Better alive than dead

[Fighter488]

Better alive than dead ​

By Farooq Hameed

Osama bin Laden is again in the headlines after a long absence. In what is said to be his most recent audio message, aired on al-Jazeera satellite television, bin Laden claimed responsibility for the abortive December 25, 2009 attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, to blow up a US airliner in flight over Detroit. In his statement, bin Laden warns the US about further such attacks as long as the US supports Israel in its atrocities against the people of Gaza.

As usual, Washington has announced that it has yet to confirm the audio's genuineness, which will be subject to verification of the
speaker's voice with the original bin Laden speech characters. The White House, however, denounced bin Laden, vowing to bring him to justice.

Why did bin Laden take almost a month to release this public message? Is he asserting that he is still alive and kicking and in full control?

Where is bin Laden and why does he or his "ghost" surface "occasionally" to haunt the Americans? These remain trillion-dollar questions. It is difficult to believe that with all its super high-tech, worldwide satellite and electronic intelligence capabilities, the US remains unaware about the status (dead or alive) and whereabouts of bin Laden.

The last the world ever knew about bin Laden's location was in the Tora Bora mountain ranges near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, after the Taliban were driven out of Kabul in the post-September 11, 2001 US invasion. Did bin Laden survive those intensive B-52 bombing strikes that blasted the Tora Bora mountains? The lethality index of one B-52's bomb and missile arsenal is known to be comparable to the devastating effect of a few kiloton tactical nuclear warhead. So deadly were those bombings that the words Tora Bora now represent death and destruction.

Since Tora Bora, bin Laden's trail went cold. During president George W Bush's second term, the US almost forgot bin Laden. The US obsession with bin Laden seemed on the decline. Rarely did bin Laden figure out in news reports, except the odd audio/video cassette recordings, denouncing the US and vowing to continue jihad against the US forces in Afghanistan and striking their interests the world over.

The pattern of these tapes/recordings did raise eyebrows. Such messages came in public on important occasions, like as before the US presidential elections or when the US government was under domestic pressure, including the uproar over losses to US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. From among the world media, al-Jazeera was generally the preferred channel to air his tapes.

There were typical controversies regarding the authenticity of some of the earlier bin Laden video tapes. How could bin Laden look younger as he aged? His face wrinkles looked different from the last video! The black patches under the eyes suddenly disappeared! Were those videos the wonders of computer wizards and forensic artists? Was there a bin Laden look-alike doing the job? Are the bin Laden tapes genuine or engineered? Are these tapes part of a US strategic deception plan to keep the bin Laden phenomenon alive to pursue a greater agenda?

Is bin Laden in Pakistan? Western intelligence experts and analysts still propagate that bin Laden is holed up somewhere in the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Pakistani leadership has emphatically rejected bin Laden's presence in Pakistan and had even indicated that bin Laden may not be alive, let alone being present in Pakistan's tribal areas.

With an extensive US intelligence network in Pakistan's tribal belt since 9/11, including their system of intelligence-sharing and coordination with their Pakistani counterparts and the local informers etc, bin Laden has yet to be located in Pakistan. Scores of drone attacks against suspected al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, especially North Waziristan, have not been able to locate or target bin Laden, or even his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

What then is the bin Laden mystery. Is he alive, hale and hearty? Is he hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border belt or residing somewhere in a remote northern Afghan province? Has he migrated to some distant land like Somalia or Yemen? Is bin Laden such a genius that he has successfully eluded the might of US intelligence all these years? Is bin Laden their (US) man of "convenience' to be used whenever the situation so demands?

Is al-Qaeda a myth or reality? Why does the al-Qaeda threat suddenly seem to emerge in areas where there is oil or near to the world's oil passage lanes? Yemen, that lies at the mouth of the Red Sea oil shipping route, has become the new "safe haven" for al-Qaeda. Is Nigeria, which is an Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries member and one of the world's leading oil producers, the next emerging al-Qaeda bastion? With a Nigerian national involved in the failed US airliner attempt, is Nigeria next on the US hit list?

Pakistanis are seething with anger for being subjected to enhanced humiliating body searches along with passengers from thirteen other Muslim countries, at US airports in the aftermath of 25/12. The hijackers that rammed those airliners into the twin towers on 9/11, were mostly Saudis and not Pakistanis. Yet, Pakistanis have suffered disgraceful body searches at US airports ever since. Pakistanis are saying, "Enough is enough. This discriminatory and unfair treatment to a country that has remained a US ally and suffered the most, is no longer acceptable."

Reportedly, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation used a photograph of Gasper LLamazares, a Spanish lawmaker, to approximate bin Laden's current appearance. LLamazares was taken aback to learn that his online photograph resembling bin Laden was used to create an image of what bin Laden would look like today. This image appeared on a "Wanted" poster updating the US government's earlier photo of bin Laden promising a reward of up to $25 million.

How many more years will pass by with the US hunting for bin Laden is anybody's guess. But one thing is certain: the Americans would love to keep bin Laden alive and on the run!

Brigadier (retired) Farooq Hameed Khan is chairman of the editorial board of the National Defence Times in Pakistan.

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