October
7, 2002, 9:00 a.m. The
Voice of Osama
One year after the strike against Afghanistan began, Osama bin Laden
resurfaces — maybe.
ast
month Americans focused their emotional energies on the anniversary of
the 9/11 attacks. However, October 7 is also an anniversary worth noting.
It has been a year since Allied forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom
against al Qaeda sanctuaries in Afghanistan, and the Taliban government
that gave them succor. While September 11 was a time of mourning and reflection,
today is an opportunity to take stock of the military accomplishments
in the past year. The Taliban has been overthrown and replaced with an
emerging democracy, the al Qaeda core has been seriously disrupted, and
terror groups linked to bin Laden are being tracked down and their support
structures eliminated. Americans and allied troops have performed admirably,
yet not without losses. Most recently, on October 2, a terrorist bomb
in the Philippines claimed
the lives of two Filipino soldiers and one American, Sergeant First
Class Mark W. Jackson.
Al Qaeda has thus
far been unable to successfully mount the significant secondary attacks
it has been threatening since last October. Yet, the terrorist organization
is not yet vanquished, and significant uncertainties remain, particularly
concerning those leading al Qaeda members still at large. On October 3,
ITAR-TASS reported that bin Laden henchman Ayman al-Zawahiri had been
killed, but gave
few details. Abu Qatada, who has been described as al Qaeda's unofficial
European ambassador and who has been in hiding since December, broke cover
recently to post his views on the 9/11 attacks on the Internet. And of
course the fate of Osama bin Laden remains the $25 million question. Hamid
Karzai speculated recently that bin Laden was dead but that Taliban leader
Mullah Omar was alive. Pervez Musharraf suggested the terror master had
died kidney failure, which unnamed American intelligence sources said
was probable. Still other unnamed American intelligence sources allegedly
picked up bin Laden's voice recently on a
telephone intercept. German intelligence also inferred he was alive,
as did former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal, who stated
that bin Laden is biding his time and will make a dramatic comeback at
a moment of his choosing.
If al-Faisal is right,
we saw the preview of coming attractions yesterday. Al-Jazeera ran a brief
audiotape that it claimed featured the voice of bin Laden himself. There
is enough skepticism for the claim to not be taken at face value, and
surely voice analysts are subjecting the tape to the most rigorous tests
available. The tone is certainly Ladenesque, with the characteristic mix
of self-pity and preachy self-righteousness. And nothing in the statement
dates the tape precisely — it may be bin Laden speaking anytime after
9/11. But whether or not it originated with the comeback kid himself,
the tape can be taken as a definitive al Qaeda policy statement, a declaration
that as far as they are concerned the war is ongoing.
The speaker addresses
the American people, to whom he speaks as "an honest adviser."
He gives us one last chance to mend our ways, by which he means rejecting
our "dry, miserable, and spiritless materialistic life" and
converting to Islam. He also tells us that we have not learned the lessons
from the "New York and Washington raids," namely that "the
aggressor deserves punishment." (In fact, we do know that, we just
disagree with him on the specifics of who the aggressor is.) He notes
that because the U.S. is facilitating the "impending partition of
the Islamic world ... the youth of Islam are preparing things that will
fill your hearts with fear. They will target key sectors of your economy
until you stop your injustice and aggression or until the more short-lived
of us die." The speaker's emphasis on economic targets mirrors the
same strategic focus enunciated in the last confirmed bin Laden videotape
from last December.
One might be tempted
to dismiss this latest tape as another in the series of empty threats
that began shortly after the bombing started a year ago. Last June, al
Qaeda media favorite Sulaiman Abu Gaith promised bin Laden would appear
after planned attacks around July 4. Later he said that the group had
postponed the comeback tour until September 11, or later. One recent report
had it that al Qaeda was refraining from attacking until after the standoff
with Iraq was concluded, in order not to give the U.S. a pretext to employ
WMDs against Iraq (which implies chillingly that they would employ such
weapons against us first).
However, the new
tape was released 12 hours after a French oil tanker exploded off the
coast of Yemen. The Yemenis quickly ruled out terrorism as a cause of
the blast, which of course was their immediate response to the October
12, 2000 U.S.S. Cole bombing as well. Yet, the initial reports
are very similar — a ship pulling in for refueling, small craft spotted
beforehand pulling up alongside, a hole blown in the side of the ship
(which, like the Cole, did not sink). The U.S. Navy issued a warning
last month that oil tankers were being targeted. Plus, tankers fit the
war aims enunciated in the tape, since they facilitate a key sector of
the economy (oil prices jumped 1.3 percent at news of the explosion).
One might question the wisdom of attacking a French ship, since this would
tend to bring one of the more errant U.S. antiterror allies back into
the fold. But in so doing al Qaeda shows the same strategic acumen that
led them to shift from bombing overseas embassies and military targets
to attacking the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Congress (which
failed when Flight 93 went down), and an aborted component of the plan
as reported recently in the Italian press, the Vatican.
The Yemen bombing
also brings to mind the terrorist ring broken up in Morocco last May that
was seeking to launch similar attacks against U.S. warships passing through
the Gibraltar Straits. The ringleader was Fawzi Sad al-Ubaydi, also known
as Abu-Zubayr, who was on the FBI's list of 25 most-wanted Bin-Laden affiliates.
Abu Zubayr currently resides at Camp X-Ray and may have been the source
for the information that generated the tanker alert. He is also a former
Captain in the Iraqi secret police, who joined al Qaeda in 1997 —
and the degree to which he was a "former" Iraqi agent is a matter
of speculation. (Those who deprecate the Baghdad connection take note.)
These events —
including
the arrest of suspected terrorists in Oregon late last week —
remind us that the global war on terrorism continues, and that the enemy
will use whatever means are at its disposal in pursuit of its objectives.
Furthermore, if the terrorists are captivated by the significance of anniversaries,
today is at least as important to them as September 11. Be careful out
there.
— James
S. Robbins is a national-security analyst & NRO contributor.
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month Americans focused their emotional energies on the anniversary of
the 9/11 attacks. However, October 7 is also an anniversary worth noting.
It has been a year since Allied forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom
against al Qaeda sanctuaries in Afghanistan, and the Taliban government
that gave them succor. While September 11 was a time of mourning and reflection,
today is an opportunity to take stock of the military accomplishments
in the past year. The Taliban has been overthrown and replaced with an
emerging democracy, the al Qaeda core has been seriously disrupted, and
terror groups linked to bin Laden are being tracked down and their support
structures eliminated. Americans and allied troops have performed admirably,
yet not without losses. Most recently, on October 2, a terrorist bomb
in the Philippines 
