Who is Osama Bin Laden?

Humanist, Nov-Dec, 2001 by Michel Chossudovsky

A few hours after the terrorist events in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, the Bush administration concluded without waiting for supporting evidence that "Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization were prime suspects. George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 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. And 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, Western media commentators encouraged 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 wereasonably 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 examines the history of Osama bin Laden and the links of the Islamic jihad (holy war) to the formulation of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War and its aftermath.

Prime suspect in the September 11, 2001, hijackings, branded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an "international terrorist" for his role in the African U.S. 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"--so reports the August 24, 1998, London Daily Telegraph. According to Fred Halliday in the March 25, 1996, New Republic, "The largest covert operation in the history of the CIA" was launched in 1979 in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-communist government of Babrak Kamal. And Ahmed Rashid writes in the November/December 1999 Foreign Affairs:

   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.

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. Steve Coil writes in the July 19, 1992, Washington Post:

   In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive
   166 ... [which] authorized 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.

The CIA's covert support was provided indirectly, using Pakistan's military ISI as a "go-between." Washington had concluded that, for these covert operations to be "successful," it must not reveal the ultimate objective of the jihad, which was to destroy the Soviet Union. The CIA played a key role in training the mujahideen by channeling CIA support through the ISI, which integrated the guerrilla training with the teachings of Islam. As Dilip Hiro of the International Press Service explains:

   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.

The CIA's Milton Beardman stated, "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." Beardman confirmed that Osama bin Laden wasn't aware of the role he was playing on behalf of Washington and reported bin Laden as saying, "Neither I, nor my brothers, saw evidence of American help."

Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were therefore unaware that they were fighting the Soviet army on behalf of Uncle Sam. And while there were contacts at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in theater had no contacts with Washington or the CIA. With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of U.S. military aid, the ISI had developed into what Dipankar Banerjee described in the December 2, 1994, India Abroad, as a "parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government." The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents, and informers, collectively estimated at 150,000.