The nature of bin Laden's charisma is one of the more fascinating questions Randal's book elicits but never addresses. Bin Laden's emergence as the world's leading terrorist seems to have surprised many experts on the region, including Randal. At one point, Randal recalls looking at a photograph of bin Laden and thinking "that his face seemed somehow divided into a feminine top half and a masculine bottom." The observation is revealing, even though Randal doesn't take it much further.

Everyone who knew the young bin Laden characterizes him as soft-spoken, well-mannered and considerate, for all the fervency of his faith. People liked and often respected him, but few considered him a leader. He was seen primarily as a wealthy supporter of tougher men, and eventually as a financier rather than a director of terrorist groups, without either the scholarly chops or the aggressive manner to run things himself. Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, remembers being thanked by bin Laden for the Saudi assistance to the Afghan mujahedin against the Soviets, and thinking, "He couldn't lead eight ducks across the street."

Certainly the Afghan war transformed bin Laden -- it changed his life. But bin Laden's countrymen and the people around him were slow to notice how much loyalty he commanded among the many Muslim foreigners who flocked to his training camps in Afghanistan. They celebrated his courage in a battle defending the mujahedin camp at Jaji against a Soviet attack in 1986 but also -- and this, unaccountably, Randal never mentions -- for his kindness and generosity to the fighters and for his willingness to share their primitive living conditions despite having been born into great wealth. The collection of virtues for which he was admired by his followers -- humility, sacrifice and compassion as well as bravery -- may seem to Westerners to possess a distinctly Christian aspect.

For years, bin Laden simply didn't conform to the macho Arab notion of a major player. He lacked the imperious intellect of a mullah and the strutting bombast of a warrior king. Possibly this is why he was underestimated for so long by people in the region and the Westerners who listened to them, and possibly this is why Randal regards him as such a puzzle.

"Osama: The Making of a Terrorist"

By Jonathan Randal

Alfred A. Knopf

340 pages

Nonfiction

Buy this book

Osama emerged from the hardships of the Soviet-Afghan war a changed man, with a confidence that eventually blossomed into a lethal fanaticism. He believed -- falsely, according to Randal and pretty much anyone else who knows much about the conflict -- that his mujahedin drove the Soviets out of Muslim Afghanistan. He proceeded to stir up trouble in Saudi Arabia by urging a first strike against Saddam Hussein's secular Iraq, which he considered an intolerable threat to the kingdom and the two holiest cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina. (This is only one of many details that make the notion of a real collaboration between al-Qaida and Saddam farfetched.)

When, just as he had predicted, Saddam invaded Kuwait, bin Laden tried to persuade the royal family that his motley band of mountain-fighting jihadists could defeat Iraqi tanks in the flat deserts of Kuwait. "We will fight them with faith!" he famously proclaimed, but the Saudis were unconvinced and chose the infidel Americans as their champions instead. This infuriated bin Laden and caused a second personal revolution: he had become the implacable enemy of the house of Saud, who in a rare move, revoked his Saudi citizenship.

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