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2001-10-23 07:23:48
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Subject: Who Is Bin Laden?


This is a Petition to Get This Information Into The Hands Of Our President.
Please read this document and add your email and or Name to the list that
follows and forward to Family and Friends.

JEBush3(_at_)hotmail(_dot_)com

Who Is Osama Bin Laden?


by Michel Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa

Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), Montréal
Posted 12 September 2001



A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
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.




Endnotes

   * Hugh Davies, International: `Informers' point the finger at bin
Laden; Washington on alert for suicide bombers, The Daily Telegraph,
London, 24 August 1998.
   * See Fred Halliday, "The Un-great game: the Country that lost
the Cold War, Afghanistan, New Republic, 25 March 1996):
   * Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, Foreign
Affairs, November-December 1999.
   * Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992.
   * Dilip Hiro, Fallout from the Afghan Jihad, Inter Press
Services, 21 November 1995.
   * Weekend Sunday (NPR); Eric Weiner, Ted Clark; 16 August 1998.
   * Ibid.
   * Dipankar Banerjee; Possible Connection of ISI With Drug
Industry, India Abroad, 2 December 1994.
   * Ibid
   * See Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The
Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, Oxford university Press, New
York, 1995. See also the review of Cordovez and Harrison in
International Press Services, 22 August 1995.
   * Alfred McCoy, Drug fallout: the CIA's Forty Year Complicity in
the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive; 1 August 1997.
   * Ibid
   * Ibid.
   * Douglas Keh, 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 Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000.
   * Report of the International Narcotics Control Board, op cit, p
49-51, see also Richard Lapper, op. cit.
   * International Press Services, 22 August 1995.
   * Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, Foreign
Affairs, November- December, 1999, p. 22.
   * Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 3 September 1998)
   * Tim McGirk, Kabul learns to live with its bearded conquerors,
The Independent, London, 6 November1996.
   * See K. Subrahmanyam, Pakistan is Pursuing Asian Goals, India
Abroad, 3 November 1995.
   * Levon Sevunts, Who's calling the shots?: Chechen conflict finds
Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 23 The Gazette, Montreal,
26 October 1999..
   * Ibid
   * Ibid.
   * See Vitaly Romanov and Viktor Yadukha, 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).
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html

Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, September 2001. All rights
reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial
community internet sites, provided the source and the URL are
indicated, the essay remains intact and the copyright note is
displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms,
including commercial internet sites and excerpts, contact the author
at chossudovsky(_at_)videotron(_dot_)ca, fax: 1-514-4256224.



Fred Adler
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