Through Our Enemies' Eyes Page 7
he offers a major corrective to the complacency and arrogance that have dominated Western self-perception for the past century and a half. If his calculations are widely accepted by Western scholars and commentators, a new language and vocabulary will have to be developed for future generations, for to depict the values that the West has stood for in the past two centuries as less than universal will call for a revolution of attitudes. This is courageous talk, not only in terms of what it means for Westerners themselves, but also for those from other civilizations who have been educated—and possibly converted, if not misled—to accept the supposed universalism of Western civilization.32
For his part, bin Laden did not, it is clear, accept the universalist ideology that he believes treats Muslims in a humiliating, discriminatory, and capriciously lethal manner. Neither did he accept the denigration of Islam that is inherent and often smugly explicit in the West’s aggressive secularism. Again, this is not to say that bin Laden is correct, but it adamantly is to say that the West’s road to hell lies in approaching the bin Laden problem with the presumption that only the lunatic fringe could oppose what the United States is trying to accomplish through its foreign policy toward the Muslim world. Bin Laden’s philosophy is slowly harnessing the two most powerful motivating forces in contemporary international affairs: religion and nationalism. In this effort, bin Laden’s movement has an advantage, because the tenets of Islam strictly guide all aspects of Muslim life, personal, political, and sacred. “If Christianity says, give Caesar what is [due] to Caesar,” eminent Sunni scholar Shakh Yusuf al-Qaradawi recently explained, “our religion says, Caesar and what is due him belongs to God Almighty.”33 As a consequence, the legitimacy of the Muslim leader—be he president, king, prime minister, or military dictator—depends on his steadfastness in hewing to the Sharia in governing at home and conducting relations abroad. So strong is this tradition in Islam, Professor John Kelsay argues in Islam and War: A Study in Comparative Ethics, that “Any Muslim ruler who omits to impose the regimen specified by the traditional judgments of the classical jurists of the [Sharia] law is an apostate and must be fought.”34
Realistically, bin Laden has stolen a march on his American and Western enemies because he recognizes the power of these forces and is acting to mobilize and exploit it. In the post–World War II West, in contrast, the elites have long railed against and ridiculed the possibility of nationalism and religion playing a telling role in personal, societal, or international affairs. Although the foes of bin Laden’s philosophy believe his appeal is limited to those few sorry and anachronistic fools who do not accept the universality of Western values, bin Laden has spoken to a broadening spectrum of Muslim society for which U.S. foreign policy, secularism, materialism, and unchecked individualism are anathema.
Until Americans begin to see that some of their values and goals are neither accepted nor acceptable to all races, nations, and creeds, they will not begin to understand the appeal of a person like bin Laden or be able to defend their interests against him. Indeed, they will need to go another step and recognize that, for many Muslims, U.S. foreign policy is seen as an attack on Islam. Until this realization sinks in, American experts will mislead their audience by claiming that religion has emerged as the predominant impetus for terrorist attacks rather than acknowledging that U.S. foreign policy, from the perspective of millions of Muslims it directly affects, is interpreted as an attack on Islam and Muslims and is drawing an armed response as a matter of self-defense and scriptural requirement.
Perhaps bin Laden’s words give Americans the context in which to recognize this point. This, again, is not to say bin Laden is correct, nor is it to say that his words reflect a universally held view in the Muslim world. It is possible, however, that bin Laden expresses a common Muslim view about the impact of U.S. policy and, if so, Americans must understand that reality—whether or not they concur. “The killing of innocent civilians, as America and some intellectuals claim, is really very strange talk,” bin Laden said in October 2001.
Who said that our civilians and children are not innocent and that shedding their blood is justified? The entire world from east to west screams at us, and America rallies agents, and sons of its agents. Who said our blood is not blood, but theirs is? Who made this pronouncement? Who has been getting killed in our countries for decades? More than one million children, more than one million children died in Iraq and others are still dying. Why do we not hear someone screaming or condemning, or even someone’s words of consolation or condolence…. How come millions of Muslims are being killed?35
3
CHASING BIN LADEN’S MONEY
That is, said the Shepherds, to show you, that he who has a heart to give his labor to the poor, shall never want wherewithal. He that watereth, shall be watered himself. And the cake the widow gave to the prophet, did not cause that she had ever the less in her barrel.
The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678
Shortly after Osama bin Laden’s fighters destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, the U.S. government launched yet another concerted effort to close down bin Laden’s financial assets. I believe, however, that one of the most debilitating misperceptions about Osama bin Laden is the deeply held American and Western belief that the bin Laden phenomenon is overwhelmingly fueled by the power of his money and the money of others to which he has access. Time magazine correspondent Scott Macleod caught the essence of the Western view in 1996 when he wrote that bin Laden is “a big fish. Bin Laden is the kind of guy that can go to someone and say ‘I need you to write a six-figure check,’ and he gets it on the spot.”1 The widely held concept is simple: Bin Laden has a personal fortune of $300 million, derives profits from his own businesses, and his family is worth more than $5 billion. In addition, bin Laden receives funding from wealthy Muslims who share his beliefs, wealthy Muslim dilettantes who contribute lavishly to “Islamic causes” without caring how the money is spent, regular collections taken up at mosques across the Muslim world, Islamic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and some portion of the immense profits from the trafficking of heroin in South Asia.
For cynical Westerners, convinced money and not ideas have been the source of bin Laden’s power and influence, this cornucopia of funding sources leads to another simple but simply wrong mantra: “Take bin Laden’s money and bin Laden is defeated.” Two comments by media experts on this theme are typical and emphasize the pervasiveness of the view. “Bin Laden’s money is the key to his power,” an unnamed U.S. official said in 1998, “He needs his fortune to pay his thousands of Muslim followers, bribe officials and plan terrorist activities.”2 More directly, a retired U.S. intelligence analyst lands in the heart of error by asserting, “Money is his main weapon without a doubt.”3
Perhaps the foregoing is too harsh on Americans. It is not only, or even mainly, that many of us are cynically prone to believe money is power—although there is much of that abroad in the land—but more that Americans know about money, use it daily, and know that it is the necessary route to home ownership, educating the kids, acquiring transportation, and retiring to a warm locale. Americans, in short, are intimate with money, know it can be used for good and evil, and are comfortable in examining and solving problems through a financial lens. This is not a fault—although it is an analytic handicap—it is simply a fact of American life.
Contemporary Americans, however, are much less conversant and comfortable than contemporary Muslims with religious tenets that shape day-to-day individual and societal behavior and that establish well-defined and fairly inflexible rules for personal behavior, relationships within families and between individuals, and intercourse among nations and religions. Most Americans are especially unfamiliar with religion being life’s core motivation and with religious rules that require an individual to willingly sacrifice wealth and life, if necessary, to defend God’s word. Even when the United States was a more religious country, it was never comfortable with the idea that one shoul
d be eager to die for ideals, religion, God, and country. Throughout their history, Americans have been ready to risk death to defend each—and, I would hope, still are—but they have always looked for ways to render such service and still survive.
An old Marine’s story seems appropriate here. This lance corporal’s regiment was among the unit’s occupying Japan at the end of 1945. As the unit settled in, the Marine recalls that he and his comrades engaged the local Japanese in conversation to the best of their limited linguistic abilities, this to put to rest Tokyo’s presurrender propaganda that the Marines would kill all Japanese if they stopped fighting. As the Japanese became comfortable with the Americans, conversations often turned to Japanese fanaticism during the war. The lance corporal said that whenever a Marine asked a Japanese of either sex or any age why anyone would become a kamikaze pilot, the answer would invariably be that it was an honor and a duty to die for their divine emperor. A bit perplexed at the Marines having missed this obvious point, the Japanese would always ask “were you not eager to die for Roosevelt?” The question, of course, left the Americans scrambling to summon enough fractured Japanese to ask “Are you crazy?”
If those Marines felt that way, how much less likely is the current self-centered governing elite to understand that bin Laden and those he leads are ready to sacrifice their lives to perform a duty that comes from their God? When bin Laden says, “I am fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven and meet God. Our fight is now against the Americans. I regret having lived this long. I have nothing to lose,”4 most Americans hear spectacular bravado or the ominous fanaticism of an irrational madman. Because the motivational force of religion in their lives is minimal, American leaders are largely incapable of hearing—let alone understanding—bin Laden’s quiet, sincere, and rational voice. As a result, they slot bin Laden in the terrorist category and look to neutralize him by eliminating his funding sources; an event they know from personal experience can disastrously limit an individual’s options, activities, and prospects. Because Americans are comfortable with the power of money, bin Laden becomes a more understandable and less dangerous enemy. If bin Laden’s money was taken, many Americans believe that bin Laden would, like Major Strasser and the Nazis in Casablanca after Rick and Ilsa escape, become only a “minor annoyance.” Unfortunately, bin Laden’s ability to kill Americans is not based on money, and it will not end even if much of his money does. As the fine scholar Paul R. Pillar recently concluded, “Financial controls do have a modest part to play in counterterrorism, but the bolder claims for what can be accomplished by going after the terrorists’ money are oversold.”5
The Islamic media shake a collective head in wonder when they see the strength of America’s conviction about the overwhelming importance of money to bin Laden. The editors of Jang, Pakistan’s largest daily, wrote in December 1998, “The biggest tragedy of the Americans growing up in the vulgar culture is that they believe in the magic of money and incorrectly believe that money is the strongest and most decisive power in history.” Because of their belief in money, Jang’s editors wrote, Americans are blind to the fact that “God … has produced saints in Afghanistan to defeat the international imperialist, who would soon put an end to the money-dominated culture. May God help Osama and the Taliban.”6 Frontline’s unattributed biography of bin Laden also made a key point often overlooked in the West; namely, “Bin Laden’s activities are not very dependent on money. His followers are not mercenaries. Training does not cost a lot of money. Explosives and weapons are very cheap in some parts of the world.”7
Overall, the Muslim media do not understand why the West views bin Laden as a combination of a demented Muslim Daddy Warbucks, a general of mercenaries, and the “Don Corleone of terror.” Rather than money, the media argue that bin Laden’s “real strength lies in his piety, unquestionable honesty, and courage of his conviction.”8 Fleshing out this position, the Islamic media focus on three factors to account for bin Laden’s growing influence in the Muslim world: his personal reputation for bravery, piety, and support for the oppressed; his outspoken condemnation of U.S. policies and attacks on U.S. targets; and the dictates of Islam. The first factor, as Al-Islah said in 1996, is bin Laden’s “long record in the jihad and his renowned piety and asceticism despite all the worldly goods God bestowed on him.”9 Second is the growing animosity among Muslims at all levels of society toward U.S. foreign policy. British journalist Robert Fisk noted the Muslim hatred of U.S. policies in the Independent in August 1998. Although he has a strong anti-American bias, Fisk is a veteran, internationally honored Middle East correspondent and his analysis rings true.
For what really lies at the root of Arab reaction to the [20 August 1998] U.S. attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan is that they come when America’s word has never been so low; when the Arab sense of betrayal has never been greater. America’s continued military presence in Saudi Arabia, its refusal to bring Israel to heel as it continues to build Jewish settlements in violation of the Oslo agreement, its almost lip-smacking agreement to continue sanctions which are clearly culling the civilian population of Iraq—Arab fury at this catastrophe is one reason why a normally compassionate people responded with so little sympathy to the [7 August 1998] bombing of the U.S. embassies.10
Third, bin Laden, for increasing numbers of Muslims, does have God on his side. Since the year 641, Professor Bernard Lewis has written, “the holy land of the Hijaz [Saudi Arabia] has been forbidden territory for non-Muslims. According to the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence, accepted by both the Saudis and the declaration signatories [i.e., those who signed bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa], for a non-Muslim to set foot on the sacred soil is a major offense.” Therefore, Lewis concluded, “Where the holy land is involved, many Muslims tend to define the struggle—and sometimes also the enemy—in religious terms, seeing the American troops sent to free Kuwait and even Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein as infidel invaders and occupiers. This perception is heightened by America’s unquestioned primacy among the powers of the infidel world.”11
To say these factors and not money have been the keys to bin Laden’s power is not to say money does not make him a more sovereign, powerful, and flexible international player. Money clearly facilitates and speeds the growth and self-sufficiency of the jihad bin Laden has instigated. From this perspective, Professor M. C. Dunn’s contention that “continuing efforts to trace, block, and seize his [bin Laden’s] funds may do more to constrain his activities than air attacks could” is theoretically correct.12
However, multiple funding sources are the core of the West’s problem in regard to the financial component of the bin Laden problem. As of 11 September 2001, bin Laden appeared to have at least four different funding channels that would have to be targeted by the West: his personal fortune and the profits of his businesses, funds he gets from his family and other wealthy Muslim families in Saudi Arabia and worldwide, witting and unwitting donations from wealthy Muslim governments and individuals via mosque collections and Islamic NGOs, and an undefined cut of the huge profits earned from trafficking heroin in South Asia. This diversity of funding channels provides bin Laden a financial network that is so redundant that, while it can be damaged, it will be almost impossible to destroy.
Personal Wealth
How big is bin Laden’s personal fortune? This is a question that fascinates Americans and Westerners and one on which bin Laden has toyed with his interlocutors. Bin Laden has publicly asserted “that his wealth increased and his business grew with the amount of money he spent on the Jihad” and, in answering Al-Quds Al-Arabi’s question about the size of his wealth, he simply replied that God “has granted us money sufficient, God willing, to repulse the unjust attacks committed against our nation.” Is he worth the $30 million to $40 million suggested by Sa’id Aburish? Is he worth the $300 million the U.S. State Department ascribed to him in summer 1996? What about the assertion by Al-Watan Al-Arabi in September 1998 that bin Laden’s cut from his family’s fortune was
$600 million and its suggestion that his total personal worth was near $1 billion?13
If bin Laden has ascended the financial ladder, how do we deal with the data pointing the other way. In October 1998, for example, U.S. News & World Report quoted “experts” who “believe that bin Laden exhausted that [$300 million personal] fortune long ago.” Then in April 1999, Sa’d al-Faqih told Frontline that bin Laden suffered three large financial losses in the 1990s, which, if Faqih is correct, would have wiped out even the largest estimates of his personal wealth. Faqih claims bin Laden has $250 million to $300 million in bank accounts frozen by the Saudis, that he lost $250 million to $300 million when he left Sudan in May 1996, and that he lost millions when his financial chief Maddani al-Tayyib ended up in Saudi hands and identified his businesses, many of which were shut or sold at a loss. UPI also has reported that bin Laden lost substantial amounts in the 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).14
Wealthy desert prince or charismatic pauper? Financial wizard or Muslim spendthrift? One can conclude from the foregoing that bin Laden is either flush with cash or mortgaged to the hilt. The former conclusion is correct, but not only, or even primarily, because of bin Laden’s personal wealth. There is every reason to believe members of bin Laden’s extended family have ensured that he has gotten his share of family profits. In addition to funds from his family, bin Laden himself has been a successful entrepreneur and businessman. He built profitable construction, manufacturing, currency trading, import-export, and agricultural businesses in Sudan, which, at the same time, gave his operatives logistics and communications support, as well as providing cover. Since 1996, he also established nascent but apparently profitable agricultural concerns in eastern Afghanistan. In addition, besides having military bases in Yemen—bin Laden and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) have long had training camps at Lhaj, Sadah, Abyan, and Jabal al-Mariqishah, the latter hosted final planning for the 1998 East Africa bombings—bin Laden is economically active there, and a portion of his investment activities are with “businessmen from the Hadramut who have strong relations to the fundamentalist leader in view of historical family affiliations.”15 Bin Laden also is reported to run “a number of [unidentified] projects with the participation of high-ranking army officers and politicians.”16