Free The Great War for Civilisation by Robert Fisk Page A

Occasionally he would ask me questions. What would be the reaction of the British Labour Party to his demand that British troops must leave Saudi Arabia? Was the Labour opposition leader Tony Blair important? I cannot, alas, remember my reply. Bin Laden said that three of his wives would soon arrive in Afghanistan to join him. I could see the tents where they would be living if I wished, just outside Jalalabad, “humble tents” for his family. He told an Egyptian holding a rifle to take me to the encampment next day.
    Then he pointed at me. “I am astonished at the British government,” he said suddenly. “They sent a letter to me through their embassy in Khartoum before I left Sudan, saying I would not be welcome in the United Kingdom. But I did not ask to go to Britain. So why did they send me this letter? The letter said: ‘If you come to Britain, you will not be admitted.’ The letter gave the Saudi press the opportunity of claiming that I had asked for political asylum in Britain—which is not true.” I believed bin Laden. Afghanistan was the only country left to him after his five-and-a-half-year exile in Sudan. He agreed. “The safest place in the world for me is Afghanistan.” It was the only place, I repeated, in which he could campaign against the Saudi government. Bin Laden and several of his Arab fighters burst into laughter. “There are other places,” he replied. Did he mean Tajikistan? I asked. Or Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan? “There are several places where we have friends and close brothers—we can find refuge and safety in them.”
    I told bin Laden he was already a hunted man. “Danger is a part of our life,” he snapped back. “Do you realise that we spent ten years fighting against the Russians and the KGB? . . . When we were fighting the Russians here in Afghanistan, 10,000 Saudis came here to fight over a period of ten years. There were three flights every week from Jeddah to Islamabad and every flight was filled with Saudis coming to fight . . . ” But, I suggested uncharitably, didn’t the Americans support the mujahedin against the Soviets? Bin Laden responded at once. “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 since Turki al-Faisal [the head of Saudi external intelligence] and the CIA were working together.”
    Bin Laden was now alert, almost agitated. There was something he needed to say. “Let me tell you this. Last week, I received an envoy from the Saudi embassy in Islamabad. Yes, he came here to Afghanistan to see me. The government of Saudi Arabia, of course, they want to give the people here a different message, that I should be handed over. But in truth they wanted to speak directly to me. They wanted to ask me to go back to Saudi Arabia. I said I would speak to them only under one condition—that Sheikh Sulieman al-Owda, the ulema, is present. They have locked up Sheikh Sulieman for speaking out against the corrupt regime. Without his freedom, negotiation is not possible. I have had no reply from them till now.”
    Was it this revelation that made bin Laden nervous? He began talking to his men about
amniya
, security, and repeatedly looked towards those flashes in the sky. Now the thunder did sound like gunfire. I tried to ask one more question. What kind of Islamic state would bin Laden wish to see? Would thieves and murderers still have their hands or heads cut off in his Islamic sharia state, just as they do in Saudi Arabia today? There came an unsatisfactory reply. “Islam is a complete religion for every detail of life. If a man is a real Muslim and commits a crime, he can only be happy if he is justly punished. This is not cruelty. The origin of these punishments comes from God through