Osama Bin Laden sent a new tape yesterday to the Arab satellite television station, Al-Jazeera, broadcast from Qatar in the Persian Gulf. Below are extracts from the tape:
This is a broadcast to our Muslim brothers in Iraq.
We are closely tracking the intentions of the Crusaders to wage a war of conquest over what was once the capital of Islam, Baghdad: to take control of Muslim treasures; to appoint a puppet government whose leaders are sitting in Washington and Tel Aviv, in the palaces of the rest of the treacherous Arab governments, in preparation for the establishment of Greater Israel.
I would like to emphasize a number of issues:
1. We must fight for God alone, and not for other objectives such as victory for individual nationalities or for that of infidel administrations in the Arab world, among them Iraq.
2. We will achieve victory only through God and we can only work in the framework of Jihad.
3. We have come to understand, by means of our experience in the war against the American enemy, that this enemy primarily relies on psychological warfare and they have in their possession extensive mechanisms for propaganda, in addition, it depends on intensive aerial bombardments to disguise its weakness, its cowardliness and the absence of fighting spirit among its soldiers. The enemy’s soldiers are convinced of the justness of their evil power and believe in its lies. They lack a good cause to fight for. They are fighting for the capitalists, oil and arms traders, among them the criminal gang sitting in the White House. This includes Crusader hostility and the personal hostility of Bush, the senior.
Likewise, we realize the best and most efficient tools to take the power out of the aerial power of the Crusader enemy is the digging of roofed tunnels and also fake tunnels. We made use of such tunnels in the course of the Tora Bora engagement last year. We were 300 fighters and we dug 100 tunnels – one tunnel for every three soldiers. The tunnel extended over one square mile. We were exposed to intensive bombardment but in the final count, the West failed in its war. If the West failed to resist 300 fighters who planted themselves in one square mile, how could they manage to resist the whole Muslim world?
Our Iraqi brothers, you have to dig many tunnels. I advise you to engage the Americans in a protracted war. The enemy fears a drawn-out war in an urban environment because he believes this type of war would bring serious losses.
I also stress the importance of suicide operations against the enemy. This type of action has inflicted crushing blows on Israel and the United States, such that they will never recover.
Whoever aids America to kill Muslims in Iraq, whether it be fighting alongside, or whether it be granting the opportunity to use bases, using administrative assistance, or even just giving verbal assistance – he must know that he is an heretic………
We emphasize to Muslims, true to their religion: it is incumbent on you to act and to be recruited for the wider Muslim nation, in order to be freed from the slavery of the wicked administrations in order to establish the rule of God on earth.
Click here [3] to see the broadcast.
An Iraqi political analyst, Zafir Al-‘Aani, responded to Osama Bin Laden’s recording, acknowledging that whilst Bin Laden had branded the Iraqi government as heretics, he believed that the speech was made for sincere Islamic reasons.