In dealing the US a history-changing blow, bin Laden inadvertently facilitated secularism, writes MICHAEL JANSEN
OSAMA BIN Laden was already an ideological anachronism when he became global public enemy number one after his followers attacked New York and Washington on September 11th, 2001.
He was an anachronism because he devoutly believed he and like-minded Muslims could turn back the pages of history and reinstall a medieval caliph as ruler of the worldwide Muslim community, the Umma. He miscalculated: Muslims do not seek to replace secular dictators with theocratic dictators.
While many may prefer Sharia canon law to civil law, most desire the democracy bin Laden rejected. Above all else, they demand an end to the corrupt, largely pro-western dictatorships that have blighted their lives and squandered their future prospects. Sunnis, in particular, do not wish to follow the example of the autocratic Shia Islamic Republic of Iran where mismanagement and corruption are as rampant as in the despised secular dictatorships being targeted for overthrow in the “Arab spring”.
Bin Laden’s powerful appeal was to Muslims yearning for liberation from foreign occupation, intervention, and social and cultural influences.
He championed the causes of driving “Godless” communist Russians out of Afghanistan, reclaiming Palestine from Israel, and expelling US forces from Saudi Arabia, the holy land of Islam.
But al-Qaeda, a band of a few thousand Arab mujahideen (holy warriors), played only a marginal role in the liberation of Afghanistan from the Soviets, a campaign that ended in 1989. Since then al-Qaeda units acting under bin Laden’s direction and as independent franchises have staged deadly terrorist attacks on a variety of targets but have not freed one inch of Palestine or Saudi Arabia.
Instead, its spectacular 2001 operation against New York and Washington prompted the US to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, thereby extending western control over strategic regions in the Muslim world. Al-Qaeda’s Afghan host, the fundamentalist Taliban, was replaced by a secular regime.
Since then the Afghan Taliban has cut ties to al-Qaeda, compelling bin Laden to seek refuge in Pakistan where he may have been protected by elements of the country’s intelligence agency on condition he remained out of sight and incommunicado.
This meant he was geographically driven to the sidelines of Muslim struggles he had hoped to lead.
Al-Qaeda, his creation, has also been driven to the geographical margins of the Arab world. Following Washington’s 2003 conquest of Iraq, the Arab heartland, al-Qaeda recruits flowed into Iraq and joined battle with US forces and their Iraqi allies. But indigenous Sunni insurgents also fighting the occupation were alienated by al-Qaeda’s random targeting of civilians, and eventually turned against al-Qaeda and helped the US and its Iraqi Shia allies to contain it. This was a major blow to al-Qaeda’s Iraq franchise, which failed to play a decisive role there and was sidelined in the power struggle pitting secularists and Sunnis against Iranian-backed Shia fundamentalists. A victory in Iraq would have projected al-Qaeda and its local allies into power in the cockpit of the eastern Arab world.
To make matters worse for al-Qaeda, the Saudi franchise was recently expelled to Yemen where it took refuge in the mountains of Hadhramaut, the birthplace of bin Laden’s father. This was also a major defeat for bin Laden for whom the liberation of Saudi Arabia from what he saw as US domination was a primary aim.
While a fresh crop of radical fundamentalists (Salafists), who do not claim affiliation with al-Qaeda, has emerged in many countries, the franchise in western North Africa remains the only serious al-Qaeda threat in the Arab world. Egypt’s Islamic Jihad and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group have been subsumed into their countries’ emerging revolutionary movements.
Al-Qaeda’s international legions have, however, remained active outside the Arab region.
They have infiltrated al-Shabab, the radical Muslim movement seeking to oust the government of Somalia, and the ranks of Muslim groups fighting the Russians in the Caucasus and the Chinese in Xinjiang. Al-Qaeda is still operating in Afghanistan and has moved into Pakistan.
Imitative cells of radicals inspired by al-Qaeda are also springing up in many places but they do not amount to a potent challenge at a time where secular democratic movements are on the march in the Arab world and are attracting the attention of oppressed Muslims elsewhere.
It is significant that grief over bin Laden’s death has been expressed mainly by the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organisation of Muslim fundamentalist groupings; Hamas, its Palestinian offshoot; the Pakistani Taliban; and online forums and websites.
Some of these websites had been involved in transmitting messages from bin Laden to his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, a dedicated figure likely to assume command, and al-Qaeda affiliates.
Radicals vowing retribution could be expected to mount attacks on western, particularly US, targets, but such operations will not achieve the liberation of Umma and the restoration of the caliphate bin Laden sought.