Foreign Policy In Focus

Osama bin Laden's demise raises many moral, legal, political, and historical questions. As I've edited and posted a steady stream of commentary about this post-9/11 milestone, one persistent editorial question has touched on all these issues.

Specifically, which verbs are appropriate for conveying what U.S. Special Forces did to carry out their mission after they burst into the al-Qaeda leader's Pakistani compound? Did they simply kill bin Laden? Murder him? Assassinate him? Execute him?

Most Americans consider Osama bin Laden a dangerous and evil man. With so many of us feeling that the world is better off without him, few are questioning the legality of the operation that ended his life. As a former New Yorker who lives in Arlington, VA, it's easy for me to relate. I was already at work in a downtown DC newsroom on September 11, 2001 when those planes flew into the twin towers and the Pentagon, and several years earlier my daily commute required me to change trains underneath the World Trade Center. I still wince whenever I glance at the Manhattan skyline. Yet, as an editor committed both to accuracy and to speaking truth to power, I need to probe this issue carefully.

One of the dictionary definitions of assassination is "to murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons." The Saudi-born terrorist certainly was killed at home, and he was killed for reasons that could easily be described as "political." However, Merriam-Webster defines "murder" as "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought." That's more problematic because it raises another question: did the U.S. government commit a crime by killing bin Laden?

To read the rest of the story, visit Other Words.

We're honored to have Michael Busch dissecting the latest WikiLeaks document dump for Focal Points. This is the fifty-second in the series.

The story of Yasser Talal Al Zahrani offers one of the most mysterious, and ultimately tragic, narratives in the “Gitmo Files” published by WikiLeaks this past week. The son of “a senior official in the Saudi Interior Ministry, reportedly holding the rank of abid, or brigadier,” the seventeen-year-old al Zahrani reportedly left home, having just completed the eleventh grade, “after hearing that sheiks from neighboring [sic throughout] towns were saying jihad in Afghanistan (AF) was a religious duty.”

He first travelled to Karachi, Pakistan, financing “the trip himself with saving he had earned selling perfumes to hajj pilgrims.” In Karachi, al Zahrani hooked up with a man named Saria al Makki, who travelled with him to Konduz, Afghanistan.

In Konduz, detainee was taken to a place called the Taliban Center. He spent one month training under an individual named Khair Allah on the use of the Kalishnikov rifle, the Makarov pistol, hand grenades, and in field training. The detainee was then assigned a guard position at a second line post between Konduz and Taloqan. 

The American Taliban fighter, John Walker Lindh, remembered Abu Ammar distinctly, in part because he was little more than a kid when they fought together in Afghanistan.

Lindh identified detainee as Abu Ammar from Saudi Arabia. He further stated that detainee was one of the youngest, which is why he stood out. Lindh stated detainee was approximately seventeen years old and was always joking and talking. Detainee…was involved in foo services. Detainee was always at front line base camps…

When the front line crumbled under the pressure of American fire power, “the group retreated to Konduz where coalition forces surrounded them.” Lindh reported that while there, al Zahrani “helped in a kitchen of an Arab guesthouse (as a cook) in Konduz after fleeing from the front lines.” Just over a week later, Konduz fell, and al Zahrani’s group cut a deal with the Northern Alliance, “Allowing fighters to leave with their weapons and travel to Mazar-E-Sharif, AF, where they would surrender.” What happened then is a bit confused, but the report notes that

On the eleventh day of Ramadan, the fighters traveled to Mazar-E-Sharid where they turned in their weapons and were taken to the Qala-I-Jangi prison. The day after they arrived at the prison, detainee and others were taken to a square in the prison yard. Detainee heard gunfire and explosions coming from the prison and then a firefight ensued injuring detainee in the leg and foot. He fell to the ground and remained in the same position until nightfall, when other prisoners retrieved him and carried him back to the underground prison. They remained there for seven days before they were forced to surrender. 

A month later, he was turned over to the American forces, and processed to Guantanamo Boy shortly thereafter.

From what can be gathered in al Zahrani’s assessment, he was quite a handful. In the five years he spent in Guantanamo, Abu Ammar racked up over one hundred disciplinary infraction reports detailing all manner of disruptive incidents, including

assault, failure to follow instructions/camp rules, using provoking words and gestures with the guards, threatening the life of a guard, damage to property, inciting a disturbance, exposing himself to guards, possession of both weapon and non-weapon type contraband, and cross block talking. The detainee had twelve reports of disciplinary infraction for assault in 2005. The detainee’s most recent assault was committed on 13 November 2005 when he punched a guard in the jaw upon being returned to his cell. The detainee has numerous cases of verbal harassment and threats towards guards…The detainee was a major participant in the voluntary total fast of 2005-2006. The detainee has notes of conducting PT, to include combative type training, and at least twice has taunted guards claiming to want to fight. On 11 July 2005, detainee told a guard that he would use a knife to cut his stomach open, cut his face off, and then drink his blood, smiling and laughing as he said it.

Major General Jay Hood, who authored the report, determined that al Zahrani’s antics were enough to keep him held indefinitely in Gitmo detention, despite the fact that the Saudi was basically of no use to al Qaeda or the Taliban, much less the United States Government.

No reporting indicates detainee served in a leadership or operational planning capacity….detainee’s exposure to the jihadist element in Afghanistan is unremarkable and less than many other detainees. The information detainee is assessed to know about the Taliban and events in Qala-I-Jangi is limited beyond what he has already provided. It is assessed the intelligence to be exploited from detainee is limited, and it would probably be dated and not tactically or strategically critical…most reporting indicates detainee was probably the average mujahid…

As it turns out, while al Zahrani may have been the average mujahid, he made a name for himself at Guantanamo for being one of four inmates to successfully commit suicide. Three months after the assessment was conducted by Hood, al Zahrani and two other detainees simultaneously killed themselves in their cells. According to the Washington Post,

Zahrani, in Cell A-8, was the first detainee to raise concern among guards. One guard passed his cell and thought the silhouette under his sheets looked too small. When guards inspected further, they found the sheet concealing random items and Zahrani hanging from a noose in the darkness… Some of the guards were "very emotional," according to the report [on the suicides]. "I feel that the guards and myself on Alpha block did an inadequate job monitoring the detainees that night to make sure that they were following the rules as to show some kind of skin while sleeping," said one guard, who name was redacted from the documents.

Inadequacy was only the tip of the iceberg. An investigation later demonstrated that

guards had become lax on certain rules because commanders wanted to reward the more compliant detainees, giving them extra T-shirts, blankets and towels. Detainees were allowed to hang such items to dry, or to provide privacy while using the toilet, but were not supposed to be able to obscure their cells while sleeping.

Guards told officials that it was not unusual to see blankets hanging in the cells and that they did not think twice when they passed several cells on the night of June 9, 2006, with blankets strung through the wire mesh. Authorities believe the men probably hanged themselves around 10 p.m., but they were not discovered until shortly after midnight on June 10.

How al Zahrani was able to get his hands on all this good-behavior swag given his extensive list of misdemeanors was never explained. What is clear, however, is that al Zahrani was slated for release at the very moment he decided to take his own life. “Zahrani, according to Guantanamo records, was next on the ‘Saudi DMO’ list, which meant he was imminently going to be part of a “Detainee Movement Operation” that would have transferred him to Saudi Arabia's reintegration program and ultimately to freedom.”  He was twenty-one years old.

The killing of Al-Qaeda founder and leader Osama bin Laden is not likely to have a profound impact one way or the other in the struggle against the terrorist organization and its allied groupings. On the one hand, Al-Qaeda may face a potential leadership void and internal divisions. On the other hand, the organization has decentralized in the ten years since the United States and allied forces drove them from their sanctuaries in Afghanistan and terrorist cells operate independently from bin Laden’s leadership and a whole new generation of terrorists subscri bing to the apocalyptic and genocidal ideology has sprung up as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The good news, however, is that Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups have been seriously weakened in recent months. Indeed, far more significant than bin Laden’s death has been the nonviolent pro-democracy insurrections that have been sweeping the Arab world in that they are empowering civil society, instilling hope, and creating models of governance that are much less likely to breed terrorists.

Bin Laden always insisted that only through subscri bing to his apocalyptic reactionary ideology and genocidal methods could Muslim peoples overthrow oppressive and corrupt U.S.-backed Arab dictatorships. Indeed, his first attack against U.S. interests was a residential compound of U.S. soldiers training the repressive Saudi internal security forces back in 1995. However, bin Laden and his followers never came close to overthrowing any Arab regime. Most Arabs found his methods not only morally reprehensible, but recognized how he gave dictatorial governments an excuse to crack down even harder against all dissent. Instead, millions of Middle Easterners are recognizing that – as did Filipinos, Poles, Chileans, Serbs and others before them – that strategic nonviolent action is far more powerful and effective. The masses calling for freedom, liberty, and social justice directly counter bin Laden’s medieval visions of a theocratic dictatorship to which very few Muslims aspire.

The sense of triumphalism and celebration of  bin Laden’s death is inappropriate, though, in many respects, the Obama administration handled the situation well. Any killing of a prominent leader by hostile forces could conceivably cause a backlash – and, ideally, it would have been better had he been captured and tried in an international tribunal – but the circumstances of his death will hopefully minimize any anti-American reaction.

Bin Laden was killed in a gun battle, not as a result of assassination by an anonymous drone launched in a control center thousands of miles away. Despite formal denials by both sides, there was clearly some cooperation with Pakistani authorities, so it was not a unilateral American operation. It appears that there were no civilian casualties. Bin Laden was buried in accordance with Muslim ritual, rather than having his body unceremoniously displayed in a propaganda show.

How this contrasts with the policies of Bush administration: If there was any logic to the madness of 9/11, it was the hope that the United States would overreact and launch massive ground invasions of Middle Eastern countries, like the Soviets did in Afghanistan a generation later. Bin Laden knew that the inevitable large-scale killings of civilians and blatant neo-imperialist agenda inherent in such ill-fated efforts would radicalize a whole new generation of extremists to bin Laden’s cult-like heresy in the name of Islam. Bush fell right into his trap, naively believing that a decentralized network of underground terrorist cells could be destroyed through high-altitude bom bing, and sending U.S. forces into fighting bloody counter-insurgency wars in Islamic countries with a long tradition of resistance to foreign invaders.

To Obama’s credit, he recognized the folly of the invading Iraq, correctly noting that unilaterally taking over a country that was no threat to us and had absolutely no operational ties to Al-Qaeda would be a major distraction from the fight against an organization that really was a threat. Ironically, however, most of his key appointments to relevant positions in his administrations were supporters of the illegal and unnecessary war: Joe Biden as vice-president; Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State; Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense; Janet Napolitano as Secretary for Homeland Security; Richard Holbrooke as special advisor for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Dennis Ross as special advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia; among others. His willingness to appoint people who clearly had difficulty distinguishing real threats from phantom threats raised serious questions regarding whether he really took the threat from Al-Qaeda seriously.

However, the final demise of Osama bin Laden appears to have come not through the indiscriminate use of force against entire nations, but through a well-planned precisely-targeted paramilitary operation based upon solid intelligence painstakingly gathered over many months.

(Ironically, it appears that  bin Laden could have been caught soon after 9/11. Pakistani and British newspapers reported that in the weeks after the attack that leaders of Pakistan’s two Islamic-identified parties negotiated a deal that could have avoided war. According to these reports, the Taliban would have extradited bin Laden to Pakistan to face an international tribunal that would then decide whether to try him or hand him over to the United States. However, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain pressured that country’s military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, to kill the deal. An American official was later quoted saying that “casting our objective too narrowly” risked “a premature collapse of the international effort if by some luck chance Mr. bin Laden was captured.” In short, the United States actually preferred going to war than bringing bin Laden to justice.)

Similarly, improved intelligence and interdiction, com bined with breaking up the financial networks that supplied Al-Qaeda operatives, have done far more the prevent another 9/11-type attack than military operations.

Ultimately, the way to stop the threat of the kind of mega-terrorism that came to America’s shores nearly ten years ago is not simply through killing terrorists but in ending policies that help create them. As most Muslims long recognized, bin Laden was never an authority on Islam. He was, however, a businessman by training who – like any shrewd businessman – knew how to take a popular fear or desire and use it to sell a product: in this case, anti-American terrorism. The grievances expressed in his manifestoes – the ongoing U.S. military presence in the Middle East, the humanitarian consequences of the U.S. policy in Iraq, U.S. support for the Israeli government, and U.S. backing of autocratic Arab regimes – have widespread appeal in that part of the world. Even if only a tiny percentage of Muslims accept bin Laden’s ideology and tactics, it will be enough to replenish the ranks of Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups as long as the United States continues to pursue such misguided policies.

At Wired's Danger Room, David Axe and Noah Shactman wrote of Osama bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. Special Operations: "Depending on which version is true, Pakistan either had a direct role in the risky, bloody raid … or no role at all." More to the point:

The crash occurred near the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbottabad, according to the report, highlighting Bin Laden's long-term proximity to Pakistan government forces — and thus the great extent of his local protection.

In other words, the size of the compound alone meant its inhabitants must have been known to the Pakistani authorities, yet they weren't the source of the information leading to the attack on the compound.

Meanwhile MSNBC reports: "The U.S. was conducting DNA testing and used facial recognition techniques to help formally identify him, Reuters reported. Results of the DNA tests were expected to be available in the next few days." From another report: "ABC News just reported that the government used a DNA sample from the brain of a deceased bin Laden sister held by a Boston hospital to match the DNA from bin Laden's body."

Which presumably is why the rumor arose that he was killed earlier in the week and the news withheld until the body was identified. Whatever the case, burying bin Laden's body at sea limits the number of people who saw the dead body. It fuels those who stand ready to make the case he wasn't really killed perhaps because they think he was/is a CIA asset. Nor did Al-Arabiya TV help when it ran a Photoshopped image superimposing mortal injuries on a photo of bin Laden taken when he was alive.

Meanwhile, for those who fear a bout of blowback, it might be time to duck and cover, if you believe disclosures in the latest WikiLeaks dump. From the International Business Times

Shortly after 9/11, Al Qaeda had warned to set off a "nuclear hellstorm" if Osama bin Laden is ever captured or killed, according to U.S. government documents that were leaked just last month by Wikileaks.

Wikileaks' files show that al Qaeda's senior leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was detained and interrogated, had spilled the beans that the terrorist group had, indeed, hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe and that it would be detonated if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed.

While this is, no doubt, bravado, it does highlight an opportunity missed. If we were able to bring bin Laden back alive, we might have extracted information from him about his attempts to secure nuclear-weapons -- the know-how, the technology, and the fuel. No, of course not through torture -- conceivably it might have been something he'd have wanted to brag about.

Sure, coaxing bin Laden out of his compound might have been unrealistic because it would have required rustling up all his wives, children, and grandchildren that could be found, lining them up outside his compound, and threatening to kill them. Naturally, we wouldn't, but it would have been up to him to call our bluff. From the viewpoint of those concerned with nuclear terrorism, something along those lines might have been worth trying.

We're honored to have Michael Busch dissecting the latest WikiLeaks document dump for Focal Points. This is the forty-ninth in the series.

Of all the Gitmo detainee assessments published thus far by WikiLeaks, none comes more ready-made for the big screen than that of Adil Hadi al-Jaza’ire Bin Hamlili.  The Algerian terrorist’s story is the stuff of pulpy spy thrillers, replete with sociopathic violence, double-dealings and a mystery ending that will leave readers squirming in their seats. 

Bin Hamlili’s personal narrative is a breathtaking account of a young man’s rearing on the battlefields of Afghanistan during the period of Russian occupation. It began with an epic, roundabout journey across North Africa, through the Middle East, and ultimately to Central Asia. Around 1986,

At approximately eleven years of age, detainee left Algeria and headed to Afghanistan with his father, his brother, detainee’s second cousin…and another associate names Abu Bakr Muhammad Boulghiti…Detainee’s father was committed to dawa (missionary work) and decided to go to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union…

They travelled for three months across the desert through Burkina Faso to Mali where they stayed at a mosque for almost nine months. Their vehicle and all their goods were stolen by thieves and they were forced to obtain new passports and health cards from the United Nations (UN). His father told the UN representatives that they were Moroccans in order to obtain new identity cards. With their paperwork in order they continued on their way to Afghanistan via Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Eventually, they were taken to a guesthouse of Osama bin Laden. Bin Hamlili was pressed into service immediately. “Detainee attended training at the nearby Sada, PK camp several times between 1986 and 1991…Detainee fought against the Soviets and the Soviet-backed Afghan regime beginning in 1986, at the age of eleven.” From there, bin Hamlili fought with a number of jihadi groups, ultimately leading the “Khalifa Group in Peshawar, a Takfir group established to engage militant combat in Algeria.”

The experience impacted bin Hamlili profoundly, leading him to ultimately embrace a fundamentalist ideology excessive by even extremist standards.

Detainee has admitted to killing another al-Qaida operative to enforce an extremist interpretation of Sharia law...Detainee murdered al-Qaida member Asadullah al-Sindhi and al-Sindhi’s wife in 1997. Al-Sindhi was [bin Laden’s] commercial representative to Pakistan and the brother of Abdallah al-Sindhi. Detainee’s Takfiri beliefs were his primary justification  for this assassination. Detainee killed al-Sindhi because he married a woman within one month of her divorce, instead of waiting four months as required by Sharia, or Islamic law.

Far from suffering punishment at the hands of al Qaeda for the murder of bin Laden’s man in Pakistan, bin Hamlili rapidly rose to prominence in the organization, taking on increased responsibilities and building an impressive resume of murder and intrigue.  He served as bin Laden’s courier to al Qaeda operatives, “arranging money transfers, procuring visas and identity cards, and performing other duties” for agents conducting terrorist operations. He reportedly became a close associate of Midhat al-Sayyid Umar, a “poison and explosives expert who helped train the perpetrators of the 2000 terrorist attack against the USS Cole in Yemen.” He is also believed by some to be “Abu Adil, the leader of a militant cell that was responsible for attacks on multiple civilian targets in Pakistan in 2002.” The list of alleged associations, acts of terror and other disturbing dealings goes on and on, becoming nearly monotonous until we learn that bin Hamlili was involved in an attempt

to transfer stolen nuclear material to al-Qaida, the Khalifa Group and the governments of Iraq and Sudan. In 1995, Muhammad Shah, a close associate of detainee (with whom detainee was captured), attempted to sell uranium and red mercury to detainee, al-Qaida senior military commander Abu Hafs al-Masri…the Iraqi government, and the Khalifa Group. The Khalifa Group also subsequently offered the red mercury to the Sudanese government.

No dummy, bin Hamlili “did not accept the offer and was not sure if the material was genuine.” As the report itself notes, “red mercury is a fictitious material advertised as a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, high explosives, and missile guidance systems. It has been associated with hoax attempts to sell the material.” 

In any event, the most intriguing details offered by the report surround bin Hamlili’s role as a spy. The assessment reveals that bin Hamlili served the Taliban as an intelligence officer. Trouble is, the Taliban wasn’t the only government employing the Algerian in this capacity.  The report notes that bin Hamlili was in fact a triple-agent, working simultaneously for the Canadian and British intel services as well, noting that “in December 2000 detainee was recruited as HUNINT source for the CSIS [Canadian intelligence] and the BSIS [British intelligence] because of his connections to members of various al-Qaida linked terrorist groups that operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Detainee was a HUMINT source until his capture by Pakistani authorities in June 2003.” Not only that, but the Americans came to believe that bin Hamlili was double-crossing both agencies: “the CIA, after numerous custodial interviews with detainee, found detainee to have withheld important information from the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service (CSIS) and British Secret Intelligence Service (BSIS) (for whom he served as a HUMINT source).”

Stop right there. If the report is correct to suggest that bin Hamlili was on the books of both CSIS and BSIS between 2000 and 2003, then serious questions need to be asked concerning the degree to which the British and Canadian governments were bankrolling the very crimes with which American authorities were charging bin Hamlili and detaining him at Guantanamo Bay. These questions, of course, were not asked by the report’s author. Instead, the report closes by reiterating the judgment that bin Hamlili posed a high risk to American security, and therefore needed to be detained indefinitely.

Except he wasn’t. Despite the fact that bin Hamlili “has made statements to [Gitmo] personnel indicating his intent to kill US citizens upon his eventual release,” he was returned to Algeria in 2010 in perhaps the creepiest twist to bin Hamlili’s tale. Where bin Hamlili is today is anyone’s guess. According to the Miami Herald, bin Hamlili was sent home with another Gitmo detainee, though the government’s announcement of the transfer “did not make clear whether the men went home as free men or were to be held by Algerian authorities for further trial or investigation.” The former scenario, given bin Hamlili’s history, is frightening enough.

But the latter possibility is equally disturbing. “Two other Algerians previously held at Guantanamo were granted asylum in France after their attornies argued successfully that the men feared a return to their homeland, which has struggled with militant Muslim extremist movements.” Given bin Hamlili’s membership and critical participation in precisely these movements, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that he is currently being held in detention no more forgiving than that on offer at Guantanamo Bay, and no less reprehensible.