Author:
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: September 27, 2001
Millions of words have been written
about Osama bin Laden, but almost all of them by people who have never
met him. One of the few who has is Pakistani journalist, Rahimullah Yusufzai.
Here he describes his extraordinary meetings with the world's most wanted
man.
The Fax rolled off the machine into
the office of Al-Jazeera Television on Sunday, and a world preparing for
war paused for a moment to read it. Signed Osama bin Mohammad, it looked
like a call to arms from the FBI's most wanted man, calling on "our beloved
brothers" to "triumph over the infidel forces and the forces of tyranny,
and to destroy the new Jewish-Christian crusader campaign on the soil of
Pakistan and Afghanistan". Osama, it seemed, was preparing for war.
We may never know if the fax came
from his pen. But from my meetings with him, I believe I have glimpsed
his state of mind. It is three years ago now that the first call came to
my office at The News in Peshawar, summoning me to a camp in southern Afghanistan.
The Pakistani border guards would not let us cross, so the Islamist militant
group, which had organised the meeting, smuggled us in. We waited for three
days until finally, on May 25 1998, we met Bin Laden - a soft-spoken man
who drank copious amounts of water, because of a kidney problem, as we
later discovered.
He had brought me there to announce
the launch of his International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the United
States and Israel - but the Taliban had not approved the announcement,
and were furious. Mullah Omar angrily insisted that there could only be
one ruler of Afghanistan - Bin Laden or himself.
Bin Laden apologised, and for my
next meeting with him, a one-to-one interview on December 23 the same year,
he was sure to obtain the approval of his protectors. I had had one communication
with him since our first meeting, on the day of America's attack in August
1998 in retaliation for the African embassy bombings. The Egyptian Jihad
leader Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri had telephoned me at my office. Bin Laden was
sitting next to him, Al-Zawahiri said he was not involved in the bombings,
though he was pleased by them. An hour after the US attack, he called back:
they had survived the attack on bin Laden's camp, Al-Zawah-iri said, and
were ready for war.
The second time I met him, he seemed
the complete opposite of the man we have been led to imagine in recent
weeks. He was polite, quiet, very civilised, and shy: after I had taken
a few photographs, he begged me to stop. I remember the softness of his
hands. They spoke of a wealthy background, of never having done much physical
work.
We talked for four hours, through
the night, drinking tea. He carefully denied involvement in the US embassy
bombings, but said he felt joy that they had happened, and I took that
as an indirect admission. He said it was not his job to organise such attacks;
it was his job to create awareness about the injustices done by the US
to Muslims, to provoke and incite Muslims against America. And he was happy
that his message seemed to be getting through. He would certainly say the
same now about the attacks of September 11. But though he might want to
contact the media, he cannot. That would infuriate the Taliban, and he
needs them desperately.
There was, however, one element
missing from his list of grievances: he did not say anything about the
idea of US - its rights, its freedoms, its prosperity. It was in American
foreign policy that he saw the greatest threat to Islam. Indeed, he criticised
the west for supporting dictators and authoritarian regimes in Islamic
countries simply because it suited their interests.
Whatever their origins, Bin Laden's
views have caught part of the popular Muslim imagination. In the west,
one view is heard - the elitist one which dismisses him as an extremist
and a terrorist. But then there is the view, held by people who do not
read the English press, and they are fascinated by Bin Laden because he
has challenged US.
(Guardian News Service)
