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Bin Laden Urges Pakistani Jihad

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By LEE KEATH, The Associated Press

Published: September 21, 2007

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden has called on Pakistanis to wage holy war on their president, saying in a recording released Thursday that it is their religious duty to overthrow Gen. Pervez Musharraf for his alliance with the United States against Islamic militants.

The message was the third from bin Laden this month after a long lull, coming in a flurry of al-Qaida propaganda marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Joining in, bin Laden's chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued a video Thursday seeking to galvanize Islamic fighters from North Africa to Afghanistan.

Zawahiri, who is seen by some counterterrorism experts to be al-Qaida's operations chief, said the United States is losing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

'What they claim to be the strongest power in the history of mankind is today being defeated in front of the Muslim vanguards of jihad six years after the two raids on New York and Washington,' he said.

The string of video and audio messages around the anniversary has shown an increased sense of triumph in al-Qaida's tone when U.S. intelligence reports say its core leadership appears to have regrouped in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

'You can actually see the increase in the number of videos tie in with recent U.S. assessments that al-Qaida is resurgent, that it is much stronger,' said Michael Jacobson, a former FBI terrorism expert now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

'They're feeling more stable, feeling much more secure, so it's not a surprise that they're able to put out more videos,' he said.

Many of the messages have hammered on U.S. struggles in Iraq to push the claim that Islamic militants are winning, and bin Laden's video against Musharraf signals that al-Qaida wants to turn its guns on one of the United States' most important allies in fighting the terror network.

Zawahiri and another top al-Qaida figure, Abu Yahia al-Libi, already had called for Pakistanis to rise up against Musharraf. The tape from bin Laden adds weight to the declaration of jihad against Pakistan's president.

In a 23-minute video showing previously released footage of bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader delivers a call to jihad in Arabic with English subtitles. The message also was released in versions dubbed in Urdu and Pashtu - languages widely used in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Bin Laden branded Musharraf an infidel because of the siege of the Red Mosque, a militant stronghold in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. Commandos overran the mosque in July. The battle killed more than 100 people, including one of the militants' leaders, Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

The siege 'demonstrated Musharraf's insistence on continuing his loyalty, submissiveness and aid to America against the Muslims,' bin Laden says. 'It is obligatory on the Muslims in Pakistan to carry out jihad and fighting to remove Pervez, his government, his army and those who help him.'

In the recording, titled 'Come to Jihad,' bin Laden quotes fatwas, or religious edicts, from hard-line Islamic scholars on the duty of Muslims to overthrow infidel rulers.

Anyone 'who believes that the strength required to rebel has not yet been completed must complete it and take up arms against Pervez and his army without procrastination,' he says.

The message comes at a delicate time for Musharraf, who has been targeted in four assassination attempts since 2002.

His popularity has plummeted in recent months as he seeks a new presidential term in a vote by Pakistani lawmakers on Oct. 6. Under popular pressure, his aides announced that Musharraf would quit as army chief and restore civilian rule if elected to a new five-year term.

Before this month, bin Laden had not issued a message in more than a year. A video released a few days before the Sept. 11 anniversary contained the first new images of him in nearly three years.

The other video released Thursday showed off al-Qaida's increasing media sophistication. It amounts to an 80-minute documentary, interweaving Zawahiri's speech with footage from the Sept. 11 attacks, interviews with experts and officials taken from Western and Arab television and old footage and audiotapes of bin Laden.

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