Is bin Laden worth catching?

2004-10-06 11:22

George Gedda

Washington - As usual, al-Qaeda's latest message to the world was delivered not by Osama bin Laden but by a subordinate.

The messenger was Ayman al-Zawahri, No 2 official in the terror organisation headed by bin Laden, heard via an audiotape aired last week on the Arab TV station al-Jazeera.

He exhorted Muslim youths to carry out pre-emptive strikes against the US and its allies.

According to the State Department, bin Laden has not been seen on videotape since December 2001. His voice has not been heard since a recording broadcast in April.

The Bush administration believes the world's most wanted man is still alive but can't rule out the possibility that he may be dead, wounded or incapacitated.

Bin Laden brushed aside the importance of his own mortality in his video statement of almost three years ago.

'If I live or die, the war will continue'

"I am a poor slave of God. If I live or die the war will continue," he said.

That view is shared by many. But Peter Bergen, one of the few Westerners who has met the man blamed for the September 11 2001, attacks, says it would be "dangerously wrong" to assume that it doesn't matter whether bin Laden is apprehended.

"Finding bin Laden remains of utmost importance," says Bergen, a fellow at the New American Foundation, a Washington think tank.

Bergen cites the "matter of justice" for the nearly 3 000 people killed on September 11, not to mention al-Qaeda's other victims.

"Also, every day that bin Laden remains at liberty is a propaganda victory for al-Qaeda," says Bergen, writing in the October issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Bin Laden continues 'to provide guidance'

Bergen says bin Laden and al-Zawahri, while relinquishing day-to-day control, are believed to provide guidance to followers across the Muslim world.

Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the California-based Rand think tank, believes bin Laden's movement is here to stay.

"I don't see that the absence of bin Laden will mean the demise of the global Jihad," says Jenkins, author of several books on terrorism.

Jenkins says that al-Qaeda, though badly damaged by arrests and relentless American attacks on their Afghan hideouts, can plausibly claim that the future is bright, irrespective of whether bin Laden is a part of it.

As Jenkins sees it, if a bin Laden lieutenant were to address fellow jihadists at an al-Qaeda base, he might say the following:

"We see operations at a greater tempo than before 9/11. We continue to recruit. American actions have outraged the Muslim community. The invasion of Iraq is a gift. It makes American forces vulnerable to kind of warfare that we wage best."

Jenkins believes al-Qaeda recruiters have a salable message: "By joining this jihad you are striking back, protecting the devout, demonstrating your courage and convictions."

He says this is a powerful message for young jobless Muslims.

Bin Laden's health

Bergen wrote that bin Laden suffers from low blood pressure, diabetes and a foot wound that he sustained while fighting in Afghanistan in the late 1980s.

"Although all these conditions are debilitating, none is likely to cause bin Laden's death anytime soon," Bergen wrote in the Atlantic Monthly article.

He also pointed out that Zawahri, bin Laden's sidekick, is a doctor.

Bergen said an "obsession with security" has enabled bin Laden to avoid capture.

He offered this account, based on personal experience in 1997, of the lengths to which al-Qaeda members protect bin Laden:

"My colleagues and I were taken to bin Laden's hideout in the middle of the night; we were made to change vehicles while blindfolded; we were aggressively searched and electronically swept for tracking devices; and we had to pass through three successive groups of guards armed with submachine guns and rocket-propelled grenades."

Bin Laden also evades capture by carefully choosing the company he keeps.

Said Bergen: "Only three people outside al-Qaeda and the Taliban are known to have spent any time with bin Laden after 9/11. Two are journalists and the third is a doctor."

George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.

- AP