Life of Osama bin laden
Osama bin Laden's secret personal
diary, seized during the US Navy Seals
raid on his house in Abbottabad on
May 2, 2011, that ended with his killing,
offers an insight into the mind of
someone who was once one of the
world's most wanted men.
In the al-Qaeda documents, bin Laden
comes across as an engaged
commentator reacting to current
events, not a strategic thinker taking
part in shaping and influencing those
events from his hideout.
In the tranche of documents released
by the US Central Intelligence Agency
on November 1, bin Laden shows no
global vision or strategy.
The dominant theme of the secret
journal is its dissection of the revolts of
the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, with
bin Laden offering little more than
commentaries and analyses.
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On Libya, for example, he discussed the
decision of the longtime ruler
Muammar Gaddafi of attacking the
rebels who were trying to topple his
government.
Bin Laden expressed apprehension that
Gaddafi might be able to defeat the
rebels and emerge victorious.
On a different page, he discussed the
possibility of Gaddafi winning the war
and of the "hypocritical" West opting to
normalise their relations with him.
The Libyan uprising
In the case of Libya, bin Laden was
hopeful that the rebels would
eventually win.
"The difference between the revolts in
Libya, Tunisia and Egypt is that Libya
has opened the door for the Mujahedin
[to operate in] where as it would take
years to have that in Tunisia and
Egypt," he wrote.
For bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the
disintegration of nation states, chaos
and state failure represented a fertile
ground to exploit and establish their
foothold on.
In the case of Yemen, however, bin
Laden expressed reservation that the
impoverished Arabian Peninsula
country was moving too fast towards its
revolution, arguing from the
perspective that the Yemeni people are
still not ready for such a step.
"We need to think for a long time about
Yemen," he wrote.
"Yemen needs at least six months more
to raise the awareness of the public.
"Keeping the country in unstable is the
best environment to spread the ideas of
al-Qaeda and Islam."
Bin Laden suggested that al-Qaeda
could speed things up Yemen by
"assassinating the Yemeni president",
Ali Abdullah Saleh, who later was
deposed.
In his secret journal, bin Laden does
not offer deeper insights into the events
he was commenting on so extensively.
People who knew bin Laden personally
during his days in Afghanistan say that
the man was neither a religious scholar
nor an Islamic thinker.
"Bin Laden was a pious rich
businessman who committed himself
and his fortune to the cause of jihad as
he understood it," a source, who knew
bin Laden personally during the 1990s
but declined to give his name,
"Because of this background, bin Laden
was more of a spiritual inspiration for
hardened jihadists than a religious
scholar or an ideological thinker.
"He was a practical man who was more
concerned with the day-to-day
operations of the al-Qaeda organisation
in Afghanistan, similar to the way he
ran his businesses before he embarked
on his quest for jihad."
Biographical question
The diary, written in Arabic, contains
exchanges and questions between bin
Laden and of his sons each time.
It starts off with a biographical
question, presumably by one of his
sons about when he thought about
"jihad" for the first time in his life.
He said he thought about "jihad" when
he was in high school.
"I was influenced by the general
environment [in the country] as any
individual at home and at school and in
the street. I was religious by nature. I
always prayed since I was young."
He also described his first encounter
with the West during a visit to Britain
that took place un 1969 when he was 13
years old.
'Degenerate and immoral'
The impression of the West that he
came away with was one of "degenerate
and immoral" social life.
"Because of that I decided to never go
back to the West, because no
religiously committed person should go
there."
He spoke about a revolt in Sudan, but
he spoke about the Sudanese "high
peaceful tendencies", meaning that they
were not prone to revolutions or rising
up against the government.
On Saudi Arabia, he estimated that "it
will only take six months to fall",
adding that "it is important that Jordan
falls before Saudi Arabia" does.
The secret journal indicates that bin
Laden predictably did not think highly
of the American government.
But what comes as a surprise is that he
regarded it in the same way he viewed
authoritarian Arab governments.
From bin Laden's standpoint, the US
government was "the head of the
snake": once you had cut it, the Arab
regimes would lose their protector and
sponsor and then fall.
That was perhaps why he chose to
attack America on September 11, 2001,
not the Arab regimes he sought to
dismantle.
It is clear that he, and al-Qaeda as a
whole, underestimated the US response
to the 9/11 attacks.
One of bin Laden's former close
confidants told Al Jazeera that bin
Laden and al-Qaeda thought America
would just do its usual bombing runs
against their camps in Afghanistan, but
not go as far as invading the country
and occupying it.
"The invasion of Afghanistan was a total
disaster for us," said the confidant, who
spent years with bin Laden in
Afghanistan but now lives in his native
country in the Middle East
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