! Bin Laden Still Seen As Threat-U.S. Harassment Campaign May Backfire
Pithy
U.S. Harassment Campaign May Backfire, Boosting Fugitive's Image
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 29, 1999; Page A03
Osama bin Laden's global terrorist network has been constantly pressured
and repeatedly compromised in the year since the fugitive Saudi
multimillionaire allegedly masterminded the deadly truck bombings of two
U.S. embassies in Africa, according to terrorism experts inside and outside
the federal government.
But those experts worry that the Clinton administration's focus on bin
Laden as the nation's number one terrorist enemy may have raised his
profile in the Islamic world and increased the likelihood of attacks by him
and his followers.
"He's become a charismatic leader like [Iran's late Ayatollah Ruhollah]
Khomeini," said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst and terrorism
expert at the Congressional Research Service. "This is what worries me.
Bin Laden is the only one who's holding to this maximalist view:
pan-Islamic and hard-core, no compromise with Israel, no compromise
with the U.S., no compromise with Egypt. And he can back it up with
force."
The twin truck bombs that detonated minutes apart outside the embassies
in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Aug. 7, 1998, killed
224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded more than 5,000. Bin
Laden and 16 alleged associates, including Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader
Ayman al Zawahiri, have since been indicted by a New York grand jury
on charges of plotting the embassy attacks.
U.S. officials note with obvious satisfaction that bin Laden's network has
not injured a single American in the past year--a record they attribute to
intensive U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and diplomatic efforts.
"We haven't killed him off," said Robert Oakley, a former State
Department ambassador for counterterrorism. "But we've clearly reduced
his ability to do things."
While some Clinton administration officials favor more aggressive attempts
to attack bin Laden's hideouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, Oakley has
counseled against it. "The risks of hitting the wrong place are very, very
high--and you've got to assume it is going to be very heavily defended," he
said.
Unwilling or unable to kill bin Laden, the U.S. government has sought to
isolate and harass his organization, known as al Qaeda, Arabic for "the
Base." Counterterrorism centers at the FBI and CIA--working closely with
law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the globe--have
detained, questioned or arrested dozens of suspected bin Laden operatives
from Albania to Uruguay.
An alleged top bin Laden lieutenant, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, was
arrested last fall by German authorities and is one of five embassy bombing
defendants in custody in New York. Another, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh,
was apprehended by Pakistani officials, and a third, Mohamed Rashed
Daoud al Owhali, was arrested in Kenya.
Authorities in London have three other defendants in custody.
The State Department, meanwhile, has offered a $5 million reward for
information leading to bin Laden's arrest, and the FBI in June added him to
its "10 Most Wanted" list--a reflection not only of the threat he poses but
also of the FBI's increasingly international focus. It now has 1,383 agents
assigned to counterterrorism in the United States and overseas.
Three weeks ago, President Clinton also banned commercial dealings
between the United States and Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, accusing
the Taliban of harboring the renegade millionaire. Until then, leaders of the
Taliban had denied knowing bin Laden's whereabouts. Two days after the
sanctions went into effect, they admitted that he was living in the portion of
Afghanistan under their control.
"If we're able to keep the pressure on him--following this diplomatic,
political strategy--bin Laden will ultimately make a mistake," said one
senior Clinton administration official. "Something will break."
But others contend that the government, in its quest to hound bin Laden,
has turned him into a rallying point for anti-Western sentiment.
"I have clearly told the Americans that they have . . . made Osama bin
Laden a great hero in the Islamic world with these pressures and economic
sanctions," said Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, the Taliban's chief representative
at the United Nations.
Former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the agency's covert campaign
to arm the Afghan mujahedeen fighting Soviet troops in the 1980s, agrees.
"One should go to the refugee camps throughout Pakistan and find out how
many boy children have been named Osama since last August," he said.
"That's scary."
A year of harassment by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies
may have weakened bin Laden's ability to strike, said Katzman, "but he's
stronger in popularity," which presumably helps al Qaeda raise funds and
recruit supporters.
And there are signs that he still could strike at any time. "If his cells are
surveilling our embassies in Africa," asked Katzman, "how constrained is
he?"
Indeed, the government's campaign against bin Laden is now highly
defensive, involving expensive efforts to harden U.S. diplomatic posts
against attacks and a willingness to shut them down on a moment's notice
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