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Michael Scheuer on bin Laden vs the Saudis
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
[Michael Scheuer, who wrote his first public book as Anonymous, is
ex-CIA (maybe he's one former analyst who really is "ex") and is a
fairly fulminating anti-al Qaeda Western imperialist. Despite all that
he's a good smart analyst and has a very perceptive understanding of
"why they hate us." He's one of the horde of competent analysts
and scholars who have left the US government (State Dept, CIA, NSA,
military, etc. in droves during the Bush regime. That's one of the
reasons Bush and his hangers on have been able to make fools of
themselves more and more, and why everything they touch turns to ****.
The fact that these people left -- their experience and services no
longer welcomed by the incompetent gangsters and their mediocre groupies
in power -- is one major reason Bush & Co. (and the cowardly Congress)
are so successfully destroying the evil empire.
This article was originally published for the right-wing Jamestown
Foundation, then republished by Asia Times where Info Clearing House
picked it up. He's always interesting, despite his politics, and his
arrogance. But take what he says with caution and keep in mind his
biases. -NY Transfer]
Asia Times via Info Clearing House - Jan 11, 2008
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19051.htm
Bin Laden turns heat on Saudi Arabia
By Michael Scheuer
11/01/08 "Asia Times"--Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's latest message
is one of the richest, most comprehensive and starkly realistic he has
issued since the start of the Iraq war. This essay considers al-Qaeda's
dour recognition of its inability to control post-occupation events in
Iraq as a small vanguard organization and a non-Iraqi presence in the
country.
On December 29, 2007, bin Laden issued a 56-minute statement that
addressed Muslim insurgents in Iraq [1] and built on his earlier
message from October 22 [2]. The new statement was ssued via al-Qaeda's
media arm, al-Sahab, and appeared on several Internet sites without
pre-publication excerpts on al-Jazeera television. Al-Jazeera's editing
of the October 22 audiotape distorted bin Laden's message, incorrectly
giving the implication that he was saying "all is lost" for the
mujahideen in Iraq [3]. Al-Jazeera customarily deletes anything
critical of the Saudi regime from bin Laden's messages. This occurred
in the case of the October 22 tape and al-Qaeda apparently did not want
to take a chance on al-Jazeera's penchant for politically correct
editing with its most recent message [4].
Focus on Iraq
The latest bin Laden tape is - like its October 22 predecessor -
pre-eminently a post-Iraq war tape. In both tapes, bin Laden declares
that the United States recognizes that its Coalition has been
militarily defeated in Iraq and predicts that US and other foreign
forces will leave. Bin Laden does not provide the date US-led forces
will withdraw; he focuses his attention on working with Islamist
insurgents in Iraq to ensure the Americans and their Arab-government
allies cannot build a national unity government that is an "agent to
America", dominated by non-Islamists and ready to permit the US basing
rights and access to Iraqi oil.
Because US-led forces have accepted military defeat, bin Laden argues,
Wa****ngton and its allies must look for other means to prevent the
consolidation of an Islamic state in Iraq. "My talk to you," bin Laden
explained, "is about the plots that are being hatched by the
Zionist-Crusader alliance, led by America, in cooperation with its
agents in the region, to steal the fruit of the blessed jihad in the
land of the two rivers, and what we should do to foil these plots."
History's lesson
As always, bin Laden speaks as a product and close observer of the
Afghans' jihad against the Soviet Union. In appealing for unity among
the Iraqi mujahideen, he makes no demand that they join al-Qaeda and
follow its instructions. He points rather to the failure of the Afghan
insurgents to consolidate victory after the Red Army's 1989 withdrawal:
"It would be useful here to recall an effort in the past to unify the
leaders of the Afghan mujahideen, which includes im****tant lessons that
are related to our topic," bin Laden tells the Iraqi fighters in an
almost avuncular tone.
We had made these efforts with Sheikh Abdullah Azzam [bin Laden's
late Palestinian mentor in Afghanistan], may God have mercy on him.
After months of seeking to achieve unity among [the Afghan leaders] and
removing the obstacles that some of them used to claim that they
obstruct unity, [but then] after removing these obstacles...they
[would] claim that there was another obstacle [preventing unity], and
so on and so forth... One of the mujahideen had a strong opinion about
these [obstructing] leaders. He was an old wise person who had long
experience in life with people. At the time we used to reject his
strong-worded statement about them. I will try to convey to you some of
what he said. The conclusion is that those leaders are tradesmen who
care more about their leader****p and give priority to their personal
interests over the cause. We used not to believe what he said about
them. This has delayed our realization of the sound conception of
persons and events [presented by this mujahid]. The harmful
consequences of this are no secret ... In fact, developments have come
to confirm things that we had never expected due to the fact that we
were young and lacked experience at the time.
In Iraq, Riyadh is the main enemy
Bin Laden urges the Iraqi fighters to heed the lesson of the Afghans'
historic post-Soviet debacle because "the same thing applies to Iraq
today"; leaders are more interested in their own power and status than
in making Islam and the ummah (Islamic community) victorious. And while
bin Laden warns that Wa****ngton is using promises of money, military
training and arms to entice the "Islamic Party and some fighting groups
[to] sup****t America against Muslims", he leaves no doubt that the
Islamists' main enemy in Iraq is now Saudi Arabia, not the supposedly
militarily defeated United States. After the Soviets' withdrawal from
Afghanistan, bin Laden reminded the Iraqi fighters that "America
exerted great efforts ... to convince the Afghan leaders through the
governments of Riyadh and Islamabad to join a national unity government
with communists and secularists from the West." Bin Laden explained
that the Saudi regime was then - and is again today in Iraq - the main
enemy of the mujahideen:
[In post-Soviet Afghanistan] the government of Riyadh sought the
help of its unofficial scholars to infiltrate the ranks of the
mujahideen. These were influential speakers who incited the people to
perform jihad and collect huge funds for the leaders of the mujahideen.
At the set time, [the Saudi regime] asked the Afghan leaders to unite
with the communists and secularists under the so-called national unity
state. [The Saudis] obstructed the plan to achieve unity among the
leaders of the mujahideen when they tempted one of them with a big
amount of money and promised him to be the president of Afghanistan ...
We do not have much time here for more details. So the current
situation [in Iraq] is similar to the past one [in Afghanistan]. The
government of Riyadh continues to this day to carry out the same
malicious roles with many Islamic action leaders and commanders of the
mujahideen in our nation [5].
Bin Laden goes on to claim that the Saudis are trying to co-opt some of
the Sunni mujahideen in Iraq by allowing "some groups to confidently
move in the Gulf to receive [financial] sup****t". Riyadh is careful to
avoid officially funding its Iraqi insurgent favorites, so its sup****t
"is channeled under the banner of raising donations by some unofficial
scholars and preachers". Bin Laden warns that "many of them ... are
loyal to the state and seek to implement [Riyadh's] policy by pulling
the rug from under the honest mujahideen's feet" and forcing them to
sup****t a national-unity government that is designed to be the agent of
the United States and Saudi Arabia.
He asks the Iraqi mujahideen how they can trust Saudi King Abdullah,
who is the "malignant foe" of Islam, the "main US agent in the region"
and a man who took it on himself "to tempt and tame every free,
virtuous, and honest person with the aim of dragging him to the path of
temptation and misguidance ... [and] the path of betraying the religion
and nation and submitting to the will of the Crusader-Zionist
alliance". The Americans are defeated, bin Laden concludes, but to
assure God's victory the Iraqi mujahideen must reject Saudi overtures
and direction if they are "not to waste the fruit of this chaste and
pure blood that was shed for the sake of consolidating religion and
entrenching the state of Muslims".
A way out?
Bin Laden and his senior lieutenants are reliving what for them is a
familiar nightmare. In one of the greatest ironies of the post-1945
era, Islamist fighters have proven that with great, prolonged and
bloody effort they can claim the military defeat of superpowers - the
USSR and the United States - but cannot consolidate victory when
confronted by the wiles, funds and religious establishment of the Saudi
leader****p. While it is clear in the December 29 tape that bin Laden
rates the Saudis as the main obstacle to God's victory in Iraq, there
is little indication of what he intends to do to destroy Riyadh's
ability to stymie the mujahideen there as it did in Afghanistan.
One possibility - though bin Laden did not allude to this - would
require a rethinking of al-Qaeda's grand strategy. Although bin Laden
and al-Qaeda have been consistent in their three-fold grand strategy -
to drive the United States from the Muslim world, destroy Israel and
in***bent Muslim regimes and settle scores with the ****'ites - they now
face a situation where the Saudi regime has not only so far prevented
the unification of Islamist leaders, but is allegedly preparing the
Sunni Iraqi insurgents it sup****ts for a civil war with Iraq's
Iranian-backed ****'ites.
Bin Laden, of course, is correct in arguing that Riyadh wants no
genuine national-unity government; the Saudis may be intending to fund
and equip a Sunni insurgent force that could join forces with the
US-armed and trained Sunni Awakening Councils to battle for control of
post-US Iraq against the ****ites and seek the establishment of a
Saudi-like Sunni theocracy in Baghdad. If this occurs, the third step
of bin Laden's grand strategy - settling scores with the ****'ites -
will immediately become the top priority of the Islamic world, as both
Sunnis and ****'ites focus on assisting their brethren in the Iraqi
civil war. This scenario would severely erode bin Laden's ability to
keep Sunni militants focused on the "far" US enemy.
If bin Laden's assertions are true, and Saudi Arabia's Afghanistan-like
intervention in Iraq continues to prevent the mujahideen unity bin
Laden advocates, the al-Qaeda chief and his shura (consultative)
council may soon confront the very unpalatable necessity of having to
break with their traditional grand strategy and move to try to destroy
the Saudi regime.
In such a scenario, al-Qaeda would abandon the pinprick
insurgency-and-terrorism campaign it has conducted in the kingdom since
September 11, and employ all the force it commands and can incite
there"and bring in from Iraq - to take on the well-infiltrated Saudi
military and security services. Such a campaign probably would combine
attempts to assassinate the king, the interior minister and senior
intelligence and military officials with attacks to disrupt Saudi oil
production.
The latter operations would be staged in the hope of forcing Wa****ngton
to a Hobson's choice between standing back and allowing havoc to reign
in the world's oil market - with the immense damage it would entail for
the US economy - and ordering US military forces into action against
Muslims in order to restore oil production on the sacred soil of the
Prophet Mohammad's birthplace and what bin Laden refers to as "the land
of the two holy mosques".
The foregoing clearly is not an option that al-Qaeda is eager to
undertake; it is an option that amounts to an almost desperate gamble.
But that said, if such a campaign successfully triggered a US military
response in the kingdom, the focus and militancy of the entire Muslim
world - both Sunni and ****'ite - would be switched from Iraq to Saudi
Arabia, and the enmity and weapons of all Muslims would, at least
tem****arily, be refocused on the "far enemy" in North America.
End Notes
1. Osama bin Laden, "The Way to Foil Plots", al-Sahab Media Production
Organization, December 29, 2007. All quotes from bin Laden in the text
are from this statement unless otherwise noted.
2. Osama bin Laden, "A Message to Our People in Iraq", Threat and Claim
Monitor, IntelCenter.com, October 22, 2007.
3. Al-Jazeera, October 23, 2007. By censoring bin Laden's statement,
al-Jazeera unwittingly seems to have done al-Qaeda a great service. The
"all-is-lost" message yielded by al-Jazeera's editors has become the
common wisdom among Western media and governments, thereby obscuring
for those entities the fact that bin Laden was discussing how all Iraqi
insurgents should proceed to consolidate Islam's victory over the
United States and its allies in Iraq.
4. Al-Jazeera's editing earned it some outrage and condemnation from
Islamists. See, for example, Bilal al-Khaldi, "And thus Osama's message
has gone to waste. An invitation to a proactive response." Islamic
al-Fallujah Forums (Internet), November 16, 2007.
5. Bin Laden says that the Saudi effort to prevent post-Soviet Afghan
unity was led and managed by "the Riyadh intelligence chief", who was
at the time Prince Turki al-Faisal. This is the same Prince Turki who -
while serving as the Saudi ambassador to the United States -
unexpectedly and hurriedly departed Wa****ngton in early 2007 when a
Sunni-****'ite civil war seemed imminent in Iraq. Not much has been
heard from Prince Turki since his departure, but if bin Laden's claims
about the current Saudi campaign to co-opt Iraq's Sunni mujahideen are
true, it is hard to imagine anyone more qualified by past experience to
lead the effort than Prince Turki.
[Michael Scheuer served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit at the
Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to
1999. He is now a senior fellow at The Jamestown Foundation, for which
this article was prepared.]
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