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Osama bin Laden: CIA’s Toy Gone Awry
Thursday, November 15, 2001
From the November 2001 issue of World Press Review
(VOL. 48, No. 11)

Ranjit Bhushan / Outlook (an independent weekly)
New Delhi, India
Written Sept. 17, 2001.



“He has killed and maimed more Americans than anyone else in history.”

Ironic as it may sound, Osama bin Laden, the most-wanted man in the world and the perceived symbol of evil, received his first lessons in the art of clandestine operations and subterfuge from the CIA.

Rewind to the late ’70s. It was at the Jawora base near Host, Afghanistan, that U.S. intelligence set up a training ground to equip young men to fight a guerrilla battle against the erstwhile U.S.S.R. Belonging to the royal Saudi family, Bin Laden was a VIP student of the CIA. Fired by a strong anti-left stand, Bin Laden launched his operations against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan with religious fervor. Indeed, when the then-Soviet Politburo decided to send an army of “infidels” into Afghanistan, Bin Laden knew his call had come. He audaciously shifted his business from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan with hundreds of loyal workers, along with state-of-the-art construction equipment, and began to erect military lines of communication and bases of resistance there. He also teamed up with Abdullah Azam, who was in charge of a Palestinian organization called the Muslim Brotherhood. It was through the Brotherhood that they set up recruitment offices all over the Islamic world.

Recalls Russian journalist Yerlan Dzhurabayev, “Thousands of volunteers, for the most part from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Pakistan, and Egypt, flocked to the newly established training camps.” When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, it left Bin Laden’s now 10,000-strong force without any immediate work. Part of his men went home, with authorities in their respective countries labeling them undesirable elements. Bin Laden knew that unless he engaged another big power, his elite and expensive force would lose interest. Thus was born the Al-Qaeda organization, a pool of Afghan veterans that has grown over the years and now has a presence in about 50 countries.
(More: World Press Review Online News Source)
2001 © Outlook.

Dan