Watching the movie Zero Dark Thirty, I kept thinking about my own time with bin Laden, in 1994. It involved no torture. No drama. The hunt was not yet on. Instead, like him at the time, I was searching for answers in Khartoum from the preeminent enabler of Radical Islam, Hassan Al-Turabi. Through his writings and sermons, Turabi had transformed fundamentalism into a dramatic theology of liberation that millions bought into—Yes, yes, of course, once purity is reestablished, Mohammed’s voice fresh again, social problems will melt away, pharaohs will die, and Allah’s soldiers will reinstall sharia from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas.
I was working for a Rock-n-Roll magazine; bin Laden was on his own and on the lookout for talent to join his gang, Al-Qaeda.
It was a simple meal in a complicated place. Fruit, bread and cheese arrived on an antique silver platter that could have been used, in 1885, to serve the head of the British soldier Charles “Chinese” Gordon to the Muslim leader Mahdi, ‘the Guided One.’ Our host smiled at the suggestion, and said, Maybe.
There were three of us sitting around a table inside the headquarters of the Popular Arab and Islamic Conference located in a low-slung, whitewashed building in Khartoum, Sudan. Secretaries came in and out, whispering messages to their boss Hassan Al-Turabi and, sometimes, to his other guest, Osama bin Laden. Turabi, as always, looked sharp, spotless, his turban crisply creased and perfectly tied; bin Laden, on the other hand, appeared comfortable in wrinkles and unbothered by the tea stain atop his left bosom.
Yes, I’ll take it, Turabi told a factotum and excused himself to field a phone call. Heading to his desk, he added, Please start, you two. I’ll only be a minute.
Good manners advised us to wait. I was prepared to chat; the night before a full moon repaved the town, turning its pot-holed and unswept streets into pearl carpets. But bin Laden turned away from me to stare at a bare white wall. We had met once before, at a crowded reception; we didn’t say much to each other then, and, obviously, he was not interested in making small talk now.
I had arrived in Khartoum weeks earlier, in September, 1994, to research a story about radical Islamists and the march of Islam’s green flag in every which way. Entering the city I was respectful of its magic. The Blue and White Nile rivers meet here, forming what Arab poets call the longest kiss in history. It’s also the traditional gateway connecting black Africa to the Arab North, and its bazaars were famed for offering goods and services that blurred the lines separating the exotic from the forbidden.
Another more pressing reason for a circumspect approach came out of Khartoum’s position as both the wheelhouse and engine room of fundamentalist Islam. As Africa’s only Islamized state, and minus the heavy hand of Mideast monarchies, agents of almost every radical Islamic group were based here. Each of them had their fingers in the honey pot: donations from the faithful, which Western sources say exceeded $200-million a year, along with tens of millions more in weaponry. Meanwhile, military camps originally financed by the Saudis and staffed by Americans to prepare Islamic warriors for battle against Russian designs in Afghanistan were being used to train Islamic terrorists in their battle against just about everybody else. And since this was the encampment of the officer corps, it was where the maps were being drawn for the passage ahead.
By all accounts, Turabi was the reason Khartoum had become the center of thinking and action for Islamic revivalists. He had opened up Sudan to veterans of the Afghan War, as well as raw recruits wanting to become jihadists, and made sure they were housed and fed and trained. Additionally, acting as talent scout, matchmaker and affable host, he ran things like a salon, constantly putting together confabs, lunches and get-togethers, urging the best and the brightest in radical Islam to meet, to network, to co-ordinate thinking and action. Only a unified force, he told me, can hope to establish a new world order, with Islam calling the shots. One, together, hundreds of millions of us, Islam will be unstoppable, he said, tapping his right temple, then his heart.
At the time, Osama bin Laden was considered a rich kid with a mixed reputation as a fighter. His money bought him attention; his unflagging dedication to jihad made him stick out; and his knack for logistics garnered him respect. Earlier, during conversations with various commanders in the Afghan war, bin Laden was described as just the kind of man you want behind the lines to keep an army going. These men thought it funny that bin Laden’s organizational skills were honed early on, as a teenager, by retired CIA officers also working for the family construction company while building the Saudi infrastructure. Not once did anyone remark on bin Laden’s qualities as an orator, thinker or strategist.
Eat. Please. Start. I’m almost done, Turabi encouraged, covering the speaker end of the phone. I reached for a date; bin Laden, however, didn’t move, still intent on the wall. Turabi smiled at me, then nodded and returned to his phone call.
***
Back then, in the early-to-mid-1990s, Turabi was Mister Big Deal, not bin Laden. He was the acknowledged power in Sudan, a Geppetto pulling the strings of a puppet-like president. Turabi both designed and engineered the Islamization of Sudan during his days as Sudan’s Attorney General. He soon exited politics to assume greater prominence as Islam’s eminence grise, directing the flow of global events through his speeches, religious writings and, when necessary, whispered commands to politicians. Without doubt, he was both the leading intellectual of fundamentalist Islam and its star on the world stage, the go-to man for presidents and pope.
Thanks to Turabi, civil law in Sudan was replaced by sharia, which treats crime as an affront to the Koran, and is enforced with a passion absent in the West. Cops from the moral squads prowled the streets, on patrol for bared female legs, heads and midriffs, and kept watch for couples holding hands or, god forbid, kissing in public, rock music and other signifiers of Western pop culture. Being caught with a bottle of beer, for instance, merited a six month prison term; the second offense earned another six months in jail, plus twenty lashes from a whip made out of camel’s tails. Because of Turabi, Sudan had been recast in religious terms, with Allah and his Prophet Mohammed providing context and direction. At last, after waiting more than one thousand years, according to Turabi, the world’s 700 million-plus Sunni Muslims could draw inspiration from fundamentalism in action.
I first met Turabi by chance. It happened the day after I arrived in Khartoum, as I nosed around the back wing of Friendship Hall, the mammoth conference center designed by Russians and built atop sand by the Chinese. An international religious conference was going on in the main hall and some heavy hitters were attending, like Cardinal Francis Arinze, the Nigerian on many short lists to become the next Pope. Mostly though, the conference seemed a scripted event for the Muslim delegates to pat themselves on the back between rounds of applause for Turabi and his cause: Islam’s dominance over corrupt value sets, i.e. Western countries and cultures.
I left the auditorium to prowl the building, not sure where I was headed and hoping for a surprise. Perhaps I’d stumble on a smoke-filled room. It was rumored that Arinze was here as part of a quid pro quo that Turabi brokered in exchange for Muslim support against a feminist agenda at the upcoming Cairo International Conference on Population and Development. Or maybe I’d happen on an interrogation room used by security forces. Sudan had one of the world’s worst records of human rights abuse, and routinely imprisoned citizens in public and private buildings. The dungeonesque quality of some of the rooms I visited (chairs with straps on the arms, chains hanging from the ceiling, empty ashtrays on a table and dozens of butts under a chair) brought torture to mind.
As I turned a corner, entering a darkened hallway, Turabi appeared ghostlike in the distance. He was backlit, his features obscured and shape eerily outlined. I approached with caution. He stood in place, his hands invisible inside the voluminous sleeves of his snow-white robe. My eyes fixed on his turbaned head, which looked preternaturally large for his body. Closing in, I could at last discern his eyeglasses and white patent-leather shoes that blend perfectly with his robe. He squinted and cocked his head. He had thought I was someone he knew.
I introduced myself.
Oh, yes, you must be the American, he said, shaking hands. Please remind me who you are working for.
Spin magazine, I replied.
Spin? What is Spin? he asked, leading me down the hallway.
Rock’n’Roll, sir.
Oh, dear, that’s too bad.
He picked up the pace and I stayed with him until three bodyguards appeared out of nowhere. They positioned themselves between Turabi and me and, as I kept chattering, I could hear them muttering accusations at each other for not intercepting me earlier. Turabi, always polite, kept giving answers over his shoulder, and we set a date to meet.
***
Turabi rejoined us at the table, and we all dug into the food. Our host guided the conversation, talking about model-making and how many pieces had to be glued together before the job could be declared done. Believe me, he said, we’re only at the beginning of Islam’s march. Soon, many nations will become one. And God’s voice will thunder. Sudan, he claimed, was merely the staging area for the worldwide expansion of fundamentalist Islam.
This is true, bin Laden piped, and repeated himself. Soon, soon, God’s army will assemble, he added.
Turabi resumed speed and forecast the future: It won’t be long before Islamic fundamentalism defines a vast geography. Listen, he demanded, pointing at me: we will be bigger than the European Union…We will be more powerful than America…The power that once belonged to Russia will be ours, yes, ours… Try the cheese. It’s delicious.
Is it French? I asked, knowing Turabi refined his taste for fine threads and food as a law student in England and later, during his time studying for a Ph.D in Paris.
I wish, Turabi said wistfully.
Bin Laden, however, insisted Muslim hands make the best of everything and speared a date with a paring knife.
Turabi shrugged but didn’t correct his guest. It’s important, he told me earlier, that Khartoum welcome all types willing to fight for Islam. It’s the only way to insure that revivalists from around the world have somewhere to share information and collaborate on all levels. He’ll offer whatever it takes to come up with an attack plan that banishes modernism and other products of the Enlightenment.
As everyone downed some cheese (delicious) and went quiet while struggling with the bread (zestless and chewy), I recalled an earlier session with Turabi when, bluntly, I asked him, What is fundamentalism?
Hmmm. Fundamentalism. What is fundamentalism? he repeated my question. He toyed with a paperclip and kept at it, until, suddenly, I realized that it would be an interminable wait. He was asking me for the answer. But I only knew fundamentalism in terms of Christianity.
Precisely, Turabi said, suddenly animated, and went on to remind me of fundamentalism’s American roots. I filled in the rest: The word was coined in the early 20th Century, during the great Protestant debate over relevancy: The majority of Protestant Fundamentalists favored coming to grips with Darwin and evolution, science and its systems of proof; the minority wanted no change and felt comfortable in maintaining the old view of biblical language as divinely derived. Out of this contest sprang the Protestant Evangelicals, who have been spearheading the battle against liberalism ever since.
I prefer revivalism to fundamentalism, Turabi said, but wasn’t upset by my decision to employ both words. Americans usually do what they want anyway, he observed.
According to Turabi, the Islamic revivalist movement rises out of two seemingly dissimilar forces: reaction and revolution, as much a voice of conservatism as an undeterred enforcer of Islam’s establishing spirit. In essence, it is opposed to any secular culture that encroaches on a Muslim’s ability to practice his or her faith, which, being a comprehensive religion, permeates all aspects and measures of life. The world is beset by demonic forces, the fundamentalist believes, and it is the duty of Muslims to combat Satan in whatever guise. The Koran offers the believer a full set of plans on which to build a perfect life, and Allah’s Prophet Mohammed provides construction tips through His example. Anything that denigrates the premier role of the Koran or even competes for attention is, by definition, morally corrupt and fair game for attack. If the climate is off one degree or 180-degrees, the revivalist must seek socio-moral change. For the revivalist, Islam is not an alternative, it is an imperative.
To regain Islam’s rightful place as a global superpower, Muslims must be exposed to that original force and reawakened again, Turabi told me, referring to the vitality that spurred the inaugural march of the green flag in the first millennium. In his way of thinking Islamic power ebbed, Allah’s armies sent in retreat and Arab ambitions stymied, when people started drifting away from the truth, letting the memory and example of Mohammed give way to an era of self-satisfaction and monarchy rule. Out of it all, a power elite emerged and closed the doors on the masses, excluding them from the decision-making process shaping Muslim lifestyles and sharia. And as people continued to distance themselves from a stripped down, pure form of Islam, an unfortunate tradition took hold that allowed Western ideas to contaminate Islamic society.
I told him he was hallucinating, merely trying to substantiate an historical mirage. The past is far too messy to explain in one clean sweep, and religious fervor can’t possibly explain 400-years of war and peace, growth and contraction. He said I missed the boat. The Koran and the Prophet’s life guided those glory days; all he is trying to do is construct a model Islamic state that allows history to repeat itself. Islam, he reminded me, means ‘Surrender.’ And the moment the state surrenders all power to Allah, the community will benefit. Sharia will insure this by turning the power pyramid upside down and letting the masses decide what course to steer. This will do away with royals and cronyism and allow all to prosper, just as the Koran dictates…
Western history books, he claimed, were wrong, flat out wrong when discussing both the sudden rise of Islam and its decline. Religious purity, not timing and opportunity, impelled the initial wave of Muslim troops. It didn’t matter to him that both the Byzantine and Persian empires were crumbling and vulnerable to attack. What counts is the religious energy that carried Umar ibn al-Khattab’s army through Damascus, Egypt and Persia in ten short years. Later, the march of Islam stalled, he insisted, not because of banal logistical difficulties attendant to swift expansion, but due to religious corruption. Only Revivalists can rekindle that old time fire. And only revivalists can once again form an unstoppable army. Allah’s troops, he asserted, are free of confusion spawned by doubt or mission, and both its commanders and grunts welcome death as an entry card into heaven. Simply put, in life and death the pure can’t lose.
Back at the table, Turabi, cleared his mouth of the last of the bread, and advised his guests to stick with the fruit and cheese. Bin Laden piped in that he liked it, that all the chewing made him think while he ate. Turabi sighed, but caught himself before chiding his guest; instead, he winked my way and left it at that. Seconds later he pulled bin Laden close by taking aim at the House of Saud and blasting all monarchist and secular governments in the Arab orbit. He considered them prime examples of human frailty clouding the immutable words of Allah and rejected the medieval systems of interpretation that justified Muslim kings. Those regimes must be toppled to free people of their great burden and, at the same time, fuel the spread of revivalist Islam, he said, eliciting a broad smile from bin Laden. Turabi then put those nations on notice and predicted their downfall. Oh, they will be toppled, he explained, because the longer they remain in power, the more corrupt they become, and the greater the need for revolution and rehabilitation. Mothers and fathers and all their children will all take part and attack the wicked beast, he asserted, adding, Islam, the Islam of the Prophet, will guide us to greatness.
Yes. Yes. Right. It will happen. It must, bin Laden cheered, and then went quiet, resuming his nodding in sequence to Turabi’s phrasing.
Suddenly, though, when Turabi changed the subject to reprimand me for being arrested a second time, bin Laden grimaced and ran his eyes up and down my body as if sizing up a lamb carcass. Three strikes and you’re out, I’m warned; certainly, Turabi wouldn’t bail me out again.
A few days before, I was thrown in jail for the second time, arrested inside African International University, the college of choice among radical Muslims looking for a career in terrorism. It offered advanced training in theology and bomb-making, and alumni left Khartoum for neighboring countries endowed with wads of money, missionary zeal and weaponry to preach the gospel of Turabi. Much like John the Baptist, they ventured into the world of the unbeliever and prepared the way for a religious revolution, but instead of crosiers they leaned on AK47s. As I walked by a university building, the pop-pop of automatic gunfire coming from a basement shooting range lured me inside with a camera and a notebook.
You stay away from there; no Westerners allowed, bin Laden scolded me. He was aghast that a bald, pasty-white Westerner could walk uninterrupted through school doors. He told Turabi security had to be tightened and then he revved his engine, raising his voice and speaking far too quickly for me to understand. Turabi interpreted before abruptly laughing and saying, Yes, you’re right. To keep bin Laden from going on and on, slamming me, along with American foreign policy, for putting our noses where they didn’t belong, Turabi talked about a sermon he was scheduled to record later that day. As he briefed us about what he was going say, bin Laden leaned into every word.
While Turabi played host to the officer corps, video and audio cassettes of his speeches took him deep into the hearts and minds of the average grunt manning the front lines. Usually poorly educated, sometimes illiterate, the foot soldiers memorized these speeches and, eventually, let their AK-47s and Turabi speak for them. Inevitably, in jail cells from New Jersey to New Caledonia, captured revolutionaries spouted Turabi’s words in answer to almost any kind of question involving identity (Who are you? What army?) and purpose (Why are you shooting at us?).
Orange Fanta was brought in, and the conversation drifted toward Egypt. Turabi lamented the state of the revolution there and went on about his favorite topic: cement-work. There could be no great victory, no genuine advance in the cause, until the various splinter groups in each and every country acted in concert. And, of course, this is why he expected the bonds forged in the Sudan to connect scores of different revolutionary groups around the world. Rising out of it all: a juggernaut able to role over and squash Western ideology.
Bin Laden weighed in. Planning. Planning. Planning, he said. The old, tribal way of fighting is dead. Although bin Laden kept racing along, now speaking very quickly in Arabic, Turabi kept silent and handed me the silver platter of fruit and cheese. When, finally, Bin Laden finished his rant, he clicked his tongue as he glanced at me and let his eyes rest on our host. In return, Turabi offered him a tired look, a professor surveying an eager but not especially bright student and handed him a napkin, along with advice to clear the debris of bread and cheese clinging to his beard.
The fuel for the coming Islamic revolution was being bunkered as we sat and talked, Turabi informed me. From earlier discussions I knew he was referring to sophisticated weaponry, like Stinger missiles, which, more than any other single bit of weaponry sent the Russians out of Afghanistan. What was missing, he added, was the spark that will set events into motion. He wasn’t sure what that spark exactly was, but he knew it would rally millions under one banner and ignite an unstoppable march of Islamic soldiers. He was convinced, like bin Laden, that once things started moving, fundamentalist Islam would recreate those 300-years, from 650-to-950, when Muslim armies established an empire that reached from Spain to Afghanistan.
I lost count of the number of times bin Laden nodded his head and whispered, Yes, yes, God is great.
A few minutes later, a secretary walked in and said something to Turabi that merited his immediate attention. Lunch, my friends, is over. Back to work.
Bin Laden and I walked through the courtyard, into the gatehouse waiting room and matched steps to the street. A Mercedes was waiting for him. Did I need a ride, he asked? I declined and after a short walk around the block, I returned to the waiting room. It was where I sat day after day, waiting for Turabi to call me inside for ten minutes, maybe twenty, perhaps hours. It depended on his mood, his schedule, and how good my questions were during the previous meet.
As usual, the waiting room was packed. Abu Nidal was there, as well as representatives of al-Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Red Hand Commandos and other, smaller organizations. Everyone was candid about his association with one or another extremist group. But no one would talk about his work in public; instead, we chatted about the weather (unrelenting heat) and local soccer action (unexciting club teams).
In private, however, one man I met in the waiting room was happy to blab, in return for a free meal. He had been trained as a doctor, spoke perfect English, and we hooked up several times a week at a fancy café, where he got to order whatever he wanted. His name was Ahmed al-Zawahiri and during one meal, he asked me about bin Laden. Turabi, he confided, thought they would make a good team and suggested they combine attributes: Ahmed’s big brain with Osama’s organizational skills and thick wallet. I reckoned he would jump at the chance to partner up, since he was scrapping bottom, broke and limited in his reach, with more enemies than friends back home in Egypt, while bin Laden was loaded and had big plans.
I bumped into bin Laden a few times later on. We shook hands and left it at that. He didn’t strike me as a particularly interesting character. Money had given him things others had to work for, and their stories were much more revealing. Besides, over the course of my six weeks in Khartoum, I came to understand bin Laden as a small part of a colossal machine that was growing day by day. Indeed, Turabi was the top man in a hierarchy of one. Directly under him were hundreds of dedicated believers, each a fighter, and a select few, like bin Laden, rich enough to finance their own groups within the umbrella organization.
What resonated for me, and I’m sure, for thousands of others in Khartoum at the same time, were Turabi’s words. They empowered the fighter and scared the hell out of me. For instance, on a Sunday, Turabi told me there is a renaissance of Islam coming. We are rising again, with Jews all around us…It’s part of a historical cycle. Islam will be on top again…Dramatic explosions, he predicted, will propel Islam’s army and reconfigure governments along an East-West axis. And throughout his sermons and pamphlets picked up by millions, he issues a call to arms, urging the faithful to usher in a new world order based on that old time religion preached by the Prophet.
From Khartoum, I headed south, into the heart of what was then rebel territory, where armies were locked in war against Turabi and the Government of Sudan. The year before, in 1993, I had spent three months traveling with one army and nothing had changed: South Sudan remained hell on earth, a place where the horrific had twisted itself into the routine. The smell of death was inescapable across an area larger than Texas, the direct consequence of a civil war pitting a southern black population of Christians and animists against the Islamists based in the North. The war had run hot then cold ever since Sudan gained independence from England in the 1950s, and no one I met thought it would end until a new country was born. One rebel leader told me there shouldn’t be any hope for reconciliation. That would be foolish, he said, because the Islamists are Arabs or think like Arabs and Arabs, believe me, are racists.
Those accusatory words brought to mind something Turabi said to me denying the rich cultural heritage of tens of millions of people who happen to be black. Africa, he told me, is virgin land and he was sure it would be easy to conquer. Why? Because it is fertile, he answered, ripe for the Islamic seed. It is land that hasn’t been planted again and again, civilization after civilization. What is there in Africa but tribalism?
At the dawn of a new century, Turabi lost power. The downfall played out like a Greek tragedy, when the puppet president hooked up with disgruntled former protégées of the master and decreed that their time had come. Turabi, they said, was out of touch, old and detached from the vitality of the masses, and in the way of the cause he once espoused: the march of the green flag. After the putsch, he was jailed, then put under house arrest house and picked clean, losing his titles and any snap to his punch. The phone stopped ringing and his repeated attempts to make a comeback failed.
The new regime quickly showed itself to be more strident and less elastic than anything that preceded it, intent, I suppose, to out Turabi Turabi and establish its own brand. Turabi told me that he loved to read Shakespeare, and I never doubted him. He was a debater, easy to engage and always willing to enter a dialogue. But the new gang in charge lived in a world of whites and blacks and were quickly tiresome talkers, always quick to lecture me about two things: me (impertinent American journalist, sinner and spy) or America (the home of Satan and Islam’s enemy).
Most worrisome, I thought, was the fanaticism that the new order wore like badges of honor. Shallow thinkers, they never went deep, the Koran the one and only book they ever referenced. Indeed, the men I met from the officer corps didn’t think beyond the mission at hand: destruction of Western culture, with the rise of Islam in its place. In the process, they ratcheted up terrorism beyond anything the West had ever experienced before.
Moreover, the new leadership, as well as the next generation coming up, proved themselves humorless. Their idea of a joke came out their experiences in training camps built by the US; they laughed at the mention of their training by former Green Berets and SAS troops. I came away believing these men derived warped enjoyment any time they could tear a page out of the bible and rub it in Western faces. In particular, I kept thinking about the gospel of St. Mathew describing a Savior killed for the sins of others. And now, after watching Zero Dark Thirty, I wonder how history will judge us. I fear that we will be found myopic, our focus on revenge, the long view blurred. I fear the process used in killing him will launch bin Laden’s star and lead others on a journey like his.
From February, 2013