Eves of Destruction

by Roy Berelowitz

  One of his many storied attacks took place at the Salang Tunnel north of Kabul. Originally built by the Soviets for the Afghanistan government starting in 1955, the tunnel and highway were completed in 1964 and at the time, the Salang Tunnel was the highest in the world at over ten thousand feet. The highway and tunnel were vital conduits for the Soviet army in Afghanistan and the site of constant and fierce fighting between Soviet forces trying to keep it open and mujihadin who sought to close it and use it to capture Soviet army equipment.

  After numerous losses, including the deaths of over two thousand people in one attack in 1982, the Soviets decided to maximize the use of the tunnel in winter when conditions would be so severe the mujahideen could not mount a serious attack, or at least so they believed. When Pakistani intelligence, who worked closely with the mujihadin, reported that a very large Soviet Army convoy planned to pass through the Salang in the next few days, Abd Al Rahman organized an attack force that spent seven days at an altitude of over ten thousand feet, sometimes in a freezing snowstorm waiting for the Soviets. When two of his men froze to death, half the men abandoned the mission and escaped to a lower elevation, but Abd Al Rahman never left nor allowed himself any quarter. He maintained his vigil, encouraged and helped the remaining mujahideen soldiers to survive and attack the Soviets when they passed by. He led the destruction of over fifty vehicles in the convoy and killed over 100 Soviet soldiers and officers.

  When he found two of his mujahideen trying to rape a captured female Russian officer he personally executed both rapists by slitting their throats and then shot the Russian woman as she begged for her life.

  But his most legendary success was how he dealt with the Russians when they captured him. He had become a marked man, known for staging bloody attacks on Russian convoys on lonely highways and later for even more blatant attacks on senior Soviet officers in Kabul.

  In desperation the Soviets brought in a Spetsnaz unit, Special Forces from the KGB comprised of elite troops to hunt him down. The Spetsnaz soldiers were extremely well trained and unlike their regular army comrades, could fight the mujihadin on their own terms in the toughest terrain and the most brutal conditions. For months they played a deadly game of cat and mouse with some close calls, but Abd Al Rahman always managed to elude them while still tormenting them with periodic attacks and bombings. The Soviets applied increasingly brutal methods, torturing captured mujihadin for information on his whereabouts, indiscriminate shelling of villages in which he was suspected to be hiding, but all to no avail. One commanding officer of the search team was killed in action and anther removed from command because of his inability to complete the mission. Finally, a young KGB major was brought in. He was much like the man he was chasing; methodical, relentless and fearless in his pursuit of his quarry. When the KGB team finally tracked Al Rahman to an area in the mountains near Kabul, they began a weeklong running pursuit that cost the lives of fifteen Soviet elite soldiers and an unknown numbers of mujihadin fighters.

  Abd Al Rahman realized the noose was tightening but he embraced the idea of dying in a holy war against the infidel invaders. He did his best to be killed rather than captured in the final fire fight when his hideout was attacked, but he was knocked unconscious and injured in his right leg when a shell exploded nearby and the Soviet Special Forces dragged him out alive.

  He was given perfunctory medical treatment to fix his wounded leg but the torture had begun almost immediately. An expert was brought in directly from Moscow to quickly get any current information about the disposition of the mujihadin fighters. The expert was systematic and unashamedly sadistic and even seasoned KGB officers stepped away as the intensity of the torture was ratcheted higher and higher, beyond what they were able to witness. But despite the expert’s best efforts with beatings, sleep deprivation, electric shock and repeated dunking in cold water, he gave them nothing. He would just stare back at his torturer’s face, blinking slowly against the pain and give himself to Allah, his faith and fortitude carrying him through.

  Finally, his torturer began the harshest and most painful attack that Al Rahman knew he could not withstand indefinitely. With garden shears, he systematically began cutting off the fingers of his right hand joint by joint. Over a period of two days, he started with his thumb and quickly worked it down to a small raw stub and then moved on to his index finger. When it too was a just a raw bleeding stub, he started cutting off his other fingers, piece by bloody piece.

  The pain was unspeakable. He cried in anger and rage against his tortures and to Allah to have mercy on him, to take him to heaven. He bit his lips and tongue raw as his hand was mutilated and shattered two molars as he clenched his jaw against the pain.

  But suddenly, for reasons never explained to him, the torture stopped. His hand was treated, not well, but just enough that he would not die of infection, and late one night he and a few other captive mujihadin were flown to Moscow. He never learned why the torture ended or why he had been taken from Afghanistan but he later assumed it was because the Soviets had decided to abandon Afghanistan and did not to want to leave obvious evidence of their mistreatment of Arabs.

  For six years he languished in a variety of Russian jails. He received additional treatment for his mangled right hand and his leg injury but for the first year of his incarceration he suffered from severe pain in his hand. The conditions in the jails were primitive and harsh and at first the Russian prisoners treated him roughly but over time his natural leadership and fortitude won them over. He learned to speak good Russian and encouraged the few other Moslems incarcerated with him to maintain their faith.

  In 1996, without warning or explanation he was released from prison, transported to the most eastern border of Russia, provided with a small amount of money and pushed over the border into Kazakhstan. He was no longer the young fit man he had been and the injury to his leg limited his mobility but his mind was clear and there was no question in his mind where he was going and who he would seek out when he got there. He was picked up by police or paramilitary groups on a number of occasions but always somehow managed to get away. Food was sometimes plentiful but more often it was meager and he struggled on his journey, but he always kept his faith, embracing his struggle as a catharsis. Traveling mostly on foot, occasionally in the backs of trucks and once by train, it took him three months to reach the Afghan border. Avoiding the border crossing, he found an unprotected and sparsely patrolled area and crossed into Afghanistan late one night.

  By the time Al Rahman returned to Afghanistan he was disconnected from the events of the past six years. He knew nothing of the current state of affairs in Afghanistan since the Soviets had been defeated by the mujihadin and that another war had broken out between the Taliban, a radical Sunni Islamist group, and the Northern Alliance, a group of warring factions united to fight the Taliban. What Abd Al Rahman also did not know was that his mentor and friend, Osama bin Laden had also just returned to Afghanistan after being deported from the Sudan. Soon after his arrival in Afghanistan, Al Rahman was picked up and quickly recognized by seasoned Taliban fighters who knew him from the old days. Within a week he was reunited with his old friend, a meeting both men immediately understood was by the providence of Allah.

  The two old warriors spent days together, praying and reminiscing only briefly about their struggle against the Soviet Union but focusing on their desire to attack America, destroy Israel, return all of Jerusalem to Arab control, expel all non-Muslims from the middle-east, returning Arabia to the days of the Caliphate when all Arabs lived by the rules and tenets of the Koran. It was never stated between them but Al Rahman was quite certain Bin Laden was a true Caliph and he sometimes referred to him as Amīr al-Mu’minīn or Commander of the Faithful.

  Al Rahman attentively listened to his old friend describe his plans to wage war against the despotic Arab regimes and their western sponsors. With the increasing power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bin Laden was confident they could operate almost in the open,
recruiting and training young fighters who were committed to the cause.

  Abd Al Rahman considered his reunion with Osama bin Laden one of the greatest moments of his life. His allegiance to Bin Laden was absolute and he agreed without reservation with his friend’s declaration of jihad against the tyrannical and despotic Arab leaders and their western supporters. Despite his age and injuries he asked his former commander to assign him a mission, another opportunity to achieve martyrdom denied to him so many years before on the battlefield with the Russians.

  Weeks passed before Bin Laden responded to his request and when he did, Al Rahman was disappointed. He wanted to fight the enemy directly, but instead he was told, “To serve us best you must become one of them. Adopt their lifestyle,” Bin Laden directed him in his soft, almost monotone voice.

  “Live openly in their secular world, cut off all ties to Islam and live amongst the infidels. When the time is right, we will call on you to our struggle.”

  He was directed to live in Paris, a relatively easy place for an Arab to blend in among the large Muslim pollution but even that was not allowed him. Fluent in French from his childhood in Lebanon, he made no contact at all with his fellow Muslims and followed his orders explicitly. He lived as a Frenchman in Paris, but during his first year there he felt adrift and without purpose. During the Afghan war against the Soviets, his purpose had been clear; to kill as many Russians as possible, and later in Russian prison his goal had been to survive while keeping his faith and spirit intact.

  After some time in his forced exile, he began to explore, first only in France then later on, other countries on the continent; Italy, Germany and Holland. He regarded these trips as intelligence gathering, an opportunity to identify possible targets to attack, to learn more about security in each country so when the time came and he was called upon, he would be ready. His trips gave him purpose, made him feel as if he was still part of the struggle, ready to act when called.

  In the summer of 2000 he crossed the Channel and spent a week in England, mostly in London visiting tourist sites, learning about the subway system, riding with the huge crowds that descend in to the London subway every weekday morning and evening on their way to and from work. He imagined what would happen if a bomb or series of bombs exploded in the subway. The death toll would be huge but he believed the psychological impact of the attack would be diminished because the destruction would take place in an area not easily seen. Al Rahman understood that the power of the terrorist was to create a sense of vulnerability in the common man, to give him a perpetual sense of insecurity. He understood that the threat of terror was much more powerful than any real action. But, he also understood that for the threat to be perceived, there had to be occasional and direct action to remind the populace they were not safe.

  He took a boat tour of the Thames and stood on the open deck as the boat motored past the British Houses of Parliament. He could hear the tour guide droning on about the history of British democracy but all he could think of is what the building would look like as a shattered and burned out shell. In his mind’s eye he could see the bombs exploding; great big sheets of fire leaping high into the air as the walls came crashing down. It was a satisfying daydream and he prayed silently that one day he would be called on to do something like that.

  His trip to England reminded him that his English language skills were very limited and upon his return to Paris he immediately began to study. As the common international language, he felt that learning English was a necessary part of his preparation for whatever mission he was given. Unwilling to expose himself to too many questions he decided against signing up for a class, instead buying language tapes and renting English language films so after a year he felt confident enough to return to England to test his skills. He was pleasantly surprised he could easily manage simple conversations and even read the local newspapers.

  Despite the years spent living in France and traveling the continent, his hatred for the infidels was not in the least bit diminished by living in their midst. On the contrary, he was revolted by their filthy lifestyles, the disgusting way in which they dressed in public, the open displays of affection between men and women and even people of the same sex. But his greatest hatred he reserved for the Americans. Every time he saw them flooding into Paris in the summer with their backpacks and their loud insistent voices he just wanted to smash their faces, to rip out their beating hearts and feed them to the dogs. The Jews were the enemy of all Arabs for the illegal occupation of Arab land but the Americans were the ones that created and then supported the despotic and tyrannical Arab regimes in countries like Jordan and Egypt where the Muslim brotherhood were suppressed and massacred. He considered the Saudi royal family just as bad despite their adherence to the faith and to Sharia, the Muslim law, because they aided and abetted the activities of the Americans by allowing the infidels to defile the land of the Prophet by inviting in their army.

  The Americans played them against each other first equipping the Iraqis and helping them fight the Iranians and then turning on their former allies as if they were just animals to be manipulated and abused. And all just so they could keep the flow of oil pumping out of the ground and then making sure the oil revenues were never equitably distributed for all Arabs but kept for the wealthy elite and then repatriated back to America. If he had any doubt about America’s intentions, they were erased after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He understood what it meant; hegemony over Arab and Muslim lands and peoples and natural resources. Next would be Iran and then Syria. He was quite certain it was just a matter of time.

  On September 11th 2001, he had been sitting in a small café sipping coffee and reading a book in the late afternoon. He noticed people gathering around television sets in the cafés and restaurants nearby and wondered what had happened. He joined one small group and stared in disbelief first at the site of the Twin Towers burning, then felt utter joy as first one then the other collapsed. He hurried back to his apartment and watched on his small television as the chaos unfolded in Manhattan and knew without a doubt that his mentor, his friend, his brother in arms could be the only one who could have arranged and carried out such a bold and daring attack.

  He closed all the curtains in his small apartment, carefully washed his hands and feet and for the first time in many years, turned to face the holy city of Mecca. He stood quietly chanting a prayer and then threw himself to the ground, prostrating himself before the prophet and God almighty.

  First he prayed for the souls of his dead comrades who had with so much courage, turned their planes into guided missiles. Then he prayed for the souls of his dead parents and dead comrades from the wars in Afghanistan and Lebanon. And finally he prayed for himself, that Allah the all merciful would find a use for him, a poor servant of God to avenge the crimes of the Jews and Americans and the British against his people.

  “Send me,” he intoned repeatedly. “Send me.”

  In 2004 he decided to visit America. He applied for a new passport, concerned his false identity would be revealed but in a few days the passport was issued and he booked a three week trip starting in New York.

  Despite his recent urbanization in Paris, he found New York quite staggering in its size and pace. He walked around lower Manhattan and spent time staring at the pit where the World Trade towers had once stood. There were many other tourists looking over the site with him, mostly Americans and he was struck by the almost religious significance and reverence they gave to the place. While he celebrated the attack and was awed by its audacity, he had witnessed so much death and destruction in his life that the response of weeping Americans seemed irrational to him but it also strengthened his belief that their very lifestyle, their expectation that life should be predictable and secure made them so vulnerable.

  He traveled to Las Vegas for one night and as he walked up one side of the strip early in the evening, he was confounded by the huge crowds wandering from hotel to hotel to throw their money away gambling. Even afte
r years of living in Paris, he still found the blatant use of course sexual themes in giant billboard advertising attached to the top of taxis confounding. Every few minutes as he walked on the sidewalk, he was handed pictures and cards of mostly naked young women in suggestive posses advertising their services. He found the city and people incongruous with the image of America he carried in his mind; a militaristic and nationalistic society, but here it just seemed that all it cared about was hedonism. Could a society so openly blasphemous really survive he wondered. Would it fall under the weight of its own sin or would Allah intercede to show the people the true path of faith and devotion.

  He stopped in front of one of the giant hotels on the strip and again imagined the terror and destruction possible with a well placed bomb.

  His last stop was in San Francisco, a city that at first reminded him a little of Paris; lots of tourists, fancy shops and endless numbers of restaurants. But the open display of affection between men as they walked hand-in-hand or kissed openly in public was completely repugnant. When he saw two transvestites walk by he lost his normal reserve and stared at them with open disgust.

  He studied the City, rode the cable cars, walked the crowded streets and was fascinated by its location on a peninsula on the Bay, hemmed in on three sides by water with just three bridges allowing people in or out, and imagined how a large attack could create panic, trapping people in the City with limited means of escape. He stood across the road from the Transamerica Building, a towering white skyscraper designed to resemble a Pyramid. He laughed to himself at an image of the building, itself an homage to Arab architecture, lying smashed across the City, not collapsed on itself like the World Trade Centers, but fallen like a giant scythe smashing other buildings as it fell.