The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [92]
These words, uttered so hopefully, found a bitter audience in Osama bin Laden. He also wanted to create a new world order, one that was ruled by Muslims, not dictated by America and enforced by the UN. The scale of his ambition was beginning to reveal itself. In his fantasy he would enter history as the savior of Islam.
BIN LADEN WAGED a high-level campaign to retrieve his passport. He argued that he needed to return to Pakistan in order to help mediate the civil war among the mujahideen, which the Saudi government was keenly interested in resolving. “There’s a role I can play,” bin Laden pleaded. Many prominent princes and sheikhs interceded on his behalf. Eventually, Prince Naif backed down and returned bin Laden’s travel documents, but only after making the nettlesome warrior sign a pledge that he would not interfere with the politics of Saudi Arabia or any Arab country.
In March 1992, bin Laden arrived in Peshawar. In the three years since his departure, the communist government in Afghanistan had managed to hang on to power, but it was on the verge of being overrun. Rival mujahideen forces, led by Ahmed Shah Massoud and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, were already engaged in a bloody struggle to determine who was going to seize power. The great powers that had chosen to use Afghanistan as a venue for the existential battle between communism and capitalism were notably absent in the chaotic aftermath of the war. Prince Turki hoped to establish a provisional government in Afghanistan that would unite the warring commanders and stabilize the country. He led the negotiations in Peshawar, along with Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Worried about the influence of Iran on Afghanistan’s western border, Turki was inclined to support the more intransigent and fundamentalist Sunni elements, led by Hekmatyar. Bin Laden, on the other hand, attempted to play the role of the honest broker. He arranged a telephone conference call between Massoud and Hekmatyar, in which he begged Hekmatyar to come to the bargaining table. Hekmatyar was unyielding—knowing, no doubt, that he had Turki’s blessing. But, in the middle of the night, Massoud’s forces slipped into the city. The next morning, the surprised Hekmatyar furiously lobbed rockets into Kabul and began the siege of the capital. The Afghan civil war had begun.
By opposing Turki in the negotiations, bin Laden believed that he had crossed a line. He told some of his companions that Saudi Arabia had recruited Pakistani intelligence to kill him. The old alliances formed by the jihad were falling apart. He and Prince Turki were now deadly antagonists.
Before he left Afghanistan, bin Laden put on a disguise and checked into a clinic in Karachi for some unknown ailment. His doctor, Zawahiri, was in Yemen, but they would soon be reunited.
8
Paradise
ALTHOUGH THE FIGHTING never paused after the fall of Kabul, the curtain came down on the Afghan jihad. Some Arabs remained, caught up in the civil war, but most of them moved on. They were largely unwelcome in their home countries, which had perceived them as misfits and extremists even before they went to Afghanistan. These same governments had advertised for young men to go to jihad, and subsidized their travel, hoping that the troublemakers would bleed away in a doomed cause. Little thought was given to the prospect of thousands of these young men returning, now trained in guerrilla-warfare tactics and empowered by the myth of their victory. Like any returning warriors, they brought home psychological problems and memories that were difficult to live with. Even those who had little actual experience of combat were indoctrinated with the culture of martyrdom and takfir. They strutted around