Who Killed Daniel Pearl (38 page)

A word about the readings from the Koran in Arabic. No one at Khalid bin Waleed speaks Arabic? It's true. The language of paradise is not Arabic but Urdu, or Punjabi, or Kashmiri, the vernacular languages of the illiterates that the camps produce in droves. Of course there are camps—those of the Lashkar e-Toïba—where the fighters have spent some time in Pakistani public schools, know the rudiments of math and reading and have a basic command of English and Arabic. This is not the case of those under the aegis of the Deobandi organizations (at that time, the Harkat; today, the Jaish e-Mohammed), that draw on the grand
madrasas
of Peshawar and Karachi (Akora Khattak, Binori Town)—and so this is not the case at Khalid bin Waleed. No matter. For the fundamentalists, the point has never been to speak but to listen, not to understand, but merely to be present—I can picture dozens of men of all ages assembled before the hangars on the parade ground, just before dawn; I can see them listening in ecstasy, repeating, reciting a text of which they do not understand a word. Omar? Of course, he speaks Arabic. In any case, he studies it. In the house in Delhi, when Shah Sahab was tired of having him underfoot, didn't he tell him to “go to your room and study your Arabic”? And in the report of the interrogation, under the heading “languages spoken by the accused,” didn't he declare, “English, Urdu, Punjabi, French, and Arabic”? So he knows enough Arabic to follow the readings from the Koran. I would even be willing to bet it's the sole intellectual activity he has retained. And I suppose that also contributes to his influence over the others, his comrades and companions. I suppose that also explains his “command” over these peasants who speak only Urdu and Kashmiri.

What does “instructor” mean, then? How does the hierarchy work in a camp like Khalid bin Waleed? In general, what kind of hierarchy exists in the army of the jihad? What command structure? And ranks? What ranks? What, exactly, is Omar's status? Answer: emir. The only rank in the holy army is emir. Wherever there is a group, there is an emir. All powers belong to the emir, without recourse to discussion and without question (except questions the emir himself chooses to ask the assembly of scholars, the
jirga
, who meet at his request). So there are as many emirs as there are groups in the jihad. The only problem: what defines a group? How many men, starting from when, compose a group? A hundred? Ten? Two? In theory, in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, a group is simply more than one person—at two “holy warriors,” you are already a group. In practice, there appears to be an average—according to Mohammed Mehran, who studied the camp of Ma'askar at Mansehra in depth, there are around eight professors and instructors for fifty or so “holy warriors.” And what of Khalid bin Waleed? What kind of emir was Omar at Khalid bin Waleed? What level, what degree? When it is said that Omar was an “instructor” at Khalid bin Waleed, it means emir. But little or big emir? Reigning over a hundred, ten, or two fighters? Over the camp, or over his roommate? I don't know.

Omar religious? Pious Omar? Omar praying? For those who know him, that would be one hell of a surprise. For those who remember him at the Forest School and the London School, for Frank Pittal, who remembers their great conversations about Jews and Arabs, for Asad Khan who, on the trip to Bosnia, was surprised that Omar didn't come to pray with him more often, even for his friends from New Delhi, or for Rhys Partridge who saw with what aplomb he used the Koranic statute of “traveler” as a dispensation from prayer, for all those who, in a word, know what a modest place the idea of God has always occupied in Omar's life (although Peter Gee said, “He believes in the immortality of the soul ‘like an egg is an egg'”), the idea is borderline credible, and it's hard to imagine him steeped in piety, waiting for the Last Judgment. Am I worthy of God? Or unworthy? Nights going over and over in his mind his good and bad deeds? Not his style . . . And yet, at Khalid bin Waleed, there is no choice. An iron-clad religious discipline. Punishment, even corporal punishment, for those who fail to say their prayers, especially collectively, at the appointed hour. So Omar behaves like everyone else. He conforms. He is submissive. Either religious crisis, or, for the first time in his life, the feeling of belonging, and the obedience that goes with it. Or else, mere cynicism, and the belief that this is the way to gain power at Khalid bin Waleed.

Memory. The past. What does Omar do with his memory? How does he live, in the midst of all these coarse beings, with his past as a Westerner? The knowledge and the science he has had access to, are they an asset or a sin? Should he get rid of them, and if so, how? Cultivate them in secret, and why? Does someone in the company of the soldiers of God still have the right to his memory, or must he, like the Khmers Rouge of Cambodia and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, kill the “old man” in himself, to be cured of the malady of the past? Yes of course, the pattern of the Tigers and the Khmers Rouge. Yes of course, the past is a sin, memory is shame. Yes, in theory the jihadist, once trained, is assumed to be pure, newborn, immaculate, and as for the rest, it's forbidden to remember—forgive me my past, Allah! Forgive me for what has passed but is not entirely in the past. I suspect, however, that Omar is an exception and that, like a few jihadists of high rank, he plays both sides of the question: hate and love for the West; hide one's science and use it; deny it, but put it to service in fighting; support the common line that this knowledge is the source of all evil, but turn it around against the dogs who invented it; and, cleverer still—proof of the survival, in new clothing, of the Omar I know and of his cynicism—the temptation to create a leverage of distinction and influence, even amongst his brothers the jihadists. At least, this is the way I see him.

It's the same thing, I think, for the kamikaze tendencies of jihadism. Of course, not all jihadists are kamikazes. The Koran forbids suicide. This is clear when you read it closely, and when you read, in particular, the
suras
explaining that the distinctive feature of hell is that the soul of the damned to relive and repeat
ad infinitum
the scene of its last moments. And I think the “holy warrior,” even in his most impossible missions, is bound to try to fight until the last against destiny, to do everything he can to come out alive and escape death—I know that martyrdom is only valid if it is at once passionately desired and desperately averted; and that to find grace in God's eyes, it is particularly important not to claim to be the author of a decision that is God's alone; I know the paradox of the kamikaze who, in Islam, and in defiance of all custom, is literally constrained to disguise a suicide as a natural and violent death. Notwithstanding, the death wish of these men is evident. That they aspire to death, that they pray day after day, begging Allah to call them to his side, is obvious. What did I do wrong? prays the surviving jihadist. What crime did I commit, my God, for you to put off your welcome? The misery of old jihadists. The ageless, soulless face of the forty-year-old jihadist who realizes that, despite his prayers, death has forgotten him. And Omar? His place in this drama? How can one imagine the young and lively Omar in this game of one-upmanship, of victimization and expiation? Well, cynicism, yes. Double-, even triple-talk. Nihilistic phraseology, without a doubt. Perhaps, also, a display of braggadocio from one who, as in his arm-wrestling days, intends to be the best, one of the lucky ones, the chosen, who will have the supreme privilege, to bear the mark of honor and the right to cross over the “line of control,” the border between Pakistan and Kashmir, and become a combatant. In an article on the war in Kashmir, I read that there are five to six hundred thousand trained jihadists in Pakistan, among whom only a few thousand are engaged in active combat! But as for the rest, no, a solid will to survive.

The comrades of Omar? There are none.

Omar's sexuality? Like that of everyone in the world of the camps. Like Mohammed Atta, who had such an aversion to women that he stipulated in his will that they should be forbidden to approach his tomb and, what's more, when preparing his body for that tomb, from washing his genitals without wearing gloves. Latent homosexuality. Or, if not, perhaps no sexuality at all, pleasure is a sin, the purpose of relations with a woman is to procreate. Omar, at this time, if I take into account what I heard in London, has probably never slept with a woman. Omar, at this time, has never taken seriously a desire, an idea, a plan, that came from a woman. And since we can assume that nothing changed at the camps, or in Lahore at his uncle's, or later, in prison, we must conclude that when he meets his wife Sadia, he is a twenty-nine year old virgin. Is this a key to the psychology of Omar? A partial explanation of his mystery? Asexuality, and the will to purity that goes with it, as possible sources of the moral standards of the religion of fundamentalist crime? Frustration and morbid desire for the absolute as the double parameters of a new Mariotte's law—whereby the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to its pressure—applied to politics in extreme conditions? One has nothing to do with the other. But I remember, I cannot help but remember, a great French philosopher, Louis Althusser, still a virgin at thirty and who . . . No. Out of bounds, precisely. Because truly blasphemous. And too flattering to Omar.

Pictures of Omar during those days? Photos? The camps of Lashkar e-Toïba are the only ones that forbid photos. So I looked. I asked. Somewhere, there must be some photos. I did not find them.

Omar's family? The beloved father, the adored mother, both remaining in London, of whom he told Abdul Rauf, the first man to invite him to enlist, at Split, “I shall do nothing against their will . . . they decide everything . . . they are the ones to convince to allow me to become a holy warrior.” No more contact with the family. The jihadist believes he has the right to name 72 of the chosen—the same as the number of virgins waiting for him in paradise—to follow in his ascension. Perhaps Omar believes this. Perhaps he thinks, if he goes to paradise, he has a responsibility to give Saeed, Qauissia, and Awais a leg up.

Do jihadists change their names? Yes, of course they do.
Noms de
guerre.
Disappear from circulation, become invisible, undetectable, camouflage and erase oneself. But for religious reasons as well. Like the companions of Mohammed. One changes names as one converts. A new name, like a rebirth. Part of the initiation into the jihad. Omar changes names then, like the others, out of religious duty. And I know all of Omar's names, seventeen of his aliases. But I don't know one, so important, decisive: His secret name.

The making of a jihadist.

Geneology of a holy warrior.

The school of religious war and the academy of crime.

That's where I am. I am in the midst of reconstructions and speculations about the most obscure area of Omar's life. And I'm having my umpteenth discussion with Mohammed. Do you think Omar knew how to shoot? The place of homosexuality in the camps? Is it possible that he never fought at all? Letters—weren't there combatants who, if they wanted to, received mail from their families, from their friends? In other words, I'm trying to fill in the details, to sharpen my portrait of him, but I'm fully aware that it doesn't in the least help further my central preoccupation, which is, his ties to al-Qaida. I'm in the midst of biographical rumination, morbid daydreams, unanswered questions, futile and pathetic speculations—when, one morning, I realize where I should have started: Gul Aga Sherzaï, the colorful and terrifying governor of Kandahar. Wouldn't the simplest thing be to return to see Gul Aga Sherzaï, this old acquaintance dating from the time of my
Rapport Afghan
, and, incidentally, the boss of this city? Isn't he still, today, the best lead and, in any case, the only one left?

I leave for the Palace.

And I pray that no one had the unfortunate idea of waving under his nose the less than flattering pages I had devoted to him in the book.

CHAPTER 5
BIN LADEN'S FAVORED SON

Apparently no one did.

Because the Governor remembers our meeting only vaguely.

He does remember, it seems, our wild automobile rodeo through the streets of his good town: “Show me, Mr. Governor, that you're as popular as you say among your people!” And he, stung to the quick, mobilizes his personal guard, his ceremonial motorcycle escort, his all-new armored BMW motorcade, its windows riddled with bullets, sirens blaring, and takes Gilles Hertzog and me for a tour of Kandahar. At each stop Sherzaï's helmeted infantry charged into the frightened crowd, whip or revolver in hand, to convince a swarm of terrified children to come have their heads patted.

Mixing up everything, he confuses this demonstration of popularity, this sinister and muscular walkabout, with the probably identical event he had to organize three months later for his “friend” Ahmid Karzai the day of the attack that almost left Afghanistan without a president and Kandahar without a governor. He takes off his general's operetta cap and, laughing very hard, almost shouting while his aide-de-camp laughs and snaps stupidly to attention, Sherzaï shows me his swollen, bruised ear: “Look at this! Does Gul Aga have a lucky charm? Could a bullet get any closer? You remember, what nerves of steel!”

But of the scathing portrait I made of him upon my return to France—his listless face, his soul-dead eyes, his nasal voice, his physique like the character out of
Tintin
, General Alcazar, stuffed in his too-new uniform with its too-red decorations and his too-black moustache, hat too high, epaulettes too starched, of his low forehead pretending determination that was only the expression of obstinance, of his terrible and absurd rages, of his taste for pistachios which he gobbled incessantly, mechanically, during our meeting, of his cupidity—he knows, it seems, thankfully, nothing.