by Adrian Levy
Late that night Osama’s convoy snaked through ancient battlefields and war-scarred villages, arriving at Garikhil, to which Ghilzai tribesmen, whose villages straddled the border, had been called to a last-minute jirga (meeting). They ate mutton and rice while envelopes filled with U.S. dollars were thrown into their laps and Osama repeated his Jaji speech. If they stood united, they could teach the Americans a lesson, “the same one we taught the Russians.”
Four hundred Kalashnikovs were unloaded. The local malik (chief) said his men would do what they could, but he found Osama a mixed bag. “Scornful and in a hurry,” was his conclusion.56
Midnight. Osama’s convoy looped back toward the White Mountains, finally reaching the compound in the foothills where his family was waiting. They would be heading in different directions, he revealed. Only sons Othman and Mohammed would remain with him.
Hamzah, who had grown accustomed to being with his father’s group, shook his head. “I want to be beside you, Father,” he said, tears of anger forming. “I wish to fight the infidels with you.” Osama refused. The situation was deteriorating by the hour, so they should leave right away. Hamzah, Khalid, and Ladin would have to take care of the women and children, although as the oldest male family member, older brother Saad would nominally lead the convoy, which also consisted of in-laws and grandchildren.
But Saad’s autism made that role a burdensome one and so Osama gifted the convoy his most trusted driver, Salim Hamdan, and a Saudi fighter who was also his son-in-law—married to daughter Fatima. This man, who Osama trusted, would negotiate with smugglers to take the family across into Pakistan.57
Osama sought out his soul mate Khairiah, confiding in her the news of a Taliban collapse in Kabul. “Only a few remain steadfast,” he complained. “The rest surrendered or fled like ducklings before they even encountered the enemy.” He apologized for making her follow a path fraught with dangers. “I want you to know that I will remain in the land of jihad until God will bring us together in this world or the hereafter, and that will suffice,” he said, rehearsing his last will and testament.
He approached Amal and kissed baby Safiyah, before turning to Seham. Please discourage the children from joining this jihad, he said. “And don’t re-marry.”
He removed Najwa’s ring from his finger and gave it to their daughter Iman. “In case we don’t meet again in this world,” he said.
Back outside, he drew three strings of prayer beads from his pocket, handing one each to Khalid, Hamzah, and Ladin. “Stay strong and true to Islam,” he said.
Then, getting into a pickup, he set off, following a narrow streambed that entered a deep gorge leading to Tora Bora. Although the watching children willed him to look back and wave, he did not turn around.58
Behind he had left suitcases containing clothes and gold coins. Dressed as Afghan nomads, they would travel through the night and attempt to cross into Pakistan at a remote checkpoint using documents provided by the Sudanese authorities during the time they lived there. Their old Saudi passports were sealed in brown envelopes and hidden away.
As their bus pulled away from the olive grove, Hamzah turned and, looking out of the back window, whispered to his mother: “It is as if we have pulled out our livers and left them there.”59
November 15, 2001, Kandahar
Leaflets rained down on Ramadan Eve, dropped by U.S. planes and promising substantial rewards for information about Al Qaeda or Taliban leaders. Arabs were being turned over willy-nilly to the Americans and news was spreading fast of the fall of Kabul. Inside Al Qaeda’s billet in the city center, Abu Hafs the Commander was laid up in bed being attended to by Osama’s personal physician, Dr. Amir Aziz, who had traveled all the way from Lahore to treat him.
The Mauritanian ran in, imploring the Commander to shift locations. “Too many brothers surround you,” he warned, as they picked over a poor man’s dinner of stale bread and cheese. The noisy comings and goings would have already attracted the attention of the watchers above.
The Commander laughed. His old friend was not a fighter and tended to be overly paranoid. He would be fine. They bade farewell after al-Isha prayer.60
At dawn, two Hellfire missiles struck the building. American analysts studying the feed saw “bodies cartwheeling into the air.” When they heard the chatter from Arab rescuers, they called Robert Grenier in Islamabad. One name stood out from the tangle of eavesdropped communications. Abu Hafs the Commander, a man who had stood at Osama bin Laden’s side for more than a decade, plotting the 1998 Africa embassy attacks, the USS Cole attack, and 9/11, was dead. A note was dispatched to George Tenet and President Bush. America had just claimed a real Al Qaeda scalp.61
The first Al Qaeda leader to reach the scene was Abu Hafs’s deputy, Saif al-Adel, a sinewy Egyptian “lifer” whose boyish good looks disguised a dangerous cold streak.
Saif had been with Abu Hafs and Osama since the Soviet war, working as chief of security in Sudan and returning with them to Tora Bora in 1996. In Kandahar, he had run the House of the Martyrs, where suicide bombers were bullied into submission using psychology, isolation, and brute force. He had also headed up the Al Qaeda “special operations committee” that conducted chemical and biological warfare experiments, a post no one volunteered for as the self-taught technicians were often maimed by accidental explosions or fell sick in the laboratory, where safety measures for working with toxic poisons were barely understood.62
Saif had always lived a martial existence, serving first as a colonel in Egyptian Special Forces before joining those who had plotted the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Afterward, he had transferred his loyalties to Dr. al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
Once ensconced in Al Qaeda, he chose a kunya that meant Sword of Islam.63 A central role in planning the East Africa embassies operation followed, ensuring his high standing inside the organization. “I have never liked reading, writing, or rhetoric,” he taunted his friend Mahfouz the Mauritanian, who had presided over his wedding inside a cave in Tora Bora in 1997. Back then, there had been no bride because her father had ordered that she remain in the relative safety of Peshawar and so in common with most jihad weddings, a fellow mujahid had stood in as a proxy.64 But Saif had been blessed with the presence of one special guest personally invited by the Mauritanian: Afghanistan’s most feared warlord and an ISI stooge, Jalaluddin Haqqani.
Now, Saif picked through the rubble as American planes buzzed the sky above the house. He found Abu Hafs’s body quickly and sat down beside it. When the Mauritanian came by a few minutes later, he hauled Saif up. “I have come to bury the dead,” he told his friend. “You rest now.”
Seventeen bodies were ferried to the martyrs’ cemetery, including three from the Mauritanian’s hometown. He returned to see Saif later that afternoon. “We did not bathe them,” he told him, following the custom with martyrs, “we did not pray on their bodies, and we buried them with their clothes on.” Abu Hafs had gone to his grave “smiling as if he was praising God for his martyrdom.”
That night the two caught up over the breaking-the-fast iftar meal, which took place after sundown. The meal was tempered by the Mauritanian’s irritation that Saif had brought along a guest, someone Mahfouz disrespected and thought of as a blunt blade.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Saif’s “loathsome” Jordanian protégé, had arrived in Afghanistan in 1999 and had been trying to inveigle his way into Al Qaeda’s inner circle ever since. Before the U.S. war started, he had rubbed everyone in Afghanistan the wrong way, delivering unasked-for critiques lambasting Al Qaeda for being “insufficiently fierce.”65 Everything about him was wrong as far as the Mauritanian was concerned, such as the fact that he had just come out of jail in Amman, having served five years of a fifteen-year sentence, let out ten years early on a royal amnesty that could also have been a cover story disguising the fact that the prisoner had been turned and was now working for Jordanian intelligence.
In truth, Zarqawi was a former st
reet fighter and a drying-out drunk, a thug who had once been known in his native town of Zarqa, outside Amman, as the “green man” in reference to ugly self-inflicted tattoos. Scars on his hands and forearms showed where he had carved them off after discovering religion under the guidance of a former carpet salesman turned influential Salafi cleric, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Zarqawi and the Palestinian-born scholar had shared a cellblock in prison.
Under Maqdisi’s guidance, Zarqawi had chosen as his kunya, Abu Musab, a name taken from one of the Prophet’s warriors, Musab bin Umayer, who was honored as the patron saint of suicide bombers.66 A silent man in his youth, according to those who remembered him in Zarqa, he began to spout half-baked, bar-stool jurisprudence, bandying about shoddy interpretations of the Koran, suggesting decapitation was to be encouraged and that “terror” in the name of Islam was a prerequisite of jihad.67 The deadliest enemies of all were Shias, who he regarded as “servants of the Antichrist.” “End of days” predictions contained in one esoteric and hotly debated text, Naeem bin Hammad’s Book of Tribulations, particularly fascinated him as he dwelled on everything apocalyptic. Setting himself up as a modern day Islamic crusader, Zarqawi wanted to foment revolution across the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, where many such prophecies located the final battle. The collection of hadiths on which he based his vision had been written down in the ninth century and were popular with the masses, although the Muslim elite scorned them.
“Ignorant, inarticulate, and rank.” That was the Mauritanian’s verdict on Zarqawi.
The hatred was mutual. Zarqawi liked to describe religious scholars as being “breastfed [on] the milk of defeat.” People like the Mauritanian disguised their cowardice with “the cloak of jurisprudence and embroidered it with the clothes of wisdom,” he said.
Before 9/11, the Mauritanian had tried to distance Al Qaeda from sleazy Zarqawi—taking up the matter with Osama, who, while mistrusting Zarqawi’s lack of education, thought his ferocity and access to Middle Eastern mujahideen might prove useful. Saif felt the same, recommending they support Zarqawi as he would come good in time. He should be given a test somewhere far enough away for it not to impact Al Qaeda Central or Osama should he turn out to be a Jordanian intelligence asset after all.
In 2000 and with Osama’s blessing, Saif had packed Zarqawi off to Herat in western Afghanistan with $5,000 to “set up a training camp.”68 “An Al Qaeda offshoot,” as Zarqawi boasted the camp attracted Salafists from Jordan, Palestine, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. Once established in Herat, he also shipped in his own family from Zarqa, including his beautiful Palestinian wife, who had stunning green eyes and had married him when she was just thirteen. His second wife, a Jordanian woman, and several children came too.
Zarqawi had been delighted when Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s brother Salahuddin agreed to join the Herat group. Now Zarqawi had scholarship to back him as well as brute force. “Osama gave me five thousand dollars and told me to do what I will,” he bragged. “And I am creating something deadly.”
The rumor that returned from Herat was that Zarqawi had taken to his task with gusto, and the only criticisms were related not to loyalty or security but to decency. He recruited brutal men in his own image, many of them from his hometown of Zarqa, the Jordanian preferring killers and brawlers who like him had dropped out of school early and were eager to persecute Shias and defend the Palestinian cause. His sidekick was a semiliterate young Jordanian thug who went by the name of Iyad al-Toubasi, and who had once been a ladies’ hairdresser. His deputy, Khalid al-Aruri, was a childhood friend and was married to one of Zarqawi’s three sisters, a woman called Alia.
Now, in the wake of Abu Hafs the Commander’s death on November 16, the Mauritanian tried once again to convince Saif that Zarqawi was a liability. But Saif would not have it.69 “His fighters from Herat will defend Kandahar,” he said. Zarqawi had brought a convoy of several hundred vehicles from Herat, filled with fighters ready to take on American forces.70 Hairdresser Iyad al-Toubasi, deputy Khalid al-Aruri, and Maqdisi’s brother Salahuddin were among them.
Depleted Al Qaeda could not afford to turn them away.
Osama was in the White Mountains when he heard the news of Abu Hafs’s death. He sent a courier down with a taped eulogy but no orders as to what to do with the Al Qaeda women and children still pooling in Kandahar.
Sensing that the situation was critical, the rest of the shura converged on the Taliban media office. To the Mauritanian’s annoyance, Mokhtar and Zarqawi came along, too. At the start of their discussion, Al-Tayyib Agha, personal secretary to Mullah Omar, let rip, furious that hundreds of Arab families had become sitting ducks. “We don’t want to spill more blood, and we should help the families leave,” he said.
Mokhtar, who was in mourning for his nephew Moaz bin Attash, who had been killed alongside Abu Hafs, disagreed. The Taliban had fled Kabul, but Al Qaeda was not running away.
When the Mauritanian pointed out that Mokhtar was not in Al Qaeda, Zarqawi, who was also not on the outfit’s shura, piped up in support of him. His forces had not come all this way just to capitulate. They were staying to fight.
Abu Zubaydah, the planning chief, felt the same. “I swear to God I wish for martyrdom, even though I don’t want to see the Americans rejoice, having killed one of the Mujahidin,” he wrote in his diary, which he still somehow found time to update almost daily. “I wish to see America’s fall and destruction … I wish to torture and kill them myself with a knife.”
They needed to organize. Zarqawi’s forces would relocate to Tora Bora, where Osama needed reinforcements, while Saif was appointed as interim military commander of Al Qaeda operations down on the plains. He and the Mauritanian left to search for sensitive documents in the ruins of Abu Hafs’s home.
Out in the street, they heard a rending and screeching sound. Looking up, they saw a missile race over their heads and smash into the Taliban building they had just exited. One of Zarqawi’s fighters fiddling with his Thuraya satellite phone during the meeting had enabled the Americans to lock on.
They charged back. Was everyone inside dead? As the dust settled, ghostlike bloodied faces began to emerge.
“I came to and the dirt was all over me,” wrote Zubaydah. “I stood up and felt like I was dying.”
“I am here, I am alive, help me!” Saif’s protégé Zarqawi screamed out from under the rubble. He was trapped under a beam and had broken several ribs, which would have to be strapped before he set out for Tora Bora.
When all of the fighters were finally accounted for, having been hauled out of the rubble, it was, Zubaydah wrote, as if they “had come out of the grave.”71
November 18, 2001, Logar Province, Afghanistan
Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s wife, Azza, banged on the door of an abandoned orphanage with five children in tow. She was filthy and delirious, according to the Arab families who were hiding there and took her in. She had been walking for days since becoming caught up in the Taliban retreat from Kabul. Despite sub-zero temperatures, she was barefoot and carried her youngest daughter, Aisha, aged four, who had Down syndrome and wore little more than a dirty diaper.
When she came to her senses, Azza brought worrying news. The Northern Alliance was advancing south of Kabul, and fleeing Taliban fighters she had met along the way had advised against staying in Logar, suggesting she head down to the Haqqani stronghold of Khost.
After cleaning up, Azza joined more refugees, who boarded pickups that clung to the path of dry riverbeds and dirt tracks through a night crisscrossed by laser-like tracers.
By the time they reached the halfway point at Gardez, Aisha was vomiting and suffering from diarrhea. Telling the others to go on without her, Azza sought sanctuary in a house, where she discovered Arab families she recognized from the old days in Peshawar. They stayed up late to break the Ramadan fast.
Azza’s eldest daughter, Fatima, first heard the sound of aircraft. “Mother!” she called out, as explosive claps broke over th
em, their building suddenly imploding, with chunks of masonry and beams falling on top of them.
Fatima came to and, freeing her legs and hands, scrambled outside into the freezing dark. Unable to shine a light, lest the planes return, she was joined by other children who frantically dug through the rubble with their hands. They could hear pitiful cries from beneath the mound. It was Fatima’s mother, brother, and sister. She dug until dawn, when the sounds stopped. Finally, she found her sister Aisha, who was fatally wounded. Her mother and her brother, Mohammed—Dr. al-Zawahiri’s only son—remained entombed.72
November 19, 2001, Kandahar
The rumble of bombs woke Saif al-Adel. He had fallen asleep after sharing a frugal iftar meal with five companions, and now the first thing that came to him was the image of his wife and children, who were trapped in occupied Kabul.
Saif roused his fellow sleepers. “We should gather our things and leave immediately,” he whispered, just as he heard another whump.73
Calling around on his old landline, which miraculously still worked, he learned that the Al Wafa charity compound, in the northeastern suburbs, had suffered a direct hit. In the past week, Al Qaeda fighters had moved in, hiding among the refugee families, and the U.S. eavesdroppers had picked up on their chatter.
Saif offered to help but was told to stay put. “It’s not safe,” a man screamed. “We are evacuating.”
Saif suggested a plan. “Send the women and children to Panjwai,” he said, referring to a village twelve miles west of Kandahar. Dozens of Arab families had already gone there. “I will ring ahead and tell them you are coming.”
A missile screamed overhead and exploded at the end of the street. Perhaps they had another five minutes before the next one landed, with greater accuracy, Saif calculated. “Run!” he urged. They reached a sandbagged position just as his house took a direct hit. He waited for the dust to settle, and then, poking his head out, spotted an abandoned taxi. After sparking the ignition, they drove through deserted streets to Mirwais Hospital. He toured the brimming corridors and wards, surveying the hundreds of injured women and children, accounting for the dead and dying, trying to retain numbers in his head so he could report later to Dr. al-Zawahiri, who was keeping the official tally.