Free The Great War for Civilisation by Robert Fisk Page B

the Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him.”
    Dissident Osama bin Laden may be, but moderate never. I asked permission to take his photograph, and while he debated this with his companions I scribbled into my notebook the words I would use in the last paragraph of my report on our meeting: “Osama bin Laden believes he now represents the most formidable enemy of the Saudi regime and of the American presence in the Gulf. Both are probably right to regard him as such.” I was underestimating the man.
    Yes, he said, I could take his picture. I opened my camera and allowed his armed guards to watch me as I threaded a film into the spool. I told them I refused to use a flash because it flattened the image of a human face and asked them to bring the paraffin lamp closer. The Egyptian scribe held it a foot from bin Laden’s face. I told him to bring it closer still, to within three inches, and I physically had to guide his arm until the light brightened and shadowed bin Laden’s features. Then without warning, bin Laden moved his head back and the faintest smile moved over his face, along with that self-conviction and that ghost of vanity which I found so disturbing. He called his sons Omar and Saad and they sat beside him as I took more pictures and bin Laden turned into the proud father, the family man, the Arab at home.
    Then his anxiety returned. The thunder was continuous now and it was mixed with the patter of rifle fire. I should go, he urged, and I realised that what he meant was that
he
must go, that it was time for him to return to the fastness of Afghanistan. When we shook hands, he was already looking for the guards who would take him away. Mohamed and my driver and just two of the armed men who had brought me to these damp, insect-hungry fields turned up to drive me back to the Spinghar Hotel, a journey that proved to be full of menace. Driving across river bridges and road intersections, we were repeatedly stopped by armed men from the Afghan factions that were fighting for control of Kabul. One would crouch on the roadway in front of our vehicle, screaming at us, pointing his rifle at the windscreen, his companion sidling out of the darkness to check our driver’s identity and wave us through. “Afghanistan very difficult place,” Mohamed remarked.
    It would be difficult for bin Laden’s family, too. Next morning, the Egyptian turned up at the Spinghar Hotel to take me to the grass encampment in which the families of the returning Arab “Afghans” would live. It was vulnerable enough. Only a few strands of barbed wire separated it from the open countryside and the three tents for bin Laden’s wives, pitched close to one another, were insufferably hot. Three latrines had been dug at the back, in one of which floated a dead frog. “They will be living here among us,” the Egyptian said. “These are ladies who are used to living in comfort.” But his fears centred on the apparent presence of three Egyptian security men who had been driving close to the camp in a green pick-up truck. “We know who they are and we have the number of their vehicle. A few days ago, they stopped beside my son and asked him: ‘We know you are Abdullah and we know who your father is. Where is bin Laden?’ Then they asked him why I was in Afghanistan.”
    Another of the Arab men in the camp disputed bin Laden’s assertion that this was only one of several Muslim countries in which he could find refuge. “There is no other country left for Mr. bin Laden,” he said politely. “When he was in Sudan, the Saudis wanted to capture him with the help of Yemenis. We know that the French government tried to persuade the Sudanese to hand him over to them because the Sudanese had given them the South American.” (This was “Carlos the Jackal.”) “The Americans were pressing the French to get hold of bin Laden in Sudan. An Arab group which was paid by