'Bin Laden's Plan' For The Saudis & Iraq.

Below is an article by Michael Scheuer out on Jan. 12 by The Jamestown Foundation. (Dr Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is said to be the anonymous author of 'Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America'. Dr Scheuer is a senior fellow with The Jamestown Foundation. Bracketed explanations and the underlining are by APS):

"Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's latest message is one of the richest, most comprehensive and starkly realistic he has issued since...[March 2003]. This essay considers al-Qaeda's dour recognition of its inability to control...events in Iraq as a small vanguard organization and a non-Iraqi presence in the country.

"On December 29, 2007, bin Laden issued a 56-minute statement that addressed Muslim insurgents in Iraq and built on his earlier message from October 22. The new statement was issued via al-Qaeda's media arm, al-Sahab, and appeared on several Internet sites without pre-publication excerpts on al-Jazeera television. Al-Jazeera's editing of the October 22 audiotape distorted bin Laden's message, incorrectly giving the implication that he was saying 'all is lost' for the mujahideen in Iraq. (Al-Jazeera customarily deletes anything critical of the Saudi regime from bin Laden's messages. This occurred in the case of the Oct. 22 tape and al-Qaeda apparently did not want to take a chance on al-Jazeera's penchant for politically correct editing with its most recent message).

"The latest bin Laden tape is - like its October 22 predecessor - pre-eminently a post-Iraq war tape. In both tapes, bin Laden declares that the...[US] recognizes that its Coalition has been militarily defeated in Iraq and predicts that US and other foreign forces will leave.

"Bin Laden does not provide the date US-led forces will withdraw; he focuses...on working with Islamist [Neo-Salafi] insurgents in Iraq to ensure the Americans and their Arab-government allies cannot build a national unity government that is an 'agent to America', dominated by non-Islamists and ready to permit the US basing rights and access to Iraqi oil.

"Because US-led forces have accepted military defeat, bin Laden argues, Washington and its allies must look for other means to prevent the consolidation of an Islamic state in Iraq. 'My talk to you', bin Laden explained, 'is about the plots that are being hatched by the Zionist-Crusader alliance, led by America, in cooperation with its agents in the region, to steal the fruit of the blessed jihad (holy war) in the land of the two rivers, and what we should do to foil these plots'.

History's Lesson: "As always, bin Laden speaks as a product and close observer of the Afghans' jihad against the Soviet Union. In appealing for unity among the Iraqi mujahideen (holy warriors), he makes no demand that they join al-Qaeda and follow its instructions. He points rather to the failure of the Afghan insurgents to consolidate victory after the Red Army's 1989 withdrawal: 'It would be useful here to recall an effort in the past to unify the leaders of the Afghan mujahideen, which includes important lessons that are related to our topic', bin Laden tells the Iraqi fighters in an almost avuncular tone.

"'We had made these efforts with Sheikh Abdullah Azzam [bin Laden's late Palestinian mentor in Afghanistan - and a Salafi ideologue - who died in a road-side bomb in 1989], may God have mercy on him. After months of seeking to achieve unity among [the Afghan leaders] and removing the obstacles that some of them used to claim that they obstruct unity, [but then] after removing these obstacles...they [would] claim that there was another obstacle [preventing unity], and so on and so forth...

"'One of the mujahideen had a strong opinion about these [obstructing] leaders. He was an old wise person who had long experience in life with people. At the time we used to reject his strong-worded statement about them. I will try to convey to you some of what he said.

"'The conclusion is that those leaders are tradesmen who care more about their leadership and give priority to their personal interests over the cause. We used not to believe what he said about them.

"'This has delayed our realization of the sound conception of persons and events [presented by this mujahid]. The harmful consequences of this are no secret...In fact, developments have come to confirm things that we had never expected due to the fact that we were young and lacked experience at the time'".

Riyadh Is The Main Enemy: "Bin Laden urges the Iraqi fighters to heed the lesson of the Afghans' historic post-Soviet debacle because 'the same thing applies to Iraq today'; leaders are more interested in their own power and status than in making Islam and the ummah (Muslim nation or community) victorious.

"And while bin Laden warns that Washington is using promises of money, military training and arms to entice the 'Islamic Party and some fighting groups [to] support America against Muslims', he leaves no doubt that the Islamists' main enemy in Iraq is now Saudi Arabia, not the supposedly militarily defeated United States.

"After the Soviets' withdrawal from Afghanistan, bin Laden reminded the Iraqi fighters that 'America exerted great efforts...to convince the Afghan leaders through the governments of Riyadh and Islamabad to join a national unity government with communists and secularists from the West'. Bin Laden explained that the Saudi regime was then - and is again today in Iraq - the main enemy of the mujahideen:

"'[In post-Soviet Afghanistan] the government of Riyadh sought the help of its unofficial scholars to infiltrate the ranks of the mujahideen. These were influential speakers who incited the people to perform jihad and collect huge funds for the leaders of the mujahideen. At the set time, [the Saudi regime] asked the Afghan leaders to unite with the communists and secularists under the so-called national unity state.

"'[The Saudis] obstructed the plan to achieve unity among the leaders of the mujahideen when they tempted one of them with a big amount of money and promised him to be the president of Afghanistan... We do not have much time here for more details. So the current situation [in Iraq] is similar to the past one [in Afghanistan]. The government of Riyadh continues to this day to carry out the same malicious roles with many Islamic action leaders and commanders of the mujahideen in our nation'.

"Bin Laden goes on to claim that the Saudis are trying to co-opt some of the Sunni mujahideen in Iraq by allowing 'some groups to confidently move in the Gulf to receive [financial] support'. Riyadh is careful to avoid officially funding its Iraqi insurgent favorites, so its support 'is channeled under the banner of raising donations by some unofficial scholars and preachers'.

"Bin Laden warns that 'many of them...are loyal to the state and seek to implement [Riyadh's] policy by pulling the rug from under the honest mujahideen's feet' and forcing them to support a national-unity government that is designed to be the agent of the United States and Saudi Arabia. He asks the Iraqi mujahideen how they can trust Saudi King Abdullah, who is the 'malignant foe' of Islam, the 'main US agent in the region' and a man who took it on himself 'to tempt and tame every free, virtuous, and honest person with the aim of dragging him to the path of temptation and misguidance...[and] the path of betraying the religion and nation and submitting to the will of the Crusader-Zionist alliance'.

"The Americans are defeated, bin Laden concludes, but to assure God's victory the Iraqi mujahideen must reject Saudi overtures and direction if they are 'not to waste the fruit of this chaste and pure blood that was shed for the sake of consolidating religion and entrenching the state of Muslims'.

A Way Out? "Bin Laden and his senior lieutenants are reliving what for them is a familiar nightmare. In one of the greatest ironies of the post-1945 era, Islamist fighters have proven that with great, prolonged and bloody effort they can claim the military defeat of superpowers - the USSR and the United States - but cannot consolidate victory when confronted by the wiles, funds and religious establishment of the Saudi leadership.

"While it is clear in the December 29 tape that bin Laden rates the Saudis as the main obstacle to God's victory in Iraq, there is little indication of what he intends to do to destroy Riyadh's ability to stymie the mujahideen there as it did in Afghanistan.

"One possibility - though bin Laden did not allude to this - would require a rethinking of al-Qaeda's grand strategy.

"Although bin Laden and al-Qaeda have been consistent in their three-fold grand strategy - to drive the...[US] from the Muslim world, destroy Israel and incumbent Muslim regimes and settle scores with the Shi'ites - they now face a situation where the Saudi regime has not only so far prevented the unification of Islamist leaders, but is allegedly preparing the Sunni Iraqi insurgents it supports for a civil war with Iraq's Iranian-backed Shi'ites.

"Bin Laden, of course, is correct in arguing that Riyadh wants no genuine national-unity government; the Saudis may be intending to fund and equip a Sunni insurgent force that could join forces with the US-armed and trained Sunni Awakening Councils to battle for control of post-US Iraq against the Shi'ites and seek...a Saudi-like Sunni theocracy in Baghdad.