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U.S. government officials and a number of other parties maintain that the U.S. supported only the indigenous Afghan mujahideen. They deny that the CIA or other American officials had contact with Bin Laden, let alone armed, trained, coached, or indoctrinated him. American scholars and reporters have called the idea of a CIA-backed Al Qaeda "nonsense", "sheer fantasy", and a "common myth".
According to Peter Jouvenal, Americans could not train mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of U.S. agents to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan.
The former Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book ''Knights Under the Prophet's Banner''.
Bin Laden himself once said "The collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," but "collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant."
In '' Ghost Wars'' (2004),
Some sources have alleged that the
wrote:
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(CIA) had ties with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda and its " Afghan Arab" fighters when it armed Mujahideen groups to fight the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
during the Soviet–Afghan War
The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It saw extensive fighting between the Soviet Union and the Afghan mujahideen (alongside smaller groups of anti-Sovie ...
.
About the same time as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the United States began collaborating with Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
's Inter-Services Intelligence
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...
(ISI) to provide several hundred million dollars a year in aid to the Afghan Mujahideen insurgents fighting the Afghan pro-Soviet government and the Soviet Army in Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in suppor ...
. Along with native Afghan mujahideen were Muslim volunteers from other countries, popularly known as "Afghan Arabs
Afghan Arabs (also known as Arab-Afghans) are Arab and other Muslim Islamist mujahideen who came to Afghanistan during and following the Soviet–Afghan War to help fellow Muslims fight Soviets and pro-Soviet Afghans.
Estimates of the volu ...
". The most famous of the Afghan Arabs was Osama bin Laden, known at the time as a wealthy and pious Saudi who provided his own money and helped raise millions from other wealthy Gulf Arabs.
When the war ended, bin Laden organized the al-Qaeda organization to carry on armed jihad against other countries, primarily against the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
.
A number of commentators have described Al-Qaeda attacks as " blowback" or an unintended consequence
In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by Ameri ...
of American aid to the mujahideen. In response, the United States government and American and Pakistani intelligence officials involved in the operation have denied this theory. Many journalists, including CNN's Peter Bergen
Peter Bergen (born December 11, 1962) is an American journalist, author, and producer who serves as CNN's national security analyst and as New America's vice president. He produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, w ...
, have also denied the claim. They maintain the aid was given out by the Pakistani government, that it went to Afghan and not foreign mujahideen, and that there was no contact between the Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) and the CIA and other American officials, let alone the arming, training, coaching, or indoctrination.
As of 2018, there is no publicly available documentary evidence to support any of the claims regarding collaboration between U.S. government agencies and bin Laden.
Allegations
In a 2004 article entitled "Al-Qaeda's origins and links", theBBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...During the anti-Soviet war Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.
Robin Cook
Robert Finlayson "Robin" Cook (28 February 19466 August 2005) was a British Labour politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 until his death in 2005 and served in the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary from 1997 until 2001 wh ...
, Foreign Secretary in the UK from 1997 to 2001, believed the CIA had provided arms to the Arab mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden, writing, "Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the '80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage war against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan."
In conversation with former British Defence Secretary
A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in som ...
Michael Portillo
Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo (; born 26 May 1953) is a British journalist, broadcaster and former politician. His broadcast series include railway documentaries such as '' Great British Railway Journeys'' and '' Great Continental Railway Jour ...
, two-time prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was initially pro-American. Prince Bandar bin Sultan
Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud (born 2 March 1949) is a retired Saudi Arabian diplomat, military officer, and government official who served as Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. He is a member of the House of Saud. Fro ...
of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
, has also stated that bin Laden once expressed appreciation for the United States' help in Afghanistan. On CNN's Larry King
Larry King (born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger; November 19, 1933 – January 23, 2021) was an American television and radio host, whose awards included 2 Peabodys, an Emmy and 10 Cable ACE Awards. Over his career, he hosted over 50,000 interviews. ...
program he said:
Bandar bin Sultan: This is ironic. In the mid-'80s, if you remember, we and the United - Saudi Arabia and the United States were supporting the Mujahideen to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets. He sama bin Ladencame to thank me for my efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the atheists, he said the communists. Isn't it ironic? Larry King: How ironic. In other words, he came to thank you for helping bring America to help him. Bandar bin Sultan: Right.
Opposing view
U.S. government officials and a number of other parties maintain that the U.S. supported only the indigenous Afghan mujahideen. They deny that the CIA or other American officials had contact with Bin Laden, let alone armed, trained, coached, or indoctrinated him. American scholars and reporters have called the idea of a CIA-backed Al Qaeda "nonsense", "sheer fantasy", and a "common myth".
According to Peter Jouvenal, Americans could not train mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of U.S. agents to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan.
The former Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book ''Knights Under the Prophet's Banner''.
Bin Laden himself once said "The collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," but "collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant."
In '' Ghost Wars'' (2004), Steve Coll
Steve Coll (born October 8, 1958) is an American journalist, academic and executive.
He is currently the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he is also the Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism. A staff writer f ...
recounted: "Bin Laden moved within Saudi intelligence
The General Intelligence Presidency (GIP); ( ar, (ر.ا.ع) رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة ), also known as the General Intelligence Directorate (GID), is the primary intelligence agency of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
History
T ...
's compartmented operations, outside of CIA eyesight. CIA archives contain no record of any direct contact between a CIA officer and bin Laden during the 1980s." Yet Coll also documents that bin Laden at least informally cooperated with the ISI during the 1980s and had intimate connections to CIA-backed mujahideen commander Jalaluddin Haqqani
Jalaluddin Haqqani ( ps, جلال الدين حقاني, Jalāl al-Dīn Ḥaqqānī) (1939 – 3 September 2018) was an Afghan insurgent commander who founded the Haqqani network, an insurgent group fighting in guerilla warfare against US-led ...
; Milton Bearden, the CIA's Islamabad
Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital ...
station chief from mid-1986 until mid-1989, took an admiring view of bin Laden at the time. Afghan assets recounted the fanaticism and intolerance of many of the so-called "Afghan Arabs" to the CIA, yet the CIA discounted these reports, instead contemplating direct support to the Arab volunteers under the guise of a Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...
-inspired "international brigade
The International Brigades ( es, Brigadas Internacionales) were military units set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organization existe ...
"—a concept that never got off paper.
According to Norwegian researcher Thomas Hegghammer, the book '' Unholy Wars'' by journalist John K. Cooley
John Kent Cooley (November 25, 1927 – August 6, 2008) was an American journalist and author who specialized in islamist groups and the Middle East. Based in Athens, he worked as a radio and off-air television correspondent for ''ABC News'' and wa ...
did the most to propagate the view that the CIA trained the Afghan Arabs. In this book, Cooley described “the central role of the CIA’s Muslim mercenaries, including upwards of 2,000 Algerians, in the Afghanistan war”. He did not present any evidence for his claims, though. And according to historian Odd Arne Westad
Odd Arne Westad FBA (born 5 January 1960) is a Norwegian historian specializing in the Cold War and contemporary East Asian history. He is the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University, where he teaches in the Yale Histor ...
, his book is unreliable. Based on information by Soviet defector Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin (russian: link=no, Васи́лий Ники́тич Митро́хин; March 3, 1922 – January 23, 2004) was a major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Di ...
, parts of the book “obviously originate in Soviet disinformation from the 1980s”.
According to CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
journalist Peter Bergen
Peter Bergen (born December 11, 1962) is an American journalist, author, and producer who serves as CNN's national security analyst and as New America's vice president. He produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, w ...
, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, "Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American, and he was operating secretly and independently."
Bergen quotes Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987:
It was always galling to the Americans, and I can understand their point of view, that although they paid the piper they could not call the tune. The CIA supported the mujahideen by spending the taxpayers' money, billions of dollars of it over the years, on buying arms, ammunition, and equipment. It was their secret arms procurement branch that was kept busy. It was, however, a cardinal rule of Pakistan's policy that no Americans ever become involved with the distribution of funds or arms once they arrived in the country. No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan.Marc Sageman, a Foreign Service Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987 to 1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan's Mujahideen, states that no American money went to the foreign volunteers. Sageman also says:
Contemporaneous accounts of the war do not even mention he Afghan Arabs Many were not serious about the war. ... Very few were involved in actual fighting. For most of the war, they were scattered among the Afghan groups associated with the four Afghan fundamentalist parties.
No U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers. They simply traveled in different circles and never crossed U.S. radar screens. They had their own sources of money and their own contacts with the Pakistanis, official Saudis, and other Muslim supporters, and they made their own deals with the various Afghan resistance leaders."As
Peter Beinart
Peter Alexander Beinart (; born February 28, 1971) is an American liberal columnist, journalist, and political commentator. A former editor of ''The New Republic'', he has also written for ''Time'', ''The New York Times'', and ''The New York Revie ...
writes in an October, 2001 article in The New Republic arguing against blowback as a cause for the 9/11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerci ...
:
As Vincent Cannistraro, who led the Reagan administration's Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987, puts it, "The CIA was very reluctant to be involved at all. They thought it would end up with them being blamed, like in Guatemala." So the Agency tried to avoid direct involvement in the war, ... the skittish CIA, Cannistraro estimates, had less than ten operatives acting as America's eyes and ears in the region. Milton Bearden, the Agency's chief field operative in the war effort, has insisted that " e CIA had nothing to do with" bin Laden. Cannistraro says that when he coordinated Afghan policy from Washington, he never once heard bin Laden's name.
Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
reporter Richard Miniter wrote that in interviews with the two men who "oversaw the disbursement for all American funds to the anti-Soviet resistance, Bill Peikney—CIA station chief in Islamabad from 1984 to 1986—and Milt Bearden—CIA station chief from 1986 to 1989—he found,
Both flatly denied that any CIA funds ever went to bin Laden. They felt so strongly about this point that they agreed to go on the record, an unusual move by normally reticent intelligence officers. Mr. Peikney added in an e-mail to me: “I don’t even recall UBL in Ladencoming across my screen when I was there.Other reasons advanced for a lack of a CIA-Afghan Arab connection of "pivotal importance," (or even any connection at all), was that the Afghan Arabs themselves were not important in the war but were a "curious sideshow to the real fighting." One estimate of the number of combatants in the war is that 250,000 Afghans fought 125,000 Soviet troops, but only 2000 Arab Afghans fought "at any one time". According to Bearden, the CIA did not recruit Arabs because there were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight. The Arab Afghans were not only superfluous but "disruptive," angering local Afghans with their more-Muslim-than-thou attitude, according to Peter Jouvenal. Veteran Afghan cameraman Peter Jouvenal quotes an Afghan mujahideen as saying "whenever we had a problem with one of them oreign mujahideen we just shot them. They thought they were kings." Many who traveled in Afghanistan, including Olivier Roy and Peter Jouvenal, reported of the Arab Afghans' visceral hostility to Westerners in Afghanistan to aid Afghans or report on their plight. BBC reporter John Simpson tells the story of running into Osama bin Laden in 1989, and with neither knowing who the other was, bin Laden attempting to bribe Simpson's Afghan driver $500—a large sum in a poor country—to kill the infidel Simpson. When the driver declined, Bin Laden retired to his "camp bed" and wept "in frustration." Academic historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin wrote in 2018 that " date, no researcher has produced documentation of direct links between Washington and bin Laden or, for that matter, Zarqawi. The weight of evidence suggests that the CIA and the future leaders of Al-Qaeda and
ISIS
Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...
were not in communication with one another during the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan."
Agreements
Sir Martin Ewans stated that the Afghan Arabs "benefited indirectly from the CIA's funding, through the ISI and resistance organizations," and that "it has been reckoned that as many as 35,000 'Arab-Afghans' may have received military training in Pakistan at an estimated cost of $800 million in the years up to and including 1988." Some of the CIA's greatest Afghan beneficiaries were Arabist commanders such as Haqqani andGulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ( ps, ګلب الدين حكمتيار; born 1 August 1949) is an Afghan politician, former mujahideen leader and drug trafficker. He is the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin political party, so calle ...
who were key allies of Bin Laden over many years. Haqqani—one of Bin Laden's closest associates in the 1980s—received direct cash payments from CIA agents, without the mediation of the ISI. This independent source of funding gave Haqqani disproportionate influence over the mujahideen, and helped Bin Laden develop his base.
Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman
Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman ( ar, عمر عبد الرحمن), (ʾUmar ʾAbd ar-Raḥmān; 3 May 1938 – 18 February 2017), commonly known in the United States as "The Blind Sheikh", was a blind Egyptian Islamist militant who served a life sent ...
, an associate of Bin Laden's, was given visas to enter the US on four occasions by the CIA. Rahman was recruiting Arabs to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war, and Egyptian officials testified that the CIA actively assisted him. Rahman was a co-plotter of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
One allegation not denied by the US government is that the U.S. Army enlisted and trained a former Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
ian soldier named Ali Mohamed, and that it knew Ali occasionally took trips to Afghanistan, where he claimed to fight Russians. According to journalist Lawrence Wright
Lawrence Wright (born August 2, 1947) is an American writer and journalist, who is a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Wright is best known as th ...
, who interviewed U.S. officials about Ali, the Egyptian did tell his Army superiors he was fighting in Afghanistan, but did not tell them he was training other Afghan Arabs or writing a manual from what he had learned from the US Army Special Forces
The United States Army Special Forces (SF), colloquially known as the "Green Berets" due to their distinctive service headgear, are a special operations force of the United States Army.
The Green Berets are geared towards nine doctrinal mis ...
. Wright also reports that the CIA failed to inform other US agencies that it had learned Ali, who was a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ, ar, الجهاد الإسلامي المصري), formerly called simply Islamic Jihad ( ar, الجهاد الإسلامي, links=no) and the Liberation Army for Holy Sites, originally referred to as al-Jihad, and ...
, was an anti-American spy.
See also
* Bank of Credit and Commerce International * CIA activities in Afghanistan *Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in suppor ...
*United States and state-sponsored terrorism
The United States has at various times in recent history provided support to terrorist and paramilitary organizations around the world. It has also provided assistance to numerous authoritarian regimes that have used state terrorism as a tool of ...
*'' Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History''
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cia-Osama Bin Laden Controversy Allegations CIA activities in Asia Osama bin Laden Soviet–Afghan War CIA and Islamism