Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [49]
Chapter 9
The Nightmare Begins
OMAR BIN LADEN
The regional calm brought by the end of the Soviet-Afghan war on February 15, 1989, did not last. Not unexpectedly, my father was one of the first to sound a new alarm because his mind was like an antenna set for regional news, especially attuned to all things Muslim. Despite the fact that Afghanistan’s woes had kept him engaged for over ten years, he remained watchful, carefully following the events related to the Iraq-Iran war. That 10-year war had begun on September 22, 1980, the year before I was even born, and had come to an exhausted conclusion on August 20, 1988, six months prior to the cessation of hostilities in Afghanistan. There was no clear victory for Iran or Iraq, and my father began monitoring the business of Iraq, believing that Saddam Hussein was so dissatisfied with the result of that war that he would not remain silent.
My father had never been a supporter of Saddam Hussein due to the dictator’s secular rule over a Muslim land. My father often mocked Saddam Hussein for “not being a believer.” There is no bigger insult for a Muslim. My father also scorned Saddam’s aggressive character, saying, “The leader of such a large army will never stop looking for war.”
My father was so concerned that a debt-stricken Saddam might be tempted by the wealth of his rich neighbors that he made his private thoughts about Saddam public, beginning a dangerous habit of using the mosque and audio-tapes to make his feelings known. The audiotapes were widely distributed to the Saudi population, creating little ripples of displeasure from the royal family, yet their disapproval remained a private affair.
Regretfully, my father’s warnings came true. Beginning in February of 1990, strong words began to fly from Iraq to Kuwait City and Riyadh, with a cash-desperate Saddam Hussein demanding that the Kuwaitis and Saudis forgive the $40 billion in loans given to him to fight Khomeini and the Iranians. Saddam’s neighbors had been generous in supporting the Iraqis against the Iranians, for both governments had become increasingly uneasy with the antagonistic militant stance taken by the Khomeini government against the Sunni-led governments in the area. Iran is a Shiite Muslim country, while most of the Gulf nations are Sunni Muslim. There have been hostilities between the two sects and the two nationalities since the earliest times in history. But the Kuwaiti and Saudi governments rejected his request. Saddam became aggressive, demanding an additional $30 billion in interest-free loans: “Let the Gulf regimes know, that if they do not give this money to me, I know how to get it.” That’s when the Iraqi dictator put his huge army on the move, positioning 100,000 trained soldiers on the Kuwaiti border. When questioned, he claimed that his army was conducting training exercises.
King Fahd reached out to bring all the parties, including Saddam, together at an emergency meeting in Jeddah on July 31, 1990. Unfortunately, the meeting ended with additional insults rather than a solution. That was the night my father warned that war was imminent.
At dawn on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein’s army invaded Kuwait, easily occupying the small country. My father repeated: “Saddam will attack Saudi Arabia for possession of the oilfields in the eastern province. This will happen as soon as his military consolidates its hold on Kuwait.”
I was ten years old. For the first time I truly grasped the concept of war, and that war could come to any nation. That was also when I recognized my father’s standing as a war hero so revered that his actions generally went unquestioned. He was the only civilian in Saudi Arabia allowed to drive cars with blackened windows, or to strap a machine gun across his shoulder and walk through the streets of Jeddah. From then on, I began to take note of what was happening in our region of the world and my father’s reactions to the events.
My father began to prepare mentally for the possibility of war within