'Bin Laden's son was my neighbour'

Published Dec 18, 2001

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By Jeremy Page

Kandahar, Afghanistan - One day in November, Mir Ahmad Shah's neighbour knocked on his door with a strange request.

"He asked us not to enter his home while he was gone because it was full of mines and booby traps," Shah recalls. "He said the Americans would be coming to search it but it was all right if anything happened to them."

The home he was talking about was a desert fortress on the outskirts of the southern city of Kandahar, now pulverised by US bombs. The man, says Shah, was Osama bin Laden's son.

For five years, Shah says he watched the 60 Saudi Arabian families who lived in the fortress coming and going in their fleet of 30 landcruisers and pickups, apparently leading a normal, if relatively luxurious, expatriate life.

They went to work in the morning, came back in the evening and occasionally fished in the irrigation channel that separated them from Shah's simple packed-mud home.

Like most people in Kandahar, Shah paid little attention to the wealthy foreigners who made the city their home under the Taliban, many of them training in the art of death and destruction at a camp near the airport known as Lewa Saradi or Wolf's Frontier.

Unwittingly, he played a bit part in the drama that unfolded around Osama bin Laden - the man wanted by Washington for the September 11 suiciide attacks on the United States - and the subsequent war in Afghanistan.

"We didn't take any notice of the Arabs at first," said the 48-year-old rickshaw driver, stroking his bushy grey beard. "We thought they were refugees or something."

Shah says he first met Bin Laden's son a couple of years ago when he struck up a conversation in Persian with the tall, well-built Arab as he fished from the opposite bank of the irrigation ditch.

"The name Bin Laden meant nothing to me at that time," said Shah, who never asked for the man's full name.

But when he heard later that Osama bin Laden had been accused of the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Shah started feeling uneasy about his reclusive neighbours.

Then, Osama himself visited the fortress for his son's wedding, swooping up in a convoy of 15 black landcruisers with tinted windows, Shah says.

"He had a long white beard and a thin face with a long nose," he said. "He gave 10 sheep to the mosques to be sacrificed. He gave us one too."

Shah continued to make small talk with Bin Laden's son as they fished on the banks of the irrigation channel, but when he heard about the September 11 attacks, he became increasingly anxious about his own family's safety.

"I was really worried because I knew if the Americans attacked, my home would be in danger too," said Shah, the head of a family of 13. "I thought about leaving the house but I was worried about being robbed."

Then, in the middle of the night on November 26, the Arabs suddenly packed their bags and Bin Laden's son appeared on his doorstep.

"He said he had made a deal with the Baluch tribes in Iran and was leaving," said Shah. "We never saw them again."

The warning about the mines was no idle threat. Shah said a robber who tried to break into the compound had his leg blown off by a mine. "He lay their screaming for two days - no one dared to go and help him."

No independent verification was available of Shah's tale, but five days after his neighbour left, Shah's worst fears were realised when US bombs rained down, smashing the fortress to pieces and blowing in the front rooms of Shah's courtyard home.

"We were running this way and that, trying to escape the bombs. We didn't know which direction to go," he said.

Miraculously, none of Shah's family was hurt.

Looking back, he says he is angry at his Arab neighbours for unleashing US firepower on war-torn Afghanistan.

He also blames the United States for not using its diplomatic and financial clout to force the Taliban to hand over Bin Laden.

"I am angry with the United States for bombing our homes and killing our people," he said. "They have so much money, so much power."

The United States has offered a $25-million in reward money for the capture of Bin Laden and leaders of his al-Qaeda network.

"If I'd known he had $25-million on his head from the start I would have captured him myself and handed him over to the Americans," said Shah. - Reuters

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