Subject: Clinton Administration Supported the "Militant Islamic
Base"
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 14:17:51 -0400
From: Michel Chossudovsky <chossudovsky@...>
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SUPPORTED THE "MILITANT ISLAMIC BASE"
To read the complete 1997 Congressional document entitled:
"CLINTON-APPROVED IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS HELP TURN BOSNIA INTO MILITANT
ISLAMIC BASE"
click: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
Editorial Note:
Centre for Research on Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca, 21
September 2001
Since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahedin ("holy warriors") to
fight covert wars on Washington's behest has become an integral part of
US
foreign policy. A 1997 document of the US Congress reveals how the
Clinton administration --under advice from the National Security Council
headed
by Anthony Lake-- had "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base"
leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic
Network,"
of thousands of Mujahedin from the Muslim world.
The "Bosnian pattern" has since been replicated in Kosovo, Southern
Serbia and Macedonia. Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting with
the
Kosovo Liberation Army(KLA) in Macedonia are Mujahedin from the Middle
East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also
within the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army are senior US military
advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as
well as
"soldiers of fortune" from Britain, Holland and Germany.
"Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking, ``Who
attacked our country?'' said George W. Bush in his address to the US
Congress on September 20th. "This group and its leader, a person named
Osama bin Laden are linked to many other organizations in different
countries"
What the President fails to mention in his speech is the complicity of
agencies of the US government in supporting and abetting Osama bin
Laden.
[link to Who is Osama bin Laden]
The Bush Administration has misled the American people. What is the
hidden agenda? The largest military operation since the Vietnam War is
being
launched against Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network, when the
evidence amply confirms that Osama has been "harbored" since the
Soviet-Afghan war by agencies of the US government.
To read the 1997 Congressional Press release entitled:
CLINTON-APPROVED IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS HELP TURN BOSNIA INTO MILITANT
ISLAMIC BASE
click http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
The congressional report provides detailed evidence from official
sources of the links between the Islamic Jihad and the US government
during the
Clinton Adminstration.
Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRT), 21
September 2001.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [COMMUNISM LIST]How the CIA created Osama bin Laden
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 18:29:39 +0100
From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda@...>
Reply-To: communism@...
Organization: Communism List
To: <communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
How the CIA created Osama bin Laden
BY NORM DIXON
"Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are
on the
defensive - on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the
political and
economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves.
They're doing so
on almost every continent populated by man - in the hills of
Afghanistan, in Angola,
in Kampuchea, in Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters."
Is this a call to jihad (holy war) taken from one of Islamic
fundamentalist Osama bin
Laden's notorious fatwas? Or perhaps a communique issued by the
repressive Taliban
regime in Kabul?
In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today's
supporters of
arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators, and their holy
war against
the "evil empire", was issued by US President Ronald Reagan on March 8,
1985. The
"evil empire" was the Soviet Union, as well as Third World movements
fighting
US-backed colonialism, apartheid and dictatorship.
How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities
- the most
despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working people in New
York and
Washington on September 11 - bin Laden the "freedom fighter" is now
lambasted by US
leaders and the Western mass media as a "terrorist mastermind" and an
"evil-doer".
Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the
vicious
movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist
terrorists
that plague Algeria and Egypt - and perhaps the disaster that befell New
York.
The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his
toxic brand of
Islamic fundamentalism.
Mujaheddin
In April 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)
seized power in
Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that
country's repressive
government.
The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the
peasants, trade
union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality
for women and
the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported
strengthening
Afghanistan's relationship with the Soviet Union.
Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal landlords, the Muslim
religious
establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal
chiefs. They
immediately began organising resistance to the government's progressive
policies,
under the guise of defending Islam.
Washington, fearing the spread of Soviet influence (and worse the new
government's
radical example) to its allies in Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states,
immediately
offered support to the Afghan mujaheddin, as the "contra" force was
known.
Following an internal PDPA power struggle in December 1979 which toppled
Afghanistan's leader, thousands of Soviet troops entered the country to
prevent the
new government's fall. This only galvanised the disparate fundamentalist
factions.
Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a "national liberation"
struggle in
the eyes of many Afghans.
The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and
the
mujaheddin captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.
Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion
(some estimates
range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop
up the
mujaheddin factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich
Saudi Arabia,
kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden,
provided
millions more.
Washington's policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy
Carter's national
security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was continued by his
successors. His plan
went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it
aimed to foster
an international movement to spread Islamic fanaticism into the Muslim
Central Asian
Soviet republics to destabilise the Soviet Union.
Brzezinski's grand plan coincided with Pakistan military dictator
General Zia
ul-Haq's own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and
Radio Free
Europe beamed Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while
paradoxically
denouncing the "Islamic revolution" that toppled the pro-US Shah of Iran
in 1979).
Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme,
led by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West's distaste for terrorism did not apply to
this
unsavoury "freedom fighter". Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970s for
throwing acid
in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.
After the mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar's forces rained
US-supplied
missiles and rockets on that city - killing at least 2000 civilians -
until the new
government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin
Laden was a close
associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.
Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and
trafficking in
opium. Backing of the mujaheddin from the CIA coincided with a boom in
the drug
business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the
world's single
largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.
In 1995, the former director of the CIA's operation in Afghanistan was
unrepentant
about the explosion in the flow of drugs: "Our main mission was to do as
much damage
as possible to the Soviets... There was a fallout in terms of drugs,
yes. But the
main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan."
Made in the USA
According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic
Review, in
1986 CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing
ISI proposal to
recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000
Islamic
militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000
attended
fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in
the fighting).
John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and
author of
Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, has
revealed that
Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary,
the CIA's spy
training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and
Jordan, and even
some African-American "black Muslims" were taught "sabotage skills".
The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those
charged with the
1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had
trained "bin
Laden's operatives" in 1989.
These "operatives" were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in
Brooklyn, New
York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to
Afghanistan
with US assistance to join Hekmatyar's forces. Mohammed was a member of
the US army's
elite Green Berets.
The program, reported the Independent, was part of a Washington-approved
plan called
"Operation Cyclone".
In Pakistan, recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the
mujaheddin
factions by an organisation known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of
Services - MAK).
MAK was a front for Pakistan's CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence
Directorate. The
ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian
covert
assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who
ran MAK. In
1989, he took overall charge of MAK.
Among those trained by Mohammed were El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in
1995 for
killing Israeli rightist Rabbi Meir Kahane and plotting with others to
bomb New York
landmarks, including the World Trade Center in 1993.
The Independent also suggested that Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an
Egyptian religious
leader also jailed for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was
also part of
Operation Cyclone. He entered the US in 1990 with the CIA's approval. A
confidential
CIA report concluded that the agency was "partly culpable" for the 1993
World Trade
Center blast, the Independent reported.
Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden, one of 20 sons of a billionaire construction magnate,
arrived in
Afghanistan to join the jihad in 1980. An austere religious fanatic and
business
tycoon, bin Laden specialised in recruiting, financing and training the
estimated
35,000 non-Afghan mercenaries who joined the mujaheddin.
The bin Laden family is a prominent pillar of the Saudi Arabian ruling
class, with
close personal, financial and political ties to that country's pro-US
royal family.
Bin Laden senior was appointed Saudi Arabia's minister of public works
as a favour by
King Faisal. The new minister awarded his own construction companies
lucrative
contracts to rebuild Islam's holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina. In the
process, the
bin Laden family company in 1966 became the world's largest private
construction
company.
Osama bin Laden's father died in 1968. Until 1994, he had access to the
dividends
from this ill-gotten business empire.
(Bin Laden junior's oft-quoted personal fortune of US$200-300 million
has been
arrived at by the US State Department by dividing today's value of the
bin Laden
family net worth - estimated to be US$5 billion - by the number of bin
Laden senior's
sons. A fact rarely mentioned is that in 1994 the bin Laden family
disowned Osama and
took control of his share.)
Osama's military and business adventures in Afghanistan had the blessing
of the bin
Laden dynasty and the reactionary Saudi Arabian regime. His close
working
relationship with MAK also meant that the CIA was fully aware of his
activities.
Milt Bearden, the CIA's station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989,
admitted to the
January 24, 2000, New Yorker that while he never personally met bin
Laden, "Did I
know that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were
bringing
$20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite
the war. And
that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this
is what bin
Laden did."
In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction equipment from Saudi
Arabia to
Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques
(he has a
degree in civil engineering), he built "training camps", some dug deep
into the sides
of mountains, and built roads to reach them.
These camps, now dubbed "terrorist universities" by Washington, were
built in
collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters,
including the
tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden,
were armed by
the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers.
Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the
mujaheddin told
the August 13, 2000, British Observer, "The Americans were keen to teach
the Afghans
the techniques of urban terrorism - car bombing and so on - so that they
could strike
at the Russians in major towns ... Many of them are now using their
knowledge and
expertise to wage war on everything they hate."
Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden's organisation, was established in
1987-88 to run the
camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist
holding
company - albeit one that integrates the operations of a mercenary force
and related
logistical services with "legitimate" business operations.
Bin Laden has simply continued to do the job he was asked to do in
Afghanistan during
the 1980s - fund, feed and train mercenaries. All that has changed is
his primary
customer. Then it was the ISI and, behind the scenes, the CIA. Today,
his services
are utilised primarily by the reactionary Taliban regime.
Bin Laden only became a "terrorist" in US eyes when he fell out with the
Saudi royal
family over its decision to allow more than 540,000 US troops to be
stationed on
Saudi soil following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
When thousands of US troops remained in Saudi Arabia after the end of
the Gulf War,
bin Laden's anger turned to outright opposition. He declared that Saudi
Arabia and
other regimes - such as Egypt - in the Middle East were puppets of the
US, just as
the PDPA government of Afghanistan had been a puppet of the Soviet
Union.
He called for the overthrow of these client regimes and declared it the
duty of all
Muslims to drive the US out of the Gulf states. In 1994, he was stripped
of his Saudi
citizenship and forced to leave the country. His assets there were
frozen.
After a period in Sudan, he returned to Afghanistan in May 1996. He
refurbished the
camps he had helped build during the Afghan war and offered the
facilities and
services - and thousands of his mercenaries - to the Taliban, which took
power that
September.
Today, bin Laden's private army of non-Afghan religious fanatics is a
key prop of the
Taliban regime.
Prior to the devastating September 11 attack on the twin towers of World
Trade
Center, US ruling-class figures remained unrepentant about the
consequences of their
dirty deals with the likes of bin Laden, Hekmatyar and the Taliban.
Since the awful
attack, they have been downright hypocritical.
In an August 28, 1998, report posted on MSNBC, Michael Moran quotes
Senator Orrin
Hatch, who was a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee
which approved US
dealings with the mujaheddin, as saying he would make "the same call
again", even
knowing what bin Laden would become.
"It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played
an important
role in the downfall of the Soviet Union."
Hatch today is one of the most gung-ho voices demanding military
retaliation.
Another face that has appeared repeatedly on television screens since
the attack has
been Vincent Cannistrano, described as a former CIA chief of
"counter-terrorism
operations".
Cannistrano is certainly an expert on terrorists like bin Laden, because
he directed
their "work". He was in charge of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras
during the early
1980s. In 1984, he became the supervisor of covert aid to the Afghan
mujaheddin for
the US National Security Council.
The last word goes to Zbigniew Brzezinski: "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?"
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
(Found on Johnson's Russia List)
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski
Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs
["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid
the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention.
In this period you were the national security adviser to President
Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA
aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the
Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality,
secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was
July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for
secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And
that very day, I wrote
a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion
this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But
perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to
provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but
we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that
they intended to fight against a secret
involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe
them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything
today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had
the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want
me to regret it?
(End of excerpt from Brzezinski interview.)
Base"
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 14:17:51 -0400
From: Michel Chossudovsky <chossudovsky@...>
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SUPPORTED THE "MILITANT ISLAMIC BASE"
To read the complete 1997 Congressional document entitled:
"CLINTON-APPROVED IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS HELP TURN BOSNIA INTO MILITANT
ISLAMIC BASE"
click: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
Editorial Note:
Centre for Research on Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca, 21
September 2001
Since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahedin ("holy warriors") to
fight covert wars on Washington's behest has become an integral part of
US
foreign policy. A 1997 document of the US Congress reveals how the
Clinton administration --under advice from the National Security Council
headed
by Anthony Lake-- had "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base"
leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic
Network,"
of thousands of Mujahedin from the Muslim world.
The "Bosnian pattern" has since been replicated in Kosovo, Southern
Serbia and Macedonia. Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting with
the
Kosovo Liberation Army(KLA) in Macedonia are Mujahedin from the Middle
East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also
within the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army are senior US military
advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as
well as
"soldiers of fortune" from Britain, Holland and Germany.
"Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking, ``Who
attacked our country?'' said George W. Bush in his address to the US
Congress on September 20th. "This group and its leader, a person named
Osama bin Laden are linked to many other organizations in different
countries"
What the President fails to mention in his speech is the complicity of
agencies of the US government in supporting and abetting Osama bin
Laden.
[link to Who is Osama bin Laden]
The Bush Administration has misled the American people. What is the
hidden agenda? The largest military operation since the Vietnam War is
being
launched against Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network, when the
evidence amply confirms that Osama has been "harbored" since the
Soviet-Afghan war by agencies of the US government.
To read the 1997 Congressional Press release entitled:
CLINTON-APPROVED IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS HELP TURN BOSNIA INTO MILITANT
ISLAMIC BASE
click http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
The congressional report provides detailed evidence from official
sources of the links between the Islamic Jihad and the US government
during the
Clinton Adminstration.
Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRT), 21
September 2001.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [COMMUNISM LIST]How the CIA created Osama bin Laden
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 18:29:39 +0100
From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda@...>
Reply-To: communism@...
Organization: Communism List
To: <communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
How the CIA created Osama bin Laden
BY NORM DIXON
"Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are
on the
defensive - on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the
political and
economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves.
They're doing so
on almost every continent populated by man - in the hills of
Afghanistan, in Angola,
in Kampuchea, in Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters."
Is this a call to jihad (holy war) taken from one of Islamic
fundamentalist Osama bin
Laden's notorious fatwas? Or perhaps a communique issued by the
repressive Taliban
regime in Kabul?
In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today's
supporters of
arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators, and their holy
war against
the "evil empire", was issued by US President Ronald Reagan on March 8,
1985. The
"evil empire" was the Soviet Union, as well as Third World movements
fighting
US-backed colonialism, apartheid and dictatorship.
How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities
- the most
despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working people in New
York and
Washington on September 11 - bin Laden the "freedom fighter" is now
lambasted by US
leaders and the Western mass media as a "terrorist mastermind" and an
"evil-doer".
Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the
vicious
movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist
terrorists
that plague Algeria and Egypt - and perhaps the disaster that befell New
York.
The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his
toxic brand of
Islamic fundamentalism.
Mujaheddin
In April 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)
seized power in
Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that
country's repressive
government.
The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the
peasants, trade
union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality
for women and
the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported
strengthening
Afghanistan's relationship with the Soviet Union.
Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal landlords, the Muslim
religious
establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal
chiefs. They
immediately began organising resistance to the government's progressive
policies,
under the guise of defending Islam.
Washington, fearing the spread of Soviet influence (and worse the new
government's
radical example) to its allies in Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states,
immediately
offered support to the Afghan mujaheddin, as the "contra" force was
known.
Following an internal PDPA power struggle in December 1979 which toppled
Afghanistan's leader, thousands of Soviet troops entered the country to
prevent the
new government's fall. This only galvanised the disparate fundamentalist
factions.
Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a "national liberation"
struggle in
the eyes of many Afghans.
The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and
the
mujaheddin captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.
Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion
(some estimates
range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop
up the
mujaheddin factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich
Saudi Arabia,
kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden,
provided
millions more.
Washington's policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy
Carter's national
security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was continued by his
successors. His plan
went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it
aimed to foster
an international movement to spread Islamic fanaticism into the Muslim
Central Asian
Soviet republics to destabilise the Soviet Union.
Brzezinski's grand plan coincided with Pakistan military dictator
General Zia
ul-Haq's own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and
Radio Free
Europe beamed Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while
paradoxically
denouncing the "Islamic revolution" that toppled the pro-US Shah of Iran
in 1979).
Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme,
led by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West's distaste for terrorism did not apply to
this
unsavoury "freedom fighter". Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970s for
throwing acid
in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.
After the mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar's forces rained
US-supplied
missiles and rockets on that city - killing at least 2000 civilians -
until the new
government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin
Laden was a close
associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.
Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and
trafficking in
opium. Backing of the mujaheddin from the CIA coincided with a boom in
the drug
business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the
world's single
largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.
In 1995, the former director of the CIA's operation in Afghanistan was
unrepentant
about the explosion in the flow of drugs: "Our main mission was to do as
much damage
as possible to the Soviets... There was a fallout in terms of drugs,
yes. But the
main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan."
Made in the USA
According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic
Review, in
1986 CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing
ISI proposal to
recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000
Islamic
militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000
attended
fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in
the fighting).
John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and
author of
Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, has
revealed that
Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary,
the CIA's spy
training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and
Jordan, and even
some African-American "black Muslims" were taught "sabotage skills".
The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those
charged with the
1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had
trained "bin
Laden's operatives" in 1989.
These "operatives" were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in
Brooklyn, New
York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to
Afghanistan
with US assistance to join Hekmatyar's forces. Mohammed was a member of
the US army's
elite Green Berets.
The program, reported the Independent, was part of a Washington-approved
plan called
"Operation Cyclone".
In Pakistan, recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the
mujaheddin
factions by an organisation known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of
Services - MAK).
MAK was a front for Pakistan's CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence
Directorate. The
ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian
covert
assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who
ran MAK. In
1989, he took overall charge of MAK.
Among those trained by Mohammed were El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in
1995 for
killing Israeli rightist Rabbi Meir Kahane and plotting with others to
bomb New York
landmarks, including the World Trade Center in 1993.
The Independent also suggested that Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an
Egyptian religious
leader also jailed for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was
also part of
Operation Cyclone. He entered the US in 1990 with the CIA's approval. A
confidential
CIA report concluded that the agency was "partly culpable" for the 1993
World Trade
Center blast, the Independent reported.
Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden, one of 20 sons of a billionaire construction magnate,
arrived in
Afghanistan to join the jihad in 1980. An austere religious fanatic and
business
tycoon, bin Laden specialised in recruiting, financing and training the
estimated
35,000 non-Afghan mercenaries who joined the mujaheddin.
The bin Laden family is a prominent pillar of the Saudi Arabian ruling
class, with
close personal, financial and political ties to that country's pro-US
royal family.
Bin Laden senior was appointed Saudi Arabia's minister of public works
as a favour by
King Faisal. The new minister awarded his own construction companies
lucrative
contracts to rebuild Islam's holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina. In the
process, the
bin Laden family company in 1966 became the world's largest private
construction
company.
Osama bin Laden's father died in 1968. Until 1994, he had access to the
dividends
from this ill-gotten business empire.
(Bin Laden junior's oft-quoted personal fortune of US$200-300 million
has been
arrived at by the US State Department by dividing today's value of the
bin Laden
family net worth - estimated to be US$5 billion - by the number of bin
Laden senior's
sons. A fact rarely mentioned is that in 1994 the bin Laden family
disowned Osama and
took control of his share.)
Osama's military and business adventures in Afghanistan had the blessing
of the bin
Laden dynasty and the reactionary Saudi Arabian regime. His close
working
relationship with MAK also meant that the CIA was fully aware of his
activities.
Milt Bearden, the CIA's station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989,
admitted to the
January 24, 2000, New Yorker that while he never personally met bin
Laden, "Did I
know that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were
bringing
$20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite
the war. And
that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this
is what bin
Laden did."
In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction equipment from Saudi
Arabia to
Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques
(he has a
degree in civil engineering), he built "training camps", some dug deep
into the sides
of mountains, and built roads to reach them.
These camps, now dubbed "terrorist universities" by Washington, were
built in
collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters,
including the
tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden,
were armed by
the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers.
Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the
mujaheddin told
the August 13, 2000, British Observer, "The Americans were keen to teach
the Afghans
the techniques of urban terrorism - car bombing and so on - so that they
could strike
at the Russians in major towns ... Many of them are now using their
knowledge and
expertise to wage war on everything they hate."
Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden's organisation, was established in
1987-88 to run the
camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist
holding
company - albeit one that integrates the operations of a mercenary force
and related
logistical services with "legitimate" business operations.
Bin Laden has simply continued to do the job he was asked to do in
Afghanistan during
the 1980s - fund, feed and train mercenaries. All that has changed is
his primary
customer. Then it was the ISI and, behind the scenes, the CIA. Today,
his services
are utilised primarily by the reactionary Taliban regime.
Bin Laden only became a "terrorist" in US eyes when he fell out with the
Saudi royal
family over its decision to allow more than 540,000 US troops to be
stationed on
Saudi soil following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
When thousands of US troops remained in Saudi Arabia after the end of
the Gulf War,
bin Laden's anger turned to outright opposition. He declared that Saudi
Arabia and
other regimes - such as Egypt - in the Middle East were puppets of the
US, just as
the PDPA government of Afghanistan had been a puppet of the Soviet
Union.
He called for the overthrow of these client regimes and declared it the
duty of all
Muslims to drive the US out of the Gulf states. In 1994, he was stripped
of his Saudi
citizenship and forced to leave the country. His assets there were
frozen.
After a period in Sudan, he returned to Afghanistan in May 1996. He
refurbished the
camps he had helped build during the Afghan war and offered the
facilities and
services - and thousands of his mercenaries - to the Taliban, which took
power that
September.
Today, bin Laden's private army of non-Afghan religious fanatics is a
key prop of the
Taliban regime.
Prior to the devastating September 11 attack on the twin towers of World
Trade
Center, US ruling-class figures remained unrepentant about the
consequences of their
dirty deals with the likes of bin Laden, Hekmatyar and the Taliban.
Since the awful
attack, they have been downright hypocritical.
In an August 28, 1998, report posted on MSNBC, Michael Moran quotes
Senator Orrin
Hatch, who was a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee
which approved US
dealings with the mujaheddin, as saying he would make "the same call
again", even
knowing what bin Laden would become.
"It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played
an important
role in the downfall of the Soviet Union."
Hatch today is one of the most gung-ho voices demanding military
retaliation.
Another face that has appeared repeatedly on television screens since
the attack has
been Vincent Cannistrano, described as a former CIA chief of
"counter-terrorism
operations".
Cannistrano is certainly an expert on terrorists like bin Laden, because
he directed
their "work". He was in charge of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras
during the early
1980s. In 1984, he became the supervisor of covert aid to the Afghan
mujaheddin for
the US National Security Council.
The last word goes to Zbigniew Brzezinski: "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?"
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
(Found on Johnson's Russia List)
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski
Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs
["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid
the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention.
In this period you were the national security adviser to President
Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA
aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the
Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality,
secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was
July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for
secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And
that very day, I wrote
a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion
this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But
perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to
provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but
we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that
they intended to fight against a secret
involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe
them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything
today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had
the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want
me to regret it?
(End of excerpt from Brzezinski interview.)