No records of bin Laden’s conversations with Azzam exist, but the
content is easy to conjecture from Azzam’s writing and bin Laden’s decision
to relocate to Pakistan in order to aid the jihad. He sought to raise
both money and recruits for the Afghan cause. While he understood the importance
of resources, he rejected the notion that sending money to help
the Afghan insurgents suffi ced. “There is no doubt that jihad by one’s person
is superior to jihad by one’s wealth,” he argued. “Consequently, the
rich in the time of the Prophet . . . were not excused from participating
with their persons, such as Uthman and Abdur Rahman Ibn Auf (ra). Because,
the purifi cation of the soul and the evolution of the spirit, is lifted
to great heights in the midst of the battle.”9
Azzam proclaimed jihad a sacred obligation incumbent upon Islamic
communities and individual Muslims. “When a span of Muslim land is
occupied, jihad becomes individually obligatory (fard ‘ayn) on the inhabAFGHANISTAN
39
itants of that piece of land,” he proclaimed. This duty took precedence
over all other obligations. “The woman may go out without her husband’s
permission with a mahram [relative], the one in debt without the permission
of the one to whom he owes, the child without his father’s permission.”
Muslims outside the occupied land had an obligation to help those
under attack. “If the inhabitants of that area are not suffi cient in number,
fall short, or are lazy, the individually obligatory nature of jihad extends to
those around them, and so on and so on until it covers the entire Earth,
being individually obligatory (fard ‘ayn) just like salat , fasting, and the like
so that nobody may abandon it.”10
Although focused for the time being on Afghanistan, Azzam’s concept
of jihad went much further. He considered the freeing of all Muslim
lands from domination by non-Muslim a duty incumbent upon all believers.
“The obligation of Jihad today remains fard ‘ayn (an individual obligation
of a believer),” he proclaimed, “until the liberation of the last
piece of land which was in the hands of Muslims but has been occupied
by the disbelievers.”11
Azzam’s preaching worked on bin Laden’s conscience. Before the Afghan
war, bin Laden does not seem to have considered anything other
than the greater jihad. For him, being a good Muslim meant prayer, personal
piety, and resisting the temptations of the fl esh. However, he had
never been one to sit still. After listening to Azzam, he longed to take up
the cause, but his family urged him not to go, and, for a while at least, he
listened to them. Finally, religious zeal overcame doubt and the admonition
of family, and he left for Afghanistan in 1984. “I feel so guilty for
listening to my friends and those that I love to not come here [to Afghanistan]
and stay home for reasons of safety,” he confi ded to a Syrian journalist,
“and I feel that this delay of four years requires my martyrdom in the
name of God.”12 Despite his yearning for a glorious death, though, bin
Laden did not go to fi ght the Soviets. Instead, he used his wealth to facilitate
deployment of other mujahedeen to Afghanistan. In late 1984 or early
1985, he, Azzam, and Bodejema Bounoua set up the Maktab al Khidmat
lil Mujadidin al Arab, the Afghan Services Offi ce, an organization in Peshawar,
Pakistan, that helped Arab fi ghters join the insurgency. “We have
founded this bureau to gather the Arabs and to send them inside Afghanistan,”
Azzam declared. “We are here as servants. We are proud to serve the
boots of the mujahideen inside Afghanistan.”13
40 OSAMA BIN LADEN
The Services Offi ce helped recruit, transport, house, and pay Arab volunteers
for the struggle with the Soviets. With his personal wealth, ties
to the Binladen Group, and connections to the royal family and wealthy
Saudis, bin Laden was too valuable to risk losing on the battlefi eld. Azzam
preferred to use him as a recruiter, fi nancier, and facilitator. More than a
tenth of all private donations from Saudi donors to the Afghan cause went
to bin Laden’s organization.14 The Services Offi ce also published a propaganda
magazine, Jihad, to recruit fi ghters and raise money throughout
the Muslim world. Although he remained in the shadow of Azzam, bin
Laden did earn a reputation for dedication and generosity. Abdullah Anas,
an Algerian who worked with him in the Service Bureau, described bin
Laden as a tireless “activist with great imagination.” “He ate very little,”
Anas recalled. “He slept very little. Very generous. He’d give you his
clothes. He’d give you his money.”15
Bin Laden arrived fortuitously in Pakistan at the pivotal point when
U.S. and Saudi aid had begun to tip the balance of the war in favor of
the Afghan insurgents. This serendipity led to the creation of a pervasive
myth. Some Americans and many others outside the United States believe
that the Central Intelligence Agency funded bin Laden’s activities or even
put him on its payroll. As long as Agency records remain classifi ed, these
rumors will persist. However, evidence in the public domain strongly
suggests that no such relationship ever existed. To begin with, Osama bin
Laden played a very minor role in the struggle. Few insurgent leaders had
ever heard of him. While he may have been useful as a conduit for private
funds, these funds made up but a small fraction of the money invested in
supporting the Afghan cause. The CIA preferred to work through its Pakistani
counterpart, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), which
in turn distributed money to Afghan warlords fi ghting the Soviets. The
Saudi government sent its funds through an even more circuitous route.
It deposited $350 to $500 million a year in a Swiss bank account controlled
by the United States, which then funneled it to the Afghans via
the ISI.16 The Saudis also raised funds from private donors, but less than
20 percent of this money went to bin Laden.17
THE HOLY WARRIOR AND THE AFGHAN ARABS
While he demonstrated some profi ciency in his supporting role, bin
Laden was itching for more active participation in the jihad. He wanted
AFGHANISTAN 41
to fi ght the Soviets and their Afghan puppet government directly. As
with so many other aspects of his life, large gaps in the historical record
obscure bin Laden’s activities inside Afghanistan. All objective accounts,
though, agree that he played a very minor role. With no military training
or combat experience, he would have been of little use to the hardened
Afghan commanders used to operating in the rugged terrain. Like
celebrities visiting any war zone, bin Laden would have been a liability. Ill
prepared to fi ght and yet too valuable to lose, he would have required protection,
which would have meant assigning him bodyguards who could
have been put to better use. While bin Laden may have shown up at an
insurgent camp, its commander probably would have kept him out of
harm’s way.
If he wanted to fi ght, bin Laden would have to raise forces of his own
to lead into battle. His personal wealth and family resources, along with
the ethnic makeup of the mujahedeen, helped him achieve his goal. Most
of the young men hanging around Peshawar came from various parts of
the Arab world. They and bin Laden spoke Arabic but neither Pashtun
(the language of the largest Afghan tribe) nor Urdu (the language of Pakistan).
Like bin Laden, these Arab mujahedeen had little to offer the
Afghan insurgents but their commitment to the struggle. Like him, they
were spoiling for a fi ght, but the insurgents had even less use for most
of them than they did for the Saudi millionaire. Determined to enter the
fray, bin Laden decided to form these men into an Arab force under his
command. Acting independently, his “Afghan Arabs” could, bin Laden
was certain, have a signifi cant impact on the war. Barring that, they
would at least achieve the martyrdom he and so many of them seemed
to desire.
Bin Laden’s eagerness to form an Arab unit separate from the Afghans
brought him fi rst into disagreement and then into open confl ict with
Azzam. The charismatic Palestinian believed that the task of foreigners
should be to fund, support, and otherwise aide the Afghan rebels. Anyone
prepared to fi ght should attach himself to an Afghan unit. He no
doubt also realized that a small force of fewer than a thousand untrained
Arabs could accomplish little by itself. Because he had ample personal resources,
however, bin Laden could do what he wanted. No doubt Azzam
also opposed the scheme because it would divert funds that would otherwise
have gone to the Services Offi ce had bin Laden not wasted them
on his pet project.
42 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Inserting themselves into the insurgency, bin Laden and his followers
adopted a classic guerrilla strategy: they would liberate one area and expand
from there to free more and more territory. They chose Jaji Maydan,
a remote area in the mountains along the Pakistan border, near enough
to trans-border routes to obtain supplies and far enough from any large
Soviet force concentration to avoid destruction. Bin Laden brought in
Binladen Group construction equipment and, beginning in 1986, built a
fortifi ed camp, making use of existing caves within the area. He named
the camp Al-Masada (the lion’s den). One observer explained both bin
Laden’s plan and his choice of location. “Liberate one area and after that
do liberation of other areas,” he observed. “Jaji was chosen because of its
geographical location—close to Parcahinar [a fi nger of Pakistani territory
that extends into eastern Afghanistan].”18 Bin Laden himself insisted
that he had deliberately situated his camp so that it would be the
fi rst thing the Soviet forces saw when they entered the area and so that
they would have to attack it.19 As usual, bin Laden exaggerated his importance
in the scheme of things. The Lion’s Den was but one small part
of a major insurgent buildup in the region. It did attract attention, but
the Soviets were far more concerned about seasoned Afghan commanders
and their large, experienced, and well-equipped cadres than they
were about bin Laden and his ragtag bunch of Arab fi ghters.
Despite his bravado, neither bin Laden nor his Arab mujahedeen performed
well on the battlefi eld. On April 17, 1987, he led 120 of his men
in a raid on an Afghan government outpost near the town of Khost, not
far from the Lion’s Den. Despite artillery support from Afghan insurgent
commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the operation went poorly. The
Arabs had made insuffi cient logistical preparation, so their attack force
had to wait for ammunition, rockets, and mortars to be placed in position.
Hungry soldiers found that their leaders had also neglected to pack suffi
cient quantities of food. At the last minute, they also realized that no
one had brought the electrical wire to connect their rockets to the detonators.
Finally, a single Afghan soldier spotted their clumsy preparations
and held off the assault with a single machine gun.20 The operation cost
bin Laden and his Arabs what little credibility they had among the Afghan
insurgents. A month later, he led another, more successful attack,
but, again, the number of fi ghters engaged suggests that the “battle” was
little more than a skirmish. The operation also provoked the Soviets into
AFGHANISTAN 43
bombarding the Lion’s Den for several weeks, which killed many of the
Afghan Arabs and forced bin Laden to temporarily abandon his camp.
An account published in an Egyptian weekly magazine described the
low regard in which one insurgent commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud,
held bin Laden and his Afghan Arabs. He considered the Afghan Arabs
to be so disorganized that he refused to let them participate in operations
with his forces. To the seasoned Afghan commander, these foreign
mujahedeen seemed more interested in seeking martyrdom for themselves
than in defeating the Soviets. Massoud also considered bin Laden’s
motives to be obscure.21 Ironically, a far more organized and focused bin
Laden would approve the plan to kill Massoud just days before 9/11.
Although he was personally brave, bin Laden in no way contributed
to the Afghan victory. Most of the “battles” in which he fought were minor
skirmishes, or, if they were major battles, he and his Arab fi ghters played
a minor role in them. Bin Laden’s military reputation consists largely of
smoke and mirrors. Properly employed, however, smoke and mirrors can
produce a powerful illusion. Osama bin Laden’s exploits grew more important
with each telling and contributed greatly to an emerging bin Laden
myth. He also drew the same conclusions about the Afghan War that the
Americans had: it was a Soviet Vietnam.
The lesson of Vietnam, reinforced by the Afghan war against the Soviets
and the U.S. failure in Somalia, would come to occupy a central place
in bin Laden’s thinking when he declared war on the United States. He
concluded that, despite their awesome conventional military might, the
superpowers had great diffi culty sustaining a protracted war. The Soviet
army had been bled white in Afghanistan, and the victory had taught the
mujahedeen an important lesson. “After our victory in Afghanistan and
the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend
about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished,” bin Laden asserted
in 1998. Vietnam had already demonstrated that the United States
could be defeated in an insurgency, and Somalia had demonstrated that
it would prove to be an even weaker opponent than the Soviet Union.
“They [the mujahedeen] thought that the Americans were like the Russians,
so they trained and prepared,” bin Laden expounded. “They were
stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American
soldier. . . . He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt his
Army.”22 In this grandiloquent statement, bin Laden exaggerated the role
44 OSAMA BIN LADEN
of the mujahedeen in both Afghanistan and Somalia and seriously underestimated
the morale of the American soldier and the determination
of the United States when its real interests were at stake. The foreign
mujahedeen were too few and too incompetent to have affected the
outcome of the Afghan war. Their numbers in Somalia were even fewer
in both absolute terms and as a percentage of total fi ghters. The United
States did withdraw from Somalia following the disastrous effort to capture
the warlord Mohammed Farah Aided, but that decision stemmed
from lack of resolve on the part of the Clinton administration, rather than
poor morale among American soldiers. The public would probably have
tolerated a sharp response to the Somalis even if it was not keen on a
protracted war in a country in which no vital U.S. interests were at stake.
Bin Laden would discover that, when he attacked the U.S. homeland, the
response would be swift, terrible, and sustained.
AFGHAN CIVIL WAR
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan did not leave the country stable and
at peace. Moscow left a puppet regime and military advisers to support
an Afghan army that had put up a decent fi ght against the insurgents. Far
from unifi ed except in hatred of the Soviet-backed regime, the rebels
fought one another as they struggled to oust the Marxist government in
Kabul. They captured the capital in 1992 and then fell to fi ghting among
themselves. The civil war continued until 1996, when a Pashtun group,
the Taliban, seized power. Even then, an alliance of northern Tajik and
other tribes remained independent until the U.S. invasion in 2001, when
they helped to overthrow the Taliban.
Osama bin Laden played a minor role in the fi ghting for control of
Afghanistan as he had in the struggle to oust the Soviets. Far from covering
himself in glory, he once again performed rather poorly. In 1989, he
and his Afghan Arabs participated in the disastrous assault on Jalalabad.
Government forces repulsed the attack, infl icting heavy casualties on the
mujahedeen. After lying low during several days of aerial bombardment,
bin Laden and his forces slinked away. He soon left for Saudi Arabia. He
would return to Afghanistan briefl y and then move there to live in 1996.
By then the country would be under the brutal rule of the religious faAFGHANISTAN
45
natic Mullah Mohammed Omar, and bin Laden would head the world’s
most infamous terrorist organization.
TRIUMPH OF THE TALIBAN
In the Pashtun language, taliban means “religious student.” The group that
seized power in Afghanistan in 1996 had passed through madrasas during
the 1980s and early 1990s. While madrasa in Arabic simply means “school,”
the institutions these Afghans attended taught little more than memorizing
the Qu’ran and the tenets of radical Islamism. Most of the imams
who taught at these madrasas belonged to the neo-Deobandi movement.
Deobandism shared with Wahhabism an extremely conservative view of
Islam. Islamic civilizations had fallen behind the West, the Deobandis
maintained, because Muslims had lost touch with the core teachings and
values of the Prophet Mohammed. The way to a better future lay through
a return to the society of Islam’s fi rst century. The movement derived its
name from the Quranic School in Deoband, India, which has trained
South Asian imams during the past two centuries.23 Though not inherently
violent, Deobandism lent itself to further radicalization in the turbulent
regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. If true Islamic society could
not be restored by prayer and righteous living, it must be restored by force.
The Neo-Deobandi madrasa movement received a powerful boost from
a massive infusion of Saudi cash. Concerned about the spread of radical
Shi’a ideology following the Iranian revolution, the monarchy and private
Saudi charities funded conservative madrasas all over the Muslim
world. Saudi money and neo-Deobandist theology made for a volatile
mix in the unstable conditions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A decade of war had produced an inexhaustible supply of recruits for
radical madrasas that offered a free education, books, room and board, and,
in some cases, a stipend for students’ families. A generation of young Afghans
had grown up in refugee camps in Pakistan, and a signifi cant number
of these children had been orphaned by the confl ict. They grew up
to become exactly the sort of rootless, angry young men extremist organizations
all over the world love to recruit. Under different circumstances
these youths might have joined street gangs or religious cults. In Pakistan’s
refugee camps, they were grist for the jihadists’ mill. Their leader,
46 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Mullah Mohammed Omar, had taught in one of the radical madrasas.
Like Osama bin Laden, he believed that God had called him to a special
mission, and nothing would dissuade him from this conviction. He also
shared bin Laden’s conviction that the United States was responsible for
all the ills of the Muslim world. “America controls the governments of
the Islamic countries,” Omar told a Voice of America interviewer after
the 9/11 attacks.
The people ask to follow Islam, but the governments do not listen
because they are in the grip of the United States. If someone follows
the path of Islam, the government arrests him, tortures him or
kills him. This is the doing of America. If it stops supporting those
governments and lets the people deal with them, then such things
won’t happen. America has created the evil that is attacking it.24
The Taliban embraced an Islamist theology more extreme than that
of Saudi Arabia’s conservative Wahhabi clerics. It unleashed a religious
reign of terror on Afghanistan, enacting the strictest form of sharia law.
The Taliban prevented women from attending school. Covering women’s
hair with a head scarf ( hijab ) or even the face with a veil did not satisfy its
puritanical rules. Women had to remain indoors unless necessity required
them to go out. Then they had to be covered from head to toe in the cumbersome
light blue burqa , which offers very limited vision through mesh
around the eyes. If possible, women who ventured out in public were to
be accompanied by a male relative at all times. Men had to wear beards.
The Taliban banned music, movies, and most television programs. It punished
adultery with death by public stoning. It beheaded barbers who
shaved beards and executed those guilty of a host of other crimes.
BIRTH OF THE BIN LADEN MYTH
The Afghan war against the Soviets and the ensuing civil war for control
of the country created an enduring myth. The Afghan Arab leaders greatly
exaggerated their role in the struggle. With no one to gainsay them, they
were free to rewrite history. They turned their abysmal performance in
the battle for Jalalabad into a stunning success. “The Arab brethren contributed
greatly in these battles,” boasted Afghan Arab Abu Salman.
AFGHANISTAN 47
“The Afghan commanders became dependent on them . . . [and the]
Jalalabad battles proved the capabilities of Arab fi ghters, they participated
in numerous liberation operations [ sic ].”25 The small number of Arab
fi ghters alone belies this exaggerated claim. A journalistic account from
the time of the siege further contradicts the rosy assessment of the prowess
of the Afghan Arabs. Edward Girardet, who visited bin Laden’s camp
with a group of Afghans in February 1989, describes a rather hostile exchange
with the Saudi leader. Bin Laden demanded to know who the men
were and why they had come. “This is our Jihad not your Jihad,” the Afghans
told bin Laden. “We’ve been coming here for quite a number of
years, and we’ve never seen you guys.” As interpreters translated the
heated Arabic exchange into Pashtun, the Afghans were “snickering.
There was obviously no love lost between the two sides.” Girardet concluded
that bin Laden came across as “being a rather spoiled brat, like
he was sort of ‘playing at jihad.’ ” The journalist also commented on bin
Laden’s obsession with being noticed and respected.26 Any further doubt
about the uneasy relationship between the foreign mujahedeen and the
Afghans should be dispelled by the message bin Laden and his followers
received following the Soviet withdrawal. After the departure of Soviet
forces and the defeat of the Marxist regime, the Afghan Arabs were told
politely but fi rmly to go home. According to Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai (acting
Afghan prime minister, 1995–1996), the Afghans thanked the foreigners
but asked them to leave rather than join with any of the factions
vying for control of the country. Ahmadzai maintained that objection
to the continued presence of the Afghan Arabs arose because of their
support for the ultraconservative Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.27
Fortunately for bin Laden, these accounts never circulated very far
abroad and so did not damage his growing reputation. Although he remained
largely unknown in the West, Osama bin Laden became something
of a celebrity in Saudi Arabia and parts of the larger Arab world
following the Afghan war. When he returned home, he found himself
lionized by his countrymen eager to hear about his exploits in Afghanistan.
In its fully developed form, the bin Laden myth gave bin Laden a
messianic complex, a deep conviction that Allah had called him to a special
mission and would bless his endeavors. Bin Laden even maintained
that he and his Arab fi ghters, not the NATO alliance, had won the Cold
War. In a 1997 interview with CNN’s Peter Arnett, bin Laden referred to
48 OSAMA BIN LADEN
“the collapse of the Soviet Union in which the US has no mentionable
role, but rather the credit goes to God, Praise and Glory be to Him, and
the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan.”28 The Arab street believed the myth
and held bin Laden in high esteem. His popularity would grow in the Arab
world as his infamy grew in the West. By 2004, 65 percent of Pakistanis,
55 percent of Jordanians, and 45 percent of Moroccans had a favorable
view of Osama bin Laden.29
NOTES
1 . “Soviet War in Afghanistan,” http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/
topics/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan (accessed March 4, 2009).
2 . Robert M. Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya: Military Strategic
Culture and the Paradox of Asymmetry (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic
Studies Institute, 2003), p. 15.
3 . “The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan,” Le Nouvel Observateur , Paris,
January 15–21, 1998, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
(accessed March 5, 2009).
4 . Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
(New York: Penguin, 2008), pp. 301–303.
5 . Jamal Khashoggi, cited in Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know
(New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 41.
6 . Abdullah Azzam, Defense of Muslim Lands, http://www.religioscope.
com/info/doc/jihad/azzam_defence_4_chap2.htm (accessed March 11, 2009).
7 . Account of Jamal Ismail in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know ,
p. 26.
8 . Account of Jamal Khalifa, in ibid., pp. 27–28.
9. Abdullah Azzam, Defense of Muslim Lands, the First Obligation of Faith ,
translated at http://www.islamistwatch.org/texts/azzam/defense/chap3.html (accessed
July 2, 2009).
10. Abdullah Azzam, Join the Caravan , 1988, translated at http://www.religio
scope.com/info/doc/jihad/azzam_caravan_5_part3.htm (accessed July 2, 2009).
11 . Quoted in Sherifa Zuhur, A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the Future
of Counterinsurgency (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute,
2005), p. 30.
12 . Basil Muhammad, quoted in ibid., p. 39.
13 . Abdullah Azzam, quoted by Boudejama Bounoua in ibid., p. 29.
14 . Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
(New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 104.
AFGHANISTAN 49
15 . Ibid.
16 . Ibid.
17 . Ibid.
18 . Jamal Ismail, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 53.
19 . Osama bin Laden, quoted in ibid., p. 52.
20 . Wright, Looming Tower , p. 116.
21 . “A Millionaire Finances Extremism in Egypt and Saudi Arabia,” Ruz
al Yusuf, date unknown, in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 94.
22 . Osama bin Laden, May 1998 statement, in Raymond Ibrahim, ed. and
trans., The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Broadway Books, 2007), p. 260.
23 . Details on Deobandism from Global Security, http://www.globalsecurity.
org/military/intro/islam-deobandi.htm (accessed May 25, 2009).
24 . Mullah Mohammed Omar, interview with Voice of America, in The
Guardian, September 26, 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/26/
afghani stan.features11 (accessed July 2, 2001).
25 . Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical
Islam, and the Future of America (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2007),
pp. 111–112.
26 . Edward Girardet, account in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 90.
27 . Ahmad Shah Ahmadai, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I
Know , p. 105.
28 . Transcript of Osama bin Laden interview with Peter Arnett, March
1997, http://www.anusha.com/osamaint.htm (accessed May 1, 2009).
29 . Pew Charitable Trust, Global Attitudes Survey , 2004, http://pewglobal.
org/reports/display.php?ReportID=206 (accessed June 5, 2009).
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Chapter 4
AL-QAEDA
Most of the foreign fi ghters who journeyed to Afghanistan in the 1980s
had a single purpose: to repel the Soviet invasion and overthrow the
communist regime in Kabul. When the war ended, they went home. The
various Afghan warlords slugged it out for control of their war-ravaged
country but thought no further than the limited goal of gaining power.
For Osama bin Laden, however, the Afghan war was merely a beginning.
The struggle had empowered him and, further, had made him aware of
the plight of Muslims in other embattled lands. He had also grown accustomed
to the notoriety the confl ict had brought him, and he was
perhaps reluctant to relinquish the limelight. Cooperating with other
like-minded individuals, he transformed his Afghan Arab fi ghters from a
guerrilla force into an organization and, more broadly, a movement.
AZZAM AND BIN LADEN
As the war drew to a close, Abdullah Azzam and bin Laden looked beyond
the immediate struggle to the plight of Muslims throughout the
world. The Afghan war had focused bin Laden’s piety and revealed in
concrete terms the wisdom of Azzam’s teaching. He wanted to continue
52 OSAMA BIN LADEN
jihad against the enemies of Islam where ever he found them. Perhaps
he also missed the attention and exhilaration war provided him. In cooperation
with other like-minded individuals, Azzam and bin Laden created
al-Qaeda in 1988. Although they agreed in principle on the broad
goals of the new organization, the founders of al-Qaeda disagreed on one
vital point. Azzam believed that the obligation to engage in jihad, which
is incumbent upon all Muslims, applied only to foreign countries under
occupation. Some of the Afghan Arabs, particularly those from Egypt,
wished to overthrow what they considered apostate regimes ruling many
Muslim countries, whereas Azzam did not wish to fi ght other Muslims.1
Azzam’s conception of jihad did not extend beyond those lands in which
non-Muslim regimes oppressed Muslim people:
Jihad and the rifl e alone: no negotiations, no conferences, no dialogues.
. . . This duty will not end with victory in Afghanistan; jihad
will remain an individual obligation until all other lands that were
Muslim are returned to us so that Islam will reign again: before us lie
Palestine, Bokhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines,
Burma, Southern Yemen, Tashkent and Andalusia [southern
Spain].2
His lengthy diatribe makes no mention of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the
United States, all of which would eventually be targeted by al-Qaeda.
Although he embraced the duty to liberate occupied Muslim lands, bin
Laden does not seem to have made up his mind about the justice and legality
of overthrowing Muslim governments. By all accounts he remained
a loyal Saudi subject, recognizing that the monarchy and many wealthy
Saudis were funding the Afghan jihad. In the coming years, however, he
would come to accept the idea that apostate Muslims could be targets of
jihad.
Although bin Laden and Azzam never formally parted company, relations
between the two grew increasingly cool. This growing alienation
developed out of a variety of complex factors. The major bone of contention
between them remained bin Laden’s determination to create an
independent Arab force to wage jihad inside Afghanistan. Azzam considered
the effort a waste of resources, but, since bin Laden funded the
effort out of his own pocket, Azzam could do nothing about it. Beneath
AL-QAEDA 53
the quarrel over creating this independent force lay a deeper tension.
Egyptian radicals made up a disproportionate number of the Afghan
Arabs, particularly its leadership. Many of the Egyptian mujahedeen had
broken from the Muslim Brotherhood, which they considered too willing
to work with the hated Egyptian government. Azzam distrusted these
men. He also feared the loss of bin Laden’s money for his own initiatives.
For these reasons, he sought to reduce their presence in al-Qaeda. Azzam
advocated a selection process for membership, but bin Laden disagreed.3
Azzam’s fears were well founded. Bin Laden gave the Egyptian group
al-Jihad, which had broken with the Muslim Brotherhood, $100,000 to
set up its own camp. Although author Richard Wright argues that this
award signaled bin Laden’s tilt toward the Egyptians, it seems more likely
that he was still hedging his bet.4 The al-Jihad camp was one of several
established by bin Laden. He had even founded one Arab camp jointly
with Azzam, who may have been persuaded that an all-Arab group did
have some merits.5
Personal issues may also have contributed to bin Laden’s growing
coolness toward his former mentor. Azzam was an internationally recognized
Muslim scholar, while bin Laden had little more than a high school
diploma. In college he had studied economics, not theology. Bin Laden
may have suffered from an inferiority complex in Azzam’s presence. For
his part, Azzam may have been patronizing and condescending toward
bin Laden, treating him as a follower, not an equal. Azzam’s widow referred
to this potential source of tension. She described bin Laden as “ not
very educated. He holds a high school degree. . . . It is true that he gave
lectures to ulema [religious scholars] and sheikhs, but he was easy to persuade.”
6
Despite their differences, the real threat to Azzam came not from bin
Laden but from the Egyptians. In 1989, Azzam and his two sons were
murdered in Peshawar, Pakistan. The crime has never been solved. Most
experts agree that bin Laden was not involved in the murder. Ahmad
Zaidan, who wrote an Arabic-language book about bin Laden based on
his interviews with the man, dismissed the idea that bin Laden had anything
to do with killing Azzam. “ Osama bin Laden, he’s not the type of
person to kill Abdullah Azzam, ” Zaidan insisted. “ Otherwise, if he be
exposed [ sic ], he would be fi nished, totally. ”7 Former CIA Middle East
analyst Bruce Riedel concludes that Azzam was probably the victim of
54 OSAMA BIN LADEN
content is easy to conjecture from Azzam’s writing and bin Laden’s decision
to relocate to Pakistan in order to aid the jihad. He sought to raise
both money and recruits for the Afghan cause. While he understood the importance
of resources, he rejected the notion that sending money to help
the Afghan insurgents suffi ced. “There is no doubt that jihad by one’s person
is superior to jihad by one’s wealth,” he argued. “Consequently, the
rich in the time of the Prophet . . . were not excused from participating
with their persons, such as Uthman and Abdur Rahman Ibn Auf (ra). Because,
the purifi cation of the soul and the evolution of the spirit, is lifted
to great heights in the midst of the battle.”9
Azzam proclaimed jihad a sacred obligation incumbent upon Islamic
communities and individual Muslims. “When a span of Muslim land is
occupied, jihad becomes individually obligatory (fard ‘ayn) on the inhabAFGHANISTAN
39
itants of that piece of land,” he proclaimed. This duty took precedence
over all other obligations. “The woman may go out without her husband’s
permission with a mahram [relative], the one in debt without the permission
of the one to whom he owes, the child without his father’s permission.”
Muslims outside the occupied land had an obligation to help those
under attack. “If the inhabitants of that area are not suffi cient in number,
fall short, or are lazy, the individually obligatory nature of jihad extends to
those around them, and so on and so on until it covers the entire Earth,
being individually obligatory (fard ‘ayn) just like salat , fasting, and the like
so that nobody may abandon it.”10
Although focused for the time being on Afghanistan, Azzam’s concept
of jihad went much further. He considered the freeing of all Muslim
lands from domination by non-Muslim a duty incumbent upon all believers.
“The obligation of Jihad today remains fard ‘ayn (an individual obligation
of a believer),” he proclaimed, “until the liberation of the last
piece of land which was in the hands of Muslims but has been occupied
by the disbelievers.”11
Azzam’s preaching worked on bin Laden’s conscience. Before the Afghan
war, bin Laden does not seem to have considered anything other
than the greater jihad. For him, being a good Muslim meant prayer, personal
piety, and resisting the temptations of the fl esh. However, he had
never been one to sit still. After listening to Azzam, he longed to take up
the cause, but his family urged him not to go, and, for a while at least, he
listened to them. Finally, religious zeal overcame doubt and the admonition
of family, and he left for Afghanistan in 1984. “I feel so guilty for
listening to my friends and those that I love to not come here [to Afghanistan]
and stay home for reasons of safety,” he confi ded to a Syrian journalist,
“and I feel that this delay of four years requires my martyrdom in the
name of God.”12 Despite his yearning for a glorious death, though, bin
Laden did not go to fi ght the Soviets. Instead, he used his wealth to facilitate
deployment of other mujahedeen to Afghanistan. In late 1984 or early
1985, he, Azzam, and Bodejema Bounoua set up the Maktab al Khidmat
lil Mujadidin al Arab, the Afghan Services Offi ce, an organization in Peshawar,
Pakistan, that helped Arab fi ghters join the insurgency. “We have
founded this bureau to gather the Arabs and to send them inside Afghanistan,”
Azzam declared. “We are here as servants. We are proud to serve the
boots of the mujahideen inside Afghanistan.”13
40 OSAMA BIN LADEN
The Services Offi ce helped recruit, transport, house, and pay Arab volunteers
for the struggle with the Soviets. With his personal wealth, ties
to the Binladen Group, and connections to the royal family and wealthy
Saudis, bin Laden was too valuable to risk losing on the battlefi eld. Azzam
preferred to use him as a recruiter, fi nancier, and facilitator. More than a
tenth of all private donations from Saudi donors to the Afghan cause went
to bin Laden’s organization.14 The Services Offi ce also published a propaganda
magazine, Jihad, to recruit fi ghters and raise money throughout
the Muslim world. Although he remained in the shadow of Azzam, bin
Laden did earn a reputation for dedication and generosity. Abdullah Anas,
an Algerian who worked with him in the Service Bureau, described bin
Laden as a tireless “activist with great imagination.” “He ate very little,”
Anas recalled. “He slept very little. Very generous. He’d give you his
clothes. He’d give you his money.”15
Bin Laden arrived fortuitously in Pakistan at the pivotal point when
U.S. and Saudi aid had begun to tip the balance of the war in favor of
the Afghan insurgents. This serendipity led to the creation of a pervasive
myth. Some Americans and many others outside the United States believe
that the Central Intelligence Agency funded bin Laden’s activities or even
put him on its payroll. As long as Agency records remain classifi ed, these
rumors will persist. However, evidence in the public domain strongly
suggests that no such relationship ever existed. To begin with, Osama bin
Laden played a very minor role in the struggle. Few insurgent leaders had
ever heard of him. While he may have been useful as a conduit for private
funds, these funds made up but a small fraction of the money invested in
supporting the Afghan cause. The CIA preferred to work through its Pakistani
counterpart, the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), which
in turn distributed money to Afghan warlords fi ghting the Soviets. The
Saudi government sent its funds through an even more circuitous route.
It deposited $350 to $500 million a year in a Swiss bank account controlled
by the United States, which then funneled it to the Afghans via
the ISI.16 The Saudis also raised funds from private donors, but less than
20 percent of this money went to bin Laden.17
THE HOLY WARRIOR AND THE AFGHAN ARABS
While he demonstrated some profi ciency in his supporting role, bin
Laden was itching for more active participation in the jihad. He wanted
AFGHANISTAN 41
to fi ght the Soviets and their Afghan puppet government directly. As
with so many other aspects of his life, large gaps in the historical record
obscure bin Laden’s activities inside Afghanistan. All objective accounts,
though, agree that he played a very minor role. With no military training
or combat experience, he would have been of little use to the hardened
Afghan commanders used to operating in the rugged terrain. Like
celebrities visiting any war zone, bin Laden would have been a liability. Ill
prepared to fi ght and yet too valuable to lose, he would have required protection,
which would have meant assigning him bodyguards who could
have been put to better use. While bin Laden may have shown up at an
insurgent camp, its commander probably would have kept him out of
harm’s way.
If he wanted to fi ght, bin Laden would have to raise forces of his own
to lead into battle. His personal wealth and family resources, along with
the ethnic makeup of the mujahedeen, helped him achieve his goal. Most
of the young men hanging around Peshawar came from various parts of
the Arab world. They and bin Laden spoke Arabic but neither Pashtun
(the language of the largest Afghan tribe) nor Urdu (the language of Pakistan).
Like bin Laden, these Arab mujahedeen had little to offer the
Afghan insurgents but their commitment to the struggle. Like him, they
were spoiling for a fi ght, but the insurgents had even less use for most
of them than they did for the Saudi millionaire. Determined to enter the
fray, bin Laden decided to form these men into an Arab force under his
command. Acting independently, his “Afghan Arabs” could, bin Laden
was certain, have a signifi cant impact on the war. Barring that, they
would at least achieve the martyrdom he and so many of them seemed
to desire.
Bin Laden’s eagerness to form an Arab unit separate from the Afghans
brought him fi rst into disagreement and then into open confl ict with
Azzam. The charismatic Palestinian believed that the task of foreigners
should be to fund, support, and otherwise aide the Afghan rebels. Anyone
prepared to fi ght should attach himself to an Afghan unit. He no
doubt also realized that a small force of fewer than a thousand untrained
Arabs could accomplish little by itself. Because he had ample personal resources,
however, bin Laden could do what he wanted. No doubt Azzam
also opposed the scheme because it would divert funds that would otherwise
have gone to the Services Offi ce had bin Laden not wasted them
on his pet project.
42 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Inserting themselves into the insurgency, bin Laden and his followers
adopted a classic guerrilla strategy: they would liberate one area and expand
from there to free more and more territory. They chose Jaji Maydan,
a remote area in the mountains along the Pakistan border, near enough
to trans-border routes to obtain supplies and far enough from any large
Soviet force concentration to avoid destruction. Bin Laden brought in
Binladen Group construction equipment and, beginning in 1986, built a
fortifi ed camp, making use of existing caves within the area. He named
the camp Al-Masada (the lion’s den). One observer explained both bin
Laden’s plan and his choice of location. “Liberate one area and after that
do liberation of other areas,” he observed. “Jaji was chosen because of its
geographical location—close to Parcahinar [a fi nger of Pakistani territory
that extends into eastern Afghanistan].”18 Bin Laden himself insisted
that he had deliberately situated his camp so that it would be the
fi rst thing the Soviet forces saw when they entered the area and so that
they would have to attack it.19 As usual, bin Laden exaggerated his importance
in the scheme of things. The Lion’s Den was but one small part
of a major insurgent buildup in the region. It did attract attention, but
the Soviets were far more concerned about seasoned Afghan commanders
and their large, experienced, and well-equipped cadres than they
were about bin Laden and his ragtag bunch of Arab fi ghters.
Despite his bravado, neither bin Laden nor his Arab mujahedeen performed
well on the battlefi eld. On April 17, 1987, he led 120 of his men
in a raid on an Afghan government outpost near the town of Khost, not
far from the Lion’s Den. Despite artillery support from Afghan insurgent
commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the operation went poorly. The
Arabs had made insuffi cient logistical preparation, so their attack force
had to wait for ammunition, rockets, and mortars to be placed in position.
Hungry soldiers found that their leaders had also neglected to pack suffi
cient quantities of food. At the last minute, they also realized that no
one had brought the electrical wire to connect their rockets to the detonators.
Finally, a single Afghan soldier spotted their clumsy preparations
and held off the assault with a single machine gun.20 The operation cost
bin Laden and his Arabs what little credibility they had among the Afghan
insurgents. A month later, he led another, more successful attack,
but, again, the number of fi ghters engaged suggests that the “battle” was
little more than a skirmish. The operation also provoked the Soviets into
AFGHANISTAN 43
bombarding the Lion’s Den for several weeks, which killed many of the
Afghan Arabs and forced bin Laden to temporarily abandon his camp.
An account published in an Egyptian weekly magazine described the
low regard in which one insurgent commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud,
held bin Laden and his Afghan Arabs. He considered the Afghan Arabs
to be so disorganized that he refused to let them participate in operations
with his forces. To the seasoned Afghan commander, these foreign
mujahedeen seemed more interested in seeking martyrdom for themselves
than in defeating the Soviets. Massoud also considered bin Laden’s
motives to be obscure.21 Ironically, a far more organized and focused bin
Laden would approve the plan to kill Massoud just days before 9/11.
Although he was personally brave, bin Laden in no way contributed
to the Afghan victory. Most of the “battles” in which he fought were minor
skirmishes, or, if they were major battles, he and his Arab fi ghters played
a minor role in them. Bin Laden’s military reputation consists largely of
smoke and mirrors. Properly employed, however, smoke and mirrors can
produce a powerful illusion. Osama bin Laden’s exploits grew more important
with each telling and contributed greatly to an emerging bin Laden
myth. He also drew the same conclusions about the Afghan War that the
Americans had: it was a Soviet Vietnam.
The lesson of Vietnam, reinforced by the Afghan war against the Soviets
and the U.S. failure in Somalia, would come to occupy a central place
in bin Laden’s thinking when he declared war on the United States. He
concluded that, despite their awesome conventional military might, the
superpowers had great diffi culty sustaining a protracted war. The Soviet
army had been bled white in Afghanistan, and the victory had taught the
mujahedeen an important lesson. “After our victory in Afghanistan and
the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend
about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished,” bin Laden asserted
in 1998. Vietnam had already demonstrated that the United States
could be defeated in an insurgency, and Somalia had demonstrated that
it would prove to be an even weaker opponent than the Soviet Union.
“They [the mujahedeen] thought that the Americans were like the Russians,
so they trained and prepared,” bin Laden expounded. “They were
stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American
soldier. . . . He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt his
Army.”22 In this grandiloquent statement, bin Laden exaggerated the role
44 OSAMA BIN LADEN
of the mujahedeen in both Afghanistan and Somalia and seriously underestimated
the morale of the American soldier and the determination
of the United States when its real interests were at stake. The foreign
mujahedeen were too few and too incompetent to have affected the
outcome of the Afghan war. Their numbers in Somalia were even fewer
in both absolute terms and as a percentage of total fi ghters. The United
States did withdraw from Somalia following the disastrous effort to capture
the warlord Mohammed Farah Aided, but that decision stemmed
from lack of resolve on the part of the Clinton administration, rather than
poor morale among American soldiers. The public would probably have
tolerated a sharp response to the Somalis even if it was not keen on a
protracted war in a country in which no vital U.S. interests were at stake.
Bin Laden would discover that, when he attacked the U.S. homeland, the
response would be swift, terrible, and sustained.
AFGHAN CIVIL WAR
Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan did not leave the country stable and
at peace. Moscow left a puppet regime and military advisers to support
an Afghan army that had put up a decent fi ght against the insurgents. Far
from unifi ed except in hatred of the Soviet-backed regime, the rebels
fought one another as they struggled to oust the Marxist government in
Kabul. They captured the capital in 1992 and then fell to fi ghting among
themselves. The civil war continued until 1996, when a Pashtun group,
the Taliban, seized power. Even then, an alliance of northern Tajik and
other tribes remained independent until the U.S. invasion in 2001, when
they helped to overthrow the Taliban.
Osama bin Laden played a minor role in the fi ghting for control of
Afghanistan as he had in the struggle to oust the Soviets. Far from covering
himself in glory, he once again performed rather poorly. In 1989, he
and his Afghan Arabs participated in the disastrous assault on Jalalabad.
Government forces repulsed the attack, infl icting heavy casualties on the
mujahedeen. After lying low during several days of aerial bombardment,
bin Laden and his forces slinked away. He soon left for Saudi Arabia. He
would return to Afghanistan briefl y and then move there to live in 1996.
By then the country would be under the brutal rule of the religious faAFGHANISTAN
45
natic Mullah Mohammed Omar, and bin Laden would head the world’s
most infamous terrorist organization.
TRIUMPH OF THE TALIBAN
In the Pashtun language, taliban means “religious student.” The group that
seized power in Afghanistan in 1996 had passed through madrasas during
the 1980s and early 1990s. While madrasa in Arabic simply means “school,”
the institutions these Afghans attended taught little more than memorizing
the Qu’ran and the tenets of radical Islamism. Most of the imams
who taught at these madrasas belonged to the neo-Deobandi movement.
Deobandism shared with Wahhabism an extremely conservative view of
Islam. Islamic civilizations had fallen behind the West, the Deobandis
maintained, because Muslims had lost touch with the core teachings and
values of the Prophet Mohammed. The way to a better future lay through
a return to the society of Islam’s fi rst century. The movement derived its
name from the Quranic School in Deoband, India, which has trained
South Asian imams during the past two centuries.23 Though not inherently
violent, Deobandism lent itself to further radicalization in the turbulent
regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. If true Islamic society could
not be restored by prayer and righteous living, it must be restored by force.
The Neo-Deobandi madrasa movement received a powerful boost from
a massive infusion of Saudi cash. Concerned about the spread of radical
Shi’a ideology following the Iranian revolution, the monarchy and private
Saudi charities funded conservative madrasas all over the Muslim
world. Saudi money and neo-Deobandist theology made for a volatile
mix in the unstable conditions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A decade of war had produced an inexhaustible supply of recruits for
radical madrasas that offered a free education, books, room and board, and,
in some cases, a stipend for students’ families. A generation of young Afghans
had grown up in refugee camps in Pakistan, and a signifi cant number
of these children had been orphaned by the confl ict. They grew up
to become exactly the sort of rootless, angry young men extremist organizations
all over the world love to recruit. Under different circumstances
these youths might have joined street gangs or religious cults. In Pakistan’s
refugee camps, they were grist for the jihadists’ mill. Their leader,
46 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Mullah Mohammed Omar, had taught in one of the radical madrasas.
Like Osama bin Laden, he believed that God had called him to a special
mission, and nothing would dissuade him from this conviction. He also
shared bin Laden’s conviction that the United States was responsible for
all the ills of the Muslim world. “America controls the governments of
the Islamic countries,” Omar told a Voice of America interviewer after
the 9/11 attacks.
The people ask to follow Islam, but the governments do not listen
because they are in the grip of the United States. If someone follows
the path of Islam, the government arrests him, tortures him or
kills him. This is the doing of America. If it stops supporting those
governments and lets the people deal with them, then such things
won’t happen. America has created the evil that is attacking it.24
The Taliban embraced an Islamist theology more extreme than that
of Saudi Arabia’s conservative Wahhabi clerics. It unleashed a religious
reign of terror on Afghanistan, enacting the strictest form of sharia law.
The Taliban prevented women from attending school. Covering women’s
hair with a head scarf ( hijab ) or even the face with a veil did not satisfy its
puritanical rules. Women had to remain indoors unless necessity required
them to go out. Then they had to be covered from head to toe in the cumbersome
light blue burqa , which offers very limited vision through mesh
around the eyes. If possible, women who ventured out in public were to
be accompanied by a male relative at all times. Men had to wear beards.
The Taliban banned music, movies, and most television programs. It punished
adultery with death by public stoning. It beheaded barbers who
shaved beards and executed those guilty of a host of other crimes.
BIRTH OF THE BIN LADEN MYTH
The Afghan war against the Soviets and the ensuing civil war for control
of the country created an enduring myth. The Afghan Arab leaders greatly
exaggerated their role in the struggle. With no one to gainsay them, they
were free to rewrite history. They turned their abysmal performance in
the battle for Jalalabad into a stunning success. “The Arab brethren contributed
greatly in these battles,” boasted Afghan Arab Abu Salman.
AFGHANISTAN 47
“The Afghan commanders became dependent on them . . . [and the]
Jalalabad battles proved the capabilities of Arab fi ghters, they participated
in numerous liberation operations [ sic ].”25 The small number of Arab
fi ghters alone belies this exaggerated claim. A journalistic account from
the time of the siege further contradicts the rosy assessment of the prowess
of the Afghan Arabs. Edward Girardet, who visited bin Laden’s camp
with a group of Afghans in February 1989, describes a rather hostile exchange
with the Saudi leader. Bin Laden demanded to know who the men
were and why they had come. “This is our Jihad not your Jihad,” the Afghans
told bin Laden. “We’ve been coming here for quite a number of
years, and we’ve never seen you guys.” As interpreters translated the
heated Arabic exchange into Pashtun, the Afghans were “snickering.
There was obviously no love lost between the two sides.” Girardet concluded
that bin Laden came across as “being a rather spoiled brat, like
he was sort of ‘playing at jihad.’ ” The journalist also commented on bin
Laden’s obsession with being noticed and respected.26 Any further doubt
about the uneasy relationship between the foreign mujahedeen and the
Afghans should be dispelled by the message bin Laden and his followers
received following the Soviet withdrawal. After the departure of Soviet
forces and the defeat of the Marxist regime, the Afghan Arabs were told
politely but fi rmly to go home. According to Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai (acting
Afghan prime minister, 1995–1996), the Afghans thanked the foreigners
but asked them to leave rather than join with any of the factions
vying for control of the country. Ahmadzai maintained that objection
to the continued presence of the Afghan Arabs arose because of their
support for the ultraconservative Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.27
Fortunately for bin Laden, these accounts never circulated very far
abroad and so did not damage his growing reputation. Although he remained
largely unknown in the West, Osama bin Laden became something
of a celebrity in Saudi Arabia and parts of the larger Arab world
following the Afghan war. When he returned home, he found himself
lionized by his countrymen eager to hear about his exploits in Afghanistan.
In its fully developed form, the bin Laden myth gave bin Laden a
messianic complex, a deep conviction that Allah had called him to a special
mission and would bless his endeavors. Bin Laden even maintained
that he and his Arab fi ghters, not the NATO alliance, had won the Cold
War. In a 1997 interview with CNN’s Peter Arnett, bin Laden referred to
48 OSAMA BIN LADEN
“the collapse of the Soviet Union in which the US has no mentionable
role, but rather the credit goes to God, Praise and Glory be to Him, and
the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan.”28 The Arab street believed the myth
and held bin Laden in high esteem. His popularity would grow in the Arab
world as his infamy grew in the West. By 2004, 65 percent of Pakistanis,
55 percent of Jordanians, and 45 percent of Moroccans had a favorable
view of Osama bin Laden.29
NOTES
1 . “Soviet War in Afghanistan,” http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/
topics/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan (accessed March 4, 2009).
2 . Robert M. Cassidy, Russia in Afghanistan and Chechnya: Military Strategic
Culture and the Paradox of Asymmetry (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic
Studies Institute, 2003), p. 15.
3 . “The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan,” Le Nouvel Observateur , Paris,
January 15–21, 1998, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
(accessed March 5, 2009).
4 . Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
(New York: Penguin, 2008), pp. 301–303.
5 . Jamal Khashoggi, cited in Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know
(New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 41.
6 . Abdullah Azzam, Defense of Muslim Lands, http://www.religioscope.
com/info/doc/jihad/azzam_defence_4_chap2.htm (accessed March 11, 2009).
7 . Account of Jamal Ismail in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know ,
p. 26.
8 . Account of Jamal Khalifa, in ibid., pp. 27–28.
9. Abdullah Azzam, Defense of Muslim Lands, the First Obligation of Faith ,
translated at http://www.islamistwatch.org/texts/azzam/defense/chap3.html (accessed
July 2, 2009).
10. Abdullah Azzam, Join the Caravan , 1988, translated at http://www.religio
scope.com/info/doc/jihad/azzam_caravan_5_part3.htm (accessed July 2, 2009).
11 . Quoted in Sherifa Zuhur, A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the Future
of Counterinsurgency (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute,
2005), p. 30.
12 . Basil Muhammad, quoted in ibid., p. 39.
13 . Abdullah Azzam, quoted by Boudejama Bounoua in ibid., p. 29.
14 . Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
(New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 104.
AFGHANISTAN 49
15 . Ibid.
16 . Ibid.
17 . Ibid.
18 . Jamal Ismail, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 53.
19 . Osama bin Laden, quoted in ibid., p. 52.
20 . Wright, Looming Tower , p. 116.
21 . “A Millionaire Finances Extremism in Egypt and Saudi Arabia,” Ruz
al Yusuf, date unknown, in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 94.
22 . Osama bin Laden, May 1998 statement, in Raymond Ibrahim, ed. and
trans., The Al Qaeda Reader (New York: Broadway Books, 2007), p. 260.
23 . Details on Deobandism from Global Security, http://www.globalsecurity.
org/military/intro/islam-deobandi.htm (accessed May 25, 2009).
24 . Mullah Mohammed Omar, interview with Voice of America, in The
Guardian, September 26, 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/26/
afghani stan.features11 (accessed July 2, 2001).
25 . Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical
Islam, and the Future of America (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2007),
pp. 111–112.
26 . Edward Girardet, account in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 90.
27 . Ahmad Shah Ahmadai, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I
Know , p. 105.
28 . Transcript of Osama bin Laden interview with Peter Arnett, March
1997, http://www.anusha.com/osamaint.htm (accessed May 1, 2009).
29 . Pew Charitable Trust, Global Attitudes Survey , 2004, http://pewglobal.
org/reports/display.php?ReportID=206 (accessed June 5, 2009).
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Chapter 4
AL-QAEDA
Most of the foreign fi ghters who journeyed to Afghanistan in the 1980s
had a single purpose: to repel the Soviet invasion and overthrow the
communist regime in Kabul. When the war ended, they went home. The
various Afghan warlords slugged it out for control of their war-ravaged
country but thought no further than the limited goal of gaining power.
For Osama bin Laden, however, the Afghan war was merely a beginning.
The struggle had empowered him and, further, had made him aware of
the plight of Muslims in other embattled lands. He had also grown accustomed
to the notoriety the confl ict had brought him, and he was
perhaps reluctant to relinquish the limelight. Cooperating with other
like-minded individuals, he transformed his Afghan Arab fi ghters from a
guerrilla force into an organization and, more broadly, a movement.
AZZAM AND BIN LADEN
As the war drew to a close, Abdullah Azzam and bin Laden looked beyond
the immediate struggle to the plight of Muslims throughout the
world. The Afghan war had focused bin Laden’s piety and revealed in
concrete terms the wisdom of Azzam’s teaching. He wanted to continue
52 OSAMA BIN LADEN
jihad against the enemies of Islam where ever he found them. Perhaps
he also missed the attention and exhilaration war provided him. In cooperation
with other like-minded individuals, Azzam and bin Laden created
al-Qaeda in 1988. Although they agreed in principle on the broad
goals of the new organization, the founders of al-Qaeda disagreed on one
vital point. Azzam believed that the obligation to engage in jihad, which
is incumbent upon all Muslims, applied only to foreign countries under
occupation. Some of the Afghan Arabs, particularly those from Egypt,
wished to overthrow what they considered apostate regimes ruling many
Muslim countries, whereas Azzam did not wish to fi ght other Muslims.1
Azzam’s conception of jihad did not extend beyond those lands in which
non-Muslim regimes oppressed Muslim people:
Jihad and the rifl e alone: no negotiations, no conferences, no dialogues.
. . . This duty will not end with victory in Afghanistan; jihad
will remain an individual obligation until all other lands that were
Muslim are returned to us so that Islam will reign again: before us lie
Palestine, Bokhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines,
Burma, Southern Yemen, Tashkent and Andalusia [southern
Spain].2
His lengthy diatribe makes no mention of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the
United States, all of which would eventually be targeted by al-Qaeda.
Although he embraced the duty to liberate occupied Muslim lands, bin
Laden does not seem to have made up his mind about the justice and legality
of overthrowing Muslim governments. By all accounts he remained
a loyal Saudi subject, recognizing that the monarchy and many wealthy
Saudis were funding the Afghan jihad. In the coming years, however, he
would come to accept the idea that apostate Muslims could be targets of
jihad.
Although bin Laden and Azzam never formally parted company, relations
between the two grew increasingly cool. This growing alienation
developed out of a variety of complex factors. The major bone of contention
between them remained bin Laden’s determination to create an
independent Arab force to wage jihad inside Afghanistan. Azzam considered
the effort a waste of resources, but, since bin Laden funded the
effort out of his own pocket, Azzam could do nothing about it. Beneath
AL-QAEDA 53
the quarrel over creating this independent force lay a deeper tension.
Egyptian radicals made up a disproportionate number of the Afghan
Arabs, particularly its leadership. Many of the Egyptian mujahedeen had
broken from the Muslim Brotherhood, which they considered too willing
to work with the hated Egyptian government. Azzam distrusted these
men. He also feared the loss of bin Laden’s money for his own initiatives.
For these reasons, he sought to reduce their presence in al-Qaeda. Azzam
advocated a selection process for membership, but bin Laden disagreed.3
Azzam’s fears were well founded. Bin Laden gave the Egyptian group
al-Jihad, which had broken with the Muslim Brotherhood, $100,000 to
set up its own camp. Although author Richard Wright argues that this
award signaled bin Laden’s tilt toward the Egyptians, it seems more likely
that he was still hedging his bet.4 The al-Jihad camp was one of several
established by bin Laden. He had even founded one Arab camp jointly
with Azzam, who may have been persuaded that an all-Arab group did
have some merits.5
Personal issues may also have contributed to bin Laden’s growing
coolness toward his former mentor. Azzam was an internationally recognized
Muslim scholar, while bin Laden had little more than a high school
diploma. In college he had studied economics, not theology. Bin Laden
may have suffered from an inferiority complex in Azzam’s presence. For
his part, Azzam may have been patronizing and condescending toward
bin Laden, treating him as a follower, not an equal. Azzam’s widow referred
to this potential source of tension. She described bin Laden as “ not
very educated. He holds a high school degree. . . . It is true that he gave
lectures to ulema [religious scholars] and sheikhs, but he was easy to persuade.”
6
Despite their differences, the real threat to Azzam came not from bin
Laden but from the Egyptians. In 1989, Azzam and his two sons were
murdered in Peshawar, Pakistan. The crime has never been solved. Most
experts agree that bin Laden was not involved in the murder. Ahmad
Zaidan, who wrote an Arabic-language book about bin Laden based on
his interviews with the man, dismissed the idea that bin Laden had anything
to do with killing Azzam. “ Osama bin Laden, he’s not the type of
person to kill Abdullah Azzam, ” Zaidan insisted. “ Otherwise, if he be
exposed [ sic ], he would be fi nished, totally. ”7 Former CIA Middle East
analyst Bruce Riedel concludes that Azzam was probably the victim of
54 OSAMA BIN LADEN
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