“My precious wife. ………… I know you are facing a psychological crisis, and I have been thinking of a way out so that we can be together sooner or later. My beloved wife: you should know that you fill my heart with love and beautiful memories and I remember your patience with the hardships for my sake, especially during the prison period. I shall never forget your favor and patience and loyalty to me. My eyes tear up whenever I think of you and our separation. You should know that I will never marry another wife for I can never find a woman like you. I shall remain in the land of Jihad until we meet again………. You have been the best wife in this world and I ask Allah to make you my wife in the other world………… And you, the apple of my eye and most precious of what I have: if you wish to remarry after I am gone I have no objection but I strongly want you to be my wife in Paradise and a woman ho has had tow husbands is allowed to choose one of them on judgment day……….”
(FYI: this is my own abridged partial translation from Arabic. He also pines for his sons and daughters but I left that part out).

Remember when we thought terrorism could not get any worse? So some Westerners now know that Osama Bin Laden was human: he had his weaknesses. I am not comparing him with Dick Cheney here, but he clearly had his human side. If you can forget the thousands who died in the United States, Britain, Bali, Spain, East Africa, and Iraq. Which demands a brief and perhaps superfluous comparison with one Ebharim Awwad (Al Samarrai) also known as the silly Caliph Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi.

Remember when we thought terrorism could not get any worse? It is like a generational shift. Bin Laden was a devout Wahhabi, wtf that means nowadays. He had a college degree and a resume of activity that spanned good Jihad (in Afghanistan although I beg to differ) and bad Jihad (after 1990). He had the usual family life from a Wahhabi perspective: three or four wives, children that he loved at least as much as anyone in the West loves his children. He was also the mastermind of terrorism across the world. His charisma and connections and  money carried the old Al Qaeda to success. His death has hurt the terrorist group: the Egyptian who succeeded him, Al Zawahri, is probably even less charismatic than the silly Caliph of Riqqa and Mosul.

Remember when we thought terrorism could not get any worse? In Iraq, Al Qaeda experienced its first metamorphosis. With the murderous genocidal Jordanian terrorist Abu Mus’ab Al Zarqawi, it became a new uber-sectarian animal. That was how he plunged Iraq into a violent sectarian war, with help from some of the violent Shi’a militias.

Osama was also apparently a man in love, or whatever passed for love during his years of separation from his wives, especially his favorite wife. Could have been the lengthy period of forced celibacy after 2001. The former jailbird who is now the silly Caliph of ISIS (DAESH) would not pine for a wife: he would just walk to the nearest slave market and buy himself a couple of concubine.
That last sentence tells us how much things have changed since 2001. It is a new animal that has almost no limits to what it would do. Al Qaeda of 2001 was the devil we knew, this new one is a devil we should never have had to know. Obviously something went very wrong after 2001. The next step will be pinning the blame on the donkey……….    

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          
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