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132 ~ TALIBANdegree in business administration at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddahbut soon switched to Islamic studies. Thin and tall, he is six feet fiveinches, with long limbs and a flowing beard, he towered above his contemporarieswho remember him as a quiet and pious individual but hardlymarked out for greater things. 5His father backed the Afghan struggle and helped fund it, so when BinLaden decided to join up, his family responded enthusiastically. He firsttravelled to Peshawar in 1980 and met the Mujaheddin leaders, returningfrequently with Saudi donations for the cause until 1982 when he decidedto settle in Peshawar. He brought in his company engineers and heavyconstruction equipment to help build roads and depots for the Mujaheddin.In 1986 he helped build the Khost tunnel complex, which the CIAwas funding as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medicalcentre for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistanborder. For the first time in Khost he set up his own training campfor Arab Afghans, who now increasingly saw this lanky, wealthy and charismaticSaudi as their leader.'To counter these atheist Russians, the Saudis chose me as their representativein Afghanistan,' Bin Laden said later. 'I settled in Pakistan inthe Afghan border region. There I received volunteers who came fromthe Saudi Kingdom and from all over the Arab and Muslim countries. Iset up my first camp where these volunteers were trained by Pakistani andAmerican officers. The weapons were supplied by the Americans, themoney by the Saudis. I discovered that it was not enough to fight inAfghanistan, but that we had to fight on all fronts, communist or Westernoppression,' he added. 6Bin Laden later claimed to have taken part in ambushes against Soviettroops, but he mainly used his wealth and Saudi donations to buildMujaheddin projects and spread Wahabbism amongst the Afghans. Afterthe death of Azam in 1989, he took over Azam's organization and set upAl Qaeda or Military Base as a service centre for Arab-Afghans and theirfamiles and to forge a broad-based alliance amongst them. With the helpof Bin Laden, several thousand Arab militants had established bases inthe provinces of Kunar, Nuristan and Badakhshan, but their extremeWahabbi practices made them intensely disliked by the majority ofAfghans. Moreover by allying themselves with the most extreme pro-Wahabbi Pashtun Mujaheddin, the Arab-Afghans alienated the non-Pashtuns and the Shia Muslims.Ahmed Shah Masud later criticized the Arab-Afghans. 'My jihad factiondid not have good relations with the Arab-Afghans during the yearsof jihad. In contrast they had very good relations with the factions ofAbdul Rasul Sayyaf and Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. When my faction enteredKabul in 1992, the Arab-Afghans fought in the ranks of Hikmetyar'sGLOBAL JIHAD: THE ARAB-AFGHANS AND OSAMA BIN LADEN ~ 133forces against us. We will ask them (Arabs) to leave our country. BinLaden does more harm than good,' Masud said in 1997 after he had beenousted from Kabul by the Taliban. 7By 1990 Bin Laden was disillusioned by the internal bickering of theMujaheddin and he returned to Saudi Arabia to work in the family business.He founded a welfare organization for Arab-Afghan veterans, some4,000 of whom had settled in Mecca and Medina alone, and gave moneyto the families of those killed. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait he lobbiedthe Royal Family to organize a popular defence of the Kingdom and raisea force from the Afghan war veterans to fight Iraq. Instead King Fahdinvited in the Americans. This came as an enormous shock to Bin Laden.As the 540,000 US troops began to arrive, Bin Laden openly criticizedthe Royal Family, lobbying the Saudi ulema to issue fatwas, religious rulings,against non-Muslims being based in the country.Bin Laden's criticism escalated after some 20,000 US troops continuedto be based in Saudi Arabia after Kuwait's liberation. In 1992 he had afiery meeting with Interior Minister Prince Naif whom he called a traitorto Islam. Naif complained to King Fahd and Bin Laden was declaredpersona non grata. Nevertheless he still had allies in the Royal Family,who also disliked Naif while he maintained his links with both SaudiIntelligence and the ISI.In 1992 Bin Laden left for Sudan to take part in the Islamic revolutionunderway there under the charismatic Sudanese leader Hassan Turabi.Bin Laden's continued criticism of the Saudi Royal Family eventuallyannoyed them so much that they took the unprecedented step of revokinghis citizenship in 1994. It was in Sudan, with his wealth and contactsthat Bin Laden gathered around him more veterans of the Afghan war,who were all disgusted by the American victory over Iraq and the attitudeof the Arab ruling elites who allowed the US military to remain in theGulf. As US and Saudi pressure mounted against Sudan for harbouringBin Laden, the Sudanese authorities asked him to leave.In May 1996 Bin Laden travelled back to Afghanistan, arriving in Jalalabadin a chartered jet with an entourage of dozens of Arab militants,bodyguards and family members including three wives and 13 children.Here he lived under the protection of the Jalalabad Shura until the conquestof Kabul and Jalalabad by the Taliban in September 1996. In August1996 he had issued his first declaration of jihad against the Americanswhom he said were occupying Saudi Arabia. 'The walls of oppressionand humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets,' thedeclaration read. Striking up a friendship with Mullah Omar, in 1997 hemoved to Kandahar and came under the protection of the Taliban.By now the CIA had set up a special cell to monitor his activities andhis links with other Islamic militants. A US State Department report in