“Throughout the world ... its agents, client
states and satellites are on the defensive — on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and
economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They're doing so on almost every continent populated by
man — in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters.”
Is this a call to jihad (holy war) taken from one of Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden's notorious fatwas? Or perhaps a communique issued by the repressive Taliban regime in
Kabul?
In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today's supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban
collaborators, and their holy war against the “evil empire”, was issued by US President Ronald Reagan on March 8, 1985. The “evil empire” was the Soviet Union, as well as Third World movements fighting US-backed colonialism, apartheid and dictatorship.
How things change. In the aftermath of
a series of terrorist atrocities — the most despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working people in New
York and Washington on September 11 — bin Laden the “freedom fighter” is now lambasted by US leaders and
the Western mass media as a “terrorist mastermind” and an “evil-doer”.
Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the vicious movement that spawned bin Laden, the
Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists that plague Algeria and Egypt — and perhaps the disaster that befell New
York. The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his toxic brand of Islamic fundamentalism.
Mujaheddin
In April 1978, the People's Democratic
Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that country's repressive government.
The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the peasants, trade union rights, an expansion of education
and social services, equality for women and the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported strengthening Afghanistan's
relationship with the Soviet Union.
Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal
landlords, the Muslim religious establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal chiefs. They immediately
began organising resistance to the government's progressive policies, under the guise of defending Islam.
Washington, fearing the spread of Soviet influence (and worse the new government's radical example)
to its allies in Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states, immediately offered support to the Afghan mujaheddin,
as the “contra” force was known.
Following an internal PDPA power struggle
in December 1979 which toppled Afghanistan's leader, thousands of Soviet troops entered the country to prevent the new government's
fall. This only galvanised the disparate fundamentalist factions. Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a “national liberation” struggle in the eyes of many Afghans.
The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan
in 1989 and the mujaheddin captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.
Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion
(some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia,
kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden, provided millions more.
Washington's policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
and was continued by his successors. His plan went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it aimed to
foster an international movement to spread Islamic fanaticism into the Muslim Central Asian Soviet republics to destabilise
the Soviet Union. Brzezinski's grand plan coincided with Pakistan
military dictator General Zia ul-Haq's own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe beamed
Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while paradoxically denouncing the “Islamic revolution” that toppled the
pro-US Shah of Iran in 1979). Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West's distaste
for terrorism did not apply to this unsavoury “freedom fighter”. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970s for throwing
acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.
After the mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar's forces rained US-supplied missiles and rockets on that city —
killing at least 2000 civilians — until the new government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin
Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction. Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation
and trafficking in opium. Backing of the mujaheddin from the CIA
coincided with a boom in the drug business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world's single largest
source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users. {There is an
In 1995, the former director of the CIA's
operation in Afghanistan was unrepentant about the explosion in the flow of drugs: “Our main mission was to do as much damage
as possible to the Soviets... There was a fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets
left Afghanistan.”
Made in the USA
According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent
for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in 1986 CIA chief William Casey
committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI proposal to recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least
100,000 Islamic militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000 attended fundamentalist schools in Pakistan
without necessarily taking part in the fighting). John Cooley, a former journalist
with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America
and International Terrorism, has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans,
Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American “black Muslims” were taught “sabotage skills”.
The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those charged with the 1998 bombings of US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had trained “bin Laden's operatives” in 1989. These “operatives”
were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn, New York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to Afghanistan
with US assistance to join Hekmatyar's forces. Mohammed was a member of the US army's elite Green Berets.
The program, reported the Independent, was part of a Washington-approved
plan called “Operation Cyclone”.
In Pakistan,
recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the mujaheddin factions
by an organisation known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of Services — MAK). MAK was a front for Pakistan's
CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. The ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian
covert assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who ran MAK. In 1989, he took overall charge of
MAK.
Among those trained by Mohammed were El
Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in 1995 for killing Israeli rightist Rabbi Meir Kahane and plotting with others to bomb New York landmarks,
including the World Trade Center in 1993. The Independent also suggested that Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian religious leader also jailed
for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was also part of Operation Cyclone. He entered the US in
1990 with the CIA's approval. A confidential CIA report concluded that the agency was “partly culpable” for the
1993 World Trade Center blast, the Independent reported.
Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden, one of 20 sons of a billionaire
construction magnate, arrived in Afghanistan to join the jihad in 1980. An
austere religious fanatic and business tycoon, bin Laden specialised in recruiting, financing and training the estimated 35,000
non-Afghan mercenaries who joined the mujaheddin. The bin Laden family is a prominent pillar of the Saudi Arabian ruling class, with close personal, financial
and political ties to that country's pro-US royal family. Bin Laden senior was
appointed Saudi Arabia's minister of public works as a favour by King Faisal. The new minister awarded his own
construction companies lucrative contracts to rebuild Islam's holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina. In the process,
the bin Laden family company in 1966 became the world's largest private construction company.
Osama bin Laden's father died in 1968.
Until 1994, he had access to the dividends from this ill-gotten business empire. (Bin
Laden junior's oft-quoted personal fortune of US$200-300 million has been arrived at by the US State Department by dividing
today's value of the bin Laden family net worth — estimated to be US$5 billion — by the number of bin Laden senior's
sons. A fact rarely mentioned is that in 1994 the bin Laden family disowned Osama and took control of his share.)
Osama's military and business adventures
in Afghanistan had the blessing of the bin Laden dynasty and the reactionary Saudi Arabian regime. His
close working relationship with MAK also meant that the CIA was fully aware of his activities.
Milt Bearden, the CIA's station chief in
Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, admitted to the January 24, 2000, New Yorker that while he never personally met bin Laden, “Did I know
that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were bringing $20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf
Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this is what bin Laden
did.”
In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction
equipment from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques (he has a degree in civil engineering),
he built “training camps”, some dug deep into the sides of mountains, and built roads to reach them. These camps,
now dubbed “terrorist universities” by Washington, were built in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters, including
the tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden, were armed by the CIA. Pakistan,
the US and Britain provided military trainers.
Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier
who secretly fought for the mujaheddin told the August 13, 2000,
British Observer, “The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans
the techniques of urban terrorism — car bombing and so on — so that they could strike at the Russians in major
towns ... Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate.”
Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden's organisation,
was established in 1987-88 to run the camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist holding company
— albeit one that integrates the operations of a mercenary force and related logistical services with “legitimate”
business operations.
Bin Laden has simply continued to do the
job he was asked to do in Afghanistan during the 1980s — fund, feed and train mercenaries. All that has changed is his
primary customer. Then it was the ISI and, behind the scenes, the CIA. Today, his services are utilised primarily by the reactionary
Taliban regime.
Bin Laden only became a “terrorist”
in US eyes when he fell out with the Saudi royal family over its decision to allow more than 540,000 US troops
to be stationed on Saudi soil following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. When thousands of US troops
remained in Saudi Arabia after the end of the Gulf War, bin Laden's anger turned to outright opposition. He declared
that Saudi Arabia and other regimes — such as Egypt — in the Middle East were puppets of
the US, just as the PDPA government of Afghanistan had been a puppet
of the Soviet Union. He called for the overthrow of these client regimes and declared
it the duty of all Muslims to drive the US out of the Gulf
states. In 1994, he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship
and forced to leave the country. His assets there were frozen.
After a period in Sudan,
he returned to Afghanistan in May 1996. He refurbished the camps he had helped build during the Afghan war and offered
the facilities and services — and thousands of his mercenaries — to the Taliban, which took power that September.
Today, bin Laden's private army of non-Afghan religious fanatics is a key prop of the Taliban regime.
Prior to the devastating September 11 attack
on the twin towers of World Trade Center, US ruling-class figures remained unrepentant about the consequences of their dirty
deals with the likes of bin Laden, Hekmatyar and the Taliban. Since the awful attack, they have been downright hypocritical.
In an August 28, 1998, report posted on MSNBC, Michael Moran quotes Senator Orrin
Hatch, who was a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee which approved US dealings with the mujaheddin, as saying he would make “the same call again”, even knowing what bin Laden
would become. “It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters
that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.”
Hatch today is one of the most gung-ho
voices demanding military retaliation.
Another face that has appeared repeatedly
on television screens since the attack has been Vincent Cannistrano, described as a former CIA chief of “counter-terrorism
operations”. Cannistrano is certainly an expert on terrorists like bin Laden, because he directed their “work”.
He was in charge of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras during the early 1980s. In 1984, he became the supervisor of covert
aid to the Afghan mujaheddin for the US National Security Council.
The last word goes to Zbigniew Brzezinski:
“What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred up
Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”
