Al Qaeda's origins

Rohan Pearce

Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was originally not a terrorist organisation but as part of the ragtag group of warlords and Islamic religious fanatics trained and funded under the auspices of the CIA to fight against the left-wing, secular government of the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), after it came to power in 1978.

Up to US$20 billion of US funding was channelled to the right-wing mujaheddin. From 1986, the CIA began aiding Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence in recruiting Islamic fundamentalists from around the world to train in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan and fight against the Soviet-backed PDPA government.

A report produced by Ahmed Rashid and released by the US-based Center for Public Integrity in September 2001 revealed that between 1982 and 1996, "some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries ... would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan mujaheddin. Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas [Islamic schools] that [Pakistan's] government began to fund in Pakistan and along the Afghan border. Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad."

Bin Laden's falling out with his erstwhile masters in Washington didn't happen until 1990, with the Gulf War and the Pentagon stationing troops in Saudi Arabia.

From Green Left Weekly, April 7, 2004.

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From GLW issue 578