by Adrian Levy
Over the past couple of years, the movement had mapped the entire district, with brothers surveying routes to be used during “tightening periods” (of drone activity or an army crackdown) and dirt roads or mule paths for times of “extreme tightening.” There were lists of secure rest stops, way stations, and safe houses, unmanned checkpoints where a traveler could sneak through unnoticed, and known flashpoints that should be avoided, such as hidden military positions. Friendly Pashtun “seekers of knowledge” were videoed or photographed so those on the road would have a “facial recognition” of who they could trust. They were listed by number rather than name: Figure 5 was okay because he had fought at Lal Masjid and was usefully “fluent in Arabic,” but the deputy to Figure 26 was not okay, because he “thins out his beard,” a sure sign of weakness. There were some useful generalizations. The people of Orakzai and Khyber should generally be avoided since they “plant hashish and some plant opium.”95
Eventually, Saad showed up at a shopfront in the village of Mir Khon Khel, a raggedy village halfway along the main road connecting Mir Ali to Miram Shah. The shop was one of several locations from where As Sahab videos were distributed, and someone alerted Khadija bin Laden’s widower, Daood, who came to check Saad out.
The two had not seen each other since Daood had accompanied the family to the Iranian border in 2002, and Saad was overwhelmed to see a familiar face. In his excitement, Daood got out his cell phone and took several photographs, ignoring established protocol.96 Sitting in the back of the shop over tea and parathas, Saad updated him as best he could, a rambling story that Daood struggled to follow. In turn, Daood recounted how Khadija had died giving birth to twins, and that one had died, while their surviving children had gone to live with their grandfather, wherever he was hiding. Even he did not know the precise location. There were things to celebrate: Osama was well and Daood had recently married a Pashtun girl called Sarah, who was already pregnant.97
When Saad said he was desperate to be reunited with his father, Daood warned him against it. He also sent word to Osama that his son had risen from the dead. The instruction that came back was perfunctory. Saad should stay put, working in the shop and pretending to be deaf and mute.98 Knowing his son’s mental proclivities, and his loose lips, Osama instructed Daood to keep a close eye on him. He could not afford to have Saad come until someone had thoroughly checked out if he had been tracked or bugged.
July 2009, Yazd
Hamzah bin Laden could not wait any longer. A low-level Al Qaeda brother released by the Iranians carried a letter describing his pain at watching on Al Jazeera as the jihad progressed without being able to play his part.
“My beloved father, when you left me, my brother Khalid, and my brother [Ladin], at the foot of the mountain, near the olive farm, I could not imagine the length of this bitter separation,” Hamzah wrote.99 Eight years had passed. “My eyes still remember the last time they saw you, when you were under the olive tree and you gave every one of us a Muslim rosary.”
Much was different, not least Hamzah himself. “You might not recognize me when you meet me, as my features have changed.” Still, he cherished the old memories most. “I remember every smile that you smiled, every word that you spoke to me, and every look that you gave me.” But now he needed his father’s wisdom. “I wish that I could see you, if only for a minute, to get your pertinent opinion.”
Hamzah had not wasted his time, he assured his father, but had studied hard with the Mauritanian. “I have been taught by the learned brothers, one who helps me, directs me, and guides me on the path.” He had married a “pious wife,” Maryam, the daughter of Al Qaeda shura member Abu Mohammed al-Masri. They had two children: “a son who I gave your name Osama and a daughter who I named after [my] mother Khairiah.” As he could not send photographs, he asked for God to “place their image in your eye. He created them to serve you.” Rounding off, he told his father that he ached to join the world of jihad. “We will leave soon, with glorious God’s permission … I consider myself to be forged in steel.”
July 2009, Bilal Town, Abbottabad
Sheikh Osama told Amal that he was most worried for his easily confused son Saad.100 The drones over Waziristan were so plentiful with their incessant buzzing that locals called them machays (wasps). The worst days were when the skies were blue, allowing for clear views over the target area. Those who had money had relocated to Balochistan, while the rest stayed at home and prayed. Some slept on the roof, fearing being buried beneath rubble, while others planted trees around their homes, hoping to shield themselves.
Osama wrote to Atiyah, telling him to start thinking of getting the brothers out of the tribal areas and over the border into Afghanistan. Zabil and Ghazni provinces should be considered as alternative bases as well as Kunar, which he knew from his own experiences was well-fortified due to its rough terrain and inaccessible, with many mountains, rivers, and trees.101
Only the senior leaders should remain in Waziristan “and take the necessary precautions” such as moving regularly but only “on a cloudy day,” avoiding the main roads “because many of them got targeted when they were meeting on them.” Atiyah had to take charge of Saad, who had a habit of getting into trouble and as a child had once been run over and almost died in Sudan.102 Osama asked Atiyah to go to Mir Khon Khel to retrieve him.
Atiyah had not used the highway for many months. He and his men trekked along smuggling routes and mule trails, traveling at night and on foot. The main problem besides the drones, he complained, was spies. There were traitors among them who were providing the Americans with such accurate targeting information that they had killed more than four hundred Al Qaeda figures and civilians in just eighteen months.
The Arabs had become so paranoid they also believed invisible ink was sprayed on target vehicles that could be spied from the sky, and that special microchips had been scattered about, disguised as stones. News of the CIA’s attempt to turn Aafia Siddiqui had reached them and filled them with dread. Dozens of suspects were seized, including several foreign journalists who came to interview Taliban commanders. Among them were Sean Langan from Britain’s Channel 4, who had been held for three months the previous year and had been threatened with mock executions; and David Rohde from the New York Times, who had been abducted near Kabul in November 2008 and held at a succession of Haqqani safe houses around Miram Shah until June 2009, when he escaped.103
Hassan Ghul had also reemerged with an alarming tale to tell. Arriving in Mir Ali, he met Atiyah and told him how the CIA and ISI had tried to recruit him to infiltrate the inner circle. Soon after that, Abu Yahya al-Libi, the famous Bagram escapee who now worked closely with Atiyah, wrote a manual, Guidance on the Ruling of the Muslim Spy.104 With a foreword by Dr. al-Zawahiri, it offered legal advice regarding the correct punishment for informants. Local Taliban commanders took immediate action. Five Pakistanis accused of leading U.S. intelligence to Abu Laith al-Libi’s hideout shortly before he was killed were forced to make videotaped confessions, before one of them was beheaded, the footage released by Al-Fajr Media Center.
July 17, 2009, Garyom District, North Waziristan
Dusty and tired, the Al Qaeda guests arrived at Maulana Abdul Majeed’s compound in the hills outside Razmak. Majeed was an influential Islamist cleric, and his security had been especially tight since the Pakistani government had accused him of links to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. Nevertheless, shortly after ten A.M., missiles screamed down, scattering rice and stainless-steel plates. It was the twenty-eighth drone strike of the year, and at least six people died, with another four seriously wounded.105
Speaking on National Public Radio in the United States five days later, an unnamed senior counterterrorism official announced that they were “eighty to eighty-five percent” certain that Saad bin Laden was among the dead. A photograph was circulating that appeared to show his body. Osama’s son, who had survived President Clinton’s 1998 Cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and President Bush
’s invasion three years later, only to vanish into the Iranian wilderness, had not been the target. He had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.106
The news came as a jolt to Osama, who described Saad as the most soft-hearted of his sons, an unlikely mujahid who had been regarded within the family as “incapable of harming a soul,” a practical joker who in the camps had liked to feed baked hedgehog to his friends, telling them it was chicken.107 It was “impossible for him to plan or commit any crime or violation,” said his siblings—unlike Hamzah, who everyone felt sure would follow in his father’s footsteps one day.
Osama sent an urgent letter to Atiyah demanding a moratorium on the “leakage of the news.” His immediate concern was that Saad’s death would demoralize the troops and somehow lead back to him.108 “Regarding what you mentioned about the picture of Saad (may God rest his soul),” he wrote to Atiyah, “his after-death picture should be deleted.”109
A shamefaced Atiyah wrote back to Sheikh Osama, confirming he would destroy the image and sending details of Saad’s demise.110 While working in the As Sahab archive, filing tapes, Saad had stayed at a house near Mir Khon Khel village, closely monitored by Pashtun “supporters,” who had all been apprised of his willfulness. When he had tried to engage any of them in a conversation about taking up an operational position in Al Qaeda, they had gently rebuffed him. Frustrated, he had befriended a visiting Al Qaeda commander who was unaware of his vulnerability. Flattered to receive attention from a genuine bin Laden, the commander, unbeknownst to Atiyah, had agreed to take Saad to Maulana Abdul Majeed’s lunch. By the time anyone realized he was missing, it was too late.
Osama wrote back, furious. His son deserved peace in his death and his grave, an unmarked plot on the edge of a martyrs’ cemetery outside Razmak, had to be kept secret. Atiyah could never make such a mistake again and should find some way to avenge Saad.
August 2009, Wana, South Waziristan, Pakistan
When Humam al-Balawi, a baby-faced Jordanian doctor, had first turned up in Wana seeking to contact Al Qaeda Central in March 2009, everyone suspected him of being another spy.111 Although he demonstrably had a secret double life as a fearsome online jihadist called Abu Dujana al-Khorasani, a self-styled “scourge of the West,” in the flesh he was effeminate and bookish.
Balawi came from a stable middle-class family in Amman, the Jordanian capital, where he worked in a clinic treating refugees, and he was married with two young daughters. However, while they slept, his avatar took over as he embarked on an online crusade to inform Muslims worldwide about the brave actions of his hero, the martyred Jordanian hardman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.112 Night after night, Balawi aka Abu Dujana posted grisly videos of insurgent attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq as he tried to rehabilitate Zarqawi’s reputation among those who had been previously alienated by his excesses.
Balawi’s arrival in Wana, where he attracted a curious but cautious crowd of Taliban and Al Qaeda supporters, was not completely unexpected. Atiyah had already heard of him, since he and Balawi had begun corresponding by e-mail in 2008, with Atiyah promising to help if he ever came to Pakistan. The Jordanian had flown to Peshawar in March 2009 with two small suitcases containing medical equipment, initially intending to volunteer his services to Al Qaeda as a field doctor.
Balawi had a list of contacts, including several Pakistani jihadists who had written to him through his website, but with the drone war having intensified, it took nearly five months for him to gain anyone’s trust. One of the first to take a chance on him was TTP emir Baitullah Mehsud, who in mid-May 2009 invited the Jordanian doctor to join him and his band of Mehsud fighters.113 Baitullah, who suffered from diabetes and several other ailments, welcomed the opportunity to have a personal medic, someone who could also treat his fighters, who shifted daily from house to house. To thank him, Balawi presented Baitullah with a large roll of dollars he had brought from Amman.114
On August 5, when Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a drone strike, Waziristan rose up in fury and pledged to avenge the TTP leader’s assassination.115 Balawi, who was accused of having called in the strike with devices hidden in his medical equipment, fled north. When he reached Mir Ali on August 8, he wrote a note to Atiyah. He desperately needed to call in that favor. “By Allah, I have yearned to meet you, Sheikh,” he wrote. “When I meet you I will squeeze you to my chest.”116 Atiyah decided to take a risk and meet him.
Balawi told Atiyah a staggering story that he immediately understood as the foundations of a plan. The CIA had sent the baby-faced doctor to Waziristan to spy on Al Qaeda, but he had no intention of becoming an American asset.
Balawi explained how when, in January 2009, the CIA had unmasked him as Abu Dujana, the Americans had asked their colleagues in the Jordanian GID to arrest him. After two months in GID custody, he had been offered a stark choice. Either he would become a double agent, a job for which the Americans would reward him with “millions upon millions of dollars,” or he would spend the rest of his life in jail.
Balawi, who was both physically and emotionally weak, had pretended to choose the first option and over the following weeks he was coached by Ali bin Zeid, a young GID captain, who angered Balawi by bragging that his agency had been the source of critical location intelligence that had led to the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.117
Balawi, who regarded Zarqawi as a hero, decided to play along with the young captain’s plan but betray him at the first opportunity. He told Atiyah that Captain bin Zeid was “an idiotic man” and a “hired dog” of the CIA. His attempt to “brainwash” Balawi was “a dream come true,” a chance to fulfill a pledge he had made to his followers on social media to make his “words drip with blood.”118
The too-trustful bin Zeid “was digging his own grave,” said Balawi, explaining that now that he had linked up with Al Qaeda in North Waziristan all he needed to do was to send tangible proof back to Amman. Then Atiyah could spring a trap.119
Atiyah introduced Balawi to moneyman Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, who, after asking more searching questions, grasped something everyone else had missed. Captain bin Zeid was a cousin of King Abdullah of Jordan. Killing such a man, who had conspired against Zarqawi and was in cahoots with the CIA, was a ripe opportunity to avenge the death of Saad bin Laden and strike at Jordan, which Al Qaeda regarded as an American lackey that had made peace with Israel.
They decided to lure the captain to Peshawar with a video of Balawi debating with Atiyah, whose face was well known to Western intelligence agencies. They shot it near Mir Ali: the two men sat in a room filled with wood smoke and Pashtun mujahideen. Balawi encrypted the file, e-mailed it to bin Zeid, and waited.
The GID captain was astounded. “You have lifted our heads in front of the Americans,” he wrote back.
The CIA was equally impressed, although some worried about the motives of a man who no one in the agency had ever met, and who had got close to ever-vigilant Al Qaeda Central unfeasibly quickly.
“The bait fell in the right spot,” Balawi reported back to Atiyah. “They went head over heels with excitement.”
Over the next few weeks more tantalizing information streamed out of Mir Ali.120 In November, when Balawi claimed to be treating Dr. al-Zawahiri and by way of proof provided intimate medical details, the CIA ordered Amman to take things to the next level.
In the eight years since 9/11, no one had ever got this close to al-Zawahiri, and everything Balawi reported matched what the CIA already knew about the fifty-eight-year-old Egyptian physician. But before launching any kind of “kill or capture” operation, the CIA needed to be sure. The only way was to meet Balawi face-to-face, and preferably out of the treacherous, overly eavesdropped death strip of Pakistan. The meet had to be fixed in Afghanistan.
November 2009, Tourist Complex, Quds Force Training Facility, Tehran
After Saad’s escape from Yazd, Osama’s family had been transported back to Tehran, where they found a new kind of prison waiting for them at the heart of the
Quds Force complex. It consisted of large and newly constructed apartments with a shaded garden for each family, a school, majlis, mosque, soccer pitch, even a swimming pool and a gym. Fatima bin Laden, who had just given birth to a daughter fathered by her new husband, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith; Saif al-Adel and his family; and Abu al-Khayr, Abu Mohammed, and the Mauritanian were already installed. As a joke, they called it the Tourist Complex.121 But with tall walls topped with barbed wire and security cameras, this was clearly no holiday camp. The Iranians were obviously not planning to give up their Al Qaeda “guests” any time soon but were trying to lure them with better facilities.
At the end of the first month, several brothers were offered the chance to call home. Flown to Mashhad, they were whisked to the border through the empty desert in a fleet of cars, in a well-established routine. Standing in the white furnace of the midday sun, Othman bin Laden tried an old number for his brother Omar.122 Over the years, Omar and his mother, Najwa (who still lived in Syria), had written to the International Red Cross and the United Nations in search of news of their family but had learned nothing certain.
The number still worked, and when Omar picked up he heard the unmistakable sound of his younger brother’s voice.
Rapt, Omar listened as Othman recounted their situation. Then, all the horror of his father’s “mad world” came flooding back and Omar was overcome as he recalled one repellant episode when Dr. al-Zawahiri had adjudicated over a grisly homosexual gang rape: Omar’s childhood friend had been assaulted by a group of men, and the doctor had ruled that it had not been the assailants’ fault—as the victim was gay. Picking up a sidearm, the doctor had shot Omar’s erstwhile school pal in the head.
Omar came around to find Othman was still talking. “Where are you?”