Author:
Publication: Forbes.com
Date: September 14, 2001
Among the thousands of operatives
trained by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization are fanatics from all
over the world. Many now constitute semi-autonomous cells, all dedicated
to bin Laden's jihad against America. But other operatives, after graduating
from bin Laden's training camps, went back home to start a jihad against
their own governments and people. Bin Laden also provides logistical, financial
and ideological support for a number of notorious terrorist organizations
around the world.
Though accurate information about
bin Laden's grand alliance is hard to come by, it is clear that it does
not include many of the states that United States regarded as enemies or
potential enemies in the 1980s and 1990s. Iraq, Syria and Libya, for example,
are largely secular nationalist regimes. While they abhor America, and
no doubt rejoice at the murder of Americans, they are mortal enemies of
the kind of Islamic fundamentalism represented by bin Laden and his allies.
Iran, meanwhile, practices a Shiite brand of fundamentalist Islam that
is vehemently opposed to bin Laden's version (the extremist Wahhabi tendency).
Over the past five years, in fact, Iran has been financing a war against
bin Laden and his Taliban allies in Afghanistan.
The only state that unambiguously
supports bin Laden today is Afghanistan, ruled by the fanatical Taliban
militias. Bin Laden can also count on the support of some parts of the
governments of Pakistan, which has long supported the Taliban, and Sudan,
wealthy donors from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states, and a variety
of underworld groups in Egypt and Algeria.
Here is a list--from West to East--of
the terrorist organizations affiliated with bin Laden:
Algeria
Groupe Islamique Armee (Armed Islamic
Group), one of the three main Islamic groups fighting the secular Algerian
government in the 1990s. Staffed by many bin Laden operatives, it began
a terrorist campaign in 1992. Since then, it perpetrated a series of assassinations
of Algerian government officials, multiple mass murders of villagers resistant
to the bin Laden version of Islam, and the murder of about 100 foreigners
in Algeria. Its most famous act was the hijacking of an Air France flight
in December of 1994 and threatening to blow it up over Paris; the attack
was stopped when French commandos stormed the plane at the airport in Marseilles
and killed the terrorists. In 1995, the group carried out a series of deadly
bombings in Paris.
Egypt
Al Jihad (a.k.a. the Muslim Brotherhood),
founded in the late 1970s by Omar Adbul Rakhman, inspired and helped orchestrate
the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, as well as
a number of other assassination attempts against members of the Egyptian
government. Also engaged in terrorist acts against Egypt's Christian minority.
Co-founded bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization in 1989. Omar Adbul Rakhman
was later convicted in the U.S. for his role in conspiring to blow up the
World Trade Center in 1993.
Al Gamaa al Islamiya (Islamic Group),
the sister organization of Al Jihad, engaged in the 1980s and 1990s in
dozens of terrorist attacks on Egyptian government institutions, the country's
Christian minority, and foreign tourists. The most famous incident: the
massacre of 67 foreign tourists and 4 Egyptians at an archeological site
in Luxor in November 1997.Sudan
Al Djaba al-Islamiya (National Islamic
Front) is an Islamic fundamentalist political movement established in 1985
and headed by the fanatical Hasan Turabi. In 1989, this organization helped
organize a military coup d'etat in northern Sudan (populated mostly by
Muslims) and unleash a genocidal war against the Christian population in
the southern part of the country. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions,
have been killed over the past decade. Bin Laden arrived in Sudan in 1991
and stayed until 1996; he is still believed to retain major commercial
interests inside the country. But the military dictator of Sudan has recently
arrested Turabi and his organization has seen its powers clipped.
The Balkans.
The civil wars in the Balkans provided
a rich new field of endeavor for bin Laden and he has long provided training
and financial support to Islamic militants among the Bosnian Muslims and
the Albanian separatists in Kosovo and Macedonia; he has also sponsored
brigades of professional Islamic fighters from abroad in their fight against
the Serbs. Among his organizations in this part of the world is Edzir,
a military training school based in Bosnia. Bin Laden may also be interested
in establishing contacts with the Albanian heroin-trading networks operating
out of the Balkans.
Chechnya
Khattab, a warlord of Saudi-Jordanian
origin and adherent to the Wahhabi tendency of Islam, is known to have
been an associate of bin Laden's in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Russian
security services say that bin Laden's organization is providing financial
and logistical help, as well as military training, to several international
Islamic brigades fighting alongside the Chechen rebels against the Russians.
Khattab, together with other Wahhabi-Arab warlords, Abdullah Malek and
Muhammed Sharif, unleashed the latest war in Chechnya, when they led their
brigades in an invasion of the neighboring province of Dagestan in August
1999. They are also notorious for their employment of car bombs in the
cities of Chechnya and for publicly cutting the throats of Russian prisoners
of war.
Afghanistan.
The Taliban appeared in Afghanistan
in 1993, four years after the Soviet withdrawal. It started as an association
of Islamic theological students, training mostly in Pakistan, under the
patronage of the Pakistani intelligence services and fundamentalist groups.
Bin Laden began helping the Taliban in the mid-1990s, with fighters and
money; moved to Afghanistan in 1996. Over the past several years, the vast
majority of Afghanistan surrendered to Taliban authority--some parts voluntarily,
some parts conquered by force or terror. Today, the Taliban has instituted
probably the most fanatical brand of Islamic government on earth; destroyed
invaluable cultural landmarks, like the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan;
two months ago, arrested eight foreign aid workers on suspicion of propagating
Christianity; until last year, sponsored the world's largest center for
the cultivation of poppies and manufacture of heroin. Under the Taliban,
Afghanistan has become bin Laden's primary state sponsor.
Tajikistan
The Islamic Renewal Movement of
Tajikistan, a fundamentalist group battling the government in this impoverished
former Soviet republic, receives financial, logistical and manpower support
from bin Laden and the Taliban.Pakistan
Djamat ul-Ulema-i-Islami (Society
of the students of Islam), a fundamentalist political party, financed partly
by Saudi donations, was formed in 1960. In the early 1990s, it helped finance
and train the members of the Taliban. Maintained military training camps
for its students on the Afghanistan border, as well as ar! ound the Afghan
city of Khost (where bin Laden's primary base camps are located as well).
Officially allied with bin Laden since 1998.
India
Kharkat ul-Ansar is a terrorist
organization based in Pakistan, but its primary goal is the formation of
an independent Islamic state in the Indian province of Kashmir. Established
in 1993, by several hundred international veterans of the Afghan war, the
group distinguished itself by a series of bombings and assassinations in
India, as well as the kidnapping and beheading of European tourists. Fighters
from this group have participated in fighting in Bosnia, Kosovo, Tajikistan,
Burma and the Philippines. Formally allied with bin Laden since 1998.
Bangladesh
Al Jihad, an Islamic fundamentalist
group led by Fazlul ar-Rakhman Khalil, was one of the founders in 1998
of bin Laden's International Islamic Front. Other founders included Al
Jihad and Djamaa al-Islamiya of Egypt, Djamat ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan of Pakistan,
and Kharakat ul-Ansar of India. The stated aim of the International Islamic
Front is to wage a "holy war" against all Jews and Christians.Philippines.
Abu Sayyaf, is a terrorist group
demanding an independent Islamic state in the southern Philippines. Bin
Laden was the group's primary financier and sponsor in the 1990s. The group
gained notoriety with a car bombing campaign in Manila in the late 1990s
and a series of kidnappings of foreign tourists. The Philippines also served
as a base for bin Laden associate Ramzi Yousef, convicted of the 1993 bombing
of the World Trade Center. A plot Yousef had initiated--to blow up 11 American
airliners over the Pacific--was foiled in 1995.
