The conflict was to go on for nine years, involving the Soviet Union, direct sponsor of the Government headed by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (a kind of puppet government of the kind the Soviets were in the habit of imposing on the countries they dominated) against Islamic mujaheddin rebels who, within the context of the Cold War, would find a strong foundation of allies in the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim nations, all of them apprehensive at the ongoing advance of Soviet conquests.
At the time of the invasion of Afghanistan, Yousef led a life similar to that of so many other Saudi children whose parents benefited from the favors of the king and who belonged to the middle class. Islam was always firmly and intensely omnipresent in his life, as well as in the life of all Saudis. More than a religion, it presented an entire way of life. It governed their lives in innumerable ways, and was therefore, naturally, a subject of much discussion, always respectful and reverent, as well as fervent. From an early age, Yousef exhibited a strong awareness of world historical events that he picked up from other’s remarks or from television. He also loved westerns. How he loved to watch those fearless heroes on horseback, always brave and quick to draw their pistols for the sake of justice! Moreover, he also loved horses, having learned to ride at an early age. Little by little, the will also began to take root in him to participate actively in the struggle for a truly important cause, an honorable struggle for justice and, given the fervent presence of Islam in his life, any truly important struggle would have to be inextricably bound up in the precepts of Islam, consummate beacon of Saudi life. Only within this context, within the context of the absolute truth that comes from Allah, and of which Mohammed is the ultimate prophet, could it make sense to undertake any struggle. Now then, according to the vision of Islam that prevailed in Yousef’s mind, chiefly due to the influence of his family and the society that surrounded him, the purest and most uncorrupted state of Islam necessarily entailed the application of Sharia as it is done in Saudi Arabia, meaning that law and jurisprudence derive directly from the purest interpretation of the words of Mohammed as consecrated in the Koran. From early on, this sequence of ideas penetrated and took root in Yousef’s mind. What set him apart from many other Saudi young men, however, was his strong inclination to act upon the things that perturbed him to the depths of his soul, that provoked the greatest emotional distress, as well as his vitality which was quite out of the ordinary – albeit within a person who most of the time exhibited only outward calm and shyness. His boiling agitation was always intimately contained within, held in reserve.
Yousef learned of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas day, December 25, 1979, or at least that’s what it was for Christians, since Christmas is not celebrated by Muslims. On that day, when Yousef went home, leaving his schoolmates playing soccer in the yard, nearly all of his innumerable cousins – there were scores of them from a number of marriages contracted and dissolved, some by divorce on the very same day they occurred – he found the adults concentrated and subdued in front of the TV screens. Their faces were grave, and the effect was underscored by Yousef’s mother, who greeted him with a finger to her lips and a severe look. Something serious had occurred, but on a level quite distant from his everyday reality. It was something of far more immediate, and at the same time transcendent significance, and this something was taking place on television, to which all the adults came flocking. In the midst of them the young Saudi boy, who was only ten years old at the time, watched the news on the magic box recounting the invasion of Afghanistan in which everyone, inside and outside the screen, beheld yet another western attack on Islam. He saw the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, announce that the Soviet military action represented the most serious threat to peace since the Second World War. Yousef, despite his tender age, already felt the weight of living in a historical moment of crucial importance to the entire Islamic world. He sensed the general mood of solemnity and the hidden pulse of revolt in everyone’s heart. He heard a voice inside him inciting him to play an important role in all this so as to make a difference, any difference. It grieved him to be looking on at things this way, impassively, stifling the overriding clamor for revolt, as though it were all nothing more than a bad movie.
With the passing of the years, this same inner voice that drove him to righteous action, as it continued to ferment, became denser, more intense and full-bodied, evolving like a Port wine aging quietly in an oaken barrel. When Yousef turned seventeen, the prospect of continuing with his studies to become a public official like his parents, serving and flattering the king as though he were Mohammed himself, disheartened him completely. He wanted more from life. At bottom, he wanted more from himself as well, and felt that he could go far. So it was that this inspiration that he felt arising from the depths of his soul, from the sacred fire of destiny, displaced any other path that life might have offered him. A path was marked out. A sacred path that summoned him. Islam summoned him. Allah summoned him. And there had to be a reason for this.
One day, at the recommendation of a friend, Yousef went to visit a book seller in Jeddah. It was an old book store, and while the ground floor displayed the most recent publications in excellent condition, the upper floor was cool and crammed with very old books, nearly all of them capable of unleashing dense clouds of dust, which helped to create a certain aura of magic as though they were all books of spells and enchantment. The book seller did not need to talk at length with Yousef since he knew what the boy was looking for when he walked into the store. So at once, he duly placed in Yousef’s hands such well-known books as Milestones and In the Shade of the Koran, by Sayid Qutb. Yousef devoured them both and began to visit the bookstore often, spending his afternoons on the upper floor reading amid the dusty tomes. He felt at ease there, as though ensconced in a privileged refuge, and it was an astonishing vision of the Islamic world that he had begun to discover through the books that the kind book seller recommended to him. It was the reason to fight. To fight against the collapse of Islam, against the collapse of a society of pure Islamic values faced with the subversive Western, Christian, Jewish, communist values constantly seeking the subjugation of Islam. The books of Sayid Qutb were for him a window onto the truth. He asked for more books for a better understanding of all these matters. He devoured and assimilated all that he saw through this window onto the truth, and in this way filled in all the gaps in his knowledge to develop his own considered vision of the world’s problems. He understood the fire that blazed within him and let its riotous flames spread freely. He understood the need for the Afghan jihad; the need for the struggle for Palestine against the Zionist enemy; the need to struggle against the propagation of jahiliyyah, the world without faith that had existed on earth prior to Islam and that, according to the vision of certain authors, was the same that reigned today in all places where it was not accepted as a fundamental religious condition that Allah is the only God and Mohammed is His prophet; the necessary struggle against the temptations of materialism, secularism, sexual equality; the need to struggle against the oppression and influence of the West in the Arab world; the need to struggle for Islam, to struggle for all this, knowing that it was a struggle for all Muslim brothers in the world, from the south of Spain to the vast archipelago of the Philippines. And finally, there was the jihad of the inward variety, the struggle for individual improvement that Yousef saw coinciding extraordinarily with everything else he was reading and learning. It all fit together so extraordinarily! And was all so logical!
It was in the natural unfolding of all this that, unsurprisingly, Yousef, felt himself driven towards the fatwa issued by Sheik Abdullah Azzam, entitled Defense of the Muslim Lands, that was circulating throughout the entire Islamic world to some extent – in particular, in the bookstores and mosques of Jeddah – and which established as mandatory the struggle of all Muslims for the defense of any brother people under infidel attack, in this case, the Afghan people.
His p
arents looked upon all of this behavior by their son with immense concern, but also as a demonstration of a high measure of courage and heroism. In point of fact they never had an inkling of all that was flowing through his mind, all they had were vague notions. They did not imagine that their son, always so calm outwardly, could have a mind seething with political and religious ideas. Much as they were pleased at his reading and taking an interest in politics, they were always aware, nonetheless, that this was a starting point for dangerous journeys. His mother made every effort to see to it that Yousef would stay away from dangers and unnecessary complications, and urged him to dispense with any sort of radical ideas. Most of the time she did not even touch upon these matters. She preferred for her son to have nothing to do with them, to seek refuge from the perils that lay in wait behind these doors, but she also knew that it was hard for a woman’s opinion to prevail in the family, or in Saudi society in general. Beyond all this there was the fact that his brothers were far too numerous to allow his parents’ attention to focus sufficiently on Yousef to be able to subdue in him the clamor for jihad.
Yousef heard of the generous offer of Osama bin Laden, one of the many sons of Mohammed Bin Laden, the legendary magnate who created from nothing, from the most grating poverty and illiteracy, a majestic fount of wealth consolidated in the Saudi Binladin Group, a conglomerate of reputable firms in construction and engineering, cement components, consulting services for foreign companies, telecommunications, highway construction, renovation of sacred sites such as the Great Mosque of Mecca, and construction materials. It was Mohammed Bin Laden who had stood up for the royal family in a moment of acute financial difficulty that was due primarily to the recklessness and outright profligacy of King Abdul Aziz and, later on, of his heir and eldest son, Prince Saud, who even went so far as to fling handfuls of money mounted on his horse as he rode along the packed-dirt streets, in addition to being the butt of countless tales of wasting money on yacht trips to casinos in the most luxurious sites of the Mediterranean Coast. When his brother, King Faisal, seized power and the reins of government, he asserted that there was less than a hundred dollars in the public treasury, so extreme was the disastrous stewardship of Saud. In those days, then, the precious help of Mohammed Bin Laden to the Government of the Kingdom had meant a great deal, and it was now one of the sons of this legendary figure who was offering a handsome stipend to anyone who accepted the challenge to be part of the Arab group that was forming in Peshawar, close to the Afghan border, with the aim of helping to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan and provide succor for the refugees.
So it was that one night, after isha, the evening prayers, Yousef set out for Peshawar, not in search of the paradise promised to martyrs after death, but rather because the flame of his destiny blazed too brightly within him, and it was only by heeding its fierce insistence that it could be assuaged. After his departure, both his parents tried to persuade themselves that Yousef would find nothing of what he was looking for and would come home soon, sufficiently disillusioned so that he would never again wish to get mixed up in such things.
May Allah keep you in good hands, was all that his mother said, standing next to Yousef’s father as they said goodbye to their son.
Staying on in Peshawar, Yousef would be put in charge of work connected with the movement’s newspapers and other humanitarian tasks. However, should the need arise, he was mentally prepared to give himself to the military cause. Indeed, he ardently longed for such an eventuality. It was only supposed to be for a matter of weeks, but weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, and the years, in their turn, would transform Yousef forever.
2
In Peshawar, a city located in northern Pakistan just a few kilometers from the border with Afghanistan, Yousef spent most of his time with the Services Bureau, the headquarters of Osama bin Laden and Sheik Abdullah Azzam for organizing and implementing participation in the Afghan jihad. It was a rented house in Peshawar’s university city, and an obligatory rendezvous point for any Arab responding to Azzam’s fatwa, which called for the undeferrable duty of all able-bodied Muslims to come to the defense of Afghanistan, a brother people invaded and oppressed by the infidel atheist communists. The Agency served as a lodging for a number of candidates for service as muhajeddin troops, and it was the headquarters of the propaganda and publishing efforts of the movement that was forming there. It thus comprised a singular mixture of guest house, a clearing house for newly arrived muhajeddin, and an administrative headquarters. A series of cash remittances arrived there, mostly arranged by Bin Laden (though also by Azzam) to assist Afghan refugees, often in suitcases generously stuffed with bank notes. The Saudi government alone was supposed to have contributed amounts somewhere between three hundred and five hundred million dollars per year. However, most of the funds raised remained in a Swiss bank account that was controlled by the U.S. government (as noted in Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006).
Although he manifested his ardent desire to take part in the fighting under way in Afghanistan, Yousef ended up being relegated to tasks behind the lines that basically consisted of seeing to it that the hard-won donations arranged for needy Afghan refugees reached their target. On occasion, he would also write for the movement’s magazine. He was given lodging in the suburbs of Peshawar, where he shared a house with other recent arrivals recruited as he had been. His daily routine was full, between the Services Bureau, hospitals, his lodgings in the suburbs, navigating the jumbled streets of Peshawar where trucks, cars, pedestrians, bicycles, horses and donkeys jammed together in a chaotic welter of traffic, and in occasional, even rare conversations with his companions in the movement. This whole setting plunged him ever more deeply into a sensation that he was wasting his time in a city fervently engrossed in the Afghan jihad, but always at a distance, as though Peshawar were the first cave in the distance where the shouts of war echoed but where there was never even the slightest prospect of being directly involved, and for Yousef, it was only on the front lines of battle that history could really be made, where one could fight for the future of Afghanistan and the Muslim world. And so it was that the reality of Peshawar fell far short of satisfying him, and even began with increasing frequency to irritate him. It seemed to him that, despite having traveled so many kilometers to get to Pakistan, he was actually still far from what truly mattered, just as he had been earlier, in Jeddah, where he merely watched everything on TV. The only benefit he felt now was that of knowing he was close to the border of Afghanistan, and also that he could offer direct assistance to the needy Afghan refugees. In them, in their exhausted faces and bodies he witnessed the terrible human damage inflicted by the war. His days were spent working to alleviate this suffering, and this engagement redoubled his concern, even as it rankled him that he lacked authorization to be active where he perceived the root of the problem to be: at the front line of battle. From his point of view, the only way to alter this state of affairs was to win the war as quickly as possible. He did not understand how they could do without anyone as keen to fight as he was. At the Services Bureau he heard talk of plans and movements. He took note of the conversations, the constant comings and goings. He promised himself to pay attention and seize any opportunity that might arise to cross the border that, in spite of everything, was so very close by.
At the end of several months in Peshawar, Yousef received orders to meet a mysterious man of whom he had heard many things, and whom he knew by sight. He knew it was a Saudi Sheik born in Medina, from a very well-to-do family close to the royal family, somewhere in his forties, known for his iron convictions in complete alignment with those of Bin Laden. He was a man worthy of the utmost confidence, who was said always to keep abreast of all that went on at the Services Bureau and what the group’s objectives were. He knew Bin Laden and Sheik Azzam well, and had placed a hefty portion of his fortune in the hands of these two men to be used in the service of the Afghan jihad. He was known only as
Sheik Omar, his full name being Omar Rasoul Sharif.
Yousef hastened to his meeting with Sheik Omar, as instructed, in a house on the outskirts of Peshawar. They met in a sparely furnished office, with the Sheik seated behind a very large but practically empty mahogany desk. All that was on it was a lamp and a copy of the Koran, both pushed towards one of the edges. A mild breeze wafted in through the window occasionally, raising the fine curtains as daylight filtered through them, filling the office with a tenuous light. There were shelves full of old books and a fan spinning on the ceiling. The décor was quite impoverished, particularly in view of all that Yousef had heard about Sheik Omar’s wealth.
He sat in a chair in front of the Sheik and listened respectfully. The Sheik was wearing a long white tunic and a checkered cloth on his head, and he led the conversation, always with assurance, from time to time raising a finger to explain or emphasize a particular point. He valued people who knew how to listen to him, and Yousef enjoyed listening, especially to someone speaking to him openly and passionately about the jihad in Afghanistan, the need to expel all infidel armies from Arab lands, or the importance of creating a glorious new Islamic Caliphate, and it was with this sort of preliminary discourse that the Sheik began the conversation, giving rise to the conditions for an immediate empathy between them. Both were devoted to the same basic political principles, and each needed the other in the same degree, the one because he needed a reliable and energetic young man at his side, and the other because he needed an important guide within the organization, someone who could lead him to become more effective within it, and who could confer on him the authorization he so longed for to cross the border.
The Miracle of Yousef: Historical and political thriller Page 5