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

Bin Laden was now alert, almost agitated. There was something he needed to say. ‘Let me tell you this. Last week, I received an envoy from the Saudi embassy in Islamabad. Yes, he came here to Afghanistan to see me. The government of Saudi Arabia, of course, they want to give the people here a different message, that I should be handed over. But in truth they wanted to speak directly to me. They wanted to ask me to go back to Saudi Arabia. I said I would speak to them only under one condition – that Sheikh Sulieman al-Owda, the ulema, is present. They have locked up Sheikh Sulieman for speaking out against the corrupt regime. Without his freedom, negotiation is not possible. I have had no reply from them till now.’

Was it this revelation that made bin Laden nervous? He began talking to his men about amniya , security, and repeatedly looked towards those flashes in the sky. Now the thunder did sound like gunfire. I tried to ask one more question. What kind of Islamic state would bin Laden wish to see? Would thieves and murderers still have their hands or heads cut off in his Islamic sharia state, just as they do in Saudi Arabia today? There came an unsatisfactory reply. ‘Islam is a complete religion for every detail of life. If a man is a real Muslim and commits a crime, he can only be happy if he is justly punished. This is not cruelty. The origin of these punishments comes from God through the Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him.’

Dissident Osama bin Laden may be, but moderate never. I asked permission to take his photograph, and while he debated this with his companions I scribbled into my notebook the words I would use in the last paragraph of my report on our meeting: ‘Osama bin Laden believes he now represents the most formidable enemy of the Saudi regime and of the American presence in the Gulf. Both are probably right to regard him as such.’ I was underestimating the man.

Yes, he said, I could take his picture. I opened my camera and allowed his armed guards to watch me as I threaded a film into the spool. I told them I refused to use a flash because it flattened the image of a human face and asked them to bring the paraffin lamp closer. The Egyptian scribe held it a foot from bin Laden’s face. I told him to bring it closer still, to within three inches, and I physically had to guide his arm until the light brightened and shadowed bin Laden’s features. Then without warning, bin Laden moved his head back and the faintest smile moved over his face, along with that self-conviction and that ghost of vanity which I found so disturbing. He called his sons Omar and Saad and they sat beside him as I took more pictures and bin Laden turned into the proud father, the family man, the Arab at home.

Then his anxiety returned. The thunder was continuous now and it was mixed with the patter of rifle fire. I should go, he urged, and I realised that what he meant was that he must go, that it was time for him to return to the fastness of Afghanistan. When we shook hands, he was already looking for the guards who would take him away. Mohamed and my driver and just two of the armed men who had brought me to these damp, insect-hungry fields turned up to drive me back to the Spinghar Hotel, a journey that proved to be full of menace. Driving across river bridges and road intersections, we were repeatedly stopped by armed men from the Afghan factions that were fighting for control of Kabul. One would crouch on the roadway in front of our vehicle, screaming at us, pointing his rifle at the windscreen, his companion sidling out of the darkness to check our driver’s identity and wave us through. ‘Afghanistan very difficult place,’ Mohamed remarked.

It would be difficult for bin Laden’s family, too. Next morning, the Egyptian turned up at the Spinghar Hotel to take me to the grass encampment in which the families of the returning Arab ‘Afghans’ would live. It was vulnerable enough. Only a few strands of barbed wire separated it from the open countryside and the three tents for bin Laden’s wives, pitched close to one another, were insufferably hot. Three latrines had been dug at the back, in one of which floated a dead frog. ‘They will be living here among us,’ the Egyptian said. ‘These are ladies who are used to living in comfort.’ But his fears centred on the apparent presence of three Egyptian security men who had been driving close to the camp in a green pick-up truck. ‘We know who they are and we have the number of their vehicle. A few days ago, they stopped beside my son and asked him: “We know you are Abdullah and we know who your father is. Where is bin Laden?” Then they asked him why I was in Afghanistan.’

Another of the Arab men in the camp disputed bin Laden’s assertion that this was only one of several Muslim countries in which he could find refuge. ‘There is no other country left for Mr bin Laden,’ he said politely. ‘When he was in Sudan, the Saudis wanted to capture him with the help of Yemenis. We know that the French government tried to persuade the Sudanese to hand him over to them because the Sudanese had given them the South American.’ (This was ‘Carlos the Jackal’.) ‘The Americans were pressing the French to get hold of bin Laden in Sudan. An Arab group which was paid by the Saudis tried to kill him and they shot at him but bin Laden’s guards fired back and two of the men were wounded. The same people also tried to murder Turabi.’ The Egyptian listened to this in silence. ‘Yes, the country is very dangerous,’ he said. ‘The Americans are trying to block the route to Afghanistan for the Arabs. I prefer the mountains. I feel safer there. This place is semi-Beirut.’

Not for long. Within nine months, I would be back in a transformed, still more sinister Afghanistan, its people governed with a harsh and ignorant piety that even bin Laden could not have imagined. Again, there had come the telephone call to Beirut, the invitation to see ‘our friend’, the delay – quite deliberate on my part – before setting off yet again for Jalalabad. This time, the journey was a combination of farce and incredulity. There were no more flights from Delhi so I flew first to the emirate of Dubai. ‘Fly to Jalalabad?’ my Indian travel agent there asked me. ‘You have to contact “Magic Carpet”.’ He was right. ‘Magic Carpet Travel’ – in a movie, the name would never have got past the screenplay writers *– was run by a Lebanese who told me to turn up at 8.30 next morning at the heat-bleached old airport in the neighbouring and much poorer emirate of Sharjah, to which Ariana Afghan airlines had now been sent in disgrace. Sharjah played host to a flock of pariah airlines that flew from the Gulf to Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, Tajikistan and a number of obscure Iranian cities. My plane to Jalalabad was the same old Boeing 727, but now in a state of much-reduced circumstances, cruelly converted into a freight carrier.

The crew were all Afghans – bushy-bearded to a man, since the Taliban had just taken over Afghanistan and ordered men to stop shaving – and did their best to make me comfortable in the lone and grubby passenger seat at the front. ‘Safety vest under seat,’ was written behind the lavatory. There was no vest. And the toilet was running with faeces, a fearful stench drifting over the cargo of ball-bearings and textiles behind me. On take-off, a narrow tide of vile-smelling liquid washed out of the lavatory and ran down the centre of the aircraft. ‘Don’t worry, you’re in safe hands,’ one of the crew insisted as we climbed through the turbulence, introducing me to a giant of a man with a black and white beard who kept grinding his teeth and wringing his hands on a damp cloth. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is our senior flight maintenance engineer.’ Over the Spinghar Mountains, the engineer at last sniffed the smell from the toilet, entered the tiny cubicle with a ratchet and attacked the plumbing. By the time we landed at the old airstrip at Jalalabad, I was ready to contemplate the overland journey home.