God Bless America

Support for Osama Bin Laden appears to be running high in his native Saudi Arabia. Many Saudis refuse to believe that Bin Laden was connected to the terror attacks of 11 September. Instead, many hail him as a Muslim hero, who stands up to the United States. An unknown number of Saudi citizens have left for Afghanistan since September to join the fighters of al Qaida.

London-based Saudi dissident, Dr Saad Al-Faqih believes that Bin Laden's organization Al-Qaeda can survive whatever happens in Afghanistan. "Even if the whole of Afghanistan is destroyed by a nuclear bomb, so imagine that the whole of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is destroyed, then two thirds of Bin Laden's followers are inside Saudi Arabia. So two thirds of Al-Qaeda are still there and active," he said.

(More about bin Laden)

He is suspected of helping organize the 1997 massacre of 67 foreign tourists in the Egyptian town of Luxor. Al-Zawahiri is wanted again in Egypt for a plot to assassinate the President Hosni Mubarak. He’s wanted by the United States for the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and now, along with bin Laden, he is wanted in connection with the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Al-Zawahiri is regarded by many investigators as smarter and more dangerous than bin Laden himself. After U.S. airstrikes against Afghanistan in 1998, it was al-Zawahiri who told the Muslim world: "The war has begun. Americans should wait for an answer." The United States has offered a $5 million reward for his arrest.

Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI)
runs hundreds of religious schools in the Northwest Frontier province of Pakistan. The Taliban leaders come from these training schools called. During the war against the Russia, Afghan and Pakistani refugees were given food, shelter, free education, and military (terrorist type) training by JUI. There were about 900 camps and training schools in 1971. By 1990 there were more than 8000.  Today the numbers are much higher but the exact number cannot be found. However, suffice it to say that there are more than 50,000 supporters.

JUI strongly supports the Taliban and close relations with the Pakistani government. When Benazir Bhutto was prime minister, the organization enjoyed access to highest political power. JUI fostered relationships within the army and the intelligence service and this helped the Taliban rise to power in Afghanistan. The warring factions in Afghanistan were a big factor too. The Taliban and the JUI were included in Bhutto's coalition to open up southern Afghanistan to Pakistani traders heading into Central Asia. Shortly after the Taliban captured the city of Kandahar and opened the roads through Afghanistan in the mid 1990s perhaps 5000 students from the JUI schools formed the bulk of the new regime.

The JUI is responsible in part for creation of numerous splinter groups, some more extremist than others. The most important was run by Maulana Samiul Haq, a former Pakistani legislator. Afghan Taliban ministers and numerous other Pakistani officials graduated from Haq's school for 1500 students. By 1999, this school had 15,000 applicants for some 400 places. The atarction was that all of the students got education, housing, and care for free.

The Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar, is surrounded by graduates from Haq's schools. Haq advises Omar on international situations. In 1997, Haq closed the schools to send all of the students to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance. In addition, he has and is organizing reinforcements for the Taliban.

Another JUI offshoot is the Jamiat-ul Uloomi Islamiyyah. It is located in a Karachi suburb where it survives because of donations from 45 Muslim countries and, through its graduates, it keeps close ties with the Taliban. As tension in the region has heightened, this group stages street revolts inside Karachi.

Recently these and other Taliban supporters clash with police. They protest and demonstrate against Pakistani support for U.S. strikes. In some cases, with riots ending in several deaths, the burning of cinemas, and burning a UNICEF building. These conflicts and threats for civil war are common place since late September.

Read more about splinter JUI groups under bin Laden.

We see this man when Omar wants to speak:

Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil is Mullah Omar's mouthpiece.

is a reclusive figure whose friendship with the world's most wanted man has brought his country complete isolation and now war. He is the Taliban supreme spiritual leader.

Recent edicts from Mullah Omar have included the death sentence for anyone converting to another religion, as well as the infamous orders to destroy the country's ancient Buddha statues.

A few months ago Mullah Omar told Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yousifzei, the first journalist to interview him, that in his lifetime half of Afghanistan had already been destroyed. He was ready to see the other half destroyed rather than give up Osama bin Laden.

Mohammed Omar and Bin Laden are fellow resistance fighters from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan of 1979 to 1989. Additionally, bin Laden is believed to have at partially financed the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, from which Mullah Omar emerged as "commander of the faithful", a title with great resonance in Islamic history.

It is believed that Mullah Omar has taken Bin Laden's eldest daughter as a wife, and that Bin Laden may have taken one of Mullah Omar's daughters as a fourth wife.

He rarely leaves the southern city of Kandahar where he lives in a large house that was reportedly built for him by Bin Laden.

No Western journalist has ever met Mullah Omar, who leaves virtually all contact with the outside world to his foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil. The world first became aware of the Taleban in 1994 when they were appointed by Islamabad to protect a convoy trying to open up a trade route between Pakistan and Central Asia.

The group is comprised of partially of Pakistanis and Afghans trained in religious schools in Pakistan along with former Islamic fighters or mujahedin. The group captured  the nearby city of Kandahar and then the capital, Kabul, in September 1996. Their refusal to deal with the existing warlords whose rivalries had caused so much killing and destruction earned them respect. Later, the Taleban said their aim was to set up the world's most pure Islamic state, banning frivolities like television, music and cinema.

sizing Omar up...