Osama Is Winning The War; Iain Macwhirter; BELIEVES THE WEST'S

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Feb 16, 2003 | by Iain Macwhirter

OLD greybeard is back. After months of denial, even the White House seems now to accept that Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, mastermind of 9/11, is alive and well and living in the Gulf where he is apparently to become a war commentator for al-Jazeera, the Arab CNN. In the week when Hans Blix refused to hand America a licence for war, this is desperate news for George W Bush, who famously promised to get bin Laden "dead or alive".

But bin Laden's re-emergence is bad news for all of us. It shows that the real war against terrorism - the destruction of the al- Qaeda network - has failed after a year and a half in which the combined police and intelligence forces of the West have been devoted to tracking him down.

Bin Laden has, it seems, escaped the hyperbaric bombs and daisy cutters in Tora Bora and is now being protected by one of the minor Gulf states or Pakistan, where many of the Taliban sought refuge after the fall of Kabul.

But the last place the world's most wanted terrorist is likely to be found is in Baghdad, which makes you wonder why we are going to start a war there. While the West has been tearing itself apart over Iraq, bin Laden has been quietly regrouping. He has become a popular hero in the Middle East and is taking over from Che Guevara as the T- shirt icon of the Third World.

But let's be clear: he is no people's hero. He is a religious fanatic, with no respect for human life, who would willingly take the Middle East back to the Dark Ages. Osama bin Laden is a ruthless murderer, leading a vicious suicide sect, which poses the greatest threat to our life and liberty since the end of the Cold War. But because of America's obsession with Saddam Hussein, the real enemy of the West, and the states who have been harbouring him, have evaded justice.

Tony Blair and George W Bush have played right into Osama bin Laden's hands. To test this proposition, ask yourselves this question: right now, what would the al-Qaeda leader most like America to do - apart, that is, from give his tape messages global coverage? The answer is launch a pre-emptive military strike against an Arab state in order to commandeer its oil fields and replace its government with a pro-American regime. We have hugely boosted Osama bin Laden's legitimacy by confirming his propaganda.

Looked at from the Palestinian refugee camps, Iraq seems like the ultimate in Western hypocrisy. Here we have Western powers going to war against an Arab state over violation of UN resolutions when Israel has violated UN resolutions with impunity. It has united the entire Arab world in condemnation. America and Britain may even go to war in defiance of the UN and international law, now that Hans Blix has failed to hand them the "smoking gun". The attempt to spin the contents of the Blix report before publication backfired when the UN inspector revealed that he was making progress towards disarming Saddam. France won unprecedented applause at the UN assembly by appealing for peace.

This war has been badly handled from the start, even more so than Kosovo. With dodgy dossiers and dubious propaganda, the West has undermined its case for attacking Iraq as a proxy for al-Qaeda. The normally sensible Secretary of State, Colin Powell, scored an extraordinary own goal last week when he leapt upon the bin Laden tape as justification for American policy. It is precisely the reverse. Last week's taped message - assuming it is genuine - confirms the worst fears of those who questioned the wisdom of the British-American posture against Iraq. We have helped forge precisely that alliance between a rogue state and al-Qaeda which we were supposed to be trying to prevent. It is a strategic blunder of epic scale.

Bin Laden and Saddam had little in common, except a vague commitment to pan-Arabism and a hatred of Israel. Saddam Hussein is a secular dictator who fought a bloody war, with US backing, against the Ayatollahs of Iran. He has a long history of persecuting Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq.

Even now, there is little love lost between Osama and Saddam. In the tape produced by Colin Powell last week, bin Laden dismisses Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party as "infidels" and "socialists" who could never enter the kingdom of heaven.

However, that doesn't mean al-Qaeda cannot join forces with the infidels in fighting the "Great Satan". The tape had bin Laden expressing support for the people of Iraq in their resistance to America's "crusade" against Islam. He advised on how to cause trouble for the enemy, by resorting to close combat in mountains and city streets.

This does not mean that Saddam and Osama are now kissing cousins. It is rather a case of my enemy's enemy is my friend. That is something we should have no difficulty understanding. Winston Churchill entered an alliance with Stalin against Germany in the second world war, but that didn't mean that the British Prime Minister had become a Bolshevik.

There is still no formal link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi dictator. However, it is impossible to ignore the evidence that Saddam has now found common cause with the Mullahs in resisting an American invasion. Iraq is no doubt keen to learn whatever the terrorists can teach it about fighting a superpower. Which is quite a lot, since many of the al-Qaeda terrorists are veteran Mujahidin who were coached by America in how to fight off the Russians in Afghanistan.