The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [75]
WHAT DID BIN LADEN WANT? He did not share either Zawahiri’s or Azzam’s priorities. The tragedy of Palestine was a constant theme in his speeches, yet he was reluctant to participate in the intifada against Israel. Like Azzam, bin Laden hated Yasser Arafat because he was a secularist. Nor did he relish the prospect of war against Arab governments. At the time, he envisioned moving the struggle to Kashmir, the Philippines, and particularly the Central Asian republics where he could continue the jihad against the Soviet Union. Notably, the United States was not yet on anyone’s list. The vanguard he would create was primarily to fight against communism.
One fateful day in Peshawar, August 11, 1988, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam called a meeting to discuss the future of jihad. Bin Laden, Abu Hafs, Abu Ubaydah, Abu Hajer, Dr. Fadl, and Wa’el Julaidan were present. These men were bound by uncommon experiences but profoundly divided by their goals and philosophies. One of Azzam’s objectives was to make sure that, in the event of an Afghan civil war, the Arabs were not involved. His former stance of scattering the Arabs among the various commanders could prove disastrous if the Afghans began fighting each other. He had come to agree with bin Laden about the need to establish a separate Arab group, although they differed on the direction it should take. The takfiris—Hafs, Ubaydah, and Fadl—were mainly interested in taking over Egypt, but they wanted to have a say in the latest venture. Abu Hajer, the Iraqi Kurd, was always suspicious of the Egyptians and inclined to oppose them on principle, but he was also the most militant among them, and it was difficult to know which side he would support. Although Azzam chaired the meeting, the comments were directed at bin Laden, because everyone understood that the fate of jihad was in his hands, not theirs.
According to Abu Rida’s sketchy handwritten notes of the meeting, the men began with three general talking points:
a. Did you take the opinion of Sheikh Abdullah
knowing that the Sheikh’s military gang has ended.
b. This future project is in the interest of the Egyptian brothers.
c. The next stage is our foreign work
disagreement is present
weapons are plenty.
The men observed that it had been more than a year since the construction of the Lion’s Den, but it was little more than a training camp. Arabs were still excluded from the real fighting. Educating the youth is important, the men admitted, but it was time to take the next step. “We should focus on the original idea we came here for,” Abu Rida noted in his pinched handwriting. “All this is to start a new project from scratch.”
In response, bin Laden, who was now being called the Sheikh in deference to his increased stature among the Arabs, reflected on his experience in Afghanistan so far: “I am only one person. We have started neither an organization nor an Islamic group. It was a space of a year and a half—a period of education, of building trust, of testing the brothers who came, and a period of proving ourselves to the Islamic world. Although I began all these matters in the darkest of circumstances and in such a brief time, we still made huge gains.” He gave no credit to Azzam, the real progenitor of the Arab Afghans; it was bin Laden’s saga now. One can hear for the first time the epic tone that began to characterize his speech—the sound of a man in the grasp of destiny.
“As for our Egyptian brothers,” bin Laden continued, mentioning what was obviously a contentious subject with many of his followers, “their standing with us in the worst of times cannot be ignored.”
One of the men then said that although the main goals of the Arabs had not yet been achieved, “we worked with what we had,” but “we lost a lot of time.