make them available for training Kashmiri militants.
tion of the main business enterprises he had set up there and then put some of
them up for public sale. According to a senior al Qaeda detainee, the govern-
ment of Sudan seized everything Bin Ladin had possessed there.
key figures had accompanied Bin Ladin to Afghanistan, Banshiri had remained
in Kenya to oversee the training and weapons shipments of the cell set up some
four years earlier. He died in a ferryboat accident on Lake Victoria just a few
days after Bin Ladin arrived in Jalalabad, leaving Bin Ladin with a need to
replace him not only in the Shura but also as supervisor of the cells and
prospective operations in East Africa.
occasion to go off in their own directions. Some maintained collaborative rela-
tionships with al Qaeda, but many disengaged entirely.
of the country, but key centers, including Kabul, were still held by rival war-
lords. Bin Ladin went initially to Jalalabad, probably because it was in an area
controlled by a provincial council of Islamic leaders who were not major con-
tenders for national power. He found lodgings with Younis Khalis, the head of
one of the main mujahideen factions. Bin Ladin apparently kept his options
open, maintaining contacts with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who, though an
Islamic extremist, was also one of the Taliban's most militant opponents. But
after September 1996, when first Jalalabad and then Kabul fell to the Taliban,
Bin Ladin cemented his ties with them.
for jihad. At about the time when the Taliban were making their final drive
toward Jalalabad and Kabul, Bin Ladin issued his August 1996 fatwa, saying that
"We . . . have been prevented from addressing the Muslims," but expressing
relief that "by the grace of Allah, a safe base here is now available in the high
Hindu Kush mountains in Khurasan." But the Taliban, like the Sudanese, would
eventually hear warnings, including from the Saudi monarchy.
view to CNN in March 1997. The Taliban leader Mullah Omar promptly
"invited" Bin Ladin to move to Kandahar, ostensibly in the interests of Bin
Ladin's own security but more likely to situate him where he might be easier
to control.