On the Run, Bin Laden Had 4 Children and 5 Houses, a Wife Says
Source: NY Times
Osama bin Laden spent nine years on the run in Pakistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, during which time he moved among five safe houses and fathered four children, at least two of whom were born in a government hospital, his youngest wife has told Pakistani investigators.
The testimony of Amal Ahmad Abdul Fateh, Bin Laden’s 30-year-old wife, offers the most detailed account yet of life on the run for the Bin Laden family in the years preceding the American commando raid in May 2011 that killed the leader of Al Qaeda at the age of 54.
Her account is contained in a police report dated Jan. 19 that, as an account of that frantic period, contains manifest flaws: Ms. Fateh’s words are paraphrased by a police officer, and there is noticeably little detail about the Pakistanis who helped her husband evade his American pursuers. Nevertheless, it raises more questions about how the world’s most wanted man managed to shunt his family between cities that span the breadth of Pakistan, apparently undetected and unmolested by the otherwise formidable security services.
Bin Laden’s three widows are of great interest because they hold the answers to some of the questions that frustrated Western intelligence in the years after 2001. They are currently under house arrest in Islamabad, and their lawyer says he expects them and two adult children — Bin Laden’s daughters Maryam, 21, and Sumaya, 20 — to be charged on Monday with breaking Pakistani immigration laws, which carries a possible five-year jail sentence.
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/world/asia/on-run-bin-laden-had-4-children-and-5-houses-a-wife-says.html?pagewanted=all
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All self-righteous and everything, just like on youtube. Everything is measured on a mythical culture rememberd from a couple hundred years ago based on freedoms that most people never saw, all black and white. Must be easy to get answers that way.
( I need a laughing sarcasm thingy)
On a more serious note, given that divorce for them can involve being ostracized from the whole of society, severe injury, or even death (stuck in a hole and hit with stones until your brain is beaten out of your head), it seems a little too easy to talk about their free choice as if they could just fall off at Kinkos and get the forms to fill out for $49.95.
Of course I never said they have no choice. I said I met bright, engaged Muslim women and their husbands and friends, and they are my neighbors. But in the writing above they are somewhat conflated with those that are associated with terrorists, and that's wrong. Big difference between here and Pakistan, even if they are Muslim. But perhaps that wasn't intentional.
But in the Santorum-inspired view espoused above the slave deserves what they get, the battered wife should have just walked off into the sunset if she knew what was good for her. Regardless of the constraints on their freedom or development? Seriously? The problem is just that the enslaved person needs to grow up, and then they can cast off their chains? No effect from culture, family, religion? That seems like an incredibly uniformed and corrosive of the human condition.
Remember the Harriet Tubman quote? Something like "I saved a thousand slaves, I could have saved a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves?" These people aren't slaves in the classic sense, perhaps, but they are oppressed in many ways not under their control.
In this context, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan these women are often groomed as property from birth, deliberately held out of school, and given to a man when they are quite young, with little or no chance to ever develop any other kind of world view, and for damn sure not in a place with the freedoms that is the incubator called America. Experts who study behavior tell us an average adults psychology can be transformed in a fairly short time, becoming willing participants in what would have horrified them only weeks before. Imagine what you can do to someone if you start at birth and reinforce it with the culture and religion.
We have women in this country who leave abusive relationships every day, women who are bright, witty, engaged, well-educated, and in one of the richest countries in the world they wind up on the street and in some of the most tragic situations they can find. Many live with the abuse because they cannot fathom how to leave. Is it so hard to see the difference in a place where that act would get you killed or hurt no matter what your resources are?
Everyone certainly has a right to their opinion, so I am not stating that the one above is wrong, but I question if it is as informed as it could be, or very pragmatic. Seems like it would be more helpful to understand the influences on their behavior and look for ways to educate, rather than just throwing them away. At least better for our long-term future than being yet another bully.
ymmv
