Salon.com > Mark Kukis

The fall of John Walker Lindh

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 21:03:00 +0000

John Walker Lindh reported to Osama bin Laden's al Farooq training camp outside Kandahar in June 2001 with about 20 other volunteers, mostly from Saudi Arabia. The desert base was similar to the mountain camp in northern Pakistan where Lindh received his first arms training with Kashmiri militants weeks earlier. But these grounds were home to Arabs, rather than Afghans or Pakistanis, and the men who ran al Farooq had even darker ambitions than training and arming a guerrilla force.

Living in a tent, Lindh joined about 100 Arab volunteers at the camp, which sat on a hidden canyon floor in a chain of low mountains arching across the desert plain surrounding Kandahar. Instructors woke recruits early and ran them through a daily regimen of running, hiking and arms training, broken up by prayers. The trainees had target practice and learned how to handle grenades and Molotov cocktails. They went on camping excursions and learned battlefield tactics such as different types of combat crawls, surveillance methods, camouflage techniques, signs and signals, navigation of rugged terrain and how to carry weapons properly.

John Walker Lindh’s long, dark journey

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 21:26:00 +0000

At 17, John Walker Lindh arrived in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a in July, 1998 looking to immerse himself in the study of Arabic and his newfound faith, Islam. He settled into a conservative Islamic university and pored over Arabic lessons and Muslim readings. And it wasn't long before he began parroting the conspiracy theories about the United States that flow through mosques and religious schools across the Middle East.

On August 7, car bombs exploded almost simultaneously outside Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing more than 220 people, most of them poor Africans. It would prove a chilling hint of what would come to New York roughly three years later. The United States immediately blamed the strike on Osama bin Laden, and in 2001 a federal court in New York convicted four accused al-Qaida operatives of staging the attacks.

Life at Camp Jihad

Thu, 03 Oct 2002 23:32:00 +0000

On Friday, John Philip Walker Lindh is scheduled to appear at a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., for a sentencing hearing likely to mark the end of his strange odyssey. The judge presiding over his case is expected to hand down a 20-year prison term in step with a plea agreement arranged by Lindh's attorneys with U.S. prosecutors in mid-July.

And it should come as no shock to Lindh, who himself long saw something like this coming even before he was caught fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan last year, according to one of Lindh's former peers at a school for would-be jihad fighters in a rural Pakistani outpost.

"He said he was sure he would be punished when he returned to America," said an 18-year-old who goes by the nom de guerre "Talha." He is a Pakistani fighter with the underground Islamic militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, or "Movement of Holy Warriors," which Lindh briefly joined in the summer of 2001 before signing on with the Taliban.

Talha, speaking through a translator, said he knew Lindh by his two aliases, Abdul Hamid and Suleyman al-Faris, when the two trained together at one of the group's guerrilla camps in Mansehra, a small mountain town in northern Pakistan sitting just west of Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region bordering India.

Al-Qaida’s last stand

Mon, 17 Dec 2001 21:49:00 +0000

The Eastern Alliance mujahedin paraded their al-Qaida captives through the hardscrabble farming villages here at the foot of the Tora Bora Monday, as U.S. airstrikes slowed down, and reports continued of only scattered fighting deep in the snowy mountains.

A day before, Alliance commanders said their forces had overrun the last of al-Qaida's Tora Bora caves, killing more than 200 foreign fighters mostly from the Middle East, capturing some 25 others and sending hundreds more fleeing toward the nearby Pakistani border as bin Laden himself remained missing. Whether he turns up -- and whether he turns up alive -- the siege of Tora Bora seems to be coming to an end.

But only after a long week that saw a possible surrender come and go in what many think is al-Qaida's last stand. It didn't prevent al-Qaida from issuing a curious, ominous, handwritten plea to its Muslim brothers in the mujahedin opposition to stop fighting, and leave the combat to the Americans. And it was a week that started with a much closer look at the fighting than I'd anticipated, and than I'd been prepared for.

“I just want to help my people”

Mon, 26 Nov 2001 21:30:00 +0000

Commander Haji Mohammed Zaman hates his new job as Jalalabad's military chief. Just ask him.

"I don't like the post, believe me," said Zaman, whose private army serves as Jalalabad's garrison, according to a power-sharing deal worked out among the three rival warlords who recently overtook this city. Less than a week on the job, Zaman is already frustrated with the day-to-day work, which mostly involves settling disputes among locals at the daily court he holds at his walled three-acre compound.

On a day when a reporter visited, Zaman sat on a red carpet spread over the sunny lawn of his courtyard, where roses, daisies and carnations were in bloom beneath rows of orange trees. At least 100 men in shawls, turbans or pakols (the ubiquitous oversized wooly berets) waited to see Zaman, who rested against an embroidered velvet pillow with a Russian Makarov pistol in a leather holster close at his side.

One man came to Zaman complaining that his car had been stolen. Zaman asked to see the car's papers, which the would-be plaintiff didn't have. He was told to find the papers and return the next day.

The $6 million man

Thu, 16 Mar 2000 10:30:00 +0000

As fund-raising activities of George W. Bush and Al Gore both score headlines, the man who stared down a possible indictment over his fund-raising, President Clinton, has managed to keep a fairly low profile. That's surprising, considering he's raking in money that would make Steve Forbes blush.

Since January, Clinton has been the featured speaker for more than 30 fund-raisers in Washington and outside the Beltway. His 19 appearances at Democratic National Committee events in just three months raised for the party about $6 million, with slightly less than half of that earmarked as controversial soft money, according to the DNC.

On top of that, the president, with a team of staffers and members of the press corps (like me) in tow, has stumped for a variety of Democratic causes, from Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan's Senate bid to Native American tribal leaders running for Congress. Overall, Clinton's fund-raising has generated an estimated $16 million in 2000 alone.