4. Why more? Are there different kinds of links to bin Laden? Of course. There is a major distinction to which very few European commentators pay enough attention. And that is the distinction between al-Qaida itself, which is a purely Arab, even Saudi organization, with several hundred members directly linked to bin Laden, responsible for his personal protection and constituting, in Afghanistan, with the backup of some Algerians, Moroccans, Palestinians, Egyptians and, especially, Yemenis, the famous "055 Brigade," which was "lent" to the Taliban in 1997 for the capture of Mazar e-Sharif; and there is the International Islamic Front for the Jihad Against the United States and Israel, which is, as the name indicates, an international organization, a federation of related groups, tied, of course, to the emir, but kept at a distance from the hard core-a sort of a Comintern of jihadism with several tens of thousands of combatants gravitating around a Center that, modernity dictates, no longer has a territory.
Well, Gilani is not a member of the International Front. Nor is he, of course, a "direct adherent" of al-Qaida; but he has a distinct status in comparison with the heads of the other groups which means that he is not, like them, a member of the terrorist Comintern either. "Pir Mubarak Shah Gilani is a master," al-Fuqrah member Wasim Yousouf told me. "Even Osama bows before Pir Mubarak Shah Gilani. Do you know that Pir, in Urdu, means 'venerated master'?" A way of suggesting a tie of a different nature. A way of saying that Gilani enjoys a sort of an ideological, even political influence upon Osama.
The master of al-Qaida is a war lord. He is undoubtedly a good financier. But is he, by the same token, an ideologue? A spiritual master? Is he even a particularly enlightened reader of the Koran? Those who know him doubt it. All of those who worked on the founder of al-Qaida's discourse and on the evolution of his style over the years strongly sense that this master has had masters, some high-flying prompters, some ideological and political tutors, some more or less secret sources of inspiration that have helped him to become what he is.
We remember, for instance, this near-comic dialogue with his official interviewer, Hamid Mir, in November 2001: Mir, in reference to the Twin Towers attacks, asks him about the basis for a fatwah against American civilians and, in the heat of the discussion, asks him how, theologically, he resolves the thorny question of Americans who are Muslims but who nonetheless died in the attack; "I see you're trying to set a trap for me," says a suddenly disconcerted Osama, who seems to be caught off-guard, "I shall consult my friends and give you my response tomorrow morning."
We know that the Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, rector of the Binori Town mosque, is one of these "friends."
We know that Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian fundamentalist who created the al-Kifah Center in Peshawar in the early '80s and who was considered, until his death in 1989, one of the re-inventors of an authentic, transnational jihad, was another of these secret mentors.
Well, perhaps Gilani is still another. Perhaps that's what the Canadian tape of the Sudanese summit says when it shows the chief of al-Qaida, so good, so modest, next to the master from Lahore. And perhaps that was one of Daniel Pearl's hypotheses as well.
5. What is al-Fuqrah's ideology? And what distinguishes it from the ideology that motivates other jihadist organizations?
I have had access to two documents: a little propaganda pamphlet, in Arabic, that gives the Gilanian vision of the holy war; and then a map of the world, distributed to the faithful, entitled "The United States of Islam," outlining, colored in green, with a green flag planted squarely in the middle, the Muslim universe, from the Philippines to Xinjiang, from West Africa to Turkey and the Middle East.
This map is interesting, of course. And, even more interesting is another, smaller map, an insert at the lower right, displaying the same "United States of Islam" in twenty years: the entire planet is colored green-the last infidel has fallen! The global Oummah has come to pass! But the important thing is the propaganda book itself, full of "poems" by the master, in the purest sectarian style, whose major motifs are trifold.
First, the jihad; the hymn to the "sub-machine gun," the "true believer's" strength; and the exhortation of "our Sheikh Gilani" to "prepare one's head for sacrifice"; nostalgia for the days when the "warriors of Allah" brought Europe to its knees; and the idea that, with the fall of the Soviet Union, a third world war had begun, from which Islam would emerge victorious.
Next, the theme of purity; the idea that Islam has been "corrupted" by too long a contact with the West and with Westerners; the obsession with a return to the sources of the true Faith, in spite of all these heretics who have sold their souls to the Zionists and the Crusaders; the idea that this return can only be effected through violence.
And then another theme that seems less usual in Islam, dealing with the presence of the "forces of evil" or "forces from below," that constitute the invisible underside to the visible world; magic Islam, esoteric and black, an almost Satanic Islam that warned the Americans in the early '90s that occult forces lay in wait for them, that innumerable tornadoes, terrifying earthquakes would be unleashed against the signs of their power and their pride.
Let us add (from the Anti-Defamation League report, "Muslims of America: In Their Own Words"), the strange vision the sect has of Christians: "By having put their God on the crucifix, as opposed to executing Satan, they not only have blasphemed against the Wisdom and Judgment of God Almighty, but reduced Him to a role of subservience to Satan." Attacks against homosexuals: "A perfect example, of unspeakable crimes against humanity." This declaration expressing an unbridled anti-Semitism: "As we all know, the Jews are master conspirators; they plot and plan for a century ahead." This other: "Every God-fearing individual, whether in America or abroad, must become informed of the heinous, barbaric, and purely subhuman nature of Zionism and all of its offshoots." This one again: "Jews are an example of human Satans; this is why Jews are the founders of Satan worship and are now trying to take over the entire globe in which the global religion is to be Satanism . . . "
I don't dare speculate any further, of course, concerning Daniel Pearl's hypotheses. But my own is that there is a tone, a morbid power, in these strange writings that Osama bin Laden can only have found compelling.
6. But that isn't all. And here is the essential point, the one I cannot imagine having escaped Daniel Pearl's notice, the one that must have intensified his interest in meeting with Gilani.
This little group, the al-Fuqrah, this sect of hand-picked fanatics, may number only two or three hundred in Lahore. But there is a country in the world where they are more numerous and more powerful, where they recruit on a vast scale and enjoy a popularity never achieved in Pakistan. This country is not Yemen, nor Indonesia, not Iraq or any of the other countries constituting Mr. Bush's "axis of evil." It is the United States of America itself.
The story begins early in the '80s in a Brooklyn mosque where a young imam named Gilani is taking his first steps as "venerated master." The war in Afghanistan has just begun. American public opinion is solidly behind the freedom fighters who, from Kandahar to the Panshir, resist the Soviet army. And here is Gilani, more loquacious than he is today, noisier, generally dressed in fatigues and wearing ammunition bandoliers, who, from his mosque in the heart of New York, founds al-Fuqrah, whose purpose is to recruit volunteers for the jihad amongst black Americans, often the poorest, sometimes ex-convicts, preferably "converts," who seem to be his specialty, his breeding ground, during these years.
Twenty years later, the Afghanistan war is a thing of the past. The al-Fuqrah sect has finally been outlawed in the United States. And Gilani himself, after the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, after at least one of his faithful, Clement Rodney Hampton-el, alias "Abd al-Rashid Abdallah," has been alleged to have been part of the attack, preferred to leave the United States and continue to direct his network from Lahore.
But the fact remains. Al-Fuqrah was born in New York. Al-Fuqrah is originally an American organization. Its first acts of violence, its first murders, its bombs in hotels, stores, cinemas managed by Indians, its intercommunity settlings of scores that led to the execution of, among others, an imam in Brooklyn and another in Tucson-all took place in the United States. It still has today between two and three thousand followers in the United States.
7. Gilani, probably realizing that one day al-Fuqrah's violence would attract, if not America's federal antiterrorist authorities, then at least those in charge of combating organized crime-such as the FBI and the local New York City Police-took precautions as early as the beginning of the '90s by establishing another organization, then another, the sect's democratic fronts. Both were still going strong when Pearl wanted to see Gilani and both are still flourishing today, as I resume Pearl's investigation. One is called Muslims of America, the other the International Quranic Open University.
Their main purpose is to pursue, among all the activities of al-Fuqrah, those that will never be considered unlawful and could, consequently, possibly serve as a cover for other activities. Teaching, of course. Consciousness-raising campaigns centered upon the "martyred Muslim peoples." Bosnia. Chechnya. Intellectual resistance to the "Zionist lobby." And, finally, one of al-Fuqrah's long-standing goals, perhaps its "holiest" mission and, in any case, the one Gilani seems proudest of, the establishment of small "jamaats" or "communities" of the faithful who have in common the teachings of the master and constitute a religious commune in the countryside, far from the urban gangrene of moral pollution and a climate of decadence, whose members live according to the precepts of Islam.
Phalansteries of this type already exist, in Virginia, Colorado, California, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, in Canada and in the Caribbean.
There are dozens, perhaps thirty, of these strange "green bases" whose existence supposedly follows Koranic precepts which, in fact, have been largely reinterpreted and revised by Gilani-think-several thousand "brothers" dispersed from one end of the North American continent to the other.
They are model villages, Islamic kolkhozes in the middle of enemy territory, hundreds of acres often in deserted regions, purchased and offered to the faithful who have heard the call to leave the cities of the Demon and return, if not to the desert, at least to the earth and its truth, to create, in the sight of Allah, these counter-societies protected from the corruption of this materialistic, Godless world-these are the Islamist enclaves in the heart of George W. Bush's America that allow us to say that the organization Pearl was investigating is still, more than ever, an American organization.
8. I visited one of these enclaves. I went, in the Town of Tompkins, Delaware County, New York, to the place where a handful of faithful, twenty years ago, established one of these model villages, since expanded to a population of around 30 families and two hundred people.
A countryside of hills and forests. A two-lane road, Roods Creek, not a soul on it, which leads to a simple gate. Before the gate, a small wooden sign indicating, on one side, "Muslims of America," and, on the other, "International Quranic Open University." A little sentry shack, with a cheerful old man who serves as guardian. Trailer homes planted in a circle like Conestoga wagons in a western. Others scattered up the hill. We're in the heart of what other people in neighboring Deposit, or in the little hamlet of Trout Creek, call, with a trace of fear or suspicion, "Islamberg."
The circled trailers are the school, and the women's quarters. Beyond them is the former mosque. Farther off, in an old quarry carved out of a hillside, will be the new mosque, larger, built on a foundation and still under construction, the ground floor in concrete block with a wooden second story. A similar building nearby is a general store that provides basic necessities and allows the "Brothers" to avoid going outside the compound and to live, if they choose, in quasi-autonomy. Higher up the hillside is the school for older children, and nearby, on another hill, a workshop for repairs or recycling or both. A small pond serving as a fish farm, on the edge of which is kept like a relic the trailer of the founder- he is still here, and still running his security guard company in New York. And, back down the hill, on the right, a ramshackle building whose walls are covered with silvered insulation panels, and which serves as both a dining hall and a library.
"We have nothing to do with al-Fuqrah," insists a big, friendly, athletic, black man who has lived here with his family for the past eight years. "We're related to Muslims of America, which is quite another organization, and advocates study and prayer."
Another man, a lawyer who commutes every day to New York City, and adopts the same look of a cool, ecologist pioneer, adds: "We aren't involved in terrorism; none of our members has ever been implicated in any act of the kind; did you know the kids from our community school went to New York as early as 12 September to help the firemen clear up Ground Zero? You won't find anyone more patriotic than we are."
Right. No doubt that's all true. And it's a sure thing that in the bucolic world of Islamberg, with its back-to-the-earth-and-the-great-outdoors utopian feel, in this isolated community that seems miles from the world of crooks and losers that was al-Fuqrah's lot in the beginning and of which Richard Reid is nonetheless still representative, things fit more easily into the pattern of a nineteenth-century utopian society than they do into that of an Islamist training camp. Except that . . .
9. Except that the sect has another face. I won't enter into the details of the criminal past of al-Fuqrah in and of itself, of no concern to the people of Islamberg, as they would insist that they belong not to al-Fuqrah but to the Muslims of American and the International Quranic Open University. I'll skip over all we know today about the thirteen assassinations and the seventeen bomb attacks committed by Gilani's men in the '80s on United States territory. I won't emphasize the 1989 police raid on one of his hideouts in Colorado that turned up an arsenal of semiautomatic weapons, fifteen kilos of explosives, blank social security cards and birth certificates, fake drivers' licenses, blueprints of New York bridges, photos of power stations and oil installations, guerrilla manuals, and notes indicating assassination plans targeting Rashid Khalifa, the imam of Tucson, Arizona, which, incidentally, were effectively carried out. I'll pass over (although we're not talking about al-Fuqrah here but Muslims of America) the NGO system implanted in the '90s that functions today as a series of bogus associations that have managed to embezzle $1.3 million in the state of California alone-all of it sent directly to the home office in Lahore. The important thing is that the friendly rural communities of Muslims of America and of the International Quranic Open University continue to adhere to the teachings of the master of al-Fuqrah, as though nothing has happened.
The important thing is that the acronym of the sect still appears on the gates of some of the villages, including Islamberg.
The important thing is the video, presented during one of the innumerable court actions brought against the organization in the past few years in North America, in this case in Canada. Here we see Gilani, battle dress over his shalwar kameez, presiding over a military training session in a green-hilled setting that could very well be Islamberg, and declaring to the camera: "We give recruits highly specialized training in guerilla warfare; we are at present establishing training camps; you can easily reach us at the Quranic Open University offices in upstate New York, or in Canada, or Michigan, or South Carolina, or Pakistan; wherever we are, you can reach us" (Mira L. Boland, "Sheikh Gilani's American disciple," Weekly Standard, 18 March 2002).
Still more recent is the 2001 FBI investigation of the murder of a deputy sheriff in the county of Fresno, near the community of "Baladullah" (in Arabic "City of God") in the Sierra Nevada foothills, that concludes (Knight-Ridder Newspapers, 25 December 2001) that the alleged murderer is a member of both organizations, Moslems of America and al-Fuqrah.
And then, finally, the sniper that terrorized the Washington, D.C. area, John Muhammad, a convert who left the Nation of Islam and whom the FBI suspects had joined not only al-Fuqrah, but also Muslims of America (which, thus, would appear to be an organization linked to assassins; is not Wadih El Hage, the African embassy bomber, and former personal secretary to bin Laden, also suspected to be linked to al-Fuqrah, the parent organization of Muslims of America? And similarly, as we saw, is not Rodney Hampton-el, convicted along with Sheik Rahman, not only in connection with the first World Trade Center attack, but in a plot to bomb New York City's bridges and tunnels, a known member of al-Fuqrah?) I know the conclusions of Douglas Wamsley, a prosecutor of the case the Attorney General of Colorado, concerning the murder of Rhasid Khalifa, in Arizona in 1990. I also know the reports of Thomas Gallagher, special agent with the U.S. Bureau Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms about another Muslims of America compound in Virginia. I know the conclusion of the 2002 investigation of Jonathan Bernstein, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League's Central Pacific region, about the links between Muslims of America and al-Fuqrah in the area of Fresno, especially in the education field. And finally, there is the note of the Department of Law regarding Colorado's prosecution of James D. Williams, condemned to sixty-nine years of prison for attempted murder and extortion.
No one believes in the actual autonomy of al-Fuqrah and its front organizations. No one doubts that Gilani is the inspiration behind the American utopian communities of Islam as well as the assassins' sect. And no one doubts that the division of roles between them is in large part fictitious.
10. Which leads one to the simplest and also the most troubling question: Why doesn't the United States do anything? Why do the authorities tolerate the Muslims of America? And as for al-Fuqrah itself, the parent institution, of whom the State Department annual report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, said, "Its members have attacked several targets considered to be enemies of Islam, among them Muslims known as heretics, and Hindus," why did it take the United States so long to outlaw the organization?
Perhaps because, the targets were "only" Muslims or Hindus . . .
Respect for the law and due process was also probably a reason, as well as the fact that in many cases, at Islamberg, for example, it was impossible to prove the least connection with any concrete terrorist plot or activity whatsoever . . .
But I wonder if there is not another, still deeper reason, one that would take us back to those times long ago and almost forgotten when the American government supported all the forces that, one way or another, opposed the enemy in its global struggle against world Communism-beginning, we recall, with the fundamentalist Muslim movements of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and, of course, Pakistan.
The era of Zbigniew Brezinski. The period of William Casey, CIA Director from 1981 to 1987 and responsible for the green light given the ISI to recruit, arm, and train tens of thousands of Arab fighters who would struggle to break up the "Empire of Evil" while simultaneously fighting for their faith . . . Following that, the era where America supported the FIS in Algeria, the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahabite tendencies in Arab countries, as well as the most hard-line Chechen groups . . . The time when, in Afghanistan, long before the Taliban, they played Gulbuddin Heykmatiar against Massoud, the religious fanatics against the democrats . . . The era when it seemed like a good idea to push the most radical Sunni groups throughout the world, to counter the Shiite revolution in Iran . . . And the era when, as a result, insane things happened within the United States, things that, retrospectively, make the head spin: Ramzi Yousef, the future mastermind of the attack against the World Trade Center, recruited by the CIA . . . the U.S. embassy at Khartoum issuing a visa to blind sheikh Omar Abdel Raman, already implicated in the assassination of Sadat . . . two international conferences at Oklahoma City (better than the "terrorist summit" of Khartoum), in 1988 and 1992, summits of radical Islam, where some of the architects of both Trade Tower attacks attended and were speakers . . . Azzam, the Palestinian eminence grise of bin Laden, authorized to open a recruiting office for his al-Kifah Center in the middle of New York . . . And Pir Mubarak Shah Gilani, linked to the Pakistani secret services and-who knows-perhaps to the American intelligence agencies as well.
Was Daniel Pearl investigating the American branches of al-Qaida? Is the key to the mystery of his death also in the closets or on the hard disks of the intelligence agencies of Washington? We're still waiting for a clear and public admission, by those responsible, of this extraordinary historical error in which the leaders of the free world welcomed to their breast and sometimes generated the Golem that we must now drive out from one end of the planet to the other. Perhaps that is what Daniel Pearl was waiting for-perhaps that's what he wanted to provoke.
CHAPTER 5 THE BOMB FOR BIN LADEN?.
"There are newspapers in the West that say that you're in the process of acquiring chemical and nuclear weapons. Is there any truth to these reports?"
"Yes, I heard the speech by the American President Bush yesterday. He's trying to alarm the Europeans by telling them that I'm going to attack them with weapons of mass destruction. Well, I would like to state that yes, if America started using chemical or nuclear weapons against us, we would retaliate with chemical or nuclear weapons. We have the weapons for that. We have the means to be dissuasive."
"And where did you get these weapons?"
"Let's go on to the next question . . . "
The person speaking is Osama bin Laden.
It's his first interview after September 11 and the attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The man he's speaking to is Hamid Mir, the former managing editor of the Urdu newspaper in Islamabad, the man who so strangely canceled our meeting, claiming that I was trying to get to Gilani through him- and also the man who with Khawaja was one of Daniel Pearl's very first contacts in Islamabad.
So, is that the other key to the mystery?
The question that bin Laden evades in his interview with Mir-is that the very subject that Pearl was working on?
Did Pearl have part of the answer to the terrifying question of whether the emir of al-Qaida is bluffing, or whether he really does possess (and if so, how? where? thanks to whom?) weapons of mass destruction, able to topple, in his favor, the balance of power with the civilized world?
My hypothesis is yes.
I think, or rather I suppose, that Pearl was also on this track.
And that, if true, would be another possible explanation for his death.
The point of departure, the most solid clue I have, is, of course, the 24 December article he wrote with Steve LeVine and which he regretted had not had more impact.
What does this article say, exactly?
It reports how, I repeat, the authors came across one of those Pakistani NGOs that was supposedly developing aid projects in Afghanistan under the Taliban, called UTN, Ummah Tameer e-Nau, the "Reconstruction of Muslm Ummah."
It recounts how the "honorary" president of UTN, responsible mainly for attracting Pakistani and Arab investors to the big agricultural development projects supposedly being launched in the Kandahar region, is none other than Hamid Gul-the former boss of the ISI, who has been retired for twelve years but has maintained, as one does, connections to his former profession.
It reveals furthermore that the operational boss of the organization is a certain Bashiruddin Mahmoud, 61, Islamist, disciple of Israr Ahmed, that other ulema from Lahore who is said to be, like Gilani, one of the more or less secret gurus of Pakistani fundamentalism and of bin Laden in particular. Mahmoud is, in addition, and this is an important point, a very famous scientist-in charge of the plutonium factory built, with the help of the Chinese, in Khusab, and head of the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission until 1999 (at which time his political leanings, his vehement and public protests against his country's ratification of the nonproliferation treaty, started to worry American intelligence and caused him to be sent into retirement).
And finally the article reveals that the two men, Gul and Mahmoud, the General and the Scientist, got together in Kaboul in very strange circumstances at the end of August 2001-after Mahmoud had already, at the beginning of the month in Kandahar, met not only the Taliban leaders but also bin Laden in person . . .
So it is useless for Gul to deny-and Pearl and LeVine's article says as much-that he was ever informed of a meeting between Mahmoud and bin Laden.
It is useless for Mahmoud to claim: "No! My trips to Afghanistan, my meetings with this man or that man, have nothing to do with my old job and therefore nothing to do with Pakistan's nuclear secrets; I wanted to participate in the development of this poor country; finance windmills; think about the exploitation of the oil and gas reserves, its iron and coal mines; accompany my son who had a bank project in Kabul."
It is useless for him to say to those who criticize him for meeting with the Emir of al-Qaida: "We are not talking about the same man; the man I met is a friend of humankind, good, generous, spending without limit to renovate schools, open orphanages, set up funds to help war widows- God save Osama."
And, most of all, it is useless for the Pakistani government, under pressure from the "friendly" intelligence services and notably that of the Americans (who, incidentally, a few days before the article was published, seem to have managed to get the UTN's accounts blocked), to have arrested Mahmoud, interrogate him, keep him a few weeks in prison, then under house arrest-and, finally, liberate him.
The reality is there.
Bin Laden had contact with one of the fathers of the Pakistani bomb.
There had probably been-another item from the Pearl-LeVine article, contributed by an unnamed "former ISI colonel"-a first meeting the previous year.
And Afghanistan being what it is, and given the secret services' vigilant watch over the comings and goings of scientists involved in the nuclear network-and Mahmoud is not just any scientist! Pearl and LeVine insist-it is unthinkable that these trips to Afghanistan, these meetings with bin Laden, these conversations, would take place without the knowledge of Islamabad.
Pearl is right to regret that his article did not make more of a splash, because he and LeVine had a double scoop: The interaction between an atomic scientist and al-Qaida; and that such interaction had the blessing of the Pakistani state, which the West believes has put its most sensitive weapons under lock and key.
From this point I tried to find out a little more-as with the Gilani dossier, I tried, with my own means, to go a little further . . .
Mahmoud, for instance-the character of Mahmoud, concerning whom I quickly make two further discoveries. The first: Far from being an Islamist like any other lost in the swamp of the movement's innumerable sympathizers, he is an active militant in one of the most radical and, as we now know, most bloodthirsty groups of all those which populate the country-he is an activist in the Harkat ul-Mujahideen, which we understand had a central role in the abduction and execution of Pearl himself. The second: Far from being a matter of conscience with no effect on his scientific activity, Mahmoud's Islamism contaminates everything, infects even his scientific work and inspires him to hold a terrifying theory- of which those in the West who live in the cozy certainty that Pakistani may have flaws, but it has its arsenals locked up, should be aware-it inspires him to think that the Pakistani bomb is not Pakistani but Islamist and, therefore, belongs by right to the entire community of believers, to the Oummah.
Next, Abdul Qadir Kahn, Mahmoud's boss, and thus the genuine father of the bomb tested for the first time on 28 May 1998. Pearl and LeVine don't talk about him, but . . . He's a popular national celebrity. A new Jinnah. A star. He's the man credited with having restored the country's honor and pride by giving it the bomb. Songs have been composed about him. He is cheered on the streets of Karachi. His birth is sanctified in the mosques of Pakistan. And I've never been able to mention his name without seeing the face of the person I'm addressing, no matter of what background, origin or sensibility, light up as if I were talking about a saint or a hero. Well, the man is a member of the Lashkar e-Toiba. This scientific expert, this Pakistani Oppenheimer, this genius who in his lifetime has had the country's biggest nuclear laboratory named after him, is officially a member of a terrorist organization which constitutes, as does the Harkat, the innermost circle of al-Qaida. A believer in nuclear weapons and a fanatic. Holder of the true secrets of the bomb, and clearly linked to bin Laden. We don't have to scare ourselves thinking what would happen if, by chance, Musharraf were overthrown and replaced by a clique of religious fanatics. The clique is already there. The religious fanatics are in the arena. They have, because they invented them, the key, the access codes for the Pakistani silos, transmission systems and warheads.
Public opinion. More precisely, the opinion of the jihadist groups in the company of which I have been living, closely or at a distance, for nearly a year, and which I suddenly discover have not only an opinion on the jihad, a position on social questions, on the status of women, on the great debates around the interpretation of the Prophet's words-they also have, with equal certainty, a line, an orthodoxy, a conviction about nuclear issues. For example, at the Peshawar mosque, when I was there in November, a Lashkar e-Toiba preacher cautioned Musharraf against the crime of "selling off the country's nuclear heritage." Another example: in the issue of Zarb e-Momin which my strange visitor in December had finally left on the table: an "editorial" where the emir of Jamaat e-Islami warns that "the whole nation" will rise up if they give in to the "American Zionists" and renounce the "Islamic bomb." What a pretty sight, he thunders, to see the Muslims being treated like dogs, yet again! The Jews have the bomb; the Americans have the bomb; even the French have it; why should we be the only ones forbidden to have the bomb! And finally, two years ago in another newspaper of the movement, a declaration by the Mufti Mizamuddin Shamzai, rector of Binori Town whose "elevated spirituality" I no longer much believe in, but whose statements still come as a shock: the Koran orders Muslims to give themselves "a strong capacity for defense"; should our leaders be renouncing this, signing treacherous non-proliferation treaties that the Zionist enemy is imposing on them-it would be an act of "high treason," a "non-Islamic" action, "a rebellion against the commandments of almighty Allah." Is there another country in the world where the question of the bomb has the status of a great national cause? Another country where the day of the first nuclear test-28 May-has the unofficial status of a religious holiday and where people parade under banners adorned with the "Hatif," the Pakistani nuclear missile? Is there a more nightmarish situation than when an atomic arsenal becomes an article of faith, in the heads of religious zealots? And yet that is Pakistan.
And on the al-Qaida problem, finally, specifically on the question of where bin Laden is, exactly, in his quest to acquire weapons of mass destruction, three pieces of information that I imagine Daniel Pearl had, plus two personal recollections . . .
The case of Mamdouh Mahmoud Salim, the bin Laden lieutenant, co-founder of al-Qaida and involved as such in the bombing attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania: arrested in Munich on 25 September 1998 as he was trying to make a deal with Ukrainian intermediaries for nuclear material and enriched uranium.
The 1998 book by Yossef Bodansky, director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the U.S. House of Representatives, which recounts how bin Laden paid $30 million cash plus the value of two tons of heroin to a group of Chechens who were supposed to provide him with the makings of one or more "dirty" bombs.
The statements from General Lebed revealing to American authorities, not long before his death, that the government of the Russian Federation had lost track of about a hundred nuclear explosive devices among the seven hundred that had been miniaturized by the Soviets in the 1970s: these bombs, he said, fit in a suitcase; they can be smuggled into any enemy territory, and therefore into the United States, through the exact same channels as any contraband goods; some have a shelf-life sufficiently long that they could be there already, sleeping, since the last years of the Soviet era, waiting to be reactivated; these micro-bombs, said Lebed, these atomic suitcases capable when they explode of killing several tens of thousands of people, maybe a hundred thousand, are the ideal weapon for a terrorist group.
And accordingly two personal recollections, which bring me back from the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia to Pakistan, and from Pakistan to bin Laden, corroborating the intuitions of Daniel Pearl . . .
A conversation in the spring of 2002 with Moshe Yaalon, nicknamed "Bogey," who has just been appointed chief of staff of the Israeli army. I had met with Ariel Sharon the day before. I see Yaalon that morning at the Ministry of Defense-an enormous fortified complex, cheerful atmosphere, a very civilian aspect to the offices, few military emblems and female soldiers at reception. We talk about Arafat. I tell him about my indestructible commitment to the Israeli cause, and about the strong reservations I nonetheless have about the kind of response chosen to deal with the second Intifada. We also talk about Iraq, which seems to me, compared to the real threats that weigh upon our world, to have all the characteristics of a false target, a red herring. I put in a few words about Pakistan, naturally. I evoke, referring to the book that is taking shape, that nest of vipers, that powder-keg, about which I imagine Israel has an opinion: "The missile sites, for instance, the places where fissile materials are stored-are they not far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein's? As a result, hasn't the international intelligence community lost control of the situation?" And he, surprised, and then vaguely mocking, with a gleam in his eye that makes him look like the young Rabin: "So, you are interested in Pakistan? How about that, so are we . . . but don't get it wrong-the international community knows, down to the single unit, where the warheads are in that country . . . if one budges, if it moves a single millimeter"-he holds his thumb and index finger apart to indicate a millimeter-"we'll know how to operate." And now me: "Does that mean there could be a Pakistani Osirak? Would that kind of operation- the destruction of a nuclear installation while under construction-be conceivable in the world of bin Laden and postSeptember 11?" He laughs: "That's a good question; but I don't have the answer." An Osirak in Kahuta, Chagai, Khushab? An Israeli commando unit capable of parachuting onto a nuclear site if a hijacking were imminent? The thought is both reassuring and terrible. Because just the fact of contemplating it means that the problem could arise.
And furthermore, a few years earlier, when I visited the Panshir, that other even more explicit conversation with Mohammed Fahim, who was then the head of Massoud's secret service. We are in the Northern Alliance's guest house, at the entrance to the valley. We're waiting for Massoud. Fahim is thinner than he is today, less formal, outspoken in a way that is lost to the marshal-minister he has become.
"The West," he tells me, "is once again underestimating the enormous danger that the Pakistanis represent. They created the Taliban. They're now creating bin Laden. Did you know that bin Laden has a laboratory near Kandahar where he's trying to make weapons of mass destruction, and that he's doing it with the full knowledge of the services, who are providing him with everything he wants-first-hand information, visits from scientists, samples of fissile materials, help with smuggling?" I don't pay very much attention to this information at the time. As with the revelation of bin Laden's Kandahar address, which I cite, but offhandedly, in my travel chronicle for the newspaper Le Monde-part of me attributes these disclosures to the Alliance's anti-Pakistani paranoia, and even more so their secret services. But I go back to my notes from that time. I read them again in the light of both Pearl's investigation, and of my investigation of his investigation. Fahim, that day, gave me the location of the laboratory: forty kilometers from the airport, west of Kandahar. The salary of the Russian or Turkmen engineers hired by bin Laden: $2,000 a month, double what the Russian Federation would pay them at the time. He also told me that one of those Turkmen scientists had worked in Baghdad in the '80s, on that same Osirak reactor; how strange . . . But most significantly he explained to me that all these weapons are too heavy, too hard to transport and then to maintain, that their locking mechanisms are too complex, for al-Qaida to get very far with the Ukrainian or Chechen networks.
"Maybe a dirty bomb," Fahim told me. "Maybe from those countries they can make nuclear devices without launchers that they'll set off in Kabul the day we go in. And obviously we are taking that possibility very seriously. Except that for the serious business, they'll do it with them . . . "
He points with his chin in the direction of Pakistan.
"It's only them, the ISI people, who can give them the know-how, and the maintenance, and the hardware necessary to put together an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction."
And he adds, "We have all the data on that; we know the process is ongoing . . . "
Several hypotheses, from that point.
One can suppose that Danny found out more about this "ongoing process."
One can suppose that he extended his investigation to Hamid Gul and his possible ties to the supposedly secular and Kamelist branch of the services.
One can imagine that he was establishing the list of ISI superior officers who, faithful to the Gul line, that is to say to the doctrine of the Islamist bomb, were busy proving Mohammed Fahim's analysis and were willing to close their eyes to a technology transfer to terrorist groups.
Was Pearl getting ready to give exact locations for the warheads and launchers of the Islamabad arsenal-and thus to provide the proof that the information was within the reach of the first terrorist to come along?
Did he have information that disproved the reassuring declarations that Musharraf kept making at that time, about his complete control over the nuclear chain of command and the deactivation of storage and launching facilities?
Had he seen in Peshawar one of those MK 47 nuclear suitcases marked "made in U.S.A." or "in U.S.S.R." that representatives of several Western special services had talked to me about-big-bellied gray or black canteens, padded like military canteens, double metal handle on the sides, a cap like the cap on a gas tank, and inside, a twentieth or a thirtieth of the Hiroshima bomb?
One can imagine, too, that after the Gul and Mahmoud trails he opened the Khan trail-after Abdul Qader Khan, the real father and boss of the Islamist bomb-and one can imagine that he scratched below the surface of the hero's official biography to find other feats of arms, carefully hidden from the outside world and particularly from the Americans. The cooperation programs, for instance, from 1986 to 1994, with the Iran of the Ayatollahs. The memo from the Iraqi secret service, dated 6 October 1990, a copy of which was shown to me in New Delhi, in which is described the Pakistani proposition to help Saddam Hussein, through Kahn, build a factory to enrich uranium. One can also imagine that he came across the dossier on Khan's contacts with the North Korean nuclear industry. I stumbled across this open secret in India, concerning the exchange of courtesies, through Khan, between Pakistan and North Korea, one side offering their know-how, the other delivering their missiles- why wouldn't Danny have been on that also? Why wouldn't he have been on the verge of presenting, in line with his 24 December article, but this time on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, an account of the secret agreements on this issue signed between Pyongyang and Islamabad?