UK Article Suggests Bin Ladin 'Blueprint for Regional Domination'
London The Sunday Times (Internet Version-WWW) in English 07 Oct 01
[Article by Tom Walker, Diplomatic Correspondent: "Master Plan: Warlord has Plans for Global Revolt"]
[FBIS Transcribed Text]
Could military intervention by America and Britain in Afghanistan trigger an Islamic fundamentalist backlash capable of turning the world's most wanted terrorist into a regional powerbroker with control over a nuclear arsenal and much of the world's oil, not to mention the West's biggest source of opium? This is Usama Bin Ladin's "golden domino" blueprint for regional domination, in which fundamentalist rule in Afghanistan is cemented, radical generals take over in Pakistan and the Saudi royal family fractures as its kingdom disintegrates in a civil war. Those familiar with Bin Ladin's thinking say he will be well-prepared for airstrikes against his Taliban hosts and seek-and-destroy missions on his bases, regarding them as the inevitable consequence of al-Qa'ida's attacks on the United States. Intelligence reports from Saudi Arabia suggest a groundswell of public opinion sympathetic to Bin Ladin in his fight with America, and such support can be expected to increase the longer he holds out. Just as his mujaheddin fighters helped put an end to Russian expansionism, so Bin Ladin appears to believe that the opportunity will come to see off the Americans.
Thomas Withington, a research fellow at King's College, London, who has studied Bin Ladin for four years, said he had factored an aerial onslaught into his calculations in a carefully laid plot to trap America and Britain in a bloody war. "He thinks he can push the US into a ground invasion which would be their undoing," said Withington. As fighting wore on, secular governments seen to be helping the West could face internal revolt. "He hopes that everywhere opposition elements will pick up their Kalashnikovs," Withington said. "It's the knock-on effect he dreams of." Pakistan, Afghanistan's southern neighbour and the only Islamic nuclear power, is thought to be most vulnerable. Its president, General Pervez Musharraf, faces unrest among hardline colleagues who would need little prompting to engineer a coup if anti-American protests threatened anarchy. Ahmed Wali Masood, the London spokesman of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, said the chances of revolt in Pakistan had increased with delays in starting military action.
"The next home for Bin Ladin could be Pakistan," said Masood. "The military there is dangerous; there is no doubt they have been supplying arms to Bin Ladin and providing him with intelligence." Bin Ladin has alluded to Pakistan's nuclear weapons in interviews in recent years. A "Talibanised" Pakistan could give him access to as many as 30 tactical warheads, each with a power roughly 2[indecipherable symbol] times that of the Hiroshima bomb. Iran, with its Shi'ite majority, has traditionally been hostile to the Sunni Pashtuns of the Taliban regime, but a former Afghan warlord, Gulbeddin Hekmatyar, remains a focus of radical dissent in Tehran and could galvanise support for Bin Ladin. The flames of revolt would then spread south across the Gulf of Oman, and the Saudi royal dynasty would be the next target. "People like Bin Ladin because he's capable of doing what all the others have not been capable of," said Dr Saad Alstudmuffinih, the London-based director of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia. "He's not just writing slogans - destroying the World Trade Center is not a small job. It's beyond their dreams." Alstudmuffinih said terrorist groups inside Saudi Arabia were planning attacks on US troops in the country. Such action would have the tacit backing of the Islamic clergy, who would argue that siding with a non-Muslim against a Muslim contravened all Islamic texts. Bin Ladin is thought to command the support of up to 10,000 former mujaheddin inside Saudi Arabia, but they are not powerful enough to seize power. More likely, analysts say, is a tussle between King Fahd, Crown Prince Abdullah and Prince Sultan, his brother. According to western intelligence sources, Washington has prepared plans that would see America deploy up to 20,000 troops to try to keep the eastern oilfields secure. Bin Ladin, however, has stressed his determination that the Americans be removed from Saudi soil in a battle of "world Christianity, which is allied with Zionist Jewry ... against the Muslim world".
The tidal wave of change sought by Bin Ladin would not abate there. Some 3,000 fighters from 13 Arab countries who are based in Afghanistan are believed to have taken oaths of loyalty to Bin Ladin and their influence spreads across Russia, China, Iran, central Asia and the Far East. Hamid Mir, a Bin Ladin biographer, said that at their last meeting in 1998, his subject had described his admiration for the Ottoman empire. "If the Christian world can have the economic alliance of the European Union and the military might of NATO, he asked why can the Islamic world not unite," said Mir. Bin Ladin has spoken of Turkey and Albania both being "blessed by Islam", and western intelligence agencies have also linked him to Muslim activists in Bosnia. All these countries would be useful buffers against the West in Bin Ladin's new world order, built on chaos and terror. Mir added another thought that may come to preoccupy military planners: that even in death, Bin Ladin would haunt them. "He knows he will be more dangerous dead than alive. After him there will be many more Bin Ladins. In martyrdom he will continue to spread hatred against the American superpower - it will be his final victory."
