The Globalists and the Islamists:

Ikhwanul Muslimin, Senjata Rahasia Globalis

IV. Osama bin Laden: The Early Years

Osama was born around 1957, the seventeenth son of the Yemenite construction magnate Sheikh Mohammed bin Oud bin Laden. Over the years Mohammed had established himself as a trusted friend of King Abdul Aziz and then King Feisal of Saudi Arabia , and his construction firm was hired to refurbish the holy sites in Mecca and Medina , including Mecca 's Grand Mosque. He also received a contract to refurbish the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in 1969.

At the time of Mohammed bin Laden's death in 1972 his family had grown to become perhaps the richest non-royal family in Saudi Arabia, and his estate was handed over to his fifty-four children. His son Salem emerged as the head of the firm, and then Bakr, with Abdelaziz, Ali, Yeslam and Yahya emerged also playing leading roles in directing the bin Laden empire. These heirs have always enjoyed a close relationship with the Saudi royal family and are responsible for training many of the younger Saudi princes in the intricacies of global finance and industry. Mohammed bin Fahd and Saud bin Nayef are two of the princes who owe their current status as global tycoons to the bin Laden brothers. (1) The Saudi royal family has always been close with the top levels of the bin Laden family, but the same cannot be said about some of the younger sons of Mohammed bin Laden.

On November 20, 1979, Mecca 's Grand Mosque was taken over by several hundred militants. The Imam was murdered and in the chaos thousands of worshipers were trampled to death. The militants took hundreds of hostages and holed up in the vast cellars under the mosque. Saudi forces reacted quickly and staged a counter-attack against the rebels inside but they were easily repulsed by the well-armed and well-fortified militants. For days the rebels fought off the government forces, destroying tanks and even a helicopter that flew in too close, crashing into a minaret. Finally King Khalid turned to the French government and French special forces arrived with chemical weapons to smoke out the rebels. The Grand Mosque was finally liberated on December 4. For two weeks the holiest shrine of Islam had been taken over by radical fundamentalists. The end result was hundreds of government soldiers and over a hundred rebels dead, with most of the hostages dead as well. On January 9 sixty-three of the captured rebels were paraded into the main squares of several Arabian cities and publicly beheaded. Hundreds more were arrested and interrogated in the ensuing investigation. (2)

Among those arrested was Mahrous bin Laden, son of Sheikh Mohammed bin Laden and brother of Osama. In his biography of Osama bin Laden Jacquard writes,

"The terrorists had established contact with Mahrous several years earlier, when he was a student in London and when he counted among his friends the son of a Southern Yemeni dignitary, the leader of a very active fundamentalist group. Following this university connection, Mahrous bin Laden became involved with a group of Syrian Muslim Brotherhood activists exiled to Saudi Arabia . The Saudi secret service investigation ultimately declared Mahrous innocent. The investigation stated that by exploiting networks of the young Mahrous's former friendships, the terrorists had gained access to the bin Laden group's trucks to organize their attack without the young man's knowledge." (3) p.13-14

The Bin Laden firm was responsible for the Grand Mosque's renovations and so its trucks were allowed to come and go freely without being searched. The terrorists had used these trucks to help them smuggle in weapons that were then stashed inside the mosque prior to the takeover. Mahrous was declared innocent of being involved in this intrigue but his honor was tainted forever and he knew he could never rise to the level of achievement reached by his older brothers. Had he been the member of any other family it is likely that he would have been executed, if only for simply having relations with some of the fundamentalists linked to the terrorists. In the end it was the bin Laden family that saved the day, because they provided the blueprints of the mosque that helped to plan the final successful attacks against the rebels. In the end the bin Laden family emerged from the whole affair pretty much unscathed, with their integrity and their close relationship with the House of Saud intact. (4)

Osama bin Laden, as one of the youngest sons of the bin Laden family, grew up feeling somewhat of an outsider and like his brother Mahrous he turned to fundamentalist Islam. Biographer Adam Robinson states that the young Osama lived a very indulgent and secular lifestyle during his teenage years, especially while he attended high school in Beirut from 1973 to 1975. Others, such as Roland Jacquard argue that this was not the case. Whatever the truth of his younger days, it is clear that Osama wholeheartedly embraced Islam during the time that he attended King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah. He enrolled there in 1976 and in 1977 he undertook the two-week long holy Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca , the Hajj . Robinson writes that after this experience Osama began to grow his beard long and his sincerity towards Islam became apparent. What Robinson does not divulge is that Osama's exposure to the Muslim Brotherhood at this time brought about his conversion.

Mohammed Qutb, the brother of Sayed Qutb the "chief ideologist" of the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed in 1966, emigrated to Saudi Arabia as a result of Nasser 's crackdown on the Brotherhood. In the 1960s he was given several different official positions within Saudi universities to teach and to carry out the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood. While in Saudi Arabia Mohammed Qutb conceived of the organization now known as the World Assembly of Muslim Youth , and it was made a reality in 1972 thanks to large donations from the bin Laden family. Osama's brother Omar was at one time its executive director, and another brother, Abdullah, also served as a director. (5) WAMY was being investigated as a source of terrorist funding until the Bush administration halted the FBI's investigation at the beginning of his term in 2001.

WAMY's perspective on Islam is the familiar Muslim Brotherhood perspective that the Globalists like so much, that Islam is threatened by the West and that it must remain wary of science and technology and return to its primitive roots. WAMY's headquarters today are in Riyadh , with major offices in Falls Church , Virginia and London , England . According to reporter Greg Palast there are over twenty WAMY-aligned organizations also based in Britain . (6)

While attending King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah Osama bin Laden became close to Mohammed Qutb and he was initiated into the Muslim Brotherhood. Malise Ruthven, author of Islam In the World and former editor with the BBC Arabic Service, even remarks that Qutb was Osama's "mentor" during this period. (7)

Another important figure in Osama's university life was a professor by the name of Sheikh Abdullah Yussuf Azzam. Unrelated to the Egyptian Azzams, he was a Palestinian-born teacher of religion who was an active member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank . Later he pursued an education in Jordan and Damascus before receiving his doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from Cairo 's Al Azhar University in 1973. While in Cairo he met the family of Sayed Qutb and was "drawn into the ranks of the Egyptian militant Islamists." (8) Shortly after this he moved to Saudi Arabia after being invited to teach at King Abdul Aziz University , where he linked up with Mohammed Qutb. Osama attended Azzam's classes and was caught up into his militant ideology. Azzam's famous motto was,

"Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences, and no dialogues." (9)

In 1979 Dr. Azzam left Saudi Arabia and was one of the first Arabs to join the Afghan jihad. He was the lead Saudi/Palestinian representative of the Muslim Brotherhood. The 22-year old Osama bin Laden followed soon after and together they established the Maktab al-Khidamat , MAK, or Mujahideen Services Bureau based in Peshawar , Afghanistan . Their organization linked up with Pakistan 's Muslim Brotherhood organization, the Jamaat-e Islami. The MAK worked to recruit fighters to join the jihad and by the late 1980s there were branches of the MAK, known also as the Al Kifah Organization, in fifty countries around the world. The Muslim Brotherhood network combined with bin Laden family money to make the MAK a tremendous success.

Militants from around the globe poured into Afghanistan , but Azzam and bin Laden recognized that many of the prospective mujahedin lacked the necessary training and supplies for the Afghan campaign. To remedy this they established Masadat Al-Ansar in Peshawar as a central base, training compound and storehouse to serve the Arabs coming in to fight. (10) Bodansky p. 12 This was Al Qaeda (the base) for the thousands streaming in to fight the jihad. Dr. Saad al-Fagih was one of the many Saudis who passed through the Peshawar base, and he explained in a PBS interview how Al Qaeda came to be and how it was never meant to refer to bin Laden's terrorist organization,

"Well, I [really] laugh when I hear the FBI talking about Al Qaeda as an organization of bin Laden... [It's really a] very simple story. If bin Laden is to receive Arabs from Saudi Arabia and from Kuwait --from other regions--he is [to] receive them in the guest house in Peshawar . They used to go to the battle field and come back, without documentation... There [was] no documentation of who has arrived. Who has left. How long he stayed. There's only [a nice general reception]. And you go there. And you join in the battle field... Now, he was embarrassed by many families when they called him and ask what happened to our son. He don't know. 'Cause there's no record. There's no documentation. Now he asked some of his colleagues to start documenting the movement of every Arab coming under his umbrella... It is recorded that [they] arrived in this date and stayed in this house... Many of them had come only for two weeks, three weeks and then disappeared. That record, that documentation was called the record of Al Qaeda. So that was Al Qaeda. There's nothing sinister about Al Qaeda. It's not like an organization... I don't think he used any name for his underground group. If you want to name it, you can name it 'bin Laden group.' But if they are using the term Al Qaeda ... Al Qaeda is just a record for the people who came to Peshawar and moved from there back and forth to the guest house. And moved back to their country." (11)

Bin Laden's years fighting the Afghan war were mostly spent in Pakistan and his job was primarily that of a fundraiser and an organizer, although many times he would travel into Afghanistan with his mentor Sheikh Azzam, known as the 'Emir of Jihad,' who would give fiery speeches to raise the morale of the mujahedin warriors. In Afghanistan bin Laden's resources as a contractor were also used and he brought in heavy equipment on a number of occasions to help fortify mujahedin strongholds and to refurbish supply roads. The debate is still unsettled as to whether or not bin Laden or Azzam were ever involved in any actual front-line fighting, but both have been mythologized as active and courageous warriors.

During bin Laden's Afghan years the MAK developed close relations with Pashtun warlord and Muslim Brother Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Azzam and Hekmatyar both held anti-American views, but Hekmatyar's were more pronounced, even though it is estimated that his group, the Hezb-e-Islami , received up to 40% of the American aid channeled to the mujahedin through the CIA and the ISI . (12) During the 1980s Azzam also traveled throughout the USA meeting American Muslim groups, raising funds and recruiting fighters for the jihad. He set up major Al Kifah centers in Atlanta , Boston , Chicago , Brooklyn, Jersey City , Pittsburgh , and Tucson , and smaller Al Kifah branches in thirty other American cities. (13) In this way the militant Muslim Brotherhood message was dispersed throughout the United States and recruits were brought into the jihad.

According to respected Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid the Afghan war escalated in 1986 when the CIA made three strategic decisions. (14) First, to provide the mujahedin with American made Stinger missiles. At the height of the war it is estimated that the mujahedin averaged 1.5 kills per day of Soviet and communist Afghan aircraft. The second decision was one promoted by British Intelligence and the ISI to launch guerilla attacks into Soviet territory in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan . Predictably, the operation was handed over to Hekmatyar's forces, who managed to achieve a symbolic success, to which the Soviets responded by firebombing all nearby villages. The CIA immediately stopped this action as counter-productive. Thirdly, the CIA began to endorse the Arab initiative of recruiting jihad warriors around the world. Rashid describes how this recruiting drive was run,

"Pakistan had issued standing instructions to all its embassies abroad to give visas, with no questions asked, to anyone wanting to come and fight with the mujahidin . In the Middle East the Ikhwan ul Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood), the Saudi-based World Muslim League, and the Palestinian Islamic radicals organized recruits and put them in contact with the ISI. The ISI and Pakistan 's Jamaat-e-Islami Party set up reception committees to welcome, house, and train the foreign militants. Then the two encouraged militants to join the mujahidin groups, usually the Hizbe Islami. Much of the funding for this enterprise came directly from Saudi Intelligence, which was partly channeled through the Saudi radical Osama bin Laden, who was then based in Peshawar . At the time, French scholar Oliver Roy described the enterprise as ' a joint venture between the Saudis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Jamaat-e-Islami, put together by the ISI .' " (15)

These three decisions escalated the war in Afghanistan and made it clear to Mikhail Gorbachev that his nation was fighting a battle that it could never win. On April 14, 1988 the Geneva Accords were signed mandating a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan . By early 1989 the Soviet Army was out of Afghanistan , but a staunchly communist and well-armed Afghan regime was still ruling from Kabul .

American aid to the mujahedin ended almost precisely at the moment the Geneva Accords were signed. The Soviets were leaving and so the West congratulated itself on achieving a victory. For the United States the war was over and the CIA did not want to participate in creating an Islamist regime in Afghanistan that would undoubtedly be anti-American. As a result Hekmatyar, Azzam, bin Laden and the Islamist warlords were left feeling betrayed and used.

The mujahedin also received a major setback on August 17, 1988, when General Muhammed Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan 's ruling dictator and mentor of the mujahedin, died when his C-130 aircraft crashed minutes after taking off from Bahawalpur airport. Also killed were a number of generals and the American ambassador. In November of 1988, Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Zulfikar Bhutto who had been executed by General Zia, was elected Prime Minister. She began to introduce policies that threatened the fundamentalists and the warlords, including legislation that cracked down on drug smuggling.

In March of 1989 the mujahedin were convinced by Saudi and ISI advisors to launch a full-scale assault on the communist-held city of Jalalabad . It was argued that the fall of Jalalabad would lead to a quick route of President Najibullah's forces and that Afghanistan could then be quickly liberated. The assault turned into one of the biggest disasters for the mujahedin because Jalalabad was well-defended and protected by a veteran army that included a significant artillery contingent. The mujahedin were slaughtered by the thousands.

Back in Peshawar bin Laden and Azzam reacted in fury. They began to issue statements from their press offices accusing Pakistan and Saudi Arabia of being part of a treacherous American plot. This was perhaps the first public notice of bin Laden's growing resentment towards the decidedly pro-American Saudi regime of his homeland. (16)

A greater blow struck bin Laden when his friend and father-figure Sheikh Abdullah Azzam was assassinated several months later. Notice the mythology that surrounds the passing of this man as related on a Muslim web site,

"On Friday the 24th of November 1989 in Peshawar , Pakistan , he was assassinated along with his two sons Mohammed and Ibrahim, by 20kg of TNT activated by remote control while he was driving to Friday (Jumma) prayer. His car was blown apart into fragments in the middle of a busy street. The blast was so intensive that fragments from the bodies of his sons were found up to a hundred meters from the carnage. One of his son's legs was also found suspended from an overhead telephone line. Nevertheless, Allah be glorified, the Sheikh was found perfectly intact, except for an internal haemorrhage, which caused his death. Many a people present will confirm to the smell of musk that emanated from his body." (17)

In his early days Sheikh Azzam had helped to create the Palestinian organization now known as HAMAS. Today the military wing of HAMAS on the West Bank is officially known as the Abdullah Azzam Brigades . (18) In London the Azzam Organization was founded in his name and its affiliate Azzam Publications ( http://www.azzam.com/ ) describes itself as "an independent media organization providing authentic news and information about Jihad and the Foreign Mujahideen everywhere." The website was shut down after September 11, 2001. (19)

At the end of 1989 Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia . He was welcomed as a celebrity and a hero, but he remained bitter about the political infighting that was consuming Afghanistan and cynical of the ruling House of Saud. He turned back to his family and he briefly took up a job within the Bin Laden Firm working in road construction. He was 32, and almost a ten-year veteran of the Afghan war, but his jihad days were just beginning. The Muslim Brotherhood had further plans for him.

Section Notes and Sources

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