Osama bin Laden: in it for the long haul

Osama bin Laden's latest defiant message comes amid signs that al-Qaida is under heavy US military pressure in its havens in Pakistan's tribal areas and facing a crisis of recruitment and morale.

Emerging two days after the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the 11-minute audio clip contained familiar rhetoric and would prove, if authenticated, that the terrorist leader is alive and able to record a message. But the fact that it contained no new image of Bin Laden may hint at logistical or communications difficulties or heightened security concerns.

It was his first message since June – that one sent out just before Barack Obama's speech reaching out to the Muslim world in Cairo – and it referred back to that speech, showing it had been made since then.

It appeared despite cyber attacks on several jihadi website forums in recent days, presumably by governments. The Islamist site where the message was posted – by As-Sahab Media, al-Qaida's production company – had promised a "present" to Muslims from Bin Laden on the occasion of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The message reflected current al-Qaida concerns by taunting Obama that he was "powerless" to stop the war in Afghanistan, despite having withdrawn from combat operations in Iraq.

Continuing attacks on the US president who al-Qaida has excoriated as a "house slave", Bin Laden said Obama was following the strategy of George Bush and Dick Cheney to "promote the previous policies of fear to market the interest of big companies". America, he was saying, was incapable of changing its policies.

"Rather than fighting to liberate Iraq, as Bush claimed, it [the White House] should have been liberated," he said. When Obama became president and retained many of the Bush administration's military leaders, such as the defence secretary, Robert Gates, "reasonable people knew that Obama is a powerless man who will not be able to end the war as he promised".

Bin Laden emphasised US backing for Israel as a key reason for Arab and Muslim grievances, even as the Obama administration intensifies diplomatic efforts to restart stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. "Prolong the wars as much as you like. By God, we will never compromise on it [Palestine], ever," he said.

In recent times the Palestinian territories have become a central theme of propaganda disseminated by al-Qaida, which has to overcome its ideological opposition to Hamas in the territories and to Hizbullah in Lebanon, both of which are widely admired for their resistance to Israel.

Most striking of all was Bin Laden's insistence that al-Qaida was in it for the long haul – perhaps implying that it would overcome recent setbacks. If the US-led wars were not ended, "all we will do is to continue the war of attrition against you on all possible axes, like we exhausted the Soviet Union for 10 years until it collapsed with grace from Allah the Almighty and became a memory of the past," he vowed.