Robert Fisk: Bin Laden Was Betrayed

Local Editor

In an article published by British daily The Independent, columnist Robert Fisk said Tuesday that a middle-aged nonentity, a political failure outstripped by history – by the millions of Arabs demanding freedom and democracy in the Middle East – died in Pakistan yesterday.

Fisk emphasized that the weird and creepy disposal of the body of bin Laden was almost as creepy as the man and his vicious organization.

While noting that Americans were drunk with joy, Fisk pointed out that the mass revolutions in the Arab world over the past four months mean that Al-Qaeda was already politically dead.

He recalled that bin Laden had told the world that he wanted to destroy the pro-Western regimes in the Arab world, the dictatorships of the Mubaraks and the Ben Alis, and that he wanted to create a new Islamic Caliphate. However, Fisk said that these past few months, millions of Arab Muslims rose up and were prepared for their own martyrdom – not for Islam but for freedom and liberty and democracy. “Bin Laden didn't get rid of the tyrants. The people did. And they didn't want a caliph,” he said.

Fisk, who met bin Laden three times, said he has only one question left unasked: what did he think as he watched those revolutions unfold this year – under the flags of nations rather than Islam, Christians and Muslims together, the kind of people his own Al-Qaeda men were happy to butcher?

According to Fisk, Bin Laden was betrayed, by the Pakistan military or the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence, and quite possibly both. “Pakistan knew where he was,” Fisk said, adding that bin Laden’s demise does bring Pakistan into grim focus.

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