The enemy with a thousand faces

In Osama bin Laden, the U.S. is confronting one of the most stealthy and formidable foes in its history.

By Gary Kamiya

Sept. 13, 2001 | While Bush administration officials refuse to state with certainty who was responsible for this week's terrorist offensive against the U.S., Osama bin Laden, the millionaire Saudi exile who is based in Afghanistan, is clearly their top suspect. His terrorist organization, al-Qaida, is one of the only ones in the world, if not the only one, with the resources, experience and sophistication to carry out such an attack, experts say.

There is some evidence, though sketchy, linking bin Laden to the attack. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said U.S. officials learned of an intercepted telephone conversation between two bin Laden associates "who acknowledged a couple of targets were hit." Bin Laden's followers also warned an Arab-language newspaper by telephone three weeks ago that a major attack on the West was coming soon, according to a London-based Arab journalist.

The New York Times reported that bin Laden made a two-hour videotape that was delivered to a Kuwaiti newspaper in June. On that videotape, which was widely disseminated in the Arab world, bin Laden exulted in his power to strike at the United States, saying, "With small capabilities, and with our faith, we can defeat the greatest military power of modern times. America is much weaker than it appears." He also appeared to call for a suicide attack in the United States, saying to supporters, "You will not die needlessly. Your lives are in the hands of God."

The complexity and coordination of the attacks, with four planes hijacked within a short time of each other, pointed to the Saudi fugitive, officials and experts said. "This apparently was well-planned over a number of years -- planned by real pros and experts," Hatch said Tuesday. "[Our] belief is, at least initially, that this looks like Osama bin Laden's signature."

Bin Laden, who has been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List since 1993, is thought to have masterminded the attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, last year's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. He is also known to have bankrolled terrorist and radical fundamentalist groups throughout the world.

For most of his career, bin Laden's primary goal has been the ouster of American troops from the Arabian Peninsula. Lately, however, his statements have given more emphasis to supporting the Palestinian struggle against Israel. He has considerable support among sectors of the Arabic world, particularly its most disaffected and impoverished elements -- as witnessed by the cheers that greeted the announcement of the attacks in Palestinian refugee camps.

Al-Qaida is an umbrella organization that includes about 20 Islamist groups, including Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Armed Islamic Group, with operatives in many countries. The exact number of his followers is unknown: Estimates range from a few hundred to 3,000 or more. How many of these are commandos prepared to die in suicide missions is unknown.

Bin Laden has always denied responsibility for the attacks he has been accused of perpetrating. Associates close to him, and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan, denied that he was involved in the latest attack. But his denials carry little weight with terrorism experts like Michele Zanini, who see him as representative of a new breed of terrorists who see no reason to avow their acts because they have no single political goal.

According to an anonymous source close to bin Laden who gave extensive information to the PBS program "Frontline" for a documentary on him, bin Laden was born in 1957, the seventh son of 50 children born to a Yemeni father who made millions running construction projects in Saudi Arabia. His father was a fairly devout Muslim, and young Osama was also religious.

It was not until after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, however, that he became a zealot. Bin Laden traveled to Afghanistan numerous times, providing resources to the mujahedin resistance and ultimately becoming a military leader himself. While in Afghanistan, he and his organization, al-Qaida, may have received training and financial assistance from the CIA, which, as detailed in Mary Anne Weaver's article "Blowback"in the May 1996 Atlantic, provided more than $3 billion to seven Afghan resistance groups, helping create a hard-line Islamic Frankenstein from which the U.S. would later recoil. The "Frontline" source denies that bin Laden received any aid or training from the CIA. But in any case, the so-called "Afghan Arabs," battle-hardened, often virulently anti-Western and fundamentalist mujahedin, were to become a far bigger problem for the West than the futile imperialist graspings of the declining Soviet empire. Some "Afghan Arabs" went on to fight in Chechnya and Bosnia; others remained in Afghanistan; others dispersed throughout the world.

The decisive and traumatic event in bin Laden's relationship to the West was the 1990 stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia before the 1991 Gulf War. For bin Laden, the fact that the godless United States, the best friend of Israel, was profaning the soil of the country housing two of the three most sacred Islamic sites was intolerable. Bin Laden quickly became too radical for his native country and was expelled from Saudi Arabia because of his anti-government activities; he is suspected of involvement in the deadly 1995 and 1996 car bombings in Riyadh and Dharan. (Bin Laden denied involvement in the bombings, but told CNN, "I have great respect for the people who did this action. What they did is a great job and a big honor I missed participating in."

After his expulsion from Saudi Arabia, bin Laden moved to Sudan, where he lived for five years. When U.S. pressure forced Sudan to expel him, he returned to Afghanistan, where he is currently based.

In August 1996, bin Laden issued a fatwa, or religious decree, authorizing his followers to kill U.S. military personnel. In a 1997 CNN interview with Peter Arnett -- which was played before the jury trying four men accused of bombing the U.S. embassies in Africa -- bin Laden explained that "We declared jihad against the U.S. government, because the U.S. government is unjust, criminal, and tyrannical."

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