Who Is Osama Bin Laden?

by Michel Chossudovsky


www.globalresearch.ca
September 12, 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 socio-political
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 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's
ouster 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 U.S.
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 U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in
Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests ... U.S.
officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its
Afghan allies `because U.S. 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 multibillion 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 build up 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 hardline 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). In
last few months there is 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 on 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
U.S. 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 which 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 Commander Shamil
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 for
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
Adminstration 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 Adminstration together with its
NATO partners from embarking upon a military adventure which threatens
the future of humanity.