Interview with Hamid Mir: Bin Laden Biographer
By Ayub Khan
23/10/2001
Hamid Mir, 36, is the editor of an Islamabad-based newspaper, the Daily Ausaf. He started his journalism career 15 years ago and has won several awards, including the Best Columnist award from the All Pakistan Newspaper Society.
He has interviewed Osama bin Laden four times since1997 and has also written bin Laden's only official biography, to be published at the end of 2001. He was also the first person to receive a message from bin Laden after the attacks on the U.S. on September 11th denying his involvement.
In this exclusive interview with IslamOnline, Hamid Mir talks about a variety of issues including the future of Taliban, Pakistan and bin Laden:
IslamOnline: Do you think that the end of Taliban is near?
Hamid Mir: The end of Taliban is not near. I told BBC on 7th Oct that Taliban will not collapse easily. Three weeks are passed. Americans have failed to break Taliban. Taliban are moving their troops and weapons in the mountains. They are planning for guerilla war. They may lose some cities but they will continue their jihad. There will be no peace for Americans inside and out-side the Afghanistan.
IOL: How strong is the Taliban's support base in Afghanistan?
HM: The support for [the] Taliban in Afghanistan is increasing day by day. Blind use of military power by America is increasing the political power of [the] Taliban. No anti-Taliban leader can enter in Pashtun speaking areas.
IOL: How true are reports of large-scale defections from Taliban?
HM: Some of the Uzbek-speaking warlords defected in Northern Afghanistan. They were not Taliban, they were allies, but more people are defecting from Northern Alliance to Taliban.
IOL: Are there any rifts within Taliban leadership?
HM: There is no rift in Taliban. American and Pakistani intelligence agencies organized a grand meeting in Peshawar on October 21st to form a jirga [traditional meeting of elders] with defected Taliban commanders. They were not able to break even a single Taliban commander and the meeting was postponed. There are rifts within Northern Alliance. [Burhanuddin] Rabbani is against [Mohammed] Fahim, and Fahim is against Sayyaf.
IOL: What will happen in Afghanistan if Taliban are kicked out of power?
HM: There will be no peace in Afghanistan if Taliban lose power. Public is against America. You will see that superpower will be humiliated in Afghanistan.
IOL: How well do you know bin Laden?
HM: I know him from last four years. I met him twice, spend many days with him. He is not a scholar, he is a fighter. He wants to liberate Palestine. He wrote many poems against Israel. He is a jihadi [warrior] poet. His poems will come out very soon. I always ask him difficult questions and he answers my questions with patience.
IOL: Do you think that bin Laden is behind the 9-11 attacks?
HM: I don't think a man living in [the] mountains, without any communication facilities inside America can manage such kind of big operation.
IOL: Why do you think that he is being considered as a hero in the Muslim world?
HM: Most of the people like him because people are against America. He is a hero by default. Many people don't share his ideology [because he praised the September 11th attacks], but they are supporting the enemy of their enemy, which is America.
IOL: Give us your personal impressions of bin Laden?
HM: He is a soft spoken, humble and simple man. He is very good in his behavior. He doesn't behave like a terrorist.
IOL: When are you going to publish your book on bin Laden?
HM: My book about Osama will be published in December 2001. This is a first book written after meeting him. It will be in English and Urdu [official language of Pakistan].
IOL: What kind of a man is Mullah Omar?
HM: Mullah Omar is a real mujahid [fighter]. I think his stature is bigger than Osama. Osama takes orders from him. Osama became hero because of Omar. He is simple man who spent his most of time in mosque or on the battlefield. Mullah Omar is convinced that America is not after Osama, they are after Islam. Omar told me a year back that Osama came to Afghanistan in May 1996, Taliban captured Kabul in September 1996 and American Assistant Secretary Of State Mrs. Robin Raphel supported Taliban in November 1996. She was silent on Osama because America wanted to use Taliban against China and Iran, when Taliban refused, Americans created the issue of Osama bin laden.
IOL: How long can the Taliban survive the military attacks?
HM: Taliban will not be routed. They can easily fight for more than a year.
IOL: Does [Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf have what it will take to contain the pro-Taliban constituency in Pakistan?
HM: Musharraf cannot control pro-Taliban feelings in Pakistan. He is playing with fire. He is pushing country towards civil war.
IOL: What do you make of charges by Western media which label the madrassas [religious schools] as breeding grounds of fanaticism?
HM: Pakistani madrassas are not involved in fanaticism. What about secular fanaticism. The girl students in France are not allowed to cover their heads with scarf because they are Muslims, but Christian nuns are not stopped to cover their heads. Now the English speaking class in Pakistan is becoming pro-Taliban.
IOL: What kind of a future do you expect for Taliban, Pakistan and bin Laden?
HM: They may be eliminated physically, but they will survive politically. Dead Osama will be more dangerous, thousands of new Osamas will be born. The half of Pakistan will be converted into Taliban. One day Afghanistan will become symbol of pride for the Muslim ummah [nation]. [U.S. President George W.] Bush used the word "crusade". This word came on his tongue because he hates Muslims. He has started crusade in Afghanistan, it will end up in America. His war is not against terror, this war is against error, and we can find out the error in the Middle East, in Kashmir and in Chechnya.
Mullah Omar - in his own words:
AMERICA HAS CREATED THE EVIL THAT IS ATTACKING IT
Wednesday September 26, 2001
The Guardian
This12-minute interview with Mullah Omar Mohammad, the Taliban leader, was conducted in Pashtu for the publicly-funded radio channel Voice of America. The broadcast was pulled last Friday, following objections from the US deputy secretary of state and senior officials of the National Security Council.
Voice of America interviewer: Why don't you expel Osama bin Laden?
Omar: This is not an issue of Osama bin Laden. It is an issue of Islam. Islam's prestige is at stake. So is Afghanistan's tradition.
VOA: Do you know that the US has announced a war on terrorism?
Omar: I am considering two promises. One is the promise of God, the other is that of Bush. The promise of God is that my land is vast. If you start a journey on God's path, you can reside anywhere on this earth and will be protected... The promise of Bush is that there is no place on earth where you can hide that I cannot find you. We will see which one of these two promises is fulfilled.
VOA: But aren't you afraid for the people, yourself, the Taliban, your country?
Omar: Almighty God... is helping the believers and the Muslims. God says he will never be satisfied with the infidels. In terms of worldly affairs, America is very strong. Even if it were twice as strong or twice that, it could not be strong enough to defeat us. We are confident that no one can harm us if God is with us.
VOA: You are telling me you are not concerned, but Afghans all over the world are concerned.
Omar: We are also concerned. Great issues lie ahead. But we depend on God's mercy. Consider our point of view: if we give Osama away today, Muslims who are now pleading to give him up would then be reviling us for giving him up... Everyone is afraid of America and wants to please it. But Americans will not be able to prevent such acts like the one that has just occurred because America has taken Islam hostage. If you look at Islamic countries, the people are in despair. They are complaining that Islam is gone. But people remain firm in their Islamic beliefs. In their pain and frustration, some of them commit suicide acts. They feel they have nothing to lose.
VOA: What do you mean by saying America has taken the Islamic world hostage?
Omar: America controls the governments of the Islamic countries. The people ask to follow Islam, but the governments do not listen because they are in the grip of the United States. If someone follows the path of Islam, the government arrests him, tortures him or kills him. This is the doing of America. If it stops supporting those governments and lets the people deal with them, then such things won't happen. America has created the evil that is attacking it. The evil will not disappear even if I die and Osama dies and others die. The US should step back and review its policy. It should stop trying to impose its empire on the rest of the world, especially on Islamic countries.
VOA: So you won't give Osama bin Laden up?
Omar: No. We cannot do that. If we did, it means we are not Muslims... that Islam is finished. If we were afraid of attack, we could have surrendered him the last time we were threatened and attacked. So America can hit us again, and this time we don't even have a friend.
VOA: If you fight America with all your might - can the Taliban do that? Won't America beat you and won't your people suffer even more?
Omar: I'm very confident that it won't turn out this way. Please note this: there is nothing more we can do except depend on almighty God. If a person does, then he is assured that the Almighty will help him, have mercy on him and he will succeed.
Osama Bin Laden: A Primitive Rebel
By Mohammad El-Sayed Sae'ed
23/10/2001
"A world war against an individual."
When was the last time a similar event took place? It is indeed rare incident for which it is hard to find a match in history. The story of Carlos the Jackal is fairly simple; a clever fighter who managed to slip out of the hands of intelligence agencies around the world, but eventually fell when turned in by the Sudanese government.
Unlike Carlos, who was a professional terrorist, Abdullah Ocalan of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was a revolutionary leader, fighting an armed political battle on behalf of the Kurds in Southeast Turkey. Yet he too fell in a disgraceful act on the part of a "Muslim" government. Even Che Guevara's, the poet laureate of the Marxist movement, experience was different. His was a universal revolutionary political call, but the fight never went far into the heart of U.S. power, for he had no intention of inflicting pain on the American people; rather, it was to mobilize the weak and raise their political awareness. He made it in Cuba, but failed in Uruguay. His was a secret assassination, discovered years later, executed with a simple intelligence operation, not a "worldwide" coalition.
Osama bin Laden is different. His ambitions exceed those of his predecessors; his goal was to hit the United States at the heart of its political and strategic power. He managed to execute what may be counted as the biggest terrorist operation in history, be it against the U.S. or any other historical empire. Bin Laden is a professional terrorist, but unlike "freelance" Carlos, was focused on the agency: the Soviet Union in the past, and the United States in the present. He speaks with a religious rhetoric when discussing political issues. However, he is not a revolutionary leader like Ocalan, for he does not engage in enhancing political awareness, he has not formed a political party or movement of any kind, he has no specific approach to any field of knowledge, and his idea of "strategy" is simple minded.
Further, bin Laden is not Guevara, speaking in the name of all the oppressed peoples of the world, with a vision that revolutionized socialist thought at the time. Bin Laden's vision is a much simpler one, dividing the world into Muslim and non-Muslim, and his "strategy" is not about making the Muslims of the world aware of their political, cultural or social reality, or even a call for their unity. It is based on a comparison between the state of the Muslim world today and that of the early days of Islam; for just as the Soviet empire fell, so too should the U.S. empire.
In other words, his ambitions are beyond definition, the results of his operations are beyond all measure, and his political naiveté is more than often self-thought. On the other hand, the battle the world is fighting against him is indeed historical in terms of size, publicity, political and strategic mobilization and, most importantly, its estimated worldwide results. This, however, is no guide to the essence of the problem.
Bin Laden belongs to a seemingly endless series of primitive rebels in the world's political history. On the surface, he appears to have humiliated the greatest empire of his time. But unlike other rebels of his kind, his address to the world is not one calling for justice, rather, it reflects a great deal of anger at U.S. policies and practices around the world in general, and in the Middle East in particular.
However, his legend is still that of a primitive rebel. It continues to receive a great deal of enthusiasm from a large segment of the Arab and Muslim population who do not act otherwise, for his actions have far exceeded any desire for revenge against vicious U.S. policies. But his revenge is not through mass mobilization into an historical act or an organized ideological move that causes a breakthrough in the role of the Muslims in the World Order; it is through terrorist strikes, relieving the masses from the burden of armed struggle, or even the aspiration for cultural or social development that enriches their interaction with the rest of the world. What would be the need for that when revenge can take place through suicidal operations conducted by a "legendary person", unidentified?
This is the key: the primitive rebel. His mission is revenge. His strikes are against the ordinary man living within the boundaries of the "enemy empire". The horrifying human losses are irrelevant for him, for what matters is the icon: the World Trade Center, a symbol of America.
If the U.S. retaliates, it would serve his cause, for it would become a battle between Muslims and non-Muslims, triggering a worldwide religious war. It could serve Zionist interests, it could serve the cause of the right wing in the U.S., millions of people could lose their lives, the world would mobilize against Islam and its people and Islam would become a religion of violence and intolerance. But all this is not important to bin Laden. A disaster would befall Islam and Muslims worldwide, and it still would not be important in Osama bin Laden's eyes.
(*Translated from the Arabic original under the title "Mukashafat," with permission from the author.)
Mohammad El-Sayed Sae'ed is an expert in the Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies Cairo, Egypt. His works include "Transnational Corporations in the Arab World and the Fate of Nationalism" (Cairo: Alam Al Ma'refa, 1986) and "The Future of the Arab Regional System in the Aftermath of the Gulf Crisis 1992" (Cairo: Alam Al Ma'refa, 1992).
What is Terrorism and What is Not?
By Azzam Tamimi
Senior Lecturer, Markfield Institute of Higher Education
26/10/2001
Those who claim to be experts on terrorism are simply liars and/or fortune hunters.
It is not true that you can study terrorism or observe it. You simply cannot talk academically about a rather subjective concept that is usually employed to camouflage complex phenomena the study of which does not, at the given time and location, seem to interest the users of the term "terrorism".
A straightforward definition of terrorism has been: "the use of force [or violence] to advocate a political cause". However, it is not as straightforward job defining who a terrorist is. For the use of force to achieve political ends may also be adopted as a definition for concepts such as "legitimate armed struggle" or "freedom fighting" or "jihad". Even the most closely allied powers of the day, Great Britain and the United States, have so far disagreed on defining the Irish struggle for independence from British rule, and for re-joining the rest of the motherland and be part of The Republic of Ireland. While the British considered the IRA, and continue to consider the new Real IRA, to be a terrorist organization, the U.S. provided moral, as well as covert material, support to the Irish "freedom fighters". Many British nationals and U.S. citizens would agree that out of self-interest their countries have been embroiled in, or have supported, terrorism on numerous occasions.
The Israelis, and their allies in the U.S. and Europe, consider the Lebanese Hezbollah's struggle to liberate the south of Lebanon from Israeli occupation an act of terrorism. But Hezbollah's struggle was vindicated when the Israelis could not take any more beatings and decided to withdraw unconditionally, admitting in other words, that their occupation of south Lebanon had been illegitimate and illegal.
In addition, Israel and its allies continue to regard the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas's military wing, Islamic Jihad and the military wings of Fatah and other PLO factions, as terrorists. At least one third of the global human population regards them as freedom fighters and considers their armed struggle legitimate and in full accord with U.N. standards and those of international law.
On the other hand, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, militant secular Palestinian factions, the majority of Arabs and Muslims around the world and a sizable segment of the world's non-Muslim population, including many in the U.S. and Western Europe, agree that Israel is a terrorist state that is imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinians, whose lands and homes have been looted and occupied by European, American and African Jewish immigrants.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the besieged and tormented Iraqi people may consider both the U.S. and the U.K., who maintain sanctions against Iraq and bomb it from the air on a regular basis, terrorist states responsible in less than ten years for the murder of no less than half a million Iraqi children.
In addition, India regards the insurgency in Kashmir as an act of terrorism. Few countries in the world agree with them, simply because, according to the United Nations, Kashmiris have the right to self-determination, something India has all along denied them. To Muslims, the Kashmiri struggle is a legitimate struggle and an act of self-defense that deserves support.
Similarly, the Russians have been telling the world that the Chechens, whose homes have been destroyed and their people killed or made homeless, are terrorists. The Chechens, whose struggle for freedom has been going on for more than a century, regard the Russians as oppressors, and in this, they enjoy the support of not only of Muslims but of many more throughout the globe.
So what is the point of talking about terrorism and terrorists? Why don't governments or nations use straightforward, unambiguous and absolute terms in describing their enemies? If language were used correctly, many so-called terrorists would emerge as freedom fighters and defenders of noble causes. These would include at the very least the Palestinians, Kashmiris and Chechens, but would not include those who killed more than six thousand civilians in the attack on the World Trade Center.
Nevertheless, those who carried out the attack in New York should be called anything but terrorists. For it serves no purpose to call them so. Some terrorists may come to be recognized as world heroes. A case in point is that of Nelson Mandela, who was once described by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a terrorist who would not be allowed to set foot on British soil.
The attackers of the World Trade Center committed an evil crime. No ethical person or community would call them heroes or martyrs. Therefore, a relative term such as "terrorist" does not serve the purpose of telling the world what they are or why they committed such an atrocity.
Furthermore, terrorizing others is not always evil or bad. If innocents are terrorized, terrorizing is bad. But what if those terrorized are thieves, burglars or some kind of aggressors whom one should seek to punish or deter? Terrorizing such criminals is not only permissible but is commendable. That is why the Qur'an uses the term "terrorize" in the context of exhorting the community to be prepared in case war is waged against it. "And prepare for them [that is the aggressors] as much force as you can so as to 'terrorize' the enemy of God and your enemy".
With reference to the attack on the U.S., instead of terms such as "terrorism" and "aggression", the terms "terrorist" and "aggressor" should be used. Since the concept, or value, of justice is a universal one, and since justice is what we are all supposed to be in pursuit of, and injustice is what we should all be united against, anyone, anywhere in the world will recognize what terrorist and aggressor means, whereas "terrorism" and "aggression" will continue to be subjective and relative.
It is only by utilizing this distinction that Israeli politicians can be halted in exploiting the suffering of Palestinians in order to blur the picture and label the victims of Zionism as terrorists. Similarly, Indian politicians cannot succeed in doing the same to their Kashmiri victims, or the Russians to their Chechen victims. (IslamOnline)
The Propaganda War
By Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
17/10/2001
The following article is critical of certain elements in American media for attempting to dismiss the grievances of Muslims against U.S. foreign policy, especially of the U.S.'s support of Israel. Because it is important that such criticism not be mistaken as a legitimization of the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, I take this opportunity to state, again, what I have made clear in every column since Sept. 11: no grievance, regardless of its legitimacy, can justify the targeting of innocent noncombatants, and I, like every other responsible Muslim, condemn the attack on America as a violation of Islamic law as well as any other standards of civilized society.
How quickly the Zionist propaganda machine has been able to do a hairpin turn on the relationship between the attack on the World Trade Center and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. On the day of the attacks, someone actually floated the rumor that it was Palestinians (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP] - to be specific) themselves who had committed the evil deed. Now, confronted with the (to them) horrifying reality that the American public is seriously demanding to know why anyone, no matter how evil they may be, would hate us so much as to commit such a horrid act, the chorus of defenders of Israeli apartheid are unanimously insisting that the Palestinian issue has nothing whatsoever to do with the attack on the U.S.
Yet on the day after the attacks, Daniel Pipes (2001) wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the attacks could have been avoided if only the U.S. government had listened to Steven Emerson. Now it just so happens that less than a month before the attacks, Pipes and Emerson (2001) had written a prescription to defend America from terrorism in the same newspaper. They urged the shutting down the web sites of a variety of organizations supportive of the Palestinian cause. The disgraceful irony is that the FBI did shut down an Islamic-owned company that hosted the web sites of 500 American Muslim organizations (including some that had been targets of Emerson's McCarthyist accusations of guilt-by-association in the past) only days before the attack. While the resources diverted into that absurd exercise might have been very small, one would have wished that every penny of it could have instead been spent on a meaningful effort to anticipate and prevent what happened a few days later.
On the same day, Charles Krauthammer (2001) also included Israel in the gallery of Muslim grievances, but signaled the onset of a switch of gears by insisting that Israel was "the smallest of fish" affronting "radical Islam". Nonetheless, Fox television insisted on showing a film clip of Palestinians allegedly celebrating the attack over and over again. That the propaganda machine was making a major tactical error only became irrefutably clear when Ariel Sharon's attempted to equate the attack on innocents in the World Trade Center with the attacks by Palestinians against illegal Israeli occupiers. That was too much even for the U.S. government and prompted a sharp rebuttal from the George W. Bush Administration.
The American people have taken a keen interest in foreign affairs for the first time since Vietnam. As the "Arab street" (i.e. the grassroots Arab citizenry) has been out of sync with Arab governments for years, so now the "American street" is out of sync with the major media. Average Americans seeking factual answers to the question: "Why Would Anyone Want to Hurt Us?" are discussing the relationship of the Palestinian issue with the failure of the Muslim world to understand how wonderful this country really is, but their thoughts only surface in the media itself in rare flashes, like Joe Sobran's (2001) syndicated Internet column.
Now, suddenly, the attack on the U.S. has nothing at all to do with Palestinians. It's about Iraq, or about troops in Saudi Arabia, or about a hatred for freedom and democracy (!), or modernity, but don't anyone dare mention Palestine.
Yet how could anyone deny that illegal Israeli occupation is a main source of Muslim dissatisfaction when even Osama bin Laden, upon whom the Bush Administration lays the responsibility for the attack, gave it pride of place in his list of grievances against the United States, not only in his 1998 declaration of war on the United States, but in the videotape he gave to al-Jazeera just before the bombing of Afghanistan commenced?
The amazing reaction of the United States has been to chastise al-Jazeera for broadcasting the tape and to attempt to prevent the Western media from re-broadcasting it! Their initial excuse for this appalling intervention upon freedom of the press was that al-Jazeera was not giving equal time to the U.S. and Britain, but al-Jazeera eagerly interviewed Tony Blair and I'm certain would eagerly interview George Bush if he offered.
Then the new excuse became that bin Laden speeches may incite new terrorist acts. If this were true, it would affirm, rather than deny, the view that it is the grievances he has articulated that are the motives of the attacks. In any case, the U.S. has never in the past been willing to sacrifice freedom of the press to the fear of such a risk. Al-Jazeera is the closest thing to a free press the Arab world has, and it'll take a better excuse than this to tape their mouths without making the West look like flaming hypocrites. (Imagine if the Saudis had tried to excuse their ban on satellite dishes on the ground by saying that they didn't want bin Laden giving the go-ahead signal for another Khobar Towers bombing?)
Why is there this intense effort to disassociate so-called "Muslim rage" from the plight of the Palestinians, given that, according to a recent Zogby poll, any effect of the recent terrorism on American public opinion increased sympathy for Israel (although only to a tiny degree)? The reason for the Zionists' intense efforts to derail any meaningful discussion of the role that the persecution of the Palestinians plays in provoking violence against America is that they correctly perceive that any such discussion may bring the reality of the un-American nature of the Israeli apartheid system into focus for the American public, and thereby threaten continued U.S. aid to Israel.
Dismissing the Palestinian question as irrelevant to the terrorist threat to America is necessary because ignorance of the facts of Israeli history and policies is the lynchpin of U.S. support for Israel. The terrorist acts of September 11, seen out of context, are a plus for Israel. A protracted discussion of U.S. foreign policy blunders that made the attacks possible would be bad news for Israel.
As a recent Al-Awda (2001) alert emphasizes: "Israel has engaged in a persistent pattern of gross human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It stands in defiance of more than eighty United Nations resolutions. Israel continues to kill innocent civilians, demolish Palestinian homes, build illegal settlements on occupied lands, practice collective punishment and deny refugees their inalienable fundamental human right to return to their homes of origin."
It is in order to prevent these facts from gaining widespread recognition that the Zionists would like everyone from al-Jazeera to the "American on the street" to just shut up. (IslamOnline)