The Looming Tower (36 page)

The Ethiopian police quickly pieced together the plot, exposing the complicity of the Sudanese government. The debacle led to a unanimous vote in the United Nations to impose stiff economic sanctions on Sudan. The Sudanese representative denied the charges, but the Sudanese delegation was already in disfavor, having been implicated only two years earlier in a plot to blow up UN headquarters, a part of the blind sheikh’s plan to destroy New York City landmarks. The international community had had enough of Turabi’s revolution, but Turabi managed to make things worse by praising the attempted murder of Mubarak. “The sons of the Prophet Moses, the Muslims, rose up against him, confounded his plans, and sent him back to his country,” he said. As for his future relations with the Egyptian president, Turabi remarked, “I found the man to be very far below my level of thinking and my views, and too stupid to understand my pronouncements.”

There was a reckoning coming, as everyone knew.

M
UBARAK’S SECURITY FORCES
fanned out all across Egypt, from the slums of Cairo to the mud-brick villages of the upper Nile, to destroy the radical Islamist movement. Houses were burned. Suspects disappeared. Sometimes a mother was dragged out on the street and stripped naked, and her children were warned that she would be raped if their brother was not present the next time they came. Mubarak instituted an anti-terrorism law that made it a crime to even express sympathy for terrorist movements. Five new prisons were built to house the thousands of suspects that were rounded up, many of whom were never charged.

To deal with Zawahiri, Egyptian intelligence agents devised a fiendish plan. They lured a thirteen-year-old boy named Ahmed into an apartment with the promise of juice and videos. Ahmed was the son of Mohammed Sharraf, a well-known Egyptian fundamentalist and a senior member of al-Jihad. The boy was drugged and sodomized; when he awakened, he was confronted with photographs of the homosexual activity and threatened with the prospect of having them shown to his father. For the child, the consequences of such a disclosure were overwhelming. “It could even be that the father would kill him,” a source close to Zawahiri admitted.

Egyptian intelligence forced him to recruit another child, Mus‘ab, whose father, Abu al-Faraj was also in al-Jihad and served as the treasurer for al-Qaeda. Mus‘ab endured the same humiliating initiation of drugs and sexual abuse and was forced to turn against his family. The agents taught the boys how to plant microphones in their own homes and photograph documents. A number of arrests followed because of the information produced by the boy spies.

The Egyptian agents then decided to use the boys to kill Zawahiri. They gave Mus‘ab a bomb to place inside a five-story apartment building where Zawahiri’s family lived. But Zawahiri was not there, and Sudanese intelligence discovered the bomb. The other child, Ahmed, was in the hospital, suffering from malaria. He had not yet been revealed as a spy. His physician was Zawahiri, who visited him every day. The Egyptian agents learned from Ahmed what time to expect his doctor. The next day an assassination team was waiting, but for whatever reason, Zawahiri didn’t come.

An even better opportunity arose, however: Egyptian intelligence learned of a meeting of al-Jihad’s
shura
council. An agent gave Mus‘ab a suitcase bomb and instructed him to place it in the office where Zawahiri and his companions would be meeting. As the boy got out of the agent’s car, however, both the Sudanese intelligence and Jihad security were waiting for him. The Egyptian agent sped away, leaving the boy to his fate.

Al-Jihad and Sudanese intelligence quarreled over who would take custody of Mus’ab. Finally, Zawahiri was allowed to question the boy. He promised to return him safely. He soon placed his young patient, Ahmed, under his arrest as well. Then Zawahiri convened a Sharia court.

Many members of al-Jihad and al-Qaeda objected to putting children on trial, saying it was against Islam. In response, Zawahiri had the boys stripped naked to determine whether they had attained puberty, which they had. The helpless boys confessed everything. The court convicted them of sodomy, treason, and attempted murder.

Zawahiri had the boys shot. To make sure he got his point across, he videotaped their confessions and their executions and distributed the tapes as an example to others who might betray the organization.

When Turabi and his people learned of the firing squad, they were incensed. The Sudanese government accused al-Jihad of behaving like a “state within a state” and ordered Zawahiri and his organization out of the country immediately. They did not even get time to pack. “All we did was to apply God’s Sharia,” Zawahiri complained. “If we fail to apply it to ourselves, how can we apply it to others?”

Al-Jihad scattered, mainly to Afghanistan, Jordan, and Sudan. Many members broke away, scandalized by the cold-blooded execution of the two young boys. In Zawahiri’s hands, al-Jihad had splintered into angry and homeless gangs. There were fewer than a hundred members left in the organization, and many of the men were still trying to collect their families and their belongings from Khartoum. “These are bad times,” Zawahiri admitted in Yemen, where he had taken refuge. He confided to some of his colleagues that he was developing an ulcer.

His disillusioned followers often reflected on the pronouncement, made during the prison years by the man Zawahiri betrayed, Major Essam al-Qamari, that some vital quality was missing in Zawahiri. Qamari was the one who had told him, “If you are the member of any group, you cannot be the leader.” That now sounded like prophecy.

Zawahiri had few resources remaining other than bin Laden’s backing. He was determined to strike back quickly against the Egyptian authorities in order to redeem his reputation and keep the remnants of his organization intact. His views had undergone a powerful shift from those of the young man who spurned revolution because it was too bloody. He now believed that only violence changed history. In striking the enemy, he would create a new reality. His strategy was to force the Egyptian regime to become even more repressive, to make the people hate it. In this he succeeded. But the Egyptian people did not turn to him or to his movement. They only became more miserable, more disenchanted, frightened, and despairing. In the game Zawahiri had begun, however, revenge was essential; indeed, it was the game itself.

F
IRST ACTIONS
often set the course of future events. On November
19, 1995,
the eighteenth anniversary of Anwar al-Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem, Zawahiri’s men bombed the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Although the bombing was an al-Jihad operation, it would become the prototype of future al-Qaeda attacks, in terms of both the target and the means of destroying it. One of Zawahiri’s men, known as Abu Khabab, an Egyptian cab driver who had studied chemistry and had become an explosives instructor. He created a powerful new bomb. Two men approached the embassy, one of them carrying a Samsonite briefcase filled with weapons. He threw grenades to frighten off the security guards. A pickup truck packed with a 250-pound explosive rushed into the compound. Then the driver set off the bomb. The embassy crumbled. Many other buildings within a half-mile radius of the bomb were severely damaged. Sixteen people died, not counting the two suicide bombers, and sixty were wounded.

This act of mass murder was al-Jihad’s first success under Zawahiri’s administration. “The bomb left the embassy’s ruined building as an eloquent and clear message,” Zawahiri wrote in his memoir. Bin Laden had not approved the operation, however; nor was he happy about it. Pakistan still offered the best route into Afghanistan and, until then, had provided sanctuary to many Arab Afghans who had lingered after the war. Now the government rounded up nearly two hundred of them and locked them in a wedding hall in Peshawar, pending deportation to their home countries. The authorities were surprised when bin Laden appeared at the wedding hall with airline tickets to Sudan for the detainees. He suddenly had on his hands a dedicated group of terrorists, who were now dependent on him but loyal to Zawahiri.

Zawahiri also alienated many of his remaining followers, who were alarmed both by the death of innocents and by the use of suicide bombers. These issues would always plague the conversation about the morality of global jihad. In responding to these objections, Zawahiri created the theoretical framework to justify the Islamabad bombing and similar al-Qaeda attacks that followed.

He explained that there were no innocents inside the embassy. Everyone who worked there, from the diplomats to the guards, was a supporter of the Egyptian regime, which had detained thousands of fundamentalists and blocked the rule of Islam. Those who carried out the duties of the government must shoulder responsibility for its crimes. No true Muslim could work for such a regime. In this, Zawahiri was repeating the
takfir
view that had been carried to its logical extreme in Algeria. Yes, he admitted, there might have been innocent victims—children, true believers—who also died, but Muslims are weak and their enemy is so powerful; in such an emergency, the rules against the slaughter of innocents must be relaxed.

The question of suicide was even more problematic. There is no theological support for such an action in Islam; indeed, it is expressly prohibited. “Do not kill yourselves,” the Quran states. The hadith, or sayings of the Prophet, are replete with instances in which Mohammed condemns the action. The specific punishment for the suicide is to burn in hell and to be forever in the act of dying by means of the same instrument that was used to take his life. Even when one of his bravest warriors was severely wounded in battle and hurled himself upon his own sword only to relieve his terrible suffering, Mohammed declared that he was damned. “A man may do the deeds of the people of the Fire while in fact he is one of the people of Paradise, and he may do the deeds of the people of Paradise when in fact he belongs to the people of Fire,” the Prophet observed. “Verily, (the rewards of) the deeds are decided by the last actions.”

In his defense of the bombing, Zawahiri had to overcome this profound taboo. The bombers who carried out the Islamabad operation, Zawahiri said, represent “a generation of mujahideen that has decided to sacrifice itself and its property in the cause of God. That is because the way of death and martyrdom is a weapon that tyrants and their helpers, who worship their salaries instead of God, do not have.” He compared them to the martyrs of early Christianity. The only example he could point to in Islamic tradition was that of a group of Muslims, early in the history of the faith, who were captured by “idolaters” and forced to choose between recanting their religion or being killed by their captors. They chose to become martyrs to their beliefs.

It was, Zawahiri argued, a suicidal choice. Other Muslims did not condemn them at the time because they were acting for the glory of God and the greater good of Islam. Therefore, anyone who gives his life in pursuit of the true faith—such as the bombers in Islamabad—is to be regarded not as a suicide who will suffer the punishment of hell but as a heroic martyr whose selfless sacrifice will gain him an extraordinary reward in Paradise.

With such sophistry, Zawahiri reversed the language of the Prophet and opened the door to universal murder.

“D
O YOU REMEMBER THAT CHAP,
bin Laden?” Hasan al-Turabi asked his son in early 1996.

“Of course!” Issam replied. “We’re stable mates.”

“Some people in my party want to throw him out,” said the father.

When Issam next saw bin Laden, he was surprised at how depressed he appeared. Zawahiri and al-Jihad had been expelled, removing the Egyptian core of bin Laden’s organization, and he was crippled by the loss. The relaxed and playful character Issam had known was gone. Rumors were racing through Khartoum that bin Laden was “the next Carlos.” The Sudanese government had allowed French intelligence to kidnap Carlos the Jackal while he was undergoing an operation on his right testicle. Now Sudanese intelligence cleverly put out a false story that the French had issued a similar indictment for bin Laden—intending, no doubt, to scare him out of the country.

Without the Egyptians, bin Laden was isolated and uncertain. There was no one he could trust. He knew that something might happen to him. He was already looking for another sanctuary, just in case.

“You shouldn’t leave Sudan,” Issam advised his friend. “If you go, who is going to manage your investments?” Bin Laden had no answer.

Issam pitied his predicament. He knew how merciless Sudanese politics could be, especially to a naïve foreigner with much to lose. “I loved that man by that time,” Issam said, “because of so many ideas I see in him. There was no hypocrisy in his character. No divergence between what he says and what he does. Unfortunately, his IQ was not that great.”

T
HE CATASTROPHE
that the radical Islamist leaders of Sudan had created for themselves finally made itself starkly apparent. The government’s complicity in the terror plots against New York and the attempted assassination of Mubarak guaranteed international sanctions, which took effect in April 1996. By that time the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum had already moved its American staff, along with the CIA’s Khartoum Station, to Kenya. It was part of a general withdrawal of the diplomatic community. Sudan was being pushed into the freezer, and its leaders were struggling to find a way out.

On his final night in Sudan, the American ambassador, Timothy Carney, had dinner with the Sudanese vice president, Ali Othman Taha. They discussed what Sudan could do to improve its reputation. Sending Osama bin Laden back to Saudi Arabia was one of Carney’s suggestions. He had already spoken to a senior Saudi official who had assured him that bin Laden could still return to the Kingdom “if he apologizes.”

A month later, the Sudanese minister of state for defense, Major General Elfatih Erwa, met Carney and covert operatives of the CIA in a Rosslyn, Virginia, hotel room. Erwa communicated his government’s desire to get off the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror. He wanted a written checklist of measures that would satisfy the U.S. government. The CIA responded with a memorandum, which among other things proposed that Sudan turn over the names of all the mujahideen that bin Laden had brought into that country, along with their passport numbers and dates of travel. In later meetings, the Americans pushed the Sudanese representative to expel bin Laden. Erwa told the agency that it was better for him to stay in Sudan, where the government could keep an eye on him; however, he said, if the United States wanted to bring charges against bin Laden, “We are ready to hand him to you.”