The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand's *Dateline* magazine

First Quarter 2002


by Richard S. Ehrlich

During the U.S. bombardment, Arabs who fled their expensive homes abandoned all sorts of things of interest to the media: a bullet-punctured target of a person's head and shoulders, bomb schematics, foreign passports, forged visas and news clippings of hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center.

"Osama bin Laden spent a lot of time in Jalalabad during his stay in Afghanistan," said Nangarhar Province's Police Chief Hazrat Ali.

"He knows the city well. More than 5,000 or 6,000 Arabs were living in this city and they had their own bases and training camps in this city. Jalalabad was very much used by the Arabs during Taliban time," Mr. Ali added.

Mr. bin Laden, born in Saudi Arabia, is suspected of financing al Qaeda, an international terrorist network which attracted Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens, Sudanese, Somalians, Europeans, Afghan Taliban officials and others.

They waged a worldwide Islamic holy war to oust U.S. forces from Saudi territory, end Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and achieve other goals.

Exploring the Arabs' former homes revealed intriguing aspects of how they prepared to kill their enemies while dwelling in this otherwise dull provincial capital 146 kilometers (88 miles) east of Kabul.

Afghan officials said Arab homes linked to al Qaeda were also maintained in Kabul, Kandahar and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Anti-Taliban troops with Kalashnikov assault rifles now guard the homes, though most things of value were stripped after the inhabitants departed during the first two weeks of November.

Inside one sprawling white-walled complex here in Jalalabad, a half-filled notebook handwritten in French displayed a student's attempt to learn military lessons and how to stage attacks.

"Airplanes. Number one: Bomb with big explosive power for immediate explosion," read one entry in French.

"Protect yourself from cannons and missiles. Avoid missiles after they hit the target because they can explode later," read another entry.

A page torn from a notebook written in Arabic listed chemical formulas and the initials "TNT" and "RDX" -- shorthand for trinitrotoluene and royal demolition explosive.

Several pages were illustrated with hand-drawn schematics of large bombs and detonators, complete with "on" and "off" switches.

Another page discovered in a yard amid debris showed someone repeatedly printed the official rectangular rubber stamp of the "Consul General, High Commission for Pakistan, London" and a circular rubber stamp for the "High Commission of Pakistan, London".

They also repeatedly printed the rubber stamp of "Islamabad International Airport, Islamabad, Pakistan" confirming an "entry" for "10 Aug 2000".

One of the Pakistani rubber stamps lay in the dirt.

Entry and exit stamps for Istanbul, Turkey, were also printed on scraps of paper.

A photographic negative cut from a larger sheet of film showed an official departure stamp from Jordan's international airport, with a blank space where a date could be filled in.

Food spread on tables and in the kitchen indicated the Arabs and their families escaped in a hurry.

After the Taliban fled Kabul on Nov. 13, the Taliban were forced to peacefully leave Jalalabad.

Their Arab comrades left clothing, Islamic textbooks, documents, several rabbits in a cage and personal letters including the address of Sliti Fatma in Brussels, Belgium.

One housing complex included its own school for boys who studied Arabic and English vocabulary plus Islamic subjects.

"A gun, a girl, a glass, a goat," read a page from one illustrated English language book.

In the school's small yard, a square plank of wood was painted black to depict a person's head and shoulders, for target practice.

About 100 bullets peppered the target hitting the face and upper body.

Dozens of missed shots gouged the tan wall made of mud and straw next to the target.

In the housing complex's main yard, a brick shed held stacks of rockets and other live ammunition.

Some anti-Taliban guards held out stacks of foreign passports they said were from various Arab houses.

It was impossible to determine if the passports identified the residents, or if the documents had been stolen to sneak across borders.

A man from Yemen named Naseem Abdulqader Ahmed al-Sakkaf was listed on passport number 00345350 with a Pakistani "business" visa issued in Yemen on July 8, 1999.

An Italian passport of light-haired woman named Rafaella Palpacelli, born in 1975, bore a Tanzania "employment visa" but she apparently only spent two weeks there in 1998.

A passport from the former Soviet Union showed a heavy-jowled Russian man travelled from Turkey into Iran in 1993.

In the back yard of one house -- scattered among trash which included a bra, software manuals and cookbooks -- lay a bunch of family photos.

The pictures portrayed happy men with bushy moustaches posing with women, boys and girls in comfortable living rooms.

Small photographs of men's faces, apparently for visa applications, were stuffed in an enveloped marked: "Afghan Photo Studio."

Pieces of new, carefully cut camouflage cloth alongside tailoring instructions proved domestic chores included sewing military uniforms.

Color downloads from Internet showed several portraits released by U.S. authorities of men suspected of crashing passenger planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11 killing more than 3,000 people.

Apparently short of paper, the news clippings were printed on pages already covered with Arabic script, including an email address of "shubeilat" in Jordan.

For entertainment, the occupants played an interactive computer game titled, "Commandos Behind Enemy Lines."

The wall of one home was decorated with a postcard of Medina, a city now in Saudi Arabia where Islam's prophet Mohammad lived after fleeing Mecca in the year 622.

Medina is also the site of his tomb.