THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM
A DECLARATION OF WAR
In February 1998, the 40-year-old Saudi exile Usama Bin Ladin and a fugitive Egyptian
physician, Ayman al Zawahiri, arranged from their Afghan headquarters for an Arabic
newspaper in London to publish what they termed a fatwa issued in the name of a
"World Islamic Front." A fatwa is normally an interpretation of Islamic law by a
respected Islamic authority, but neither Bin Ladin, Zawahiri, nor the three others
who signed this statement were scholars of Islamic law. Claiming that America had
declared war against God and his messenger, they called for the murder of any
American, anywhere on earth, as the "individual duty for every Muslim who can do it
in any country in which it is possible to do it."
Three months later, when interviewed in Afghanistan by ABC-TV, Bin Ladin enlarged on
these themes.
He claimed it was more important for Muslims to kill Americans than to kill other
infidels." It is far better for anyone to kill a single American soldier than to
squander his efforts on other activities," he said. Asked whether he approved of
terrorism and of attacks on civilians, he replied:"We believe that the worst thieves
in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. Nothing could stop
you except perhaps retaliation in kind. We do not have to differentiate between
military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets." Note:
Islamic names often do not follow the Western practice of the consistent use of
surnames. Given the variety of names we mention, we chose to refer to individuals by
the last word in the names by which they are known: Nawaf al Hazmi as Hazmi, for
instance, omitting the article "al" that would be part of their name in their own
societies. We generally make an exception for the more familiar English usage of
"Bin" as part of a last name, as in Bin Ladin. Further, there is no universally
accepted way to transliterate Arabic words and names into English. We have relied on
a mix of common sense, the sound of the name in Arabic, and common usage in source
materials, the press, or government documents. When we quote from a source document,
we use its transliteration, e.g.,"al Qida" instead of al Qaeda.
Though novel for its open endorsement of indiscriminate killing, Bin Ladin's 1998
declaration was only the latest in the long series of his public and private calls
since 1992 that singled out the United States for attack. In August 1996, Bin Ladin
had issued his own self-styled fatwa calling on Muslims to drive American soldiers
out of Saudi Arabia. The long, disjointed document condemned the Saudi monarchy for
allowing the presence of an army of infidels in a land with the sites most sacred to
Islam, and celebrated recent suicide bombings of American military facilities in the
Kingdom. It praised the 1983 suicide bombing in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines,
the 1992 bombing in Aden, and especially the 1993 firefight in Somalia after which
the United States "left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and
your dead with you."
Bin Ladin said in his ABC interview that he and his followers had been preparing in
Somalia for another long struggle, like that against the Soviets in Afghanistan, but
"the United States rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace." Citing the Soviet
army's withdrawal from Afghanistan as proof that a ragged army of dedicated Muslims
could overcome a superpower, he told the interviewer: "We are certain that we
shall-with the grace of Allah-prevail over the Americans." He went on to warn that
"If the present injustice continues . . . , it will inevitably move the battle to
American soil."
Plans to attack the United States were developed with unwavering singlemindedness
throughout the 1990s. Bin Ladin saw himself as called "to follow in the footsteps of
the Messenger and to communicate his message to all nations," and to serve as the rallying point and organizer of a new kind of war to
destroy America and bring the world to Islam.
BIN LADIN'S APPEAL IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD
It is the story of eccentric and violent ideas sprouting in the fertile ground of
political and social turmoil. It is the story of an organization poised to seize its
historical moment. How did Bin Ladin-with his call for the indiscriminate killing of
Americans-win thousands of followers and some degree of approval from millions more?
The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin has shaped and spread
his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam's
past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves the
victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to
the holy Qur'an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by
cyclonic change as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric
selectively draws from multiple sources-Islam, history, and the region's political
and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely
shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in
Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam's holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the
Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested
U.S. support of Israel.
Islam Islam (a word that literally means "surrender to the will of God") arose in
Arabia with what Muslims believe are a series of revelations to the Prophet Mohammed
from the one and only God, the God of Abraham and of Jesus. These revelations,
conveyed by the angel Gabriel, are recorded in the Qur'an. Muslims believe that
these revelations, given to the greatest and last of a chain of prophets stretching
from Abraham through Jesus, complete God's message to humanity. The Hadith, which
recount Mohammed's sayings and deeds as recorded by his contemporaries, are another
fundamental source. A third key element is the Sharia, the code of law derived from
the Qur'an and the Hadith. Islam is divided into two main branches, Sunni and Shia.
Soon after the Prophet's death, the question of choosing a new leader, or caliph,
for the Muslim community, or Ummah, arose. Initially, his successors could be drawn
from the Prophet's contemporaries, but with time, this was no longer possible. Those
who became the Shia held that any leader of the Ummah must be a direct descendant of
the Prophet; those who became the Sunni argued that lineal descent was not required
if the candidate met other standards of faith and knowledge. After bloody struggles,
the Sunni became (and remain) the majority sect. (The Shia are dominant in Iran.)
The Caliphate-the institutionalized leadership of the Ummah-thus was a Sunni
institution that continued until 1924, first under Arab and eventually under Ottoman
Turkish control. Many Muslims look back at the century after the revelations to the
Prophet Mohammed as a golden age. Its memory is strongest among the Arabs. What
happened then-the spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula throughout the Middle
East, North Africa, and even into Europe within less than a century- seemed, and
seems, miraculous.
Nostalgia for Islam's past glory remains a powerful force.
Islam is both a faith and a code of conduct for all aspects of life. For many
Muslims, a good government would be one guided by the moral principles of their
faith. This does not necessarily translate into a desire for clerical rule and the
abolition of a secular state. It does mean that some Muslims tend to be
uncomfortable with distinctions between religion and state, though Muslim rulers
throughout history have readily separated the two.
To extremists, however, such divisions, as well as the existence of parliaments and
legislation, only prove these rulers to be false Muslims usurping God's authority
over all aspects of life. Periodically, the Islamic world has seen surges of what,
for want of a better term, is often labeled "fundamentalism."
Denouncing waywardness among the faithful, some clerics have appealed for a return to
observance of the literal teachings of the Qur'an and Hadith. One scholar from the
fourteenth century from whom Bin Ladin selectively quotes, Ibn Taimiyyah, condemned
both corrupt rulers and the clerics who failed to criticize them. He urged Muslims
to read the Qur'an and the Hadith for themselves, not to depend solely on learned
interpreters like himself but to hold one another to account for the quality of
their observance.
The extreme Islamist version of history blames the decline from Islam's golden age on
the rulers and people who turned away from the true path of their religion, thereby
leaving Islam vulnerable to encroaching foreign powers eager to steal their land,
wealth, and even their souls.
Bin Ladin's Worldview Despite his claims to universal leadership, Bin Ladin offers an
extreme view of Islamic history designed to appeal mainly to Arabs and Sunnis. He
draws on fundamentalists who blame the eventual destruction of the Caliphate on
leaders who abandoned the pure path of religious devotion.
He repeatedly calls on his followers to embrace martyrdom since "the walls of
oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets." For those yearning for a lost sense of order in an older,
more tranquil world, he offers his "Caliphate" as an imagined alternative to today's
uncertainty. For others, he offers simplistic conspiracies to explain their world.
Bin Ladin also relies heavily on the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb. A member of the
Muslim Brotherhood executed in 1966 on charges of
attempting to overthrow the government, Qutb mixed Islamic scholarship with a very
superficial acquaintance with Western history and thought. Sent by the Egyptian
government to study in the United States in the late 1940s, Qutb returned with an
enormous loathing of Western society and history. He dismissed Western achievements
as entirely material, arguing that Western society possesses "nothing that will
satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence."
Three basic themes emerge from Qutb's writings. First, he claimed that the world was
beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition he called jahiliyya,
the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the revelations given to the
Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued that humans can choose only between Islam and
jahiliyya. Second, he warned that more people, including Muslims, were attracted to
jahiliyya and its material comforts than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could
therefore triumph over Islam. Third, no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived
as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims-as he defined them-therefore must
take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more
nonbeliever worthy of destruction.
Bin Ladin shares Qutb's stark view, permitting him and his followers to rationalize
even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defense of an embattled faith. Many
Americans have wondered, "Why do 'they' hate us?" Some also ask, "What can we do to
stop these attacks?"
Bin Ladin and al Qaeda have given answers to both these questions. To the first, they
say that America had attacked Islam; America is responsible for all conflicts
involving Muslims. Thus Americans are blamed when Israelis fight with Palestinians,
when Russians fight with Chechens, when Indians fight with Kashmiri Muslims, and
when the Philippine government fights ethnic Muslims in its southern islands.
America is also held responsible for the governments of Muslim countries, derided by
al Qaeda as "your agents." Bin Ladin has stated flatly,"Our fight against these
governments is not separate from our fight against you."
These charges found a ready audience among millions of Arabs and Muslims angry at
the United States because of issues ranging from Iraq to Palestine to America's
support for their countries' repressive rulers.
Bin Ladin's grievance with the United States may have started in reaction to specific
U.S. policies but it quickly became far deeper. To the second question, what America
could do, al Qaeda's answer was that America should abandon the Middle East, convert
to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture:"It is
saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history
of mankind." If the United States did not comply, it would be at war with the
Islamic nation, a nation that al Qaeda's leaders said "desires death more than you
desire life."
History and Political Context Few fundamentalist movements in the Islamic world
gained lasting political power. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
fundamentalists helped articulate anticolonial grievances but played little role in
the overwhelmingly secular struggles for independence after World War I.
Western-educated lawyers, soldiers, and officials led most independence movements,
and clerical influence and traditional culture were seen as obstacles to national
progress. After gaining independence from Western powers following World War II, the
Arab Middle East followed an arc from initial pride and optimism to today's mix of
indifference, cynicism, and despair. In several countries, a dynastic state already
existed or was quickly established under a paramount tribal family. Monarchies in
countries such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Jordan still survive today. Those in
Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen were eventually overthrown by secular nationalist
revolutionaries.
The secular regimes promised a glowing future, often tied to sweeping ideologies
(such as those promoted by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's Arab Socialism or
the Ba'ath Party of Syria and Iraq) that called for a single, secular Arab state.
However, what emerged were almost invariably autocratic regimes that were usually
unwilling to tolerate any opposition-even in countries, such as Egypt, that had a
parliamentary tradition. Over time, their policies- repression, rewards, emigration,
and the displacement of popular anger onto scapegoats (generally foreign)-were
shaped by the desire to cling to power.
The bankruptcy of secular, autocratic nationalism was evident across the Muslim world
by the late 1970s. At the same time, these regimes had closed off nearly all paths
for peaceful opposition, forcing their critics to choose silence, exile, or violent
opposition. Iran's 1979 revolution swept a Shia theocracy into power. Its success
encouraged Sunni fundamentalists elsewhere. In the 1980s, awash in sudden oil
wealth, Saudi Arabia competed with Shia Iran to promote its Sunni fundamentalist
interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism. The Saudi government, always conscious of its
duties as the custodian of Islam's holiest places, joined with wealthy Arabs from
the Kingdom and other states bordering the Persian Gulf in donating money to build
mosques and religious schools that could preach and teach their interpretation of
Islamic doctrine. In this competition for legitimacy, secular regimes had no
alternative to offer. Instead, in a number of cases their rulers sought to buy off
local Islamist movements by ceding control of many social and educational issues.
Emboldened rather than satisfied, the Islamists continued to push for power-a trend
especially clear in Egypt. Confronted with a violent Islamist movement that killed
President Anwar Sadat in 1981, the Egyptian government combined harsh repression of
Islamic militants with harassment of moderate Islamic scholars and authors, driving
many into exile. In Pakistan, a military regime sought to justify its seizure of
power by a pious public stance and an embrace of unprecedented Islamist influence on
education and society.
These experiments in political Islam faltered during the 1990s: the Iranian
revolution lost momentum, prestige, and public support, and Pakistan's rulers found
that most of its population had little enthusiasm for fundamentalist Islam. Islamist
revival movements gained followers across the Muslim world, but failed to secure
political power except in Iran and Sudan. In Algeria, where in 1991 Islamists seemed
almost certain to win power through the ballot box, the military preempted their
victory, triggering a brutal civil war that continues today. Opponents of today's
rulers have few, if any, ways to participate in the existing political system. They
are thus a ready audience for calls to Muslims to purify their society, reject
unwelcome modernization, and adhere strictly to the Sharia. Social and Economic
Malaise In the 1970s and early 1980s, an unprecedented flood of wealth led the then
largely unmodernized oil states to attempt to shortcut decades of development. They
funded huge infrastructure projects, vastly expanded education, and created
subsidized social welfare programs. These programs established a widespread feeling
of entitlement without a corresponding sense of social obligations. By the late
1980s, diminishing oil revenues, the economic drain from many unprofitable
development projects, and population growth made these entitlement programs
unsustainable. The resulting cutbacks created enormous resentment among recipients
who had come to see government largesse as their right. This resentment was further
stoked by public understanding of how much oil income had gone straight into the
pockets of the rulers, their friends, and their helpers.
Unlike the oil states (or Afghanistan, where real economic development has barely
begun), the other Arab nations and Pakistan once had seemed headed toward balanced
modernization. The established commercial, financial, and industrial sectors in
these states, supported by an entrepreneurial spirit and widespread understanding of
free enterprise, augured well. But unprofitable heavy industry, state monopolies,
and opaque bureaucracies slowly stifled growth. More importantly, these
state-centered regimes placed their highest priority on preserving the elite's grip
on national wealth. Unwilling to foster dynamic economies that could create jobs
attractive to educated young men, the countries became economically stagnant and
reliant on the safety valve of worker emigration either to the Arab oil states or to
the West. Furthermore, the repression and isolation of women in many Muslim
countries have not only seriously limited individual opportunity but also crippled
overall economic productivity.
By the 1990s, high birthrates and declining rates of infant mortality had produced a
common problem throughout the Muslim world: a large, steadily increasing population
of young men without any reasonable expectation of suitable or steady employment-a
sure prescription for social turbulence. Many of these young men, such as the
enormous number trained only in religious schools, lacked the skills needed by their
societies. Far more acquired valuable skills but lived in stagnant economies that
could not generate satisfying jobs. Millions, pursuing secular as well as religious
studies, were products of educational systems that generally devoted little if any
attention to the rest of the world's thought, history, and culture. The secular
education reflected a strong cultural preference for technical fields over the
humanities and social sciences. Many of these young men, even if able to study
abroad, lacked the perspective and skills needed to understand a different culture.
Frustrated in their search for a decent living, unable to benefit from an education
often obtained at the cost of great family sacrifice, and blocked from starting
families of their own, some of these young men were easy targets for radicalization.
Bin Ladin's Historical Opportunity Most Muslims prefer a peaceful and inclusive
vision of their faith, not the violent sectarianism of Bin Ladin. Among Arabs, Bin
Ladin's followers are commonly nicknamed takfiri, or "those who define other Muslims
as unbelievers," because of their readiness to demonize and murder those with whom
they disagree. Beyond the theology lies the simple human fact that most Muslims,
like most other human beings, are repelled by mass murder and barbarism whatever
their justification.
"All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true face of Islam,"
President Bush observed." Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people
around the world. It's a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race.
It's a faith based upon love, not hate." Yet as
political, social, and economic problems created flammable societies, Bin Ladin used
Islam's most extreme, fundamentalist traditions as his match. All these
elements-including religion-combined in an explosive compound.
Other extremists had, and have, followings of their own. But in appealing to
societies full of discontent, Bin Ladin remained credible as other leaders and
symbols faded. He could stand as a symbol of resistance-above all, resistance to the
West and to America. He could present himself and his allies as victorious warriors
in the one great successful experience for Islamic militancy in the 1980s: the
Afghan jihad against the Soviet occupation.
By 1998, Bin Ladin had a distinctive appeal, as he focused on attacking America. He
argued that other extremists, who aimed at local rulers or Israel, did not go far
enough. They had not taken on what he called "the head of the snake."
Finally, Bin Ladin had another advantage: a substantial, worldwide organization. By
the time he issued his February 1998 declaration of war, Bin Ladin had nurtured that
organization for nearly ten years. He could attract, train, and use recruits for
ever more ambitious attacks, rallying new adherents with each demonstration that his
was the movement of the future.
THE RISE OF BIN LADIN AND AL QAEDA (1988-1992)
A decade of conflict in Afghanistan, from 1979 to 1989, gave Islamist extremists a
rallying point and training field. A Communist government in Afghanistan gained
power in 1978 but was unable to establish enduring control. At the end of 1979, the
Soviet government sent in military units to ensure that the country would remain
securely under Moscow's influence. The response was an Afghan national resistance
movement that defeated Soviet forces.
Young Muslims from around the world flocked to Afghanistan to join as volunteers in
what was seen as a "holy war"-jihad-against an invader. The largest numbers came
from the Middle East. Some were Saudis, and among them was Usama Bin Ladin.
Twenty-three when he arrived in Afghanistan in 1980, Bin Ladin was the seventeenth of
57 children of a Saudi construction magnate. Six feet five and thin, Bin Ladin
appeared to be ungainly but was in fact quite athletic, skilled as a horseman,
runner, climber, and soccer player. He had attended Abdul Aziz University in Saudi
Arabia. By some accounts, he had been interested there in religious studies,
inspired by tape recordings of fiery sermons by Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian and a
disciple of Qutb. Bin Ladin was conspicuous among the volunteers not because he
showed evidence of religious learning but because he had access to some of his
family's huge fortune. Though he took part in at least one actual battle, he became
known chiefly as a person who generously helped fund the anti-Soviet jihad.
Bin Ladin understood better than most of the volunteers the extent to which the
continuation and eventual success of the jihad in Afghanistan depended on an
increasingly complex, almost worldwide organization. This organization included a
financial support network that came to be known as the "Golden Chain," put together
mainly by financiers in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. Donations flowed
through charities or other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Bin Ladin and the
"Afghan Arabs" drew largely on funds raised by this network, whose agents roamed
world markets to buy arms and supplies for the mujahideen, or "holy warriors."
Mosques, schools, and boardinghouses served as recruiting stations in many parts of
the world, including the United States. Some were set up by Islamic extremists or
their financial backers. Bin Ladin had an important part in this activity. He and
the cleric Azzam had joined in creating a "Bureau of Services" (Mektab al Khidmat,
or MAK), which channeled recruits into Afghanistan.
The international environment for Bin Ladin's efforts was ideal. Saudi Arabia and the
United States supplied billions of dollars worth of secret assistance to rebel
groups in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation. This assistance was funneled
through Pakistan: the Pakistani military intelligence service (Inter- Services
Intelligence Directorate, or ISID), helped train the rebels and distribute the arms.
But Bin Ladin and his comrades had their own sources of support and training, and
they received little or no assistance from the United States.
April 1988 brought victory for the Afghan jihad. Moscow declared it would pull its
military forces out of Afghanistan within the next nine months. As the Soviets began
their withdrawal, the jihad's leaders debated what to do next. Bin Ladin and Azzam
agreed that the organization successfully created for Afghanistan should not be
allowed to dissolve. They established what they called a base or foundation (al
Qaeda) as a potential general headquarters for future jihad.
Though Azzam had been considered number one in the MAK, by August 1988 Bin Ladin was
clearly the leader (emir) of al Qaeda. This organization's structure included as its
operating arms an intelligence component, a military committee, a financial
committee, a political committee, and a committee in charge of media affairs and
propaganda. It also had an Advisory Council (Shura) made up of Bin Ladin's inner
circle.
Bin Ladin's assumption of the helm of al Qaeda was evidence of his growing
self-confidence and ambition. He soon made clear his desire for unchallenged control
and for preparing the mujahideen to fight anywhere in the world. Azzam, by contrast,
favored continuing to fight in Afghanistan until it had a true Islamist government.
And, as a Palestinian, he saw Israel as the top priority for the next stage.
Whether the dispute was about power, personal differences, or strategy, it ended on
November 24, 1989, when a remotely controlled car bomb killed Azzam and both of his
sons. The killers were assumed to be rival Egyptians. The outcome left Bin Ladin
indisputably in charge of what remained of the MAK and al Qaeda.
Through writers like Qutb, and the presence of Egyptian Islamist teachers in the
Saudi educational system, Islamists already had a strong intellectual influence on
Bin Ladin and his al Qaeda colleagues. By the late 1980s, the Egyptian Islamist
movement-badly battered in the government crackdown following President Sadat's
assassination-was centered in two major organizations: the Islamic Group and the
Egyptian Islamic Jihad. A spiritual guide for both, but especially the Islamic
Group, was the so-called Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman. His preaching had inspired
the assassination of Sadat. After being in and out of Egyptian prisons during the
1980s, Abdel Rahman found refuge in the United States. From his headquarters in
Jersey City, he distributed messages calling for the murder of unbelievers.
The most important Egyptian in Bin Ladin's circle was a surgeon, Ayman al Zawahiri,
who led a strong faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Many of his followers became
important members in the new organization, and his own close ties with Bin Ladin led
many to think of him as the deputy head of al Qaeda. He would in fact become Bin
Ladin's deputy some years later, when they merged their organizations.
Bin Ladin Moves to Sudan By the fall of 1989, Bin Ladin had sufficient stature among
Islamic extremists that a Sudanese political leader, Hassan al Turabi, urged him to
transplant his whole organization to Sudan. Turabi headed the National Islamic Front
in a coalition that had recently seized power in Khartoum.
Bin Ladin agreed to help Turabi in an ongoing war against African Christian
separatists in southern Sudan and also to do some road building. Turabi in return
would let Bin Ladin use Sudan as a base for worldwide business operations and for
preparations for jihad.
While agents of Bin Ladin began to buy property in Sudan in 1990, Bin Ladin himself moved from Afghanistan back to Saudi Arabia. In
August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Bin Ladin, whose efforts in Afghanistan had earned
him celebrity and respect, proposed to the Saudi monarchy that he summon mujahideen
for a jihad to retake Kuwait. He was rebuffed, and the Saudis joined the U.S.-led
coalition. After the Saudis agreed to allow U.S. armed forces to be based in the
Kingdom, Bin Ladin and a number of Islamic clerics began to publicly denounce the
arrangement. The Saudi government exiled the clerics and undertook to silence Bin
Ladin by, among other things, taking away his passport. With help from a dissident
member of the royal family, he managed to get out of the country under the pretext
of attending an Islamic gathering in Pakistan in April 1991.33 By 1994, the Saudi
government would freeze his financial assets and revoke his citizenship.
He no longer had a country he could call his own.
Bin Ladin moved to Sudan in 1991 and set up a large and complex set of intertwined
business and terrorist enterprises. In time, the former would encompass numerous
companies and a global network of bank accounts and nongovernmental institutions.
Fulfilling his bargain with Turabi, Bin Ladin used his construction company to build
a new highway from Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. Meanwhile, al Qaeda
finance officers and top operatives used their positions in Bin Ladin's businesses
to acquire weapons, explosives, and technical equipment for terrorist purposes. One
founding member, Abu Hajer al Iraqi, used his position as head of a Bin Ladin
investment company to carry out procurement trips from western Europe to the Far
East. Two others, Wadi al Hage and Mubarak Douri, who had become acquainted in
Tucson, Arizona, in the late 1980s, went as far afield as China, Malaysia, the
Philippines, and the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Belarus.
Bin Ladin's impressive array of offices covertly provided financial and other support
for terrorist activities. The network included a major business enterprise in
Cyprus; a "services" branch in Zagreb; an office of the Benevolence International
Foundation in Sarajevo, which supported the Bosnian Muslims in their conflict with
Serbia and Croatia; and an NGO in Baku, Azerbaijan, that was employed as well by
Egyptian Islamic Jihad both as a source and conduit for finances and as a support
center for the Muslim rebels in Chechnya. He also made use of the
already-established Third World Relief Agency (TWRA) headquartered in Vienna, whose
branch office locations included Zagreb and Budapest. (Bin Ladin later set up an NGO
in Nairobi as a cover for operatives there.)
Bin Ladin now had a vision of himself as head of an international jihad
confederation. In Sudan, he established an "Islamic Army Shura" that was to serve as
the coordinating body for the consortium of terrorist groups with which he was
forging alliances. It was composed of his own al Qaeda Shura together with leaders
or representatives of terrorist organizations that were still independent. In
building this Islamic army, he enlisted groups from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan,
Lebanon, Iraq, Oman, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea. Al
Qaeda also established cooperative but less formal relationships with other
extremist groups from these same countries; from the African states of Chad, Mali,
Niger, Nigeria, and Uganda; and from the Southeast Asian states of Burma, Thailand,
Malaysia, and Indonesia. Bin Ladin maintained connections in the Bosnian conflict as
well.
The groundwork for a true global terrorist network was being laid.
Bin Ladin also provided equipment and training assistance to the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front in the Philippines and also to a newly forming Philippine group
that called itself the Abu Sayyaf Brigade, after one of the major Afghan jihadist
commanders.
Al Qaeda helped Jemaah Islamiya (JI), a nascent organization headed by Indonesian
Islamists with cells scattered across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the
Philippines. It also aided a Pakistani group engaged in insurrectionist attacks in
Kashmir. In mid-1991, Bin Ladin dispatched a band of supporters to the northern
Afghanistan border to assist the Tajikistan Islamists in the ethnic conflicts that
had been boiling there even before the Central Asian departments of the Soviet Union
became independent states.
This pattern of expansion through building alliances extended to the United States. A
Muslim organization called al Khifa had numerous branch offices, the largest of
which was in the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn. In the mid- 1980s, it had been set up as
one of the first outposts of Azzam and Bin Ladin's MAK.
Other cities with branches of al Khifa included Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh,
and Tucson.
Al Khifa recruited American Muslims to fight in Afghanistan; some of them would
participate in terrorist actions in the United States in the early 1990s and in al
Qaeda operations elsewhere, including the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in East
Africa.
BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION, DECLARING WAR ON THE UNITED STATES
(1992-1996)
Bin Ladin began delivering diatribes against the United States before he left Saudi
Arabia. He continued to do so after he arrived in Sudan. In early 1992, the al Qaeda
leadership issued a fatwa calling for jihad against the Western "occupation" of
Islamic lands. Specifically singling out U.S. forces for attack, the language
resembled that which would appear in Bin Ladin's public fatwa in August 1996. In
ensuing weeks, Bin Ladin delivered an often-repeated lecture on the need to cut off
"the head of the snake."
By this time, Bin Ladin was well-known and a senior figure among Islamist extremists,
especially those in Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border region. Still, he was just one among many diverse terrorist barons. Some of
Bin Ladin's close comrades were more peers than subordinates. For example, Usama
Asmurai, also known as Wali Khan, worked with Bin Ladin in the early 1980s and
helped him in the Philippines and in Tajikistan. The Egyptian spiritual guide based
in New Jersey, the Blind Sheikh, whom Bin Ladin admired, was also in the network.
Among sympathetic peers in Afghanistan were a few of the warlords still fighting for
power and Abu Zubaydah, who helped operate a popular terrorist training camp near
the border with Pakistan. There were also rootless but experienced operatives, such
as Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who-though not necessarily formal
members of someone else's organization-were traveling around the world and joining
in projects that were supported by or linked to Bin Ladin, the Blind Sheikh, or
their associates.
In now analyzing the terrorist programs carried out by members of this network, it
would be misleading to apply the label "al Qaeda operations" too often in these
early years. Yet it would also be misleading to ignore the significance of these
connections. And in this network, Bin Ladin's agenda stood out. While his allied
Islamist groups were focused on local battles, such as those in Egypt, Algeria,
Bosnia, or Chechnya, Bin Ladin concentrated on attacking the "far enemy"-the United
States.
Attacks Known and Suspected
After U.S. troops deployed to Somalia in late 1992, al Qaeda leaders formulated a
fatwa demanding their eviction. In December, bombs exploded at two hotels in Aden
where U.S. troops routinely stopped en route to Somalia, killing two, but no
Americans. The perpetrators are reported to have belonged to a group from southern
Yemen headed by a Yemeni member of Bin Ladin's Islamic Army Shura; some in the group
had trained at an al Qaeda camp in Sudan.
Al Qaeda leaders set up a Nairobi cell and used it to send weapons and trainers to
the Somali warlords battling U.S. forces, an operation directly supervised by al
Qaeda's military leader.
Scores of trainers flowed to Somalia over the ensuing months, including most of the
senior members and weapons training experts of al Qaeda's military committee. These
trainers were later heard boasting that their assistance led to the October 1993
shootdown of two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters by members of a Somali militia group
and to the subsequent withdrawal of U.S. forces in early 1994.
In November 1995, a car bomb exploded outside a Saudi-U.S. joint facility in Riyadh
for training the Saudi National Guard. Five Americans and two officials from India
were killed. The Saudi government arrested four perpetrators, who admitted being
inspired by Bin Ladin. They were promptly executed. Though nothing proves that Bin
Ladin ordered this attack, U.S. intelligence subsequently learned that al Qaeda
leaders had decided a year earlier to attack a U.S. target in Saudi Arabia, and had
shipped explosives to the peninsula for this purpose. Some of Bin Ladin's associates
later took credit.
In June 1996, an enormous truck bomb detonated in the Khobar Towers residential
complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that housed U.S. Air Force personnel. Nineteen
Americans were killed, and 372 were wounded. The operation was carried out
principally, perhaps exclusively, by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had
received support from the government of Iran. While the evidence of Iranian
involvement is strong, there are also signs that al Qaeda played some role, as yet
unknown.
In this period, other prominent attacks in which Bin Ladin's involvement is at best
cloudy are the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, a plot that same year to
destroy landmarks in New York, and the 1995 Manila air plot to blow up a dozen U.S.
airliners over the Pacific. Details on these plots appear in chapter 3.
Another scheme revealed that Bin Ladin sought the capability to kill on a mass scale.
His business aides received word that a Sudanese military officer who had been a
member of the previous government cabinet was offering to sell weapons-grade
uranium. After a number of contacts were made through intermediaries, the officer
set the price at $1.5 million, which did not deter Bin Ladin. Al Qaeda
representatives asked to inspect the uranium and were shown a cylinder about 3 feet
long, and one thought he could pronounce it genuine. Al Qaeda apparently purchased
the cylinder, then discovered it to be bogus.
But while the effort failed, it shows what Bin Ladin and his associates hoped to do.
One of the al Qaeda representatives explained his mission: "it's easy to kill more
people with uranium."
Bin Ladin seemed willing to include in the confederation terrorists from almost every
corner of the Muslim world. His vision mirrored that of Sudan's Islamist leader,
Turabi, who convened a series of meetings under the label Popular Arab and Islamic
Conference around the time of Bin Ladin's arrival in that country. Delegations of
violent Islamist extremists came from all the groups represented in Bin Ladin's
Islamic Army Shura. Representatives also came from organizations such as the
Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
Turabi sought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisions and join
against the common enemy. In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al
Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing
support-even if only training-for actions carried out primarily against Israel and
the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers
traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another
such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in
explosives as well as in intelligence and security. Bin Ladin reportedly showed
particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that had
killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. The relationship between al Qaeda and
Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an
insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations. As will be described
in chapter 7, al Qaeda contacts with Iran continued in ensuing years.
Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even
though Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda-save for
his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against "Crusaders" during the
Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam
Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.
To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement that Bin
Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin apparently honored
this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to aid a group of Islamist
extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside of Baghdad's control. In
the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces. In
2001, with Bin Ladin's help they re-formed into an organization called Ansar al
Islam. There are indications that by then the Iraqi regime tolerated and may even
have helped Ansar al Islam against the common Kurdish enemy.
With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior
Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995. Bin Ladin is said
to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in
procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded to this
request.
As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to establish
connections.
Sudan Becomes a Doubtful Haven
Not until 1998 did al Qaeda undertake a major terrorist operation of its own, in
large part because Bin Ladin lost his base in Sudan. Ever since the Islamist regime
came to power in Khartoum, the United States and other Western governments had
pressed it to stop providing a haven for terrorist organizations. Other governments
in the region, such as those of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and even Libya, which were
targets of some of these groups, added their own pressure. At the same time, the
Sudanese regime began to change. Though Turabi had been its inspirational leader,
General Omar al Bashir, president since 1989, had never been entirely under his
thumb. Thus as outside pressures mounted, Bashir's supporters began to displace
those of Turabi.
The attempted assassination in Ethiopia of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in June
1995 appears to have been a tipping point. The would-be killers, who came from the
Egyptian Islamic Group, had been sheltered in Sudan and helped by Bin Ladin.
When the Sudanese refused to hand over three individuals identified as involved in
the assassination plot, the UN Security Council passed a resolution criticizing
their inaction and eventually sanctioned Khartoum in April 1996.
A clear signal to Bin Ladin that his days in Sudan were numbered came when the
government advised him that it intended to yield to Libya's demands to stop giving
sanctuary to its enemies. Bin Ladin had to tell the Libyans who had been part of his
Islamic army that he could no longer protect them and that they had to leave the
country. Outraged, several Libyan members of al Qaeda and the Islamic Army Shura
renounced all connections with him.
Bin Ladin also began to have serious money problems. International pressure on Sudan,
together with strains in the world economy, hurt Sudan's currency. Some of Bin
Ladin's companies ran short of funds. As Sudanese authorities became less obliging,
normal costs of doing business increased. Saudi pressures on the Bin Ladin family
also probably took some toll. In any case, Bin Ladin found it necessary both to cut
back his spending and to control his outlays more closely. He appointed a new
financial manager, whom his followers saw as miserly.
Money problems proved costly to Bin Ladin in other ways. Jamal Ahmed al Fadl, a
Sudanese-born Arab, had spent time in the United States and had been recruited for
the Afghan war through the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn. He had joined al Qaeda and
taken the oath of fealty to Bin Ladin, serving as one of his business agents. Then
Bin Ladin discovered that Fadl had skimmed about $110,000, and he asked for
restitution. Fadl resented receiving a salary of only $500 a month while some of the
Egyptians in al Qaeda were given $1,200 a month. He defected and became a star
informant for the United States. Also testifying about al Qaeda in a U.S. court was
L'Houssaine Kherchtou, who told of breaking with Bin Ladin because of Bin Ladin's
professed inability to provide him with money when his wife needed a caesarian
section.
In February 1996, Sudanese officials began approaching officials from the United
States and other governments, asking what actions of theirs might ease foreign
pressure. In secret meetings with Saudi officials, Sudan offered to expel Bin Ladin
to Saudi Arabia and asked the Saudis to pardon him. U.S. officials became aware of
these secret discussions, certainly by March. Saudi officials apparently wanted Bin
Ladin expelled from Sudan. They had already revoked his citizenship, however, and
would not tolerate his presence in their country. And Bin Ladin may have no longer
felt safe in Sudan, where he had already escaped at least one assassination attempt
that he believed to have been the work of the Egyptian or Saudi regimes, or both. In
any case, on May 19, 1996, Bin Ladin left Sudan-significantly weakened, despite his
ambitions and organizational skills. He returned to Afghanistan.
AL QAEDA'S RENEWAL IN AFGHANISTAN (1996-1998)
Bin Ladin flew on a leased aircraft from Khartoum to Jalalabad, with a refueling
stopover in the United Arab Emirates.
He was accompanied by family members and bodyguards, as well as by al Qaeda members
who had been close associates since his organization's 1988 founding in Afghanistan.
Dozens of additional militants arrived on later flights.
Though Bin Ladin's destination was Afghanistan, Pakistan was the nation that held the
key to his ability to use Afghanistan as a base from which to revive his ambitious
enterprise for war against the United States.
For the first quarter century of its existence as a nation, Pakistan's identity had
derived from Islam, but its politics had been decidedly secular. The army was-and
remains-the country's strongest and most respected institution, and the army had
been and continues to be preoccupied with its rivalry with India, especially over
the disputed territory of Kashmir.
From the 1970s onward, religion had become an increasingly powerful force in
Pakistani politics. After a coup in 1977, military leaders turned to Islamist groups
for support, and fundamentalists became more prominent. South Asia had an indigenous
form of Islamic fundamentalism, which had developed in the nineteenth century at a
school in the Indian village of Deoband.
The influence of the Wahhabi school of Islam had also grown, nurtured by Saudifunded
institutions. Moreover, the fighting in Afghanistan made Pakistan home to an
enormous-and generally unwelcome-population of Afghan refugees; and since the badly
strained Pakistani education system could not accommodate the refugees, the
government increasingly let privately funded religious schools serve as a cost-free
alternative. Over time, these schools produced large numbers of half-educated young
men with no marketable skills but with deeply held Islamic views.
Pakistan's rulers found these multitudes of ardent young Afghans a source of
potential trouble at home but potentially useful abroad. Those who joined the
Taliban movement, espousing a ruthless version of Islamic law, perhaps could bring
order in chaotic Afghanistan and make it a cooperative ally. They thus might give
Pakistan greater security on one of the several borders where Pakistani military
officers hoped for what they called "strategic depth."
It is unlikely that Bin Ladin could have returned to Afghanistan had Pakistan
disapproved. The Pakistani military intelligence service probably had advance
knowledge of his coming, and its officers may have facilitated his travel. During
his entire time in Sudan, he had maintained guesthouses and training camps in
Pakistan and Afghanistan. These were part of a larger network used by diverse
organizations for recruiting and training fighters for Islamic insurgencies in such
places as Tajikistan, Kashmir, and Chechnya. Pakistani intelligence officers
reportedly introduced Bin Ladin to Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base of
power, to aid his reassertion of control over camps near
Khowst, out of an apparent hope that he would now expand the camps and make them
available for training Kashmiri militants.
Yet Bin Ladin was in his weakest position since his early days in the war against the
Soviet Union. The Sudanese government had canceled the registration of the main
business enterprises he had set up there and then put some of them up for public
sale. According to a senior al Qaeda detainee, the government of Sudan seized
everything Bin Ladin had possessed there.
He also lost the head of his military committee, Abu Ubaidah al Banshiri, one of the
most capable and popular leaders of al Qaeda. While most of the group's key figures
had accompanied Bin Ladin to Afghanistan, Banshiri had remained in Kenya to oversee
the training and weapons shipments of the cell set up some four years earlier. He
died in a ferryboat accident on Lake Victoria just a few days after Bin Ladin
arrived in Jalalabad, leaving Bin Ladin with a need to replace him not only in the
Shura but also as supervisor of the cells and prospective operations in East
Africa.
He had to make other adjustments as well, for some al Qaeda members viewed Bin
Ladin's return to Afghanistan as occasion to go off in their own directions. Some
maintained collaborative relationships with al Qaeda, but many disengaged
entirely.
For a time, it may not have been clear to Bin Ladin that the Taliban would be his
best bet as an ally. When he arrived in Afghanistan, they controlled much of the
country, but key centers, including Kabul, were still held by rival warlords. Bin
Ladin went initially to Jalalabad, probably because it was in an area controlled by
a provincial council of Islamic leaders who were not major contenders for national
power. He found lodgings with Younis Khalis, the head of one of the main mujahideen
factions. Bin Ladin apparently kept his options open, maintaining contacts with
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who, though an Islamic extremist, was also one of the Taliban's
most militant opponents. But after September 1996, when first Jalalabad and then
Kabul fell to the Taliban, Bin Ladin cemented his ties with them.
That process did not always go smoothly. Bin Ladin, no longer constrained by the
Sudanese, clearly thought that he had new freedom to publish his appeals for jihad.
At about the time when the Taliban were making their final drive toward Jalalabad
and Kabul, Bin Ladin issued his August 1996 fatwa, saying that "We . . . have been
prevented from addressing the Muslims," but expressing relief that "by the grace of
Allah, a safe base here is now available in the high Hindu Kush mountains in
Khurasan." But theTaliban, like the Sudanese, would eventually hear warnings,
including from the Saudi monarchy.
Though Bin Ladin had promised Taliban leaders that he would be circumspect, he broke
this promise almost immediately, giving an inflammatory interview to CNN in March
1997. The Taliban leader Mullah Omar promptly "invited" Bin Ladin to move to
Kandahar, ostensibly in the interests of Bin Ladin's own security but more likely to
situate him where he might be easier to control.
There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers
to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation. None are reported to have received a
significant response. According to one report, Saddam Hussein's efforts at this time
to rebuild relations with the Saudis and other Middle Eastern regimes led him to
stay clear of Bin Ladin.
In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative.
In March 1998, after Bin Ladin's public fatwa against the United States, two al
Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an
Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then
with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was
apparently arranged through Bin Ladin's Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of
his own to the Iraqis. In 1998, Iraq was under intensifying U.S. pressure, which
culminated in a series of large air attacks in December.
Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred
in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban. According to the
reporting, Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq. Bin Ladin
declined, apparently judging that his circumstances in Afghanistan remained more
favorable than the Iraqi alternative. The reports describe friendly contacts and
indicate some common themes in both sides' hatred of the United States. But to date
we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a
collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that
Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the
United States.
Bin Ladin eventually enjoyed a strong financial position in Afghanistan, thanks to
Saudi and other financiers associated with the Golden Chain. Through his
relationship with Mullah Omar-and the monetary and other benefits that it brought
the Taliban-Bin Ladin was able to circumvent restrictions; Mullah Omar would stand
by him even when otherTaliban leaders raised objections. Bin Ladin appeared to have
in Afghanistan a freedom of movement that he had lacked in Sudan. Al Qaeda members
could travel freely within the country, enter and exit it without visas or any
immigration procedures, purchase and import vehicles and weapons, and enjoy the use
of official Afghan Ministry of Defense license plates. Al Qaeda also used the Afghan
state-owned Ariana Airlines to courier money into the country.
The Taliban seemed to open the doors to all who wanted to come to Afghanistan to
train in the camps. The alliance with theTaliban provided al Qaeda a sanctuary in
which to train and indoctrinate fighters and terrorists, import weapons, forge ties
with other jihad groups and leaders, and plot and staff terrorist schemes. While Bin
Ladin maintained his own al Qaeda guesthouses and camps for vetting and training
recruits, he also provided support to and benefited from the broad infrastructure of
such facilities in Afghanistan made available to the global network of Islamist
movements. U.S. intelligence estimates put the total number of fighters who
underwent instruction in Bin Ladin-supported camps in Afghanistan from 1996 through
9/11 at 10,000 to 20,000.
In addition to training fighters and special operators, this larger network of
guesthouses and camps provided a mechanism by which al Qaeda could screen and vet
candidates for induction into its own organization. Thousands flowed through the
camps, but no more than a few hundred seem to have become al Qaeda members. From the
time of its founding, al Qaeda had employed training and indoctrination to identify
"worthy" candidates.
Al Qaeda continued meanwhile to collaborate closely with the many Middle Eastern
groups-in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Somalia, and
elsewhere-with which it had been linked when Bin Ladin was in Sudan. It also
reinforced its London base and its other offices around Europe, the Balkans, and the
Caucasus. Bin Ladin bolstered his links to extremists in South and Southeast Asia,
including the Malaysian-Indonesian JI and several Pakistani groups engaged in the
Kashmir conflict.
The February 1998 fatwa thus seems to have been a kind of public launch of a renewed
and stronger al Qaeda, after a year and a half of work. Having rebuilt his
fund-raising network, Bin Ladin had again become the rich man of the jihad movement.
He had maintained or restored many of his links with terrorists elsewhere in the
world. And he had strengthened the internal ties in his own organization.
The inner core of al Qaeda continued to be a hierarchical top-down group with defined
positions, tasks, and salaries. Most but not all in this core swore fealty (or
bayat) to Bin Ladin. Other operatives were committed to Bin Ladin or to his goals
and would take assignments for him, but they did not swear bayat and maintained, or
tried to maintain, some autonomy. A looser circle of adherents might give money to
al Qaeda or train in its camps but remained essentially independent. Nevertheless,
they constituted a potential resource for al Qaeda.
Now effectively merged with Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda promised to become the general headquarters for international
terrorism, without the need for the Islamic Army Shura. Bin Ladin was prepared to
pick up where he had left off in Sudan. He was ready to strike at "the head of the
snake." Al Qaeda's role in organizing terrorist operations had also changed. Before
the move to Afghanistan, it had concentrated on providing funds, training, and
weapons for actions carried out by members of allied groups. The attacks on the U.S.
embassies in East Africa in the summer of 1998 would take a different form-planned,
directed, and executed by al Qaeda, under the direct supervision of Bin Ladin and
his chief aides.
The Embassy Bombings As early as December 1993, a team of al Qaeda operatives had
begun casing targets in Nairobi for future attacks. It was led by Ali Mohamed, a
former Egyptian army officer who had moved to the United States in the mid-1980s,
enlisted in the U.S. Army, and became an instructor at Fort Bragg. He had provided
guidance and training to extremists at the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, including some
who were subsequently convicted in the February 1993 attack on the World Trade
Center. The casing team also included a computer expert whose write-ups were
reviewed by al Qaeda leaders.
The team set up a makeshift laboratory for developing their surveillance photographs
in an apartment in Nairobi where the various al Qaeda operatives and leaders based
in or traveling to the Kenya cell sometimes met. Banshiri, al Qaeda's military
committee chief, continued to be the operational commander of the cell; but because
he was constantly on the move, Bin Ladin had dispatched another operative, Khaled al
Fawwaz, to serve as the on-site manager. The technical surveillance and
communications equipment employed for these casing missions included
state-of-the-art video cameras obtained from China and from dealers in Germany. The
casing team also reconnoitered targets in Djibouti.
As early as January 1994, Bin Ladin received the surveillance reports, complete with
diagrams prepared by the team's computer specialist. He, his top military committee
members-Banshiri and his deputy, Abu Hafs al Masri (also known as Mohammed Atef)-and
a number of other al Qaeda leaders reviewed the reports. Agreeing that the U.S.
embassy in Nairobi was an easy target because a car bomb could be parked close by,
they began to form a plan. Al Qaeda had begun developing the tactical expertise for
such attacks months earlier, when some of its operatives-top military committee
members and several operatives who were involved with the Kenya cell among them-were
sent to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon.
The cell in Kenya experienced a series of disruptions that may in part account for
the relatively long delay before the attack was actually carried out. The
difficulties Bin Ladin began to encounter in Sudan in 1995, his move to Afghanistan
in 1996, and the months spent establishing ties with the Taliban may also have
played a role, as did Banshiri's accidental drowning. In August 1997, the Kenya cell
panicked. The London Daily Telegraph reported that Madani al Tayyib, formerly head
of al Qaeda's finance committee, had turned himself over to the Saudi government.
The article said (incorrectly) that the Saudis were sharing Tayyib's information
with the U.S. and British authorities.
At almost the same time, cell members learned that U.S. and Kenyan agents had
searched the Kenya residence of Wadi al Hage, who had become the new on-site manager
in Nairobi, and that Hage's telephone was being tapped. Hage was a U.S.citizen who
had worked with Bin Ladin in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and in 1992 he went to Sudan
to become one of al Qaeda's major financial operatives. When Hage returned to the
United States to appear before a grand jury investigating Bin Ladin, the job of cell
manager was taken over by Harun Fazul, a Kenyan citizen who had been in Bin Ladin's
advance team to Sudan back in 1990. Harun faxed a report on the "security situation"
to several sites, warning that "the crew members in East Africa is [sic] in grave
danger" in part because "America knows . . . that the followers of [Bin Ladin] . . .
carried out the operations to hit Americans in Somalia." The report provided
instructions for avoiding further exposure.
On February 23, 1998, Bin Ladin issued his public fatwa. The language had been in
negotiation for some time, as part of the merger under way between Bin Ladin's
organization and Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Less than a month after the
publication of the fatwa, the teams that were to carry out the embassy attacks were
being pulled together in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The timing and content of their
instructions indicate that the decision to launch the attacks had been made by the
time the fatwa was issued.
The next four months were spent setting up the teams in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
Members of the cells rented residences, and purchased bomb-making materials and
transport vehicles. At least one additional explosives expert was brought in to
assist in putting the weapons together. In Nairobi, a hotel room was rented to put
up some of the operatives. The suicide trucks were purchased shortly before the
attack date.
While this was taking place, Bin Ladin continued to push his public message. On May
7, the deputy head of al Qaeda's military committee, Mohammed Atef, faxed to Bin
Ladin's London office a new fatwa issued by a group of sheikhs located in
Afghanistan. A week later, it appeared in Al Quds al Arabi, the same Arabic-language
newspaper in London that had first published Bin Ladin's February fatwa, and it
conveyed the same message-the duty of Muslims to carry out holy war against the
enemies of Islam and to expel the Americans from the Gulf region. Two weeks after
that, Bin Ladin gave a videotaped interview to ABC News with the same slogans,
adding that "we do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and
civilians; they are all targets in this fatwa."
By August 1, members of the cells not directly involved in the attacks had mostly
departed from East Africa. The remaining operatives prepared and assembled the
bombs, and acquired the delivery vehicles. On August 4, they made one last casing
run at the embassy in Nairobi. By the evening of August 6, all but the delivery
teams and one or two persons assigned to remove the evidence trail had left East
Africa. Back in Afghanistan, Bin Ladin and the al Qaeda leadership had left Kandahar
for the countryside, expecting U.S. retaliation. Declarations taking credit for the
attacks had already been faxed to the joint al Qaeda-Egyptian Islamic Jihad office
in Baku, with instructions to stand by for orders to "instantly" transmit them to Al
Quds al Arabi. One proclaimed "the formation of the Islamic Army for the Liberation
of the Holy Places," and two others-one for each embassy-announced that the attack
had been carried out by a "company" of a "battalion" of this "Islamic Army."
On the morning of August 7, the bomb-laden trucks drove into the embassies roughly
five minutes apart-about 10:35 A.M. in Nairobi and 10:39 A.M. in Dar es Salaam.
Shortly afterward, a phone call was placed from Baku to London. The previously
prepared messages were then faxed to London.
The attack on the U.S. embassy in Nairobi destroyed the embassy and killed 12
Americans and 201 others, almost all Kenyans. About 5,000 people were injured. The
attack on the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam killed 11 more people, none of them
Americans. Interviewed later about the deaths of the Africans, Bin Ladin answered
that "when it becomes apparent that it would be impossible to repel these Americans
without assaulting them, even if this involved the killing of Muslims, this is
permissible under Islam." Asked if he had indeed masterminded these bombings, Bin
Ladin said that the World Islamic Front for jihad against "Jews and Crusaders" had
issued a "crystal clear" fatwa. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and
the Americans to liberate the holy places "is considered a crime,"he said,"let
history be a witness that I am a criminal."
