The Exile

by Adrian Levy

  There was news about Hamzah. Over recent weeks, Atiyah had got to know him and liked what he saw. He described the boy to his doting father as being “very sweet and good.” Osama would be pleased to know that his son had wisdom and politeness, was easygoing and warm, and had requested that he receive no special treatment just because he was the son of “someone.”

  However, Atiyah was worried that Osama was expecting too much of Hamzah. “Beloved Sheikh, he is a young man who lived years in prison.”

  Although Hamzah was already asking for military training, Atiyah warned that he needed to spend time getting used to his new environment first. “I calm him down as we pray together … I reminded him of what happened to Saad, because he was impatient and persistent.” In Atiyah’s opinion, Hamzah could become a great mujahid but first needed time to mature. “I promised to plan some safe training for him: firing various weapons. Perhaps I will get to do this in the coming days.” Osama should write “something proper” to him, finding some encouraging words.

  There was better news about finding a replacement companion, a subject that Atiyah referred to as “the special issue.” Finally, he had identified someone: a mujahid who was thirty-five years old and married with small children. Presently, he managed shops in Lahore and so knew how to behave in cities. “He is a savvy person, mature, confident, and understands the subject matter of renting, selling, and purchasing homes,” wrote Atiyah. There was only one hitch: he was an Urdu-speaking Punjabi, not a Pashtun. “What is your opinion?” he asked, adding that this candidate was the best he could find and that he wanted to resolve the issue as it had been dragging on for far too long.

  Next, Atiyah addressed future operations. Things were looking up. Abu Yahya’s Libyan group had formally merged with Al Qaeda, bringing in more money and recruits. The list of commanders under training was swelling once more, Atiyah naming them all individually, using their kunyas. “The good news is we are in one heart, loving, confident, and cooperating,” he said. He had also been in touch with the elusive Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was “very happy” in his tribal bolt-hole with his young wife.

  Even Younis al-Mauritani, the new external operations chief, was working out. Despite his relative youth he was galvanizing support. Currently he was on the Balochistan border with six brothers, preparing to enter Iran. From there they planned to disperse across Europe to monitor the growth of cells in Western cities.

  Days later more family news reached the compound. Osama’s sons Mohammed and Othman has also been released by the Iranians and brought to the Pakistan border. They had already crossed over into Waziristan and were on their way to Karachi with their families.119 Buoyed by the news but worried that some Iranian double-game was afoot, Osama wrote immediately to Atiyah, sending Ibrahim to meet Atiyah’s courier in double-quick time. All family members and their luggage had to be thoroughly checked for spying devices. Not a moment could be spared.

  But then outside life reached inside. One night while the women and children were watching Al Jazeera, a recent demand by Maryam and Bushra, who had complained of being bored, Maryam’s eldest daughter, Rehma, nine, saw a picture of Osama bin Laden on the screen and exclaimed that “this is the man upstairs!”120

  Maryam demanded an explanation from her husband. “Don’t you trust us?” she yelled at him, with all the children listening, after he stonewalled and refused to comment.121

  “It’s none of your business,” Ibrahim finally hissed.

  She stopped talking to him. They sat sullenly.

  “Yes,” he eventually said, “the man we have been protecting all these years is Osama bin Laden.”

  Although it was not a complete surprise, Maryam was still shocked. How could he have taken on such an arduous responsibility? And what would they gain from it? she asked. What about the children? Their lives were being played with. “Don’t you worry about being arrested or tortured?” she asked, reminding him of the Aafia Siddiqui story.

  “It’s the will of God,” Ibrahim replied blithely. “He gave me this mission.”

  Maryam looked him in the eye. “Well in that case there is no stopping you and I wish you are martyred rather than captured,” she said, storming out of the annex, “because at least that will be a quick death.”

  Ibrahim called after her. “Come back. For now we all have to find a way to live together—with the Sheikh,” he said. “But I have given notice. Soon I will be free of my duties.”

  The Sheikh was planning to give him some money as compensation for the years of service, he revealed. They could make a fresh start in Saudi Arabia. “You need to stay calm,” he hollered, “and keep the children quiet.”

  Maryam stormed back into the room. “I am leaving unless you give him a deadline,” she spat. “How much longer?”

  Ibrahim hesitated. “Six more months and then it is over. I will tell him tonight.”

  The meeting went badly. Osama talked over Ibrahim and Abrar, telling them that he had changed his mind and that instead of emptying out his household, five new family members were coming to join him. Hamzah, his wife and two children, and Khairiah were coming to Abbottabad. Khalid was staying and they had to find a safe house for his sons Mohammed and Othman in Peshawar, who would soon be arriving with their wives and children. He was sick of being blackmailed.

  As a sop, Osama suggested limply that Ibrahim and Abrar tell their wives and children that the family upstairs had “gone away.”

  The Kuwaiti brothers despaired. With their children growing older it was impossible to keep Osama’s existence concealed. It would only get worse if yet more Arabs moved in. Their children heard every footstep and scraping chair above them. Lives were in the balance, Ibrahim said. He had just come back from a doctor who had diagnosed his cancer as terminal and he did not want to spend his dying days caring for the Sheikh.122

  Osama would not budge. His organization had rallied, it was solvent and busy plotting new attacks, and he was not going to be pushed around by a Pakistani. He, too, was “suffering from a long-term and life threatening condition.” Did they not understand how he had sacrificed everything and never stolen even a moment for himself?

  The Kuwaiti brothers looked at each other and rose as one. “We quit,” Ibrahim said. Abrar nodded.

  There was one final matter. Given how much time they had invested in building the Abbottabad villa, and the fact that Abrar’s name was on all the paperwork, the brothers regarded the compound as theirs. They would not be moving out but Sheikh Osama and his family would have to go.

  On December 4, a shaken Osama wrote to Khairiah. “I have been living for years in the company of some of the brothers of the area and they are getting exhausted—security wise—from me staying with them.”123 He had done everything he could to win Ibrahim’s support for his plan to receive the family from Iran but to no avail. “I have used all my energy and I have tried so hard … to convince them to agree,” he wrote.

  But the companions would not budge. “They are down, and they asked us all to leave,” he revealed. “Our number is large and beyond what they can handle, and so we started telling them that you will come alone. They still refused. That’s how much they are in a state of shut down.”

  Even Osama’s suggestion that Khalid would leave so Khairiah could stay had been rejected. “I have to leave,” a dejected Osama wrote. And if this was the case he was in no rush. “It will take a few months to arrange another place.”124

  Osama became so sullen that he barely spoke to anyone.125 He had been banking on Khairiah’s arrival. She was the only one capable of helping him prepare for the tenth anniversary of 9/11. During the first years in Pakistan, Seham had tried to assist as best she could, editing his statements. But she did not have Khairiah’s clarity or literary skills, and after the deaths of her daughter Khadija, Saad, and her son-in-law Daood, her fervor for jihad had dwindled.

  These days, she was at war with Maryam and Bushra. Blaming them for the brothers’ decision to evict Osama
, she could not bear to be around them. She also feared for Khalid. Her twenty-one-year-old son was, she thought, coming to the end of his tether, partly because of his enforced monastic lifestyle. Nothing was going to change fast. Khalid’s marriage to Karima was still some way off because of Ibrahim and Abrar’s demands. All Seham could do, as a prospective mother-in-law, was write to her future sister-in-law asking for yet another postponement.126

  Osama decided to get around his companions. If Khairiah could not come to him, he would send his writings to her for review via Atiyah. “I sent you all the statements and ideas I have on my computer to contribute to putting together the statements for this important anniversary,” he wrote. “While waiting for God Almighty to facilitate your return and fill our hearts with joy,” could she please take a look and “assist me in my path and in my messages?”127

  He dispatched a separate message to Atiyah to buy Khairiah a computer and USB drives on which to record her responses. Osama hoped she could also look over the video statement he had recorded more than two months back that had still not been aired. “I plan to redo it before broadcasting.”

  At the back of his mind, he continued to worry about Iran and the CIA. He just could not stop himself. He had one more piece of advice for his wife. Inspecting her teeth was just not good enough. She should get all of her Iranian fillings replaced. And while she waited she should also learn Pashto, and take care of all her medical needs “as our security situation here does not allow us to go to the doctors.” Hamzah had to do the same.

  He rounded off his letter to his wife obliquely. “Tell me again one thing,” he wrote. “What was the reason [the Iranians] told you they were releasing you?”128

  Days later, Osama pushed the plan on. He wrote another letter to Atiyah checking up on an older request to arrange for fake ID cards to be manufactured for himself and Khalid. He would do what needed to be done. The Sheikh could not wait any longer. He was coming out to meet Khairiah.

  This was not the first time Osama had ventured out. Contrary to popular belief, he had left the compound several times before. In 2008, according to two former aides to the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Saeed, Osama had traveled to Mansehra to attend an extraordinary planning meeting for the Mumbai operation of November 26, 2008 (which had become known as 26/11).129 It had been facilitated by Lashkar, overseen by the ISI’s S-Wing, and sponsored by Al Qaeda.

  In August 2009, he traveled to Kohat to meet up with Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the leader of the banned Islamist group Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI).130 Akhtar, a prominent figure in Osama’s closed circle of protectors, had wanted Al Qaeda’s help with a planned attack on the Pakistan Army’s general headquarters in Rawalpindi. Instead of giving his blessing, Osama had tried to talk Akhtar out of it, requesting that HUJI and other jihad fronts concentrate their firepower on America. But Akhtar had gone ahead anyway, launching a savage and surprising broadside on October 10 that had killed nine soldiers and two civilians, shaking the Pakistan Army establishment to its core.131 At one point in the siege, reporters claimed that several senior ranking officers were being held captive, and regardless of whether the hostage taking actually took place, the fact that the public believed it did demonstrated how low was the standing of the army.

  Osama’s most recent trip out had come in the summer of 2010, when Fazlur Rehman Khalil arranged a meeting with Hakimullah Mehsud so they could discuss TTP–Al Qaeda differences face-to-face. The Sheikh had left Abbottabad at sunset and arrived on the edge of the Tribal Areas around eleven P.M. “We were dumb-struck,” said the elder of the compound that had been selected as the venue at the last minute. “We all knew his face. He was the last person we’d expected to turn up at our doorstep.”132

  After discussions sustained over a dinner of lamb chops and rice, Osama’s entourage left the village via a different route, seemingly able to pass through several army checkpoints without any trouble, showing chits of paper as if they were working for the chief of the army staff.

  This time, Osama planned another venture. Reassured that important ISI-linked figures like Khalil were watching his back, his only concern was running into impromptu patrols. “Are there any permanent, nightly or time to time checkpoints there in the place where you deliver and receive messages from your area?” he asked Atiyah in a letter discussing logistics.133

  When was the best time for him to travel? Just after sunrise “when movement is weak because of the extreme cold” or after sunset, when roads became deserted?

  As for a rendezvous point, he suggested to Atiyah the “place where you all meet customarily,” which was possibly somewhere near Kohat, close to or even in the tunnel, or possibly near Ibrahim’s sister’s place. If not any of these, they could arrange it at “the other place where I met with the brother from our side a while ago,” Osama said, referring to his trip to see Hakimullah in the summer. To make sure that he and Atiyah were on the same page, he mentioned another landmark. The place he was thinking of was where “I prepared the goods in a bag for him.”

  Osama would not be going alone. He decided to use his wife Amal as cover, along with their two youngest sons, Ibrahim and Hussein. Using innocent family members to shield behind came as second nature to a man who had once happily dragged his young sons across the battlefields of Afghanistan. Amal had no say in the matter. She comforted herself in the knowledge that as always Osama would be carrying five hundred euros sewn into his undergarments and two phone numbers, one for a handset held by Atiyah that was only ever to be rung in a dire emergency. The other number linked through to a close aide of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.

  There was a brief postscript. He had taken the precautionary measure of instructing his son Khalid of what to do “in case any mishap should befall my two companions.” In the event of Ibrahim or Abrar being arrested, or running away, leaving them all dangerously exposed, Khalid was to contact Atiyah with prearranged details of an emergency safe house in Peshawar, where the family temporarily could hide.

  Atiyah needed to acknowledge the plan. Could he do that, Osama asked?

  December 14, 2010, Washington, D.C.

  Analysts called him “the Pacer,” and this image intrigued John Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism chief, whose gut told him that Osama bin Laden was likely in the Abbottabad compound.134

  Shortly before the president left for his annual Christmas holiday in Hawaii, Panetta and Brennan briefed him again. They discussed the mysterious third family who lived on the top floor of the house and similarities between the Pacer and old Predator footage of Osama walking across the parade ground at his former headquarters in Tarnak Qila in Kandahar.

  This man’s gait and poise were similar, Brennan argued.

  The president was still not ready. “I want to hear back from you, Director Panetta, when I get back from the holidays,” he said. “Let’s make sure that we pull this string as quickly as possible. If he’s there, time is of the essence.”135

  That month, the CIA requested tens of millions of dollars in extra funding from Congress. It was skimmed off other agency budgets and plowed into various schemes that sought more tangible proof that the Al Qaeda leader and his family were inside the compound.

  One idea involved setting up a fake National Literacy Program inside Shamraiz’s house in an attempt to lure out the children living opposite.136 Another was a phony Save the Children vaccination scheme. If the doctors got to meet Osama’s children, they could sneak a few DNA samples and check them against those of a sister of Osama’s who had died of brain cancer in the United States. The hospital in Boston that had treated her in 2010 had kept tissue samples—at the request of the CIA.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “We go to a house, we fuck with some people, and we leave. This is just a longer flight.”

  —SEAL TEAM MEMBER ROBERT O’NEILL1

  January 13, 2011, Bilal Town, Abbottabad, Pakistan

  Osama called a summit with Ibrahim and Abrar. Still at loggerheads, they all needed a
way out.

  “We have been friends on this great path for more than eight years,” he began, choosing a somber tone. “You have given us a great gift that we will never forget as long as we live,” he tried. He needed to buy a few weeks of their time. After that, he agreed to move out with his family. They were ready to pack everything and leave.

  He understood the pressures the Kuwaitis were under, he said, and was disturbed by their sicknesses—Ibrahim’s cancer and Abrar’s chronic depression.2

  He wanted to reassure them that he was actively seeking a new companion and a new place to live. It might all happen very quickly indeed. He pulled out his Koran: “Help ye one another in righteousness and piety.”3

  The brothers were not impressed. A “long and strenuous discussion” followed that involved shouting, “petulance,” and “irritation” and carried on into the next day. However, finally an agreement was hammered out and Osama must have been relieved by the concessions he won: Khairiah could come after all, so long as she completed any outstanding medical treatment first. Once in the house, she would not be able to leave until they all departed for their new bolt-hole.

  For his part, the Sheikh signed a new written promise to move out of Abbottabad after the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The property could then be sold, meaning Ibrahim and Abrar would cash in and could spend their money on buying their retirement homes in Jeddah, where no one could touch them. The moving date for the caravan of Osama bin Laden was set. The Abbottabad epoch was, in Osama’s mind, almost over. To avoid any further misunderstandings, he wrote it all down. “We do appreciate the amount of pressure you have been under and the importance of lessening the pressure, so I have suggested decreasing the number [of people] to nearly half.”