I don’t think Osama Bin Laden would have much to tell us if he had the opportunity to sit with us and talk for an hour. The man already has said what he wanted to say and has had his share of explaining his views and defending his actions.
The only person who, I think, has not yet said anything and who deserves to be given a chance to explain himself is the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar. He suddenly appeared on the scene and then vanished like a summer cloud. We have not seen the man, we have not heard him speaking. We don’t know much about him. He was like a ghost. There is no picture of him to tell us how he might look like. He had no physical presence to give people a glimpse of how he may have appeared. All we know about him is that he ruled Kabul until the Afghan capital fell during a war that lasted for only a very short duration.
Mullah Omar was one of those knights belonging to a distant history. With his Afghan cavalry and the help of Pakistani tanks, he was able to eliminate almost all Afghan warlords. For five years his ferocious men spread panic and terror, applying strict laws and only halting their offensive to prepare for the next battle.
For sure, Omar was a humble man who was neither tutored in international politics nor did he comprehend the complications of world politics. He couldn’t understand how supplies reached him from Pakistan or why the American government backed him against the other warlords, especially during attempts to build a pipeline that was designed to carry oil through Turkey and not Iran.
Without knowing it, Omar helped Washington against the other Afghan mullahs who were considered to be close to Iranian mullahs. At least, this was what he thought until just before Sept. 11, which effectively put an end to the rule of the Taleban leader even before the dust of the falling towers had settled down.
Omar is perhaps the only one in the world who has not watched the events of Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath. Judging from his words and deeds I can confidently say that he was the most ignorant world leader in modern history. He entered Kabul victoriously riding a white horse and fled the devastated capital on a motorbike to escape the wrath of his Northern foes.
As for Bin Laden, Omar’s political mentor, guide and reference, his goals are completely different from those of the Mullah. Bin Laden is more intelligent and knowledgeable and knew exactly what he was doing and where to direct his fire. In the ignorant Mullah Omar he found the best companion.
I thus find very interesting the recent disclosure of contacts being made between an American official and Mullah Omar just before the start of the war. In that contact the Pushtun leader was reported to have denied his friend Bin Laden was plotting against America. I assume Omar was sincere and was talking in good faith.
To understand the man better, one has to remember that he never watched television all his life, never read a book on politics or subscribed to a newspaper. He thought that the Pakistani border represented the end of the world and that anything beyond that was unreachable. With this kind of thinking, or in fact ignorance, it is no wonder Omar quickly lost the kingdom he had built in the most unbalanced war in the history of armed conflicts — a fight between obsolete and rusty tanks and war planes that flew undetected by radar.
