New Al Qaeda video affirms Bin Laden is still alive

Al Qaeda have released a new video marking the seventh anniversary of 9/11 which claims Osama Bin Laden and former Taliban leader Mullah Omar are both alive and well. The 90 minute video also contains speeches by Al Qaeda’s number two Ayman al-Zawahiri and the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq Abu Ayyub al-Masri, (also known as Hamza al-Muhajir) as well as a reading of the will of 9/11 Flight 93 hijacker Saeed al Ghamdi. Al Qaeda’s video production arm As Sahab released the footage in full on jihadi websites this week after Al Jazeera had broadcast excerpts on 8 September.

The full video comes just days after two suicide car bombers claimed the lives of 17 people (including 6 attackers) at the US embassy in Sana the capital of Yemen. A group calling itself Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for the attack but the group is almost certainly linked to Al Qaeda. Bin Laden’s father Muhammad was born in Yemen and Osama remains extremely popular in the Gulf state. A large percentage of his followers and all his bodyguards are Yemenis or from the nearby Assir region of southern Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda’s first ever attack bombed US soldiers in Aden in 1991. And one of its most notorious attack before 9/11 was on the USS Cole also at Aden in October 2000 in which 17 American sailors died.

The British based Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan would not be surprised to hear the news that Osama is still alive. Atwan is the editor of the London based Arabic newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi and the author of the book The Secret History of Al Qa’ida. He is also one of the few Western based journalists to interview Bin Laden in person. He tells the story of that hair-raising interview in the first chapter of his book. After a secret and dangerous trip via Peshawar and Jalalabad, he arrived at the Tora Bora caves in the Winter of 1996. Atwan complained to Bin Laden how cold it was in the caves. Bin Laden said he was lucky; when the UK Independent journalist Robert Fisk arrived, it was Summer and the caves were infested by scorpions.

Atwan was struck by how modestly Bin Laden lived. His manner, austere living habits, and renouncement of comfort and wealth have all contributed to his air of a champion of revolution and rebellion to many Muslims. He was born in Riyadh in 1957, of a Syrian mother and a self-made construction contractor father Muhammad Awad bin Laden. Muhammad was from the Hadramaut region of southern Yemen whose inhabitants are renowned for their business prowess. Bin Laden senior fit the mould and rose from being a labourer to a billionaire presiding over the largest construction empire in the Arab world.

Osama was the forty-third of fifty-three siblings and the family was adopted by the Saudi Royal Family after his father died in a plane crash. Osama was just 10 years old. He was educated at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah where he studied Islamic trends under Muhammad Qutb (brother of the Egyptian Father of Islamism Sayyid Qutb) and Abdullah Azzam. Azzam was a highly influential Palestinian-born scholar and theologian, and a central figure in preaching for jihad.

Azzam became Osama’s mentor and encouraged him to join the mujahideen rising in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion. He moved there in 1982 and became a key role in fundraising and organising Saudi volunteers for the jihad. He set up his own camps and created a register to inform families of those who were killed. The name of the register was Al Qaeda (“the base” or “the foundation”). After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, he and Azzam fled back to Saudi Arabia, having been warned by Pakistani intelligence that the pair were a target for CIA assassination.

The Saudis placed him under house arrest in 1990 after he was too outspoken about the threat from the “godless regime” of Saddam Hussein. He also predicted Iraq would invade Kuwait. When the panicked Saudis invited US troops into the country after his prediction came to pass, Osama described the deployment of the “infidel soldiers” as the “biggest shock of his life”. He used his royal connections to get a passport and moved to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan where he prepared to organise a new jihad against the invaders of his homeland.

After threats on his life, Osama moved to Sudan in 1991 where he was made welcome by the Bashir Islamic regime which had taken power in a coup two years earlier. Osama invested $200 million in Sudanese infrastructure including an airport in Port Sudan and the 400km Defiance Highway between Port Sudan and the capital Khartoum. From here, he launched his first attacks against the US, the Yemen incident mentioned earlier and he was also instrumental in bringing down two Black Hawk helicopters in the US 1993 mission in Mogadishu.

But under increasing international pressure, Sudan looked for a way to expel its increasingly dangerous guest. In 1996 Bashir told him Sudan could no longer protect him from assassination. Osama took the hint and moved his operation back to Afghanistan. The country was then in chaos as the Taliban were taking city after city. Osama was initially wary but changed his mind after meeting Mullah Omar in Spring 1996. He gave his bayat (pledge of allegiance) to Omar and threw his forces into battle against the Northern Alliance. The safe haven provided by Omar’s successful capture of Kabul allowed Osama to do longer term planning against his implacable enemy – the US.

That year, he faxed Atwan’s newspaper his declaration of war against the US, which he called the “jihad against the Americans occupying the land of the two sacred places” (Mecca and Medina). Atwan believes that planning for 9/11 started in 1998. Under the influence of his Egyptian 2IC Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Osama saw the advantages of the military strategy of suicide bombing. They looked for recruits with religious zeal, courage, mental agility, a clean criminal record, and those with no spouses or family to support. There were hundreds of eager applicants.

Al Qaeda are also sophisticated users of the Internet. Electronic jihad is a “sacred duty” in which believers are called on to defend Islam and also hack into, destroy American and Israeli websites. Jihadi groups have four elements: a leader, religious guide, members and IT specialists. Prior to his death in 2006, Iraqi Al Qaeda leader Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi gained enormous status almost entirely due to his use of the Internet. He averaged nine communications a day and released numerous videos on the Net. Al Qaeda is now believed to have almost five thousand websites promoting the movement.

Al Qaeda has been mostly extremely successful in meeting its goals. Its 9/11 operation cost $500,000 to fund and caused billions in financial damage. American troops left Saudi Arabia in 2003 and a year later Spain overthrew its pro Iraqi invasion right-wing government just three days after the Al Qaeda killed 200 people in the Madrid bombings. Osama has tapped into the worldwide Muslim umma, most of whom see him as a David figure, bringing down the American Goliath. As Atwan says, not many Muslims necessarily want Wahhabi-style caliph rule that Osama says he wants to bring back, but that is not an issue for now.

Osama is hoping to stretch American hegemony in the Middle East to breaking point (much like how the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989). Then, he believes, it will be easy overthrow the weak and corrupt Arab and Gulf regimes once US power in the region is destroyed. As Atwan concludes matter-of-factly and chillingly “as long as connections continue to be made between US policy, actual or perceived, and the continuing instability in much of the Middle East, we can expect that Al-Qaeda will grow stronger and expand the sphere of its operations”.

The case of Abdul Bari Atwan: A disgrace for democracy in Australia

The Australian Government dealt another hammer blow against free speech in this country when it refused a visa for a journalist to speak at a Brisbane festival today. Audiences at the Brisbane Writers Festival were denied a chance to hear respected London-based journalist Abdul Bari Atwan speak at a festival event. Atwan is the Palestinian-born editor of the prestigious London based Arabic newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi and he was due to share a session called “Is Balance a Delusion” with renowned Australian journalist David Marr. Atwan was expected to talk about journalistic balance and also promote his critically acclaimed new book “The Secret History of al-Qa'ida”. Atwan interviewed Bin Laden in the Tora Bora Caves in 1996 but his book categorically rejected supporting the methods used by Bin Laden’s organisation.

Festival director Michael Campbell told the audience that Atwan had applied for a visa in London on 16 August and it was referred to Canberra a week later. Atwan and Campbell then queried Australia House on a weekly and then daily basis on the status of the request. They got conflicting reports that said variously it was in progress or it was not on file at all. Campbell rang the office of Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews and was stonewalled. Eventually Atwan ran out of time and had to cancel his invitation to Australia.

Journalist and writer David Marr then spoke. He said this was “another day of censorship in this country”. Marr spent much of his day yesterday on the phone to Atwan and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (the aptly acronymed DIC). He found out that DIC’s Character Section had sent Atwan’s visa request to ASIO. Marr said this was done for political not security reasons. It was done for two pre-election fear mongering reasons. Firstly to remind the electorate how frightening terrorism is (even though Atwan merely reports on it, not engages in it). And secondly to wedge the Labor Party into a “soft on terrorism” position if it opposed the government action. And indeed Marr and Campbell could elicit no response from Labor Immigration spokesman Tony Burke on the issue.

Marr said the freedom to engage in public debate has been deteriorating since the draconian anti-terror and sedition legislation (pdf) was passed in 2005. The government was enraged when ACT Chief Minister John Stanhope published the proposed legislation on his web site. Prime Minister Howard and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock were furious that the public could know what was in the security laws. Drafted in the wake of the 2005 London bombings, Australia passed laws that were more restrictive than those in the UK.

The legislation includes a clause that outlaws “association with terrorism”, a power that the government has used widely and with little scrutiny. Meanwhile the state governments were foolishly persuaded to pass the sedition laws on the condition that the Law Reform Commission would examine them in 2006. Ruddock has shown no inclination to act on any of their tabled recommendations.

Marr also condemned the refusal to remove academic studies from the scope of the legislation. In 2006 respected Monash University lecturer in security studies David Wright Neville reported that police had interviewed his students because they were buying and borrowing books about terrorism. Ruddock supported the police saying genuine academics ‘had nothing to fear’. But an Adelaide academic with a $1m grant into terrorism research was warned off talking to Hezbollah leaders.

In July 2006, the Government banned two 1980s texts on jihad after a heavily publicised moral panic campaign by the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Though the Tele described them as “books of hate”, Marr said they are still available on the internet and would not incite anyone to slaughter. Universities have removed books about terrorism and jihad from their shelves. “How are we better off for not knowing what they do?” wondered Marr.

Ruddock is not yet finished. In the last two weeks of parliament he has tried to introduce wider censorship so that anything that advocates terrorism or illegal activity can be banned. As well as jihadi texts this would include instruction manuals on how to make ecstasy. The wording around ‘advocates’ would be anyone ‘who directly praises terrorism where the risk that a person of whatever age or mental impairment might be encouraged to commit terrorism’ (Hansard 15 Aug). Marr suggested that no-one can begin to guess what texts a lunatic might use to commit terrorism. In any case, terrorists are usually not mentally impaired – just really angry.

Marr suggested that if the audience wanted to see Abdul Bari Atwan, they should go to Youtube where they can see Atwan debate the Iraq war with Richard Perle (architect of the Afghan invasion) on a PBS documentary. Marr said that unlike Australia, the US still had a high regard for debate. In the US the culture is to answer questions, here the culture is to avoid answering questions. Atwan told Marr this is the first time he has been refused entry into any country in the world.

Marr said the reason Atwan was not allowed to come to Australia was purely political. If he came here he would have been the focus of media attention. His support of the Palestinian cause and his opposition to the war in Iraq would have achieved a wide audience in the lead-up to a general election. Atwan was not only due to speak at intellectual forums such as the Brisbane Writers Festival and ABC Radio National but also on high-rating media such as Channel 9’s Today Show and the Alan Jones radio show. Marr said there was a political dividend to the government to keep him out. “This is a very sad day for the country and I’m disgusted to be a witness to it”, he said. Marr finished with an unambiguous description of the decision makers: “These people are scum”.