• 26 June 1995: The Egyptian Gama’at tried to assassinate President Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The attack was planned by Gama’at operations chief Mustafa Hamza, who at the time managed a bin Laden business in Khartoum.45
• 4–8 July 1995: Kashmir’s Harakat-ul-Ansar—using the name “al-Faran”—kidnapped five Western hikers in Kashmir: a German, an American, two Britons, and a Norwegian; one escapes, the Norwegian is decapitated, the others are not found.46
• July–October 1995: Algeria’s GIA staged nine bombings in France, most in Paris, which killed 9 and wounded 160. The media quoted the French Ministry of Interior as saying bin Laden funded the Paris attacks. Rashid Randa, leader of the attacks, is an Arab Afghan who had known bin Laden since the 1980s. Time magazine reported that after Randa’s arrest, British police found records of wire transfers to him from bin Laden companies in Sudan. According to the director of the Algerian Judicial Police, Mohamed Isouli, bin Laden was a sponsor of Algeria’s Islamists—GIA and the Islamic Salvation Front—and helped them “maintain a genuine network supplying arms and military equipment to the Algerian guerrillas.” Isouli added that with “bin Laden’s financial support,” the Islamists have “active structures and networks abroad, responsible for propaganda, fund-raising, and setting up a logistical structure for the benefit of armed groups.”47
• 20 September 1995: The Egyptian Gama’at detonated a car bomb near police headquarters in Rijeka, Croatia, killing one and wounding dozens. The Gama’at claims credit, saying the attack was in retaliation for the disappearance of Gama’at leader Talat Fuad Kassem, who had been detained by Zagreb police in September 1994.48
• 13 November 1995: Bin Laden associates detonated a car bomb near the U.S. Office of Program Management-Saudi Arabian National Guard (OPM-SANG), killing seven and wounding forty-two. Five of the dead were Americans. About the OPM-SANG bombers, bin Laden has said, “We describe those [attackers] as heroes and describe them as men. They have pulled down the disgrace and submissiveness off the forehead of their nation.” Bin Laden and his aides see the attack as more evidence of U.S. weakness, given the post-attack reduction and reconcentration of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.49
• 19 November 1995: The EIJ used a car bomb to attack Egypt’s embassy in Islamabad, killing sixteen and wounding sixty. Al Qaeda provided logistic support to the attackers and assisted their escape.50
• 16 April 1996: Ibn Khattab’s force of Arab-Afghan/Chechen insurgents “attack[ed] and destroy[e]d” a Russian military convoy leaving Chechnya. The U.K.-based Islamic Observation Center cited a report from “Russian military sources” of 50 vehicles destroyed and 273 Russian soldiers killed.51
Again, the importance of this meandering, lengthy, but not comprehensive list is not that the line of responsibility for each attack leads to bin Laden; it does not. What is important is that the attacks fit the thematic parameters bin Laden has set for the “guerrilla” war he is waging and inciting against the Crusaders and “apostate” Muslim regimes. At a minimum, the attacks above suggest bin Laden’s views and aspirations are shared by Islamists in many areas of the world, from Zuk, Lebanon, to Davao City in the Philippines. U.S. troops are attacked in Yemen and Somalia, for example, and the Egyptian government is attacked in Pakistan, Egypt, and Ethiopia. The Abu Sayyaf Group seeks Muslim dominance over the Catholic population of Mindanao, and attacks are staged in French cities. The World Trade Center in New York is bombed; Catholic and Christian churches and clergy are attacked in the Philippines, Somalia, Lebanon, Egypt, and Algeria; and funding, fighters, and weapons are supplied to Balkan Muslims fighting Catholic Croats and Orthodox Christian Serbs. A U.S. facility in Riyadh is car-bombed and plans are laid to kill President Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II in Manila. All the events fit the pattern bin Laden has established for his war, all contribute to the same goal. In this context, by 1996 bin Laden’s worldwide insurgency against the Crusaders was well under way.
As in all wars, both sides took casualties. Bin Laden, his allies, and his associates were no exception in the 1992–1996 period. In February 1994, Pakistan captured Ramzi Yousef and returned him to the United States; later in 1994, the Malaysians likewise caught and returned Wali Khan Amin Shah. In late 1994, Gama’at al-Islamiyya (IG) leader Anwar Shaban was ambushed and killed by security forces in Bosnia, and many Arab Afghans evacuated Bosnia after the Dayton Accord.
In addition, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat has reported that the Bosnian war cost bin Laden’s allies a large loss of veteran fighters. Captured EIJ fighters have told Egyptian courts that in Bosnia “a large number of the Organization’s [EIJ’s] members” were uncovered. “Bosnia was an open field for the arrest of many Jihad and Islamic Group members when they tried to turn Bosnia into another Afghanistan in the heart of Europe and to move the phenomenon of Afghan Arabs to it.” Attacks on the pope, President Clinton, and U.S. airliners were halted, and the attack on Mubarak in Addis Ababa was unsuccessful and almost all of the attackers were killed or captured. Egyptian security forces also stopped a second planned attack on Mubarak in Cairo in December 1995. Likewise, most of the team that executed the November 1995 attack on Egypt’s embassy in Islamabad were killed or captured. Another senior Europe-based IG leader, Talat Fuad Kassem, disappeared while transiting Croatia in September 1995. It was later reported that bin Laden valued Kassem as highly as he has EIJ leader Zawahiri.52
Wins and losses, triumphs and disasters, these are the characteristics of all wars. But in a guerrilla war, as has been seen in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Vietnam, and elsewhere, if the guerrilla force survives, it is winning. And bin Laden’s organization not only survived this four-year period, but also grew in size, reach, and capability; made new friends and allies; learned how to plan for, absorb, and survive the losses of war; and relocated to Afghanistan, an area more remote and less vulnerable than Sudan.
Return to Afghanistan
After he had spent five productive years in Sudan, several factors coalesced to cause bin Laden to go to Afghanistan for the third time since 1979. In the first instance, Sudan had heated up markedly in terms of earning the West’s attention and enmity since bin Laden arrived in 1992. The NIF’s open-door for Arabs—Arabs coming to Sudan in the bin Laden years needed no visas—made Khartoum a haven for Islamist insurgents and terrorists. By the middle of bin Laden’s stay, the EIJ; the IG; HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement); the Palestine Islamic Jihad; the ANO; several Algerian, Libyan, and Tunisian groups; the Eritrean Islamic Jihad; groups of Ethiopian, Ugandan, and Somali Islamists; and Lebanese Hizballah—among others—were in Khartoum. The combination of hosting these Islamist fighters and bin Laden’s presence, at least after it was clear he aided the attacks on Mubarak and OPM-SANG, led the United States to name Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism, an act followed by the imposition of U.S. and UN sanctions. These sanctions were one more strain on NIF leader al-Turabi’s fledgling Islamic state, which already was fighting a protracted civil war with Sudanese Christians; fencing with Egypt over the attack on Mubarak, boundary demarcation, and access to Nile waters; suffering from a decaying economy; and being loudly criticized by the international community for abusing human rights and limiting freedom of worship. By early 1996, then, Sudan was becoming too hot for bin Laden, and bin Laden was another point of irritation between the West and Sudan that al-Turabi did not need.53
Two other factors also motivated bin Laden to leave Sudan. First, he was again a target for assassination; two attacks failed in early 1994. On 4 February Takfir al-Hijra fighters—a group that thinks bin Laden is not a strict enough Muslim—tried to kill bin Laden in the meeting hall next to his Khartoum home. The attack was defeated by bin Laden’s bodyguard and Sudanese security. In the battle bin Laden and his eldest son Abdallah returned fire with AK-47s. “We used to meet [at my residence compound] with the brother guests at 1700 hours every evening,” bin Laden told Al-Quds Al-Arabi in 1996.
On that day, and for a reason known to God, I was late. Then I heard
a barrage of bullets fired on the guest [meeting?] room, which is detached from the house. Some bullets were [fired] at me. So I took my weapon and went to a position overlooking the house to investigate the matter. I gave my eldest son (Abdallah) a weapon and told him to take a position inside the house. I thought that an armed group had attacked the guards, and we prepared ourselves for a clash. But it was discovered that the attack was aimed directly at the guest room, which was stormed by three young men who opened fire at the guests, three of whom were seriously wounded. They opened fire on the place where I use to sit. One [guest] was hit in the abdomen, another in the thigh, and the third in the leg. The brothers clashed with them. There were Sudanese security forces near the house, so they clashed with them, killing two and wounding the third. Some of the brothers sustained minor injuries.”54
A few weeks later, the Takfir attacked and killed worshippers at Friday prayers in the Al-Thawrah Mosque in the Omdurman section of Khartoum where bin Laden may have been present. Bin Laden says he was there during the attack, but media reports say he was not and that his absence may have saved his life.55
The final factor prompting bin Laden’s departure from Sudan was the increasing discomfort of the Saudi regime and the al-Saud family with bin Laden’s public criticism and defiance of them; Riyadh, along with the Qataris, had been a major benefactor of the Sudanese NIF even before it took power and did not look kindly on the NIF hosting bin Laden. After bin Laden left the kingdom in April 1991, Saudi authorities continued to act against him. In late 1991, for example, Riyadh revoked the passport he traveled on to Pakistan, announcing that Saudi intelligence had found that bin Laden was smuggling weapons to Yemen from the kingdom.56 Then, at some point in 1992, according to the Associated Press, “Saudi Arabia froze his [bin Laden’s] bank accounts” in the kingdom.
In addition, Mary Anne Weaver has reported in the Atlantic Monthly that the Saudis sent “hit teams” to Sudan in the 1991–1992 period to kill bin Laden, a point supported by the testimony in a U.S. court of an al Qaeda defector who was close to bin Laden in Sudan.57 On 16 May 1993 Riyadh issued an arrest warrant for bin Laden “both because of his support for fundamentalist groups involved in terrorist operations in Algeria and Egypt and because of his ties with upstart religious circles [read: religious critics of the al-Sauds] that tried to establish an independent human rights organization in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of May [1993].”58 Given the usual glacierlike movement of Saudi bureaucrats, the speed with which the warrant was issued after the start of the human rights campaign—no more than sixteen days—it is reasonable to assume the warrant was issued because of the latter, not the former.
By late 1994, ensuring that bin Laden did not reenter the kingdom was not sufficient for Saudi authorities. In September, Saudi security forces arrested some of the harshest religious critics of the al-Sauds. Included were Shaykh al-Awdah and Shaykh al-Hawali, two clerics whom bin Laden has long identified as his personal heroes and the rightful leaders of Islam’s jihad against America.59 When the clerics were arrested and “the State prevented the clerics from speaking,” bin Laden has said he and his colleagues in Sudan “set up the advice committee [the London-based Advice and Reform Committee (ARC)] and began to reveal the truth and clarify matters [to the Saudi people], seeking reform and guidance for the nation, and reminding people of the long time our Ulema had spent working to reform [Saudi society] through good preaching.”60 Bin Laden told Abd al-Bari Atwan of Al-Quds Al-Arabi that ARC communiqués, issued from Sudan and London, were read by the Saudi people, and
when the Saudi government discovered the great impact and effect of these statements, it transcended all its disagreements with the Sudanese regime, which had exerted great efforts to rectify its relations with the Riyadh government and to end the [Saudi] boycott [against Khartoum] but encountered a lack of response and arrogance [from Riyadh]. After [ARC] Statement No. 17—it was an open letter to the King on the occasion of the cabinet reshuffle—the Saudi Government contacted the Sudanese Government at the highest level, requesting [Saudi-Sudanese] reconciliation on the condition that Osama bin Laden and the sons of the two Holy Mosques accompanying him in Sudan were expelled and that they stopped [sic] issuing statements. The Sudanese Government at the highest level informed me of its difficult position and the scale of Saudi pressure. They [the Sudanese] asked me to stop issuing statements. On the day I was told to stop issuing statements I sought to find an alternative land capable of bearing the word of truth and we came to the land of Khorasan [Afghanistan] once again.61
While pressing the NIF to oust bin Laden, the Saudis simultaneously sent olive-branch-carrying envoys to Sudan to try to get bin Laden to reconcile with the al-Sauds and return home. These emissaries, bin Laden said, told him he could return to Saudi Arabia and receive “my identity card, passport, and money … if I say through the media that the King is a good Muslim.” “I would like to state,” bin Laden told ABC in late 1998, “that the Saudi government initiated contacts [with me] during the last period in Sudan. They sent several delegations to enter into negotiations aimed at convincing me to keep silent on the unjust American occupation of the land of the two mosques.” Among the envoys were bin Laden’s mother and Bakr bin Laden, his eldest brother and family patriarch; bin Laden told Robert Fisk the al-Sauds “had offered his family 2 billion riyals ($535 million) if he abandons his ‘holy war’”—a tactic like the al-Sauds’ earlier offer of a $90 million construction contract to deflect bin Laden’s focus from the Afghan jihad. As an unnamed acquaintance of bin Laden has said, “He is so kind and tender toward his kinsmen. But this has nothing to do with the formulation of his platform or decisions.”62 Bin Laden also discussed the issue with CNN, and you could almost picture bin Laden scratching his head and wondering why the Saudis just do not get it.
They sent me my mother, my uncle, and my brothers in almost nine visits to Khartoum asking me to stop and return to Arabia to apologize to King Fahd. I apologized to my family kindly because I know they were driven by force to come to talk to me. This regime wants to create a problem between me and my family and in order to take some measures against them. But, with Allah’s grace, this regime did not get his [sic] wish fulfilled. I refused to go back. They—my family—conveyed the Saudi government’s message that if I don’t go back, they’ll freeze my assets, deprive me of my citizenship, my passport, and my Saudi I.D., and distort my picture in the Saudi and foreign media. They think that a Muslim may bargain on his religion. I said to them do whatever you may wish. It is with Allah’s bounty, we refused to go back. We are living in dignity and for whom [sic— which?] we thank Allah. It is much better for us to live here under a tree here on these mountains than to live in palaces in the most sacred land of Allah, while being subjected to disgrace not worshiping Allah in the most sacred land on earth, where injustice is so widespread. There is no strength except in Allah.63
Bin Laden turned the emissaries down flat, thereby precipitating another Saudi move against him. Having issued an arrest warrant, Riyadh was now faced with the terrifying possibility that at some point someone would seize and return an unrepentant bin Laden to the kingdom, thereby making him a rallying point for internal dissidents. Cornered by a dilemma of their own making, the Saudis moved on 10 April 1994 to erase the problem by withdrawing bin Laden’s nationality, a sort of a de-Saudification process. Officially, the interior ministry’s decree said bin Laden’s nationality was canceled because he engaged in “irresponsible acts which run counter to the Kingdom’s interest and offend against its relations with sister countries, and for his failure to comply with instructions.”64 In traditional Saudi head-in-the-sand fashion, Riyadh tried to frame the bin Laden issue—he had not yet staged an attack in the kingdom—as the world’s problem, not its own. After the November 1995 bombing of the OPM-SANG building, the Saudis moved to further refine this portrait to make it appear the confrontation was exclusively between bin Laden and the United States.
With pressur
es converging, bin Laden decided to leave Sudan by early May 1996. At the time, bin Laden was silent about his departure and by his silence allowed the NIF to appear responsive to Saudi concerns and, partially, to U.S. and UN demands that Sudan stop supporting terrorism.65 The NIF did not claim that it deported bin Laden, but it did nothing at first to negate that impression. It appears that its silence on this score angered some pro-bin Laden NIF members in Sudan and abroad, a lesson the Taliban regime surely has taken to heart. In early 1997, for example, Sudan’s information ministry said Sudan did not deport bin Laden and “the Afghan brothers” and that “Sheikh Osama and the Afghan brothers left Sudan of their own volition, knowing the pressures Sudan is facing and so that they can destroy the opportunity for the enemies of Islam and Sudan.”66 Later, in April 1997, NIF leader al-Turabi underscored that bin Laden decided to leave because he saw his presence “was at the root of much pressure exercised by Saudi Arabi and the United States on the government in Khartoum.”67
The Arab media pretty much agreed with official Sudanese commentary, with Amman’s Sawt al-Mar’ah saying that bin Laden left “voluntarily … [and] his departure from Khartoum had nothing to do with Washington’s demands,”68 and Al-Watan Al-Arabi simply asserting that bin Laden decided to leave Sudan “to reduce regional and international pressure on al-Turabi and to prevent further sanctions on Sudan.” Long after his departure, bin Laden in May 1998 said he left the country because he “felt the government of Sudan could not afford to bear [U.S.] pressure any more.”69
Through Our Enemies' Eyes Page 24
