embassy and two consulates in India. An attack was prevented on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, from which U.S. aircraft operate against Iraq. Islamist leaders attribute these Western successes to Islamist errors stemming from inexperience, haste, and the zeal of local networks—a largely correct observation. The Islamists warn of a long-term commitment to striking out against the United States with better-prepared assets once the time is ripe. The captured Islamist terrorist commander Ahmad Ibrahim al-Najjar stressed this point to his interrogators. “The two anti-American attacks in Kenya and Tanzania were not simply advertisements,” he said. “Jihad will continue because the fight against the United States and the Jews will never cease.” Asked about recent setbacks, Najjar cautioned the Egyptians against doubting the success of Islamist spectacular strikes in and against the United States. “Don’t worry, they’ll come when the time is right,” he quipped.
Bin Laden’s Islamist forces continue to patiently consolidate their capabilities and further their preparations for spectacular strikes. Bin Laden has already expanded the network of organizations and groups following both his own theological teachings and Zawahiri’s military-terrorist plans. Former ISI chief General Hamid Gul has said that bin Laden has already established an “alliance with 30 different organizations” in order “to retaliate against American interests around the world.” According to Islamist terrorists from Central Asia and the Caucasus who were recently interrogated by Russian intelligence, bin Laden is busy establishing in his Imarat in Afghanistan a new elite force that he calls The Order of Islamic Sword-Bearers, under the direct command of Ayman al-Zawahiri. The main objective of this force is to serve as an “Islamic rapid-deployment force” prepared at any moment to mount a spectacular terrorist strike or save an Islamist subversion in distress.
Osama bin Laden continues to build sound theological foundations for escalating the jihad. He has repeatedly summed up his belief in a statement usually made while waving his own ornate Koran: “You cannot defeat heretics with this book alone, you have to show them the fist!” He also elucidated his vision of the relentless, fateful, global jihad against the United States in a book titled America and the Third World War. The draft manuscript is already being circulated among key Islamist leaders and commanders in the original Arabic and in translation into several South Asian languages. In this book bin Laden propounds a new vision, stressing the imperative of a global uprising. Bin Laden in essence calls on the entire Muslim world to rise up against the existing world order to fight for their right to live as Muslims—rights, he states, which are being trampled by the West’s intentional spreading of Westernization. For the Islamists there can be no compromise or coexistence with Western civilization.
In early January 1999 Islamist scholars in Jordan published a study about the centrality of the jihad in Islam. The study decreed that “the Messenger of Allah [the prophet Muhammad] said: ‘Jihad is the pillar of Islam and its top most part.’ ” The study then set the religious logic and justification for the use of international terrorism as a form of jihad obligatory for all Muslims. Relying on Koranic precedents, the study determined that even when the Muslims suffer from shortage of numbers and weaponry, they are sure to win if they follow the Koranic teachings by “instilling the fear of God” and “showing fortitude” when confronting the infidels. Terrorism is a key instrument for instilling fear. The study stresses that all the past achievements of Islam were attained “through jihad which Allah has made obligatory” for the believers. Under contemporary conditions there are numerous ways to take part in a jihad. “Jihad from the Sharia standpoint is to do one’s utmost when fighting in the path of Allah whether directly, or supporting the jihad with one’s wealth, opinion or augmenting the great numbers (participating in the Jihad), etc.… Allah has made it obligatory for the purpose of carrying Islam to the rest of mankind and for the protection of the Khilafah state and Muslims.”
The study then addresses the specific conditions for jihad in the contemporary Hub of Islam. “Jihad encompasses the offensive, defensive and pre-emptive war, providing that this war is for the sake of Allah,” the authors explain. This diversity of forms of jihad is necessary for meeting the myriad of threats to Islam. The main threat is the spread of Westernization, because it is the instrument and justification for the West’s drive to destroy and control the Muslim world. “So fighting for the protection of interests and viewpoint in life became confined to the major disbelieving states such as America and others, who develop their weaponry and strengthen their armies in order to strike whoever and at any time they wish. As for the rest, and especially the Muslims, they are banned from possessing sophisticated weapons and forbidden to use force in order to defend themselves. They are required to content themselves with protests, misery and grief when they are attacked as recently happened in Iraq.”
With the U.S.-led West increasingly resorting to the use of force to impose their will on Muslims, it is imperative for Muslims to use force—that is, wage the jihad—to reverse this dangerous trend. “Truly, jihad is the pillar of the deen [Islamic law] and its uppermost part. Muslims cannot have any international standing without it since it is the method Allah has obliged for the propagation of Islam, to preserve the Islamic State and protect its citizens.” The study notes that the situation throughout the Muslim world has reached a crisis point and emphasizes the urgency of reversing this trend by fighting a jihad. The Jordanian scholars call for action against both local Muslim leaders and their patrons in the West; the Hub of Islam must choose between succumbing to the West and fighting for Islam. “O Muslims! Today you are between two alternatives: either you are silent, submissive and acquiescent of what the puppet rulers are doing to you, and whatever results from the domination of the Kuffar [infidels] over your countries and resources, and from your downfall and utter ruin in this life and in the Akhira [afterlife]. Or you move effectively to seize the power of those rulers and work in earnest with those sincere Muslims who are working for the re-establishment of the Khilafah state and whatever follows by our return to our past glory as the greatest Ummah and the most powerful state which will fight in the path of Allah so that the truth may prevail and falsehood shall perish.” This study was widely circulated throughout the Muslim communities in western Europe and the United States.
By mid-February 1999 bin Laden’s warning of an inclusive Western threat to Islamdom was echoed by a wide variety of Muslim intellectuals, from longtime supporters of bin Laden to pro-Saudi conservative thinkers. Writing in the pro-Saudi al-Hayah, one of the most authoritative Arab newspapers, Yussuf Samahah stressed that bin Laden’s vision was the wave of the future—the real merger of international megatrends and Islamdom. The future of the world is globalization, Samahah argued. “Globalization in the general sense of the term means among other things the free movement of funds, the communications revolution, and ‘multinational networks’ replacing national frameworks and relations.” At present this trend is usually dominated by the U.S.-led West, with the sole exception bin Laden’s philosophy of an all-Muslim resurgence. “One can say that bin Laden’s organization represents an improvement on similar organizations and one that has benefitted more from the ‘opportunities’ provided by the globalization elements,” Samahah explained. “And anyone who believes that there is a contradiction between his [bin Laden’s] ‘ideas’ and the new phenomenon would be mistaken, because while globalization is gradually uniting the planet, it is causing many introverted and revivalist reactions which use the tools that globalization provides to give the impression that they are not only fighting it but that they will ultimately defeat it.”
Writing in the Islamist al-Quds al-Arabi, Abdul-Bari Atwan, bin Laden’s friend and confidant, elaborates on the “globalism” theme in the context of the plight of the Hub of Islam. The most profound threat to Islam is the U.S. policy of “globalism,” which means furthering America’s global security and economic interests through a combination of brute force—such as that being used against Iraq—and subversion, namely modernization. “It is sad to say that Arabs in particular and Muslims in general are the biggest victims of globalism in all its forms, economic, cultural, and security,” Atwan said. Not only has the global economic trend harmed the Arab world, but “culturally, CNN and the Internet have begun to rule the world. The American event and its instruments have changed Arab cultural life completely.” Atwan blames the “European and American trained/indoctrinated” younger generation of Arab officers and intellectuals who are eager “to join in the modern globalism once they take power and succeed their fathers. The most prominent of their ‘realistic’ traits is the ability to use the computer, belief in policies of market economy, permanent decisiveness, and the continuation of the Hebrew state.”
Bin Laden’s Islamist terrorism provides the only hope against this bleak future, Atwan stresses. And this is the quintessence of the U.S.-led relentless struggle against the Islamists. “Because terrorism is the single, effective element that threatens this new, monopolistic structure, efforts are being made to eliminate its prominent leaders, make examples of them and, to the extent possible, attach maximum abuse and humiliation to those countries that protect them, so that those nations will return to their ‘senses’ and enter fully into the new order.” For Atwan, bin Laden’s steadfast resolve to stand up to the West and punish the United States, even if symbolically, is a source of hope that the spread of globalism and Westernization is not irreversible. “For us, at least, the picture appears dark. Our only strength is that it is a simple and perhaps unintended mistake, which may lead to a big collapse and a change in the rules of the game. Perhaps we are headed for the furthest thing from that, and we mean a powerful steadfastness. Perhaps it will blow up the foundations of this globalism in the Arab region at least,” Atwan concludes circumspectly and cryptically, in classic Arabic style.
These were not abstract observations, for in early 1999 bin Laden and his forces committed to a major buildup of elite terrorist assets in the West. This buildup occurred in the aftermath of the setbacks suffered in summer 1998, when numerous Egyptian terrorists were rounded up around the world and extradited to Egypt. These arrests not only deprived the Islamists of a few good commanders but also compelled them to undertake a thorough reexamination of their internal security and counterintelligence situation. In February-March 1999 this process was completed, and the Islamists were ready to deploy a new round of commanders and expert terrorists for spectacular operations in the West. By late March the first round of these deployments was completed with the dispatch of fourteen top commanders, all longtime comrades in arms of bin Laden, to the West. Soon afterward two teams of commanders reached the United States and United Kingdom, and high-level command cells were activated in Bangladesh, France, and Russia. Eighty-three additional mujahideen from several Muslim countries were selected and trained for participation in these missions and were now ready for quick deployment the moment the on-site commanders called for them. In Pakistan, Islamist leaders noted that the building crises in Iraq and Kosovo introduced an added urgency to the Islamists’ campaign against the United States and Britain. A Pakistani official explained that “the US and British governments are presently engaged in punitive strikes against Iraqi people, both military and civilian, while looking the other way on the massacre of the Kosovan Muslims for the last so many months” and therefore “would become a target of attack by bin Laden, his allies or [other] Islamists.”
These preparations were echoed in a March 30 communiqué in which the Egyptian Islamic Jihad vowed to continue its campaigns against the Egyptian government and U.S. and Israeli interests throughout the world. The communiqué declared that “the Ummah must stand united against the United States, Israel, and their lackeys”—the pro-Western Arab regimes. “Our battle is essentially with the United States and Israel,” the Jihad declared, and the ongoing confrontation with Cairo would not alter this priority. A few days later Islamist leaders in London urged that the Jihad’s communiqué be taken seriously and warned of impending terrorist strikes on U.S. and Gulf interests. An Islamist source in London alluded to the character of the forthcoming strike, saying that “al-Jamaah [al-Islamiyah] is known not to conduct frequent operations, but prefer bigger operations, even if they are fewer in number.” He noted that states from which Egyptian terrorists had been extradited in summer 1998 “will assume a major part of the responsibility for their execution.” Another Islamist leader revealed that Osama bin Laden had resolved to carry out “an attack against U.S. interests” and that Ayman al-Zawahiri had already “assumed responsibility for preparing for such armed attacks.”
In early April 1999 the Islamists activated and began deploying another system of terrorists comprising solely Kashmiris, Pakistanis, and Afghans affiliated with the Harakat ul-Ansar. The ISI helps organize these new forces so that they are immune to the penetration that happened to the Egyptian-dominated networks in the summer of 1998. At the core of this group are veteran “Afghans” committed to avenging the victims of the U.S. cruise missile strikes on their training camps in Afghanistan. One of their senior commanders declared that “the blood of our supporters will not be in vain and we will avenge every martyr by killing 100 Americans.” The “Afghans,” he stated, “formed suicide cells affiliated with bin Laden whose only mission in life is to take revenge on the United States.” Another leader declared that “in return for every martyr or wounded from our followers, we will kill at least 100 Americans. Perhaps, I will not be alive at that time but the world will remember these words.”
To shield Pakistani sponsorship and support, the new terrorist forces were formally separated from the Harakat ul-Ansar and identified as the newly formed Harakat Jihad Islami. In early April, Harakat Jihad Islami already had active forward headquarters in Burma, Bangladesh, Palestine, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Eritrea, Chechnya, and Bosnia, which is also responsible for Albania and Kosovo. In a meeting with soon-to-be-deployed cadres, Harakat leaders vowed that their “Jihad would continue till the day of judgement and the effects of the Afghan Jihad are spread all over the world.” They said that having played an important role in the Kashmir jihad, the Harakat Jihad Islami had decided to expand its operations to all other jihad fronts, “and now mujahideen from all over the world are joining the group.” Although the Harakat leaders insisted that they belonged to a separate organization, they declared that “Osama bin Laden is the hero of Islam.” They added that Harakat Jihad Islami supported bin Laden’s demand for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Persian Gulf.
The Islamists embarked on a key undertaking in early 1999—the revival of East Africa operations, which had been dormant since the bombing of the U.S. embassies. A forward base has been organized in the Gedo region in southern Somalia, not far from the border with Kenya. The center of Islamist activities is at the coastal town of Ras Kamboni, where a secure communications system is being set up by several Arab experts. The entire Gedo area is controlled by the al-Ittihad movement, an offshoot of the Somali Islamic Union Party (SIUP), which has been linked to bin Laden since 1993. The extent of the Islamist activities in and around Ras Kamboni was discovered after the March 20 fatal shooting of a U.S. aid worker in a local tea shop. Reportedly he stumbled on Arab Islamists and was swiftly eliminated by the al-Ittihad gunmen protecting them. By early April a discernable presence of Arab terrorists who openly identified themselves with bin Laden were in the Gedo area. Somalia is rife with rumors that bin Laden visited his men in southern Somalia, although no proof of this exists.
In mid-April the Islamist leadership thoroughly studied the recent progress of terrorist forward deployment and preparations and the recovery of the Egyptian-based networks from the impact of the summer 1998 arrests and extraditions. Ayman al-Zawahiri convened his aides and senior commanders at a major session in the Tora Boora caves near Jalalabad. Participants at the meeting resolved to markedly improve the security and counterintelligence measures undertaken by the clandestine networks. Commanders who arrived from several countries were told to alter their travel and communication methods and to pay more attention to the internal situation and security authorities in their countries of residence. Zawahiri also introduced a new system of code names and channels of communications developed after the arrest and interrogation of the terrorists by the Egyptians. The commanders then went over the entire chain of command and areas of responsibility to make sure that the new redundant, resilient modus operandi would withstand future onslaughts by hostile intelligence services, including the arrest and interrogation of senior leaders. By the end of the meeting Zawahiri was satisfied with the status of his networks and approved the activation of several operational plans.
This renewed confidence was expressed in a statement issued in late April by Zawahiri’s Jihad Islami in reaction to the harsh sentencing of a number of Egyptian terrorists, including Zawahiri himself and several other key leaders who were tried in absentia. The statement stressed that the jihad “is much bigger and deeper” than unfolding events and would not be affected by the Cairo trial. The Islamic Jihad was determined to stay on course, and so “the escalating Islamic resistance against the Crusader campaign against the Muslim nation will not stop.” On the contrary, the statement argued, recent U.S. actions and policies made the overall situation more conducive for the Islamists. “The Islamic world in general, in particular the Arab region, is being swept by a wave of Islamic jihadist rejection, the Muslim nation is vigorously rejecting the policy of humiliation and oppression being pursued against those working to restore Islam’s sovereignty over its territory, and it is at the same time determined to firmly and resolutely move toward achieving its aim of establishing an Islamic state through preaching, jihad, and exposing suspect actions.”
These sentiments were echoed in a concurrent statement by Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the central emir of the Harakat Jihad Islami, who is responsible for the organization’s international operations. He declared that Harakat Jihad Islami “would not allow any one to compromise the blood of the Muslims being spilt in Kashmir and Afghanistan.” Harakat Jihad Islami also anticipates a marked escalation and expansion of Islamist jihads worldwide because “the atrocities being committed against the Muslims in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya have awakened Muslims, and now Muslims would fight against India, the United States, Russia and Britain.” Led by the jihadist forces, the Muslim world is out to take revenge against their U.S.-led foes, and “the eye that looks down upon Muslims as a minority or dreams of reducing them to a minority would be gouged out,” Qari Saifullah Akhtar declared.
In late March the Muslim world, like most of the rest of the world, became fixated with the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia and the ensuing mass exodus of Kosovo Albanian refugees. Muslims watched the horrors endured by their Albanian brethren as they were driven out of Kosovo by Serb paramilitary forces, marauding KLA detachments, and widespread NATO bombing of civilian targets. The Islamists reacted to the Kosovo tragedy only after deliberation and then made the distinction between the plight of their Kosovo Albanian brethren and the NATO bombing campaign. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad was among the first Islamist organs to assume an authoritative position. “The NATO raids might continue. But it is clear that the goal is not to serve Muslim interests in Kosovo or uproot the Serbian violence that grew more powerful in the embrace of the Western civilization, the hostility to Islam and the race to throw a siege around it. The Serbian violence found encouragement from the West, concealed at times and explicit at others,” stated an editorial in the Jihad’s organ al-Istiqlal.
Islamist intellectuals in Jordan stressed the difference between NATO’s objectives and the interests of the Kosovo Albanians, in whose name the bombing campaign was ostensibly conducted. “The United States has decided to wage war against Milosevic” because he would not surrender to the U.S.-imposed “new world order” and in so doing the United States intentionally abandoned the Kosovo Muslims to the wrath of the Serbs. “It is possible that the Kosovo region could become vacant of its Albanian inhabitants, whose autonomy the NATO war machine came to defend. In other words, the Albanians are as yet the only victims of the war, which those who started it claimed was designed to support their humanitarian and ethnic rights.” Hence the United States should not be permitted to win in Kosovo. “The phenomenon of Slobodan Milosevic is a contradictory one,” the Jordanian Islamists explained. “What he stands for in the Kosovo region deserves to be renounced, despised, and punished because, in Kosovo, Milosevic represents the rule of the dead over the living, a system that we thought has perished. Nonetheless, what he represents in terms of resistance to the U.S. barbarism in the last years of the Twentieth Century should be supported and backed. Milosevic is very bad in Kosovo and very good in resisting the United States and its escalating military and political pressure.” Ultimately, in taking sides in this conflict, the long-term interest of the Muslims should determine the position of the Muslim world, and this interest is clearly to block the United States and NATO. If the United States is permitted to pursue the war on its own terms, “the Kosovo Albanians could be eliminated from geography and history before the war is settled,” the Jordanian Islamists concluded.
This point was further elaborated by Pakistani former senior officials with Islamist leanings who represent prevailing opinions in Islamabad. “Aggression is continuing in Kosovo. This problem concerns not only Bosnia and Kosovo but also 25 million Muslims living in the Balkans.” The entire Muslim world is witnessing not only the unprecedented plight of the Kosovo Albanians but the inability and unwillingness of NATO to come to their assistance. Therefore, the Pakistani officials stressed, it is incumbent on the Muslim world to save their brethren. “The issue of Kosovo and the Balkans can only be solved through Jihad.” These officials saw a special role for Islamabad because “being the only nuclear power of the Muslim world, it is the responsibility of Pakistan to provide the Muslims of Kosovo with every possible support without caring about the pleasure or displeasure of the United States.”
Similar sentiments were elucidated by the HizbAllah in Lebanon. “The Muslims in Kosovo are the target of a real genocide at the hands of the Yugoslav regime in an attempt to uproot them, obliterate their identity, and eradicate their history using brutal measures, including massacres, displacement, expulsion, burning of cities, and confiscation of identity documents from the population.… The genocide demonstrates the barbarity of crimes committed against the Muslims, who are now in need of being embraced by their fellow Muslims worldwide and require assistance by the world community.” Although the Serbs are the actual perpetrators of the crimes against the Kosovo Albanians, this tragedy is the direct outcome of U.S. policy. “While condemning the Serbian massacres and mass expulsion, we reiterate to Muslims and the free people in the world that the war launched by the United States in the Balkans does not aim to protect the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo or grant them their rights as much as it is a war that seeks to serve the US interests and consolidate its unipolar order. Leaving the Serbs to carry out their genocide against the Kosovo Albanians is just one piece of evidence that the US Administration is settling accounts with the Yugoslav regime to serve its own political interests in the Balkans.”
By early April, Pakistani officials had elucidated a coherent analysis of the U.S. position and strategic interests in pursuing the war. They stressed the importance of the Balkans to the economic and strategic interests of the West: “The Balkans are the only land route to the Middle East, as well as the gateway to the oil and mineral-rich region of the Caucasus.” The U.S.-led West is determined to control these regions, which requires the suppression of Islamic awakening, and so the United States first embarked on suppressing Milosevic’s Yugoslavia because Belgrade would not accept U.S. hegemony. But the Muslim world must not forget that the NATO bombing is only the first step in the U.S. campaign to suppress and enslave Islamist revivalism.
Arab Islamists were now holding U.S.-led NATO directly responsible for the plight of the Kosovo Albanians, as shown in an editorial by Fakhri Qawar in the Jordanian newspaper Shihan: “It is the NATO forces which are bombing the Kosovo region with the most sophisticated, the most violent and ugliest instruments of destruction, killing Muslims and forcing them to evacuate their region. The evidence of this is that we have only seen the waves of destitute, thirsty and hungry immigrants on television screens after the initiation of NATO bombing.” Hence it is incumbent on Islamists to save their Kosovo brethren in a jihad against both NATO and the Serbs.
In London the Islamist front organizations affiliated with bin Laden now drew obvious conclusions from the building sentiments throughout the Muslim world. In a special statement al-Muhajiroun urged a Kosovo jihad and “call[ed] upon all Muslims to support the Jihad to liberate Kosovo physically, financially, and verbally.” Al-Muhajiroun used Kosovo as a rallying cry for better Islamist unity against all their foes as well as the current world, or Western, order. “The Islamic Movements world-wide condemn the atrocities being committed by the Serbs in Kosovo and the attempt by NATO to gloss over the Kosovo question. We pledge that we will not rest until Kosovo is liberated and all Muslims are returned to their land. The Jihad will continue until Muslim life, honor and wealth is protected and the law of Allah is established. During this crisis and massacre in the Balkans we must be a united Muslim community with a united policy and agenda. Let us leave our partisanship, sectarianism, nationalism and tribalism aside and save ourselves from the wrath of Allah by fulfilling our obligations towards the Muslims in Kosovo to whom we are the nearest neighbors and who therefore have more responsibility to help. We declare that we will not stop the Jihad against the Serbian or Israeli occupiers no matter what the UN say or do. Surely the ugly face of hatred towards Islam by the indiscriminate and continuous bombing of innocent Muslims in Iraq and those last year in Sudan and Afghanistan is evidence if it were needed of the true stand and the crusader mentality of western regimes.”
As the NATO bombing campaign continued, with no apparent change in the plight of the Kosovo Albanians, the Islamists’ hostility and defiance increased. The April 2.3 sermon in al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one month into the NATO bombing, elucidated the Islamists’ frustration and rage. “The Balkans will be part of the coming Islamic State against the will of the Serbians, against the will of the Europeans, and against the will of the Americans. The Americans are working now to evacuate the Balkans from its Muslim inhabitants so as to prevent the establishment of an Islamic state in the heart of Europe.” For the Islamist preacher the inability of the Muslim world to prevent the tragedy of the Kosovo Albanians was indicative of the overall plight of the Muslim world and a reaffirmation that a profound confrontation with pro-Western regimes was inevitable. “The Muslims in Kosovo don’t need just blankets, food, and medicine. They need their brothers to help them against the Serbian aggression, they need their Muslim brothers with tanks and missiles and airplanes; they need an Islamic army. But how would this happen with these corrupted puppet rulers in the Muslim world? That is why we say the Khalifah is needed.” In a sermon in Gaza, Dr. Mahmud al-Zahhar, a HAMAS leader, accused the United States of collaborating with the Serbs in emptying Kosovo of its original Muslim population. He denounced the silence of Arab and Muslim governments toward the Kosovo tragedy, calling these regimes accomplices of the United States and the Serbs.
The escalation of the fighting in and around Kosovo, in particular the specter of a NATO ground intervention, has had a profound impact on the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) and the Islamist elements at its core. The Islamists were confronted with the dilemma of how to react to the massive support, including weapons, pouring from several Western intelligence services that insisted on purging the Islamists from the UCK as a precondition for this help. Determined not to deprive their Kosovo Albanian brethren of Western aid, the Islamist leadership decided to adopt temporary measures of cooperation with the U.S.-led NATO, at the very least tolerance of NATO’s presence in the Balkans and its cooperation with the Albanians. At the same time, the Islamists did not forfeit their own military capabilities but simply went underground whenever necessary.
By mid-March 1999, as the advance to crisis and NATO’s war seemed inevitable, the UCK hastily expanded to include many elements controlled and/or sponsored by the U.S., German, British, and Croatian intelligence services. The UCK is in essence a hodge-podge of distinct armed groups brought together by two common denominators: (1) commitment to a Greater Albania encompassing Albania, Kosovo, and a large part of Macedonia; and (2) hatred for the Serbs. These groups have little else in common because they are ideologically diverse, ranging from Hoxheists, followers of the teachings of former Albanian Stalinist-Maoist leader Enver Hoxha, to organized crime elements and militant Islamists. The NATO-sponsored UCK does not even have an indigenous command structure. In late April it was put under the command of Agim Ceku, a Croatian brigadier general of Albanian descent who brought with him a staff composed mainly of veterans of the Croatian armed forces. The indigenous leadership of the UCK, hailing from the center of Kosovo and composed of veterans of the Bosnian Muslim and “Bosnian” mujahideen forces, was passed over and marginalized. In early April the UCK began actively cooperating with the NATO bombing—selecting and designating targets for NATO aircraft as well as escorting U.S. and British special forces detachments into Yugoslavia.
At the same time the Islamist elements in Albania and Macedonia went underground. Their key Albanian units, comprising mainly Albanian veterans of the Bosnian Handzar Division, were deployed to the parts of Albania where the clan of former president Sali Berisha is influential. The NATO-sponsored segments of the UCK, totaling between 25,000 and 30,000 fighters, are riddled with clandestine Islamist cells composed of Albanian, Turkish, and North African volunteers from Western Europe. These volunteers were organized by Islamist leaders based in West Europe who are allied with bin Laden and Zawahiri.
The Islamist leadership decided not to challenge the leadership of the UCK, based in Albania, and to avoid having distinct mujahideen units so as not to affect the assistance the UCK gets from the United States. Soon after the beginning of the NATO bombing, a senior Europe-based Islamist commander explained the decision: “The current war in the Balkans is a purely intelligence war associated with the presence of U.S. security services in the region.” The Islamists, however, consider the war in Kosovo a component of “the [overall] war in the Balkans—a religious war targeting a Muslim minority situated in a sea of Orthodox [Christians].” In mid-April a Pakistan-based senior commander of bin Laden’s provided an even more pragmatic explanation for the Islamists’ tolerance of the NATO-sponsored UCK. In Yugoslavia, he said, the aims of bin Laden and the United States “temporarily coincide.” Both are interested in “the protection of our Muslim brothers” against “the Serb oppressors.” The Islamists would not interfere with the pursuit of this objective. But the moment Kosovo gains independence and/or merges into a greater Albania, bin Laden’s mujahideen “are going to deal with the U.S. in real earnest.”
The Islamist mujahideen continue fighting inside Kosovo under the banner of the Islamic Liberation Army, which also fought in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Carrying out bin Laden’s proven combination of fierce fighting against enemy security forces while providing social and humanitarian services to prostrate civilians, the Islamists interact with the destitute Kosovo Albanian population at the center of Kosovo, where nobody else dares to operate. The Islamist forces concentrate on dealing with the indigenous forces—both the civilian population and the now largely defeated UCK elements that emerged from the rural population in central Kosovo. The mujahideen established close relations with the key clans from the Drenica area in central Kosovo, the birthplace of the UCK, including Suley-man Selimi, “the Sultan,” who comes from this area and is commander in chief of the UCK forces inside Kosovo. In these operations the mujahideen have already demonstrated their fearlessness and all-out commitment to the Muslim population. An example of this was the last stand of a mujahideen battalion of some fifty fighters under the command of Sheikh Muhammad al-Adalbi (also known as Abu-al-Abbas) north of the village of Meja. The battalion “was completely martyred following a ferocious battle with Serbian forces deep inside Kosovo” in which the Saudi and Egyptian mujahideen held the line, enabling the UCK to evacuate the Albanian civilians, destroy the local villages in an orderly scorched-earth withdrawal, and then reach Albanian sanctuary. The UCK destroyed the villages to alienate and radicalize the population so that they would fight the Serbs and to coerce the civilians to escape into exile so that there can be no normalization and Kosovo Albanian population under the control of the Serbs. This is a classic “revolutionary” strategy that has been implemented in several previous Islamic Liberation struggles such as those in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Bosnia. A NATO spokesman attributed the emptying and destruction of Meja and surrounding villages to “Serbian ethnic cleansing.”
With the Serb forces and NATO bombing eliminating the UCK’s ability to operate inside Kosovo, the Islamists are also preparing for what they see as the fateful phase of fighting: when they wrest Kosovo from hostile non-Muslim hands, either Serb or NATO’s. The importance of these preparations is reflected in the immediate supervisory and support elements of the Islamist forces in Albania and Kosovo. Recently, the Islamist senior commanders responsible for the entire southeastern approaches to Europe—an area stretching from Italy to the Caucasus Mountains—were directed to concentrate on and directly support Ayman al-Zawahiri’s forces. The commanders are abu-Muhammad Hulyani (military operations), Aqil bin Abdul-Aziz al-Aqil, and Sheikh Muhammad abu-Fakhdah al-Tuwayjar (logistical support). All are veterans of major jihads, including Chechnya. In order to provide comprehensive support for anticipated combat operations by the Islamist forces, particularly an elite force of over 500 Arab mujahideen, the Islamists are running more than fifteen private Muslim charities and humanitarian organizations in Albania and Kosovo alone. These organizations also finance the training, arming, and supplying of select UCK units. “Private” organizations from Persian Gulf States develop routes for the clandestine deployment of Arab volunteers from Albania into Yugoslavia, as well as the organization of a steady pipeline for supplying weapons and other equipment to the UCK forces deep inside Kosovo. These Islamist support elements also oversee the flow of Islamist reinforcements into the Balkans. The first group of about 175 Yemeni mujahideen arrived in Albania in early May, and a second group of some 200 Yemenis, including hard core “Afghans” and terrorists released from jail by the government, was getting ready to travel. Comparable units are being organized throughout the hub of Islam. All of these forces have yet to be assigned to operational units.
In early April, Muhammad al-Zawahiri established in Albania an Islamist “military action committee” to coordinate the preparations of elements capable of carrying out audacious military and terrorist missions deep in the enemy’s territory. These elements include clandestine Islamist cells in the ranks of the UCK and underground networks throughout the Balkans. At the core of Zawahiri’s forces is a group of over 500 Arab mujahideen, all fiercely loyal to bin Laden, that is deployed near Korce and Podgrade in southeastern Albania. A forward base of the Islamist terrorists, a small number of Saudis and Egyptians who answer to bin Laden and Zawahiri, is in Tropje, in northern Albania. Tropje is Berisha’s hometown, and the UCK maintains a major staging base there for transporting weapons and launching operations into Kosovo. This Islamist force is ready to intervene in the war against both the Yugoslav and NATO forces if they betray the “cause” of the Kosovo Albanians as bin Laden and his lieutenants understand it.
The use of these Islamist forces might be imminent. In early May, as the UCK was collapsing inside Kosovo and NATO remained reluctant to commit ground forces to occupy the province, the Islamist trend in the UCK has become more pronounced. Senior UCK commanders are renewing the “Islamic solidarity” theme even as NATO is supposed to be building and arming a secular-progressive UCK. Gani Sylaj, a senior UCK commander in northern Albania, appealed “to our Arab and Muslim brothers to help us militarily and politically because we are facing difficult conditions. The Arabs know well the meaning of occupation, injustice, and the peoples’ expulsion from their land.” These commanders now intimate that the UCK leadership no longer trusts the U.S.-led NATO to adhere to its promises. These leaders are convinced that NATO will abandon the UCK and the Kosovo Albanian refugees once a political solution is reached with Belgrade. Only the Islamists will stay with them to continue the jihad for a greater Albania against the Serbs, the Macedonians, and the West.
The real danger from the Islamist involvement in Kosovo is the legacy of the war. After a negotiated settlement is reached, the moment foreign aid stops and a genuinely moderate political leadership is empowered in Kosovo, the UCK elements sponsored by the Western intelligence services will collapse. Only the Islamist mujahideen and their supporters among the UCK’s indigenous grassroots units will remain active. They will continue to have a steady supply of money and weapons from the drug trade and a constant flow of expert fighters and volunteers from the Muslim world. Since the greater Albania aspired to by all factions of the UCK will not materialize, elements of other branches of the UCK will join the Islamists to continue the jihad against both the Serbs who destroyed Kosovo and the U.S.-led West, which eventually abandoned the Albanians. Having witnessed the selfless help provided by the Arab mujahideen at their darkest hour inside Kosovo, the Kosovo Albanian population will wholeheartedly support this jihad.
Baghdad has not missed the turmoil in the Muslim world caused by the Kosovo crisis. Saddam Hussein decided to capitalize on the building popular hostility to the United States. The Islamists were living up to bin Laden’s promise to build grassroots support for Iraq in the Arab world—in early April, Arab sources confirmed the existence of “popular movements in a number of Arab countries that are preparing for mass demonstrations and marches to break the Iraq blockade.” These sources also disclosed the recent organization of a clandestine Islamist support system composed of “secret cells in most Arab countries that are awaiting the start signal to hit U.S. and British interests and to stage massive demonstrations if London and Washington resume their barbaric aggression against Iraq.” For Baghdad the mere existence of such an infrastructure was a reaffirmation of the viability of the deal with bin Laden.
Emboldened, Saddam Hussein ordered his son Qusay, commander of the Special Security Forces, to form a new terrorist force for joint operations with the Islamists. Called the al-Nida (the Call) Force, it will consist of thousands of fighters specially trained in guerrilla warfare and special operations tactics. Al-Nida squads are expected to soon be assigned a number of “secret missions” all over the world. One of the first moves undertaken by Qusay in connection with the establishment of the al-Nida Force was the activation of long-term dormant networks of Iraqi intelligence planted in the West in the wake of the Gulf War in order to support joint operations with bin Laden’s Islamist terrorists.
The threat from the Saddam–bin Laden cooperation was shown by the discovery of a joint terrorist operation in Australia being prepared for the Olympic Games to be held in Sydney in the year 2000. In mid-March, Hamoud Abaid al-Anezi, a senior commander of bin Laden’s, arrived in Melbourne, Australia, with a valid Saudi passport. There he made contact with a just-activated network of four former Iraqi nationals, who as alleged defectors from the Iraqi army had been granted protective political refugee status in Australia in 1991. Together they started combing the Muslim community for young militants, ostensibly to join a jihad in Kosovo and Chechnya. The network was exposed in late April after al-Anezi and the Iraqis broke into the house of and beat up a young Muslim who refused to join the jihad and threatened to inform the authorities. When arrested, al-Anezi was carrying a Yemeni passport with another name. One of the Iraqis told the investigators that “al-Anezi had traveled to Australia for the purpose of recruiting other Muslims to join bin Laden in a jihad in Kosovo and Chechnya.” During this time the Fiji police launched a widespread search for three local Muslims whose names were provided by one of the Islamist terrorists captured in Albania in the summer of 1998. One of the suspects is a permanent resident of Australia. The search for these terrorists was prompted by the arrival in mid-April of a senior Saudi or Yemeni operative of bin Laden’s in order to contact and use this network in preparation for future terrorist operations, most likely in connection with the Sydney Olympic Games. Soon afterward rumors spread throughout the Islamist community in Fiji that this commander was none other than bin Laden himself. In early May the Fiji intelligence service issued a sketch of the Saudi commander they now believe is hiding in the southern islands of Fiji. The sketch bears a close resemblance to Osama bin Laden.
Islamist leaders and commanders stress that these operations, irrespective of their outcome, are but the initial steps in what they insist will be a long and bitter confrontation all over the world. In early May the Islamist leadership was anticipating escalation in the terrorism campaign. In Islamabad, a senior terrorist commander known as Sher (“lion” in Urdu) warned about the long reach of the Islamists in this campaign. Sher is a veteran member of bin Laden’s entourage, having operated with bin Laden in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Discussing the objectives of their jihad, Sher explained that having established an Islamist safe haven in South Asia, “we [the Islamists] now have to annihilate the Nasara [Christians]. First and foremost, the Americans. They regard themselves as the bosses everywhere. But in Serbia our aims coincide with theirs. They are protecting the Muslims, we also.” This is why the Islamist mujahideen in the Balkans will not challenge the United States while Americans are helping the Albanian Muslims. Sher acknowledged that there is a build up of Islamist terrorist forces in Albania and Kosovo. For example, “fifty of Osama’s gunmen” who had recently “disappeared” from a mujahideen base in Afghanistan “turned up in Kosovo.” The coexistence between the Islamists and the Americans in the Balkans, however, does not apply to the rest of the world. Sher explained that “there are many of us and we are everywhere. Including in the United States. They [the Americans] will be hearing about us again soon. After Serbia, God willing, we will [also] set about the Yahud [Jews].” Osama bin Laden is the undisputed commander of this surge. Sher emphasized that bin Laden “is alive and well. The Americans will never find him.” This state of affairs will not change even after the Islamist jihad begins in earnest. “Let me remind you that our people are everywhere,” Sher concluded. “We really do have a long reach. Our hands have long been stained with blood, and we do not know the meaning of the word ‘mercy.’ ” (A few days later, on May 11, 1999, Eduard Babazade, the Russian journalist who conducted this interview, died suddenly and mysteriously in Islamabad.)
The Islamist leadership in the West is also getting ready for the revival of terrorism. The significance of terrorism and the urgency to unleash a terrorist campaign were stressed in the “Third Fundamentalists’ Conference” organized by Sheikh Omar Bakri’s al-Muhajiroun and held in London on May 21. Al-Muhajiroun’s advance statement about the conference explained that it “will focus on the reasons for the Islamic regimes’ violence and backwardness, the Kosovo tragedy and its impact on Muslims in the West, the role of Asia’s Muslims in reviving the Caliphate, and the Islamo-phobia phenomenon, that is the fear of Islam in the West between fiction and truth.” The conference’s concluding statement warned the Muslim world against being “deceived by international organizations, such as NATO and the United Nations, because they are hostile to Muslims and are responsible for all the massacres perpetrated against Muslims in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Albania, and Kosovo.”
One of the keynote speakers at the conference was bin Laden’s supporter Mustafa Kamil, also known as Abu Hamzah al-Masri, who is the head of the Partisans of the Sharia Organization. Kamil’s speech was essentially a summing up of his recent book Terrorism Is the Solution. He explained that “terrorism is a Sharia term which Muslims must remain committed to. This means that terrorism is the means for calling on the oppressed to terrorize the tyrants.” Kamil stressed that Islamists must resort to terrorism as the sole viable and effective means of meeting such challenges as “the enslavement of mankind, the unfair killing of the oppressed on earth, the corruption of man and land, and the proliferation of destructive weapons that are used only by the tyrants.” Drafts of the manuscript are being circulated throughout the Islamist communities in the Middle East and South Asia where Kamil’s book is considered a major legal-theological justification for the conduct of spectacular terrorism against the enemies of Islam.
AT THE TIME of this writing, in the spring of 1999, the Islamist terrorist system commonly identified as bin Laden’s is functioning quite effectively. Bin Laden feels secure enough to venture out of his hideaway in Islam Dara and visit Tora Boora, where it is easier to communicate with his supporters around the world. The Islamists conducted several spectacular strikes and endured the consequent dragnet by intelligence services all over the world. Mere endurance under such adverse conditions would have been an achievement, but under the leadership of bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their colleagues the Islamist terrorist system continues to expand.
The unique role and long-term impact of bin Laden’s leadership were emphasized in the material from the interrogation of the Islamist terrorists in Egypt. Osama bin Laden is the only Islamist leader to have fostered unity of purpose and genuine cooperation among the various Islamist terrorist organizations all over the world. Shawqi Salamah, one of the Egyptian terrorists, contrasted the achievements of bin Laden with the earlier failures of the Islamist leadership. According to Salamah, Zawahiri repeatedly complained that although “serious and arduous efforts were made by several Sudanese political leaders, and particularly Hasan al-Turabi,” to achieve unity among various Islamist terrorist organizations, these efforts “failed” to such a degree that they were all but abandoned. “Hence there was no longer any question that either faction would agree to a merger until Osama bin Laden” prompted the various leaders “to address the issue of the merger which seemed possible,” Salamah explained.
Another terrorist commander, Sharif Hazza, told his interrogators that “after bin Laden settled in Afghanistan and set up the camps which included elements of all trends and inclinations, it was logical that bin Laden would impose on these newcomers the rules and conditions which he had agreed with the Afghan Taliban movement and which stipulated that he would be responsible for all the Arabs, and that there should be no disagreements or conflicts between them that would undermine security, otherwise they [the Taliban] would be forced to expel them all.” The unity achieved was a genuine one, for the various Islamist organizations began to closely cooperate in operational matters and “were able to benefit from the expertise and capabilities of each other’s cadres.” This unity was not limited to the Islamist terrorists operating in Afghanistan, Hazza noted, but included “groups in the Afghan, Yemeni, Sudanese, or even Albanian arenas. There were also groups from the Philippines, Bangladesh, Kashmir, and even China.”
All of these groups were unified by their commitment to waging a relentless jihad against the United States, Ahmad al-Najjar told the Egyptian interrogators. “I myself heard bin Laden say that our main objective is now limited to one state only, the United States, and involves waging a guerrilla war against all U.S. interests, not only in the Arab region but also throughout the world, and that this operation on the whole will ultimately force the United States and those gravitating within its sphere to review their policies toward the Islamic groups. Also, as a first step, the [Islamic] Front adopted Afghanistan as its launch-pad, and enlisted the help of cadres from various trends to carry out its instructions.” Najjar stressed the centrality of bin Laden as the key leader and source of inspiration of the entire Islamist effort conducted under the umbrella of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders. “Osama bin Laden held the general leadership, while some twenty individuals, foremost among them Ayman al-Zawahiri and Ahmad Shawqi al-Islambuli, were assigned the task of assisting him,” Najjar stated. Addressing the issue of his own arrest and that of numerous other Egyptian commanders, he stressed that once the various Islamist organizations were unified by bin Laden and integrated into the Islamic Front, bin Laden and Zawahiri established a multilayered, redundant, resilient command structure made up of commanders from numerous countries. As a consequence, Najjar emphasized, the Islamic Front can endure the arrests and/or killing of numerous commanders, including bin Laden and Zawahiri, and still be able to continue to expand and escalate its jihad against the United States and the West until the inevitable triumph.
Perhaps the most important and lasting legacy of bin Laden is his impact on Muslim youth all over the world, for whom he is a source of inspiration. “When the United States expresses its hatred for Osama, feelings of love for him intensify in the Muslim world. A large majority of Muslim youth considers Osama their hero. They raise slogans in his support and chant songs in his praise,” observed an editorial in Pakistan newspaper right after bin Laden’s disappearance. “No matter wherever he is, and wherever he decides to live, the number of people who love him will never lessen.”
The hero worshiping of bin Laden already has had dire ramifications for the security of the United States and its allies—namely, the radicalization and motivation of Muslim youth for generations of jihad. A senior ISI officer noted that since the U.S. cruise missile attacks on Khost, Osama bin Laden has been “gaining the image of a cult figure.” Even those wounded in the U.S. strike revere him. “Of course, we know him as the greatest Muslim hero of our time,” said one teenage Pakistani made an invalid by the strike. These sentiments are prevalent among Islamist youth. The master of Pakistani religious academies noted that “Osama bin Laden is an ultimate hero” for “each of the thousands of Pakistani and Afghan Taliban” studying in his higher schools. These students are eager to join bin Laden’s anti-American jihad in revenge for the U.S. strikes against Muslim lands. “I can see that our youth are getting desperate to pay back the Americans in their own coin,” the schoolmaster explained. Giving the name “Osama” to babies throughout the Muslim world has dramatically increased. Therein lies the epitome of bin Laden’s populist appeal and long-term impact—the sense of historical continuity of the Islamist jihad. “If we can’t take revenge from the Americans during our life time, our own Osamas will teach a lesson to them,” explained one Pakistani Talib (religious student), whose Osama is only six months old.
Ultimately the quintessence of bin Laden’s threat is his being a cog, albeit an important one, in a large system that will outlast his own demise—state-sponsored international terrorism. This is not to belittle the importance of bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their comrades in arms. Islamist international terrorism, perpetrated by deniable all-Islamic fronts such as bin Laden’s and made up of individuals genuinely convinced of the righteousness of their cause and methods, enables the sponsoring states to escalate their struggle against the West at a relatively low level of risk. The haphazard U.S. retaliation against Sudan and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam clearly demonstrated this low risk. Both regional and international terrorism can be used by a relentless and unscrupulous government to further strategic objectives, as Pakistan has proven with its war by proxy against India waged in Kashmir, and Iran with its campaign of pressure and coercion against the Persian Gulf States. The availability of weapons of mass destruction and the audacity to reach out into the heart of the United States make this trend all the more frightening.