Osama bin Laden Research Papers (original) (raw)

Beginning in the 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union, American policy has been more and more based on the faulty premise of the War of Terrorism. At the same time American policy turned to supporting an alliance with India as the only “democracy” (because it has a parliamentary form of government) and an ambiguous relationship towards Pakistan because of its military-controlled government. After 9/11 with President George W. Bush’s decision not only to retaliate against Al Qaeda, but attack as well those regimes that gave shelter to them (in this case the Taliban which took control of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops). Even after the overthrow of the Taliban regime and the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, by Navy SEALs in May 2011, American foreign policy has been to prevent the Taliban from retaking control of Afghanistan from a corrupt, American-installed regime. The United States has an awkward position towards Pakistan, in whose Northwest Frontier region the Taliban has taken refuge. The suspicion that the Pakistan intelligence agency (ISI) continued to support the Taliban and even Al Qaeda was reinforced by the fact that Bin Laden had been living in plain sight in Abbottabad, Pakistan, not far from a Pakistani Military Academy.

With the Pashtuns as a majority in the strategic Pakistani city of Peshawar at the entrance to the Khyber Pass and in the mountainous region of the Northwest Frontier, the Pakistani government felt it necessary to court the Taliban (or at least overlook them) while at the same time supporting Pashtun fighters active in trying to overturn the Indian government in Kashmir. After the defeat of the Soviet Union, the fundamentalist Pashtun group known as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, and the radical Islamist group known as Al Qaeda under Osama Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan after having been forced out of East Africa. Bin Laden viewed the United States as its enemy, first because of its support of Israel and second because it stationed troops in Saudi Arabia during and after the first Iraq War (Desert Storm) in 1990-1991. Al Qaeda planned and executed the two attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993 and 2001. After the second attack the administration of George W. Bush declared war not only on Al Qaeda, but on any regime that gave shelter to Al Qaeda, namely, the Taliban. The Taliban regime was overthrown by an alliance led by the United States and eventually Osama Bin Laden was killed by Navy Seals on a raid of his hideout in plain sight in Pakistan. The Taliban was replaced by a moderate but corrupt Pashtun leader, Hamid Karzai, and the Taliban continued its fight against the new regime from safe havens in the North-West Frontier Provinces of Pakistan.

The United States remains suspect of Pakistan’s motives in Afghanistan. It accuses Pakistan of playing a double-hand in outwardly condemning the Taliban’s use of terrorism and violence against women, as in the attack on the young Pashtun women’s rights activist Malala Yousafzai, while at the same time encouraging Pashtun activists to operate in Kashmir and India (most notably in the 2008 attack in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, India). The problem is not the many Pashtuns adhere to Sharia law; we are willing to accept this from our ally Saudi Arabia. The problem is that the United States again fails to think in terms of the underlying issues of self-determination that have been exploited by Islamist radicals, in this case, the fact that the Pashtun population was intentionally divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to keep them under control. In addition, a legalistic mindset that views any renegotiation of international borders as being off-the-table prevents us from having any negotiated solution to the problem.

The Afghanistan problem cannot be separated from its relationship to Pakistan and from Pakistan’s relationship with India over control of Kashmir. It is the reason why Pakistan has employed Pashtun fighters to undermine Indian control of mostly-Muslim Kashmir and has supported the Taliban sanctuary in the Northwest Frontier Province, while publicly condemning at the same time the Taliban’s actions in enforcing Sharia law. The fact that the Taliban gave sanctuary to Osama Bin Laden helps explain why he was able to hide in plain sight in western Pakistan. Any solution to these problems needs to take into account the fact that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank (one of the motifs for Al Qaeda’s view of the United States as its enemy), the division of the Pashtun ethnic group between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Indian’s control of the mostly Muslim state of Kashmir are inter-related. The United States needs to rethink fundamentally its foreign policy; and instead of trying to defeat the Taliban by military means, we must support an international regional conference to settle these issues by peaceful means based on the principle of self-determination.
The American people and our leaders tend to be ahistorical. Rather than learning from the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, which contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States made the same mistake. Without the support of the Soviet Union, a fundamentalist Pashtun group named the Taliban led by an imam named Mullah Oman overturned the Communist regime imposed by the Soviets in Afghanistan. They gave shelter to the anti-American terrorist organization named Al Qaeda led by the Egyptian exile Osama Bin Laden. Like Adolph Hitler, who published his agenda in Mein Kampf, Bin Laden made known his complaints about the United States in his manifestos. There were two: first that the United States unconditionally supported the State of Israel despite its occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank and second that the United States stationed troops with the approval of the king in Saudi Arabia in order to launch its attack on Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait. While both Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussein were Sunni Muslims, the Saudis saw Hussein’s invasion as a threat to the Saudi oil fields in the Persian Gulf.

Al Qaeda launched several attacks against the United States overseas, but its two attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, and the second attack in 2001 that brought down the twin towers and killed almost 4,000 people was seen as an act of war. President George W. Bush not only declared war on Al Qaeda, he also viewed those countries, namely Afghanistan under the Taliban, that supported Al Qaeda to be enemies as well. In the resultant war, the United States and its allies overturned the Taliban regime and installed a corrupt government led by a pro-American Pashtun leader named Hamid Karzai. The Taliban from its base in the Pashtun province of Kandahar launched an insurgency that has lasted to the present day. Osama Bin Laden escaped first to the Tora Borah region of Afghanistan and from to the Pashtun region of northwestern Pakistan.

The government of Pakistan continued to play a double game in regard to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Its Inter-Service Intelligence organization (ISI) filtered United States aid to the mujaheddin fighting the Soviets and helped organize the Taliban. It made use of Pashtun fighters in its efforts to overthrow the Indian government in the mostly Muslim state of Kashmir. Realizing that its so-called North-West Frontier Province was predominantly Pashtun, Pakistan didn’t want to alienate the Taliban sympathizers there. At the same time, it wanted to court the aid and support of the United States. Eventually, both Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden fled to Pakistan, where Omar died of natural causes and Bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy Seals. The United States remains suspicious of how both were able to hide in plain sight of Pakistani authorities. Both Al Qaeda and the Taliban continue and even expand to the present day.
What the United States continues to forget is that it was Al Qaeda, not the Taliban, that attacked the United States in 2001. While the Taliban is fundamentalist Islamist organization that imposes Sharia law on the people under its control, so is the Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia that is an ally of the United States. Once again, we see how the problems throughout the Middle East and South Asia are interrelated. One issue that motivates much of the anti-American attitude in the region, including Al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center, is our unconditional support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and our military involvement in the region. Another issue is our failure to understand that the Pashtun people were divided by the British-imposed Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The lesson of the Afghan Civil War following the Soviet withdrawal in the early 1990s is that Pashtun, Uzbek, Tajik, and Hazara ethnic groups do not necessarily want to live together in the same country. Any long-time solution to these problems needs to involve the redrawing of political boundaries, not only between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but between Pakistan and India.