[iwar] [fc:U.S..Had.Hand.In.Creating.An.Implacable.Foe]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-18 07:42:57


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:U.S..Had.Hand.In.Creating.An.Implacable.Foe]
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Chicago Tribune
September 17, 2001
U.S. Had Hand In Creating An Implacable Foe
Osama bin Laden, ruling militia are tough products of Soviet-Afghan war
By Tom Hundley, Tribune foreign correspondent
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- In an interview three years ago, former National
Security Adviser Zbignew Brzezinski answered a question by asking one:
"Which is more important in world history: The Taliban or the fall of the
Soviet Empire? A few over-excited Islamists or the liberation of Central
Europe and the end of the Cold War?"
The answer that Brzezinski thought so obvious back them seems less so today,
nearly a week after "a few over-excited Islamists" managed to pull off the
most spectacular terrorist attack in history, replacing the Cold War with a
new war against a faceless enemy.
Last week, the bill came due on the U.S. decision, taken more than two
decades ago, to arm and finance a fundamentalist jihad, or holy war, against
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The U.S. must now launch a war against
the sophisticated and well-equipped terrorist network that it helped spawn.
A sense of what's ahead
Even before Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul in December 1979, Brzezinski
recognized the trouble-making potential of a few well-armed religious
zealots. During the summer of 1979, he persuaded President Jimmy Carter to
sign a secret directive to supply covert aid to a budding mujahedeen
movement.
What began as a trickle would soon turn into a flood of arms and money. The
CIA took responsibility for acquisition and shipment of weapons. Much of the
hardware was purchased on the black market from Soviet bloc countries,
although one of the most effective weapons in the mujahedeen's arsenal would
turn out to be U.S.-made Stinger missiles. They used the missiles to shoot
down hundreds of Russian helicopters.
Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Directorate, working closely with the
CIA, was in charge of recruiting and training the guerrillas.
The directorate cast a wide net. Religiously-inclined young men from North
Africa, the Persian Gulf region and Palestinian refugee camps that fester
across the Middle East signed up for the jihad. One of the early recruits
was a young and very wealthy Saudi construction tycoon named Osama bin
Laden.
Money for the undertaking poured in from the anti-communist Saudis.
The CIA's jihad, well under way within a year, was warmly embraced by the
Reagan administration when it took office in 1981. Afghanistan was becoming
the Soviet Union's Vietnam. Over the course of the next eight years, the
relentless hit-and-run tactics of the mujahedeen, or holy warriors, would
demoralize the Soviet Union and sap the strength of its military.
Recruiters return home
When the Soviets gave up and pulled out in 1989, the mujahedeen recruited
from different Arab countries began to trickle back to their homelands.
The end of the war coincided with a surging Islamic militancy that had
spread from Iran and Afghanistan to almost every corner of the Muslim world.
Veterans from the conflict saw themselves as the vanguard of a new
revolutionary order.
The ruling establishment saw them as dangerous and destabilizing elements.
Egypt spent the better part of the 1990s in a brutal crackdown against an
Islamic insurgency led by veterans from the Afghan war. Among the horrors of
this conflict was the 1997 massacre of 58 foreign tourists in Luxor.
In Algeria, more than 100,000 people have died in a war between a corrupt
government dominated by the military and an Islamic movement led by Afghan
war veterans.
The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the car bombs in
Moscow linked to Chechen rebels, the kidnappings of foreigners by the Abu
Sayyaf rebel group in the Philippines--all share a common Afghan pedigree.
Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia after the Soviets left Afghanistan. There
he focused his wrath on the monarchy, which he viewed as decadent and too
friendly to the United States.
He was particularly incensed by the monarchy's willingness to permit
American troops to set up bases on Saudi soil leading up to and during the
1991Persian Gulf war.
Meanwhile, the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan turned this benighted land
into a chaotic battleground for warlords and druglords.
Taliban services enlisted
Pakistan, already burdened by 2 million war refugees, sought to impose some
semblance of order by enlisting the services of an obscure group of
puritanical religious students known as the Taliban, whose name means
"students."
Lavishly funded by the equally puritanical Saudis; armed, trained and
organized by Pakistan's intelligence directorate, the Taliban gradually took
control of the country.
Evidence of U.S. involvement at this point is sketchy. All that can be said
with certainty is that the Clinton administration, failing to recognize the
danger signs, did nothing to curb Saudi or Pakistani support for the
Taliban.
At first the Taliban was welcomed by the Afghans. At least the Taliban
seemed honest, if perhaps a little over zealous.
But soon the group's true intentions became clear--a fanatically "pure"
Islamic society that virtually enslaves its women and insists that
non-Muslims wear badges that identify them as such.
Under the Taliban's harsh judicial code, apostates are beheaded and
"sodomizers" buried alive.
Bin Laden, finding himself under house arrest in Saudi Arabia, fled the
country in 1991. He went first to Afghanistan, and then to Sudan, where an
Islamic fundamentalist regime had just come to power. There he set up
legitimate businesses as well as a few training camps for terrorists.
Bin Laden was forced to move again in 1996 after the U.S. applied intense
diplomatic pressure on Sudan. He went back to Afghanistan, where the Taliban
welcomed him as an honored "guest."
Wealthy supporters
Despite its pariah status in the international community, it is believed
that the Taliban movement is still heavily funded by a network of wealthy
Saudi businessmen, and Saudi Arabia remains one of only three countries that
recognizes the Taliban government. The others are the United Arab Emirates
and Pakistan.
Pakistan's intelligence agency keeps close tabs on the Taliban, though the
government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf has tried to distance itself from some
of the more odious aspects of the regime next door.
As the clamor mounts for retaliatory strikes against Afghanistan, the
Taliban government has warned its neighbors--specifically Pakistan--that
anyone who cooperates with the U.S. will face a jihad, not a warning to be
taken lightly in this neighborhood.
Mullah Mohammed Omar, the reclusive leader of the Taliban, has asked his
followers to prepare themselves for a fight to the death against the U.S.
Taliban officials are reactivating former fighters from across the country
and Pakistan.
A new tidal wave of refugees is welling up. Iran already has shut its border
and Pakistan is trying to do the same.
Afghanistan is a hard and unforgiving place. Britain, the superpower of the
19th Century, fought and lost a long war in its barren mountains.
In the 20th Century, it was the Soviet Union that slowly bled to death on
its high plateaus.
President Bush has warned America that first war of the 21st Century will
not be quick or easy. If it is fought in Afghanistan, there is no guarantee
that it will be successful either. 

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