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By Root 601 0

that captivated his imagination. The government barter had made him perhaps the largest landowner in the country. He had a million acres in the Gash River Delta in northeast Sudan; a large plot in Gedarif, the most fertile province in the eastern section, and another in Damazine, which lies along the western bank of the Blue Nile near the Ethiopian border. Through his agricultural company, al-Thimar al-Mubaraka, bin Laden enjoyed a near monopoly on Sudan’s major farm exports—sesame, white corn, and gum arabic. Other bin Laden subsidiaries produced sorghum, honey, peanuts, chickens, livestock, and watermelons. He declared that Sudan could feed the entire world if it were properly managed, and to prove the point he showed off a prize sunflower he had grown in Gedarif. “It could be in the Guinness Book of World Records,” he told the minister of state.

He was a comparatively generous employer by Sudanese standards, paying $200 per month to most of his workers, with senior managers making from $1,000 to $1,500. He imposed corporate management techniques on his organization, requiring that forms be filled out in triplicate to purchase tires, for instance. Those employees who were actual members of al-Qaeda received a monthly bonus, between $50 and $120, depending on the size of the member’s family and his nationality—Saudis got more and Sudanese got less—along with free housing and medical care. There were about five hundred people working for bin Laden in Sudan, but there were never more than a hundred of them who were active members of al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden shied away from the intractable conflict in the southern region of Sudan that was costing the impoverished Sudanese government $1 million a day and would eventually claim more than a million lives. Issam, a veteran, considered the war a jihad, and it seemed wrong to him that the famous Islamic warrior held himself apart from it. Bin Laden explained that he was through with warfare. He said he resolved to quit al-Qaeda altogether and become a farmer.

He made similar statements to many of his friends. He was at a crossroads. Life in Sudan was pleasantly monotonous. In the mornings he walked to his local mosque to pray, followed by a gaggle of acolytes and admirers; he lingered to study with the holy men, often breakfasting with them before going to his office, or to visit one of the various factories that were part of his expanding portfolio, or to hop on a tractor and plow the fields on one of his massive estates. Although he was the CEO of a burgeoning empire, he continued his lifelong habit of fasting on Mondays and Thursdays. Before Friday prayers, he would sometimes speak in the main Khartoum mosque, urging his fellow Muslims to discover the blessings of peace.

There was one galling fact that prevented bin Laden from relaxing into the life of business and of spiritual contemplation that so strongly beckoned: the continued presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia. King Fahd had pledged that the nonbelievers would be gone as soon as the war was over, and yet months after the Iraqi defeat coalition forces were still entrenched in Saudi air bases, monitoring the cease-fire agreement. Bin Laden agonized over what he believed was a permanent occupation of the holy land. Something had to be done.

COINCIDENTALLY, AMERICAN TROOPS were stopping over in Yemen on their way to Somalia. The famine had drawn international attention, and the United States sent a modest force to protect the United Nations aid workers against the marauding local clans.

The strategists in al-Qaeda felt encircled, however, and they read this latest development as a direct assault: Americans already controlled the Persian Gulf, and now they were using the excuse of the famine in Somalia to occupy the Horn of Africa. Yemen and Somalia were the gateposts to the Red Sea, which could easily be pinched off. After all the plans al-Qaeda had nurtured to spread an Islamist revolution, it was America that appeared to be waxing in influence across the region, seizing control of the pressure points of the Arab