SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden (16 page)

It was the Afghan people themselves who defeated the Soviets. They were helped by U.S.-provided weapons that were funneled through the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI. Fewer than ten thousand “Afghan Arabs” joined the Afghanis.

For almost a decade the Soviet Union provided a battle laboratory where Jihadists from all over the world learned how to fight. They gained combat experience and training in explosives, clandestine military work, small-unit tactics, and the simple business of killing efficiently. The Soviet-Afghan war had several world-altering consequences: The first was that the Soviet juggernaut would shudder and creak and wheeze back across the border, broken and defeated. Soon after its defeat in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would collapse. No one in NATO or the West could predict this outcome when the Soviets landed on the day after Christmas at the Kabul airport in 1979.

No one in the West could foresee that because of the Soviet defeat, a new class of warrior would emerge into history. The West had armed, trained, and encouraged Jihad fighters against the Soviets—it would now find itself fighting these same men. It was blowback on a global scale. Skilled in the use of state-of-the-art weapons, computer literate, technologically adroit, and media savvy, these new war fighters did not fight for a nation, or a region, or even necessarily for a religion. Sunni and Shia both were warriors of an Idea.

That idea was to remake the planet: one world, one people under Islamic domination and the will of God. To accomplish this, these new Jihadists would use any means, however bloody, nefarious, or cruel. Women and children were fair game, as were the enemy’s ships, trains, and airplanes. These men would do the work of God. The time had come to make way for the coming of the Mahdi, the prophet of God. They would fight to bring about the end times as predicted in the Koran.

Riding out of the dusty plains of Afghanistan, galloping past the wreckage of Soviet tanks and the bleaching bones of Russian soldiers, Jihad had come.

HERO OF THE LION’S DEN

AROUND 1982, OSAMA DECIDED THAT
he would become a polygamist like his father. Osama purchased a small, four-unit apartment building about a mile from his mother’s home and decided to fill it with three new families. His objective, he told his friends, was to show that polygamy was a thoroughly Islamic way of life, and, as practiced by the Prophet, could be a fair and equitable arrangement for all involved.

Osama’s choice for second wife was surprising. She was seven years his senior, the daughter of a wealthy Jeddah family who had earned a Ph.D. in child psychology from the women’s college of Abdul Aziz University. Soon he courted and married another highly educated woman—wife number three. She also held a doctorate, this one in Arabic grammar. Osama’s third wife was known as Umm Khalid. She moved into unit number three, and raised a son and three daughters. Osama’s fourth wife was from Mecca, a daughter of the prominent Gialani family. After celebrating their nuptials, she, too, moved into the apartment building and there bore him three children, eventually giving birth to a son and assuming the title Umm Ali.

Osama had taken a job with the family business. His duties at the Bin Laden Group’s headquarters in Jeddah did not take up very much of his time, and Osama found himself playing host to a series of visiting fund-raisers, fresh from the war in Afghanistan.

Some were rough, military men who had little time for the gangling, soft-spoken Bin Laden. Others were polite, accepted his hospitality, and enthralled him with tales of battles with the Russians. They needed money to buy weapons and found that the young millionaire was willing to write checks. Just as important, he made introductions to the upper echelons of Saudi society.

Later, in his own mythmaking, Bin Laden would claim to have traveled to Afghanistan the day after the Soviet invasion. This is nonsense. During the early 1980s, he spent his days raising a gaggle of children, seeing that they were home-schooled, and playing host at the hospitality tents offered by his family’s company at religious events such as the Haj. It was not until after the success of the Beirut bombings that Osama bin Laden decided to get involved in the “holy war” then evolving in Afghanistan.

Despite Beirut, or perhaps because of it, the United States was now pouring money into the Afghan war. The major route for U.S. funds and weapons was through the Pakistani ISI (Inter Service Intelligence). Pakistan became the clearinghouse for American cash, and that made the ISI the powerbroker among the Afghan-manned groups who did the actual fighting of the Soviet invaders.

The Saudis were anxious to open their own direct channels to the Mujahideen. Osama told several stories about his path to Jihadi stardom, but things probably didn’t begin to click until he reconnected with Ahmed Badeeb, his old teacher. After leaving the faculty of Al Faqr University, Badeeb started to work for Saudi intelligence, eventually becoming an aide to Prince Al Tarqi. Osama met his teacher at one of the Bin Laden Group’s sponsored events. They exchanged pleasantries and the older man sized up his former student. Osama was wealthy, he was connected, and he was eager. Thus began Osama’s cultivation by Saudi intelligence. Prince Al Tarqi saw Bin Laden as a conduit and cutout for funding Afghan Jihad.

Wealthy people like to surround themselves with others who are either beautiful or interesting—this is the case in New York and Paris, and it is also the case in Mecca and Jeddah. Osama was introduced to thirty-four-year-old Sheik Abdullah Azzam, then the most dashing of Arab Afghans fighting the Soviets. Osama came under the sway of this highly educated, articulate, and fearless Mujahideen. Lawrence Wright pointed out that the romantic image of the warrior priest is as strong in Islam as it is in the Japanese culture of Shinto. Abdullah Azzam was the quintessential Arab manifestation of this spiritual, resolute, and determined warrior.

Azzam was a religious scholar with a degree in sharia law. Born in Palestine, Azzam found that his fiery sermons got him kicked out of both his native land and Jordan and Egypt before he landed in Saudi Arabia. He eventually drifted to Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Azzam was a tall, handsome man, and had a beard streaked with gray. He was an articulate, even mesmerizing speaker, and he wore the black and white checked Palestinian kaffiyeh that marked him as both a combatant and a man determined to fight for freedom.

Azzam’s message was simple: Islam would come to its rightful place when Muslims no longer played the victim. The caliphate had been won by force of arms, and Islam’s first caliph, the Prophet Muhammad, was a prophet of the Lord and was a military leader. It was the duty of all Muslims to resist infidel invaders when they intruded on Muslim lands. Tape cassettes of Azzam’s sermons included his motto, “Jihad and the rifle alone. No negotiations, no conferences, no dialogue.”

Azzam was a Jihad rock star.

Osama frequently provided hospitality when Azzam visited Saudi Arabia. Osama and his friends would listen as the sheik amazed them with stories of battling Soviet tanks. Azzam maintained that the participation in Jihad was not an option for able-bodied Muslims—it was an obligation. It was their duty to fight the Soviets. Azzam was there to raise money, but also to recruit men. Osama was enthralled.

Preachers like Azzam convinced many Saudis that communism was a threat to their region, and a menace to their religion. Should the Soviets be allowed to remain in Afghanistan, Pakistan would surely fall, then Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. It turns out that there are not just geopolitical dominoes, but religious dominoes as well.

During this time, Osama was being tested by Saudi intelligence. His recruitment followed a time-honored pattern. He was first asked to do small favors, then perform slightly more involved tasks. When he had successfully fulfilled that request, he was given slightly more responsibility and eventually larger tasks, such as providing cover jobs for radicals recruited from abroad. The Cairo offices of the Bin Laden Group was soon funneling Algerians, Libyans, Moroccans, and Yemenis into Saudi Arabia, and then facilitated their transportation into Afghanistan.

Osama was himself a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it’s likely that at this time he made contact with Egyptians who were part of the mother organization in Egypt. Prince Turki al-Fisal noted Osama as a man who might do some good.

Osama bin Laden, the mediocre son of a Saudi millionaire, had finally found his métier. His star was on the rise.

Both the United States and Saudi Arabia believed that the Russians’ aim was to conquer Afghanistan and destabilize the countries in the Persian Gulf region. There was oil in the region but the Russians had plenty of their own. What was really in question was the Strait of Hormuz—the opening of the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean. Through this narrow body of water, almost 40 percent of the West’s petroleum passes by tanker. The Russians wanted the Strait of Hormuz, and the West needed it. That is what raised the stakes of the Soviet-Afghan war.

These were geopolitical considerations and in 1984 they were way above Osama’s pay grade. The prime mover and shaker in Saudi Arabia’s Afghan affairs was Prince Turki al-Fisal. A month after the Soviet invasion, the prince flew to Pakistan to coordinate aid to the Mujahideen. Prince Turki would become the pivot man in a secret alliance between Saudi Arabia and the United States to vector weapons and money to aid the Afghan resistance.

This alliance would eventually defeat the Soviet Union, but spawn the hell child of international Jihad.

Prince Turki and the Saudis had to tread carefully. If the extent of the Saudi and American aid did not remain secret, the Soviets might easily use it as an excuse to invade Pakistan itself, bringing the bear one step closer. For these reasons the Pakistanis insisted that all money and weapons, both Saudi and American, be transferred through the ISI.

Almost five years after the Soviets first invaded, Osama bin Laden made a trip to the battle area. Incredible as it seems, he had not gone earlier because he could not secure his mother’s permission. Armed with the arguments of Abdul Azzam and his personal assurances that her boy would be well taken care of, Osama traveled on one of the family jets to Islamabad.

On June 26, 1984, accompanied by Azzam, Osama slipped across the Afghan frontier at a place called Jaji. He found a squalid camp surrounded by shallow, hastily dug trenches. Morale was high, but the fighters’ weapons, clothing, and equipment were in pathetic condition. Yet these men were happy and eager to fight. There was a major Soviet encampment quite close by. Osama found himself on the front lines.

He would later recall a shame he felt for not participating earlier in the struggle against the Soviets. “I asked forgiveness from God Almighty, feeling that I had sinned because I’d listen to those who advised me not to go.… I felt that this four-year delay could not be pardoned unless I became a martyr.”

He almost got his wish—that morning. Just after dawn, Soviet jets appeared over the camp. They bombed and strafed but did little damage. It was the first time in his life that Osama bin Laden had stood in the sights of an enemy’s weapon, and it thrilled him. He claimed later that Mujahideen antiaircraft fire downed four Soviet planes. That part was unlikely, but the effect the strafing had on Osama was galvanizing.

“Not one of our brothers had been injured, thank God. This battle gave me in fact a big push to continue in this matter. I became more convinced of the fact that no one could be injured except by God’s will.”

Osama’s baptism by fire had energized him.

According to Abdullah Azzam, Osama returned to Saudi Arabia and started to raise money in earnest. Ten million dollars poured into the coffers of Azzam’s group; two million of it came from members of the Bin Laden family. Money put Osama on the map. Until now, Osama had been seen as a disciple of Sheik Abdullah Azzam. He was now beginning to emerge as his own man.

In September 1984, during the Haj in Mecca, Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam officially joined forces. Azzam had the Jihadi credentials and Osama had the cash. At the time there were very few Arabs fighting in Afghanistan. Those who were there were treated as “glorified guests” by their Afghan hosts.

Azzam and Bin Laden set out to form a new fighting organization, with its own recruiting pipeline, financing, and logistical support. Azzam published a book entitled
In Defense of Muslim Lands.
In it was a fatwa that declared that Jihad in Afghanistan was obligatory for every Muslim. Azzam’s call to arms was issued to Muslims around the world: Bosnians, Malaysians Turkmen, and Filipinos all were needed. Osama’s connections ensured that the first editions of
In Defense of Muslim Lands
included a foreword written by Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Baz, the chief cleric of Saudi Arabia. This amounted to an official endorsement.

Osama and Azzam returned to Pakistan and established a string of guesthouses they called
Makhtab al Khadamat,
the Services Bureau. They established a main office in the university town of Peshawar, and their first efforts involved printing copies of Assam’s books and producing a glossy magazine extolling the manly virtues of armed Jihad.

They started recruiting. Osama sweetened the deal by offering airline tickets, living arrangements, and a $300-a-month stipend to anyone willing to sign up and fight in Afghanistan.

The Saudis had been pouring money into the Afghan insurgency through the conduit of Pakistani intelligence. In addition to the funds transferred directly from Saudi intelligence, Osama remained the conduit through which wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf could show their support for the Mujahideen. These monies are now estimated to have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Such funds, raised covertly and held in Swiss banks, put the Services Bureau on the map as a major player in the Afghan resistance. Neither Osama nor Azzam had yet to fire a shot in anger. For a while, they collected men and money, directing both to training camps across the border.