Osama bin Laden and the legacy of 9/11
by Anthony Tucker-Jones
13 September 2011
9/11 turned the world upside down but the Arab spring has shown the irrelevancy of bin Laden's legacy
Just short of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the world's most wanted terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden was finally brought to justice. On 1 May 2011 he was cornered by US Special Forces and shot dead in Abbotabad, 60 miles north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad. His death was in many ways disappointing; after a decade it was an anti-climax to what has been dubbed erroneously the 'war on terror'.
On that fateful day of 9/11 I was in my office in the Old War Office Building in London when a colleague informed me that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade towers in New York. I had shown little interest and like many assumed it had been an accident involving a light aircraft.
Subsequently, I watched transfixed along with the rest of the world as the news networks showed the two jumbo jets crashing into the towers over and over again until you felt numb. In Washington DC the Pentagon suffered a similar attack, while another aircraft crashed in the woods near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Even now it is hard to comprehend the scale of destruction in New York – but what really stayed with me were the awful images of the jumpers. Many poor souls were simply driven out the windows by the force of the flames and explosions, but some chose not to burn or choke to death and consigned themselves to a terrible fall.
At the end of the Cold War, Western intelligence had been painfully slow to adapt as it sought to identify new enemies. Now that the certainty of the nuclear face off between the two superpowers had ended the new threat was the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Countries not considered allies seeking these capabilities were deemed pariah states; they were the new enemy. In the meantime militant Islam was slipping largely unnoticed under the radar.
As a former member of the Defence Intelligence organisation I was closely involved in Op Enduring Freedom in 2001 and the subsequent 'war on terror.' At the time the task of running Osama bin laden, his right hand man Ayaman al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar to ground in the mountains of Afghanistan seemed a fruitless task.
Ironically the unsuccessful attempts to kill bin Laden during the 1990s hardened the resolve of his followers to strike against the heartland of the 'Great Satan.' Conversely if Washington had been successful 9/11 would probably never have taken place and there would have been no need to invade Afghanistan. There is no denying that removing the Taliban was the right thing to do – after 9/11 America needed a grand gesture, but what to leave in their place has remained an insoluble problem ever since.
For years after the fall of the Taliban and the ousting of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, US Special Forces scoured the country for bin Laden and his close cohorts, with one intention in mind, to gun him down. To make matters worse there had been at least half a dozen opportunities to kill bin Laden since the late 1990s, but for varying reasons each was lost. It is quite remarkable that he managed to successfully elude the military and technological might of America for ten long years.
Until May this year it had proved a frustrating task and the feeling was that perhaps he had died of natural causes. Ultimately, having located him, Washington had little option but to kill him on the spot. Removing him to America or even Guantanamo Bay was never a practical option – once in court he would have been given a global platform once more. Then incarcerated he would have remained a dangerous rallying point for every anti-Western Jihadist.
Clearly the operation to eliminate Bin Laden did not go entirely smoothly as a US helicopter came down near the Kakul Pakistan Military Academy – effectively Pakistan's version of Britain's Sandhurst and America's West Point. Questions were raised over why he was hiding so near to a key Pakistani military facility.
US officials said that Pakistan authorities were not notified of the raid in advance. Clearly it was felt there are leaks in the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence organisation. It is no secret that it has competing loyalties and goals that are not always aligned with Western interests or even those of the Pakistani government.
On the basis of his background it is hard to conceive of bin Laden as a true grand strategist – nonetheless there is no question over his complicity with 9/11. While the coalition air war went well, as did the Special Forces' cooperation with the Northern Alliance, the botched battle of Tora Bora, resulted in bin Laden escaping – many argued that this had been facilitated by Pakistan. His final location seems to endorse this view.
In trying to counter al-Qaeda the West has not showered itself with glory, the campaigns in Afghanistan have been botched from start to finish and civil liberties have been eroded. Ultimately though the Arab Spring has shown what little relevancy bin Laden's legacy has for the Muslim world. They want democracy not a return to the Middle Ages. From this we can draw hope that there will be a better future.
Anthony Tucker-Jones is the author of The Rise of Militant Islam: An Insider's View of the Failure to Curb Global Jihad and will be appearing at the Appledore Book Festival to discuss the hunt for bin Laden
Just short of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the world's most wanted terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden was finally brought to justice. On 1 May 2011 he was cornered by US Special Forces and shot dead in Abbotabad, 60 miles north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad. His death was in many ways disappointing; after a decade it was an anti-climax to what has been dubbed erroneously the 'war on terror'.
On that fateful day of 9/11 I was in my office in the Old War Office Building in London when a colleague informed me that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade towers in New York. I had shown little interest and like many assumed it had been an accident involving a light aircraft.
Subsequently, I watched transfixed along with the rest of the world as the news networks showed the two jumbo jets crashing into the towers over and over again until you felt numb. In Washington DC the Pentagon suffered a similar attack, while another aircraft crashed in the woods near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Even now it is hard to comprehend the scale of destruction in New York – but what really stayed with me were the awful images of the jumpers. Many poor souls were simply driven out the windows by the force of the flames and explosions, but some chose not to burn or choke to death and consigned themselves to a terrible fall.
At the end of the Cold War, Western intelligence had been painfully slow to adapt as it sought to identify new enemies. Now that the certainty of the nuclear face off between the two superpowers had ended the new threat was the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Countries not considered allies seeking these capabilities were deemed pariah states; they were the new enemy. In the meantime militant Islam was slipping largely unnoticed under the radar.
As a former member of the Defence Intelligence organisation I was closely involved in Op Enduring Freedom in 2001 and the subsequent 'war on terror.' At the time the task of running Osama bin laden, his right hand man Ayaman al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar to ground in the mountains of Afghanistan seemed a fruitless task.
Ironically the unsuccessful attempts to kill bin Laden during the 1990s hardened the resolve of his followers to strike against the heartland of the 'Great Satan.' Conversely if Washington had been successful 9/11 would probably never have taken place and there would have been no need to invade Afghanistan. There is no denying that removing the Taliban was the right thing to do – after 9/11 America needed a grand gesture, but what to leave in their place has remained an insoluble problem ever since.
For years after the fall of the Taliban and the ousting of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, US Special Forces scoured the country for bin Laden and his close cohorts, with one intention in mind, to gun him down. To make matters worse there had been at least half a dozen opportunities to kill bin Laden since the late 1990s, but for varying reasons each was lost. It is quite remarkable that he managed to successfully elude the military and technological might of America for ten long years.
Until May this year it had proved a frustrating task and the feeling was that perhaps he had died of natural causes. Ultimately, having located him, Washington had little option but to kill him on the spot. Removing him to America or even Guantanamo Bay was never a practical option – once in court he would have been given a global platform once more. Then incarcerated he would have remained a dangerous rallying point for every anti-Western Jihadist.
Clearly the operation to eliminate Bin Laden did not go entirely smoothly as a US helicopter came down near the Kakul Pakistan Military Academy – effectively Pakistan's version of Britain's Sandhurst and America's West Point. Questions were raised over why he was hiding so near to a key Pakistani military facility.
US officials said that Pakistan authorities were not notified of the raid in advance. Clearly it was felt there are leaks in the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence organisation. It is no secret that it has competing loyalties and goals that are not always aligned with Western interests or even those of the Pakistani government.
On the basis of his background it is hard to conceive of bin Laden as a true grand strategist – nonetheless there is no question over his complicity with 9/11. While the coalition air war went well, as did the Special Forces' cooperation with the Northern Alliance, the botched battle of Tora Bora, resulted in bin Laden escaping – many argued that this had been facilitated by Pakistan. His final location seems to endorse this view.
In trying to counter al-Qaeda the West has not showered itself with glory, the campaigns in Afghanistan have been botched from start to finish and civil liberties have been eroded. Ultimately though the Arab Spring has shown what little relevancy bin Laden's legacy has for the Muslim world. They want democracy not a return to the Middle Ages. From this we can draw hope that there will be a better future.
Anthony Tucker-Jones is the author of The Rise of Militant Islam: An Insider's View of the Failure to Curb Global Jihad and will be appearing at the Appledore Book Festival to discuss the hunt for bin Laden
COMMENTS
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article.
Laskovar - UK
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