Vad vill Osama?

Arnaud de Borchgrave i Washington Times om Osamas strategiska omprioriteringar:

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breakin...3433-4060r.htm

"---Bin Laden sees his ratings in the Muslim world and among Muslim minorities in Europe have far surpassed Bush's on the scale of credibility and trustworthiness. The administration's Israel-right-or-wrong policy has now been confirmed -- for bin Laden to read in dozens of newspapers -- by no less an authority than Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush 41.

In an interview with the global newspaper Financial Times, Gen. Scowcroft said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "has wrapped president Bush around his little finger" and his peace plan consists of evacuating Gaza and three or four minor settlements in the West Bank -- "and then call it a day." Scowcroft thought he was off the record, but he has since confirmed he did indeed say this.

Bin Laden has read what prominent non-royal Saudis have said about him -- e.g., in a truly free election in Saudi Arabia he would win hands down against the royal family, which is now cordially and widely disliked, if not despised. The world's most wanted terrorist also has friends in high places in Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf is also widely despised by a majority of the population. In Pakistan bin Laden mustered a 66 percent approval rating. In the two provinces governed by the pro-al-Qaida, pro-Taliban coalition of six politico-religious parties, bin Laden's popularity rating as a "freedom fighter" climbs above 80 percent.---

Bin Laden's new strategy appears designed to (1) further detach America from its European allies -- much the way the Soviet Union unsuccessfully tried to do throughout the Cold War; (2) assist the insurgency in Iraq by encouraging more jihadis to volunteer for suicide duty; (3) stoke public opinion against the royals in Saudi Arabia; (4) stoke public opinion against Musharraf in Pakistan.---"


Och ett band där bin Laden uppmanar Iraks sunnis att bojkotta det kommande fuskvalet har nått media:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6759167/

"---Roger Cressey, who was the deputy to former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, said the boycott message indicates bin Laden has been trying to broaden his audience.

“He is trying to position himself as speaking to a global Islamic community in a way that further defines the fight against the West in his terms,” Cressey said.

“If he can show he’s more than just a rank-and-file terrorist, that will help his message.”

Cressey said bin Laden is trying to reach “the part of the Muslim world that is sympathetic to the message, but is not willing to endorse him. These are fence sitters, people who have serious problems with the U.S. policy but have not become activists against us yet.”

Peter Bergen, a fellow at the New American Foundation, a Washington think tank, says he doesn’t believe bin Laden’s call for a boycott will have much effect because most of the Sunnis against the election already were planning to shun the polls. “It’s just one more reason to boycott it,” he said.

With the release of still another bin Laden tape, Bergen said, “The tapes are coming thick and fast, which means they (the terrorists) are feeling secure.”"

Om Osama som heroisk myt och demonisk legend:

http://www.counterpunch.org/khan12292004.html

"---In this great tradition of violence starting with Cowboys against Indians, Osama is an exotic but a perfect fit. Produced in Washington D.C., directed by the CIA, and filmed in Afghanistan, Osama is cast as a millionaire hero, the 17th son from a family of 50, who speaks softly but carries a cane, who prays five times a day and inspires his Men to terminate Soviet helicopters flying low over the mud houses of a wretched Afghan population.

This alien hero, this entrepreneur of violence, this Osama, after successfully shooting the first movie against the Soviet evil empire---decides to go on his own. He moves the camera and the crew from an emptied Afghanistan to a city filled with skyscrapers. Planes hit the towers with real death and grief and loss and barbarism. This unprecedented though overly-familiar violence perpetrated in America against America, shown in real time, comes across as neither legal nor creative. 9/11 changes the world, the norms of reaction, the meaning of violence, the definition of artistic expression, fun, the gulf between law and lawlessness. But has 9/11 changed the celebration of the outlaw?

While American soldiers, spies, bounty hunters, television, radio, magazines, and private conversations pursue Osama to bring him to justice for perpetrating the crime of the century, and while Muslim militants pray and fast and plot to kill the enemy under Osama's real or inspired leadership, the yearly festival at Nottingham recites the fifteenth-century ballads and later poems to keep alive the Robin Hood legend. One ballad opens with the words Attend and listen gentlemen/that be of freeborn blood/ I shall tell you of a good yeoman/ His name was Robin Hood. John Keats raises poetic scare by asking what if Robin should be cast/sudden from his turfed grave. Alfred Noyes makes an ecstatic call of Robin! Robin! Robin! All his merry thieves/Answer as the bugle-note shivers through the leaves. But the abbot and the Sheriff are in no frolicsome mood. "Seize him, seize him!" the Abbot cried/With his fat voice through the trees. And the Sheriff is mad as hell.

Ali Khan is professor of law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. This article is partly excerpted from his forthcoming book A Theory of International Terrorism to be published in 2005 by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. He may be reached at ali.khan@washburn.edu"

Intressanta iakttagelser från Asia Times:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA05Ak03.html

"---The collaboration of Muslim governments with the US against Iraq was the ideal time to stir the resentment of the masses against their regimes by exploiting the US's strategic alliance with Muslim countries.

Soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan, bin Laden released his first tape in which he spoke against the Saudi government. "You are a US stooge and your fathers were stooges of Britain. You help the US in attacking a Muslim country and your fathers rebelled against the caliph to facilitate British rule in the Middle East."

In the next few months, Zawahiri spoke for the first time against President General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan and asked the people of that country to topple "the closest Muslim ally to the US in the world". Immediately after, pro-al-Qaeda groups were encouraged to carry out attacks in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

There was no reason for al-Qaeda to get involved in Iraq. The strategy they had evolved over more than a decade never suggested that they take on their enemy on the battlefield. Its only aim is to keep the enemy engaged and work toward organizing a Muslim backlash so that when its new strike on the US comes it will not go in isolation, and will change the world on a much broader scale than September 11: al-Qaeda will conveniently fade into the background and let the angry Muslim masses decide the course of the world."

Den nya BBC-dokumentären om al-Qaida finns att titta på här, tre delar, sammanlagt tre timmar:

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=4281

Tankar om Osama, och huruvida Bushregimen verkligen skulle önska se honom fångad och ställd inför rätta:

http://www.counterpunch.org/wellen01272005.html

"---Stage Three: Amnesty "The world may be better off if Osama Bin Laden remains at large," the CIA's recently departed executive director Buzzy Krongard claimed. The latest in a line of CIA mouths that roared after spy-who-came-in-from-the-anonymity Michael Scheuer, Krongard added that, "If [bin Laden] is captured or killed, a power struggle [may occur] among his Al-Qaeda subordinates. . . . vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror."14

Other officials have privately admitted that it may be better to co-exist with bin Laden rather than make him a martyr or put him on stage with a trial. Effectively granting him amnesty, whether permanent or temporary, also permits the Defense Department to continue using him as a rallying point for waging the war on terror in their own roundabout fashion. The irony, of course, is that downplaying bin Laden's importance to Al Qaeda undercuts his power to tug at the heart strings like a good poster boy should.

Allowing bin Laden to roam free, whether tethered to a dialysis machine, also nourishes our relationship with Pakistan's President Musharraf. No matter that the administration restrains the International Atomic Energy Agency from demanding the handover of Pakistan's rogue nuclear paterfamilias A.Q. Khan. As well, it looks the other way as Pakistan buys nuclear parts and supplies on the clandestine market. What apparently counts is that it spares Musharraf the coup attempt that forcing fundos (as pedigreed Pakistanis refer to fundamentalists) to cough up bin Laden might incur. Also, Pakistan turns over the occasional terror kingpin like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and feeds us information on Iran's nuclear ambitions.---"

Nu kan det ju mycket väl förhålla sig så att Osama bin Laden avlidit i Pakistans bergstrakter - framtiden kanske kan ge klarhet i det. Mycket desinformation om hans person har förstås publicerats av ideologiska fiender, Mattias Gardell sammanfattar på s.230-31 i den läsvärda boken Bin Ladin i våra hjärtan, 2005, :

”Ett visst mått av fabulerande kännetecknar också den flod av böcker och artiklar som publicerats om Usama bin Ladin och al-Qaida. Är bin Ladin spindeln i ett vidsträckt terrornätverk, ett ensamt ont geni, en opportunistisk affärsman, en manifestation av den islamiska ärkefiendens hat mot den fria kristna världen, en katalysator för de fattigas revolt eller en oförskräckt gudskrigare?
Den israelisk-amerikanske militäranalytikern Yossef Bodansky, vars bok Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, publicerades innan 11 september, berättar om en stenrik ung jetsettare som rumlade runt med kvinnor på kasinon och barer i Beiruts nöjeskvarter. Dessa uppgifter har sedan spätts på ytterligare med likaledes helt obekräftade berättelser om bin Ladin, den utsvävande vällustingen. Han sägs ha jagat blondiner i Sverige, ägnat sig åt klubbliv i Paris och London, själv ha flugit sitt privata jetplan till England för att titta på favoritlaget Arsenals hemmamatcher och ägnat sig åt homosexuella utlevelser på bastuklubbar.
Mary Ann Weaver vet exempelvis berätta att bin Ladin var ökänd på Beiruts inneklubbar som en ”stordrickare vars kvällar ofta slutade i gräl och knytnävsslagsmål med andra unga män över en attraktiv nattklubbsdansös eller barflicka”. När denna typ av utsagor infogas i väckelseberättelser fungerar de som kontrasterande fond till ljuset och glädjen på andra sidan omvändelsen. I detta fall följer inte godhet utan ondska på förtappelsen, och funktionen blir följaktligen en annan. Skrönorna undergräver bin Ladins hänvisningar till gud och får honom att framstå som en hycklare. Han säger sig slåss för högre värden men var redan från början fördärvad. Berättelserna om hans hedonistiska tonår avslöjar hans sanna vara, eller med Mary Ann Weavers rubriksättning i The New Yorker: ”The Real bin Laden”. Mot bilden av bin Laden som suput och horkarl talar sammanvägningen av andra uppgifter – från lärare, barndomsvänner, grananr och skolkamrater – som berättar om en tämligen seriös och religiöst orienterad ung man, snarare något tillbakadragen än självförhävande, som var djupt bekymrad över tillstånden i världen.”