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COVER STORY: OSAMA BIN
LADEN
Taking On The World
As the mastermind plans more terrorist strikes to provoke
even greater retaliations, his escape routes in Afghanistan are narrowing
—By Jason Burke in Peshawar
In the summer of
1999, flush with the triumph of the east African bombings, Osama bin Laden
sent a secret message from his hideout in Afghanistan to members of his
cell in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. Across the world, his various
associates-groups and individuals alike-sprang into action. Their task:
to buy weapons.
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MESSIAH OF DEATH: Bin Laden has inspired
many to kill innocents
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Following the success of the attacks on the Kenyan
and Tanzanian embassies (which killed around 224 people and injured 4,000
more), many would have expected the 44-year-old Saudi dissident to instruct
his people to buy explosives, detonators and electrical radio controls.
Most western intelligence agencies certainly did. But bin Laden is cleverer
than his hunters and trackers commonly believe. His estimation of the
situation was better than theirs and, as we are now seeing, his strategy
was successful.
The weapons, mainly light arms or anti-tank rocket
launchers, were more suited to conventional infantry-based warfare than
modern terrorism. They were used to build up the 055 brigade-a 2,000-strong
body of Arabs from across West Asia trained in bin Laden-administered
camps and funded by the cash he was receiving from wealthy private backers
in the Gulf. Last year, for the first time, the 055 brigade played a key
part in the summer offensive launched by the Taliban and helped in securing
the major advances the Islamic militia made in the northwest of the country.
The Taliban now controls more than 90 per cent of Afghanistan, an achievement
that was aided to a significant extent by bin Laden.
The Talibans' gratitude to him, and their continuing
dependence on his recruits and reinforcements as their own Afghan soldiers
succumb to war-weariness or injuries, is profound. And it is this capital
that bin Laden is spending now. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the
Taliban, knows that "the emir" has played a critical role in
recent fighting and that his support will be invaluable in the final battles
against the (now Masood-less) Northern Alliance.
At the moment bin Laden's strategy is survival.
He is hoping his accumulated credit with the Taliban will guarantee him
a few more days, if not weeks, of grace in which to work out how to survive
the post-September 11 storm. Informed sources in Peshawar believe he will
have fled to the desert rather than the mountains. In the long term, there
are few obvious escape routes from Afghanistan. None of the neighbouring
countries are likely to give him shelter and flight by air would be impossible.
So far the only state that might offer support appears to be Saddam Hussain's
Iraq. But that would be a bitter pill for bin Laden-who has always opposed
Saddam's brand of pan-Arab secular socialism-to swallow.
He will be confident, however, that his two
deputies, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef, aka Abu Hafs, will be
able to run Al Qaida if he is forced to leave Afghanistan. Both are Egyptian
and veterans of the terrorist campaign waged there. Hafs has fought against
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and is a dour, committed and effective
military commander. Zawahiri is more of a politician and his fiery brand
of Islamic extremism has been a great influence on bin Laden. Between
them they would ensure that Al Qaida's work goes on.
Of course, bin Laden has bought his way out
of trouble before. In 1996, as the Taliban began the campaigns that led
to the capture of Kabul that September, there was by no means a unanimous
will in their ranks to look after bin Laden. Maulvi Nabi Mohammed Nabi,
one of the key ideological founders of the Taliban, told this reporter
in a hotel room in Kabul three years ago that bin Laden was "a problem"
that was "inherited".
He was right. It was the Jalalabad shura (council)
ruling eastern Afghanistan at the time that welcomed bin Laden when he
was expelled from Sudan in 1996, not the Taliban as is commonly believed.
Nor was the Taliban, at that time, as extreme and as anti-West as they
are today. Bin Laden was widely known and respected for his role in the
war against the Russians but he was less than widely welcomed.
All that changed after bin Laden bankrolled
the advance on Kabul, providing the millions of dollars needed to buy
off the key commanders that stood in the Taliban's way. After that he
was welcome indeed. None of this would have been far from Mullah Omar's
mind during the consultations last week. Nor would it have been far from
bin Laden's. "He is a very clever political operator and is advised
by some very astute men. The Taliban are great negotiators. Bin Laden
doesn't ever get as far as negotiating. He's usually got the situation
he wants before it comes to that," says a western intelligence source
in Islamabad last week.
Bin Laden
also knows that the Pakhtun tradition of melmastia, or hospitality
to a guest, is very strong. "It shouldn't be underestimated especially
when we are talking about another Muslim who is aiding Pakhtuns fight
what they see as a hostile world and possibly a hostile invasion,"
says Latif Afridi, leader of the Khyber Afridis, one of the largest and
most feared Pakhtun tribal groups.
Money is, of course, the key. Contrary to popular
myth, bin Laden himself never inherited the sort of astronomical sums
regularly attributed to him by US intelligence. In Saudi Arabia, a family's
wealth is not split into portions and distributed on the death of the
patriarch. Bin Laden senior, who started as a Yemeni labourer and ended
up building the biggest construction conglomerate in West Asia, died with
a business empire worth billions. That wealth and capital has been kept
centralised under the control of his eldest and most trusted sons. Bin
Laden was neither, born the 17th of 57 children to a less favoured wife.
Instead he has received millions of dollars in donations from wealthy
sympathisers.
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