Osama bin Laden's new strategy

No one really knows what’s going to happen in the Middle East, not even the experts. I would venture to speculate based on media accounts and recent history that no one should underestimate Osama bin Laden’s intent for a new radical Islamic region. The uprising in Egypt may have been a blessing in disguise.

Where is he anyway? No one seems to know despite all the technology available these days. It’s believed he’s hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Who knows? Wherever he is, he’s probably not gathering signatures to qualify as a candidate in any of the new democracies eagerly hoped for by the West.

One Associated Press story caught my eye this week reporting that Iran is sending two warships through the Suez Canal, something that hasn’t been done since 1979. The vessels are bound for Syria for a training mission.

Where is al-Qaeda in all this?

I think it would be wise to remind ourselves that all that Osama bin Laden ever wanted was to get rid of the U.S. presence in the Middle East.

The U.S.’s invasion in Iraq helped keep tyrants like Libya Muammar Khadafi at bay preventing in the long run Osama’s dream of a united Arab world. 

So, in a change of gears, the best way to bring about Islamic unity would be to play the U.S.’s game and trigger a call for democracy that perhaps would bring down the Arab tyrannies who, friends or not of the U.S., have kept the region relatively calmed.

Of course, once the U.S. is out, Osama bin Laden can turn to his own building of an Islamist region – (democratically of course). No more people blown up with bombs, no more suicide-bomb attacks, no more airplane terror.

In the end, Osama bin Laden must have realized by now that unmitigated violence to bring change in the Arab countries backfires and people repudiate it. Efforts by al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have only brought greater oppression to the people. Eventually people get fed up with it. Look at the Irish Republican Army or the Basque separatist group ETA in Spain, perhaps the last of Western Europe’s terrorist groups. Instead, in a democracy-like regime, al-Qaeda has a chance to become a populist advocate.

With the military in the middle and old guard cronies trying to hang on, and with foreign capitals resorting to calls for stability and ''orderly transitions'' (read let’s keep the status quo) the brave ones who are standing in the streets day after day calling for democratic change could be short-changed beyond their expectations.