Terrorism experts question U.S. air
strikes
Clinton's military gambit may embolden terrorist backer
Osama bin Laden and his followers.
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BY HARRY JAFFE , JEFF STEIN AND LORI
LEIBOVICH | The bombing of six supposed terrorist
sites in Afghanistan and the Sudan Thursday by
U.S. forces may have given some Americans a
sense of revenge -- and temporarily diverted some
public attention from President Clinton's deepening
sex scandal -- but a number of foreign policy
experts believe it will serve only to embolden
Middle East radicals bent on further terrorist acts
against the United States.
"We're not doing much more than making ourselves
feel good," says Bernard Reich, professor of
international affairs at George Washington
University. "It could very well have the reverse
effect, especially in Sudan, where there are plenty
of wonderful people that want good relations with
the United States."
Thursday's attacks were directed against targets
associated with Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi
Arabian who's been financing terrorist attacks since
the early 1980s. U.S. investigators have concluded
that bin Laden was behind the recent bombings of
U.S. embassies in East Africa. The air strikes
carried out yesterday were direct retaliation, but
they may have been futile.
"It doesn't affect bin Laden unless he was killed,"
says Scott Armstrong, a former Washington Post
reporter who's been in contact with bin Laden's
associates in researching a book about American
policy in the Persian Gulf. "The U.S. military
wanted to show great strength. It did. But the only
real impact on bin Laden is that he might hamper
him a bit in getting money from his family."
Bin Laden, who moved his base of operations to
Sudan in 1991, is reportedly worth $500 million.
He's driven by a fundamentalist, pan-Islamic belief
that Western influences must be driven from
Muslim holy places, according to Armstrong. It's a
passion that's shared by some radical Muslims from
Saudi Arabia and Tunisia to Bosnia and Chechnya.
Professor Reich says bin Laden represents a brand
of terrorism that's a departure from the
state-sponsored terrorism prevalent during the
1980s, when Libya and Iran encouraged and
financed terrorist operations. Bin Laden springs
more from an ideological, romantic strain of
terrorists, who are much more difficult to identify,
target and control.
"Bin Laden may be of the romantic variety, but he
is the functional equivalent of a state," Reich says.
"He's worth a half a billion dollars in a part of the
world where people will do things for very little
money. He can provide cover, passports,
transportation. He can do what Syria can do, what
Libya did with Pan Am 103."
Taliban leaders in Afghanistan reported that bin
Laden was not killed in Thursday's bombing raids.
Reich says it's just as well. "He would have become
a martyr," says the professor. "It could very well
have had the opposite effect."
Armstrong agrees that the bombings could backfire.
"It could recruit huge numbers of people to his
cause," Armstrong says. "He has about 4,000 active
members right now, and he could call on many
thousands more. These raids will multiply that by a
factor of 10."
"You have to remember that bin Laden is revered
by thousands of his followers," a weary intelligence
specialist said before heading back to another
13-hour shift at the counter-terrorism center in the
Pentagon Thursday afternoon. "He's revered as
Daddy to them -- Daddy Bucks.
"He's got thousands of freedom-fighting veterans
who went back to their countries, mostly in the
Middle East and North Africa, but also stretching
into Asia. They're certainly capable of doing all
sorts of nasty things."
And so are his relatives. Bin Laden's brother-in-law
Jamal Khalifah owns a rattan factory in the
Philippines, for example, from which he's
bankrolled the Filipino Muslim terrorist organization
Abu Sayyaf. In 1991 the organization recruited
future World Trade Center bomber Yousef Ramzi.
In 1994 Khalifah was arrested in Morgan Hill,
Calif., on a charge of providing false information on
his visa application. Eventually he was deported to
Jordan and is understood to be busily buttressing
bin Laden's terror campaigns.
The picture Americans have of bin Laden sitting
cross-legged in his Afghan redoubt in brown robes,
with a scraggly beard and sunken cheeks,
meanwhile, may give a false impression of the
Saudi's business and professional acumen.
He is a professional engineer who has amassed a
multibillion-dollar family fortune building roads and
other construction projects in Sudan, where he
lived with his four wives before being forced to
move to Afghanistan.
One project was a new, 500-mile highway from
Khartoum to Port Sudan, which replaced an old
road that was nearly twice as long, cutting travel
time by days. Only five years earlier, bin Laden
was using the same equipment to blast tunnels
through the mountains of Afghanistan for use by
Muslim guerrillas in the jihad against the Soviet Red
Army.
Intelligence analysts say bin Laden's cousins
manage the Sudan projects now -- including the
Khartoum pharmaceutical plant that was bombed
by U.S. warplanes Thursday. U.S. officials have
not said publicly that Laden's family owned the
plant, but "you can use your logic and come up
with the most likely conclusion," one analyst says.
The pharmaceutical plant, the analyst said, was
capable of making at least mustard and VX gases
for use against Western targets. Bin Laden's family
also has large holdings of land south of Khartoum
that Western intelligence suspects have been used
as military training camps for Islamic guerrillas,
with the training at least partly supported by Iran.
Other terrorist groups, such as Hamas and the
Iran-backed Hezbollah, openly maintain offices in
Khartoum.
In a confidential study for the secretary of defense
last year, a group of retired military and intelligence
officers concluded a terrorist gas attack on U.S.
military bases, including the Pentagon itself, would
not be difficult.
As for the likelihood of bin Laden's retaliation,
"The main groups he seems to be affiliated with are
no doubt taking a look at contingency plans, if
they're not scrambling for their own little asses,"
says the analyst. "It's one thing to carry out an
action and say, 'Oh, America, you're a paper tiger.'
It's another thing to have a goddamn Tomahawk
coming through your window."
Assembling bombs like the ones that exploded in
front of U.S. embassies in Africa last week,
however, takes "about 20 minutes if you have the
materials ready in a truck in a warehouse
somewhere," the analyst points out.
Meanwhile, Armstrong says the raid could start a
domino effect in the Middle East if it increases bin
Laden's power and influence. Armstrong said
there's already a large group of clerics in Saudi
Arabia who share bin Laden's religious beliefs that
Western influences must be swept from Mecca,
Medina and other Islamic holy places. The Taliban
regime in Afghanistan is with him. The Islamic
government in Sudan is in the balance, but it's
already angry with the United States for supporting
a Christian rebellion in the south. "Also," Armstrong
said, "this could certainly radicalize certain people
in Pakistan to his cause."
Says Professor Reich: "We have no conclusive
evidence that raids of this sort will have any effect
on terrorism. Yes, we can reach anywhere. We
have an incredibly impressive arsenal. The question
is do you stop groups who are doing terrorist acts?
"We have no solution to terrorism," he says. "We
can slow it down, we can divert it, but a determined
terrorist can pull off a terrorist act with relative
ease."
In light of all this, were Thursday's attacks more
politically motivated than militarily? "This event
does look like a wonderful confluence of
international opportunity and domestic advantage
for Mr. Clinton," says James Morrow, a senior
research fellow at the Hoover Institution at
Stanford University.
"People say that the Lewinsky scandal is weakening
the United States internationally, that it is
encouraging states like Iraq and North Korea to
challenge the United States," adds Morrow. "I think
that argument is absolutely wrong and it's
backwards. I think the temptation for the wounded
leader to act is stronger in crisis, and therefore, if
you're a prospective opponent, you have to be
aware of that. I think opponents are less likely to
challenge a leader who is down, precisely because
they know they are more likely to get a strong
response."
SALON | Aug. 21, 1998 |
