Informed Comment
Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Monday, November 17, 2008
Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney
The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Persian Afghan press alleging that French troops were at one point close to capturing Usamah Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, but that American forces stopped them from doing so. It says that a forthcoming French documentary containing interviews with the French soldiers provides proof for the allegation. The argument is that the Bush administration needed Bin Ladin to be at large in order to justify its military expansionism.
Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney
Hasht-e-Sobh
Friday, October 3, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text
Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney
Text of article, "Bin-Ladin on the run? The rumour which was fact", by Afghan independent secular daily newspaper Hasht-e Sobh on 29 September
So, the rumour was right: French soldiers trapped Usamah Bin-Ladin, but were not allowed by the Americans to arrest the apparent fugitive leader of Al-Qa`idah. A Bin-Ladin documentary just released by French documentary cinema examines this issue, an issue which has led to heated debate in the French media.
This French documentary shows how the Americans are interested in continuing the game, a bloody and expensive game whose victims are only the unprotected and local people of our dry and dusty country. It was last year that rumours spread about this report in Kabul, but it has not been taken seriously by the media. But watching this revealing French documentary changes the rumours into disturbing facts. "Bin Laden, the failings of a manhunt", produced by Emmanuel Razavi and Eric de Lavarene, two French filmmakers and reporters, assesses and confirms the claims of French soldiers that they could have killed Usamah within two operations, but the American forces prevented them. This film has not been broadcast publicly yet and is to be broadcast by Planet, a French network.
Even though French soldiers have insisted on this in the battlefield many times, the Elysees Palace in Paris and the White House in America have rejected this, and the Afghan leadership does not have any information about it yet!
The main question that arises is the extent to which the "Bin Laden on the run" project is a problem for America and Afghanistan. Seven years of suicide bombing and explosions, blood and violence, unmanned fighter planes, and old vehicles full of explosives, all to catch a long-bearded Arab whom America apparently hates? And an Arab who worked for the CIA in the name of Allah, and who now, also in the name of that same Allah, has conducted a jihad against that same CIA?
Facing the facts in this Usamah film is a bitter and disturbing experience and will make you nervous and wish that what it is that you are watching is just a baseless rumour, or a figment of Hollywood's imagination. But it is not. The pictures are real and you are facing a debate in documentary form. The only justification for the bloody presence of America in Afghanistan is the ambiguous existence of Usamah Bin-Ladin and the Al-Qa'idah terrorist network.
George Bush, with his "war on terror" project, has transformed the middle east and Afghanistan into an inflamed bomb ready to explode, but has not found out anything about his beloved lost Usamah Bin-Ladin so far.
What is seen, and the film also emphases this, is that all these slogans, this fighting and killing are a game, a painful and prolonged game whose end even the players do not know and which is running out of control. Apparently, it is a game of cat and mouse, just like "Tom and Jerry", the famous cartoon. But it is a reality that the stubborn one from Texas does not want to catch the mouse - unlike credulous Tom - and that the long-bearded Wahhabi Arab does not want to hide - unlike the intelligent and roaming Jerry. Their prolonged game has made not only the audiences tired but has also transformed the playground into a big pool of blood.
There have always been questions that neither the politicians have been willing to answer, nor the independent western media to raise. If Usamah is not the lost one of the Americans, then who is? What are the Americans searching for in Afghanistan and who are they looking for? The main media in the West remained silent before the report of the Usamah Bin-Ladin arrest by French soldiers. And, through a news boycott, they reduced a certain fact to a rumour.
Certainly, they will do the same before this film, too. But instead they will try to complicate the scenario. More painful than anything else is the political fair in Kabul, a poor fair where everyone offers his despicable commodity - a combination of generous western customers and thankful sellers of the country. Everyone knows the fact, like "an obvious secret", but no one wants to irritate the delicate minds of their nervous guests, guests who will be staying at home until the new year.
Politicians try to forget such news in Kabul, and this is the advice they give to the people. Forgetting and ignoring such facts is possible, but how can we forget and ignore the bombs exploding next to our houses every day?
Bombs which sometimes rise from the ground and sometimes descend from the air.
(Description of Source: Kabul Hasht-e-Sobh in Dari Kabul Hasht-e Sobh in Dari - Eight-page secular daily launched in May 2007; editor-in-chief, Qasim Akhgar, is a political analyst and Head of the Association for the Freedom of Speech. )
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/17/2008 12:33:00 AM
7 COMMENTS:
At 1:34 AM, amk said...
Two year old reports on this documentary from Al Jazeera and Fox.
At 6:52 AM, Anonymous said...
According to an Afghan official, there has never been a hunt for Osama. If the US catches him, then the world will demand they leave the region.
I think the US even pays Osama to make those scary audio tapes. The more scared the world is, the longer the US can stay in South Asia. Remember, Afghanstan borders China and Iran and the US is building military bases in Afghanstan to shore-up its global dominance. BEING IN AFGHANSTAN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OSAMA BIN LADEN !!!
At 9:42 AM, camatheson said...
So--Usama Bin-Laden is actually Emmanuel Goldstein. This in fact occurred to me a long time ago, but without any supporting evidence.
C Matheson
Huntington NY
At 10:21 AM, Anonymous said...
For the last year or two I've thought exactly what has been said here, that UBL was "allowed" to escape so WE could continue our war against the rest of the world. If UBL were caught there would be no reason for all the killing.
Bushco needs to be strung up by their collective nuts.
At 10:47 AM, BF said...
This report sheds light on the oft-repeated claim by Senator John McCain during his Presidential campaign, that he knew how to capture Mr Usamah Bin Laden. He was repeatedly confronted with the question whether it was not patriotic that he shared his knowledge with the Bush Administration then, months in advance of possibly becoming President himself. Remarkably, he always found a way to escape answering this straightforward question.
As an aside, the above story contains at least three remarkable coincidences. Firstly, the Persian/Dari words "Hasht" and "Sobh" mean "Eight" and "Morning", respectively (thus, Hasht-e Sobh means Eight in the Morning). Now, the time difference between Tehran and Kabul is exactly one hour,* and such that 8 am Kabul's time is exactly 7 am Tehran's time. Secondly, and remarkably, there is an Iranian feature film named "Tehran Sa'at-e Haft-e Sobh"** (Tehran, Seven O'clock in the Morning --- in Persian/Dari, "Haft" stands for "Seven"), made in 2004, which not only is extremely hilarious, but is one of the most intelligent observations of causally unrelated but meaningfully related events in the lives of a number of apparently randomly-sampled dwellers of a large city (in this case Tehran --- the story-line of the film is rendered continuous by showing the main, but unrelated, characters in the same but limited number of frames). Thirdly, and again remarkably, the Director of this film is Mr Amir-Shahab Razavian.** This name is to be contrasted with Emmanuel Razavi, one of the co-produces of the French documentary at issue. Of course, Razavi is different from Razavian, but both names refer to the principal name Reza (they mean of, or related to, Reza; Razavian is also the plural of Razavi).
BF.
_____
* For the international time zones, one may consult:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/** For details, the reader is referred to:
http://www.citwf.com/film344824.htmI was dismayed to discover that one of the stories in this film is in fact entirely based on an account in the biography of the Persian Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar Neyshabury (1145-1221), without this fact being explicitly acknowledged in the film credits (Attar became a mystic as a result of the very event described in this account).
At 3:40 PM, Anonymous said...
But what of the rumor I have heard multiple times, that Osama bin Laden is dead? Such as from Benazir Bhutto. Is that also not true? Perhaps someone should tell our new president-elect. After all, he has said he wants to continue the fight in Afghanistan to get the guy.
Randi
At 8:28 PM, Anonymous said...
I have long belived that the worst thing we could do is find Bin-Laden.
What would the Arab world do if we captured or killed him. Things could only get worse.
Better that he die anonymously in a cave.
http://www.juancole.com/2008/11/afghan-article-says-us-bin-ladin-hunt.html
