How the CIA created Osama bin Laden

How the CIA created Osama bin Laden - by Norm Dixon

"Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are on the defensive — on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They're doing so on almost every continent populated by man — in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters."
 
Is this a call to jihad (holy war) taken from one of Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden's notorious fatwas? Or perhaps a communique issued by the repressive Taliban regime in Kabul?
In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today's supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators, and their holy war against the "evil empire", was issued by US President Ronald Reagan on March 8, 1985. The "evil empire" was the Soviet Union, as well as Third World movements fighting US-backed colonialism, apartheid and dictatorship.

How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities — the most despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working people in New York and Washington on September 11 — bin Laden the "freedom fighter" is now lambasted by US leaders and the Western mass media as a "terrorist mastermind" and an "evil-doer".

Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the vicious movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists that plague Algeria and Egypt — and perhaps the disaster that befell New York.

The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his toxic brand of Islamic fundamentalism.

Mujaheddin

In April 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that country's repressive government.

The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the peasants, trade union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality for women and the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported strengthening Afghanistan's relationship with the Soviet Union.

Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal landlords, the Muslim religious establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal chiefs. They immediately began organising resistance to the government's progressive policies, under the guise of defending Islam.

Washington, fearing the spread of Soviet influence (and worse the new government's radical example) to its allies in Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states, immediately offered support to the Afghan mujaheddin, as the "contra" force was known.

Following an internal PDPA power struggle in December 1979 which toppled Afghanistan's leader, thousands of Soviet troops entered the country to prevent the new government's fall. This only galvanised the disparate fundamentalist factions. Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a "national liberation" struggle in the eyes of many Afghans.

The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and the mujaheddin captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.

Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden, provided millions more.

Washington's policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was continued by his successors. His plan went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it aimed to foster an international movement to spread Islamic fanaticism into the Muslim Central Asian Soviet republics to destabilise the Soviet Union.

Brzezinski's grand plan coincided with Pakistan military dictator General Zia ul-Haq's own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe beamed Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while paradoxically denouncing the "Islamic revolution" that toppled the pro-US Shah of Iran in 1979).

Attack of the drones

CIA Drone Strikes in Pakistan 2004 – 2012

Total US strikes: 343
Obama strikes: 291
Total reported killed: 2,558-3,319
Civilians reported killed: 474-881
Children reported killed: 176
Total reported injured: 1,226-1,359

US Covert Action in Yemen 2002 – 2012

Total confirmed US operations (all): 51-61
Total confirmed US drone strikes: 39-49
Possible additional US operations: 115-130
Possible additional US drone strikes: 59-69
Total reported killed (all): 347-1,005
Total civilians killed (all): 58-165
Children killed (all): 24-31

US Covert Action in Somalia 2007 – 2012

Total US strikes: 10-21
Total US drone strikes: 3-9
Total reported killed: 58-169
Civilians reported killed: 11-57
Children reported killed: 1-3

Rohingya - The Forgotten People

They are branded as one of the most persecuted communities in the world by the UN, yet nobody knows their name. They are the forgotten people.

In recent weeks, the escalating violence has displaced more than 90,000 Rohingya people. Villages are being burnt, people are being abducted, concentration camps are being created, women are being raped and children mercilessly killed. The persecution against the Rohingya can be described in no other terms but that of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Charity

The Prophet Muhamad s.aw said: 'Charity is a necessity for every Muslim. ' He was asked: 'What if a person has nothing?' The Prophet s.a.w replied: 'He should work with his own hands for his benefit and then give something out of such earnings in charity.' The Companions asked: 'What if he is not able to work?' The Prophet s.a.w said: 'He should help poor and needy persons.' The Companions further asked 'What if he cannot do even that?' The Prophet s.a.w said 'He should urge others to do good.' The Companions said 'What if he lacks that also?' The Prophet s.a.w said 'He should check himself from doing evil. That is also charity.'

The dark side of Globalization

- Many people have suffered from globalization but they clearly aren't the only species. Surprisingly, the environments in developing counties have been negatively affected as well. Many companies use toxic chemicals during production, these are later often dumped into nearby rivers as there are as foreign corporations do not apply standard procedures to developing countries. The result of this is polluted water, dead plants and animals.

- Besides from exploiting countries and making health literally worse, globalization is viewed by many as a threat to the world's cultural diversity. It is said to drown out local economies, traditions and languages and re-casting the whole world in the mould of the capitalist North and West.

- Its is clear that globalization clearly operates in the interests of the richest countries which continue to dominate world trade and at the expense of developing countries, whose role in the world market is mostly to provide cheap labor and raw materials. The fact is that globalization will never stop and while people say it is beneficial, it is also being unfair to poor countries. Perhaps it is best that richer countries reconsider many of their selfish actions and instead of just taking for poorer countries, they should try to help out and give.

What Killed Arafat?

It was a scene that riveted the world for weeks: The ailing Yasser Arafat, first besieged by Israeli tanks in his Ramallah compound, then shuttled to Paris, where he spent his final days undergoing a barrage of medical tests in a French military hospital.
Eight years after his death, it remains a mystery exactly what killed the longtime Palestinian leader. Tests conducted in Paris found no obvious traces of poison in Arafat’s system. Rumors abound about what might have killed him – cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, even allegations that he was infected with HIV.
A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera has revealed that none of those rumors were true: Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on October 12, 2004.
More importantly, tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat’s blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died.
“I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute.
The findings have led Suha Arafat, his widow, to ask the Palestinian Authority to exhume her late husband’s body from its grave in Ramallah. If tests show that Arafat’s bones contain high levels of polonium, it would be more conclusive proof that he was poisoned, doctors say.
“I know the Palestinian Authority has been trying to discover what Yasser died from,” Suha Arafat said in an interview. “And now we are helping them. We have very substantial, very important results.”

Unsupported polonium

The institute studied Arafat’s personal effects, which his widow provided to Al Jazeera, the first time they had been examined by a laboratory. Doctors did not find any traces of common heavy metals or conventional poisons, so they turned their attention to more obscure elements, including polonium.
 It is a highly radioactive element used, among other things, to power spacecraft. Marie Curie discovered it in 1898, and her daughter Irene was among the first people it killed: She died of leukemia several years after an accidental polonium exposure in her laboratory.
At least two people connected with Israel’s nuclear program also reportedly died after exposure to the element, according to the limited literature on the subject.
But polonium’s most famous victim was Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy-turned-dissident who died in London in 2006 after a lingering illness. A British inquiry found that he was poisoned with polonium slipped into his tea at a sushi restaurant.
There is little scientific consensus about the symptoms of polonium poisoning, mostly because there are so few recorded cases. Litvinenko suffered severe diarrhea, weight loss, and vomiting, all of which were symptoms Arafat exhibited in the days and weeks after he initially fell ill.
Animal studies have found similar symptoms, which lingered for weeks - depending on the dosage – until the subject died. “The primary radiation target… is the gastrointestinal tract,” said an American study conducted in 1991, “activating the ‘vomiting centre’ in the brainstem.”
Scientists in Lausanne found elevated levels of the element on Arafat’s belongings - in some cases, they were ten times higher than those on control subjects, random samples which were tested for comparison.
The lab’s results were reported in millibecquerels (mBq), a scientific unit used to measure radioactivity.
Polonium is present in the atmosphere, but the natural levels that accumulate on surfaces barely register, and the element disappears quickly. Polonium-210, the isotope found on Arafat's belongings, has a half-life of 138 days, meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every four-and-a-half months. “Even in case of a poisoning similar to the Litvinenko case, only traces of the order of a few [millibecquerels] were expected to be found in [the] year 2012,” the institute noted in its report to Al Jazeera.
But Arafat’s personal effects, particularly those with bodily fluids on them, registered much higher levels of the element. His toothbrushes had polonium levels of 54mBq; the urine stain on his underwear, 180mBq. (Another man’s pair of underwear, used as a control, measured just 6.7mBq.)
Further tests, conducted over a three-month period from March until June, concluded that most of that polonium – between 60 and 80 per cent, depending on the sample – was “unsupported,” meaning that it did not come from natural sources.

‘It was a crime’

Doctors in Lausanne, and elsewhere, also ruled out a range of other possible causes for Arafat’s death, based on his original medical file, which Ms. Arafat also provided to Al Jazeera. Their examination ruled out many of the other causes of death that have been rumored over the last eight years.
 There was not liver cirrhosis, apparently no traces of cancer, no leukemia,” said Dr. Patrice Mangin, the head of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Lausanne University. “Concerning HIV, AIDS – there was no sign, and the symptomology was not suggesting these things.”
Dr. Tawfik Shaaban, a Tunisian specialist in HIV and one of the doctors who examined Arafat in his Ramallah compound, confirmed that there were no signs of the disease.
Their conclusions, of course, were based on documentation rather than firsthand examination. Doctors in Lausanne had hoped to study the blood and urine samples taken from Arafat while he was at Percy Military Hospital in France. But when she requested access, the hospital told his widow that those samples had been destroyed.
“I was not satisfied with that answer,” Ms. Arafat said. “Usually a very important person, like Yasser, they would keep traces – maybe they don’t want to be involved in it?”
Several of the doctors who treated Arafat said that they were not allowed to discuss his case – even with Ms. Arafat’s permission – because it was considered a “military secret.” And most of his onetime doctors in Cairo and Tunis refused requests for interviews as well.
With those avenues of inquiry closed, Arafat’s body itself would be the last remaining source of conclusive evidence. Exhuming it would require approval from the Palestinian Authority; shipping bone samples outside of the West Bank would require permission from the Israeli government.
Whatever the outcome, Ms. Arafat said she hopes further tests would “remove a lot of doubt” about her husband’s still-mysterious death.
“We got into this very, very painful conclusion, but at least this removes this great burden on me, on my chest,” she said. “At least I’ve done something to explain to the Palestinian people, to the Arab and Muslim generation all over the world, that it was not a natural death, it was a crime.”
A conclusive finding that Arafat was poisoned with polonium would not, of course, explain who killed him. It is a difficult element to produce, though – it requires a nuclear reactor – and the signature of the polonium in Arafat’s bones could provide some insight about its origin.

- Source : Al Jazeera