I wrote in the first part of this review of the book by Lawrence Wright that I thought it should be required reading for any public official who refuses to use the term “war on terror.”The first part focused on the origins of the radical Muslim organization called al-Qaeda. This part will cover the many failures in initial attempts by bin-Laden to develop a fighting force of world Arabs to help the mujahideen combat the Soviets in Afghanistan. That is followed by his struggles to keep his ideas about combating the west and the U.S. in particular alive after the Soviets were defeated. However, Soviet defeat wasn’t expected in the early days after the invasion. The Muslim world was shaken by the invasion, and Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal travelled to Pakistan to gauge what was going on there. He and other visitors to follow were appalled at the conditions in the refugee camps. He believed Afghanistan was lost, and that the only hope was to delay the expected invasion of Pakistan. The U.S. was hoping that the Soviets now had their own “Vietnam war.”

The mujahideen standing against the Soviets were little more than disorganized mobs. The Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI) insisted that they would only provide aid to six factions with a warlord at the head of each, and the estimated 3.27 million refugees had to sign up with one of those six parties to be eligible for aid. Turki insisted on a seventh party that would better represent Saudi interests. The seven mujahideen leaders became known to the CIA and other intelligence agencies as the Seven Dwarves. Bin Laden stayed away from the battlefield for years in “Fear of Bodily Participation,” a fact that caused him great shame. He also lost his business in Medina and forfeited about $2.5 million in profits. In 1984 he was taken to a mujahideen camp that was attacked by Soviet jets, but the missiles failed to explode. The Afghans had not even jumped into trenches with the frightened Arabs. Bin-Laden was so impressed by the bravery of the Afghans that he immediately returned to Saudi Arabia and raised millions of dollars to support efforts to help refugees. A fatwa was issued that required every able-bodied Muslim to support the jihad in Afghanistan, which was even to take precedence over the Palestinian struggle against Israel. Bin Laden was “paying the rent” for the Arabs who arrived to join the fight.

Bin Laden was not considered physically impressive. He was described as shy, soft-spoken, and gentle. He always had a small smile and soft hands. A hardened mujahid remarked, “You’d think you were shaking hands with a girl.” The fatwa was not successful at gathering many recruits, and only about 3000 misfits arrived to join bin Laden. About the only thing they had in common was “…thirst for martyrdom.” The first spurt of blood would be forgiven sins. “Seventy members of his household might be spared the fires of hell…The martyr who is poor will be crowned in heaven with a jewel more valuable than the earth itself…(and) martyrdom offered the conjugal pleasures of seventy-two virgins.” Foreign reporters noted the Arabs “…were a curious sideshow to the real fighting, set apart by their obsession with dying.” This group became the core of al-Qaeda.

Against all odds, it was obvious that the Afghans had the Soviets on the ropes and the U.S. stinger missiles were shooting down Soviet aircraft by the time bin Laden and the rag-tag Arab jihadists joined the action. The people with bin Laden and the actions in which they participated were not the stories from which legends are born. One was a 400 pound man who had to be towed up hills by donkeys, and seemed only interested in finding a way to be shot in battle. Another was an American community college dropout who only seemed to care about enjoying the new adventure. The Soviets attacked one of their encampments, the Arabs panicked, and the Afghans asked them to leave because they were useless. Bin Laden did succeed at establishing the Tora Bora (“black dust”) camp. They did destroy it with explosives once when they thought they might be overrun, and had to rebuild it when no attack came.

Bin Laden’s first attack against the Soviets and Communist Afghans, which was planned for months, was a complete and embarrassing disaster. None of the attacking positions were in place at the designated time, and those who did make it into position did not have the ammunition or other supplies needed. A single Afghan soldier heard their disorganized actions and drove them off with a machine gun. They had been defeated by one man, and the Afghan mujahideen were laughing at them. But then some Arabs under the leadership of a jihadist named Sayyaf outflanked an attachment of Russian Spetsnaz Special Forces troops and killed several of them. Bin Laden took credit for the victory and was given a Kalikov AK-74 assault rifle, which he proudly displayed everywhere he went as a reminder of “his victory.” Bin Laden would successfully attribute the collapse of the Soviet Union to the wounds the Muslims had inflicted in Afghanistan and “his victory.”

Peshawar, the capital of the northwest province of Pakistan where millions of Afghan refugees escaped the war, had a higher death toll of Afghan commanders than on the field of battle because of weekly assassinations by the KGB and the Afghan intelligence service. The violence that was spreading through the Muslim world is forbidden by the Quran. “The Quran explicitly states that Muslims shall not kill anyone, except as punishment for murder. The murderer of one innocent, the Quran warns, is judged as if he had murdered all of mankind. The killing of Muslims is an even greater offense.”

In addition to the arguments about whether their terrorist actions were forbidden Al-Zawhiri and bin Laden argued over strategy. For example, Al-Zawhiri warned bin-Laden that he was also “hitting the snake on the head” by inflaming the Americans, Jews, and Russians. Zawahiri offered bin-Laden a cadre of mujahideen to protect him. “They were different from the teenagers and drifters who made up so much of the Arab Afghan community…They would become the leaders of al-Qaeda.” The movement was formed along the lines called for by Sayyid Qutb, for the vanguard, or “…the solid base–qaeda–for the hoped for society.” Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group, was formed at the same time.

The Soviet venture into Afghanistan was costly to the Soviets and Afghans. The nine-year stay ended fifteen thousand Soviet lives and the death of one to two million Afghans, including perhaps 90 percent of them civilians. There were hundreds of Saudis, often wealthy young men seeking reputations, who at least postured to “chase the Soviet bear.” However, “chaos and barbarism…sharply increased as bin Laden took the helm. Bank robberies and murders became more commonplace, justified by absurd religious claims.” The Soviet withdrawal didn’t end the fighting. Muslims were pitted against Muslim as the Afghan government refused to collapse after the Soviet retreat. One Arab Muslim with bin Laden was named Shafiq, who was a small (under five feet tall) Saudi who joined the jihad at the age of sixteen. Shariq sacrificed himself to save bin Laden from an Afghan assault by covering the retreat of the main force with a mortar. Eighty Arabs, including Shafiq, died, but bin Laden escaped.

The Saudi government was having economic difficulties because of the lavish spending of the royal family and a collapse in the price of oil. Young college graduates were unable to find jobs, and bin Laden was able to easily recruit them. The Saudi government was hiring muttawa, religious vigilantes who roamed the country to chase men into mosques at prayer time and flog women who didn’t meet their idea of proper dress. The muttawa were officially called the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, and would be the model for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait startled the world, and the Saudis were worried. Their small army had no chance of standing up to Iraq’s millions if Saddam Hussein turned his attention on them. U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and General Norman Schwarzkopf persuaded the king to accept American troops into the kingdom after showing satellite images of many more Iraqi forces than were needed to occupy Kuwait. Bin Laden offered that he could prepare 100,000 fighters within three months, and told the Saudis that the Americans weren’t needed. The Saudis went with the coalition of thirty-four countries including the Americans, and bin Laden called them foreign crusaders.