Inside the kingdom by Robert Lacey

Author:Robert Lacey [Robert Lacey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politique
ISBN: 9780670021185
Published: 2009-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

“Finish this!”

Crown Prince Abdullah issued the order with his customary bluntness. Osama Bin Laden’s insulting and defiant February declaration of jihad had been bad enough, but a month or so afterward the Mabahith had picked up some Bin Laden followers transporting missiles that were intended for use inside the Kingdom. They had planned to attack the U.S. consulate in Jeddah.

“We had kept complaining to the Taliban,” remembers Turki Al-Faisal, “but here was solid evidence that Bin Laden was doing fieldwork at home, in Saudi Arabia itself. Enough was enough.”

The Al-Saud could no longer allow Bin Laden to roam free in Afghanistan, and in June 1998, Prince Turki flew off to Kandahar. As his plane banked over the airport, the intelligence boss could clearly make out Tar nak Farms, the huddle of mud-walled buildings, where, his agents reported, Osama had been living for some time—the new headquarters of his campaign to mount global jihad.

The Taliban leaders were waiting, grouped around Mullah Omar—a remarkable sight with their collection of missing eyes, arms, and legs. They were easily the world’s most physically disabled government.

“I can’t just give him to you to put on a plane,” was Omar’s response to Turki’s opening argument, which had been a reproachful reminder of the mullah’s original undertaking that he would prevent Bin Laden from operating or speaking against the Kingdom while he was in Afghanistan. Bin Laden had scarcely stopped talking and giving interviews since his arrival, and that was clearly in breach of what the Taliban had promised.

“We provided him shelter,” responded the Taliban leader, launching into a long lecture on the Pashtun code of hospitality and its strict rules against betraying guests.

The prince was prepared for some such tactic. To back up his own arguments, he had brought from Riyadh the learned Sheikh Abdullah Turki, a scholar of Islam-wide renown and one of the Saudi ulema, who now pointed out to the Taliban how a guest who repeatedly broke his word, as Bin Laden had done in giving so many aggressive and troublemaking interviews to the world’s press, forfeited his claim to his host’s protection. As a former Saudi minister of religious endowments, Sheikh Abdullah also provided a not-so-subtle reminder to the Afghans of the Saudi charities that were financing their revolution so generously—but whose spending ultimately depended on a certain give-and-take.

Mullah Omar seemed unmoved by either consideration. Offering a face-saving compromise, Prince Turki suggested the formation of a joint Saudi-Taliban commission that would negotiate an Islamic mechanism to hand over the jihadist, and he recalls leaving them with a final question: “Are you agreed in principle that you will give us Bin Laden?”

Prince Turki is quite adamant that Mullah Omar’s answer was a firm “Yes”—and that no money or aid changed hands. Observers have suggested that the arrival of several hundred new 4x4 pickup trucks in Kandahar later that summer was a Saudi down payment on the deal, but Prince Turki denies this.

“The trucks,” agrees Ahmed Rashid, “could have come from any of the talibs’ Gulf sponsors.

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