Violent Influence of Afghan War Vets

Nov. 3, 2000 -- Many were secretly trained and armed by the Central Intelligence Agency, to help them in their successful decade-long “holy war” to drive the Soviet military out of Afghanistan.

Now, many Muslim veterans of that conflict, also known as the mujahedeen, are suspected by the U.S. government to be at the center of a global effort to engage in terrorism and other forms of violence against the United States and other countries around the world.

Since Soviet forces left Afghanistan in defeat in 1989, the mujahedeen and their radical Islamic followers and associated groups are suspected of terrorist activity in more than 30 countries across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, Europe, and North America.

They’ve fueled insurgencies and civil wars in global hotspots like Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya and Tajikistan and have aided violent political groups across the Middle East and North Africa, and have set up training camps for militants in at least seven countries.

The most notorious Afghan war veteran, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, who heads an organization believed to include many Afghan war vets, is suspected of funding and orchestrating a good deal of that activity, according to FBI indictments against him.

The FBI suspects bin Laden is connected to, and in some cases responsible for masterminding, nearly every major foreign terrorist attack against the United States since 1990, which together have claimed well over 200 American lives.

The list includes: the attempted bombing of U.S. soldiers passing through Yemen in 1992; plots to assassinate President Clinton in the Philippines in 1994 and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995; the 1995 and 1996 bombings aimed at U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia; and the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

It also includes, most recently, the Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen’s port of Aden, which killed 17 sailors, injured many more and severely damaged the ship. The president of Yemen has said a number of Arab veterans of the Afghan war have been detained by Yemeni authorities in connection with the suspected terrorist act.

Motivations

There are many explanations for this vast pattern of violence.

It’s been attributed to resentment against the United States over abandonment after the Afghan-Soviet war, to a simple need for channeling the violent skills and experience obtained during the war, to a fanatical anti-Western and anti-Israeli sentiment, and to an extremist Islamic ideology that advocates ridding Westerners from lands containing Muslim holy places.

It’s also been attributed to a still-unfilled power vacuum in Afghanistan after the destructive war, and to unstable Pakistan, enabling militant groups to establish and fund worldwide networks of extremist cells and to set up training camps designed to create new generations of combatants to fight inside and outside Afghanistan.

U.S. Ambassador for Counter-terrorism Michael Sheehan in July testimony to Congress also cited refusal by Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia to crack down on terrorists, making the country “a swamp for terrorism, harboring terrorists from the region and around the world.”

Because of the freedom the Taliban gives to bin Laden, said Sheehan, he has “created a truly transnational terrorist enterprise, drawing on recruits from across Asia, Africa, and Europe, as well as the Middle East.”

U.S. Supplied and Trained

After the mujahedeen pushed the Soviets out, thousands of Islamic warriors in Afghanistan were out of work, bands of Muslim rebels with combat training and experience. To many, they were seen as a valuable commodity for other Islamic fights around the world.

The rebels had received limited training during the conflict, except for what had been provided secretly by the United States. They nevertheless had proved extremely effective guerrilla fighters.

Their weapons were a mixed bag at first — some of the weapons extremely old from the days of fighting the British. But the CIA supplied an estimated few billion dollars worth of more modern weaponry, including shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, which proved effective in downing large numbers of Soviet aircraft.

After the conflict, Afghanistan and Pakistan have remained places where all sorts of weaponry could be obtained by just about anyone, as instability draws more weapons into the region.

Spreading Around the World

Leaving Afghanistan after the conflict, many Afghan war veterans began joining the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir. Some also joined a Muslim insurgency in the Philippines and lower-level ethnic and religious clashes in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Others went to places like Libya, Sudan and Yemen, where their expertise was welcomed in training and sometimes leading local recruits in civil wars and in terrorist acts elsewhere.

Some remained in Afghanistan, joining the Muslim fundamentalist Taliban organization, which over the past decade fought to take control of most of Afghanistan and has permitted bin Laden to base there. Others followed mujahedeen leaders Ahmad Shah Masood and Ismail Khan as their forces battled the Taliban.

Still others, by the hundreds, are believed to have joined bin Laden’s network, helping to train and organize thousands of future Islamic insurgents, terrorists, and trainers.

A Loose Organization

Bin Laden’s role in the global pattern on terrorism over the past decade has certainly seemed significant.

Drawing on his personal wealth, estimated at $250 million, and funds raised from other wealthy Muslims, bin Laden is believed by U.S. authorities to have helped fund the activities of his organization, al Qaeda, and of a loosely associated network of terrorist cells and supporters around the world.

With anywhere from several hundred to several thousand members, al Qaeda is believed to serve as the core of a loose network that includes many Sunni Islamic extremist groups, including factions of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Gama’at al-Islamiyya (Egypt), and the Harakat ul-Mujahidin (Pakistan).

A faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad is believed led by a man named Ayman al-Zawahiri — who, in Afghanistan, is believed by U.S. authorities to be a key leader in terrorist bin Laden’s network.

Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted of inspiring the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, headed Gama’at al-Islamiyya.

“Terrorist networks outside the context of the international state system provide everything that is needed for groups such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad to survive and become stronger — even when they are based in friendly states with vigorous counter-terrorism policies,” said Sheehan.

Bin Laden’s Impact Questioned

The United States has made bin Laden’s capture a priority, placing him on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List and offering a $5 million reward. Yet, some have argued his and al Qaeda’s role in orchestrating global terrorism may be overestimated.

“What has happened since 1998 or so is we have made this guy into some sort of mystical power that in the Islamic world he’s greater than Elvis,” says Milt Bearden, former CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989.

“He wasn’t much of a deal until we made him public enemy number one and bombed [a suspected bin Laden training camp].”

It’s been noted an illicit drug trade and other forms of criminality are said to help fund military groups in South Asia.

“You know, a lot of these operations are not too expensive,” says Bearden. “How much would the operations in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam cost? Not much, probably.”

Sheehan said Bin Laden and other non-state sponsored terrorists use modern communications, including e-mail and Web sites, to spread their message, recruit members and raise funds.

Taliban leaders have asserted bin Laden could not orchestrate major terrorist attacks, because he lacks access to communications to do so.

Groups in the Middle East and elsewhere associated with al Qaeda certainly have their own reasons for opposing a U.S. presence in the region.

“What if it’s a whole lot of maybe even not connected Muslim groups with grievances?” says Bearden. “I mean these people are pissed off right now, at Israel and at us. You know, we went in and bashed Saddam [Hussein] 10 years ago and we stayed [kept our troops in the Middle East].”

Many also assert bin Laden is in no way essential to promoting jihad (holy war).

“It’s easy to recruit volunteers. Many, many Muslims are inspired by the call for jihad,” Mohammad Haroon, a 27-year-old regional commander with the militant group Al-Badar Mujahedeen told ABCNEWS earlier this year.

“Even if Americans get bin Laden tomorrow, there are hundreds of bin Ladens sitting inside Afghanistan,” he said.

A Broad Influence

Still, the impact of al Qaeda’s organization, funding and training is believed to have reached numerous, unexpected quarters, causing trouble for the United States in hot spots around the globe. So much so, that many suspected by the FBI to have been in the loose bin Laden network had little connection to the Afghan war.

Haroun Fazul, for instance, a man in bin Laden’s network in East Africa believed to have driven the lead truck in the 1998 Nairobi embassy bombing, came from the impoverished, volatile Comoros Islands just off the coast of East Africa.

Others have followed twisted, unexpected paths. El Hage, also indicted in the 1998 bombings, was born in Lebanon, grew up in Kuwait, and studied urban planning at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. In the early 1980s, he traveled to Pakistan to enroll in mujahedeen war training programs and fight in the Afghan war. Afterwards, he returned to the United States, started a family and became a U.S. citizen in 1989.

Last month, a native Egyptian and former instructor for the U.S. Army special forces admitted in a federal court to earlier connections to bin Laden’s organization and plans by that organization to attack U.S. targets, including embassies abroad.

An FBI indictment says people trained by al Qaeda participated in the 1993 attack on United States military personnel serving in a peacekeeping operation in Somalia, which resulted in the killing of 18 U.S. Army personnel.

Though not pointing to bin Laden specifically for the attack on the USS Cole, Yemeni officials have repeatedly said they believe the sophisticated attack appeared to be the work of Afghan groups.

The FBI hasn’t yet said it has identified any suspects.