The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [229]
“Sixty”: interview with Mohammed Loay Baizid.
135 “independent body”: interview with Abdullah Anas.
“The Saudi authorities”: ibid.
“Say something”: ibid.
136 “Osama is limited”: ibid.
Abu Abdul Rahman: His real name is Ahmed Sayed Khadr. Interviews with Zaynab Ahmed Khadr, Maha Elsamneh, and Mohammed Loay Baizid. Details of the trial come from Wa’el Julaidan, who responded to questions through an intermediary, and “Tareek Osama” document presented in United States v. Enaam M. Arnaout.
expel him from the leadership: “The Story of the Arab Afghans from the Time of Their Arrival in Afghanistan Until Their Departure with the Taliban,” Part 5, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, December 12, 2004.
“Soon we will see the hand”: interview with Abdullah Anas.
“cannot trust the Egyptians”: interview with Jamal Khalifa.
137 “not a single Soviet soldier”: Cordovez and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, 384.
fifteen thousand lives: Borovik, The Hidden War, 12–13.
Between a million: William T. Vollmann, “Letter from Afghanistan: Across the Divide,” New Yorker, May 15, 2137.
third of the population: interview with Prince Turki al-Faisal.
six thousand Arabs: Ismail Khan, “Crackdown Against Arabs in Peshawar,” Islamabad the News, April 7, 1993.
“men with large amounts of money”: from “Chats from the Top of the World,” no. 6, from the Harmony Documents.
air-conditioned cargo containers: Benjamin and Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, 101.
takfiris even held up a truck: interview with Jamal Khashoggi.
138 sold arms for gold: Raphaeli, “Ayman Muhammed Rab‘i al-Zawahiri.”
“The Blind Leader”: interview with Usama Rushdi.
awarding $100,000: Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Knew, 70.
Jalalabad: The account that follows is based on a number of interviews, but they include some contradictory stories that are worth noting. Marc Sageman, who was a CIA case officer in Pakistan at the time, told me that the garrison of Afghan soldiers—450 men—who were guarding the airport quickly surrendered. Given the jealousy and divisiveness of the mujahideen factions, it was decided that the prisoners would be parceled out among them. The Arabs got a one-ninth share—49 men. The Arabs murdered them, cut their bodies to pieces, and packed them into crates. Then they loaded the boxes onto a supply truck, which they sent into the beleaguered city, with a sign that said, “This is what happens to apostates.” At that point the war abruptly changed. The Afghan troops inside Jalalabad stopped negotiating their surrender and began fighting back. Within days, the Afghan air force drove the mujahideen away from the airport and back into the mountains. If this account is true, this was the first evidence of bin Laden’s appetite for slaughter. Olivier Roy, the great French scholar and student of Afghanistan, said that he had heard essentially the same account from Afghans who were inside the garrisoned city. Neither Sageman nor Roy was present at the battle, however. Essam Deraz, who was there, denies that such an event ever occurred, as does Ahmed Zaidan, who covered the battle as a reporter. Indiscriminate slaughter of prisoners was common on both sides in that war.
Another issue about the battle of Jalalabad is whether bin Laden was injured. Michael Scheuer, who was head of the CIA’s Alec Station, says that bin Laden was injured twice in the jihad against the Soviet Union: once in Jaji, a foot wound, and once in the shoulder from a piece of shrapnel. Essam Deraz, again, says that bin Laden was never injured during that war, as does Jamal Khalifa.
five to seven thousand Afghan mujahideen: Yousaf and Adkin, The Bear Trap, 227–28.
four kilometers above the city: interview with Essam Deraz.
fewer than two hundred men: interview with Abdullah Anas.
139 malaria…pneumonia: interview with Jamal Khashoggi.
139 medical genius: interview with Essam Deraz.
twenty sorties a day: Yousaf and Adkin, The Bear Trap, 230.
glucose transfusion: Details of this episode come from an interview with Essam Deraz and from his account that is rendered in Azzam, The Lofty Mountain, 80ff.
Addison’s disease: