The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [60]
Across the Khyber Pass was the war. The young Arabs who came to Peshawar prayed that their crossing would lead them to martyrdom and Paradise. As they passed the time, they traded legends about themselves, about the call that had drawn young Muslims to free their brothers in Afghanistan. In fact the war was being fought almost entirely by the Afghans themselves. Despite Azzam’s famous fatwa and bin Laden’s subsidies, there were never more than three thousand of these outsiders—who came to be known as the Arab Afghans—in the war against the Soviets, and most of them never got out of Peshawar.
The Arab Afghans were often unwanted renegades in their own countries, and they found that the door closed behind them as soon as they left. Other young Muslims, prompted by their own governments to join the jihad, were stigmatized as fanatics when they did so. It would be difficult for many of them ever to return home. These abandoned idealists were naturally looking for a leader. They had little to cling to except their cause and each other. As stateless persons they naturally revolted against the very idea of the state. They saw themselves as a borderless posse empowered by God to defend the entire Muslim people. That was exactly bin Laden’s dream.
In Peshawar, they adopted new identities. Few people in the Arab community used their actual names, and it was rude to ask. In this incognito underground, a child often did not know his father’s real identity. The alias usually reflected the name of the mujahid’s firstborn male child or some quality that suited his personality. A common jihadi name, such as Abu Mohammed, would be followed by his nationality—al-Libi, for instance, “the Libyan.” It was a simple code but difficult to decipher, since one had to know a man’s reputation or his family in order to catch the reference.
It was death, not victory in Afghanistan, that summoned many young Arabs to Peshawar. Martyrdom was the product that Azzam sold in the books, tracts, videos, and cassette tapes that circulated in mosques and Arabic-language bookstores. “I traveled to acquaint people with jihad,” Azzam said, recalling his lectures in mosques and Islamic centers around the world. “We were trying to satisfy the thirst for martyrdom. We are still in love with this.” Azzam visited the United States each year—Kansas City, St. Louis, Dallas, all over the heartland and the major cities as well—looking for money and recruits among the young Muslims who were mesmerized by the myths he spun.
He told stories of the mujahideen who defeated vast columns of Soviet troops virtually single-handed. He claimed that some of the brave warriors had been run over by tanks but survived; others were shot, but the bullets failed to penetrate. If death came, it was even more miraculous. When one beloved mujahid expired, the ambulance filled with the sound of humming bees and chirping birds, even though they were in the Afghan desert in the middle of the night. Bodies of martyrs uncovered after a year in the grave still smelled sweet and their blood continued to flow. Heaven and nature conspired to repel the godless invader. Angels rode into the battle on horseback, and falling bombs were intercepted by birds, which raced ahead of the jets to form a protective canopy over the warriors. The miracle stories naturally proliferated as word spread that Sheikh Abdullah was paying for mujahids who brought him wonderful tales.
The lure of an illustrious and meaningful death was especially powerful in cases where the pleasures and rewards of life were crushed by government