[A-List] Fwd: Andrew Gavin Marshall: The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda. The CIA's Drug-Running Terrorists and the "Arc of Crisis"

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Date: Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 1:09 PM
Subject: Andrew Gavin Marshall: The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda. The
CIA's Drug-Running Terrorists and the "Arc of Crisis"
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The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda. The CIA’s Drug-Running Terrorists
and the “Arc of Crisis”
Part I

By Andrew Gavin Marshall

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20907

Global Research, September 5, 2010

Introduction



As the 9th anniversary of 9/11 nears, and the war on terror continues
to be waged and grows in ferocity and geography, it seems all the more
imperative to return to the events of that fateful September morning
and re-examine the reasons for war and the nature of the stated
culprit, Al-Qaeda.



The events of 9/11 pervade the American and indeed the world
imagination as an historical myth. The events of that day and those
leading up to it remain largely unknown and little understood by the
general public, apart from the disturbing images repeated ad nauseam
in the media. The facts and troubled truths of that day are lost in
the folklore of the 9/11 myth: that the largest attack carried out on
American ground was orchestrated by 19 Muslims armed with box cutters
and urged on by religious fundamentalism, all under the direction of
Osama bin Laden, the leader of a global terrorist network called
al-Qaeda, based out of a cave in Afghanistan.



The myth sweeps aside the facts and complex nature of terror,
al-Qaeda, the American empire and literally defies the laws of
physics. As John F. Kennedy once said, “The greatest enemy of the
truth is not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the
myth – persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.”



This three-part series on “The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda” examines
the geopolitical historical origins and nature of what we today know
as al-Qaeda, which is in fact an Anglo-American intelligence network
of terrorist assets used to advance American and NATO imperial
objectives in various regions around the world.



Part 1 examines the origins of the intelligence network known as the
Safari Club, which financed and organized an international
conglomerate of terrorists, the CIA’s role in the global drug trade,
the emergence of the Taliban and the origins of al-Qaeda.



The Safari Club



Following Nixon’s resignation as President, Gerald Ford became the new
US President in 1974. Henry Kissinger remained as Secretary of State
and Ford brought into his administration two names that would come to
play important roles in the future of the American Empire: Donald
Rumsfeld as Ford’s Chief of Staff, and Dick Cheney, as Deputy
Assistant to the President. The Vice President was Nelson Rockefeller,
David Rockefeller’s brother. When Donald Rumsfeld was promoted to
Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney was promoted to Chief of Staff. Ford
had also appointed a man named George H.W. Bush as CIA Director.



In 1976, a coalition of intelligence agencies was formed, which was
called the Safari Club. This marked the discreet and highly covert
coordination among various intelligence agencies, which would last for
decades. It formed at a time when the CIA was embroiled in domestic
scrutiny over the Watergate scandal and a Congressional investigation
into covert CIA activities, forcing the CIA to become more covert in
its activities.



In 2002, the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal gave a
speech in which he stated that in response to the CIA’s need for more
discretion, “a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting
Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari
Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran [under
the Shah].”[1] However, “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to
finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of
George H.W. Bush as the head of the CIA,” Saudi intelligence chief,
Kamal Adham, “transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a world-wide
money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world to create the
biggest clandestine money network in history.”[2]



As CIA director, George H.W. Bush “cemented strong relations with the
intelligence services of both Saudi Arabia and the shah of Iran. He
worked closely with Kamal Adham, the head of Saudi intelligence,
brother-in-law of King Faisal and an early BCCI insider.” Adham had
previously acted as a “channel between [Henry] Kissinger and [Egyptian
President] Anwar Sadat” in 1972. In 1976, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi
Arabia formed the Safari Club “to conduct through their own
intelligence agencies operations that were now difficult for the CIA,”
which was largely organized by the head of French intelligence,
Alexandre de Marenches.[3]



The “Arc of Crisis” and the Iranian Revolution



When Jimmy Carter became President in 1977, he appointed over
two-dozen members of the Trilateral Commission to his administration,
which was an international think tank formed by Zbigniew Brzezinski
and David Rockefeller in 1973. Brzezinski had invited Carter to join
the Trilateral Commission, and when Carter became President,
Brzezinski became National Security Adviser; Cyrus Vance, also a
member of the Commission, became Secretary of State; and Samuel
Huntington, another Commission member, became Coordinator of National
Security and Deputy to Brzezinski. Author and researcher Peter Dale
Scott deserves much credit for his comprehensive analysis of the
events leading up to and during the Iranian Revolution in his book,
“The Road to 9/11”,* which provides much of the information below.



Samuel Huntington and Zbigniew Brzezinski were to determine the US
policy position in the Cold War, and the US-Soviet policy they created
was termed, “Cooperation and Competition,” in which Brzezinski would
press for “Cooperation” when talking to the press, yet, privately push
for “competition.” So, while Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was
pursuing détente with the Soviet Union, Brzezinski was pushing for
American supremacy over the Soviet Union. Brzezinski and Vance would
come to disagree on almost every issue.[4]



In 1978, Zbigniew Brzezinski gave a speech in which he stated, “An arc
of crisis stretches along the shores of the Indian Ocean, with fragile
social and political structures in a region of vital importance to us
threatened with fragmentation. The resulting political chaos could
well be filled by elements hostile to our values and sympathetic to
our adversaries.” The Arc of Crisis stretched from Indochina to
southern Africa, although, more specifically, the particular area of
focus was “the nations that stretch across the southern flank of the
Soviet Union from the Indian subcontinent to Turkey, and southward
through the Arabian Peninsula to the Horn of Africa.” Further, the
“center of gravity of this arc is Iran, the world's fourth largest oil
producer and for more than two decades a citadel of U.S. military and
economic strength in the Middle East. Now it appears that the 37-year
reign of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi is almost over, ended by months of
rising civil unrest and revolution.”[5]



With rising discontent in the region, “There was this idea that the
Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was,
there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized
to contain the Soviets. It was a Brzezinski concept.”[6] A month prior
to Brzezinski’s speech, in November of 1978, “President Carter named
the Bilderberg group’s George Ball, another member of the Trilateral
Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the
National Security Council’s Brzezinski.” Further, “Ball recommended
that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the
fundamentalist Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini.”[7] George
Ball’s visit to Iran was a secret mission.[8]



Throughout 1978, the Shah was under the impression that “the Carter
administration was plotting to topple his regime.” In 1978, the Queen
and Shah’s wife, told Manouchehr Ganji, a minister in the Shah’s
government, that, “I wanted to tell you that the Americans are
maneuvering to bring down the Shah,” and she continued saying that she
believed “they even want to topple the regime.”[9] The US Ambassador
to Iran, William Sullivan, thought that the revolution would succeed,
and told this to Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General under the
Johnson administration, as well as professor Richard Falk, when they
were visiting Sullivan in Iran in 1978. Clark and Falk then went from
Iran to Paris, to visit Khomeini, who was there in exile. James Bill,
a Carter adviser, felt that, “a religious movement brought about with
the United States’ assistance would be a natural friend of the United
States.”[10]



Also interesting is the fact that the British BBC broadcast
pro-Khomeini Persian-language programs daily in Iran, as a subtle form
of propaganda, which “gave credibility to the perception of United
States and British support of Khomeini.”[11] The BBC refused to give
the Shah a platform to respond, and “[r]epeated personal appeals from
the Shah to the BBC yielded no result.”[12]



In the May 1979 meeting of the Bilderberg Group, Bernard Lewis, a
British historian of great influence (hence, the Bilderberg
membership), presented a British-American strategy which, “endorsed
the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order to
promote balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and
religious lines. Lewis argued that the West should encourage
autonomous groups such as the Kurds, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites,
Ethiopian Copts, Azerbaijani Turks, and so forth. The chaos would
spread in what he termed an ‘Arc of Crisis,’ which would spill over
into the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union.”[13] Further, it would
prevent Soviet influence from entering the Middle East, as the Soviet
Union was viewed as an empire of atheism and godlessness: essentially
a secular and immoral empire, which would seek to impose secularism
across Muslim countries. So supporting radical Islamic groups would
mean that the Soviet Union would be less likely to have any influence
or relations with Middle Eastern countries, making the US a more
acceptable candidate for developing relations.



A 1979 article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on
Foreign Relations, described the Arc of Crisis, saying that, “The
Middle East constitutes its central core. Its strategic position is
unequalled: it is the last major region of the Free World directly
adjacent to the Soviet Union, it holds in its subsoil about
three-fourths of the proven and estimated world oil reserves, and it
is the locus of one of the most intractable conflicts of the twentieth
century: that of Zionism versus Arab nationalism.” It went on to
explain that post-war US policy in the region was focused on
“containment” of the Soviet Union, as well as access to the regions
oil.[14] The article continued, explaining that the most “obvious
division” within the Middle East is, “that which separates the
Northern Tier (Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan) from the Arab core,” and
that, “After World War II, Turkey and Iran were the two countries most
immediately threatened by Soviet territorial expansionism and
political subversion.”[15] Ultimately, “the Northern Tier was assured
of a serious and sustained American commitment to save it from sharing
the fate of Eastern Europe.”[16]



While Khomeini was in Paris prior to the Revolution, a representative
of the French President organized a meeting between Khomeini and
“current world powers,” in which Khomeini made certain demands, such
as, “the shah's removal from Iran and help in avoiding a coup d'état
by the Iranian Army.” The Western powers, however, “were worried about
the Soviet Union's empowerment and penetration and a disruption in
Iran's oil supply to the west. Khomeini gave the necessary guarantees.
These meetings and contacts were taking place in January of 1979, just
a few days before the Islamic Revolution in February 1979.”[17] In
February of 1979, Khomeini was flown out of Paris on an Air France
flight, to return to Iran, “with the blessing of Jimmy Carter.”[18]
Ayatollah Khomeini named Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister of the
Provisional Revolutionary Government on February 4, 1979. As Khomeini
had demanded during his Paris meeting in January 1979, that western
powers must help in avoiding a coup by the Iranian Army; in that same
month, the Carter administration, under the direction of Brzezinski,
had begun planning a military coup.[19]



Could this have been planned in the event that Khomeini was
overthrown, the US would quickly reinstate order, perhaps even place
Khomeini back in power? Interestingly, in January of 1979, “as the
Shah was about to leave the country, the American Deputy Commander in
NATO, General Huyser, arrived and over a period of a month conferred
constantly with Iranian military leaders. His influence may have been
substantial on the military's decision not to attempt a coup and
eventually to yield to the Khomeini forces, especially if press
reports are accurate that he or others threatened to withhold military
supplies if a coup were attempted.”[20] No coup was subsequently
undertaken, and Khomeini came to power as the Ayatollah of the Islamic
Republic of Iran.



As tensions increased among the population within Iran, the US sent
“security advisers” to Iran to pressure the Shah’s SAVAK (secret
police) to implement “a policy of ever more brutal repression, in a
manner calculated to maximize popular antipathy to the Shah.” The
Carter administration also began publicly criticizing the Shah’s human
rights abuses.[21] On September 6, 1978, the Shah banned
demonstrations, and the following day, between 700 and 2000
demonstrators were gunned down, following “advice from Brzezinski to
be firm.”[22]



The US Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, a Trilateral Commission
member, said that, “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint,”
and the US Ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a
Gandhi-like figure,” while Carter’s adviser, James Bill, said that
Khomeini was a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”[23]



The Shah was also very sick in late 1978 and early 1979. So the Shah
fled Iran in January of 1979 to the Bahamas, allowing for the
revolution to take place. It is especially interesting to understand
the relationship between David Rockefeller and the Shah of Iran. David
Rockefeller’s personal assistant, Joseph V. Reed, had been “assigned
to handle the shah’s finances and his personal needs;” Robert Armao,
who worked for Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, was sent to “act as
the shah’s public relations agent and lobbyist;” and Benjamin H. Kean,
“a longtime associate of Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David
Rockefeller,” and David Rockefeller’s “personal physician,” who was
sent to Mexico when the shah was there, and advised that he “be
treated at an American hospital.”[24]



It is important to note that Rockefeller interests “had directed U.S.
policy in Iran since the CIA coup of 1953.”[25] Following the Shah’s
flight from Iran, there were increased pressures within the United
States by a handful of powerful people to have the Shah admitted to
the United States. These individuals were Zbigniew Brzezinski, former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, John J. McCloy, former statesman
and senior member of the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission and
the Council on Foreign Relations, who was also a lawyer for Chase
Manhattan, and of course, David Rockefeller.[26]



Chase Manhattan Bank had more interests in Iran than any other US
bank. In fact, the Shah had “ordered that all his government’s major
operating accounts be held at Chase and that letters of credit for the
purchase of oil be handled exclusively through Chase. The bank also
became the agent and lead manager for many of the loans to Iran. In
short, Iran became the crown jewel of Chase’s international banking
portfolio.”[27]



The Iranian interim government, headed by Prime Minister Bazargan,
collapsed in November of 1979, when Iranian hostages seized the US
Embassy in Teheran. However, there is much more to this event than
meets the eye. During the time of the interim government (February,
1979 to November, 1979), several actions were undertaken which
threatened some very powerful interests who had helped the Ayatollah
into power.



Chase Manhattan Bank faced a liquidity crisis as there had been
billions in questionable loans to Iran funneled through Chase.[28]
Several of Chase’s loans were “possibly illegal under the Iranian
constitution.”[29] Further, in February of 1979, once the interim
government was put in power, it began to take “steps to market its oil
independently of the Western oil majors.” Also, the interim government
“wanted Chase Manhattan to return Iranian assets, which Rockefeller
put at more than $1 billion in 1978, although some estimates ran much
higher,” which could have “created a liquidity crisis for the bank
which already was coping with financial troubles.”[30]



With the seizure of the American Embassy in Iran, President Carter
took moves to freeze Iranian financial assets. As David Rockefeller
wrote in his book, “Carter’s ‘freeze’ of official Iranian assets
protected our [Chase Manhattan’s] position, but no one at Chase played
a role in convincing the administration to institute it.”[31]



In February of 1979, Iran had been taking “steps to market its oil
independently of the Western oil majors. In 1979, as in 1953, a freeze
of Iranian assets made this action more difficult.”[32] This was
significant for Chase Manhattan not simply because of the close
interlocking of the board with those of oil companies, not to mention
Rockefeller himself, who is patriarch of the family whose name is
synonymous with oil, but also because Chase exclusively handled all
the letters of credit for the purchase of Iranian oil.[33]



The Shah being accepted into the United States, under public pressure
from Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller,
precipitated the hostage crisis, which occurred on November 4. Ten
days later, Carter froze all Iranian assets in US banks, on the advice
of his Treasury Secretary, William Miller. Miller just happened to
have ties to Chase Manhattan Bank.[34]



Although Chase Manhattan directly benefited from the seizure of
Iranian assets, the reasoning behind the seizure as well as the events
leading up to it, such as a hidden role for the Anglo-Americans behind
the Iranian Revolution, bringing the Shah to America, which
precipitated the hostage crisis, cannot simply be relegated to
personal benefit for Chase. There were larger designs behind this
crisis. So the 1979 crises in Iran cannot simply be pawned off as a
spur of the moment undertaking, but rather should be seen as quick
actions taken upon a perceived opportunity. The opportunity was the
rising discontent within Iran at the Shah; the quick actions were in
covertly pushing the country into Revolution.



In 1979, “effectively restricting the access of Iran to the global oil
market, the Iranian assets freeze became a major factor in the huge
oil price increases of 1979 and 1981.”[35] Added to this, in 1979,
British Petroleum cancelled major oil contracts for oil supply, which
along with cancellations taken by Royal Dutch Shell, drove the price
of oil up higher.[36] With the first major oil price rises in 1973
(urged on by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger), the Third World
was forced to borrow heavily from US and European banks to finance
development. With the second oil price shocks of 1979, the US Federal
Reserve, with Paul Volcker as its new Chairman, (himself having served
a career under David Rockefeller at Chase Manhattan), dramatically
raised interest rates from 2% in the late 70s to 18% in the early 80s.
Developing nations could not afford to pay such interest on their
loans, and thus the 1980s debt crisis spread throughout the Third
World, with the IMF and World Bank coming to the “rescue” with their
Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), which ensured western control
over the developing world’s economies.[37]



Covertly, the United States helped a radical Islamist government come
to power in Iran, “the center of the Arc of Crisis,” and then
immediately stirred up conflict and war in the region. Five months
before Iraq invaded Iran, in April of 1980, Zbigniew Brzezinski openly
declared the willingness of the US to work closely with Iraq. Two
months before the war, Brzezinski met with Saddam Hussein in Jordan,
where he gave support for the destabilization of Iran.[38] While
Saddam was in Jordan, he also met with three senior CIA agents, which
was arranged by King Hussein of Jordan. He then went to meet with King
Fahd in Saudi Arabia, informing him of his plans to invade Iran, and
then met with the King of Kuwait to inform him of the same thing. He
gained support from America, and financial and arms support from the
Arab oil producing countries. Arms to Iraq were funneled through
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.[39] The war lasted until 1988 and
resulted in over a million deaths.



This was the emergence of the “strategy of tension” in the “Arc of
Crisis,” in particular, the covert support (whether in arming,
training, or financing) of radical Islamic elements to foment violence
and conflict in a region. It was the old imperial tactic of ‘divide
and conquer’: pit the people against each other so that they cannot
join forces against the imperial power. This violence and radical
Islamism would further provide the pretext for which the US and its
imperial allies could then engage in war and occupation within the
region, all the while securing its vast economic and strategic
interests.



The “Arc of Crisis” in Afghanistan: The Safari Club in Action



In 1978, the progressive Taraki government in Afghanistan managed to
incur the anger of the United States due to “its egalitarian and
collectivist economic policies.”[40] The Afghan government was widely
portrayed in the West as “Communist” and thus, a threat to US national
security. The government, did, however, undertake friendly policies
and engagement with the Soviet Union, but was not a Communist
government.



In 1978, as the new government came to power, almost immediately the
US began covertly funding rebel groups through the CIA.[41] In 1979,
Zbigniew Brzezinski worked closely with his aid from the CIA, Robert
Gates (who is currently Secretary of Defense), in shifting President
Carter’s Islamic policy. As Brzezinski said in a 1998 interview with a
French publication:



According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the
Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army
invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 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.[42]



Brzezinski elaborated, saying he “Knowingly increased the probability
that [the Soviets] would invade,” and he recalled writing to Carter on
the day of the Soviet invasion that, “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.” When asked about the repercussions for such
support in fostering the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, Brzezinski
responded, “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?”[43]



As author Peter Dale Scott pointed out in, The Road to 9/11:*



For generations in both Afghanistan and the Soviet Muslim Republics
the dominant form of Islam had been local and largely Sufi. The
decision to work with the Saudi and Pakistani secret services meant
that billions of CIA and Saudi dollars would ultimately be spent in
programs that would help enhance the globalistic and Wahhabistic
jihadism that are associated today with al Qaeda.[44]



Hafizullah Amin, a top official in Taraki’s government, who many
believed to be a CIA asset, orchestrated a coup in September of 1979,
and “executed Taraki, halted the reforms, and murdered, jailed, or
exiled thousands of Taraki supporters as he moved toward establishing
a fundamentalist Islamic state. But within two months, he was
overthrown by PDP remnants including elements within the
military.”[45] The Soviets also intervened in order to replace Amin,
who was seen as “unpredictable and extremist” with “the more moderate
Barbak Karmal.”[46]



The Soviet invasion thus prompted the US national security
establishment to undertake the largest covert operation in history.
When Ronald Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter in 1981, the covert
assistance to the Afghan Mujahideen not only continued on the path set
by Brzezinski but it rapidly accelerated, as did the overall strategy
in the “Arc of Crisis.” When Reagan became President, his Vice
President became George H.W. Bush, who, as CIA director during the
Ford administration, had helped establish the Safari Club intelligence
network and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in
Pakistan. In the “campaign to aid the Afghan rebels ... BCCI clearly
emerged as a U.S. intelligence asset,” and CIA Director “Casey began
to use the outside – the Saudis, the Pakistanis, BCCI – to run what
they couldn’t get through Congress. [BCCI president] Abedi had the
money to help,” and the CIA director had “met repeatedly” with the
president of BCCI.[47]



Thus, in 1981, Director Casey of the CIA worked with Saudi Prince
Turki bin Faisal who ran the Saudi intelligence agency GID, and the
Pakistani ISI “to create a foreign legion of jihadi Muslims or
so-called Arab Afghans.” This idea had “originated in the elite Safari
Club that had been created by French intelligence chief Alexandre de
Marenches.”[48]



In 1986, the CIA backed a plan by the Pakistani ISI “to recruit people
from around the world to join the Afghan jihad.” Subsequently:



More than 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between
1986 and 1992, in camps overseen by CIA and MI6, with the SAS [British
Special Forces] training future al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in
bomb-making and other black arts. Their leaders were trained at a CIA
camp in Virginia. This was called Operation Cyclone and continued long
after the Soviets had withdrawn in 1989.[49]



CIA funding for the operations “was funneled through General Zia and
the ISI in Pakistan.”[50] Interestingly, Robert Gates, who previously
served as assistant to Brzezinski in the National Security Council,
stayed on in the Reagan-Bush administration as executive assistant to
CIA director Casey, and who is currently Secretary of Defense.



The Global Drug Trade and the CIA



As a central facet of the covert financing and training of the Afghan
Mujahideen, the role of the drug trade became invaluable. The global
drug trade has long been used by empires for fuelling and financing
conflict with the aim of facilitating imperial domination.



In 1773, the British colonial governor in Bengal “established a
colonial monopoly on the sale of opium.” As Alfred W. McCoy explained
in his masterful book, The Politics of Heroin:



As the East India Company expanded production, opium became India’s
main export. [. . . ] Over the next 130 years, Britain actively
promoted the export of Indian opium to China, defying Chinese drug
laws and fighting two wars to open China’s opium market for its
merchants. Using its military and mercantile power, Britain played a
central role in making China a vast drug market and in accelerating
opium cultivation throughout China. By 1900 China had 13.5 million
addicts consuming 39,000 tons of opium.[51]



In Indochina in the 1940s and 50s, the French intelligence services
“enabled the opium trade to survive government suppression efforts,”
and subsequently, “CIA activities in Burma helped transform the Shan
states from a relatively minor poppy-cultivating area into the largest
opium-growing region in the world.”[52] The CIA did this by supporting
the Kuomintang (KMT) army in Burma for an invasion of China, and
facilitated its monopolization and expansion of the opium trade,
allowing the KMT to remain in Burma until a coup in 1961, when they
were driven into Laos and Thailand.[53] The CIA subsequently played a
very large role in the facilitation of the drugs trade in Laos and
Vietnam throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s.[54]



It was during the 1980s that “the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan
transformed Central Asia from a self-contained opium zone into a major
supplier of heroin for the world market,” as:



Until the late 1970s, tribal farmers in the highlands of Afghanistan
and Pakistan grew limited quantities of opium and sold it to merchant
caravans bound west for Iran and east to India. In its decade of
covert warfare against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the CIA’s
operations provided the political protection and logistics linkages
that joined Afghanistan’s poppy fields to heroin markets in Europe and
America.[55]



In 1977, General Zia Ul Haq in Pakistan launched a military coup,
“imposed a harsh martial-law regime,” and executed former President
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (father to Benazir Bhutto). When Zia came to
power, the Pakistani ISI was a “minor military intelligence unit,”
but, under the “advice and assistance of the CIA,” General Zia
transformed the ISI “into a powerful covert unit and made it the
strong arm of his martial-law regime.”[56]



The CIA and Saudi money flowed not only to weapons and training for
the Mujahideen, but also into the drug trade. Pakistani President
Zia-ul-Haq appointed General Fazle Haq as the military governor of
Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), who would “consult
with Brzezinski on developing an Afghan resistance program,” and who
became a CIA asset. When CIA Director Casey or Vice President George
H.W. Bush reviewed the CIA Afghan operation, they went to see Haq; who
by 1982, was considered by Interpol to be an international narcotics
trafficker. Haq moved much of the narcotics money through the
BCCI.[57]



In May of 1979, prior to the December invasion of the Soviet Union
into Afghanistan, a CIA envoy met with Afghan resistance leaders in a
meeting organized by the ISI. The ISI “offered the CIA envoy an
alliance with its own Afghan client, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,” who led a
small guerilla group. The CIA accepted, and over the following decade,
half of the CIA’s aid went to Hekmatyar’s guerillas.[58] Hekmatyar
became Afghanistan’s leading mujahideen drug lord, and developed a
“complex of six heroin labs in an ISI-controlled area of Baluchistan
(Pakistan).”[59]



The US subsequently, through the 1980s, in conjunction with Saudi
Arabia, gave Hekmatyar more than $1 billion in armaments. Immediately,
heroin began flowing from Afghanistan to America. By 1980,
drug-related deaths in New York City rose 77% since 1979.[60] By 1981,
the drug lords in Pakistan and Afghanistan supplied 60% of America’s
heroin. Trucks going into Afghanistan with CIA arms from Pakistan
would return with heroin “protected by ISI papers from police
search.”[61]



Haq, the CIA asset in Pakistan, “was also running the drug trade,” of
which the bank BCCI “was completely involved.” In the 1980s, the CIA
insisted that the ISI create “a special cell for the use of heroin for
covert actions.” Elaborating:



This cell promoted the cultivation of opium and the extraction of
heroin in Pakistani territory as well as in the Afghan territory under
Mujahideen control for being smuggled into Soviet controlled areas in
order to make the Soviet troops heroin addicts.[62]



This plan apparently originated at the suggestion of French
intelligence chief and founder of the Safari Club, Alexandre de
Marenches, who recommended it to CIA Director Casey.[63]



In the 1980s, one program undertaken by the United States was to
finance Mujahideen propaganda in textbooks for Afghan schools. The US
gave the Mujahideen $43 million in “non-lethal” aid for the textbook
project alone, which was given by USAID: “The U.S. Agency for
International Development, [USAID] coordinated its work with the CIA,
which ran the weapons program,” and “The U.S. government told the AID
to let the Afghan war chiefs decide the school curriculum and the
content of the textbooks.”[64]



The textbooks were “filled with violent images and militant Islamic
teachings,” and “were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings
of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines.” Even since the covert war of
the 1980s, the textbooks “have served since then as the Afghan school
system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced
books.” The books were developed through a USAID grant to the
“University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies,”
and when the books were smuggled into Afghanistan through regional
military leaders, “Children were taught to count with illustrations
showing tanks, missiles and land mines.” USAID stopped this funding in
1994.[65]



The Rise of the Taliban



When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the fighting
continued between the Afghan government backed by the USSR and the
Mujahideen backed by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. When the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, so too did its aid to the Afghan
government, which itself was overthrown in 1992. However, fighting
almost immediately broke out between rival factions vying for power,
including Hekmatyar.



In the early 1990s, an obscure group of “Pashtun country folk” had
become a powerful military and political force in Afghanistan, known
as the Taliban.[66] The Taliban “surfaced as a small militia force
operating near Kandahar city during the spring and summer of 1994,
carrying out vigilante attacks against minor warlords.” As growing
discontent with the warlords grew, so too did the reputation of the
Taliban.[67]



The Taliban acquired an alliance with the ISI in 1994, and throughout
1995, the relationship between the Taliban and the ISI accelerated and
“became more and more of a direct military alliance.” The Taliban
ultimately became “an asset of the ISI” and “a client of the Pakistan
army.”[68] Further, “Between 1994 and 1996, the USA supported the
Taliban politically through its allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,
essentially because Washington viewed the Taliban as anti-Iranian,
anti-Shia, and pro-Western.”[69]



Selig Harrison, a scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Centre
for Scholars and “a leading US expert on South Asia,” said at a
conference in India that the CIA worked with Pakistan to create the
Taliban. Harrison has “extensive contact” with the CIA, as “he had
meetings with CIA leaders at the time when Islamic forces were being
strengthened in Afghanistan,” while he was a senior associate of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. As he further revealed in
2001, “The CIA still has close links with the ISI.”[70] By 1996, the
Taliban had control of Kandahar, but still fighting and instability
continued in the country.



Osama and Al-Qaeda



Between 1980 and 1989, roughly $600 million was passed through Osama
bin Laden’s charity front organizations, specifically the Maktab
al-Khidamat (MAK), also known as Al-Kifah. The money mostly originated
with wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia and other areas in the Persian
Gulf, and was funneled through his charity fronts to arm and fund the
mujahideen in Afghanistan.[71]



In the 1980s, the British Special Forces (SAS) were training
mujahideen in Afghanistan, as well as in secret camps in Scotland, and
the SAS is largely taking orders from the CIA. The CIA also indirectly
begins to arm Osama bin Laden.[72] Osama bin Laden’s front charity,
the MAK, “was nurtured” by the Pakistani ISI.[73]



Osama bin Laden was reported to have been personally recruited by the
CIA in 1979 in Istanbul. He had the close support of Prince Turki bin
Faisal, his friend and head of Saudi intelligence, and also developed
ties with Hekmatyar in Afghanistan,[74] both of whom were pivotal
figures in the CIA-Safari Club network. General Akhtar Abdul Rahman,
the head of the Pakistani ISI from 1980 to 1987, would meet regularly
with Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, and they formed a partnership in
demanding a tax on the opium trade from warlords so that by 1985, bin
Laden and the ISI were splitting the profits of over $100 million per
year.[75] In 1985, Osama bin Laden’s brother, Salem, stated that Osama
was “the liaison between the US, the Saudi government, and the Afghan
rebels.”[76]



In 1988, Bin Laden discussed “the establishment of a new military
group,” which would come to be known as Al-Qaeda.[77] Osama bin
Laden’s charity front, the MAK, (eventually to form Al-Qaeda) founded
the al-Kifah Center in Brooklyn, New York, to recruit Muslims for the
jihad against the Soviets. The al-Kifah Center was founded in the late
1980s with the support of the U.S. government, which provided visas
for known terrorists associated with the organization, including Ali
Mohamed, the “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman and possibly the lead
9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta.[78]



This coincided with the creation of Al-Qaeda, of which the al-Kifah
Center was a recruiting front. Foot soldiers for Al-Qaeda were
“admitted to the United States for training under a special visa
program.” The FBI had been surveilling the training of terrorists,
however, “it terminated this surveillance in the fall of 1989.” In
1990, the CIA granted Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman a visa to come run the
al-Kifah Center, who was considered an “untouchable” as he was “being
protected by no fewer than three agencies,” including the State
Department, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA.[79]



Robin Cook, a former British MP and Minister of Foreign Affairs wrote
that Al-Qaeda, “literally ‘the database’, was originally the computer
file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained
with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.”[80] Thus, “Al-Qaeda”
was born as an instrument of western intelligence agencies. This
account of al-Qaeda was further corroborated by a former French
military intelligence agent, who stated that, “In the mid-1980s, Al
Qaida was a database,” and that it remained as such into the 1990s. He
contended that, “Al Qaida was neither a terrorist group nor Osama bin
Laden's personal property,” and further:



The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al
Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is
a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an
identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the
'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war
against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and
the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in
making money.[81]



The creation of Al-Qaeda was thus facilitated by the CIA and allied
intelligence networks, the purpose of which was to maintain this
“database” of Mujahideen to be used as intelligence assets to achieve
US foreign policy objectives, throughout both the Cold War, and into
the post-Cold War era of the ‘new world order’.



Part 2 of “The Imperial Anatomy of al-Qaeda” takes the reader through
an examination of the new imperial strategy laid out by American
geopolitical strategists at the end of the Cold War, designed for
America to maintain control over the world’s resources and prevent the
rise of competitive powers. Covertly, the “database” (al-Qaeda) became
central to this process, being used to advance imperial aims in
various regions, such as in the dismantling of Yugoslavia. Part 2
further examines the exact nature of ‘al-Qaeda’, its origins, terms,
training, arming, financing, and expansion. In particular, the roles
of western intelligence agencies in the evolution and expansion of
al-Qaeda is a central focus. Finally, an analysis of the preparations
for the war in Afghanistan is undertaken to shed light on the
geopolitical ambitions behind the conflict that has now been waging
for nearly nine years.



* [Note on the research: For a comprehensive analysis of the history,
origins and nature of al-Qaeda, see: Peter Dale Scott, The Road to
9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America, which provided much of
the research in the above article.]



Andrew Gavin Marshall is a Research Associate with the Centre for
Research on Globalization (CRG).  He is co-editor, with Michel
Chossudovsky, of the recent book, "The Global Economic Crisis: The
Great Depression of the XXI Century," available to order at
Globalresearch.ca.



Notes



[1]        Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the
Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: page 62



[2]        Ibid, page 63.



[3]        Ibid, page 62.



[4]        Ibid, pages 66-67.



[5]        HP-Time, The Crescent of Crisis. Time Magazine: January 15, 1979:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919995-1,00.html



[6]        Peter Dale Scott, op. cit., page 67.



[7]        F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil
Politics and the New  World Order. London: Pluto Press, 2004: page 171



[8]        Manouchehr Ganji, Defying the Iranian Revolution: From a
Minister to the Shah to a Leader of Resistance. Greenwood Publishing
Group, 2002: page 41



[9]        Ibid, page 39.



[10]      Ibid, page 41.



[11]      Ibid.



[12]      F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil
Politics and the New  World Order. London: Pluto Press, 2004: page 172



[13]      Ibid, page 171.



[14]      George Lenczowski, The Arc of Crisis: It’s Central Sector.
Foreign Affairs: Summer, 1979: page 796



[15]      Ibid, page 797.



[16]      Ibid, page 798.



[17]      IPS, Q&A:  Iran's Islamic Revolution Had Western Blessing.
Inter-Press Service: July 26, 2008:
 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43328



[18]      Michael D. Evans, Father of the Iranian revolution. The
Jerusalem Post: June 20, 2007:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813077590&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull



[19]      Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 89.



[20]      George Lenczowski, The Arc of Crisis: It’s Central Sector.
Foreign Affairs: Summer, 1979: page 810



[21]      F. William Engdahl, op cit., page 172.



[22]      Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 81.



[23]      Michael D. Evans, Father of the Iranian revolution. The
Jerusalem Post: June 20, 2007:
 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813077590&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull



[24]      Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 83.



[25]      Ibid, page 84.



[26]      Ibid, page 81.



[27]      Ibid, pages 85-86.



[28]      Ibid.



[29]      Ibid, page 87.



[30]      Ibid, pages 88-89.



[31]      Ibid.



[32]      Ibid, pages 87-88.



[33]      Ibid, page 85.



[34]      Ibid, page 86.



[35]      Ibid, page 88.



[36]      F. William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil
Politics and the New  World Order. London: Pluto Press, 2004: page 173



[37]      Andrew Gavin Marshall, Controlling the Global Economy:
Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and the Federal Reserve. Global
Research: August 3, 2009:
 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14614



[38]      Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the
Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: page 89



[39]      PBS, Secrets of His Life and Leadership: An Interview with
Said K. Aburish. PBS Frontline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/interviews/aburish.html



[40]      Michael Parenti, Afghanistan, Another Untold Story. Global
Research: December 4, 2008:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11279



[41]      Oleg Kalugin, How We Invaded Afghanistan. Foreign Policy:
December 11, 2009:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/12/11/how_we_invaded_afghanistan



[42]      ‘'Le Nouvel Observateur' (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76:
http://www.ucc.ie/acad/appsoc/tmp_store/mia/Library/history/afghanistan/archive/brzezinski/1998/interview.htm



[43]      Ibid.



[44]      Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the
Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: page 73



[45]      Michael Parenti, Afghanistan, Another Untold Story. Global
Research: December 4, 2008:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11279



[46]      Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 78.



[47]      Ibid, page 116.



[48]      Ibid, page 122.



[49]      Ibid, page 123.



[50]      Ibid,.



[51]      Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in
the Global Drug Trade. (Lawrence Hill Books: Chicago, 2003), page 80



[52]      Ibid, page 162.



[53]      Ibid.



[54]      Ibid, pages 283-386.



[55]      Ibid, page 466.



[56]      Ibid, page 474.



[57]      Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the
Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: page 73



[58]      Alfred W. McCoy, op cit., page 475.



[59]      Peter Dale Scott, op cit., page 74.



[60]      Ibid, pages 75-76.



[61]      Ibid, page 124.



[62]      Ibid, pages 75-76.



[63]      Ibid, page 124.



[64]      Carol Off, Back to school in Afghanistan. CBC: May 6, 2002:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/afghanistan/schools.html



[65]      Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, From U.S., the ABC's of
Jihad. The Washington Post: March 23, 2002:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5339-2002Mar22?language=printer



[66]      Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA,
Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10,
2001. Penguin Books, New York, 2004: Page 328



[67]      Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA,
Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 11,
2001. (London: Penguin, 2005), page 285



[68]      Steve Coll, “Steve Coll” Interview with PBS Frontline. PBS
Frontline: October 3, 2006:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/taliban/interviews/coll.html



[69]      Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped
Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005),
page 326



[70]      ToI, “CIA worked in tandem with Pak to create Taliban”. The
Times of India: March 7, 2001:
http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/taliban.htm



[71]      Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped
Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005),
pages 279-280



[72]      Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden,
and the Future of Terrorism. (London: André Deutsch Ltd, 1999), page
168



[73]      Michael Moran, Bin Laden comes home to roost. MSNBC: August 24, 1998:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3340101/



[74]      Veronique Maurus and Marc Rock, The Most Dreaded Man of the
United States, Controlled a Long Time by the CIA. Le Monde
Diplomatique: September 14, 2001:
http://www.wanttoknow.info/010914lemonde



[75]      Gerald Posner, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent
9/11. (New York: Random House, 2003), page 29



[76]      Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens. (New York: Penguin, 2008), pages 7-9



[77]      AP, Al Qaeda Financing Documents Turn Up in Bosnia Raid. Fox
News: February 19, 2003:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,78937,00.html



[78]      Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the
Future of America. University of California Press: 2007: pages 140-141



[79]      Ibid, page 141.



[80]      Robin Cook, The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by
military means. The Guardian: July 8, 2005:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development



[81]      Pierre-Henri Bunel, Al Qaeda -- the Database. Global
Research: November 20, 2005:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BUN20051120&articleId=1291




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