Bin Laden video targets Musharraf

Versions of the message were dubbed in languages used in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Osama bin Laden called on Pakistanis to wage holy war on their president Thursday, saying in a new recording that it was their religious duty to overthrow Gen. Pervez Musharraf for his alliance with the U.S. against Islamic militants.

The message was the third from bin Laden this month after a long lull, coming in a flurry of al-Qaida propaganda marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

Joining in, bin Laden’s chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, issued a video Thursday seeking to galvanize Islamic fighters from North Africa to Afghanistan.

Al-Zawahri, who is seen by some counterterrorism experts to be al-Qaida’s operational chief rather than bin Laden, said the United States is losing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Assessment

The string of video and audio messages around the anniversary has shown an increased sense of triumphalism in al-Qaida’s tone at a time when U.S. intelligence reports say its core leadership appears to have regrouped in the Afghan-Pakistani border region.

“You can actually see the increase in the number of videos tie in with recent U.S. assessments that al-Qaida is resurgent, that it is much stronger,” said Michael Jacobson, a former FBI terrorism expert now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Many of the messages have hammered on U.S. struggles in Iraq to push the claim that Islamic militants are winning, and bin Laden’s video against Musharraf signaled that al-Qaida wants to turn its guns on one of the United States’ most important allies in fighting the terror network.

In a 23-minute video showing previously released footage of bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader’s voice delivered a call to jihad in Arabic with English subtitles, but the message also was released in versions dubbed in Urdu and Pashtu — languages widely used in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Bin Laden branded Musharraf an infidel because of the siege of the Red Mosque, a militant stronghold in the Pakistani capital overrun by commandos in July. The battle killed more than 100 people, including one of the militants’ leaders, Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

In the recording, titled “Come to Jihad,” bin Laden quoted fatwas, or religious edicts, from hard-line Islamic scholars on the duty of Muslims to overthrow infidel rulers.

The message comes at a delicate time for Musharraf, who has been targeted by four assassination attempts since 2002.