Al-Qaeda. Bin Laden ventured into
Afghanistan in the early 1980's to fight the Soviets. He helped fund and train
a kind of Islamic Foreign Legion, and he learned the ways of guerilla war.
Later, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Bin Laden offered his militias to the Saudi
defense ; the King invited the U.S.A forces. Enraged at the presence of
infidels in Islam Holiest land, Bin Laden turned his wrath on America. With his
military experience, and personal fortune, Bin Laden forged an extraordinary
network of terrorists, allying himself with groups from Algeria to the
Philippines. That network became Al Qaeda.
He built camps inside Afghanistan where thousands have learned
the craft of war, as well as Bin Laden own interpretation of Islamic law. One
of the principal goals of Al-Qaeda was to drive the U.S.A armed forces out of
Saudi arabia, and to overthrow nearly all Muslim governments which are viewed
as corrupt to drive Western influence from these countries. On February 1998,
he issued a Fatwah stating it is the duty of all Muslims to kill Americans.
Bin Laden married Mohammed Atef's daughter. This wedding was
more than the union of two families. It heralded the fusion of two of the
world's top terror organizations, Al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The
merger has transformed Al-Qaeda, fostering new discipline among a loose
association of terrorist organizations from more than 60 countries. Bin Laden
schools his recruits in Mayhem. Its networks span more than 60 countries and
are estimated to comprise some 3.000 militants. Here is how Bin Laden recruits
and trains Muslims into terrorists :
«-Motivate : rhetoric
from Bin Laden supporters at local mosques about world wide persecution of
Muslims.
-Audition : network leader meets possible recruit in
Pakistan.
-Train : once approved, recruits attend training camp
in Afghanistan to learn basic military skills and strategy.
-Educate : gets advanced training at another camp,
learns hoax to blend into foreign community.
-Graduate : return to Peshawar for instruction or
destination and objectives.
-Sow the seeds : Bin Laden wrote a verse about the
U.S.S Cole attacks, « the sight of flying body parts would fill your
heart with joy ». The full 100 minutes of propaganda also feature
footage of Bin Laden firing the AK-47 and a clip exhorting Muslims to further
attacks. « America is much weaker than it seems ». At one
point, Bin Laden is grooming his followers for suicide missions :
« you will not die needlessly. Your lives are in the hands of
God »
-Hit : a coordinator is called in, once a plan is
well developped to pull various cells together and implement the
attack. »25(*)
With its attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
Al Qaeda proved it can orchestrate spectacularly destructive attacks.
However, Al Qaeda's successes raise a key question :
whether this new group gets help from rogue states, such as Iraq. But there is
no evidences of Iraq's hand, Al Qaeda is fully capable of wreaking havoc on its
own. The terrorist network has several sources of financing :
-Islamic charities : Al-Qaeda gets money from selected
charities, mosques, and relief agencies.
-Donations : backers include businessmen, disaffected
members of the Saudi Royal Family, and his own relative.
-Criminal activity : the organization earns cash by
exorting protection money from wealthy merchants, and running other rackets.
-Front companies : Bin Laden own companies offer cover
for operatives by providing them jobs and legitimate identities.
-Family fortune : he uses his fortune, to fund a network
of some 3.000 fundamentalist operatives.
The Taliban. The story began in 1979 when the
Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up a Communist regime. Through the
prism of the Cold
War, the U.S.A saw a chance to confront its nuclear rival on
the ground. So the U.S.A armed and financed the Mujahedin. The
band of holy warriors the U.S.A backed came from the diverse Afghan tribes but
also from cadre of Muslim volunteers including Ossama Bin Laden who saw
resistance against the Soviets as a God ordered defense of Islam. And they won,
sending the demoralize Soviet army home in 1989.
For the U.S.A the Afghan war was over. The American interest
in the nation was finished, they have little interest in
staying around. The Soviet withdrawal left Afghanistan ruined,
with millions of refugees, lawless chaos. In their misery, many Afghans came to
blame « the Great Satan betrayal ». They
had fought on the front line of America's war ; the Americans had walked
away, leaving them with a desolated country, did virtualy nothing to
reconstruct Afghanistan. Significant foreign aid never materialized. Then came
Omar, preaching at the Mosque in his native village near Kandahar. He put down
his Koran to act. Omar says he discovered his destiny in a dream : God was
calling him to save his country from the warlords. Now according to The Taliban
lore, he gathered together 30 like-minded men. A movement was born determined
to establish the laws of God on Earth and prepared to sacrifice everything in
pursuit of that goal.The little group, calling itself the Taliban26(*), literally students of
Islam, more poetically seekers of knowledge, set out to bring
vigilante justice to the city. Its vow was to bring peace, law and order and
« pure » Islam to Afghanistan. Led by Omar the Taliban
suscribes to a unique extremist model, based on harsh interpretation of Muslim
law and a profound belief in never-ending Jihad. Young men
displaced to refugee camps across the border in Pakistan had spent years in the
conservative frontier Islamic schools where Pashtu27(*) speakers memorized the Koran
in the Arabic rhetoric of Jihad28(*). They went home to rally behind the Mullah. The
Pakistan connection gave the Taliban the muscle to turn its aspirations for law
and order into a quest for national power.
Not every Afghan welcomed the Taliban. The toughened ethnic
minorities and religious disenters loosely linked in the Northern Alliance
fought them. Until 2002, the Taliban ruled 90 % of Afghan and is still engaged
in fierce fighting to capture the rest. Stalled at the gate of Kabul, the
Taliban found Bin Laden, who has spent some of his family fortune to finance
the anti-Soviet Mujahedin. It was Bin Laden who brought anti-Americanism to the
nationalistic Taliban ideology.
The events of September 11th have forced the U.S.A
to take a stand against the Taliban. Washington wants to eradicate that
terrorist threat. The event of September 11th have also uncoupled
Pakistan from the Taliban as nothing previously could. In fact, Bush asked
Pakistan President's help to hunt down Bin Laden. If they refused, Americans
would consider it as betrayal. If he agreed, there would be trouble at home.
Many Pakistanis believe Bin Laden is not a terrorist but a warrior of the
Islamic faith. However, Omar refused to give up Bin Laden. If he delivered him
to the West, he would betray the man who sustained him to power and added that
« the Taliban will fight until there is no blood in Afghanistan
left to be shed, that would not be just Afghan blood, but American
too. »
On October 7th , 2001, the U.S.A began bombing
Taliban military sites. Many of the Talibans most radical leaders and
supporters have been killed, taken prisoners, or fled the countryside
Al-Qaeda is different from the Taliban :
Al-Qaeda is international ; the Taliban
were an Afghan phenomenon. However, the two were closely linked. The Taliban
provided refuges for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda ; and Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda
offered ideological guidance and financial assistance to the Taliban.
