Al Qaeda, possibly the most notorious terrorist organisation in the world and the atrocities they have committed are unforgivable, no matter the ideology behind them. Even though the legitimacy of several of the claims made against the group are questionable, the actions of Osama Bin Laden and the psychos that follow him cannot be defended. But the question can still be asked from where they emerged, did it start as a small resistance group and grow or was it something far more sinister?
Welcome to the Soviet-Afghan War, a violent conflict lasting nine years, December 1979 to February 1989, anywhere from just under 1 million and 2 million civilians are killed. The Soviets have just invaded Afghanistan as part of the notoriously deceptive Cold War, America isn’t just going to give up the Middle East. But invading a country half across the world in mass numbers isn’t exactly wise, so what do they do, get someone else to do their dirty work, in particular, the Mujahideen of Afghanistan. This is the beginning of Operation Cyclone, the codename given by the CIA to a program aiming at funding, arming and training soldiers to fight against the USSR and the then client of the soviets, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
However something that is important to note is that former CIA director Robert Gates stated in his memoir that the CIA started funding the fighters 6 months before the soviet intervention. National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told this worrying fact to a French News Magazine in 1998, he said: “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.”
According to this quote the intervention of America wasn’t designed to counter the Russian intervention but in fact caused it. As it states in the quote the motive was there, this ‘enemy of my enemy’ outlook on the world isn’t an isolated incident for the American government, they have done it again recently by supplying the Yemeni government with explosives to use in the civil war.
While the term Mujahideen literally translates to ‘person engaged in jihad’ and the current political climate around radical Islam makes this at best a bad decision, but back then the move would be far less controversial and the Mujahideen aren’t Al Qaeda, yet.
When Osama Bin Laden’s biography was declassified it told us that he moved from his original birthplace in Saudi Arabia to participate in the Soviet Afghan war. Hr ran an organisation known as ‘Maktab al-Khidamat’ which took funds, weapons and personnel from the outside and funneled it into Afghanistan. This organisation quickly became a major player in the war and being a big player on this side of the war meant money, big money and this money was being given to an early interpretation of Al Qaeda to the tune of millions of dollars either directly from the CIA or funnelled through the ISI.
Some have pointed to the fact that the Maktab al-Khidamat controlled a very small group of soldiers in the war as evidence that Osama Bin Laden’s involvement in the group and the funding he received didn’t go onto the creation of Al Qaeda. And these people are correct, the organisation only had around 100 mujahideen at their disposal at the time of the conflict. However the CIA’s funding of this group allowed their organisation to set up 33 branches in the United States, these branches helped them to receive even more money and fly Mujahideen recruits over to fight in the Afghani holy war. Even though this group didn’t operate like a military it was run by Osama Bin Laden and it did participate in the war and it did receive money from the CIA to run its operations
Possibly the greatest mistake made by the Americans was simply leaving after the Soviets dispersed. They went to great lengths to ensure that they did not have to deal with the terrorists they left in Afghanistan and several surrounding countries. They even imposed sanctions to distance themselves from the problem. But as much as the Americans ignored it, it didn’t change the fact that there were trained, armed and funded radical Islamic militants in the middle east as a direct result of their actions.
The organisation of Al Qaeda itself was founded after the Soviets withdrew from the war. It was founded by the same volunteers that Bin Laden flew over to the war with the aid and assistance of the US. The primary goal of the group was to continue to destroy those they saw as enemies of Islam.
There it is and if you don’t believe me, believe this: