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Either the al-Qaeda leader
is running out of things to say or his message isn't
cutting it because his most recent message, which
appeared on 23 October in an audio recording posted on
Islamist websites, renews a call for a holy war against
a proposed peacekeeping force in Darfur and urges
Muslims in countries that neighbour Iraq to join the
battle and intensify the fight against U.S.-led forces.
Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, also called for
jihad in Darfur in a 20 September video message, and bin
Laden himself called on followers in an audio recording
in 2006 to go to Sudan to fight a proposed U.N. force
there.
Clearly, bin Laden et al are banking on the fact that
many Muslims are woefully ignorant of what's happening
in Darfur.
By trying to portray a joint U.N.-African peacekeeping
force planned for Sudan's war-torn region as the
"Crusader invaders", they are pushing to portray Darfur
as the latest in the long list of Muslim grievances in
which the West/America/ Israel (take your pick) either
invade, attack or occupy Muslim lands. And in the
absence of robust coverage of Darfur in the media of the
Muslim world - but particularly the Arab media - that is
what many Muslims apparently believe.
"It is the duty of the people of Islam in the Sudan and
its environs, especially the Arabian Peninsula, to
perform jihad against the Crusader invaders and wage
armed rebellion to remove those who let them in," bin
Laden said. He referred in his message to talks between
Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, and Saudi officials
who pressed him in March and April meetings to agree to
a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.
But there are no "Zionist conspiracies" or American
machinations over Darfur. Instead, Muslims are killing
Muslims in Darfur and bin Laden's rehashed messages must
be seen as a catalyst not for "jihad" but for
Muslim-on-Muslim violence. More Muslims are today dying
at the hands of Muslims - often those fueled by al-Qaeda
ideology - than the "Crusader invaders".
Recognizing that and saying it loudly in the Muslim
world is an important step in ‘de-fanging' the appeal of
bin Laden's pleas for action.
And the figures speak of that tragic reality - loud and
clear.
Just witness the bombings in Pakistan on 19 October that
killed at least 139 people when twin suicide attackers
tried to kill the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto just
hours after she returned from eight years in
self-imposed exile. On 23 October, the same day that bin
Laden's latest recording was reported, Bhutto received a
death threat from a "friend of al-Qaeda".
Pakistan has been a particularly bloody home of
Muslim-on-Muslim violence lately. At least 350 people -
the majority of them Muslims - have died there in three
months of suicide attacks. I am by no means holding
Muslim life more sacred than that of non-Muslims. I am
instead pointing out the lies at the heart of bin
Laden's messages that consistently portray the Muslim
world as the victim of western aggression. If anyone has
declared war on Muslims, it is al-Qaeda itself and its
followers who are behind those explosions in Pakistan
for example.
According to a chronology compiled by Reuters News
Agency, more than 140 people were killed in about 13
suicide attacks in July after the siege and storming by
security forces of Islamabad's Red Mosque; at least 13
were killed in three attacks in August, and at least 61
were killed in four suicide attacks in September.
For more examples of Muslims killing Muslims look no
further than the Palestinians, for whom bin Laden
sometimes tries to rally the forces but who have been
wise enough to recognise the disaster it would
constitute for their cause should al-Qaeda ever become
its standard bearer. Nevertheless, as it the case with
Pakistan, Palestinian in-fighting has been bloody.
On 24 October, the international human rights group
Amnesty International issued a blistering report
criticizing rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah
for harming civilians in months of infighting that came
to a head in June when Hamas militants defeated pro-Fatah
security forces to take over the Gaza Strip in June. In
a 58-page report titled "Torn apart by factional
strife," Amnesty said about 350 Palestinians were killed
during the first months of 2007 in infighting. Many of
the dead were noncombatants, Amnesty said.
Not all Palestinians are Muslim but it's safe to assume
that most who died in the Hamas-Fatah infighting were.
The particular irony of such intra-Palestinian violence
is that the plight of the Palestinians is a perennial
recruiting tool for violent groups such as al-Qaeda - as
long as that plight is considered a direct result of
Israeli violence and occupation, of course. But what of
Palestinian- on-Palestinian violence?
Al Qaeda and its affiliates usually find plenty of
fuel in Israeli atrocities against Palestinians to
stir up recruits and anger. Needless to say, atrocities
perpetrated by rival Palestinian factions as reported in
the Amnesty report are unlikely to be employed in the
‘Die for Palestine' recruitment drive.
The Associated Press gave examples of such atrocities as
cited in the Amnesty report: a child running to a shop
to buy candy was killed by shrapnel, a young woman
heading to a school exam died from a sniper bullet, and
a peaceful march through Gaza City to demand an end to
the clashes came under fire that killed three civilians.
Hamas and Fatah also killed respective members they held
in captivity and maimed others often by shooting
captives in the shin bones and knees, Amnesty said. In a
particularly gruesome example of how civilians suspected
of loyalty to rival groups were drawn into the conflict,
AP reported the following from the report: pro-Fatah
security forces snatched 35-year-old tiler Husam Abu
Qinas and threw him off a roof, apparently as revenge
after Hamas militants threw a security force official
off a high-rise hours before.
With such bloody and sobering facts, it is
understandable why bin Laden barely mentions Palestine
any more and focuses instead on Darfur.
Iraq - another mainstay of jihadi recruitment - did
feature once more in the al-Qaeda leader's latest
message. "Where are the soldiers of the Levant and
the reinforcements from Yemen? Where are the knights of
Egypt and the lions of Hejaz [region in Saudi Arabia]?
Come to the aid of your brothers in Iraq," bin Laden
said.
Again, Iraq has witnessed the death of hundreds of
thousands of Muslims at the hands of fellow Muslims.
Wahhabi-inspired Sunni Muslim terrorists have
slaughtered Muslim Shiites, whose death squads in turn
executed Sunnis. But Al Qaeda followers have also
clashed with tribesmen and domestic Iraqi Jihadist
groups - more examples of intra-Muslim violence. Bin
Laden was forced to admit that "mistakes" had been made
and called on Sunni insurgents to put aside differences
and unite with his al-Qaeda followers.
His latest message coincided with Iraqi government
reports of a sharp drop in violence following a series
of U.S.-led summer offensives against insurgents, and
reports of those clashes between al Qaeda and rivals.
October is also due to record the second consecutive
decline in U.S. military and Iraqi civilian deaths. But
despite that decline, a significantly higher number of
Iraqis than American soldiers are dying in Iraq - again
because of Muslim-on-Muslim violence.
For
example, 65 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in September. For
Iraqis, the figure was 1, 023. As reports by the
Associated Press have made clear, any significant attack
- by insurgents or civilians caught in the crossfire -
could quickly wipe out the downward trend.
But we must counter bin Laden's insistent focus on
"them" - the West or America or Israel - and shift focus
back to the Muslims who suffer as a result of that
insistence. Muslims must not let themselves be prevented
by bin Laden's "us versus them" message from seeing the
"us versus us" reality, in which most of the victims of
jihadi fighters are actually Muslims.
For those of us in the Muslim world fed up of the bloody
toll of bin Laden's lies, the solution is to highlight,
clearly and unequivocally, who bears the brunt of his
message. |
