Listening in on the al-Qaida leader’s thinking
Flagg Miller, a UC Davis international expert in Islamic reform, is the first academic researcher to analyze more than 1,500 new audiocassette tapes taken from Osama bin Laden’s former residential compound in Qandahar, Afghanistan in 2001.
A CNN producer and an Afghan translator first acquired the tapes after the Taliban evacuated Qandahar at the end of 2001. Miller, who is fluent in Arabic, was offered the tapes by anthropologist and head of the William College Afghan Media Project David Edwards after both CNN and the FBI declined to keep them.
Miller said that the information revealed in the tapes he has analyzed so far provide a better perspective on bin Laden’s intellectual development before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
He said that bin Laden is more explicit about his early personal battlefront experiences. He talks about his hopes of a brighter day for Islam in which Muslims can be empowered and accuses Saudi political authorities and Arab rulers across the Middle East of perverting Islam.
He also consistently identifies the United States as his No. 1 enemy.
The tapes date from the late 1960s through 2000, with more than 200 speakers from more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Miller’s first research paper from his study of the tapes appeared in the October issue of the academic journal Language and Communication.
Bin Laden’s world view
Video format:
- Flash Video (1 min 45 sec)
Videography by Ken Zukin
Produced by Paul Pfotenhauer
A die-hard militant
Video format:
- Flash Video (1 min 45 sec)
Videography by Ken Zukin
Produced by Paul Pfotenhauer