PART TWO : THE BATTLE OF TORA BORA THE RISE OF al-Qaeda al-sulbah (THE SOLID BASE). JAJI and TORA BORA A LEGEND IS BORN.

Above bin Laden being positively reported on in the above-shown article by Robert Fisk on Monday 6, December 1993. In those days he was a "hero" and a "moderate".

Afghan mujahideen being hailed by Ronald Reagan as "heroes" and "freedom fighters", today they are the Taliban.

AL QAEDA’S STRATEGY OF UNIFICATION (1989–2001).

What follows is from (History of Terror):

"Any number of theories have been advanced as to the origins of the name Qaeda (the base), from a reference to a computer file revealing the identities of Arab veterans of the Afghanistan conflict (the database), to Osama bin Laden's alleged high-tech headquarters, deep in the mountains of Afghanistan (the secret base), drawings of which—impressive though entirely fictitious—were produced by the American media when U.S. operations began in October 2001.

The name al-Qaeda, which instantly became the focus of media attention following the August 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, had long had mythical status. Osama bin Laden himself had contributed to the mystery surrounding the name by never uttering it prior to the events of September11. The groups leaders, in their internal communications, usually referred to it as the society, an intentionally neutral appellation.

In fact, it was Abdallah Azzam who had named the organization. In 1988, at the first signs of a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Azzam decided that he would not disband the army of Arab volunteers he had created four years earlier but would use it to undertake a much vaster mission—the reconquest of the Muslim world.

To that end, he needed a standing vanguard of fighters to serve as

leaders of the umma. He coined the term al-qaeda al-sulbah (the solid base) for this, which was also the headline of an editorial he wrote in issue number 41 of al-Jihad, published in April 1988. The article stated:

Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward that is willing, while integrating into society, to undertake difficult tasks and make tremendous sacrifices. No ideology, celestial or earthly, can do without such a vanguard, which gives its all to ensure victory. It is the standard bearer.

on an endless and difficult path until it reaches its destination, as

it is the will of God that it do so. It is al-Qaeda al-sulbah that constitutes this vanguard for the hoped-for society".

Two events cemented bin Laden's myth in the minds of admirer's and follower's alike 1The Battle of Jaji and 2The Battle of Tora Bora. First I will highlight Jaji, Tora Bora came shortly after 9/11, when Bush was intent on bringing in Osama "dead or alive", evoking the tough talk of the border frontier sheriff's of his native Texas. 

MUKUB the acronym of bin Laden's organization according to History of Terror : "The group’s four main offices were located, respectively, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia

and Iran, the latter headed by close associates of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,who in 1999 was bin Ladens principal Afghan supporter.

The second group, better known as the House of Martyrs  (Beit al-

Shuhada), was based in Islamabad. It continued to publish al-Jihad magazine,albeit on a less regular basis, and was headed by two Jordanians of Palestinian origin, Mahmoud Said Salah Azzam, aka Abu Adil—AbdallahAzzam’s nephew—and Abu Aris, a Jordanian Palestinian who had been Azzam’s assistant. Both of them had conflicted relationships with bin Laden. Another of their associates was Boujemah Bunnua, aka Abdallah, Azzam’s son-in-law. The group was dismantled in 1995 by the Pakistani authorities, which suspected it of having helped Ramzi Yussef flee the United States for Pakistan and of having provided assistance

to the perpetrators of the Egyptian embassy bombing. As a result,

it relocated to Afghanistan, and publication of al-Jihad ceased.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was the pretext for American retrenchment , in Iraq and the broader ME. It was also the pivot, for Osama and most in the Islamist movement. America became the new enemy, replacing the "atheist Soviet Union". 

As a result of the Iraqi invasion, the Saudis were in imminent danger, resultantly America the al-Saud ally put, "boots on the ground" there. Osama was opposed to the presence of "Christian" troops on the soil of Saudi Arabia aka, "The Land of the Two Holy places". For Osama and many who believed as he did, the mere presence of foreign troops and "infidels" at that, constituted an outright violation of Islamic tenets and was a desecration of the land of the prophet Muhammed. The presence of American troops placed in Saudi Arabia, was a humiliation for not only Islamist's but many so-called "moderate", Muslim's throughout the Muslim community globally shared that sentiment. The situation was poignantly summed up in (History of Terror): "The United States, having thus humiliated all Muslims, became their principal enemy, inasmuch as it was deemed responsible for the Saudi authorities corruption and apostasy."

In a fatwa issued in August 1996, he said that: "the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. ’ 

Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajakestan, Burma, Cashmere, Assam, Philippine,Fatani, Ogadin, Somalia, Erithria, Chechnia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watched and heard, and not only didnt respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves".

Above bin Laden inside his Tora Bora cave. The following is qouted from the Telegraph: "He wanted media exposure," Mr Atwan said. "He wants to say, 'Now I am an international figure; I'm not just a Saudi. I am aggrieved at Americans who are occupying Saudi Arabia who are desecrating the Holy Land".

Picture: U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. The ubiquitous Kalishnikov is that came to characterize bin Laden's pictures and many of his comrades who fought in the Soviet-Afghan war is present in this photo too. Bin Laden claimed that his was taken from a Russian general. Jonathan Randal said of Osama in his book "Osama: The Making Of A Terrorist" that: "He (Osama) was chosen by the Arab volunteers as emir or prince of the Afghan Arabs". "Osama's name a friend remembered was on every Saudi boy's lips".  Osama's myth was being cemented even further now that he had, the western media as well as al-Jazeera at his beck and call. Here begins the telling of the Jaji affair. 

Bin Laden's first television interview - with CNN's Peter Arnett and Peter Bergen in 1997 .

Picture: U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

After Osama bin Laden left Sudan in the early 1990's he was on his second hijra (flight), that time he went to Afghanistan ."The situation in Afghanistan had changed since bin Ladens departure seven years earlier. The tribal factions fighting for control of the country,in the process plundering it and brutalizing the people, had since1994 been brought to heel by the Taliban (students of religion) movement.

The sons of Afghan refugees, Taliban members were educated in

Deobandi madrassas. Indeed, the Pakistani intelligence services, with the tacit approval of the Saudi and U.S. authorities, had promoted the creation of a new Muslim army charged with restoring internal security in

Afghanistan, as had happened ten years earlier with Arab volunteers.

Arriving in Kabul in May 1996, bin Laden was welcomed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had taken charge of some of MUKUB's activities following the 1989 assassination of its founder, Abdallah Azzam.

Hekmatyar, the principal spokesman for the Arab fighters, who had just reached an agreement with his long-standing enemy, Commander Massoud, was preparing to assume the post of prime minister. On August 26 bin Laden issued his first fatwa from Afghanistan—a final warning to the American forces to leave Saudi Arabia". 

Mullah Omar's Taliban controlled roughly 80% of Afghanistan. Omar had seemingly "fallen under Osama's spell",  emir (prince) Osama built a palace for Mullah Omar, provided him with cash and enormous amounts of cash and a fleet of expenxive black SUV's the same type that the CIA used in Afghanistan at the time. Osama's influence began to grow in ever expanding circles, so much so, to the point that high ranking Taliban, began to fear that he was controlling, Mullah Omar instead of Omar controlling him. It was that outsized influence that was responsible for the Bamiyan Buddha's, which paved the way for the ultra-Salafist group led by Abu Musab az-Zarqawi pledging baya (fealty or allegiance),  to bin Laden . Zarqawi's group would eventually become  al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), indicative of the fact that the group's leader had officially pledged his fealty to bin Laden along with the majority of his fighter's, of course the group became the Islamic State in Sham/Syria (ISIS) and Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL), the by now infamous group now known as the Islamic State constantly credit's bin laden as being a patriarch of the movement along with Zarqawi and others. Out of al-Qaeda came IS and out of IS no one knows what will emerge, from every indication what could emerge is a terror organization that will be far more more terrible than it's predecessor. 

What follows is from WHC Unesco.org:

Enclosed between the high mountains of the Hindu Kush in the central highlands of Afghanistan, the Bamiyan Valley opens out into a large basin bordered to the north by a long, high stretch of rocky cliffs. The Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley comprise a serial property consisting of eight separate sites within the Valley and its tributaries. Carved into the Bamiyan Cliffs are the two niches of the giant Buddha statues (55m and 38m high) destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, and numerous caves forming a large ensemble of Buddhist monasteries, chapels and sanctuaries along the foothills of the valley dating from the 3rd to the 5th century C.E. In several of the caves and niches, often linked by galleries, there are remains of wall paintings and seated Buddha figures. In the valleys of the Bamiyan's tributaries are further groups of caves including the Kakrak Valley Caves, some 3km south-east of the Bamiyan Cliffs where among the more than one hundred caves dating from the 6th to 13th centuries are fragments of a 10m tall standing Buddha figure and a sanctuary with painted decorations from the Sasanian period. Along the Fuladi valley around 2km southwest of the Bamiyan Cliffs are the caves of Qoul-i Akram and Lalai Ghami, also containing decorative features.

Punctuating the centre of the valley basin to the south of the great cliff are the remains of the fortress of Shahr-i Ghulghulah. Dating from the 6th to 10th centuries CE, this marks the original settlement of Bamiyan as stopping place on the branch of the Silk Route, which linked China and India via ancient Bactria. Further to the east along the Bamiyan Valley are the remains of fortification walls and settlements, dating from the 6th to 8th centuries at Qallai Kaphari A and B and further east still (around 15km east of the Bamiyan Cliffs) at Shahr-i Zuhak, where the earlier remains are overlaid by developments of the 10th to 13th centuries under the rule of the Islamic Ghaznavid and Ghorid dynasties.

The Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley represent the artistic and religious developments which from the 1st to the 13th centuries characterised ancient Bactria, integrating various cultural influences into the Gandharan school of Buddhist art. The numerous Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries, as well as fortified structures from the Islamic period testify to the interchange of Indian, Hellenistic, Roman, Sasanian and Islamic influences. The site is also testimony to recurring reactions to iconic art, the most recent being the internationally condemned deliberate destruction of the two standing Buddha statues in March 2001.

After the destruction of the two colossal statues bin Laden issued a personal congratulation to Mullah Omar: "Highly esteemed leader of the faithful I pray to God that after having granted you victory over the deaf, blind and mute false gods, he will grant you victory over the living false gods". Osama characterized the UN as "iniquitous" and condemed the UN as a "new false god", he styated that the UN's "prophet's", could be found in the General Assembly and that the laws of the UN were counter to Islamic law (sharia). The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas were a great diplomatic and spiritual victory for the Taliban since centuries earlier, successive Muslim emir's, had tried unsuccessfully to destroy them, the Taliban in destroying them in contemporary times, saw themselves as carrying on manifest destiny, of the triumph of Islam over all "infidel", faith's.  The path of confrontation military, with America was irrecovably set for Osama and his associates and Islamism in general, after the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and elsewhere in the US. Days after Kabul fell Osama bin Laden was still there, Hamid Mir interviewed bin Laden in those day's. By 14th November bin Laden was in Jalalabad, encouraging the mujahideen in the struggle. Peter Bergen wrote in his "The Account of How We Nearly Caught Osama bin Laden in 2001",  that : Abdullah Tabarak, a Moroccan who is alleged to be one of bin Laden’s bodyguards, reportedly told interrogators that, "during the month of Ramadan, which began on November 17, bin Laden and his top deputy, Egyptian surgeon Ayman Al Zawahiri, left Jalalabad and headed about 30 miles south. Their destination was Tora Bora, a series of mountain caves near the Pakistani border. Berntsen’s team remained one step behind them, for now". (Berntsen was a CIA officer tasked with tracking bin Laden with a team of operatives). 

Upon learning that bin Laden was in Tora Bora, the CIA and the Special Ops team and their Afghan allies pulled out all stops in their attempts to kill him. 

"As the fighting got underway, bin Laden initially sought to project an easy confidence to his men. Abu Bakr, a Kuwaiti who was at Tora Bora, said that, early in the battle, he saw bin Laden at the checkpoint he was manning. The Al Qaeda leader sat with some of his foot soldiers for half an hour, drinking a cup of tea and telling them, “Don’t worry. Don’t lose your morale, and fight strong. I’m here. I’m always asking about you guys.” (Peter Bergen).

"But, despite Al Qaeda’s arsenal of rockets, tanks, machine guns, and artillery, its position was becoming perilous. At altitudes of up to 14,000 feet above sea level, Tora Bora’s thin air provides a tough environment at any time of year—and, in December, temperatures drop to well below zero at night. As the battle raged in the mountains, snow was falling steadily. What’s more, it was Ramadan, and the ultra-religious members of Al Qaeda were likely observing the fast from dawn to dusk. Meanwhile, U.S. bombs rained down on the snow-covered peaks unceasingly, preventing sleep. Between December 4 and 7 alone, U.S. bombers dropped 700,000 pounds of ordnance on the mountains".
Osama gave an al-Jazeera interview in 2003, he claimed that : "on the morning of December 3, heavy U.S. bombing began around the clock, with B-52s dropping some 20 to 30 bombs each. “American forces were bombing us by smart bombs that weigh thousands of pounds and bombs that penetrate caves".
"On December 9, a U.S. plane dropped an immense BLU-82 bomb on Al Qaeda’s positions. Known as a Daisy Cutter, the 15,000-pound bomb was used in the Gulf war to clear minefields.  “We came right in behind it with B-52s,” he says. “Like three or four of them. ... Each of them has twenty-five five-hundred-pounders, so everything goes in there. Killed a lot of people. A lot of bad guys.” That night"  (CIA operative Berntsen previously mentioned).

Al Qaeda member Abu Jaafar Al Kuwaiti and others “were awakened to the sound of massive and terrorizing explosions very near to us.” The following day, he later recounted on an Al Qaeda website, he “received the horrifying news” that the “trench of Sheik Osama had been destroyed.”

But bin Laden was not dead. A subsequent account on an Al Qaeda website offered an explanation of how he saved himself: Bin Laden had dreamed about a scorpion descending into one of the trenches that his men had dug, so he evacuated his trench. A day or so later, it was destroyed by a bomb.

That afternoon, American signals operators picked up bin Laden speaking to his followers. Fury kept a careful log of these communications in his notebook, which he would type up at the end of every day and pass up his chain of command. “The time is now,” bin Laden said. “Arm your women and children against the infidel!” Following several hours of high-intensity bombing, the Al Qaeda leader spoke again. Fury paraphrases: “Our prayers have not been answered. Times are dire. We didn’t receive support from the apostate nations who call themselves our Muslim brothers.” Bin Laden apologized to his men for having involved them in the fight and gave them permission to surrender.
Khalid Al Hubayshi, one of the Saudis holed up in Tora Bora, says that bin Laden’s aides instructed the hundreds of mostly Arab fighters who remained alive in the mountainous complex to head to Pakistan and turn themselves in to their embassies.
Abdullah Tabarak, the Moroccan who was allegedly one of bin Laden’s bodyguards, says that the top leaders of Al Qaeda separated as they made their escape to Pakistan. Ayman Al Zawahiri left the mountainous redoubt with Uthman, one of bin Laden’s eleven sons. Osama fled with another of his sons, 18-year-old Muhammad, accompanied by his guards. Tabarak continued to use bin Laden’s satellite phone as the Al Qaeda leader escaped, on the reasonable assumption that it was being monitored by U.S. intelligence.
By December 17, the battle of Tora Bora was over. Fury estimated that there were some 220 dead militants and 52 captured fighters—mostly Arabs, as well as a dozen Afghans, and a sprinkling of Chechens and Pakistanis.

The following are diverse accounts of Osama bin Laden from his son Omar, to reporter's like Peter Bergen and some US intelligence operatives. 

"Again, with the caves, they weren't these crazy mazes or labyrinths of caves that they described. Most of them were natural caves. Some were supported with some pieces of wood maybe about the size of a 10-foot by 24-foot room, at the largest. They weren't real big. I know they made a spectacle out of that, and how are we going to be able to get into them? We worried about that too, because we see all these reports. Then it turns out, when you actually go up there, there's really just small bunkers, and a lot of different ammo storage is up there. – Jeff, Staff Sgt. ODA 572.

 Matthew Forney (December 11, 2001) describing Osama's caves. "Inside the Tora Bora Caves". Time magazine. December 21, 2009. For the first time, the infamous man-made caves of Tora Bora were thrown open. These weren't the five-star accommodations with internal hydroelectric power plants and brick-lined walls, areas to drive armored tanks and children's tricycles, and tunnels like capillaries that have captured the world's imagination. Such commodious quarters might exist higher in the White Mountains, but these were simply rough bunkers embedded deep into the mountain. They were remarkable nonetheless.

"Omar's early childhood is both charmed and abusive. Though the family inhabited a mansion in the Saudi city of Jeddah and owned horse ranches in the desert, their father refused to let them have toys, take modern medicine or use almost any modern conveniences except for light bulbs, automobiles and firearms. Though Osama would punish his boys for laughing or smiling and send them on forced marches in the desert without water, Omar and his brothers could at least console themselves with the honor of being sons of the man who helped defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, a hero in both the Muslim world and the West. "When I was a young boy, I worshipped my father, whom I believed to be not only the most brilliant, but also the tallest man in the world," Omar writes. "I would have to go to Afghanistan to meet a man taller than my father. In truth, I would have to go to Afghanistan to truly come to know my father." TIME Magazine.

Tora Bora being bombarded by the American Airforce.

A severe and fierce bombardment began...not one second passed without warplanes hovering over our heads...[America] exhausted all efforts to blow up and annihilate this tiny spot – wiping it out altogether...Despite all this, we blocked their daily attacks, sending them back defeated, bearing their dead and wounded. And not once did American forces dare storm our position, what clearer proof of their cowardice, fear and lies concerning the myth of their alleged power is there?! ”

— Osama bin Laden, 2002

Matthew Forney of Time Magazine reported on December 11, 2001 that the allied forces did not find massive bunkers but small outposts and a few minor training camps. He said reporters were allowed to see the "rough bunkers" deep in the mountains were still "remarkable." 

In his book Jawbreaker (2005), Berntsen said that his team had pinpointed bin Laden's location.[page needed] He wrote that a number of al-Qaeda detainees later confirmed that bin Laden had escaped into Pakistan via an easterly route through snow-covered mountains to the area of Parachinar, Pakistan. He believed that bin Laden could have been captured at the time if the United States Central Command had committed the troops which Berntsen had requested. In a 2005 interview, the former CIA officer Gary Schroen concurred with Berntsen's opinion. Pentagon documents suggest bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora. 

Bin Laden as the "mystic aesthetic mountain hermit" and cave dweller, invoking by his life in the mind's of  Muslim's everywhere imagery of the life of  Muhammed the Prophet of Islam . 

Abu Musab al-Suri a writer sympathetic to Osama. 

During his interview on 60 Minutes to discuss his book, Fury said that his team saw a group whom they believed to be bin Laden and his bodyguards entering a cave. The team called down several bombing attacks on the site, and believed that they had killed bin Laden. Six months later, US and Canadian forces returned and checked several caves in the area, finding remains of al-Qaeda fighters, but not of bin Laden. Fury thought that bin Laden was injured during the bombing of the cave, but was hidden, given medical care, and assisted out of the area into Pakistan by allied local Afghans.

After his 'miraculous" escape from death on Tora Bora, a resolute bin Laden was shuttled to safety by allied Afghan tribes paid handsomely in rifles and cash, from there he made his way into Pakistan. After his escape he mocked the US government with these words: "  being the gretest economic power, possessing the most up-to date military in the world" , yet it failed to prevent the "blessed operation", in New York on 9/11.

"In his book Jawbreaker (2005), Berntsen said that his team had pinpointed bin Laden's location . He wrote that a number of al-Qaeda detainees later confirmed that bin Laden had escaped into Pakistan via an easterly route through snow-covered mountains to the area of Parachinar, Pakistan". 

" Mashal told me, based on information he gleaned from radio intercepts, that "the Sheikh," as bin Laden is called by his supporters, departed Tora Bora in the first week of the American bombing campaign in that region, at the beginning of December 2001. According to Mashal, this information has been confirmed by Abu Jaffar, a Saudi financier who traveled to Afghanistan shortly before 9/11 with $3 million in charitable donations for al-Qaeda. Abu Jaffar, a fat middle-aged man with an amputated leg who described himself as an old friend of bin Laden's, told Mashal that once bin Laden had reached Jalalabad, he arranged for safe passage out of Afghanistan with the help of local tribal leaders.
Mashal told me that there were three routes out of Tora Bora. The young and the energetic took the difficult, snow-covered passes south toward Parachinar. Others took the road to the southeastern Afghan city of Gardez. Older fighters headed east into Pakistan. According to Mashal, bin Laden took the Parachinar route, aided by members of the Pashtun Ghilzai tribe, who were paid handsomely in money and rifles for their efforts. And so was lost the last, best chance to capture al-Qaeda's leader, at a time when he was confined to an area of several dozen square miles. Bin Laden may now be somewhere in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province—and if so, the area involved is approximately 40,000 square miles, a largely mountainous tract the size of Virginia".

References:

"The "Mother Of All Bombs" - how the US plans to pulverise Iraq". openDemocracy. 2003-03-07. Retrieved 2014-01-18.

"Guardian". Guardian. 2001-12-11. Retrieved 2014-01-18.

Grant, Rebecca. "Air Force Magazine". Airforcemag.com. Retrieved 2014-01-18.

"ABC News". Abcnews.go.com. Retrieved 2014-01-18.

Rothkopf, David. "Foreign Policy". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 2014-01-18.

Biddle, Stephen D. Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare Implications for Army and Defense Policy. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002.

Ibrahim, Raymond. The al-Qaeda Reader, 2007. p. 245

 Krause, Peter John Paul. The Last Good Chance: A Reassessment of U.S. Operations at Tora Bora. Security Studies, Volume 17, p. 644-684, 2008.

 Efran, Shawn (producer), "Army Officer Recalls Hunt For Bin Laden", 60 Minutes, CBS News, October 5, 2008

 Fury, Dalton. Kill bin Laden, p. 233, 2008.

 Burke, Jason. Guantánamo Bay files rewrite the story of Osama bin Laden's Tora Bora escape. The Guardian, 25 April 2011.

 "Yemeni describes bloody siege on Al Qaida". Gulf News. September 8, 2007. Retrieved September 11, 2007. A doctor who treated wounded Al Qaida fighters in Afghanistan's Tora Bora has said Osama Bin Laden was in the mountains as coalition troops attacked.

 Laura King. Fighting erupts in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains between NATO, insurgent forces Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2010.

 "Senate Report Explores 2001 Escape by bin Laden From Afghan Mountains", New York Times, November 28, 2009

 Bergen, Peter (2009-12-22). "The Battle for Tora Bora: The Definitive Account of How Osama Bin Laden Slipped From Our Grasp | New Republic".