Astute Bin Laden raises the stakes
Video stunt sways Arabs in battle for
hearts and minds
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Tuesday October 9, 2001
The Guardian
Arab governments were muted in their
response to the US attacks yesterday but on
the streets there was a strong mood running
in favour of Osama bin Laden, who is
emerging as a much more formidable
opponent than the US and Britain first
believed. The US attacks on Afghanistan
threaten to leave him more powerful than
before. A widespread feeling among many
Arabs is that he, rather than the US, is
winning the war.
Bin Laden is successfully polarising opinion.
He proved tactically astute on Sunday in
releasing his video soon after the attack. His
videotaped interview was designed to address
the three main Arab grievances: the
Israeli-Palestinian con flict; Iraqi sanctions;
and the presence of US troops in Saudi
Arabia. He also referred to America's atom
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an
example of US "world crime".
It is risky to generalise too much, but there
was repeated support in the Middle East
yesterday for Bin Laden's portrayal of the
conflict as a black-and-white one between the
west and Islam. "It is clear that this war
targets the Islamic and Muslim renaissance,"
Jamil Abu-Baker, a spokesman for the Muslim
Brotherhood, the biggest opposition group in
Jordan, said yesterday.
Abu Hassan, 50, a real estate employee in
pro-western Bahrain, responded positively to
Bin Laden's call for a jihad against the west,
saying all Muslims should "rise and support"
Afghanistan. "America wants to control the
world. Are Israeli attacks on Palestinians not
a terrorist act? Would America bomb Israel?"
he asked.
There were few street demonstrations, though
that could change if there are pictures of
Afghan civilian dead. Where people did take
to the streets, it was in support of Bin Laden.
In a Palestinian demonstration in Gaza
yesterday, in which two were shot dead in
clashes with Palestinian police, students
carried pic tures of Bin Laden and chanted his
name. Outside the Middle East, there were
demonstrations in support of Bin Laden in
Muslim countries in Africa and Asia. In the
Sudan, students chanted: "Long live Bin
Laden." At Zagazig University north of Cairo,
students chanted: "Our rulers, why are you
silent? Have you got orders from America?"
Power
In Kuwait, one of the few Arab governments
vocally to support the US yesterday, even
moderates such as Hadi Abbas, a shopkeeper,
25, acknowledged the power of Bin Laden. He
said Bin Laden should have targeted "military
positions, not innocent civilians" but he felt he
was a "a strong Muslim personality".
Ali Muhsen Hamid, ambassador of the Arab
League in London, insisted support for Bin
Laden was confined to a tiny minority: "No
one believes Bin Laden will liberate Palestine
or the Golan. He is not serving the interest of
the Arab world or Islam." But he admitted:
"Maybe now he will get support or sympathy
because people will think he is the victim of a
war that is unjust and without concrete
evidence. But no one feels Bin Laden is the
right person to claim he is capable of
liberating occupied territory." He was
dismissive of the Bin Laden video: "It is mere
rhetoric. What matters in Palestine is the
intifada, not a cry from the mountains of
Afghanistan."
But what should be a matter of concern to the
US and British governments is the way Bin
Laden held on to the video until the raids
started. He has had five years to plan his
offensive and each move so far appears to be
well thought out. His strategy is to suck the
US into a regional conflict in the hope that the
repercussions will destabilise countries such
as Saudi Arabia, making them vulnerable to
Islamic fundamentalist groups.
Some thought the video, far from being astute,
might have negative repercussions.
Mohammad Sayed Said, a political scientist in
Cairo, said that during the broadcast Bin
Laden "implicitly but strongly" admitted his
guilt in the September 11 attacks. That "may
really backfire", he said. "People will think
this is a confession of sorts and see it with
revulsion." But Said's was a minority view.
Bin Laden's appeal is of the ascetic figure,
living in a cave, defying the might of the US,
and the video reinforced this image. A
fundamentalist Muslim cleric in London, Abu
Hamza, hailed the air strikes on Afghanistan
as a success for Bin Laden: "It was a night of
victory for Bin Laden because he has shown
this is the sort of aggression the Americans
have used against Palestine. It is like slapping
a giant and running from him. If the
Americans win this war, there will be no
triumph for them."
While there is sympathy with the victims of
the New York and Washington attacks, there
is a widespread sense of injustice in the
Middle East that Bin Laden is being targeted
without sufficient evidence, at least in public.
Evidence
Mr Hamza, from Yemen, who lost both hands
and an eye fighting with Muslims in Bosnia,
mirrored a view repeated throughout the
Middle East yesterday: "Tony Blair has said
the evidence against him would not stand up
in a court of law. Surely that is not enough
reason to start a war. I think the west is
exaggerating it and turning Bin Laden into a
martyr."
That is the danger for the international
coalition. If Bin Laden is killed by a bomb or
shot by special forces, he will become a
martyr, a symbol of defiance for future Muslim
fundamentalists. If he is captured and tried, he
will pose a problem for whatever country
holds him, leaving it vulnerable to repeated
hostage taking in attempts to free him.
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