Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Robert Fisk: A close encounter with the man who shook the world

Mi pare giusto celebrare l'uscita di scena di uno dei protagonisti 
dell'ultimo decennio con l'intervista che gli fece un grandissimo 
cronista inglese che lo conobbe di persona.
-------------------------------------------------
Robert Fisk: A close encounter with the man who shook the world
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
One hot evening in late June 1996, the telephone on my desk in Beirut 
rang with one of the more extraordinary messages I was to receive as a 
foreign correspondent. "Mr Robert, a friend you met in Sudan wants to 
see you," said a voice in English but with an Arabic accent. At first I 
thought he meant another man, whose name I suggested. "No, no, Mr 
Robert, I mean the man you interviewed. Do you understand?" Yes, I 
understood. And where could I meet this man? "The place where he is 
now," came the reply. I knew that Bin Laden was rumoured to have 
returned to Afghanistan but there was no confirmation of this. So how do 
I reach him? I asked. "Go to Jalalabad – you will be contacted."
A month later. "CLACK-CLACK-CLACK." It was as if someone was attacking 
my head with an ice-pick. "CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK." I 
sat up. Someone was banging a set of car keys against the window of my 
room in the Spinghar Hotel. "Misssster Robert," a voice whispered 
urgently. "Misssster Robert." He hissed the word "Mister." Yes, yes, I'm 
here. "Please come downstairs, there is someone to see you." It 
registered only slowly that the man must have climbed the ancient fire 
escape to reach the window of my room. I dressed, grabbed a coat – I had 
a feeling we might travel in the night – and almost forgot my old Nikon. 
I walked as calmly as I could past the reception desk and out into the 
early afternoon heat.
The man wore a grubby, grey Afghan robe and a small round cotton hat but 
he was an Arab and he greeted me formally, holding my right hand in both 
of his. He smiled. He said his name was Mohamed, he was my guide. "To 
see the Sheikh?" I asked. He smiled but said nothing.
I followed Mohamed all the way through the dust of Jalalabad's main 
street until we arrived next to a group of gunmen in a pick-up truck in 
the ruins of an old Soviet army base, a place of broken armoured 
vehicles with a rusting red star on a shattered gateway. There were 
three men in Afghan hats in the back of the pick-up. One held a 
Kalashnikov rifle, another clutched a grenade-launcher along with six 
rockets tied together with Scotch tape. The third nursed a machine gun 
on his lap, complete with tripod and a belt of ammunition. "Mr Robert, 
these are our guards," the driver said quietly, as if it was the most 
normal thing in the world to set off across the wilds of Afghanistan's 
Nangarhar province under a white-hot afternoon sun with three bearded 
guerrillas. A two-way radio hissed and crackled on the shoulder of the 
driver's companion as another truckload of Afghan gunmen drove up behind us.
We were about to set off when Mohamed climbed back down from the pick-up 
along with the driver, walked to a shaded patch of grass and began to 
pray. For five minutes, the two men lay half-prostrate, facing the 
distant Kabul Gorge and, beyond that, a far more distant Mecca. We drove 
off along a broken highway and then turned on to a dirt track by an 
irrigation canal, the guns in the back of the truck bouncing on the 
floor, the guards' eyes peering from behind their chequered scarves. We 
travelled like that for hours, past half-demolished mud villages and 
valleys and towering black rocks, a journey across the face of the moon.
By dusk, we had reached a series of cramped earthen villages, old men 
burning charcoal fires by the track, the shadow of women cowled in the 
Afghan burka standing in the alleyways. There were more guerrillas, all 
bearded, grinning at Mohamed and the driver. It was night before we 
stopped, in an orchard where wooden sofas had been covered in army 
blankets piled with belts and webbing and where armed men emerged out of 
the darkness, some holding rifles, others machine guns. They were the 
Arab mujahedin, the Arab "Afghans" denounced by the presidents and kings 
of half the Arab world and by the United States of America. Very soon, 
the world would know them as al-Qa'ida.
Mohamed beckoned me to follow him and we skirted a small river and 
jumped across a stream until, in the insect-filled darkness ahead, we 
could see a sputtering paraffin lamp. Beside it sat a tall, bearded man 
in Saudi robes. Osama bin Laden stood up, his two teenage sons, Omar and 
Saad, beside him. "Welcome to Afghanistan," he said.
He was now 40 but looked much older than at our last meeting in the 
Sudanese desert late in 1993. Walking towards me, he towered over his 
companions, tall, slim, with new wrinkles around those narrow eyes. 
Leaner, his beard longer but slightly flecked with grey, he had a black 
waistcoat over his white robe and a red-chequered kuffiah on his head, 
and he seemed tired. When he asked after my health, I told him I had 
come a long way for this meeting. "So have I," he muttered. There was 
also an isolation about him, a detachment I had not noticed before, as 
if he had been inspecting his anger, examining the nature of his 
resentment; when he smiled, his gaze would move towards his 16-year-old 
son Omar – round eyes with dark brows and his own kuffiah – and then off 
into the hot darkness where his armed men were patrolling the fields.
Just 10 days before, a truck bomb had torn down part of the US Air Force 
housing complex at al-Khobar in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and we were 
speaking in the shadow of the deaths of the 19 US soldiers killed there. 
And Bin Laden knew what he wanted to say. "Not long ago, I gave advice 
to the Americans to withdraw their troops from Saudi Arabia. Now let us 
give some advice to the governments of Britain and France to take their 
troops out – because what happened in Riyadh and al-Khobar showed that 
the people who did this have a deep understanding in choosing their 
targets. They hit their main enemy, which is the Americans. They killed 
no secondary enemies, nor their brothers in the army or the police in 
Saudi Arabia... I give this advice to the government of Britain." He 
said the Americans must leave Saudi Arabia, must leave the Gulf. The 
"evils" of the Middle East arose from America's attempt to take over the 
region and from its support for Israel. Saudi Arabia had been turned 
into "an American colony".
***
Bin Laden was speaking slowly and with precision, an Egyptian taking 
notes in a large exercise book by the lamplight like a Middle Ages 
scribe. "This doesn't mean declaring war against the West and Western 
people – but against the American regime which is against every 
American." I interrupted Bin Laden. Unlike Arab regimes, I said, the 
people of the United States elected their government. They would say 
that their government represents them. He disregarded my comment. I hope 
he did. For in the years to come, his war would embrace the deaths of 
thousands of American civilians. "The explosion in al-Khobar did not 
come as a direct reaction to the American occupation," he said, "but as 
a result of American behaviour against Muslims, its support of Jews in 
Palestine and of the massacres of Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon – of 
Sabra and Chatila and Qana – and of the Sharm el-Sheikh conference."
But what Bin Laden really wanted to talk about was Saudi Arabia. Since 
our last meeting in Sudan, he said, the situation in the kingdom had 
grown worse. The ulema, the religious leaders, had declared in the 
mosques that the presence of American troops was not acceptable and the 
government took action against these ulema "on the advice of the 
Americans". For Bin Laden, the betrayal of the Saudi people began 24 
years before his birth, when Abdul Aziz al-Saud proclaimed his kingdom 
in 1932. "The regime started under the flag of applying Islamic law and 
under this banner all the people of Saudi Arabia came to help the Saud 
family take power. But Abdul Aziz did not apply Islamic law; the country 
was set up for his family. Then after the discovery of petroleum, the 
Saudi regime found another support – the money to make people rich and 
to give them the services and life they wanted and to make them 
satisfied." Bin Laden was picking away at his teeth with that familiar 
twig of mishwak wood, but history – or his version of it – was the basis 
of almost all his remarks. The Saudi royal family had promised sharia 
laws while at the same time allowing the United States "to Westernise 
Saudi Arabia and drain the economy". He blamed the Saudi regime for 
spending $25bn in support of Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war and a 
further $60bn in support of the Western armies in the 1991 war against 
Iraq, "buying military equipment which is not needed or useful for the 
country, buying aircraft by credit" while at the same time creating 
unemployment, high taxes and a bankrupt economy. But for Bin Laden, the 
pivotal date was 1990, the year Saddam invaded Kuwait. "When the 
American troops entered Saudi Arabia, the land of the two Holy places, 
there was a strong protest from the ulema and from students of sharia 
law all over the country against the interference of American troops. 
This big mistake by the Saudi regime of inviting the American troops 
revealed their deception. They were giving their support to nations 
which were fighting against Muslims."
Bin Laden paused to see if I had listened to his careful, if 
frighteningly exclusive history lesson. "The Saudi people have 
remembered now what the ulema told them and they realise America is the 
main reason for their problems... the ordinary man knows that his 
country is the largest oil producer in the world yet at the same time he 
is suffering from taxes and bad services. Now the people understand the 
speeches of the ulemas in the mosques – that our country has become an 
American colony. What happened in Riyadh and al-Khobar is clear evidence 
of the huge anger of Saudi people against America. The Saudis now know 
their real enemy is America." The overthrow of the Saudi regime and the 
eviction of US forces from the kingdom were one and the same for Bin 
Laden. He was claiming that the real religious leadership of Saudi 
Arabia – among whom he clearly saw himself – was an inspiration to 
Saudis, that Saudis themselves would drive out the Americans, that 
Saudis – hitherto regarded as a rich and complacent people – might 
strike at the United States. Could this be true?
Bin Laden sometimes stopped speaking for all of 60 seconds in order to 
reflect on his words. Most Arabs, faced with a reporter's question, 
would say the first thing that came into their heads for fear that they 
would appear ignorant if they did not. Bin Laden was different. He was 
alarming because he was possessed of that quality which leads men to 
war: total self-conviction.
Bin Laden had asked me – a routine of every Palestinian under occupation 
– if Europeans did not resist occupation during the Second World War. I 
told him no Europeans would accept this argument over Saudi Arabia – 
because the Nazis killed millions of Europeans yet the Americans had 
never murdered a single Saudi. Such a parallel was historically and 
morally wrong. Bin Laden did not agree. "We as Muslims have a strong 
feeling that binds us together... We feel for our brothers in Palestine 
and Lebanon... When 60 Jews are killed inside Palestine" – he was 
talking about Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel – "all the world 
gathers within seven days to criticise this action, while the deaths of 
600,000 Iraqi children did not receive the same reaction." It was Bin 
Laden's first reference to Iraq and to the United Nations sanctions that 
were to result, according to UN officials themselves, in the death of 
more than half a million children. "Killing those Iraqi children is a 
crusade against Islam," Bin Laden said. "We, as Muslims, do not like the 
Iraqi regime but we think that the Iraqi people and their children are 
our brothers and we care about their future." It was the first time I 
heard him use the word "crusade".
***
For some time, there had been a steadily growing thunderstorm to the 
east of Bin Laden's camp and we could see the bright orange flash of 
lightning over the mountains on the Pakistan border. But Bin Laden 
thought this might be artillery fire, the continuation of the 
inter-mujahedin battles that had damaged his spirit after the 
anti-Soviet war. He was growing uneasy. He broke off his conversation to 
pray. Then, on the straw mat, several young and armed men served dinner 
– plates of yoghurt and cheese and Afghan naan bread and more tea. Bin 
Laden sat between his sons, silent, eyes on his food.
I said to Bin Laden that Afghanistan was the only country left to him 
after his exile in Sudan. He agreed. "The safest place in the world for 
me is Afghanistan." It was the only place, I repeated, in which he could 
campaign against the Saudi government. Bin Laden and several of his Arab 
fighters burst into laughter. "There are other places," he replied. Did 
he mean Tajikistan? I asked. Or Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan? "There are 
several places where we have friends and close brothers – we can find 
refuge and safety in them." I told Bin Laden he was already a hunted 
man. "Danger is a part of our life," he snapped back.
He began talking to his men about amniya, security, and repeatedly 
looked towards those flashes in the sky. Now the thunder did sound like 
gunfire. I tried to ask one more question. What kind of Islamic state 
would Bin Laden wish to see? Would thieves and murderers still have 
their hands or heads cut off in his Islamic sharia state, just as they 
do in Saudi Arabia today? There came an unsatisfactory reply. "Islam is 
a complete religion for every detail of life. If a man is a real Muslim 
and commits a crime, he can only be happy if he is justly punished. This 
is not cruelty. The origin of these punishments comes from God through 
the Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him." Dissident Osama bin Laden may 
be, but moderate never. I asked permission to take his photograph, and 
while he debated this with his companions I scribbled into my notebook 
the words I would use in the last paragraph of my report on our meeting: 
"Osama bin Laden believes he now represents the most formidable enemy of 
the Saudi regime and of the American presence in the Gulf. Both are 
probably right to regard him as such." I was underestimating the man.
Yes, he said, I could take his picture. I opened my camera and allowed 
his armed guards to watch me as I threaded a film into the spool. 
Without warning, Bin Laden moved his head back and the faintest smile 
moved over his face, along with that self-conviction and that ghost of 
vanity which I found so disturbing. He called his sons Omar and Saad and 
they sat beside him as I took more pictures and Bin Laden turned into 
the proud father, the family man, the Arab at home.
Then his anxiety returned. The thunder was continuous now and it was 
mixed with the patter of rifle fire. I should go, he urged, and I 
realised that what he meant was that he must go, that it was time for 
him to return to the fastness of Afghanistan. When we shook hands, he 
was already looking for the guards who would take him away.
This is an edited extract from 'The Great War For Civilisation', by 
Robert Fisk, published by Harper Perennial (£13.99)
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-a-close-encounter-with-the-man-who-shook-the-world-2278035.html
-- 
Sostieni Rete ECO
http://rete-eco.it/it/sostienici.html

 American."
Insomma, un altro che voleva spiegare a qualcuno come si fa a essere 
veramente quel qualcuno.
Ammazzandolo.
-- 
*Sunspot*
Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish.

 Ammazzandolo.
Dal tuo punto di vista, dal suo punto di vista è diverso.


No.
Ci sono concetti di valore universale.
Come ad esempio che Persio sia un altro pirla che sta rodendosi molto per
la prematura fine di un soldato della fede (ma non quella responsabile del
9/11)
-- 
Io non gufo l'Inter. Le spacco le corna.

 wrote:

e quale sito complottista scrive che OBL è responsabile dell'11/9,
visto che non era per questo ricercato dall'FBI?

 9/11)
Perché dovrei rodermi?  Ho sempre sostenuto che AQ ha offerto 
all'imperialismo americano le motivazioni che gli occorrevano per 
dispiegarsi con la massima efficacia.
Scomparso OBL si spera che il promesso nuovo inizio nei rapporti tra 
occidente e mondo islamico divenga più facilmente raggiungibile.
Tu piuttosto mi sembri un po' nervoso. Temi forse che la distensione dei 
rapporti, la fine dello "scontro di civiltà", la diminuzione dei 
conflitti, ti privi della possibilità di continuare a tifare per la tua 
squadra?
Già, mi rendo conto che può essere un problema: che fa un hooligan 
quando il campionato finisce se non ridiventare un anonimo signor nessuno?


 quando il campionato finisce se non ridiventare un anonimo signor nessuno?
ci sono sempre i nazisti dell'Illinois....