2 U.S. Targets Bound by Fate
Washington Says Bin Laden and Omar Are Increasingly Desperate, Defiant
By Michael Dobbs and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 14, 2001; Page A22
With their enemies closing in on their hiding places, both Osama bin Laden and his Afghan patron, Mohammad Omar, are showing signs of increasing desperation mixed with continued defiance of the United States, according to U.S. officials and experts who have analyzed their recent statements.
Over the last five years, since bin Laden moved to Afghanistan from Sudan in 1996, the fugitive Saudi dissident has exercised ever greater ideological influence over his fundamentalist Taliban allies, and has supplied Omar with money and weapons to wage war against rival Afghan factions. Now, as the Taliban movement faces its gravest crisis, the fate of the two men seems inextricably intertwined.
Yesterday, as opposition Northern Alliance forces moved into the Afghan capital, Kabul, senior U.S. officials said their top priority now is hunting down bin Laden and Omar, the Taliban's supreme religious leader. They said that the search had been greatly facilitated by the dramatic shift in the military picture over the last few days, and the "disarray" in Taliban-controlled areas.
There has been no sign of any break between bin Laden and Omar, despite past U.S. suggestions that the Taliban could save itself by handing over bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
Yesterday, Omar appealed to his followers in a radio address from his political stronghold in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar to "regroup, put up resistance, and fight." He accused waverers of behaving "like chickens with their heads cut off" and added: "Do not listen to the propaganda by opposition media. I am in Kandahar and have not gone anywhere. This is a fight for Islam."
In his most recent interview, with a Pakistani journalist summoned to his mountain hideout near Kabul, bin Laden said he was "ready to die" to avenge the humiliation of the Muslim world by "crusader forces" led by the United States. "The Americans think they will solve this problem by killing me," bin Laden was quoted as saying. "But it's not easy to solve this problem. This war has been spread all over the world."
The journalist, Hamid Mir, in an article for the newspaper Dawn, depicted the 44-year-old terrorist leader as a man "at ease" with himself, even though he "feels certain" that the Americans will kill him sooner or later. In other recent statements, bin Laden has claimed credit for helping to spark a clash of civilizations between Islam and Christianity, and called on Muslims everywhere "to rise to support your religion."
"God bear witness that I have conveyed the message," he repeated three times in a final incantation to a videotaped statement delivered to the Arab cable news network Al Jazeera earlier this month. He also bitterly attacked the United Nations and its "criminal leader" Kofi Annan, who he said was "sitting idly by" while "we are being massacred every day."
A senior U.S. official said that intelligence reports clearly indicate that bin Laden remains in Afghanistan, but probably not in the same location as Omar, who rarely travels outside his native Kandahar region. The official said that the two men hold occasional meetings but generally do not travel together. Bin Laden, unlike Omar, has traveled outside Afghanistan in earlier times.
Michael Vickers, a former officer in the U.S. Army Special Forces and the CIA, said that both bin Laden and Omar could be at risk from Special Forces operations at a time when the Taliban frontline is crumbling all around them. "If these guys are on the run, they're vulnerable," said Vickers, explaining that their normal security networks may have been disrupted and once-trusted associates may be willing to betray their whereabouts.
He noted that the United States has offered a $25 million reward for information leading to the capture or death of bin Laden or his closest associates. "It may very well be that money will talk at some point," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters.
The relationship between Omar -- a 41-year-old Islamic preacher who lost his right eye in the war against the occupying Soviet army in the 1980s -- and bin Laden goes back to the early days of Taliban rule. After the Taliban seized control of Kabul and much of northern Afghanistan in September 1996, bin Laden appealed to Omar for refuge and took control of guerrilla training camps that had previously been used by anti-Soviet Mujaheddin.
In return for protection, bin Laden built a house for Omar's family and provided funds for Taliban leaders, according to Ahmed Rashid, author of a recent book on the Taliban. Promises to pave a road to the airport outside of Kandahar and build mosques and schools never got off the ground because his funds were frozen, but he did supply a steady stream of guerrilla fighters to assist the Taliban in their continuing battles with the northern Alliance. As many as 10,000 Arabs are believed to have passed through bin Laden's training camps, and many of them have served with the Taliban at one time or another.
According to Thomas Gouttierre, an Afghan expert at the University of Nebraska and a former UN adviser, the so-called Afghan Arabs surrounding bin Laden were much more educated and articulate than the often illiterate Taliban and succeeded in convincing them that they were at the head of a worldwide Islamic renaissance. "Al Qaeda ended up hijacking a large part of the Taliban movement," he said, noting that Omar and bin Laden were "very, very tight" by 1998.
Bin Laden is a charismatic leader, born to a privileged family, with a natural sense of public relations. Omar is uneducated, comes from a desperately poor background, and has rarely been photographed or interviewed. Despite these differences, they share a common strategic interest and a vision of a unified Islamic world, much as it was in the 7th century, during the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Earlier this year, bin Laden described Omar as "the commander of the faithful" and Afghanistan as the only true Islamic state.
"They depend on each other because they are soul mates and both are committed to an international Islamic revolution," said Yossef Bodansky, author of a recent biography of bin Laden. "Both of them regard America as their implacable enemy, with whom there is no point negotiating."
Attempts by the Clinton administration to drive a wedge between the two leaders, and persuade the Taliban to give up bin Laden, ended in failure. "Even if the whole of Afghanistan is destroyed, we will never deliver Osama," Omar said in a statement issued in April 2000. "A Muslim cannot deliver a Muslim to a non-Muslim."
Former assistant secretary of state Karl F. Inderfurth, who negotiated with the Taliban on behalf of the Clinton administration, said that it now seems obvious that Omar would never surrender his troublesome guest. "The relationship was too strong, and too beneficial and they had a meeting of the minds on establishing a true Islamic state. The driving force was that they were both true believers and fanatical in pursuit of an Islamic state."
Some U.S. officials have said that they have detected signs of friction between the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network as their military reverses mount. "When things are good, everything's easy, and when things are bad, everything's tough," said Rumsfeld, adding that the former "intimacy" between the two organizations had come under strain.
The marriage between bin Laden and Omar is one of both "ideology and convenience," said Richard Dekmejian, professor of political science at the University of Southern California. "Since they both believe they are likely to be killed by the Americans, they have no choice but to stick together. The only question is: will we be able to find them?"
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Best Regards, J.T. |
