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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (56891)	11/13/2002 5:08:37 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

>> I said something similar once and got scratched all over by the fierce defenders of the CIA (or something)<< Steven is a known quantity. If he wants to believe that the CIA created Al Qadea, fuck it, he's too far to the left to change his mind on that one. Some beliefs are like religion, they don't depend on facts. As for you, the argument between me and you transpired because you kept insisting that you read it in the Economist, which simply is factually untrue.

To: zonder who wrote (56891)	11/13/2002 7:04:52 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Al Qaeda was formed ? with extensive CIA involvement ? to give Muslims from many different countries an extra-national vehicle for resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.". The CIA and the Pakistani SIS between them created the conditions allowing Al Qaeda to establish itself without hindrance in Afghanistan. The motivation on the part of the CIA was to defeat the Soviet occupation there. After the Soviets withdrew US interest in Afghanistan diminished. From my reading around the subject, it was the Pakistani outfit that administered most of the funds and shaped the information the CIA received. The Pak SIS was largely islamicized by that time with Wahabbist type folk. Today, it still is. I think the CIA was had by the Pakistani intelligence service and is still very reluctant to admit they were leaning on an outfit so islamist and inimical to US interests. When bin Laden left Sudan for Afghanistan the last time and joined up with the Taliban, it was Pakistani intelligence that gave it the OK. The CIA was at the time, and probably still is, a very white bread outfit and couldn't do a whole lot of on the ground intelligence work in Afghanistan and also was at the time reluctant to do very much on the ground human intelligence work anyway. Julie Sirrs, a CIA empoyee, went to Afghanistan I believe in very late 1990s - 2000 to interview Taliban prisoners held by the Northern Alliance and was rebuked for it despite the fact she must have had permission to go. There was obviously much dissension in CIA about desirability of human intelligence work in Afghanistan. It is very unlikely al Qaeda was formed with CIA involvement. It had the wrong membership. It is possible they gave the outfit a pass as it was opposing the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. The US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, for both similar and different reasons, were encouraging islamists to go to Afghanistan and fight the Soviets.