Jason Burke

Sunday September 5, 2004

The Observer

Heads of security services and governments around the world have something in common with Osama bin Laden. They all stand to benefit from exaggerating the capabilities of al-Qaeda.
The idea that bin Laden is a global terrorist mastermind, able to engender violence worldwide, flatters him and helps in the competition with other terrorist outfits for recruits and funds. The benefits of myth-making are also clear to the Russians (and the Uzbeks, Filipinos and Algerians, to name but three serial human-rights abusing governments who constantly claim, disingenuously, that the insurgents that they are fighting in their respective lands are linked to 'al-Qaeda').

Active participation in the 'war against terror' triggers a flood of material and moral support from Washington as well as legitimising tactics the West otherwise wouldn't approve of. It means long-term grudges underpinning any insurgency - discrimination, economic mismanagement, repression - can be ignored and the 'al-Qaeda bogeyman' blamed instead.

So it is unsurprising Russian security services have, on the basis of 10 'citizens of the Arab world' being among 20 militants killed in the hostage siege last week, decided that the operation was the work of 'al-Qaeda'.

We must be wary. It is true that Chechen warlord Khattab, a Jordanian-born militant leader killed in 2002, met bin Laden while both men were fighting the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan but there is no evidence that Khattab joined his group.