Fw: [COMMUNISM LIST]Fwd: Who is Ousmane Bin Laden?

hi list members...

the following paper may provide leads for anyone
seeking to find out who is really behind the Sept. 11.
attacks. 
pls circulate it widely, also to all govt officials in
US/EU and elsewhere...

regards

ryan

Regards
Karl Carlile
Be free to join our communism mailing list 
at http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
-----------------------------------------------------

WHO IS OUSMANE BIN LADEN?

by Michel Chossudovsky 

Professor of Economics, 
University of Ottawa

Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) at
http:/globalresearch.ca. 
The  url of this article is
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html      
Posted 12 September 2001

A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration
concluded without supporting evidence, that "Ousmane
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
harbour 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 Ousmane 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 Ousmane 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 travelled 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 Ousmane
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 multi-billion 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 Ousmane 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. Centre for Research on
Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca.
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 chossudovsky@videotron.ca,
fax: 1-514-4256224.


____________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk
or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie

Communism List _______________________________________________
Communism@lists.econ.utah.edu