The Miracle of Yousef: Historical and political thriller

by Gonçalo Coelho

  Setting aside internal organizational problems, Yousef and Al-Qaeda did manage to set their megalomaniacal plans in motion and calmly await the fateful day of September 11, 2001. A few days before this date, we will find Yousef and Sheik Omar along with many of their other comrades at the facilities of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the same place where we can imagine that Bin Laden is also to be found. On the day prior to the attack some of these men dreamt of planes smashing into tall buildings in the United States, although of this group, only a very restricted few knew of all that was about to take place. At all events, contemplating the image of chaos and destruction within the United States, they felt that, at last, the nation they blamed for countless Muslim deaths, the nation that used its supremacy and arrogance as a super-power to support, incite and unleash wars in all corners of the globe (but particularly in the Arab world), would now pay the price, as it was lethally struck by the martyrdom of the heroic suicide attackers. Symbolically, the operation that led to September 11th was referred to within Al-Qaeda as The Big Wedding, based on the perspective that death by martyrdom represents a wedding with the virgins in paradise on the other side of life, in eternity. As for the discussion as to whether a man who deliberately contributes to one or more deaths can enter into paradise, that is not addressed here but in other theological venues.

  And so the day arrives for the Big Wedding. Everything is ready. The retinue in Afghanistan anxiously awaits news via satellite TV, but, by chance, on that day the device isn’t working properly. News is then sought on the BBC radio in Arabic. The anxiety is general. Meanwhile, up in the sky on the commercial flights that will plow into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the situation is already proceeding after the fashion of Hollywood’s most tragic films. Faced with the threat of the hijackers, fear and terror naturally take hold of the passengers. On one of the planes that is supposed to fly into the Capitol, the crew will decide to fight back, but only later, when they fully understand that what the hijackers intend for their flight will entail the death of all crew members. In consequence, unlike the other three, this plane will not actually be transformed into a bomb on this morning.

  The first plane-bomb flies across the skies of New York. Some New Yorkers catch sight of it from the streets of Lower Manhattan. Isn’t that plane flying too low? one person wonders. There’s something wrong here, another thinks. Let us pause the action of this narrative as if it were a movie we were watching comfortably at home on the DVD player, exactly at the point when the first plane that slammed into the World Trade Center had its nose just a few dozen meters from the 92nd floor of the South Tower, where in the ensuing seconds it would produce a huge hole that we have all seen on television at least once in our lives. Let us focus on the people inside the World Trade Center, we see them carrying on with their daily grind in their offices, sitting at the computer or on the phone, walking down the hallways, sitting at conference tables and coming out of rooms and off the elevators. We know that the tragedy is just seconds from happening, yet they, the victims, do not. Now let us pull back to a large scale view. We’ve stopped seeing into the offices inside the World Trade Center and now see the downtown portion of Manhattan, or ‘Lower Manhattan,’ as it is known. We see the buildings, the streets and the people, all from an aerial view. Let us draw back still further, and now our field of vision takes in an aerial view of all Manhattan. Then the whole aerial view of all of New York City. Continuing to pull back our extraordinary lens, we can now see the United States from the sky, yet let us not tarry here but rather contemplate next a magnificent aerial view of our planet, the world where we live, with its vast continents and oceans.

  The news of the September 11th tragedy would make a journey similar to the one we’ve just made, being disseminated through all the media of the whole world, and the farther the news traveled from the World Trade Center en route to the rest of the world, the less people would feel the horror and overall impact of the tragedy with the more than three thousand deaths that would result. Dreadful? Perhaps, but let us consider, isn’t it true that if some act of violence occurs on our side we become tremendously indignant and terrified and we immediately demand that justice be done? And if the same act occurs thousands of kilometers away, no matter how terrible it may be, what is the general reaction? We may feel pity and compassion for the victims, but will certainly carry on with our lives, in the next few moments we will forget the fact for the sake of something more important that will soon attract our attention (there is always something or other claiming our attention in the next moment, especially if we have the TV turned on beside us, all the more so if it’s television news). Perhaps we may even understand that there are two sides to the question. Television has the gift of bringing global events close to us all. If we see a particular news report, a particular sequence of images, countless times, it seems the events we are seeing on the screen are happening close to us. So it was with the scenes of 9/11 that passed countless times on the television, bringing this event much closer to all the citizens of the world than the genocide in Rwanda, the number of whose victims is estimated between 800,000 and 1 million human beings. Now then, in a country such as Afghanistan, where the horrors imposed by the Taliban regime are far too frequent, where the civil war has dragged on for years, and before that the war dragged on against the Soviet invaders, where before that the colonial British presence dragged on, in the midst of a people that saw each country and each governing authority with influence in the region, foreign or otherwise, seeking only gain without considering the means, frequently through financial support to this or that oppressive regime, all of this always without regard for the population suffering all these tyrannies in its skin, how would the news of the attack of September 11, 2001, be received and felt there? There would probably be some who mourn and have pity, but there would certainly be someone who understood that there are two sides to the question, just as some Americans will mourn the fact that the United States bombed Iraq or Kosovo, but understand that there are two sides of this question. If indisputably, from the outset, human life always has unquestionable and universal value, the truth is that the farther away people are from the horror, the more accepting and indifferent they become about such things. On the contrary, the closer horror and violence are, the more unjust they appear, and the more infamous the offenders, regardless of the motives adduced. It is often the case that, for those who are far away, far removed from the horror and suffering, any reasons of a geopolitical nature can serve as grounds for starting a war, a military assault, as long as it occurs thousands of kilometers from home – apart from the fact that the armaments business continues to be quite profitable. So we come to the conclusion that the feeling of compassion, when taken to a global scale, is a concept that dissolves in the atmosphere, very far removed from what would be ideal in this world we are living in at the beginning of the 21st century.

  Run the tape. It’s 8:46. The American Airlines Boeing 767 with 92 people on board (including the hijackers) slams thunderously into the 92nd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The impact is widely felt throughout Lower Manhattan. A mixture of surprise and consternation takes hold of everyone. There inside the building all is chaos. Some two hundred people fling themselves desperately from the top of the building, and their bodies come down hard and heavy into the hard abyss of asphalt or pavement. Down below, innumerable people are looking up at the building, hypnotized and terrified. From fire and police stations innumerable vehicles flood the streets, numerous sirens announcing the tragedy like church bells announcing disaster, tolling in the heart of the world’s greatest super power. It’s now 9:03. To top off the tragedy, another Boeing 767 emerges boldly and horribly on a collision course with the South Tower, on the way to more deaths and more damage. It’s carrying sixty-five souls aboard.

  In Afghanistan, at the first impact, Bin Laden’s retinue celebrates. This time, the Americans would be obliged to come to Afghanistan, and then the Arabs would unite and
thrash them like mangy dogs. This is the plan, but the hoped for union is not going to happen. When the time comes for the powerful American response, Al-Qaeda will be isolated. Osama raises one finger upon confirmation of the first impact of a plane into the World Trade Center on TV, as if to say, one down, but then signals to his comrades to wait because it isn’t over yet. At the second impact he raises two fingers and even so, he still gives the signal, wait, there’s more. Yousef is seething. Inwardly he feels a mix of nausea, excitement and tension. He is witnessing the utmost limit that a radical ideology can achieve in what it believes is a serious lesson instructing the United States to free the world of all its dreadful troops and influence. So that the Ummah[15] can be strong and lightning sharp once again. Free and glorious in keeping with its historic destiny. At 9:37 it’s the turn of the Boeing 757 to smash into the Pentagon, with sixty four souls on board. Once again Bin Laden makes a signal that there is more, but what he is still hoping to see, a fourth impact, does not occur. These are great victories, nonetheless, for a man who has been through great difficulties, left Sudan impoverished, was expelled from Saudi Arabia, deprived of his nationality, endured times of privation in Afghanistan, and with difficulty, managed to arrange for the Taliban to take him in and eventually grant him more respect than the Saudi rulers. A man who dedicated his entire life to the struggle against the infidel oppressor, first the Soviets and then, later on, the United States, which was bent on oppressing not just Afghanistan but the whole Muslim world, preventing it from being free and glorious. However, he would come to feel betrayed when the day of the powerful American response arrived, and he ascertained that he had no support whatsoever from any Arab nation, at a time when he believed the Americans could be defeated in Afghanistan. The Ummah would not unite in Afghanistan to wage war on the United States, as though signaling that perhaps it did not ever again in its history wish to form a caliphate, nor did they even wish to see the day when there was not a single western military base stationed in their territory. Even so, to many, including Bin Laden himself, the day September 11, 2001, was to have been the turning point that would mark in history the end of American supremacy, the start of the decline of the super power, whose final arrogance and negligence in the administration of George W. Bush helped to make this a reality by the very beginning of the 21st century.

  In Afghanistan, on this day of September 11, 2001, it is understood that the American response will not be long in coming. Sheik Omar has embraced Yousef in the midst of the celebration.

  “You must get out of here as fast as possible,” the Sheik ordered him in a private conversation.

  “What do you mean? I will defend our brothers here in Afghanistan as long as there is breath left in my body! The time has come for us to beat them here in this land just as we beat the Soviets!”

  “That’s right. But even so, I want you abroad. It is not time for you to suffer martyrdom. Not yet. Your work abroad has been too important and the American response will be immense. I don’t even know if I will survive it, but I myself am disposable.”

  “All loyal warriors will be needed at a time like this.”

  “You must know that Bin Laden has no way to resist the Americans unless support appears from other Arab governments, and if that doesn’t happen, may God forgive me for even imagining such a thing… The Americans will make the sky fall down on our heads to avenge the death of their people in New York.”

  “God will not allow it. Do not ask me to go now, not at a time like this.”

  The Sheik’s face hardened.

  “I’m not asking you, I’m ordering you. One more thing: I know few men with the determination and intelligence of Bin Laden, few men, therefore, whom I consider truly capable of carrying forward his legacy, and if he does die, I only see one person capable of replacing him, a person who has the same qualities as he does: you. That’s why I need you to stay alive and far away from here.”

  “You see the same qualities in me?” Yousef raised his eyes to the Sheik.

  “Yes. You have the same firm belief, the same determination capable of overcoming a thousand and one adversities in the name of that which has truly conquered your heart, and I know that our cause conquered you years ago. That’s why it is so important for you to go away immediately. We cannot run the risk that two men who are so unique in our midst should be in the same place at the same time awaiting the American attacks. If you have respect and consideration for me, you will do what I tell you.”

  Saying this, Sheik Omar turned his back on Yousef, leaving him in a sea of conjecture.

  14

  In December of 2001, just as expected, the United States responded with force to the September 11th attacks, and at that point the brief battle of Tora-Bora occurred in the mountains of Afghanistan. On the ground, the men loyal to Bin Laden had to deal with other Muslims – Afghan soldiers – while the Americans only appeared in the skies, untouchable in their planes, dropping incredibly powerful Daisy Cutter bombs on the caves and entrenched positions of Al-Qaeda. Subsequently, and as a result of these bombardments, Afghan troops dug up more than a hundred dead of the roughly three hundred men comprising Al-Qaeda’s retinue at Tora-Bora. The mighty united military force of the Ummah that Bin Laden had imagined, overwhelming enough to defeat the Americans in Afghanistan, had proved nothing more than a mirage. The defeat was swift and crushing, although the victory of the forces of the international coalition, led by the United States but also made up of the British and German soldiers, as well as Afghan soldiers of the Northern Alliance, turned out to be inconclusive, since the grand objective of capturing or killing Bin Laden was not achieved.

  While this was going on, removed from the theater of operations and isolated in Kuala Lumpur, Yousef could do no more than follow the news in the papers and on TV. During this period he spent his nights without sleeping, subject to countless nightmares, and wandered often through the streets of Kuala Lumpur, much more at night than during the day, nearly always unnoticed in the darkness. The shadows under his eyes grew even bigger as he imagined his brothers at Tora-Bora being ferociously attacked by immeasurably greater military detachments, facing death trapped in the caves or trenches. He feared for them all, but chiefly for Sheik Omar and Bin Laden, for whom he prayed fervently and often. He learned then that some brothers had managed to escape in time through the mountains to Pakistan, crossing tribal zones, managing to elude death, and he prayed that both Sheik Omar and Osama bin Laden had managed to flee. He leapt for joy when he finally learned that they were both safe and sound. It was deep in the night, in a hotel room in one of the many skyscrapers making up the skyline of Kuala Lumpur, a city where he remained in isolation during these months of internal convulsion, that Yousef received the good news from the mouth of Sheik Omar himself, assuring him that they were safe and sound and by now far from Pakistan. In a very short phone call at the end of December 2001, the Sheik also ordered Yousef to remain in Kuala Lumpur for a few more weeks until he called again with new instructions. In the next phone call, he ordered him to make the necessary arrangements for them to meet in Istanbul. Prior to this, Yousef should spend several days in Tirana, Albania, with the aim of finding out the latest plans and movements of the Albanian Kosovars, and in particular, of the controversial KLA,[16] which now governed the destiny of the recently established independent Kosovo. Some Arab mujaheddin had supported the KLA in the Kosovo War, so it was high time to check up on what was going on in this new country, and to make sure the KLA had not forgotten services rendered and was grateful for such efforts. It was purely a diplomatic mission, if we might call it that, at a time when it was of the utmost importance to know who they could count on after the defeat at the brief battle of Tora-Bora.

  Accordingly, in the beginning of March 2002, Yousef disembarked at the airport in Tirana, in a country and capital city he was visiting for the first time. Before the journey, making use of his time in Kuala Lumpur, he had done some research on Albania. He learned that i
t was considered a moderate Muslim country, where the secular order and freedom of religious choice was preserved. Now then, to Yousef, this clearly meant that the State was shirking its responsibility to carry forward the islamization of the society. He had also learned that Albania was the only country that had been occupied by the Axis powers during the Second World War that, by the end of the war, had within it a larger number of Jews than before the war. This was due to the fact that the country had sheltered and protected countless Jewish families and individuals during this period. At the end of the war, the country had fallen under Soviet communist dominion, just as occurred with most of the Balkan territories during the Cold War period, a dominion that restricted religious observance and lasted until 1992. With liberation, in the mid-1990’s, Albania undertook to strengthen itself as a democratic and secular country, and at the same time, as a liberalized economy, and even after the severe financial crisis of 1997, which provoked widespread upheaval in the streets and the fall of the government at that time, the country followed a path towards modernization within the same political model. It thus became, increasingly, a modern secular democracy, increasingly allied with Europe, the United States and NATO, in contrast with the former Soviet regime.