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Binny in trouble?
For once, however, the most interesting aspect about the statement is not what it says, but how it surfaced. While most statements by AQ Central in recent years have been posted directly on the Internet, this one was distributed the old way, in a physical copy delivered by courier to al-Jazeera. As of 2pm EST, the statement has not yet appeared on the forums. Moreover, the absence of references to recent events suggests the tape was recorded several weeks ago. Finally the length of the tape is reportedly only around four minutes, which is unusually short. In all these respects, the latest tape differs from UBLs three previous statements this year, on Gaza in January and on Gaza and Somalia in March.What we have here is a short, outdated tape delivered manually following a series of longer, up-to-date statements distributed online. This suggests to me that Bin Ladins personal situation has changed in the past few months. He may have moved to a new location, and/or he is taking much stricter security precautions than before. By contrast, todays statement by Ayman al-Zawahiri was completely different. It was distributed the usual way on the forums, it was longer (11 minutes), and it was tailored in content and timing for Obamas arrival in the region. Al-Zawahiri declared Obama unwelcome in Egypt and argued that the current presidents policies, especially toward Israel, are no better than those of his predecessors. For a transcript, see here. The differences between the two statements suggest first of all that Bin Ladin and al-Zawahiri are not in the same physical location. Moreover, Bin Ladins situation clearly lends itself more badly to media production than that of al-Zawahiri. We should of course be careful not to overinterpret individual messages like this, especially since there have been occasional aberrations to established distribution patterns in the past. But at the risk of sounding like the 43rd president - my gut tells me this is quite significant. Posted by: 3dc 2009-06-06 |
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