His older sons were to join their father and other brothers at an undisclosed location. The only boy left behind was nine-year-old Ladin, a timid child who flinched at the sound of gunfire. He, the women and other children filed on to a corroding Soviet-era bus smeared with mud, setting off on a dirt track parallel to the Silk Road. Three uncomfortable days later, they lurched to a halt on the outskirts of Jalalabad, a city in the north-east of Afghanistan, next to a dun-coloured fort surrounded by 4m-high mud walls and crowned with guard towers.
The fort was a barracks for the al-Qaida training camp located at a nearby village, and Osama had grandiosely named it Najm al-Jihad, the Star of the Holy War. Discarded ammunition boxes, food packaging and empty bottles of chemicals lay everywhere. Khairiah, the family matriarch, organised a clean-up. The women pinned up woollen rugs as insulation and plumped thin foam mattresses with old clothes, inspecting the bedding for scorpions and snakes.
Narrow alleys that connected the apartments to a tin toilet outhouse were swilled out, and in the rudimentary kitchen area someone fixed the water pump and got an old generator running. The women would cook on a traditional Afghan bukhar open stove ; the three nursing mothers were to have the best pickings.
Two years earlier, she had been married in a double wedding with her year-old half-sister Fatima. Their husbands, two Saudi brothers in their 30s who both had wives and children already, were mujahideen fighters. Without any adult male relatives to protect them, only al-Qaida guards who could not enter the same room, the wives had been instructed by Osama to blow themselves up if the situation became critical.
Even nine-year-old Ladin had a role. He was to lie on his back, staring up into the sky, scouting for enemy jets, as war with America now appeared inevitable. At night they huddled under a blanket with a Kalashnikov and a stash of grenades, wondering what would befall those friends and family left behind in the cities, and when they would next see their husband and sons. At Tarnak Qila, the wives shared a cordoned-off yard that they turned into a small allotment and where they reared rabbits and chickens.
But lately there had been dissonance. Many al-Qaida members had witnessed the screaming rows Osama had with Omar, the teenage son he had been training as his heir, who bore a striking resemblance to his father. He had gone to his mother, Najwa, pleading with her to come with him. But she had never disobeyed her husband, so Omar had slipped away alone.
But by the end of August , Najwa had a change of heart. Najwa had never intended to be a jihadi bride. Glamorous and beautiful, she was a Ghanem, from an old, cultured Syrian family, and had grown up in the cosmopolitan seaside resort of Latakia, where women wore bikinis. She had married Osama in , when she had just turned 16 and he was still forging a reputation as a demon soccer player at his university, and for driving fast cars recklessly.
Osama had taken other wives before. His second had not seen eye to eye with Najwa, and she and Osama later divorced. Two had hydrocephalus water on the brain , and her third son, Saad, was autistic. But Osama refused conventional treatment for them, preferring to put his fate in desert remedies and the hands of God. Najwa had sought help for her sons at a clinic in Jeddah, where she met Khairiah, a child psychologist, seven years older than Osama.
It was in her room in Kandahar that everyone gathered to resolve disputes and discuss impending changes, or to lobby for an extra sack of rice, basic medicine or schoolbooks. Unlike Najwa, Khairiah was devout, and had married Osama in , when he was already well on the path to jihad.
She had worked as a teacher before she married Osama, in , at which point she too set herself the task of having as many children as she could. The children remember how Osama would occasionally interrupt, conducting impromptu maths and English tests, with his children lined up in order of size.
Osama expected all his children to play their part in jihad. Rather than celebrating birthdays, the boys were videotaped brandishing weapons or visiting the scenes of battle.
As they drove away, headed for Syria, Najwa turned to see the rest of her family enveloped in the dust. Agents never managed to capture a clearly identifiable image of bin Laden to prove they had finally uncovered his hiding place. Obama was convinced. He ordered the US Navy to begin planning the operation that would ultimately, on May 1, , snuff out the terror master at age 54 — a decision that might never have been made if Osama bin Laden had thought to give his wives a clothes dryer.
July 31, am Updated July 31, pm. Osama bin Laden was hiding out, but his family's clothing on the washing line gave him away, a new book reveals. NY Post photo composite. Although his family almost never came out, a bodyguard spotted by a US informant unwittingly led the CIA back to the home.
Share This Article. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Omar states bin Laden is alive in Afghanistan. The fire from this war will reach America, and it will burn the capital that launched an unjust attack on Muslims. March 10, - Muslim clerics in Spain issue what they call the world's first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against bin Laden.
They call him an apostate and urge others of their faith to denounce him. The ruling is issued by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the main body representing the country's Muslim community. December - The US government admits a "lack of intelligence" on bin Laden's whereabouts, noting he could be in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
May 2, - In the early morning hours, a small group of US Forces, including Navy Seals, raid a walled and fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
In the ensuing firefight, bin Laden and three other men die. A woman also dies. Bin Laden reportedly dies of a gunshot wound to the head. DNA samples are taken before his body is buried at sea. Photos: The death of Osama bin Laden.
Click through to see reactions from around the world following the death of the al Qaeda leader. Hide Caption. President Obama edits his remarks in the Oval Office prior to making a televised statement announcing bin Laden's death.
Revelers gather at the fence on the north side of the White House. Afghans watch television coverage in Kabul announcing the killing of bin Laden.
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