Authors: Jason Burke
31
. Rubin,
The Political Fragmentation of Afghanistan
, pp. 84, 101.
32
. Multiple interviews with former Sayyaf associates, former Hizb-e-Islami activists, former mujahideen, Peshawar, Kabul, 1999–2002.
33
. Rashid,
Taliban
, pp. 18–19.
34
. An interesting feature of the refugees’ flight from Afghanistan was how it was legitimized by a reference to the example of the Prophet’s hijra.
35
. Statistic provided by UNHCR to author, July 2002.
36
. Haqqani eventually married an Emirati princess.
37
. Rubin,
The Political Fragmentation of Afghanistan
, p. 221.
38
. Interviews with Haji Zargoon, Jalalabad, November 2001; Said Pahlwan, Peshawar, October 2001.
39
. Lamb,
Waiting for Allah
, p. 220.
5: Heroes
1
. Al-Zawahiri’s own book,
Knights Under the Banner of Islam
, described his arrival in Pakistan with two other Egyptian doctors. See also Lawrence Wright, ‘The Man Behind bin Laden’,
New Yorker
, 16 September 2002; interview with Mahfouz Azzam, al-Zawahiri’s great-uncle and lawyer,
The Guardian
, 11 September 2002.
2
. Multiple interviews with former mujahideen, political activists and retired Pakistani army officers and bureaucrats in Peshawar, Islamabad and Lahore, 1998–2001; Ruthven,
A Fury for God
, pp. 202–11; Kepel,
Jihad
, pp. 144–5.
3
. Abdallah Azzam, ‘Last Will’, Khorasan Publications, publication date unknown, author collection.
4
. Quoted in Esposito,
Unholy War
, p. 7.
5
. Information from
www.Azam.com
, accessed September 2002.
6
. Interview with former Maktab al-Khidamat employee, Peshawar, October 2002.
7
. Many Kurds, who had been forced to flee Iraq by Saddam Hussein during the early and mid 1980s, when they were perceived by Baghdad as a potential fifth column aiding Tehran, were recruited by Saudi dissidents, including the followers of Juhaiman and the rebels who seized Mecca, who had set up secret
medressas
and were teaching Wahhabism in the refugee camps in Iran; author interview with Mullah Majjed Ishmail Mohammed (who spent 1988 to 1994 in Pakistan), Sulaimaniyah, Iraq, August 2002.
8
. Roy,
The Failure of Political Islam
, p. 66. According to Milton Bearden, the CIA station chief at the time, ‘there were genuine volunteers on missions of humanitarian value, there were adventure-seekers looking for paths to glory, and there were psychopaths’. Milton Bearden, ‘Afghanistan, Grave-yard of Empires’,
Foreign Affairs
, November/December 2001. Also author interview with Bearden, 2004. It is interesting to note how the Afghan jihad had replaced Palestine as the cause that was most attractive to young Muslims. The shift in focus was ideological (from the left to Islam) as well as geographical. Given historic Soviet backing for the Palestinian cause supporting both was clearly difficult.
9
. Interviews with mujahideen, former Hizb-e-Islami activists, Peshawar, 1998, 2001, 2002.
10
. Mary Ann Weaver, ‘Blowback’,
Atlantic Monthly
, May 1996.
11
. Interview with former mujahideen and activist, Peshawar, October 1998.
12
. James Bruce, ‘Arab Veterans of the Afghan War’,
Jane’s Intelligence Review
, April 1995.
13
. Wright, ‘The Man Behind bin Laden’.
14
. Lester W. Grau and Ali Ahmad Jalali, Foreign Military Studies Office,
Journal of Slavic Military Studies
, vol. 14, September 2001, Number 3; sketch maps of the base can be found at
http://call.army.mil/fmso/FMSOPUBS/ISSUES/zhawar/zhawar.htm
.
15
. Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin,
The Bear Trap
, p. 166; Grau and Jalali; author interviews with visitors to Zhawar Khili in the late 1980s and subsequently.
16
. Some activists say that it was Maktab al-Khidamat itself that funded Khaldan. However, Sayyaf’s deputy confirmed that Khaldan was created and funded by Sayyaf in this period. Author interview, Kabul, November 2003.
17
. CNN interview, 1997.
18
. Jamaal Isma’il, an al-Jazeera correspondent who was associated with the Arabs during the Afghan war, said it was late 1986 or 1987 in a documentary broadcast in 1999. However, Afghan former mujahideen and activists have told the author it was later. Several have also denied that it was a bin Laden camp at all. Instead, they say, it was run by various Arab groups under the auspices of Hekmatyar and Sayyaf.
19
. Interview with former Sayyaf fighter, June 2001.
20
. Interview with former mujahideen commander, Peshawar, 2001.
21
. Jalaluddin Haqqani, for example, often disappeared to the Gulf for protracted fundraising trips, either to Saudi Arabia or to Kuwait to see his in-laws.
22
. Yousaf and Adkin,
The Bear Trap
, p. 166.
23
. Multiple interviews, Peshawar, September to November 2001.
24
. Multiple interviews, Peshawar, September to November 2001.
25
. Multiple interviews with former mujahideen, 1998–2001.
26
. Al-Zawahiri,
Knights Under the Banner of Islam
; bin Laden interview with al-Jazeera broadcast 10 June 1999.
27
. Interview with bin Laden associate, interview with Mohammed Said Pahlwan, Peshawar, October 2002.
28
. Multiple interviews in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algiers, 1998–2002.
29
. Yousaf and Adkin,
The Bear Trap
, pp. 8–9.
30
. Interviews with Qazi Amin Wiqad, Hekmatyar’s assistant, Hizb, Peshawar, September 2001; Mohammed Din Mohammed, October 2002.
31
. Mohammed Din Mohammed, Peshawar, October 2002.
32
. Interview with former fighter, former Hizb-e-Islami activist, Peshawar, October 2001.
33
. Interview with former bin Laden associate, Sayyaf commander, Peshawar, October 2001.
34
. Multiple interviews with Afghan mujahideen, Pakistani ISI officers, former ‘Arab Afghan’ fighters, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, London, 1998–2002.
35
. Roy,
The Failure of Political Islam
, p. 74.
36
. Kepel,
Jihad
, p. 9; Ruthven,
Islam in the World
, p. 442.
37
. Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, called as prosecution witness, USA
v.
Usama bin Laden, New York Southern District Court, transcript days 2 and 3.
38
. Interviews with senior Sayyaf and Hizb-e-Islami commanders, Peshawar, December 1999, September–November 2001, July and October 2002.
39
. Oath-taking, or ‘making bayat’, was a common practice among groups in the jihad.
6: Militants
1
. Sara Dixon, ‘From Life-saver to Life-taker’,
Redbridge Guardian
, 19 July 2002.
2
. Nick Fielding, ‘The British Jackal’,
Sunday Times
, 21 April 2002; interviews with Aitchison old boys in Lahore, June 2002.
3
. Fielding, ‘The British Jackal’; interviews with HUM activists, Lahore, 1998.
4
. Between 1955 and 1970 population growth across the Muslim world approached 50 per cent. Pakistan was no exception. Kepel,
Jihad
, p. 66.
5
. Cooley,
Unholy Wars
, p. 49.
6
. Barbara Metcalf,
Traditionalist Islamic Activism: Deoband, Tablighis and Talibs
(Social Science Research Council, New York).
7
. Rashid,
Taliban
, p. 88.
8
. Ibid., p. 89.
9
. Owen Bennett Jones,
Pakistan
, p. 32; multiple interviews with senior Deobandi ulema, Kohat, Akora Khattak, Peshawar, Lahore, 1998–2000.
10
. Tariq Rahman, ‘Language, Religion and Identity in Pakistan: Language-teaching in Pakistan’,
Medressas: Ethnic Studies Report
, vol. XVI, no. 2, July 1998.
11
. Multiple interviews with former army officers who witnessed such training, senior SSP cadres, Islamabad, Kohat, Peshawar, Lahore, 1998–2002; Azmat Abbas, ‘Tentacles of Hatred’,
Herald
, September 2001; interviews with former Harkat-ul-Mujahideen officials, Lahore, Islamabad, 1998–2000.
12
. In October 2001, a diary allegedly written by Sheikh surfaced amid court documents relating to his arrest for kidnapping Westerners in New Delhi. The 35-page diary, which Sheikh had apparently written in jail after his conviction, details his training and subsequent activities. The diary is almost certainly a forgery by the Indian intelligence services. It was ‘discovered’ and swiftly released to the Indian newspapers at a time when New Delhi was extremely nervous about the sudden popularity of Pakistan in the aftermath of Islamabad’s decision to back the ‘War on Terror’. It seems unlikely that Sheikh would write such a comprehensive confession of his own operations, particularly as he had not actually been convicted of any offence by the Indians at the time the diary was meant to have been written. The diary states that, before being dispatched to New Delhi in 1994, Sheikh was told of the capture of British hostages in Kashmir, an event that actually took place a year later. The ‘diary’ appears to be based on Sheikh’s own interrogation and the interrogations of other captured militants during this period. Apparently correct in many details, it is nonetheless a forgery, albeit a useful one.