|
Bin Laden and ‘Azzam the American’:
Al-Qaeda with American characteristics
By Sukant
Chandan
09/11/07
"ICH" -- -
Released in time for the 6th
anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the
World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and Camp David, Al-Qaeda’s
‘al-Sahab’ media organisation has released Osama Bin Laden’s
first video statement from for nearly three years, followed by
another today in which Bin Laden praises Abu Musab Walid, one of
the 911 hijackers. These statements generally accepted
authenticity has put to rest speculation that Bin Laden might
have died, and has put the West’s most wanted man back into the
forefront of the politics of the ‘war on terror’. The coverage
that the first video statement has been given throughout the
international media has proven again that Bin Laden is the most
important spokesperson on behalf of militant Islamism even
though his direct organisational involvement in Al-Qaeda affairs
may have possibly been curtailed. What is most noticeable about
this latest statement is the stridently radical anti-capitalist
rhetoric which many have attributed to the influence of former
white US citizen Azzam Al-Amriki – ‘Azzam the American’ -
previously known as Adam Gadahn, the son of a Jew and a
Catholic, who has family members who live in Israel, who now
runs al-Sahab, Al-Qaeda’s media wing. The British Telegraph
on September 9th quoted former CIA covert operations
officer Mike Baker who stated that the Bin Laden statement ‘has
Adam Gadahn all over it’. Amriki’s own speeches and possible
influence on the statements of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s second
leader Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, has raised an interesting
development in Al-Qaeda propaganda strategy in adapting its
message to the politics, history and even culture of US society.
Most
recognize Amriki as being the main person behind the al-Sahab
media organisation, and it is thought that he runs its editing
suite from the back of a van somewhere in and around the border
areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Bin Laden and
Zawahiri are also thought to be in hiding. Amriki has previously
made video statements in English and is thought to be the third
most important spokesperson for Al-Qaeda. Although nominally
involved in al-Sahab he has been the only person apart from Bin
Laden in Al-Qaeda who has directed his messages specifically to
a US audience. It seems likely that Amriki is relied upon by Bin
Laden and Zawahiri, and also possibly more widely in Al-Qaeda,
as someone who is most sensitive to and knowledgeable as to the
most effective ways targeting the US in its propaganda war.
Although Bin
Laden and Zawahiri have directed many comments and statements at
the people and government of the US, recent statements have
shown that Al-Qaeda is attempting to improve this particular
media strategy. One of Zawahiri’s latest statements stated that
Al-Qaeda is fighting on the behalf of "all the weak and
oppressed in North America and South America, in Africa and
Asia, and all over the world", being possibly the first time
that Al-Qaeda leadership has stated that their struggle is also
aimed at assisting the world’s oppressed. Zawahiri’s statement
also contained many references to Malcolm X /
Malik el-Hajj Shabazz, a figure that still holds an emotive and
profoundly political place in the hearts and minds of radicals,
Muslims and especially Black people in the US. Zawahiri cited
the famous militant Black leader to call on Black soldiers in
the US army to recognise their historical and continuing
oppression by the US and to refuse to fight in a war that is not
in their interests; “And I tell the soldier of color in
the American army that the racist Crusader regime kidnapped your
ancestors to exploit them in developing their resources, and
today it is using you for the same purpose, after they altered
the look of the shackles and changed the type of chains and try
to make you believe that you are fighting for democracy and the
American dream ... And after you achieve for them what they
want, they will throw you out into the street like an old shoe”.
In Bin
Laden’s latest statement he takes up a similar theme of racial
divisions and tensions in US society by citing a short
Guardian Film which was syndicated by ABC about a US Black
soldier in Iraq; “Among them is the eloquent message of Joshua
which he sent by way of the media, in which he wipes the tears
from his eyes and describes American politicians in harsh terms
and invites them to join him there for a few days. Perhaps his
message will find in you an attentive ear so you can rescue him
and more than 150,000 of your sons …"
It has been speculated that
Amriki is the person who is essentially script-writing sections
or even large parts of Zawahiri and Bin Laden’s speeches, this
seems especially so in the case of Bin Laden’s latest video
statement perhaps drafting the entire speech. The question has
to be posed: is this an effective strategy on the part of al-Sahab?
If put into the historical context of conflicts in times gone
by, the current media strategy by al-Sahab has the potential of
being successful to some extent, and there is even evidence that
this is working on young people across the West.
The period of Black, Hispanic
and white leftist and anti-imperialist movements of the 1960s
and ‘70s in the US saw these organisations ally themselves to
struggles which the US government considered a part of what was
at the time then the parallel of Al-Qaeda in terms of the way
the communists and the ‘Evil Empire’ were demonized and seen by
the US government to epitomize the very opposite of its
principles of American democratic and free-market values.
Significant sections, but by no means a majority of Black
political movements of Black radical movements in the US have
throughout the last century sympathized and even sided with
those the US are at war with. This has included Saddam Hussein
in the 1991 war, at which time influential rapper Rakim in his
pioneering Hip-Hop outfit with DJ Eric B expressed support for
Saddam Hussein with a mixture of Third Worldist, Islamist and
anti-capitalist lyrics on the track ‘Causalities of War’:
… let's see who reigns supreme
Something like Monopoly: a
government scheme
Go to the Army, be all you can
be
Another dead soldier? Hell no,
not me
So I start letting off
ammunition in every direction
Allah is my only protection
But wait a minute, Saddam
Hussein prays the same
and this is Asia, from where I
came
I'm on the wrong side, so change
the target
Shooting at the general; and
where's the sergeant?
One of the pet hate figures of
the US establishment has been the leader of possibly one of the
biggest Black political organisations: Louis Farrakhan, leader
of the Nation of Islam, whose international allies include
Cuba’s Castro and Libya’s Ghadaffi. One of the earlier leaders
of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, was well-known for supporting
practically any militant opposition to US power in the world
from guerilla movements Vietnam to the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, the equivalent of the 911 attacks of its time.
Following the Zawahiri statement
in which he quotes Malcolm X, one of the best documentaries on
Malcolm X’s life and political beliefs overseen by his wife
Betty Shabazz, was edited into a pro-Al-Qaeda version of the
original film, renaming it ‘Prince of Islam’. This was also
accompanied by the release of a pro-Malcolm X rap song and video
entitled ‘By Any Means Necessary’ by the clandestine rap group
‘Soul Salah Crew’ with which the aforementioned ‘Prince of
Islam’ film opens. The music video and the ‘re-mixed’ film are
popular on video-sharing websites, showing that Zawahiri’s
statement has been successful in fusing Al-Qaeda’s jihadist
ideology with the radical message of Malcolm X.
Further back in history we can
find examples of white US soldiers defecting to North Korea
during the war against it by the US in the early 1950s, who
broadcasted radio statements encouraging US soldiers to defect,
and who also played acting roles in North Korean propaganda
films portraying the ignorant and racially chauvinist American.
Then there is the case of Robert F Williams from Monroe, North
Carolina, maybe the person most responsible for the rise of the
Black Power movement in the early 1960s who conducted radio
broadcasts encouraging Black US soldiers in Vietnam to defect
and also got Mao Tse Tung to issue a statement in support of the
Black civil-rights movement at a time that Mao and Red China
were seen as irreproachable anti-imperialist radicals by the US
government. Today there is no sign of any radical Black movement
in open support of Al-Qaeda, but judging from the fact that
throughout history sizeable sections of Black people who have no
trust whatsoever in the US system, one can be sure that Al-Qaeda
are receiving some sympathetic nods when they raise the
parallels between the history of US oppression of Black people
and the way in which they are treated today.
The South Asia Analysis Group
states that the Bin Laden statement reads more like the text of
a disgruntled American than that of an ‘Arab Sheikh’ and that
‘there are more allusions to contemporary American history than
to ancient Islam’. Most of Al-Qaeda’s statements are highly
political, derided by some trends within Islam as being
concerned too much with politics. In their statements Al-Qaeda
raise events in Islamic history to prove a very contemporary
political proposition. Nevertheless, it is true to say that this
latest statement has very few references to Islamic history
apart from the last section whereby Bin Laden explains that
rather than being guilty of massive anti-Semitic practices,
Islamic history, especially that of the 700 years of Islamic
rule in Spain, proved that it was under an Islamic government
that Jews and Muslims lived together in peace and security at a
time when they were both persecuted. Bin Laden points the finger
at the West as the architects and executers of the genocide
against the Jewish people; “They [Jews and Christians] are alive
with us and we have not incinerated them”.
This section of the statement
has been derided by many commentators and analysts which is
rather heavy on Islamist rhetoric calling on people in the US to
convert to Islam, something which Al-Qaeda has done in many
statements. It should be remembered that many Muslims, including
rather reformist Islamic trends which Western governments tend
to encourage, see the obligation of dawa - a religious
call – to the West to convert to Islam as one of the greatest
challenges facing the Ummah - the international community
or nation of Muslims – in establishing peace and justice which
they see as only being possible under Islamic law. So it should
not come as any surprise that Bin Laden also calls upon people
in the West to do so, albeit with the obvious difference being
that refusing to do so might result in terrorist guerilla
attacks. However Al-Qaeda like many Muslims believe Islam to be
the only viable alternative to what they see as the morally
decadent nature of the West. If yesterday it was Marxism or
communism that was seen by many as, on the one hand the greatest
enemy of the West, and on the other hand, as the best possible
alternative to Western democracy and capitalism, it shouldn’t be
so shocking in a context where Islam is seen as having replaced
communism as the great threat, that it is seen by many Muslims
as the great alternative to Western capitalist democracy. Bin
Laden sees that only Islam can save the people of the US, and
that of those Islamic countries with which it is fighting, from
war and exploitation as he does not see any effective movement
in the US that fights the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, let
alone a cohesive political movement that is able to
fundamentally challenge the system. Bin Laden argues: “you can
still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of
major cities, then go back to your homes, but that will be of no
use and will lead to the prolonging of the war."
Bizarrely, Bin Laden has become
one of the most well-known personalities in the world that is
championing anti-capitalist, anti-racist and environmentalist
demands, and all the while favorably quoting one of the greatest
radical minds of our times: Noam Chomksy. It is rare, even on
anti-war demonstrations in the West, to find such radical
pronouncements as those from Bin Laden when he calls on people
who have ‘previously liberated yourselves before from the
slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism’, to liberate themselves
from ‘the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist
system’, a system he continues to argue that ‘seeks to turn the
entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the
label of "globalization" in order to protect democracy.’
This Islamist leftist rhetoric
has inspired annoyance in some left-wing and radical circles in
the West. While they might share Bin Laden’s radical comments
they perhaps don’t appreciate Bin Laden picking holes in their
political strategies and movements so publicly. One has to wait
and see whether Chomksy shares this sentiment or like William
Blum, another leftist intellectual that Bin Laden has previously
praised, will be ‘glad’ about Bin Laden’s name dropping. If Bin
Laden quoting Chomsky as a great writer wasn’t surreal enough,
he goes on to praise the author of the book Imperial Hubris,
Michael Scheuer, currently one of the main writers on the
conflict-analyst organisation Jamestown and former head of the
CIA Bin Laden unit. Scheuer has said in the past that “the
Islamic media's correspondents and editors work harder, dig
deeper, and think more than most of their Western counterparts.”
This latest Al-Qaeda statement
indeed shows that Bin Laden has done his research, or perhaps
Amriki has done the legwork for him, in crafting a statement
well-suited politically to a US context. The calls for people in
the West to convert to Islam are not as outrageous and important
as they might seem; in this statement, like so many others by
Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s main emphasis remains the demand for a
security pact with the people of the West conditional on the
cessation of hostilities against Islamic nations, especially in
the Arab world and in Afghanistan. In this latest statement it
is probable that Amriki has helped Bin Laden gear this statement
for a US audience. No matter how much analysts, journalists and
commentators rubbish Al-Qaeda’s attempts at developing a
discourse that aims to bridge the political and cultural chasm
created by Western mainstream media in the present conflicts,
Al-Qaeda are, as shown in the example of the Prince of Islam and
Soul Salah Crew song, achieving some successes in this strategy.
As for Amriki, one can imagine that Amriki is rather flattered
by the amount of attention and responsibility that he has been
attributed in Al-Qaeda’s media campaign against the West, in
addition to being the first person since 1952 to be charged with
treason, something which undoubtedly boosts his jihadi
kudos, and may well be satisfied with his efforts. Possibly
Amriki’s aim at the very least is to have got people in the
world to take notice as to this the latest development of al-Sahab’s
media campaign, something which he has achieved, and in so
doing, has contributed to one of the most extraordinary cultural
accomplishments of our times – Al Qaeda with American
characteristics.
Sukant Chandan
is London-based freelance journalist and political analyst. He
runs two blogs
http://ouraim.blogspot.com/ and
http://sonsofmalcolm.blogspot.com/ and can be contacted at
sukant.chandan@gmail.com
Click
on "comments" below to
read or post comments
Comment
Guidelines
Be succinct, constructive and
relevant to the story.
We
encourage engaging, diverse and
meaningful commentary. Do not
include personal information such
as names, addresses, phone
numbers and emails. Comments
falling outside our guidelines
– those including personal
attacks and profanity – are
not permitted.
See our complete
Comment
Policy and
use
this link to notify us if you
have concerns about a comment.
We’ll promptly review and
remove any inappropriate
postings.
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
