Al Jazeera, according to informed sources, was waiting for a new tape of OBL that was to be released a month ago. The tape did not come out in public possibly for the sensitivity of the matter...

Angry and desperate young Palestinians voiced their support for ‘Sheikh Osama Bin Laden’ and his global war against Jewish domination while Israeli troops uprooted olive trees from their farms. With the Taliban saying Osama Bin Laden (OBL) is alive and well, there is talk of a possible return of the ‘Sheikh’ from the shadows of oblivion. Will the possible second coming of OBL confirm the rise of Islamic militancy and armed revolutionary movements across the Muslim world? World Futures analyses the situation in several Muslim countries to give a better picture to its readers.

In the Palestine territories that were freed by Israel, the Palestinians are showing signs of discontent and a lack of faith in their political leaders. The Hamas, running the Parliament of the country and the Cabinet and the Fatah – the party created by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – are both at daggers drawn, forgetting their primary objectives of finding a state for their supporters and the people of Palestine.

In the mean time, the Fatah Al-Islam (FAI), though claiming no association with the Al-Qaeda or groups affiliated to OBL; said they believed in Osama’s vision of global jihad and of the establishment of a ‘caliphate’ of Islam in the Muslim world. The views of the FAI are shared by many other ‘militant’ groups such as the Runda Kupulan Kecil (RKK) in Thailand and the Ansar Al-Islam in Anbar province in Iraq. These are also the views of hard line military leaders in independence movements in the Southern Philippines and elsewhere, in large swathes of Arabia and Africa.

The idea of a global jihad is taking roots and it is apparently inevitable due to the arrogance of the American invaders in Afghanistan, Iraq and their role in fighting Muslim insurgents and attempts at quelling Muslim rebellion at all cost. These movements are not interested in the form of nationalism or pan-Arabism promoted by the current political leadership because the Islamic movements believe that Islam is one and that all Muslims must be united under one banner: that of the caliphate of Islam.

Now what does all this have to do with the planned return of Osama bin Laden in the International media scene? Commander Mullah Dadullah’s brother in Afghanistan – he took command of the Taliban’s military force after his brother’s death – said OBL is well and has written a letter stating his regrets to the death of Dadullah. The new Taliban commander Mullah Bakht Mohammad also said that OBL could not be seen in public for this would mean the enemy would definitely target him physically. He also dismiss request from the Al-Jazeera correspondent to interview OBL.

Palestinians are not alone suffering from Western arrogance

However, there are reasons to believe that all this will change as soon as the Nato realizes that it has failed in Afghanistan. Things will take a sudden turn with the rising conflict in Pakistan where some observers told WFOL that the ‘genie is already out of the bag’.

The Americans are definitely unchallenged in the air and in the seas – unless Iran proves this theory wrong on the seas in the near future – while they have showed constant vulnerabilities on the ground. The Islamic jihad fighters have proven that they are excellent on the grounds and they operate very well in small, compact but deadly groups as we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are also seeing this in South Thailand and the same patterns are increasing in Lebanon, Somalia and Chechnya.

Is it possible that while the Americans were busy battling insurgents in Iraq, OBL and his network were planning the return of the Sheikh with the spreading of the fighters who had gained experience in the ‘Iraqi school of insurgency’? The Mujahideen groups did say in 2004 that Iraq was their training ground, where they will learn how to combat more powerful forces.

The Taliban has two reasons for saying that Osama Bin Laden was the main planner of their return to fame in Afghanistan: First, they had to deny reports that the Americans and the Nato had offered the Taliban some cabinet posts in the Afghan government in the event they denounced OBL. Second, they had to prove that they were still part and parcel of the OBL group of fighters and that they possibly formed the core of these fighters.

The Taliban is not composed of Afghans alone. It is an international Islamic group of fighters and it will remain as such until the end. Many of these fighters crossed over to Iraq via the long stretch of sandy territory across Iran. They fought the Americans in Iraq and the survivors migrated to Lebanon and Palestine in a move to enlarge, expand the global jihad movement.

This strategy is part of the plan to bring the Commander of the global jihad forces back into the limelight. OBL will surely not come out of his secret hideout to offer a bag of rhetoric’s to his audience. He will surely want to come out with force and the only way to do so is to post the fighters of the global jihad across strategic points in the Muslim world. It will be almost impossible for the Americans to deal with a sudden surge of ‘Jihad’ across the Muslim world.

It is not possible for the American army to suddenly leave Iraq and interfere in countries like the Philippines, Thailand or Indonesia and Egypt or even Jordan and Algeria, Morocco, Somalia at the same time. The Americans are stuck in a game of hide and seek that is being well played by the OBL fighters in Iraq. They are bound to be ‘check mate’ if a massive movement for revolution explodes from Palestine to Turkey and Thailand and so on.

One thing is now becoming clear. Whether or not the Americans are to leave Iraq illico presto or were to remain in the Muslim country for a longer period of time, the global jihad movement will not end here. It will grow, as signs shows it is, and it will do all it can to topple the other weaker regimes in the Middle East before it surrounds the Americans in Iraq.

What the West, particularly the Americans and the British have failed to realize in the recent months is:

a. The paradigm shift in Muslim warfare

Since 911 and the silencing of Osama Bin Laden and his group after the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S., the opinion of world leaders were that ‘Militant Islam’ or armed Muslim rebellion across the world was going to be crushed. It was also believed that the might of America, with its sophisticated intelligent weaponry, its warfare strategy and its imposing presence in the air and on land or the seas was sufficient to call it a day and bury the Muslim rebels.

Iraq proved everybody wrong and now the Taliban in Afghanistan is claiming it is Osama Bin Laden – the long silenced Shiekh of the Muslims warring factions in Afghanistan – was behind the rise of military warfare against the U.S. and the Nato. This bodes bad news for the Western crusade forces. The Muslims are getting bolder by the day and every single misstep of the crusaders in the heart of the Muslim lands they are occupying will be an added advantage to the global jihad movement.

The Muslims are now, as the Hizbullah have proven it during the Israel bombing of Lebanon last year, well equipped to fight larger armies with light weapons but also with powerful Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) that has been so efficient against the huge tanks and Humvees of the U.S.-British-Nato armies.

In the event the West and the Muslim nationalist leaders join forces to counter the massive onslaught that the OBL group is preparing on a global basis, the guarantee is that their armies will suffer terribly in what will be a very long and deadly guerilla warfare by the global jihadists.

The Jihadists does not have to worry about the politics of wars, like Bush has learned after the defeat of his government in the 2006 Congress-Senate mid-term elections in the U.S. The Jihadists has other things too to their advantage. They are not worried of their death toll or the amount of collateral damages done to them by their enemies. They are fighting to die and they know that their enemies are unable to think of dying on the battle field.

The Jihadist movement will start new hot spots across the world – particularly the Muslim world – and this will mean uncontrollable situations and the possible collapse of the secular regimes in the Arab world. Once one regime falls, it will be a game of domino that will fall one by one.

They will also take advantage of the massive rallies organized by the secular movement in Turkey, rallies that will probably end up breaking the Army into secular and Islamic forces rather than bring down the Islamic regime that is in power there. Since there is an undeniable penetration of Islamic Jihadist forces and opinions within the armed forces – which is part of the Nato – there is no reason to believe that there will be defections in the Turkish army in the long run. The secular rallies are tolerated by the pro-Islam Turkish government of Tayyib Erdogan for the simple reason that it puts more strain on the military than on the government itself.

It is a battle of wit and of nerves that the Jihadist is playing with the Pentagon and the military planners of the Western world. No army will be able to sustain the blows that such a Jihadist movement can inflict against them in the long run and on a world wide basis. This is the plan that has been well laid by the Jihadists and no one should be surprised that OBL may be behind this strategy – though we are not certain of his conditions at this very moment.

b. The changing landscape of Islamic militancy

From the OBL group to the Al-Qaeda sobriquet we have now seen the rise of a new form of Islamic militancy. The FAI and the Runda Kumpulan Kecil (RKK) in Thailand are examples of the changing landscape in this so called Islamic militancy world. Their strategies are varied and they are of greater concern to the war planners in Washington and Europe now even more than the OBL group was before and after 911.

The world will soon witness the end of the 911 era with the retreat of Bush from the Presidency. He will bring with him the arrogance and the persistence to follow the course that characterized his tenure in power. With this, the 911 era will be history and the new era of global jihad will dominate the world’s scene.

The presence of the FAI in Lebanon and the fact that they are willing to die with weapons in one hand and the Muslim Holy Book in the other, is indeed an addition to the already existing number of militant and para-military groups in the Muslim world.

More of these groups now have different nationalities among them. The FAI for example is made of Saudi nationals, Egyptians, Tunisians, Algerians, Afghans, Yemenis and Iraqis. The number of Palestinians is limited in such groups based in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Yemen or Saudi Arabia.

They are also in Somalia and they know how to raise funds and acquire weapons altogether. They are also learning from the mistakes and successes of the Iraqi insurgency movement. They are indeed an extension of the Afghani-Iraqi insurgency and this is new since before that, the U.S. and the Western government had hoped that the conflict in Iraq would be contained within its borders.

It has now spilled and it did so in the most unexpected manner. The Israelis and the Bush administration did claim that if the Muslim world did not help them in dealing with the fighting in Iraq, the insurgency will become a stigma for the Middle East. They did not know that the fighters will establish schools (training or ideological) in Lebanon or Jordan. And it is exactly this that happened.

OBL and his next move

Al Jazeera, according to informed sources, was waiting for a new tape of OBL that was to be released a month ago. The tape did not come out in public possibly for the sensitivity of the matter it contained or that it never reached its targeted Network station due to unforeseen circumstances.

As we have seen before in the propaganda side of the OBL group, the Sheikh will deliver a speech that will be televised by Al-Jazeera by preference. It is possible that the purported tape that was to come out a month ago will be screened soon by the Dubai based television network. This will then be part of the well woven plan by OBL and his group.

In the event OBL is preparing a second return that would help his movement regain the lost glamour in the immediate aftermath of the 911 events, the world should expect more than a tape from the Saudi born millionaire turned Mujahideen.

In a statement Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri chastised the “international community” for the “abandonment” of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989. This is the sentiment that is now running high in Muslim capitals: That the west does not follow suit on its promises and that this will play into the hands of the global jihad movement of OBL.

In the Pakistani Minister’s estimation, it was this attitude that created the conditions which eventually culminated in the rise of the Taliban, the hosts of Al-Qaeda, as Al-Jazeera’s website put it. And he is not totally wrong in this since the West is always the one that allows situations to deteriorate before they send in their armies to kill innocents Muslim civilians.

There are 2.4 million Afghani refugees — according to UNHCR figures — who have crossed the border into Pakistan seeking shelter and relative safety. Or are they all seeking such refuge? Some reports said that global jihad operatives and Taliban officials were among the 2.4 million refugees and that had access to Pakistan’s militant movement and infiltrated India, Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Syria and now Lebanon from that particular point.

The global war against terrorism has one major loophole and it is the length of the war. Its other major lacking is the fact that it is built on lies and is served to its supporters with conditions attached. In the long run, these lies explode into the eyes of the betrayed populations of the countries targeted and Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Pakistan are the countries concerned. Yet another loophole of the war on terror is that it is a war fought on too many borders, too many frontiers. This is where global jihad takes advantage of the situation.

After six years of occupation of Afghanistan the population is still living in absolute poverty and no change in their conditions are to be expected any time soon. The same is happening in Iraq. These can only turn the people towards the global jihad ideologies. This theory is now being applied in Palestine and the effect is that soon enough; the Palestinian intifada will be part of the global jihad’s movement stratagem.

And the patient OBL and his group are behind these changes that we have noted since the defeat of the ground forces of U.S. and the Nato in Afghanistan and Iraq.