A Call to Rise
Kimbell Vincent
Copyright 2012 by Kimbell Vincent
Smashwords Edition
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Prologue
When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, to prop up the pro-communist government of Babrak Kamal, the American CIA launched the largest covert operation in history. Working through neighboring Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) the CIA roused all Muslims to oppose Russian occupation. In response, 35,000 radicals from 40 countries took up arms in an Islamic jihad. Over the next 10 years, following President Reagan’s signing of the National Security Directive 166, the U.S. supplied weapons to the Mujahadeen at the rate of up to 65,000 tons per year, together with an unending stream of CIA and Pentagon specialists who helped train Afghan rebels and direct the war effort.
In 1989, after losing 15,000 Russian soldiers, the Soviet Union withdrew and Usama bin Laden became an international hero. In the aftermath, civil war erupted as the Taliban took over. But the U.S. persisted, benefiting in part from opium sales of 200 billion dollars a year generated by the Golden Crescent, plus the motivation for strategic oil reserves and the impetus provided by the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. In the wake of all this, however, it turns out the Islamic people were equally disenchanted with the presence of Americans infidels on their soil as they were with the Russians. Still, America pressed on. One wonders why?
William Blum’s article, “The Truth About the U.S. Bombing of Afghanistan” (The Ecologist 22 March 2002) summed it up best: “Following its bombing of Iraq, the US wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. Following its bombing of Yugoslavia, the US wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia. Following its bombing of Afghanistan, Washington appears on course to wind up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.” Now, with the invasion of Iraq, American military bases are now in Turkey and Iraq. “Thus does the empire grow.”
Chapter One
1987.
Ibrahim’s senses were reeling. The smell of cordite mingled with the layers of pine branches covering his bunker. It was a hot, dusty odor, like before a rain. The tunnel, through which he peered through the crude V-site of his father's Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rife, shimmered in the heat. He dragged up a bandolier of 7.62x39mm cartridges in 5-round clips and waited. His finger was on the trigger, his body tense for the next explosion.
Of the twenty Arab patriots who scattered in the shallow trenches above Jaji, Afghanistan, only four remained alive, the rest having been neutralized by 80mm rocket fire from two Russian Mi-24 helicopters. The Mujahedin called them the devil's chariots. One of them had cork-screwed through a spiral of smoke, the result of an American, heat-seeking Stinger missile that blasted through a side-facing engine port. When the other helicopter left, with its Klimov turbo shafts thundering up and away from their hideout, Ibrahim could only stare wide eyed, with no thought of reprieve. The thought of actually dying, however, had yet to cross his mind. At age twelve, it was an unlikely sentiment. Yet, behind him, were the clotted, ragged stumps of what had once been his father's legs. Only the thighs, the torso and one arm remained. The man’s head had vaporized like an exploding light bulb, showering Ibrahim with a mist of red pearls. The other man, the tall one they called “The Emir,” was unconscious.
Soon, Ibrahim knew, the Russian soldiers would come again, advancing under progressive fire from portable mortars, until every hill was blasted apart and every trench was a choking, powder filled grave.
* * *
At a time when the average life span of an Afghan male was only 45 years, Mia Mohammed Aga was getting old. His bushy eyebrows, like his long, square beard were shot with grey. As senior Afghan commander, now with the Taliban, he spoke softly to the one squatting opposite. The lush carpet they shared, of hand spun wools and natural dyes from Turkestan, bound them as if in an arena, defying the packed mud and rock all around them. The building, a hovel in the high mountain desert, was a hundred years old. The walls were 3 feet thick and the roof sagged on age-blackened beams. It was in the same compound as the headquarters building, in a training camp for Persian Arabs. It was called al Masadah, the Lion's Den. The Lion was Usama bin Laden, the man who listened.
Aga’s deep-set eyes twinkled.
“I saw it all,” he said. “You were knocked unconscious from the same blast that killed the boy’s father. Yet, there was not a mark on you. It was as if you were sleeping. As I watched, the boy picked up his father’s Kalashnikov, even while under fire from multiple-barreled rocket launchers. Then, when the last helicopter left, he proceeded to kill three Russian soldiers in succession as they charged your position. Truly, by the Grace of Allah, the boy saved your life.”
“Where is he now?” Usama asked.
“I placed him in the care of Aymal Fahim, the one without days.” There was a moment of silence, each man thinking ahead. “The revered one will make him well.”
“Is the boy wounded?”
Aga's eyes softened.
“Not on the outside. But he was in shock when we found him. He hasn't stopped shaking since the firefight ended. I am worried about him. He is so small, so brave, may Allah preserve him.”
Usama slowly nodded, the weight of war upon him. There were too many martyrs that day.
“He will be paid,” Aga added, encouragingly. The Mujahadeen were paid for each Russian soldier proven killed.
Usama smiled fleetingly, then uncurled his long frame as he stood up, dominating the other man.
“I will go to him now.”
* * *
The revered one, Aymal Fahim, a Pashtun tribesman who spoke both Pakhtu and Farsi, was something of a muezzin, a mystic. Five times a day he called the people to the mosque to perform salat, the prayer of Islam. And the people heeded him, during the call and after, for he was known to be a wise man. He could see things. Allah had gifted him.
Usama picked his way through a field of green flags, each marking the grave of a war victim. From a distance they fluttered like tall grass. In place of tombstones, there were a few piles of rocks. But, even in Afghanistan, there were not enough rocks to cover everyone. The muezzin was there, at the center of it all, hobbling through the shadows with his spiderwood stave. He leaned on it heavily, his ancient frame permanently twisted to one side.
“Peace and the blessings of Allah be upon you,” the old man opened. “I was expecting you. Please be seated.”
Usama pursed his lips, a half-smile tempting him. The fact that the muezzin had expected him was not surprising, nor was the sumptuous offering before him. A undersized tray of tin bore three Baghlawa, pastries made with thin, layered dough, crushed walnuts and rose water. Usama hunched into position and remained quiet while the wise man poured a miniature cup of scalding green tea. Only when the older man was seated and waiting did Usama say bismillah as he reached for the delicate offering.
“You come for the boy?” The muezzin inquired, softly.
Usama needn’t reply. He gazed steadily, noting the field of wrinkles on the tanned skin below the old man’s black turban. Over his shoulders and hanging down his back, Aymal wore an almost threadbare burnoose of old, brown cloth, homespun in another time.
“I claim this child,” Aymal said, simply.
Usama looked up, startled, but still said nothing. The muezzin already knew all that was to be known. Usama waited.
“Allah, may his name be praised, has sent him to us. As you have already seen, he is not an ordinary boy. His is the long path: the more painful path. The martyrs will go to glory without him. And he will serve us well.” The old man sipped tea noisily, three short sips at a time as prescribed. At length, the muezzin continued, something of a fever in his eyes: “He is the Claw of the Lion.”
Usama bolted back as if slapped, his olive complexion drained of color. He blinked furiously, his mouth slightly agape, teeth flashing, at a loss for words.
“It is written,” his host added, quietly.
Usama leaned forward again, even more intent than before. A prophecy was being fulfilled. He knew it.
“His new name is Ibrahim Mahmud al-Abbas. Treat him, my friend, even as a favored son, for he will write your name in history. More tea?”
The muezzin poured without being asked. The emphasis on “favored” was extraordinary, since all sons are equal under Islamic law.
All the while, Usama underwent a transformation from dignified respect to unfeigned awe. Finally, he stammered: “Does he know?”
The muezzin shook his head.
“He knows nothing. His brain is addled, may Allah preserve him. He suffers from shellshock and cannot stop shaking. Even in his sleep he continues to shake, crying out his father’s name, may he know the blessings of paradise. His suffering is the pain of ages, of countless feet marching into the abyss, of tyrants and saints. He suffers for us all, and will continue to do so until Allah, praise his name forever, redeems him.”
The tea was set aside now, Usama's alhamdulilah of final thanks being an inaudible whisper. He had not expected this. In a way it changed everything. In another sense it changed nothing. Insha Allah. It was the Will of God. So be it.
Ibrahim's cot was in near darkness. There was only one unglazed window, behind wooden slats known as rawasheen, the better to keep the heat out. Sleep had finally claimed him. Usama squatted down beside the low bed and studied the sleeping figure before him. The boy was not large for his age. His hands were small and finally tapered. The wonder was that he could even hold a Kalashnikov, so slim was he. Under his scrutiny, Usama easily admitted to the beauty of his new charge. Under his tutelage, Ibrahim would indeed be treated as a favoured son. First he would be sent to a medressas where it was safe. In Jeddah, perhaps, where Usama himself went to school. Certainly not in Kandahar, where Ibrahim was born and now orphaned, and where the fighting still raged. He would go under the care of the one who had claimed him, Aymal Fahim. The aged muezzin was Ibrahim’s family now. It was meant to be, and in a way it made sense: a prayer having been answered. Not one, but many. Usama looked up, seeing nothing, seeing everything, a sense of knowing upon him, of clarion calls, the trumpets of destiny blaring.
* * *
At age forty-three, Malichi Weizman could do a standing back flip. Anytime. Anywhere. When he walked down the street men automatically made way for him. He had that look about him: like coiled dynamite that could explode at any second. He seldom smiled and had few friends. But it wasn’t choice: it was a matter of self preservation. After spending twenty years in harms way, it was a simple matter of kill or be killed, and the bad guys were always easy to spot. At least they used to be.
Now, five years after his release from Sayerot Mat’kal, also known as General Staff Reconnaissance Unit 269, the unit primarily responsible for the war against terrorism, he had been recruited by Metsada, part of Israel’s famed Mossad intelligence service. Ostensibly a jewel courier between Tel Aviv and Toronto, he was one of Israel’s 35,000 undercover agents and a specialist in his own right. His forte was piecing puzzles together, of ferreting out conclusions amid hysteria, misinformation and fragmented data.
On this day, late in August 1991, he was working at home as usual, writing reports, perched before his computer in Toronto’s Mississauga area of Churchill Meadows. Outside, the heat was unbearable – stacked in muggy layers through which 370,000 aircraft a year disgorged 24 million passengers at the nearby Pearson International Airport. The email he was sending used PGP/MIME encryption, which translated the message into an unintelligible string of data for which the recipient had to have a specially coded key to unlock. That part of his undertaking was safe. Nothing else was, he surmised, and nothing was as it seemed.
Pakistan was the springboard for covert CIA operations in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Balkans. Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, Pakistan’s super spy and head of the ISI, acted consistently on behalf of U.S. interests. According to Jane’s Defense Weekly: “Half of Taliban manpower and equipment originated in Pakistan under the ISI.” While it is a fact that the U.S. used the ISI to assist the Mujahadeen, Bin Laden and the Taliban to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan, few people realize that the CIA’s operation began before the Soviets invaded. In 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor to U.S. president Jimmy Carter, said to Le Nouvel Observateur: “It was July 3, 1979, (5 months before the Soviet invasion) that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.” The intention was to provoke the Soviet Union into invading, in order to bring them down, which they did on 24 December 1979.
But the current situation really had its beginnings in 1987, when Usama bin Laden split with MAK to start his own jihad. He proclaimed a holy war was against Western influence in all Arab countries, particularly the Americans for having opened military bases in Saudi Arabia, and – of course – the Zionists in Al Quds, Jerusalem. Then, in 1988, he gained international notoriety when he founded al-Qa’ida, The Base in Arabic, which was dedicated to uniting all Muslims in a strict, fundamentalist Islamic state.
“So, what’s the beef?” Malichi asked himself, aloud, already knowing the answer.
According to The Bible, Abraham, the first Jew, had two sons: Isaac and Ishmael. Apparently, in order to prove obedience, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac at the Temple Mount. Then, just as Abraham was about to kill Isaac on the alter, an angel appeared telling Abraham to forget it. “Your offspring shall inherit the gate of his enemy.” Thereafter, Isaac became the grandfather of the twelve tribes of Israel.
That’s when the trouble began, because there’s another spin on this. In Islam, the other son, Ishmael, became the father of the Arabs. Ipso facto, this makes Abraham and the Muslims the chosen people who are supposed to inherit the gate of their enemy.
Now, a couple of thousand years later, while Israel eventually prospered, the Muslim states have been floundering; it seems they cannot build a modern civilization even with the help of all the oil money in the world. In Malichi Weizman’s opinion, they could not fight either, as was proven by five defeats in five wars at the hand of the Israelis. According to Bernard Lewis, a professor at John Hopkins University, jealousy, humiliation and low self-esteem are at the root of Arab outrage.
Enter Osama bin Laden, the Muslim Messiah who ousted the Russians from Afghanistan in 1989. At long last the Islamic community had the means to inject fear and respect into the infidel world. But, they have corrupted Abraham’s zeal by making a virtue of suicide bombings and global terror. All of which is supposedly reinforced by selected quotes from Mohammad, the prophet of Islam who arrived 571 years after Jesus in order to set things right. Usama’s raisen d’etre was provided in dramatic fashion on 2 August 1990 when Saddam Hussein sent 150,000 Iraqi troops and tanks storming into Kuwait. He seized that tiny country in just five hours.
Over the next several months, 300,000 U.S. soldiers took up position in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden, then living in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, was outraged at the presence of American infidels on Islamic holy land. He offered to oust the Americans and free Kuwait himself, all the while seething as half-naked U.S. troops took to boozing and sunbathing on the beaches. To further his indignation, his offer was firmly rejected. Usama’s oath of revenge now extended to include the Saudi royal family. Meanwhile, a coalition air attack began on the morning of 17 January 1991 and the war to reclaim Kuwait was over in just one-hundred hours. In that short space of time, the Iraqi infrastructure had been reduced to ashes, while the Iraqi Army surrendered en mass having suffered 35,000 dead.
Following the Kuwait war, Usama bin Laden made repeated virulent criticisms of the Saudi monarchy. Later that year, after he was caught smuggling arms, they expelled him from the country. Had he been less of a public hero they would have locked him up and thrown away the key.
* * *
Aymal Fahim, the retired muezzin and now Ibrahim’s guardian, stayed in the Land Rover as Usama bin Laden and Ibrahim wandered a short distance into the desert. Behind them, beyond the sheep and donkeys on the unpaved track, the first lights of evening winked in the setting sun that flooded Jeddah. The name Jeddah means seashore in Arabic, and the sunsets over the ocean are always beautiful to behold.
“Aymal tells me that you are doing well in school. How do you like it? Have you made many friends?”
Ibrahim skipped to keep up. He had been in school for three years now. He was the oldest in every class and he had much yet to learn. Because of his age, however, he was left pretty much to his own resources, making him more of a loner than ever and somewhat introverted. He might have shrugged his shoulders in reply, something of a habit, had not his overwhelming respect for his benefactor dictated otherwise. In any case, Usama bin Laden was not accustomed to being ignored.
“I am grateful to learn,” Ibrahim replied, honestly, “but...”
“But, what?” Usama halted mid-stride. “Is something wrong? Does someone mistreat you?” Ordinarily Usama would have known the answer, what with Ibrahim supposedly being “treated as a favored son,” but such was not the case. Although they shared the same city, Ibrahim had seen Usama on only three occasions, each time from a distance.
Ibrahim struggled for the words. They did not come easy. It was something he had been forced to deny in himself. If he could have expressed it, he was lonely. And Aymal, although wise, was hardly a source of affection. Ibrahim didn’t know what to say. Instead, he looked up at the beautiful Usama, at the man whose photographs plastered every square inch of his tiny bedroom, all taken from the internet. Suddenly, his large brown eyes welled over. He swiped at his tears, angrily.
“Ah,” Usama slightly smiled, his head somewhat tilted to one side. “So you've heard then. Well, I had hoped to tell you myself. I will be leaving Jeddah in a week’s time, because of a disagreement with the Royal Family. I will live in Khartoum. But Sudan, is just across the Red Sea. It is not far away. Think of me when the sun sets. I will be there.”
All in all it was just too much for Ibrahim.
“Forever?” he blurted, the tears coming in spite of himself.
Usama pursed his lips and for a moment he looked serious. Then, relenting, he put an arm around Ibrahim’s shoulder and drew him close, giving the boy the closest thing to a hug he ever had. As Usama looked up at the blood shot sky, he said: “I understand.”
Love was such a strange thing.
Ibrahim dared not move. The smell of the man, the feel of his long fingers, the rumble of his voice – all of it was magic upon Ibrahim’s senses, and he would carry those impressions with him for life. Nothing else seemed to matter.
“As Allah wills it, I will see you again, my son. Until then you must learn all you can, for one day I will call upon you with a mission, and you must be ready. When that time comes you will be more than a fly to be swatted by a giant hand. This I know.”
Then, quite unexpected, Ibrahim made the boldest move of his life – something that was even harder than staring down the sights of an AK47 in a firefight. He slipped through Usama’s arm and fell to his knees. Then, taking Usama’s other hand in his own, he brushed the big man’s hand against his cheek, reveling in the moment.
“I have made a bayat,” he declared, his voice immediately calm.
Usama look down, startled. A bayat was a very serious thing.
“You are too young to be making a life-long oath.”
Whether true or not, it had been done. This time when Ibrahim looked up his eyes were clear, brilliant with intelligence and unwavering. Boy or not, he was indeed man enough.
“I will serve you,” he said, solemnly, the moment weighted as he enunciated each word.
Usama grew fierce, his eyes flashing. The color drained from his thin lips as he clenched his jaw.
This was the real thing. There was no fervor, no group hysteria to motivate it, no mere wistfulness nor indulgence of any kind. It was as if Allah had just given him a second life. It was akin to being reborn and there was nothing more to be said.
At length, he drew Ibrahim to his feet and placed a hand on each of the boy’s shoulders. He looked straight into Ibrahim’s eyes and uttered, simply: “Thank you.”
On the way back to the car, Usama instructed Ibrahim to communicate with him through his brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, who, while also living in Jeddah, was head of a group called Benevolance International. Ostensibly a charitable front, it was used to funnel donations to terrorist camps.
* * *
Chapter Two
Within the multiplex of red tile roofs and magnificent Mission style sandstone arches, John Aaron Warner, aka JAW, was something of a displaced person. As a long-standing professor of political science, he ought to have been elsewhere. As it was, his office in the Quad was tucked into quarters officially designated as Asian Studies. In many respects his life at Stanford University had been idyllic. Once he had paraded through one classroom after another, always packing a rack of books and his dog-eared briefcase. But not any more. His status had changed. Fully entitled to retirement, he stayed on as a sleeper, a force unto himself and with accountability to only a few highly placed individuals at Joint Force Headquarters - Homeland Security (JFHQ-HLS) in Norfolk, Virginia, which is responsible for the land and maritime defense of the continental United States.
Near Palo Alto and the Silicon Valley, the university was less than an hour from San Francisco where he lived. His commute was through towering redwood forests and along the seemingly endless beaches of the Pacific Ocean. Long since, however, the two hours a day spent driving had become too much of a sacrifice, no matter how picturesque. Instead, he had a cot installed in an alcove next to his private lavatory. It served him well, as he often had a mid-day snooze as was his wont, like right now. He sometimes joked that he wasn’t a “sleeper” for nothing.
As his melodious snoring filled the room, the light from outside filtered through columns of tall Venetian blinds. On his desk there was a mountain of documents and files of every description, the disarray matching the twelve foot floor-to-ceiling shelves on either side. Nearest to where he lay sleeping, his shoes kicked off and his suspenders eased from his shoulders, was the financial section. In a mass of Cerlox plastic bindings resided a host of secrets some people thought best forgotten. The topmost binder heralded back to the 1976 BCCI scandal. It still made good reading. It began with a 9/24/01 report by Christopher Byron, entitled “Terrorists, dollars and a tangled web.”
The Bank for Credit & Commerce International (BCCI), with its main offices in London and New York, was bankrolled by Saudi Arabian interests such as Khalid bin Mahfouz. The BCCI was involved in nefarious activities of every sort, throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. According to Forbes Magazine: “A New York state grand jury indicted Khalid for fraud, and the U.S. Federal Reserve alleged that he breached banking regulations. He denied any wrongdoing, of course. Then the charges were dropped in 1993, but only after Khalid agreed to pay a penalty of $225 million, including $37 million in fines.” Apparently, Khalid also paid out an additional $253 million to settle claims with BCCI's creditors.
In a similar vein, following the death of Usama bin Laden’s father in 1968, Usama’s brother Salem took over the family business, one of the largest construction companies in the world. Piecing the story together from sources such as Christopher Byron and The Wall Street Journal: James R. Bath, who in 1976 was working for the CIA as liaison to Saudi Arabia – while Bush Sr. was head of the CIA – funneled money on behalf of Salem bin Laden to invest in George W. Bush’s new oil company, Arbusto Energy, Inc., in Bush’s home state of Texas. Arbusto means “shrub” in Spanish. Close enough. Shortly, Bush sold his fledgling oil company to Harken Energy, at which point he too became ensnarled in BCCI conspiracies. Khalid bin Mahfouz and Bath, both investors in the Main Bank of Houston, arranged for Harken Energy to borrow $25 million from the Union Bank of Switzerland, which – surprise – was half owned by none other than Khalid bin Mahfouz himself. At this point, writes Byron, the Swiss bank sold its interest in Harken Energy to a Saudi real estate developer by the name of Abdullah Bakhsh.
When, in March 2001, the FBI subpoenaed the banking records of the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm, it was revealed that Bush Sr. also had ongoing relationships with a certain primary investor by the name of the bin Laden family. Meantime, in Craig Unger’s book entitled House of Bush, House of Saud, it was business as usual with bin Mahfouz giving Usama bin Laden a $270,000 charitable donation. In the aftermath, it is reported that Khalid bin Mahfouz has been under house arrest in Saudi Arabia since 2000, while still posing as a charitable front to raise more money for Usama bin Laden’s undertakings.
Mahfouz’s enterprises include several business which, while generating income for al-Qa’ida, procured arms, chemicals and explosives, at the same time providing legitimized travel for their operatives. These activities were conducted through a front company known as Wadi al-Aqiq. Other companies such as Al Hajira built hundreds of miles of highways in Sudan; an agricultural company called Al Themar Al Mubaraka farmed hundreds of thousands of acres of sorghum, gum Arabic and sesame – with exclusive export rights – and sunflowers in Sudan’s central Gezira province. There were also investment companies called Taba Investments and Laden International with banking connections in Sudan, Malaysia, Britain, Hong Kong and Dubai.
* * *
When Usama bin Laden arrived in Khartoum in 1991, it was with a smile. He had everything he needed: an opportunity for much needed legitimate business, while the Sudanese government was entirely sympathetic to his activities otherwise. As would come out later, at a secret hearing in a federal court in Manhattan, Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl, bin Laden’s accountant of sorts come FBI informant, said their office was just like any other except it managed such things as forged passports, fake identities, the smuggling of arms and the purchase of chemical weapons. It was merely business as usual. Soon, bin Laden had established Mujahadeen bases that recruited and trained even more operatives, at the same time spreading the word of radical fundamentalist Islam. The opportunity was simply too good to ignore. For the first time in history, Iran’s minority Shia forged an alliance with the Sunni Muslim government of Sudan – a marriage made in heaven some said: the tolerant Sunni of Sudan now in bed with the vitriolic Shia of Iran. To be sure, someone was going to get screwed, since historically they had never missed an opportunity to annihilate each other.
In the meantime, while Libya dismantled a few of its terrorist camps – under international pressure – some members of their radical Palestinian Abu Nidal organization popped up in Sudan. About the same time, the Hezbollah of Lebanon and the Palestinian Islamic group known as Hamas arrived in Khartoum as well. Then, following the arrival of Iran’s President Hashemi Rafsanjani, his Revolutionary Guard personnel arrived to train Sudan’s fundamentalist people’s militia. Egyptian sources claim there are about twenty camps, staffed by members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Mujahadeen veterans from Afghanistan. All of the powerful Islamic extremist groups – Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah – use this training facility. In one writer’s words, if terrorism is piracy, then Sudan is the Barbary Coast.
Sudan is the largest country in Africa, although it is about 1/10th the size of the U.S. It’s 27 million inhabitants are, however, also among the poorest, with 40% unemployment, spiraling inflation and a hundred different languages to contend with. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1956, a half-million people have died in civil war between its Arab northerners and black southerners, leading in 1989 to the proclamation of an Islamic government. At first spearheaded by Hassan al-Turabi, the power now rests with General Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, the leader of the coup d’etat – who is now President – and Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and leader of the National Islamic Front. Turabi, in his mid-sixties, is highly educated. He speaks both English and Arabic and has law degrees from Khartoum, London and Paris. Reportedly a charming man, he is as much feared as respected. While Turabi envisions expanding a tolerant version of Islamic law and the Sharia, Tehran hopes to use Sudan as a springboard for the spread of militant fundamentalism throughout the Middle East. Either way, Usama bin Laden was in his element.
* * *
Ibrahim watched as Aymal Fahim poured tea. It was a ritual when Ibrahim got home, still in his school uniform. The previous year he had graduated from short pants to long, a sign of his coming of age and the considerable progress he had made academically. The old man would ask what he had learned that day, his questions often being more poignant and deeper reaching than had been afforded in class. It way his way. Real understanding did not come easy.
Ibrahim was wide eyed and amazed at Aymal’s dexterity as he stuck his thumb into the top of the teacup as he poured. It was the only way the old man could tell how full the cup was. It was almost five years since they had left Afghanistan and Aymal was now nearly blind. It was a wonder that he coped as well as he did. Another thing that Ibrahim picked up on, although the old man had more than his share of hurts, as evidenced by his permanently twisted frame and reliance upon his spiderwood stave, he never ever complained – not of anything. It was a mystery. One day Ibrahim asked him about it.
“It is a good question,” the old muezzin replied. “So I will tell you a little story about an old man we called Rafa. He was a street beggar in Kabul. He had nothing to his name beyond what he carried in a bundle on his back, and he lived on the street, sleeping in doorways. One day a man with a wheelbarrow knocked Rafa onto the roadway and he was run over by a truck. He lost both legs. I do not know how he survived it, but he did, moving about on his knuckles, always a gnarled smile upon his lips, though his few remaining teeth were badly broken. As you can imagine, he was unable to fend for himself at all. He was as skinny as anyone I ever saw, and his shirt and jacket were shredded and dirty from being dragged as he moved about. Even his turban was filthy. Being unable to run, he was often robbed. Truly, he had nothing. Nevertheless, he always smiled in that crooked way of his. And he never complained and he never criticized. It was a wonder.
“One day, as part of a civic clean-up program, the authorities decided he was no longer welcome on the street. It wasn’t good for business and he made a bad impression on the tourists. As two soldiers made to carry him away, to one of the back streets where he would surely die, one of them tried to soften the blow.
“It won't be so bad,” the soldier said, “You will be more sheltered from the wind and there are some boxes to store things in.”
Rafa, grinning all the while, replied: “I will be very happy there.”
“Will you now?” the other soldier retorted. “You haven't even seen the place.”
“It does not matter,” Rafa explained. “My happiness depends on how I arrange my mind, not on how I arrange my boxes.”
So it went. Ibrahim learned from the old man, about life and much more besides. His other great fascinations, not surprising, were television and computers. Like any kid with the opportunity, the things that often baffle older folks came as second nature to him. Although Ibrahim and Aymal lived simply, Ibrahim could have almost anything he wanted so long as his guardian agreed. Money was not an issue: mere necessity was. As a consequence, in his tiny bedroom, Ibrahim had his own color TV and a constantly upgraded computer, such as was available – and he was more than adept at both, ferreting out such information as able by reading between the lines to overcome the censorship. It would be another four years before al-Jazeera would begin broadcasting from Qatar, offering the most controversial Arabic TV News Channel in the Middle East.
To the extent that television was controlled and the programming limited, the world of computers was just the opposite. Because of the internet, Ibrahim could go anywhere, anytime: to CNN one minute and downtown Vancouver the next. But, unlike his counterparts abroad, he never played shoot-em-up videos. Having experienced real war, for him it was not a game. That was for children. The other marvelous connection he made was with radicals, malcontents, agitators and fanatics from every part of the globe. Lacking friends his own age at school, he made contact with a host of people who shared his interests, and he made close ties with many of them. It was simply a matter of discretion and opportunity, which included a constant flow of information about Usama bin Laden, Ibrahim’s hero, or anything to do with al-Qa’ida and Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Usama's brother-in-law. The Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, told Congress that bin Laden, through his internet network, was “the nation’s most immediate and serious transnational threat.” Moreover: “Al-Qa’ida’s encryption techniques have thus far defied Western eavesdropping attempts.”
Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a Saudi Arabian businessman, who also lived in Jeddah, had been an Al-Qa’ida lieutenant who trained with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. He was later based in Sudan, using the alias Abu Barra. In 1988 he organized the Benevolence International Corporation in the Philippines, claiming it was an import-export company. Khalifa came to the attention of American authorities in 1992 when Ramzi Yousef and Ahmed Ajaj tried to enter the U.S. with false passports and, in their luggage, instructions on how to make bombs. Not too bright, especially when Khalifa’s name was on the manual. However, the INS was backlogged and holding cells were at a premium, so they let him go with instructions to reappear a month later. Oh, sure. Yousef, of course, disappeared and did not resurface until being connected with the 1993 plot to bomb the World Trade Center, at which time Khalifa’s business card was found in Yousef’s Jersey City apartment. While Yousef did a good job of pointing the U.S. finger of suspicion at Khalifa, as an Al-Qa’ida agent he undertook extraordinary measures to obscure his own identity, using twenty-one different aliases including Najy Awaita Haddad, Paul Vijay, Adam Sali, Adam Adel Ali, Adam Khan Baluch, Doctor Adel Sabah and Doctor Richard Smith. Not only did he learn to make bombs at a training camp in Peshawar, he also went to the Swansea Institute of Higher Education in Britain, where he studied electrical engineering. Obviously, the man was no dummy.
To prove it, on 26 Feb 1993, Yousef rented a van, loaded it with 1,300 pounds of explosives and drove into the garage of the World Trade Center. When it exploded it blew a hundred foot hole through four concrete floors, killing six people and injuring over a thousand others. He had hoped to take out one of the structural columns, causing the tower to collapse. No such luck. He escaped to Pakistan hours later and hid out in al-Qa’ida safe houses where he met Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 air attacks. Later in 1993, Yousef plotted to assassinate Pope John Paul ll and Bill Clinton. The plan to kill Clinton was abandoned, while the plot to kill the Pope, Operation Bojinka, was exposed when a chemical fire occurred in a friend’s apartment and Yousef’s laptop computer was found with all the details. It wasn’t too long after that when one of Yousef’s associates, Istaique Parker, a South African Muslim living in Pakistan, betrayed Yousef in Islamabad in order to get a two million dollar reward being offered for his capture.
So it was that Ibrahim was riveted to his computer at every opportunity. He knew about Mohammed Jamal Khalifa’s arrest, on 14 December 1994, the same day it happened. All the while, Khalifa, Usama’s brother-in-law, was Ibrahim’s only live contact in Jeddah, which caused him considerable anxiety for many months. When Khalifa traveled to the U.S. to meet Mohamad Loav Bayazid, the president of Benevolence International, they were arrested near San Francisco after the FBI got a tip from the Philippines that Khalifa was providing the funds for Operation Bojinka. Frantic, Ibrahim sent repeated emails to the Islamic Benevolence Committee in Jeddah, but was either ignored or given no assurances whatever. Finally, after being extradited by the INS, Khalifa was tried in a Jordanian court and acquitted of all charges. He returned to Jeddah where he refused to talk to anyone, Ibrahim included.
* * *
Malichi Weizman gazed out his window at the 3/8” tomb of ice surrounding his car. It would take him the better part of an hour just to get the door open and defrost the windshield. The ice storms in Ontario were a nuisance, pure and simple. Never mind the numbing cold. But he had other things to think about. The world was falling to pieces, thanks to the ISI and CIA. But there was some good news too.
Pakistan’s extensive intelligence military-network, the 150,000 strong I.S.I., had not pulled in its horns in the wake of the Cold War. At the continued urging of the CIA, the Islamic jihad out of Pakistan was hastening the breakdown of the Soviet Union, albeit with the help of Osama bin Laden who was strengthening the old Wahhabi connection with the Deobandi Taliban rulers. Upon the recent emergence of six new Muslim republics, Islamic fundamentalism was doing a good job of promoting America’s strategic interests in Central Asia, never mind the ideological difference and the casualties from never-ending civil war. Pakistan’s Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), aided by the Saudi Wahhabis, had recruited volunteers to fight in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. To complicate matters further, profits from the Golden Crescent drug trade were being used to finance the Bosnian Muslim Army and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and it appeared that Mujahadeen mercenaries had joined the ranks of the KLA-NLA in attacking Macedonia.
On the good side of the news, in 1994 Usama bin Laden’s Saudi citizenship was revoked after he claimed responsibility for attacks on joint U.S. and Saudi military bases at Riyadh and Dahran. After the 1995 attempted assassination of Egyptian president Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Sudan offered to extradite bin Laden to the United States or Saudi Arabia, however the U.S. had no legal grounds to hold him and the Saudi’s wanted no part of the controversy that was sure to follow. When the United Nations Security Council ordered Sudan to extradite the three men responsible for the Mubarak assassination attempt, they responded by expelling the terrorist Carlos the Jackal to France.
The Washington Post, on August 21, 2001, reported: “The State Department said in its last annual terrorism report that Khartoum’s behavior had improved but that Sudan continued to be used as a safe haven by members of various groups, including associates of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization, the Islamic Group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Palestine Islamic Jihad and Hamas.”
The U.S. then added Sudan to its list of states sponsoring terrorism and ordered all of its diplomats to leave the country.
Since then, U.S. agents and Pakistani police caught up with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, one of bin Laden’s primary operatives. He was arrested at a guest house in Islamabad, Pakistan, on 7 February 1995, then flown to New York pending trial. On 5 September 1996, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. In court, still defiant, he proclaimed: “I am a terrorist and I am proud of it.” He is now serving his sentence in the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
* * *
As he stepped down from his chartered plane on the runway in Kabul, Usama bin Laden took a moment to close his eyes against the sun blasted landscape and inhaled deeply. The thin air was always the same: oppressively hot or bone chilling, but always reeking with the smell of dust mixed with dried human feces. After mounting international pressure through 1996, Sudan had finally expelled him. In a way he felt like he was now home. But he would not stay in Kabul: the city was in ruin. In 1993 alone, according to Felix Ermacora, in his report to the UN General Assembly, more than 10,000 people had been killed, 66,000 houses had been destroyed or damaged and about 110,000 families had been displaced. Instead, Usama had made up his mind to first go to Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, near the famed Khyber Pass. The land there was lush, with oranges and sugarcane, and had summer-like weather all year round. Moreover, he was comfortable with the Pashtun tribesmen and had forged a close relationship with Mullah Mohammad Omar of Afghanistan’s new Taliban government, after having financed or trained many of their Islamic guerrillas. Life would be good, he affirmed. His only regret was that he hadn’t managed to attend Ibrahim’s graduation ceremony upon his completing high school. In the back of his mind, Usama knew that he might never see the boy again. He lowered his head, more than a little wistful as he crossed the tarmac to the waiting car: an old Toyota sedan with strings of brass bells and pom-poms plastered all over.
* * *
Chapter Three
Friends on the internet said Usama was in Jalalabad, so that’s where Ibrahim was determined to go. After considerable fussing he had finally convinced the aging Aymal Fahim to let make the journey. But the small victory was hardly satisfying, for as he asserted himself he sensed when, for the first time, the old muezzin backed down. For some strange reason, Ibrahim had suddenly become the dominant one, although he didn’t understand the reason behind it. Moreover, it meant leaving Aymal alone for a time. The truth be told, the old man was now more dependent on Ibrahim than the other way around. In any case, it was understood that Ibrahim would soon enter university – but only as a man. The old one had insisted on it. And, as a man, Ibrahim would no longer be accountable to anyone but himself. He was, however, always mindful of his bayat. Everything remained dedicated to the fulfillment of his oath. That would never change, and for the time being, at least, that meant finding Usama bin Laden, if he could.
Ibrahim smiled at the Afghan border guard and offered the man a cheap ball point pen, taken from his hoard of 50 bought at the University Book Store in Jeddah. As baksheesh, his offering was more appreciated than rupees and often got better results. The guard, his eyes but slits in the harsh sun, affected something between a sneer and a smile. Behind him, his compatriots were using rubber hoses to move the line along, most of them refugee families.
The drive from Peshawar, Pakistan, had been made atop a near derelict bus that careened from side to side, the gears grinding every inch of the torturous 110km through the Khyber Pass. Because of recent rocket attacks, Ibrahim had been unable to book a direct flight to Jalalabad, and flights to Kabul departed only from England. The guard gave his Tribal Area Permit a cursory glance and snatched the pen with a nod of his head. Ibrahim moved on, without even a search of his backpack. He was home again and felt curiously free.
He quickly arranged to share a convoy of three taxis, and while waiting for a soldier escort to take the lead, in a modified Datsun pickup with a rear-mounted machine gun, he adjusted his watch to local time. Afghanistan – out of step in even this – is 30 minutes different from all of the surrounding countries.
The road immediately improved and they made good time without – as he remembered – having to contend with herds of goats or stooped columns of laden peasants fleeing wherever. As the flat-roofed mud villages became more numerous, they crossed the Kabul River and arrived in Jalalabad in the late afternoon. Ibrahim’s first impression was of the number of armed men, overly serious Pathans mostly, packing their ever ubiquitous AK47 automatic rifles. It looked like the city was under siege. Perhaps it was, Ibrahim grimaced.
His second impression was the absence of women in the mandatory head-to-toe chadri, blue, brown or black, with holes chopped out for the eyes, like ghosts. The only relief was when they wore a white head scarf to indicate they were married. Any woman who dared show her face, or even an inch of ankle, was considered to be tempting a man. If caught, by the Promotion of Virtue goons, they would be whipped on the spot. And if they got raped, which happened all the time, the attacker would get off while the woman could be charged with committing a sexual crime, for which she might be stoned to death. It was the same if she was charged with adultery. Under Islamic law, women have no rights at all. They cannot go to school or work in shops, and they dare not go anywhere without a male blood-relative, and even if they take a bus it had to have tinted windows for them to hide behind. Having lived abroad, Ibrahim was keenly aware of the injustices. Either way, however, Afghan fathers would continue to sell their young daughters to pay off debts and people caught stealing would get their right hand and left foot lopped off in accordance with Sharia law.
Curiously, as barbaric as it is, the system does put a lid on petty crime. For the average Muslim, living in a crime-ridden city like Chicago is simply unimaginable, even though Mark 9:43 claims: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands go to Hell.” The punishment for murder, however, is the same as in the U.S. In Afghanistan you pay the victims what is called “blood-money” and you walk. In the States you pay it to a lawyer. Same difference.
The convoy ground to a halt at the central bus station and Ibrahim was on his own. Unlike the locals, he did not have a full beard, but had accumulated a three week stubble which somewhat helped him to blend in. But his clothes were a dead giveaway – pun intended – because if he wasn’t careful he’d get his throat slit for his troubles. As a consequence, while he stuck to the crowded bazaars, he haggled over the price of a plain thigh-length shirt and a suitable belt, together with a nondescript brown vest and open sandals to match. At another shop he bought the last of his Shalwar Kadiz: a pair of white, baggy pantaloons. As for a hat, instead of the large traditional turban, he still had his old astrakhan hat, made from the pelt of a lamb fetus. Fortunately, the outside of his head hadn’t grown: only what was inside had.
After a standing meal, Ibrahim hired a rickshaw. He had to chose between a low-class hotel or one of the better tea houses where a space would be made available for him to sleep on the floor. Chagrinned, he chose the former, the Spin Ghar Hotel, not far from the park surrounding the Mausoleum of Amir Habibullah, the king who was assassinated in 1919. A late night walk through the park, to escape the oppressive heat in his hotel room, came with the smell of decomposing shit everywhere. At least, he reconciled, that meant he was safe from land mines.
The next morning, after a welcome shower and a change into his new clothes, Ibrahim could have used the single telephone at the hotel front desk – after parting with another ballpoint pen – but it wasn’t the least secure. Instead, he used the time until checkout to scan his contacts through an uplink on his laptop computer. He carried spare batteries and was good for 20 hours. Two hours later, filled with dismay, he had learned that Usama bin Laden had already left the city. Worse than that, Usama was now reported to be holed up in a Mujahadeen base at Tora Bora, high in the mountains to the south of Jalalabad. Unless he got help, Ibrahim was afraid he’d never see Usama again.
Ibrahim renewed his booking and frantically set about trying to find someone who could help him. While the heat built up outside his hotel window in downtown Jalalabad, he made contact over the internet with everyone he could think of, persuading and coercing as able, then followed down one lead after another. Morning prayers and mid-day Salat-ul-Zuhr came and went and he was still at it, although now clad only in his underwear, while his newly forming beard itched furiously with the sweat trickling down his neck. The fan in the ceiling didn’t work. Then he had a break-through. An encrypted email arrived from Eastern Shura. Ibrahim sent the appropriate response and got another email from someone connected with Haji Hayat Ullah, a man he didn’t know, and was given instructions to contact a notorious warlord by the name of Sheikh Maulvi Younis Khalis. He would help, the email said. For the first time, Ibrahim had serious reservations. He was being instructed to go into bandit country, in a mountainous region where the rooster tail of dust from a car could be spotted a half-mile away. Around any turn in the road he could be ambushed by a posse of cutthroat villagers or unpaid soldiers out for an easy kill. It was not a pleasant prospect.
In the distant countryside, beggared peasants still lived as they had for hundreds of years, cut off from the world in mud and rock fortresses with lookout towers and gun slits. Like a moonscape, desolate except for rocky mountain crags, and a million landmines scattered all about, it was the perfect lair for the lion Usama bin Laden. So long as he maintained good relations with the local Pashtun tribesmen, it was a suitable haven for al-Qaeda training camps. The question was, could Ibrahim get there without getting killed or blown up for his troubles.
That afternoon, after parting with another 5 ballpoint pens, Ibrahim found himself in a chaihana, sitting at a low table across from a swarthy Muj mercenary. He was the Rambo type, except for his pock marked face and enormous, black beard. The tea house veranda was open to the bustle of the street. There was dust everywhere and the buzzing flies were relentless. Tea was served in clear glasses, scalding to the touch. Shortly, whatever money he had saved on a second rate hotel was quickly blown when he had to pay the equivalent of $300 USD to secure three armed guards and a lumbering Ural-375 three ton truck. At least, he told himself, he would get there in one piece. The truck, a battered left-over from the Soviets, looked like it could roll over a landmine and just keep going. He fervently hoped so.
They left Jalalabad the next morning, before first light. The mercenary, laughing, told Ibrahim there was nothing to worry about for the first hour or so. Not the least reassured that his hired help might be the very ones who would rob him, Ibrahim’s misgivings leaped to the surface in a rush of adrenalin when, about 40 miles later, the truck bounced off the road into a Taliban militia tank park.
“Now we wait,” the guide explained, tersely, pointing to an area between two tanks where a tarpaulin had been strung for shade. The big man tossed a brown blanket over his shoulder and strode away, no more of an explanation forthcoming. Whatever uncertainties Ibrahim had were proven justified when, within the quarter hour, no less than 12 belligerent looking soldiers in green and brown camouflage uniforms surrounded him, their assault rifles at the ready. Game time was over. Things were getting very serious, very quickly.
It was then that Ibrahim noticed a wizened, hawk nosed man who stood apart from the rest. A long purple scarf topped his military jacket, otherwise he was dressed the same as the other men. He was looking at Ibrahim intently, as if trying to make up his mind.
Suddenly, the butt of a rifle slammed into Ibrahim’s back.
“Do not look!” the soldier screamed.
Compliance came easy, for in the next instant Ibrahim found himself on all fours, starring dizzily at the ground as pain leaped the length of his spine. And, in spite of himself, he was drooling.
“What is your name?” another soldier barked.
Ibrahim gasped: “I am Ibrahim Mahmud al-Abbas, from Kandahar.”
All at once the circle around Ibrahim widened. The leader of the troop looked over to the one with the purple scarf, a puzzled look on his face. The man approached, at the same time beckoning Ibrahim’s body guards forward with Ibrahim’s backpack.
“You did not ask his name?” the wrinkled one demanded.
The big man with the square beard shrugged, and spread his hands.
“No, of course you didn’t. You were more interested in the money. Give it back.”
The body guard hesitated, perplexed.
“Now!” the hawk screamed, immediately furious.
The big man retrieved a roll of notes from his fatigues. He held it out, but when Ibrahim merely flopped over onto his rear end, looking up dazed, the man dropped the wad of money onto the ground beside him.
The man with scarf looked down, his eyes blazing fiercely.
“How do I know you are who you say you are?” he demanded.
Ibrahim focused.
“Because you have my word.”
The other man slightly laughed.
“Well, you are arrogant enough. Who sent you?”
“Nobody sent me. I came for a visit.”
Ibrahim’s explanation was absurd. No tourist in their right mind would do what he had done. In a way that made his explanation all the more plausible.
The man with the scarf grunted.
“You talk too much.”
Ibrahim looked up, puzzled.
“...on the air. That computer thing you carry. Do you know who I am?”
“No, sir.”
Ibrahim’s interrogator turned to one of his soldiers.
“Introduce me to this fool.”
“Your gracious host, may Allah be praised, is Sheikh Maulvi Younis Khalis.”
Ibrahim’s eyes lit up.
“The great warlord? But I thought you were in Tora Bora? I... I need your help!”