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High-profile military operations
were out. Carter wanted a covert CIA operation like the one it
had carried out in Laos, with no US personnel directly involved.
‘The Agency, it was decided, would coopt specialised American
military personnel, with the support of the Pakistan military to
train an army of Muslim zealots’.
The others, who
would help carry out the role, were christened ‘the safari
club’. Pakistan was considered indispensible due to its
strategic location.
Sadat agreed to
help train, equip and supply volunteers for the Afghan Jihad.
Russian weapons were flown to Afghanistan. Encouraging
fundamentalism to grow in Egypt had its fall out, when these
Mujahideens turned hostile to Sadat, for signing the peace
treaty with Israel. It led to Sadat’s assassination and
terrorist acts of killing 58 tourists.
Zia ul Haque of
Pakistan made the best of this opportunity, created the ISI to
train Pakistanis and Afghans. By doing this, Pakistan’s
economic and social instability increased and terrorist acts in
Sindh grew. There was growing violence between Sindhis and Mohajirs,
while the Pushtoons were growing restless.
China too
encouraged its Muslim Uighurs to join the Afghan Jihad.
The price it paid was the revolt among the Muslims in its
Xingjiang province.
The source of
funds to run the show was as complicated: "Charitable
donations in the United States and Europe, the frantic
profligacy of Saudi Arabians and other Arabs in the oil states
in their efforts to support Islam in South and Central Asia
against godless communism, the reliance of the CIA and its
allies on the crooked machinations of the biggest international
criminal bank ever known the fabulous profits of drug lords, and
the usually unexceptionable generosity of US Congressmen with
the funds of the American tax payer".
Osama bin Laden’s
father, Muhammad bin Laden, was a Yemeni, who emigrated to Saudi
Arabia. He got the job of a brick-layer, saved his meagre income
in a tin box and when he had saved enough, he founded his
construction company. He started moderately with small jobs but
soon moved into big time construction.
Bin Laden
joined the Jihad as soon as the Russians invaded
Afghanistan. By 1985, he had collected millions from his own
business and other wealthy Arabs to found Al Qaida. He
set up base at Peshawar and took a leading role. When the
Russians withdrew in 1989, he continued to support militant
Muslims in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen and Philippines.
The writer
reveals how US equipment, originally intended for Afghan Jihad,
was diverted and abused on a massive scale in Kashmir.
The USA became their target for
its pro-Israeli policy. In 1993, the World Trade Centre was
bombed. In 1995 and 1996, US personnel were attacked at Riyadh
and Khobar, for which Bin Laden was suspected. Then in 1998,
came the bombings of US embassies in Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam.
The author holds the view that Afghanistan was a major reason
for the breakup of the erstwhile USSR. For a great power to send
100,000 troops into Afghanistan and suffer 14,000 dead was not
such a loss as to lead to break up of the USSR. The causes of
that lay far deeper in USSR itself.
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THIS
is a journalist’s account of terrorism in our times. It
foresees the attack on US and covers events up to the bombing
of the World Trade Centre. The crashing of the aeroplanes into
the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, and loss of 6,000 lives
are events that happened later. The writer foresees the coming
confrontation between the super power and the forces that were
its own creation. There is this country joke that aptly fits
the situation. A village chaudhry wanting to instill
fear into the villagers brought a pehelwan. He told him
to beat up a few villagers every day so that they knew their
place. The pehelwan did his job well and the village
feared the chaudhry. Then one day, the pehelwan finding
no one to beat up took to beating the chaudhry himself.
