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Bin Laden burns with hate for U.S.
©Associated Press,
He is said to enjoy playing traditional healer, dispensing honey and herbs to the sick. But beneath Osama bin Laden's benign exterior burns a desire to rid Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia -- home of Islam's holiest shrines -- of the Israeli and Americans he regards as infidels. "If the instigation for jihad (holy war) against the Jews and the Americans ... is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal," bin Laden told Time in an interview published in January 1999. That holy war, in Western eyes, amounts to cold-blooded slaughter: the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in which 231 people died, and nearly 5,000 dead or missing from the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Jamal Ismail, a Palestinian journalist, says a bin Laden aide called him after Tuesday's attack to say bin Laden denied being involved but "thanked almighty Allah and bowed before him when he heard this news." Why would the son of a construction magnate, a man destined for a life of ease and riches, rejoice in the massacre of innocents? Rage against America and its support for Israel, say people who have known or met him. Thin, bearded and over 6 feet tall, bin Laden was once a hero in his own country, gaining a reputation as a courageous and resourceful commander in the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s. When he returned home to Saudi Arabia, bin Laden was showered with praise and donations and was in demand as a speaker in mosques and homes. More than 250,000 cassettes of his fiery speeches were distributed, selling out as soon as they appeared. "When we buy American goods, we are accomplices in the murder of Palestinians," he says in one of the cassettes. "American companies make millions in the Arab world with which they pay taxes to their government. The United States uses that money to send $3-billion a year to Israel, which it uses to kill Palestinians." The tapes are now banned in Saudi Arabia. Ismail, the Palestinian journalist, met bin Laden in the 1980s in Peshawar, a Pakistani town that was the staging ground for anti-Soviet attacks. In an interview from Islamabad, Pakistan, Ismail said bin Laden would fly into Peshawar on a private jet loaded with gifts for the fighters. "He would train with his men, eat with them and never make them feel he's doing them a favor," Ismail said. He said bin Laden, 47, tries to speak the classical Arabic of the Koran, Islam's holy book, instead of the vernacular, and peppers his conversations with pious references such as bismillah, in the name of Allah. It was in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet fight that was supported by Washington that bin Laden's rage grew. Among his visitors in Afghanistan were Palestinians who spoke to him about losing family members, friends and homes in confrontations with the Israelis. "I have seen him sob several times upon hearing such stories," Ismail said. In bin Laden's eyes and those of his followers, the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 did not mean the end of their struggle. It was one infidel superpower down, another one to go. In 1990, U.S. troops landed on Saudi Arabian soil to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. Bin Laden tried to dissuade the Saudi government from allowing non-Muslim armies into the land where the Prophet Mohammed is buried. But the Saudi leadership turned to the United States to protect its vast oil reserves. When he continued criticizing Riyadh's alliance with Washington, bin Laden was stripped of Saudi citizenship. He sought refuge in Sudan but was expelled under U.S. and Saudi pressure. He returned to Afghanistan.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
