U.S. on trail of jehad financiers?

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (Bahrain) SEPT. 13. While the U.S. policy-makers appear to be zeroing in on Osama bin Laden as the main perpetrator of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on Tuesday, the immediate question is whether there is a danger that their focus will become too narrow.

Osama is only a franchise-holder for jehadi operations world-wide and there are people who provide financial help or forces that promote a world-view behind him. Over the past few years, the U.S. officials have either not directed themselves against these forces or been stymied in their anti-Osama actions.

Al Qaeda, the outfit headed by Osama, is by all accounts a loose- knit fraternity rather than a monolithic organisation. Those who fought in the Afghan war or those who have joined global jehad subsequently use Al Qaeda as a hub for networking. This provides Osama with ready access to operatives or suppliers of logistic services and finances all over the world.

On the one hand, this means that Osama is not tied down to jehad in one particular country or one part of the world or attached to the agenda of a particular religious fundamentalist outfit like the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria or the Gama'a Islamiya in Egypt. On the other, it also means that Osama can seek assistance at any time from the operatives of all these fundamentalist groups that are spread across the world.

Whether it was the attack on the U.S. embassies in East Africa or on the USS Cole in Yemen, the actual operatives or support cadres were reportedly drawn from several countries and had been drawn into jehad by diverse national/ideological groups.

Identifying them as Al Qaeda members has been a journalistic/counter-terrorism short-hand for the fact that the one common thread that brought them together was their commitment to jehad. In their counter-terrorism operations, the U.S. and other national agencies have been able to track down or at least identify these operatives.

Unfortunately, perhaps on account of the Al Qaeda being spoken of as an organisation, the media and the public have focussed on the operatives while ignoring the other aspects of the phenomenon of jehad.

From what has been disclosed about their efforts, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other agencies, have not contended themselves with tracking the operatives alone. They have tried to get at the financiers and the sympathisers who hold high positions in different countries.

For instance, several reports have appeared in the U.S. media on how the FBI tried to persuade the authorities in Yemen that the financiers and wider circle of supporters should also be proceeded against.

The Yemenese authorities are reported to have neither taken those in the wider circle into custody nor allowed the FBI to question them. Similar complaints have been voiced in connection with the U.S. investigations into an explosion at the Al Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia.

It has been well known for some time now that there has emerged a network of financiers in West Asia and elsewhere who contribute liberally to global jehad, perhaps as a means of earning religious merit.

Similarly situated are the clerics or the other ideologues like Pakistan's Hamid Gul who try to provide a spiritual or scriptural justification for jehad. (It might not even be too far-fetched to think that the idea for a specific operation might have actually emanated at this level - in the sense of ``he who pays the piper calls the tune'' - rather than at the level of actual operatives themselves. For instance, these remoter echelons of the jehad might have felt that their warriors were not adequately addressing the issue of Israel's actions against the Palestinians and of the U.S. support for Israel).

With the U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, stating that the U.S. would now launch a multi-dimensional war against terrorism it would appear that they are about to go at all the echelons that support global jehad.

If so, the countries that the U.S. will try to rope in for joint efforts at the primary stage will be those of the Arab and Muslim world that can actually help it get at the financial and ideological echelons. For this reason, the U.S. might not want to show that India is very much in the forefront of the joint efforts.

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Section  : International
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