Bin Laden’s thoughts revealed in handwritten journal
Newly released document details family conversations, interest in 2011 Arab Spring
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A journal made public by the CIA and apparently handwritten by one of Osama bin Laden’s daughters offers a glimpse into how the late al-Qaida leader viewed the world around him and reveals his deep interest in the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions that were unfolding in the months before a U.S. raid killed him.
He talks about Libya becoming a pathway for jihadis to Europe, of his time as a young teen visiting William Shakespeare’s home in Britain and of how quickly turmoil had gripped the Middle East.
The 228-page journal meanders between discussions, thoughts and reflections bin Laden shared with his family about how to exploit the uprisings, what to make of the rapid changes unfolding in the Arab world and when al-Qaida should speak out.
“This chaos and the absence of leadership in the revolutions is the best environment to spread al-Qaida’s thoughts and ideas,” bin Laden is quoted as telling his family in the document.
Bin Laden’s wife, referred to as Um Hamza, assures him that a tape he released seven years earlier calling out the rulers of the region as unfit could be one of the major forces behind the Arab Spring protests roiling the region.
The Associated Press examined a copy of the journal uploaded by the Long War Journal to its website. The CIA released it Wednesday as part of a trove of material recovered during the May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden, then took down the files, saying they were “temporarily unavailable pending resolution of a tech- nical issue.”
The journal appears to cover conversations between bin Laden and his daughters, Miriam and Somiya, his wife and his sons, Khaled and Hamza — the latter of whom would go on to become a potential successor to lead the group his father founded.
The journal is titled, Special Diaries for Abu Abdullah: Sheikh Abdullah’s Points of View — A Session with the Family, which refers to bin Laden by his traditional Arabic name. The conversations took place between February and April 2011, with the journal entries dated according to the Islamic calendar.
During that time, uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt had ousted longtime autocratic rulers, touching off protests in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria. The Middle East was on the cusp of unstoppable change, chaos and turmoil.
In Libya, the uprising there would end with Moammar Gadhafi’s death months after bin Laden was killed. In Yemen, al-Qaida would gain a greater foothold and remain active amid the chaos of war and famine. In Bahrain, the Sunni-led monarchy would launch a crackdown on the country’s Shiite majority. In Syria, the government’s lethal response to a protest by schoolchildren in early 2011 would spark mass protests across the country and ignite a war and massive refugee crisis that continues today.
The reflections, jotted down in blue ink at times and at others in red, refer repeatedly to media reports of what was happening across the region.
There is little indication that the writer had much information about what was happening in the region beyond what was reported in the media. This could indicate that bin Laden had become isolated in his final months hiding out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where U.S. forces would find and kill him a little over a month later. Or it could also be that bin Laden was shielding his relatives from al-Qaida intelligence.
In the early pages of the document, bin Laden is asked about his thoughts on jihad, and replies that he first considered it “in secondary school.”