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Osama Bin Laden: A Primitive Rebel*
By Mohammad El-Sayed Sae'ed
23/10/2001
"A world war against an individual."
When was the last time a similar event took place? It is indeed rare incident for which it is hard to find a match in history. The story of Carlos the Jackal is fairly simple; a clever fighter who managed to slip out of the hands of intelligence agencies around the world, but eventually fell when turned in by the Sudanese government.
Unlike Carlos, who was a professional terrorist, Abdullah Ocalan of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was a revolutionary leader, fighting an armed political battle on behalf of the Kurds in Southeast Turkey. Yet he too fell in a disgraceful act on the part of a "Muslim" government. Even Che Guevara's, the poet laureate of the Marxist movement, experience was different. His was a universal revolutionary political call, but the fight never went far into the heart of U.S. power, for he had no intention of inflicting pain on the American people; rather, it was to mobilize the weak and raise their political awareness. He made it in Cuba, but failed in Uruguay. His was a secret assassination, discovered years later, executed with a simple intelligence operation, not a "worldwide" coalition.
Osama bin Laden is different. His ambitions exceed those of his predecessors; his goal was to hit the United States at the heart of its political and strategic power. He managed to execute what may be counted as the biggest terrorist operation in history, be it against the U.S. or any other historical empire. Bin Laden is a professional terrorist, but unlike "freelance" Carlos, was focused on the agency: the Soviet Union in the past, and the United States in the present. He speaks with a religious rhetoric when discussing political issues. However, he is not a revolutionary leader like Ocalan, for he does not engage in enhancing political awareness, he has not formed a political party or movement of any kind, he has no specific approach to any field of knowledge, and his idea of "strategy" is simple minded.
Further, bin Laden is not Guevara, speaking in the name of all the oppressed peoples of the world, with a vision that revolutionized socialist thought at the time. Bin Laden's vision is a much simpler one, dividing the world into Muslim and non-Muslim, and his "strategy" is not about making the Muslims of the world aware of their political, cultural or social reality, or even a call for their unity. It is based on a comparison between the state of the Muslim world today and that of the early days of Islam; for just as the Soviet empire fell, so too should the U.S. empire.
In other words, his ambitions are beyond definition, the results of his operations are beyond all measure, and his political naiveté is more than often self-thought. On the other hand, the battle the world is fighting against him is indeed historical in terms of size, publicity, political and strategic mobilization and, most importantly, its estimated worldwide results. This, however, is no guide to the essence of the problem.
Bin Laden belongs to a seemingly endless series of primitive rebels in the world's political history. On the surface, he appears to have humiliated the greatest empire of his time. But unlike other rebels of his kind, his address to the world is not one calling for justice, rather, it reflects a great deal of anger at U.S. policies and practices around the world in general, and in the Middle East in particular.
However, his legend is still that of a primitive rebel. It continues to receive a great deal of enthusiasm from a large segment of the Arab and Muslim population who do not act otherwise, for his actions have far exceeded any desire for revenge against vicious U.S. policies. But his revenge is not through mass mobilization into an historical act or an organized ideological move that causes a breakthrough in the role of the Muslims in the World Order; it is through terrorist strikes, relieving the masses from the burden of armed struggle, or even the aspiration for cultural or social development that enriches their interaction with the rest of the world. What would be the need for that when revenge can take place through suicidal operations conducted by a "legendary person", unidentified?
This is the key: the primitive rebel. His mission is revenge. His strikes are against the ordinary man living within the boundaries of the "enemy empire". The horrifying human losses are irrelevant for him, for what matters is the icon: the World Trade Center, a symbol of America.
If the U.S. retaliates, it would serve his cause, for it would become a battle between Muslims and non-Muslims, triggering a worldwide religious war. It could serve Zionist interests, it could serve the cause of the right wing in the U.S., millions of people could lose their lives, the world would mobilize against Islam and its people and Islam would become a religion of violence and intolerance. But all this is not important to bin Laden. A disaster would befall Islam and Muslims worldwide, and it still would not be important in Osama bin Laden's eyes.
*Translated from the Arabic original under the title "Mukashafat," with permission from the author.
Mohammad El-Sayed Sae'ed is an expert in the Ahram Center for Political & Strategic Studies Cairo, Egypt. His works include
"Transnational Corporations in the Arab World and the Fate of Nationalism" (Cairo: Alam Al Ma'refa, 1986) and
"The Future of the Arab Regional System in the Aftermath of the Gulf Crisis 1992" (Cairo: Alam Al Ma'refa, 1992).
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