The Looming Tower:Chapter 8

❌ ALTHOUGH THE FIGHTING never paused after the fall of Kabul, the curtain came down on the Afghan jihad. Some Arabs remained, caught up in the civil war, but most of them moved on. They were largely unwelcome in their home countries, which had perceived them as misfits and extremists even before they went to Afghanistan. These same governments had advertised for young men to go to jihad, and subsidized their travel, hoping that the troublemakers would bleed away in a doomed cause. Little thought was given to the prospect of thousands of these young men returning, now trained in guerrilla-warfare tactics and empowered by the myth of their victory. Like any returning warriors, they brought home psychological problems and memories that were difficult to live with. Even those who had little actual experience of combat were indoctrinated with the culture of martyrdom and takfir. They strutted around the mosque, often wearing Afghan garb to signal their special status. Saudi intelligence guessed that between fifteen and twenty-five thousand Saudi youths trained in Afghanistan, although other estimates are far lower. Those who came back to the Kingdom were taken directly to jail for two or three days of interrogation. Some countries simply refused to let the fighters return. They became a stateless, vagrant mob of religious mercenaries. Many of them took root in Pakistan, marrying local women and learning to speak Urdu. Some went to fight in Kashmir, Kosovo, Bosnia, or Chechnya. The cinders of the Afghan conflagration were drifting across the globe, and soon much of the Muslim world would be aflame. For those free-floating but ideologically charged veterans, a new home awaited them. In June 1989, at the same time that the jihad was 163 T H E L O O M I N G TOWER ending in Afghanistan, Islamists staged a military coup d'état against the civilian, democratic government of Sudan. The leader of the coup was Brigadier General Omar Hasan al-Bashir, but the prime mover was Hasan al-Turabi, one of Africa's most complex, original, charismatic, and devious characters. Like bin Laden and Zawahiri, Turabi attributed the failures of the Arab world to the fact that its governments were insufficiently Islamic and too dependent on the West. But unlike those other men, Turabi was a Quranic scholar who was well acquainted with Europe and the United States. A Sudanese student in i960, he wandered across America, staying with ordinary families—"even with Red Indians and farmers"—an adventure that would inform his piercing critique of secularism and capitalism. He had gained his master's degree in law from the London School of Economics in 1961 and a doctorate in law from the Sorbonne in Paris three years later. Turabi envisioned the creation of an international Muslim community— the ummah—headquartered in Sudan, which would then spill into other countries, carrying the Islamist revolution in an everwidening circle. Sudan, until then a cultural backwater in the Muslim world, would be the intellectual center of this reformation and Turabi its spiritual guide. In order to carry out this plan, he opened the doors of his country to any Muslim, regardless of nationality, no questions asked. Naturally, the people who responded to his invitation tended to be those who were welcome nowhere else. The government of Sudan began its courtship of bin Laden by sending him a letter of invitation in 1990, and followed it up by dispatching several members of the Sudanese intelligence service to meet with him. Essentially, he was being offered an entire country in which to operate freely. At the end of that year, bin Laden sent four trusted associates to investigate the business opportunities that the Sudanese government had promised. Turabi dazzled these representatives with his erudition, and they brought back an enthusiastic report. "What you are trying to do, it is Sudan!" they told bin Laden. "There are people with minds, with professions! You're not mixing with the goats." Soon, another bin Laden emissary appeared in Khartoum with a bundle of cash. Jamal al-Fadl, a Sudanese member of al-Qaeda, rented a number of houses and bought several large parcels of land that would be used for training. Al-Jihad was already in Sudan, and Zawahiri personally gave Fadl $250,000 to buy a farm north of the cap- 164 Paradise ital. The neighbors began complaining about the sound of explosions coming from the untilled fields. As an additional inducement, the Saudi Binladin Group got the contract to build an airport in Port Sudan, which brought Osama frequently into the country to oversee the construction. He finally moved to Khartoum in 1992, flying from Afghanistan with his four wives and—at that point—seventeen children. He also brought bulldozers and other heavy equipment, announcing his intention to build a threehundred- kilometer road in eastern Sudan as a gift to the nation. The leader of Sudan greeted him with garlands of flowers. Two MEN WITH SUCH SIMILAR DREAMS as bin Laden and Turabi could scarcely be more different. As terse and laconic as bin Laden was, Turabi was fluent and endlessly theoretical, a brilliant windbag. He held soirees in his house, where on any evening heads of state or distinguished clerics would be perched on the green corduroy settees pressed against the walls of Turabi's salon, drinking tea and listening to his prolonged monologues. He could speak without pause for hours, unprompted except for the presence of an audience, gesturing with both hands and punctuating his witticisms with nervous laughter. He was slight and very dark, which, contrasted with his immaculate white robe and turban and his bright, toothy grin, made him appear all the more vivid. Nearly every month bin Laden would attend one of these events, more out of courtesy than curiosity. He disagreed with almost everything Turabi said, but he was no match for the professor in his drawing room. The Islam that Turabi was straining to create in such a radical, nondemocratic fashion was, in fact, surprisingly progressive. Turabi advocated healing the ancient breach between the Sunni and the Shia branches of Islam, which was heresy in bin Laden's eyes. Turabi spoke about integrating "art, music, singing" into religion, offending bin Laden's Wahhabi sensibilities. Early in his career, Turabi had made his reputation as an Islamic thinker by his advocacy of women's rights. He thought that Muslim women had suffered a long retreat from the comparative equality they once enjoyed. "The Prophet himself used to visit women, not men, for counseling and advice. They could lead prayer. Even in his battles, they are there! In the election between Othman and Ali to determine who will be the successor to the Prophet, they voted!" 165 T H E L O O M I N G TOWER Now that he was finally living in a radical Islamist state, bin Laden would ask practical questions, such as how the Islamists intended to apply Sharia in Sudan and how they proposed to handle the Christians in the south. Often he did not like the answers. Turabi told him that Sharia would be applied gradually and only on Muslims, who would share power with Christians in a federal system. Bin Laden would stay ten to thirty minutes and then slip away. He couldn't wait to get out of there. "This man is a Machiavelli/' bin Laden confided to his friends. "He doesn't care what methods he uses." Although they still needed one another, Turabi and bin Laden soon began to see themselves as rivals. KHARTOUM BEGAN AS THE HAPPIEST PERIOD in bin Laden's adult life. He opened a small downtown office on Mek Nimr Street in a sagging, single-story building with nine rooms, a low ceiling, and a heavy air conditioner that dripped on the sidewalk. Here he started Wadi El Aqiq, the holding company for his many enterprises, named after a river in Mecca. Across the street was the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, in a building that had been a famous brothel during the British occupation. "Osama just laughed when I told him that," recalled Hasan Turabi's son Issam. Bin Laden and Issam became friends because of their common passion, riding. There are four million horses in Sudan, a country that relies on them for transportation and farm work but loves them for sport. Although Issam was only twenty-five when bin Laden arrived in Sudan, he was already one of the country's top breeders, and he kept a stable at the Khartoum track. One Friday bin Laden came shopping for a mare, and Issam showed him around the fly-ridden stalls. Issam was very struck by his Saudi visitor. "He was not tall, but he was handsome—his eyes, his nose—he was beautiful." Bin Laden settled on a stately thoroughbred from another breeder, and Issam arranged to buy the horse without asking a commission. Bin Laden was so used to people taking advantage of his money that this simple courtesy impressed him. He decided to quarter his horses with Issam. He added four more Sudanese thoroughbreds for himself and bought his children about ten local horses, which he bred to some Arabians he had flown in from the Kingdom. Issam was disdainful of what he saw as bin Laden's romantic attachment to native stock. "Here we are trying to go toward the thoroughbred, away from the Arabian. But he wanted to establish a breeding scheme of his own." 166 Paradise The Khartoum track is a chaotic bowl of dust. Wild dogs romp across the grassless infield, chasing after the horses. The rickety grandstand is divided between the lower half, where the common people stand, and the upper half, with the superior view, where the social elite and horse owners sit in relative comfort. Osama insisted on watching the races in the lower part, even though Issam was on the track's board of directors and enjoyed a prime box. In Sudan, the races are wild and the audiences are boisterous, given to dancing and singing. The famous mujahid would plug his ears with his fingers whenever the band played. It ruined the experience for him. When he asked people to stop singing, they told him to get lost. "It's not your fault the music is there/' Issam would gently remind bin Laden. "You didn't rent the band." Bin Laden was unappeased. "Music," he declared, "is the flute of the devil." Eventually he stopped coming to the races altogether. He bought a three-story red stucco villa in a district of Khartoum called Riyadh. Across the unpaved street, he acquired an unfurnished guesthouse that he used for entertaining. The neighbors claimed he received fifty people a day, starting at five in the afternoon, most of them Arabs wearing calf-length thobes and long beards—a parade of fundamentalists. His barefoot young sons would pass among the men, offering sweetened hibiscus tea. Every day he slaughtered a lamb for his expected visitors, but he ate very little himself, preferring to nibble what his guests left on their plates, believing that these abandoned morsels would gain the favor of God. Sometimes bin Laden would take his sons for picnics on the shore of the Nile, with sandwiches and sodas, and in the packed sand along the river bank he taught them to drive. Bin Laden adopted humble Sudanese attire, a white turban and gallabea, and he carried a typical walking stick with a V-shaped handle. "He was becoming Sudanese," Issam observed. "It seems he wanted to stay here forever." Bin Laden was finally at peace. He kept members of al-Qaeda busy working in his burgeoning enterprises, since there was little else for them to do. On Fridays after prayers, the two al-Qaeda soccer teams squared off against each other. There was training going on, but at a low level, mainly refresher courses for men who had already been in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda had become largely an agricultural organization. 167 T H E L O O M I N G TOWER IN SUDAN, bin Laden had the opportunity to imitate his father's career as a road builder and businessman. He was "the great Islamic investor," as Turabi called him at a reception he gave soon after bin Laden arrived. Although it was true that he was Sudan's major tycoon, he was also practically the only one. The Sudanese dinar was sinking and the government was constantly in arrears. The ongoing civil war between the largely Arab, Islamic north and the black Christian south was draining the treasury and scaring away investors, who were already appalled by the confluence of terrorists and the experimental nature of Islamist rule. That bin Laden was willing to put his money into such an economy made him all the more prized. Exaggerated rumors about his wealth were circulating; people said that he was investing $350 million—or more—in the country, which would certainly be its salvation. It was said that he capitalized a bank with $50 million, which was well beyond his financial capacity. Through al-Hijira, his construction company, bin Laden built several major roads in Sudan, including one to Port Sudan. When the government was unable to pay him, he took large plots of land in trade. One parcel alone was "larger than Bahrain," he bragged to his brothers. The government also threw in a tannery in Khartoum, where bin Laden's employees prepared leather for the Italian market. Another bin Laden venture, al-Qadurat, imported trucks and machinery from Russia and Eastern Europe. But it was farming that captivated his imagination. The government barter had made him perhaps the largest landowner in the country. He had a million acres in the Gash River Delta in northeast Sudan; a large plot in Gedarif, the most fertile province in the eastern section, and another in Damazine, which lies along the western bank of the Blue Nile near the Ethiopian border. Through his agricultural company, al- Thimar al-Mubaraka, bin Laden enjoyed a near monopoly on Sudan's major farm exports—sesame, white corn, and gum arabic. Other bin Laden subsidiaries produced sorghum, honey, peanuts, chickens, livestock, and watermelons. He declared that Sudan could feed the entire world if it were properly managed, and to prove the point he showed off a prize sunflower he had grown in Gedarif. "It could be in the Guinness Book of World Records," he told the minister of state. He was a comparatively generous employer by Sudanese standards, paying $200 per month to most of his workers, with senior managers making from $1,000 to $1,500. He imposed corporate man- 168 Paradise agement techniques on his organization, requiring that forms be filled out in triplicate to purchase tires, for instance. Those employees who were actual members of al-Qaeda received a monthly bonus, between $50 and $120, depending on the size of the member's family and his nationality—Saudis got more and Sudanese got less—along with free housing and medical care. There were about five hundred people working for bin Laden in Sudan, but there were never more than a hundred of them who were active members of al-Qaeda. Bin Laden shied away from the intractable conflict in the southern region of Sudan that was costing the impoverished Sudanese government $1 million a day and would eventually claim more than a million lives. Issam, a veteran, considered the war a jihad, and it seemed wrong to him that the famous Islamic warrior held himself apart from it. Bin Laden explained that he was through with warfare. He said he resolved to quit al-Qaeda altogether and become a farmer. He made similar statements to many of his friends. He was at a crossroads. Life in Sudan was pleasantly monotonous. In the mornings he walked to his local mosque to pray, followed by a gaggle of acolytes and admirers; he lingered to study with the holy men, often breakfasting with them before going to his office, or to visit one of the various factories that were part of his expanding portfolio, or to hop on a tractor and plow the fields on one of his massive estates. Although he was the CEO of a burgeoning empire, he continued his lifelong habit of fasting on Mondays and Thursdays. Before Friday prayers, he would sometimes speak in the main Khartoum mosque, urging his fellow Muslims to discover the blessings of peace. There was one galling fact that prevented bin Laden from relaxing into the life of business and of spiritual contemplation that so strongly beckoned: the continued presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia. King Fahd had pledged that the nonbelievers would be gone as soon as the war was over, and yet months after the Iraqi defeat coalition forces were still entrenched in Saudi air bases, monitoring the cease-fire agreement. Bin Laden agonized over what he believed was a permanent occupation of the holy land. Something had to be done. COINCIDENTALLY, AMERICAN TROOPS were stopping over in Yemen on their way to Somalia. The famine had drawn international 169 T H E L O O M I N G TOWER attention, and the United States sent a modest force to protect the United Nations aid workers against the marauding local clans. The strategists in al-Qaeda felt encircled, however, and they read this latest development as a direct assault: Americans already controlled the Persian Gulf, and now they were using the excuse of the famine in Somalia to occupy the Horn of Africa. Yemen and Somalia were the gateposts to the Red Sea, which could easily be pinched off. After all the plans al-Qaeda had nurtured to spread an Islamist revolution, it was America that appeared to be waxing in influence across the region, seizing control of the pressure points of the Arab world and pushing into al-Qaeda's arena. The net was closing. Sudan could be next. This thinking took place at a time when the United States had never heard of al-Qaeda, the mission to Somalia was seen as a thankless act of charity, and Sudan was too inconsequential to worry about. Every Thursday evening, al-Qaeda members would gather in bin Laden's Khartoum guesthouse to hear lectures from their leaders. On one of these Thursdays at the end of 1992, they discussed the threat of the expanded U.S. presence. Al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization was really born in the decisions that bin Laden and his shura council would make in this brief period when bin Laden was wavering—the lure of peace being as strong as the battle cry of jihad. Bin Laden's religious advisor was his close friend Mamdouh Salim, also known as Abu Hajer al-Iraqi. He was a dashing, hard-headed Kurd who made a striking impression on everyone he met. Solemn and imperious, with a trim goatee and penetrating black eyes, Abu Hajer had been a colonel in Saddam's army during the war with Iran, specializing in communications, until he deserted and fled to Iran. He and bin Laden were the same age (thirty-four in 1992). They had worked together in the Services Bureau in Peshawar and fought together in Afghanistan, forging such powerful bonds that no one could get between them. Unlike nearly everyone around bin Laden in Sudan, Abu Hajer had never sworn fealty to him; he saw himself as an equal, and bin Laden treated him as such. Because of his piety and learning, Abu Hajer led the prayers; his voice, singing the verses of the Quran in a melancholy Iraqi style, was so lyrical that it made bin Laden weep. Besides being bin Laden's friend, Abu Hajer was his imam. There were remarkably few among the members of al-Qaeda who had any extensive religious training. Despite their zealotry, they were essen- 1 7 0 Paradise tially theological amateurs. Abu Hajer had the greatest spiritual authority, by virtue of having memorized the Quran, but he was an electrical engineer, not a cleric. Nonetheless, bin Laden made him head of al-Qaeda's fatwa committee—a fateful choice. It was on Abu Hajer's authority that al-Qaeda turned from being the anti-communist Islamic army that bin Laden originally envisioned into a terrorist organization bent on attacking the United States, the last remaining superpower and the force that bin Laden and Abu Hajer believed represented the greatest threat to Islam. Why did these men turn against America, a highly religious country that so recently had been their ally in Afghanistan? In large part, it was because they saw America as the locus of Christian power. Once, the piety of the Muslim mujahideen and the Christian leaders of the U.S. government had served as a bond between them. Indeed, mujahideen leaders had been considerably romanticized in the American press and had made tours through American churches, where they were lauded for their spiritual courage in the common fight against Marxism and godlessness. But Christianity—especially the evangelizing American variety—and Islam were obviously competitive faiths. Viewed through the eyes of men who were spiritually anchored in the seventh century, Christianity was not just a rival, it was the archenemy. To them, the Crusades were a continual historical process that would never be resolved until the final victory of Islam. They bitterly perceived the contradiction embodied by Islam's long, steady retreat from the gates of Vienna, where on September 11—that now resonant date—in 1683, the king of Poland began the battle that turned back the farthest advance of Muslim armies. For the next three hundred years, Islam would be overshadowed by the growth of Western Christian societies. Yet bin Laden and his Arab Afghans believed that, in Afghanistan, they had turned the tide and that Islam was again on the march. Now they faced the greatest military, material, and cultural power any civilization had ever produced. "Jihad against America?" some of the al-Qaeda members asked in dismay. "America knows everything about us. It knows even the label of our underwear." They saw how weak and splintered their own governments were—empowered only by the force of America's need to maintain the status quo. The oceans, the skies, even the heavens were patrolled by the Americans. America was not distant, it was everywhere. 171 T H E L O O M I N G TOWER Al-Qaeda economists pointed to "our oil" that fueled America's rampant expansion, feeling as if something had been stolen from them—not the oil, exactly, although bin Laden felt it was underpriced— but the cultural regeneration that should have come with its sale. In the woefully unproductive societies they lived in, fortunes melted away like snow in the desert. What remained was a generalized feeling of betrayal. Of course, oil had brought wealth to some Arabs, but in the process of becoming rich hadn't they only become more Western? Consumerism, vice, and individuality, which the radical Islamists saw as the hallmarks of modern American culture, threatened to destroy Islam— even the idea of Islam—by blending it into a globalized, corporate, interdependent, secular commercial world that was part of what these men meant when they said "America." But by defining modernity, progress, trade, consumption, and even pleasure as Western assaults on Islam, al-Qaeda thinkers left little on the table for themselves. If America owned the future, the Islamic fundamentalists laid claim to the past. They were not rejecting technology or science; indeed, many of the leaders of al-Qaeda, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Hajer, were men of science themselves. But they were ambivalent about the way in which technology weakened the spirit. This was reflected in bin Laden's interest in earth-moving machinery and genetic engineering of plants, on the one hand, and his rejection of chilled water on the other. By returning the rule of Sharia, radical Islam could draw the line against the encroaching West. Even the values that America advertised as being universally desirable—democracy, transparency, the rule of law, human rights, the separation of religion from governance—were discredited in the eyes of the jihadis because they were Western and therefore modern. Al-Qaeda's duty was to awaken the Islamic nation to the threat posed by the secular, modernizing West. In order to do that, bin Laden told his men, al-Qaeda would drag the United States into a war with Islam—"a large-scale front which it cannot control." INDIGENOUS SALAFIST MOVEMENTS were arising spontaneously across the Arab world and parts of Africa and Asia. These movements were largely nationalist, but they needed a place to organize. They found safe harbor in Khartoum, and naturally they mingled and learned from one another. 1 7 2 Paradise Among these groups were the two main Egyptian organizations, Zawahiri's al-Jihad and Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman's Islamic Group, as well as nearly every other violent radical group in the Middle East. The Palestinian group Hamas aimed to destroy Israel and replace it with a Sunni Islamist state; it was known for murdering Israeli citizens, and torturing and killing Palestinians who it believed had been collaborating with Israel. Another Palestinian group, the Abu Nidal Organization, was even more violent and rejectionist, having killed more than nine hundred people in twenty different countries, aiming mainly at Jews and moderate Arabs. Its best-known operations included the machine-gunning of a synagogue in Vienna, the grenade attack on a Parisian restaurant, the bombing of a British Airways office in Madrid, the hijacking of an EgyptAir flight to Malta, and bloody attacks on the airports of Rome and Vienna. Hezbollah, which aimed to set up a revolutionary Shia state in Lebanon, had murdered more Americans than any other terrorist organization at the time. Sponsored by Iran, Hezbollah specialized in kidnapping and hijacking, although it was also responsible for a series of bombings in Paris. The most wanted terrorist in the world, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, also took up residence in Khartoum, posing as a French arms dealer. A Marxist and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Carlos had kidnapped eleven members of the oil-producers' cartel, OPEC, in Vienna in 1975 and flown them to Algiers for ransom. Havinig lost faith in communism, he now believed that radical Islam was the only force sufficiently ruthless to destroy America's cultural and economic dominion. Wanted all over the world, Carlos could easily be found in the mornings drinking coffee and eating croissants at Khartoum's Méridien Hotel. Although bin Laden distrusted Turabi—hated him, even—he experimented with one of Turabi's most progressive and controversial ideas: to make common cause with Shiites. He had Abu Hajer advise the members of al-Qaeda that there was only one enemy now, the West, and the two main sects of Islam needed to come together to destroy it. Bin Laden invited Shiite representatives to speak to al- Qaeda, and he sent some of his top people to Lebanon to train with the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. Imad Mugniyah, the head of Hezbollah's security service, came to meet bin Laden and agreed to train members of al-Qaeda in exchange for weapons. Mugniyah had planned the 1983 suicide car bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the 173 T H E L O O M I N G TOWER U.S. Marine Corps and French paratrooper barracks in Beirut, which killed more than three hundred Americans and fifty-eight French soldiers and had led to the prompt withdrawal of American peacekeeping forces from Lebanon. That precedent had made a profound impression on bin Laden, who saw that suicide bombers could be devastatingly effective and that, for all its might, America had no appetite for conflict.* On December 29,1992, a bomb exploded in the Môvenpick Hotel in Aden, Yemen, and another blew up prematurely in the parking lot of a nearby luxury hotel, the Goldmohur. The bombers had targeted American troops who were on their way to Somalia to participate in Operation Restore Hope, the international famine relief effort. In fact, the soldiers were staying in a different hotel altogether. Bin Laden would later claim credit for this blundered attack, which was barely noticed in the United States, since no Americans died. The troops went on to Somalia as scheduled, but the triumphant leaders of al-Qaeda told themselves that they had frightened the Americans away and scored an easy victory. And yet it had come at a price. Two people died, an Australian tourist and a Yemeni hotel worker, and seven others, mostly Yemenis, were severely injured. Behind the delirious, self-congratulatory chatter in Sudan, moral questions posed themselves, and members of al- Qaeda began to wonder exactly what kind of organization they were becoming. One Thursday evening, Abu Hajer addressed the ethics of killing innocent people. He spoke to the men about Ibn Tamiyyah, a thirteenth-century scholar who is one of the primary references for Wahhabi philosophy. In his day, Ibn Tamiyyah confronted the problem of the Mongols, who savaged Baghdad but then converted to Islam. Was it proper to take revenge against fellow Muslims? Ibn Tamiyyah argued that just because the Mongols had made the profes- told the FBI that al-Jihad had planned a coup in Egypt in 1990. Zawahiri had studied the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, and he sought training from the Iranians. He offered information about an Egyptian government plan to storm several islands in the Persian Gulf that both Iran and the United Arab Emirates lay claim to. According to Mohammed, in return for this information, the Iranian government paid Zawahiri $2 million and helped train members of al-Jihad in a coup attempt that never actually took place. 174 Paradise sion of faith, they were still not true believers, and therefore they could be killed. Moreover, as Abu Hajer explained to the thirty or forty al-Qaeda members who were sitting on the carpet in bin Laden's salon, propping their elbows on the bolsters and sipping mango juice, Ibn Tamiyyah had issued a historic fatwa: Anyone who aided the Mongols, who bought goods from them or sold to them or was merely standing near them, might be killed as well. If he is a good Muslim, he will go to Paradise; if he is bad, he will go to hell, and good riddance. Thus the dead tourist and the hotel worker would find their proper reward. A new vision of al-Qaeda was born. Abu Hajer's two fatwas, the first authorizing the attacks on American troops and the second, the murder of innocents, turned al-Qaeda into a global terrorist organization. Al-Qaeda would concentrate not on fighting armies but on killing civilians. The former conception of al-Qaeda as a mobile army of mujahideen that would defend Muslim lands wherever they were threatened was now cast aside in favor of a policy of permanent subversion of the West. The Soviet Union was dead and communism no longer menaced the margins of the Islamic world. America was the only power capable of blocking the restoration of the ancient Islamic caliphate, and it would have to be confronted and defeated. 175
 * Most of al-Qaeda's relationship with Iran came through Zawahiri. Ali Mohammed

8. Paradise
163 fifteen and twenty-five thousand: interview with Steven Simon. Other estimates range from five to fifteen thousand. Reeve, The New Jackals, 3; also, Halliday, Two Hours That Shook the World, 166. Marc Sageman cautions in a personal communication: "I wanted to zero in on the numbers myself. What I found out is that no one knew, and did not even know how to go about even estimating this number. So far, all the numbers are arbitrary, based on a very wild guess." directly to jail: interview with Saeed Badeeb. 164 "even with Red Indians": interview with Hasan al-Turabi. four trusted associates: testimony of Jamal al-Fadl, U.S. v. Usama bin Laden, etal. "it is Sudan!": interview with Mohammed Loay Baizid. gave Fadl $250,000: testimony of Jamal al-Fadl, United States v. Usama bin Laden et al. 165 which brought Osama: interview with Dr. Ghazi Salaheddin. seventeen children: interview with Zaynab Abdul Khadr. leader of Sudan greeted: Ahmad Zaydan, "The Search for al-Qaeda," al- Jazeera, September 10, 2004. Nearly every month: interview with Ibrahim al-Sanoussi. heresy in bin Laden's eyes: interview with Jamal Khalifa. "art, music, singing": interview with Hasan al-Turabi. "The Prophet himself": interview with Hasan al-Turabi. 167 The neighbors claimed: al-Nour Ahmed al-Nour, "His Neighbor Claims He Does Not Speak Much," Al-Hayat, November 19,2001. what his guests left: interview with Issam Eldin Turabi. 407 Notes 167 al-Qaeda soccer teams: interview with Jack Cloonan. 168 "great Islamic investor": "Part One of a Series of Reports on bin Ladin's Life in Sudan: Islamists Celebrated Arrival of 'Great Islamic Investor/ " Al-Quds al-Arabi, November 24, 2001. Translated by FBIS. $350 million: Ibid. $50 million: Thomas E. Burnett, Sr. v. Al Baraka Investment and Development Corporation, et al. Final Third Amended complaint. "larger than Bahrain": interview with Dr. Khaled Batarfi. leather for the Italian market: Bergen, Holy War, 81. a million acres: Burr, Revolutionary Sudan, 71. near monopoly: U.S. State Department fact sheet on Usama bin Laden, August 14,1996. 169 filled out in triplicate: interview with Bruce Hoffman. between $50 and $120: al-Hammadi, "The Inside Story of al-Qa'ida," part 9, March 28, 2005. Saudis got more: interview with Dan Coleman. five hundred people working: interview with Hassabulla Omer. a hundred of them who were active members: ibid. The testimony of Jamal al-Fadl (U.S. v. Usama bin Laden, et al.) is confusing because he apparently conflates the number of employees of bin Laden's companies with the actual number of people who had formally pledged bayat to bin Laden. $1 million a day: Burr, Revolutionary Sudan, 36. holy men... fasting: al-Nour Ahmed al-Nour, "His Neighbor Claims He Does Not Speak Much," Al-Hayat, November 19,2001. blessings of peace: interview with Ghazi Salah Eddin Atabani. 170 Abu Hajer: interviews with Tom Corrigan, Daniel Coleman, Allan P. Haber, Jamal Khalifa, and Mohammed Loay Baizid. he deserted: interrogation of Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim Ahmed, Munich, September 17,1998. made bin Laden weep: interview with Daniel Coleman. 171 September 1 1 : Belloc, The Great Heresies, 85. "Jihad against America?": al-Hammadi, "The Inside Story of al-Qa'ida," part 8, March 26,2005. 172 "a large-scale front": ibid., part 5, March 23, 2005. 173 nine hundred people: United States Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism, 2004, April 2005. Carlos the Jackal: interviews with Tim Niblock and Hassabullah Omer. Ken Silverstein, "Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America's War on Terrorism," Los Angeles Times, April 29,2005. in exchange for weapons: Douglas Farah and Dana Priest, "Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in al-Qaeda," Washington Post, October 14, 2003. 175 Ibn Tamiyyah had issued a historic fatwa: testimony of Jamal al-Fadl, U.S. v. Usama bin Laden, et al.