The New York Times > Week in Review > Sizing Up the New Toned-Down Bin Laden

The New York Times > Week in Review > Sizing Up the New Toned-Down Bin Laden

December 19, 2004
Sizing Up the New Toned-Down Bin Laden
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

LONDON — What does Osama bin Laden want?

The vexing question emerged again last week with the release of an audiotape on which the Qaeda leader seems to be speaking. On it, he applauds the Dec. 6 attack against the United States Consulate in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, and urges the toppling of the Saudi royal family.

The tape indicated that Mr. bin Laden has apparently moved the fomenting of a revolution in his Saudi homeland toward the top of his lengthy and ambitious wish list, which also includes the reversal of American foreign policy in the Middle East, the retreat of the American military from the Arabian Peninsula and the creation of a Palestinian homeland.

Mr. bin Laden has advocated these sea changes before. What intelligence officials and terrorism experts find particularly remarkable in his recent pronouncements is a shift in style from the raw anger and dark imagery of the post-9/11 days. They say he has subtly tempered his message, tone and even persona, presenting himself almost as an ambassador, as if he sees himself as an elder statesman for a borderless Muslim nation.

Earlier this year, he offered a truce to European governments that withdraw their troops from Iraq. In a message released just before the presidential election in the United States, he gloated that the war in Iraq and the "war against terror" were primarily responsible for record American budget deficits. Instead of talking about exacting blood from his enemies, he offered a sober discussion of the bleeding of the American economy.

Perhaps most striking is Mr. bin Laden's expression of frustration. Like any politician on the stump, Mr. bin Laden craves the ability to deliver an unfiltered message to his audience. Speaking directly to Americans in the pre-election address, he complained that his rationale for waging a holy war against the United States was repeatedly mischaracterized by President Bush and consequently misunderstood by most Americans.

To change this, Mr. bin Laden is testing what he apparently believes are more mainstream themes, while trying to dislodge the entrenched American view of him as a terrorist hell-bent on destroying America and all it stands for. In the pre-election address, Mr. bin Laden said Mr. Bush was wrong to "claim that we hate freedom." He added: "If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike, for example, Sweden."

That remark surprised some counterterrorism officials and terrorist experts, who said the Al Qaeda leader rarely injects sarcasm into his public pronouncements. They took it as a signal that he was trying to broaden his appeal, particularly to moderate Muslims and possibly even some Americans.

What they cannot say is whether the less strident approach means that he has changed his goals and is less of a danger or that he is just laying the groundwork to justify a new attack against the United States. But they are listening closely and debating an important question: Is Mr. bin Laden committed to destroying America, or has he become more pragmatic, trying to begin a rational foreign policy debate about its presence in the Middle East and even appealing to Americans' pocketbooks?

"Osama is not a man given to humor, but when he told this joke about Sweden, I think it showed his frustration that Americans are not listening to him," said Michael Scheuer, a former senior C.I.A. official who tracked Mr. bin Laden for years and is the author of "Imperial Hubris." "We are being told by the president and others that Al Qaeda attacked us because they despise who we are and what we think and how we live. But Osama's point is, it's not that at all. They don't like what we do. And until we come to understand that, we are not going to defeat the enemy."

The bin Laden messages are a historical rarity: a foreign leader speaking so directly and frequently to his enemy. Mr. bin Laden has spent 25 years honing his message, and began to address an American audience in the mid-1990's. Since Sept. 11, 2001, he has delivered 17 messages, while his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has made 12. That amounts to a message from a Qaeda leader every six weeks.

Intelligence officials are divided on what the two men are trying to accomplish. Some believe they are the leading advocates for what is increasingly being called Qaedism, an anti-Western gospel that they hope will inspire attacks all over the world. Others say the messages are intended to be jihad pep talks, or veiled triggers for new attacks.

Some believe these messages were used that way before the commuter-train bombings in Madrid in March and the bombings of British targets in Istanbul in 2003. Some messages have bluntly threatened new terror strikes; on April 15, Mr. bin Laden warned that an attack would strike any European country that failed to withdraw its troops from Iraq within 90 days. (No country complied, and no Qaeda-linked attacks have occurred in Europe since then.)

Mr. bin Laden's attempt to engage Americans is occurring while his message to drive the United States out of the Muslim world is resonating with those among the 1.2 billion Muslims who believe the Qaeda leader eloquently expresses their anger over the foreign policies of the United States and Israel. In recent years, he has emphasized the Palestinians' struggle. "His genius lies in identifying things that are easily visible and easily felt by most Muslims," Mr. Scheuer said. "He has found issues that are simple, and that Muslims see playing out on their televisions every day."

But Mr. bin Laden also wants Americans and Europeans to heed his messages and urge their leaders to change their Middle East policies. This has not happened and probably will not happen. "He is tuned out by most Americans and Europeans, and it's begun to really annoy him," said a senior counterterrorism official based in Europe.

In his pre-election address, Mr. bin Laden seemed irritated that interviews he gave to Western journalists in the 1990's went largely unheard by most Americans. He appeared to suggest that if American leaders had listened to his warnings that the United States must change its foreign policy in the Middle East or face the consequences, the Sept. 11 attacks could have been avoided.

Analysts say Mr. bin Laden's repeated refrain is that Al Qaeda's strikes are retribution for American and Israeli killings of Muslim women and children. "Reciprocity is a very important principle in the Islamic way of the world," Mr. Scheuer said. "They judge how far they can go by how far their enemy has gone."

What stood out in the pre-election message was Mr. bin Laden's bid to reinvent himself. He traded his battle fatigues, his AK-47 and a rough-terrain backdrop for a sensible sheik's garb, an anchor desk and a script without a single phrase portending a clash of civilizations. No longer was he reflecting on his own possible martyred death in the "eagle's belly" - the United States - as he did in 2002, nor did he threaten another spectacular attack against America.

Instead, he said the United States could avoid another attack if it stopped threatening the security of Muslims. He spoke at length about what he sees as the true motive for the Iraq war - to enrich American corporations with ties to the Bush administration. (He cited Halliburton.) And he spoke of bloodshed, but this time metaphorically, about the American economy.

He mocked the United States's budget and trade deficits, saying that Al Qaeda is committed "to continuing this policy in bleeding American to the point of bankruptcy." And he said that the 9/11 attacks, which cost Al Qaeda a total of $500,000, have cost the United States more than $500 billion, "according to the lowest estimate" by a research organization in London that he cited by name.

"It all shows that the real loser is - you," he told Americans, according to a transcript by Al Jazeera, the satellite network.

Peter Bergen, a CNN analyst who interviewed Mr. bin Laden in 1997, said, "The talk revealed bin Laden to be sort of a policy wonk, talking about supplemental emergency funding by Congress for the Afghan and Iraq wars, and how it was evidence that Al Qaeda's bleed-until-bankruptcy plan was working."

Jessica Stern, a Harvard professor who lectures on terrorism, said she was most surprised by Mr. bin Laden's detailed comments about the American economy. "It seemed as if he was trying to appeal to more moderate Muslims, who might have found his 1998 fatwa to kill all Americans morally repulsive," said Ms. Stern, the author of "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill." "His message on this tape is not nearly as offensive. He talks about Americans having a choice - it is up to us to decide whether we will support a foreign policy that he says is bad for our economy and bad for the Islamic world."

Mr. bin Laden first turned his attention to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980's. He began demanding that the United States withdraw its troops from the Arabian Peninsula, home to the holiest Muslim sites. The American military presence in Saudi Arabia officially ended in 2003, months after a Qaeda-linked terror group launched a series of attacks inside the kingdom.

Analysts say Mr. bin Laden believes that it will be much easier to overthrow Arab regimes if they are not supported by American power. And he wants to encourage the current upheaval in Saudi Arabia, though analysts say they are unsure why he has suddenly made it a priority. Saudi Arabia has killed or arrested hundreds of militants, but there are cells still capable of carrying out attacks there.

"He sees Saudi as one of the places where he might be successful," said Matthew Levitt, a former F.B.I. terrorism analyst. "And he realizes there is tremendous potential in terms of societal issues that breed radicalization."

Does Mr. bin Laden's more moderate style mean there is less risk of a terrorist strike on American soil? Intelligence analysts are unsure. More than one analyst discerned an ominous warning embedded in his milder pre-election address.

"In Islamic jurisprudence, the warning is important," Mr. Bergen said. "And if we don't respond, it's our problem and our fault. He's putting the ball back in our court. Maybe this is all rhetorical and they don't have the ability to launch another big attack. But he intended to tell us that if we choose to completely ignore him, which is a very viable option for us, then we are going to get hit again."