With smoke still rising from lower Manhattan, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania pasture, bin Laden had little time for celebra- tion. He had sought to lure the United States into invading Afghanistan since at least 1997 and was pretty sure the 9/11 attacks would do the trick.1 Still, he took no chances. On September 19, 2001, bin Laden announced that while cowardice and fear might yet prevail, if it did launch an invasion “the United States would face a crushing defeat.”2 While continuing to goad Washington, bin Laden acted as if sure the fish was hooked. He later said he’d had six days’ notice of the attacks—learning of the actual date on September 5—but had of course known for far longer that they were coming. He and his lieutenants probably began moving archives, ordnance, communications gear, and fighters into Afghanistan’s mountains or into Pakistan much earlier. Indeed, Ahmad Zaydan has written, based on observations when inter- viewing bin Laden before 9/11, that “Usama and al-Qaeda in general were prepared for the worst Western and U.S. strike on Afghanistan”; such readiness helped them avoid getting killed or arrested after the fall of the Taleban.3 Washington, moreover, gave al-Qaeda twenty-six more days to disperse its resources by not attacking until October 7; the delay was due to the Pentagon’s lack of planning for Afghanistan 130 | OSAMA BIN LADEN and the Bush administration’s fear of casualties or captured ser- vicemen—especially pilots—before enough search-and-rescue units could be deployed to the war zone.4 Given the quantity of al-Qaeda documents found by journalists and by U.S. and UK militaries, it is clear that evacuation was not completed by October 7. Nonetheless, the operation had been given priority, and was well planned and exe- cuted: nothing that could fatally compromise al-Qaeda, pinpoint its leaders, sketch its worldwide network, detail or locate its financial assets and transfer mechanisms, or outline its intentions, targets, or timetables was left behind. The post-9/11 analysis of bin Laden’s life and al-Qaeda has been distorted. Indeed, the bin Laden–related literature is littered with as- sumptions ranging from plausible (a few) to wishful thinking (the ma- jority). Conventional wisdom has it that while bin Laden, some of his senior lieutenants, and many fighters survived the U.S. onslaught, al- Qaeda as an organization was essentially destroyed. This tends to ignore the fact that bin Laden worked hard to lure U.S. forces into Afghanistan, which he would not have wanted to do had it meant al- Qaeda’s annihilation. It also ignores that the “small military footprint” Washington had mandated was sufficient to win battles, not a war. Could al-Qaeda not have survived because it is a flexible and resilient organization that simply relocated to the tribal zone straddling the Pakistan-Afghanistan border before and after 9/11? In an incisive essay, the British journalist Mark Huband persuasively argues for this case, given what we know of bin Laden’s managerial style. “Bin Laden believes in structures and organization,” he wrote, “and the hierarchy he created is both al-Qaeda’s main organizational strength as well as its source of credibility among Muslims. Al-Qaeda is not haphazard; there is a chain of command, orders are given, and plans are developed over time and distance.”5 Huband’s conclusion counters the common wisdom that al-Qaeda’s organization was so weakened, and its leaders so isolated, by U.S. at- tacks that all it can do is issue statements and watch groups operate as its independent—in a command-and-control sense—“franchises” out- side South Asia. These are a few of the many “assumptions” currently underpinning analyses of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. They may be true, but may not be. If not, the greater assumption that bin Laden poses little SURVIVOR AND PLANNER, 2001–2010 | 131 threat to the continental United States is quite dangerous. What if a bin Laden–led al-Qaeda remains a functioning organization and the so- called franchises—such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic-Maghreb (AQIM), AQI, and al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)—are evidence of growth in vitality, size, and geographic reach?
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 07:48:33 +0000
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