hospitality are without equal. His mental computer, an archive of contemporary Afghan history, is a national asset as valuable as the Bagram ivories. Without him this book simply could not have been written. With him, it has been a lot easier, and a lot more fun.
Nor, of course, could this book have been written without Toby Eady, my agent, a consummate professional whose enthusiasm, understanding, erudition and experience are indispensable.
Raf Nieto, Denise Bailey, Roger Deane and everyone else, student or sensei, involved with Zen-do have done a magnificent job of keeping me sane and vaguely fit over the last five years.
For all the support and the forbearance of all my friends I am profoundly grateful.
I would like to thank my brothers and sisters, Adam, Sonya, Patrick and Anna, and my parents, my grandmother and Mike and Sally, all of whom are always there. I can remember days spent reading on Nina’s dining-room table.
This book is dedicated to my grandfathers, Sidney Marks and Samuel Burke. Both were truly good men, full of dry humour, respect for others, honesty, tolerance and integrity. I miss them both.
Regardless if Osama is killed or survives, the awakening has started, praise
be to God.
Osama bin Laden, videoed speech, broadcast 27 December 2001
He was no man of action; he was not even an orator of torrential eloquence, sweeping the masses along in the rushing noise and foam of a great enthusiasm. With a more subtle intention, he took the part of an insolent and venomous evoker of sinister impulses which lurk in the blind envy and misery of poverty, in all the hopeful and noble illusions of righteous anger, pity, and revolt… The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by
personal impulses disguised into creeds.
Joseph Conrad , The Secret Agent
Brute force without wisdom falls by its own weight.
Horace , Odes, iv, 65
Introduction
The Shadow of Terror
The fighters came back in the middle of the night. Their weapons and the ammunition slung around their shoulders reflected the dull red glow given out by the embers of the fire. The men sleeping in the room sat up and moved to make space by the fire for the new arrivals. Outside it was cold enough for frost to form wherever there was standing water.
During the day, two men had been taken prisoner and several others killed or wounded, and the fighters did not talk much. One of them cleaned and checked a captured light machine gun while the others ate the remnants of a thin chicken stew cooked several hours earlier. It was 3am, and everyone knew, at least if the routine established over the previous two days continued, that the bombing would not start again for two or three hours, and now was the time to sleep.
Throughout the day and for much of the night the B-52s had been overhead. We had watched their distinctive quadruple contrails tracking in straight lines from the north towards their targets. Then they would make a sharp turn to the west and we would see great gouts of smoke, dirt, rock and flame on the steep slopes above us. A second or so later the noise and the blast would reach us, tugging at our clothes.
But now there was no noise. The fighters were sleeping or eating or talking softly to each other. In the next room, where the commanders were sitting on the floor drinking tea and dozing, a radio set on the dirt floor crackled out bursts of conversations and static.
When I woke three hours later all the men in the room were awake and most were standing. They had already eaten and stowed some dry bread for later in the day and had hung chains of bullets for thecaptured light machine gun around their necks. Then they wrapped their blankets over their thin shalwar kameez , hitched the straps of their Kalashnikovs over their shoulders, put magazines in their pockets or in the home-stitched webbing and, talking in low, muffled, uninflected voices, moved outside into the cold. Many of their blankets, bought in the bazaars
Nor, of course, could this book have been written without Toby Eady, my agent, a consummate professional whose enthusiasm, understanding, erudition and experience are indispensable.
Raf Nieto, Denise Bailey, Roger Deane and everyone else, student or sensei, involved with Zen-do have done a magnificent job of keeping me sane and vaguely fit over the last five years.
For all the support and the forbearance of all my friends I am profoundly grateful.
I would like to thank my brothers and sisters, Adam, Sonya, Patrick and Anna, and my parents, my grandmother and Mike and Sally, all of whom are always there. I can remember days spent reading on Nina’s dining-room table.
This book is dedicated to my grandfathers, Sidney Marks and Samuel Burke. Both were truly good men, full of dry humour, respect for others, honesty, tolerance and integrity. I miss them both.
Regardless if Osama is killed or survives, the awakening has started, praise
be to God.
Osama bin Laden, videoed speech, broadcast 27 December 2001
He was no man of action; he was not even an orator of torrential eloquence, sweeping the masses along in the rushing noise and foam of a great enthusiasm. With a more subtle intention, he took the part of an insolent and venomous evoker of sinister impulses which lurk in the blind envy and misery of poverty, in all the hopeful and noble illusions of righteous anger, pity, and revolt… The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by
personal impulses disguised into creeds.
Joseph Conrad , The Secret Agent
Brute force without wisdom falls by its own weight.
Horace , Odes, iv, 65
Introduction
The Shadow of Terror
The fighters came back in the middle of the night. Their weapons and the ammunition slung around their shoulders reflected the dull red glow given out by the embers of the fire. The men sleeping in the room sat up and moved to make space by the fire for the new arrivals. Outside it was cold enough for frost to form wherever there was standing water.
During the day, two men had been taken prisoner and several others killed or wounded, and the fighters did not talk much. One of them cleaned and checked a captured light machine gun while the others ate the remnants of a thin chicken stew cooked several hours earlier. It was 3am, and everyone knew, at least if the routine established over the previous two days continued, that the bombing would not start again for two or three hours, and now was the time to sleep.
Throughout the day and for much of the night the B-52s had been overhead. We had watched their distinctive quadruple contrails tracking in straight lines from the north towards their targets. Then they would make a sharp turn to the west and we would see great gouts of smoke, dirt, rock and flame on the steep slopes above us. A second or so later the noise and the blast would reach us, tugging at our clothes.
But now there was no noise. The fighters were sleeping or eating or talking softly to each other. In the next room, where the commanders were sitting on the floor drinking tea and dozing, a radio set on the dirt floor crackled out bursts of conversations and static.
When I woke three hours later all the men in the room were awake and most were standing. They had already eaten and stowed some dry bread for later in the day and had hung chains of bullets for thecaptured light machine gun around their necks. Then they wrapped their blankets over their thin shalwar kameez , hitched the straps of their Kalashnikovs over their shoulders, put magazines in their pockets or in the home-stitched webbing and, talking in low, muffled, uninflected voices, moved outside into the cold. Many of their blankets, bought in the bazaars
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