Who Is Osama Bin Laden?
by Michel
Chossudovsky
September 13,
2001
A few hours after the terrorist attacks on
the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded
without supporting evidence, that "Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda
organisation were prime suspects."
CIA Director George Tenet stated that bin Laden has the capacity to plan
"multiple attacks with little or no warning.'' Secretary of State Colin
Powell called the attacks "an act of war" and President Bush
confirmed in an evening televised address to the nation that he would
"make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and
those who harbor them." Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger at "state
sponsorship," implying the
complicity of one or more foreign governments. In the words of
former National Security Adviser,
Lawrence Eagleburger, "I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength
and in our retribution."
Meanwhile,
parroting official statements, the Western media mantra has approved the
launching of "punitive actions" directed against civilian targets in
the Middle East. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times: "When we
reasonably determine our attackers' bases
and camps, we must pulverize them - minimizing but accepting the
risk of collateral damage - and act
overtly or covertly to destabilize
terror's national
hosts."
The following text
outlines the history of Osama Bin Laden and the links of the Islamic "jihad" to the formulation of US
foreign policy during the Cold War and its aftermath.
_________________________________________________________________
Prime suspect in
the New York and Washington terrorists attacks, branded by the FBI as an
"international terrorist" for his role in the African US embassy
bombings, Saudi born Osama bin Laden was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war
"ironically under the auspices of the
CIA, to fight Soviet invaders."1
In 1979 "the
largest covert operation in the history of the CIA" was launched in
response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist
government of Babrak Kamal.2:
"With the
active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI [Inter Services
Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by
all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40
Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's
fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani
madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly
influenced by the Afghan jihad."3
The Islamic
"jihad" was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia with a
significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:
"In March 1985, President Reagan signed
National Security Decision Directive 166, ...[which] authorize[d] stepped-up
covert military aid to the mujahideen,
and it made clear that the secret Afghan war
had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet
withdrawal. The new covert U.S.
assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies - a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987,
... as well as a "ceaseless
stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI
on the main road near Rawalpindi,
Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan
operations for the Afghan rebels."4
The Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored
guerrilla training was integrated with
the teachings of Islam:
"Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete
sociopolitical ideology, that holy Islam was being violated by the atheistic
Soviet troops, and that the Islamic people of Afghanistan should reassert their
independence by overthrowing the leftist Afghan regime propped up by
Moscow."5
Pakistan's
Intelligence Apparatus
Pakistan's ISI was used as a "go-between." The CIA's
covert support to the "jihad" operated indirectly through the
Pakistani ISI - i.e. the CIA did not channel its support directly to the
mujahideen. In other words, for these covert operations to be
"successful," Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate
objective of the "jihad," which consisted in destroying the Soviet
Union.
In the words of CIA's Milton Beardman: "We didn't train
Arabs." Yet according to Abdel Monam Saidali, of the Al-aram Center for
Strategic Studies in Cairo, bin Laden and the "Afghan Arabs" had been
imparted "with very sophisticated types of training that was allowed to
them by the CIA."6
CIA's Beardman
confirmed, in this regard, that Osama bin Laden was not aware of the role he
was playing on behalf of Washington. In the words of bin Laden (quoted by
Beardman): "neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help.” 7
Motivated by
nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were unaware that they
were fighting the Soviet Army on behalf of Uncle Sam. While there were contacts
at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in
theatre had no contacts with Washington or the CIA.
With CIA backing
and the funneling of massive amounts of US military aid, the Pakistani ISI had
developed into a "parallel structure wielding enormous power over all
aspects of government."8 The ISI had a staff composed of military and
intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated
at 150,000.9
Meanwhile, CIA
operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia
Ul Haq:
"'Relations between the CIA and the ISI [Pakistan's military
intelligence] had grown increasingly warm following [General] Zia'souster of
Bhutto and the advent of the military regime,'... During most of the Afghan
war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military
invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia [UL
Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize
the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in
October 1984.... 'the CIA was more cautious than the Pakistanis.' Both Pakistan
and the United States took the line of
deception on Afghanistan with a public posture of negotiating a settlement while privately agreeing that
military escalation was the best course."10
The Golden
Crescent Drug Triangle
The history of
the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert
operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and
Pakistan was directed to small regional
markets. There was no local production of heroin.11 In this regard,
Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan,
"the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin
producer, supplying 60 percent of US
demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979... to 1.2 million by
1985 - a much steeper rise than in any other nation":12
"CIA assets
again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahideen guerrillas seized
territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a
revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates
under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade of
wide-open drug-dealing, the US Drug
Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests ... US officials had refused
to investigate charges of heroin
dealing by its Afghan allies 'because US
narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against
Soviet influence there.' In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan
operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war
to fight the Cold War. 'Our main mission
was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn't really have the resources or the time to
devote to an investigation of the drug trade,'... 'I don't think that we need
to apologize for this. Every situation
has its fallout.... There was fallout in
terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The
Soviets left Afghanistan.'"13
In the Wake of
the Cold War
In the wake of
the Cold War, the Central Asian region is not only strategic for its extensive
oil reserves, it also produces three quarters of the World's opium representing
multi-billion dollar revenues to business syndicates, financial institutions,
intelligence agencies and organized crime. The annual proceeds of the Golden
Crescent drug trade (between 100 and 200 billion dollars) represents
approximately one third of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics,
estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $500 billion.14
With the
disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium production has
unfolded. (According to UN estimates, the production of opium in Afghanistan in
1998-99 - coinciding with the buildup of armed
insurgencies in the former Soviet republics - reached a record high of
4600 metric tons.15 Powerful business syndicates in the former Soviet Union
allied with organized crime are competing for the strategic control over the
heroin routes.
The ISI's
extensive intelligence-military network was not dismantled in the wake of the
Cold War. The CIA continued to support the Islamic "jihad" out of
Pakistan. New undercover initiatives were set in motion in Central Asia, the
Caucasus and the Balkans. Pakistan's military and intelligence apparatus essentially
"served as a catalyst for the
disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of six new Muslim
republics in Central Asia."16
Meanwhile, Islamic missionaries of the
Wahhabi sect from Saudi Arabia had established themselves in the Muslim
republics as well as within the Russian
federation, encroaching upon the institutions of the secular state. Despite its anti-American ideology, Islamic
fundamentalism was largely serving Washington's strategic interests in the
former Soviet Union.
Following the
withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, the civil war in Afghanistan continued unabated. The Taliban were being supported
by the Pakistani Deobandis and their
political party the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). In 1993, JUI entered the
government coalition of Prime Minister
Benazzir Bhutto. Ties between JUI, the Army and ISI were established. In 1995,
with the downfall of the Hezb-I-Islami Hektmatyar government in Kabul, the
Taliban not only instated a hard-line Islamic government, they also
"handed control of training camps in Afghanistan over to JUI
factions..."17
And the JUI, with
the support of the Saudi Wahhabi movements, played a key role in recruiting
volunteers to fight in the Balkans and the
former Soviet Union.
Jane Defense
Weekly confirms in this regard that "half of Taliban manpower and
equipment originate[d] in Pakistan under the ISI."18
In fact, it would
appear that following the Soviet withdrawal both sides in the Afghan civil war
continued to receive covert support through Pakistan's ISI.19
In other words,
backed by Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI) which in turn was controlled
by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic state was largely serving American geopolitical
interests. The Golden Crescent drug trade was also being used to finance and
equip the Bosnian Muslim Army (starting in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA). There is also evidence that Mujahideen mercenaries are
fighting in the ranks of KLA-NLA
terrorists in their assaults into Macedonia.
No doubt, this
explains why Washington has closed its eyes to the reign of terror imposed by the Taliban, including the blatant
derogation of women's rights, the closing down of schools for girls, the
dismissal of women employees from government offices and the enforcement of
"the Sharia laws of punishment."20
The War in
Chechnya
With regard to
Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and
indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to
Yossef Bodansky, director of the US
Congress's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the war in
Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit of HizbAllah International
held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia.21 The summit, was attended by Osama bin
Laden and high-ranking Iranian and
Pakistani intelligence officers. In this regard, the involvement of
Pakistan's ISI in Chechnya "goes far beyond supplying the Chechens with
weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually
calling the shots in this war."22
Russia's main pipeline route transits through
Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of Islamic
terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American
oil conglomerates that are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline
corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin.
The two main
Chechen rebel armies (respectively led by CommanderShamil Basayev and Emir
Khattab) estimated at 35,000 strong were supported by Pakistan's ISI, which
also played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army:
"[In 1994] the Pakistani Inter Services
Intelligence arranged Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive
Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia
camp, set up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani
warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July
1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia,
Basayev was transferred to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in advanced guerrilla
tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the highest ranking Pakistani military and
intelligence officers: Minister of
Defense General Aftab Shahban Mirani, Minister of Interior General Naserullah
Babar, and the head of the ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes,
General Javed Ashraf, (all now
retired). High-level connections soon proved very useful to Basayev."23
Following his
training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was assigned to lead the assault
against Russian federal troops in the first
Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also developed extensive links to criminal syndicates in Moscow as
well as ties to Albanian organized
crime and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-98, according to Russia's
Federal Security Service (FSB), "Chechen
warlords started buying up real estate in Kosovo... through several real
estate firms registered as a cover in Yugoslavia."24
Basayev's
organisation has also been involved in a number of rackets including narcotics,
illegal tapping and sabotage of Russia's oil pipelines, kidnapping,
prostitution, trade in counterfeit dollars and
the smuggling of nuclear materials. (See "Mafia linked to Albania's collapsed pyramids."25) Alongside the
extensive laundering of drug money, the proceeds of various illicit activities
have been funneled towards the recruitment of mercenaries and the purchase of
weapons.
During his
training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up with Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander
"Al Khattab," who had fought
as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few months after Basayev's return to Grozny, Khattab was invited (early
1995) to set up an army base in
Chechnya for the training of Mujahideen fighters. According to the BBC, Khattab's posting to Chechnya had
been "arranged through the
Saudi-Arabian based [International] Islamic Relief Organisation, a
militant religious organisation, funded by mosques and rich individuals which channeled funds into
Chechnya."26
Concluding
Remarks
Since the Cold
War era, Washington has consciously supported Osama bin Laden, while at same
time placing him on the FBI's "most wanted list" as the World's
foremost terrorist.
While the
mujahideen are busy fighting America's war in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, the FBI -
operating as a US based Police Force -
is waging a domestic war against terrorism, operating in some respects independently of the CIA, which has
- since the Soviet-Afghan war -
supported international terrorism through its covert operations.
In a cruel irony,
while the Islamic jihad - featured by the Bush
administration as "a threat to America" - is blamed for the
terrorist assaults on the World Trade Centre
and the Pentagon, these same Islamic
organisations constitute a key instrument of US military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and the former
Soviet Union.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New
York and Washington, the truth must prevail to prevent the Bush administration
together with its NATO partners from embarking
upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.
_________________________________________________________________
Endnotes
1. Hugh Davies, International:
"'Informers' point the finger at bin
Laden"; Washington on alert for
suicide bombers, The Daily
Telegraph, London, 24 August 1998.
2. See Fred Halliday, "The Un-great
game: the Country that lost the
Cold War, Afghanistan," New
Republic, 25 March 1996):
3. Ahmed Rashid, "The Taliban: Exporting
Extremism," Foreign Affairs,
November-December 1999.
4. Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19,
1992.
5. Dilip Hiro, "Fallout from the
Afghan Jihad," Inter Press Services,
21 November 1995.
6. Weekend Sunday (NPR); Eric Weiner,
Ted Clark; 16 August 1998.
7. Ibid.
8. Dipankar Banerjee; "Possible
Connection of ISI With Drug
Industry," India Abroad, 2
December 1994.
9. Ibid
10. See Diego Cordovez and Selig
Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The
Inside Story of the Soviet
Withdrawal, Oxford University Press,
New York, 1995. See also the review
of Cordovez and Harrison in
International Press Services, 22
August 1995.
11. Alfred McCoy, "Drug fallout: the
CIA's Forty Year Complicity in
the Narcotics Trade," The
Progressive; 1 August 1997.
12. Ibid
13. Ibid.
14. Douglas Keh, "Drug Money in a
Changing World," Technical document
no 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See
also Report of the
International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1
United Nations Publication, Vienna
1999, p 49-51, and Richard
Lapper, "UN Fears Growth of
Heroin Trade," Financial Times, 24
February 2000.
15. Report of the International Narcotics
Control Board, op cit, p
49-51, see also Richard Lapper, op.
cit.
16. International Press Services, 22
August 1995.
17. Ahmed Rashid, "The Taliban:
Exporting Extremism," Foreign Affairs,
November- December, 1999, p. 22.
18. Quoted in the Christian Science
Monitor, 3 September 1998)
19. Tim McGirk, "Kabul learns to
live with its bearded conquerors,"
The Independent, London, 6
November1996.
20. See K. Subrahmanyam, "Pakistan
is Pursuing Asian Goals," India
Abroad, 3 November 1995.
21. Levon Sevunts, "Who's calling
the shots?: Chechen conflict finds
Islamic roots in Afghanistan and
Pakistan," The Gazette, Montreal,
26 October 1999.
22. Ibid
23. Ibid.
24. See Vitaly Romanov and Viktor
Yadukha, "Chechen Front Moves To
Kosovo," Segodnia, Moscow, 23
Feb 2000.
25. The European, 13 February 1997, See
also Itar-Tass, 4-5 January
2000.
26. BBC, 29 September 1999).
The original URL of this article is
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
> Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of
Economics, University of Ottawa.