The Finish (18 page)

It was now enough that the “general public” considered the victims Muslims, even if bin Laden, with his purer standards, did not. Killing those who fell into this category, while morally defensible, was a strategic error. Better that future attacks should come in places far removed from the Middle or Near East, he said. He mentioned South Korea in particular.

“Among the opportunities to be exploited in targeting the Americans is the state of security laxity found in countries where we have not carried out any attacks.”

The Sheik often lectured in these letters, trying to steer his organization back to its central goals. He worried not only that local al Qaeda franchises had drifted away from his guidance, but that its mission was being diluted on targets and concerns he regarded as peripheral.

“By God’s grace, jihad is under way on several fronts [Iraq and Afghanistan and, to some extent, Pakistan], and these are sufficient, by His will and His glory, as well as by the steadfastness of the
mujahidin
there, to perform the functions of bleeding the head of the infidels, America, such that it is defeated, God willing. Then the Islamic Nation will be able to expel that which has stricken it with weakness, servility, and degradation. The plague that exists in the nations of Muslims has two causes: the first is the presence of American hegemony and the second is the presence of rulers who have abandoned Islamic law and who identify with the hegemony, serving its interests in exchange for securing their own interests. The only way for us to establish the religion and alleviate the plague
. . .
is to remove the hegemony.
. . .
After this phase comes the phase in which the second cause—rulers who have abandoned Islamic law—are toppled, and this will be the phase in which God’s religion is established and Islamic law rules.”

Proceeding too hastily in local regions like Yemen undermined the movement’s long-term goals, he argued. He saw the Taliban as a cautionary tale in this regard.

“A man might measure the results of establishing a Muslim state before toppling its enemies against the
. . .
fall of the Islamic emirate in Afghanistan, which we pray to God does not happen again.”

In this October letter to al-Rahman, and in several others composed around the same time, the Sheik offered a sweeping assessment of the cause, his organization, and the world. He remained stubbornly optimistic, despite his circumstances. If America was the greater enemy, he considered Pakistan the one closer at hand, and he saw the natural disasters and political strife that year as a hopeful sign.

“As for the local enemy, as you know, they are in big trouble and the government is in danger of falling, especially after the floods [of the previous July] and the increase of the numbers of those who are suffering from the financial crisis.” The floods, he wrote, were “God’s punishment” on Pakistan for “its sins,” but he urged al-Rahman that no one from al Qaeda should say this publicly, “because of the case of the Jewish man with the sick child, whom the Prophet invited to Islam, but did not tell him that his son was sick because he was not a believer.” Best not to insult Pakistan.

He relished the conflicts between his two enemies: Pakistan and the American-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan. In recent months Pakistan had closed the border to Afghanistan, shutting down main supply lines for American forces there.

“Through the generosity of God, the situation is moving in the direction of the
mujahidin
. You should be patient and strong and God will reward us.”

Given the persistent American pounding, it was time for all but the most disciplined “brothers” to leave Waziristan. He recommended that the others begin moving back into Afghanistan, urging al-Rahman to instruct them to leave their cars behind, because the Americans might otherwise start targeting houses, and that would “increase casualties among women and children.” Bin Laden was very particular about protecting the lives of innocent Muslims. He urged his followers to move on “cloudy days, so that their flight would not be readily detected from above.” He sent instructions concerning his grown children, the ones who were not in hiding with him, detailing precautions they should take when traveling, and where he wanted them to go. He had lost two of his elder sons, Saad and Mohammed, to the cause already. The Sheik considered himself an expert on security, especially on avoiding overhead surveillance, advising that travelers be moved from car to car inside tunnels, and that the brothers plant large trees around their bases of operation to provide cover from overhead cameras. He warned that tracking and eavesdropping devices might be “so small that they can be put inside a medical syringe.”

Gone from these letters, full of condolences and the need for vigilant security, is the bravado of his younger years. Now and then the Sheik would digress for a moment to fondly recall that glory. He reminisced to al-Rahman, his current Number Three, about that moment in their shared story.

“[The attacks] filled Muslims with sympathy toward their fellow
mujahidin
, as it became perfectly clear that they are in the vanguard and are the standard-bearers of the Islamic community in fighting the Crusader-Zionist alliance that has caused the people to endure various forms of pain and degradation. One indication of that is the wide-scale spread of jihadist ideology, especially on the Internet, and the tremendous number of young people who frequent the jihadist Web sites—a major achievement for jihad, through the grace of God, despite our enemies and their efforts.”

But those enemies and those efforts had kept him on the run or in hiding. He had been disowned by his large extended family. Most of his closest associates were either dead or in prison. He had been certain that America would not dare to directly confront him and the Taliban in Afghanistan. He had boasted to a Pakistani journalist, “I want the Americans to proceed toward Afghanistan, where all of their misconceptions and illusions will be removed. I am sure, however, that the Americans will not come, because they are cowards. They attack only the unarmed and weaker people.”

The United States did come to Afghanistan, and they had defeated the Taliban. Despite the costs they were still coming. In addition, the United States had done something the Sheik could never have imagined. They had elected a black man president, a man with the name Barack Hussein Obama. It sounded like a Muslim name. And for almost two years now, Obama’s words and policies had helped weaken the anti-Americanism that fueled al Qaeda’s cause, while his drones killed off its membership.

Worse still, the indiscriminate brutal tactics of al Qaeda and its self-anointed affiliates had alienated millions of Muslims, those bin Laden meant when he referred to “the people” or “the Nation.” This was the hardest thing for him to swallow. All this had happened, he believed, because he had lost control. His isolation had made it impossible for him to shape the group’s image and message, and because al Qaeda had failed to make further dramatic strikes inside America, its significance waned. The attacks he had rejoiced over, that had seemed the start of something glorious, had instead set him back further than he had been when he had started. His world now consisted of two upstairs floors of a house in Pakistan that he and his family never dared to leave.

The house stood inside a large triangular-shaped compound at the end of a dirt road about a half hour drive north of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, in a neighborhood called Bilal Town. Abbottabad was in a basin surrounded on all sides by the rugged Sarban Hills. The drive from the capital was uphill, and Abbottabad’s relatively cool air made it an escape for well-to-do residents of the big city during the brutally hot summer months. There were several golf courses nearby. One mile away was Pakistan’s large military academy at Kakul.

The compound was new, and even though Bilal Town was an affluent neighborhood, at thirty-eight thousand square feet it was many times larger than any of the surrounding ones. Its walls were built of cinder block that had been plastered in the front. They were as high as eighteen feet in some spots, topped with barbed wire. The main house was a large white three-layer box, with a third floor that appeared to have been an afterthought, which was only two-thirds as tall as the first and second. This truncated floor was odd. It had windows on only the north wall: a large one at the center filled with glass coated with an opaque reflective material, and four small rectangular ones just under the overhanging roof, similarly coated. Most of the house was painted white, and the windows on the second story were shaded with simple white awnings. The Sheik and his large family lived on the upper floors. Bin Laden himself was rarely seen even by the other two families who shared the compound and who ostensibly owned it—the brothers who called themselves Arshad and Tareq Khan.

Locked away and losing control, bin Laden had not given up, nor had he retreated from life. Two of his first four wives were still with him, and he had taken one more. His most recent, Amal, a Yemeni a quarter century younger than him, shared a mattress with him on the cramped third floor. The two older ones—Khairiah and Siham—waited their turns with him downstairs. There was not, as later events would show, perfect harmony in these domestic arrangements. There was a container of Avena syrup on his kitchen shelf, an oat-based folk remedy that promised arousal to the sexually depleted male. It might even have done him some good, because the cramped hallways of his upstairs cloister were crowded with twelve children, the youngest, Hussein, just two years old. The Sheik’s own father had taken twenty-two wives, so by comparison the son was a restrained polygamist who, by most accounts, labored to meet his responsibilities to each wife, even to those who had left him. He had acquiesced in the desires of Najwa and Khadijah to divorce him. He knew the difficulties of his chosen path and did not push it on them or his children. But he personally never wavered in his commitment to the cause. He was soft-spoken, but hardly an easy person to live with. Marriage was no equal partnership for the Sheik. His faith stressed strict patriarchy, and bin Laden was its obedient servant. He ruled his family. He not only made all the decisions, he liked to instruct, and like most men who possess the ultimate truth he liked to hold forth. He gave frequent in-house lectures to his wives about the correct way to raise and discipline children. And there was a daily religious homily.

There was no stoop yet to his tall, lean frame, and daily pacing sessions behind the high walls of his compound gave him at least a modicum of exercise. He walked beneath a tarp suspended over the compound’s vegetable garden that deflected direct sunlight and shielded him from prying eyes. The Sheik had been athletic in his youth, playing soccer and volleyball. He was vain about his appearance. The whitening of his hair and beard bothered him. The most wanted man in the world worried less about being recognized than
not
being recognized. On TV, that is. He had been in such deep hiding that few outside his immediate family had seen him in person for years. But his self-made videos and the periodic pronouncements smuggled out by couriers were seen everywhere. It would not do for him to appear old. Given fundamentalist Islam’s ban on depicting the human form, there were only a few images of the Prophet Muhammad, but no one better appreciated the power of pictures than the Sheik, and those of the Prophet that did exist generally showed him young and virile, with flowing robes and a dark beard. He had mimicked those images all his life. So now he dyed his hair and beard black for his taping sessions, with results that were predictably amateurish. The color was too uniform and dark. He looked like a caricature of himself: Osama bin Laden with a cheap dye job.

He had plenty of time to think. He could picture what must be done but could no longer make it happen. Al Qaeda’s name had been so usurped and muddied by younger, less careful warriors in Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere—men less constrained, as he was, by the strict dictates of faith—that bin Laden apparently thought of changing his group’s name. Among his papers were long lists of possible alternatives, most of them amusingly clumsy in their English translation, but all attempted to identify the group closer to his religious ambitions. Increasingly, affiliates were fighting local wars over local problems, and ignoring the Sheik’s overarching vision. This was no small matter. The path he saw was immutable, and perfect, and straying from it meant nothing less than failure. He weighed al Qaeda’s every act and public comment with mounting dismay.

Take the case of Faisal Shahzad, the young man coached by bin Laden’s followers in Waziristan to explode a car bomb in Times Square. No doubt Shahzad’s attempt was an example of bin Laden’s men trying to follow his instructions—he repeatedly urged renewed attacks in the United States at iconic, well-populated locations. Times Square fit the prescription perfectly, as did Shahzad. He was the son of a wealthy and prominent Pakistani air force officer. He had been raised in luxury and given the best of international educations. After marrying an American woman of Pakistani descent, settling in Connecticut, and fathering two children, he applied for and completed a program to become an American citizen. Then he’d traveled to Pakistan and received training on how to set off the bomb. A young volunteer with an American passport must have seemed a godsend to the besieged plotters in Waziristan. But alert Times Square sidewalk vendors had thwarted Shahzad’s mission and the would-be bomber was arrested. Just before he was sentenced to life in prison, a judge had asked Shahzad about the oath of allegiance he had sworn to the United States when he was made a citizen.