by Jean Sasson
Chapter 8
Many Children for Osama
NAJWA BIN LADEN
In 1988 another girl, Kadhija, was born to Osama’s newest wife, Siham. And so it came to be that our family consisted of four wives and nine children. The following year brought the blessing of two additional children to our ever-growing family. Siham had a quick second pregnancy, giving birth twice in two years as she welcomed her first son, baby Khalid. From that time Siham was happy to be known as Um Khalid.
Most exciting for me was that my sweet friend Khairiah, Osama’s third wife, gave birth to her first child, a little boy named Hamza. Khairiah now also wore the highly prized mantle of being known as Um Hamza.
We could all proudly say that we were the mothers of sons, which is an important distinction for a woman in Saudi Arabia.
Suddenly Osama traveled less frequently to Pakistan and Afghanistan. I felt my spirits lift when told that the long war in Afghanistan had finally ended. The Soviets were out of Afghanistan as of February 15, 1989, which was particularly auspicious because it was also Osama’s thirty-second birthday. Although Muslims do not typically celebrate birthdays, Osama said that he felt that day was filled with the most important gift, that the war he had fought for so long had finally been won.
For me, the most important gift was the thought that my husband could now resume the life of an industrious Saudi businessman. No longer would Osama be a warrior. No longer would I spend hours filled with worry that I might receive a message that my husband had been killed on the battlefield.
I was told that my husband was a hero in many Muslim eyes. But Osama seemed a reluctant hero, failing to enlighten me of the many awards received and of the widespread adoration that put his name on the tip of many tongues.
Osama soon settled into his routine of going to work in the mornings and coming home in the afternoons, although he now had four wives and alternated his time with each family. This meant that my husband came to me only once every four nights. When we all went to the farm, he would alternate his time with us there as well.
Osama was certainly achieving his goal of having many children for Islam. In fact, 1990 brought three more babies into our busy lives. This was the year that Osama’s second wife, Khadijah, had her second child and second son, Amer. During this same season, two other pregnancies occurred nearly simultaneously, with an amusing conclusion.
It came to be that I was pregnant with my eighth child at the same time my husband’s fourth and newest wife, Siham, was pregnant with her third child, although Siham’s baby was due a few months later than mine.
As usual, Osama was in attendance when the time was near for me to give birth. As God would have it, the moment I began to have labor pains, one of the maids dashed from Siham’s apartment with the news that her mistress was in premature labor. At first we thought perhaps Siham’s pains were not real labor, for her child was not due for another two months. But we soon realized that was not the case.
The circumstances were beyond belief. Had I not been feeling so poorly, I would have smiled watching my husband struggle to settle two pregnant women into the backseat of his new Mercedes.
The drive was surreal as Siham and I sat side by side, clasping our stomachs, wanting nothing more but to gain some relief from the pain. As might be expected, there was a bit of bedlam at the hospital as the staff dashed about trying to admit two women into labor rooms at the same time. There was such a commotion that several of the nurses had no idea that we were all together.
The most humorous moment arrived after a bright-eyed nurse witnessed Osama dashing from my room into Siham’s. The woman was a dainty Filipina, yet she was very bold, scolding my tall husband, telling him that he must remain in his wife’s room. That little nurse warned him, “You will get into serious trouble for peeking at another woman!”
I’m sure she was astonished when an excited Osama shouted out, “I am not illegally peeking! These two mothers are both my wives.”
As for me, I was very pleased to learn that I had a second daughter, a girl we named Iman. In a house with so many males I had fretted that my delicate first daughter, Fatima, felt isolated.
Siham was also the mother of a daughter named Miriam, but because she delivered too soon, little Miriam needed extra care, staying in the hospital for a week longer than her mother.
The end of 1990 brought less happy news, when the president of Iraq invaded his neighbor, Kuwait. At the time I was afraid for everyone in the region, but being a woman whose only business was the home and children, there was nothing I could do but be anxious. I know certain facts now only because my grown sons shared information with me. They told me that their father was so convinced that the Iraqi army would walk across the Kuwaiti border to Saudi Arabia that he gave speeches warning of the danger. But no one else believed the Iraqi president would be so foolish.
War came to the region, but I buried my head in the sand like those soldiers Osama had described in Afghanistan. I took care of my children and did not doubt that my husband would protect us.
After the war ended and the Iraqis ran through the desert and back into their own country, we all assumed that calm would return. That was not the case, at least not for my family. I noticed that my husband’s demeanor grew more serious with every passing month. He made the unusual arrangement for me to travel alone with my youngest children to Syria, telling me to remain there for a nice long visit. When I asked why he thought I should leave Saudi Arabia at such a tension-filled time, he told me, “Najwa, the time may unfurl into years before you see your parents and siblings again.”
And so it came to pass that Abdul Rahman and I took my daughters, Fatima and Iman, for a holiday in Syria. While I was worried about the events in Saudi Arabia, I did enjoy sharing my little daughters with my parents and siblings and other relatives. Although I had visited Syria on holidays, the visits were not as frequent as we would have wished.
While the visiting time was as sweet as candy, as the time passed and the day drew near when I would say goodbye, a strange feeling kept coming over me. I would be cheerful one moment and suddenly a dark cloud would be cast over my heart, like someone had tossed the “unhappy net” over me. In the past when I left after a holiday in Syria, all of us would say our goodbyes in the midst of joyful talk, reminiscing about the good times we had enjoyed at the beach or in the mountains.
But during that goodbye I had a difficult time finding a smile. I didn’t share my strange concerns. I just knew something terrible was going to happen to me or my family. Indeed, before I saw my family in Syria again, something wildly unexpected would happen, not only to me and my children, but to many other people in the world. But I was a woman confined to her home, so there was nothing I could do to alter anyone’s future, not even my own.
A Note Regarding Osama bin Laden’s Political Activities
JEAN SASSON
During these same years that Najwa continued having more children and Omar reached an age when he grasped that his life was different from those of other children, Osama bin Laden was fully involved with the conflict in Afghanistan. The war changed, with the Russians occupying the main cities and the Mujahideen fighters (of which Osama was a part) waging a guerrilla war. In fact, from 1980 until 1985, there were nine main Russian offensives resulting in heavy fighting.
In 1985, Abdullah Azzam and Osama established a formal office, called the Services Office, where Muslim volunteers were sent for training and then to fighting units in Afghanistan. Osama was no longer content to limit his activities to raising money and organizing the delivery of supplies, but expanded his participation in Jihad by helping to establish training camps, building roads, and forming his own fighting unit manned by Arab fighters. By this time he was a participant in the battles, risking his life alongside his men, and suffering injuries.
Osama also met the main Egyptian Jihadists who inspired him further. All were of the same mind, wanting to remake the Muslim world as soon as the Soviets w
ere defeated. These men would later become some of his most devoted followers, including Mohammed Atef, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric from Egypt.
Because Osama was in Pakistan and Afghanistan more than he was in Saudi Arabia, he set up a family home in Peshawar, Pakistan, so that his wives and children could join him for summer visits. Osama introduced his firstborn son, Abdullah, to the conflict in Afghanistan, bringing him to the fighting camp in Jaji, where the young boy was exposed to great danger. Osama received unexpected criticism from his family and other Jihadi leaders, including Abdullah Azzam, for doing so, yet it was only the first of many instances when Osama would push his unenthusiastic sons to the forefront of his personal passion for Jihad.
In April 1988, nine years and four months after the Soviets first invaded Afghanistan, representatives of Afghanistan, the USSR, the United States, and Pakistan met to sign an agreement calling for the Russian army to pull its forces out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to stop interfering in each other’s political and military affairs, and the United States agreed to end its support for the Afghan anti-Soviet groups.
Osama’s mentor, Abdullah Azzam, made the case for an extensive foundation from which believers could launch their struggle for a perfect Islamic world. In full agreement, Osama called for the planning meeting that would be named al-Qaeda al-Askariya, which translates as “the military base,” and was later shortened to al-Qaeda, “the base,” or “the foundation.” The first meeting was held at his family home in Peshawar, Pakistan, in August 1988.
The founding members decreed that Osama’s al-Qaeda organization would be a global crusade, having both an Islamic arm and a military arm, so that the organization could support Islam by violent and nonviolent means. Goals included ridding the Muslim world of western influence, overthrowing monarchies and secular governments, and making Islam the only religion in the world. As the war in Afghanistan wound down, Osama found more time to devote to the Islamic goals of al-Qaeda.
After Osama assumed a leadership role in the movement, there were tensions among some of his followers, most noticeably between Abdullah Azzam and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, with both men competing for Osama’s support, financial and otherwise. While Abdullah Azzam was not in favor of violence against fellow Muslims, Zawahiri had no such scruples. As time went on, the tensions between the two men grew problematic for the movement.
On February 15, 1989, the last Russian soldier departed from Afghanistan. Osama and his fighting men claimed a great victory. Tragically, with the departure of the Russians, the Afghan warlords commenced quarreling, each faction determined to gain leadership of the war-weary country. Osama made some efforts to bring the warlords together, but his efforts were unsuccessful.
After the war ended, and al-Qaeda was aiming to make their movement global, there were attempts on Abdullah Azzam’s life. On November 24, 1989, Azzam and his two sons were killed when three land mines detonated as a motor caravan was taking them to the mosque in Peshawar to pray. There have been many speculations as to the guilty party, but most believe Zawahiri to be the mastermind of the assassination.
When Abdullah Azzam died at the age of forty-nine, he was probably the only person who might have cautioned Osama against future attacks against the Saudi rulers and the Americans.
Osama soon returned to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a man whose political, religious, and militant vision had been fully awakened. From that time on, he continued to push for the growth of al-Qaeda, and was actively meeting with other Arabs who held similar views.
Chapter 9
The Nightmare Begins
OMAR BIN LADEN
The regional calm brought by the end of the Soviet-Afghan war on February 15, 1989, did not last. Not unexpectedly, my father was one of the first to sound a new alarm because his mind was like an antenna set for regional news, especially attuned to all things Muslim. Despite the fact that Afghanistan’s woes had kept him engaged for over ten years, he remained watchful, carefully following the events related to the Iraq-Iran war. That 10-year war had begun on September 22, 1980, the year before I was even born, and had come to an exhausted conclusion on August 20, 1988, six months prior to the cessation of hostilities in Afghanistan. There was no clear victory for Iran or Iraq, and my father began monitoring the business of Iraq, believing that Saddam Hussein was so dissatisfied with the result of that war that he would not remain silent.
My father had never been a supporter of Saddam Hussein due to the dictator’s secular rule over a Muslim land. My father often mocked Saddam Hussein for “not being a believer.” There is no bigger insult for a Muslim. My father also scorned Saddam’s aggressive character, saying, “The leader of such a large army will never stop looking for war.”
My father was so concerned that a debt-stricken Saddam might be tempted by the wealth of his rich neighbors that he made his private thoughts about Saddam public, beginning a dangerous habit of using the mosque and audio-tapes to make his feelings known. The audiotapes were widely distributed to the Saudi population, creating little ripples of displeasure from the royal family, yet their disapproval remained a private affair.
Regretfully, my father’s warnings came true. Beginning in February of 1990, strong words began to fly from Iraq to Kuwait City and Riyadh, with a cash-desperate Saddam Hussein demanding that the Kuwaitis and Saudis forgive the $40 billion in loans given to him to fight Khomeini and the Iranians. Saddam’s neighbors had been generous in supporting the Iraqis against the Iranians, for both governments had become increasingly uneasy with the antagonistic militant stance taken by the Khomeini government against the Sunni-led governments in the area. Iran is a Shiite Muslim country, while most of the Gulf nations are Sunni Muslim. There have been hostilities between the two sects and the two nationalities since the earliest times in history. But the Kuwaiti and Saudi governments rejected his request. Saddam became aggressive, demanding an additional $30 billion in interest-free loans: “Let the Gulf regimes know, that if they do not give this money to me, I know how to get it.” That’s when the Iraqi dictator put his huge army on the move, positioning 100,000 trained soldiers on the Kuwaiti border. When questioned, he claimed that his army was conducting training exercises.
King Fahd reached out to bring all the parties, including Saddam, together at an emergency meeting in Jeddah on July 31, 1990. Unfortunately, the meeting ended with additional insults rather than a solution. That was the night my father warned that war was imminent.
At dawn on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein’s army invaded Kuwait, easily occupying the small country. My father repeated: “Saddam will attack Saudi Arabia for possession of the oilfields in the eastern province. This will happen as soon as his military consolidates its hold on Kuwait.”
I was ten years old. For the first time I truly grasped the concept of war, and that war could come to any nation. That was also when I recognized my father’s standing as a war hero so revered that his actions generally went unquestioned. He was the only civilian in Saudi Arabia allowed to drive cars with blackened windows, or to strap a machine gun across his shoulder and walk through the streets of Jeddah. From then on, I began to take note of what was happening in our region of the world and my father’s reactions to the events.
My father began to prepare mentally for the possibility of war within the kingdom. One day he returned home with supplies of heavy-duty adhesive tape, instructing his sons to help him cross the windows to save them from shattering if Saddam dropped bombs on the city. He arranged for extra stocks of food, candles, gas lights, handheld transceivers, and battery-operated radios. He even purchased military-quality gas masks for everyone in the family. We kids treated the gas mask lessons as a game, but our father had never been more serious, predicting that Saddam would not hesitate to use chemical or biological weapons, as he had done against the Iranians.
Once our home and family were ready, he turned his attention to the
farm, stockpiling gas, food, and large trucks there. He had come to the conclusion that our farm would be the best military base, believing that the royal family would call upon his military skills when Saddam attacked.
He even purchased a speedboat to be used if he had to take his family to safety. The boat’s engine was removed and replaced by a more powerful one. Then it was docked at the bin Laden mooring in Jeddah’s harbor. I was taken aback when my father mentioned that he had named the boat in honor of Shafiq al-Madani, a war hero who had died in the Afghan-Russian war.
Certainly Shafiq al-Madani was a champion in my young eyes. I had met the man when my father had taken his family to Pakistan for the summer. I was only eight years old at the time, and as usual, looking for activity. Some of my father’s men were organizing the loading of two trucks with food and other essentials for the training camps in Afghanistan. My brothers and I were thrilled when the men asked us to assist in the loading. I gave a little twitch when I caught a glimpse of a soccer ball in the stack of goods. I wanted that ball for myself. I gathered my courage to ask one of the men, “Are they going to play football at the soldiers’ camp?”
The man answered, “Yes, they will play with it.”
I said, “I don’t think they will,” and then lifted the ball in my hands, hoping to make a quick getaway before he could react.
The man’s voice was stern. “Yes, they will,” he said, snatching the ball from my hands and throwing it back into the truck.
