[iwar] [fc:Bin.Laden:.Independent.Actor.or.Pawn.of.State.Sponsors?]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-31 05:15:20


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Bin.Laden:.Independent.Actor.or.Pawn.of.State.Sponsors?]
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bin Laden biography raises doubts
BY Mark N. Katz,: October 27, 2001
<a href="http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/culture/articles/eav102701.shtml">http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/culture/articles/eav102701.shtml>

BOOK REVIEW:
Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America
by Yossef Bodansky 439 pp., $17.95 (paper)
New York: Prima Publishing, 1999, 2001

First published some two years before the September 11 attacks, Bin 
Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America appears to have been 
highly prescient. This is particularly true of Bodansky's portrayal 
of how bin Laden and his network are seeking to drive America out of 
the Muslim world - especially Saudi Arabia - through acts of 
"spectacular terrorism." There are, however, several important 
problems with the book.

Bodansky traces Osama bin Laden's journey from son of a 
rags-to-riches Saudi construction magnate to anti-Soviet mujahid in 
Afghanistan in the 1980s, his subsequent break with the Saudi 
monarchy in the early 1990s over its decision to allow American 
forces into the Kingdom after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, his 
activities in Sudan until 1996, and his activities in Afghanistan 
since then.

What emerges - in addition to a portrait of an individual determined 
to expel American and other non-Muslim influences from the Muslim 
world - is a detailed description of the extraordinary network 
operating throughout the Muslim world, the West and elsewhere that 
bin Laden and his associates have built up to pursue this aim. The 
author goes on to argue that bin Laden's endeavors have received 
crucial support from several governments, including Afghanistan's 
Taliban, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran and Iraq.

This is a serious claim. Much of the research supporting it, Bodansky 
writes in his introductory "Note on Sources and Methods," is based on 
"extensive interviews and communications with numerous officials, 
mujahideen, terrorists, commanders, emitters, defectors, and 
otherwise involved individuals from all sides of these events" (p. 
xxi). He also made use of "large quantities of open sources-primarily 
regional media" (p. xxi). He then states that "precise source noting 
is inadvisableŠbecause the safety and survival of the human sources 
is most important" (p. xxii). This certainly seems fair enough when 
it comes to interviews or other private communications. But Bodansky 
then goes on to state that he will not cite open sources either, out 
of concern that doing so will enable hostile intelligence services to 
more readily judge what he obtained from human sources, as well as 
who provided it.

This is a problem because Bodansky makes some fairly amazing claims, 
and the lack of sourcing makes it impossible to judge their 
credibility. Throughout the book, Bodansky portrays bin Laden not as 
the central figure directing a jihad against America, but as "a cog, 
albeit an important one, in a large system that will outlast his own 
demise-state-sponsored international terrorism" (p. 406).

On p. 72, for example, Bodansky claims that the 1993 escalation of 
attacks against American forces in Somalia "was the first 
manifestation of a strategic alliance between Iran, Iraq, and Sudan." 
He does not, however, provide a convincing account of how Iraq and 
Iran went from being at war with each other between 1980 and 1988 to 
being strategic allies by 1993. Most observers believe that Iraq and 
Iran still view each other as adversaries, not allies.

Bodansky later argues that in order to make gains against his rivals 
within the Saudi royal family, "Prince Abdallah urged [Syrian 
President] Assad to expedite the implementation of their joint 
designs for a wave of low-level anti-American terrorism in Saudi 
Arabia" (p. 166), which led to the June 25, 1996 explosion that 
killed nineteen Americans.

Those who do research on Saudi Arabia know that trying to obtain 
information about the inner workings of the royal family is extremely 
difficult. There are all kinds of rumors which swirl around about 
this subject. Bodansky, though, has reported one of these rumors as 
if it were fact without any qualification.

Bodansky even accuses the Clinton Administration of aiding the 
Islamist cause in 1997 by recounting how a shadowy Muslim figure made 
a secret offer to one of bin Laden's associates: "The United States 
would not interfere with or intervene to prevent the Islamists' rise 
to power in Egypt if the Islamist mujahideen currently in 
Bosnia-Herzegovina would refrain from attacking the U.S. forces 
there" (pp. 212-13). Once the Mubarak government got wind of this, 
Bodansky claims that it entered into "strategic cooperation" with 
Iraq, Iran, and Syria in early 1998 (p. 218). Both of these reports 
are extremely farfetched.

The book is replete with these sort of claims. The basic message 
appears to be that a whole host of important Muslim actors-including 
those in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and both 
the secular and Islamist Palestinian movements-support bin Laden to a 
greater or lesser extent.

If this is the case, why is it that Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia 
have supported the United States in its conflict with bin Laden since 
September 11? Why is it that Iran has not sided with him, but has 
tried to remain neutral, even offering humanitarian aid to the US-led 
forces? Why has Yasser Arafat expressed sympathy for the United 
States and sought to suppress Palestinian expressions of support for 
bin Laden?

The truth of the matter is that bin Laden does not have the level of 
support from these actors that Bodansky claims he has. All of them, 
including Saddam Hussein in Iraq, know full well that if bin Laden 
succeeded in getting the United States to withdraw from the Middle 
East, he would not leave them be.
His associates have denounced Saddam for his secular Arab nationalism.
The Iranian clerics know that his Sunni movement is virulently anti-Shi'a.
Nor would he leave the present Saudi, Egyptian, or Palestinian 
leaderships intact.
The fact that the Pakistani government is cooperating so closely with 
the United States indicates that it sees bin Laden's activities as a 
threat to their interests too.
Even Islamist Sudan is cooperating with Washington.

In his zeal to warn us about the threat we face from bin Laden, 
Bodansky portrays the Muslim world as monolithically united against 
us. This reminds me of the type of analysis that was highly prevalent 
during the Cold War, analysis that described the communist bloc as 
both monolithic and firmly under Moscow's control. There were even 
those at that time who saw the Sino-Soviet rift and other public 
disputes between communists as hoaxes meant to lull the West into 
complacency. Today, we need to take care not to fall into this trap. 
We need to be aware that, while many Muslim actors are admittedly 
anti-American, this does not mean that there are not serious 
differences among them.

As the events of September 11 have shown, bin Laden is a serious 
threat and an accurate understanding of him and his network is a 
necessity.  Exaggerating the unity and power of the forces behind him 
and not paying sufficient attention to the important differences 
among various Muslim actors, though, does not help us in undertaking 
this vitally important task.

Editor's Note: Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics 
at George Mason University.

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