The'Sacred' Relationship of Imran Khan With Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda And Terror
By
Khaled Ahmed
July 11,
2020
Since Prime
Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan fondly remembers the founder of al Qaeda, Osama
bin Laden, as a “martyr” of the faith, it is only relevant to talk about this
“sacred” relationship.
In
this 1998 file photo made available on March 19, 2004, Osama bin Laden is seen
at a news conference in Khost, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Mazhar Ali Khan, File)
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Osama bin
Laden’s Syrian mother was one of the many wives of his millionaire Yemeni
father. While his brothers went to the West for higher education, Osama
preferred going to Jeddah’s Abdel Aziz University where his fondness for
Islamic studies was spurred by two charismatic teachers, Muhammad Qutb and
Abdallah Azzam — the first an Egyptian, a brother of the great Ikhwan leader,
Syed Qutb and the second, a Palestinian who merged the Qutb doctrine of
jahiliyya (ignorance) with modern jihad against the West.
Flag
used by various al-Qaeda factions
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Osama came
to Peshawar in 1980 to conduct jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
By 1984, Osama got used to spending a lot of time in Peshawar, renting a number
of guest houses in the city, and frequenting the office of Al Jihad, the Arabic
newspaper that his mentor Azzam was bringing out from Peshawar. (Azzam later
gave Pakistan a university in Islamabad that only spread extremism in a state
that needed moderate thinking.) Osama’s jihad against the Soviets received a
setback in 1989 when the mujahideen suffered a defeat at Jalalabad.
Credit:
Views and News/ ImranKhan
------
Osama
decided sometime after 1991 that the real enemy was America — Pakistan
swallowed the bait. Jason Burke assigns a large part of blame for the terrorism
that began in the training camps of Afghanistan to the Sipah Sahaba. He claims
that an attempt on Benazir Bhutto’s life was unsuccessfully made by Ramzi Yusuf
at the outfit’s instigation, while the money came from his relative Khalid
Shaikh Muhammad who was then living in Karachi disguised as a Saudi businessman
and planning 9/11. Ramzi got injured outside Bhutto’s Karachi house when his
bomb went off prematurely. Severely injured, he was visited in hospital by top
functionaries of the Sipah Sahaba. Bhutto’s government accused Osama bin Laden.
Nothing happened and Khalid Shaikh Muhammad went on to plan the 9/11 attack on
New York. It comes to light that an entire Arab terrorist diaspora either began
by training in Afghanistan or went to Afghanistan as a kind of sacred
pilgrimage before offering new plans to Osama for financing. Those present
there included the Indonesian militant Hambali who was frequently in Karachi on
his way to meet Al Zawahiri to request funding for his project of killing
Americans in Southeast Asia.
Muhammad
Atta’s story is often told. He was to be the leader of the suicide attacks on
the World Trade Centre. After 1996, expat Arabs from as far away as Canada,
France and Germany travelled to Afghanistan “through Pakistan” to offer their
oath of allegiance (bayat) to bin Laden. Saudi youths, most of them originally
from Yemen like bin Laden, gradually came to outnumber the others because the
US gave them visas more easily.
Abu Zubayda
was another Egyptian who emerged as al Qaeda’s fundamental asset as he stayed
back in Peshawar to look after training while Osama was away in Sudan till
1996. When he was caught in Faisalabad after a shootout, no one in Pakistan
knew how important the catch was. Another capture in Karachi of Ramzi bin
al-Shibh, an important member of the Hamburg Cell, also drew a blank. If the
government in Islamabad knew about him, it pretended to draw a blank.
Al Qaeda
attacked New York on September 11, 2001. The Americans killed bin Laden in
Abbottabad on May 2, 2011. In December 2007 about 13 groups united under the
leadership of BaitullahMehsud to form the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Among the stated objectives of Tehrik-e-Taliban is resistance against the
Pakistani state. The TTP’s aim is to overthrow the government of Pakistan by
waging a terrorist campaign against the Pakistan armed forces and the state.
The TTP depends on the tribal belt along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border from
which to draw its recruits. The TTP draws ideological guidance from the Al
Qaeda and maintains ties with it.
The BBC
noted on February 2, 2014: “Pakistan’s Taliban have named politician and
ex-cricketer Imran Khan as a member of a five-man team to enter into peace
talks with the government.”
Khaled Ahmed is consulting editor, Newsweek
Pakistan.
Original
Headline: The slow poison of Osama: A
man, an organisation, and the spreading of terror
Source: The Indian Express
URL: https://newageislam.com/radical-islamism-jihad/the-acred-relationship-imran-khan/d/122343
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