Why is Osama declaring war on the world?
Salah Nasrawi reports for the Associated Press that bin Laden is urging jihadis to head for Sudan. Why? To prepare to wage holy war against…get ready… The United Nations.
The AP’s lede:
Osama bin Laden issued ominous new threats in an audiotape broadcast Sunday, saying the West was at war with Islam and calling on his followers to go to Sudan to fight a proposed U.N. force.
In his first new message in three months, bin Laden said the West’s decision to cut off funds to the Palestinians because their Hamas leaders refuse to recognize Israel proved that the United States and Europe were conducting “a Zionist crusader war on Islam.”
The AP report says the tape was broadcast on Al Jazeera and there is reason to believe the voice on the tape is bin Laden’s (though of course that is no certainty). An Israeli spokesman said that the bin Laden now wants to direct attacks toward Israel because Al Qaeda is increasingly unpopular in the Arab world.
The report adds:
Recent media reports in the Middle East have said al-Qaida is building cells in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Sudan.
As for Sudan:
A three-year conflict between Darfur’s rebels and the Arab-dominated central government has caused about 180,000 deaths _ most from disease and hunger _ and displaced 2 million people.
The United Nations has described the conflict as the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis. The United States has described it as genocide.
Negotiators are trying to broker a peace deal between warring factions by an April 30 deadline. Members of the African Union have agreed in principle to hand over peacekeeping duties to the United Nations beginning Sept. 30.
“I call on mujahedeen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arab peninsula, to prepare for long war again the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan. Our goal is not defending the Khartoum government but to defend Islam, its land and its people,” bin Laden purportedly said.
“I urge holy warriors to be acquainted with the land and the tribes in Darfur.”
Al-Qaida has targeted Western forces in Africa before _ including its attacks against U.S. troops trying to bring peace to Somalia in 1993.
The reports ends with this clash of civilizations jab:
The Al-Jazeera news reader said bin Laden, in a portion of the tape not aired by the Qatar-based broadcaster, scoffed at Saudi King Abdullah for his calls for a “dialogue among civilizations” and blasted liberal-minded Arab writers for taking part in the “Western cultural invasion” of Muslim lands.
If the tape is authentic — and that is a big if– the call for an anti-UN jihad in Darfur is another self-inflicted information warfare wound by Al Qaeda.
Bin Laden is upset because the UN intends to take control of the Darfur peacekeeping mission. The African Union (AU) is in charge of the current peacekeeping operation, and it has failed to stop the slaughter.
That’s one reason this latest tape is an agitprop error: most of the world’s opinion leaders, including the liberal and left-wing “internationalistas” who spend a great deal of air time, ink, and electrons excusing Arab terrorists (particularly Hamas) have made the Darfur horror a cause celebre (ironically excusing one band of Islamic extremists while damning another). Here’s a second reason bin Laden’s made a political error: The peacekeeping mission is meant to protect Muslims, so once again Al Qaeda is promoting the murder of Muslims– what the US has been pointing out to the Muslims of the world since September 12, 2001. For three years StrategyPage has been reporting that the Sudanese war in Darfur is a Muslim against Muslim war. The Islamist Janjaweed militias (backed by the Sudan Islamists in Khartoum) have been attacking Muslim farmers –predominantly black African Muslims– in the Darfur region. Of course, the black African Muslims aren’t quite “Muslim enough” for the Sudanese Islamists. (There are, of course, complex ethnic, tribal, and political factors in play, but the Muslim on Muslim mass murder is a fact.)
In the 1990s Sudan served as a haven and a base for bin Laden and key Al Qaeda cadres. This latest bin Laden tape serves the current interests of the Sudanese Islamists who are trying to thwart the UN takeover of the peacekeeping effort. Bin Laden certainly owes the Sudanese Islamists a personal as well as a political debt, so we may be witnessing a bit of “pay off” in the statement.
Interesting development, if true. The agreement by the AU to hand over nominal responsibility for Darfur peacekeeping to the UN by September 30 has been regarded by Eric Reeves and other observers as an abdication on the UN’s part, as Sec. Gen. Annan and Jan Egeland had both spoken in January about a UN presence (or at least a “bridging mission,” presumably manned by troops from NATO countriies) beginning much sooner. Moreover the AU countries participating in the underfunded and undermanned peacekeeping effort had come under ferocious pressure at the last AU summit (held, remarkably, in Khartoum) not to follw through on turning over responsibility to the UN, though the idea had originated with AU countries aware that the deployment in Darfur was more than they could handle. The rpessure came, naturally, from Sudan and its Arab allies, plus Ethiopia (this country remains embroiled with Eritrea, with which Sudan is at odds for unrelated reasons). If the bin Laden tape is authentic, it could be a geopolitical mistake as Austin suggests. But it might simply be a call to rally around a government bin Laden’s knows is more unambiguously sympathetic to his cause than Pakistan’s. It is unlikely he accepts at face value reports from Western media about the extent of the harm done to Darfur’s civilian population by Sudan’s government and its janjaweed proxies, and at least possible he sees the Sept. 30 handover agreement as a real threat around which to rally the more bloodthirsty of Islamist extremists instead of the thinly veiled display of UN impotence it really was.
Comment by Zathras — 4/23/2006 @ 1:36 pm
So which is it UBL? Are you for genocide or against it? Or does it depend on who is on the other side of the knife? Is it okay for Sunnis to kill Shiites but not vice versa? Really, you need to set your priorities! What iff the UN sends only Islamic forces to stop the heinous Janjaweed and their Khartoum allies? What would Mohammed do?
Comment by Citizen Deux — 4/23/2006 @ 1:37 pm
Purported Bin Laden Tape Aired On Arab TV Network Osama bin Laden issued ominous new threats in an audiotape broadcast Sunday, purportedly saying the
Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator — 4/23/2006 @ 1:47 pm
New Bin Laden Tape Says This Is A Crusader-Zionist War Hat tip: Right on the Right I was just starting to think it had been too long since this thug had something to say. Every time people start thinking he is dead, a new tape comes out. So, now he is upset that we didn’t take him up on his truce…
Trackback by Stop The ACLU — 4/23/2006 @ 1:57 pm
Trackback didn’t work: New Bin Laden Tape Says This Is A Crusader-Zionist War
Comment by Jay — 4/23/2006 @ 1:59 pm
This guy isn’t very good at world domination. Austin do you think the focus on Denmark and the U.N. is an idication that we have some sort of deterence and they don’t want to mess with the big dogs anymore?
Comment by Mikek — 4/23/2006 @ 3:11 pm
Why is Osama declaring war on the world? Austin Bay says “Salah Nasrawi reports for the Associated Press that bin Laden is urging jihadis to head for Sudan. Why? To prepare to wage holy war against…get ready… The United Nations.” Tigerhawk adds “Apart from the list’s comic aspects,…
Trackback by Pajamas Media — 4/23/2006 @ 3:38 pm
Since 9-11 I knew that Osama would be harder to aprehend than Sadam. Lets not forget that sadam was a man of palace and Osama a man of caves. If he has proven to be eluvise untill this day, experience tells me he might take decades for Osama to be aprehended.
Comment by Dr.Q — 4/23/2006 @ 4:20 pm
New Bin Laden Tape: Ten Main Points By Walid Phares Sounds like the Democratic National Committee wrote Osama’s talking points or is Osama writing the DNC ‘s talking points? …
Trackback by The Absurd Report — 4/23/2006 @ 6:06 pm
I don’t think he’s trying to thwart, he just knows that it’s another front where he can win at. He’s pretty much managed to turn the US public agains the Iraq war, and pretty overwhelmingly so. Operations in Sudan against UN peacekeepers will turn the public opinions of those countries against any further intervention abroad.
Comment by JeremyR — 4/23/2006 @ 10:56 pm
If the UN ever does start a mission in Darfur (3 years too late) it will also fail to stop the slaughter. The UN doesn’t exactly have a stellar record in Africa. The situation in Chad (threatening to deport 200,000 Darfur refugees) is likely to accelerate the slaughter, if anything.
Comment by doolz — 4/23/2006 @ 11:09 pm
Why isn’t OBL calling for people to fight in Iraq? Or Afghanistan? James
Comment by james968 — 4/24/2006 @ 9:45 am
Bin Longdead Speaks from the Grave… Again A new, and completely legitimate tape of bogeyman extrordinaire, Osama bin Laden has surfaced again. (h/t Mudville Gazette) In the tape, which reportedly is 100% authentic and totally not fake, OBL uses tired cliches, such as “infidel” and …
Trackback by Radioactive Liberty — 4/24/2006 @ 10:42 am
[…] litics, Middle East/Terrorism at 10:15 am by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton Courtesy of Austin Bay: Salah Nasrawi reports for the Associated Press that bin Laden is urging jihadis to head for Sudan. […]
Pingback by NoisyRoom.net » Why is Osama declaring war on the world? — 4/24/2006 @ 12:15 pm
Should this be proved real, it may mean nothing. Although we view Al Qaeda’s Iraq campaign as a failure, Bin Laden may not see it that way. At the least, he has shown that Islamist terror can make it very difficult for Western style forces to keep the peace in a given theatre. The mere threat of an Iraq style campaign in Darfur might well be enough to discourage any international troops from participating effectively. (Although I am sure ineffectual participation, such as the African Union’s would probably continue.) This may be all that is needed for victory - any more delays in getting real protection for the refugees in Darfur and it might well be too late. A better question might be why Bin Laden is so interested in supporting the genocide to begin with. How exactly does genocide fit with Salafist Islam? Are they viewed as heretics? Can this information be used to further discredit Salafism with non-Sunni and moderate-Sunni branches of Islam? What about the Arab/NonArab Muslim divide?
Comment by shaulie — 4/24/2006 @ 1:41 pm
UBL does seem to have a pattern of releasing tapes after one of his compatriots is killed of captured. This last week the Pakistanis announced that they had offed one of these creeps in a firefight. UBL is trying to maintain his relevance. I think it a sign of weakness. Now if only the media would understand that.
Comment by Rich DiNardo — 4/24/2006 @ 4:18 pm
It’s truly unfortunate that Pres. Bush is not watching the slo-mo genocide in Darfur, and calling on the Dem. Party for ideas on how to solve it. His own idea should be explicit regime change as the goal, and possibly a declaration of war. With a weekly highlight of how many people have been murdered, have died of disease, have become refugees — because of reliance on the Dem. Party’s “Global Test,” i.e. the UN.
Comment by Tom Grey - Liberty Dad — 4/25/2006 @ 3:36 am
If Bush is not calling on the Dems for their ideas about Darfur it is probably because he knows they have none. They have given no sign of having any sensible ideas about international affairs for the last few decades, why should anyone expect them to have any now?
Comment by Michael Lonie — 4/30/2006 @ 3:45 pm
[…] s of the recent speech by Bin Laden (or whoever) by Walid Phares on Counterterrorism blog. Why is Osama declaring war on the world? …. (melaniephillips, austinbay) LOVE THY NEIGHBOR? Andrew Stutt […]
Pingback by CaNN :: We started it. — 4/30/2006 @ 6:06 pm
The real issue is why we let extremists hijack religion to support their side of a struggle. Sure he wants to revert to the “good old days” where he could kill all non-believers. No different than extremist christians who would enslave women and kill homosexuals. Resonable minded people need to remove the holyness from religion, so as to open up the discussion in a meaningful way. If we could ignore religion and see the world without the religious haze, we could better identify what’s right and wrong. Human rights matter, not respect for religious belief. Come to Flush A Holy Book .com and see how irrelevant religion can be.
Comment by Holy Book Flusher — 6/2/2006 @ 2:35 pm