Between Politics and Myth: A Review of Peter L. Bergen’s Holy War, Inc.

Steinberg 1 Between Politics and Myth: A Review of Peter L. Bergen’s Holy War, Inc. Joseph J. Steinberg IR 6635 National Security Policy Farkasch 16 November 2007 Steinberg 2 Between Politics and Myth: A Review of Peter L. Bergen’s Holy War, Inc. Q What's your reaction to the bin Laden tape? Are you afraid he's eluded the manhunt? THE PRESIDENT: Oh, the tape, yes. I didn't watch it all. I saw snippets of it on TV. You know, it's -- who knows when it was made. Secondly, he is not escaping us. This is a guy who, three months ago, was in control of a county. Now he's maybe in control of a cave. He's on the run. Listen; a while ago I said to the American people, our objective is more than bin Laden. But one of the things for certain is we're going to get him running and keep him running, and bring him to justice. And that's what's happening. He's on the run, if he's running at all. So we don't know whether he's in a cave with the door shut, or a cave with the door open -- we just don't know. There's all kinds of reports and all kinds of speculation. But one thing we know is that he's not in charge of Afghanistan anymore. He's not in charge of the -- he's not the parasite that invaded the host, the Taliban. We know that for certain. And we also know that we're on the hunt, and he knows that we're on the hunt. And I like our position better than his.1 Man or myth? Anarchists or Islamic warriors? It is debatable whether Osama bin Laden is a better recruitment tool, for al-Qaeda, or the US military. Bin Laden’s one allegiance is seemingly Islam, and his goal is to restore the Caliphate. That goal, though, is rather nebulous and unworkable, all which highlights the salient point, that bin Laden, whether it be Sunni Saudi Arabia or the United States, aims to undermine legitimate political authority. In the attempt to understand Osama bin laden and al-Qaeda, however, we 1 President George W. Bush, ―President, General Franks Discuss War Effort,‖ December 28, 2001. Available at White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/print/20011228-1.html (Accessed November 12, 2007). Steinberg 3 should not mistake the subject for the context. Bin Laden is not unique, but events happening now are literally new under the sun. I will argue that Peter L. Bergen, in Holy War, Inc. has an excellent opportunity both to understand Osama bin Laden and alQaeda, and also to put him into the contemporary context of the United States (U.S.) reeling from globalization and the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon. However, by focusing so narrowly on bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and yet not quite apprehending him, Bergen in effect re-mystifies both, a man and an organization, into a phenomenon somewhere between politics and culture. Bergen characterizes ―Holy War, Inc.‖, or al-Qaeda, as a ―fusion‖ by which ―…bin Laden and his followers have exploited twenty-first-century communications and weapons technology in the service of the most extreme, retrograde reading of holy war.‖2 Bergen distinguishes the 19 ―shuhadaa‖ (martyrs) who boarded two Boeing 757-200 and 767-200 commercial airliners on September 11, 2001 from the ―impoverished suicide bombers‖ of the Palestinian intifada as ―well-educated, savvy, young…cleanshaven…hijackers [who]…looked and acted like the increasingly diverse United States of the twenty-first century.‖ Bergen even claims that the terrorists drank alcohol occasionally, ―a grave sin for a serious Muslim but an excellent cover for bin Laden’s operatives‖, exercised at local gyms, ordered pizza, and used the Internet to buy airline tickets.3 Prominent members of al-Qaeda are former professionals. Bin Laden himself delivered his 1996 declaration of war against the U.S., a ―premodern message…by 2 Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 159. 3 Bergen, 161. Steinberg 4 postmodern means‖, by Apple computer, email, fax, and satellite transmissions.4 At a training camp, Al-Badr, named after a seventh-century battle, bin Laden’s operatives swore medieval oaths of fealty, but also learned how to use RDX and C-4 explosives.5 Bergen also characterizes al-Qaeda ―…as sort of a multinational holding company, headquartered in Afghanistan, under the chairmanship of bin Laden.‖6 Bin Laden and his operatives used legitimate businesses and the savvy developed by bin Laden’s experience in his own family’s Saudi Arabian corporations, to fund recruitment and camp construction in Afghanistan.7 Al-Qaeda’s decision-making process involves a series of functional committees subordinate to an executive council. Couriers with no direct interaction with bin Laden facilitate communication between committee and operatives. Perpetrators in the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania admitted both to ignorance of these committees and bin Laden himself.8 Finally, al-Qaeda has multinational sweep, including affiliations with organizations and direct membership of operatives from countries extending globally.9 Both these metaphors do have a certain utility, insomuch as they faintly foreshadow the concept of economic globalization. But, in the absence of concrete evidence about al-Qaeda, they both tend to re-mystify alQaeda as a different sort of terrorist group, rather than as the anarchist group it is. Additionally, Bergen, in a November 19, 2001 lecture delivered at the Carnegie Council, attempted to describe al-Qaeda in two additional ways. Both of these 4 5 Bergen, 165. Bergen, 163. 6 Bergen, 175. 7 Bergen, 167. 8 Bergen, 175. 9 Bergen, 177. Steinberg 5 characterizations are more useful than the preceding two offered above because they are factually based. Firstly, al-Qaeda is ―sui generis at the end of the day, it is a slippery phenomenon‖. Secondly, al-Qaeda is ―basically an Egyptian terrorist group with a very well-known (sic) Saudi at its head.‖ Bergen also alleges in his book and in the lecture that he is offering a ―…stab at trying to understand [bin Laden] psychologically.‖10 Bergen’s lecture also provides a succinct synopsis of his case against bin Laden: 1. It starts in 1992 with the bombing of a couple of hotels in Yemen, which were housing U.S. servicemen transiting the Gulf for Operation Restore Hope [the U.S. military intervention in Somalia, 1992-1993]. Bin Laden's followers blew up a bomb outside two hotels in Yemen. They went off, killing a tourist but no Americans. That little-noticed bomb was the opening salvo in an ever-deadly and more complicated conflict. 2. If we take bin Laden and the U.S. government more or less at face value, bin Laden's men were involved in some way with what happened in Mogadishu on the nights of February 17 and 18, 1993, when 18 Americans were killed. Who exactly killed the American servicemen, who exactly trained them, will never be clear, but in one of the very rare areas that the U.S. government and bin Laden basically agree, the U.S. indictment against bin Laden mentions Somalia. And bin Laden's military commander, the now apparently departed Muhammad Attaf, trained men in Somalia in how to bring down American helicopters. So with Somalia the graph rises a little further. Riyadh, in 1995, the bomb goes off outside a joint U.S.-Saudi facility. Five Americans are killed. Three out of the four men who did the bombings said they trained in Afghanistan. They mentioned—they were probably tortured to get these confessions, but they have a ring of truth—bin Laden by name as influencing their thinking. In 1998 you're all familiar with the U.S. embassy bombing attacks. Last year the devastating attack on the USS COLE, one of the most sophisticated warships in the U.S. Navy, killed 17 American sailors and inflicted a quarter-million dollars damage on the COLE. And then, of course, September 11th. (Let me add a parenthesis in the middle there, something that didn't happen, which is equally important. In a way, if you throw enough darts at a dartboard, eventually one will hit. Bin Laden has had a lot of operations which haven't gone right for him, not least of which was the millennium plot, which 10 3. 4. 5. 6. Peter L. Bergen, ―Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden‖ (lecture, Carnegie Council, November 19, 2001) Available from: http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/5444.html/:pf_printable? (Accessed 12 November 2007) Steinberg 6 involved bombing Los Angeles Airport in the middle of the very busy Christmas tourist season.)11 Bergen asks three questions about these events in Holy War, Inc., that will guide this review. Firstly, Bergen asks, ―Why is bin Laden doing what he does?‖12 Bergen argues that Osama bin Laden’s objective is political, not cultural. Bin Laden is at war with the United States, but his is a political war, justified by his own understanding of Islam, directed at the symbols and institutions of American political power. The hijackers who came to America did not attack the headquarters of a major brewery or AOL-Time Warner or Coca-Cola, nor did they attack Las Vegas or Manhattan’s West Village or even the Supreme Court. They attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, preeminent symbols of the United States’ military and economic might. And that fits the pattern of previous al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies, military installations, and warships.13 Bergen in this context takes issue directly with Samuel P. Huntington’s ―clash of civilizations‖ thesis. Huntington argues, ―…the fundamental conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or…economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.‖14 However, he is careful to qualify the sweep of the argument that ―…differences between civilizations are real and important…‖ by listing caveats, among which is that ―the paramount axis of world politics will be the relations between ―the West and the Rest‖; the elites in some torn nonWestern countries will try to make their countries part of the West, but in most cases face major obstacles to accomplishing this…‖15 Bergen responds to Huntington’s single, 11 12 Bergen, Carnegie Council Lecture Bergen, 1202. 13 Bergen, 1205-7. 14 Samuel P. Huntington, ―The Clash of Civilizations?‖ in Globalization and the Challenges of a New Century, ed. Patrick O’Meara, Howard D. Mehlinger, Matthew Krain (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 3. 15 Huntington, 20. Steinberg 7 universal theory with four ―predictors‖ of his own: tribalism; nationalism, Ignatieff’s ―narcissism of minor differences‖; and, power politics.16 Secondly, Bergen asks, ―…[W]hat is the significance of Holy War, Inc., the most radical Islamist strain?‖17 Bergen argues, after comparing al-Qaeda to the eleventh-andtwelfth Century Assassins, ―…although the Assassins were a splinter group of the Shia minority…and bin Laden preaches a neo-fundamentalist Sunni Islam, in practice both groups are opposed to the Sunni establishment and the West.‖18 But, regarding al-Qaeda itself, Bergen needs to demonstrate that Holy War, Inc is a result of the implementation of one organization’s–or, Osama bin Laden’s–strategic vision, not Huntington’s ―clash of civilizations‖ thesis. Demonstrating the existence of such a premeditated plan is much more difficult than listing examples where states or groups with different cultural backgrounds went to war. But, without that proof, Huntington’s thesis, with caveats, facially provides an alternative explanation. Bergen does offer three unique formative influences upon bin Laden’s strategic vision: the death of bin Laden’s father; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; and, the April 17, 1987 Battle of Jaji against the Soviets in Afghanistan.19 Thirdly, continuing his characterization of al-Qaeda as a military organization, Bergen asks how will the U.S. respond tactically? Firstly, Bergen argues that the U.S. is incapacitated by a lack of good intelligence sources. Not only does the U.S. lack spies 16 17 Bergen, 1216-21. Bergen, 1231. 18 Bergen, 1234-5. 19 Bergen, Carnegie Council Lecture (based on an account by Essam Deraz) Steinberg 8 within al-Qaeda, but also its only credible witnesses capable of testifying against bin Laden in American court have not had contact with the redoubtable leader since 1998 at best.20 Moreover, bin Laden has prudently avoided using satellite phones since 1997, thwarting the National Security Agency’s attempts to eavesdrop on his communications.21 Regrettably, the Afghan and Pakistani sources, including the Pakistani intelligence services, President Hamid Karzai, and the Northern Alliance, Bergen mentioned at the time his book was published are even more unreliable or marginalized.22 Finally, Bergen places too much faith in the cordon sanitaire around Afghanistan, as nation-building efforts in Kabul, insurgency in Pakistan’s Northwest Provinces, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s coup de palace, and dwindling political commitment among NATO allies for continued military operations along the Afghan-Pakistani border all provide bin Laden continued sanctuary in a mountainous hideout.23 Bergen is more persuasive, since bin Laden’s war is political, when he argues that assassinating bin Laden would ―go a long way‖: I think the death of bin Laden would have a huge impact, because (a) he's the shorthand and the metaphor and the leader and the rhetorician and the ideologue and all these other things, and also the CEO. But also, when we say the death of bin Laden, we also mean the death of the entire leadership, or the capturing of the entire leadership. The U.S. government is keenly aware that it's not just bin Laden who has organized this group. So I think that would impact them a lot.24 20 21 Bergen, 1239. Bergen, 1241. 22 Bergen, 1242-4. 23 Bergen, 1276. 24 Bergen, Carnegie Council Lecture. Steinberg 9 This is the gung-ho version of the cautious support he gives in Holy War, Inc., that killing bin Laden, a ―severe blow‖, could merely flush other unsavory characters into prominence.25 Bergen ridicules the notion of negotiating with bin Laden, but warms to the notion of an indictment against bin Laden in the U.S. for the September 11, 2001 attacks, if only because ―…it would be useful from a public relations perspective, apart from anything else...‖26 However, when pressed for evidence by which to support that indictment, Bergen’s reply was not very compelling. What would that indictment consist of? Well, his own (sic) statements on the subject and the statements of his spokesmen have been pretty forthright. He actually said in videotapes that The Daily Telegraph reported on that the Trade Center was selected as a preeminent symbol of political and economic might, which seems like a fairly good part of that indictment. Also, four of the hijackers were trained in Afghanistan. There were cell phone calls in Germany apparently on the day between al-Qaeda members basically indicating that they were involved. Ultimately, also, when the second plane hit the Trade Center, it was obvious to me it had to be bin Laden. I mean what group or organization in the world has (1) a group of people willing to martyr themselves and (2) the technical ability to fly commercial passenger jets? Well, the answer is only one. Bin Laden has constantly recruited commercial pilots. He had a number of pilots on call in the Sudan. He bought a jet in the United States in 1993 in Tucson, which was flown to the Sudan. He flew to Afghanistan from the Sudan in his personal jet. This is an organization that has jet pilots on call. But secondly, the whole thing about the willingness to die. So just by process of elimination, it seemed to me obvious it was bin Laden, which I know is not an indictment or evidentiary. But you have to ask yourself, "If not him, who else?"27 25 26 Bergen, 1266. Bergen, Carnegie Council Lecture. 27 Bergen, Carnegie Council Lecture. Steinberg 10 Clearly, though compelling for a journalist, this is not a valid legal question. The pertinent question is whether there is documentary or testimonial evidence for a chain of causation extending from Osama bin Laden, in his capacity as a member of al-Qaeda’s executive council through subordinate councils, to a courier, and then finally to an operatives’ cell. Bergen cannot provide this chain of causation. As a result of this, as Laura Miller argues, Holy War, Inc. has a ―scattered quality‖, and ―…feels like a collection of trees rather than a forest. Though it has a structure, it's constantly veering away from it distractedly; it's hard to grasp the book as anything more than a collection of interesting bits.‖28 Miller’s criticism is valid, because of Bergen’s prologue, occurring in 1997, and the first chapter leading with the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which lead into a chronological discussion of events running from the Afghan-Soviet War in the 1980s to 2000. But, Holy War, Inc.’s fragmentation is a result of its journalistic sources, notably Essam Deraz, who was the first journalist to interview Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s.29 Along with Bergen’s 1997 interview, Holy War, Inc. is a collage of both first person and secondary sources, in its thesis and journalistic core. In Bergen’s collage, even the major conclusions are unoriginal. John O’Neill, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) counter-terrorism expert killed in the WTC on September 11, 2001, argued that ―diplomacy, military action, covert operations, economic sanctions, and law enforcement‖ were the five tolls needed to defeat al-Qaeda. 28 Laura Miller, ―The Holy Warrior‖ (2001). Available from: Salon http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/11/21/ceo/print.html (Accessed on November 12, 2007). 29 Lawrence Wright, ―The Man Behind Bin Laden‖ (2002). Available from Lawrence Wright http://www.lawrencewright.com/art-zawahiri.html (Accessed on November 10, 2007). Steinberg 11 ―O’Neill never presumed that killing bin Laden alone would be sufficient.‖30 Michael Scheuer, chief of the Bin Laden unit at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1996 to 1999, however, criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the Afghan campaign in 2001. ―[O}ur only real mission there should have been to kill bin Laden and Zawahiri and as many Al Qaeda fighters as possible, and we didn't do it.‖31 But Bergen, paying lip service to the lack of actionable intelligence in his conclusion, fails to address the overall context in which intelligence could assist spies, military personnel, and political leaders decide which course, O’Neill’s or Scheuer’s, to take. Donald M. Snow argues that thinking about the ―national security problem‖ involves two emphases: change; and, the basic nature of the national security environment. Change has two aspects: what the September 11, 2001 attacks affected; and, what the collapse of the Soviet Union affected. The nature of the national security problem also involves two aspects: geopolitics; or, globalization.32 Bergen’s ―scattered‖ focus upon a timeline of purported al-Qaeda activities ranging from the Afghan-Soviet War to the September 11, 2001 attacks hinders placing those events within a national security framework and thereby frustrates an analysis based upon Snow’s emphases. The intelligence problem is not just a matter of a legalistic campaign to identify the perpetrators for either legal proceedings or assassination, but also a theoretical task of identifying strategy and predicting future attacks. 30 Lawrence Wright, ―The Counter-Terrorist,‖ The New Yorker (January 14, 2002). Available from: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/01/14/020114fa_fact_wright?printable=true (Accessed on November 12, 2007). 31 Ken Silverstein, ―Six Questions for Michael Scheuer on National Security,‖ Harper’s Weekly (August 23, 2006). Available from: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/08/sb-seven-michael-scheuer-1156277744 (Accessed on November 12, 2007). 32 Donald M. Snow, National Security for a New Era (Pearson Longman: New York, 2007), p. 2. Steinberg 12 The consequences of Bergen’s myopic focus become apparent when investigating a context Bergen ignores: CIA intelligence-gathering and covert operations. Bergen will only implicate the CIA for ―tactical errors‖ during the Afghan-Soviet War.33 Bergen is persuasive when he debunks the popular myth, that CIA ―…armed and trained the Afghan Arabs and even bin Laden himself as part of its operation to support the Afghan rebels fighting the Soviets in the 1980s…[and] is culpable in the jihads and terrorism those militants subsequently spread around the world.34 Bergen offers testimony, that CIA disbursed money to Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which made decisions regarding which factions to support in Afghanistan, and that CIA would not enter Afghanistan, let alone meet Osama bin Laden.35 However, CIA’s misadventures with bin Laden continued in the 1990s. In February, 1996, the CIA shut down a counterterrorism operation run by Cofer Black in Sudan based on intelligence gathered from a liar whose role was only subsequently uncovered.36 After bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, President Clinton ordered the assassination of Saddam Hussein, for the third time in five years, diverting resources from another CIA plan to assassinate bin Laden. On June 26, 1996, Hussein discovered the plot, arresting and executing CIA’s Iraqi operatives.37 On May 29, 1998, George Tenet halted another assassination plot, which had progressed to the dress rehearsal stage, after Pakistan, whose assistance was vital to the operation, unexpectedly exploded a nuclear device.38 In 1999, in the wake of the CIA’s role in providing erroneous information resulting in the accidental bombing of the 33 34 Bergen, 351. Bergen, 350. 35 Bergen, 358. 36 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Doubleday: New York, 2007), p. 2388. 37 Weiner, 2392. 38 Weiner, 2419. Steinberg 13 Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Tenet canceled three opportunities to strike bin Laden’s camp in Kandahar with cruise missiles.39 In the summer of 1999, Cofer Black again supported assassination plans involving CIA cooperation with Ahmed Shah Massoud, but ―…the chances of failure were too high for Tenet. Once again he said no.‖40 Tenet reached these debilitating decisions, based on events and CIA operations occurring beyond Afghanistan and Sudan, because he lacked faith in CIA capabilities and feared the risk of further political and diplomatic damage to the U.S. government. Not only is Bergen wrong about useful intelligence about bin Laden, but also his myopic treatment of al-Qaeda’s campaigns misses a good opportunity to expose unsatisfactory trends in American security policy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Far from demystifying al-Qaeda, Peter L. Bergen’s use of metaphors, like ―holding company‖ and ―Holy War, Inc.‖, re-mystifies al-Qaeda as innovative, when what has really changed, after the fall of the Soviet Union, as Snow argues, is the context. Bergen’s unique value as bin Laden’s interviewer is undermined by the use of journalistic and legal sources. Bergen’s claim that al-Qaeda’s aim is political and not cultural is not original. Bergen’s subsequent contention, that al-Qaeda’s war is with both the major Sunni states loosely affiliated with the West, and Western states, is adequately supported. But his ―scattered‖ discussion of al-Qaeda campaigns, without placing them within the context of contemporary events, such as the Kosovo war and Pakistan’s explosion of a nuclear device, is chronologically confusing. Finally, Bergen wastes an opportunistic attack on Huntington’s ―clash of civilizations‖ thesis, by his indecision about whether to 39 40 Weiner, 2444. Weiner, 2453. Steinberg 14 assassinate or arrest Osama bin Laden. Characterizing al-Qaeda as a cultural force could conceivably lead one to adopt a less risky military campaign, to consider ―hearts and minds‖ in the region. Yet, the preponderance of Bergen’s evidence, although not good enough for a conviction—and certainly the intelligence he could not recover—does support a call for assassination. Bergen’s indecision is less comprehensible than George Tenet’s, who after all had much more to consider. But, in each their own way, Bergen and Tenet—and President Bush—are dealing with the momentous changes created by the fall of the Soviet Union and globalization. Steinberg 15 Bibliography Bergen, Peter L. Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden. New York: The Free Press, 2001. Bergen, Peter L. ―Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden‖ (lecture, Carnegie Council, November 19, 2001) Available from: http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/5444.html/:pf_printable? (Accessed 12 November 2007). Bush, President George W. ―President, General Franks Discuss War Effort,‖ December 28, 2001. Available at White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/print/20011228-1.html (Accessed November 12, 2007). Miller, Laura. ―The Holy Warrior‖ (2001). Available from: Salon: http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/11/21/ceo/print.html (Accessed on November 12, 2007). Silverstein, Ken. ―Six Questions for Michael Scheuer on National Security,‖ Harper’s Weekly (August 23, 2006). Available from: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/08/sbseven-michael-scheuer-1156277744 (Accessed on November 12, 2007). Snow, Donald M. National Security for a New Era: Globalization and Geopolitics, Second Edition. Pearson Longman: New York, 2007. Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Doubleday: New York, 2007. Wright, Lawrence. ―The Counter-Terrorist,‖ The New Yorker (January 14, 2002). Available from: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/01/14/020114fa_fact_wright?printable=true (Accessed on November 12, 2007). Wright, Lawrence. ―The Man Behind Bin Laden‖ (2002). Available from Lawrence Wright http://www.lawrencewright.com/art-zawahiri.html (Accessed on November 10, 2007).