By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

When the invasion of Afghanistan started

Radical ideology was the catalyst. While studying at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in the late 1970s, bin Laden joined the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic group founded in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood specializes in recruiting university students and young professionals, many of whom later move on to  more radical and violent Islamist organi­zations. The Brotherhood believes that all Arab dictatorships should fall because they are insufficiently "Islamic," and that a return to the seventh­ century values of Mohammed will raise the Arab world to global preemi­nence. These soon became the views of Osama bin Laden.

While still at university, bin Laden also graduated to a more violent brand of Islamism. Sometime in 1978, he met a Palestinian firebrand named Abdullah Azzam. Azzam, a tall, charismatic man with arresting eyes, spoke with conviction and passion. His theme was jihad. He did not mean a spiritual struggle most conservative Muslims today understand under this term, but violence. Ten years later, a videotape of Azzam's ideas about jihad surfaced at an Islamist conference in Oklahoma City. "The jihad, the fighting, is obligatory on you wherever you can per­form it. And just as when you are in America you must fast-unless you are ill or on a voyage-so, too, must you wage jihad. The word jihad means fighting only, fighting with the sword." (Cited by Steven Emerson in American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, New York, 2002). Though this quote comes more than ten years after bin Laden first heard Azzam speak, it is remark­ably similar in spirit and tone to the late 1970s speeches of Azzam. Azzam had a consistent theme and repeated it, by all accounts, throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Even Azzam's enemies came to respect his ability to recruit and inspire thousands of terrorists. Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, wrote: "It is dif­ficult to overstate the impact that this Islamic radical [Azzam] had." (Gold, Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, Washington, D.C, 2003, p. 94.)

Young bin Laden saw Azzam in person in 1978. Less than a year later, two cataclysmic events at the frontiers of the Muslim world completed bin Laden's transformation from a radical into a jihadi. In 1979, Islamic extremists led a coup in Iran. The Iranian rev­olution showed bin Laden and his generation of Islamists that their dream of a Koranic theocracy was actually possible. They could change the world. Just as the 1917 Soviet revolution in Russia electrified Communists across Europe, the Iranian revolution galvanized radicals across the Muslim world.

The Iranian revolution taught bin Laden and his comrades-in-arms a second deadly lesson: not to fear the United States. Iranian militants took dozens of Americans hostage in the U.S. embassy in Teheran. America did nothing. As the months ticked by, President Carter seemed weak and ineffectual. Carter's feeble response surprised the Islamic radicals. According to their speeches and printed propaganda, militants became convinced that Allah was protecting the fundamentalist revolution in Iran and holding America at bay. They were elated and emboldened. No one could stop them now.

Then, in December 1979, the Soviet Union toppled a rival  regime in Afghanistan with a massive invasion of airborne special forces, paratroopers, tanks, and self-propelled artillery. On its eastern flank, Iran saw a threat to its revolution from its ancient enemy-the Russians-and was alarmed that its allies in Afghanistan were among the first gunned down by Soviet troops. The word went out: Islam is in dan­ger. Azzam repeated the call to arms in his spellbinding speeches.

Bin Laden heard the call. "When the invasion of Afghanistan started, I was enraged and went there at once," he told Robert Fisk. "I arrived within days, before the end of 1979." (Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East , 2005)

For what it is worth, The Soviet invasion began December 25, 1979, and the Islamist effort took months to organize. But it illustrates bin Laden's reaction nonetheless: he was provoked and he would take action.

In neighboring Pakistan, bin Laden soon linked up with Azzam. There were thousands of other recruits-many drawn by Azzam's speeches-from around the Arab world. These were the Arab Afghans. They lacked guns, training, and coordination. Azzam busied himself try­ing to negotiate alliances among the various Arab factions-it would take unity to defeat the largest army in the world. But the unity rarely held and the Arab Afghans often fought among themselves. Bin Laden did not find a role until Azzam told him that an army also needs a quartermaster.

With Azzam's help, bin Laden opened the "bureau of services," the Makhtab Khadamat al-Mujahideen, in Peshawar, Pakistan. (In 1989, this organization was renamed al Qaeda, Arabic for "the base.") Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia to raise money and buy supplies. He returned with his family's construction vehicles to cut roads and build bomb-proof bunkers. He bought blocks of houses to quarter the holy warriors, the muji­hideen. And, critically, he set up a central office to track recruits. Once reg­istered with bin Laden's bureau of services '22 a recruit was assured food, medical care, and, if he died in combat, a letter to his parents lionizing his martyrdom. Since the recruits came from as far away as Morocco and the Philippines, bin Laden ended up with a vast database of Islamic militants from around the world. That codex would enable him to set up cells of trusted terrorists in more than fifty-five countries in the 1990s.

As the Afghan jihad wore on, the Reagan administration decided to step up its financial support to something close to the funds provided by the Saudis and various Gulf state sheikhs (who had been financing the Afghan war for years). As a rule, America financed Afghan natives while Saudi Arabia funded Islamic extremists from outside Afghanistan. These were separate efforts funding separate groups; only a common Commu­nist enemy united them.

The Reagan administration officials saw the war as a way of weaken­ing and demoralizing the Soviet Union. A joke popular in conservative circles at the time captured the essence of the strategy: "How do you say Vietnam in Russian? Afghanistan." Ultimately, the Reagan administration pumped in more than $3 billion between 1985 and 1989. (According to an informal estimate by a retired CIA official who worked in Afghanistan.)

Ahmed Rashid, author of the authoritative book Taliban, writes that bin Laden's role in the 1980s was channeling money through the Makhtab al-Khidmat ("bureau of services"), which evolved into al Qaeda in 1989 after the pullout of Soviet troops. Funding for bin Laden's orga­nization came from "Saudi Intelligence, the Saudi Red Crescent, the World Muslim League and private donations from Saudi princes and mosques," Rashid writes. (Excerpted from Taliban, Straits Times, Singapore, September 23, 2001.)

Years before September 11, Peter Bergen, a bold CNN producer, arranged the first American broadcast interview with bin Laden. Before the September 11 attacks, Bergen turned in his manuscript for Holy War Inc., which quickly became a bestselling book. Bergen concluded:

While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don't make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA.

There was simply no point in the CIA and Afghan Arabs being in contact with each other. The Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding. The CIA did not need the Afghan Arabs, and the Afghan Arabs did not need the CIA. So the notion that the Agency funded and trained the Afghan Arabs is, at best, misleading. The "let's blame everything bad that happens on the CIA" school of thought vastly overestimates the Agency's powers, both for good and ills. (Bergen, Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden New York, 2001, 64-66.)

The CIA has also issued an official denial, saying: "For the record, you should know that the CIA never employed, paid, or maintained any rela­tionship whatsoever with bin Laden." (As cited in "Did the U.S. `Create' Osama bin Laden?" http://www.usinfo.state.gov.)

The Saudis saw the effort as a way of protecting their kingdom, spreading their severe version of Islam, and extending their influence to the non-Arab Muslim world. The Reagan administration was no more responsible for the anti-Soviet Arab Afghans than bin Laden and his fel­low jihadis were responsible for Reagan's principled anti-Communism.

By February 1989, the Soviets had retreated and bin Laden joined the civil war to turn once-tolerant Afghanistan into a model Islamic state. But he used his own money, not the CIAs.

Other media outlets  imagined bin-Laden living in a vast, under­ground lair that would put Dr. No's to shame. A leading  British newspaper even published an illustration featuring elevators, armories, and control rooms. Yet when U.S. Special Forces and their Afghan allies won control of the mountain bunkers at Tora Bora in December 2001, they discovered small, squalid holes and limestone caves smeared with diesel soot and lit­tered with spent cartridges. There were no air-conditioned underground warehouses or flood-lit control rooms.

For a long time, leading newspapers especially also in the US, wrote  that Osama bin Laden had a personal fortune of some $300 mil­lion. This figure still surfaces in news stories and slips from the lips of cable commentators. Yet, upon examination, it turns out that lofty esti­mates of bin Laden's wealth where exaggerated.

The $300 million figure first appeared on November 17, 1998, according to the 9-11 Commission's extensive investigation. The 9-11 Commission's Monograph on Terrorist Financing, reveals, in footnote number 12:

Reporting from November 1998 concluded that although the $300 mil­lion figure probably originated from rumors in the Saudi business community; it was a "reasonable estimate" as a few years earlier, representing what would have been bin Laden's share of his family's business con­glomerate in Saudi Arabia. The intelligence community thought it had adequately verified this number by valuing bin Laden's investments in Sudan as well as what he could have inherited from his father's con­struction empire in Saudi Arabia. Finished intelligence supported the notion that bin Laden's "fortune" was still intact by concluding that bin Laden could only have established al Qaeda so quickly in Afghanistan if he had ready access to significant funds. (As cited in the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States Staff Report to the 9-11 Commission, "Monograph on Terrorist Financing.")

In other words, it was a guesstimate.

Then there also was ignorance: the CIA and other intelligence services knew that bin Laden spent large sums on terrorism and influence, but did not know where or how he was funded. Since the intelligence community could not determine the sources of bin Laden's budget, it was presumed to be his own pocket.

The conventional wisdom of the time is probably best summarized by P. J. Crowley, former National Security Council spokesman and special assistant to President Clinton. Crowley described the state of thinking about bin Laden's finances inside the National Security Council follow­ing the August 7, 1998, embassy bombings. "The media repeated things they were told by various government officials. It is a fact that bin Laden had access to some portion of his share of the family fortune. He was involved in various commercial enterprises in Sudan with the Military Industrial Complex [that is actually what the Sudanese charmingly called it], one portion of which we bombed in 1998. It was assumed that he was a financial backer for terrorist groups before his operational and inspira­tional role became more clear." (R.Miniter, Disinformation, 2005, 25.)

As it would later emerge, bin Laden's portion of his family fortune was relatively small, and long since frozen. And his Sudanese investments were hardly what one foreign intelligence source called "money spinners."

More correct information had been made available before, by Clinton-era  Richard Clarke who led an inter-agency team of intelligence professionals to meet their counterparts in Saudi Arabia in 1999. In Riyadh, Clarke received far more precise information on bin Laden's finances.

Clarke was told that Osama most likely received Sl million a year from about 1970 to 1994 (a total of S24 million) from his family, according to Saudi intelligence and the 9-11 Commission reports. In 1994, the Saudi government forced the bin Laden family to sell Osama's share of the company and place his assets in a frozen account.

Clarke subsequently testified before the much more reliable 9-11 Commission, which authoritatively dismissed the myth of bin Laden's vast fortune.

For many years, the United States thought bin Laden financed al Qaeda's expenses through a vast personal inheritance or through the proceeds of the sale of his Sudanese businesses. Neither was true. Bin Laden was alleged to have inherited approximately $300 million when his father died, funds used while in Sudan and Afghanistan. This money was thought to have formed the basis of the financing for al Qaeda. Only after NSC-initiated interagency trips to Saudi Arabia in 1999 and 2000, and after interviews of bin Laden family members in the United States, was the myth of bin Laden's fortune discredited. From about 1970 until 1993 or 1994, Osama bin Laden received about a million dollars per year­adding up to a significant sum, to be sure, but not a $300 million fortune. In 1994 the Saudi government forced the bin Laden family to find a buyer for Osama's share of the family company and to place the proceeds into a frozen account. The Saudi freeze had the effect of divesting bin Laden of what would otherwise have been a $300 million fortune. Notwithstanding this information, some within the government contin­ued to cite the $300 million figure well after 9-11, and the general pub­lic still gives credence to the notion of a "multimillionaire bin Laden. ("Monograph on Terrorist Financing.")

The 9-11 Commission concluded that the terror network relied on, aside from petty larceny and welfare fraud, covert fund-raising in Saudi Ara­bia and Persian Gulf states as well as on funds obtained from charities either directly or by illicit diversion.

Phony charities are an al Qaeda favorite, and include a U.S.-based nonprofit called Benevolence International. American corporations unwittingly supplied some of its funds. Among the donors, according to the daily Asharq al-Awsat, were Microsoft, UPS, and Compaq Corporation (taken over by Hewlett Packard in 2002). Some of these contribu­tions may well have found their way to al Qaeda.( Nimrod Raphaeli, Financing of Terrorism: Sources, Methods, and Channels. Terrorism and Political Violence 15:59-82 Winter 2003, http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/terrornew/terrorism.htm)

The 9-11 Commission concludes:

Al Qaeda relied on fund-raising before 9-11 to a greater extent than thought at the time. Bin Laden did not have large sums of inherited money or extensive business resources. Rather, it appears that al Qaeda lived essentially hand to mouth. A group of financial facilitators gener­ated the funds; they may have received money from a spectrum of donors, charities, and mosques, with only some knowing the ultimate destination of their money. The CIA estimates that it cost al Qaeda about $30 million per year to sustain its activities before 9-11, an amount raised almost entirely through donations .( "Monograph on Terrorist Financing.")

Al Qaeda's finances depend largely on abusing one of the central tenets of Islam, known as zakat, which requires that all faithful Muslims turn over a percentage of their annual income for charity. As a result, al Qaeda's funding is neither stable nor reliable. Al Qaeda fund-raising was largely cyclical, with the bulk of the money coming in during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan .

Meanwhile, there has been an unpredicted global effort to seize the bank accounts of organizations that divert funds to al Qaeda. Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2004 that $138 million had been frozen before it could be used by terrorists. ("Material Aid for Terrorists." Testimony of Assistant Attorney General Christo­pher Wray before the Senate Judiciary Committee, May 5, 2004.)

But bin Laden's wealth is a convenient myth for all concerned. American intelligence would rather that its failures be against an immensely wealthy arch-terrorist mastermind than against a strapped-for-cash crim­inal entrepreneur. More important, it allows bin Laden to say that he gave up a life of luxury to live in a cave, to sacrifice his worldly goods for the betterment of the ummah, the Muslim nation. It is a very important propaganda point, and we may come to regret giving it to him. Talking about the Islamic holy month of Ramadan just ending now, one could argue, that due to high Oil prices many a Saudi or/and radical Islamist in Oil rich countries are coming into increased wealth now.

 

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