The Secret History of al Qaeda

Abdel Bari Atwan

• Publisher: Saqi Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780863568435
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Terrorismus

Over the last ten years, journalist and al-Qa'ida expert Abdel Bari Atwan has cultivated uniquely well-placed sources and amassed a wealth of information about al-Qa'ida's origins, masterminds and plans for the future. Atwan reveals how al-Qa'ida's radical departure from the classic terrorist/guerrilla blueprint has enabled it to outpace less adaptable efforts to neutralize it. The fanaticism of its fighters, and their willingness to kill and be killed, are matched by the leadership's opportunistic recruitment strategies and sophisticated understanding of psychology, media, and new technology - including the use of the internet for training, support, and communications. Atwan shows that far from committing acts of violence randomly and indiscriminately, al-Qa'ida attacks targets according to a decisive design underwritten by unwavering patience. He also argues that events in Iraq and Saudi Arabia are watershed moments in the group's evolution that are making it more dangerous by the day, as it refines and appropriates the concept of jihad and makes the suicide bomber a permanent feature of a global holy war. While Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri remain al-Qa'ida's figureheads, Atwan identifies a new kind of leader made possible by its horizontal chain of command, epitomized by the brutal Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and the bombers of London, Madrid, Amman, Bali, and elsewhere. Scholarly, analytical, objective, it is also intensely readable, being by far the best book on the subject.' -- Tony Benn 'This is a must-read book for anyone interested in understanding our increasingly scary world.' -- Gavin Esler 'What shines out... is a profound desire to investigate and reveal the truth. Intelligent and informative.' -- Jason Burke, Guardian 'Deeply researched, well reported and full of interesting and surprising analyses. It demands to be read.' -- Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc

1

Osama bin Laden

The Historical Inevitability of bin Laden

Today the Muslim world is fascinated by bin Laden. When the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television channel broadcasts a video or audio message by him, or a program about his life, the streets are almost emptied in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Morocco, as everyone heads indoors to watch or listen to this man who has managed to gain an almost iconic status in the region.

An August 2007 poll in Pakistan found that Osama bin Laden was more popular than President Pervez Musharraf.¹ Another recent survey showed that as much as 60 per cent of the population in some Arab countries support him. In November 2003, even though the kingdom was experiencing al Qaeda attacks first-hand, more than half of all Saudis said they approved of bin Laden’s message. In Egypt, where US aid is key to the economy, bin Laden is more popular than George W. Bush.

There was a historical inevitability about the rise of bin Laden, who has become for many the figurehead of a resurgent Muslim identity. For many people in the West this is unthinkable, as there he is presented and perceived as an evil terrorist. Yet it is important to understand how he is viewed by his admirers in the Islamic world. How can the very real threat that al Qaeda’s ideology represents to global security be countered if its identity and nature remains shrouded in obscurity?

Osama bin Laden is perceived by many Muslims as a brave champion of revolution and rebellion, a person of mythical proportions with the appeal of a David challenging Goliath. Probably many of those who currently support him would not endorse either his extreme violence or the kind of shari‘ah governance Salafis² would like them to live under, but for the moment these are minor details for them. After centuries of decline, they view bin Laden as having brought hope and dignity back to a people under the shadow of humiliation and exploitation, and having squared up to the bullies of the West, in particular the US: this is how people have described their feelings about him to me.

Some have compared bin Laden to Jawaharlal Nehru, the great Indian populist leader; others have likened him to Buddha in that he, too, renounced wealth, prosperity and comfort in order to live austerely in the caves of barren mountains. Of course the enormous difference is that both Nehru and Buddha were pacifists, using only peaceful means in the pursuit of justice and freedom, whereas bin Laden has chosen the path of extreme violence and mass murder.

Perhaps Ayatollah Khomeini, the figurehead of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, is the closest in historical terms to bin Laden. Khomeini was to some extent bin Laden’s role model when he was in Sudan. He pursued a similar methodology to that of Khomeini in spreading his message; he issued communiqués, released audiocassettes and published written admonitions demanding reform and calling for the full implementation of shari‘ah and the combatting of corruption. However, in the crucial aspect of theology they are at odds, as Khomeini was a Shi‘i Muslim whereas bin Laden is Sunni.

The Early Years

Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1957. His mother was of Syrian origin and his father was a self-made construction contractor named Muhammad Awad bin Laden, who came to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from the Hadramaut region in southern Yemen, where the inhabitants are known for their intelligence, shrewdness, patience and distinctive business talents. Most of the big business families in Saudi Arabia originally hailed from this region. Muhammad bin Laden started as a simple labourer, but within a few years he was rapidly climbing the ladder of success and prosperity, eventually presiding over the biggest construction empire in the Arab world.

More importantly, he became a major behind-the-scenes political player in the kingdom. He established close ties with the ruling family, and when a feud erupted in the mid-1960s between King Saud and his brother Crown Prince Faisal, Muhammad bin Laden played a major role in persuading the king to abdicate in favour of Faisal and leave the country. The state treasury was empty at the time, and the country was on the verge of bankruptcy. Muhammad bin Laden lent the Saudi state tens of millions of dollars to pay the salaries of government employees for more than six months. The grateful ruling family subsequently rewarded him with enormous construction contracts, the most significant of which was the expansion of the Sanctuary in Mecca and the Prophet Muhammad’s mosque in Medina.

Osama bin Laden is the forty-third of fifty-three siblings, and twenty-first of twenty-nine brothers. He was ten years old when his father was killed in a plane crash.

When he was six months old his family moved from Riyadh to Hijaz, where he spent his childhood and adolescence. He frequently visited Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. This must have had a great impact on him and certainly contributed to the religious faith he exhibits now.

One of bin Laden’s brothers informed me that Osama was quiet and aloof as a child. He kept his distance from other children and did not participate with them in their play and clamour. He was intelligent and preferred to stay close to his father, enjoying sitting quietly in his company. He attended many religious meetings, study circles and Qur’anic readings even as a young boy.

Bin Laden has always been very attached to his mother. Born Aliyah Ghanem, she came from a rural family in the northeastern Syrian coastal region of Latakia. Although the region is dominated by Allawi Muslims, the Ghanem family is Sunni. Muhammad bin Laden was introduced to the beautiful Aliyah while on a business trip to Latakia in 1956, and soon afterwards she became his fourth wife. Osama bin Laden is her only son; he spoke to me about her with the greatest warmth and respect.

In 1998 the Saudi government tried to turn bin Laden’s admiration for his mother to their advantage, flying her by private jet to Afghanistan in the hope that she might dissuade her son from pursuing jihad and talk him into returning to Saudi Arabia. Her mission met with failure, however. It is believed that the last time mother and son met was in January 2001, at the wedding of bin Laden’s son to Abu Hafs al-Misri’s daughter.

Aliyah is known to follow her son’s activities with almost obsessive interest, keeping newspaper cuttings, watching the satellite channels and keeping up to date with his Internet communiqués and statements.

Osama bin Laden used to spend his summer holidays with his uncle Naji in Latakia, and it was there, at age seventeen, that he met his cousin Najua Ghanem, who was to become his first wife. She was fourteen when they married, and moved to Saudi Arabia with him. They have eleven children together.

Bin Laden received his education at Jeddah’s primary, intermediate and secondary schools. He then studied economics and business administration at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah where he received his BA. During his university years, he studied prevalent Islamic ideological trends and learned from such renowned scholars as Muhammad Qutb and Dr Abdullah Azzam.

Osama bin Laden’s marriage at the early age of seventeen speaks clearly against the often repeated allegation that he spent his youth travelling to London, Paris, Geneva and Manila in search of thrills. However, one of his brothers did tell me that he went to London at the age of thirteen for an English-language summer course at an Oxford Street language school. Sheikh Muhammad Zaki Badawi, the former director of the Regents Park Islamic Centre in London, confirmed that bin Laden visited the mosque in the early 1980s and delivered several sermons there.

Muhammad bin Laden was in the habit of offering his hospitality to large numbers of pilgrims on their way to Mecca each year. Following his death, two of the older bin Laden brothers decided to do likewise. The pilgrims often included renowned Islamic scholars and thinkers with whom the young Osama was eager to meet and speak. He was greatly influenced by two men in particular. The first was Muhammad Qutb, brother of Sayyid Qutb (who some analysts regard as the spiritual father of Islamic radical groups, and who will later be discussed in detail). The other was Abdullah Azzam, the ideologue of the jihad in Afghanistan and a very influential figure among Muslim youths in the 1980s. Both men lectured at the University of Jeddah, teaching Islamic culture, which was a mandatory module for all students.

Afghanistan

Abdullah Azzam became bin Laden’s first mentor, providing him with an overview of current events in the Muslim world. He discussed the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, emphasizing the necessity of liberating that Muslim country from foreign occupation. Azzam organized a secret trip to Pakistan for bin Laden through his own contacts and the young man travelled to Peshawar and Karachi, where he met leaders of the Afghan Islamic groups including Abdul Rasul Sayyaf of the Itihad-i-Islami Baraye Azadi Afghanistan and Burhanuddin Rabbani of the Jama’at Islamiyah (both men would later oppose the Taliban, with whom bin Laden formed a de facto alliance). This trip lasted for a month and was followed by several others until Osama bin Laden eventually moved to Afghanistan more or less full-time in 1982. Bin Laden brought drilling equipment, diggers and bulldozers from the family firm in Saudi Arabia. This was an immense contribution to the mujahedin’s campaign against the Soviet invaders, creating access routes up mountains, levelling ground and digging labyrinthine camps like the one I visited at Tora Bora.

Bin Laden also played a key role fundraising for the mujahedin and encouraged thousands of Saudis to volunteer for the jihad on his many trips back to Saudi Arabia, where he gave talks and sermons; by then he was already seen as something of a role model. Although he had been born into great wealth, bin Laden did not care for material comforts and had abandoned the lavish lifestyle the majority of his family enjoyed to pursue an Islamic agenda. He was becoming a well-known face in the pages of Arab magazines and newspapers in the Gulf region, celebrated as a heroic mujahed who was willing to sacrifice comfort and even his life for the cause and for the principles he believed in.

The Saudi government wholeheartedly supported and backed the Afghan and Arab mujahedin fighting the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Fundraising committees were formed under the chairmanship of Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the governor of the Riyadh district. Imams at mosques were encouraged to deliver fiery sermons exhorting young men to join the fight. Large boxes were placed in mosque courtyards to collect donations from worshippers. I recall being at the mosque on Fridays when thousands were present, and seeing how eagerly they pressed around these boxes to deposit their offerings. The Saudi government itself split the cost of the Afghan war with the US.

In 1984, bin Laden founded Bayt al-Ansar (House of the Supporters) in Peshawar. His mission was to provide a station where newly arrived volunteers for jihad could be received before being sent for training. Bin Laden did not have his own training camps at this time, and sent new recruits to one of the Afghan mujahedin groups led by warlords like Sayyaf, Rabbani or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Afghan Hezb-e Islami party. By 1986 bin Laden had set up his own training camps in various parts of Afghanistan. In 1988 he established an office to record the names of the mujahedin and inform the families of those who were killed. The name of this register was ‘al Qaeda’ (‘the base’ or ‘foundation’), and that is how the organization got its name. Most Islamist sources say that the embryonic al Qaeda network was established at this point.

In 1989, in the wake of the withdrawal of Soviet troops, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia having received a warning from Pakistani intelligence that he and Abdullah Azzam were being targeted for assassination by the CIA. Two weeks later Azzam, godfather of the Afghan jihad, was assassinated along with his two sons.

Saudi Arabia

The Saudi government put bin Laden under house arrest in mid-1990 and banned him from travelling; one of his stud farms was also raided and kept under close observation. The Saudi government had security concerns about bin Laden even at this early stage. His very outspoken public speeches had been recorded on cassette tapes and were widely distributed; in them he warned the Saudi people about the threat posed by the Iraqi Ba‘thist regime, which he believed had plans to invade the entire Gulf region. A subsequent letter from bin Laden to Prince Ahmad bin Abdul Aziz, Deputy Minister of the Interior, urging the royal family to recognize the necessity for comprehensive reform, did nothing to endear him to the regime. In the same letter bin Laden predicted that Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait.

Prince Nayif bin Abdul Aziz, Minister of the Interior, was sufficiently interested in this analysis to invite bin Laden to a meeting. However, he did not act upon the warnings. When Saddam eventually did invade Kuwait on 2 August 1990, bin Laden wrote another letter to the minister in which he suggested mobilizing mujahedin from various parts of the Muslim world, including his own Afghan Arab veterans, in order to liberate Kuwait. He claimed he could muster an army of 100,000 men. This letter was ignored.

Bin Laden told me that the Saudi government’s decision to invite US troops to defend the kingdom and liberate Kuwait was the biggest shock of his entire life. He could not believe that the House of Al Saud could welcome the deployment of ‘infidel’ forces on Arabian Peninsula soil, within the proximity of the Holy Places, for the first time since the inception of Islam.

Bin Laden also feared that by welcoming US troops onto Arab land the Saudi government would be subjecting the country to foreign occupation – in an exact replay of the course of events in Afghanistan, when the Communist government in Kabul invited Russian troops into the country. Just as bin Laden had taken up arms to fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, he now decided to take up arms to confront the US troops on the Arabian Peninsula. At this point bin Laden decided to stop advising the Saudi officials on what actions they should or should not take. He felt communication with them had become utterly futile.

Bin Laden now had two main aims: renowned Saudi cleric Sheikh bin Uthaymin had issued a fatwa stating that it was obligatory for every Muslim, particularly those from the Arabian Peninsula, to prepare for battle against the ‘invaders’. Bin Laden decided to use this fatwa as a means of mobilizing youths to travel to Afghanistan and train for combat, and a considerable number of Saudis heeded the call.

He also decided to assemble the largest possible number of scholars in an independent religious establishment that could become an authoritative frame of reference for the people, in lieu of the official Senior Scholars’ Association (the ulama, or religious authorities). Bin Laden no longer had faith in the Saudi ulama whose religious rulings, he felt, were in response to requests from the government rather than based on truthful interpretations of the shari‘ah. He now sought an independent fatwa on whether or not it was permissible for the Saudi rulers to seek the assistance of foreign troops.

Meanwhile, bin Laden had decided to leave his homeland indefinitely. There was one problem – his passport had been confiscated. He made use of his family’s close connections with the royal family to get permission to travel to Pakistan, where he said he had to wind down some of his businesses. After a con...