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“A
world war against an individual.”
When was the last time
a similar event took place? It is indeed a rare incident to
which it is hard to find a match in history. The story of
Carlos the Jackal is fairly simple; a clever fighter who managed
to slip out of the hands of intelligence agencies around the
world, but eventually fell when turned in by the Sudanese
government. Unlike Carlos who was a professional terrorist,
Abdullah Ocalan, of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was
a revolutionary leader, fighting an armed political battle on
behalf of the Kurds in Southeast Turkey. Yet he too fell in
a disgraceful act on the part of a Muslim government. Even
Che Guevara’s experience was different. His was a
universal revolutionary political call, but the fight never went
far into the heart of American power, for he had no intention of
inflicting pain on the American people; rather, it was to mobilize
the weak and to raise their political awareness. He made it
in Cuba, but failed in Uruguay. His was a secret
assassination, discovered years later, executed with a simple
intelligence operation, not a ‘worldwide’ coalition.
Osama bin Laden is
different. His ambitions exceeded those of his predecessors;
his goal was to hit the United States at the heart of its
political and strategic power. He managed to execute what
may be counted as the biggest terrorist operations in history, be
it against the U.S. or any historical empire. Bin Laden is a
professional terrorist but, unlike ‘free lance’ Carlos, was
focused on the agency: the Soviet Union in the past, and the
United States in the present. He speaks with a religious
rhetoric when discussing political issues. However, he is
not a revolutionary leader like Ocalan, for he does not engage in
enhancing political awareness, he did not form a political party
or movement of any kind, he has no specific approach to any field
of knowledge, and his idea of ‘strategy’ is a simple minded
one. Further, bin Laden is not a Guevara, speaking in the
name of all the oppressed peoples of the world, with a vision that
revolutionized socialist thought at the time. His vision is
a much simpler one dividing the world into Muslim and non-Muslim,
and his ‘strategy’ is not about making the Muslims of the
world aware of their political, cultural or social reality or even
call for their unity. It is based on a comparison between
the state of the Muslim world today and that of the early days of
Islam, for just as the Soviet empire has fallen, so too should the
American empire. In other words, his ambitions are beyond
definition, the results of his operations are beyond all measure,
and his political naiveté is more than often thought. On
the other hand, the battle the world is fighting against him is
indeed historical in terms of size, publicity, political and
strategic mobilization and, most importantly, its estimated
worldwide results. This, however, is no guide to the essence
of the problem.
Bin Laden belongs to a
seemingly endless series of primitive rebels in the world’s
political history. On the surface, he appears to have
humiliated the greatest empire of his time. Unlike other
rebels of his kind, his address to the world is not one calling
for justice, rather, it reflects a great deal of anger at American
policies and practices around the world in general, and in the
Middle East in particular. However, his legend is still that
of a primitive rebel. It continues to receive a great deal
of enthusiasm from a large segment of the Arab and Muslim
populations who do not act otherwise, for his actions have far
exceeded any desire for revenge against vicious American
policies. But his revenge is not through mass mobilization
into an historical act or an organized ideological move that
causes a breakthrough in the role of the Arabs and Muslims in the
World Order; it is through terrorist strikes, relieving the masses
from the burden of armed struggle, or even the aspiration for
cultural or social development that enriches their interaction
with the rest of the world. What would be the need for that
when revenge can take place through suicidal operations conducted
by a ‘legendary person,’ unidentified?
This is the key: the
primitive rebel. His mission is revenge. His strikes
are against the ordinary man living within the boundaries of the
‘enemy empire.’ The horrifying human losses are
irrelevant, for what matters is the icon: the World Trade Center,
a symbol of America. If America retaliates it would serve
the cause, for it would become a battle between Muslims and
non-Muslims, thus triggering a worldwide religious war. It
could serve Zionist interests, it could serve the cause of the
right wing in America, millions of people could lose their lives,
the world would mobilize against Islam and its people and Islam
would become a religion of violence and intolerance, but this is
all not important in the eyes of bin Laden. A disaster would
fall on Islam and Muslims around the world, it is still not
important in the eyes of Osama bin Laden.
*Translated
from the Arabic original under the title "Mukashafat,"
with permission from the author.
Mohammad El-Sayed Sae'ed
is an expert in the Ahram Center for Political & Strategic
Studies Cairo, Egypt. His works include Transnational
Corporations in the Arab World and the Fate of Nationalism
(Cairo: Alam Al Ma'refa, 1986) and The Future of the Arab
Regional System in the Aftermath of the Gulf Crisis 1992
(Cairo: Alam Al Ma'refa, 1992).
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