Informazione
Militant groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan
By The Associated Press
The Associated Press
03/16/00 1:04 AM Eastern
Following are some of the Islamic militant groups the
United States is pressuring Pakistan to close down or ban:
HARAKAT-UL-MUJAHEDEEN: Previously Harakat-ul-Ansar,
but changed its name after United States declared the
group a terrorist organization. Harakat-ul-Ansar was
founded by Masood Azhar, one of three Kashmiri
militants freed by India last December to end the
hijacking of an Indian Airlines jetliner.
Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen's leader is Fazal-ur-Rehman
Khalil. Headquartered in Pakistan, with a membership
believed to be in the hundreds, the group is committed
to fighting Indian soldiers in Indian-ruled Kashmir.
It's fighters, trained in Afghanistan, are believed to
have also fought in the breakaway republic of
Chechnya, Bosnia and Algeria.
HARAKAT-UL-JEHAD-E-ISLAMI: The parent organization of
Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar,
who spends most of his time in Afghanistan. It is
believed to have thousands of fighters, who train in
Afghanistan and have fought in Chechnya and Bosnia.
LASHKAR-E-TAYYABA: Led by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, it is
based in Muridke, in Pakistan's eastern Punjab
province, and has a membership in the thousands, who
are trained in Afghanistan and in Pakistan-ruled
Kashmir.
AL QAIDA: Led by Osama bin Laden, Al Qaida is
committed to forcing the United States to withdraw its
army from Saudi Arabia, where two of Islam's holiest
sites are located. Its membership figure is unknown
but bin Laden is believed to have thousands of
followers. His popularity soared after 1998, when the
United States fired Tomahawk cruise missiles at
eastern Afghanistan where bin Laden is believed to
operate military training camps. Bin Laden, a
millionaire Saudi, also raises millions of dollars
from sympathizers throughout the Muslim world. Al
Qaida members fight alongside the Taliban in
Afghanistan and reportedly train militants to fight in
Indian-held Kashmir. Al Qaida also is known to have
sent fighters to Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo.
==========================================
Osama Bin Laden
Le ditte del terrorista islamico Bin Laden in tutta Europa
Un giornalista del giornale "Vecernji list" di Zagabria, ha soggiornato
segretamente nel segreto campo di addestramento dei seguaci del più
famoso e ricercato terrorista del mondo, Osam Bin Laden.
Il giornalista conferma che, questo ricchissimo estremista musulmano
ha delle ditte in tutta la Europa, comprese la Croazia e la Bosnia.
- Bin Laden i soldi li guadagna attraverso le sue ditte che sono
registrate con i nomi dei presta nomi, o con i nomi falsi.
Le ditte si trovano in Albania, Olanda, Gran Bretagna, Romania,
Croazia, Bosnia ...- ha dichiarato Abu Baker, uno dei più stretti
collaboratori di Bin Laden e aggiunge che, "durante la ultima guerra
in Zagabria operava una organizzazione pseudo-umanitaria di Bin Laden
"Moafak".
Nel testo del detto quotidiano si dice pure che, le ditte di Bin Laden
in Croazia sono abbastanza bene organizzate e funzionano molto bene, e
la maggioranza delle persone che fanno gli affari con queste ditte non
sanno con chi hanno che fare.
... e in lingua originale:
"VECERNJI LIST" O NAJTRA?ENIJEM TERORISTI
LADENOVE FIRME PO CELOJ EVROPI
Reporter zagrebackog "Vecernjeg lista" koji je boravio u tajnom kampu za
obuku sledbenika najtra?enijeg teroriste na svetu Osame Bin Ladena tvrdi
da ovaj bogati muslimanski ekstremista ima preduzeæa sirom Evrope,
ukljucujuci Bosnu i Hrvatsku.
- Bin Laden novac zaradjuje preko svojih preduzeæa koja su registrovana
na tudja i la?na imena koja su rasuta po celom svetu. Preduzeca su u
Albaniji, Holandiji, Britaniji, Rumuniji, Hrvatskoj, Bosni... - ka?e Abu
Baker, jedan od najbli?ih saradnika Bin Ladena i dodaje da je za vreme
poslednjeg rata u Zagrebu radila Ben Ladenova navodna humanitarna
organizacija "Moafak".
U tekstu se navodi da je Bin Ladenovo preduzece u Hrvatskoj veoma
razgranato i da vecina ljudi koja posluje sa njim nema pojma sa kim se
upusta u biznis.
V. Mt.
(tratto da Vecernji List, aprile 2000; comunicazione personale)
=================================================
Subject: [COMMUNISM LIST]Afghanistan background
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:15:58 +0100
From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda@...>
Reply-To: communism@...
Organization: Communism List
To: <communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
Afghanistan 1979-1992: America's Jihad
His followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of
women who refused to wear the veil. CIA and State Department
officials I have spoken with call him "a fascist," "definite
dictatorship material."
This did not prevent the United States government from showering the
man with large amounts of aid to fight against the Soviet-supported
government of Afghanistan. His name was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He was
the head of the Islamic Party and he hated the United States almost
as much as he hated the Russians. His followers screamed "Death to
America" along with "Death to the Soviet Union'", only the Russians
were not showering him with large amounts of aid.
The United States began supporting Afghan Islamic fundamentalists in
1979 despite the fact that in February of that year some of them had
kidnapped the American ambassador in he capital city of Kabul,
leading to his death in the rescue attempt. The support continued
even after their brother Islamic fundamentalists in next-door Iran
seized the US Embassy in Teheran in November and held 55 Americans
hostage for over a year. Hekmatyar and his were, after all, in battle
against the Soviet Evil Empire; he was thus an important member of
those forces Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters".
On 27 April 1978, a coup staged by the People's Democratic Party
(PDP) overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud. Daoud, five years
earlier, had overthrown the monarchy and established a republic,
although he himself was a member of the royal family. He had been
supported by the left in this endeavor, but it turned out that
Daoud's royal blood was thicker than his progressive water. When the
Daoud regime had a PDP leader killed, arrested the rest of the
leadership, and purged hundreds of suspected party sympathizers from
government posts, the PDP, aided by its supporters in the army,
revolted and took power.
Afghanistan was a backward nation: a life expectancy of about 40,
infant mortality of at least 25 percent, absolutely primitive
sanitation, widespread malnutrition, illiteracy of more than 90
percent, very few highways, not one mile of railway, most people
living in nomadic tribes or as impoverished farmers in mud villages,
identifying more with ethnic groups than with a larger political
concept, a life scarcely different from many centuries earlier.
Reform with a socialist bent was the new government's ambition; land
reform (while still retaining private property), controls on prices
and profits, and strengthening of the public sector, as well as
separation of church and state, eradication of illiteracy,
legalization of trade unions, and the emancipation of women in a land
almost entirely Muslim.
Afghanistan's thousand-mile border with the Soviet Union had always
produced a special relationship. Even while it was a monarchy, the
country had been under the strong influence of its powerful northern
neighbor, which had long been its largest trading partner, aid donor,
and military supplier. But the country had never been gobbled up by
the Soviets, a fact that perhaps lends credence to the oft-repeated
Soviet claim that their hegemony over Eastern Europe was only created
as a buffer between themselves and the frequently-invading West.
Nevertheless, for decades Washington and the Shah of Iran tried to
pressure and bribe Afghanistan in order to roll back Russian
influence in the country. During the Daoud regime, Iran, encouraged
by the United States, sought to replace the Soviet Union as Kabul's
biggest donor with a $2 billion economic aid agreement, and urged
Afghanistan to join the Regional Cooperation for Development, which
consisted of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. (This organization was
attacked by the Soviet Union and its friends in Afghanistan as being
"a branch of CENTO" the 1950s regional security pact that was part of
the US policy of containment of the Soviet Union.) At the same time,
Iran's infamous secret police SAVAK was busy fingering suspected
Communist sympathizers in the Afghan government. In September 1975,
prodded by Iran which was conditioning its aid on such policies,
Daoud gradually dismissed 40 Soviet-trained military officers and
moved to reduce future Afghan dependence on officer training in the
USSR by initiating training arrangements with India and Egypt. Most
important, in Soviet eyes, Daoud gradually broke off his alliance
with the PDP, announcing that he would start his own party and ban
all other political activity under a projected new constitution.
Selig Harrison, the Washington Post's South Asia specialist, wrote an
article in 1970 entitled "'The Shah, Not the Kremlin, Touched off
Afghan Coup", concluding:
"The Communist takeover in Kabul (April 1978] came about when it did,
and in the way that it did, because the Shah disturbed the tenuous
equilibrium that had existed in Afghanistan between the Soviet Union
and the West for neatly three decades. In Iranian and American eyes,
Teheran's offensive was merely- designed to make Kabul more truly
nonaligned, but it went far beyond that Given the unusually long
frontier with Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would clearly go to great
lengths to prevent Kabul from moving once again toward a pro-western
stance."
When the Shah was overthrown in January 1979, the United States lost
its chief ally and outpost in the Soviet-border region, as well as
its military installations and electronic monitoring stations aimed
at the Soviet Union. Washington's cold warriors could only eye
Afghanistan even more covetously than before.
After the April revolution, the new government under President Noor
Mohammed Taraki declared a commitment to Islam within a secular
state, and to non-alignment in foreign affairs. It maintained that
the coup had not been foreign inspired, that it was not a "Communist
takeover", and that they were not "Communists" but rather
nationalists and revolutionaries. (No official or traditional
Communist Party had ever existed in Afghanistan.) But because of its
radical reform program, its class-struggle and anti-imperialist-type
rhetoric, its support of all the usual suspects (Cuba, North Korea,
etc.), its signing of a friendship treaty and other cooperative
agreements with the Soviet Union, and an increased presence in the
country of Soviet civilian and military advisers (though probably
less than the US had in Iran at the time), it was labeled "communist"
by the world's media and by its domestic opponents.
Whether or not the new government in Afghanistan should properly have
been called communist, whether or not it made any difference what it
was called, the lines were now drawn for political, military, and
propaganda battle: a jihad (holy war) between fundamentalist Muslims
and "godless atheistic communists"; Afghan nationalism vs. a
"Soviet-run" government; large landowners, tribal chiefs,
businessmen, the extended royal family, and others vs. the
government's economic reforms. Said the new prime minister about this
elite, who were needed to keep the country running, "every effort
will be made to attract them. But we want to re-educate them in such
a manner that they should think about the people, and not, as
previously, just about themselves-to have a good house and a nice
car" while other people die of hunger."
The Afghan government was trying to drag the country into the 20th
century. In May 1979, British political scientist Fred Halliday
observed that "probably more has changed in the countryside over the
last year than in the two centuries since the state was established."
Peasant debts to landlords had been canceled, the system of usury (by
which peasant were forced to borrow money against future crops, were
left in perpetual debt to lenders) was abolished, and hundreds of
schools and medical clinics were being built in the countryside.
Halliday also reported that a substantial land-redistribution program
was underway, with many of the 200,000 rural families scheduled to
receive land under this reform already having done so. But this last
claim must be approached with caution. Revolutionary land reform is
always an extremely complex and precarious under the best of
conditions, and ultra-backward, tradition-hound Afghanistan in the
midst of nascent civil war hardly offered the best of conditions for
social experiment.
The reforms also encroached into the sensitive area of Islamic
subjugation of women by outlawing child marriage and the giving of a
woman in marriage in exchange for money or commodities, and teaching
women to read, at a time when certain Islamic sectors were openly
calling for reinforcement of 'purdah', the seclusion of women from
public observation.
Halliday noted that the People's Democratic Party saw the Soviet
Union as the only realistic source of support for the long-overdue
modernization. The illiterate Afghan peasant's ethnic cousins across
the border in the Soviet Union were, after all, often university
graduates and professionals.
The argument of the Moujahedeen ("holy warriors") rebels that the
"communist" government would curtail their religious freedom was
never borne out in practice. A year and a half after the change in
government, the conservative British magazine The Economist reported
that "no restrictions had been imposed on religious practice".
Earlier, the New York Times stated that the religious issue "is being
used by some Afghans who actually object more to President Taraki's
plans for land reforms and other changes in this feudal society."
Many of the Muslim clergy were in fact rich landowners. The rebels,
concluded a BBC reporter who spent four months with them, are
"fighting to retain their feudal system and stop the Kabul
government's left-wing reforms which [are] considered anti-Islamic."
The two other nations which shared a long border with Afghanistan,
and were closely allied to the United States, expressed their fears
of the new government. To the west, Iran, still under the Shah,
worried about "threats to oil-passage routes in the Persian Gulf".
Pakistan, to the south, spoke of "threats from a hostile and
expansionist Afghanistan." A former US ambassador to Afghanistan saw
it as part of a "gradually closing pincer movement aimed at Iran and
the oil regions of the Middle East." None of these alleged fears
turned out to have any substance or evidence to back them up, but to
the anti-communist mind this might prove only that the Russians and
their Afghan puppets had been stopped in time.
Two months after the April 1978 coup, an alliance formed by a number
of conservative Islamic factions was waging guerrilla war against the
government. By spring 1979, fighting was taking place on many fronts,
and the State Department was cautioning the Soviet Union that its
advisers in Afghanistan should not interfere militarily in the civil
strife. One such warning in the summer by State Department spokesman
Hodding Carter was another of those Washington monuments to chutzpah;
"We expect the principle of nonintervention to be respected by all
parties in the area, including the Soviet Union." This while the
Soviets were charging the CIA with arming Afghan exiles in Pakistan;
and the Afghanistan government was accusing Pakistan and Iran of also
aiding the guerrillas and even of crossing the border to take part in
the fighting. Pakistan had recently taken its own turn toward strict
Muslim orthodoxy, which the Afghan government deplored as a
"fanatic," while in January, Iran had established a Muslim state
after overthrowing the Shah. (As opposed to the Afghan fundamentalist
freedom fighters, the Iranian Islamic fundamentalists were regularly
described in the West as terrorists, ultra-conservatives, and
anti-democratic.)
A "favorite tactic" of the Afghan freedom fighters was "to torture
victims [often Russians] by first cutting off their noses, ears, and
genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another", producing
"a slow, very painful death". The Moujahedeen also killed a Canadian
tourist and six West Germans, including two children, and a U.S.
military attaché was dragged from his car and beaten; all due to the
rebels' apparent inability to distinguish Russians from other
Europeans.
In March 1979, Taraki went to Moscow to press the Soviets to send
ground troops to help the Afghan army put down the Moujahedeen. He
was promised military assistance, but ground troops could not be
committed. Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin told the Afghan leader:
"The entry of our troops into Afghanistan would outrage the
international community, triggering a string of extremely negative
consequences in many different areas. Our common enemies are just
waiting for the moment when Soviet troops appear in Afghanistan. This
will give them the excuse they need to send armed bands into the
country."
In September, the question became completely academic for Noor
Mohammed Taraki, for he was ousted (and his death soon announced) in
an intra -party struggle and replaced by his own deputy prime
minister, Hafizullah Amin. Although Taraki had sometimes been
heavy-handed in implementing the reform program, and had created
opposition even amongst the intended beneficiaries, he turned out to
be a moderate compared to Amin who tried to institute social change
by riding roughshod over tradition and tribal and ethnic autonomy.
The Kremlin was unhappy with Amin. The fact that he had been involved
in the overthrow and death of the much-favored Taraki was bad enough.
But the Soviets also regarded him as thoroughly unsuitable for the
task that was Moscow's sine qua non; preventing an anti-communist
Islamic state from arising in Afghanistan. Amin gave reform an
exceedingly bad name. The KGB station in Kabul, in pressing for
Amin's removal, stated that his usurpation of power would lead to
"harsh repressions and, as a reaction, the activation and
consolidation of the opposition". Moreover, as we shall see, the
Soviets were highly suspicious about Amin's ideological convictions.
Thus it was, that what in March had been unthinkable, in December
became a reality. Soviet troops began to arrive in Afghanistan around
the 8th of the month - to what extent at Amin's request or with his
approval, and, consequently, whether to call the action an "invasion"
or not, has been the subject of much discussion and controversy.
On the 23rd the Washington Post commented "There was no charge [by
the State Department] that the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan,
since the troops apparently were invited."
However, at a meeting with Soviet-bloc ambassadors in October, Amin's
foreign minister had openly criticized the Soviet Union for
interfering in Afghan affairs. Amin himself insisted that Moscow
replace its ambassador. Yet, on 26 December, while the main body of
Soviet troops was arriving in Afghanistan, Amin gave "a relaxed
interview" to an Arab journalist. "The Soviets," he said, "supply my
country with economic and military aid, but at the same time they
respect our independence and our sovereignty. They do not interfere
in our domestic affairs." He also spoke approvingly of the USSR's
willingness to accept his veto on military bases.
The very next day, a Soviet military force stormed the presidential
palace and shot Amin dead.
He was replaced by Babrak Karmal, who had been vice president and
deputy prime minister in the 1978 revolutionary government.
Moscow denied any part in Amin's death, though they didn't pretend to
be sorry about it, as Brezhnev made clear:
"The actions of the aggressors against Afghanistan were facilitated
by Amin who, on seizing power, started cruelly repressing broad
sections of Afghan society, party and military cadres, members of the
intelligentsia and of the Moslem clergy, that is, the very sections
on which the April revolution relied. And the people under the
leadership of the People's Democratic Party,' headed by Babrak
Karmal, rose against Amin's tyranny and put an end to it. Now in
Washington and some other capitals they are mourning Amin. This
exposes their hypocrisy with particular clarity. Where were these
mourners when Amin was conducting mass repressions, when he forcibly
removed and unlawfully killed Taraki, the founder of the new Afghan
state?"
After Amin's ouster and execution, the public thronged the streets in
"a holiday spirit". "If Karmal could have overthrown Amin without the
Russians," observed a Western diplomat, "he would have been seen as a
hero of the people."
The Soviet government and press repeatedly referred to Amin as a "CIA
agent", a charge which was greeted with great skepticism in the
United States and elsewhere. However, enough circumstantial evidence
supporting the charge exists so that it perhaps should not be
dismissed entirely out of hand.
During the late 1950s and early '60s, Amin had attended Columbia
University Teachers College and the University of Wisconsin. This was
a heyday period for the CIA-using impressive bribes and threats-to
regularly try to recruit foreign students in the United States to act
as agents for them when they returned home. During this period, at
least one president of the Afghanistan Students Association (ASA),
Zia H. Noorzay, was working with the CIA in the United States and
later became president of the Afghanistan state treasury. One of the
Afghan students whom Noorzay and the CIA tried in vain to recruit,
Abdul Latif Hotaki, declared in 1967 that a good number of the key
officials in the Afghanistan government who studied in the United
States "are either CIA trained or indoctrinated. Some are cabinet
level people." It has been reported that in 1963 Amin became head of
the ASA, but this has not been corroborated. However, it is known
that the ASA received part of its funding from the Asia Foundation,
the CIA's principal front in Asia for many years, and that at one
time Amin was associated with this organization.
In September 1979, the month that Amin took power, the American
charge d'affaires in Kabul, Bruce Amstutz, began to hold friendly
meetings with him to reassure him that he need not worry about his
unhappy Soviet allies as long as the US maintained a strong presence
in Afghanistan. The strategy may have worked, for later in the month,
Amin made a special appeal to Amstutz for improved relations with the
United States. Two days later in New York, the Afghan Foreign
Minister quietly expressed the same sentiments to State Department
officials. And at the end of October, the US Embassy in Kabul
reported that Amin was "painfully aware of the exiled leadership the
Soviets [were] keeping on the shelf" (a reference to Karmal who was
living in Czechoslovakia). Under normal circumstances, the Amin-US
meetings might be regarded as routine and innocent diplomatic
contact, but these were hardly normal circumstances-the Afghan
government was engaged in a civil war, and the United States was
supporting the other side.
Moreover, it can be said that Amin, by his ruthlessness, was doing
just what an American agent would be expected to do: discrediting the
People's Democratic Party, the Party's reforms, the idea of socialism
or communism, and the Soviet Union, all associated in one package.
Amin also conducted purges in the army officer corps which seriously
underlined the army's combat capabilities.
But why would Amin, if he were actually plotting with the Americans,
request Soviet military forces on several occasions? The main reason
appears to be that he was being pressed to do so by high levels of
the PDP and he had to comply for the sake of appearances. Babrak
Karmal has suggested other, more Machiavellian, scenarios.
"The Carter administration jumped on the issue of the Soviet
"invasion" and soon launched a campaign of righteous indignation,
imposing what President Carter called "Penalties"-from halting the
delivery of grain to the Soviet Union to keeping the US team out of
the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
The Russians countered that the US was enraged by the intervention
because Washington had been plotting to turn the country into an
American base to replace the loss of lran.
Unsurprisingly, on this seemingly clear-cut anti-communist issue, the
American public and media easily fell in line with the president. The
Wall Street Journal called for a "military" reaction, the
establishment of US bases in the Middle East, "reinstatement of draft
registration", development of a new missile, and giving the CIA more
leeway, adding "Clearly we ought to keep open the chance of covert
aid to Afghan rebels." The last, whether the newspaper knew it or
not, had actually been going on for some time. In February 1980, the
Washington Post disclosed that while the United States was now
supplying weapons to the guerrillas,
"U.S. covert aid prior to the December invasion, according to
sources, was limited to funneling small amounts of medical supplies
and communications equipment to scattered rebel tribes, plus what is
described as "technical advice" to the rebels about where they could
acquire arms on their own ."
US foreign service officers had been meeting with rebel leaders to
determine their need at least as early as April 1979, and the CIA had
been training guerrillas in Pakistan and beaming radio propaganda
into Afghanistan since the year before.
Intervention in the Afghan civil war by the United States, Iran,
Pakistan, China and others gave the Russians grave concern about who
was going to wield power next door. They consistently cited these
"aggressive imperialist forces" to rationalize their own intervention
into Afghanistan, which was the first time Soviet ground troops had
engaged in military action anywhere in the world outside its post-
World War II Eastern European borders. The potential establishment of
an anti-communist Islamic state on the borders of the Soviet Union's
own republics in Soviet Central Asia that were home to some 40
million Muslims could not be regarded with equanimity by the Kremlin
any more than Washington could be unruffled about a communist
takeover in Mexico.
As we have seen repeatedly, the United States did not limit its
defense perimeter to its immediate neighbors, or even to Western
Europe, but to the entire globe. President Carter declared that the
Persian Gulf area was "now threatened by Soviet troops in
Afghanistan," that this area was synonymous with US interests, and
that the United States would "defend" it against any threat by all
means necessary. He called the Soviet action "the greatest threat to
peace since the Second World War", a statement that required
overlooking a great deal of post-war history. But 1980 was an
election year.
Brezhnev, on the other hand, declared that "the national interests or
security of the United States of America and other states are in no
way affected by the events Afghanistan. All attempts to portray
matters otherwise are sheer nonsense."
The Carter administration was equally dismissive of Soviet concerns.
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski later stated that "the
issue was not what might have Brezhnev's subjective motives in going
into Afghanistan but the objective consequences of a Soviet military
presence so much closer to the Persian Gulf."
The stage was now set for 12 long years of the most horrific kind of
warfare, a daily atrocity for the vast majority of the Afghan people
who never asked for or wanted this war.
But the Soviet Union was determined that its borders must be
unthreatening. The Afghan government was committed to its goal of a
secular, reformed Afghanistan. The United States was determined that,
at a minimum, this should be the Soviets' Vietnam that they should
slowly bleed as the Americans had at a minimum; at a maximum ... that
was perhaps not as well thought out but American policymakers could
not fail to understand - though they dared not say it publicly and
explicitly - that support of the Moujahedeen (many of whom carried
pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini with them) could lead to a
fundamentalist Islamic state established in Afghanistan every bit as
repressive as in next-door Iran, which in the 1980s; was Public Enemy
Number One in America. Neither could the word "terrorist" cross the
lips of Washington officials in speaking of their new allies/clients,
though these same people shot down civilian airliners and planted
bombs at the airport. In 1986, British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher, whose emotional invectives against "terrorists" were second
to none, welcomed Abdul Haq, an Afghan rebel leader who admitted that
he had ordered the planting of a bomb at Kabul airport in 1984 which
killed at least 28 people. Such, then, were the scruples of cold-war
anti-communists in late 20th century. As Anastasio Somoza had been
"our son of a bitch", the Moujahedeen were now "our fanatic
terrorists". At the beginning there had been some thought given to
the morality of the policy. "The question here," a senior official in
the Carter administration said, "was whether it was morally
acceptable that, in order to keep the Soviets off balance, which was
the reason for the operation, it was permissible to use other lives
for our geopolitical interests."
But such sentiments could not survive. Afghanistan was a
cold-warrior's dream: The CIA and the Pentagon, finally, had one of
their proxy armies in direct confrontation with the forces of the
Evil Empire. There was no price too high to pay for this Super
Nintendo game, neither the hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives, nor
the destruction of Afghan society, nor three billion (sic) dollars of
American taxpayer money poured into a bottomless hole, much of it
going only to make a few Afghans and Pakistanis rich. Congress was
equally enthused-without even the moral uncertainty that made them
cautious about arming the Nicaraguan contras-and became a veritable
bipartisan horn of plenty as it allocated more and more money for the
effort each year. Rep. Charles Wilson of Texas expressed a
not-atypical sentiment of official Washington when he declared:
"There were 58,000 dead in Vietnam and we owe the Russians one ... I
have a slight obsession with it, because of Vietnam. I thought the
Soviets ought to get a dose of it ... I've been of the opinion that
this money was better spent to hurt our adversaries than other money
in the Defense Department budget."
--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@... on 09/16/2001
Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
By The Associated Press
The Associated Press
03/16/00 1:04 AM Eastern
Following are some of the Islamic militant groups the
United States is pressuring Pakistan to close down or ban:
HARAKAT-UL-MUJAHEDEEN: Previously Harakat-ul-Ansar,
but changed its name after United States declared the
group a terrorist organization. Harakat-ul-Ansar was
founded by Masood Azhar, one of three Kashmiri
militants freed by India last December to end the
hijacking of an Indian Airlines jetliner.
Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen's leader is Fazal-ur-Rehman
Khalil. Headquartered in Pakistan, with a membership
believed to be in the hundreds, the group is committed
to fighting Indian soldiers in Indian-ruled Kashmir.
It's fighters, trained in Afghanistan, are believed to
have also fought in the breakaway republic of
Chechnya, Bosnia and Algeria.
HARAKAT-UL-JEHAD-E-ISLAMI: The parent organization of
Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, led by Qari Saifullah Akhtar,
who spends most of his time in Afghanistan. It is
believed to have thousands of fighters, who train in
Afghanistan and have fought in Chechnya and Bosnia.
LASHKAR-E-TAYYABA: Led by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, it is
based in Muridke, in Pakistan's eastern Punjab
province, and has a membership in the thousands, who
are trained in Afghanistan and in Pakistan-ruled
Kashmir.
AL QAIDA: Led by Osama bin Laden, Al Qaida is
committed to forcing the United States to withdraw its
army from Saudi Arabia, where two of Islam's holiest
sites are located. Its membership figure is unknown
but bin Laden is believed to have thousands of
followers. His popularity soared after 1998, when the
United States fired Tomahawk cruise missiles at
eastern Afghanistan where bin Laden is believed to
operate military training camps. Bin Laden, a
millionaire Saudi, also raises millions of dollars
from sympathizers throughout the Muslim world. Al
Qaida members fight alongside the Taliban in
Afghanistan and reportedly train militants to fight in
Indian-held Kashmir. Al Qaida also is known to have
sent fighters to Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo.
==========================================
Osama Bin Laden
Le ditte del terrorista islamico Bin Laden in tutta Europa
Un giornalista del giornale "Vecernji list" di Zagabria, ha soggiornato
segretamente nel segreto campo di addestramento dei seguaci del più
famoso e ricercato terrorista del mondo, Osam Bin Laden.
Il giornalista conferma che, questo ricchissimo estremista musulmano
ha delle ditte in tutta la Europa, comprese la Croazia e la Bosnia.
- Bin Laden i soldi li guadagna attraverso le sue ditte che sono
registrate con i nomi dei presta nomi, o con i nomi falsi.
Le ditte si trovano in Albania, Olanda, Gran Bretagna, Romania,
Croazia, Bosnia ...- ha dichiarato Abu Baker, uno dei più stretti
collaboratori di Bin Laden e aggiunge che, "durante la ultima guerra
in Zagabria operava una organizzazione pseudo-umanitaria di Bin Laden
"Moafak".
Nel testo del detto quotidiano si dice pure che, le ditte di Bin Laden
in Croazia sono abbastanza bene organizzate e funzionano molto bene, e
la maggioranza delle persone che fanno gli affari con queste ditte non
sanno con chi hanno che fare.
... e in lingua originale:
"VECERNJI LIST" O NAJTRA?ENIJEM TERORISTI
LADENOVE FIRME PO CELOJ EVROPI
Reporter zagrebackog "Vecernjeg lista" koji je boravio u tajnom kampu za
obuku sledbenika najtra?enijeg teroriste na svetu Osame Bin Ladena tvrdi
da ovaj bogati muslimanski ekstremista ima preduzeæa sirom Evrope,
ukljucujuci Bosnu i Hrvatsku.
- Bin Laden novac zaradjuje preko svojih preduzeæa koja su registrovana
na tudja i la?na imena koja su rasuta po celom svetu. Preduzeca su u
Albaniji, Holandiji, Britaniji, Rumuniji, Hrvatskoj, Bosni... - ka?e Abu
Baker, jedan od najbli?ih saradnika Bin Ladena i dodaje da je za vreme
poslednjeg rata u Zagrebu radila Ben Ladenova navodna humanitarna
organizacija "Moafak".
U tekstu se navodi da je Bin Ladenovo preduzece u Hrvatskoj veoma
razgranato i da vecina ljudi koja posluje sa njim nema pojma sa kim se
upusta u biznis.
V. Mt.
(tratto da Vecernji List, aprile 2000; comunicazione personale)
=================================================
Subject: [COMMUNISM LIST]Afghanistan background
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:15:58 +0100
From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda@...>
Reply-To: communism@...
Organization: Communism List
To: <communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
Afghanistan 1979-1992: America's Jihad
His followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of
women who refused to wear the veil. CIA and State Department
officials I have spoken with call him "a fascist," "definite
dictatorship material."
This did not prevent the United States government from showering the
man with large amounts of aid to fight against the Soviet-supported
government of Afghanistan. His name was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He was
the head of the Islamic Party and he hated the United States almost
as much as he hated the Russians. His followers screamed "Death to
America" along with "Death to the Soviet Union'", only the Russians
were not showering him with large amounts of aid.
The United States began supporting Afghan Islamic fundamentalists in
1979 despite the fact that in February of that year some of them had
kidnapped the American ambassador in he capital city of Kabul,
leading to his death in the rescue attempt. The support continued
even after their brother Islamic fundamentalists in next-door Iran
seized the US Embassy in Teheran in November and held 55 Americans
hostage for over a year. Hekmatyar and his were, after all, in battle
against the Soviet Evil Empire; he was thus an important member of
those forces Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters".
On 27 April 1978, a coup staged by the People's Democratic Party
(PDP) overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud. Daoud, five years
earlier, had overthrown the monarchy and established a republic,
although he himself was a member of the royal family. He had been
supported by the left in this endeavor, but it turned out that
Daoud's royal blood was thicker than his progressive water. When the
Daoud regime had a PDP leader killed, arrested the rest of the
leadership, and purged hundreds of suspected party sympathizers from
government posts, the PDP, aided by its supporters in the army,
revolted and took power.
Afghanistan was a backward nation: a life expectancy of about 40,
infant mortality of at least 25 percent, absolutely primitive
sanitation, widespread malnutrition, illiteracy of more than 90
percent, very few highways, not one mile of railway, most people
living in nomadic tribes or as impoverished farmers in mud villages,
identifying more with ethnic groups than with a larger political
concept, a life scarcely different from many centuries earlier.
Reform with a socialist bent was the new government's ambition; land
reform (while still retaining private property), controls on prices
and profits, and strengthening of the public sector, as well as
separation of church and state, eradication of illiteracy,
legalization of trade unions, and the emancipation of women in a land
almost entirely Muslim.
Afghanistan's thousand-mile border with the Soviet Union had always
produced a special relationship. Even while it was a monarchy, the
country had been under the strong influence of its powerful northern
neighbor, which had long been its largest trading partner, aid donor,
and military supplier. But the country had never been gobbled up by
the Soviets, a fact that perhaps lends credence to the oft-repeated
Soviet claim that their hegemony over Eastern Europe was only created
as a buffer between themselves and the frequently-invading West.
Nevertheless, for decades Washington and the Shah of Iran tried to
pressure and bribe Afghanistan in order to roll back Russian
influence in the country. During the Daoud regime, Iran, encouraged
by the United States, sought to replace the Soviet Union as Kabul's
biggest donor with a $2 billion economic aid agreement, and urged
Afghanistan to join the Regional Cooperation for Development, which
consisted of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. (This organization was
attacked by the Soviet Union and its friends in Afghanistan as being
"a branch of CENTO" the 1950s regional security pact that was part of
the US policy of containment of the Soviet Union.) At the same time,
Iran's infamous secret police SAVAK was busy fingering suspected
Communist sympathizers in the Afghan government. In September 1975,
prodded by Iran which was conditioning its aid on such policies,
Daoud gradually dismissed 40 Soviet-trained military officers and
moved to reduce future Afghan dependence on officer training in the
USSR by initiating training arrangements with India and Egypt. Most
important, in Soviet eyes, Daoud gradually broke off his alliance
with the PDP, announcing that he would start his own party and ban
all other political activity under a projected new constitution.
Selig Harrison, the Washington Post's South Asia specialist, wrote an
article in 1970 entitled "'The Shah, Not the Kremlin, Touched off
Afghan Coup", concluding:
"The Communist takeover in Kabul (April 1978] came about when it did,
and in the way that it did, because the Shah disturbed the tenuous
equilibrium that had existed in Afghanistan between the Soviet Union
and the West for neatly three decades. In Iranian and American eyes,
Teheran's offensive was merely- designed to make Kabul more truly
nonaligned, but it went far beyond that Given the unusually long
frontier with Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would clearly go to great
lengths to prevent Kabul from moving once again toward a pro-western
stance."
When the Shah was overthrown in January 1979, the United States lost
its chief ally and outpost in the Soviet-border region, as well as
its military installations and electronic monitoring stations aimed
at the Soviet Union. Washington's cold warriors could only eye
Afghanistan even more covetously than before.
After the April revolution, the new government under President Noor
Mohammed Taraki declared a commitment to Islam within a secular
state, and to non-alignment in foreign affairs. It maintained that
the coup had not been foreign inspired, that it was not a "Communist
takeover", and that they were not "Communists" but rather
nationalists and revolutionaries. (No official or traditional
Communist Party had ever existed in Afghanistan.) But because of its
radical reform program, its class-struggle and anti-imperialist-type
rhetoric, its support of all the usual suspects (Cuba, North Korea,
etc.), its signing of a friendship treaty and other cooperative
agreements with the Soviet Union, and an increased presence in the
country of Soviet civilian and military advisers (though probably
less than the US had in Iran at the time), it was labeled "communist"
by the world's media and by its domestic opponents.
Whether or not the new government in Afghanistan should properly have
been called communist, whether or not it made any difference what it
was called, the lines were now drawn for political, military, and
propaganda battle: a jihad (holy war) between fundamentalist Muslims
and "godless atheistic communists"; Afghan nationalism vs. a
"Soviet-run" government; large landowners, tribal chiefs,
businessmen, the extended royal family, and others vs. the
government's economic reforms. Said the new prime minister about this
elite, who were needed to keep the country running, "every effort
will be made to attract them. But we want to re-educate them in such
a manner that they should think about the people, and not, as
previously, just about themselves-to have a good house and a nice
car" while other people die of hunger."
The Afghan government was trying to drag the country into the 20th
century. In May 1979, British political scientist Fred Halliday
observed that "probably more has changed in the countryside over the
last year than in the two centuries since the state was established."
Peasant debts to landlords had been canceled, the system of usury (by
which peasant were forced to borrow money against future crops, were
left in perpetual debt to lenders) was abolished, and hundreds of
schools and medical clinics were being built in the countryside.
Halliday also reported that a substantial land-redistribution program
was underway, with many of the 200,000 rural families scheduled to
receive land under this reform already having done so. But this last
claim must be approached with caution. Revolutionary land reform is
always an extremely complex and precarious under the best of
conditions, and ultra-backward, tradition-hound Afghanistan in the
midst of nascent civil war hardly offered the best of conditions for
social experiment.
The reforms also encroached into the sensitive area of Islamic
subjugation of women by outlawing child marriage and the giving of a
woman in marriage in exchange for money or commodities, and teaching
women to read, at a time when certain Islamic sectors were openly
calling for reinforcement of 'purdah', the seclusion of women from
public observation.
Halliday noted that the People's Democratic Party saw the Soviet
Union as the only realistic source of support for the long-overdue
modernization. The illiterate Afghan peasant's ethnic cousins across
the border in the Soviet Union were, after all, often university
graduates and professionals.
The argument of the Moujahedeen ("holy warriors") rebels that the
"communist" government would curtail their religious freedom was
never borne out in practice. A year and a half after the change in
government, the conservative British magazine The Economist reported
that "no restrictions had been imposed on religious practice".
Earlier, the New York Times stated that the religious issue "is being
used by some Afghans who actually object more to President Taraki's
plans for land reforms and other changes in this feudal society."
Many of the Muslim clergy were in fact rich landowners. The rebels,
concluded a BBC reporter who spent four months with them, are
"fighting to retain their feudal system and stop the Kabul
government's left-wing reforms which [are] considered anti-Islamic."
The two other nations which shared a long border with Afghanistan,
and were closely allied to the United States, expressed their fears
of the new government. To the west, Iran, still under the Shah,
worried about "threats to oil-passage routes in the Persian Gulf".
Pakistan, to the south, spoke of "threats from a hostile and
expansionist Afghanistan." A former US ambassador to Afghanistan saw
it as part of a "gradually closing pincer movement aimed at Iran and
the oil regions of the Middle East." None of these alleged fears
turned out to have any substance or evidence to back them up, but to
the anti-communist mind this might prove only that the Russians and
their Afghan puppets had been stopped in time.
Two months after the April 1978 coup, an alliance formed by a number
of conservative Islamic factions was waging guerrilla war against the
government. By spring 1979, fighting was taking place on many fronts,
and the State Department was cautioning the Soviet Union that its
advisers in Afghanistan should not interfere militarily in the civil
strife. One such warning in the summer by State Department spokesman
Hodding Carter was another of those Washington monuments to chutzpah;
"We expect the principle of nonintervention to be respected by all
parties in the area, including the Soviet Union." This while the
Soviets were charging the CIA with arming Afghan exiles in Pakistan;
and the Afghanistan government was accusing Pakistan and Iran of also
aiding the guerrillas and even of crossing the border to take part in
the fighting. Pakistan had recently taken its own turn toward strict
Muslim orthodoxy, which the Afghan government deplored as a
"fanatic," while in January, Iran had established a Muslim state
after overthrowing the Shah. (As opposed to the Afghan fundamentalist
freedom fighters, the Iranian Islamic fundamentalists were regularly
described in the West as terrorists, ultra-conservatives, and
anti-democratic.)
A "favorite tactic" of the Afghan freedom fighters was "to torture
victims [often Russians] by first cutting off their noses, ears, and
genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another", producing
"a slow, very painful death". The Moujahedeen also killed a Canadian
tourist and six West Germans, including two children, and a U.S.
military attaché was dragged from his car and beaten; all due to the
rebels' apparent inability to distinguish Russians from other
Europeans.
In March 1979, Taraki went to Moscow to press the Soviets to send
ground troops to help the Afghan army put down the Moujahedeen. He
was promised military assistance, but ground troops could not be
committed. Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin told the Afghan leader:
"The entry of our troops into Afghanistan would outrage the
international community, triggering a string of extremely negative
consequences in many different areas. Our common enemies are just
waiting for the moment when Soviet troops appear in Afghanistan. This
will give them the excuse they need to send armed bands into the
country."
In September, the question became completely academic for Noor
Mohammed Taraki, for he was ousted (and his death soon announced) in
an intra -party struggle and replaced by his own deputy prime
minister, Hafizullah Amin. Although Taraki had sometimes been
heavy-handed in implementing the reform program, and had created
opposition even amongst the intended beneficiaries, he turned out to
be a moderate compared to Amin who tried to institute social change
by riding roughshod over tradition and tribal and ethnic autonomy.
The Kremlin was unhappy with Amin. The fact that he had been involved
in the overthrow and death of the much-favored Taraki was bad enough.
But the Soviets also regarded him as thoroughly unsuitable for the
task that was Moscow's sine qua non; preventing an anti-communist
Islamic state from arising in Afghanistan. Amin gave reform an
exceedingly bad name. The KGB station in Kabul, in pressing for
Amin's removal, stated that his usurpation of power would lead to
"harsh repressions and, as a reaction, the activation and
consolidation of the opposition". Moreover, as we shall see, the
Soviets were highly suspicious about Amin's ideological convictions.
Thus it was, that what in March had been unthinkable, in December
became a reality. Soviet troops began to arrive in Afghanistan around
the 8th of the month - to what extent at Amin's request or with his
approval, and, consequently, whether to call the action an "invasion"
or not, has been the subject of much discussion and controversy.
On the 23rd the Washington Post commented "There was no charge [by
the State Department] that the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan,
since the troops apparently were invited."
However, at a meeting with Soviet-bloc ambassadors in October, Amin's
foreign minister had openly criticized the Soviet Union for
interfering in Afghan affairs. Amin himself insisted that Moscow
replace its ambassador. Yet, on 26 December, while the main body of
Soviet troops was arriving in Afghanistan, Amin gave "a relaxed
interview" to an Arab journalist. "The Soviets," he said, "supply my
country with economic and military aid, but at the same time they
respect our independence and our sovereignty. They do not interfere
in our domestic affairs." He also spoke approvingly of the USSR's
willingness to accept his veto on military bases.
The very next day, a Soviet military force stormed the presidential
palace and shot Amin dead.
He was replaced by Babrak Karmal, who had been vice president and
deputy prime minister in the 1978 revolutionary government.
Moscow denied any part in Amin's death, though they didn't pretend to
be sorry about it, as Brezhnev made clear:
"The actions of the aggressors against Afghanistan were facilitated
by Amin who, on seizing power, started cruelly repressing broad
sections of Afghan society, party and military cadres, members of the
intelligentsia and of the Moslem clergy, that is, the very sections
on which the April revolution relied. And the people under the
leadership of the People's Democratic Party,' headed by Babrak
Karmal, rose against Amin's tyranny and put an end to it. Now in
Washington and some other capitals they are mourning Amin. This
exposes their hypocrisy with particular clarity. Where were these
mourners when Amin was conducting mass repressions, when he forcibly
removed and unlawfully killed Taraki, the founder of the new Afghan
state?"
After Amin's ouster and execution, the public thronged the streets in
"a holiday spirit". "If Karmal could have overthrown Amin without the
Russians," observed a Western diplomat, "he would have been seen as a
hero of the people."
The Soviet government and press repeatedly referred to Amin as a "CIA
agent", a charge which was greeted with great skepticism in the
United States and elsewhere. However, enough circumstantial evidence
supporting the charge exists so that it perhaps should not be
dismissed entirely out of hand.
During the late 1950s and early '60s, Amin had attended Columbia
University Teachers College and the University of Wisconsin. This was
a heyday period for the CIA-using impressive bribes and threats-to
regularly try to recruit foreign students in the United States to act
as agents for them when they returned home. During this period, at
least one president of the Afghanistan Students Association (ASA),
Zia H. Noorzay, was working with the CIA in the United States and
later became president of the Afghanistan state treasury. One of the
Afghan students whom Noorzay and the CIA tried in vain to recruit,
Abdul Latif Hotaki, declared in 1967 that a good number of the key
officials in the Afghanistan government who studied in the United
States "are either CIA trained or indoctrinated. Some are cabinet
level people." It has been reported that in 1963 Amin became head of
the ASA, but this has not been corroborated. However, it is known
that the ASA received part of its funding from the Asia Foundation,
the CIA's principal front in Asia for many years, and that at one
time Amin was associated with this organization.
In September 1979, the month that Amin took power, the American
charge d'affaires in Kabul, Bruce Amstutz, began to hold friendly
meetings with him to reassure him that he need not worry about his
unhappy Soviet allies as long as the US maintained a strong presence
in Afghanistan. The strategy may have worked, for later in the month,
Amin made a special appeal to Amstutz for improved relations with the
United States. Two days later in New York, the Afghan Foreign
Minister quietly expressed the same sentiments to State Department
officials. And at the end of October, the US Embassy in Kabul
reported that Amin was "painfully aware of the exiled leadership the
Soviets [were] keeping on the shelf" (a reference to Karmal who was
living in Czechoslovakia). Under normal circumstances, the Amin-US
meetings might be regarded as routine and innocent diplomatic
contact, but these were hardly normal circumstances-the Afghan
government was engaged in a civil war, and the United States was
supporting the other side.
Moreover, it can be said that Amin, by his ruthlessness, was doing
just what an American agent would be expected to do: discrediting the
People's Democratic Party, the Party's reforms, the idea of socialism
or communism, and the Soviet Union, all associated in one package.
Amin also conducted purges in the army officer corps which seriously
underlined the army's combat capabilities.
But why would Amin, if he were actually plotting with the Americans,
request Soviet military forces on several occasions? The main reason
appears to be that he was being pressed to do so by high levels of
the PDP and he had to comply for the sake of appearances. Babrak
Karmal has suggested other, more Machiavellian, scenarios.
"The Carter administration jumped on the issue of the Soviet
"invasion" and soon launched a campaign of righteous indignation,
imposing what President Carter called "Penalties"-from halting the
delivery of grain to the Soviet Union to keeping the US team out of
the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
The Russians countered that the US was enraged by the intervention
because Washington had been plotting to turn the country into an
American base to replace the loss of lran.
Unsurprisingly, on this seemingly clear-cut anti-communist issue, the
American public and media easily fell in line with the president. The
Wall Street Journal called for a "military" reaction, the
establishment of US bases in the Middle East, "reinstatement of draft
registration", development of a new missile, and giving the CIA more
leeway, adding "Clearly we ought to keep open the chance of covert
aid to Afghan rebels." The last, whether the newspaper knew it or
not, had actually been going on for some time. In February 1980, the
Washington Post disclosed that while the United States was now
supplying weapons to the guerrillas,
"U.S. covert aid prior to the December invasion, according to
sources, was limited to funneling small amounts of medical supplies
and communications equipment to scattered rebel tribes, plus what is
described as "technical advice" to the rebels about where they could
acquire arms on their own ."
US foreign service officers had been meeting with rebel leaders to
determine their need at least as early as April 1979, and the CIA had
been training guerrillas in Pakistan and beaming radio propaganda
into Afghanistan since the year before.
Intervention in the Afghan civil war by the United States, Iran,
Pakistan, China and others gave the Russians grave concern about who
was going to wield power next door. They consistently cited these
"aggressive imperialist forces" to rationalize their own intervention
into Afghanistan, which was the first time Soviet ground troops had
engaged in military action anywhere in the world outside its post-
World War II Eastern European borders. The potential establishment of
an anti-communist Islamic state on the borders of the Soviet Union's
own republics in Soviet Central Asia that were home to some 40
million Muslims could not be regarded with equanimity by the Kremlin
any more than Washington could be unruffled about a communist
takeover in Mexico.
As we have seen repeatedly, the United States did not limit its
defense perimeter to its immediate neighbors, or even to Western
Europe, but to the entire globe. President Carter declared that the
Persian Gulf area was "now threatened by Soviet troops in
Afghanistan," that this area was synonymous with US interests, and
that the United States would "defend" it against any threat by all
means necessary. He called the Soviet action "the greatest threat to
peace since the Second World War", a statement that required
overlooking a great deal of post-war history. But 1980 was an
election year.
Brezhnev, on the other hand, declared that "the national interests or
security of the United States of America and other states are in no
way affected by the events Afghanistan. All attempts to portray
matters otherwise are sheer nonsense."
The Carter administration was equally dismissive of Soviet concerns.
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski later stated that "the
issue was not what might have Brezhnev's subjective motives in going
into Afghanistan but the objective consequences of a Soviet military
presence so much closer to the Persian Gulf."
The stage was now set for 12 long years of the most horrific kind of
warfare, a daily atrocity for the vast majority of the Afghan people
who never asked for or wanted this war.
But the Soviet Union was determined that its borders must be
unthreatening. The Afghan government was committed to its goal of a
secular, reformed Afghanistan. The United States was determined that,
at a minimum, this should be the Soviets' Vietnam that they should
slowly bleed as the Americans had at a minimum; at a maximum ... that
was perhaps not as well thought out but American policymakers could
not fail to understand - though they dared not say it publicly and
explicitly - that support of the Moujahedeen (many of whom carried
pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini with them) could lead to a
fundamentalist Islamic state established in Afghanistan every bit as
repressive as in next-door Iran, which in the 1980s; was Public Enemy
Number One in America. Neither could the word "terrorist" cross the
lips of Washington officials in speaking of their new allies/clients,
though these same people shot down civilian airliners and planted
bombs at the airport. In 1986, British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher, whose emotional invectives against "terrorists" were second
to none, welcomed Abdul Haq, an Afghan rebel leader who admitted that
he had ordered the planting of a bomb at Kabul airport in 1984 which
killed at least 28 people. Such, then, were the scruples of cold-war
anti-communists in late 20th century. As Anastasio Somoza had been
"our son of a bitch", the Moujahedeen were now "our fanatic
terrorists". At the beginning there had been some thought given to
the morality of the policy. "The question here," a senior official in
the Carter administration said, "was whether it was morally
acceptable that, in order to keep the Soviets off balance, which was
the reason for the operation, it was permissible to use other lives
for our geopolitical interests."
But such sentiments could not survive. Afghanistan was a
cold-warrior's dream: The CIA and the Pentagon, finally, had one of
their proxy armies in direct confrontation with the forces of the
Evil Empire. There was no price too high to pay for this Super
Nintendo game, neither the hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives, nor
the destruction of Afghan society, nor three billion (sic) dollars of
American taxpayer money poured into a bottomless hole, much of it
going only to make a few Afghans and Pakistanis rich. Congress was
equally enthused-without even the moral uncertainty that made them
cautious about arming the Nicaraguan contras-and became a veritable
bipartisan horn of plenty as it allocated more and more money for the
effort each year. Rep. Charles Wilson of Texas expressed a
not-atypical sentiment of official Washington when he declared:
"There were 58,000 dead in Vietnam and we owe the Russians one ... I
have a slight obsession with it, because of Vietnam. I thought the
Soviets ought to get a dose of it ... I've been of the opinion that
this money was better spent to hurt our adversaries than other money
in the Defense Department budget."
--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@... on 09/16/2001
Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
Subject: [COMMUNISM LIST]Fw: historical questions
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:13:01 +0100
From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda@...>
Reply-To: communism@...
Organization: Communism List
To: <communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
The Guardian (London), November 23, 1995
PAKISTAN IS SECRET OF TALIBAN'S SUCCESS;
By John-Thor Dahlburg
IT HAS been one of the most breathtaking advances in the annals of
modern warfare: master of little more than a single city in
Afghanistan a year ago, the Taliban now controls more than half the
country.
And standing at the gates of Kabul, the Muslim fundamentalists
announced at the weekend that they had launched their final assault
to overrun the capital and chase President Burhanuddin Rabbani from
office.
Many observers believe it is only a matter of time before the
political map of a country mauled by more than 15 years of warfare
will be changed decisively.
The Taliban, a motley band of fighters chiefly composed of
inexperienced but courageous Islamic students, credits its lightning
success to its creed and to Allah. "The only real superpower is
Allah," said a commander, Mulvi Abdul Samad. But in the rugged
countryside of Baluchistan, the sparsely populated Pakistani province
of mountain and desert that runs parallel to Afghanistan for 670
miles, more worldly reasons come to light.
Attracted by the sacred Islamic ideal of jihad, or holy war, young
Pakistanis have flooded across the border to embrace Kalashnikov
rifles and the Taliban's cause.
And, despite repeated official denials, the Islamic republic of
Pakistan has given enormous support to the Muslim Afghan fighters in
the past year, the Los Angeles Times has learnt.
"Pakistan has decided not to give financial or military support to
any faction of the Afghans," the prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, told
an Iranian audience earlier this month.
But from Pakistan have come petrol for the Taliban's tanks, aircraft
and armoured vehicles, lorry convoys filled with munitions and other
supplies, and telecommunications equipment, experts and advice.
"This is the work of the Lawrence of Arabias of the ISI
(Inter-Services Intelligence)," said an opposition senator, Abdur
Rahim Khan Mandokhel of Baluchistan, who accuses the government of
trying to play puppet-master in Afghanistan.
===
The Guardian (London)
April 8, 1995
MUFTI IQBAL'S SCHOOL FOR MARTYRS;
'Rent-a-jihad' groups are sending out Muslims, including foreigners,
to fight abroad. Benazir Bhutto must crack down on fundamentalism to
prove her pro-Western credentials, but dare not go too far. Kathy
Evans in Peshawar reports on her dilemma
By Kathy Evans
THE bearded mullah sat cross-legged on the floor, fingering his beard
thoughtfully. "No, money is not a problem. We have many supporters
and they help us keep the jihad going," Mufti Iqbal smiled.
Mufti Iqbal is the Karachi front man for Harakat al Ansar, one of
Pakistan's numerous "rent-a-jihad" services. It is his job to recruit
local volunteers, receive foreign Muslims, and send them on to jihads
of their choosing. It is one of Pakistan's growing businesses.
The focus of Harakat's attention is Kashmir, the slither of territory
claimed by both India and Pakistan. Liberating the Kashmiri Muslims
from the Indian yoke is a national cause in Pakistan shared by
government and the man in the street. Mufti Iqbal, himself an Afghan
jihad veteran, offers contacts to other causes and conflicts,
however.
"Our main objective is to help Muslims all over the world secure
their freedom. We have received thousands of volunteers to fight in
Kashmir, Bosnia, Tajikistan and Chechenia. Jihad is, after all, an
obligation on all Muslims."
It was through Harakat al Ansar's conduit for would-be martyrs that
the young east London Pakistani, Ahmed Sheikh, was reported to have
passed. The former London School of Economics student now faces
charges of kidnapping two British tourists in India. Mufti Iqbal, the
Karachi recruiter, denies any knowledge of him.
Harakat al Ansar says it has several hundred foreign Muslims who have
come to "learn". Among the volunteers are Pakistanis, black American
Muslims, Arabs, Indians, Afghans, and even one Canadian.
The movement's officials deny they offer military training, saying
such skills are acquired at the front line. But Western diplomats in
Karachi say they have a well-established camp in Miranshahr, a remote
area bordering neighbouring Afghanistan.
The rent-a-jihad service is just one of the avenues available in
Pakistan to young Muslims from all over the world who seek to grow in
their religion and get an insight into the growing list of conflicts
in which Muslims find themselves in, against oppressive
Western-backed governments and the Christian world.
For such Muslims, Pakistan offers a number of attractions. It is a
cheap, police are bribeable, arms all too easily available, and in
whole chunks of the country government officials rarely venture.
The tribal areas function as playgrounds for the heroin and weapons
mafia. Here you can buy vital necessities for a terrorist movement.
Moreover, some of the causes espoused by religious groups enjoy
government support.
Throughout the interview with Mufti Iqbal, a man sat beside him on
the floor, prompting his answers. He claimed he was from a Pakistani
news agency.
"It's the ISI man" laughed my local newspaper colleague as we left.
"He is his minder".
ISI is the acronym for the Inter-Services Intelligence, one of
Pakistan's main intelligence agencies. It has many rivals, but none
enjoys the covert power of the ISI. That power is the product of the
multi-billion-dollar war effort launched by the West at the beginning
of the eighties to fight communism in Afghanistan. Today, its main
focus is Kashmir.
Afghanistan was the West's last war against the Soviet Union. More
than $ 10 billion was ploughed into this "heroic" cause by the US,
Britain and Saudi Arabia.
An early agreement in the conflict between America's CIA and the ISI
made the Pakistani agency the sole channel for the billions of
dollars worth of arms to the jihad. This gave the agency an
unprecedented influence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, which
lingers to this day. Headed by General Hamid Gul, working under
General Zia ul-Haq, ISI established the seven guerrilla groups known
as the mojahedin.
Today, the mojahedin groups have become little more than heroin
warlords.
In Pakistani internal politics, ISI functions as an instrument of the
government in power, drumming up evidence against opponents and
making and un-making political parties.
Embarrassingly, some of its creations are thought to be behind the
recent killing sprees in Karachi, including possibly the shooting
last month of two US embassy officials.
ISI's Afghan jihad operation was also a siren call to militant
Muslims in the Middle and Far East. The agency turned a blind eye to
the thousands who flocked to Afghanistan for military training.
Afghanistan became a playground for any disgruntled Muslim who felt
oppressed.
Today, veterans of the Afghan war dominate terrorist groups in
Algeria and Egypt, and they remain a latent and feared force in the
Gulf states.
A number of Arab veterans of the Afghan war are facing trial in New
York for suspected involvement in the bombing of the World Trade
Centre in 1993. The latest suspect to join them in the New York
courtroom is Ramzi Youssef, said to be the master bomber.
If Western intelligence sources are to be believed, Ramzi Youssef was
one of the world's most dangerous terrorists. However, it is still
unclear whether he is a Pakistani Baluch, a Kuwaiti or an Iraqi.
Since his arrest, many stories have grown up around him. He was known
to have travelled to Manila, allegedly to kill the Pope on his tour
there.
It is not just abroad that Youssef was allegedly active. Benazir
Bhutto, Pakistan's prime minister, told journalists last month that
he was also behind an attempt to assassinate her in 1993. Pakistani
press reports have linked him with the Sunni extremist group Sepah
Sehaba, believed to be behind dozens of killings of Shias in Karachi,
and also a bombing in Iran.
Today the Arab route to training grounds in Afghanistan has virtually
ceased to exist. Dozens of Arab mojahedin have been arrested and
hundreds more have fled.
It has become virtual grounds for arrest to be an Arab and an Afghan
veteran and still live in Pakistan.
It is not just Arabs who have been subjected to the police's tactic
of rounding up the usual suspects. Last week, offices of the region's
oldest and largest Islamic group, the Jamaat Islami, were raided in
the police effort to root out militants.
The crackdown on militants preceded the vital trip to the United
States this week by Ms Bhutto. For her, it is the most important trip
of her administration, one in which she will attempt to portray
herself as the only reliable partner Washington and the West has to
fight fundamentalism in the region.
Only last year, Pakistan narrowly avoided being put on the American
list of states sponsoring terrorism. But in the effort to clean
militants out of Pakistan and brush up the country's image, Ms Bhutto
risks all.
Gen Hamid Gul, the former head of ISI, warns that if these arrests
continue, a typhoon will hit Pakistan.
"What is a fundamentalist anyway? A man with a beard? If the state
machinery goes after what it calls extremists, then the reaction
could be very very nasty. Inflation, the effects of IMF policies - if
mixed with a danger to the faith - could be very dangerous for the
country," he says.
Naturally, the first beneficiary of such a backlash would be groups
Gen Gul is associated with. The former intelligence chief is said to
be a key figure behind the increasingly political campaign by the
former playboy-cricketer Imran Khan.
Another beneficiary of any reaction from Muslim groups is Ms Bhutto's
long-standing rival, the Lahore businessman Nawaz Sharif. Mr Sharif
has already been able to accuse her of attacking Islam to appease the
Americans. Unwittingly or not, Ms Bhutto has provided her opponents
with potent slogans.
It is not just on the parliamentary front that dangers lurk for Ms
Bhutto. Kashmir is a cause supported by both the ISI and the army,
two institutions which Ms Bhutto has to live with. India accuses both
of training and arming the Kashmiri militants. Western diplomats
believe that help is being organised by renegade elements in the ISI
and the army.
Figures such as Gen Gul continue to be admired in military circles
for their devotion to Islamic causes. In the past year, Ms Bhutto has
been trying to clean out Jamaat Islami sympathisers in the
intelligence service through her new ISI chief and loyalist, Javed
Ashraf.
Jamaat officials shrug off such changes, saying that in the end Ms
Bhutto has to do "her duty" towards Kashmir.
Publicly, Pakistani officials have consistently denied that they are
arming and training the militants. However, few Pakistanis would
bother to deny that the militants are able to buy weapons freely or
that they are helped to cross over to the Indian-controlled part of
Kashmir.
Any attack on these delicate covert mechanisms by Ms Bhutto would
lead to charges that the prime minister is not only against Islam but
against Pakistan's national cause, Kashmir. During the last 15 months
she has made her support for the cause a central platform from which
to reaffirm all her Islamic credentials. Rarely does she make a
speech without mentioning Kashmir and Islam in the same breath.
In private, her diplomats wonder why Pakistan cannot consider the
unthinkable third option - supporting total independence for
Kashmiris from both India and Pakistan. That way, they argue, the
fundamentalist groups and the role of the intelligence agencies, can
be wiped away in one go.
Gen Gul argues that if the West is really interested in curbing the
terrorism carried out in the name of Kashmir, it should try to
resolve the conflict, rather than fighting its symptoms.
Meanwhile, the prime minister's crackdown on militants is getting
closer to the groups and rent-a-jihad services that the Kashmir cause
has created. Ms Bhutto may find she can go only so far. It is a
dilemma which even her friends in Washington cannot help her with.
--
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
Subject:
[COMMUNISM LIST]Fw: Very interesting article from 1999 about
Bin Laden
Date:
Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:10:23 +0100
From:
"Jeff Seaman" <scratcher11@...>
Reply-To:
communism@...
To:
<communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 3:31 PM
Subject: Very interesting article from 1999 about Bin Laden
I remember being struck by the tone of this article when it appeared.
It
suggests that Bin Laden is more the inspiration for terrorists than
their
mastermind, and that his grievances are focused on the US presence in
Saudi
Arabia. I had seen nothing like it in the mainstream media before, and
nothing since. Did anyone see the Frontline documentary related to this
article?
Steven Sherman
April 13, 1999, Tuesday
U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof Bin Laden Directed Attacks
By TIM WEINER
American commandos are poised near the Afghan border, hoping to capture
Osama
bin Laden, the man charged with blowing up two American embassies in
Africa
eight months ago, senior American officials say.
But they still do not know how to find him. They are depending on his
protectors in Afghanistan to betray him -- a slim reed of hope for one
of the
biggest and most complicated international criminal investigations in
American history.
Capturing Mr. bin Laden alive could deepen the complications. American
officials say that so far, firsthand evidence that could be used in
court to
prove that he commanded the bombings has proven difficult to obtain.
According to the public record, none of the informants involved in the
case
have direct knowledge of Mr. bin Laden's involvement.
For now, officials say, Federal prosecutors appear to be building a case
that
his violent words and ideas, broadcast from an Afghan cave, incited
terrorist
acts thousands of miles away.
In their war against Mr. bin Laden, American officials portray him as
the
world's most dangerous terrorist. But reporters for The New York Times
and
the PBS program ''Frontline,'' working in cooperation, have found him to
be
less a commander of terrorists than an inspiration for them.
Enemies and supporters, from members of the Saudi opposition to present
and
former American intelligence officials, say he may not be as globally
powerful as some American officials have asserted. But his message and
aims
have more resonance among Muslims around the world than has been
understood
here.
''You can kill Osama bin Laden today or tomorrow; you can arrest him and
put
him on trial in New York or in Washington,'' said Ahmed Sattar, an aide
to
Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted of
inspiring the
bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. ''If this will end the
problem --
no. Tomorrow you will get somebody else.''
Interviews with senior American officials and knowledgeable observers of
Mr.
bin Laden in Pakistan, Sudan and elsewhere suggest that there is
widespread
support among ordinary people in the Muslim world for his central
political
argument: that American troops should get out of Saudi Arabia. The
embassy
bombings, they note, took place eight years to the day after the G.I.'s
were
ordered onto Saudi soil.
The interviews also raise questions about key assertions that have been
made
by the Government about Mr. bin Laden. Senior intelligence officials
concede
that their knowledge of him is sketchy.
''We can't say for sure what was going on'' with him from 1991 to 1996
--
most of the years covered in the indictment -- one senior official said.
His Affluence Seems Overstated
Present and former American officials and former business associates of
Mr.
bin Laden say he appears to control only a fraction of the $250 million
fortune that the American Government says he possesses.
''Clearly, his money's running out,'' said Frank Anderson, a former
senior
Central Intelligence Agency official who maintains close Middle Eastern
contacts.
Larry Johnson, the State Department deputy counterterrorism director
from
1988 to 1993, said Administration officials had ''tended to make Osama
bin
Laden sort of a Superman in Muslim garb -- he's 10 feet tall, he's
everywhere, he knows everything, he's got lots of money and he can't be
challenged.''
Milton Bearden, a retired senior C.I.A. official who ran the agency's
war in
Afghanistan and retired in 1995, said the Government had ''created a
North
Star'' in Mr. bin Laden.
''He is public enemy No. 1,'' Mr. Bearden said. ''We've got a $5 million
reward out for his head. And now we have, with I'm not sure what
evidence,
linked him to all of the terrorist acts of this year -- of this decade,
perhaps.''
Political leaders in Sudan and Pakistan who have met Mr. bin Laden
describe
him as intelligent, soft-spoken, polite. They also say he is deadly
serious
about his violent brand of radical politics and capable of killing in
God's
name.
Mr. bin Laden was born into the ruling class of Saudi Arabia. His father
was
the favorite construction magnate of the Saudi royal family, who gave
Mr. bin
Laden's family huge contracts to renovate the holy cities of Mecca and
Medina
and build palaces for Saudi princes.
American officials calculated Mr. bin Laden's fortune by estimating the
family fortune at $5 billion and dividing by 20, the number of male
heirs.
But business associates of Mr. bin Laden said his family cut him off
years
ago and are managing his share of his inheritance for him as long as he
is
disowned. Business associates say that Mr. bin Laden has been living on
a
generous allowance from his eldest brother and that his assets in Saudi
Arabia are now frozen.
In 1980, at 22, Mr. bin Laden left Saudi Arabia and moved to the Afghan
frontier. In Peshawar, Pakistan -- working alongside, but never directly
allied with, the C.I.A. -- he used his money and his machines to help
the
Afghan rebels fight the Soviet Army invaders.
The Afghan war shaped Mr. bin Laden, those who know him say. ''He is an
ordinary person who is very religious,'' said President Omar Hassan
al-Bashir
of Sudan, who met Mr. bin Laden often from 1992 to 1996. ''He believes
in the
rule of Islam and where possible the establishment of an Islamic state.
The
time that he spent in Afghanistan led him to believe that this might be
achieved through military means.''
Legend has it that Mr. bin Laden fought bravely against Soviet troops.
But
former C.I.A. officers say he was a financier, not a warrior -- ''a
philanthropist supporting a number of health care, widows-and-orphans
charity
operations in Peshawar for Afghan refugees,'' as Mr. Anderson put it.
He also helped create a headquarters called Al Qaeda, the Base. It was a
way
station in Peshawar where Egyptian and Saudi volunteers rested before
setting
off for battle in Afghanistan. Its name became a kind of flag uniting
Mr. bin
Laden's followers. American officials call it a global terrorist
network.
When the Soviet forces left Afghanistan in 1989, Mr. bin Laden went home
to
Saudi Arabia. He soon set his sights on the last remaining superpower.
''He himself was very much wary about America,'' said Saad al-Faqih, a
Saudi
exile living in London, who worked as a surgeon for wounded Afghan
fighters,
''very skeptical about America and the Saudi regime.''
He found a new enemy on Aug. 7, 1990, when the United States began
sending
half a million soldiers to Saudi Arabia, preparing for war against Iraq.
''One of the stories put out by bin Laden is that he went to King Fahd
and
promised that he would raise holy warriors who would protect Saudi
Arabia,''
said Mr. Anderson, who was the chief of the C.I.A.'s Near East
operations in
the mid-1990's. ''His violent opposition to the Saudi royal family began
when
King Fahd denied or rejected that offer.''
Americans Painted As New Crusaders
To Mr. bin Laden the deployment of Americans in the land of Mecca and
Medina
smacked of the Crusades, the Christian religious wars against Islam that
began nine centuries ago. His rage transformed him into a stateless
outlaw.
In November 1991, Saudi intelligence officers caught Mr. bin Laden
smuggling
weapons from Yemen, his father's homeland. They withdrew his passport.
Soon
afterward he made his way to Sudan, which had decreed its borders open
to all
Muslims, with or without passports or visas.
Veterans of the Afghan jihad, or holy war, against Moscow followed Mr.
bin
Laden, under Al Qaeda's banner. But ''when Al Qaeda was moved to Sudan,
it
lost around 70 percent of its members,'' Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, accused
of
being an associate of Mr. bin Laden, said during an interrogation by the
German police after his arrest in September.
''This group didn't have a purpose except to carry out the jihad,'' Mr.
Salim
said, ''and since nobody carried out the jihad, it lost a lot of its
members.''
He Lived As an Investor
There were three kinds of men in Al Qaeda, he said. First, ''people who
had
no success in life, had nothing in their heads and wanted to join just
to
keep from falling on their noses.'' Second, ''people who loved their
religion
but had no idea what their religion really meant.'' And third, ''people
who
have nothing in their heads but to fight and solve all the problems in
the
world with battles.''
Mr. bin Laden lived in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, ''as an
investor,''
said President Bashir. ''With his money, he was adventurous, and
probably he
gained this mentality by his experiences as a fighter.''
The indictment against Mr. bin Laden says he provided training camps in
Sudan
where Afghan war veterans prepared for terrorist missions. But a senior
American intelligence official contradicted that, saying, ''There was
never a
bin Laden-financed training camp in Sudan.''
The official added: ''In 1993, '94, '95, he's managing and building up
his
legitimate business presence there in Sudan. I won't pretend we've got a
good
intelligence base on this period, but we think he was laying the
groundwork
for Al Qaeda.''
In 1995 two C.I.A. officers were stalked by teen-age followers of Mr.
bin
Laden in the streets of Khartoum. ''Bin Laden was approached by us and
was
told that this would not be tolerated,'' said Ghazi Salaheldin, the
Sudanese
Information Minister. Sudan expelled the teen-agers.
In the face of such perceived threats -- though some were mirages, based
on a
slew of false C.I.A. reports -- the United States withdrew from Sudan in
late
1995. The absence of American diplomats and spies in the country
diminished
Washington's ability to know what Mr. bin Laden was doing at the very
moment
he stepped up his political war.
In 1995, after the Saudi Government rescinded his citizenship, he began
sending scathing attacks on the royal family from Khartoum.
''Bin Laden took a chance and started doing some political activities,''
President Bashir said, ''not terrorist activities, but he started
issuing
political bulletins and communiques and faxes'' denouncing the Saudi
Government as corrupt and repressive.
The United States took notice. ''There had been confusion'' after the
World
Trade Center bombing about the nature of radical Islamic threats to the
United States, said Mr. Johnson, the former senior counterterrorism
official.
No Evidence To Implicate Him
''There were lots of theories, not very good intelligence, and so the
intelligence community actually started generating a picture that Osama
bin
Laden was, if you will, the new face of terrorism,'' he said.
On May 31, 1996, four Saudis were beheaded after confessing to bombing a
Saudi National Guard post in Riyadh and killing five Americans. All told
their interrogators that they had received Mr. bin Laden's communiques.
Only
25 days later, a truck bomb tore through a military post in Dhahran,
killing
19 American soldiers.
Mr. bin Laden was blamed by American officials for instigating the
attacks.
But no known evidence implicates him, and the Saudi Interior Minister,
Prince
Nayef ibn Abdel Aziz, has absolved him. ''Maybe there are people who
adopt
his ideas,'' Prince Nayef said. ''He does not constitute any security
problem
to us.''
Shortly before the Dhahran attack, Mr. bin Laden and members of his
entourage
left Sudan in a C-130 military transport plane. The Sudanese had asked
him to
leave -- at the request of the United States. Mr. bin Laden landed at an
American-built airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Three months later, on
Aug.
23, 1996, he declared war on the United States.
''The situation in Saudi Arabia is like a great volcano about to
erupt,'' his
declaration stated. ''Everyone talks openly about economic recession,
high
prices, debt'' and ''the filling up of the prisons.''
How Did He Control the Bombers?
Mr. bin Laden's criticisms of Saudi repression and corruption closely
corresponded with State Department reports and C.I.A. analyses. But Mr.
bin
Laden blamed the United States. ''The root of the problem is the
occupying
American enemy,'' he proclaimed, ''and all efforts should focus on
killing,
fighting and destroying it.''
A second, more ominous warning from him came on Feb. 23, 1998: ''To kill
Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual
duty of
every Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible,'' until
American armies, ''shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the
lands of
Islam.''
Then came the embassy bombings last August. American authorities say the
men
who attacked the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were controlled by Mr.
bin
Laden. But they still have no clear idea how.
Despite efforts at the highest levels of the United States Government,
Mr.
bin Laden and his closest associates remain isolated in Afghanistan.
It is difficult to say precisely where the criminal case against Mr. bin
Laden stands. Prosecutors have obtained unusually restrictive court
orders
that bar the defendants and their lawyers from communicating with
virtually
anyone.
The Case Runs Out of Steam
Publicly, at least, the case has lost momentum. While two men suspected
of
being bombers were quickly apprehended, many other suspects are still at
large. The last arrest was more than six months ago. A spokesman for the
United States Attorney in Manhattan declined comment.
Now the hunt for Mr. bin Laden depends on whether the Taliban, his
radical
hosts in Afghanistan, will betray him. The United States has little
leverage
with the Taliban, and little fresh intelligence on how to capture Mr.
bin
Laden. It has no spies in Afghanistan and little new information on
precisely
how he might have instigated the deadly bombings.
''I do not have a clear picture yet of what happened when,'' said
Prudence
Bushnell, the United States Ambassador to Kenya, who was wounded in the
bomb
blast, which killed 12 of her colleagues. ''I may not ever have a clear
picture of what happened when. None of us may.''
A COLLABORATION
This article resulted from a collaboration between The New York Times
and the
PBS program ''Frontline,'' which will broadcast a documentary tonight
about
Osama bin Laden that will run on most PBS stations at 9 o'clock. The
''Frontline'' program was based on the work of Lowell Bergman,
correspondent,
Martin Smith, producer, and Orianna Zill and Ivana Damjanov, associate
producers.
ON THE WEB
Past coverage of Mr. bin Laden, the 1998 bombings of the American
embassies
in East Africa and the American response to terrorism is available from
The
New York Times on the Web:
www.nytimes.com/ international
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:13:01 +0100
From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda@...>
Reply-To: communism@...
Organization: Communism List
To: <communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
The Guardian (London), November 23, 1995
PAKISTAN IS SECRET OF TALIBAN'S SUCCESS;
By John-Thor Dahlburg
IT HAS been one of the most breathtaking advances in the annals of
modern warfare: master of little more than a single city in
Afghanistan a year ago, the Taliban now controls more than half the
country.
And standing at the gates of Kabul, the Muslim fundamentalists
announced at the weekend that they had launched their final assault
to overrun the capital and chase President Burhanuddin Rabbani from
office.
Many observers believe it is only a matter of time before the
political map of a country mauled by more than 15 years of warfare
will be changed decisively.
The Taliban, a motley band of fighters chiefly composed of
inexperienced but courageous Islamic students, credits its lightning
success to its creed and to Allah. "The only real superpower is
Allah," said a commander, Mulvi Abdul Samad. But in the rugged
countryside of Baluchistan, the sparsely populated Pakistani province
of mountain and desert that runs parallel to Afghanistan for 670
miles, more worldly reasons come to light.
Attracted by the sacred Islamic ideal of jihad, or holy war, young
Pakistanis have flooded across the border to embrace Kalashnikov
rifles and the Taliban's cause.
And, despite repeated official denials, the Islamic republic of
Pakistan has given enormous support to the Muslim Afghan fighters in
the past year, the Los Angeles Times has learnt.
"Pakistan has decided not to give financial or military support to
any faction of the Afghans," the prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, told
an Iranian audience earlier this month.
But from Pakistan have come petrol for the Taliban's tanks, aircraft
and armoured vehicles, lorry convoys filled with munitions and other
supplies, and telecommunications equipment, experts and advice.
"This is the work of the Lawrence of Arabias of the ISI
(Inter-Services Intelligence)," said an opposition senator, Abdur
Rahim Khan Mandokhel of Baluchistan, who accuses the government of
trying to play puppet-master in Afghanistan.
===
The Guardian (London)
April 8, 1995
MUFTI IQBAL'S SCHOOL FOR MARTYRS;
'Rent-a-jihad' groups are sending out Muslims, including foreigners,
to fight abroad. Benazir Bhutto must crack down on fundamentalism to
prove her pro-Western credentials, but dare not go too far. Kathy
Evans in Peshawar reports on her dilemma
By Kathy Evans
THE bearded mullah sat cross-legged on the floor, fingering his beard
thoughtfully. "No, money is not a problem. We have many supporters
and they help us keep the jihad going," Mufti Iqbal smiled.
Mufti Iqbal is the Karachi front man for Harakat al Ansar, one of
Pakistan's numerous "rent-a-jihad" services. It is his job to recruit
local volunteers, receive foreign Muslims, and send them on to jihads
of their choosing. It is one of Pakistan's growing businesses.
The focus of Harakat's attention is Kashmir, the slither of territory
claimed by both India and Pakistan. Liberating the Kashmiri Muslims
from the Indian yoke is a national cause in Pakistan shared by
government and the man in the street. Mufti Iqbal, himself an Afghan
jihad veteran, offers contacts to other causes and conflicts,
however.
"Our main objective is to help Muslims all over the world secure
their freedom. We have received thousands of volunteers to fight in
Kashmir, Bosnia, Tajikistan and Chechenia. Jihad is, after all, an
obligation on all Muslims."
It was through Harakat al Ansar's conduit for would-be martyrs that
the young east London Pakistani, Ahmed Sheikh, was reported to have
passed. The former London School of Economics student now faces
charges of kidnapping two British tourists in India. Mufti Iqbal, the
Karachi recruiter, denies any knowledge of him.
Harakat al Ansar says it has several hundred foreign Muslims who have
come to "learn". Among the volunteers are Pakistanis, black American
Muslims, Arabs, Indians, Afghans, and even one Canadian.
The movement's officials deny they offer military training, saying
such skills are acquired at the front line. But Western diplomats in
Karachi say they have a well-established camp in Miranshahr, a remote
area bordering neighbouring Afghanistan.
The rent-a-jihad service is just one of the avenues available in
Pakistan to young Muslims from all over the world who seek to grow in
their religion and get an insight into the growing list of conflicts
in which Muslims find themselves in, against oppressive
Western-backed governments and the Christian world.
For such Muslims, Pakistan offers a number of attractions. It is a
cheap, police are bribeable, arms all too easily available, and in
whole chunks of the country government officials rarely venture.
The tribal areas function as playgrounds for the heroin and weapons
mafia. Here you can buy vital necessities for a terrorist movement.
Moreover, some of the causes espoused by religious groups enjoy
government support.
Throughout the interview with Mufti Iqbal, a man sat beside him on
the floor, prompting his answers. He claimed he was from a Pakistani
news agency.
"It's the ISI man" laughed my local newspaper colleague as we left.
"He is his minder".
ISI is the acronym for the Inter-Services Intelligence, one of
Pakistan's main intelligence agencies. It has many rivals, but none
enjoys the covert power of the ISI. That power is the product of the
multi-billion-dollar war effort launched by the West at the beginning
of the eighties to fight communism in Afghanistan. Today, its main
focus is Kashmir.
Afghanistan was the West's last war against the Soviet Union. More
than $ 10 billion was ploughed into this "heroic" cause by the US,
Britain and Saudi Arabia.
An early agreement in the conflict between America's CIA and the ISI
made the Pakistani agency the sole channel for the billions of
dollars worth of arms to the jihad. This gave the agency an
unprecedented influence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, which
lingers to this day. Headed by General Hamid Gul, working under
General Zia ul-Haq, ISI established the seven guerrilla groups known
as the mojahedin.
Today, the mojahedin groups have become little more than heroin
warlords.
In Pakistani internal politics, ISI functions as an instrument of the
government in power, drumming up evidence against opponents and
making and un-making political parties.
Embarrassingly, some of its creations are thought to be behind the
recent killing sprees in Karachi, including possibly the shooting
last month of two US embassy officials.
ISI's Afghan jihad operation was also a siren call to militant
Muslims in the Middle and Far East. The agency turned a blind eye to
the thousands who flocked to Afghanistan for military training.
Afghanistan became a playground for any disgruntled Muslim who felt
oppressed.
Today, veterans of the Afghan war dominate terrorist groups in
Algeria and Egypt, and they remain a latent and feared force in the
Gulf states.
A number of Arab veterans of the Afghan war are facing trial in New
York for suspected involvement in the bombing of the World Trade
Centre in 1993. The latest suspect to join them in the New York
courtroom is Ramzi Youssef, said to be the master bomber.
If Western intelligence sources are to be believed, Ramzi Youssef was
one of the world's most dangerous terrorists. However, it is still
unclear whether he is a Pakistani Baluch, a Kuwaiti or an Iraqi.
Since his arrest, many stories have grown up around him. He was known
to have travelled to Manila, allegedly to kill the Pope on his tour
there.
It is not just abroad that Youssef was allegedly active. Benazir
Bhutto, Pakistan's prime minister, told journalists last month that
he was also behind an attempt to assassinate her in 1993. Pakistani
press reports have linked him with the Sunni extremist group Sepah
Sehaba, believed to be behind dozens of killings of Shias in Karachi,
and also a bombing in Iran.
Today the Arab route to training grounds in Afghanistan has virtually
ceased to exist. Dozens of Arab mojahedin have been arrested and
hundreds more have fled.
It has become virtual grounds for arrest to be an Arab and an Afghan
veteran and still live in Pakistan.
It is not just Arabs who have been subjected to the police's tactic
of rounding up the usual suspects. Last week, offices of the region's
oldest and largest Islamic group, the Jamaat Islami, were raided in
the police effort to root out militants.
The crackdown on militants preceded the vital trip to the United
States this week by Ms Bhutto. For her, it is the most important trip
of her administration, one in which she will attempt to portray
herself as the only reliable partner Washington and the West has to
fight fundamentalism in the region.
Only last year, Pakistan narrowly avoided being put on the American
list of states sponsoring terrorism. But in the effort to clean
militants out of Pakistan and brush up the country's image, Ms Bhutto
risks all.
Gen Hamid Gul, the former head of ISI, warns that if these arrests
continue, a typhoon will hit Pakistan.
"What is a fundamentalist anyway? A man with a beard? If the state
machinery goes after what it calls extremists, then the reaction
could be very very nasty. Inflation, the effects of IMF policies - if
mixed with a danger to the faith - could be very dangerous for the
country," he says.
Naturally, the first beneficiary of such a backlash would be groups
Gen Gul is associated with. The former intelligence chief is said to
be a key figure behind the increasingly political campaign by the
former playboy-cricketer Imran Khan.
Another beneficiary of any reaction from Muslim groups is Ms Bhutto's
long-standing rival, the Lahore businessman Nawaz Sharif. Mr Sharif
has already been able to accuse her of attacking Islam to appease the
Americans. Unwittingly or not, Ms Bhutto has provided her opponents
with potent slogans.
It is not just on the parliamentary front that dangers lurk for Ms
Bhutto. Kashmir is a cause supported by both the ISI and the army,
two institutions which Ms Bhutto has to live with. India accuses both
of training and arming the Kashmiri militants. Western diplomats
believe that help is being organised by renegade elements in the ISI
and the army.
Figures such as Gen Gul continue to be admired in military circles
for their devotion to Islamic causes. In the past year, Ms Bhutto has
been trying to clean out Jamaat Islami sympathisers in the
intelligence service through her new ISI chief and loyalist, Javed
Ashraf.
Jamaat officials shrug off such changes, saying that in the end Ms
Bhutto has to do "her duty" towards Kashmir.
Publicly, Pakistani officials have consistently denied that they are
arming and training the militants. However, few Pakistanis would
bother to deny that the militants are able to buy weapons freely or
that they are helped to cross over to the Indian-controlled part of
Kashmir.
Any attack on these delicate covert mechanisms by Ms Bhutto would
lead to charges that the prime minister is not only against Islam but
against Pakistan's national cause, Kashmir. During the last 15 months
she has made her support for the cause a central platform from which
to reaffirm all her Islamic credentials. Rarely does she make a
speech without mentioning Kashmir and Islam in the same breath.
In private, her diplomats wonder why Pakistan cannot consider the
unthinkable third option - supporting total independence for
Kashmiris from both India and Pakistan. That way, they argue, the
fundamentalist groups and the role of the intelligence agencies, can
be wiped away in one go.
Gen Gul argues that if the West is really interested in curbing the
terrorism carried out in the name of Kashmir, it should try to
resolve the conflict, rather than fighting its symptoms.
Meanwhile, the prime minister's crackdown on militants is getting
closer to the groups and rent-a-jihad services that the Kashmir cause
has created. Ms Bhutto may find she can go only so far. It is a
dilemma which even her friends in Washington cannot help her with.
--
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
Subject:
[COMMUNISM LIST]Fw: Very interesting article from 1999 about
Bin Laden
Date:
Mon, 17 Sep 2001 00:10:23 +0100
From:
"Jeff Seaman" <scratcher11@...>
Reply-To:
communism@...
To:
<communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2001 3:31 PM
Subject: Very interesting article from 1999 about Bin Laden
I remember being struck by the tone of this article when it appeared.
It
suggests that Bin Laden is more the inspiration for terrorists than
their
mastermind, and that his grievances are focused on the US presence in
Saudi
Arabia. I had seen nothing like it in the mainstream media before, and
nothing since. Did anyone see the Frontline documentary related to this
article?
Steven Sherman
April 13, 1999, Tuesday
U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof Bin Laden Directed Attacks
By TIM WEINER
American commandos are poised near the Afghan border, hoping to capture
Osama
bin Laden, the man charged with blowing up two American embassies in
Africa
eight months ago, senior American officials say.
But they still do not know how to find him. They are depending on his
protectors in Afghanistan to betray him -- a slim reed of hope for one
of the
biggest and most complicated international criminal investigations in
American history.
Capturing Mr. bin Laden alive could deepen the complications. American
officials say that so far, firsthand evidence that could be used in
court to
prove that he commanded the bombings has proven difficult to obtain.
According to the public record, none of the informants involved in the
case
have direct knowledge of Mr. bin Laden's involvement.
For now, officials say, Federal prosecutors appear to be building a case
that
his violent words and ideas, broadcast from an Afghan cave, incited
terrorist
acts thousands of miles away.
In their war against Mr. bin Laden, American officials portray him as
the
world's most dangerous terrorist. But reporters for The New York Times
and
the PBS program ''Frontline,'' working in cooperation, have found him to
be
less a commander of terrorists than an inspiration for them.
Enemies and supporters, from members of the Saudi opposition to present
and
former American intelligence officials, say he may not be as globally
powerful as some American officials have asserted. But his message and
aims
have more resonance among Muslims around the world than has been
understood
here.
''You can kill Osama bin Laden today or tomorrow; you can arrest him and
put
him on trial in New York or in Washington,'' said Ahmed Sattar, an aide
to
Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted of
inspiring the
bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. ''If this will end the
problem --
no. Tomorrow you will get somebody else.''
Interviews with senior American officials and knowledgeable observers of
Mr.
bin Laden in Pakistan, Sudan and elsewhere suggest that there is
widespread
support among ordinary people in the Muslim world for his central
political
argument: that American troops should get out of Saudi Arabia. The
embassy
bombings, they note, took place eight years to the day after the G.I.'s
were
ordered onto Saudi soil.
The interviews also raise questions about key assertions that have been
made
by the Government about Mr. bin Laden. Senior intelligence officials
concede
that their knowledge of him is sketchy.
''We can't say for sure what was going on'' with him from 1991 to 1996
--
most of the years covered in the indictment -- one senior official said.
His Affluence Seems Overstated
Present and former American officials and former business associates of
Mr.
bin Laden say he appears to control only a fraction of the $250 million
fortune that the American Government says he possesses.
''Clearly, his money's running out,'' said Frank Anderson, a former
senior
Central Intelligence Agency official who maintains close Middle Eastern
contacts.
Larry Johnson, the State Department deputy counterterrorism director
from
1988 to 1993, said Administration officials had ''tended to make Osama
bin
Laden sort of a Superman in Muslim garb -- he's 10 feet tall, he's
everywhere, he knows everything, he's got lots of money and he can't be
challenged.''
Milton Bearden, a retired senior C.I.A. official who ran the agency's
war in
Afghanistan and retired in 1995, said the Government had ''created a
North
Star'' in Mr. bin Laden.
''He is public enemy No. 1,'' Mr. Bearden said. ''We've got a $5 million
reward out for his head. And now we have, with I'm not sure what
evidence,
linked him to all of the terrorist acts of this year -- of this decade,
perhaps.''
Political leaders in Sudan and Pakistan who have met Mr. bin Laden
describe
him as intelligent, soft-spoken, polite. They also say he is deadly
serious
about his violent brand of radical politics and capable of killing in
God's
name.
Mr. bin Laden was born into the ruling class of Saudi Arabia. His father
was
the favorite construction magnate of the Saudi royal family, who gave
Mr. bin
Laden's family huge contracts to renovate the holy cities of Mecca and
Medina
and build palaces for Saudi princes.
American officials calculated Mr. bin Laden's fortune by estimating the
family fortune at $5 billion and dividing by 20, the number of male
heirs.
But business associates of Mr. bin Laden said his family cut him off
years
ago and are managing his share of his inheritance for him as long as he
is
disowned. Business associates say that Mr. bin Laden has been living on
a
generous allowance from his eldest brother and that his assets in Saudi
Arabia are now frozen.
In 1980, at 22, Mr. bin Laden left Saudi Arabia and moved to the Afghan
frontier. In Peshawar, Pakistan -- working alongside, but never directly
allied with, the C.I.A. -- he used his money and his machines to help
the
Afghan rebels fight the Soviet Army invaders.
The Afghan war shaped Mr. bin Laden, those who know him say. ''He is an
ordinary person who is very religious,'' said President Omar Hassan
al-Bashir
of Sudan, who met Mr. bin Laden often from 1992 to 1996. ''He believes
in the
rule of Islam and where possible the establishment of an Islamic state.
The
time that he spent in Afghanistan led him to believe that this might be
achieved through military means.''
Legend has it that Mr. bin Laden fought bravely against Soviet troops.
But
former C.I.A. officers say he was a financier, not a warrior -- ''a
philanthropist supporting a number of health care, widows-and-orphans
charity
operations in Peshawar for Afghan refugees,'' as Mr. Anderson put it.
He also helped create a headquarters called Al Qaeda, the Base. It was a
way
station in Peshawar where Egyptian and Saudi volunteers rested before
setting
off for battle in Afghanistan. Its name became a kind of flag uniting
Mr. bin
Laden's followers. American officials call it a global terrorist
network.
When the Soviet forces left Afghanistan in 1989, Mr. bin Laden went home
to
Saudi Arabia. He soon set his sights on the last remaining superpower.
''He himself was very much wary about America,'' said Saad al-Faqih, a
Saudi
exile living in London, who worked as a surgeon for wounded Afghan
fighters,
''very skeptical about America and the Saudi regime.''
He found a new enemy on Aug. 7, 1990, when the United States began
sending
half a million soldiers to Saudi Arabia, preparing for war against Iraq.
''One of the stories put out by bin Laden is that he went to King Fahd
and
promised that he would raise holy warriors who would protect Saudi
Arabia,''
said Mr. Anderson, who was the chief of the C.I.A.'s Near East
operations in
the mid-1990's. ''His violent opposition to the Saudi royal family began
when
King Fahd denied or rejected that offer.''
Americans Painted As New Crusaders
To Mr. bin Laden the deployment of Americans in the land of Mecca and
Medina
smacked of the Crusades, the Christian religious wars against Islam that
began nine centuries ago. His rage transformed him into a stateless
outlaw.
In November 1991, Saudi intelligence officers caught Mr. bin Laden
smuggling
weapons from Yemen, his father's homeland. They withdrew his passport.
Soon
afterward he made his way to Sudan, which had decreed its borders open
to all
Muslims, with or without passports or visas.
Veterans of the Afghan jihad, or holy war, against Moscow followed Mr.
bin
Laden, under Al Qaeda's banner. But ''when Al Qaeda was moved to Sudan,
it
lost around 70 percent of its members,'' Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, accused
of
being an associate of Mr. bin Laden, said during an interrogation by the
German police after his arrest in September.
''This group didn't have a purpose except to carry out the jihad,'' Mr.
Salim
said, ''and since nobody carried out the jihad, it lost a lot of its
members.''
He Lived As an Investor
There were three kinds of men in Al Qaeda, he said. First, ''people who
had
no success in life, had nothing in their heads and wanted to join just
to
keep from falling on their noses.'' Second, ''people who loved their
religion
but had no idea what their religion really meant.'' And third, ''people
who
have nothing in their heads but to fight and solve all the problems in
the
world with battles.''
Mr. bin Laden lived in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, ''as an
investor,''
said President Bashir. ''With his money, he was adventurous, and
probably he
gained this mentality by his experiences as a fighter.''
The indictment against Mr. bin Laden says he provided training camps in
Sudan
where Afghan war veterans prepared for terrorist missions. But a senior
American intelligence official contradicted that, saying, ''There was
never a
bin Laden-financed training camp in Sudan.''
The official added: ''In 1993, '94, '95, he's managing and building up
his
legitimate business presence there in Sudan. I won't pretend we've got a
good
intelligence base on this period, but we think he was laying the
groundwork
for Al Qaeda.''
In 1995 two C.I.A. officers were stalked by teen-age followers of Mr.
bin
Laden in the streets of Khartoum. ''Bin Laden was approached by us and
was
told that this would not be tolerated,'' said Ghazi Salaheldin, the
Sudanese
Information Minister. Sudan expelled the teen-agers.
In the face of such perceived threats -- though some were mirages, based
on a
slew of false C.I.A. reports -- the United States withdrew from Sudan in
late
1995. The absence of American diplomats and spies in the country
diminished
Washington's ability to know what Mr. bin Laden was doing at the very
moment
he stepped up his political war.
In 1995, after the Saudi Government rescinded his citizenship, he began
sending scathing attacks on the royal family from Khartoum.
''Bin Laden took a chance and started doing some political activities,''
President Bashir said, ''not terrorist activities, but he started
issuing
political bulletins and communiques and faxes'' denouncing the Saudi
Government as corrupt and repressive.
The United States took notice. ''There had been confusion'' after the
World
Trade Center bombing about the nature of radical Islamic threats to the
United States, said Mr. Johnson, the former senior counterterrorism
official.
No Evidence To Implicate Him
''There were lots of theories, not very good intelligence, and so the
intelligence community actually started generating a picture that Osama
bin
Laden was, if you will, the new face of terrorism,'' he said.
On May 31, 1996, four Saudis were beheaded after confessing to bombing a
Saudi National Guard post in Riyadh and killing five Americans. All told
their interrogators that they had received Mr. bin Laden's communiques.
Only
25 days later, a truck bomb tore through a military post in Dhahran,
killing
19 American soldiers.
Mr. bin Laden was blamed by American officials for instigating the
attacks.
But no known evidence implicates him, and the Saudi Interior Minister,
Prince
Nayef ibn Abdel Aziz, has absolved him. ''Maybe there are people who
adopt
his ideas,'' Prince Nayef said. ''He does not constitute any security
problem
to us.''
Shortly before the Dhahran attack, Mr. bin Laden and members of his
entourage
left Sudan in a C-130 military transport plane. The Sudanese had asked
him to
leave -- at the request of the United States. Mr. bin Laden landed at an
American-built airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Three months later, on
Aug.
23, 1996, he declared war on the United States.
''The situation in Saudi Arabia is like a great volcano about to
erupt,'' his
declaration stated. ''Everyone talks openly about economic recession,
high
prices, debt'' and ''the filling up of the prisons.''
How Did He Control the Bombers?
Mr. bin Laden's criticisms of Saudi repression and corruption closely
corresponded with State Department reports and C.I.A. analyses. But Mr.
bin
Laden blamed the United States. ''The root of the problem is the
occupying
American enemy,'' he proclaimed, ''and all efforts should focus on
killing,
fighting and destroying it.''
A second, more ominous warning from him came on Feb. 23, 1998: ''To kill
Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual
duty of
every Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible,'' until
American armies, ''shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the
lands of
Islam.''
Then came the embassy bombings last August. American authorities say the
men
who attacked the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were controlled by Mr.
bin
Laden. But they still have no clear idea how.
Despite efforts at the highest levels of the United States Government,
Mr.
bin Laden and his closest associates remain isolated in Afghanistan.
It is difficult to say precisely where the criminal case against Mr. bin
Laden stands. Prosecutors have obtained unusually restrictive court
orders
that bar the defendants and their lawyers from communicating with
virtually
anyone.
The Case Runs Out of Steam
Publicly, at least, the case has lost momentum. While two men suspected
of
being bombers were quickly apprehended, many other suspects are still at
large. The last arrest was more than six months ago. A spokesman for the
United States Attorney in Manhattan declined comment.
Now the hunt for Mr. bin Laden depends on whether the Taliban, his
radical
hosts in Afghanistan, will betray him. The United States has little
leverage
with the Taliban, and little fresh intelligence on how to capture Mr.
bin
Laden. It has no spies in Afghanistan and little new information on
precisely
how he might have instigated the deadly bombings.
''I do not have a clear picture yet of what happened when,'' said
Prudence
Bushnell, the United States Ambassador to Kenya, who was wounded in the
bomb
blast, which killed 12 of her colleagues. ''I may not ever have a clear
picture of what happened when. None of us may.''
A COLLABORATION
This article resulted from a collaboration between The New York Times
and the
PBS program ''Frontline,'' which will broadcast a documentary tonight
about
Osama bin Laden that will run on most PBS stations at 9 o'clock. The
''Frontline'' program was based on the work of Lowell Bergman,
correspondent,
Martin Smith, producer, and Orianna Zill and Ivana Damjanov, associate
producers.
ON THE WEB
Past coverage of Mr. bin Laden, the 1998 bombings of the American
embassies
in East Africa and the American response to terrorism is available from
The
New York Times on the Web:
www.nytimes.com/ international
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
Subject: Clinton Administration Supported the "Militant Islamic
Base"
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 14:17:51 -0400
From: Michel Chossudovsky <chossudovsky@...>
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SUPPORTED THE "MILITANT ISLAMIC BASE"
To read the complete 1997 Congressional document entitled:
"CLINTON-APPROVED IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS HELP TURN BOSNIA INTO MILITANT
ISLAMIC BASE"
click: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
Editorial Note:
Centre for Research on Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca, 21
September 2001
Since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahedin ("holy warriors") to
fight covert wars on Washington's behest has become an integral part of
US
foreign policy. A 1997 document of the US Congress reveals how the
Clinton administration --under advice from the National Security Council
headed
by Anthony Lake-- had "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base"
leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic
Network,"
of thousands of Mujahedin from the Muslim world.
The "Bosnian pattern" has since been replicated in Kosovo, Southern
Serbia and Macedonia. Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting with
the
Kosovo Liberation Army(KLA) in Macedonia are Mujahedin from the Middle
East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also
within the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army are senior US military
advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as
well as
"soldiers of fortune" from Britain, Holland and Germany.
"Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking, ``Who
attacked our country?'' said George W. Bush in his address to the US
Congress on September 20th. "This group and its leader, a person named
Osama bin Laden are linked to many other organizations in different
countries"
What the President fails to mention in his speech is the complicity of
agencies of the US government in supporting and abetting Osama bin
Laden.
[link to Who is Osama bin Laden]
The Bush Administration has misled the American people. What is the
hidden agenda? The largest military operation since the Vietnam War is
being
launched against Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network, when the
evidence amply confirms that Osama has been "harbored" since the
Soviet-Afghan war by agencies of the US government.
To read the 1997 Congressional Press release entitled:
CLINTON-APPROVED IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS HELP TURN BOSNIA INTO MILITANT
ISLAMIC BASE
click http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
The congressional report provides detailed evidence from official
sources of the links between the Islamic Jihad and the US government
during the
Clinton Adminstration.
Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRT), 21
September 2001.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [COMMUNISM LIST]How the CIA created Osama bin Laden
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 18:29:39 +0100
From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda@...>
Reply-To: communism@...
Organization: Communism List
To: <communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
How the CIA created Osama bin Laden
BY NORM DIXON
"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.
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?"
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
(Found on Johnson's Russia List)
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski
Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs
["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid
the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention.
In this period you were the national security adviser to President
Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA
aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the
Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality,
secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was
July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for
secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And
that very day, I wrote
a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion
this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But
perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to
provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but
we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that
they intended to fight against a secret
involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe
them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything
today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had
the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want
me to regret it?
(End of excerpt from Brzezinski interview.)
Base"
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 14:17:51 -0400
From: Michel Chossudovsky <chossudovsky@...>
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SUPPORTED THE "MILITANT ISLAMIC BASE"
To read the complete 1997 Congressional document entitled:
"CLINTON-APPROVED IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS HELP TURN BOSNIA INTO MILITANT
ISLAMIC BASE"
click: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
Editorial Note:
Centre for Research on Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca, 21
September 2001
Since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahedin ("holy warriors") to
fight covert wars on Washington's behest has become an integral part of
US
foreign policy. A 1997 document of the US Congress reveals how the
Clinton administration --under advice from the National Security Council
headed
by Anthony Lake-- had "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base"
leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic
Network,"
of thousands of Mujahedin from the Muslim world.
The "Bosnian pattern" has since been replicated in Kosovo, Southern
Serbia and Macedonia. Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting with
the
Kosovo Liberation Army(KLA) in Macedonia are Mujahedin from the Middle
East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also
within the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army are senior US military
advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as
well as
"soldiers of fortune" from Britain, Holland and Germany.
"Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking, ``Who
attacked our country?'' said George W. Bush in his address to the US
Congress on September 20th. "This group and its leader, a person named
Osama bin Laden are linked to many other organizations in different
countries"
What the President fails to mention in his speech is the complicity of
agencies of the US government in supporting and abetting Osama bin
Laden.
[link to Who is Osama bin Laden]
The Bush Administration has misled the American people. What is the
hidden agenda? The largest military operation since the Vietnam War is
being
launched against Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network, when the
evidence amply confirms that Osama has been "harbored" since the
Soviet-Afghan war by agencies of the US government.
To read the 1997 Congressional Press release entitled:
CLINTON-APPROVED IRANIAN ARMS TRANSFERS HELP TURN BOSNIA INTO MILITANT
ISLAMIC BASE
click http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html
The congressional report provides detailed evidence from official
sources of the links between the Islamic Jihad and the US government
during the
Clinton Adminstration.
Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRT), 21
September 2001.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [COMMUNISM LIST]How the CIA created Osama bin Laden
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 18:29:39 +0100
From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda@...>
Reply-To: communism@...
Organization: Communism List
To: <communism@...>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
_______________________________________
How the CIA created Osama bin Laden
BY NORM DIXON
"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.
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?"
Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@...
(Found on Johnson's Russia List)
Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski
Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs
["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid
the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention.
In this period you were the national security adviser to President
Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA
aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the
Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality,
secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was
July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for
secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And
that very day, I wrote
a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion
this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But
perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to
provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but
we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that
they intended to fight against a secret
involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe
them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything
today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had
the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want
me to regret it?
(End of excerpt from Brzezinski interview.)
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Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive about
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=======================================
More on Bushladen Carlyle Group:
George Soros & James Baker are part of the Family
[Posted 8 October 2001]
The first Bushladen article can be found at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/bushladen.htm
=======================================
[Emperor's Clothes note: The following is an excerpt from a 'Baltimore
Chronicle & Sentinel' article entitled, "Republican-controlled Carlyle
Group
poses serious Ethical Questions for Bush Presidents, but Baltimore Sun
ignores it.'
The article, written by Alice Cherbonnier, deals with the world's
largest
private equity firm, The Carlyle Group, a company that links George Bush
Sr.
and the family of Osama bin Laden. ]
[START of EXCERPT]
Copyright © 2001 'The Baltimore Chronicle and the SENTINEL'
"AN IMPORTANT TENET of journalism is that you should always ask, 'Who
benefits?'
"In the case of a war, the answers to this question become of paramount
importance. Suppose, for example, that profits from military contracting
were
to go in the pockets of a former U.S. President whose son (and a
presumed
future heir) is now President? Suppose further that such profits
escalate in
times of conflict. Wouldnâ??t this be of concern to the public?
Wouldnâ??t you
expect the media to be all over such an important ethical (not to
mention
moral, and maybe legal) angle?
"Though described by the Industry Standard as 'the worldâ??s largest
private
equity firm,' with over $12 billion under management, chances are
readers
havenâ??t ever heard of The Carlyle Group. Isnâ??t that a little odd,
considering it is run by a veritable who's who of former Republican
political
leaders. Former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyleâ??s chairman
and
managing director (who, by the way, was college roommate of the current
Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld). And that partners in this mammoth
venture include former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III,
George
Soros, Fred Malek (George H.W. Bushâ??s campaign manager, forced to
resign when
it was revealed he was Nixonâ??s 'Jew counter'), and 'presumably' George
H.W.
Bush?
"We say 'presumably' because the privately-held Carlyle doesnâ??t have
to
reveal information about its partners or investments to the SEC or to
anyone
else. Our former President is reported to be active in seeking
investments
for the Carlyle Group from the Asian market, and word is heâ??s paid
between
$80,000 to $100,000 per presentation.
"All told, Carlyle has about 420 partners all over the globe, from Saudi
princes to the former president of the Philippines. Its investments run
heavily in the defense sector; they make money from military conflicts
and
weapons spending."
[END of EXCERPT]
excerpt from http://baltimorechronicle.com/media3_oct01.shtml
3 October 2001, 'Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel' article by Alice
Cherbonnier
***
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive about
one
article/day.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Further Reading
= = = = = = = = = =
'Bushladen': the first article in the series about Bush and bin Laden
family
partnership in the Carlyle Group 'defense' business at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/bushladen.htm
'Why Washington Wants Afghanistan' by Jared Israel, Rick Rozoff & Nico
Varkevisser at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/afghan.htm
'NATO Buildup in the Balkans: Part of a Deadly Game' by Jared Israel at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/farish.htm
'Why is NATO Decimating the Balkans and Trying to Force Milosevic to
Surrender?' By Jared Israel and Nico Varkevisser at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/whyisn.htm
***
----- Original Message -----
From: cobas@i...
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2001 12:49 PM
Subject: Bush senior era capo della CIA
6-10-01 Bush senior era capo della CIA
George Bush, figlio di un banchiere di Wall Street, divenne il 41esimo
presidente degli Stati Uniti nel 1989 dopo essere stato pilota
dell'aviazione navale, petroliere, deputato al Congresso, ambasciatore
all'Onu e in Cina, capo della Cia e vicepresidente con Ronald Reagan
dal 1981 al 1989.
Dopo la guerra del Golfo contro l'Iraq "la popolarità di Bush negli
Usa giunse a un livello mai toccato prima da un presidente", cioè al
90%, esattamente come ora il figlio.
Nel 1993 fu sconfitto da Clinton anche perchè Bush fu accusato di aver
appoggiato Saddam Hussein con soldi ed armi fino a una settimana prima
dell'invasione del Kuwait (scandalo BNL-Atlanta, ecc..).
Un altro suo figlio è governatore della Florida, lo Stato al centro
dei brogli elettorali nelle elezioni presidenziali di un anno fa.
Nei giorni scorsi, mentre il figlio sta dichiarando la terza guerra
mondiale, ha fatta una strana visita di piacere a Milano, con "una
puntatina in Svizzera per salutare un amico".
C'è chi dice che è andato a sistemare qualche conto e qualche affare
in sospeso con qualche arabo poco presentabile.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
la Repubblica.it,24-9-01
Attacco agli Usa:
fratello Bin Laden socio di Bush
Il presidente americano George W. Bush sarebbe stato in affari con uno
dei fratelli di Osama Bin Laden, il miliardario saudita indicato come
il massimo responsabile degli attacchi a New York e Washington.
Lo scrive oggi il quotidiano britannico 'Daily Mail'.
Secondo il servizio pubblicato dal giornale, Salem Bin Laden e George
W. Bush avrebbero fondato insieme, nel Texas, una compagnia
petrolifera, la 'Arbusto Energy'.
Salem, uno dei 54 fratelli di Osama, morto nel 1983 in un incidente
aereo nel Texas, avrebbe investito gran parte del suo capitale
derivante dall'eredità del padre in compagnie petrolifere e nel 1978
aveva nominato James Bath, un intimo amico di George W. Bush come sua
rappresentante a Houston. Sempre stando al giornale britannico, Bath
avrebbe investito la somma di 50 mila dollari nelle azioni della
'Arbusto' e, sempre per conto di Salem Bin Laden, avrebbe acquistato
l' aeroporto della 'Houston Gulf'. (Red)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nella due giorni milanese Bush è stato ospite del "sinistro"
finanziere Carlo De Benedetti ed ha partecipato - con la "crema" dei
padroni italiani- a una cena organizzata dal gruppo finanziario
americano «Carlyle»; questa banca d' affari agisce in 50 Stati in
tutto il mondo e in essa vi "lavorano" Bush senior, il suo ex
segretario di Stato James Baker e l' ex premier inglese John Major.
Ha dovuto poi rinviare la partenza per gli Usa perchè invitato in
pompa magna a Roma da Berlusconi, Ciampi, Veltroni e dal Papa.
cobasalfaromeo,6-10-01
a.. guerra 2001
--- End forwarded message ---
----- Original Message -----
From: "Réseau Voltaire" <redaction@...>
To: "Sources ouvertes" <redaction@...>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 12:10 PM
Subject: Les liens financiers occultes entre les familles Bush et Ben
Laden
À QUI PROFITE LE CRIME ?
LES LIENS FINANCIERS OCCULTES ENTRE LES FAMILLES BUSH ET BEN LADEN
À la fin des années 80, alors qu¹il dirigeait l¹Harken Energy Company,
une
petite société pétrolière texanne, Georges W. Bush fit fortune en
emportant
la concession pétrolière du Bahreïn. Ce marché truqué était la
rétribution
d¹une rétro commission sur les ventes réalisées par le président Bush
père
au Koweït. L¹opération impliquait divers intermédiaires saoudiens, dont
Salem Ben Laden, frère aîné d¹Oussama et actionnaire d¹HarkenS
Les Notes d¹information du Réseau Voltaire, à paraître le 16 octobre à
20 h,
révèlent les réseaux financiers communs tissés depuis vingt ans par les
familles Bush et Ben Laden. Un monde occulte de marchands d¹armes et de
drogues où l¹on croise aussi bien le banquier nazi François Genoud, que
d¹anciens directeurs de la CIA et des services secrets saoudiens.
Attention : cette enquête ne sera postée par mail qu¹aux abonnés des
Notes
d¹information.
http://www.reseauvoltaire.net/presentations/abonnements.htm
_______________________________________________
Pour gerer votre abonnement :
http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/rv-sources
URL for this article: http://emperors-clothes.com/misc/isi.htm
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive about
one
article/day.
www.tenc.net * [Emperor's Clothes]
Please take note: If Emperor's Clothes Website goes down, a reader has
'mirrored' the Website at http://thechaos.net/plea/
========================================
Did Pakistani Intelligence ('Our' Allies) Fund the WTC Attackers?
A Question Mr. Bush Is Not Asking...
[posted 15 October 2001]
========================================
Comment by Jared Israel, Emperor's Clothes
The following story from the 'Times of India' appears to confirm the
charge,
made by Emperor's Clothes and many others, that the U.S. foreign policy
Establishment is playing a hypocritical game in Afghanistan. (1)
According to a story in the 'Times of India," the Pakistani intelligence
service, ISI, Washington's close ally in the 'infinite war' against
terror,
was intimately involved with the 9-11 hijackers.
Is it true, as the 'Times' claims, that the U.S. pressured the
now-retired
head of Pakistani Intelligence, Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad, to 'request' early
retirement?
If so, wasn't this an attempt to head off a fuller investigation?
And doesn't that mean the U.S. side knows Ahmad is guilty as charged?
And by demanding early retirement, rather than a trial for terrorism,
hasn't
the U.S. government acknowledged that a) in sending $100,000 to one of
the
alleged WTC hijackers, Ahmad was acting in accord with ISI policy and b)
the
CIA or other U.S. covert forces were also involved?
If the 'Times' is telling the truth, and Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad was pushed
into
retirement to prevent a scandal, and if President Bush really wants to
punish
the parties behind 9-11, why doesn't he demand a full investigation so
that
the guilty can be brought to justice, whether they are to be found in
Kabul,
or Islamabad, or Riyadh, or Langley or Washington, D.C.?
If, on the other hand, the 'Times' is lying, why hasn't the U.S. State
Department demanded a retraction? After all, this is a most serious
accusation.
Washington's silence is one more piece of evidence that the "infinite
war"
against terrorism is an infinite sham.
-- Jared Israel
India helped FBI trace ISI-terrorist links
by MANOJ JOSHI
12 October 2001
'THE TIMES OF INDIA'
NEW DELHI: While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed
that
former ISI director-general Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after
being
superseded on Monday, the truth is more shocking.
Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job
because
of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide
bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought
his
removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC
hijacker
Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen
Mahumd.
Senior government sources have confirmed that India contributed
significantly
to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played
by
the dismissed ISI chief. While they did not provide details, they said
that
Indian inputs, including Sheikhâ??s mobile phone number, helped the FBI
in
tracing and establishing the link.
A direct link between the ISI and the WTC attack could have enormous
repercussions. The US cannot but suspect whether or not there were other
senior Pakistani Army commanders who were in the know of things.
Evidence of
a larger conspiracy could shake US confidence in Pakistanâ??s ability to
participate in the anti-terrorism coalition.
Indian officials say they are vitally interested in the unravelling of
the
case since it could link the ISI directly to the hijacking of the Indian
Airlines Kathmandu-Delhi flight to Kandahar last December. Ahmad Umar
Sayeed
Sheikh is a British national and a London School of Economics graduate
who
was arrested by the police in Delhi following a bungled 1994 kidnapping
of
four westerners, including an American citizen.
(C) 'Times of India' 2001, Reprinted for Fair Use Only
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1454238160
***
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive about
one
article/day.
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive about
one
article/day.
www.tenc.net * [Emperor's Clothes]
=======================================
More on Bushladen Carlyle Group:
George Soros & James Baker are part of the Family
[Posted 8 October 2001]
The first Bushladen article can be found at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/bushladen.htm
=======================================
[Emperor's Clothes note: The following is an excerpt from a 'Baltimore
Chronicle & Sentinel' article entitled, "Republican-controlled Carlyle
Group
poses serious Ethical Questions for Bush Presidents, but Baltimore Sun
ignores it.'
The article, written by Alice Cherbonnier, deals with the world's
largest
private equity firm, The Carlyle Group, a company that links George Bush
Sr.
and the family of Osama bin Laden. ]
[START of EXCERPT]
Copyright © 2001 'The Baltimore Chronicle and the SENTINEL'
"AN IMPORTANT TENET of journalism is that you should always ask, 'Who
benefits?'
"In the case of a war, the answers to this question become of paramount
importance. Suppose, for example, that profits from military contracting
were
to go in the pockets of a former U.S. President whose son (and a
presumed
future heir) is now President? Suppose further that such profits
escalate in
times of conflict. Wouldnâ??t this be of concern to the public?
Wouldnâ??t you
expect the media to be all over such an important ethical (not to
mention
moral, and maybe legal) angle?
"Though described by the Industry Standard as 'the worldâ??s largest
private
equity firm,' with over $12 billion under management, chances are
readers
havenâ??t ever heard of The Carlyle Group. Isnâ??t that a little odd,
considering it is run by a veritable who's who of former Republican
political
leaders. Former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyleâ??s chairman
and
managing director (who, by the way, was college roommate of the current
Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld). And that partners in this mammoth
venture include former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III,
George
Soros, Fred Malek (George H.W. Bushâ??s campaign manager, forced to
resign when
it was revealed he was Nixonâ??s 'Jew counter'), and 'presumably' George
H.W.
Bush?
"We say 'presumably' because the privately-held Carlyle doesnâ??t have
to
reveal information about its partners or investments to the SEC or to
anyone
else. Our former President is reported to be active in seeking
investments
for the Carlyle Group from the Asian market, and word is heâ??s paid
between
$80,000 to $100,000 per presentation.
"All told, Carlyle has about 420 partners all over the globe, from Saudi
princes to the former president of the Philippines. Its investments run
heavily in the defense sector; they make money from military conflicts
and
weapons spending."
[END of EXCERPT]
excerpt from http://baltimorechronicle.com/media3_oct01.shtml
3 October 2001, 'Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel' article by Alice
Cherbonnier
***
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive about
one
article/day.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Further Reading
= = = = = = = = = =
'Bushladen': the first article in the series about Bush and bin Laden
family
partnership in the Carlyle Group 'defense' business at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/bushladen.htm
'Why Washington Wants Afghanistan' by Jared Israel, Rick Rozoff & Nico
Varkevisser at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/afghan.htm
'NATO Buildup in the Balkans: Part of a Deadly Game' by Jared Israel at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/farish.htm
'Why is NATO Decimating the Balkans and Trying to Force Milosevic to
Surrender?' By Jared Israel and Nico Varkevisser at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/whyisn.htm
***
----- Original Message -----
From: cobas@i...
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2001 12:49 PM
Subject: Bush senior era capo della CIA
6-10-01 Bush senior era capo della CIA
George Bush, figlio di un banchiere di Wall Street, divenne il 41esimo
presidente degli Stati Uniti nel 1989 dopo essere stato pilota
dell'aviazione navale, petroliere, deputato al Congresso, ambasciatore
all'Onu e in Cina, capo della Cia e vicepresidente con Ronald Reagan
dal 1981 al 1989.
Dopo la guerra del Golfo contro l'Iraq "la popolarità di Bush negli
Usa giunse a un livello mai toccato prima da un presidente", cioè al
90%, esattamente come ora il figlio.
Nel 1993 fu sconfitto da Clinton anche perchè Bush fu accusato di aver
appoggiato Saddam Hussein con soldi ed armi fino a una settimana prima
dell'invasione del Kuwait (scandalo BNL-Atlanta, ecc..).
Un altro suo figlio è governatore della Florida, lo Stato al centro
dei brogli elettorali nelle elezioni presidenziali di un anno fa.
Nei giorni scorsi, mentre il figlio sta dichiarando la terza guerra
mondiale, ha fatta una strana visita di piacere a Milano, con "una
puntatina in Svizzera per salutare un amico".
C'è chi dice che è andato a sistemare qualche conto e qualche affare
in sospeso con qualche arabo poco presentabile.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
la Repubblica.it,24-9-01
Attacco agli Usa:
fratello Bin Laden socio di Bush
Il presidente americano George W. Bush sarebbe stato in affari con uno
dei fratelli di Osama Bin Laden, il miliardario saudita indicato come
il massimo responsabile degli attacchi a New York e Washington.
Lo scrive oggi il quotidiano britannico 'Daily Mail'.
Secondo il servizio pubblicato dal giornale, Salem Bin Laden e George
W. Bush avrebbero fondato insieme, nel Texas, una compagnia
petrolifera, la 'Arbusto Energy'.
Salem, uno dei 54 fratelli di Osama, morto nel 1983 in un incidente
aereo nel Texas, avrebbe investito gran parte del suo capitale
derivante dall'eredità del padre in compagnie petrolifere e nel 1978
aveva nominato James Bath, un intimo amico di George W. Bush come sua
rappresentante a Houston. Sempre stando al giornale britannico, Bath
avrebbe investito la somma di 50 mila dollari nelle azioni della
'Arbusto' e, sempre per conto di Salem Bin Laden, avrebbe acquistato
l' aeroporto della 'Houston Gulf'. (Red)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nella due giorni milanese Bush è stato ospite del "sinistro"
finanziere Carlo De Benedetti ed ha partecipato - con la "crema" dei
padroni italiani- a una cena organizzata dal gruppo finanziario
americano «Carlyle»; questa banca d' affari agisce in 50 Stati in
tutto il mondo e in essa vi "lavorano" Bush senior, il suo ex
segretario di Stato James Baker e l' ex premier inglese John Major.
Ha dovuto poi rinviare la partenza per gli Usa perchè invitato in
pompa magna a Roma da Berlusconi, Ciampi, Veltroni e dal Papa.
cobasalfaromeo,6-10-01
a.. guerra 2001
--- End forwarded message ---
----- Original Message -----
From: "Réseau Voltaire" <redaction@...>
To: "Sources ouvertes" <redaction@...>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 12:10 PM
Subject: Les liens financiers occultes entre les familles Bush et Ben
Laden
À QUI PROFITE LE CRIME ?
LES LIENS FINANCIERS OCCULTES ENTRE LES FAMILLES BUSH ET BEN LADEN
À la fin des années 80, alors qu¹il dirigeait l¹Harken Energy Company,
une
petite société pétrolière texanne, Georges W. Bush fit fortune en
emportant
la concession pétrolière du Bahreïn. Ce marché truqué était la
rétribution
d¹une rétro commission sur les ventes réalisées par le président Bush
père
au Koweït. L¹opération impliquait divers intermédiaires saoudiens, dont
Salem Ben Laden, frère aîné d¹Oussama et actionnaire d¹HarkenS
Les Notes d¹information du Réseau Voltaire, à paraître le 16 octobre à
20 h,
révèlent les réseaux financiers communs tissés depuis vingt ans par les
familles Bush et Ben Laden. Un monde occulte de marchands d¹armes et de
drogues où l¹on croise aussi bien le banquier nazi François Genoud, que
d¹anciens directeurs de la CIA et des services secrets saoudiens.
Attention : cette enquête ne sera postée par mail qu¹aux abonnés des
Notes
d¹information.
http://www.reseauvoltaire.net/presentations/abonnements.htm
_______________________________________________
Pour gerer votre abonnement :
http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/rv-sources
URL for this article: http://emperors-clothes.com/misc/isi.htm
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive about
one
article/day.
www.tenc.net * [Emperor's Clothes]
Please take note: If Emperor's Clothes Website goes down, a reader has
'mirrored' the Website at http://thechaos.net/plea/
========================================
Did Pakistani Intelligence ('Our' Allies) Fund the WTC Attackers?
A Question Mr. Bush Is Not Asking...
[posted 15 October 2001]
========================================
Comment by Jared Israel, Emperor's Clothes
The following story from the 'Times of India' appears to confirm the
charge,
made by Emperor's Clothes and many others, that the U.S. foreign policy
Establishment is playing a hypocritical game in Afghanistan. (1)
According to a story in the 'Times of India," the Pakistani intelligence
service, ISI, Washington's close ally in the 'infinite war' against
terror,
was intimately involved with the 9-11 hijackers.
Is it true, as the 'Times' claims, that the U.S. pressured the
now-retired
head of Pakistani Intelligence, Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad, to 'request' early
retirement?
If so, wasn't this an attempt to head off a fuller investigation?
And doesn't that mean the U.S. side knows Ahmad is guilty as charged?
And by demanding early retirement, rather than a trial for terrorism,
hasn't
the U.S. government acknowledged that a) in sending $100,000 to one of
the
alleged WTC hijackers, Ahmad was acting in accord with ISI policy and b)
the
CIA or other U.S. covert forces were also involved?
If the 'Times' is telling the truth, and Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad was pushed
into
retirement to prevent a scandal, and if President Bush really wants to
punish
the parties behind 9-11, why doesn't he demand a full investigation so
that
the guilty can be brought to justice, whether they are to be found in
Kabul,
or Islamabad, or Riyadh, or Langley or Washington, D.C.?
If, on the other hand, the 'Times' is lying, why hasn't the U.S. State
Department demanded a retraction? After all, this is a most serious
accusation.
Washington's silence is one more piece of evidence that the "infinite
war"
against terrorism is an infinite sham.
-- Jared Israel
India helped FBI trace ISI-terrorist links
by MANOJ JOSHI
12 October 2001
'THE TIMES OF INDIA'
NEW DELHI: While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed
that
former ISI director-general Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after
being
superseded on Monday, the truth is more shocking.
Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job
because
of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide
bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought
his
removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC
hijacker
Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen
Mahumd.
Senior government sources have confirmed that India contributed
significantly
to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played
by
the dismissed ISI chief. While they did not provide details, they said
that
Indian inputs, including Sheikhâ??s mobile phone number, helped the FBI
in
tracing and establishing the link.
A direct link between the ISI and the WTC attack could have enormous
repercussions. The US cannot but suspect whether or not there were other
senior Pakistani Army commanders who were in the know of things.
Evidence of
a larger conspiracy could shake US confidence in Pakistanâ??s ability to
participate in the anti-terrorism coalition.
Indian officials say they are vitally interested in the unravelling of
the
case since it could link the ISI directly to the hijacking of the Indian
Airlines Kathmandu-Delhi flight to Kandahar last December. Ahmad Umar
Sayeed
Sheikh is a British national and a London School of Economics graduate
who
was arrested by the police in Delhi following a bungled 1994 kidnapping
of
four westerners, including an American citizen.
(C) 'Times of India' 2001, Reprinted for Fair Use Only
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1454238160
***
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm. Receive about
one
article/day.
