Just over the border from Peshawar into Afghanistan is the small village of Jaji. In 1986 the Soviet garrison there was under heavy attack from the resistance. One morning a senior commander was sheltering from a bombardment by Russian mortars in a bunker when a tall Arab dived through the door as explosions shook the earth. It was bin Laden. His "ground war" had started.

In the mid-'80s -- partly due to a massive increase in American funding for the resistance -- the war in Afghanistan intensified. Thousands of young Muslims were filling the university town dormitories. Though their motives were varied -- some came for adventure, camaraderie or to escape from the law -- most came for one reason only. "I went to fight for my faith," one Egyptian former mujahid told The Observer in London last year.

Through the summer of 1986 bin Laden was in the center of the fighting around Jaji. Once, with a force of about 50 Arabs, he fought off a sustained assault by Soviet helicopters and infantry. "He was right in the thick of it," Mia Mohammed Aga, a senior Afghan commander at the time and now with the Taliban, said last week. "I watched him with his Kalashnikov in his hand under fire from mortars and the multiple-barrelled rocket launchers."

Over the next three years, bin Laden fought hard, often exposing himself to extreme physical danger. One leader of the hardline Hezb-i-Islami group said he remembered bin Laden holding a position under heavy bombardment after being surrounded by Soviet soldiers. At least a dozen other senior veterans, many of whom are now opposed to bin Laden, corroborate the accounts of his combat role. They all mention his lack of concern for his own safety. The devout boy was turning into the holy warrior.

Bin Laden's fanaticism was shared by his men. "I took three Afghans and three Arabs and told them to hold a position [during the battle for the eastern city of Jalalabad in 1989]. They fought all day, then when I went to relieve them in the evening the Arabs were crying because they wanted to be martyred. I told them that if they wanted to stay and fight they could. The next day they were killed. Osama said later that he had told them that the trench was their gate to heaven."

Bin Laden shared more than their fanaticism. "You never knew he was so rich or the commander of everyone. We used to all sit down together and eat like friends," another veteran said.

On some occasions he took it on himself to broker truces between Afghan factions. His self-assumed responsibility for supplying the Mujahideen continued. CIA sources estimated he was bringing in at least $50 million a year for the jihad. One veteran said that during the fighting for Jalalabad, he had seen the Saudi by a roadside, caked in mud, organizing food, boots and clothes for the Mujahideen.

However, there were tensions with those who did not share his hardline Islamism. Said Mohammed, another Afghan veteran, said bin Laden had refused to deal with him during one battle because he was clean shaven. Bin Laden was learning the power of the media too. Reports of his exploits, by Arab journalists based in Peshawar, were published throughout the Middle East. They brought him a flood of recruits as well as a respect and a status that he had never had before. The "son of the slave" was now a sheikh himself.

In 1989 the Soviet forces pulled out of Afghanistan and left a puppet government in Kabul. The Mujahideen were now battling other Afghans -- and each other. There was little to keep the thousands of battle-hardened fighters of the Arab "international brigade" in Afghanistan. Many left to continue their jihad in their home countries. Bin Laden, hating the internecine squabbles, was one.

"He was very frustrated by it all. He is a very honest, very clean man, and when he saw the Arabs were arguing among themselves he was sickened by it," said Jammal Nazimuddin, a former fighter. "He used to tell them that they had defeated the Soviet empire alone because they were united and Allah had blessed them. If they were not united, he said, they could not do Allah's will."

Bin Laden, aged 33, went home.

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