Four more years for al–Qaida

As the Bush administration moves towards its second term following the election of 2 November, the period between now and the presidential inauguration in January 2005 will be significant for two quite different reasons: political and military.

The first is the composition of the new cabinet, and especially whether Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld retain their positions. The new appointments will give a good indication of the power of the neo–conservatives; the likelihood is that Dick Cheney, the vice–president, will retain sufficient power to ensure a cabinet this is markedly to the liking of Washington’s neocon community.

The second is the determined effort that United States forces will certainly make to contain the Iraq insurgency in the run–up to the planned elections by the end of January 2005. The past few days alone have seen a number of serious incidents: the assassination of the deputy governor of Baghdad and of a senior oil ministry official; major attacks on oil facilities; the bombing of the education ministry, killing eight people; and numerous kidnappings. All this is in addition to frequent attacks on US troops and the Iraqi police and security forces.

In response, the cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra are expected to be subject to intense military action. The assault on Fallujah may now be imminent, with the heaviest US bombardment for several weeks reported the day after Bush’s re–election. The most recent attacks have included artillery bombardments as well as the use of the AC–130 gunship.

Beyond Iraq, there have been three developments in the broader al–Qaida–linked insurgencies. In southern Thailand, a deputy village leader was murdered on 2 November in retaliation for the suffocating to death of seventy–eight Muslim detainees in army custody (and the killing of seven others). The next day, two police officers, a government official and four civilians were killed in four separate attacks. In the Philippines, fighting has erupted between government troops and militias of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), just before planned peace talks designed to consolidate a two year–old truce.

But perhaps the most significant development has been the release of the full transcript of Osama bin Laden’s video address. The shortened version shown on al–Jazeera on the weekend before the United States election attracted fervid publicity and may have favoured George W Bush. But behind the headlines, the extended version is notable for several more subtle elements.

A political sermon

In the broadcast, Osama bin Laden appears in an almost authoritative light, using a lectern and avoiding camouflage gear or any display of armaments. Alongside direct condemnation of President Bush and castigation of Arab elites, bin Laden makes pointed references to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and siege of west Beirut. This last reference in particular would resonate with Arab audiences by connecting the Israeli destruction of high–rise buildings in Beirut, part of a protracted military action in July–August 1982 that killed well over 10,000 people, with the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center towers.

This rhetorical connection is skilful in two ways. First, its retrospective linkage of the United States to Israel’s 1982 operation in Lebanon, which the US had tacitly backed. By making this connection, bin Laden seeks to establish that the much–vaunted American–Zionist axis has existed for decades, and that the 9/11 attacks were little more than reasonable responses to an alliance that was already evident more than twenty years ago.

The second skilful element is that both the United States and Israel suffered “defeats” in the months and years after the 1982 campaign. In 1983, the United States marine corps lost 241 troops in a suicide–bomb attack on its barracks at Beirut airport, leading to the US’s subsequent withdrawal from Lebanon; by 1985, the Israeli armed forces had encountered such difficulty in controlling southern Lebanon in the face of Hezbollah guerrilla action that they withdrew from most of the territory they had occupied.

Beyond the United States–Israel linkage, the full transcript of Osama bin Laden’s speech contains a wide–ranging presentation of al–Qaida thinking and policy. Bin Laden’s determined effort to sound almost reasonable, if not actually statesmanlike, is reflected in his reference to interviews he gave to CNN and Time magazine in the mid–1990s.

More substantially, he relates the 1991 and 2003 wars with Iraq, conjoining the current President Bush’s actions with those of his father, and describing the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime as the installation of “a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq’s oil.”

Here as elsewhere, the transcript relates closely to events and activities across the western world. He quotes from lectures given at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA); quotes casualty figures in Iraq gathered by Iraq Body Count; and even reminds his audience that many people in the west argued that Bush could have achieved the removal of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction by using the inspection process, “but the darkness of the black gold blurred his vision and insight, and he gave priority to private interests over the public interests of America”.

The theme of a war for oil is repeated later in the text and linked to the human costs of the Iraq war:

“So I say to you, over 15,000 of our people have been killed and tens of thousands injured, while more than 1,000 of you have been killed and more than 10,000 injured. And Bush’s hands are stained with the blood of all those killed from both sides, all for the sake of oil and keeping their private companies in business.”

There are other aspects of note in the address, not least its emphasis on the punishing monetary costs of the war to the United States. The conflict may be greatly profitable to private corporations but bin Laden points acidly to the rapidly rising federal deficit, seeming to argue that one aim of al–Qaida is to cripple the United States through inflicting inordinate costs on its war on terror.

In one of the most interesting parts of the entire statement, he seems almost to toy with Washington, presenting the Bush administration and the US military with imaginary targets to drain their resources.

“All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahideen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al–Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.”

Al–Qaida’s brand extension

Although bin Laden’s statement has much to say directly about the United States, perhaps its most significant aspects are those revealing a desire, and perhaps a need, for al–Qaida to embrace new causes. The emphasis on Israel and Lebanon, for example, implies tacit if indirect support for the Palestinian cause and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Neither of those constituencies has had much regard for al–Qaida, but bin Laden continues to try to suggest the connection to his wider Islamic audience.

It is also significant that bin Laden is now putting so much emphasis on Iraq, and making a connection between the Iraq war and the control of oil resources. This is a mirror image of the Bush administration’s own periodic efforts to emphasise the involvement of foreign militias in the Iraq insurgency, even in the absence of much substantial evidence; bin Laden evidently wants to do exactly the same, both because it demonstrates the involvement of al–Qaida in the foreign policy issue that is impacting most on the United States media.

Al–Qaida may be more a loose network of affiliates motivated by an evolving religious ideology than a coherently–structured organisation with a precise hierarchy and close day–to–day coordination. Such an entity is extraordinarily difficult to counter by traditional counter–terrorism tactics. Instead it requires an understanding of the factors underpinning the support for its ideas – ideas that are becoming increasingly pervasive across the middle east, and even beyond.

For different reasons, though, both “sides” need to present an image of al–Qaida as a powerful, unified and effective organisation. Osama bin Laden needs it to demonstrate his strength and authority, George W Bush needs it as a focus for his occupation of Iraq. In a sense, each needs the other. President Bush’s re–election on 2 November 2004 is undoubtedly important for international relations in the next four years. So, in its own way, is bin Laden’s videotaped message.