- The men had gathered in the shade of the plane trees.
Beyond were the fields - wheat and opium - and then the dry wastes of the
desert stretching away to the horizon. They were gathered to celebrate
a wedding. The bride, a young girl of 14, sat demurely with the women.
The bridegroom sat with the men. He was Mohamed bin Laden, 19 years old
and Osama bin Laden's second oldest son. He was marrying the daughter of
Mohamed Atef, Osama bin Laden's military chief and second in
command.
-
- The service was short and afterwards the smiling father
of the groom said a few words. He read out a poem he had composed for the
occasion:
-
- 'She sails into the waves flanked by arrogance,
haughtiness
and false power. To her doom she moves slowly... Your brothers in the East
readied themselves. And the war camels prepared to move.'
-
- The reference was clear - as was the warning to the
'false
power' of the US. A few months earlier the USS Cole had been attacked at
harbour in the Yemen and 17 US servicemen had been killed. It was an odd
speech at a wedding. But then this was no ordinary wedding.
-
- Western intelligence watched the ceremony, in January
this year, with interest. It took place two hours drive from Kandahar,
the southern desert city that is the spiritual home of the Taliban and
where bin Laden has a key base. It was the Saudi-born dissident's first
public appearance for months and a clear demonstration that al-Qaeda -
his organisation - had strength in depth.
-
- Bin Laden's son is now emerging as a key figure. Though
reputed to be shy and contemplative, he is being groomed by his father,
who is now 44 and suffers from back and kidney problems, as a successor.
By the age of 17 he had been entrusted with ensuring his father's security
as he slept. One former associate remembered how, when bin Laden spent
the night at the house of an ally near the eastern Afghan city of
Jalalabad,
'Mohamed spent the entire night at the door to his father's room with a
Kalashnikov in his arms'.
-
- Western intelligence agencies say Mohamed is a deeply
devout young man utterly committed to the radical programme of his father,
and could easily assume his crucial 'figurehead' role.
-
- 'Bin Laden's role is not as a military technician but
as a broad strategist. He is an inspirational leader full of rhetoric and
ideas,' said one security source. 'If bin Laden is killed his son will
be the son of the martyred mujahid [freedom fighter] and can take on the
leadership role.'
-
- Mohamed, one of 13 children by four wives, will also
be able to draw on powerful family connections. Though the wealthy bin
Ladens are supposed entirely to have cut off Osama, the most wayward of
their 50 children, two brothers and a sister were present at the January
wedding. They flew into Kandahar from Mecca on a returning pilgrim flight,
according to witnesses.
-
- Taking out bin Laden junior will be hard. He may already
have left Afghanistan. He has spent much of his life in Peshawar and knows
it well. Last year a raid on the Spina Wari district in the city missed
capturing him by a few hours, though two other al-Qaeda members were
caught.
-
- The Pakistani authorities are finding it impossible to
seal the 1,200-mile mountainous border. There are also many in the Inter
Services Intelligence (ISI) agency who are long-term supporters of bin
Laden. The ISI was the principal conduit for Western aid to the Afghan
Mujahideen during the war against the Soviet Union. The then ruler of
Pakistan,
General Zia ul-Haq, encouraged hardline Islamists in the army and the
intelligence
services as a counter to the more secular opposition to his dictatorship.
Ten years later, they have risen to the senior ranks. Pakistani police
sources told The Observer they believe they failed to capture Mohamed bin
Laden last year after he was warned of their raid by ISI jihadi elements.
Western security sources blame Osama bin Laden's sudden decision to leave
a meeting of al-Qaeda commanders in the hours before it was hit by US
cruise
missiles in 1998, following the East African embassy bombings, on a tip-off
from the same source.
-
- But even if bin Laden and his son are killed or captured
several other key men will also have to be put out of action for any
assault
on al-Qaeda to be effective. Evidence presented during the trial of four
men who bombed the embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi reveals the key
role of Mohamed Atef, a 6ft-plus Egyptian also known as Abu Hafs el Masri
or Sheikh Taseer Abdullah. He is bin Laden's trusted lieutenant.
-
- Atef was born in the Egyptian village of Quenna in 1958
and deserted from the police in the early Eighties to travel to Afghanistan
to fight the Russians. He met bin Laden there and followed him first to
Saudi Arabia and then into exile in Sudan. Atef had already conducted
sensitive
missions for al-Qaeda, travelling to Somalia several times during 1991
and, according to US court documents, in 1993 he returned to the war-racked
East African state to train Somali militants. By 1995 he had established
the East African network, including 'sleeping' operatives in Nairobi, who
would later bomb the embassy there. In Peshawar in early 1997 he held a
meeting with a key member of the Nairobi operation in which he passed on
instructions to 'militarise'. Phone records show he was the 'manager' of
the East African operation and he has also been named by defectors as the
head of al-Qaeda's 'military committee' - charged with running terrorist
attacks across the globe. At every public appearance of bin Laden Atef
has been at his right hand. But Atef is not the only man powerful enough
to run al-Qaeda if bin Laden falls.
-
- At 9pm on 20 August 20 1998, the telephone rang in the
cluttered Peshawar office of Rahimullah Yusufzai, a senior reporter on
the Pakistani paper the News. Despite the late hour the bazaar beneath
the office window was still noisy. Yusufzai could hardly hear the man at
the other end of the phone.
-
- It was Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, calling on a satellite phone
from a secret location deep in Afghanistan - and sitting next to him was
bin Laden. Ten days earlier 224 people had died in the bombing of the East
African embassies.
-
- Al-Zawahiri, a trained surgeon, read a statement in
English.
'Osama bin Laden calls on all Muslims to continue jihad against Jews and
Americans to liberate their holy places. He denies any involvement in the
East African bombings.'
-
- An hour later the first US missiles fired to avenge the
embassy blasts struck the camps. Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and Atef were not
there. The next morning al-Zawahiri rang Yusufzai again. 'The war has just
started,' he said. 'Tell the Americans they should wait for our
answer.'
-
- Zawahiri, a founder of the Egyptian group al-Jihad, has
been with bin Laden since 1995. He has fused his apocalyptic vision of
war between Islam and the West with the experience of bin Laden and
Afghanistan.
-
- 'At first bin Laden was just concerned with the US troops
in Saudi Arabia. The global focus he has now is basically down to
Zawahiri,'
one Western security source said. 'He is a sophisticated thinker and
understands
the media and how it works.'
-
- Zawahiri is believed to be behind bin Laden's bribery
of Pakistani journalists and to have drafted a letter signed by bin Laden,
seen by The Observer, asking associates in Pakistan to increase their
efforts
to cultivate key figures on newspapers. In one instance a Pakistani
journalist
received $10,000 from al-Qaeda.
-
- Zawahiri also has access to a massive network of
volunteers,
particularly in Egypt. Many of the men involved in the hijacks in America
two weeks ago were Egyptian, which has led security services to believe
Zawahiri played a key role. He has also been involved in recruitment and
financial dealings for bin Laden and is a key fundraiser in North Africa.
Bin Laden, who contrary to popular myth never inherited much money, fills
his coffers with donations from wealthy sympathisers in the Gulf. Zawahiri
has his own sources of funds and no one doubts that, in bin Laden's
absence,
he would be a powerful player.
-
- Zawahiri also played a key role in a recent arms buying
programme that bin Laden organised. According to one arms dealer in
Peshawar,
bin Laden's associates made a concerted effort to obtain Stinger-type
anti-aircraft
missiles. 'I received offers of $200,000 if I could get one and they would
take as many as I could provide,' he said.
-
- Another dealer claimed he had supplied al-Qaeda with
'several' Chinese surface-to-air missiles. Several dealers confirmed that,
from early last year until two months ago, bin Laden was spend ing around
$800,000 a month on small arms and ammunition from stockpiles within the
former Soviet Union. 'We were just crating up piles of Kalashnikovs and
RPG7s [rocket launchers] and sending them across the border into
Afghanistan
to warehouses around Jalalabad. We don't know what happened after that,'
said one.
-
- Bin Laden may have secured other, more lethal, weapons.
He has often expressed a wish to obtain a chemical, biological or nuclear
capability and tried to buy uranium in 1993 but failed. Though it is not
clear whether he has bought any, several batches of enriched uranium from
the Soviet Union have been on sale in Peshawar in recent months.
-
- Lateef Afridi, a tribal leader and former member of
Pakistan's
parliament, told The Observer he had been approached four weeks ago and
offered uranium. 'I was shown a sample in a heavy lead canister from
Kazakhstan
by two Afghans and told that there were 26 more like it if I wanted,'
Afridi
said.
-
- Three years ago police in the city seized 8kgs of uranium
hidden in a refugee camp. A month earlier officers had stumbled across
smugglers while on a drugs raid on the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. The
smugglers
had pictures of cylinders of uranium which were to be shown to prospective
buyers and other 'nuclear-related materials.'
-
- So far, however, there is no clear information about
bin Laden's capabilities. The conventional weapons he bought recently are
almost certainly destined for the 055 brigade - a unit of 2,000 Arabs based
in the old army barracks at Rishkor just outside Kabul, though currently
deployed alongside the Taliban on the frontline 20 miles north of Kabul.
According to witnesses in Kabul the 'Arab Legion' started digging bunkers
and trenches around their camps at the beginning of this month.
-
- There are other indications that bin Laden is preparing
for a fight. Afghan opposition sources say the district of Nawar Saifalla,
in the desert near Kandahar, has been turned into a giant military camp
populated almost solely by Arabs loyal to bin Laden. It is centred on an
old Soviet airstrip that has been restored and has been receiving regular
flights at night. Many of the volunteers the large planes are bringing
in are Palestinian. Many are funded by Gulf and West Bank backers who want
to see all the Western aid agencies in Afghanistan replaced by Islamic
organisations.
-
- Abdullah is now a chubby, metals trader in Peshawar's
old city. Once, though, he was a sinewy, half-starved fighter carrying
his Kalashnikov hundreds of miles through the desert mountains of eastern
Afghanistan. He is one of three former Mujahideen interviewed by The
Observer
last week who fought with bin Laden against the Russians.
-
- In 1986 Abdullah met the young Saudi zealot in Peshawar.
'I first saw Osama in his office at the al-Qaeda centre in university town
[a suburb of Peshawar],' Abdullah, now 33, said. 'He was organising food
and lodging for all the Arab recruitsto the jihad against the Russians.
He taught me Arabic and we became good friends.'
-
- Abdullah next saw the Saudi during a battle near
Jalalabad.
He remembered how, unlike many Arab volunteers, bin Laden's men were
disciplined
and highly motivated. 'I took three Afghans and three Arabs and told them
to hold a position. They fought all day then when I went to relieve them
in the evening they were crying because they wanted to be martyred. I told
them that if they wanted to stay in the trench and fight they could. The
next day they were killed. Osama said later that he had told them the
trench
was their gate to heaven.'
-
- A second Afghan fighter recalled how, following the
Soviet
withdrawal, bin Laden had been disgusted by the infighting among Mujahideen
groups.
-
- 'He was very frustrated by it all. He is a very honest,
very clean man and when he saw the Arabs arguing among themselves he was
sickened by it,' Jammal Nazimuddin said. 'He used to tell them they had
defeated the Soviet empire because they were united and Allah had blessed
them. If they were not united, he said, they could not do Allah's
will.'
-
- But bin Laden's own men remained loyal to the end. 'I
had come to Afghanistan to fight for my faith,' said one former fighter
with the 'Arab Legion' who is now a businessman commuting between his
native
Algeria and Peshawar. 'I started off fighting around Kandahar for a
different
group. I spent weeks being shelled and shot at and saw that the Afghans
were not Muslims like me. Then when I got back to Peshawar I went to see
Osama because he had more faith than anybody and it was a quiet, strong,
modest faith that I liked. We used to sit down as brothers to eat, all
the fighters together. Everyone was equal. When I wanted to marry a
Pakistani
girl I had no money for the dowry so he gave me $1,500. Now I am 35 and
an old man with a family. But I would still follow him anywhere if he asked
me.'
- A Global Machine
- Al-Qaeda
- Founded: 1998 by Osama bin Laden.
-
- Aims:
Overthrow 'corrupt' Arab governments, rid Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem of
non-Muslims, establish global Islamic law.
-
- Members
-
- A core of several hundred 'Afghan Arabs' - mainly Saudi,
Algerian and Egyptian veterans of Afghan-Soviet war - remain in
Afghanistan.
Up to 10,000 active in terrorism across Arab world.
-
- Funding
-
- Construction, import/export, agriculture and banking
interests. Also raises funds via front organisations in Europe and North
America and illicitly siphons funds from donations to Muslim charities.
-
- Link
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- MainPage
http://www.rense.com
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