WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- Drawing parallels between the Iraq war and the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s, journalist and terrorism analyst Peter Bergen believes that the terror blowback from the Iraq war will be "particularly vicious."
While working as a terrorism analyst for CNN in 1997, Bergen became the first Western television reporter to interview Osama bin Laden. In his new book, "The Osama bin Laden I Know," Bergen uses interviews with family, schoolmates and comrades-in-arms to trace the development of bin Laden's religious and political motivations. Speaking at the New America Foundation on Jan. 17, Bergen called the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a catalyst in the life of the al-Qaida leader and suggested that the American invasion of Iraq would mark a similar turning point in the lives of future terrorists.
According to Bergen, bin Laden was the unremarkable, highly devout son of a Saudi multi-millionaire before the December 1979 invasion. He traveled to Afghanistan, setting up a jihad camp near a Soviet military base not because it was strategically viable but because it would prove that he was committed to the fight, regardless of personal risk. Bergen says that this incident is characteristic of bin Laden's inability to place strategic planning over personal goals.
After Sept. 11, 2001, a backlash against bin Laden developed among various jihad elements, which believed the attacks hurt their cause more than it helped them. "It's a myth that all jihadist groups are united by their hatred of the United States and have a single perspective," said Bergen. "The jihad groups hate each other more than they hate the Bush Administration."
Speaking alongside Bergen was Steve Coll, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning "Ghost Wars; The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden." Coll said that "Bin Laden's greatest gift as a leader is to control the public narrative. He has a sense of the ending of his own narrative and that ending is martyrdom."
Consequently, both authors believe that a practical mechanism for dealing with bin Laden is simply not available. From Bergen's point of view, bin Laden has two choices at this point, "He can disappear into the history books and never say anything again or he can remain in the game and risk the possibility of revealing himself." At this point in the development and disintegration of al-Qaida, Bergen believes that bin Laden has carved out a role for himself as the elder statesmen, playing a role in the media battle.
Both Bergen and Coll said that while the threat of Osama bin Laden has decreased in the past few years, there are still lessons to learn from his leadership style. "The theater of competition is rapidly changing," said Coll. At age 50, bin Laden is a product of the pre-digital age in which terrorists disseminated their message by broadcasting via radio or videotapes from a mountaintop.
A new generation of terrorists, such as the younger second-in-command of al-Qaida, Ayman Zawahiri, is fully engaged in the digital age. Jihadist Web sites can now offer information to multiple points in time and space while still waging a traditional guerilla war. "All policy that hopes to succeed in that space," said Coll, "must participate in that space and not operate on the 1950s model that if we build more and bigger towers than we can defeat them."
The question of communication and interaction among jihadist groups is difficult to untangle. In the past week, the recent increase in suicide bombing attacks in Afghanistan has highlighted the difficulty in determining linkages between violence in Iraq and terrorist activity in Afghanistan. Twenty-one suicide attacks have occurred in Afghanistan since June, as opposed to nine in the previous three years of U.S. occupation.
Bergen was quick to note that very few Afghans joined al-Qaida in the 1990s, when the Taliban government allowed the group to base itself inside the country. Jihad groups refrained from using suicide bombings against the Soviets in the 1980s largely because such tactics are not accepted or endorsed in Afghan culture. Coll mentioned the widespread assumption that the Afghan attack methods are being imported from terrorist groups in Iraq, who have been recruited using the al-Qaida brand name. He believes that it is difficult to say whether the bombings have been carried out by new Afghan elements of al-Qaida assisted by Iraqi terrorists, or if they are merely copycat attacks.
What is becoming increasingly obvious, said both Bergen and Coll, is that the Iraq war has placed a very valuable card in the hand of bin Laden just when he had lost the resources available to him. Bergen believes that bin Laden made a strategic mistake when assuming that the United States would send a large ground force into Afghanistan following the 2001 attacks. "Bin Laden is a product of the Afghan war writ large," said Coll. He planned on defeating the United States Army much as jihad forces had beaten back the Soviet army in the 1980s. Bin Laden was prevented from using such tactics when the United States won the war in Afghanistan using aerial bombardments and Special Forces. When we sent a large ground force into Iraq, we gave the terrorists another chance and, said Bergen, "a Christmas present for bin Laden, if he were to celebrate Christmas."
Just as the Afghan jihad created the set of problems that now plagues the United States, the war in Iraq will spawn a new generation of terrorists and grievances. As Coll termed it, the Iraq of today is the training ground for "the Osama bin Laden of the 2030s."
