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Bin Laden's tapes - curiouser and
curiouser
By B Raman
(A tentative
assessment)
US intelligence agencies are still
to give their views on the authenticity of the video and
audio tapes of Osama bin Laden of al-Qaeda and his No 2,
Ayman al-Zawahiri, played on the Arab al-Jazeera
television channel on Wednesday.
The video shows
the two men moving about in a hilly area. According to
al-Jazeera, the video is believed to have been recorded
in April or May. The video has no audio message. The
audio messages of the two, which seem to have been
recorded after the United States-United Kingdom
occupation of Iraq, are unrelated to the video and were
not necessarily recorded at the time the video was
taken.
It was noticed in a video recording of
bin Laden aired by the same channel last year that he
was not using his left hand or making any gestures with
it. It remained mostly covered with a blanket.
Subsequently, there were reports that one side of his
body and his speech had been affected by a shrapnel
injury for which he was undergoing treatment in the
Binori madrassa (religious school) in Pakistan's
port city of Karachi.
In the latest video shown
on Wednesday, bin Laden could be seen making normal use
of both hands. This would indicate either that he has
been cured of the effects of the shrapnel injury, if he
is still alive, or that this video recording was made
before he sustained the injury in the beginning of last
year, in which case al-Jazeera's belief that the video
could have been recorded in April or May this year is
not sustainable.
The recorded message of
al-Zawahiri broadcast on Wednesday contains a strong
attack on President General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's
military dictator, calling him a traitor. It is also
partly directed at India and the Hindus. This is the
first time there has been such a direct reference to
India in a tape purported to be emanating from al-Qaeda
leaders.
There was a criticism of Pakistan, but
not of Musharraf personally, in a message purported to
be of bin Laden broadcast by al-Jazeera on February 11.
That message included Pakistan on a list of so-called
anti-Muslim, apostate states that have to be liberated
by Muslims by waging a jihad against them. This week's
message makes a much more direct and virulent attack on
Musharraf and his policies vis-a-vis the United States
as well as India.
I had commented as follows on
bin Laden's purported message of February 11, "This is
the first time that he has spoken against Pakistan and
called for its 'liberation' from the control of the
apostates. This shows that he and his dregs, who now
enjoy the protection of the governments of the NWFP
[North-West Frontier Province ] and Balochistan and of a
large number of retired officers of the Pakistani army
and Inter-Services Intelligence, no longer feel the need
to avoid rubbing Musharraf on the wrong side" (see Now, bin Laden takes aim at
Pakistan, February 14).
While those comments
remain valid, the resurgent Taliban, which has launched
an offensive in Afghanistan from its sanctuaries in
Pakistan since the middle of August, needs the continued
complicity of the Pakistani army and its intelligence
establishment. It would not be in the interest of
al-Qaeda's Taliban associates to antagonize the
Musharraf regime for the present, when the Taliban
offensive is on in Afghanistan.
The strong
anti-Musharraf phrases and characterizations with regard
to Musharraf as well as India used in the al-Zawahiri
tape bring to mind those of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET).
Is the LET, which is now coordinating the activities of
bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF), getting
these tapes fabricated through its branch in Saudi
Arabia and having them disseminated in order to keep up
the morale of al-Qaeda and other components of the IIF?
Or is it the Pakistani military-intelligence
establishment that has had these tapes fabricated and
disseminated in order to convey a signal to the United
States, at a time when there is growing criticism of
Pakistani support to the Taliban in Afghanistan, that if
the US continues to exercise pressure on him, there is a
danger of his being overthrown by al-Qaeda and its
Pakistani associates?
These are questions that
need careful examination. During a talk by me at a panel
discussion on terrorism in the Indian subcontinent,
organized by the US-India Political Action Committee and
the US-India Institute for Strategic Policy in
Washington, DC, on July 16, I stated as follows: "Till
August 2002, positive, direct evidence was available
from Karachi-based sources about the survival of bin
Laden and about his undergoing treatment for a shrapnel
injury in the Binori madrassa of Karachi.
"Since then, there have been no direct reports
of his being sighted anywhere. All reports since
September [2002] about his continuing to be alive
provide more indirect than direct evidence. The indirect
evidence is such as the following: If he is dead, the
news of his death would have spread like wildfire in the
Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt; if he is dead, the
place where his body is buried would have become a place
of pilgrimage etc. However, since November 2002, a
number of taped messages purported to be his have been
circulating, with some of them broadcast by the
al-Jazeera TV station. A message, purported to be of
Ayman-al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's No 2, was also broadcast
after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Intriguingly, Ayman's message contained a serious
factual mistake in that Norway was included among the
countries alleged to have helped the US in the invasion
of Iraq, whereas it was not so. Such factual mistakes
had not occurred in the past.
"The frequency
with which such messages have been circulating and the
factual mistake raise the suspicion whether these
messages are really of bin Laden and Ayman or whether
their followers in Pakistan have been circulating
well-fabricated messages in an attempt to convince their
followers that they [bin Laden and al-Zawahiri] are
alive and leading."
The suspicion about the
genuine source of these messages - al-Qaeda itself or
the LET or the Pakistani military-intelligence
establishment - remains as strong as ever.
B Raman is additional secretary
(retired), Cabinet Secretariat, government of India, and
currently director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai; former member of the National Security Advisory
Board of the government of India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He
was also head of the counter-terrorism division of the
Research & Analysis Wing, India's external
intelligence agency, from 1988 to August 1994.
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