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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