University
of Ottawa / Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), Montr,al / Posted 12
September 2001
A few
hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon,
the bsh administration concluded without supporting evidence, that "Ousmane
(or Osman ala Tim Osman) bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation were prime
suspects". Agency Director GTenet 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 bsh
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 Agency Director James Woolsey pointed his
finger at "state sponsorship," implying the complicity of one or more
foreign governments. In the words of former Security Adviser, LEagleburger,
"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 Ousmane (or Osman ala Tim Osman) 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 Ousmane (or Osman ala Tim Osman) bin Laden was
recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war "ironically under the auspices of
the Agency, to fight Soviet invaders".
1-
In 1979 "the largest covert operation in the history of the
Agency" 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
Agency 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
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 Agency and Pentagon
specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
There the Agency specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help
plan operations for the Afghan rebels.
4- The Central Intelligence Agency
(Agency) using Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a
key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn,
the Agency 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 Agency covert support to the
"jihad" operated indirectly through
the Pakistani ISI, --i.e. the Agency 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 Agency'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
Agency"
6- Agency's Beardman confirmed, in this
regard, that Ousmane 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 Agency. With Agency 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, Agency operations had also
reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:
'Relations between the Agency 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
Agency only agreed to this plan in October 1984.... `the Agency 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 Agency'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 "H".
11 In this regard, AMcCoy's study confirms
that within two years of the onslaught of the Agency operation in Afghanistan,
"the Pakistan- Afghanistan
borderlands became the world's top "H" producer, supplying 60 percent
of U.S. demand. In Pakistan, the
"H"-addict population went from near zero in 1979... to 1.2 million
by 1985 -- a much steeper rise than in any other nation":
12-Agency assets again controlled this
"H" 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 "H" 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 "H" 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 Agency director
of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the Agency 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 "H" routes.
The ISI's extensive intelligence military-network was not dismantled in
the wake of the Cold War. The Agency 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 Agency, 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 Agency
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 Agency 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 Ousmane (or Osman ala Tim Osman) 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 Agency 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 bsh 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 bsh Adminstration together with its NATO partners from
embarking upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.
Endnotes
International:
`Informers' point the finger at bin Laden; Washington on alert for suicide
bombers, The Daily Telegraph, London, 24 August 1998.
See
"The Un-great game: the Country that lost the Cold War, Afghanistan, New
Republic, 25 March 1996):
The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, Foreign
Affairs, November-December 1999.
Washington Post, July 19, 1992.
Fallout from the Afghan Jihad, Inter Press
Services, 21 November 1995.
Weekend
Sunday (NPR); 16 August 1998.
Ibid.
Possible
Connection of ISI With Drug Industry, India Abroad, 2 December 1994.
Ibid
Out of
Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, Oxford university
Press, New York, 1995. See also the review of in International Press Services,
22 August 1995.
Drug
fallout: the Agency's Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive;
1 August 1997.
Ibid
Drug
Money in a changing World, Technical document no 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4.
See also Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999,
E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations Publication, Vienna 1999, p 49-51, And Richard
Lapper, UN Fears Growth of "H" Trade, Financial Times, 24 February
2000.
Report
of the International Narcotics Control Board, op cit, p 49-51, see also op.
cit.
International
Press Services, 22 August 1995.
The
Taliban: Exporting Extremism, Foreign Affairs, November- December, 1999, p. 22.
Quoted
in the Christian Science Monitor, 3 September 1998)
Kabul
learns to live with its bearded conquerors, The Independent, London, 6
November1996.
See
Pakistan is Pursuing Asian Goals, India Abroad, 3 November 1995.
Who's
calling the shots?: Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, 23 The Gazette, Montreal, 26 October 1999..
Ibid
See Chechen Front Moves To Kosovo Segodnia,
Moscow, 23 Feb 2000.
The
European, 13 February 1997, See also Itar-Tass, 4-5 January 2000.
BBC, 29
September 1999).
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