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Similarities between Bin Laden and Enver Pasha
Posted in: Opinions
Written By: Richard Willis
Article Date: Jun 28, 2008 - 3:16:44 AM
There is much evidence to suggest that one of Osama bin Laden’s leading heroes is Ismail Enver, known in the West as Enver Pasha, the militant Turkish leader who lived between 1881 and 1922. The records clearly speak for themselves and as bin Laden has been protected by the Taliban, it was Enver Pasha who was defended and harbored by the Basmachis.
Both bin Laden and Enver Pasha were born to wealthy families. Enver Pasha’s links with foreign powers hostile to the United States and Britain were underlined when he was sent to Berlin before World War I. He sympathized with the German cause and did his best to forge ties between Germany and the Ottoman Empire. There were in fact past links with the Prussians and the Turks going back to the 1840s. Four decades later, German officers acted as advisers to the Ottoman army in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War.
Enver Pasha’s allegiance to Germany was evidenced when he allowed two German warships to enter the Dardanelles when they were being pursued by the British Navy. Britain eventually declared war on the Ottoman Empire on Nov. 5, 1914. Enver Pasha actively pursued a career in government and within the army whereas, bin Laden, reflecting the modern trend toward terrorism worked behind the scenes; yet both leaders exercised considerable authority in the ruthless pursuits of their aims.
Even so the Washington Post claimed that Osama bin Laden was present during the Battle of Tora Bora. But he shows no reliance on the conventional war apparatus and he does not even have, as has been thought, a tightly knit organization with a coherent military command structure.
Hostilities toward the Russians conjure up even more similarities. Enver Pasha engaged in a series strategic attacks on the Russians, but was seriously defeated at the Battle of Sarıkamıs in December-January 1914-1915.
He had ignored the harsh land and weather conditions, and Enver Pasha’s army of around 90,000 soldiers was repelled by Russian force and Enver Pasha’s troops suffered huge losses of life in the subsequent retreat.
Bin Laden’s fight with the Soviet Union is also well documented. When they invaded Afghanistan in 1979, he joined a resistance movement as did many other Muslims, and he was heralded a hero in 1989 when the Soviets withdrew their forces.
Enver Pasha understandably met a worse fate and he was dismissed as war minister in October 1918 and soon fled into exile, a position not unlike that of bin Laden. In 1919 Enver Pasha was tried, even though he was not present at the hearing, by a Turkish court and condemned to death, mainly for plunging his country into war without a legitimate reason.
The fate of bin Laden lies in the balance, and indeed many question whether he is still alive but the parallels seemingly end here as it is unlikely that bin Laden, as did Enver Pasha, seek to ally himself with the Russians.
Enver Pasha wanted the Russian government to repel the British and in 1918 he showed much sympathy for the communists. He tried to form a secret society that would entail Russian military support for Turkey but his efforts failed. Later Enver Pasha became embroiled in leading a small group of local Muslims who attempted to overthrow the pro-Moscow Bolshevik regimes in an uprising known as the Basmachi Revolt. Enver Pasha became the rebels’ leader. In 1922 the Red Army launched an attack on Enver Pasha’s men and in the course of action he was killed.
There is little doubt that Enver Pasha is to bin Laden what Sir Winston Churchill was to Margaret Thatcher. Enver Pasha did in fact meet Winston Churchill in 1910 but he decided to side with the military support of the German Army. Under the direction of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban command a very strict interpretation of Islamic law; the Basmachis, or Muslim guerrillas, were Islamic traditionalists who were opposed to the cultural imperialism of Russia.
The Armenian genocide of 1915-16 was supposedly ordered by Enver Pasha; correspondingly and in a similar fashion bin Laden is the alleged originator, as indicted by the United States federal court, of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. Bin Laden has also claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. --
Richard Willis is an historian and widely published author.