Who Is Osama Bin Laden?

By PROFESSOR MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY
University of Ottawa

A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the Worlds Trade Center and the Pentagon, the George W. Bush administration immediately concluded without any supporting evidence, that "Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization were prime suspects". The 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 Woolsley pointed his finger at the "state sponsorship", implying the complicity of one or more foreign governments. In words of former National Security Advisor, Lawrence Eagelburger, " I think we will show them when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution."

Meanwhile, parroting the official statements, all of 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 the – 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 era and its aftermath.

The prime suspect in the New York and Washington terrorists attacks, branded by the FBI as an "international terrorists" for his role in the African US bombings, Saudi born Osama bin Laden was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war ironically under the auspices of the CIA in order to fight the Soviets who came to the defense of the Afghanistan government, according to the mutual defense treaty that was signed by the two governments.

In 1979 the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA was lunched in response to the Soviet-Afghan war in support of the pro-Communist government of Babrak Kamal.

With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistanis ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by all the Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined the Afghanistan fight against the legally elected Afghan government and the Soviets in 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more Islamic fighters came to study in the Pakistanis Madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghanistan Jihad.

This Islamic Jihad was fully supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia with a very significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent Drug Trade.

In March of 1985, the then US President Reagan signed the National Security Decision Directive 166…which authorized the stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen, and it made clear that that this secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat the Soviet troops helping Afghanistan through covert action and thus encourage the Soviets to withdraw. The new covert US assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies to the Mujahideen – a steady rise to over 65,000 tons annually by 1987…as well as a ceaseless stream of CIA and Pentagon officials and specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistani’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 who were fighting the Afghan government and the Soviet troops.

The CIA, using Pakistani’s Inter-Service Intelligence played a key role in training the Mujahideen fighters. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings if 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 elected Afghan

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, Egypt, bin Laden and the "Afghan Arabs" had been imparted "with very sophisticated types of training and weapons that was allowed to them by the CIA."

CIA’s Beardman confirmed in his report, that Osama bin Laden was not aware of the role that he was playing and how he was being used by USA. In the words of bin Laden, quoted by Beardman: "neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help."

Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet Army and the loyal Afghan troops on behalf of Uncle Sam and their overall plans. While there were contacts at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in the fighting theatre had no contacts with Washington or the CIA.

With the CIA backing and massive amounts of US military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of Pakistani reactionary government. The ISI had a staff composed of the military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at over 150,000 people – all funded, supported and hidden by the CIA covert actions.

The CIA reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia Ul Hag.

Relations between the CIA and ISI had grown increasingly very warm, following General Zia’s ouster of the elected government of Bhutto and the advent of his military dictatorship. During the struggle in Afghanistan, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviets came to the aid of the Afghan government in 1980, General Zia sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Asian Republics with his agents. The CIA somehow was more cautious than the Pakistanis, but that was just what the CIA wanted. Both Pakistan and USA took the road of outright deception on Afghanistan with a public relations posture of trying to negotiate a settlement while privately supporting the military escalation to its full capacity.

The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA’s covert operations. Prior to the US instigated Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. 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 producer, supplying 60 per cent of US demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from a near zero in 1979 – to 1.2 million by 1985 – a much steeper rise than in any other nation."

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 the Pakistani Intelligence, operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade of wide-open drug dealing, the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to investigate major seizures or arrests – US officials refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies, because US narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against the Soviet influence there.

In 1995 the former CIA director of Afghan operations, Charles Cogan, admitted that the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war on the directive from the White House in order to fight the Cold War against the Soviet Union. "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 have to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout…There was a fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective of fighting the Soviets was accomplished. The Soviets had to leave Afghanistan!"

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 Word’s opium, representing multi-billon 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.

The full force of resistance against the US-UK occupiers in Iraq is growing with every passing day, with more and more casualties.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium production in Afghanistan in 1998-1999 – coincided with the build-up of armed insurgencies in the former Soviet Asian republics – reached a record high of 4,600 metric tons. Powerful business syndicates in the perestroika infested USSR, allied with organized crime competed for the strategic control of the heroin routes.

The Pakistan’s ISI’s 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, in the Caucasus, in 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."

Meanwhile, Islamic missionaries of the Wahhabi sect from Saudi Arabia had established themselves in the former Soviet republics as well as within the Russian Federation, (with the help of the traitors within these governments-Editor) 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. In 1993 this movement entered the government coalition of Prime Minister Benazzir Bhutto. Ties between this JUI, the Army and ISI of Pakistan were established. In 1995, with the withdrawal of the Herzb-I-Islami Hektmatyar government in Kabul, the Taliban not only installed a hard-line Islamic government, they also "handed control of training camps in Afghanistan over to the JUI factions."

And this coalition with the support of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, played a key role in recruiting volunteers in the Balkans and in former USSR.

Jane Defense Weekly conforms ion this regard that "half of Taliban manpower and its equipment originated in Pakistan under the ISI."

In fact it does appear that following the Soviet withdrawal, both sides in the Afghan civil war continued to receive covert support through the Pakistani’s secret services.

In other words, backed by Pakistan’s military intelligence (ISI) which in turn was and is 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 early 1990’s) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In the last few months there is evidence that the Mujahideen mercenaries are fighting in the ranks of KLA-NLA terrorists in the assaults into Macedonia.

No doubt this explains why Washington has closed its eyes on the reign of terror imposed by the Taliban regime, including 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 law of punishment."

With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in the CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the US Congress’s Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the war in Chechnya had been planned during a secret Summit HizAllah International, held in 1997 in Mogadishu, Somalia. This 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."

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 multinational Anglo-American oil conglomerates who are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin.

The two main Chechen rebel armies, estimated at 35,000 strong were and are supported by Pakistani’s ISI, which also played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army.

In 1994 the Pakistani Inter Services (ISI) arranged for Basayev and all his trusted lieutenants to undergo very intensive Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in Khodt province of Afghanistan at the Amir Muawia camp, set up in the early 1980’s by the CIA and ISI and run by the famous Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July of 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 Mirani, Minister of Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the heads of Pakistani ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes, General Javed Ashraf. These very high-level connections soon proved useful to Basayev.

Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was assigned to lead the assault against the Russian troops in the first Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also developed extensive links to all the criminal syndicates in Moscow as well as ties to the Albanian organized crime and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-987, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) "Chechen warlords started buying up large real estate in Kosovo… through several real estate firms registered as a cover in Yugoslavia."

Basayev’s organization has also been involved in many rackets, including narcotics, sabotage of Russia’s oil pipelines, kidnapping, prostitution, trade in counterfeit dollars and the smuggling of nuclear material. Alongside with extensive money laundering, the proceeds of these various activities have been funneled towards the recruitment of mercenaries and the purchase of weapons.

Since the Cold War era, Washington has consistently supported Osama bin Laden, while at the 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 wars in the Balkans and inside 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 all of its covert operations.

In a cruel irony, while the Islamic Jihad – featured by the Bush administration as a "threat to America" – is being blamed for the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, these same Islamic organizations constitute a key instrument in the US military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and in the former Soviet Union.

In the wake terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the truth must prevail to prevent the Bush administration, together with its NATO partners from embarking upon a military adventure which threatens the future of all humanity.

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