Osama Bin Laden spent his final months in hiding worrying about the future of Al Qaeda, emails recovered from computers in his hideout reveal. The terror leader was spending as much of his time dealing with concerns about funding and the toll being taken by CIA drone explosions as he was plotting attacks, according to U.S. intelligence officers.Officials said the emails depict an organisation beset by mounting problems as its leader remained obsessed on a follow up attack to September 11.
Al Qaeda leaders expressed their concerns about the organisation's finances in frequent emails to Bin Laden. In one, the head of the group's counterintelligence unit, which was set up to protect against infiltrations by traitors and spies, complained that they were losing the 'espionage war' as he struggled with 'a very low budget'. Bin Laden himself complained about the organisation's financial hardships and in one email ordered a deputy to form a group to raise money through the kidnapping of diplomats.
Organisers also complained of the strain on resources being brought by strikes from CIA unmanned aircraft. Bin Laden's number three, Atiyah abd al-Rahman, said that Al Qaeda fighters were being killed faster than they could be replaced.
In the months before the Arab Spring, Bin Laden warned affiliates in Yemen that there was not 'enough steel' in Al Qaeda's support structure to allow even tentative steps towards creating an Islamic state.
The emails suggest that despite the problems, Bin Laden was still focussed on attacking the U.S. 'The trove makes it clear that Bin Laden's primary goal - you can call it an obsession - was to attack the U.S. homeland,' a senior U.S. counterterrorism told the Washington Post. 'He pushed for this every way he could.'
The emails also include correspondence between Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded him as Al Qaeda leader. The pair express frustration that the conflict between the terror group and the U.S. is not more widely perceived by Muslims as a religious war.
The messages, which were analysed by the CIA in Virginia, were mostly composed by Bin Laden on computer in his compound before being smuggled out on disks or thumb drives to be sent from outside.