In November 2001, my phone rang. The number was unknown, but the voice was familiar.

“The man is ready to meet you again. Can you come to Kabul?”

It was the Al-Qaeda messenger who had arranged my interview with Osama bin Laden months earlier in Kandahar. That interview turned out to be Bin Laden’s last before the 9/11 attacks.

By then, Afghanistan was collapsing under the US-led military invasion. Kabul was close to falling. Getting there was becoming more difficult and more dangerous.

But the call took me straight back to Kandahar, and to a warning I had heard there.

The coffin business will increase in the United States.Baker Atyani

The coffin business will increase in the United States.

Abu Hafs Al-Masri, Al-Qaeda’s military chief, had been present during my interview with Bin Laden in his fortified compound.

He told me: “The coffin business will increase in the United States.”

There would be a “big surprise,” he said, and US and Israeli interests would be targeted.

A few months later, the 9/11 attacks happened.

As I watched the Twin Towers fall, the words I had heard in Kandahar reverberated in my mind.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed and many more were wounded. The United States responded with what became known as the global “war on terror.” George W. Bush told the world: “Either you are........

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