This book by Lawrence Wright should be required reading for anyone who thinks the term “War on Terror” is insensitive or politically incorrect. The book describes the history of al-Qaeda and the disturbing story of how the failure U.S. intelligence agencies to cooperate assured that they wouldn’t detect the plans to fly airplanes into the Twin Towers, Pentagon, and White House. I intend to do the review in at least four parts, and this part will focus on the origins of al-Qaeda. The doctrine of the modern Islamic movement was developed by Sayyid Qutb (pronounced “Kuh-tub”), who at the age of 42 was a student for six months at what was then the Colorado State College of Education in Greeley, Colorado. He was an Egyptian, a fervent nationalist, and anti-communist who was radicalized by the British occupation of Egypt. He and other Arabs admired how the immigrant nation of America was “…the anticolonial paragon…,” but felt betrayed when America supported the Zionist cause beginning with Harry Truman endorsing the transfer of a hundred thousand Jewish refugees into Palestine. Qutb was influenced to join the Muslim Brothers that had been founded by Hasan al-Banna, and he gained fame as an Islamic thinker by his writings. Qutb found Greeley to be beautiful, but he was scandalized by the behavior of the students and especially the open sexuality of the women.
Qutb withdrew from classes, but spent another eight months in America. He became even more radicalized, and wrote that “The white man crushes us underfoot…” Gamal Abdul Nasser had overthrown King Faruk after Qutb had returned to Egypt, and Nasser invited him to be an advisor. Qutb advocated that the country be controlled by religion, and Nasser believed in control by a strong military. Nasser eventually threw Qutb in prison, released him in three months to be the editor of the Muslim Brothers magazine, and then shut the magazine down after several critical articles by Qutb. The Muslim Brothers attempted to assassinate Nasser and he had six hanged and thousands of others, including Qutb, imprisoned in concentration camps. Qutb smuggled a manifesto titled Milestones that would have a major influence on radical Muslims, including Osama bin Laden. Qutb plotted from prison to overthrow Nasser with money and arms supplied by Saudi Arabia. He was released from prison, but his plots were revealed. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. He declared after the sentence, “Thank God, I performed jihad for fifteen years until I earned this martyrdom.” Nasser knew Qutb was more dangerous dead than alive, and offered to spare him if Qutb appealed his sentence. He told his pleading sister, “My words will be stronger if they kill me.” He was hanged on August 29, 1966.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was one man who would continue Qutb’s cause. He wanted to impose Sharia, or Islamic law. Qutb also had written that the struggle of Islam was against jahiliyya, the world of unbelief before Islam. Al-Zawhiri’s goal was to overthrow the Egyptian government and impose an Islamic regime. Bin Laden would advocate international jihad. The two men would be both competitors and partners in their enterprises. Al-Zawahiri grew up in the same area of Egypt as Michel Chalhub, who became known as the actor Omar Sharif. He helped form an underground cell devoted to overthrowing the government and establishing an Islamist state when he was fifteen years old. He was sixteen when Israel wiped out frontline Arab forces in the Six Day War and humiliated Muslims who had believed that God favored their cause.
Nasser died of a heart attack in 1970, and Anwar al-Sadat succeeded him. He offered to let the Muslim Brothers preach if they renounced violence, and emptied the prisons. Zawahiri formed al-Jihad, which was dedicated to the overthrow of Sadat. He was invited to travel to Pakistan to tend to Afghan refugees, hundreds of thousands of which were fleeing the invasion by the Soviets. He travelled into Afghanistan and became one of the first outsiders to witness the courage of the “mujahideen,” the “Holy Warriors.” Zawahiri said in an interview, “Sure we’re taking American help to fight the Russians, but they are equally evil.”
The Ayatollah Khomeini, a Shiite, overthrew the Shah of Iran while the Soviets were fighting in Afghanistan, and Sadat declared Khomeini as a “lunatic madman.” He invited the ailing Shah to take up residence in Egypt and signed a peace agreement with Israel. Sadat was assassinated in October 1981, and Zawahiri was arrested. He and other prisoners were subjected to many sadistic forms of punishment, and his body bore many scars. “One line of thinking proposes that America’s tragedy on September 11 was born in the prisons of Egypt.”
The book describes in glowing terms the accomplishments of Mohammed Awahd bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s father. He was an illiterate brick layer who had incredible skill at designing and building complex projects. The oil boom of the 1950s had transformed the barren peninsula, and bin Laden’s enterprise was one that got a start with Aramco sponsorship. He caught the eye of the royal family, completed several successful projects for them, and was patient with them being slow to make payments when they had emptied the treasury with their trips to Riviera casinos and other spendthrift activities. Bin Laden became the largest customer of Caterpillar earth-moving equipment in the world in his quest to build roads for the country. His reputation soared when he succeeded at building a highway through a mountain range from Taif to Mecca that had defied all previous efforts. The legend is that he forced a donkey off the top of the mountain and laid out the road by the path the donkey followed to get to the bottom. He would spend months with his men on projects, but that wasn’t obvious from the size of his family. He fathered fifty-four children from twenty-two wives. He had additional wives that he would marry in the afternoon and divorce them by declaring, “I divorce you” that night. Alia was one of the “retained” wives, and her only child was Osama, “the Lion,” bin Laden. Osama’s favorite television show was Bonanza, and he enjoyed soccer. He is said to have never given in to the temptations of liquor, smoking, or gambling and was pious sexually. His main interest was religion, and his mother watched his religious convictions with alarm.
Osama married at the age of 17 to a girl 14 and joined the Muslim Brothers. He studied economics in college, but devoted most of his studies to religion. Most of his teachers were also members of the Muslim Bothers, and studied Qutb’s Milestones and In the Shade of the Quran. Moderate Muslims were attacking Qutb’s writings that justified attacks on anyone considered an infidel, including other Muslims. Osama agreed with Qutb, and “…that would open the door to terror.” He was, however, described as a being attentive and playful with his children. He, like his father, insisted on working beside the laborers on projects. It is interesting that he is described as just over six feet tall, and not the giant that news media always portrayed him to be.
Saudi Arabia was moving closer to America while Osama was being radicalized. King Faisal sent his sons to America to be educated, and his youngest, Turki, was coached by fellow student Bill Clinton in preparation for an ethics test. Turki had become the Kingdom’s spymaster by the time there was an attack on Mecca with several pilgrims trapped inside with four or five hundred insurgents. A hundred security officers attempted to assault the mosque, but most were gunned down. There was an attempt to lower troops by helicopter, and they were slaughtered. Turki called on the bin Ladens to get maps of the mosque, which the father had rebuilt. The insurgents kept up a constant barrage of demands on the mosque’s public address system. They wanted the royal family thrown out of power and the money they had taken to be repaid. Saudi forces gained the upper floors, attempted unsuccessfully to pump gas into the underground chambers, and dropped grenades though holes they had drilled. The grenades off course killed indiscriminately, but the attackers were driven into the open where they were forced to surrender after holding out for two weeks. The government divided the leader of the attack and 62 of his disciples among eight different cities where they were beheaded in the largest execution in the history of the Kingdom.
A month later, on Christmas Eve 1979, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan. Bin Laden claimed he went there immediately, but records do not indicate his presence there until 1984. The Saudi government forbid bin Laden from entering Afghanistan, because the Russians might capture him and use that as proof the Saudis were supporting the mujahideen. He begged his mother for her blessing to violate that order, but she refused. He promised “I won’t even go near Afghanistan.” The events that followed will be the focus of the second part of this review.