In his last recorded interview, Usama bin Ladin tells Robert Fisk why he so despises America.
Bin Laden's narrow eyes and long beard were familiar amid the
battlefields of Afghanistan where he and his guerillas fought the Soviet
invasion army of the '80s. His appearance is little changed, the beard a
trifle greyer, perhaps, but the fierceness unquenched. Then he fought the
Russians. Now, determined to overthrow the monarchy in Saudi Arabia and
oust the Americans from that kingdom, he is describing the bombings that
slaughtered 24 Americans in Riyadh [in 1995] and Khobar-Dhahran [in 1996]
as a symbol of Saudi anger, the presence of US forces as an
"insult" to the Saudi people. For bin Laden, the betrayal of the Saudi people began 24 years before
his birth, when Abdul Aziz al-Saud proclaimed his kingdom in 1932. "The regime started under the flag of applying Islamic law, and
under this banner all the people of Saudi Arabia came to help the Saudi
family take power," he says as the night wind moves through the
darkened trees, ruffling the robes of the Arab Afghan fighters around us.
"Abdul Aziz did not apply Islamic law; the country was set up for his
family. Then, after the discovery of petroleum, the Saudi regime found
another support - the money to make people rich and give them the services
and life they wanted and to make them satisfied." He is picking his
teeth with a piece of miswak wood, a habit that accompanies many of
his conversations. History - or his version of it - is the basis of almost all his
remarks. And the pivotal date is 1990, the year Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait. "When the American troops entered Saudi Arabia, the land of the
two holy places [Mecca and Medina], there was a strong protest from the ulema
[religious authorities] and from students of the sharia law all
over the country against the interference of American troops. This big
mistake by the Saudi regime of inviting the American troops revealed their
deception. They had given their support to nations that were fighting
against Muslims. They helped the Yemeni communists against the southern
Yemeni Muslims and helping [Yasser] Arafat's regime fight Hamas [who
opposed the peace process in the Middle East]. After it insulted and
jailed the ulema 18 months ago, the Saudi regime lost its
legitimacy ... "The Saudi people have remembered now what the ulema told
them and they realise America is the main reason for their problems. The
ordinary man knows that his country is the largest oil producer in the
world, yet at the same time he is suffering from taxes and bad services.
Now the people understand the speeches of the ulemas in the mosques
- that our country has become an American colony. They act decisively with
every action to kick the Americans out of Saudi Arabia. What happened in
Riyadh and Khobar [when 24 Americans were killed in two bombings] is clear
evidence of the huge anger of Saudi people against America. The Saudis now
know their real enemy is America." IT was a construction company that made bin Laden's family into
millionaires, but it was its convoys of earth-moving trucks, bulldozers
and quarrying equipment that took him to war. The Afghan conflict against
the Russians moulded bin Laden, taught him the meaning of his religion,
made him think. Anyone who wants to understand the man whom Bill Clinton dubbed
"America's Public Enemy No1" should study this moment in his
life. The West regarded him as a hero. In those days the young Arabs whom
he brought to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation army were treated
as heroes; in Britain, The Times used to call them "freedom
fighters". Few noticed, or bothered to study, the theological
implications of the West's support for the mujahideen. One of the reasons Leonid Brezhnev was persuaded to send his troops
into Afghanistan was the reports that large areas of the country had
fallen under the sway of Muslim fundamentalists. Schoolteachers, installed
by the communist regime in Kabul, were being assassinated. Even when the
mujahideen were shooting at civil airliners with British-made Blowpipe
missiles, they were not called "terrorists". Bin Laden saw his comrades die in their hundreds, while he survived
Russian kidnap attempts. Eventually, he was sickened by the factional
fighting among the Afghans that followed the departure of the Russians and
he moved to Sudan, using his wealth to finance road construction projects
north of Khartoum. It was while he was here, in the years after the Afghan
war, that reports came from Egypt and Algeria of Arabs returning home in
Afghan clothes, many of them deeply religious, contemptuous of the
corruption of secular governments, doctrinal to the point of
self-righteousness. When I first met bin Laden, in 1993, he was building a highway to
connect the village of Almatig to Khartoum for the first time, shaking
hands with the grateful villagers, worshipped by the local sheikh. Bin
Laden shook hands with each man, watched by the young Arab fighters and
clearly enjoying the adoration. There is something of the evangelist about bin Laden; not the friendly
apostle but the fire-breathing preacher, a hermit of such conviction that
argument is out of the question. For the Americans, his epic certainties
constitute his greatest danger. Bin Laden is not a man who does deals. He embarked on another construction; a new motorway between Khartoum
and Port Sudan. By now, Egyptian newspapers were claiming that bin Laden
was helping to organise an Islamist resistance to President Hosni
Mubarak's rule from "training camps" in Sudan. "The rubbish
of the media and the embassies," bin Laden retorted. He kept a home
in Khartoum, only a small apartment in his native Jeddah. His four wives
lived with him in Sudan. Three of them were later to follow him back to
Afghanistan, along with his two sons. He had watched his beloved Afghanistan torn apart by greedy men who had
forgotten their religion. Now he saw corruption in Egypt, in all the Arab
nations that had adopted a facade of Western life; above all, in Saudi
Arabia. Under pressure from the Americans, the Sudanese told bin Laden to
leave and so he returned to the land where he had been a hero. Some say he
travelled back to Afghanistan via Saudi Arabia; certainly, he has many
sympathisers there, including some members of the royal family. In those
initial months back in Afghanistan, he must have decided that if he could
defeat the Russians he could also defeat America. Saudi Arabia, he concluded, had become "an American colony".
Ordinary Saudis realised the imprisoned ulemas were right: US
troops had stayed on in the kingdom, despite their promise to leave.
"The Saudis now know their real enemy is America." Did not the
Europeans resist German occupation in World War II? bin Laden suddenly
asked. I told him this parallel was morally wrong, that no European would
accept the argument because the Nazis killed millions of Europeans; the
Americans had never murdered a single Saudi. "We as Muslims have a strong feeling that binds us together,"
he replied. "We feel for our brothers in Palestine and Lebanon. The
explosion at Khobar did not come as a direct result of American occupation
but as a result of American behaviour against Muslims ... When 60 Jews are
killed inside Palestine [in suicide bombings earlier this year] all the
world gathers within seven days to criticise this action, while the deaths
of 600,000 Iraqi children [after UN sanctions were placed on Iraq] did not
receive the same reaction. Killing those Iraqi children is a crusade
against Islam. We, as Muslims, do not like the Iraqi regime but we think
that the Iraqi people and their children are our brothers and we care
about their future." Ultimately, all Muslims will unite in the fight against America, says
bin Laden. "I believe that sooner or later the Americans will leave
Saudi Arabia and that the war declared by America against the Saudi people
means war against all Muslims everywhere. Resistance against America will
spread in many, many places in Muslim countries. Our trusted leaders, the ulema,
have given us a fatwa that we must drive out the Americans. The
solution to this crisis is the withdrawal of American troops ... their
military presence is an insult for the Saudi people." Yet did not the Americans support the mujahideens' war against the
Soviets? "We were never at any time friends of the Americans. We knew
that the Americans support the Jews in Palestine and that they are our
enemies. Most of the weapons that came to Afghanistan were paid for by the
Saudis on the orders of the Americans because Turki al-Faisal [the head of
Saudi external intelligence] and the CIA were working together." So what kind of Arabian Islamic state does he wish to see? Would
thieves and murderers still have their heads cut off, for example, in a sharia-governed
state? Bin Laden's answer is unsatisfactory. All Muslims would love to
live under true sharia, he said. A guilty man would only be happy
if he was justly punished. Dissident bin Laden may be. But moderate, never. The Independent Based on the last recorded interview given by bin Laden, in 1996