This message of mine is to the peoples of the states allied to America in the invasion of Afghanistan and I mention specifically Europe.
It isn’t hidden from you that the Afghans have tasted the two bitterest things for two decades at the hands of the Russians and their Communist agents, but they persevered, fought, and were resolute and victorious, by the Grace of Allah. And before their wounds had healed and their grief had ended, they were invaded without right by your unjust governments, without stopping to think about or reflect on Bush’s claim that this invasion was a response to the events of the 11th, although–as I mentioned previously–the events of Manhattan were a response to the American-Israeli coalition’s murder of our people in Palestine and Lebanon.
And it was I who was responsible for 9/11, and I stress that all Afghans–both government and people–had no knowledge of those events and America knows that, because some of the Taliban’s ministers fell into its hands as captives, and they were interrogated and that became known. And that’s why the Taliban government requested America to produce the evidence for the truth of its claims prior to the invasion, but it didn’t produce any evidence, and instead insisted on invading; and Europe marched behind it in that, and had no choice but to be its vassal. It suffices as evidence of this your entering of this war and your excusing of American soldiers from being held to account by the European courts.
For this reason, this address of mine is to you, not to your politicians, as it is no longer a secret that Blair, Brown, Berlusconi, Aznar, Sarkozy and those with him and their like love to shade themselves in the shade of the White House. And there isn’t a major difference worth mentioning between them and many of the leaders of the Third World. So to summarize, in this war you have combined two injustices: the first is that this war was waged against the Afghans without right. You didn’t have even one piece of evidence suitable for submission to a court. Additionally, you destroyed the camps of al-Qaida and killed some of its members, and you captured others, most of who were from Pakistan. So what is the sin of the Afghans due to which you are continuing this unjust war against them?
Their only sin is that they are Muslims, and this illustrates the extent of the Crusaders’ hatred of Islam and its people. Second, in this war, you have not observed the ethics and protocol of warfare. Most of your victims–as a result of the bombing–are women and children, and intentionally so. You know that our women don’t fight, yet you target them even on days of celebration, knowingly and adamantly, hoping by that to break the morale of the Mujahideen. This will not benefit you, however, for we are resolute and, by the grace of Allah, the Glorious and Great, continuing to take revenge on the unjust and expel the occupying invaders. I have personally witnessed incidents like these, and the matter continues on an almost daily basis, and the hospitals are full of innocent people.
You have no religion, morals, humanity or shame. And for your information, the Afghan people are a courageous, defiant, jealous, honorable, religious Muslim people who refuse humiliation and submission to invaders. And their history is rich in resolve and victories. They fought Britain in its glory days and defeated it by the grace of Allah, and fought the Russians in their glory days as well and defeated them by the grace of Allah. And today, they are fighting America and its agents under the leadership of the Commander of the Believers, Mullah Umar, may Allah protect him, and under the command of the Knight of the Field, Hajji Mansoor Dadullah. I ask Allah, the Most High to grant them victory and resolve.
In conclusion, I remind you that the American tide is ebbing, by the grace of Allah, and that they shall soon depart for their homeland beyond the Atlantic and leave the neighbors to settle their accounts with each other. So it is better for you to restrain your politicians who are thronging the steps of the White House and work diligently to remove oppression from the oppressed, for justice is right and injustice is torment, and returning to the truth is the hallmark of men of understanding. And peace be on those who follow the guidance.
——-
(NB: I am posting this transcript for the sole reason that I had a hard time locating it and that it seems that, yet again, the corporate media does not want people to make up their own mind about Bin-Laden, Al-Qaeda or anything else for that matter. I personally find the Wahabi/Salafi ideology at least as bad as US messianic imperialism , Likudnik racism or Neocon Fascism so please do not tell how bad OBL is – I already know. The Saker)
Isn’t the reference to three politicians who have been out of power some time (Blair, Aznar, Berlusconi) a bit odd?
yes, it is. I noticed that too. I suppose that there are number of possible explanations about this including that it took a while to get OBL ‘s audiotape to Al-Jazeera, that OBL just makes a list of the most pathetic ‘poodles’, or that the old and sick OBL is just getting a little more old and sick ;-)
The interesting part is where he says that the Taliban did not know about 911 which makes sense from the point of view of operational security (anybody who knows how corrupt most Afghan warlords are will see why OBL choose to be sneaky).
People laughed at me at the time, but I always found quite plausible the Taliban’s claim that they would consider ‘handing over’ Bin Laden once evidence of his guilt were made available to them – as is the norm in extradition procedures.
I agree that it is quite likely they knew nothing of 9/11 prior to the event. The Taliban were mostly deeply parochial, xenophobic bumpkins (Mullah Omar almost never left Kandahar, let alone Afghanistan) who never had the slightest interest in international affairs.
If we put all binLadins writings on the table, and walked around them, to decide if he would “follow us home” as was the contention in the debates yesterday by all the candidates except Dr, Paul, then this would be a successful exercise.
1) Up ’til now anyway, the bone with the US has been the occupation of Saudi Arabia before 2001 and the support of Israel. If it were not for these, we would have not been on the fatwa list.
2) Muslims mostly don’t believe in the separation between Church and State. IF we allowed Muslim immigration into the US on a large scale, we would have a problem like France (from Algeria), Germany, Italy, England … This minority wants their way in the public square.
3) Even in localities within the US, if there is such a Muslim Majority, there are issues of religious tolerance in the public arena. They really don’t believe in separation of Church and State. Even in Turkey, it’s ok to be secular, but not promote a different religion. There are problems with religious tolerance in Turkey too, but to be a militant secularist is apparently allowed, but that may be changing.
4) Should we allow the US to break on ethnic lines, so if a locality want to be Muslim, let them. If the Amish want to merge church and state in their community, let them. Indian tribes in the US, same thing. … Then we would abandon the vision of the US with a unified language and culture, but maybe with such a large country as the US, and with so many traditions and ethnic contributions and histories etc, it is not a good thing to try to meld it into a single deracinated entity because a clique on the national level can control the Propaganda origins of the media and the press and the schools, and the political parties. A powerful minority can make this lumbering beast, who does not have a natural unified national identity, into a mailed fist to do the bidding of whoever has the will and money and power to steer it. A tiny mouth bit can control a huge draft horse. We are presented with the necessary propaganda, and told what our duty is to whatever synthetic historical and cultural vision of the world would require. Maybe we are too large and too amorphous and too powerful to safely be a single country. If we let the single country vision go, what kind country would result from the canonization that would replace the mailed fist of synthetic national unity we have now? I really don’t know myself. Maybe the south was right, and in the civil war, if a significant minority that is geographically centralized enough to make a new country reasonable, that its reasonable. The issue was whether the south must share the trade and foreign policy of the north, and if they did not feel it was in their interest, they wanted out. The concept of a country to the founders was this limited united front on trade and some other few issues on which collective action was possible. They founders certainly never envisioned somebody that said if you try to leave this union, we will kill as many of you as it takes to change your mind. If they did, the would not have entered into the thing in the first place.
Maybe we can turn a page back from Lincoln, and re-kindle the vision of the founders. The centralizers like Lincoln and Wilson and Roosevelt not withstanding, maybe having a huge powerful diverse country that does not have a natural unifying culture and history and destiny is too much temptation for a Joseph Goebbels to come along and a powerful clique of elites can steer the hapless beast to do its bidding, for the chump change it takes to control the media and both parties in this land. Then whatever synthetic culture is ginned up for us, we as assured that the hand of God is on the shoulder of the United States and its particular vision of world capitalism and “democracy’. We might be a cancer on the world, and the true vision of peace and prosperity that we should be seeking may lie closer to the founders than to the unified post world war II , worlds only superpower , US that we worship now. Buchanan’s new book looks back with nostalgia at the country as a mailed fist. I have been a loyal Buchanan supporter for a lot of years, but this vision troubles me now when I see how much evil that giant multi-ethnic state which succumbs to a unifying synthetic culture ginned up by a media elite can do. Maybe we should celebrate with relief the dismantling of the thing that is actually controlled by the media and a clique in both parties. That would true unified culture and destiny and history and vision mean for such a large deracinated population.. So if we don’t have
a true culture, we are given a synthetic one that suits the purpose of the clique. The destiny of the man on the street is of no concern to this bunch. They themselves, in the case of the Lobby, have their own tribe, and they know who they are. Most other real countries have a unified culture and history too, like Japan. Well we can never be Japan like. We are a dumb but dangerous large draft horse with a bit in its mouth, and a rider who knows to what service he wishes to put us. God help us if we cant either de-horse him, or quit the role of God’s country of destiny and allow the Buchanan vision of fracture to just happen and welcome the cantonization since it removes the temptation to be ridden as the horse of some particular tribe’s destiny. Cantonization worked in Switzerland to keep the Protestants and Catholics apart.
It would work in Iraq to keep the Sunni and Shiites and Kurds apart. True there would be no Iraq that could be a pro Israeli force in the region, but we would have a peaceful people without being a pawn in the US/Israel chess game. Maybe we should consider Cantonization here too if we can’t de-horse the Lobby.
Omar Sheik (LTTE and Jaish al Mohammed agent, London School of Economics graduate student and Osama’s former technology advisor who was released from an Indian jail in 1999 in return for an Indian airlines’ jet passengers in Afghanistan . . . he and KSM organized the killing of Daniel Pearl) briefed the head of the ISI in general terms about the 9/11 plot (without revealing OPSEC) in August 2001. Why would OBL inform the ISI but not Mullah Omar? It makes no sense.
Mullah Omar knew very well that OBL was planning terrorist attacks against Russia, the Stans, Shia, India, Africa (remember the embassy bombings), Europe and America.
Note that OBL’s plan to attack the UN HQs and the Pope in the Vatican in 1995 were foiled (and those weren’t his only attempts on those two targets.)
OBL’s plans for the millennium bombings (synchronized across Europe and the States) were also foiled.
All of these attacks and many more were well publicized.
Mullah Omar knew all this. He was an OBL and ISI stooge. Mullah Omar believed he needed Pakistani, Saudi, UAE, AQ linked networks (IIF) help to fight the more popular Northern Alliance led by Massoud (and backed by Iran, Russia, India, the Stans, Turkey . . . and on its way to being backed by America and Europe . . . and ultimately although Mullah Omar may not have expected this China.)
5,000 Americans in one remote airbase in Saudi Arabia (very far from any civilization or any Saudi citizens) at the invitation of the Saudi government to help the Saudis keep Saddam in the box was no excuse for these attacks. The 5,000 GIs in Saudi Arabia were not allowed to travel outside the base to satisfy Saudi sensibilities.
Why doesn’t OBL apologize for his massacre of thousands of Pakistani Shia in 1988, and thousands of Hazara Shia in Mazar e Sharif in 1998 (that very nearly led to the invasion of Afghanistan by Khamenei . . . except for the fact that a nuclear armed Pakistan and its Saudi patron covered the Taliban/AQ’s behind . . . and that the international communities would have criticized Iran for violating OBL’s human rights) OBL should publicly cry and say he is sorry to all the world’s 150 million Shia, as well as to Sufi and all other “lesser” muslims.
In all opinion polls of Afghans, the vast majority hate OBL and his loons. Maybe OBL can apologize to the Afghan people.
OBL should also stop trying to overthrow Afghanistan’s democratically elected government. He should encourage all of the Pashtu tribes to participate in Afghanistan’s elections and government. He should encourage reconciliation by Pashtu tribes on both sides of the Durand line (most to the West back the Afghan government, while most on the East back Taliban/Pakistani resistance/AQ.) He should encourage all Pashtu tribes to negotiate peaceful deals with the Afghan government and its many factions.
Instead, OBL is doing his best to foment a Pashtu civil war . . . with some degree of success (OBL is also trying to stock animosity between Pashtuns and Hazara/Tajik/Uzbecs but with less success so far). The situation in Afghanistan is now much worse than Iraq.
But the situation in Afghanistan is not lost. Afghanistan retains many powerful friends, including China, India, all the NATO countries, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and other countries.
Two large Chinese mining companies are putting up $3.7 billion dollars in capital costs to set it up a copper mine in Afghanistan:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/55214-chinese-demand-for-metals-expected-to-help-boost-teck-cominco-by-50
Together with its friends, Afghanistan will smash OBL and his friends. That is why OBL’s had to flee Afghanistan and hide out in Pakstan.
Go China! Go Afghanistan! Keep running away OBL!
{Disclosure: I am a huge fan of President Hu. I wish he were running for President of America in 2008. I would so vote for him. Vineyard, would you support President Hu becoming President of America?}
VS and Irish eyes,
While it is plausible that event the leadership of the Taliban did not have advance knowledge of the events of 9/11, do either of you think that the Taliban would have turned OBL over no matter how much evidence was presented? Didn’t Al Quaida have a great deal of sympathy among all ranks of the Taliban leadership? So, even if Mullah Omar contemplated turning OBL over to us, if for no other reason than to save his state,who could he have called upon to arrest OBL and his followers? Both of you seem to have some insight into the Taliban, and I was curious to hear your thoughts.
@Anonymous:
I have to tell you that I have no insights into the Taliban at all. Also, I have no basis upon which to speculate as to whether the Taliban would have handed over OBL or not. My gut feeling tells me that handing over a fellow-Muslim, to an Zionist stooge at that, is not something a Mollah Omar would have done. However, I also am aware of tensions between the Pashtun Taliban and Arab Al-Qaeda and while extradition is something I have a hard time imagining, some kind of expulsion of OBL, or even some kind of judgment in Islamic courts is not something which I would dismiss as impossible.
Whatever the case may be, the US, high on its (mistaken) assumption of being the ‘sole superpower of the planet’ which can just do whatever the heck it wants, cowboy movie style, did not bother even trying to see what was, or was not, possible down that road.
I think that the US had a very strong case in going after OBL and Al-Qaeda, they weakened somewhat it by going after the Taliban, and they totally lost it by invading Iraq. Going after Iran, which comes next, would probably make everything else Dubya did look outright reasonable.
Like VS, I claim no expert knowledge whatsoever on Afghanistan. All I know can be gleaned from books readily available in your local bookshop.
From what I’ve read, Mullah Omar was often quite annoyed by the “Arab Afghans” and their high-risk antics. One theory has it that the Taliban came quite close to handing OBL over to the Saudis in the late ’90s, but that the international fame/notoriety/admiration he garnered after the African embassy bombings made this politically impossible for them. However, the Taliban must have known that failure to ‘cooperate’ post 9/11 would have led to the bombing of their country, and IMHO (although I stress I am not well informed on this) it is at least possible that they may have been tried to come to some sort of face-saving arrangement with the US. However, this is pure speculation and it’s hard to imagine how such an arrangment could ever have been agreed upon to the mutual satisfaction of all parties concerned.
Mullah Omar should be tried in the Hague for crimes against Humanity alongside the other great Muslim killer Milosevic.
The Russians provided Mullah Omar all the evidence he needed about OBL’s IIF’s role in blowing up apartment complexes in Moscow and other terrorist attacks against Russia in the 1990s.. Mullah Omar continued to back AQ linked networks against Russia and the Stans.
Mullah Omar supported the anti-Shia genocide in Mazar in 1998. He was complicit in the Indian airlines flight that landed in Afghanistan in 1999, and the exchange that released three of OBL’s top lieutenants from Indian jails. Note that some of the Indian hostages released said they were ashamed about the way they were released. That they would have rather stayed OBL’s hostages then have three great killers released.
Mullah Omar was directly complicit in the murder of over 10,000 Indians by AQ linked networks inside India before 9/11. The Indian foreign minister said that Mullah Omar had been provided realms and realms of evidence but it made no difference. After 9/11, the Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh said that America shouldn’t keep sending Mullah Omar realms and realms of additional evidence. America and the international community needed to take action.
Many countries around the world had similar “perspectives” on the amazing Mullah Omar. I could write a hundred pages of greviances against him on the part of Thais, Philippinos, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Chinese, Stans, Europeans, Iranians, Afghanistanis etc. Every country in the world declared Mullah Omar a completely illegitamate ruler of Afghanistan except for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. There is no excuse for Mullah Omar’s many terrible atrocities.
And thank God America didn’t make some kind of “deal” with Mullah Omar after 9/11. That would have led America down a path of darkness that would have made Kissinger look downright saintly (even the thought is sickening.)
The new placard for all the world’s collegue campusses, “Try Mullah Omar for Crimes against Humanity.” At least that is something we can all agree on.