BackOsama bin Laden urged caution on an Islamic state: declassified documents
The documents have given a rare insight into Bin Laden's operations and the inner organisational dynamics of the al-Qaeda
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On Wednesday, the United States’ Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) declassified and released a hoard of documents recovered from the compound of Osama Bin Laden’s residence in Abbottabad in Pakistan. In May 2011, Bin Laden was killed in a sensational raid by US Navy Seals in an operation codenamed “Geronimo".
The operation has been in the news recently, with investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s recent article for the London Review of Books (LRB), which presented an alternate history of events leading up to Osama’s assasination.
The documents have given a rare insight into the correspondence between Bin Laden and his several associates, the inner organisational dynamics of the al-Qaeda, the dreaded terrorist organisation headed by Bin Laden, and its objectives—from Bin Laden’s obsession with America to warnings against an Islamic state.
Here’s what we learnt from the declassified documents:
Warnings against Islamic State
In an undated letter to his associate and now slain Libyan Al-Qaeda operative, Atiyah abd al-Rehman, Osama warned against the creation of an Islamic state to consolidate the terror group’s anti-American hostility. Bin Laden wrote, “You should ask them to avoid insisting on the formation of an Islamic state at the time being..."
While suggesting that the US must be defeated so that it doesn’t crush such an Islamic state, he wrote, “We should stress on the importance of timing in establishing the Islamic state. We should be aware that planning for the establishment of the state begins with exhausting the main influential power that enforced the siege on the Hamas government, and that overthrew the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan and Iraq despite the fact that this power was depleted."
He added, “We should keep in mind that this main power (the US) still has the capacity to lay siege on any Islamic state, and that such a siege might force the people to overthrow their duly elected governments. We have to continue with exhausting and depleting them till they become so weak that they can’t overthrow any state that we establish. That will be the time to commence with forming the Islamic state."
However, these warnings clearly fell on deaf ears after the organization, now known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) or simply, the Islamic State, was established by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In June last year, the Isis proclaimed itself to be a ‘caliphate’, with Raqqa in Syria as its de facto capital.
Praise for jihadi activities in India
The Al-Qaeda was all praise for jihadi activities in India, including the November 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, conducted by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). In a document titled “Terror Franchise: The Unstoppable Assasin", the Somalian al-Qaeda operative Abu-Salih Al Somali calls the 26/11 attack as a “blessed operation".
He writes, “Following the London bombing and before it, there were several blessed operations against American and European targets in Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, India and elsewhere (sic) such as the brave bombing of a bus carrying French nationals...and lately the heroic Fidai operations in Bombay-India’s economical capital-in which several western targets were struck in which many Americans and other westerners were killed." In the paper, Al-Somali also praises the ‘beautiful’ 2010 German Bakery bombing in Pune, in which nearly 17 people were killed. He added, “Following that, was the beautiful huge bombing—also in India—of the western German bakery mainly visited by Jews and western nationals in general…"
Critical of the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI)
The document penned by Somali was highly (and surprisingly) critical of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) for its close relationship with the Americans. In a section titled “ISI-CIA Deadly Covert War", he wrote, “In a nut shell, Pakistan’s ISI sold or surrendered to America its 60 year old (already prepared) infrastructure of senior agents, informers, recruiters, bases, political parties, airports, logistics and all that the Americans demanded from them." Referring to the ISI as “dogs", he further wrote, “ISI dogs gathered the somewhat freely available info from their countries - money worshipping tribal agents, or from the many captured—among the Mujahideen and civilians, in check posts, sudden ambushes, and sudden raids on houses during the preparation stage through 2003-2006."
Bin Laden’s America obsession
Right till the very end, Osama was obsessed with the US. In the letter to Atiyah warning against the creation of an Islamic state, Bin Laden wants the group to “work on breaking the power of our main enemy by attacking the American embassies in African countries, such as Sierra Leone and Togo and mainly to attack American oil companies." Bin Laden also wanted the group’s local affiliate in Yemen, the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to “avoid targeting the army and the police force...and declare that they aren’t targeting them, but are after the Americans who are killing our families in Gaza." He added, “They should clearly tell the military to avoid serving the crusaders, and that they shouldn’t fight the party that doesn’t fight them..." However, the affiliate group ignored Osama’s advice, and continued fighting against local Yemeni authorities.
In a correspondence with Bin Laden, his associate Atiyah writes, “The purpose is to focus on striking inside America and its interest abroad, especially oil producing countries, to agitate public opinion and to force US to withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq." In a communication about the Arab Spring and American “hegemony", Atiyah goes on to write, “These are gigantic events that will eventually engulf most of the Muslim world, will free the Muslim land from American hegemony, and is troubling America whose Secretary of State declared that they are worried about the armed Muslims controlling the Muslim region."
Inner workings of the Al-Qaeda
Among the trove of declassified documents found in Osama’s compound were some which offered a closer view of how the Al Qaeda worked as an organisation, especially with its leader hiding in a Pakistan safe house. The cache also revealed the terror group’s recruitment methods, the rather interesting job application form, which asked interested would-be jihadists everything from their hobbies to objectives they’d like to fulful on their “jihad path". Besides the usual (and mundane) details about the applicant, it asks applicants to fill questions like, “What is your favourite material, science or literature?", “Have you ever been convicted by any court? When and who convicted you? What was the offense?", “Have you ever been in jail or prison?" or even for that matter, “Who should we contact in case you become a martyr? Address: Phone numbers:"
Also found in Bin Laden’s compound is a document that would surely pass off as a modern-day management case study. Titled, “Lessons learnt via incidents following the fall of the Islamic Emirate", the document lists out the group’s failures in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, which was their sanctuary, before the US began bombing Afghanistan in 2011.
The curious case of Osama Bin Laden’s bookshelf
When in hiding, Osama was a well-read man, or at least, that’s what his bookshelf revealed. It included a vast number of books by conspiracy theorists (including those questioning the official account of the 9/11 attacks) including David Ray Griffin’s “The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11" and Eustace Mullins’ “The Secrets of the Federal Reserve". Mullins has been known to be a “Holocaust denier", with anti-semetic views. Osama also read books authored by popular linguist Noam Chomsky (Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance) and veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars.
He also had a digital library in his Pakistan house, which CNN’s Peter Bergen writes, had no internet connection. “Among the most interesting windows into the mind of al Qaeda’s leader are the contents of his massive digital library, which was painstakingly assembled. Because of security concerns, bin Laden’s compound had no connection to the Internet so any books or reports that bin Laden had an interest in were assembled painstakingly by making PDFs of each page. They were then put on to a thumb drive and delivered to bin Laden by one of his two bodyguards, according to U.S. intelligence officials." Bergen adds in his report, “Bin Laden also collected reports by leading American counterterrorism exports such as Bruce Hoffman and Paul Pillar as well as papers about Al Qaeda by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, RAND Corp. and the Congressional Research Service. (He even possessed congressional testimony by this author titled, “Reassessing the Evolving al Qaeda threat to the Homeland.")" Besides, Bergen wrote that Bin Laden “collected indictment from American terrorism cases that he found of interest such as that of David Coleman Headley from Chicago, who al Qaeda had tasked to plan an attack against a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed."
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