The Longest War (62 page)

As the drone program was in full swing, the CIA director, General Michael Hayden, explained in November 2008 that “by making a safe haven feel less safe, we
keep al-Qaeda guessing
. We make them doubt their allies;
question their methods, their plans, even their priorities.” Hayden went on to say that the key outcome of the drone attacks was that “we force them to spend more time and resources on self-preservation, and that distracts them, at least partially and at least for a time, from laying the groundwork for the next attack.”

Privately, American officials raved about the drone program. One Bush administration official said that the drones had so crimped the militants’ activities in the FATA that they had begun discussing a move to Yemen or Somalia. The
number of “spies”
al-Qaeda and the Taliban killed rose dramatically after the summer of 2008, suggesting that the militants were turning on themselves in an effort to root out the sources of the often pinpoint intelligence that had led to what officials described as the deaths of half of the top militant leaders in the FATA by early 2009.

One way of measuring the pain that the drone program had inflicted on al-Qaeda was the number of audio-and videotapes that the terrorist group had released through its propaganda arm, Al Sahab. Al-Qaeda takes its propaganda operations seriously and in 2007 Al Sahab had a banner year, releasing almost one hundred tapes. But the number of releases
dropped by half in 2008
, indicating that the group’s leaders were more concerned with survival than public relations.

Pakistan was not the only country where al-Qaeda’s top leaders fled following the fall of the Taliban in the winter of 2001. A number of important al-Qaeda operatives fled to Iran, where they were
taken into Iranian custody
. Saif al-Adel, number three in the al-Qaeda hierarchy; Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the group’s spokesman; and Abu al-Khayr, a deputy of Zawahiri’s, were all apprehended by Iranian authorities a year or so after 9/11. What the Iranians planned to do with their al-Qaeda guests was something of a mystery: “We wish we could predict how this is going to turn out,” said one U.S. intelligence official. They appeared to be bargaining chips that the Iranians could use in the event of some normalization of relations with the United States.

Even with the capture or death of key al-Qaeda leaders in both Iran and Pakistan, al-Qaeda can continue to sustain blows because the members of the group firmly believe that they are doing God’s work. In their own narrative of their struggle, setbacks here on earth simply recall the Prophet Mohammed’s many years of exile in the wilderness fighting the enemies of Islam. For al-Qaeda’s leaders and foot soldiers, setbacks are, in fact, simply more evidence of their part in God’s plan to prevail over the infidels.

Despite the difficulty it remains a vital interest of the United States to catch or kill bin Laden. While bin Laden is on the lam, al-Qaeda is far from defeated. Ahmed Zaidan, the Al Jazeera reporter who has written an Arabic biography of bin Laden, explains, “
As long as
Osama bin Laden is alive he has defeated America.” “How do we
close the 9/11 chapter
with him still being out there?” says Roger Cressey, who was responsible for the coordination of counterterrorism policy at the time of the September 11 attacks. John McLaughlin, the deputy director of the CIA until 2004, pointed out that there would be other advantages in taking al-Qaeda’s leader out of commission: “It would create fractures within the movement, renew a debate on broad strategy, and remove the one figure best able to inspire new recruits.”

Should bin Laden be eliminated, that would likely trigger a succession battle within al-Qaeda. While Ayman al-Zawahiri is the deputy leader of the terror group and therefore technically bin Laden’s successor, he is not regarded as a natural leader. Indeed, even among his fellow Egyptian militants Zawahiri is
seen as a divisive force
and so he is unlikely to be able to step into the role of leader of al-Qaeda and of the global jihadist movement that is occupied by bin Laden.

It may take years but it’s likely bin Laden—who turned 54 almost a decade after 9/11—will eventually be apprehended or killed. So what are the implications of either of those outcomes? If bin Laden were to be captured alive, where, for instance, should he be put on trial? A U.S. official involved in the hunt for bin Laden said that if al-Qaeda’s leader were captured, it would likely produce a subsequent significant problem—
Americans being taken hostage
with the aim to free him. And in the unlikely event that bin Laden ever was put on trial, he would inevitably try to turn the proceeding into a platform for his views.

Of course, capturing bin Laden alive is, in any event, less likely than him being killed.
His former bodyguard
Abu Jandal explains that al-Qaeda’s leader gave him a pistol that “had only two bullets, for me to kill Sheikh Osama with in case we were surrounded or he was about to fall into the enemy’s hands so that he would not be caught alive.” In a tape posted to Islamist websites in 2006, bin Laden confirmed his willingness to be martyred: “
I have sworn
to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don’t want to die humiliated or deceived.”

In the short term bin Laden’s death would likely trigger violent anti-American attacks around the globe, while in the medium term his death
would be a serious blow to al-Qaeda, the formal organization, since bin Laden’s charisma played a critical role in the success of his group. As Julie Sirrs, a former intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, put it, “No one can fit into his
size twelve shoes
.” (However, bin Laden does have eleven sons, some of whom might choose to go into Dad’s line of work.
Saad bin Laden
, one of his older sons, has already played some kind of role in al-Qaeda.)

In the longer term bin Laden’s “martyrdom” would likely give a boost to the power of his ideas. Sayyid Qutb, generally regarded as the Lenin of the jihadist movement, was a relatively obscure writer before his execution by the Egyptian government in 1966. After his death, Qutb’s writings, which called for holy wars against the enemies of Islam, became influential. The same process will likely happen with the death of bin Laden, but to a larger degree, as bin Laden’s prestige and fame far eclipses Qutb’s. And so, in death, bin Laden’s ideas will likely attain some lasting currency. As bin Laden himself put it to his bodyguard, Abu Jandal, in death “
his blood
would become a beacon that arouses the zeal and determination of his followers.”

“Bin Ladenism” will never enjoy the mass appeal of other destructive ideologies of the modern era, such as communism, but it certainly enjoys some measure of support today. And this is important, because many thousands of underemployed, disaffected men in the Muslim world will continue to embrace bin Laden’s doctrine of violent anti-Westernism. In a telling
2008 survey of opinion
in the Muslim world in countries as diverse as Morocco, Indonesia, Jordan, and Turkey, people expressed more “confidence” in bin Laden than in President Bush by significant margins. Thus while eliminating the top leadership of al-Qaeda will be useful in terms of seeking justice for the victims of 9/11 and heading off other spectacular attacks by the group, make no mistake: This will not end the war of the terrorists. Bin Laden’s ideas have circulated widely and will continue to attract adherents for years to come. Arresting people is generally a relatively simple matter. Arresting ideas is another thing entirely.

Whatever the ultimate fate of bin Laden, and even of al-Qaeda itself, Michael Scheuer, who founded the bin Laden unit at the CIA in 1996, points this out: “Their
mission is accomplished
: worldwide instigation and inspiration.”

The Longest War continues.

Note on Sources
 

I
was able to interview many of the sources in the book on more than one occasion and the dates and places of all those interviews are noted in the footnotes. A partial list of the several hundred interviews I conducted for this history can be found in the next section. (A number of the people I interviewed were subsequently jailed, killed by security services, assassinated, or have gone into hiding, and I have noted those in the list of interviewees.) Of course, many interviewees chose to remain anonymous.

I have also drawn on documents filed in criminal cases involving jihadist militants in the United States, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And I have mined books written by al-Qaeda’s leaders and former Taliban officials; thousands of pages of transcripts of U.S. military tribunal proceedings of prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay; first-hand accounts about al-Qaeda from newspapers from around the Muslim world; and a trove of al-Qaeda-related documents and publications going back to the late 1980s that I have collected over the years.

I also used material derived from several hundred books that touch on aspects of the story and thousands of articles and government documents and other reports that I have collected on this subject, the most useful of which are referenced in the endnotes and bibliography. Also useful were the many publications and statements by al-Qaeda’s leaders or other militant strategists.

When it comes to transliterating Arabic names or terms, I have used conventional English spellings, for instance, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman.

Interviewees
 

Hassan Abbas

Dr. Abdullah

Zachary Abuza

David Albright

“Matthew Alexander”

Sydney Alford

Hazarat Ali

Imtiaz Ali

Jason Amerine

Abdullah Anas (Boudjema Bounoua)

Peter Arnett

Abdel Bari Atwan

Hussein al-Awadi

Salman al-Awdah

Hutaifa Azzam

Mahfouz Azzam

Robert Baer

Omar Bakri Mohamed

Kenneth Ballen

Arianna Barbazza

David Barno

Khaled Batarfi

Milt Bearden

Noman Benotman

James Bernazzan

Gary Berntsen

Benazir Bhutto (Assassinated in Pakistan in 2007)

Stephen Biddle

Cofer Black

Antony Blinken

Jason Burke

Daniel Byman

Vincent Cannistraro

Yigal Carmon

Frank Cilluffo

Peter Clarke

Richard A. Clarke

Jack Cloonan

Eliot Cohen

David Cohen

Daniel J. Coleman

Aukai Collins

Elizabeth Colton

Conrad Crane

Roger Cressey

Henry “Hank” Crumpton

Robert Dannenberg

Mohammed Daud

Essam Deraz

James Dobbins

Brian Doyne

Joshua Dratel

Assad Durrani

Jason Dye

Paul Eedle

Karl Eikenberry

Charles “Sam” Faddis

Saad al-Fagih

Christine Fair

William J. Fallon

Mahmoun Fandy

Khaled al-Fauwaz (Jailed in the UK in 1998)

Yosri Fouda

Tommy Franks

Joe Frost

“Dalton Fury”

Brad Garrett

Baltasar Garzon

Fawaz Gerges

Abdul Rashid Ghazi (Killed by Pakistani security forces in 2007)

Susan Glasser

David Gordon

Karen Greenberg

Robert Grenier

Stephen Grey

Alain Grignard

Abdul Rahman al-Hadlag

Stephen Hadley

Mohammed Hafez

Moinuddin Haider

Hamid al-Haiys

Kemal Halbawy

Abu Hamza (Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, jailed in the UK in 2004)

Abdul Haq Hanif (Jailed in Afghanistan)

Sami ul-Haq

Husain Haqqani

Ali Hatem

Neil Herman

Thomas Hegghammer

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (In hiding)

Andrew Higgins

Bruce Hoffman

Richard Holbrooke

Pervez Hoodbhoy

Ed Husain

Zahid Husain

Mansoor Ijaz

Faraj Ismail

Jamal Ismail

Imdadullah (Jailed in Afghanistan)

Abd al-Jabbar

Saad al-Jabri

Wael Jalaidan