Robert Fisk - The Great War for Civilisation - The Conquest of the Middle East

Bin Laden paused to see if I had listened to his careful if frighteningly exclusive history lesson. ‘The Saudi people have remembered now what the ulema told them and they realise America is the main reason for their problems … the ordinary man knows that his country is the largest oil-producer in the world yet at the same time he is suffering from taxes and bad services. Now the people understand the speeches of the ulemas in the mosques – that our country has become an American colony. They act decisively with every action to kick the Americans out of Saudi Arabia. What happened in Riyadh and al-Khobar is clear evidence of the huge anger of Saudi people against America. The Saudis now know their real enemy is America.’ There was no doubting bin Laden’s argument. The overthrow of the Saudi regime and the eviction of US forces from the kingdom were one and the same for him. He was claiming that the real religious leadership of Saudi Arabia – among whom he clearly saw himself – was an inspiration to Saudis, that Saudis themselves would drive out the Americans, that Saudis – hitherto regarded as a rich and complacent people – might strike at the United States. Could this be true?

The air was clouding with insects. I was writing in my notebook with my right hand and swatting them away from my face and clothes with my left, big insects with wide wings and buglike creatures that would slap against my shirt and the pages of my notebook. I noticed that they were colliding with bin Laden’s white robe, even his face, as if they had somehow been alerted by the anger emanating from this man. He sometimes stopped speaking for all of sixty seconds – he was the first Arab figure I noticed doing this – in order to reflect upon his words. Most Arabs, faced with a reporter’s question, would say the first thing that came into their heads for fear that they would appear ignorant if they did not. Bin Laden was different. He was alarming because he was possessed of that quality which leads men to war: total self-conviction. In the years to come, I would see others manifest this dangerous characteristic – President George W. Bush and Tony Blair come to mind – but never the fatal self-resolve of Osama bin Laden.

There was a dark quality to his calculations. ‘If one kilogram of TNT exploded in a country in which nobody had heard an explosion in a hundred years,’ he said, ‘surely the exploding of 2,500 kilos of TNT at al-Khobar is clear evidence of the scale of the people’s anger against the Americans and of their ability to continue that resistance against the American occupation.’ Had I been a prophet, might I have thought more deeply about that fearful metaphor which bin Laden used, the one about the TNT? Was there not a country – a nation which knew no war within its borders for well over a hundred years – which could be struck with ‘evidence’ of a people’s anger, 2,500 times beyond anything it might imagine? But I was calculating more prosaic equations.

Bin Laden had asked me – a routine of every Palestinian under occupation – if Europeans did not resist occupation during the Second World War. I told him no Europeans would accept this argument over Saudi Arabia – because the Nazis killed millions of Europeans yet the Americans had never murdered a single Saudi. Such a parallel was historically and morally wrong. Bin Laden did not agree. ‘We as Muslims have a strong feeling that binds us together … We feel for our brothers in Palestine and Lebanon … When sixty Jews are killed inside Palestine’ – he was talking about Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel – ‘all the world gathers within seven days to criticise this action, while the deaths of 600,000 Iraqi children did not receive the same reaction.’ It was bin Laden’s first reference to Iraq and to the UN sanctions which were to result, according to UN officials themselves, in the death of more than half a million children. ‘Killing those Iraqi children is a crusade against Islam,’ bin Laden said. ‘We as Muslims do not like the Iraqi regime but we think that the Iraqi people and their children are our brothers and we care about their future.’ It was the first time I heard him use the word ‘crusade’.

But it was neither the first – nor the last – time that bin Laden would distance himself from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Much good would it do him. Five years later, the United States would launch an invasion of Iraq that would be partly justified by the regime’s ‘support’ for a man who so detested it. But these were not the only words which bin Laden uttered that night to which I should have paid greater attention. For at one point, he placed his right hand on his chest. ‘I believe that sooner or later the Americans will leave Saudi Arabia and that the war declared by America against the Saudi people means war against all Muslims everywhere,’ he said. ‘Resistance against America will spread in many, many places in Muslim countries. Our trusted leaders, the ulema, have given us a fatwa that we must drive out the Americans.’

For some time, there had been a steadily growing thunderstorm to the east of bin Laden’s camp and we could see the bright orange flash of lightning over the mountains on the Pakistan border. But bin Laden thought this might be artillery fire, the continuation of the inter-mujahedin battles that had damaged his spirit after the anti-Soviet war. He was growing uneasy. He broke off his conversation to pray. Then on the straw mat, several young and armed men served dinner – plates of yoghurt and cheese and Afghan nan bread and more tea. Bin Laden sat between his sons, silent, eyes on his food. Occasionally he would ask me questions. What would be the reaction of the British Labour Party to his demand that British troops must leave Saudi Arabia? Was the Labour opposition leader Tony Blair important? I cannot, alas, remember my reply. Bin Laden said that three of his wives would soon arrive in Afghanistan to join him. I could see the tents where they would be living if I wished, just outside Jalalabad, ‘humble tents’ for his family. He told an Egyptian holding a rifle to take me to the encampment next day.

Then he pointed at me. ‘I am astonished at the British government,’ he said suddenly. ‘They sent a letter to me through their embassy in Khartoum before I left Sudan, saying I would not be welcome in the United Kingdom. But I did not ask to go to Britain. So why did they send me this letter? The letter said: “If you come to Britain, you will not be admitted.” The letter gave the Saudi press the opportunity of claiming that I had asked for political asylum in Britain – which is not true.’ I believed bin Laden. Afghanistan was the only country left to him after his five-and-a-half-year exile in Sudan. He agreed. ‘The safest place in the world for me is Afghanistan.’ It was the only place, I repeated, in which he could campaign against the Saudi government. Bin Laden and several of his Arab fighters burst into laughter. ‘There are other places,’ he replied. Did he mean Tajikistan? I asked. Or Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan? ‘There are several places where we have friends and close brothers – we can find refuge and safety in them.’

I told bin Laden he was already a hunted man. ‘Danger is a part of our life,’ he snapped back. ‘Do you realise that we spent ten years fighting against the Russians and the KGB? … When we were fighting the Russians here in Afghanistan, 10,000 Saudis came here to fight over a period of ten years. There were three flights every week from Jeddah to Islamabad and every flight was filled with Saudis coming to fight …’ But, I suggested uncharitably, didn’t the Americans support the mujahedin against the Soviets? Bin Laden responded at once. ‘We were never at any time friends of the Americans. We knew that the Americans support the Jews in Palestine and that they are our enemies. Most of the weapons that came to Afghanistan were paid for by the Saudis on the orders of the Americans since Turki al-Faisal [the head of Saudi external intelligence] and the CIA were working together.’