Blowback

SIXTY

Why would a major, internationally recognized Muslim spiritual figure be involved in a kidnapping?” asked Jillian once they were in the car and on their way back to Sion.

“I have no idea, but it’s important to note that Shia Muslims are the second-largest branch of Islam. It’s the Sunnis who make up the world’s majority of Muslims.”

“So?”

“So you don’t often see the two groups working together.”

Jillian turned in her seat and looked at him. “Who says they’re working together?”

“We came here looking for Rayburn. He’s the one who put together the hunt for Hannibal’s mysterious weapon. Once the weapon was found and made ready for modern use, everyone associated with it was killed, by an al-Qaeda assassin.”

“Or kidnapped. Emir might still be alive,” said Jillian.

“Fine,” replied Harvath, “but it’s no coincidence that both the Aga Khan and Rayburn are known to be in this village. The Aga Khan is the Shia connection, and Khalid Alomari is the Sunni. All of the al-Qaeda are Sunni.”

“What’s the difference, though? They’re all Muslims.”

“That’s not the way the Sunnis see it. To a good number of them, the Shia are even worse than Western infidel Christians. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” said Harvath. “Even holier-than-thou Muslim terrorists are prejudiced against other followers of Islam, but at this point nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to these people. As far as I’m concerned, there are only two kinds of Muslims in the world — good ones and bad ones. Other than that, I really don’t care. That’s not my department.”

“I still don’t understand why the distinction is important.”

“Most of the terrorism,” he tried to explain, “all that militant, radical fundamentalist Wahhabi crap out of Saudi Arabia, is Sunni. The only major Shia problem out there is the Iranians.”

“But if they all follow Islam, where does the acrimony come from?”

“Simple,” said Harvath. “Thirteen hundred years ago, the Prophet Muhammad died without leaving a will.”

“I don’t get it.”

Harvath turned up the air conditioning and said, “During his time, the Prophet Muhammad had created his own earthly kingdom or caliphate. After his death, his successors were known as caliphs, and it was their job to lead the worldwide Muslim community, or ummah. But after the fourth caliph, Ali, was assassinated in 661, a schism erupted between the Sunni and the Shia. The Sunnis believe that Muhammad had intended for the Muslim community to choose a successor, or caliph, by consensus to lead the caliphate, while the Shia believe that Muhammad had chosen his son-in-law, Ali, as his successor and that only the descendants of Ali and his wife, Fatima, were entitled to rule.”

“But what does any of this have to do with the Aga Khan?”

“Now we start drifting into the realm of the very interesting,” said Harvath as he signaled to change lanes. “The Aga Khan, as I’ve said, is Shia, and the Shia have a very esoteric interpretation of the Koran. They believe that beneath the explicit and literal levels is another level entirely, and it is on that level that all of the secrets of the universe are contained.”

“Including scientific secrets?” asked Jillian, anticipating where he was going.

“Yes, including scientific secrets.”

“What’s the likelihood that he was involved with the organization Emir was working for?”

“The Islamic Institute for Science and Technology?” replied Harvath. “Anything is possible. It takes a lot of money to fund the expeditions they were engaged in, and the Aga Khan has lots and lots of money. Not only that, but the specific type of expeditions they were conducting would fit very nicely with the Shia interpretation of the Koran.”

“Actually, any follower of Islamic science, Shia or Sunni, believes that the Koran contains the keys to the mysteries of the universe.”

“True,” stated Harvath, “but it’s the fact that the Sunni and Shia seem to be working together at such a high level on this that is so interesting. Maybe using Islamic science to rid the world of nonbelievers is the first thing both camps have ever been able to come together and agree on.”

“That could be,” said Jillian, “but then how does al-Qaeda fit into all this? I see what you mean, at least with the Aga Khan being involved, there is cooperation from at least one camp at a very high level, but who are the high-level operators on the Sunni side? Al-Qaeda? They’ve always struck me as nothing more than narrow-minded thugs. They’re just terrorists.”

Jillian was right, but there was a piece of the puzzle that she didn’t have. “There is a theory in Western intelligence circles,” said Harvath, “and it has been regularly dismissed as being too far-fetched, but the theory is that there is somebody very far removed from the al-Qaeda organization who pulls their strings. I’m starting to think that theory might hold some water.”

“Someone above bin Laden?”

“Above bin Laden and beyond Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s second in command, whom many believe is a lot smarter than bin Laden and could even be the real head of al-Qaeda.”

“But that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?”

“No. You see, during the Afghan war, there was a Soviet KGB agent obsessed with bin Laden. He studied everything he could about him and the burgeoning al-Qaeda organization. Right before the collapse of the Soviet Union, he defected to Great Britain. As these people do, he tried to make himself look as valuable as possible to his new host country. Contained within the intelligence he brought with him were his views and hypotheses about bin Laden and al-Qaeda. At the time, a good portion of that intelligence was seen as pretty fantastic. I mean, bin Laden had been nothing more than a really nasty thorn in the side of the Soviets. The West was on bin Laden’s side back then. We wanted them to cream the Red Army and we helped train and equip them to do so. In hindsight, we probably trained them too well.

“Fast forward seven years, and you have the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, followed by the USS Cole bombing in Yemen two years later. Then of course there’s September eleventh, and all of a sudden, al-Qaeda cells are popping up all over Britain. Now, the Brits were looking for anything and everything they could get their hands on about bin Laden and al-Qaeda. So, what would you imagine floats back up to the surface?”

“All of the files from the KGB defector,” replied Jillian.

“Exactly. This is in part where it starts really coming together. The ex — KGB person, we’ll call him Yuri, hasn’t given up his passion for bin Laden just because he’s the newest citizen of merry old England. On the contrary, he really sees a growing threat in al-Qaeda and predicted long before anyone else that bin Laden was going to go global in a very big, very bad way.

“Yuri took classes at Oxford about all things Islamic and wrote lengthy letters to his case officer at MI6 about why England needed to take the bin Laden threat seriously. Of course, at that time, nobody saw any need to listen to Yuri, and so his letters were buried along with the rest of his intel. Then Yuri made a big mistake.”

“Which was?”

“He had unapproved contact with someone active in the espionage community. That’s one thing a host country absolutely will not tolerate. They put a roof over your head, and in exchange you give them your old team’s playbook and you hang up your spikes. You do not put your spikes back on unless your hosts tell you to.”

“So who was he talking to?” asked Jillian.

“The man was a floater. He worked for several different governments, none of whom the British were too fond of. Yuri claimed the man was just an old friend whom he was talking to for a book he wanted to write about bin Laden, but the powers that be at MI6 didn’t give a damn. He broke the rules, and he got the boot for it. It was Sweden who finally took him in,” said Harvath.

“Interesting,” replied Jillian, “but what does that have to do with the idea that someone is pulling al-Qaeda’s strings?”

“Yuri believed that al-Qaeda was a front.”

Jillian looked at him. “A front? A front for what?”

“What do you know about the beginnings of al-Qaeda?” he asked.

“Not much. I know that bin Laden fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and that when he returned home to Saudi Arabia he was extremely unhappy with the Saudi Royal Family. Somehow al-Qaeda came from all of that.”

“Their roots go a lot deeper and cover a piece of terrorism history most people are unfamiliar with. You see, when the Soviet Union invaded predominantly Muslim Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden was one of the thousands of devout Muslims who heeded the call to help repel the invasion. As the son of one of the wealthiest men in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden brought with him quite a sizable bank account, and it’s here that we get to the part that a lot of people don’t know about.

“Along with a man by the name of Sheik Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden founded the Maktab al-Khidamat, or Offices of Services, in 1984. It served as a recruiting and command center for the international Muslim brigade that fought throughout Afghanistan.

“It’s rumored that the MAK trained, equipped, and financed anywhere between ten thousand and fifty thousand mujahideen, or holy warriors, from more than fifty countries. The MAK had offices around the globe, including Europe and even in the United States. Bin Laden’s fame grew like wildfire throughout the Islamic world, and soon all sorts of interesting people were coming to see him. One of these visitors, according to Yuri, began to mold bin Laden’s vision of what he could do on a worldwide basis.”

“You’re saying he was manipulated?” asked Alcott.

“That’s too crass a word. It was much more elegant than that. His fervor was already there. It was just a matter of directing it. What’s important, though, is that toward the end of the decade-long Soviet-Afghan conflict, a rift started to develop between bin Laden and Azzam. Azzam wanted the MAK to focus its efforts solely on Afghanistan, but bin Laden increasingly wanted to focus on this new idea of ‘global’ jihad. He had come to believe that not only was jihad a personal responsibility, but all Muslims were honor bound to establish true Islamic rule in their own countries by any means necessary, even violence. Concepts like democracy and the separation between church and state were anathema to him.”

“Which immediately made the United States and the rest of the West enemies of Islam,” said Jillian.

Harvath nodded his head in agreement. “With the help of the aforementioned outside influence, bin Laden began sketching out rough plans for his global al-Qaeda organization in 1987, but he couldn’t bring himself to split with Azzam and the MAK, no matter how divergent their ideas. Over the next several months, bin Laden held many meetings with a certain shadowy international figure who, according to Yuri, urged him to go his own way, but bin Laden either couldn’t or wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t until the next year, when Azzam was assassinated under very mysterious circumstances, that al-Qaeda broke off from the MAK and threw down the gauntlet to the rest of the world.”

“You said that al-Qaeda was being used as a front. For what?”

“To ignite global jihad,” replied Harvath, “and overthrow any apostate regimes in Arab or Muslim countries they see as corrupt or anti-Islamic.”

“And what would they replace those regimes with?” asked Alcott.

“From what I understand, a single Muslim government strictly ruled by sharia — the religious and moral principles of Islam — the law of the Muslim land so to speak. Essentially what they want to see created is another Muslim caliphate. One nation, under Allah, headed by a caliph who would be the recognized leader of the entire Islamic world.”

“So bin Laden wants to rule the world. Big surprise.”

Harvath shook his head. “Bin Laden’s not smart enough to be caliph. He might be the movement’s emir-general, providing operational and tactical management, but for all intents and purposes he’s nothing more than a Koran thumper, a zealot. He has some useful skills, but not what it would take to run an empire. He’s too wrapped up in the fundamentalism. He’s nothing more than an extremely clever bully. Once all of the crusader infidels have been driven from the Muslim holy lands and all of the apostate regimes have been disposed of, who would run this new, unified Muslim dynasty he has helped bring to life? Who would be caliph?”

Jillian had never thought about that before. In fact, she had never thought that bin Laden and his organization were anything more than that — bin Laden and his organization, much less that they would ever succeed in achieving their goals. In her mind, al-Qaeda was enough of a terrifying handful without exploring the possibility that they could unite the Muslim faithful and overthrow the rest of the world. “I don’t know,” she responded. “Bin Laden’s a Sunni, so based on their way of doing things, I guess the Muslim faithful would vote for who would be caliph.”

“Unless somehow an effort was going to be made to include the Shia in this new Muslim dynasty,” replied Harvath.

“But you said the Sunnis saw the Shia as worse than Christians.”

“Many do, but Yuri suggested that the person behind al-Qaeda was going to be able to deliver a leader acceptable to both camps.”

Jillian thought about that a second and then replied, “Which would mean the person would have to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and acceptable to a majority of the Sunni population. How do you do that?”

“I have no idea,” said Harvath as he pulled up in front of their hotel, “but I think I know where some of our answers might be found.”

“Don’t say Château Aiglemont.”

Harvath didn’t say it, but the look on his face was enough to tell her that’s exactly where he wanted to go.