[Al Qaeda shura (leadership council) members revealed the schism that opened up when 9/11 was first plotted, describing how they rejected the plan while Osama and Khalid Shaikh Mohammad (who was not in Al Qaeda) pressed on in secret. They described how they had been astonished on the day the Twin Towers fell, excited at Al Qaeda having achieved something so staggeringly shocking, that they had no choice but to back the operation.]
http://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/others/sunday-read/chasing-the-ghost-of-osama/articleshow/58770321.cms CHASING THE GHOST OF OSAMA Mumbai Mirror | Updated: May 21, 2017, 05.23 AM IST By Cathy Scott-Clark & Adrian Levy The authors of The Exile on how and why they decided to write a book about bin Laden and the big break that made it possible. In 2012, almost a year after Osama bin Laden was run to ground in the garrison town of Abbottabad, and with a toxic plume of a scandal still hanging over the Pakistan military, a sample from the Al Qaeda leaders’ letters and communiquéés seized from the house was released. Previewed in a powerful Washington Post opinion piece, headline: “Osama bin Laden, a Lion in Winter,” the files suggested that Al Qaeda was finished. The report referenced video footage showing a greying Osama watching his TV set, while unnamed US Defense officials riffed on his alleged pornography collection. That year, the Obama administration also went into the movie business, backing Zero Dark Thirty, a nail-biting account of the sleuthing that led to the raid on Abbottabad. An American president, Barack Obama, canvassing for his second term in the White House, had beaten an old enemy who had gone to seed, the messaging suggested. But Zero Dark Thirty was materially wrong in many ways, especially claiming that torture had elicited the clues that led to Osama’s capture. And only one per cent of the million-plus-document trove of files recovered from Abbottabad were declassified, even as another large cache of enemy documents, including records of Saddam Hussein’s high command in Iraq and Al Qaeda material from Afghanistan, all held at the National Defense University in Washington, DC was shuttered by the Pentagon. This got us thinking. Eighteen years into an epoch of Islamist terror that began with horrific attacks on US embassies in East Africa in 1998, and we are still being led by the nose. There are few books that have told the story of Al Qaeda from the inside. Obviously, to try and research such a project was a foolish idea. Getting into any volatile, paranoiac outfit that executes outsiders as spies or kidnaps reporters is hair-raising. But right now — in a post-truth world, awash with alt-facts — we need more details and not fewer if we are to ever tamp down the ongoing bloody conflict with Islamist extremism. And it is from this place — a desire for a contemporary, complex, untidy, knotted, verbal history, where no one is regular or consistent, and where allies are murderously betraying their friends, in which good men make poor choices, and switch sides, and wives become double agents — that the idea for The Exile began. We had a helping hand in February 2012 when on a dark Islamabad night we met Zakariya al-Sadeh, a Yemeni student, pro-democracy campaigner, and brother of Amal bin Laden, Osama’s youngest wife. He had come to Pakistan trying to free his sister from the legal limbo the ISI had slung her into alongside Osama’s other wives, several children and grandchildren. At that meeting, everyone was nervous. Zakariya was frightened of worsening his sister’s predicament by being caught with Western journalists, and we were worried about being glimpsed with him, as we were engaged in the middle of complex negotiations with the Pakistan Army on another delicate project. But that tense discussion with Zakariya led to an exchange of ideas, and nervy conversations with many others in Yemen, Jordan, the Gulf and Mauritania that resulted (after trust was won) in meetings with Osama’s family, friends, mentors, companions, factotums, security chiefs, and religious and media advisers. Gradually, something unique came into focus — a story told about Al Qaeda by Al Qaeda men and women with nothing more to lose. They, too, had letters, e-mails, text messages and chat transcripts, videos and photo albums that corroborated their claims. And they too were just as conscious of their constituencies as the DC panjandrums. At one meeting in dusty Nouakchott, a photograph we took that showed a religious leader tapping away on his computer had to be erased, as he needed to be seen by his flock (and the CIA) as low-fi. In another, in a remote Jordanian town, two clerics who feasted on roasted sheep pleaded to be photographed only after the meal was cleared away less starving fighters in Syria see them gorging. But once a thread of trust unfurled, so did a story. Al Qaeda shura (leadership council) members revealed the schism that opened up when 9/11 was first plotted, describing how they rejected the plan while Osama and Khalid Shaikh Mohammad (who was not in Al Qaeda) pressed on in secret. They described how they had been astonished on the day the Twin Towers fell, excited at Al Qaeda having achieved something so staggeringly shocking, that they had no choice but to back the operation. These fighters, religious thinkers, friends, and family members recalled how as war came to Afghanistan, they rumbled along the desert plains of Jalalabad with Osama’s terrified family, and watched tracer fire light up the night sky from a redoubt they called the Star Wars camp. As the United States struck back, they were daunted by life on the run, their lives subordinated to a mission most of them had never chosen. Some took us along the rat runs to the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders, showing how they were guided and nourished by Pakistan-based jihad fronts. Gradually they coalesced again in new locations — Pakistan and Iran — and began plotting new attacks. They detailed the secret cease-fire deals fielded by the ISI that shielded Al Qaeda leaders. And all the while, Osama’s closest family was battered by the ebb and flow of war. Here came news of one son’s death, Saad bin Laden, the family joker who was killed accidentally by a drone strike. A young daughter, Khadija, dying during childbirth in Waziristan. Then, the revelation of a parallel world in distant Iran in a compound known as the Tourist Complex, where many bin Laden family members, much of Al Qaeda’s original military leadership and most of its shura had become caught up in a nerve-jangling reallife game of Risk. But in Washington, where politics required wars to be endless, the Bush administration stepped away from making a deal that might have lanced that boil. And in Pakistan, where Osama hid with two and then three wives, all the while his family could not stop growing, eventually eroding the generosity of its guardians, who slapped the world’s most wanted man with an eviction notice. Requiring a new hideout, and only weeks away from the American raid that would kill him, Osama cut what he regarded as a great deal. He renegotiated an agreement to stay put in Abbottabad, rather than having to seek a new bolthole elsewhere. Outside, the Black Hawks were coming and inside Osama fired off letters and paced in his garden, directing family and friends, exhorting his outfit to work until it burst, like the chief mechanic in the engine room of the Titanic. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark are investigative journalists and authors. They tweet @AdrianMLevy and @cathyscottclark respectively. ***The Exile (Bloomsbury) will be released on May 23.*** [Emphasis added.] -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
