CIA sniffs out the honey trail to al-Qa'eda's treasure chest
By Ben Fenton in Washington
(Filed: 12/10/2001)
THE CIA has identified a chain of shops selling top
grade Yemeni honey as the bizarre fountainhead of
funding and illicit supplies for Osama bin Laden's
al-Qa'eda network, it was reported yesterday.
The agency has also determined that bin Laden has
provided $100 million (about £69 million) in money
and materiel to the Taliban in the past five years,
prompting one source to say that the Saudi
multimillionaire "owns and operates" the Afghan
regime.
Both Yemen, where bin Laden's family comes from,
and Afghanistan, where he is now believed to be in
hiding, are famed in the Islamic world for the quality
of their honey, a food that plays an important role in
the culture of the region.
The CIA believes that through a chain of shops
across the Middle East selling mostly Yemeni honey,
bin Laden is not only able to raise money for
al-Qa'eda but can also use the distribution network
to smuggle cash, drugs and arms to his followers.
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad, run by Ayman
al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's main lieutenant, was
already known to have used honey-trading as a
source of income and distribution.
"The smell and consistency of the honey makes it
easy to hide weapons and drugs in the shipments,"
one government official told the New York Times.
"Inspectors don't want to inspect that product. It's
too messy."
Bin Laden first started to get involved in the honey
business in the early 1990s when he was living in
Sudan.
There are believed to be at least two honey
companies in Yemen with ties to al-Qa'eda. They and
other companies the CIA has linked to bin Laden are
under consideration to be included on the list of
companies that America is targeting for financial
sanctions.
The honey companies are just part of a network of
businesses, both legal and illegal, that have allowed
al-Qa'eda to buy the loyalty of the Taliban, and
before them the Sudanese government, without
having to tap bin Laden's personal wealth.
The Washington Post said that bin Laden gave
about £2 million to the Taliban shortly after he
arrived in Afghanistan in 1996, allowing them to buy
arms and supplies at a crucial time in the country's
civil war.
Another major source of income for bin Laden is a
form of tribute exacted from Middle Eastern states
that he promises not to operate in, a system akin to
the Danegeld paid by Anglo-Saxon kings to Viking
warriors to leave them alone.
The CIA is hoping that action by the world's banks
against bin Laden's sources of money will impede his
ability to supply the Taliban and make it more
attractive to moderate members of the movement to
hand him over to America.
The newspaper reported that so far the CIA has
been unable to find bin Laden, who changes his
location often and lives in deep caves.
One intelligence official said: "One Afghanistan
mountain looks like every other Afghanistan
mountain."
It is thought that the American intelligence officials
have had some success in discovering where bin
Laden, who travels in a small convoy with 25 or
fewer people, has been, but not where he is going.
They believe that he sometimes uses an ambulance
for cover. The CIA has sent an increased number of
spies, known in the agency as a "surge" to the
region in the hope of obtaining better intelligence on
al-Qa'eda through bribes and interrogations.http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/12/walq12.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/12/ixhome.html |
