Face to face with bin Laden

Osama bin Laden remains at large seven years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — and the United States is “incredibly unlikely” to capture or kill the al-Qaida mastermind anytime soon.

That was the assessment of Peter Bergen, a CNN terrorism analyst who interviewed bin Laden in 1997, in a speech Friday morning at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

“We know he’s in the northwest border region [of Pakistan], which is like saying we know he’s somewhere in Virginia,” Bergen told the crowd of several hundred. “They’re roughly the same size.”

It can be extraordinarily tricky to locate a single person who wants to remain hidden. In 1993, Mohamed Aideed, the Somali warlord, eluded 20,000 American troops in Mogadishu. Radovan Karadzic, the accused Bosnian Serb war criminal, avoided capture for more than a decade. And Boston gangster James

“Whitey” Bulger has been on the run since 1999, when he was placed atop the FBI’s most wanted list.

“I think it is incredibly unlikely that [bin Laden] will be captured or killed in the foreseeable future,” Bergen said.

Does bin Laden matter anymore? Bergen thinks so. The terrorist leader continues to release audio and video recordings that energize and inspire al-Qaida and its sympathizers around the world.

“No one can replace him,” said Bergen, the author of two books on al-Qaida, “Holy War Inc.” and “The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader.” “He provides the central focus, let’s put it that way.”

The likelihood of an al-Qaida terrorist attack in the United States in the next five years is relatively small, Bergen predicted. It is far more likely, he said, that the terrorist network would shoot down a commercial airliner with a surface-to-air missile somewhere else in the world. Also possible, he said, would be a radiological bomb attack in Europe.

“Al-Qaida is weaker than it was on 9/11, even though they are resurging,” he said.

Bergen is skeptical that America has any “sleeper cells” of al-Qaida agents and doubts that there are any trained “homegrown terrorists” lurking in the United States. Al-Qaida has lost the war of ideas with American Muslims, Bergen said, and is continuing to lose the support of Muslims abroad.

Few Americans say they are worried about future terrorist attacks, he pointed out. An ABC News/Washington Post poll earlier this month found only 18 percent of Americans worry “a great deal” about future terrorist attacks. Such figures, Bergen said, show that al-Qaida is losing the so-called Global War on Terrorism.

“The whole point of terrorism is to terrorize,” he said. “If you’re not terrorized, it’s not working.”

America has been able to avoid the possible large numbers of radical Islamic militants that can be found in other Western nations. American Muslims, he said, tend to be better educated and enjoy high rates of employment. In Europe, Muslims are more likely to be unemployed and live in ghettos.

“The American dream has worked well for Muslims,” he said. “But there is no British dream or Spanish dream or French dream.”

Bergen believes that al-Qaida and the Taliban will continue to operate in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border badlands for the foreseeable future. Though the U.S. military has stepped up raids by Special Operations forces and increased the number of missile strikes targeting militants in the region, Bergen does not believe the effort will be sufficient to eradicate al-Qaida.

Melvin Leffler, a UVa history professor and co-author of “To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine,” attended Bergen’s talk. He said that American military efforts targeting al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan are risky and may embolden terrorists and further anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world.

“The great danger is that American actions in Pakistan will do more harm than good,” he said. “That is a great danger.”

Leffler, who will appear at the Miller Center on Monday, said he agrees with Bergen’s analysis that al-Qaida has been weakened as it has lost the ideological backing of the Muslim world.

The United States has suffered setbacks in its effort to destroy al-Qaida, Bergen noted. America’s tough interrogation practices in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, as well as the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” have given the terrorists a talking point and opened America to charges of hypocrisy.

Plus, he said, the United States’ intelligence community has an insufficient number of Arabic speakers. The FBI, he said, has only 33 people who can speak Arabic, with only a dozen who are fluent.

Intelligence agencies’ background checks, he added, seem counterproductive. The CIA wants officers who are bilingual and well traveled, but unquestionably American. Consequently, he said, there is a disproportionate number of Mormons in the intelligence community. “Probably a Mormon is not going to penetrate al-Qaida very effectively,” he said.