Who Is Osama bin Laden?

Chapter 2

Presented in stylized fashion by the Western media, "Osama bin Laden" constitutes the new bogeyman. He is both the "cause" and the "consequence" of war and social devastation. He is also held responsible for the civilian deaths in Afghanistan resulting from the US bombing campaign. In this regard, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has stated that "he did not rule out the eventual use of nuclear weapons"as part of the US Government's campaign against Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.(1)

Background of the Soviet-Afghan War

Who is Osama? The prime suspect in the New York and Washington terrorists attacks, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war, "ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight Soviet invaders".(2)

In 1979, the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA was launched in Afghanistan:

With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI, 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)

US Government support to the Mujahideen was presented to world public opinion as a "necessary response" to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist government of Babrak Kamal. Recent evidence suggests, however, that the CIA's military-intelligence operation in Afghanistan had been launched prior rather than in response to the Soviet invasion. Washington's intent was to deliberately trigger a civil war, which lasted more than 20 years.

The CIA's role in support of the Mujahideen is confirmed in an 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, who at the time was National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter:

Brzezinski: According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, [on] 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the President in which I explained to him that in my opinion, this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Question: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Question: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalists, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?(4)

"The Islamic Jihad"

Consistent with Brzezinski's account, a "Militant Islamic Network" was created by the CIA. The "Islamic Jihad" (or holy war against the Soviets) became an integral part of the CIA's intelligence ploy. It 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 US 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.(5)

The Central Intelligence Agency using Pakistan's ISI played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam. The madrasas were set up by Wahabi fundamentalists financed out of Saudi Arabia: "[I]t was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools, from which the germs of the Taliban emerged."(6)

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.(7)

Pakistan's ISI used as a 'Go-Between'

CIA covert support to the "Islamic Jihad" operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI-i.e., the CIA did not channel its support directly to the Mujahideen. For these covert operations to be "successful", Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate objective of the "Jihad", which consisted of not only destabilizing the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan, but also destroying the Soviet Union.

In the words of the CIA's Milton Beardman, "We didn't train Arabs." Yet, according to Abdel Monam Saidali, of the Al-aram Centre 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".(8)

The CIA's Beardman confirmed, in this regard, that Osama bin Laden was not aware of the role he was playing on behalf of Washington. According to bin Laden (as quoted by Beardman): "Neither I, nor my brothers, saw evidence of American help."(9)

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 theater 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".(10) The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at 150,000.(11)

Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia-ul Haq:

Relations between the CIA and the ISI 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.(12)

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.(13) Researcher 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 per cent of US 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".(14)

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 US Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests....

US officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies "because US 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."(15)

After the Cold War, the Central Asian region became not only strategic for its extensive oil reserves, but also produced, in Afghanistan alone, 75 per cent of the world's heroin, representing multi-billion dollar revenues to business syndicates, financial institutions, intelligence agencies and organized crime. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium production had unfolded.

The annual proceeds of the Golden Crescent drug trade (between 100 and 200 billion dollars) represented approximately one third of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $500 billion.16 According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Afghanistan produced more than 70 per cent of the world's opium in 2000, and about 80 per cent of the opiate products in Europe.(17)

Powerful business syndicates in the West, and in the former Soviet Union, allied with organized crime, were competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes. According to UN estimates, the production of opium in Afghanistan in 1998-1999-coinciding with the buildup of armed insurgencies in the former Soviet republics-reached a record high of 4,600 metric tons.(18) In other words, control over "the drug routes" is strategic.

The multi-billion dollar revenues of narcotics are deposited in the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks-together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens-launder large amounts of narco-dollars. Therefore, the international trade in narcotics constitutes a multi-billion dollar business of the same order of magnitude as the international trade in oil. From this standpoint, geopolitical control over "the drug routes" is as strategic as oil pipelines. (On the post-Taliban narcotics economy, see Chapter XVI).

In the Wake of the Soviet Withdrawal

Despite the demise of the Soviet Union, Pakistan's extensive military-intelligence apparatus (the ISI) 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 ISI essentially "served as a catalyst for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of six new Muslim republics in Central Asia".(19)

Meanwhile, Islamic missionaries of the Wahabi 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, the JUI entered Pakistan's government coalition of Prime Minister Benazzir Bhutto. Ties between the JUI, the Army and the ISI were established. In 1996, 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 the training camps in Afghanistan over to JUI factions...".(20)

The JUI, with the support of the Saudi Wahabi movement, played a key role in recruiting volunteers to fight in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union.

Jane Defense Weekly confirms, that "half of Taliban manpower and equipment originate[d] in Pakistan under the ISI".(21) 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.(22)

Backed by Pakistan's military intelligence, which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic State was largely serving American geopolitical interests. No doubt this explains why Washington had 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".(23)

The Golden Crescent drug trade was also being used to finance and equip the Bosnian Muslim Army (starting in the early 1990s) and later the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In fact, at the time of the September 11 attacks, CIA-sponsored Mujahideen mercenaries were fighting within the ranks of KLA-NLA terrorists in their assaults into Macedonia. (See Chapter III.)

The War in Chechnya

In Chechnya, the renegade autonomous region of the Russian Federation, 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 US Congress'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.(24) The summit was attended by none other than Osama bin Laden, as well as 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." (25)

Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington's condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the wars in Chechnya are the British and American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin. (See map page Middle East Theatre of War)

The two main Chechen rebel armies (led by Commanders 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 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.(26)

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 KLA. In 1997-1998, 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."(27)

Basayev's organization had 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.[28] Alongside the extensive laundering of drug money, the proceeds of various illicit activities were funnelled 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 (in 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 Organization, a militant religious organization, funded by mosques and rich individuals who channeled funds into Chechnya".(29)

Dismantling Secular Institutions in the former Soviet Union

The enforcement of Islamic law in the largely secular Muslim societies of the former Soviet Union has served America's strategic interests in the region. Previously, a strong secular tradition based on a rejection of Islamic law prevailed throughout the Central Asian republics and the Caucasus, including Chechnya and Dagestan (which are part of the Russian Federation).

The 1994-1996 Chechen war, instigated by the main rebel movements against Moscow, has served to undermine secular state institutions. A parallel system of local government, controlled by the Islamic militia, was implanted in many localities in Chechnya. In some of the small towns and villages, Islamic Sharia courts were established under a reign of political terror.

Financial aid from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to the rebel armies was conditional upon the installation of the Sharia courts, despite strong opposition of the civilian population. The Principal Judge and Ameer of the Sharia courts in Chechnya is Sheikh Abu Umar, who "came to Chechnya in 1995 and joined the ranks of the Mujahideen there under the leadership of Ibn-ul-Khattab.... He set about teaching Islam with the correct Aqeedah to the Chechen Mujahideen, many of whom held incorrect and distorted beliefs about Islam."(30)

Meanwhile, state institutions of the Russian Federation in Chechnya were crumbling under the brunt of the IMF-sponsored austerity measures imposed under the Presidency of Boris Yeltsin. In contrast, the Sharia courts, financed and equipped out of Saudi Arabia, were gradually displacing existing State institutions of the Russian Federation and the Chechnya autonomous region.

The Wahabi movement from Saudi Arabia was not only attempting to overrun civilian State institutions in Dagestan and Chechnya, it was also seeking to displace the traditional Sufi Muslim leaders. In fact, the resistance to the Islamic rebels in Dagestan was based on the alliance of the (secular) local governments with the Sufi sheiks:

These [Wahabi] groups consist of a very tiny but well-financed and well-armed minority. They propose with these attacks the creation of terror in the hearts of the masses....By creating anarchy and lawlessness, these groups can enforce their own harsh, intolerant brand of Islam....Such groups do not represent the common view of Islam, held by the vast majority of Muslims and Islamic scholars, for whom Islam exemplifies the paragon of civilization and perfected morality. They represent what is nothing less than a movement to anarchy under an Islamic label ....Their intention is not so much to create an Islamic state, but to create a state of confusion in which they are able to thrive.(31)

Promoting Secessionist Movements in India

In parallel with its covert operations in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, Pakistan's ISI has provided, since the 1980s, support to several secessionist Islamic insurgencies in India's Kashmir.

Although officially condemned by Washington, these covert ISI operations were undertaken with the tacit approval of the US Government. Coinciding with the 1989 Geneva Peace Agreement and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the ISI was instrumental in the creation of the militant Jammu and Kashmir Hizbul Mujahideen (JKHM).(32)

The December 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament-which contributed to pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of war-were conducted by two Pakistan-based rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Mohammed), both of which are covertly supported by Pakistan's ISI.(33)

The timely attack on the Indian Parliament, followed by the ethnic riots in Gujarat in early 2002, were the culmination of a process initiated in the 1980s, financed by drug money and abetted by Pakistan's military intelligence.(34)

Needless to say, these ISI-supported terrorist attacks serve the geopolitical interests of the US They not only contribute to weakening and fracturing the Indian Union, they also create conditions which favor the outbreak of a regional war between Pakistan and India.

The powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which plays a behind-the-scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy, confirms that the Lashkar and Jaish rebel groups are supported by the ISI:

Through its Inter-Service Intelligence Agency (ISI), Pakistan has provided funding, arms, training facilities, and aid in crossing borders to Lashkar and Jaish. This assistance-an attempt to replicate in Kashmir the international Islamist brigade's "holy war" against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan-helped introduce radical Islam into the long-standing conflict over the fate of Kashmir....

Have these groups received funding from sources other than the Pakistani government?

Yes. Members of the Pakistani and Kashmiri communities in England send millions of dollars a year, and Wahabi sympathizers in the Persian Gulf also provide support.

Do Islamist terrorists in Kashmir have ties to Al Qaeda?

Yes. In 1998, the leader of Harakat, Farooq Kashmiri Khalil, signed Osama bin Laden's declaration calling for attacks on Americans, including civilians, and their allies. Bin Laden is also suspected of funding Jaish, according to US and Indian officials. And Maulana Massoud Azhar, who founded Jaish, traveled to Afghanistan several times to meet bin Laden.

Where were these Islamist militants trained?

Many were given ideological training in the same madrasas, or Muslim seminaries, that taught the Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan. They received military training at camps in Afghanistan or in villages in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Extremist groups have recently opened several new madrasas in Azad Kashmir.(35)

What the CFR fails to mention are the links between the ISI and the CIA. Confirmed by the writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski (who also happens to be a member of the CFR), the "international Islamic brigade" was a creation of the CIA.

US-Sponsored Insurgencies in China

Also of significance in understanding America's "War on Terrorism" is the existence of ISI-supported Islamic insurgencies on China's Western border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. In fact, several of the Islamic movements in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union are integrated with the Turkestan and Uigur movements in China's Xinjiang-Uigur autonomous region.

These separatist groups-which include the East Turkestan Terrorist Force, the Islamic Reformist Party, the East Turkestan National Unity Alliance, the Uigur Liberation Organization and the Central Asian Uigur Jihad Party-have all received support and training from Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.36 The declared objective of these Chinese-based Islamic insurgencies is the "establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the region".(37)

The caliphate would integrate Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan (West Turkestan) and the Uigur autonomous region of China (East Turkestan) into a single political entity.

The "caliphate project" encroaches upon Chinese territorial sovereignty. Supported by various Wahabi "foundations" from the Gulf States, secessionism on China's Western frontier is, once again, consistent with US strategic interests in Central Asia. Meanwhile, a powerful US-based lobby is channelling support to separatist forces in Tibet.

By tacitly promoting the secession of the Xinjiang-Uigur region (using Pakistan's ISI as a "go-between"), Washington is attempting to trigger a broader process of political destabilization and fracturing of the People's Republic of China. In addition to these various covert operations, the US has established military bases in Afghanistan and in several of the former Soviet republics, directly on China's Western border.

The militarization of the South China Sea and of the Taiwan Straits is also an integral part of this strategy. (See Chapter VII.)

Washington's Hidden Agenda

US foreign policy is not geared towards curbing the tide of Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The significant development of "radical Islam", in the wake of September 11, in the Middle East and Central Asia is consistent with Washington's hidden agenda. The latter consists of sustaining rather than combatting international terrorism, with a view to destabilizing national societies and preventing the articulation of genuine social movements directed against the American Empire. Washington continues to support-through CIA covert operations-the development of Islamic fundamentalism, particularly in China and India.

Throughout the developing world, the growth of sectarian, fundamentalist and other such organizations tends to serve US interests. These various organizations and armed insurgents have been developed, particularly in countries where state institutions have collapsed under the brunt of the IMF-sponsored economic reforms.

The application of IMF economic medicine often breeds an atmosphere of ethnic and social strife, which in turn favors the development of fundamentalism and communal violence.
These fundamentalist organizations contribute by destroying and displacing secular institutions.

In the short term, fundamentalism creates social and ethnic divisions. It undermines the capacity of people to organize against the American Empire. These organizations or movements, such as the Taliban, often foment "opposition to Uncle Sam" in a way which does not constitute any real threat to America's broader geopolitical and economic interests. Meanwhile, Washington has supported their development as a means of disarming social movements, which it fears may threaten US economic and political hegemony.

Notes:

1. Quoted in The Houston Chronicle, 20 October 2001. See also Michel Chossudovsky, "Tactical Nuclear Weapons" against Afghanistan? Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO112C.html, 5 December 2001.

2. Hugh Davies, "Informers point the finger at bin Laden; Washington on alert for suicide bombers." The Daily Telegraph, London, 24 August 1998, emphasis added.

3. Ahmed Rashid, "The Taliban: Exporting Extremism", Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999.

4. "The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan, Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser", Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998, published in English, Centre for Research on Globalization, emphasis added in italics, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html, 5 October 2001, italics added.

5. Steve Coll, The Washington Post, July 19, 1992.

6. Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), "RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks in the US", Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RAW109A.html, 16 September 2001

7. Dilip Hiro,"Fallout from the Afghan Jihad", Inter Press Services, 21 November 1995.

8. National Public Radio, Weekend Sunday (NPR) with Eric Weiner and Ted Clark, 16 August 1998.

9. Ibid.

10. Dipankar Banerjee, "Possible Connection of ISI With Drug Industry", India Abroad, 2 December 1994.

11. Ibid.

12. 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 (IPS), 22 August 1995.

13. Alfred McCoy,"Drug Fallout: the CIA's Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Tr a d e ", The Progressive, 1 August 1997.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, "UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade", Financial Times, 24 February 2000.

17. BBC,"Afghanistan's Opium Industry", 9 April 2002.

18. Report of the International Narcotics Control Board, op cit, p. 49-51; see also Richard Lapper, op. cit.

19. International Press Services, 22 August 1995.

20. Ahmed Rashid, "The Taliban: Exporting Extremism", Foreign Affairs, November-December, 1999, p. 22.

21. Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 3 September 1998.

22. Tim McGirk, "Kabul Learns to Live with its Bearded Conquerors", The Independent, London, 6 November 1996.

23. See K. Subrahmanyam, "Pakistan is Pursuing Asian Goals", India Abroad, 3 November 1995.

24. Levon Sevunts, "Who's Calling The Shots? Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan", The Gazette, Montreal, 26 October 1999.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. See Vitaly Romanov and Viktor Yadukha, "Chechen Front Moves To Kosovo", Segodnia, Moscow, 23 Feb 2000.

28. See,"Mafia linked to Albania's Collapsed Pyramids", The European, 13 February 1997. See also Itar-Tass, 4-5 January 2000.

29. BBC, 29 September 1999.

30. See Global Muslim News, http://www.islam.org.au/articles/21/news.htm, December 1997.

31. Mateen Siddiqui,"Differentiating Islam from Militant 'Islamists'" San Francisco Chronicle, 21 September 1999.

32. See K. Subrahmanyam, "Pakistan is Pursuing Asian Goals", India Abroad, 3 November 1995.

33. Council on Foreign Relations,"Terrorism: Questions and Answers, Harakat ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad", http://www.terrorism-answers.com/groups/harakat2.html, Washington 2002.

34. See Murali Ranganathan,"Human Rights Report Draws Flak", News India, 16 September 1994.

35. Ibid.

36. According to official Chinese sources quoted in UPI, 20 November 2001.

37. Defense and Security, 30 May 2001.