The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [123]
Many members of al-Jihad and al-Qaeda objected to putting children on trial, saying it was against Islam. In response, Zawahiri had the boys stripped naked to determine whether they had attained puberty, which they had. The helpless boys confessed everything. The court convicted them of sodomy, treason, and attempted murder.
Zawahiri had the boys shot. To make sure he got his point across, he videotaped their confessions and their executions and distributed the tapes as an example to others who might betray the organization.
When Turabi and his people learned of the firing squad, they were incensed. The Sudanese government accused al-Jihad of behaving like a “state within a state” and ordered Zawahiri and his organization out of the country immediately. They did not even get time to pack. “All we did was to apply God’s Sharia,” Zawahiri complained. “If we fail to apply it to ourselves, how can we apply it to others?”
Al-Jihad scattered, mainly to Afghanistan, Jordan, and Sudan. Many members broke away, scandalized by the cold-blooded execution of the two young boys. In Zawahiri’s hands, al-Jihad had splintered into angry and homeless gangs. There were fewer than a hundred members left in the organization, and many of the men were still trying to collect their families and their belongings from Khartoum. “These are bad times,” Zawahiri admitted in Yemen, where he had taken refuge. He confided to some of his colleagues that he was developing an ulcer.
His disillusioned followers often reflected on the pronouncement, made during the prison years by the man Zawahiri betrayed, Major Essam al-Qamari, that some vital quality was missing in Zawahiri. Qamari was the one who had told him, “If you are the member of any group, you cannot be the leader.” That now sounded like prophecy.
Zawahiri had few resources remaining other than bin Laden’s backing. He was determined to strike back quickly against the Egyptian authorities in order to redeem his reputation and keep the remnants of his organization intact. His views had undergone a powerful shift from those of the young man who spurned revolution because it was too bloody. He now believed that only violence changed history. In striking the enemy, he would create a new reality. His strategy was to force the Egyptian regime to become even more repressive, to make the people hate it. In this he succeeded. But the Egyptian people did not turn to him or to his movement. They only became more miserable, more disenchanted, frightened, and despairing. In the game Zawahiri had begun, however, revenge was essential; indeed, it was the game itself.
FIRST ACTIONS often set the course of future events. On November 19, 1995, the eighteenth anniversary of Anwar al-Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem, Zawahiri’s men bombed the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Although the bombing was an al-Jihad operation, it would become the prototype of future al-Qaeda attacks, in terms of both the target and the means of destroying it. One of Zawahiri’s men, known as Abu Khabab, an Egyptian cab driver who had studied chemistry and had become an explosives instructor. He created a powerful new bomb. Two men approached the embassy, one of them carrying a Samsonite briefcase filled with weapons. He threw grenades to frighten off the security guards. A pickup truck packed with a 250-pound explosive rushed into the compound. Then the driver set off the bomb. The embassy crumbled. Many other buildings within a half-mile radius of the bomb were severely damaged. Sixteen people died, not counting the two suicide bombers, and sixty were wounded.
This act of mass murder was al-Jihad’s first success under Zawahiri’s administration. “The bomb left the embassy’s ruined building as an eloquent and clear message,” Zawahiri wrote in his memoir. Bin Laden had not approved the operation, however;