[iwar] [fc:Saudi-Fugitive-Spouts-Militant-Rhetoric,-but-Ties-to-Violence-Remain]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-13 03:23:49
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Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 03:23:49 -0700 (PDT)
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Bin Laden: A 'Master Impresario'
Saudi Fugitive Spouts Militant Rhetoric, but Ties to Violence Remain
Mysterious 
   
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 13, 2001; Page A28

For the past few months, a videotape has been circulating in the Middle
East showing Osama bin Laden appealing to his followers to join a "holy
war" against the United States.  Wearing white robes and a Yemeni
dagger, the fugitive Saudi millionaire goes on to thank Allah for the
"destruction" of a U.S.  warship in Aden, Yemen. 

The 100-minute videotape, a mixture of militant rhetoric and rambling
theology, offers insight into the propaganda methods of a man who U.S. 
officials have depicted as the leading suspect in Tuesday's terrorist
attacks in New York and Washington.  Although he openly rejoices in last
October's bombing of the USS Cole, and calls for more "blood and
destruction" in the months ahead, he stops short of claiming
responsibility for the incident. 

Since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, bin Laden has used his public
statements to create an image as the leader of a religious struggle on
behalf of the disgruntled and the dispossessed of the Islamic world.  At
the same time, he has maintained an air of mystery about his involvement
in specific terrorist acts and his degree of control over a worldwide
network of supporters known in Arabic as al Qaeda ("The Base"). 

"He is a master impresario and manipulator of the media," said Bruce
Hoffman, a terrorism expert for the Rand Corp., a research center in the
Washington area.  "There has been a consistent pattern of him making
statements and issuing threats ahead of time, but not taking
responsibility afterward.  He alternates between the psychological
campaign and acts of death and carnage."

Bin Laden's statements in the period leading up to Tuesday's multiple
terrorist attacks seem to fit into a well-established routine. 
Interviewed last month in the mountains of southern Afghanistan by a
London-based Arab journalist, he boasted -- without going into detail --
that he and his followers were planning "a very big one." Yesterday,
however, al Qaeda spokesmen denied involvement in strikes on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, while expressing support for the attacks. 

One reason for bin Laden's reticence, according to U.S.  officials, may
be a deal struck with the Islamic fundamentalist rulers of Afghanistan,
where he has been based since 1996.  Known as the Taliban, the Afghan
fundamentalists have responded to repeated U.S.  demands for bin Laden's
extradition by depicting him as a Saudi political fugitive.  Taliban
leaders deny knowledge of any evidence that he has been involved in
terrorism. 

By seeking sanctuary in Afghanistan, bin Laden has returned to the
source of his political inspiration.  Bin Laden, the son of a wealthy
Saudi construction magnate, was born in 1957 and is the 17th of 52
children.  Bin Laden was an early supporter of the mujaheddin resistance
movement formed to oppose the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. 
"I was enraged," he has said.  "I went there at once."

At first, his role was limited to fundraising activities in Pakistan. 
Toward the end of the war, he moved to Afghanistan and took part in
several battles against the Soviet army. 

At the time, the Afghan mujaheddin were receiving financial and
logistical support from the United States and other Western governments. 
Bin Laden, however, saw little difference between the United States and
the Soviet Union.  In his view, both superpowers were equally culpable:
for geopolitical reasons, the United States might be temporarily
supporting "freedom movements" in Afghanistan, but it was on the side of
the "oppressive forces" back home in Saudi Arabia. 

According to former associates of bin Laden, his anger at the United
States grew after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and the decision to
station thousands of troops in Saudi Arabia.  In a lengthy statement in
1996 outlining his philosophy, bin Laden denounced the "occupation" of
the Arab Holy Land by "American crusader forces," which he described as
"the latest and greatest aggression" against the Islamic world since the
death of the prophet Muhammad in 632. 

"He sees himself as continuing the jihad, first against the Soviets and
then against the Americans," said David Schenker, a terrorism expert at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 

"He looks at the world in very stark, black-and-white terms," said
Joshua Teitelbaum, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University who has
studied bin Laden's early career.  "For him, the U.S.  represents the
forces of evil that are bringing corruption and domination into the
Islamic world, and particularly to Saudi Arabia, the holiest land in the
world for Muslims."

Kept under house arrest in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, because of his
opposition to the Saudi alliance with the United States, bin Laden fled
the country in April 1991, moving first to Afghanistan and then to the
Sudanese capital, Khartoum.  A fundamentalist Islamic government had
just come to power in Sudan and was permitting Muslims to enter the
country without visas, opening the doors for hundreds of suspected
terrorists and former mujaheddin. 

According to a former associate, Jamal Fadl, now in a witness protection
program in the United States, bin Laden used his stay in Sudan both to
set up legitimate businesses and to prepare for a terrorist war against
the United States. 

"In some ways, his organization resembles a government," said Jessica
Stern, a terrorism expert at Harvard University who worked in the
Clinton White House.  "As in the government, people were often told only
what they needed to know.  There was almost a classification system for
information."

According to U.S.  officials, bin Laden financed several terrorist
training camps in northern Sudan and Yemen, and appeared interested at
one time in acquiring nuclear and chemical components.  U.S. 
investigators also have established financial and logistical links
between bin Laden and Ramzi Yousef, organizer of the February 1993 World
Trade Center bombing. 

Sudan expelled bin Laden and most of his supporters in 1996 after the
United States mounted political and diplomatic pressure.  He moved back
to Afghanistan and set up training camps in the mountains.  According to
Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian thought to have been trained by bin Laden who
was arrested on the Canadian border in December 1999, the camps offered
training in areas such as "rocket-launching, urban warfare,
assassination and sabotage."

Ressam, who told a New York court in July that he planned to disrupt
millennium celebrations by bombing Los Angeles International Airport,
said that later classes focused on how "to blow up the infrastructure of
a country." But he also suggested that many of the operations were
semi-autonomous.  He said his cell was given leeway to choose its own
targets, and to raise funds by robbing banks in Canada. 

Last year, a U.S.  court found evidence of links between bin Laden and
the organizers of the August 1998 bomb attacks against U.S.  Embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania.  The United States responded to the attacks by
bombing suspected training camps in Afghanistan and a factory in Sudan
linked by the CIA to the production of chemical agents. 

Soon after the attacks, U.S.  officials warned Afghan authorities that
they risked further retaliation if they continued to give safe haven to
bin Laden, who had been charged by a New York grand jury with
"conspiracy to attack the defense utilities of the United States." But
Taliban officials made clear that they were unwilling to surrender their
guest. 

According to U.S.  terrorism experts, the Taliban appears to have
reached an arrangement with bin Laden.  In return for providing him
sanctuary, they have received financial and military support for their
efforts to gain control over the entire country.  Some experts believe
that bin Laden's followers may have played a role in the reported
assassination earlier this week of Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the
last remaining resistance to the Taliban. 

Researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report. 

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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