Subject: Who Is Bin Laden?

From: "JEB" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 1956 22:01:56 -0500

This is a Petition to Get This Information Into The Hands Of Our President.
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>Who Is Osama Bin Laden?
>
>
>by Michel Chossudovsky
>Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
>
>Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), Montréal
>Posted 12 September 2001
>
>
>
>A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
>and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded without
>supporting evidence, that "Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda
>organisation were prime suspects". CIA Director George Tenet stated
>that bin Laden has the capacity to plan ``multiple attacks with
>little or no warning.'' Secretary of State Colin Powell called the
>attacks "an act of war" and President Bush confirmed in an evening
>televised address to the Nation that he would "make no distinction
>between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor
>them". Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger at
>"state sponsorship," implying the complicity of one or more foreign
>governments. In the words of former National Security Adviser,
>Lawrence Eagleburger, "I think we will show when we get attacked
>like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution."
>
>Meanwhile, parroting official statements, the Western media mantra
>has approved the launching of "punitive actions" directed against
>civilian targets in the Middle East. In the words of William Saffire
>writing in the New York Times: "When we reasonably determine our
>attackers' bases and camps, we must pulverize them -- minimizing but
>accepting the risk of collateral damage" -- and act overtly or
>covertly to destabilize terror's national hosts".
>
>The following text outlines the history of Osama Bin Laden and the
>links of the Islamic "Jihad" to the formulation of US foreign policy
>during the Cold War and its aftermath.
>
>
>Prime suspect in the New York and Washington terrorists attacks,
>branded by the FBI as an "international terrorist" for his role in
>the African US embassy bombings, Saudi born Osama bin Laden was
>recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war "ironically under the
>auspices of the CIA, to fight Soviet invaders". 1
>
>In 1979 "the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA" was
>launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in
>support of the pro-Communist government of Babrak Kamal.2:
>With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI [Inter
>Services Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a
>global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some
>35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined
>Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more
>came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000
>foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan
>jihad.3
>
>The Islamic "jihad" was supported by the United States and Saudi
>Arabia with a significant part of the funding generated from the
>Golden Crescent drug trade:
>In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision
>Directive 166,...[which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid
>to the mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had
>a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert
>action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S.
>assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a
>steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, ... as well as a
>"ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to
>the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near
>Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani
>intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.4
>
>The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan's military
>Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in training the
>Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was
>integrated with the teachings of Islam:
>Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete socio-political
>ideology, that holy Islam was being violated by the atheistic Soviet
>troops, and that the Islamic people of Afghanistan should reassert
>their independence by overthrowing the leftist Afghan regime propped
>up by Moscow.5
>
>
>
>Pakistan's Intelligence Apparatus
>
>
>Pakistan's ISI was used as a "go-between". The CIA covert support to
>the "jihad" operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI, --i.e.
>the CIA did not channel its support directly to the Mujahideen. In
>other words, for these covert operations to be "successful",
>Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate objective of the
>"jihad", which consisted in destroying the Soviet Union.
>
>In the words of CIA's Milton Beardman "We didn't train Arabs". Yet
>according to Abdel Monam Saidali, of the Al-aram Center for
>Strategic Studies in Cairo, bin Laden and the "Afghan Arabs" had
>been imparted "with very sophisticated types of training that was
>allowed to them by the CIA" 6
>
>CIA's Beardman confirmed, in this regard, that Osama bin Laden was
>not aware of the role he was playing on behalf of Washington. In the
>words of bin Laden (quoted by Beardman): "neither I, nor my brothers
>saw evidence of American help". 7
>
>Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors
>were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet Army on behalf of
>Uncle Sam. While there were contacts at the upper levels of the
>intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in theatre had no
>contacts with Washington or the CIA.
>
>With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of US military
>aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a "parallel structure
>wielding enormous power over all aspects of government". 8 The ISI
>had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers,
>bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at 150,000. 9
>
>Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military
>regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:
>'Relations between the CIA and the ISI [Pakistan's military
>intelligence] had grown increasingly warm following [General] Zia's
>ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime,'... During
>most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet
>than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded
>Afghanistan in 1980, Zia [ul Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize
>the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in
>October 1984.... `the CIA was more cautious than the Pakistanis.'
>Both Pakistan and the United States took the line of deception on
>Afghanistan with a public posture of negotiating a settlement while
>privately agreeing that military escalation was the best course.10
>
>
>
>The Golden Crescent Drug Triangle
>
>
>The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related
>to the CIA's covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war,
>opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small
>regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. 11 In
>this regard, Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of
>the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, "the
>Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin
>producer, supplying 60 percent of U.S. demand. In Pakistan, the
>heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979... to 1.2
>million by 1985 -- a much steeper rise than in any other nation":12
>CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahideen
>guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered
>peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in
>Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection
>of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories.
>During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug
>Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures
>or arrests ... U.S. officials had refused to investigate charges of
>heroin dealing by its Afghan allies `because U.S. narcotics policy
>in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet
>influence there.' In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan
>operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had indeed sacrificed the
>drug war to fight the Cold War. `Our main mission was to do as much
>damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn't really have the
>resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug
>trade,'... `I don't think that we need to apologize for this. Every
>situation has its fallout.... There was fallout in terms of drugs,
>yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left
>Afghanistan.'13
>
>
>
>In the Wake of the Cold War
>
>
>In the wake of the Cold War, the Central Asian region is not only
>strategic for its extensive oil reserves, it also produces three
>quarters of the World's opium representing multibillion dollar
>revenues to business syndicates, financial institutions,
>intelligence agencies and organized crime. The annual proceeds of
>the Golden Crescent drug trade (between 100 and 200 billion dollars)
>represents approximately one third of the Worldwide annual turnover
>of narcotics, estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of
>$500 billion.14
>
>With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium
>production has unfolded. (According to UN estimates, the production
>of opium in Afghanistan in 1998-99 -- coinciding with the build up
>of armed insurgencies in the former Soviet republics-- reached a
>record high of 4600 metric tons.15 Powerful business syndicates in
>the former Soviet Union allied with organized crime are competing
>for the strategic control over the heroin routes.
>
>The ISI's extensive intelligence military-network was not dismantled
>in the wake of the Cold War. The CIA continued to support the
>Islamic "jihad" out of Pakistan. New undercover initiatives were set
>in motion in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Pakistan's
>military and intelligence apparatus essentially "served as a
>catalyst for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the
>emergence of six new Muslim republics in Central Asia." 16.
>
>Meanwhile, Islamic missionaries of the Wahhabi sect from Saudi
>Arabia had established themselves in the Muslim republics as well as
>within the Russian federation encroaching upon the institutions of
>the secular State. Despite its anti-American ideology, Islamic
>fundamentalism was largely serving Washington's strategic interests
>in the former Soviet Union.
>
>Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, the civil war in
>Afghanistan continued unabated. The Taliban were being supported by
>the Pakistani Deobandis and their political party the
>Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). In 1993, JUI entered the government
>coalition of Prime Minister Benazzir Bhutto. Ties between JUI, the
>Army and ISI were established. In 1995, with the downfall of the
>Hezb-I-Islami Hektmatyar government in Kabul, the Taliban not only
>instated a hardline Islamic government, they also "handed control of
>training camps in Afghanistan over to JUI factions..." 17
>
>And the JUI with the support of the Saudi Wahhabi movements played a
>key role in recruiting volunteers to fight in the Balkans and the
>former Soviet Union.
>
>Jane Defense Weekly confirms in this regard that "half of Taliban
>manpower and equipment originate[d] in Pakistan under the ISI" 18
>
>In fact, it would appear that following the Soviet withdrawal both
>sides in the Afghan civil war continued to receive covert support
>through Pakistan's ISI. 19
>
>In other words, backed by Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI)
>which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic State
>was largely serving American geopolitical interests. The Golden
>Crescent drug trade was also being used to finance and equip the
>Bosnian Muslim Army (starting in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo
>Liberation Army (KLA). In last few months there is evidence that
>Mujahideen mercenaries are fighting in the ranks of KLA-NLA
>terrorists in their assaults into Macedonia.
>
>No doubt, this explains why Washington has closed its eyes on the
>reign of terror imposed by the Taliban including the blatant
>derogation of women's rights, the closing down of schools for girls,
>the dismissal of women employees from government offices and the
>enforcement of "the Sharia laws of punishment".20
>
>
>The War in Chechnya
>
>
>With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and
>Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in
>Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Yossef Bodansky, director of
>the U.S. Congress's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional
>Warfare, the war in Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit
>of HizbAllah International held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia. 21
>The summit, was attended by Osama bin Laden and high-ranking Iranian
>and Pakistani intelligence officers. In this regard, the involvement
>of Pakistan's ISI in Chechnya "goes far beyond supplying the
>Chechens with weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic
>proxies are actually calling the shots in this war". 22
>
>Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan.
>Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism,
>the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American
>oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and
>pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin.
>
>The two main Chechen rebel armies (respectively led by Commander
>Shamil Basayev and Emir Khattab) estimated at 35,000 strong were
>supported by Pakistan's ISI, which also played a key role in
>organizing and training the Chechen rebel army:
>[In 1994] the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence arranged for
>Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive Islamic
>indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost
>province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp, set up in the early
>1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani warlord Gulbuddin
>Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev
>was transferred to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo
>training in advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the
>highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officers:
>Minister of Defense General Aftab Shahban Mirani, Minister of
>Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the head of the ISI branch in
>charge of supporting Islamic causes, General Javed Ashraf, (all now
>retired). High-level connections soon proved very useful to
>Basayev.23
>Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was
>assigned to lead the assault against Russian federal troops in the
>first Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also developed
>extensive links to criminal syndicates in Moscow as well as ties to
>Albanian organized crime and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In
>1997-98, according to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB)
>"Chechen warlords started buying up real estate in Kosovo... through
>several real estate firms registered as a cover in Yugoslavia" 24
>
>Basayev's organisation has also been involved in a number of rackets
>including narcotics, illegal tapping and sabotage of Russia's oil
>pipelines, kidnapping, prostitution, trade in counterfeit dollars
>and the smuggling of nuclear materials (See Mafia linked to
>Albania's collapsed pyramids, 25 Alongside the extensive laundering
>of drug money, the proceeds of various illicit activities have been
>funneled towards the recruitment of mercenaries and the purchase of
>weapons.
>
>During his training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up with
>Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander "Al Khattab" who had fought
>as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few months after Basayev's
>return to Grozny, Khattab was invited (early 1995) to set up an army
>base in Chechnya for the training of Mujahideen fighters. According
>to the BBC, Khattab's posting to Chechnya had been "arranged through
>the Saudi-Arabian based [International] Islamic Relief Organisation,
>a militant religious organisation, funded by mosques and rich
>individuals which channeled funds into Chechnya".26
>
>
>Concluding Remarks
>
>
>Since the Cold War era, Washington has consciously supported Osama
>bin Laden, while at same time placing him on the FBI's "most wanted
>list" as the World's foremost terrorist.
>
>While the Mujahideen are busy fighting America's war in the Balkans
>and the former Soviet Union, the FBI --operating as a US based
>Police Force- is waging a domestic war against terrorism, operating
>in some respects independently of the CIA which has --since the
>Soviet-Afghan war-- supported international terrorism through its
>covert operations.
>
>In a cruel irony, while the Islamic jihad --featured by the Bush
>Adminstration as "a threat to America"-- is blamed for the terrorist
>assaults on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, these same
>Islamic organisations constitute a key instrument of US
>military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and the former
>Soviet Union.
>
>In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the
>truth must prevail to prevent the Bush Adminstration together with
>its NATO partners from embarking upon a military adventure which
>threatens the future of humanity.
>
>
>
>
>Endnotes
>
>    * Hugh Davies, International: `Informers' point the finger at bin
>Laden; Washington on alert for suicide bombers, The Daily Telegraph,
>London, 24 August 1998.
>    * See Fred Halliday, "The Un-great game: the Country that lost
>the Cold War, Afghanistan, New Republic, 25 March 1996):
>    * Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, Foreign
>Affairs, November-December 1999.
>    * Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992.
>    * Dilip Hiro, Fallout from the Afghan Jihad, Inter Press
>Services, 21 November 1995.
>    * Weekend Sunday (NPR); Eric Weiner, Ted Clark; 16 August 1998.
>    * Ibid.
>    * Dipankar Banerjee; Possible Connection of ISI With Drug
>Industry, India Abroad, 2 December 1994.
>    * Ibid
>    * See Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The
>Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, Oxford university Press, New
>York, 1995. See also the review of Cordovez and Harrison in
>International Press Services, 22 August 1995.
>    * Alfred McCoy, Drug fallout: the CIA's Forty Year Complicity in
>the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive; 1 August 1997.
>    * Ibid
>    * Ibid.
>    * Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a changing World, Technical document
>no 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also Report of the International
>Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations
>Publication, Vienna 1999, p 49-51, And Richard Lapper, UN Fears
>Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000.
>    * Report of the International Narcotics Control Board, op cit, p
>49-51, see also Richard Lapper, op. cit.
>    * International Press Services, 22 August 1995.
>    * Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, Foreign
>Affairs, November- December, 1999, p. 22.
>    * Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 3 September 1998)
>    * Tim McGirk, Kabul learns to live with its bearded conquerors,
>The Independent, London, 6 November1996.
>    * See K. Subrahmanyam, Pakistan is Pursuing Asian Goals, India
>Abroad, 3 November 1995.
>    * Levon Sevunts, Who's calling the shots?: Chechen conflict finds
>Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 23 The Gazette, Montreal,
>26 October 1999..
>    * Ibid
>    * Ibid.
>    * See Vitaly Romanov and Viktor Yadukha, Chechen Front Moves To
>Kosovo Segodnia, Moscow, 23 Feb 2000.
>    * The European, 13 February 1997, See also Itar-Tass, 4-5 January 2000.
>    * BBC, 29 September 1999).
>The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
>
>Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, September 2001. All rights
>reserved. Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial
>community internet sites, provided the source and the URL are
>indicated, the essay remains intact and the copyright note is
>displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms,
>including commercial internet sites and excerpts, contact the author
>at [email-masked], fax: 1-514-4256224.

Fred Adler
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---

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 11:10:42 -0400

> Hopefully you accidentally sent this to the IETF.

Seems unlikely.  Note that this particular burbler showed up right after 
Jim Flaming was slapped down.  I wouldn't bet against them being the same 
person.

John Stracke
Principal Engineer
Incentive Systems, Inc.
[email-masked]