Shaping Jihad’s Battle Space While unleashing military and rhetorical anti-U.S. attacks, bin Laden conducted a media campaign—following the American model of “shaping the battle space”—in South Asia, one designed to build durable support for al-Qaeda’s presence. His specific targets were the Taleban; the Afghan and Pakistani peoples; Pakistan’s army; Kashmiri insurgents; student groups; and the Afghan and Pakistani ulema. Until 9/11, al-Qaeda’s media operators seized every possible chance to address these audiences. For example, when Mullah Omar and his lieutenants refused the demands of Bill Richardson, America’s ambas- sador to the U.N., in 1998—demands focused on human rights, espe- cially women’s rights, and the cessation of opium production—bin Laden praised the Taleban’s decision, saying Richardson had come to “thwart the Islamic state project in Afghanistan.” Citing the refusal as proving the Taleban’s “adherence to its principles, and decision not to bargain over these principles,” bin Laden said Mullah Omar spoke for the proud Afghan people, “who have given millions of martyrs in order to establish their Islamic state [and] will not relinquish this goal or sell it at any price.”55 No U.S.-led effort would succeed against the Tale- ban, bin Laden said in mid-2000, using words that by 2011 would be painfully haunting to Western ears. The United States and the United Nations have already imposed sanctions on Afghanistan. The have enclosed Afghan- istan’s borders as much as they could. The have put restric- tions on the types of imports by Afghanistan. They have attempted to incite unrest, civil war, and bloodshed over here. What else do they want to try? They may try anything. The target is not Usama, as there are thousands of Usamas in the world. Their real target is to eliminate the Islamic identity of Afghanistan. The United States should understand that ORGANIZER, 1996–2001 | 119 120 | OSAMA BIN LADEN Afghanistan cannot be intimidated. In the last century, two of the world’s superpowers faced defeat here; first the British Empire and then [the] Soviet Union. Countries that do not take a lesson from history face destruction. Afghanistan is a land of self-respecting Muslims. It cannot be pressured, allured, or intimidated into submission. Personally, I am extremely grateful to the people of Afghanistan and the Tale- ban that they have allowed me to live here despite facing diffi- culties. They have entertained me as a guest and taken care of me. It is true that only Afghans could take this burden. God has blessed them with power and ability.56 Al-Qaeda’s media voiced support for those who opposed or were condemned by the United States. When Washington put the Taleban on its list of state sponsors of terrorism, for example, bin Laden told the media Mullah Omar should be congratulated for showing the world Afghans would not bend to the United States, while mocking U.S. officials for failing to see that the action inferred the Taleban was a legitimate government regime despite Washington’s refusal to recog- nize it.57 He also stressed what he described as the Islamophobic nature of anti-Taleban sanctions. The UN sanctions on the Taleban, bin Laden told Muslims, were imposed because Washington controls the UN.58 Bin Laden defended the Kashmiri insurgent group Harakat al-Unsar when it was put on the U.S. list of terrorist groups, offering al-Qaeda’s full support and appealing “to the Muslim world to provide assistance to the Kashmiri fighters.” Harakat was a mujahid organiza- tion that “played a commendable role in Afghanistan and in Kashmir, also it’s playing [an] important role in Islamic jihad.”59 Al-Qaeda’s media paid particularly close attention to supporting and cultivating religious fervor in Pakistan. In September 1998, for example, bin Laden sent a communiqué to the convention of the “Or- ganization of Arabic Students in the Sindh,” which was being held to condemn U.S. Cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan. Praising the Arabic students for meeting, he urged them to follow the “youths of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan” who were “taking part in the Islamic jihad in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and other places in the world.”60 In all statements to Pakistani audiences, bin Laden stressed that the “Pakistani people have great love for Islam and they always have offered sacrifices for the cause of religion.”61 In general, bin Laden seized upon every opportunity to align al-Qaeda with Pakistan and its army vis-à-vis the Kashmir issue and the overall threat from India. “Whatever Pakistan does in the matter of Kashmir we support it,” bin Laden announced in 2000.62 While the West was siding with India in ignoring “the dishonoring of thousands of Kashmiri Muslim women by India’s security forces,” Pakistan sup- ported those seeking to avenge these women.63 Pakistan’s position had to be supported by all religious scholars, who should “shun differences and unite until the oppressed people of Kashmir are free from the Indian occupation and atrocities with the help of God.”64 Claiming Pakistan to be “the heart of the Muslim world and jihad is its heart- beat,” he saluted its army and urged its generals “to strengthen their nuclear power and demonstrate it with full strength.”65 The Islamic world must support Pakistan and its army, Bin Laden said, because of the alliance between India and Israel and because “India’s animosity toward Islam and Muslims is increasing with the passage of time.”66 Noting that al-Qaeda’s fighters could “create problems” not only on the borders or in Kashmir but within India itself, bin Laden reminded his readers that it was “the duty of all Muslims to carry out jihad against India.”67 Afghan and Pakistani Islamist scholars were among the last but not the least of the audiences targeted by al-Qaeda media. In Kanda- har, bin Laden welcomed individual scholars or clerical delegations from Afghanistan and abroad, and likewise asked to meet Afghan scholars as he traveled the country. He also sought, received, and pub- licly praised scholarly support for his positions. In May 1998, for example, the “Ulema Union of Afghanistan” issued a fatwa demanding withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Arabian Peninsula. The Union said the forces were “spreading apostasy among the young people” and that their presence “violated the Koranic verses, the Prophet’s hadith, and the views of the ummah’s ulema.” Bin Laden thanked the Afghan ulema and praised their “great fatwa” for proving “with irrefutable evidence that it is impermissible for these forces to enter these countries” and that there is “a necessity to expel them from there.”68 He emphasized that the Afghan ulema cited the authoritative hadith of the Prophet’s ORGANIZER, 1996–2001 | 121 122 | OSAMA BIN LADEN demand “to expel the infidels from the Peninsula.” The responsibility for acting upon the hadith lay with the “entire nation of Islam” and not just the peninsula’s people.69 In 1999, he sent a message to a Peshawar conclave of Sunni Deobandi scholars from Pakistan, India, the Gulf, and the Far East, congratulating them for publishing a statement con- demning the United States on the first anniversary of its August 1998 strike on Khowst.70 Al-Qaeda media activities operated at three levels: the local audi- ence, the Muslim world audience, and the Western and other non- Muslim audience, often addressing all three in one message. Each of the statements discussed had an international angle—terrorism, U.S. policy toward Muslims, India’s aggression, and so on—but their main audiences were Afghans and Pakistanis, and they were meant to build a local constituency to stand by al-Qaeda if it succeeded in luring Washington into a military invasion of Afghanistan. It is hard to esti- mate the media’s impact, but two things are clear: bin Laden believed it was a key element of al-Qaeda’s jihad, and it stood him in good stead with the Afghan and Pakistani ulema after the 9/11 attacks.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 07:48:01 +0000
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