After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the high point of Arab participation in the Afghanistan jihad actually occurs in the so-called battles of Jalalabad, as Osama bin Laden’s Arab brigade takes control of the airport and defends the eastern mountain sanctuaries from Afghan fighters. Up until the victory of the Taliban seven years later, al Qaeda holds on to territory in eastern and southern Afghanistan, in the seams between still fighting Afghan groups.
In the battles of Jalalabad, Osama bin Laden is supposedly wounded in fighting, though Saudi (and other) propagandists trying to undermine his popularity will later also say that he cowered under fire and was magically absent from the battlefield when it mattered. This counter-narrative persisted through 9/11 – that bin Laden was a coward, that he never graduated from university, that he whored and drank as a youth, that he was a bad Muslim, that he was weak and gaunt, sick with liver ailments and kidney disease, and on and on – and one wonders what impact all of that manufactured propaganda had. Even after the killing of bin Laden, the CIA persisted with such nonsense, leaking that he possessed pornography.
Information warfare is certainly important, but the narrative blew back to make many in the west doubt bin Laden’s importance. And it obscured the one truth about the al Qaeda leader – just how charismatic he was and how capable he was at motivating and directing others.
Day: March 1, 2021