headland

The Irish Independent reports on Monday (Al-Jazeera was 'Saddam's Station'" January 3, 2004 [registration required]) that a videotape shows a former manager of Al-Jazeera thanking Odai, son of Saddam Hussein, and telling him "Al-Jazeera is your channel." On the tape, Odai mentions that he had proposed "some ideas" in previous meetings that had led to changed in Al-Jazeera's political coverage. Al-Jazeera dismissed the manager, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali, from his position shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 without explanation. The tape is set to be broadcast in a documentary on Thursday by Al-Hurra television. Al-Jazeera refused any comment on the report.

For more connections linking Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau to Saddam's regime, see Headland's November 27 story: Allegation Saddam Guard Was Al-Zarqawi Aide Spurs Dispute.

Labels: Al-Jazeera, Saddam Hussein

Was the brother of the former director of Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau a guard for Saddam Hussein and the foremost aide of Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi? The rift between the Qatari-funded satellite channel Al-Jazeera and the Saudi-owned London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat over that allegation may reflect deeper fault lines between the two Gulf states.

On November 19, Al-Sharq al-Awsat published a report from Baghdad with the lengthy title: "Al-Zarqawi's aide a former guard of Saddam, brother of 'Al-Jazeera' office's director in Baghdad. Umar Hadid led Al-Fallujah battle, received training in Afghanistan." A translated paraphrase of the article was made by BBC Monitoring International Reports (not, so far as I know, publicly accessible on the web), though a rough translation of a portion of the article is available on FrontPage Magazine.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted informed sources in Iraq as saying that Hamid Hadid, the director of Al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau had a brother who had been Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi's foremost aide. This brother, Umar Hadid, was also said to have once been in the special guard of Saddam Hussein. (The translation on FrontPage says he was in Saddam Hussein's "personal body-guards unit"; the BBC Monitoring International Report says Umar was in "Saddam's Special Republican Guard.") About ten years ago, according to the report, Umar left the guard service to associate with radical Islamic fundamentalist groups. With one accomplice, he is alleged to have carried out a bombing of an al-Fallujah cinema that killed a person. He then is thought to have fled to Pakistan, and, from there, to have entered Afghanistan, where he received training in the base camps of al-Qa'idah, under the leadership of Osama bin Laden.

Sources for the report thought that Umar Hadid may have left Afghanistan to return to Pakistan, after the overthrow of the Taleban regime in 2001. There is no doubt among the sources, however, that he returned to Iraq just before the beginning of the war, when Saddam Hussein provided a general amnesty for prisoners, wanted men and runaways.

According to intelligence sources, Umar Hadid led the battle against U.S. forces in al-Fallujah. Iraqi sources privy to information from western intelligence services also claimed that Umar Hadid was still in the al-Fallujah region after al-Zarqawi escaped.

The report of Al-Sharq al-Awsat also alleged that the Hadids had a third brother, who was killed, along with his family, when his house was shelled by U.S. forces just two hours after a visit from Umar.

Al Jazeera responded promptly, on November 20, with an interview of Umar Hadid in their Doha studio. Here are his denials, in a translation provided by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, November 20 (again, so far as I know, not available in any publicly accessible website):

Hadid: I am Umar Ahmad Muhammad al-Jumayli, a brother of Hamid Ahmad Muhammad al-Jumayli, director of Al-Jazeera bureau. The Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat published a report claiming that I have a connection with or that I am an aide to Al-Zarqawi in Al-Fallujah. I deny this because I am 24 years old. The report claims that I was in Afghanistan 10 years ago and went to Pakistan. Ten years ago, I was a little boy. Therefore, this is untrue.

Lina Zahr-al-Din, Al-Jazeera: You do not know Al-Zarqawi at all and you have not met him before?

Hadid: I do not know Al-Zarqawi or anybody linked to him. I hear about him from satellite channels only.

Zahr-al-Din: You said that 10 years ago you were a young boy, but the newspaper accused you that then you worked in Saddam Husayn's special guard. What did you exactly do then?

Hadid: I was a student. I was 14 years old. I left school then and began to drive a lorry to support my family. Afterward, I was enrolled in the Iraqi Army for three months. This is the military service document and the driving licence, which prove that I served in the Iraqi Army for three months. I was discharged later after paying cash for my discharge.

On November 23, Al-Sharq al-Awsat responded with a published interview of Iraqi interim Defense Minister Hazim Sha'lan. Al-Sha'lan attacked Al-Jazeera satellite television as a "terrorist channel. He also claimed that Umar Hadid was indeed "a terrorist and is wanted by the Iraqi government for his terrorist activities in Fallujah." (quotation from "Analysis: Al-Jazeera's Row with Saudi Paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat," BBC Monitoring International Reports, November 26, 2004).

On the same day, the new editor of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Tariq al-Humayd, appeared on the Lebanese channel Future TV to defend his paper's feature story on Umar Hadid. Appointed by Prince Faysal bin Salman in October 2004, al-Humayd has given the London-based newspaper an editorial stance that is firmly in support of the war on terror. (In one piece, entitled "For Saudis only," for example, he took to task those Saudis who sympathized with the jihadists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and particularly, those fighting in Fallujah. He also called for Islamic clerics to stop inciting the youth of Saudi Arabia to jihad.) By the account of the interview in the BBC Monitoring International Report, it appears that al-Humayd took a moderately conciliatory stance toward al-Jazeera, and emphasized that the story's focus had been Umar Hamid, not al-Jazeera. Al-Humayd also expressed concern that the incident should not become "politicized" and lead to a rift between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Whatever the resolution of this dispute over the Hadids, the fast-approaching trial of Saddam Hussein promises to teach us much, much more about the nexus connecting Saddam's regime to global networks of terror.

Labels: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda, Al-Jazeera, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Hamid Hadid, Iraq, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein

We have had our October Surprise. The surprise was not the work of the mainstream media nor a "527" group delivering a last-minute exposé on what one of the candidates did decades ago. Nor was the surprise the doing of the Bush administration, as expected by those cynics who thought the administration would withhold news of bin Laden's death or capture until its revelation could have maximal effect on the electorate. No, though the surprise was the appearance of bin Laden, as Teresa Heinz Kerry had feared, it was not an appearance that anyone expected. We did not anticipate our October Surprise to be delivered, in the form of a videotape, from Osama bin Laden himself to the front door of the Islamabad office of Al Jazeera. And thus we were genuinely surprised.

The surprise went deeper. For we expected an October Surprise to represent an obvious advantage for one side or the other. On this weekend before the election, however, it is by no means obvious how this October Surprise is likely to sway the electorate. Even putting aside the fact that millions have already cast their ballot, it is hard to anticipate the effect of the tape on those who have yet to vote.

What was Osama bin Laden doing? Obviously, he was giving a message addressed explicitly to the American people. More important than the propositional content of his utterance, however, is what effects he intended to produce in those who heard his words. The philosopher J. L. Austin coined the term "perlocutionary act" to describe that part of a speech act that is directed toward producing an effect in the audience. What was the perlocutionary effect that bin Laden was seeking? One effect, no doubt intended, was that the Americans would be surprised. Another, perhaps, was directed toward the Arab world: to lift al Qaeda's image and morale. Perhaps another was to signal al Qaeda cells to proceed with an attack. Were there other purposes intended by bin Laden toward his American audience?

Undoubtedly there were. The timing of the videotape makes plain that bin Laden intended to have his words heard before the election. In the words broadcast by al Jazeera, and apparently in those words mysteriously not broadcast, bin Laden was intent on mocking Bush. (In Austin's terminology, bin Laden's mocking is one of his illocutionary acts.) It is understandable that those Democrats who echo Michael Moore, those who use similar language with similar intent, should wish to put distance between their own rhetoric and that of bin Laden. Some attempt to find that difference in the intended perlocutionary effects. The terrorists, they insist, would prefer to see Bush win, because al Qaeda could then continue to exploit the hatred of Bush to recruit more youth into al Qaeda. This response has the scent of desperation.

Others on the left do not attribute such subtlety to bin Laden's motives, but take him at his word when he claims that it will not matter to the security of America whether or not Kerry or Bush win. Here, I think they are only half-right. Note that bin Laden declared that the idea of attacking the twin towers came to him in 1982, when the United States aided Israel in its invasion of Lebanon. Yet, the groups with which bin Laden was affiliated did not wait until 2001 to respond. In 1983, a group known as Islamic Jihad destroyed the United States embassies in Beirut and in Kuwait. In 1992, that same group destroyed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. In 1993, they first struck the twin towers, in the bombing attack planned by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed. These attacks span the administrations of both parties in the U.S. It is a fantasy to believe that bin Laden would respond to the election of Kerry by ordering a ceasefire.

So, it is a half-truth that al-Qaeda and bin Laden do not care who wins this election. To be sure, the election will have no effect on their intentions nor on their hatred of the West. Nor will the election change their impossible demand that the West disengage from the Islamic world, and only such a disengagement could constitute the security that bin Laden demanded in his videotape. Nonetheless, the election will have an effect on the level of resistance that the jihadists can expect to meet. That is the difference that explains why bin Laden would prefer that George Bush lose, and why he wished to demonstrate that he was alive, well, and capable of mocking Bush right before the election. The intended purpose of the tape was to help swing the election Kerry's way. We will soon see whether bin Laden gets what he wishes.

Labels: al Qaeda, Al-Jazeera, Al-Qa'idah, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, George W. Bush, John Kerry, Michael Moore, October Surprise, Osama bin Laden