N
Neolibertarian
Guest
In a recent discussion here at Usenet, I had to fetch part of an old PBS
interview from 2002--I needed to make certain I remembered the
conversation correctly:
"Q: [Did you hear that some of those training at the camp were working
for] Osama bin Laden?"
"KHODADA: Nobody came and told us, 'This is al-Qaeda people,' but I know
there were some Saudis, there were some Afghanis. There were some other
people from other countries getting trained. They didn't tell us they
were part of al-Qaeda; there's no such thing."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/khodada.
html
This quote, and the predictable turn of that conversation, helped remind
me how little Americans understand about the enemy their nation is
fighting.
"They didn't tell us they were part of al-Qaeda; there's no such thing."
Yes, there's no such thing as "al-Qaeda."
It's disconcerting that most Americans have no idea that, in fact,
there's no such thing as "al-Qaeda."
From another, earlier PBS interview:
==begin quote==
Q: But there's some confusion here apparently. Today in the United
States, we hear from law enforcement about Al Qaeda.
AL-FAGIH: Yes.
Q: But to you that's something different.
AL-FAGIH: Well, I [really] laugh when I hear the FBI talking about Al
Qaeda as an organization of bin Laden...[It's really a] very simple
story. If bin Laden is to receive Arabs from Saudi Arabia and from
Kuwait--from other regions--he is [to] receive them in the guest house
in Peshawar. They used to go to the battle field and come back, without
documentation.
Q: What do you mean without documentation?
AL-FAGIH: There [was] no documentation of who has arrived. Who has left.
How long he stayed. There's only [a nice general reception]. And you go
there. And you join in the battle field. ... Very simple organization.
Now, he was embarrassed by many families when they called him and ask
what happened to our son. He don't know. `Cause there's no record.
There's no documentation. Now he asked some of his colleagues to start
documenting the movement of every Arab coming under his umbrella. ... It
is recorded that [they] arrived in this date and stayed in this
house...And then there was a record of thousands and thousands of
people. Many of them had come only for two weeks, three weeks and then
disappeared. That record, that documentation was called the record of Al
Qaeda. So that was Al Qaeda.
==end quote==
---Dr. Saad al-Fagih
2001 Interview PBS Frontline (WGBH Boston)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/al-fagi
h.html
When I point this out in discussions, almost invariably the point is
claimed to be irrelevant. It seems that most proponents and critics of
the War on Terror are satisfied that "we all have agreed on what the
term 'al-Qaeda' means."
But, of course, this is completely at odds with the facts--we have NOT
agreed upon what that name means nor what it implies or represents.
And this fundamental lack of understanding of the enemy is what gives
rise to so many misunderstandings over the conduct of the war.
Perhaps I can do a little to amend this black hole of understanding. Or,
perhaps not--this being Usenet and all. But I'm compelled to try.
You see, it all began like this:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=peshawar+pakistan&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=1
8&ll=33.999023,71.497693&spn=0.002624,0.006652&t=k
As far as I can determine, it's somewhere in the center of this overhead
view. Maybe the house with the very large parking lot.
Abdara Road runs N & S. University Road runs diagonally at upper left.
The heart of University Town in Peshawar, Pakistan. Peshawar University
and Islamia College are to the West less than a mile away.
A single, and then a group of residences within this frame was once
known as "Beit-al-Ansar" or The House of the Companions (Companions,
meaning /religious/ companions; companions of Mohammed in spirit or in
poetic fact).
Sometime after 1984, a guest house, and later the whole compound of
residences would be named "al-Qaeda," correctly pronounced
el-KAW-ee-deh. This was "the Base" where many of the young Arab
Mujahideen would come from all over the Middle East to join the fight
of the Afghanis against the Soviet invaders, or "the Great Satan."
A computer register or log was kept of all the men who came and went
through here. The leader, a certain Abu Abdullah, had ordered the
records kept when he began receiving concerned phone calls from
relatives and parents inquiring about their children. It seems these
young men had told their families they were leaving to join Abu
Abdullah and the great Jihad in Afghanistan, never to be seen again.
Abdullah was reportedly embarrassed that he couldn't tell these parents
the whereabouts of these boys who had come to see him--neither when or
if they had arrived, nor when they might have left for the fight in
Afghanistan. From then on, detailed records where kept of the jihadis
who'd passed through there.
In the early 90's, CIA operatives confiscated a computer disk from the
compound. The file on the disk was named "al-Qaeda," and it was,
indeed, a copy of this register.
Hence the now famous nickname.
But to the jihadis, the organization was always called "Abu Abdullah
Contracting Company."
And this is the birthplace of that group.
Bin Laden's nom de guerre is "Abu Abdullah."
Most every jihadi leader has a nom de guerre--and using the first name
"Abu" is most common. In some ways, it is similar to the name "Don" in
Italian and Spanish culture. It is both a proper name and a title,
equivalent to "Uncle" or "Father."
Oddly, bin Laden is only known to the west by his given name (more or
less). Most jihadis are known to the west only by their nom de guerres.
Abu Nidal. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Abu Abbas. Abu Ibrahim. Etc.
As stated above, the jihadis called bin Laden's group "Abu Abdullah
Contracting Company"--mostly an intimate in-crowd code-name: bin Laden's
fortune came from his father's contracting company. And Osama had set up
a construction company of his own when he was located in Sudan.
Bin Laden seems to have been singularly unconcerned about a name for his
group. This may be related to his policy of never claiming
responsibility for any of the terrorist attacks he was responsible for
(he only claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks for the very first
time about a month ago).
CIA, it was GHW Bush's CIA btw, confiscated the "al-Qaeda" computer disk
from bin Laden jihadis. The CIA used that name because there was no
other name for this organization. And they had to call it SOMETHING.
But it was never the name of bin Laden's group. In a fatwa in 1996,
he named his group "The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews
and Crusaders."
This is it's only official name. But no one ever uses it. Bin Laden.
himself, only occasionally refers to "The World Islamic Front" in his
audio and videotaped addresses.
When you call it "al-Qaeda," you might as well call the US Marines
"Lejeune."
Some Arabs, after chuckling at the west for calling bin Laden's group
"al-Qaeda" for years, finally adopted the name--but only to be
understood by westerners. Kinda the same as when parents talk about "the
stork" in front of children.
But the important thing here is this:
At its zenith, bin Laden's group was only composed of about 3,000
jihadis. About 900 or so were wiped out in Operation: Enduring Freedom
(this doesn't include the very different organization called "Taliban"),
Another 500 or so were sent off to Gitmo for waterboarding treatments.
This leaves about 1500, and most of these ended up in Iran, of all
places. Very few of bin Laden's group who fled to Pakistan stayed there
for any length of time. Those who attempted to stay in Pakistan and
continue operations were soon arrested.
So why, some people have asked themselves, are we still fighting them?
Aren't they pretty much neutralized? Marginalized?
Well, the answer was explained very clearly to America and the world
less than 10 days after the 9/11 attacks, but of course, people weren't
really paying attention.
"Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It
will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found,
stopped and defeated."
---George W. Bush
Address to the Joint Session of Congress
(September 20, 2001)
This isn't "The War Against bin Laden." And it's not "The War Against
'al-Qaeda'"--after all, there's no such thing.
It's The War on Terror.
Words mean things. And the more we understand them, the more we
understand...period.
--
NeoLibertarian
http://www.elihu.envy.nu/NeoPics/UncleHood.jpg
interview from 2002--I needed to make certain I remembered the
conversation correctly:
"Q: [Did you hear that some of those training at the camp were working
for] Osama bin Laden?"
"KHODADA: Nobody came and told us, 'This is al-Qaeda people,' but I know
there were some Saudis, there were some Afghanis. There were some other
people from other countries getting trained. They didn't tell us they
were part of al-Qaeda; there's no such thing."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/gunning/interviews/khodada.
html
This quote, and the predictable turn of that conversation, helped remind
me how little Americans understand about the enemy their nation is
fighting.
"They didn't tell us they were part of al-Qaeda; there's no such thing."
Yes, there's no such thing as "al-Qaeda."
It's disconcerting that most Americans have no idea that, in fact,
there's no such thing as "al-Qaeda."
From another, earlier PBS interview:
==begin quote==
Q: But there's some confusion here apparently. Today in the United
States, we hear from law enforcement about Al Qaeda.
AL-FAGIH: Yes.
Q: But to you that's something different.
AL-FAGIH: Well, I [really] laugh when I hear the FBI talking about Al
Qaeda as an organization of bin Laden...[It's really a] very simple
story. If bin Laden is to receive Arabs from Saudi Arabia and from
Kuwait--from other regions--he is [to] receive them in the guest house
in Peshawar. They used to go to the battle field and come back, without
documentation.
Q: What do you mean without documentation?
AL-FAGIH: There [was] no documentation of who has arrived. Who has left.
How long he stayed. There's only [a nice general reception]. And you go
there. And you join in the battle field. ... Very simple organization.
Now, he was embarrassed by many families when they called him and ask
what happened to our son. He don't know. `Cause there's no record.
There's no documentation. Now he asked some of his colleagues to start
documenting the movement of every Arab coming under his umbrella. ... It
is recorded that [they] arrived in this date and stayed in this
house...And then there was a record of thousands and thousands of
people. Many of them had come only for two weeks, three weeks and then
disappeared. That record, that documentation was called the record of Al
Qaeda. So that was Al Qaeda.
==end quote==
---Dr. Saad al-Fagih
2001 Interview PBS Frontline (WGBH Boston)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/al-fagi
h.html
When I point this out in discussions, almost invariably the point is
claimed to be irrelevant. It seems that most proponents and critics of
the War on Terror are satisfied that "we all have agreed on what the
term 'al-Qaeda' means."
But, of course, this is completely at odds with the facts--we have NOT
agreed upon what that name means nor what it implies or represents.
And this fundamental lack of understanding of the enemy is what gives
rise to so many misunderstandings over the conduct of the war.
Perhaps I can do a little to amend this black hole of understanding. Or,
perhaps not--this being Usenet and all. But I'm compelled to try.
You see, it all began like this:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=peshawar+pakistan&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=1
8&ll=33.999023,71.497693&spn=0.002624,0.006652&t=k
As far as I can determine, it's somewhere in the center of this overhead
view. Maybe the house with the very large parking lot.
Abdara Road runs N & S. University Road runs diagonally at upper left.
The heart of University Town in Peshawar, Pakistan. Peshawar University
and Islamia College are to the West less than a mile away.
A single, and then a group of residences within this frame was once
known as "Beit-al-Ansar" or The House of the Companions (Companions,
meaning /religious/ companions; companions of Mohammed in spirit or in
poetic fact).
Sometime after 1984, a guest house, and later the whole compound of
residences would be named "al-Qaeda," correctly pronounced
el-KAW-ee-deh. This was "the Base" where many of the young Arab
Mujahideen would come from all over the Middle East to join the fight
of the Afghanis against the Soviet invaders, or "the Great Satan."
A computer register or log was kept of all the men who came and went
through here. The leader, a certain Abu Abdullah, had ordered the
records kept when he began receiving concerned phone calls from
relatives and parents inquiring about their children. It seems these
young men had told their families they were leaving to join Abu
Abdullah and the great Jihad in Afghanistan, never to be seen again.
Abdullah was reportedly embarrassed that he couldn't tell these parents
the whereabouts of these boys who had come to see him--neither when or
if they had arrived, nor when they might have left for the fight in
Afghanistan. From then on, detailed records where kept of the jihadis
who'd passed through there.
In the early 90's, CIA operatives confiscated a computer disk from the
compound. The file on the disk was named "al-Qaeda," and it was,
indeed, a copy of this register.
Hence the now famous nickname.
But to the jihadis, the organization was always called "Abu Abdullah
Contracting Company."
And this is the birthplace of that group.
Bin Laden's nom de guerre is "Abu Abdullah."
Most every jihadi leader has a nom de guerre--and using the first name
"Abu" is most common. In some ways, it is similar to the name "Don" in
Italian and Spanish culture. It is both a proper name and a title,
equivalent to "Uncle" or "Father."
Oddly, bin Laden is only known to the west by his given name (more or
less). Most jihadis are known to the west only by their nom de guerres.
Abu Nidal. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Abu Abbas. Abu Ibrahim. Etc.
As stated above, the jihadis called bin Laden's group "Abu Abdullah
Contracting Company"--mostly an intimate in-crowd code-name: bin Laden's
fortune came from his father's contracting company. And Osama had set up
a construction company of his own when he was located in Sudan.
Bin Laden seems to have been singularly unconcerned about a name for his
group. This may be related to his policy of never claiming
responsibility for any of the terrorist attacks he was responsible for
(he only claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks for the very first
time about a month ago).
CIA, it was GHW Bush's CIA btw, confiscated the "al-Qaeda" computer disk
from bin Laden jihadis. The CIA used that name because there was no
other name for this organization. And they had to call it SOMETHING.
But it was never the name of bin Laden's group. In a fatwa in 1996,
he named his group "The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews
and Crusaders."
This is it's only official name. But no one ever uses it. Bin Laden.
himself, only occasionally refers to "The World Islamic Front" in his
audio and videotaped addresses.
When you call it "al-Qaeda," you might as well call the US Marines
"Lejeune."
Some Arabs, after chuckling at the west for calling bin Laden's group
"al-Qaeda" for years, finally adopted the name--but only to be
understood by westerners. Kinda the same as when parents talk about "the
stork" in front of children.
But the important thing here is this:
At its zenith, bin Laden's group was only composed of about 3,000
jihadis. About 900 or so were wiped out in Operation: Enduring Freedom
(this doesn't include the very different organization called "Taliban"),
Another 500 or so were sent off to Gitmo for waterboarding treatments.
This leaves about 1500, and most of these ended up in Iran, of all
places. Very few of bin Laden's group who fled to Pakistan stayed there
for any length of time. Those who attempted to stay in Pakistan and
continue operations were soon arrested.
So why, some people have asked themselves, are we still fighting them?
Aren't they pretty much neutralized? Marginalized?
Well, the answer was explained very clearly to America and the world
less than 10 days after the 9/11 attacks, but of course, people weren't
really paying attention.
"Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It
will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found,
stopped and defeated."
---George W. Bush
Address to the Joint Session of Congress
(September 20, 2001)
This isn't "The War Against bin Laden." And it's not "The War Against
'al-Qaeda'"--after all, there's no such thing.
It's The War on Terror.
Words mean things. And the more we understand them, the more we
understand...period.
--
NeoLibertarian
http://www.elihu.envy.nu/NeoPics/UncleHood.jpg
