Thanks Bernard:
I'll open it up here:
This is from a renowned journalist in Pakistan...this guy has a set of cojones...we Americans are bombarded with information yet we are so pitifully informed...
Special Report
Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S.
Helped Midwife a Terrorist
Ahmed Rashid of Pakistan is a member of the
International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for
Public Integrity. He is the
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent
for the Far Eastern
Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph of London. This
is an excerpt from his
book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism
in Central Asia" (Yale
University Press).
By Ahmed Rashid
In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war
against the Soviet
Union by taking three significant, but at that time
highly secret, measures.
He had persuaded the US Congress to provide the
Mujaheddin with
American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot
down Soviet planes and
provide US advisers to train the guerrillas. Until
then, no US-made weapons or
personnel had been used directly in the war effort.
The CIA, Britain's MI6 and the
ISI [Pakistan‚s Inter-Services
Intelligence] also agreed on a
provocative plan to launch
guerrilla attacks into the Soviet
Socialist Republics of Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan, the soft
Muslim underbelly of the Soviet
state from where Soviet troops
in Afghanistan received their
supplies. The task was given to
the ISI's favourite Mujaheddin
leader, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. In
March 1987, small units
crossed the Amu Darya river
from bases in northern
Afghanistan and launched their
first rocket attacks against
villages in Tajikistan. Casey
was delighted with the news,
and on his next secret trip to
Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with
[the late Pakistani]
President Zia [ul-Haq] to review the Mujaheddin groups.
Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing
ISI initiative to recruit
radical Muslims from around the world to come to
Pakistan and fight with the
Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since
1982, and by now all the
other players had their reasons for supporting the idea.
President Zia aimed to cement Islamic unity, turn
Pakistan into the leader of the
Muslim world and foster an Islamic opposition in
Central Asia. Washington
wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was
fighting the Soviet Union
alongside the Afghans and their American benefactors.
And the Saudis saw an
opportunity both to promote Wahabbism [their strict and
austere Wahabbi creed]
and to get rid of its disgruntled radicals. None of the
players reckoned on these
volunteers having their own agendas, which would
eventually turn their hatred
against the Soviets on their own regimes and the
Americans.
Thousands of radicals come to study
. . . Between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim
radicals from 43 Islamic
countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa,
Central Asia and the Far
East would pass their baptism under fire with the
Afghan Mujaheddin. Tens of
thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in
the hundreds of new
madrassas that Zia's military government began to fund
in Pakistan and along the
Afghan border. Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim
radicals were to have direct
contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced
by the jihad.
In camps near Peshawar and in Afghanistan, these
radicals
met each other for the first time and studied, trained
and fought
together. It was the first opportunity for most of them
to learn
about Islamic movements in other countries, and they
forged
tactical and ideological links that would serve them
well in the
future. The camps became virtual universities for
future Islamic
radicalism. None of the intelligence agencies involved
wanted
to consider the consequences of bringing together
thousands
of Islamic radicals from all over the world. "What was
more important in the world
view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet
Empire? A few stirred-up
Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end
of the Cold War?" said
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US National Security
Adviser. American citizens
woke up to the consequences only when
Afghanistan-trained Islamic militants
blew up the World Trade Center in New York in 1993,
killing six people and
injuring 1,000.
"The war," wrote Samuel Huntington, "left behind an
uneasy coalition of Islamist
organizations intent on promoting Islam against all
non-Muslim forces. It also left
a legacy of expert and experienced fighters, training
camps and logistical
facilities, elaborate trans-Islam networks of personal
and organization
relationships, a substantial amount of military
equipment including 300 to 500
unaccounted-for Stinger missiles, and, most important,
a heady sense of power
and self-confidence over what had been achieved and a
driving desire to move on
to other victories."
A young Bin Laden
. . . Among these thousands of foreign recruits was a
young Saudi student,
Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Yemeni construction
magnate, Mohammed Bin
Laden, who was a close friend of the late King Faisal
and whose company had
become fabulously wealthy on the contracts to renovate
and expand the Holy
Mosques of Mecca and Medina. The ISI had long wanted
Prince Turki Bin Faisal,
the head of Istakhbarat, the Saudi Intelligence
Service, to provide a Royal Prince
to lead the Saudi contingent in order to show Muslims
the commitment of the
Royal Family to the jihad. Only poorer Saudis,
students, taxi drivers and Bedouin
tribesmen had so far arrived to fight. But no pampered
Saudi prince was ready to
rough it out in the Afghan mountains. Bin Laden,
although not a royal, was close
enough to the royals and certainly wealthy enough to
lead the Saudi contingent.
Bin Laden, Prince Turki and General Gut were to become
firm friends and allies in
a common cause.
The centre for the Arab-Afghans
[Filipino Moros, Uzbeks from
Soviet Central Asia, Arabs from
Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait, and Uighurs from Xinjiang
in China who had all come to fight
with the Mujaheddin] was the
offices of the World Muslim League
and the Muslim Brotherhood in the
northern Pakistan city of
Peshawar. The center was run by
Abdullah Azam, a Jordanian
Palestinian whom Bin Laden had
first met at university in Jeddah and revered as his
leader. Azam and his two
sons were assassinated by a bomb blast in Peshawar in
1989.
During the 1980s, Azam had forged close links with
Hikmetyar and Abdul Rasul
Sayyaf, the Afghan Islamic scholar, whom the Saudis had
sent to Peshawar to
promote Wahabbism. Saudi funds flowed to Azam and the
Makhtab at Khidmat
or Services Center, which he created in 1984 to service
the new recruits and
receive donations from Islamic charities. Donations
from Saudi Intelligence, the
Saudi Red Crescent, the World Muslim League and private
donations from Saudi
princes and mosques were channelled through the
Makhtab. A decade later, the
Makhtab would emerge at the center of a web of radical
organizations that helped
carry out the World Trade Center bombing and the
bombings of US embassies in
Africa in 1998.
Until he arrived in Afghanistan, Bin Laden's life had
hardly been marked by
anything extraordinary. He was born around 1957, the
17th of 57 children sired by
his Yemeni father and a Saudi mother, one of Mohammed
Bin Laden's many
wives. Bin Laden studied for a master‚s degree in
business administration at King
Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah but soon switched to
Islamic studies. Thin and
tall, he is 6 feet 5 inches, with long limbs and a
flowing beard. He towered above
his contemporaries, who remember him as a quiet and
pious individual but hardly
marked out for greater things.
His father backed the Afghan struggle and helped fund
it, so when Bin Laden
decided to join up, his family responded
enthusiastically. He first traveled to
Peshawar in 1980 and met the Mujaheddin leaders,
returning frequently with
Saudi donations for the cause until 1982, when he
decided to settle in Peshawar.
He brought in his company engineers and heavy
construction equipment to help
build roads and depots for the Mujaheddin. In 1986, he
helped build the Khost
tunnel complex, which the CIA was funding as a major
arms storage depot,
training facility and medical center for the
Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains
close to the Pakistan border. For the first time in
Khost he set up his own training
camp for Arab Afghans, who now increasingly saw this
lanky, wealthy and
charismatic Saudi as their leader.
. . . Bin Laden later claimed to have taken part in
ambushes against Soviet
troops, but he mainly used his wealth and Saudi
donations to build Mujaheddin
projects and spread Wahabbism among the Afghans. After
the death of Azam in
1989, he took over Azam's organization and set up Al
Qaeda or Military Base as
a service center for Arab-Afghans and their families
and to forge a broad-based
alliance among them. With the help of Bin Laden,
several thousand Arab militants
had established bases in the provinces of Kunar,
Nuristan and Badakhshan, but
their extreme Wahabbi practices made them intensely
disliked by the majority of
Afghans. Moreover, by allying themselves with the most
extreme pro-Wahabbi
Pashtun MuMeddin, the Arab-Afghans alienated the
non-Pashtuns and the Shia
Muslims.
Upset by U.S. role in Gulf War
. . . By 1990, Bin Laden was disillusioned by the
internal bickering of the
Mujaheddin and he returned to Saudi Arabia to work in
the family business. He
founded a welfare organization for Arab-Afghan
veterans. Some 4,000 of them had
settled in Mecca and Medina alone, and Bin Laden gave
money to the families of
those killed. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait he
lobbied the Royal Family to
organize a popular defense of the kingdom and raise a
force from the Afghan war
veterans to fight Iraq. Instead, King Fahd invited in
the Americans. This came as
an enormous shock to Bin Laden. As the 540,000 US
troops began to arrive, Bin
Laden openly criticized the Royal Family, lobbying the
Saudi ulema to issue
fatwas, religious rulings, against non-Muslims being
based in the country.
. . . In 1992, Bin Laden left for Sudan to take part in
the Islamic revolution under
way there under the charismatic Sudanese leader Hassan
Turabi. Bin Laden's
continued criticism of the Saudi Royal Family
eventually annoyed them so much
that they took the unprecedented step of revoking his
citizenship in 1994. It was
in Sudan, with his wealth and contacts, that Bin Laden
gathered around him more
veterans of the Afghan war, who were all disgusted by
the American victory over
Iraq and the attitude of the Arab ruling elites who
allowed the US military to
remain in the Gulf. As US and Saudi pressure mounted
against Sudan for
harboring Bin Laden, the Sudanese authorities asked him
to leave.
In May 1996, Bin Laden travelled back to Afghanistan,
arriving in Jalalabad in a
chartered jet with an entourage of dozens of Arab
militants, bodyguards and
family members, including three wives and 13 children.
Here he lived under the
protection of the Jalalabad Shura [an advisory body or
assembly], until the
conquest of Kabul and Jalalabad by the Taliban in
September 1996. In August
1996, he had issued his first declaration of jihad
against the Americans, whom he
said were occupying Saudi Arabia.
"The walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be
demolished except in a rain of
bullets," the declaration read. Striking up a
friendship with Mullah Omar, in 1997
he moved to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and came under the
protection of the
Taliban.
By now, the CIA had set up a special cell to monitor
his activities and his links
with other Islamic militants. A US State Department
report in August 1996 noted
that Bin Laden was "one of the most significant
financial sponsors of Islamic
extremist activities in the world." The report said
that Bin Laden was financing
terrorist camps in Somalia, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Egypt
and Afghanistan. In
April 1996, President Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism
Act, which allowed the US
to block assets of terrorist organizations. It was
first used to block Bin Laden's
access to his fortune of an estimated US$250-300
million. A few months later,
Egyptian intelligence declared that Bin Laden was
training 1,000 militants, a
second generation of Arab-Afghans, to bring about an
Islamic revolution in Arab
countries.
CIA tries snatch operation
In early 1997, the CIA constituted a squad that arrived
in Peshawar to try to carry
out a snatch operation to get Bin Laden out of
Afghanistan. The Americans
enlisted Afghans and Pakistanis to help them but
aborted the operation. The US
activity in Peshawar helped persuade Bin Laden to move
to the safer confines of
Kandahar. On 23 February 1998, at a meeting in the
original Khost camp, all the
groups associated with Al Qaeda issued a manifesto
under the aegis of "The
International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and
Crusaders." The manifesto
stated "for more than seven years the US has been
occupying the lands of Islam
in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsular,
plundering its riches, dictating to
its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its
neighbours, and turning its bases
in the peninsular into a spearhead through which to
fight the neighbouring Muslim
peoples."
The meeting issued a fatwa. "The ruling to kill the
Americans and their allies --
civilians and military -- is an individual duty for
every Muslim who can do it in any
country in which it is possible to." Bin Laden had now
formulated a policy that
was not just aimed at the Saudi Royal Family or the
Americans, but called for the
liberation of the entire Muslim Middle East. As the
American air war against Iraq
escalated in 1998, Bin Laden called on all Muslims to
"confront, fight and kill,
Americans and Britons."
1998 U.S. Embassy bombings
However, it was the bombings in August 1998 of the US
Embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania that killed 220 people which made Bin Laden a
household name in the
Muslim world and the West. Just 13 days later, after
accusing Bin Laden of
perpetrating the attack, the USA retaliated by firing
70 cruise missiles against
Bin Laden's camps around Khost and Jalalabad. Several
camps which had been
handed over by the Taliban to the Arab-Afghans and
Pakistani radical groups
were hit. The Al Badr camp controlled by Bin Laden and
the Khalid bin Walid and
Muawia camps run by the Pakistani Harakat ul Ansar were
the main targets.
Harakat used their camps to train militants for
fighting Indian troops in Kashmir.
Seven outsiders were killed in the strike -- three
Yemenis, two Egyptians, one
Saudi and one Turk. Also killed were seven Pakistanis
and 20 Afghans.
In November 1998 the USA offered a US$5-million reward
for Bin Laden's capture.
The Americans were further galvanized when Bin Laden
claimed that it was his
Islamic duty to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons to
use against the USA.
"It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess
the weapons that would
prevent infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims.
Hostility toward America is a
religious duty and we hope to be rewarded for it by
God," he said.
. . . After the Africa bombings, the US launched a
truly global operation. More
than 80 Islamic militants were arrested in a dozen
different countries. Militants
were picked up in a crescent running from Tanzania,
Kenya, Sudan and Yemen
to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and the Phillipines."
In December 1998, Indian authorities detained
Bangladeshi militants for plotting
to bomb the US Consulate in Calcutta. Seven Afghan
nationals using false Italian
passports were arrested in Malaysia and accused of
trying to start a bombing
campaign." According to the FBI, militants in Yemen who
kidnapped 16 Western
tourists in December 1998 were funded by Bin Laden. In
February 1999,
Bangladeshi authorities said Bin Laden had sent US$l
million to the
Harkat-ul-Jihad (HJ) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, some of
whose members had trained
and fought in Afghanistan. HJ leaders said they wanted
to turn Bangladesh into a
Taliban-style Islamic state.
Thousands of miles away in Nouakchott, the capital of
Mauritania in West Africa,
several militants were arrested who had also trained
under Bin Laden in
Afghanistan and were suspected of plotting bomb
explosions. Meanwhile, during
the trial of 107 Al-Jihad members at a military court
in Cairo, Egyptian
intelligence officers testified that Bin Laden had
bankrolled Al-Jihad. In February
1999, the CIA claimed that through monitoring Bin
Laden's communication
network by satellite, they had prevented his supporters
from carrying out seven
bomb attacks against US overseas facilities in Saudi
Arabia, Albania, Azerbaijan,
Tajikistan, Uganda, Uruguay and the Ivory Coast --
emphasizing the reach of the
Afghan veterans.
. . . But it was Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the
original sponsors of the
Arab-Afghans, who suffered the most as their activities
rebounded. In March
1997, three Arab and two Tajik militants [from
Tajikistan] were shot dead after a
36-hour gun battle between them and the police in an
Afghan refugee camp near
Peshawar. Belonging to the Wahabbi radical Tafkir
group, they were planning to
bomb an Islamic heads of state meeting in Islamabad.
Fighting in Kashmir against India
With the encouragement of Pakistan, the Taliban and Bin
Laden, Arab-Afghans
had enlisted in the Pakistani party Harkat-ut-Ansar to
fight in Kashmir against
Indian troops. By inducting Arabs who introduced
Wahabbi-style rules in the
Kashmir valley, genuine Kashmiri militants felt
insulted. The US government had
declared Ansar a terrorist organization in 1996 and it
had subsequently changed
its name to Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. All the Pakistani
victims of the US missile
strikes on Khost belonged to Ansar. In 1999, Ansar said
it would impose a strict
Wahabbi-style dress code in the Kashmir valley and
banned jeans and jackets.
On 15 February 1999, they shot and wounded three
Kashmiri cable television
operators for relaying Western satellite broadcasts.
Ansar had previously
respected the liberal traditions of Kashmiri Muslims,
but the activities of the
Arab-Afghans hurt the legitimacy of the Kashmiri
movement and gave India a
propaganda coup.
Pakistan faced a problem when Washington urged Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif
to help arrest Bin Laden. The ISI's close contacts with
Bin Laden, and the fact
that he was helping fund and train Kashmiri militants
who were using the Khost
camps, created a dilemma for Sharif when he visited
Washington in December
1998. Sharif sidestepped the issue but other Pakistani
officials were more
brazen, reminding their American counterparts how they
had both helped midwife
Bin Laden in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s.
Bin Laden himself pointed
to continued support from some elements in the
Pakistani intelligence services in
an interview. "As for Pakistan there are some
governmental departments, which,
by the Grace of God, respond to the Islamic sentiments
of the masses in
Pakistan. This is reflected in sympathy and
co-operation. However, some other
governmental departments fell into the trap of the
infidels. We pray to God to
return them to the right path," said Bin Laden.
Conundrums for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
Support for Bin Laden by elements within the Pakistani
establishment was
another contradiction in Pakistan‚s Afghan policy. . .
. The US was Pakistan‚s
closest ally, with deep links to the military and the
ISI. But both the Taliban and
Bin Laden provided sanctuary and training facilities
for Kashmiri militants who
were backed by Pakistan, and Islamabad had little
interest in drying up that
support. Even though the Americans repeatedly tried to
persuade the ISI to
cooperate in delivering Bin Laden, the ISI declined,
although it did help the US
arrest several of Bin Laden's supporters. Without
Pakistan‚s support, the United
States could not hope to launch a snatch by US
commandos or more accurate
bombing strikes, because it needed Pakistani territory
to launch such raids. At
the same time, the USA dared not expose Pakistan‚s
support for the Taliban,
because it still hoped for ISI cooperation in catching
Bin Laden.
The Saudi conundrum was even worse. In July 1998 Prince
Turki had visited
Kandahar and a few weeks later 400 new pick-up trucks
arrived in Kandahar for
the Taliban, still bearing their Dubai license plates.
The Saudis also gave cash for
the Taliban's cheque book conquest of the north in the
autumn. Until the Africa
bombings and despite US pressure to end their support
for the Taliban, the
Saudis continued funding the Taliban and were silent on
the need to extradite Bin
Laden.
The truth about the Saudi silence was even more
complicated. The Saudis
preferred to leave Bin Laden alone in Afghanistan
because his arrest and trial by
the Americans could expose the deep relationship that
Bin Laden continued to
have with sympathetic members of the Royal Family and
elements within Saudi
intelligence, which could prove deeply embarrassing.
The Saudis wanted Bin
Laden either dead or a captive of the Taliban -- they
did not want him captured by
the Americans.
. . . By now Bin Laden had developed considerable
influence with the Taliban, but
that had not always been the case. The Taliban's
contact with the Arab-Afghans
and their Pan-Islamic ideology was non-existent until
the Taliban captured Kabul
in 1996. Pakistan was closely involved in introducing
Bin Laden to the Taliban
leaders in Kandahar, because it wanted to retain the
Khost training camps for
Kashmiri militants, which were now in Taliban hands.
Persuasion by Pakistan,
the Taliban's better-educated cadres, who also had
Pan-Islamic ideas, and the
lure of financial benefits from Bin Laden, encouraged
the Taliban leaders to meet
with Bin Laden and hand him back the Khost camps.
A life with the Taliban in Kandahar
Partly for his own safety and partly to keep control
over him, the Taliban shifted
Bin Laden to Kandahar in 1997. At first he lived as a
paying guest. He built a
house for Mullah Omar's family and provided funds to
other Taliban leaders. He
promised to pave the road from Kandahar airport to the
city and build mosques,
schools and dams, but his civic works never got started
as his funds were frozen.
While Bin Laden lived in enormous style in a huge
mansion in Kandahar with his
family, servants and fellow militants, the arrogant
behaviour of the Arab-Afghans
who arrived with him and their failure to fulfill any
of their civic projects
antagonized the local population. The Kandaharis saw
the Taliban leaders as
beneficiaries of Arab largesse rather than the people.
Bin Laden endeared himself further to the leadership by
sending several hundred
Arab-Afghans to participate in the 1997 and 1998
Taliban offensives in the north.
These Wahabbi fighters helped the Taliban carry out
massacres of the Shia
Hazaras in the north. Several hundred Arab-Afghans,
based in the Rishkor army
garrison outside Kabul, fought on the Kabul front
against [the Mujaheddin leader
Ahmad Shah] Masud. Increasingly, Bin Laden's world view
appeared to dominate
the thinking of senior Taliban leaders. All-night
conversations between Bin Laden
and the Taliban leaders paid off. Until his arrival,
the Taliban leadership had not
been particularly antagonistic to the USA or the West
but demanded recognition
for their government. However, after the Africa
bombings the Taliban became
increasingly vociferous against the Americans, the UN,
the Saudis and Muslim
regimes around the world. Their statements increasingly
reflected the language of
defiance Bin Laden had adopted and which was not an
original Taliban trait.
As US pressure on the Taliban to expel Bin Laden
intensified, the Taliban said he
was a guest and it was against Afghan tradition to
expel guests. When it
appeared that Washington was planning another military
strike against Bin
Laden, the Taliban tried to cut a deal with Washington
-- to allow him to leave the
country in exchange for US recognition. Thus, until the
winter of 1998 the Taliban
saw Bin Laden as an asset, a bargaining chip over whom
they could negotiate
with the Americans.
The US State Department opened a satellite telephone
connection to speak to
Mullah Omar directly. The Afghanistan desk officers,
helped by a Pushto
translator, held lengthy conversations with Omar in
which both sides explored
various options, but to no avail. By early 1999 it
began to dawn on the Taliban
that no compromise with the US was possible and they
began to see Bin Laden
as a liability. A US deadline in February 1999 to the
Tatiban to either hand over
Bin Laden or face the consequences forced the Taliban
to make him disappear
discreetly from Kandahar. The move bought the Taliban
some time, but the issue
was still nowhere near being resolved.
The Arab-Afghans had come full circle. From being mere
appendages to the
Afghan jihad and the Cold War in the 1980s they had
taken centre stage for the
Afghans, neighbouring countries and the West in the
1990s. . . . Afghanistan was
now truly a haven for Islamic internationalism and
terrorism and the Americans
and the West were at a loss as to how to handle it.
ragingbull.lycos.com
© 2000 by Ahmed Rashid. Reprinted by permission
Jim |
