Today’s still unconfirmed reports that Mohammed Atef has been killed and that the Taliban are abandoning even their stronghold in Kandahar are seen as confirmation that the fight may soon be over. “People are too jaded, they are too tired,” says a market researcher in the United Arab Emirates. “They were willing to celebrate him for a little while, and then ‘Enough!’ There goes another one.” Even in Pakistan, the stridently anti-American mood on the streets has shifted away from uncritical support of bin Laden to a more studied neutrality.
“Expectations were never high,” says Lebanese intellectual and columnist Elias Khouri. “There was opposition to American policy in the Middle East, but that’s always there. After the [World Trade Center] towers came down, people said ’let the Americans taste it’”–the suffering and violence of the region–“but nothing more. Bin Laden and the Taliban were never a serious political alternative.”
Neither the fighting nor the man himself is finished, of course. Bin Laden may well try to make a comeback with a new terrorist spectacular. His minions plotted major attacks over the holidays in 1999 and 2000. They probably have similar plans in the works now, and could carry them out even if their leader is captured. “Osama has lost the battle, but the war has not ended yet,” says Palestinian businessman Huthaifa Azzam, who grew up in the mujahedin camps of Pakistan and Afghanistan alongside bin Laden. Azzam’s father was the founder of the so-called “Arab Afghan” movement. “In my opinion Osama will never give up. He will fight until they kill him. Then thousands of people will continue who had allegiance to this man.”
Yet the most important of bin Laden’s goals, the effort to create a true clash of civilizations, has faltered. Even religious leaders who are hostile to the West have attacked the credibility of his claims to represent the faith. French researcher Gilles Kepel, whose book “Jihad” is an authoritative study of violent Islamic movements, has met with several leading Islamic scholars, known as ulema, since Sept. 11. Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, long known as the spiritual leader of Hizbollah when it was waging a ferocious war on Americans in Lebanon during the 1980s, told Kepel the Arabs were mistaken to place their hopes in men like Nasser, Khomeini, Saddam and bin Laden, whom Fadlallah described as “the least of them.” Another influential scholar, the Egyptian Yousef al-Qardawi, told Kepel that Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and bin Laden’s campaign of terror are “fake jihads” that have done nothing but spread division and chaos through the Muslim world. Events in Afghanistan over the last few days have strengthened that view: this is no longer a war between Muslims and Christians, but of Muslim Taliban against Muslim soldiers of the Alliance–with both sides calling themselves mujahedin, or holy warriors.
“Both Bush, with his talk of a crusade, and bin Laden started out making this a war between Christians and Muslims, then of Good versus Evil,” says Khouri. “But it didn’t work. Good and bad are so incredibly mixed in this one, with the CIA having helped bin Laden in the past so he could help to fight the Russians. Allies become enemies. There was confrontation in the media, but the people were never mobilized. Unlike during the gulf war, there have not been any major demonstrations anywhere in the Arab world since this began.”
What Khouri and many others are hoping for now is a new breath of democracy throughout the Mideast, but they’re not optimistic. “Nobody is listening to the democrats,” he said. “Nobody is interested in their struggle.” Unless some way is found for people to express themselves openly, however, Arabs may keep reaching out for the bloody demagogues who promise quick solutions, looking to restore their pride, even if they know it will lead to another fall.
