The more bin Laden heard, the more he began to buy into the Radicals’ ideology. As he did so, he experienced a religious and political awakening, concluded Lawrence Wright in his landmark book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. “Osama stopped watching cowboy shows. Outside of school, he refused to wear Western dress. Sometimes he would sit in front of the television and weep over the news from Palestine. . . . He began fasting twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, in emulation of the Prophet. . . . In addition to the five prayers a day, he set his alarm for one in the morning and prayed alone every night.”171
As he approached his sixteenth birthday in 1973—and underwent a massive growth spurt that left him six feet six inches tall and 160 pounds—bin Laden was again stunned and horrified to see the Jews of Israel defeat Egypt and the Syrians during the Yom Kippur War. Now the Muslim Brotherhood argument made even more sense. The Arabs were getting slaughtered and utterly humiliated by the Israelis and by the West because they had lost their way and forgotten the path of the prophets. Islam was the answer, he concluded, and jihad was the way.
Bin Laden soon became a member of the Brotherhood himself. He began reading the collected works of Sayyid Qutb, the radical Sunni theologian and Muslim Brotherhood activist who was executed by Egyptian authorities in 1966 but whose books became wildly popular among young jihadists, selling millions of copies after his death. Bin Laden married for the first time in 1974 to a devout fourteen-year-old Muslim girl who was a cousin of his from Syria.172 Following high school, he enrolled at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, ostensibly to study management and economics but also to find and make common cause with like-minded jihadists.
All the while, one geopolitical event after another kept forcing him to think more deeply about his worldview and how committed he was to it.
In 1975, for example, Saudi king Faisal was assassinated by his nephew. The assassination rocked the kingdom and was widely perceived by Islamic Radicals as a judgment against the king’s love of the U.S. and Western Europe.
In 1977, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat made his dramatic visit to Jerusalem, and he began talking about making peace with the Israelis, horrifying young Radicals who saw Sadat as an apostate worthy of assassination himself (something they accomplished four years later).
In early 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini led his Islamic Revolution to victory in Iran, electrifying Radicals throughout the region, including Sunnis like bin Laden who disagreed with Khomeini’s theology but loved his tactics and envied his accomplishments.
On November 20, 1979, more than 1,300 radical Islamic jihadists seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Their leader declared himself the Mahdi and called for the overthrow of the apostate House of Saud and the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate. Saudi police eventually stormed the sacred facility to expel the extremists, killing 250 people, wounding 600, and infuriating Muslims who had been sympathetic to the extremists’ cause.
And then the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan closed out 1979 with a bang.
Bin Laden found himself wrestling with hard questions. How serious was he about his religious faith and his political views? If he had to decide between following his steadily developing convictions and becoming obscenely wealthy, which would he choose? Though he had been cast out of the bin Laden family at an early age, he still bore his father’s name. He was still entitled to tens of millions of dollars in inheritance. He still had the opportunity to be a key figure in a multi-billion-dollar family construction business. Which path would he choose?
Finding a Mentor
Osama bin Laden went through his college years not only seeking education but searching for a father figure who would be willing to be his mentor and spiritual guide. He wanted to sit at the feet of a man who would give him the personal attention he so desperately craved, teach him the ways of Allah, and model for him a life of jihad. He wanted someone to help him choose the right direction for his life. He believed deeply that Allah had chosen him for a special mission. But he was not sure he could find it on his own.
In 1981, bin Laden finally found a Radical sheikh by the name of Abdullah Azzam who was all too happy to take the young and hungry student under his wing.
Azzam had been born in Jenin, a town in the West Bank, in 1941. During the 1967 war, he fled to Jordan, then moved to Cairo, where he earned a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from al-Azhar University. Later, he took a job leading prayers at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he met bin Laden.
Bin Laden was attracted, in part, to the fact that Azzam was a fellow member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a Palestinian with an intense desire to liberate Jerusalem from the Jews. He was also intrigued by the intense fervor with which Azzam preached his message and his absolute commitment to the use of violence.
“Jihad and the rifle alone” was the way to liberate the Holy Lands from the infidels, Azzam once insisted. “No negotiations, no conferences, no dialogues.”173 Another time, Azzam argued, “Jihad must not be abandoned until Allah alone is worshiped. . . . Jihad is the way of everlasting glory.”174 In his book Defense of Muslim Lands, Azzam wrote, “Pay close attention to the hadith: ‘To stand one hour in the battle line in the cause of Allah is better than sixty years of night prayer.’”175
But the charismatic cleric did not just talk jihad; he lived it, and this galvanized bin Laden all the more. In 1981, Azzam went to Pakistan to teach the Qur’an at the International Islamic University in Islamabad. There, he met leaders of the Afghan mujahadeen. Entranced by the passion of these jihadists for death and for victory over the Soviets, Azzam visited Afghanistan. When he returned to Saudi Arabia, he told bin Laden and his other students, “I reached Afghanistan, and I could not believe my eyes. I felt as if I had been reborn.”176 Azzam was convinced it was in Afghanistan that Muslims should make a stand against the Communists, and he was eager to get his young Saudi protégé involved.
“Azzam returned to Jeddah frequently, staying in bin Laden’s guest flat on his trips to the Kingdom,” journalist Lawrence Wright has noted. “He held recruiting sessions in bin Laden’s apartment, where he magnetized young Saudis with his portraits of the suffering of the refugees and the courage of the mujahadeen. ‘You have to do this!’ he told them. ‘It is your duty! You have to leave everything and go!’”177
By the early 1980s, there were 3,000 to 3,500 Arabs fighting in Afghanistan, a number that quickly grew to somewhere between 16,000 and 20,000 by the mid-1980s.178
“I Felt Closer to God than Ever”
Osama bin Laden was convinced. His mentor wanted to take him on a journey to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and he desperately wanted to say yes. But bin Laden’s mother told him he could not go. So did the Saudi government.
At first, bin Laden complied, promising his mother he would not travel into harm’s way. But Azzam was relentless, part exhorting, part shaming his protégé into coming with him on his next trip into the battle zone.
By June 1984, Azzam’s strategies had succeeded. He finally persuaded bin Laden to leave the family construction business behind, defy his family and many of his less devout friends, and join him in Afghanistan.
Upon arriving in the barren, rugged Afghan mountains, bin Laden was stunned by the squalor and the wretched state of affairs his fellow Muslims found themselves in. “I was surprised by the sad state of the equipment and everything else—weapons, roads, and trenches,” he later recalled. “I asked forgiveness from God Almighty, feeling that I had sinned because I listened to those who advised me not to go. . . . I felt that this four-year delay could not be pardoned unless I became a martyr.”179
Bin Laden had an epiphany in Afghanistan when he watched jihadists shoot down four Soviet aircraft. The experience moved him deeply. “I saw with my own eyes the remains of [one of] the pilots. Three fingers, a part of a nerve, the skin of one cheek, an ear, the neck, and the skin of the back. Some Afghan brothers came and took a photo of him as i
f he were a slaughtered sheep! We cheered. . . . I felt closer to God than ever.”
Bin Laden had found his calling. True, he could not yet preach with the same intellect, experience, and charisma that Azzam possessed. Indeed, he was still a very shy and reclusive man. But he eagerly wanted to emulate his mentor. Perhaps, he thought, he could help finance the battle against the Soviets with his own money and with funds raised from kindred spirits back in Saudi Arabia. He resolved to return to Jeddah and find willing financial allies. By the end of the year he had raised nearly $10 million for the mujahadeen.180
At the same time, he did not want to simply write checks. He wanted to help in practical, tangible ways. He wanted to get his hands bloody. So he continued making trips to Afghanistan to visit those to whom he was supplying weapons, ammunition, food, and medical supplies, and he soon put his family’s engineering experience to work, helping design, finance, and construct new roads, underground bunkers, and various facilities for the mujahadeen. And as he gained more in-country experience, he even began to try his hand at commanding small units of Arab jihadists in battles against the Soviets.
Views of bin Laden’s military skills, even by close associates, were mixed at best. Bin Laden lost many men during his few clashes with the enemy. But there was absolutely no question that he was building a deeply devoted following of both Arabs and Afghans who admired his commitment to their overall success and were grateful for his personal and financial support. “He not only gave his money, but he also gave himself,” recalled Hamza Muhammad, a Palestinian who signed up to help the mujahadeen and along the way became enamored of bin Laden. “He came down from his palace [in Arabia] to live with the Afghan peasants and the Arab fighters. He cooked with them, ate with them, dug trenches with them. That was bin Laden’s way.”181
The Birth of Al Qaeda
By the late 1980s, bin Laden could see the handwriting on the wall. The Soviets were getting their clocks cleaned by the mujahadeen, and he suspected Moscow might soon withdraw. When they did, bin Laden wanted to be able to boast that Allah had defeated one of the world’s two infidel superpowers and was now ready to take down the other.
But bin Laden knew he could not possibly take on the “Great Satan” alone. He needed to build a team, an organization, and a movement. And the son of one the region’s savviest businessmen soon realized he did not need to start from scratch. A merger would do just fine.
Bin Laden turned to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of an up-and-coming terrorist movement known as Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The two had met sometime in 1984 or 1985, and bin Laden was intrigued with his story.
Zawahiri—about six years older than bin Laden—was born in Egypt in June 1951. Heavily influenced by the Brotherhood and the writings of Sayyid Qutb, he had formed his first jihad cell group in 1966, when he was only fifteen years old.
Recruitment was slow going at first. But a year later, Egypt lost the Six-Day War with Israel. Three years later, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser died of a heart attack. Three years after that, then president Anwar Sadat lost the 1973 war with Israel.
By this time, Zawahiri was twenty-two. The case he had been making to his emotionally devastated Egyptian friends was finally winning him converts. Secular nationalist movements such as Nasser’s and Sadat’s, he argued, were never going to help Arabs regain their honor or lost glory. Nor were such movements ever going to liberate Jerusalem. Islam was the only answer, he argued. Violent jihad was the way. And now was the time.
By the time he finished medical school in 1974, Zawahiri had forty members in his cell. But he was not nearly satisfied. Soon, he adopted four smaller cells operating in the Cairo area.
Then came the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Zawahiri was captivated by Khomeini’s vision of a global jihadist movement, not just one limited to a single country. He also became intoxicated by accounts of the “miracles” of the mujahadeen destroying the Soviets with Allah’s help.
Zawahiri wanted to learn everything he could in order to take the lessons back to Cairo, overthrow Sadat’s regime, create a Sunni version of the Islamic Revolution, and then export the Revolution throughout North Africa and the Sunni Middle East.
It became clear to bin Laden that Zawahiri had a bold and sweeping vision, a detailed strategy, and a ready-made organization of highly educated and well-trained warriors and experienced cell commanders. It was, in short, a turnkey scenario enabling bin Laden to establish what would effectively become “Jihad, Inc.,” a multinational corporation dedicated to destroying Judeo-Christian civilization and imposing Sharia law on the entire planet.
Zawahiri needed money and a safe base of operations to train more men, plan terrorist actions, and launch attacks without being under the constant watchful eye of the Egyptian authorities. For bin Laden money was no object. His family had decided to bless him and his efforts rather than disown him. Thus, his own personal fortune was now estimated at between $60 million and $300 million. He also had thousands of names and addresses of donors who had helped him as he helped the mujahadeen.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan seemed to bin Laden like an ideal place to set up training camps and his global headquarters. Once the Soviets were gone, it would essentially be a no-man’s-land, teeming with unemployed but experienced mujahadeen looking for new work and a new target.
On September 10, 1988, therefore, with help from Zawahiri and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Osama bin Laden formed a new jihadist organization known as al Qaeda (Arabic for “the base”). Bin Laden was only thirty years old.
Chapter Eight
Declaring War on America
The birth and growth of al Qaeda
“I am only one person,” Osama bin Laden told fifteen colleagues at their first planning meetings in September of 1988.182 They had to build a movement of Sunni jihadists, and they had to build fast, he told them. Bin Laden’s plan was to have 314 trained terrorists on the payroll in Afghanistan and ready to embark on missions within six months.
By 1990, al Qaeda had established cells, recruiters, and fund-raising operations in fifty countries, including the United States.183 By 1993, al Qaeda had trained more than six thousand Arabs to export jihad throughout the world.184
“New recruits filled out forms in triplicate, signed their oath of loyalty to bin Laden, and swore themselves to secrecy,” reported Lawrence Wright. “In return, single members earned about $1,000 a month in salary; married members received $1,500. Everyone got a round-trip ticket home each year and a month of vacation. There was a health care plan and—for those who changed their mind—a buyout option: they received $2,400 and went on their way. From the beginning, al -Qaeda presented itself as an attractive employment opportunity for men whose education and careers had been curtailed by jihad.”185
What accelerated the growth of the fledgling organization so quickly?
The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, plain and simple. In nine years, more than fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers and airmen were killed in Afghanistan, and another thirty thousand or so were injured. Hundreds of Soviet jets and helicopters were shot down. And all the while bin Laden passionately argued that the mujahadeen’s victories against the Soviet infidels were proof that Allah was on their side.186
But in bin Laden’s mind, the defeat of the Soviets was only the beginning. He knew he needed to seize the momentum from this perceived victory and channel it into future operations. So no sooner had the Soviets retreated than bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia and took a victory lap.
“The praise and media attention made bin Laden a sought-after celebrity,” reported Youssef Bodansky, author of Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, one of the best biographies written about the enigmatic jihadist. “He spoke at countless mosques and private gatherings. Some of his fiery speeches were recorded; well over a quarter of a million official cassettes were sold, and countless illegal—and later, underground—copies were also ma
de and distributed.”187
“Allah . . . granted the Muslim people and the Afghani mujahedeen, and those with them, the opportunity to fight the Russians and the Soviet Union,” bin Laden preached to anyone and everyone who would listen, including American journalists. “They were defeated by Allah and were wiped out. There is a lesson here. The Soviet Union entered Afghanistan late in December of ’79. The flag of the Soviet Union was folded once and for all on the twenty-fifth of December, just ten years later. It was thrown in the waste basket. Gone was the Soviet Union forever. We are certain that we shall—with the grace of Allah—prevail over the Americans and over the Jews, as the Messenger of Allah promised us in an authentic prophetic tradition when he said the Hour of Resurrection shall not come before Muslims fight Jews and before Jews hide behind trees and behind rocks.”188
Competing Visions
Al Qaeda was now a fast-growth company.
Money and new recruits were pouring in, but tensions within the organization were mounting as well, particularly between bin Laden’s two mentors and ideological guides. Abdullah Azzam strongly disagreed with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s vision of a global jihadist movement, believing it was a waste of time and money to build on such a large and expensive scale. Instead, Azzam implored bin Laden to turn his attention exclusively to helping Palestinians build an Islamist movement and muscle the secular nationalist Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization out of the way. In his spare time, Azzam had helped create Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement of the Palestinians, in 1987. With bin Laden’s money and intellectual leadership, Azzam believed together they could liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Land just as they had liberated Afghanistan.
Inside the Revolution Page 13