The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [140]
Bin Laden cited American support for Israel as the first cause of his declaration of war, followed by the presence of American troops in Arabia. He added that American civilians must also leave the Islamic holy land because he could not guarantee their safety.
In the most revealing exchange, Arnett asked whether, if the United States complied with bin Laden’s demands to leave Arabia, he would call off his jihad. “The reaction came as a result of the aggressive U.S. policy toward the entire Muslim world, not just the Arabian Peninsula,” bin Laden said. Therefore, the United States has to withdraw from any kind of intervention against Muslims “in the whole world.” Bin Laden was already speaking as the representative of the Islamic nation, a caliph-in-waiting. “The U.S. today has set a double standard, calling whoever goes against its injustice a terrorist,” he complained. “It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us…and wants us to agree to all these. If we refuse to do so, it will say, ‘You are terrorists.’”
THIS TIME MULLAH OMAR sent a helicopter to Jalalabad and summoned bin Laden to Kandahar. It wasn’t clear whether bin Laden would prove to be an ally or a rival. In either case, Omar couldn’t afford to leave him in Jalalabad, on the opposite side of the country, in an area that the Taliban only marginally controlled. The talkative Saudi obviously had to be restrained or expelled.
The two men met at the Kandahar airport. Omar told bin Laden that the Taliban intelligence service claimed to have uncovered a plot by some tribal mercenaries to kidnap him; whether or not the story was true, it provided the excuse for Mullah Omar to order bin Laden to evacuate his people from Jalalabad and relocate to Kandahar, where the Taliban could keep an eye on him. Omar personally extended his protection to bin Laden, but he said that the interviews must come to a stop. Bin Laden said he had already decided to freeze his media campaign.
Three days later, bin Laden flew all of his family members and supporters to Kandahar, and he followed by car. Once again his entire movement had been uprooted; once again discouraged followers drifted away. Omar gave bin Laden and al-Qaeda the choice of occupying a housing complex built for the workers of the electric company, which had all the necessary utilities, or an abandoned agricultural compound called Tarnak Farms, which had none, not even running water. Bin Laden chose the dilapidated farm. “We want a simple life,” he said.
Behind the ten-foot walls of the compound were about eighty mud-brick or concrete structures, including dormitories, a small mosque, storage facilities, and a crumbling six-story office building. Bin Laden’s three wives were all crowded into a walled compound where they lived, according to one of bin Laden’s bodyguards, “in perfect harmony.” Outside the walls, the Taliban stationed two T-55 Soviet tanks.
As always, bin Laden drew strength from privation and seemed oblivious to the toll such circumstances took on others. When a Yemeni jihadi, Abu Jandal, went to his chief complaining that there was nothing for the men to eat, bin Laden replied, “My son Jandal, we have not yet reached a condition like that of the Prophet’s companions, who placed stones against their middles and tightened them around their waists. The Messenger of Allah used two stones!”
“Those men were strong in faith and God wished to test them,” Abu Jandal protested. “We, on the other hand, have sinned, and God would not test us.”
Bin Laden laughed.
Meals were often little more than stale bread and well water. Bin Laden would dip the hard bread in the water and say, “May God be praised. We are