Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics (31 page)

For example, Bin Laden gave the Taliban 3 million dollars at a crucial point in 1996 as the Taliban prepared to conquer Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.168 Another instance of Bin Laden’s military support of the Taliban was when 300 of his soldiers fought alongside soldiers from the Taliban during the winter of 1997.169 By 1999, 400 Arabs under Bin Laden’s leadership were fighting against the Northern Alliance.170

Yet, Bin Laden’s relationship with the Taliban was not always smooth. While at significant junctures Bin Laden and the Taliban were close allies, there were at least four differences between him and the Taliban which at dif- ferent times and in varying ways caused rifts between the two sides: (1) There was an ethnic difference – Bin Laden was an Arab while the majority of the Taliban were Pashtun. (2) At times, some members of the Taliban and Bin Laden differed with respect to priorities. Bin Laden wanted to secure Afghanistan for the Taliban and al-Qaida so that he could use Afghanistan as a stepping stone for continuing his global war against the West and his hoped-for establishment of a global Islamic state, while some members of the Taliban put a much higher priority on Afghanistan’s welfare than expanding the Islamist struggle outside of Afghanistan. (3) Bin Laden had significantly more money at his disposal than the Taliban which sometimes caused jealousy and bitterness on the Taliban’s part. (4) During certain periods, there were power struggles between Mullah Omar, an important Taliban leader, and Bin Laden over who should be in charge of Afghanistan’s Islamists and the future direction of al-Qaida and the Taliban.171 Although there were periods of friction between al-Qaida and the Taliban, their relationship was usually characterized by reciprocity; Bin Laden provided financial and other forms of support to the Taliban, while the Taliban protected Bin Laden and al-Qaida, allowing them to operate within Afghanistan.172

In spite of the alternating reciprocity and tensions between al-Qaida and the Taliban, Bin Laden used his time in Afghanistan in pursuit of several of his goals. For instance, during this period, he issued a number of significant statements which articulated al-Qaida’s objectives, the Islamic foundations of the movement, and al-Qaida’s grievances against Western governments and most of the governments in the majority-Muslim world.173 Among these, a notable statement was the “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” which was issued on August 23, 1996.174 In this statement, Bin Laden blamed the “Zionist- Crusader Alliance” (which includes the United States and Israel) for “mas- sacres” in many places, including Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza, and Somalia.175 Bin Laden believed that the American soldiers who were in Saudi Arabia during and after the first Gulf War were part of this broader Western war against Muslims because, in his words, they were “occupying” Saudi Arabia.176 In this statement, Bin Laden also expressed his belief that, given the continuing massacres against Muslims, the Saudi government’s alliance

with the United States, and the Saudi royal family’s oppression against Muslims in Saudi Arabia, true Muslims such as himself are left with no choice but to use military means to attack all those enemies of al-Qaida.177

Many of the principles which were articulated in that 1996 statement were restated in a declaration by the World Islamic Front entitled “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders” which was released on February 23, 1998.178 This statement was approved by Bin Laden, who represented al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri who was the leader of the Islamic Jihad Group in Egypt, as well as the leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Group, Jama(at al-Ulema-i Pakistan, and the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh, all of whose names appear on the declaration.179 This was the first major statement that was approved by Bin Laden and Zawahiri and was one of several indications of their strong alliance with each other, which was to extend into the foreseeable future. The fact that all of these leaders approved the declaration signifies the continuing transnational coalitions that Bin Laden was building with Islamist groups as he continued his battle against Western countries and their allies in the majority-Muslim world.

Another manifestation of al-Qaida’s expansive reach and its commitment to using violence in its attempt to eject all American influences from the majority-Muslim world was the attack against the USS Cole, the destroyer which was attacked by Islamists during a refueling stop in a port in Aden, Yemen on October 12, 2000. The Islamists who were involved in this attack had received training and support in Afghanistan and used their expertise in a suicide attack which blew a 40- by 60-foot hole in the hull of the destroyer, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 31 others. The attack inflicted a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of damage, left the ship without a deployment from October 12, 2000 until November 29, 2003, and caused the United States to avoid using Aden as a port for its warships.180

Bin Laden expressed enormous satisfaction as a result of this attack, partly because it constituted what he considered to be a successful and fully justified assault against a tangible symbol of American military aggression against the majority-Muslim world. For him, the United States’ running “away [from Aden] in less than twenty-four hours after the attack” was another indication of American cowardice in the face of consistent military opposition.181 According to Bin Laden, the United States manifested a similar level of cowardice in its withdrawals from Vietnam at the end of that war, from Beirut after the Islamist attack against the American Marine barracks there in 1983, and from Mogadishu in 1993 after 18 American soldiers were killed in the city.182 Bin Laden’s perception of the United States’ weakness and cowardice was one of the reasons that he believed the United States would not engage in a long ground war against himself, al-Qaida, and the Taliban after al-Qaida’s attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.183

Usama bin Laden, al-Qaida, and the September 11 Attacks

The next major attack which al-Qaida coordinated took place on September 11, 2001 and was directed against the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, and, in all likelihood, the White House in Washington, DC. One plane hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center, a second struck the other tower, a third crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth plane, which probably had the White House as its target, was downed as a result of the intervention of its passengers and crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.184 Just under 3,000 people died as a result of these attacks.185 Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two were from Egypt, one was from Lebanon, and one was from the United Arab Emirates.186 Most of these men were deeply committed Muslims, believed that the West through its military, political, economic, and cultural imperialism sought to destroy Islam, and harbored feelings of alienation from significant aspects of their respective societies. They may have believed that in striking at a “far enemy,” namely the United States, they were part of al-Qaida’s larger battle against the West and its destructive impact on the majority-Muslim world. Most of the hijackers had received training in Afghanistan and received support and coordination from al-Qaida’s global network, including leading al-Qaida figures in Afghanistan. Their time in Afghanistan included receiving additional education in Islam as well some limited instruction on how to carry out the September 11 attacks.187

The letter which may have been written by Muhammad Atta, the lead September 11 hijacker, to his fellow-hijackers is full of Quranic citations and commands to the hijackers to pray during various stages of their opera- tion. For example, the final paragraph of this letter states, in part:

And then, when the zero-hour comes, open your chest and welcome death in the cause of God, always remembering your prayers to ease your mission before the goal … . And let your last words be, “There is no God but God and Muhammad is his messenger.” And then comes the meeting in the highest paradise with the mercy of God … . When you see the masses of the infidels, remember those [enemies of the Prophet] that numbered about ten thousand and how God granted victory to the believers. (Quran 33:22)188

This letter attempts to embed the hijackers’ mission within certain Quranic proclamations and the life of the Prophet Muhammad; it even equates the hijackers’ operations against the infidel Westerners with Muhammad’s battles against the roughly 10,000 enemies of Islam which he and the early Muslims faced during the Battle of the Trench in the seventh century. It attempts to encourage the hijackers by stating that much like those early

Muslims who fought the seventh-century infidels with God’s blessing and were victorious, so too the September 11 hijackers are involved in a contem- porary battle against modern-day infidels who are attempting to destroy Islam, and those who support the hijackers’ cause and the cause of Islam will also be victorious.

In a variety of statements after the September 11 attacks, Bin Laden continued to praise the heroism of the hijackers while justifying their actions on the basis of his interpretation of Islam.189 Bin Laden stated that the 19 hijackers (whom he called students) “did a very great deed, a glorious deed. God rewarded them and we pray that their parents will be proud of them, because they raised Muslims’ heads high and taught America a lesson it won’t forget, with God’s will.”190 Bin Laden indirectly reminded his listeners that it was these 19 “students” who did the work that 19 Arab nations could have done when they engaged in the September 11 attacks “which shook America’s throne, struck its economy right in the heart, and dealt the biggest military power a mighty blow, by the grace of God almighty.”191

In Bin Laden’s view, the hijackers struck hard at the destructive and rapacious global economy which is largely controlled by the United States, a country that uses its military in its attempt to force unbelief and humiliation on the world’s Muslims.192 Bin Laden believes that the hijackers have shown a way to battle America that could undercut that country financially and militarily. For him, the September 11 attacks were damaging financially to the United States because they cost the United States “more than a trillion dollars.”193 According to Bin Laden, the attacks could be damaging to the United States militarily because as a result of them, the United States deployed thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan, where they are vulnerable to the attacks of Muslims.194

Bin Laden predicted that the United States’ post-September 11 response would turn its battle against Muslims into one that is far more destructive to that nation than the Vietnam War.195 For Bin Laden, God’s renewal of the global Islamic community will enable Muslims to topple the United States, much as God’s blessing of Afghanistan’s mujahideen enabled them to defeat the Soviets, which in Bin Laden’s view was one factor that led to the demise of the Soviet Union.196 In an interview between Usama bin Laden and Hamid Mir of the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Bin Laden discussed his justifications for the killing of American and other non-Muslim civilians in al-Qaida’s attacks, including the September 11 attacks.197

During various times in Islamic history, Muslims have interpreted the Quran and Hadith as forbidding or at least minimizing the allowable number of deaths of non-combatants at the hands of Muslims during warfare. According to Bin Laden, since Americans “pay taxes to their government, they elect their president, their government manufactures

arms” and uses them itself and provides them to a variety of governments which wage war against “true Muslims,” American citizens cannot be considered non-combatants at all since they either support or are complicit in their government’s massacres of Muslims across the world. Given this high level of complicity, all Americans (whether or not they are in the military) can be considered combatants and are legitimate targets of Islamically-based attacks.198 Indeed, for Bin Laden, in this war against the West, the Quran and Hadith obligate all Muslims to engage in warfare against the West until, at minimum, all the governments of the majority-Muslim world are “truly Islamic.”199

For Bin Laden, Muslims also have an obligation to wage war against the West in what could be considered traditional battlefield situations such as Afghanistan and Iraq.200 For example, in February 2003 as Bin Laden saw the American invasion of Iraq (which occurred in March 2003) on the horizon, he attempted to provide a strategy for Iraqis to resist the Americans and other “foreign occupiers.”201 In his February 2003 statement, presciently, Bin Laden stated, “what the enemy fears most is urban and street warfare, in which heavy and costly human losses can be expected,” while he emphasized “the importance of dragging the enemy into a protracted, exhausting, close combat, making the most of camouflaged defense positions in plains, farms, hills and cities.”202 Bin Laden also asserted the potential effectiveness of martyrdom operations (or suicide attacks) “which have inflicted unprecedented harm on America and Israel, thanks to God Almighty.”203 Bin Laden also suggested that much as the Prophet Muhammad used creative and beneficial methods (such as building trenches) in warfare against his enemies, so too contemporary Muslims should be open to deploying unorthodox methods in modern-day warfare against their enemies.204

While it would be difficult to measure the extent of the influence of Bin Laden’s declarations on future Iraqi insurgents, his observations on the impending war could, at minimum, be considered perceptive. In a series of other statements about the Iraq War and the United States’ military operations there and in other parts of the majority-Muslim world, Bin Laden continued to encourage Islamists and others who were fighting the Americans, while expressing the same kind of justifications for their resistance against the Americans (based on his interpretation of the Quran and Hadith) as he had in the past.205

Multiple Muslim individuals and movements seem to have influenced Bin Laden’s ideas. Bin Laden’s ways of imagining Islamic history and applying his understanding of it to today’s events, together with his conceptions of such ideas as jahiliyya, jihad, and justifications for warfare, seem to have been influenced by Ibn Taymiyya and Sayyid Qutb, while his austere vision of the Islamic state seems to be influenced by the Wahhabi tradition. Several of these strands of thought have also been at work as Islamists in Pakistan