THE EXILE: THE STUNNING INSIDE STORY OF OSAMA BIN LADEN AND AL QAEDA IN FLIGHT
By Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, Bloomsbury, Rs 899

More than six years have passed since Osama bin Laden was killed by US marines. Such was the scale of the operation to eliminate the most dreaded global terrorist that even the makers of James Bond movies must have been put to shame. The world at large had no idea where Osama took refuge after the 9/11 attacks in New York. The Exile attempts to trace those years of Osama's life to find out how he plotted schemes, tried to regroup his organization, and was forced to lead a forlorn life as most of his trusted aides were handed over to the Americans by the Pakistanis. The book also narrates how terror operatives such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abu Zubaydah, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, among others, were tracked down, arrested and tortured in prisons maintained by the United States of America.

Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy have done extensive research to weave a plot that is riveting and, at times, suspect. The authors have perused books, secret documents, diaries and undertaken dangerous journeys to piece together the narrative.

The book is not just about a particular incident or an individual. It takes into account events occurring before and after 9/11 and delves into the workings of terrorist groups that operate in West Asia, Afghanistan, Europe and Africa. The Exile shows the kind of tightrope walk that Americans, especially those from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had to perform to flush out terrorists from the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The authors, probably unintentionally, also reveal the dangerous techniques of torture that the CIA and the FB> employ to extract information from terrorists.

There is a portion in the book that talks about marriages, deaths and births in Osama's family and how the different members of his family yearned to stay close to Osama. But they could not, as they remained exiled in different parts of the world. Here, the heartbreaks and sufferings experienced by Osama's kith and kin appear to be no different from those faced by other, more normal, people.

The first thing that one would notice about the book is its size - The Exile runs into some 500-odd pages. Second, apart from the information on Al Qaeda, the readers would get to know about the policies of different governments and the tugs and pulls of international diplomacy. The reviewer has one quibble though - how did the researchers know what Osama felt when one of his wives took leave of him in Afghanistan?

The Exile is gripping - especially towards the end - when it describes the secret mission of the marines and their arrival in Abbottabad, the killing of Osama, the subsequent euphoria in the US, and the bickering among the marines on who fired the shots at Osama. The easy flow of the prose also makes it difficult to put down the book.