Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden
By Peter L. Bergen
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2001
$29.95
REVIEWED BY CHRIS SLEE
Despite serious limitations, Peter Bergen's Holy War Inc. is a useful biography of Osama bin Laden. While Bergen gives a useful history of the development of bin Laden's movement, he minimises the US role in helping to create it.
Bin Laden was born into a wealthy family with close links to the Saudi monarchy. He studied economics at a university in Jedda, where he became associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. He was influenced by the ideas of radical Islamists who, while hostile to communism and Arab nationalism, were also hostile to the West and pro-Western governments in the Middle East, considering them to be "un-Islamic".
In 1979, Soviet troops entered Afghanistan to assist the leftist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government to fight US-backed right-wing rebels (Bergen labels this a "Soviet invasion").
Throughout the 1980s, bin Laden played a key role in raising money for the mujaheddin and recruiting of tens of thousands of islamists from many countries to participated in the fighting.
After Soviet troops left Afghanistan in 1989 Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, where he called for a boycott of US goods because of US support for Israel.
In August 1989, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and US troops arrived in Saudi Arabia to prepare for a counter-invasion. Bin Laden opposed their presence, arguing that non-Muslim troops should not be allowed in the Muslim holy land. He became increasingly critical of the Saudi regime, and was eventually exiled to Sudan, and then returned to Afghanistan.
His supporters began attacks on US bases in Saudi Arabia, and other US property around the world, allegedly including the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993 and the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Bin Laden's followers have also been blamed for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Bergen acknowledges that the US provided large amounts of money and arms to the mujaheddin and that some of these arms found their way into the hands of bin Laden's followers. However, he denies that US personnel directly armed or trained either the mujaheddin or bin Laden's forces.
Bergen claims that the US channelled the arms through Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency and that the ISI had its own agenda which led it to favour the most extreme mujaheddin groups, which were allied to bin Laden.
Bergen quotes a claim by a Pakistani officer that, "No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the Mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan". Yet later in the book, Bergen reports that Ali Mohamed, an Egyptian-born US citizen and member of the US special forces, fought in Afghanistan while "on leave" from the US army, supposedly without authorisation from his superiors.
Undoubtedly, the US worked through Pakistan's ISI as much as possible. But there is plenty of evidence that US and other Western personnel were regularly present inside Afghanistan as advisers and weapons trainers for the mujaheddin.
Ali Mohamed was arrested for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. He was a former Egyptian army officer who was a member of Jihad, the Islamist group that murdered Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
After moving to the US, Mohamed joined the US army in 1986. While on vacation he went to Afghanistan and fought in the war, without informing his immediately superior officer. When this apparent violation of discipline was reported to higher authorities no action was taken.
Bergen attributes the lack of action to administrative slackness. He does not consider the possibility that Mohamed's involvement in the Afghan war was authorised at a higher level of the US army.
How many other members of Islamist groups were trained directly by the US army, the CIA or other US agencies? Given that Islamists such as bin Laden and Ali Mohamed were hostile to the West, why did the US arm and train them?
The US ruling class wanted to overthrow the PDPA government and weaken the Soviet Union. The Islamists were allies in this fight. US officials may not have foreseen that the US-supplied weapons and training would be turned against the US. But if they did anticipate this possibility, they presumably thought the price was worth paying.
In the words of former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski: "What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? A few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"
Bergen does not quote Brzezinski's statement, which would probably not go down well with US citizens after the September 11 attacks.
While bin Laden is no longer a US ally, he is remains useful to the US ruling class in a different way — as an enemy who provides an excuse for repression and militarism.
Bin Laden is an ideal enemy, since his reactionary ideology and terrorist tactics prevent him from winning any sympathy among the American people — unlike progressive national liberation movements.
Bush and other imperialist leaders demand that we choose between supporting their "war on terrorism" or supporting bin Laden. We have to reject this limited choice.
From Green Left Weekly, January 16, 2002.
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