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How to Beat Bin Laden
How Osama Bin Laden operates — and what it will take
to defeat him
AP |
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Thursday,
Sep. 13, 2001
Washington may never have declared war on
Osama Bin Laden, but he has been at war with America for the better
part of a decade. Now, with the Saudi terrorist-financier a prime
suspect in the World Trade Center attack, President Bush has vowed
that the U.S. will devote all necessary resources to beating Bin
Laden. This is no easy task. If Bin Laden is in fact responsible,
the most important thing is to know right now is: who is he? How
does he operate? And why does he seem to have so much support?
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Understanding the enemy This will be a protracted, complex
and unconventional war in which many of the tactics of war as we
know it are superfluous. The "Powell Doctrine" — the theory that
wars are best won by deploying "overwhelming force" — doesn't apply
here, for the simple reason that the enemy has hardly any visible
military assets or civilian economic infrastructure, and may not
even be ultimately dependent on his current territorial home base.
And applying such force in territories where he has sought support
or shelter could open up a protracted, costly and difficult
conflict. The battle with Bin Laden is more likely to combine
conventional military tactics with unconventional ones. Because Bin
Laden is no ordinary foe.
Osama Bin Laden is a man, not a state. And he wields very little
by way of conventional military power. Estimates of the number of
men under arms in his Afghanistan camps at any one point seldom
range above 2,000. But those men are extremely well-trained,
well-funded and have shown a fanatical willingness to die in order
to inflict pain on their enemies. Technology and globalization have
made their reach almost boundless, and they are linked to a vast
network of terrorist groups throughout the Muslim world from western
China and the Philippines all the way across to Algeria.
Bin Laden's is hardly the first terrorist group to operate well
beyond home base, but it is the first truly global terror operation.
And where Cold War-era terrorist groups invariably relied on the
support of "rogue" states, Bin Laden's is independent. It is able to
finance itself and provide sophisticated training to its own men —
and build its operational alliances by providing such training to
like-minded groups. And it has already demonstrated an ability to
relocate its headquarters from one country to another.
Targeting America
The foundations of Bin Laden's network were laid during the
Afghan war, during which the wealthy Saudi heir had been the prime
organizer of volunteers for the 'jihad' against the Soviet invasion.
That made him a key player in an effort backed by the CIA and the
intelligence agencies of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to funnel aid,
equipment, training and volunteers to the Afghan mujahedeen. Many of
the "Arab Afghans," as the volunteers became known, had been radical
Islamist dissidents in their home countries, and their pro-Western
governments were only too happy to ship them off to fight the
Russians. But the 'jihad' experience forged unprecedented bonds
among the world's radical Islamists, turning them in spirit and in
direct combat experience into a single army of 'holy' warriors.
Bin Laden emerged from the Afghan experience determined to
overthrow Saudi Arabia's pro-Western rulers and institute a radical
brand of Islamic rule. And when those rulers invited U.S. troops
onto Saudi soil to defend them against Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden
began to call for a global 'jihad' against the U.S. because of its
support for Israel and for moderate Arab regimes.
He set up camps in Afghanistan and the Sudan — two states that
the end of the Cold War left in conditions of near collapse — to
keep his "Arab Afghans" together. And he combined his own personal
fortune with funds raised throughout the Arab world to maintain his
"Al Qaida" ("The Base") organization, which began sending fighters
to Bosnia, Chechnya and to Muslim insurgencies all over East Asia.
Bin Laden also extended his reach by turning his camps into a
terrorism college providing highly specialized training to Islamist
fighters from all over the world.
Bin Laden began attacking the U.S. in 1993, claiming
responsibility in retrospect for the ambush that killed some 17 U.S.
soldiers in Mogadishu that year. Although he had no direct role in
the first World Trade Center bombing, he later sheltered its
perpetrator, Ramzi Yousef, after the attack.
The U.S. hits back
The U.S. military finally put Bin Laden in its sights following
the 1998 East African embassy bombings. President Clinton ordered
cruise missile strikes on camps associated with Bin Laden in
Afghanistan and on a factory linked with him (possibly erroneously)
in the Sudan. But those strikes did little to impair Bin Laden's
operational ability, and the U.S. reverted to containing his
operations through cooperation with Arab intelligence agencies to
foil planned attacks and round up and prosecute the perpetrators of
the embassy bombings. Washington also sought to use Pakistan's close
relationship with the Taliban to press Bin Laden's hosts into
extraditing him, but to no avail.
The Bush administration has promised a full-blown war against Bin
Laden following Tuesday's attacks, but the key to winning that war
and eliminating the terrorist threat may lie in the extent to which
the terrorists can be isolated.
Isolating Bin Laden
Without the layers of support he has mustered in the Islamic
world, Bin Laden would be nothing more than a crazy killer who could
be hunted down and brought to trial or simply eliminated. Instead,
his relatively tiny organization has menaced the world's largest
military power largely because of its ability to capitalize on
growing anti-American sentiment in the Arab world.
Reports of funds interdicted en route to Bin Laden in recent
years suggest that he continues to enjoy the support of some wealthy
Arab businessmen, who either directly support his beliefs or else
are inclined to hedge their bets on the outcome of his battle with
the U.S.
Anti-American anger on the Arab streets — fueled by the ongoing
campaign against Iraq and by Israeli military actions against the
Palestinian uprising — provides Bin Laden with a growing pool of
potential recruits, often highly educated and skilled young men who
are willing to die for his cause. And the passions on the street
also make it more difficult for even pro-U.S. governments in the
Arab world to be seen to be working too closely with Washington.
Isolating Bin Laden may require ongoing efforts to repair and
maintain Washington's relations with its Arab allies, whose security
services remain the front line of the battle against Bin Laden.
Building a coalition
While NATO's support improves the U.S. striking power and widens
political and diplomatic consent for any counterstrike, the crucial
allies in the battle against Bin Laden remain the governments and
security services of the Islamic world — because it is intelligence,
rather than air power or armor, that wins the war on terrorism.
Despite the ability of U.S. satellites to intercept cell-phone
and email messages, human intelligence remains the most effective
way of staying forewarned of Bin Laden's plans and movements. That's
not going to be easy. There are distinct limits on the ability of
U.S. agents to directly infiltrate Bin Laden's networks, which are
often based on family and other kinship ties. Such operations would
require agents able to blend in ethnically and spend years away from
their American lives in the extremely harsh conditions of Bin
Laden's mountain camps. Plainly, the U.S. needs the active support
of allied security services closer to the action. And the need to
maintain such alliances also affects the range of options for
responding to the latest outrage.
Why not simply bomb Kabul?
Although the U.S. will very likely seek to punish the Taliban for
hosting Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Afghanistan long ago ceased to
function as a state. The Taliban are simply its dominant militia,
and to the people of Kabul, they are outside occupiers.
While determined to hit hard against both the perpetrators and
their protectors, U.S. officials will also be mindful of the danger
of taking actions — particularly any that cause suffering among
innocents — that widens the anti-American sentiment in the Muslim
world on which Bin Laden feeds.
Invasion?
Others have asked why the U.S. doesn't simply round up a Gulf
War-style posse to invade Afghanistan, overthrowing the Taliban and
putting an end to the country being used as a safe haven for
terrorists. But that would require tens of thousands of allied
troops deployed in an open-ended commitment to keep a heavy troop
presence in an extremely unfriendly environment. If the decision is
made to take down the Taliban, that may be more likely to be
attempted in concert with its regional enemies — including Russia
and possibly even Iran — in support of the Northern Alliance
opposition forces.
The Pakistan dilemma
The trickiest aspect of the Bin Laden equation may be Pakistan.
Despite being a close ally of the U.S. during the Cold War,
Afghanistan's nuclear-armed neighbor is also a hotbed of
anti-American Islamic radicalism. Pakistan has reportedly promised
full support for a U.S. retaliation against Bin Laden, including
allowing Pakistani airspace to be used by U.S. planes to strike
Afghanistan. But President Bush's comment that Washington would have
to wait and see what that means suggests the U.S. is not sure of the
extent of Pakistan's commitment to the battle against Bin Laden. But
Pakistani intelligence agents are probably closer than any other to
Bin Laden's operations on the ground, and their cooperation may be
acritical element of the war against terrorism.
A war not won in a day
"Let's not think that one single counter-attack will rid the
world of terrorism of the kind we saw yesterday," said Secretary of
State Colin Powell on Wednesday. Indeed, it is to be anticipated
that the Bush administration will develop a layered response of
short-term and long-term actions to bring to bear military, economic
and political pressure to isolate and neutralize not only Bin Laden
himself, but the movement that would almost certainly seek to
continue even if he were eliminated. And that's a war in which the
U.S. needs its allies more than ever.
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