Look back: 9/11, Osama bin Laden, and a safe haven in Afghanistan

If America goes to war with Afghanistan, the battle will pit the world's richest nation against one of the poorest. The country devastated by more than 20 years of continuous warfare. I think it's already this day and age. I mean, 80% of Kabul was destroyed, and just the journey to the clinic, we're always just amazed at how much rubble, how much there's still tanks which are strewn, and just the evidence of war is all around.

Go back down to this one here. Which one?

Vicki and Mark Timlin spent the last seven months in Afghanistan. The head office of their charity, Hope Worldwide, ordered them to leave after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Afghanis, they say, were as stunned by the attacks as everyone else. They wanted to feel the grief of the Americans as well, that there definitely wasn't a sense of jubilation that this happened. There was a sense of, wow, this is terrible. And they just want to know exactly what the images were like, how the planes crashed, how many people died.

The Timlins believe it is Afghan culture that provides Osama bin Laden his best protection. They see him as a guest, and they'll protect him. They'll look after him, and that's just the general culture. They do that with anyone.

Osama bin Laden is a Saudi Arabian who went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets after they invaded in 1979. The shadowy figure, who is known to hide in caves, is believed to be the youngest son of 24 brothers in a family whose hugely successful construction business earned him a fortune believed to exceed $200 million. He used it in the Afghan refugee camps of Pakistan to recruit and train dedicated young fighters, slowly building a fanatical network of his own called al-Qaeda, the base. The problem for the US is that the name is just that, a name. Bin Laden has no real base, no sitting target. And even if he could be killed, it wouldn't necessarily mean the end of al-Qaeda. Bin Laden is as much a phenomenon as he is a man, one expert here said, and you can't kill an idea. And he has an heir apparent, a trusted lieutenant whose son recently married one of bin Laden's daughters. The ceremony was one of the last times bin Laden was seen in public. His followers train with video games like this one, shooting at former President Clinton. No small irony in light of the fact that bin Laden began with American help. The CIA and other Western intelligence services were supplying hardware and training to the Afghan fighters bin Laden recruited to fight the Soviets. Just as it was then, ordinary Afghans seem resigned to the next phase of US involvement in their country, Vicki Timlin says, another case of, here we go again.

70% of the nation, the population, is women and children. So, obviously, these are the most vulnerable because so many of the men have died in the so many years of war. They've just gone out to fight.

And if it does come to a war, the fight will be a desperate one.

If they fight, they definitely fight very hard, and they fight to the end.

They don't have a fear of dying?

They don't, no, because, in their mind, they're just fighting for their country. They're fighting for what's right.