[ by Charles Cameron — hadith, Aden-Abyan, Abu M. al-Maqdisi, major dream of young bin Laden, role of narration 1 month after his death, any comments? ]

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I was trying to follow up on a hadith which declares:

An army of twelve-thousand will come out of Aden-Abyan. They will give victory to Allah and His messenger. They are the best between myself and them.

There’s an extensive discussion of it on Somalinet offered by Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi [teh Sheikh Abu M al-Maqdisi?] and posted on June 4 of this year, but it doesn’t answer my question as to how this narration fits in with the various narrations about the army from Khorasan.

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While reading in and around this topic, however, I ran across this account of a dream on the young bin Laden, which appears on a number of sites favorable to jihad around June 4, 2011, i.e. after bin Laden’s death, and which I have not seen discussed on those analysts’ sites that I manage to follow.

It’s extremely interesting to me not only because dreams are potentially important vehicles for divine guidance in Islam, but also because it ties bin Laden specifically to the Khorasan / black banners hadith, and to the Mahdi.  In this dream, I( don’t think it’s going too far to say that bin Laden himself plays a preparatory role with regard to the Mahdi that we can perhaps understand in the west as equivalent to that of John the Baptist in preparation for Christ.

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If this dream narrative has been explored in the open source analytic literature, I would be very interested to see what has been said.  In  the meantime, I will simply post the narration as I found it:

3.

This incident was narrated to me by a student of knowledge who spent more than 20 years in the company of scholars acquiring knowledge. He told me about a dream that Shaykh Osama bin Laden had when he was 9 years old, which indicated that Allah swt was preparing Shaykh Osama bin Laden, may Allah have mercy on him, since childhood, for battles against the Crusaders.

He told me that once he was sitting with a companion and discussing the deplorable condition of the Ummah but that all the incidents taking place in the Muslim Ummah are going according to Allah’s plan and that it is certain that the victory of Allah the Almighty will come. He will surely send a Leader and a Guide from amongst our Ummah who will deliver the humiliated and pitiful Ummah to the enlightened path of ascent and loftiness. We started thinking that who could be such a person!

Immediately, the thought of Shaykh Osama bin Laden came to our minds, since he has made innumerable sacrifices for the sake of the Ummah. On this, my companion smiled and said, “I will narrate to you a dream of Shaykh Osama bin Laden; you will be pleased to hear it, and your love for the mujahideen will only increase.”

He said, I was in al-Madinah al-Munawwarah at the house of a Scholar who used to lecture at the Prophet’s masjid. We had just arrived at his house when someone knocked on the door. The Shaykh returned with a person of luminous and honorable appearance who was about 80 years old.

The host welcomed him and requested the Tafsir of a few verses from the Qur’an. We quietly listened to him while the guest Shaykh recited a few verses, and then he gave the Tafsir of those verses. By Allah, I had studied a number of Tafsirs, but that Shaykh was a sea of knowledge. When he completed his lesson, the host invited him for a meal, but he declined politely, and we came to understand that he was fasting.

Eventually, the guest asked for permission to leave, but the host insisted, ‘Until you narrate to us the dream of Shaykh Osama bin Laden once more, you will not get the permission to leave.’

The Shaykh smiled and asked, ‘The dream that Shaykh Osama bin Laden had when he was 9 years old?’ The host replied in the affirmative.

This is how that Shaykh narrated the incident:

I was a close friend of Muhammed bin Laden, the father of Osama bin Laden. Many times I would be in his company. And many times, I used to visit his house regarding work related to construction. During the discussions, our talk would be disturbed by the playing of his children, and then he would ask them to go out and play.

But I was surprised to see that he would always ask one particular son to sit beside him. I asked him, “Why don’t you let this son of yours to play with his other brothers? Is he sick?”

Mohammed bin Laden smiled and said, “No, there something special about this son of mine.”’

When I asked his name, he said, “His name is Osama, and he is 9 years old. Let me share with you something strange which happened a few days ago. My son woke me up few minutes before the morning prayer and told me, ‘Dear father, I want to tell you about a dream that I had.’ I thought he must have had a nightmare. I made ablution and took him along with me to Masjid.

On the way, he told me, ‘In the dream, I saw myself in a huge, flat area. I saw an army mounted on white horses moving towards me. All of them were wearing black turbans. One of the horsemen, who had shiny eyes, came up to me and asked me, “Are you Osama bin Muhammed bin Laden?” I replied, “Yes.” He then asked me again, “Are you Osama bin Muhammed bin Laden?” I again replied, “Yes, that is me.” He again asked, “Are you Osama bin Muhammed bin Laden?” Then I said, “By Allah, I am Osama bin Laden.” He moved a flag towards me and said, “Hand this flag over to Imam Mahdi Muhammad bin Abdullah at the gates of Al-Quds.” I took the flag from him, and I saw that the army started marching behind me.’

Muhammed bin Laden said, “I was surprised at that but, due to business at work, I forgot about the dream. The next morning, he woke me up just before the morning prayer and narrated the same dream. The same thing happened on the third morning also. Now, I began to worry for my son. I decided to take him with me to a knowledgeable person who can interpret dreams.

Accordingly, I took Osama to a person of knowledge and informed him about the whole incident. He looked at us with surprise and asked, ‘Is this your same son who had the dream?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He kept staring at Osama for some time. My concern multiplied. He comforted me and said, ‘I will ask you a few questions. I am sure that you will answer them truthfully.’

He asked Osama, ‘Son, do you remember anything about that flag which that horseman gave you?’ Osama replied, ‘Yes, I remember it.’

He asked him, ‘Can you describe it, how it was?’

Osama said, ‘It was similar to the flag of Saudi Arabia, but its color was not green but black, and there was something written on it in white color.’

He then put the next question to Osama, ‘Did you ever see yourself also fighting?’

Osama replied, ‘I commonly see such dreams.’ He then asked Osama to go out of the room and do recitation of the Qur’an.

Then that person of knowledge turned towards me and asked, ‘Where is your ancestry from?’

I replied from Hadramawt in Yemen. Then, he asked me to tell him something about my tribe. I replied that we are related to the tribe of Shanwah which is a Qahtani tribe from Yemen. He then cried out the Takbir loudly and called in Osama and kissed him while crying. He also said that the signs of the hour are near.

‘O Muhammed bin Laden, this son of yours will prepare an army for Imam Mahdi and for the sake of protecting his religion, he will migrate to the region of Khurasan. O Osama ! Blessed is he who will do Jihad by your side and undone and disappointed be he who leaves you alone and fights against you.’

4.

It is notable that this account appears to have surfaced in the English-language literature about a month after the Abbottabad raid of May 2.  At least in this English-language form, it seems to be a posthumous account, hagiographic in tone, and directly linking  bin Laden and those who fought with him to the fulfillment of Mahdist prediction.

My questions would be whether anyone knows of an earlier appearance of this narrative, perhaps in Arabic — and if it indeed is first found after bin Laden’s death, how the readers of signs, both Islamist and  Western-analytic, read this particular text.

I have seen this narrative featured on sites relating to the Netherlands, Egypt, Somalia, South Africa, Kashmir, and Pakistan — and as a text video with nasheed accompaniment on YouTube – so it seems to have spread pretty rapidly, which suggests it “fits” powerfully with the needs of the jihadizing internet shortly after bin Laden’s death.

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Sources include:

• http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=185017914885438
• http://www.afghan.nl/forum/index.php?showtopic=13439&st=36#
• http://www.somalinet.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=277607#p3220737
• http://shuratulmujahideen.blogspot.com/2011/06/dream-of-shaykh-osama-bin-laden-may.html
• http://tahir2626.blogspot.com/2011/06/karachi-friends-lucid-dream-of-shaykh.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Or6_Tp7IJA

Major General Peter Fuller lost it yesterday and committed an unpardonable political sin – spontaneously telling the truth to reporters:

US general fired from Afghan training job

….Referring to Karzai’s recent assertion that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan if Pakistan got into a war with the U.S., Fuller was quoted as calling the comments “erratic,” adding, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me . I’m sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you’re telling me, I don’t really care?”

Fuller said the Afghans have at times made unreasonable requests for U.S. assistance.

“You can teach a man how to fish, or you can give them a fish,” Fuller was quoted as saying. “We’re giving them fish while they’re learning, and they want more fish! (They say,) ‘I like swordfish, how come you’re giving me cod?’ Guess what? Cod’s on the menu today.”

Fuller also said the Afghans don’t understand the extent to which the U.S. is in economic distress or the “sacrifices that America is making to provide for their security.” He said the Afghans are “isolated from reality.”

Allen said the “unfortunate comments” don’t represent the solid U.S. relationship with the Afghan government….

 The relationship of the Karzai’s regime to the United States is a lot like that of a 32 year-old drug-addict living in his parent’s basement. The parents keep muddling through life, hoping their son will suddenly wake up one morning and decide to clean up his act, get a job, move out, get married and have 2.5 kids, a dog and a house with a white picket fence. The parents cling to that hope and cherish it but the reality is that the son staggers out of bed every day, sometime in the afternoon, only to go find their dealer, score some heroin and get high.

Karzai’s egime has less chance of governing Afghanistan effectively than the average heroin addict does of kicking their habit. And the reason is a) far and away Hamid Karzai and, secondarily b) Most Afghans fear a strong central government. The US has managed to do two things at the strategic level that a nation should never do in fighting a counterinsurgency war – support a government  that will not take sensible measures even in the interest of it’s own survival and permit insurgents a sanctuary and third country sponsorship.

General Fuller’s career is now effectively over. Too bad we cannot say the same for Mr. Karzai.

An interesting new blog. An operator type, an Iraq and Afghan vet,  quesopaper blogging from AfPakland on situational awareness and much later in the post, on leadership:

Running To Contact

….I thought we’d cover danger in Afghanistan again by examining, “When Insurgents attack.”

A quick aside…over the years one develops a sense for explosions. Some are “ours”…outgoing mortars, rounds from a gun or controlled detonations. We learn the sounds of different weapon systems. A helicopter followed by a high pitched drone and several whooshes is an Apache firing it’s main gun and rockets. Whomp Whomp Whomp  is an M60/M240. Ma duece says Bum Bum Bum. Artillery is LOUD and has a pointy sound when outgoing. Incoming is more spherical.

We also develop a sense of distance and direction for the booms…it’s all part of our survival mechanism. Another aspect is awareness of our surroundings. We constantly scan and consider what to do if we are attacked …where is the nearest bunker or where is the closest safest place?

This sounds frightening, but we all do this. Motorcycle riding is a good analog. When riding we have to be aware of spacing. Scanning for threats and escape routes saves a rider’s life.

The sound that puts me face first on the ground are mortars wobbling towards me. They make a unique sound that I can’t quite describe. Sort of of a frantic flutter…the closest sound I can come up with is the rattle of a door stop when accidentally brushed. Rockets and their vibrating engine sound are also unnerving. If you can hear them flying, they are too damned close…

Very relevant to past blog discussions of fingerspitzegehful and the OODA Loop – a good descriptive narrative, in fact, of OODA working correctly. Theory is not the interest of the quesopaper gent, but his firsthand observations of COIN in Afghanistan are intriguing, for those interested in military policy or theory. Ideas that are often great on a whiteboard or ppt slide but may not seem quite as great once they collide with reality.

Another post from quesopaper, in the vein of theoretical rubber meeting the practitioner road:

What do they Need?

….indulge me while I inject some confusion into our clarity regarding Afghans. This is a paraphrased version of a Benedictine Grima tale from her field work. If one desires knowledge about AfPak, particularly the female’s role, Ms Grima is THE source.

The tale….Two men travel to village 1. While there, they commit robbery and murder. These crimes are detected by local police. The police debate their response, and decide to chase the perpetrators.

They enter the criminal’s village (village 2) where locals set upon the police and kill them. These villagers for whatever reason don’t appreciate nor require police involvement in their affairs. Villages 1 and 2 are content to solve crimes of any type within their own system of justice. In response to the police incursion, village 2 blocks outside access to the road preventing further police/outsider interference. Up the road a bit, the next village (village 3) hears of this incident. The road blockage makes them fighting mad. A village 2 v. village 3 mini-war occurs; people die. Why? Village 3 needs that road to survive or, shoot-some other reason. We don’t and honestly; we can’t know.

The point isn’t “should we” or “shouldn’t we” be here; that’s a different blog…Fact is we are here.

So let’s do this…Let me take you to a village. You comment below on how we are going to help….maybe we’ll all learn something….

Read the rest here.

Here is something for the learned readership to chew on.

As you are probably all aware, in the hard sciences it is common for research papers to be the product of large, multidiciplinary, teams with, for example, biochemists working with physicists, geneticists, bioinformatics experts, mathematicians and so on. In the social sciences and humanities, not so much. Traditional disciplinary boundaries and methodological conservatism often prevail or are even frequently the subject of heated disputes when someone begins to test the limits of academic culture

I’m not sure why this has to be so for any of us not punching the clock in an ivory tower.

The organizer of the Boyd & Beyond II Conference, Stan Coerr, a GS-15 Marine Corps, Colonel Marine Corps Reserve and Iraq combat veteran, several years ago, developed a very intriguing analytical outline of thirty years of Afghan War, which I recommend that you take a look at:

The Eagle and the Bear: First World Armies in Fourth World Insurgencies by Stan Coerr

the-eagle-and-the-bear-11.pdf

There are many potential verges for collaboration in this outline – by my count, useful insights can be drawn by from the following fields:

Military History
Strategic Studies
Security Studies
COIN Theory
Operational Design
Diplomatic History
Soviet Studies
Intelligence History
International Relations
Anthropology
Ethnography
Area Studies
Islamic Studies
Economics
Geopolitics
Military Geography
Network Theory

I’m sure that I have missed a few.

It would be interesting to crowdsource this doc a little and get a discussion started. Before I go off on a riff about our unlamented Soviet friends, take a look and opine on any section or the whole in the comments section.

[ by Charles Cameron — wars and seasons of wars ]

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Read the CJ Chivers piece first, for verbal and visual background, then read the New York Times article he mentions, Cease-Fire for Harvests Offers Respite in Afghanistan, which is now online — and quite a read it is, too.