When did OBL go off the CIA's payroll?
I'm Osama Bin Laden and I approve this message:
Osama Bin Ladin:
Marketing Terrorism
Yael Shahar, ICT
Aug 22 1998
If he were using the same methods to run a huge software empire, we would laud Osama bin Ladin as a clever capitalist; we would envy him his marketing savvy, or jealously deride him for his riches. However, Osama bin Ladin is not in the software business; his business is international terrorism. Bin Ladin is the prototype of a new breed of terrorist, the private entrepreneur who puts modern enterprise at the service of a world-wide network of terrorists. He makes effective use of all the tried and true methods of marketing, management, privatization and advertising.
Osama bin Ladin is one of 53 children of Saudi construction magnate Muhammad Awad bin Ladin. His mother was reportedly a Palestinian, and the least favored of his father’s ten wives. The elder bin Ladin moved to Saudi Arabia from Yemen and amassed a fortune. Most of this money came from a number of successful construction and contracting companies. Today, the bin Ladin family fortune is estimated at $5 billion, of which Osama has access to an estimated $300 million. He tends to see himself as the model businessman, a graduate of Riyadh University’s management and economics department. The only difference is, his product is war.
The education of a Mujahedin
Bin Ladin entered on his current path of holy warrior in 1979. That was the year Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. Osama moved his business to Afghanistan--several hundred loyal workmen, some heavy construction tools--and set out to liberate the land from the infidel invader. Recognizing at once that the Afghans were lacking both infrastructure and manpower to fight a protracted conflict, he set about solving both problems at once. The first step was to set up an organized program of conscription. He advertised all over the Arab world for young Muslims to come to fight in Afghanistan. He paid for their transportation to Afghanistan, and set up facilities to train them. The Afghan government donated land and resources, while bin Ladin brought in experts from all over the world on guerilla warfare, sabotage, and covert operations. Within a little over a year he had thousands of volunteers in training in his private bootcamps.
Superpower vs. superpower
But the war in Afghanistan was not a tribal hill feud; it was the stage for one of the last major stand-offs between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The Americans at that time had the same goals as bin Ladin’s mujahedin--the ousting of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. In what was hailed at the time as one of its most successful covert operations, America’s Central Intelligence Agency launched a $500 million-per-year campaign to arm and train the impoverished and outgunned mujahedin guerrillas to fight the Soviet Union. The most promising guerilla leaders were sought out and “sponsored” by the CIA. U.S. official sources are understandably vague on the question of whether Osama bin Ladin was one of the CIA’s “chosen” at that time. Bin Ladin’s group was one of seven main mujahedin factions. It is estimated that a significant quantity of high tech American weapons, including “stinger” anti-aircraft missiles, made their way into his arsenal. The majority of them are reported to be still there.
What is certain is that the CIA plan was wildly successful. The mujahedin vanquished the Soviet Union in ten years of savage fighting. What had begun as a fragmented army of tribal warriors ended up a well-organized and equipped modern army--one capable of beating a super power. The departing Soviet troops left behind an Afghanistan with a huge arsenal of sophisticated weapons and thousands of seasoned Islamic warriors from a variety of countries.
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