As I've been saying, binLaden is just one more of America's new
hitler's, all of whom were previously used and trained by the CIA.
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes
>WHO IS OUSMANE BIN LADEN?
>
>by Michel Chossudovsky
>
>Professor of Economics,
>University of Ottawa
>
>Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) at
>http:/globalresearch.ca.
>The url of this article is
>http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
>Posted 12 September 2001
>
>A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and
>the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded without supporting
>evidence, that "Ousmane 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 harbour 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 Ousmane 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 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 travelled 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 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 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 multi-billion 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 Ousmane 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. Centre for Research on
>Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca.
>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 [EMAIL PROTECTED],
>fax: 1-514-4256224.
>
>
>
>
>
--
| Bruce Tober, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Freelance Journalist,
|
| My Website <http://www.star-dot-star.co.uk/>
|
| Birmingham, UK, EU +44-780-374-8255 (Mobile) +44-1562-638-704 (Landline) |
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