By Mirta Balea
The First 48 hours, as the title of a televisión crime program reads, have become years in the case of life and death of Osama Bin Laden, facts even adopt a predictable and artificial routine and have been forgotten or parked. A score of books and hundreds of articles are enough to understand a legend forged to idealize it and let everybody to know that the only objective of his life, his uncontrollable compulsión, was to destroy the United States, which he blamed for poverty in Arab countries. This purpose acted like a boomerang when Washington took on the task in reverse: ending this man, whom he classified as Public Enemy Number One. It would not be until the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, on May 15, 1988, that the Intelligence Services of several Western nations would begin to focuss on a new terrorist organization: Al Qaeda. The USSR had occupied the country for nine years as a by-product of the tug-of-war with the United States, known as the Cold War, to which other nations were added over time, believing themselves obliged to choose sides. Sometimes the only thing necessary is leave the game. Washington initiated a policy of support for the Islamic guerrilla to get the rival power out of there and added to its efforts Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim nations. The conflict -which seemed endless- was settled with a ceasefire agreement in Geneva. Even so, the situation in Afghanistan did not improve, it remained highly unstable and explosive, and in 1992 the guerrillas assaulted Kabul and overthrew the government, to then confront each other until they led the country into civil war. The coming to power of the Taliban - Sunni Islamic fundamentalists- put an end to the civil war en 1996 and led to the imposition of Sharia or Islamic law throughout the country. Afghanistan, which had not advanced much, suffered a major setback until the Middle Ages. An international coalition, led by de United States, put paid to the radicals in 2001, in an act of revenge for the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. There was no interest in the Hindu Kush nation coming out of the economic, political and social subsoil it had boxed in, it was an act of pure revenge. The regime was replaced by another favorable to Western interests, chaired by Hamid Karzai. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), interposed by the UN, helped the new Administration and offered mínimum assurances, all of this insuficcient to manage the fate of some 35 million people, which is said soon and easy, but which is a titanic task in a country without titans. The Taliban regrouped in Pakistan to prepare their revenge for their expulsión from Afghanistan, where other international forces entered the economic landscape with the stated purpose of "helping reconstruction". Washington had shown its opposition to the double play of Islamabad on its close relationship with the Islamic radicals. Apart from this international game, the Afghans remained among the poorest of the planet, governed by corruption and the sword of Damocles on their heads of a return of the most backward force in our world today.
The above is a scheme of a story which goes much further. To get into the situation, the first thing is to know that all the American presidents, including the current one, Donald Trump, have pointed out as reasons for the invasión Moscow's fear of terrorists entering the common border. If we take into account the content of the desclassified archives of the CPSU what was really behind was the fear that the Hafizullah Amin regime might forgo the Soviet orbit. This personage had arrived at the power by a coup d'etat against the leader of its Democratic Popular Party, Mohammed Taraki, the 14 of September, 1979, taking advantage of the wake of a period of turbulences and the consequent repression, united all this to a Sunni insurgency on the rise.
We'll have to do some history to locate ourselves better in the subject. The PPD was founded in 1965 with Taraki at the head, but the internal quarrels divided it between the parcham or flag of Babrak Karmal, member of the Central Committee of the organization, and the khalags or the people of Taraki and Amin. This was the momentum that determining actor in the war against the Soviets becomes visible, managing to maintain its importance long after the end of the conflict: Islamic fundamentalism in the form of mujahideen.
The KGB used to spy on the Afghans long before the arrival of Amin, and they continued to do so and found over that the new president held frequent meetings with officials of the US embassy in Kabul and also had offered a reception in honor of the charge de'affaires. The chronology of the events after the coup and the murder of Taraki made Moscow suspect a drift of the regime. The decisión to intervene militarily was taken by Leonid Brezhnev himself, during a meeting with his main staff: the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs and the head of the KGB. The Soviets could afford a twisted fantasy with a putrefying corpse on which they would march.
The opposition resulted in Afghanistan in a cluster of guerrilla organizations without political neither military experience, they not outnumber a battalion and were initially unable to fight together. Nine years and 30 thousand deaths afterwards, the Soviets undertook the flight by the border, long before de armistice was signed in Geneva, and the mujahideen not even took the work to shoot them when runing.
In the light of time, a recount of the war points to the fact that the Soviets never defeated the insurgents in decisive battles, not even manage to close the border crossing with de Pakistanis, hence among military it is considered the most resounding failure of all low cost war waged between 1975-1990. The press of the time was carried away by Moscow's optimism, believing it would achieve the cherished dream of having an outlet to Persian Gulf.
The notes of the Soviet Ambassador in the United States Anatoli Dobynin in his memoirs called In Confidence point out the Soviets fear about the possible installation of short-range missiles on the border to Kazakhstan and Siberia and even so the annexation of Aghan areas by Pakistan. This envoy of Kremlin held office since 1962 and served during the terms of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan, participating in the preparation of all high-level meetings between leaders of both nations, including Gorbachev and Bush, in 1990. He evokes his experience during the Cold War and I would even recommend reading it to the new generations of diplomats who did'nt live that stage, but believe they know all about it.
OBL have a normal life in the early nineties and denied having a relationship with terrorism. Al Qaeda was wrapped in a mantle of mistery, unknown to all de governments of the planet, although it was the seed planted in the Afghan-Soviet conflicto, thanks to American aid. Thousands of Arabs had been recruited and converted into anti-Soviet mujahedeen. So were also called the fighters against colonialism in Algeria (1954-1962), because Arabic Word mujaid refers to a fighter of the holy war or jihad. To mention someone involve in an armed struggle the Koran or Quram used another expression: qitál. It's easy today for Muslims to interpret certain passages of such a millennial text as a convenient call to violence.
The Western Secret Services could have seen all this a boring and unoriginal sequence of events, they would go blind without paying attention of the steps, until they stumbled upon them. Someone turned on the light bulb and began to develop a diagram, a visual representation of a terrorist network, similar of those refering to arms and drug trafficking. The big doubt at the time was whether a rich man like Bin Laden was the boss and main funder of a terrorist network hitherto unknown. His participation on more tan seven million dollars in the Saudi Binladin Group, apart from the profits percentage of one million dollars, showed him as the perfect candidate to occupy the throne of the budding organization, which still was not noted.
Lawrence Wright, in The Looming Tower, says that when OBL returned to his hometown Jidda, in 1989, at the age of 31, han behind an international army of volunteers of unknown dimensions. Without much fighting, this character had gone from being a nobody in politics in Arab world to a well-known guerrilla leader, and he believed his own legend -according to Wright-, propagated by the Saudi press on the grounds that his legion had defeated the great Soviet superpower.
The belief that he was destined to fulfill a divine misión could give his face that messianic look, also lead his drowsy speech and soft and languid gesture, meanwhile shaking his long and bony finger to emphasized his message, as many journalists thinks. Whenever was possible showed his phobia towards the United States, that saw as the world leader of a movement against Muslims, summarizing, this country was behind all the bad things that were happening to the Arabs, so, this empire has to be destroyed as it had been done before with Soviets. The funny thing is that he never mentioned the aid to the mujahedeen, coming from Washington, that made de birth of Al Qaeda possible.
It's hard to believe that all his hate came from an instant fixed in his memory: the momentum when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 an the US Sixth Fleet supported this. "The infidels will not stop until we face them in a jihad", he said en 1993, eighteen years before American special forces assault his residence in Abbottabad, abode in Pakistani territory. The operation lasted 40 minutes and ended with his life and his legend.
Some writers and academics of the Arab world think that he was not in possession of a particularly gifted mind, each word bretrayed his deep ignorance of the West, he could not get rid of the narrow box in which is summarized the radical islamist discourse. Even so, around him developed a certain mystic, his position of not accepting peace also distinguished him from other arabs leaders.
Wright mentions in his book that it was a group of women within the CIA which carried on their shoulders the tracking of OBL, integrated at a section called Alec Station, under de guidance first of Michel Scheuer, analyst of the Counterterrorism Center, and after Richard Blee, assistant to chief of the Agency, George Tenet. This team was in charge of interpreting the information arrived from points outside the States. Despite being an inter-disciplinary unit, in which participated not just the CIA, but also the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, communication was not the best. Had it been fluid could have been avoided attacks of September 11, something that many Americans take for granted, incapable yet of fitting that they have been attacked on their own soil. The view that there was a lack of bi-directionality, and a consequent compartmentalization of the information, is well developed in several books, including that of Seymour Hersh The Death of Bin Laden.
The difference between what we now know as the Islamic State-founded by Al Qaeda in Iraq as part of the Sunni insurgency- and the strategy of OBL, who offen spoke of restoring the caliphate in the modern era, is that the latter focused on to finish first with de United States, as an essential step before the creation of a State governed by Sharia throughout the Middle East. Towards the end of the 20th century, the world witnessed how violent could be some Islamists , which over time became known as today's jihad Salafists, but whose seeds we will find in Al Qaeda. These included the Egyptian organizations al-Jihad, Ayman al-Zawahari, and the Islamic Group of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, the Palestinians of Hamas, with their recurrent thought of throwing Israel into the sea, and Hezbollah, which aspired to a state shi'i in Lebanon. Meanwhile, for Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, there was only one enemy: the United States, and urged the two main branches os Islam to join the goal of destruction and death.
Shi'ism and Sunnism are these two major branches of Islam, since the death of Muhammad in 632. The first defends that the heir and new leader would have been his cousin and son-in-law Ali and the other, that the successor should be chosen by the community, without having to see the direct descendants of the Prophet. As for daily worship, the differences are minimal. The Shi'ites account for at most 15% of the 1,4 billion Muslims in the world, while the Sunnis constitute almost 90%, concentrated in very influential nations, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The Sunni insurgency had lost ground when Al Qaeda created the Islamic State of Iraq en 2006 (it is mistakenly believed that the current one came out of thin air between 2013 and 2014, but what happened then was the extensión to Syria of the initial Project, becoming oficially the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham or Great Syria), with the sole purpose of concentrating the forces in decline of Sunnism. Since the chain of attacks in Paris en 2015, it began to me called DAESH.
The former French president Francois Hollande was the first to use this Arabic transliteration of the acronym ISIS or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The word DAESH irritates the jihadists because the significance: something to crush or trample, intolerant or the that sows discord. The government of the Elysée oficially asked the media to use the term as a "linguistic weapon", a challenge to the "state" and "islamic" voices, which, together, offer legitimacy to the project of intolerance and extermination of those called infidels.
The Koran or Quram-literally recitation- speaks of religious struggle on behalf of propagating the message of Allah, and many progressive scholars cling to this to disqualify the holy war waged by the Salafists, which not only seeks extermination of believers of other religions and non-believers, but those Muslims who do not want to be part
of the path of terrorism.
When the United States left Iraq in 2011, Islamic State was a minor political asset on the ground. There were two channels that led to its boom and expansion. First, the Muslim Brotherhood, born in Egypt in 1928 from the hand of Hasan al-Banna, as a movement lacking in its beginnings the radical doctrine identified today as jihadism, its main goal was to achieve power, to overthrow the corrupt Arab governments and implement Sharia throughout the Middle East and little else. It was the Sunni response to Western colonialism and did not discriminate against other orientations within Islam such as Shi'ism or mystic Sufism, an esoteric expression of Islam which extracts the revelation of its doctrines an methods from de Quram itself, usually grouped in confraternities or turuq, tariga in singular, led by a shayi or spiritual leader. Sharia rules in Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria as an application of Islamic order to the State.
The other growth channel for Islamic State has turned out to be the very increase of Salafist activity in Iraq and Syria. Salafism is a theology of the purification of the faith, of extermination of idolatry or shi'a and the confirmation of the tawhid or supremacy of Allah. They see themselves as the only true Muslims and have condemned the veneration of tombs, saints an othe places of worship as apostasy. For these fanatics, shi'ism and sufism or even Muslims who participate en Western system or are integrated to it are as well enemies. The new salafist generation look back to the medieval past and ignores any modern interpretation of Islam. His theological work was born in 1328 an the Hanbali syrian school of Ibn Tamiyya.
Later on emerged other importante thinkers who reaffirmed these retrogade ideas, such as the Wahabi movement in Saudi Arabia, a product in the Peninsula of Muhammad ibn' Abd al-Wahab', at the end of 18th century. This character advocated destroying all the worship places, reaffirm the part of Koran appropriate to their way of thinking and discard the rest. They dream eliminating from the face of earth the Shiites and other cults inside the Islam, as they which to do also with Israel. Hanbali is the strictest legal schools in a list which add the hanaki, malaki and shafi'i.
The smaller the unit -case of Alec Station- the closer and more productive for Intelligence Services. Marty Martin, former director of operations of the CIA, in charge of infiltrators in the Middle East, says that the whereabouts of OBL wasn't known by following his emails -as the oficial versión of the White House claimed to be- but through a high ranking official of the Pakistani Intelligence to which Americans paid 25 million dollars for the tip. This man went directly to Jonathan Blank, head of the spies working at the Islamabad embassy, and offer his services spurred by the amount of the reward. Washington decide not to report the blow to their counterparts in Pakistan to avoid any attempt of moving the objective. The informant was removed from the country pretty soon and re-located in Washington, where he began working as an Intelligence Advisor.
Pakistan authorities appointed a major in the army for the custody of Bin Laden and a doctor, Amir Aziz, who proved CIA through a DNA test that the tenant in Abbottabad was the long-sought tan. The Agency tried to cover the prints and protect its snitch when press discover in June, 2011, his identity. Instead, sacrificed another confident and doctor as well, Shakil Afridi, spreading the false story that a failed local vaccination test took place to achieve DNA. The latter was condemned to 33 years in Pakistan for collaboration with the enemy and paid the duck, as they say.
Abbottabad was under the direct control of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). It wasn't a military garrison, of course, but it was two miles from de Pakistani Military Academy, one mile from an army combat battalion and 15 minutes by helicopter from the Tarbela Ghazi base for Covert Operations, in that the soldiers were trained for guarding nuclear weapons. From the observation post placed by the CIA in a building opposite the complex, no weapons were visible, only some guards displaced to protect the tenant.
The Chief of Staff Parvez Kayani and the Director General of the ISI General Ahmed Shiya Pasha initially denied that the most wanted man was en Abbottabad, but later they agreed to cooperate for the attack, ensuring for first the passage through the border of the helicopters with SEAL's comand on board.
The Pakistani acquiescence in any joint operation has always been dictated by the interest of securing US aid, supposedly destined to figh terrorism,which amounts to at least 255 million dollars. A good part of these funds goes to maintaining the life train of local military an intelligence leaders, who are provided too with other incentives. Despite de apparent disagreements, Americans and Pakistanis have collaborated for decades on military and intelligence operations in that área, in some cases undercover, and both parties have endeavored to strengthen cooperation in these fields. Washington is supposed to keep the reins, to a certain extent, on a nation with 100 nuclear warheads, something that doesn't worry Trump, who threatened in 2018 to withdraw aid, because of the "weak results" in the fight against terrorism, as if truly this would be the only objective of the cash outlay.
The New York Times denounced in 2007 that despite economic disbursements, US was far from finding OBL and stoping Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afhanistan and Pakistan. The newspaper confirmed what was a secret with voices, that Islamabad diverted money towards weapons systems to fight its main enemy: India. By that time, the Pakistanis had received five billion dollars in sex years. And is that the ISI has maintained a more than ouststanding collaboration with de Taliban of Afghanistan, with the pretext of national security. Islamabad see them as a shock troop, in an eventual Indo-Pakistani conflict over the control of Kashmir, and a counterweight to de indian influence in the área.
Martin van Cleveld make clear in his book The Transformation of War that most of the conflicts since 1945 have been of low intensity, although they had more weight in terms of victims and political results. The countries involved- says the writer- were mostly Western, and precise that until de war in Afghanistan, the largest Soviet presence was recorded in Egypt between 1969-1975, when 20.000 advisors helped to form the army and the defense system of the Arab country. He stated also, that the Soviet invasión should be considered below US participation in Vietnam.
OBL provided the telephone 671-0837 to join the fight in Afghanistan and announced to potential applicants that it would disburse 75% of the money expended in travelling to Islamabad, through a charity, according to several sources. Its well known that the majority were Saudi idealistic university students, and the Secret Services of the kingdom calculate that between 15 and 25 thousands of young men arrived to Afghanistan. This was for sure the legion mentioned by Saudi press in the time of creating the legend of the jihadist icon. The media responsible of publicizing all this move spread the absurdity that the bodies of martyrs killed in combat did not decompose, and even exhaled perfume, so exhorted parents to send their children to the holy war, under the sponsorship of Allah.
It was at this stage, that the hackneyed profile of the marginalized, poor or poorly-educated jihadist, was put to the test. Was an argument elaborated by numerous analysts and politicians -without research basis among the phenomenon-, to hold the West responsible for all the atrocities committed by these people, for not having done enough to integrate them economically and socially. When studies began to appear on the subject, it was noted that the recruits were educated people and from families of middle or high class, with and average age of 26 years, 86% men, from second or third generation of immigrants.
Bin Laden had lived with his wives and children in a cave in the Hindu Kush, Afghan territory in northeastern Pakistan, during the five years prior to his capture by Pakistani ISI. Saudi Arabia paid for his maintenance all time he lived in Abbottabad, as it became known later. Pasha gave the Islamab's reasons for keeping in secret de whereabouts of the most wanted. They needed the hostage to stop Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Joint Special Operations Command prepared a list of questions demanded by Obama himself, to guarantee the viability of the attack as a previous step to give his authorization. At that moment, the Americans agreed with Kayani that the operation would not be used as a show for the stands. However, retired General Assad Durrani, former head of the ISI, revealed the great disgust of Pakistani Army and Intelligence, for the haste with which the White House made it know the success of the operation and its ins and outs.
Obama assure the world that without the help of Pakistan, and the bilateral anti-terrorist cooperation, it would have been difficult to capture de objective. It was a blunder, that exposes the complicity of Islamabad, and put the regime in serious straits, not only with the Taliban, but also internally. The previous adjusted plan foresaw that White House press team would make the public believe that the capture was product of a "careful and highly profitable" intelligence work, consisting in "tracking down several emails", even one very close to Bin Laden, and that the highest American authority would wait for a week to report the death of the leader of Al Qaeda, during a "drone attack, somewhere in the border mountains".
Sources close to the Pentagon blame for the gaffe to the bewilderment that invaded Obama Administration when one of the two Black Hawk had an accident in the middle of the operation and the locals witnessed the episode. It seems imposible for the White House to maintain in the secret the assault, as was agreed in advance. The government of Pakistan react inmediately, conducting his own investigation into the facts, to wash face before the world.
It was created a Commission, given the rather ingenious name of Abbotabad, that did not find "any evidence" that involved Pakistani authorities in the protection of Bin Laden. This mean that the team preferred to talk about incompetence of the military and intelligence, instead of accepting the obvious, the complicity in the execution of the Al Qaeda leader. I don't think anyone has believed this, apart from everything known later, when it became clear the cooperation from the very begining to the end. As it has been discovered later, among the requirements of the Pakistanis was to kill him in the site, for two reasons: avoid losing confidence of the Taliban, and on the other hand, the wrath of the local population, who had Bin Laden for a hero.
There was an interviewed en 1987 that launched OBL to fame. Performed by CNN's Peter Bergen, it gave to the leader of Al Qaeda an opportunity to speak to Anglophone viewers for the first time, and send them one more time one of his frequent threats of war against the United States, in case they had not paid attention before. I remember talking to an Israeli friend about this and he told me: "We would never put this person in direct contact with our population with an interview that just seeks the journalist's fame" and I believe him because I know how they spend it.
The Al Qaeda leader served himself with a fat ladle -as we usually say in Cuba- and claimed that Muslims hated the American people and their president, and warned civilians that they would pay like military for choosing this kind of governments. Bergen asked the terrorist about his plans for the future, wanting perhaps with his illusory question to cross walls, floors, doors and intimidate his interiewee, maybe trying to put in a dead end the character in front of him. I was pending all the time on OBL reactions, because the Camera wrapped him all, and for a brief moment I thought I have seen the outline of a smile in a face, until that very moment, naivety. He replied enigmatically that everyone would see and hear it in the press "if Allah wills". I deflated myself on the sofá at my house, because it seems to me he only articulate the obvious, and offered the finishing touch he was expecting to impose from the very begining. Of course, the past is always analyzed better, but history is what it is.
1998 could be defined as the year Al Qaeda began his attacks on Western targets, in a massive way. Let us reconcile here with the required brevity, even I'm not a lover of brevity at all. We got the aggression to the embassies of Kenya and Tanzania in the same day, with few kilometers difference, or the onslaught against the Destroyer Cole, at a short distance of the Yemeni coast. At the same time, the network was invaded by propaganda videos, first cautious and then daring, always seeking international recognition. In spite of the radicals, the very precepts of Islam force to warn the enemy of any attack, hence the usefulness of CNN to oficially declare war, leaving a clear message. OBL appeared on screen almost every week with more threats, but since Bergen interview, specialists tried to decipher any trace to lay naked the possible dates and places of an attack, colliding with the lack of practical information, what can be obtained from snitches in the ground.
On Septembre 11, 201, happened what everyone feared. I remember standing before a shop window of an electronics store where a television showed the image of the attack on the Twin Tower. I though a lot about the friends of New York, none of whom, fortunately, suffered any damage. The attacks were in the hands of a small group of 19 jihadists and the result was almost three thousand dead. The then President George Bush Jr. blamed the intelligence analysts for the lack of information, but this kind of reflection is easy once the catastrophe occurs, because guilt never falls on the ground.
It most be said that an exclusive Truthout report of documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and a interview with Richard Clarke, former head of Counterterrorism, brought to light that former director of CIA, Tenet, chief of de Counterterrorism Confer Black and Blee, director for a time of Alec Station, were directly responsible for not capturing Nawaf Hazmi and Khalid al Mindhar, hijackers of American Airlines aircraft 77, crashed into the Pentagon, killing 189 persons. This three officials ordered to stop tracking the movements of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda before 9/11, without notifying those in charge of studying possible attacks, which remained ignorant of entry a year earlier to US territory, of those individuals. Wright reveals in his book, that de FBI and federal prosecutors, known as Squad l-49, came to believe that CIA protected the identity of these two terrorists in hope to recruit them, which is not far fetched.
OBL inmediately broadcast a video of Al Qaeda entitled The Manhattan Raid. "The héroes who carried out the attacks participated in an intensive training and learned to take control of cockpit of the plane to forcé the pilots to take the device to the targets" and added: "The brothers pilots continued to prepare with complete peace of mind, integrated among the North American population, ignoring the media propaganda, which presumes in the whole world the capacity of its intelligence services and its great security measures, the héroes left engraved their motivations to perform the blessed act".
The phrase ¡Allahu, Akbar!, which only means "God is Great", has since become synonymous with terrorism. The Intelligence Services in the world take for granted that whoever pronounces it will inmolate itself in a violent way. The men who perpetrated the attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in 2015, shouted it during the violent act, and before, in 2013, it was heard when a British soldier was run over by two jihadists, who got out of the car and killed him with machetes. This shows us that in an age of tensions, language has become a barrier instead of a nexus between individuals. In this case, for Muslims as a religious identity.
The dismantling of Al Qaeda became the goal, not only for the United States, but for other Western nations. The terrorist organization assumed responsability for the bombings en 2007 in Algeria, through a statement issued by Al Jazeera. OBL warned Americans that they were still vulnerable, and were commiting in Iraq the same mistakes as Soviets in Afghanistan, not understanding that they were loosing the war. They go on with attacks of great media impact an high number of victims, mostly in charge of local cells, that didn't wait for orders.
The list was long between 2002 and 2007, date that marks the moment when OBL stopped dealing with the terrorista strategy of Al Qaeda. Highlight in the registry ,the load in October, 2002, against the French oil tanker Limburg, near the coasts of Yemen, which spilled thousands of liters of crude, in the waters of the Gulf of Aden; the simultaneous explosions in a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, with 202 dead; the attacks in Casablanca, Morocco, in which 24 people die, together in the same city of the inmolation of two terroristas against the Israelite Alliance and the Belgian consulate, and even more,the car bomb against de Shafir hotel, all of which leave a trail of 45 dead.
The explosión of a bomb in the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, in August, 2003, with 13 dead, ocurried two days after the execution of Al Amrazi, condemned for his involvement in the Bali bombing performed by Jemaa Islamiya Group, which also later attempted against the Jordanian Embassy, in Baghdad. Four commuter trains explode in Madrid, in 2004, leaving 191 dead and more than 1,700 injured. Three terrorists inmolate themselves that same year in the London Underground and a fourth in a double-decker public bus. On November 9, 2005, the most serious attack in Jordan took place in three Amman hotels, with 57 deaths, while in Bombay, seven bombs explode in different stations, leaving 200 dead and 700 injured. In March 27, 2007, 152 people died in Iraq, too.
The brain of the attacks of the 11-S, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, number three inside Al Qaeda, was captured en 2003, in a joint operation in Rawalpindi of the Services of Intelligence of the United States and Pakistan. In a military trial, conducted in Guantánamo American naval base (to all intents and purposes US territory despite lacking the legitimacy required to act in Cuba), he decided to represent himself and pleaded guilty, asking for death sentence. The Americans police services have long held him responsible for the most of the attacks of the last twenty years, such as the live beheading, in 2002, of Wall Street Journal reporter, Danil Pearl, the 1993, World Trade Center attack, another attempted bombing in Los Angeles, in 2002, the failed bomb on the American Airlines flight 63 and the attack on Bali nightclub.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 16. He studied in the United States and took part in the Afghan-Soviet war. In 1999, took control of the Al Qaeda propaganda headquarters. During Guantanamo's trial, he defined himself and his comrades as night jackals of the war against the Americans in which civilians would be a necessary price to pay. The phrase search to stand away from assuming the shame that rightly corresponds to him. Same to the known joy of the Palestinians, when celebrated the mournful events of 9/11, among other citizens in the Arab world. This make them retreat any sphere of human contact.
After New York, everyone expected Bin Laden to be in Tora Bora, along with his lieutenants, what apparently did. The American troops tended him a shortly fence, from which he escaped by a blunder of the military command, that leave his capture in the hands of local leaders, to avoid casualties of his own. This resulted in the lengthening of its catch in ten more years. All these time, he moves across the Afghan-Pakistani border as a fish in the water. The fact that for so long he had not been captured, uncovered that his strategy worked. During this time, he made Al Qaeda go to a war of attrition, he wasn't interested in winning, but in avoiding being defeated, didn't seem to need access to power or to re-build the caliphate, the victory -or it's perception- consisted of continue with the attacks, to convey an aure of indestructibility.
Dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda became a more precise purpose for the Western Intelligence Services, instead of the previous absurd formula of the Bush Administration of facing global terrorism, that throw nulls results. The task stopped being strategic information, to make way to tactical information. This allowed to monitor a specific objective. To understand why Americans lost so much time in finding Public Enemy Number One, we must go back to 1950 when the CIA created the Office of National Estimates, on behalf analyzing and predicting the behavior of the world, and its effect on the national security of the United States. It turns out that never predicted anything useful, could not even advance the dissolution of the Soviet Unión, or the end of Cold War.
When the Berlin Wall fell, I was watching the event from the living room of my house in Warsaw. It turns out that a month earlier I had sent to my General Director to Prensa Latina Agency, for which I was working by the time, on the possibility of the disappearance of the socialist community in Europe, arguing on the subject. It was an internal memorándum, otherwise a news ítem would have being blocked inmediately. I should say I have never seen myself as an analyst, but a compiler of information as a journalist, and solely that role lead to some conclusion by the nose. Fall of the Steel Telon threatened directly the CIA funds, when Gorbachev was talking about perestroika and glasnot and the European comunist bloc was doomed in an implosion.
Mourners among the ranks of the American spies, were sure that the money would swell the budgets of other entities also in charge of espionage and state terrorism, according an American journalist who I met in India. It was for sure that Agency was finished, not only for the above reasons, but because was always below its own legend. Then a new enemy appeared on the horizon, the global jihadist terrorism, and made the Agency necessary again.
Obama decide to send a team of 23 Navy Seal in two Black Hawk helicopters, when tested that the resident of Abbottabad was Bin Laden. The move went well. Not only did he get rid of his enemy, but the operative achieve an inmortalize success in films and bestsellers, and the campaign for a second term was reinforced with his appearance before de press, as a leader with iniciative in the most critical moment of his first term. This became a good reason to promise his electorate the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and to give his Pakistani allied carte blanche in the neighboring territory when American soldiers left. The CIA was also favored in cleaning its bad image, when obtaining its greatest triumph in the war against Al Qaeda.
Intelligence reports from several countries pointed out that the remnants of OBL in his terrorist organization, had only forged a handful of attacks since he was transfer to Abbottabad. But Washington must continue to consider him an enemy, if it had been said that it was not operational or had little weight in the structure, there would have been no moral reason for the assault or kill him, and that's why was necessary to post going back and forth to justify the oficial story. Other issues known later, refers to the "so important documents and electronic material" recovered by the Command in Abbotabad. The attributed importance to this archives was looking for leverage the theory that Al Qaedas's leader was like a spider, that stretched its web from the conspiratorial center of its residence in Pakistan. A 2012, report from the West Point Center for Combating Terrorism, made it clear that nothing supported this dangerous contact with the outside world.
The Pakistanis agreed to install an American team in the Tarbela Ghazi base, to coordinate activity before and during the asault. As a mesure of pressure to ensure there would be no last-minute regrets, Americans delayed the delivery of 18 new G-16 aircarft and suspended money allocated to Pakistan's in military and Intelligence fields. It seems the attackers found no resistance on their way to the compound when Pakistani guards left as soon as they heard the rotors of the helicopters, as it was agreed. The bedroom of Bin Laden, on the third floor, second door on the right, was difficult to reach, but the Command knew it in advance, they should knock down two armored doors to get the target, although it was reported that this stumbling block was "unexpected".
In the oficial version, OBL was armed and used his woman as a shield. It was reported also that the soldier who shot him down said alleged "sel-defense". All these was a misleading story, to sorround his death with impunity. Years ago, the Arab press had leaked their health problems, on the other hand, an indiscreet photo of his bedroom filtered after the attack, showed the AK-47 hanging on the wall above the bed. This rifle was carried by him as an amulet since he escape of death miraculously, during a bombardment in Afghanistan. The soldiers were also elite, so how could anyone believe that they were not able of reducing it without killling him? As hoxes intensified, immediatly after the assault, Pentagon had no choice but to admit that the target was not armed and that the women did not serve as human shields. The official story was wafting everywhere, and the contradictions came to light, the most terrible, perhaps, that he had died without resistance.
Hersh claims in his book that the much publicized live broadcast of the operation, supossedly seen by Obama and other senior officials of his Administration, never took place, the SEALS did not charge Cameras on their helmets. The story of some soldiers invading Pakistani airspace without ground or air cover, whata made the mission seem suicidal, even descending on the housing complex, which should therefore be protected, and running all this without support of the Pakistanis, was falling to pieces. The operation was carried out in a country, which was not any country, but one of the most important allies of the US in Asia, who could believe all this?
The direct participants and rest of the Joint Special Operations Command, were forced to sign a confidentiality agreement not to mention in public or in private, but nevertheless, two members of the Command, involved in the assault, wrote about the issue or gave interviews. Matt Bissonnette, in his book No Easy Day, in 2012, and two years later, Rob O'Neill, in a meeting with Fox News, claimed the fatal shot an recounted five dead: Bin Laden, a brother and a son, one of his women an one of his personal emails. These two soldiers held the official version for the account that it brings and no known reprisal was taken against them.
The official version got even more into their lies. US authorities reported that it was thrown into the sea after a ceremony to the Muslim use, from a Navy ship near Yalalabad, in the northern Arabian Sea. To justify why no member of the crew gave evidence of such a ceremony, the Pentagon added that they had not been allowed to attend the funeral, leaving aside the clarification of who was in charge of cleaning the body and its shrouding, as well as the one in charge of throwing the body into the sea, all important things within the ritual. Two advisers from the Special Operations Command told Hersh that the remains were sent to Afghanistan, but other versión linked to SEALs, pointed they themselves threw the corpse into the Hindu Kush as the helicopter move away from the scene.
The death of Bin Laden had a scant operational impact on the functioning of other jihadist organizations, but it negatively affected the structure he led. Apart from the affiliated or non-Al Qaeda, such as those of the Arabian Peninsula, the Maghreb and Iraq, independent cells and even the so-called solitary, sel-radicalized Wolves, have taken center stage after decide to attempt on their own. Analysts believe that had not the Black Hawk, which forced Obama to rush the news with a speech prepared at the last moment, everything that happened, could have been covered with the version originally planed by Americans and Pakistanís. As Aristotle said, the total truth is never reached, neither is it totally removed.
The smaller the unit -case of Alec Station- the closer and more productive for Intelligence Services. Marty Martin, former director of operations of the CIA, in charge of infiltrators in the Middle East, says that the whereabouts of OBL wasn't known by following his emails -as the oficial versión of the White House claimed to be- but through a high ranking official of the Pakistani Intelligence to which Americans paid 25 million dollars for the tip. This man went directly to Jonathan Blank, head of the spies working at the Islamabad embassy, and offer his services spurred by the amount of the reward. Washington decide not to report the blow to their counterparts in Pakistan to avoid any attempt of moving the objective. The informant was removed from the country pretty soon and re-located in Washington, where he began working as an Intelligence Advisor.
Pakistan authorities appointed a major in the army for the custody of Bin Laden and a doctor, Amir Aziz, who proved CIA through a DNA test that the tenant in Abbottabad was the long-sought tan. The Agency tried to cover the prints and protect its snitch when press discover in June, 2011, his identity. Instead, sacrificed another confident and doctor as well, Shakil Afridi, spreading the false story that a failed local vaccination test took place to achieve DNA. The latter was condemned to 33 years in Pakistan for collaboration with the enemy and paid the duck, as they say.
Abbottabad was under the direct control of Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). It wasn't a military garrison, of course, but it was two miles from de Pakistani Military Academy, one mile from an army combat battalion and 15 minutes by helicopter from the Tarbela Ghazi base for Covert Operations, in that the soldiers were trained for guarding nuclear weapons. From the observation post placed by the CIA in a building opposite the complex, no weapons were visible, only some guards displaced to protect the tenant.
The Chief of Staff Parvez Kayani and the Director General of the ISI General Ahmed Shiya Pasha initially denied that the most wanted man was en Abbottabad, but later they agreed to cooperate for the attack, ensuring for first the passage through the border of the helicopters with SEAL's comand on board.
The Pakistani acquiescence in any joint operation has always been dictated by the interest of securing US aid, supposedly destined to figh terrorism,which amounts to at least 255 million dollars. A good part of these funds goes to maintaining the life train of local military an intelligence leaders, who are provided too with other incentives. Despite de apparent disagreements, Americans and Pakistanis have collaborated for decades on military and intelligence operations in that área, in some cases undercover, and both parties have endeavored to strengthen cooperation in these fields. Washington is supposed to keep the reins, to a certain extent, on a nation with 100 nuclear warheads, something that doesn't worry Trump, who threatened in 2018 to withdraw aid, because of the "weak results" in the fight against terrorism, as if truly this would be the only objective of the cash outlay.
The New York Times denounced in 2007 that despite economic disbursements, US was far from finding OBL and stoping Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afhanistan and Pakistan. The newspaper confirmed what was a secret with voices, that Islamabad diverted money towards weapons systems to fight its main enemy: India. By that time, the Pakistanis had received five billion dollars in sex years. And is that the ISI has maintained a more than ouststanding collaboration with de Taliban of Afghanistan, with the pretext of national security. Islamabad see them as a shock troop, in an eventual Indo-Pakistani conflict over the control of Kashmir, and a counterweight to de indian influence in the área.
Martin van Cleveld make clear in his book The Transformation of War that most of the conflicts since 1945 have been of low intensity, although they had more weight in terms of victims and political results. The countries involved- says the writer- were mostly Western, and precise that until de war in Afghanistan, the largest Soviet presence was recorded in Egypt between 1969-1975, when 20.000 advisors helped to form the army and the defense system of the Arab country. He stated also, that the Soviet invasión should be considered below US participation in Vietnam.
OBL provided the telephone 671-0837 to join the fight in Afghanistan and announced to potential applicants that it would disburse 75% of the money expended in travelling to Islamabad, through a charity, according to several sources. Its well known that the majority were Saudi idealistic university students, and the Secret Services of the kingdom calculate that between 15 and 25 thousands of young men arrived to Afghanistan. This was for sure the legion mentioned by Saudi press in the time of creating the legend of the jihadist icon. The media responsible of publicizing all this move spread the absurdity that the bodies of martyrs killed in combat did not decompose, and even exhaled perfume, so exhorted parents to send their children to the holy war, under the sponsorship of Allah.
It was at this stage, that the hackneyed profile of the marginalized, poor or poorly-educated jihadist, was put to the test. Was an argument elaborated by numerous analysts and politicians -without research basis among the phenomenon-, to hold the West responsible for all the atrocities committed by these people, for not having done enough to integrate them economically and socially. When studies began to appear on the subject, it was noted that the recruits were educated people and from families of middle or high class, with and average age of 26 years, 86% men, from second or third generation of immigrants.
Bin Laden had lived with his wives and children in a cave in the Hindu Kush, Afghan territory in northeastern Pakistan, during the five years prior to his capture by Pakistani ISI. Saudi Arabia paid for his maintenance all time he lived in Abbottabad, as it became known later. Pasha gave the Islamab's reasons for keeping in secret de whereabouts of the most wanted. They needed the hostage to stop Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Joint Special Operations Command prepared a list of questions demanded by Obama himself, to guarantee the viability of the attack as a previous step to give his authorization. At that moment, the Americans agreed with Kayani that the operation would not be used as a show for the stands. However, retired General Assad Durrani, former head of the ISI, revealed the great disgust of Pakistani Army and Intelligence, for the haste with which the White House made it know the success of the operation and its ins and outs.
Obama assure the world that without the help of Pakistan, and the bilateral anti-terrorist cooperation, it would have been difficult to capture de objective. It was a blunder, that exposes the complicity of Islamabad, and put the regime in serious straits, not only with the Taliban, but also internally. The previous adjusted plan foresaw that White House press team would make the public believe that the capture was product of a "careful and highly profitable" intelligence work, consisting in "tracking down several emails", even one very close to Bin Laden, and that the highest American authority would wait for a week to report the death of the leader of Al Qaeda, during a "drone attack, somewhere in the border mountains".
Sources close to the Pentagon blame for the gaffe to the bewilderment that invaded Obama Administration when one of the two Black Hawk had an accident in the middle of the operation and the locals witnessed the episode. It seems imposible for the White House to maintain in the secret the assault, as was agreed in advance. The government of Pakistan react inmediately, conducting his own investigation into the facts, to wash face before the world.
It was created a Commission, given the rather ingenious name of Abbotabad, that did not find "any evidence" that involved Pakistani authorities in the protection of Bin Laden. This mean that the team preferred to talk about incompetence of the military and intelligence, instead of accepting the obvious, the complicity in the execution of the Al Qaeda leader. I don't think anyone has believed this, apart from everything known later, when it became clear the cooperation from the very begining to the end. As it has been discovered later, among the requirements of the Pakistanis was to kill him in the site, for two reasons: avoid losing confidence of the Taliban, and on the other hand, the wrath of the local population, who had Bin Laden for a hero.
There was an interviewed en 1987 that launched OBL to fame. Performed by CNN's Peter Bergen, it gave to the leader of Al Qaeda an opportunity to speak to Anglophone viewers for the first time, and send them one more time one of his frequent threats of war against the United States, in case they had not paid attention before. I remember talking to an Israeli friend about this and he told me: "We would never put this person in direct contact with our population with an interview that just seeks the journalist's fame" and I believe him because I know how they spend it.
The Al Qaeda leader served himself with a fat ladle -as we usually say in Cuba- and claimed that Muslims hated the American people and their president, and warned civilians that they would pay like military for choosing this kind of governments. Bergen asked the terrorist about his plans for the future, wanting perhaps with his illusory question to cross walls, floors, doors and intimidate his interiewee, maybe trying to put in a dead end the character in front of him. I was pending all the time on OBL reactions, because the Camera wrapped him all, and for a brief moment I thought I have seen the outline of a smile in a face, until that very moment, naivety. He replied enigmatically that everyone would see and hear it in the press "if Allah wills". I deflated myself on the sofá at my house, because it seems to me he only articulate the obvious, and offered the finishing touch he was expecting to impose from the very begining. Of course, the past is always analyzed better, but history is what it is.
1998 could be defined as the year Al Qaeda began his attacks on Western targets, in a massive way. Let us reconcile here with the required brevity, even I'm not a lover of brevity at all. We got the aggression to the embassies of Kenya and Tanzania in the same day, with few kilometers difference, or the onslaught against the Destroyer Cole, at a short distance of the Yemeni coast. At the same time, the network was invaded by propaganda videos, first cautious and then daring, always seeking international recognition. In spite of the radicals, the very precepts of Islam force to warn the enemy of any attack, hence the usefulness of CNN to oficially declare war, leaving a clear message. OBL appeared on screen almost every week with more threats, but since Bergen interview, specialists tried to decipher any trace to lay naked the possible dates and places of an attack, colliding with the lack of practical information, what can be obtained from snitches in the ground.
On Septembre 11, 201, happened what everyone feared. I remember standing before a shop window of an electronics store where a television showed the image of the attack on the Twin Tower. I though a lot about the friends of New York, none of whom, fortunately, suffered any damage. The attacks were in the hands of a small group of 19 jihadists and the result was almost three thousand dead. The then President George Bush Jr. blamed the intelligence analysts for the lack of information, but this kind of reflection is easy once the catastrophe occurs, because guilt never falls on the ground.
It most be said that an exclusive Truthout report of documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and a interview with Richard Clarke, former head of Counterterrorism, brought to light that former director of CIA, Tenet, chief of de Counterterrorism Confer Black and Blee, director for a time of Alec Station, were directly responsible for not capturing Nawaf Hazmi and Khalid al Mindhar, hijackers of American Airlines aircraft 77, crashed into the Pentagon, killing 189 persons. This three officials ordered to stop tracking the movements of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda before 9/11, without notifying those in charge of studying possible attacks, which remained ignorant of entry a year earlier to US territory, of those individuals. Wright reveals in his book, that de FBI and federal prosecutors, known as Squad l-49, came to believe that CIA protected the identity of these two terrorists in hope to recruit them, which is not far fetched.
OBL inmediately broadcast a video of Al Qaeda entitled The Manhattan Raid. "The héroes who carried out the attacks participated in an intensive training and learned to take control of cockpit of the plane to forcé the pilots to take the device to the targets" and added: "The brothers pilots continued to prepare with complete peace of mind, integrated among the North American population, ignoring the media propaganda, which presumes in the whole world the capacity of its intelligence services and its great security measures, the héroes left engraved their motivations to perform the blessed act".
The phrase ¡Allahu, Akbar!, which only means "God is Great", has since become synonymous with terrorism. The Intelligence Services in the world take for granted that whoever pronounces it will inmolate itself in a violent way. The men who perpetrated the attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in 2015, shouted it during the violent act, and before, in 2013, it was heard when a British soldier was run over by two jihadists, who got out of the car and killed him with machetes. This shows us that in an age of tensions, language has become a barrier instead of a nexus between individuals. In this case, for Muslims as a religious identity.
The dismantling of Al Qaeda became the goal, not only for the United States, but for other Western nations. The terrorist organization assumed responsability for the bombings en 2007 in Algeria, through a statement issued by Al Jazeera. OBL warned Americans that they were still vulnerable, and were commiting in Iraq the same mistakes as Soviets in Afghanistan, not understanding that they were loosing the war. They go on with attacks of great media impact an high number of victims, mostly in charge of local cells, that didn't wait for orders.
The list was long between 2002 and 2007, date that marks the moment when OBL stopped dealing with the terrorista strategy of Al Qaeda. Highlight in the registry ,the load in October, 2002, against the French oil tanker Limburg, near the coasts of Yemen, which spilled thousands of liters of crude, in the waters of the Gulf of Aden; the simultaneous explosions in a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, with 202 dead; the attacks in Casablanca, Morocco, in which 24 people die, together in the same city of the inmolation of two terroristas against the Israelite Alliance and the Belgian consulate, and even more,the car bomb against de Shafir hotel, all of which leave a trail of 45 dead.
The explosión of a bomb in the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, in August, 2003, with 13 dead, ocurried two days after the execution of Al Amrazi, condemned for his involvement in the Bali bombing performed by Jemaa Islamiya Group, which also later attempted against the Jordanian Embassy, in Baghdad. Four commuter trains explode in Madrid, in 2004, leaving 191 dead and more than 1,700 injured. Three terrorists inmolate themselves that same year in the London Underground and a fourth in a double-decker public bus. On November 9, 2005, the most serious attack in Jordan took place in three Amman hotels, with 57 deaths, while in Bombay, seven bombs explode in different stations, leaving 200 dead and 700 injured. In March 27, 2007, 152 people died in Iraq, too.
The brain of the attacks of the 11-S, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, number three inside Al Qaeda, was captured en 2003, in a joint operation in Rawalpindi of the Services of Intelligence of the United States and Pakistan. In a military trial, conducted in Guantánamo American naval base (to all intents and purposes US territory despite lacking the legitimacy required to act in Cuba), he decided to represent himself and pleaded guilty, asking for death sentence. The Americans police services have long held him responsible for the most of the attacks of the last twenty years, such as the live beheading, in 2002, of Wall Street Journal reporter, Danil Pearl, the 1993, World Trade Center attack, another attempted bombing in Los Angeles, in 2002, the failed bomb on the American Airlines flight 63 and the attack on Bali nightclub.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 16. He studied in the United States and took part in the Afghan-Soviet war. In 1999, took control of the Al Qaeda propaganda headquarters. During Guantanamo's trial, he defined himself and his comrades as night jackals of the war against the Americans in which civilians would be a necessary price to pay. The phrase search to stand away from assuming the shame that rightly corresponds to him. Same to the known joy of the Palestinians, when celebrated the mournful events of 9/11, among other citizens in the Arab world. This make them retreat any sphere of human contact.
After New York, everyone expected Bin Laden to be in Tora Bora, along with his lieutenants, what apparently did. The American troops tended him a shortly fence, from which he escaped by a blunder of the military command, that leave his capture in the hands of local leaders, to avoid casualties of his own. This resulted in the lengthening of its catch in ten more years. All these time, he moves across the Afghan-Pakistani border as a fish in the water. The fact that for so long he had not been captured, uncovered that his strategy worked. During this time, he made Al Qaeda go to a war of attrition, he wasn't interested in winning, but in avoiding being defeated, didn't seem to need access to power or to re-build the caliphate, the victory -or it's perception- consisted of continue with the attacks, to convey an aure of indestructibility.
Dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda became a more precise purpose for the Western Intelligence Services, instead of the previous absurd formula of the Bush Administration of facing global terrorism, that throw nulls results. The task stopped being strategic information, to make way to tactical information. This allowed to monitor a specific objective. To understand why Americans lost so much time in finding Public Enemy Number One, we must go back to 1950 when the CIA created the Office of National Estimates, on behalf analyzing and predicting the behavior of the world, and its effect on the national security of the United States. It turns out that never predicted anything useful, could not even advance the dissolution of the Soviet Unión, or the end of Cold War.
When the Berlin Wall fell, I was watching the event from the living room of my house in Warsaw. It turns out that a month earlier I had sent to my General Director to Prensa Latina Agency, for which I was working by the time, on the possibility of the disappearance of the socialist community in Europe, arguing on the subject. It was an internal memorándum, otherwise a news ítem would have being blocked inmediately. I should say I have never seen myself as an analyst, but a compiler of information as a journalist, and solely that role lead to some conclusion by the nose. Fall of the Steel Telon threatened directly the CIA funds, when Gorbachev was talking about perestroika and glasnot and the European comunist bloc was doomed in an implosion.
Mourners among the ranks of the American spies, were sure that the money would swell the budgets of other entities also in charge of espionage and state terrorism, according an American journalist who I met in India. It was for sure that Agency was finished, not only for the above reasons, but because was always below its own legend. Then a new enemy appeared on the horizon, the global jihadist terrorism, and made the Agency necessary again.
Obama decide to send a team of 23 Navy Seal in two Black Hawk helicopters, when tested that the resident of Abbottabad was Bin Laden. The move went well. Not only did he get rid of his enemy, but the operative achieve an inmortalize success in films and bestsellers, and the campaign for a second term was reinforced with his appearance before de press, as a leader with iniciative in the most critical moment of his first term. This became a good reason to promise his electorate the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and to give his Pakistani allied carte blanche in the neighboring territory when American soldiers left. The CIA was also favored in cleaning its bad image, when obtaining its greatest triumph in the war against Al Qaeda.
Intelligence reports from several countries pointed out that the remnants of OBL in his terrorist organization, had only forged a handful of attacks since he was transfer to Abbottabad. But Washington must continue to consider him an enemy, if it had been said that it was not operational or had little weight in the structure, there would have been no moral reason for the assault or kill him, and that's why was necessary to post going back and forth to justify the oficial story. Other issues known later, refers to the "so important documents and electronic material" recovered by the Command in Abbotabad. The attributed importance to this archives was looking for leverage the theory that Al Qaedas's leader was like a spider, that stretched its web from the conspiratorial center of its residence in Pakistan. A 2012, report from the West Point Center for Combating Terrorism, made it clear that nothing supported this dangerous contact with the outside world.
The Pakistanis agreed to install an American team in the Tarbela Ghazi base, to coordinate activity before and during the asault. As a mesure of pressure to ensure there would be no last-minute regrets, Americans delayed the delivery of 18 new G-16 aircarft and suspended money allocated to Pakistan's in military and Intelligence fields. It seems the attackers found no resistance on their way to the compound when Pakistani guards left as soon as they heard the rotors of the helicopters, as it was agreed. The bedroom of Bin Laden, on the third floor, second door on the right, was difficult to reach, but the Command knew it in advance, they should knock down two armored doors to get the target, although it was reported that this stumbling block was "unexpected".
In the oficial version, OBL was armed and used his woman as a shield. It was reported also that the soldier who shot him down said alleged "sel-defense". All these was a misleading story, to sorround his death with impunity. Years ago, the Arab press had leaked their health problems, on the other hand, an indiscreet photo of his bedroom filtered after the attack, showed the AK-47 hanging on the wall above the bed. This rifle was carried by him as an amulet since he escape of death miraculously, during a bombardment in Afghanistan. The soldiers were also elite, so how could anyone believe that they were not able of reducing it without killling him? As hoxes intensified, immediatly after the assault, Pentagon had no choice but to admit that the target was not armed and that the women did not serve as human shields. The official story was wafting everywhere, and the contradictions came to light, the most terrible, perhaps, that he had died without resistance.
Hersh claims in his book that the much publicized live broadcast of the operation, supossedly seen by Obama and other senior officials of his Administration, never took place, the SEALS did not charge Cameras on their helmets. The story of some soldiers invading Pakistani airspace without ground or air cover, whata made the mission seem suicidal, even descending on the housing complex, which should therefore be protected, and running all this without support of the Pakistanis, was falling to pieces. The operation was carried out in a country, which was not any country, but one of the most important allies of the US in Asia, who could believe all this?
The direct participants and rest of the Joint Special Operations Command, were forced to sign a confidentiality agreement not to mention in public or in private, but nevertheless, two members of the Command, involved in the assault, wrote about the issue or gave interviews. Matt Bissonnette, in his book No Easy Day, in 2012, and two years later, Rob O'Neill, in a meeting with Fox News, claimed the fatal shot an recounted five dead: Bin Laden, a brother and a son, one of his women an one of his personal emails. These two soldiers held the official version for the account that it brings and no known reprisal was taken against them.
The official version got even more into their lies. US authorities reported that it was thrown into the sea after a ceremony to the Muslim use, from a Navy ship near Yalalabad, in the northern Arabian Sea. To justify why no member of the crew gave evidence of such a ceremony, the Pentagon added that they had not been allowed to attend the funeral, leaving aside the clarification of who was in charge of cleaning the body and its shrouding, as well as the one in charge of throwing the body into the sea, all important things within the ritual. Two advisers from the Special Operations Command told Hersh that the remains were sent to Afghanistan, but other versión linked to SEALs, pointed they themselves threw the corpse into the Hindu Kush as the helicopter move away from the scene.
The death of Bin Laden had a scant operational impact on the functioning of other jihadist organizations, but it negatively affected the structure he led. Apart from the affiliated or non-Al Qaeda, such as those of the Arabian Peninsula, the Maghreb and Iraq, independent cells and even the so-called solitary, sel-radicalized Wolves, have taken center stage after decide to attempt on their own. Analysts believe that had not the Black Hawk, which forced Obama to rush the news with a speech prepared at the last moment, everything that happened, could have been covered with the version originally planed by Americans and Pakistanís. As Aristotle said, the total truth is never reached, neither is it totally removed.
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