With every step, I sense his presence-but it is as insubstantial as shadows.
I know that here, in this maze of narrow streets, lies hidden another key to his mystery and to the nature of his ties with al-Qaida, but nothing tells me how, if I were to come upon it, I would recognize it.
In a word, the investigation is at a standstill.
For the second time, as in Bosnia, I've run into a complete lack of clues or witnesses.
For three days, it goes on like this.
I spend the time reading, reflecting, walking through the bazaars, daydreaming, listening to the call of the muezzin, which seems (or is it my impression?) more aggressive than during my other stays here. I reread Les Amants de Kandahar late one afternoon, seated at a table on the terrace of a cafe on "Mujahideen Square," waiting, losing patience, waiting some more. And then, since I have to wait, I spend the time trying to imagine Omar's life, not here, but at Miran Shah, then Kahlid bin Waleed, during the time of his first visit, when he completed his first two training sessions-and as long as I'm daydreaming, I linger one last time over what remains the most disconcerting part of the puzzle: the transformation of a young Englishman into a fanatic of holy war and crime.
There are no direct witnesses, of course. No one to tell me, "I knew Omar at Miran Shah and Khalid bin Waleed, and this is what he was like." Instead, Mohammed's stories, and bits of secrets confided to Peter Gee, to Rhys Partridge and to his other kidnap victims, whose police depositions Indian services gave to me and I recall. And then, my own knowledge of him. Because isn't that what it means to know someone? To be able to imagine how he would behave, even in situations of which we know close to nothing . . . And by drawing on all this, I have the feeling I'm beginning to know Omar . . .
The layout of the camps of Khalid bin Waleed and Miran Shah: The camps are all alike, Mohammed Mehran told me. Built along the same lines. At the bottom of a very green valley, surrounded by snowy, deserted mountains. Hangars of poor-quality sheet metal that sparkle in the sunlight. Tents. A mosque. An immense parade ground where everyone gathers for prayers and for exercises. The exact image, in other words, of the nave painting on the wall of my room in the Hotel Akbar. But Khalid bin Waleed, the second camp Omar attended, and the one Mohammed knew the best, having visited there just before the Americans razed the place, had one unusual feature. It had another, smaller parade ground, where the combatants' families came regularly to share their joys and sorrows, to be united in an ecstasy of shared sacrifice and death, and, sometimes, to intermarry, widows and survivors, thus constituting a sort of a holy fellowship of relatives of heroes. They came also as if to the theatre, with their children, to see the "holy warriors" act out, as though on a stage, their glory, their sacrifice, and their death. War and theatre. Crime and crime drama. A bucolic and austere setting. Luxuriant and lugubrious. Actors and martyrs. Allah Akbar. Omar is there.
Daily life in the camps: The days . . . The nights . . . I try to imagine Omar's nights at Khalid bin Waleed. Details . . . Always details . . . Because, as usual, everything is said and done in the details: Where does he sleep, for example? In a bed? On a mat? On the ground? In the snow or on the stones? Alone? With the others? Response: on mats on the ground, under a tree, when it rains, without a pillow of course, without sheets or blankets, in stocking feet when it's cold, huddled against one another like sardines, to get warm. Terror and brotherhood. Terror-brotherhood. Heat, rank and exquisite, and, at last, the bliss of a sense of belonging. In the style of my dear Sartre: the experience of the hangar and collectivity, the sweaty stench of humans, their fetid breath, the nausea- in a word, the "autodidactic" destiny of a social misfit named Omar who, far from suffering from the fleas and bedbugs, the cold, the promiscuity of bodies, the mingled breath, the decaying human matter, finds the most profound and intense pleasure in them. If, as Peter Gee told me, Omar's problem really was that of the impossibility of his belonging, if his secret dream was really to escape his painful and guilty solitude, at Khalid bin Waleed, his desires were fulfilled. The hell, thus the heaven, of Khalid bin Waleed.
The days at Khalid bin Waleed: What did they eat? What did they drink? It seems like a frivolous question, but it isn't for Omar. Omar with his fragile health. With the body and the physiology of a prosperous European. Omar, whom I now know couldn't make it to Bosnia because the trip was too exhausting and, ultimately, made him ill. And Omar who, arriving directly from London at the camp at Miran Shah, had had the same problem. Dishes of poorly cooked rice. Old meat that has spoiled, eaten with the fingers off huge, communal plates. Rancid oil, cooked a hundred times over. Bad, stagnant water. Milk that has gone sour. Meager amounts of fruit. Filthy kitchens. Filth everywhere, all the time. Miran Shah turns out to be like Bosnia, only worse. Food poisoning that, this time, knocks him flat. Fever. Delirium. Dry, swollen tongue. The body-bathed in sweat-letting go at both ends. Left in bed, if one can call it a bed, while the others go out to drill. Off to the jihad and glory, Omar falls ill after twenty-one days (the end of the first leg of jihadist training) and must immediately leave for Lahore (either the home of his uncle, Rauf Ahmed Sheikh, a judge on the High Court of Lahore, or that of his grandfather, I don't know which-back to home base, Omar the weakling, the pitiful).
What does Omar do when he gets sick? At Solin, in Croatia, it was simple. He stayed in bed. Waited. And the Convoy of Mercy picked him up on its way back and took him home to London. But here? From what I know of Miran Shah, doctors and nurses are nonexistent, as are medicine and medical care. And what I know of that army, the army of jihadists, the holy warriors, the soldiers of God, is that it's the only army in the world where no one cares about the health, the physical state, or even the age of the soldiers. There is no age limit for recruitment, for example. No draft board to declare you exempt. Little kids and old men of eighty. And the little kids, by the way, can be ten years or ten months or ten days old-there are mothers who take their newborn to the camp! There are actually nurseries in the camps, for the babies dedicated to the jihad! In short, no hospital at Miran Shah nor, for that matter, at Khalid bin Waleed. The closest hospital is at Muzzafarabad, two hundred kilometers away, where those who are wounded in combat receive treatment. Sink or swim is the only choice. Omar, at Miran Shah, nearly sinks, and goes back to Lahore.
The schedule at Miran Shah and Khalid bin Waleed: The rhythm of the nights and the days . . . The first thing that must strike Omar, I am sure, is the way time drags on slowly, without breaks or events. Five prayers don't make a rhythm; three meals aren't enough to organize a day around. The first thing that bothers and changes him is this slackness, time that's almost immobile, bloodless, like time during insomnia, when nothing happens except the succession of days and of nights, of dawns and of dusks. Time reduced to this? The time of these epic and beautiful moments-the sunrises, the sunsets-whose meaning, as it would be for all city dwellers, had been lost on him in London? Yet not even that, for, in the camps, one never sees the sun rise. And one never sees it set. Or, if one does, it is without looking at it-it is forbidden to notice, a European and Christian concern, a wonder of aesthetes and idolators, silence! The first commandment of jihadist time: act as though nothing were happening. The first shock of Omar the jihadist: the time that doesn't pass, time emptied of events, of thought, the pure passage of time. Omar no longer reads. He no longer reflects. Caught in the mechanism of the days, in the repetition of collective movements and that of survival, he scarcely has time to think. No longer an autodidact, but an illiterate. Drunk, no longer on the group, but on the void. The illiterate destiny of Omar. To become impoverished in spirit. Amnesia. Brain washing?
The schedule, once more: The concrete filling of the hours. The same as in almost all camps. It's a protocol, almost a ritual, it doesn't change from one camp to the next. First prayer before dawn. Then, recitation from the Koran, in Arabic. Then a lecture by an emir, or an ulema who is passing through, on a point of doctrine, a saying of the prophet, a group of suras, a page of the Kitalbul Jihad, the "Book of the Jihad" by Abdullah bin Murbarik, the Koranic scholar responsible for a collection of the sayings of the Prophet regarding the holy war. Then and only then-it's eight o'clock-is breakfast served. After that-it's nine o'clock-military training. Prayers at noon. Lunch. Rest. Afternoon prayers. Training. New indoctrination session: the wars of Mohammed; the lives of his companions; his holy Face; the contours of his Face; why there is only One; the horror of video games, drugs, the films of Stallone and others that were so influential in arousing violence in Omar and that he sees, now, condemned, relegated to oblivion. Domestic work. Chores. Prayers at twilight. New recitation from the Koran. New lecture on the "jihad" (combat on the path of God) and on the "qital" (the art of killing, according to the path of Allah), on the holy values of Islam (fraternity and oumma, the community of believers) as well as the materialism of modern life and the moral decadence of the West (the incapacity, in Europe, of sons to love fathers, of fathers to love sons, of brothers to love brothers, as brothers love in the land of Islam-as in the camps). Last prayers. Sleep.
I add them up. Five prayers. Four or five time slots devoted to religious indoctrination and the Koran. As opposed to two, perhaps three sessions of actual military training (in sum: learning how to handle a Kalashnikov, an RPG-7, grenades, a rifle, a rocket launcher, and, the specialty at Khalid bin Waleed, remotely detonated landmines). Is this what they call a "training camp"? Is this how the dreaded camps of al-Qaida function? Is the religious more important than the military at Khalid bin Waleed? Does the minaret have control over the rifle? The ulema over the emir? And, in "holy warriors," does "holy" count more than "warriors"? Well, yes. That's right. That's what the West doesn't realize when we think of these camps, and yet, that is the reality. That these camps are about life as well as combat, that jihadism is a way of living and of being as well as a penchant for war-it's one of the things I have come to understand in the twenty years I have been interested in Afghanistan, and something that my conversations with Mohammed Mehran confirm. That the important thing is less the actual jihad than to believe in the jihad, and that the jihad is as much, if not more, of a religious obligation as it is a military obligation, that the liberation of Kashmir and Palestine are merely a point of departure, almost a pretext-this is also the first thing Omar realizes as soon as he arrives. It's his chance, actually. It's the card he's going to play. That's the only explanation for the odd title of "instructor" he boasted of to the Bengali and Pakistani inmates at Tihar Jail, a title I have long wondered about-how could it have been conferred upon such a weakling, such a city boy? Omar never would have been an "instructor" at the camp of Khalid bin Waleed if the actual military component had been more important than the religious.
A word about the readings from the Koran in Arabic. No one at Khalid bin Waleed speaks Arabic? It's true. The language of paradise is not Arabic but Urdu, or Punjabi, or Kashmiri, the vernacular languages of the illiterates that the camps produce in droves. Of course there are camps-those of the Lashkar e-Toba-where the fighters have spent some time in Pakistani public schools, know the rudiments of math and reading and have a basic command of English and Arabic. This is not the case of those under the aegis of the Deobandi organizations (at that time, the Harkat; today, the Jaish e-Mohammed), that draw on the grand madrasas of Peshawar and Karachi (Akora Khattak, Binori Town)-and so this is not the case at Khalid bin Waleed. No matter. For the fundamentalists, the point has never been to speak but to listen, not to understand, but merely to be present-I can picture dozens of men of all ages assembled before the hangars on the parade ground, just before dawn; I can see them listening in ecstasy, repeating, reciting a text of which they do not understand a word. Omar? Of course, he speaks Arabic. In any case, he studies it. In the house in Delhi, when Shah Sahab was tired of having him underfoot, didn't he tell him to "go to your room and study your Arabic"? And in the report of the interrogation, under the heading "languages spoken by the accused," didn't he declare, "English, Urdu, Punjabi, French, and Arabic"? So he knows enough Arabic to follow the readings from the Koran. I would even be willing to bet it's the sole intellectual activity he has retained. And I suppose that also contributes to his influence over the others, his comrades and companions. I suppose that also explains his "command" over these peasants who speak only Urdu and Kashmiri.
What does "instructor" mean, then? How does the hierarchy work in a camp like Khalid bin Waleed? In general, what kind of hierarchy exists in the army of the jihad? What command structure? And ranks? What ranks? What, exactly, is Omar's status? Answer: emir. The only rank in the holy army is emir. Wherever there is a group, there is an emir. All powers belong to the emir, without recourse to discussion and without question (except questions the emir himself chooses to ask the assembly of scholars, the jirga, who meet at his request). So there are as many emirs as there are groups in the jihad. The only problem: what defines a group? How many men, starting from when, compose a group? A hundred? Ten? Two? In theory, in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, a group is simply more than one person-at two "holy warriors," you are already a group. In practice, there appears to be an average-according to Mohammed Mehran, who studied the camp of Ma'askar at Mansehra in depth, there are around eight professors and instructors for fifty or so "holy warriors." And what of Khalid bin Waleed? What kind of emir was Omar at Khalid bin Waleed? What level, what degree? When it is said that Omar was an "instructor" at Khalid bin Waleed, it means emir. But little or big emir? Reigning over a hundred, ten, or two fighters? Over the camp, or over his roommate? I don't know.
Omar religious? Pious Omar? Omar praying? For those who know him, that would be one hell of a surprise. For those who remember him at the Forest School and the London School, for Frank Pittal, who remembers their great conversations about Jews and Arabs, for Asad Khan who, on the trip to Bosnia, was surprised that Omar didn't come to pray with him more often, even for his friends from New Delhi, or for Rhys Partridge who saw with what aplomb he used the Koranic statute of "traveler" as a dispensation from prayer, for all those who, in a word, know what a modest place the idea of God has always occupied in Omar's life (although Peter Gee said, "He believes in the immortality of the soul 'like an egg is an egg'"), the idea is borderline credible, and it's hard to imagine him steeped in piety, waiting for the Last Judgment. Am I worthy of God? Or unworthy? Nights going over and over in his mind his good and bad deeds? Not his style . . . And yet, at Khalid bin Waleed, there is no choice. An iron-clad religious discipline. Punishment, even corporal punishment, for those who fail to say their prayers, especially collectively, at the appointed hour. So Omar behaves like everyone else. He conforms. He is submissive. Either religious crisis, or, for the first time in his life, the feeling of belonging, and the obedience that goes with it. Or else, mere cynicism, and the belief that this is the way to gain power at Khalid bin Waleed.
Memory. The past. What does Omar do with his memory? How does he live, in the midst of all these coarse beings, with his past as a Westerner? The knowledge and the science he has had access to, are they an asset or a sin? Should he get rid of them, and if so, how? Cultivate them in secret, and why? Does someone in the company of the soldiers of God still have the right to his memory, or must he, like the Khmers Rouge of Cambodia and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, kill the "old man" in himself, to be cured of the malady of the past? Yes of course, the pattern of the Tigers and the Khmers Rouge. Yes of course, the past is a sin, memory is shame. Yes, in theory the jihadist, once trained, is assumed to be pure, newborn, immaculate, and as for the rest, it's forbidden to remember-forgive me my past, Allah! Forgive me for what has passed but is not entirely in the past. I suspect, however, that Omar is an exception and that, like a few jihadists of high rank, he plays both sides of the question: hate and love for the West; hide one's science and use it; deny it, but put it to service in fighting; support the common line that this knowledge is the source of all evil, but turn it around against the dogs who invented it; and, cleverer still-proof of the survival, in new clothing, of the Omar I know and of his cynicism-the temptation to create a leverage of distinction and influence, even amongst his brothers the jihadists. At least, this is the way I see him.
It's the same thing, I think, for the kamikaze tendencies of jihadism. Of course, not all jihadists are kamikazes. The Koran forbids suicide. This is clear when you read it closely, and when you read, in particular, the suras explaining that the distinctive feature of hell is that the soul of the damned to relive and repeat ad infinitum the scene of its last moments. And I think the "holy warrior," even in his most impossible missions, is bound to try to fight until the last against destiny, to do everything he can to come out alive and escape death-I know that martyrdom is only valid if it is at once passionately desired and desperately averted; and that to find grace in God's eyes, it is particularly important not to claim to be the author of a decision that is God's alone; I know the paradox of the kamikaze who, in Islam, and in defiance of all custom, is literally constrained to disguise a suicide as a natural and violent death. Notwithstanding, the death wish of these men is evident. That they aspire to death, that they pray day after day, begging Allah to call them to his side, is obvious. What did I do wrong? prays the surviving jihadist. What crime did I commit, my God, for you to put off your welcome? The misery of old jihadists. The ageless, soulless face of the forty-year-old jihadist who realizes that, despite his prayers, death has forgotten him. And Omar? His place in this drama? How can one imagine the young and lively Omar in this game of one-upmanship, of victimization and expiation? Well, cynicism, yes. Double-, even triple-talk. Nihilistic phraseology, without a doubt. Perhaps, also, a display of braggadocio from one who, as in his arm-wrestling days, intends to be the best, one of the lucky ones, the chosen, who will have the supreme privilege, to bear the mark of honor and the right to cross over the "line of control," the border between Pakistan and Kashmir, and become a combatant. In an article on the war in Kashmir, I read that there are five to six hundred thousand trained jihadists in Pakistan, among whom only a few thousand are engaged in active combat! But as for the rest, no, a solid will to survive.
The comrades of Omar? There are none.
Omar's sexuality? Like that of everyone in the world of the camps. Like Mohammed Atta, who had such an aversion to women that he stipulated in his will that they should be forbidden to approach his tomb and, what's more, when preparing his body for that tomb, from washing his genitals without wearing gloves. Latent homosexuality. Or, if not, perhaps no sexuality at all, pleasure is a sin, the purpose of relations with a woman is to procreate. Omar, at this time, if I take into account what I heard in London, has probably never slept with a woman. Omar, at this time, has never taken seriously a desire, an idea, a plan, that came from a woman. And since we can assume that nothing changed at the camps, or in Lahore at his uncle's, or later, in prison, we must conclude that when he meets his wife Sadia, he is a twenty-nine year old virgin. Is this a key to the psychology of Omar? A partial explanation of his mystery? Asexuality, and the will to purity that goes with it, as possible sources of the moral standards of the religion of fundamentalist crime? Frustration and morbid desire for the absolute as the double parameters of a new Mariotte's law-whereby the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to its pressure-applied to politics in extreme conditions? One has nothing to do with the other. But I remember, I cannot help but remember, a great French philosopher, Louis Althusser, still a virgin at thirty and who . . . No. Out of bounds, precisely. Because truly blasphemous. And too flattering to Omar.
Pictures of Omar during those days? Photos? The camps of Lashkar e-Toba are the only ones that forbid photos. So I looked. I asked. Somewhere, there must be some photos. I did not find them.
Omar's family? The beloved father, the adored mother, both remaining in London, of whom he told Abdul Rauf, the first man to invite him to enlist, at Split, "I shall do nothing against their will . . . they decide everything . . . they are the ones to convince to allow me to become a holy warrior." No more contact with the family. The jihadist believes he has the right to name 72 of the chosen-the same as the number of virgins waiting for him in paradise-to follow in his ascension. Perhaps Omar believes this. Perhaps he thinks, if he goes to paradise, he has a responsibility to give Saeed, Qauissia, and Awais a leg up.
Do jihadists change their names? Yes, of course they do. Noms de guerre. Disappear from circulation, become invisible, undetectable, camouflage and erase oneself. But for religious reasons as well. Like the companions of Mohammed. One changes names as one converts. A new name, like a rebirth. Part of the initiation into the jihad. Omar changes names then, like the others, out of religious duty. And I know all of Omar's names, seventeen of his aliases. But I don't know one, so important, decisive: His secret name.
The making of a jihadist.
Geneology of a holy warrior.
The school of religious war and the academy of crime.
That's where I am. I am in the midst of reconstructions and speculations about the most obscure area of Omar's life. And I'm having my umpteenth discussion with Mohammed. Do you think Omar knew how to shoot? The place of homosexuality in the camps? Is it possible that he never fought at all? Letters-weren't there combatants who, if they wanted to, received mail from their families, from their friends? In other words, I'm trying to fill in the details, to sharpen my portrait of him, but I'm fully aware that it doesn't in the least help further my central preoccupation, which is, his ties to al-Qaida. I'm in the midst of biographical rumination, morbid daydreams, unanswered questions, futile and pathetic speculations-when, one morning, I realize where I should have started: Gul Aga Sherza, the colorful and terrifying governor of Kandahar. Wouldn't the simplest thing be to return to see Gul Aga Sherza, this old acquaintance dating from the time of my Rapport Afghan, and, incidentally, the boss of this city? Isn't he still, today, the best lead and, in any case, the only one left?
I leave for the Palace.
And I pray that no one had the unfortunate idea of waving under his nose the less than flattering pages I had devoted to him in the book.
CHAPTER 5 BIN LADEN'S FAVORED SON.
Apparently no one did.
Because the Governor remembers our meeting only vaguely.
He does remember, it seems, our wild automobile rodeo through the streets of his good town: "Show me, Mr. Governor, that you're as popular as you say among your people!" And he, stung to the quick, mobilizes his personal guard, his ceremonial motorcycle escort, his all-new armored BMW motorcade, its windows riddled with bullets, sirens blaring, and takes Gilles Hertzog and me for a tour of Kandahar. At each stop Sherza's helmeted infantry charged into the frightened crowd, whip or revolver in hand, to convince a swarm of terrified children to come have their heads patted.
Mixing up everything, he confuses this demonstration of popularity, this sinister and muscular walkabout, with the probably identical event he had to organize three months later for his "friend" Ahmid Karzai the day of the attack that almost left Afghanistan without a president and Kandahar without a governor. He takes off his general's operetta cap and, laughing very hard, almost shouting while his aide-de-camp laughs and snaps stupidly to attention, Sherza shows me his swollen, bruised ear: "Look at this! Does Gul Aga have a lucky charm? Could a bullet get any closer? You remember, what nerves of steel!"
But of the scathing portrait I made of him upon my return to France-his listless face, his soul-dead eyes, his nasal voice, his physique like the character out of Tintin, General Alcazar, stuffed in his too-new uniform with its too-red decorations and his too-black moustache, hat too high, epaulettes too starched, of his low forehead pretending determination that was only the expression of obstinance, of his terrible and absurd rages, of his taste for pistachios which he gobbled incessantly, mechanically, during our meeting, of his cupidity-he knows, it seems, thankfully, nothing.
"I've come to see you, Mr. Governor, because I'm interested in a man who was here at the end of the '80s."
"Oh the '80s . . . that's a long time ago, the '80s," he says, taking a handful of pistachios an aide has shelled, and stuffing them all in his mouth.
"Yes, but it's important . . . he's an enemy of Afghanistan. Remember our conversation last year when you said the Pakistanis were enemies of your country. Well, this man is Pakistani . . . "
"Yes, I remember," he grumbles, suspicious, then angry; but it's only a piece of pistachio stuck between two teeth-he glares at his aide-de-camp.
"I'm convinced, Mr. Governor, that this man who is today in prison in Pakistan underwent military training here in Afghanistan; and I'm certain he still has connections and support in the region."
He looks happy now. He's managed to extricate the piece of pistachio and so he's happy, and he smiles at me. And I choose to interpret this as an invitation to proceed.
"The name of the camp is Khalid bin Waleed."
"I remember," he repeats, "I remember . . . "
But he is slumped over his table now, eyes half closed. His voice is husky, a little thick. I'm afraid he's going to sleep. Even the pistachios, he takes sluggishly, a few at a time.
"It's important, Mr. Governor. Very important. The French government attaches the greatest importance to the-"
A miracle! The words French government have the effect, one wonders why, of waking him up. He starts, twists his hat on his head, and stares attentively at me as if seeing me for the first time.
"The money," he says. "I hope you have the money!"
What money? What's he talking about? I won't find out. Because without waiting for an answer or even my question, he straightens up, barks an order to his aide-de-camp who again snaps to attention, takes me by the arm, and drags me to the giant stairway of the Palace where the motorcycle squadron waits, ready to go. But there, he changes his mind, barks a new order at his panicked escort, stumbles, turns red in the face, takes my arm again, and quick-steps back to his office where he stops in the middle of the room with a stupid look on his face as if he no longer knew why he had come. We are joined by a small, thin man with bright black eyes set in a face with the profile of an insect, who seems to be the only one who dares look the general straight in the eye.
"Amine is one of the heads of our police," he says, pulling himself together and affecting an absurdly sonorous voice as if he were awarding a decoration. "Ask your questions. All your questions. Amine is here. He will answer you."
And he goes to his chair, slumps down again, and grabs another handful of pistachios that his panting aide-de-camp has resumed shelling.
Amine asked me to give him two days.
He didn't promise anything. He said: "All that is long in the past; the Afghanistan of today is a new Afghanistan; we might have a chance, though-the Taliban was very organized, they recorded everything."
On the morning of the second day, one of the governor's cars preceded by a full-dress motorcycle escort, stops in front of my pension and takes me to the other side of town in a grand display of sirens, flashing lights, the jack-booted cycle escort kicking cars in their way, to a complex of buildings surrounding a courtyard. I don't know if it's an annex of the Palace or a Kandahar police station.
Amine is there with two colleagues in a dining room where a copious breakfast has been prepared.
"I think we've got it," he says. "Saeed Sheikh Omar. Born in London in 1973. Double nationality until 1994. Abandons his Pakistani nationality in January 1994. Is this him?"
He slides an old black-and-white photo, actually a photocopy of a photo, across the table to me, and immediately, despite his youth and his black turban, resembling those of the Ministry of Repression of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue, I recognize my man.
"Well then yes," he resumes. "In that case, we have a few things. Drink up your tea. And come."
Amine, his colleagues and I get into a new Toyota, which was a goodbye present, he tells me, from an American Special Forces officer. And we're off again, as always, with the jack-booted escort, toward Wazir Akbar Khan, the residential quarter of the city, near the Pakistan consulate. It's an isolated three-story house, modest and obviously empty, but guarded by armed soldiers as if it was the tomb of a marabou.
Inside, arranged on shelves like museum pieces: a flight manual with a newsprint cover; several Korans; Pakistani passports; video-cassettes; stacks of mimeographed pamphlets in Arabic and Urdu; photos of combatants, maybe Chechens; a map of American bases in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf; medicines; some cooking utensils. We are, I understand, in one of the al-Qaida houses discovered in November 2001, when nobody knew whether these houses were mines of information or decoys-if it's the latter, then the real secrets, the archival essentials, the names of bin Laden's operatives in the United States, had already been moved to Jalalabad by al-Qaida. And earlier, in January 2000 after Omar had been exchanged for the 155 passengers on the Indian Airlines flight, it was also one of the places foreign fighters were housed, and therefore it's possible Omar stayed here.
Amine, in other words, confirms for me his three stays in Afghanistan.
The first was in 1994. Probably in March. Maybe April. Omar spent, a few months before, a period at Miran Shah in the Pakistani tribal zones in a camp called-I had been missing the name-Salam Fassi Camp (this camp, contrary to what Mohammed Mehran told me, still exists since it seems, in January 2002, to have been a transit stop for Abu Zubaydah, bin Laden's deputy, as he fled Tora Bora on his way to Faisalabad). But his first real stay in Afghanistan is here, at camp Khalid bin Waleed, in Zhavar, which American bombardments, first in 1997, then in 2001, in this case, completely destroyed.
Instructor, really? Yes, really.
In a position to take his turn to run an istakbalia, a training session? Yes, quite probably.
Particularly because-and this is something I suspected and which Amine confirms-Khalid bin Waleed had the distinction of being oriented to the "intellectual" training of the combatants. The handling of Kalashnikovs, of course. The techniques of hand-to-hand combat, as well. The art of throat-slitting and remotely detonated explosions, yes. But also the art of camouflage and disguise. Of disinformation and information. Of intelligence and counter-intelligence. And, even more specifically, a section on the infiltration of militants, and eventually kamikazes, into "infidel" zones: life in the West, how to eat and dress, how to travel, how to outsmart police surveillance, remain a good Muslim, pray without raising suspicions-all questions to which Omar, given his biography, was supposed to provide more precise and reliable answers than anybody.
Anyway, he's there, in good health this time. For forty days he trains thirty or so young Pakistani recruits in the art of jihad. The student of statistics, the chess player, who said in London that he played the way Julius Caesar led his battles, has declared war without recourse on his former world. It's here, that he meets the man who will weigh heavily on the following episodes of his life-his mentor, his dark angel, the man who will send him to India to organize kidnappings of tourists, the man whom the irony of fate will send to prison soon after, and for whose liberation Omar takes his first hostages: Masood Azhar, who, on an inspection tour in the region's camps, with the flair of a gang boss that all jihad dignitaries have, spots Omar right away, the exceptional young recruit with a promising future.
In January 2000, after the hijacking and his exit from prison- Omar's second stay.
Omar is a celebrity. He was important enough that one of the Pakistani Islamist groups, with support from the secret services, put together a major, costly, internationally perilous, and spectacular media event to liberate him. The hijackers, as everybody in Kandahar knows, started with a much longer list of demands-they wanted the release of several dozen of their "imprisoned comrades." They announced they wouldn't budge for less than "two hundred million dollars." However, as the week progresses, they gradually renounce all their demands but one- the release of Omar, Masood Azhar, and Mushtaq Zargar. What privilege! What glory! And for the unknown jihadist, what proof of importance!
As soon as he arrives he is received by Mullah Omar himself, who naturally puts him in contact with the other foreigners stationed in the city, and through them, with bin Laden. With bin Laden they talk about Kashmir. The Pakistani tells the Saudi of the heroic struggle of the Kashmiri people against Indian occupation and asks for his help. The former student of the London School of Economics also explains how he sees the Koranic prohibition of "riba," literally, "increase"-in other words, the prohibtion of the work of money, and of the new mechanisms of financial capitalism. "It's not so simple," he expounds. "There are other readings just as orthodox, from Surat 2, verse 275 . . . one can be a good Muslim and turn the methods of the infidels against themselves . . . " The Saudi observes him. He is obviously impressed with this rare combination of faith and culture, of fanaticism and competence. And he certainly sees what he can get from a fervent jihadist and a matchless financier, expert in electronics and the internet as well as a connoisseur of the West and its workings.
He is wary, I imagine. Amine doesn't say this, but I imagine he must be. Yes, a man like bin Laden wouldn't, without a minimum of caution, receive a young man who had just spent six years in Indian prisons, and could have well been turned into an enemy agent. So they study his case, test him discreetly. Does he know Arabic but hides it? Does he know Indian? Persian? Does he make suspicious phone calls? Does he overdo it- classic error-in his official hatred of America and England? Are they in the presence of another Ali Mohammed, the young Egyptian who in the '90s infiltrated Arab terrorist groups for the CIA? But the tests must have been conclusive because the Englishman seems to have been adopted.
According to some, Omar joins Majlis al-shura, the political council of al-Qaida. Others say he is put in charge of relations with the major allies outside Afghanistan-the Iranian Hezbollah, the National Islamic Front of Sudan. What Amine knows, and which the Indian services confirmed to me, is that Omar finds himself entrusted with extremely precise tasks for putting in place the logistical groundwork for the organization.
For example, he designs, puts on line and secures the al-Qaida websites.
He contributes to the creation of a communications system that will allow an obscure sect, closed in on itself, backward, to open up to the world, to capture the voices of friends and enemies, to circulate its fatwahs as well as its coded messages.
And finally, eighteen months before September 11th, at the time the organization begins to plan the operations that will give it its global dimension, he is among those set to work on its finances and secure the means to match its ambitions. With others he negotiates to buy land where the training camps of Khalden, Derunta, Khost, Siddiqui and Jihad Wal are based. He helps perfect a sophisticated system to reinforce al-Qaida's control over the Afghan opium trade. He ensures ties with Saudi NGOs, like the Islamic Relief Agency, whose Dublin office, since the 1998 attacks on the American embassies in Tanzania and Sudan, is one of bin Laden's largest suppliers of funds. Later, I will even hear that, in this Kandahar house, a computer is installed, possibly for Omar, that will function as a mini-stock exchange providing continuous on-line connection to the markets of the world: London, Tokyo, New York, Frankfurt-already "selling short," already perfecting the speculative techniques that in six months will be used to play the effects of September 11? Anyway, all the young trader savoir-faire of Omar in the service of an organization preparing total war against the American capitalist system!
"We are in the winter of 2000," concludes Amine, "maybe spring. Bin Laden, as you know, lost Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim, his finance minister, who was killed in 1998. At that point it seems that Omar Sheikh takes his place. Or rather, we wonder if this recruitment wasn't decided earlier still-if the organization hadn't already spotted him during his years in prison in Delhi, and therefore whether getting him back wasn't the reason for the hijacking. What? Harkat? You say it was public knowledge that Harkat was behind the hijacking? Yes. But it's compatible. The Harkat is part of al-Qaida . . . The ISI? You're wondering if the ISI wasn't also involved in the operation? That I don't know. That's a little delicate. You understand that I prefer not to comment . . . "
Amine won't say more. But I can see, as I listen to him, new perspectives opening up-I can see the pieces falling into place, confirming, and going well beyond, what I learned in Dubai: Omar liberated by al-Qaida and the ISI; Omar an agent, very early on, of al-Qaida and the ISI; Omar as link between both organizations.
And then finally 2001. September 2001. Omar has returned to Pakistan. For six months he's been living the high life in Lahore, all the while making great and noble speeches on the misery he rediscovers there, the beggars going through the garbage who break his heart, the selfishness of his peers, their flinty souls. He enjoys his growing prestige conferred by his experiences in Bosnia and Kashmir, his years of prison in India, and now, his Afghan season. He sees his old friends. He makes little visits to his old Aitchinson College professors who also see him as a celebrity, almost a hero: "Oh yes, that scar, the arm slightly withered . . . so it's true those Indian bastards shot him savagely the day they freed the hostages . . . Poor Omar! The brave Sheikh . . . " Far from concealing his connections to the Taliban and al-Qaida, he boasts of it, glories in it. Overtaken by his old tendency toward mythomania, he invents extravagant fables. To some he tells how, during the battle of Taloqan he almost, and with his own bare hands, strangled the renegade Masood, traitor to Islam-shame on him. He tells others that he witnessed the famous scene (which in fact happened twenty years earlier) in which Mullah Omar, in the heart of another battle, rips out his own wounded eye. And I know this mythomania is one of the reasons for the growing chill between Omar and Masood Azhar: Omar, undoubtedly, thinks the time has come to emancipate himself from his mentor and to forge his own legend; Masood has had enough of hearing the yarns his disciple feeds to the young leaders of Jaish, his imaginary exploits and Indian tortures: "They made me drink my urine . . . eat my own shit . . . enough to put you off food for the rest of your life . . . "
Then comes the attack on the World Trade Center. The announcement of reprisals against Afghanistan. Omar is fired up again. He says: "These are my brothers, the greatest power in the world threatens attack on my brothers-my place is at their side, I'm going." He continues, "Each man, the Koran teaches, comes into the world to accomplish a mission. Some missions are humble, others are great, mine is to serve in the great army of Allah." So here he is, in the first week of October, back in the house for foreigners in Kandahar, where preparing for holy war.
He is seen at Mullah Omar's headquarters.
He is again received by bin Laden, who, it seems, puts him in charge of new financial duties (notably, contact with a counterfeit money workshop in Muzzafarabad, in "occupied Kashmir" that Omar knows better than anyone, and where he still has solid ties). He brings books purchased from "Mr. Books" that are, I think, perhaps gifts for the al-Qaida leader or his principle aides (an anthology in four volumes, edited in Beirut, The Strategies of Arab Conquests; a book by Rifaat Sayed Ahmed on the war in Palestine, published in Cairo; and economics texts).
He is in contact with Tajmin Jawad, bureau chief of information for Mullah Omar, who in the beginning of November is named liaison officer to bin Laden, and is also linked to the ISI.
He sees Mulla Akhtar Usmani, commander in chief of the Taliban armed forces in the region, who puts him in charge of an accelerated training program for a group of newly arrived young recruits from Pakistan.
He sees Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the leader of Harkat al-Jahad el-Islami, one of Mullah Omar's close advisors, who will soon join him in escaping the country, but who looks askance at this strange, cultivated man so different from the saber-rattlers who make up most of his troops.
He drives a Toyota. He has his personal guard. He lives surrounded by mobile phones, computers, and other gadgets.
He has become, concludes Amine, one of the most high-profile characters of the small clan of foreigners in Kandahar, and he knows it. So much so that, in October, when the Americans unleash their offensive, he is there at the front with a few thousand combatants from the whole region, but especially from Pakistan. It doesn't appear that he actually participated in the battles, but he's there. He shares the fate of his "Afghan brothers." And he might be among those who negotiate, in certain surrounded areas, and notably in the face the battalion led by the future president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, the surrender of Taliban forces.
Omar, as Robert Sam Anson (Vanity Fair) and Jon Stock (The Times of London) say, is now called by bin Laden "my favorite son" or "my special son."
The future kidnapper of Daniel Pearl has become, in a very short time, an active apostle of the clash of civilizations, al-Qaida style.
I don't know how he gets out of Afghanistan.
The fact that he reappears in early December in Lahore, ready for the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, proves that his exit was relatively easy and that he didn't belong to the roughneck rank and file who had to go through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and in some cases Chechnya, pursued by American Special Forces and having to hide in Waziristan and Buner, the Pakistani tribal zones, before returning.
The fact that the adventure is resolved so quickly and so well, the fact that he obviously escapes this Afghan Rigadoon, this rout, this deluge of fire, and the flight that was the fate of most of the combatants caught like he was, in the rat-trap of Kandahar, the complicities implied by all that system of connivance that had to be put into action so that he could find himself from one day to the next, as if by enchantment, in his garden in Lahore-it all proves what we already knew, which is, his very particular status: inside this LVF, this collaborationist's militia, that is the Pakistani battalion in the Taliban army and, now, in the State of Pakistan itself and its intelligence services.
What we didn't know about, however, was his place in al-Qaida.
What I couldn't figure out, even after Dubai and the discovery of his possible role in the financing of September 11, was his position in bin Laden's entourage.
I don't need to go back and see Gul Aga, I know enough.
Daniel Pearl's killer is not just linked to al-Qaida. He is not one of the innumerable Muslims around the world in vague allegiance to it. He is the "favored son" of its Chief. He is a man with responsibilities in the organization's command cell. He is a crucial character in the "arm wrestling match" that the new barbarians have started against the democracies of the world. And this is how the Pearl affair takes on its full dimension.