Twenty years ago Osama Bin Laden went to Sudan to build a road. It was a road that ultimately led to the destruction of the Twin Towers and all that came after. The Arab mujahedin–with major US backing–had finally defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan just a few years earlier. Bin Laden had played a major role and now he was allegedly dedicated to doing good works in Sudan. Intrepid journalist Robert Fisk of The Independent went to interview him and wrote a Bin Laden profile for the newspaper.
It’s a smart, wary piece of reporting–Fisk talks about how outside of Sudan, where many were grateful for the 745-mile road Bin Laden was building, he wasn’t so popular. Fisk mentions the suspicion, in Egypt and elsewhere, that Bin Laden is running training camps in Sudan for “further jihad wars.” It’s a suspicion Bin Laden dismisses as “the rubbish of the media and the embassies.”
