Growing Up Bin Laden - Jean P. Sasson [95]
My father grimaced, his expression puzzled. He knew from all that he had heard that Mullah Omar, like most Muslims, avoided anything to do with drugs. When he mentioned this to the driver, the man said, “Yes. The good Mullah Omar has not been in favor of the drug trade. He made this fatwa only against the Americans.”
My father said nothing else, yet I knew that this was not to his liking. Regardless of his growing hatred for everything American, he followed the Islamic belief that forbade believers from trafficking in drugs for any reason.
I wondered why the Taliban leader hated the Americans. I knew my father believed that if the Americans had kept their noses out of Saudi business, that he and his Mujahideen fighters would have saved Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, further establishing his reputation as the greatest Arab hero of all time. It was the Americans who had put him in an untenable position, causing him to flee his country—and eventually forcing his expulsion from Sudan.
I wondered if the Americans had targeted Mullah Omar as well. Certainly, Mullah Omar had lived a hard life. He was an ethnic Pashtun of the Hotak tribe. After his father’s premature death, Mullah Omar was born in 1959 in a mud hut in a small village in Kandahar Province. Born in a country where leaders come to power because of wealth, family lineage, or royalty, the peasant boy was not a likely candidate to one day rule the country.
Mullah Omar was schooled in Islamic studies at a Pakistani madrassah, or religious school, being taught the strictest interpretation of the Koran. Growing into a tall, rugged teenager, his youth was spent working to help support his struggling family.
When the Russians invaded Afghanistan, Mullah Omar joined the Mujahideen, reportedly fighting under the command of Nek Mohammad, a famous Afghan warrior. Omar was a superior marksman who quickly gained the respect of the fighters around him. He was wounded many times, losing an eye and scarring his face. Becoming too disabled to fight, he began to teach in a village madrassah near Kandahar.
After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the country veered toward civil war. It was said that Mullah Omar wished to stay out of the fray, but after hearing about the crimes committed by former Afghan fighters, violence that included kidnapping and the rape of young boys and girls, the pious mullah gathered a group of students, inspiring those young men to fight the criminals.
With success came the idea to install a purely Islamic state. Due to his piety and call for strict law and order, Mullah Omar easily gained support. A Taliban army resulted. With Mullah Omar as their leader, the Taliban entered the civil war and began defeating all opposing factions, including the Northern Alliance led by Ahmad Shah Massoud.
By the time my father and I arrived in Afghanistan, anyone who wanted to live in Afghanistan had to reach an alliance with Mullah Omar. My father was cautious as to where we traveled, for he had not yet met with Mullah Omar and did not know if the Taliban leader would welcome us into the country. For the time being, we had the support of Mullah Nourallah, who was the leader of his province, but at any time Mullah Omar could order my father out of Afghanistan.
After three bone-shattering hours, the rutted road grew even more jarring, but our uncomfortable journey was coming to an end. The peaks of Tora Bora loomed over us against the sapphire sky, so numerous that they appeared to fold into one another.
Where in that towering rock pile would my ill-fated family find a home?
We left the highway to climb a steep, winding track so narrow that there was barely room for our small vehicle. Our truck tires edged the cliffs. One misplaced jolt and we would have plummeted to our deaths.
Another hour of measured climbing revealed some structures perched on a rock ledge. Was this the mountain that Mullah Nourallah had so generously given