There are many dogmas in our life that are never supposed to be questioned. When I say this I mean the ones other than the superstars of dogma land; religion, nationalism and political ideology. I write this note to dwell into my interactions with one of those dogmas that’s been walking around in my mental landscape with an audacity that tells me that no one of sound mind shall mess with it. The topic is Osama bin Laden. And the dogma being “thou shall hate Osama as he is embodiment of evil on two legs” (and a stick I guess as he s always shown to be carrying one with him!)
Let me ponder over the questions that trouble me ……
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Shouldn’t the killing of bin laden be considered as a win for the democratic, liberal & secular world. If so then whats worrying part in it ?
There can’t be any doubt that the world is a slightly better place without bin laden than with bin laden. But what’s worrying is something else. It’s the continuing reasoning that we hear about why a bin laden or al qaida came into being in the first place. The often repeated reason being that it’s the product of anti Americanism that came out of wahabi Islamism which wants to wipe out the western world by using terrorism. The fundamental flaw in this thinking is the core idea that Muslims hate and attack the democratic secular and liberal world (leading self appointed exponent being US) for what they stand for, rather than for what is being done to the Muslim world by the same group. In other words though a fundamentalist Muslim may be bothered by the modernity, democracy, and sexuality of the democratic, liberal & secular world, what turns him to a terrorist & blow himself and others up is when these forces (American, Russian, Israeli &Indian in Kashmir) encroach on their lands. Terrorism is just a tactic or a symptom of the disease. In case of Osama and Al-Qaeda, one has to highlight the fact that it’s the American foreign policy which supports the Saudi police state, the US military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq and Yemen & support for the Israelis that enrages them, not the American culture and society.
Was Bin Laden a Frankenstein monster created by US/ CIA during afghan war that later turned against its creator?
The myth that has almost become a fact is that bin laden was in CIA payroll during Afghan war.
This is factually wrong and one has to understand the reasons why this legend came into being. The two sources that I found authentic are the accounts of Michael Scheuer, a former an intelligence officer at CIA who was the Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station and was later ousted from the agency for being the anonymous author of the 2004 book Imperial Hubris, in which he criticized many of the United States' assumptions about Islamist insurgencies and that of Steve Coll , the Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist who authored, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
Scheuer tells that though at various times CIA did try to contact Bin Laden for obvious reasons of common interest and common enemy to fight against, they were never successful in establishing any direct contact with Bin Laden himself. Coll in his fairly exhaustive account of bin laden family chronicles (which I must confess reads like a Rockefeller or ambani saga) notes the fact that in his search for any such Osama – CIA direct alliance he couldn’t find a single instance where Osama ever came into contact with any normal American citizen leave alone government / CIA official
Then why is it so easy today to sell that argument today?
We can safely assume that this is an American account of what happened as one can’t imagine Osama being keen to spread the news that he had a CIA connection. This is a direct by product of the interventionist foreign policy ideas of US. This US “interventionism in other states” for political /economic benefits has always been camouflaged by lot of talk on upholding great democratic values that the founder fathers has envisaged and the need to stand by their allies. But the reality is that its impossible to bring about a change from ‘outside- in’ even in states ruled by the most autocratic of dictatorships. US foreign policy history is full of such blunders like Shah in Iran, Pinochet in Chile, Castillo in Guatemala, Karzai in Afghanistan & not to mention Vietnam and now Iraq & pakistan. So one would imagine that its natural for the US foreign policy hawks to categorize the afghan war as one of their victorious interventionist endeavors
What was different in Afghan war of 80’s was that US was on the other side of the court. USSR was trying to do to Afghanistan what US is doing to Iraq and Afghanistan now. Naturally there was a strong anti- USSR feeling among the Afghans which was tapped into by both Islamic fundamentalists and CIA for their own religious and political interests. Islamic help came from Saudi via people like Osama & mujahedeens and CIA help came via Pakistan. Neither did Osama and the mujahedeen warriors who fought in the afghan war reach there because Americans asked them to nor were they keen to get help from a secular western superpower as it would have defeated their very purpose.
How can Pakistan be considered as failure of US policy? Isn’t the CIA director’s quote “they are either involved or incompetent” true about Pakistan after Osama was found hiding right under their nose?
The present dilemma we see in Pakistan is very much the product of interventionist policy that makes countries fight proxy war for the US. This strategy works fine when the ground reality and popular opinion in that country is also pulling in same direction. The classical example is Pakistan of Zia- ul-haq’s time when it was channelizing CIA support to fight USSR in Afghanistan and at same time training “freedom fighters” for Kashmir. There were no suicide attacks of jihadist groups then in Pakistan though CIA was very much around. If the popular opinion and ground reality is pulling in diametrically opposite direction to the external pressure we will have present day Pakistan.
Pakistan was perfectly fine with Taliban in Afghanistan, and to great extent al Qaeda and Osama till 9/11 happened. It’s not that ISI or Pakistan in general was not aware at that time what the real intentions of these groups were. On the contrary they were much better informed than any as Pakistan was the only nation which recognized Taliban government. But still the worse crime one can accuse on average Pakistani at that time was that he was sympathetic to the jihad movement but not an active supporter or participator. Post 9/11 Pakistan did a complete turnabout in 24 hrs or so thanks to the not so subtle talks from US. It’s not tough to understand that this change was not reflective of popular perception as 9/11 didn’t cause any direct damage to average Pakistani than it did to say an average Chinese or Japanese. In spite of that what he saw in later years before his own eyes was the very scenario that Islamic fundamentalist propaganda was trying to warn him about. Whether it’s the drone attacks or CIA agents killing civilians and getting away with it or the present taking down of Osama, all of this are many times better recruiting advertisements for jihad than any video or speech As a result Islamic fundamentalism started to grow exponentially and we have the present day “involved or incompetent” Pakistan
The three critical happening in Islamic sphere; what happened in Egypt, what’s happening in Libya and what happened to bin laden…does this all show a trend towards democratic liberal ideals & away from terror ?
The general opinion that one hears is that acts of terrorism will come down in view of the fact that there’s been revolutions against dictators in Middle East and once liberal democracies take over in Islamic heartland things are going to get better. As much as one would hope so, when we look at ground realities this doesn’t seem to be the fact. Reasons for this error is mainly due to two reasons
1) This kind of feedback that we see in media is coming from the English speaking ,CNN debating analysts & social networking accessing westernized population of the Islamic world
2) We have an overbearing belief that the binding factor and driving force behind the movements we see in middle east was an urge to move towards pro-democratic, secular and liberal values
The pew research centre polls done recently among Muslims spread all around the world including Egypt can definitely be considered to be reflecting the real ground situation better than the above mentioned sources. What does it say? In Egypt for instance, About six-in-ten (62%) think laws should strictly follow the teachings of the Quran & about 31% of Egyptian Muslims say they sympathize with Islamic fundamentalists. In all of the countries were the poll was conducted (Indonesia, turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan) majority of common people believed religion should play a major part in how their country is been run
But we got to keep few points in mind while interpreting these results. Firstly as we discussed in beginning Islamic fundamentalism didn’t fly planes into twin towers on 9/11. It was anti- Americanism that did it. It’s not that difficult to understand as these Islamic schools of teaching has been around for ages while strong anti Americanism took wings post 91 Iraq war . Secondly what we are seeing in Middle East now is not in any way against Islamic ideals. Mubarak was the most US friendly of Islamic national heads and made lot of secular posturing. In Libya, the anti- Gadaffi forces are made of al Qaida elements that have fought outside Libya for al Qaida till now. Actually other than Saudi, Libya remains the biggest contributor of volunteers for al Qaida.
So what are the concluding points?
1) Osama’s killing is good riddance. But from perspective of anti- terrorism its relevance is slightly better than “a body count” in bold letters. From perspective of pro- terrorism it can be a good recruiting tool as it’s the end they always wanted for Osama
2) It’s alarming that we still don’t hear enough voices differentiating between anti-Americanism and Islamic fundamentalism in relation to growth of terrorism. Though both has been causative factors, the former definitely outweighs the latter and latter without former doesn’t make the mix that makes people blow up by themselves along with others
3) One shouldn’t be surprised if future Egypt government gets more Islamic flavor. it’s a matter of when and not whether. It shouldn’t alarm outside world as long as US stays away for good
4) The trend in Libya is slowly slipping towards a situation where Obama will have to make a call between American troops in ground or quit Libya for good. One hopes he will choose the latter while Zawahiri will be praying he chooses the former option
