Coll’s extended portrait of Salem, an energetic, garrulous bon vivant given to risk-taking in every sphere, makes for the most pleasurable section of his massive narrative. Salem extended his father’s system of patronage, forging links with many members of the next generation of the Al Saud family. He drank wine and ate pork without inhibition and inherited his father’s love of flying; he bought several jets and acquired considerable proficiency in flying them. He flew frequently to the US, where he invested copiously in businesses and real estate, and supported several girlfriends around the world. As the oil boom of the 1970s made the Saudi kingdom flush with money, the Bin Laden family rose higher than ever before. But Salem himself died tragically in a plane crash.
The Bin Ladens: Allen Lane, 672 pages, Rs795.
All this while, Osama, whose mother had remarried after being divorced by Mohamed, was acquiring an education at an expensive private school in Jeddah. This was where he came into first contact with radical religious rhetoric, through a teacher who owed allegiance to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Osama’s devotion to the word of God and his fastidious observance of rules — he would avert his eyes while speaking to women outside the family — was not seen as unusual by his family in a country where, as Coll remarks, “religion was like gravity” and the influence of the austere Wahhabi school was strong.
After attaining maturity, Osama worked with the Bin Laden group as a junior executive while enjoying a life much higher than his position because of his stake in the family business. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 would be the making of Osama as a man. He moved to Pakistan to work as a fund-raiser for the cause of the mujahideen, the Arab militia who had arrived to join the Afghan resistance, and his profile rose within his country and family.
In Pakistan, Osama came into contact with several radical preachers (Abdullah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri) who taught him the lines of his polemic —Christians and Jews want to take over the world; the West is tempting the Muslim world with lowly material and carnal pleasures; it is the duty of every Muslim to wage jihad against these forces — while exploiting his access to wealth.
It is worth noting that Osama’s current face — that of a rootless, transnational holy warrior, a voice speaking to the world from an abyss, plotting its doom — was only consolidated after his family broke all ties with him in 1994, followed shortly afterwards by the Saudi government’s cancellation of his citizenship.
Left without the consolations of family or motherland, Osama was now on his own—Osama first, and Bin Laden second.
In his speeches and essays (his skillful use of new media such as satellite television and the Internet is totally at odds with his hatred of modernity), he now railed against the Al Saud dynasty and its defenders, and of practices such as usury, which he had formerly endorsed.
Coll’s brilliant book, with its emphasis on “the universal grammar of families”, shows us an Osama bin Laden who is more contradictory, more fragile, and more vulnerable than the Osama we have previously read about.
The big picture
Three more books that brings out the many facets of the Al Qaeda leader
Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, edited by Bruce Lawrence (Verso, 2005)
The first requirement of any conflict is to understand the enemy, and this book, a collection of Osama’s essays and broadcasts over the years, is an invaluable resource for understanding the nature of the man’s grouse with most of humanity.
The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History, by Peter Bergen (Free Press, 2006)