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November 28, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
November 25, 2001
Ralph Nader
The Crisis
in Leadership
Sam Bahour
Israel's
Choice
November 24, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
He Who
Has
the Guns Rules
November 23, 2001
Phyllis
Pollack
Long
Live The Clash
Cockburn/St. Clair
The Press
and
the Patriot Act
November 22, 2001
Oscar
Gonzalez
A
Homeland Thanksgiving
November 21, 2001
CounterPunch Wire
Rep. Chambliss
Calls for Arrest of Every Muslim That Enters Georgia
Tom Turnipseed
Broadcasting
and Bombing
David Price
Academia Under
Attack
Molly
Secours
Modern
Day Witch Trials
Tariq Ali
Killing
Mr. Biswas
November 20, 2001
Sam Bahour
Plain
Truths About Palestine
Michael Ratner
Moving Toward
a
Police State
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 19, 2001
Edward
Said
Suicidal
Ignorance
November 18, 2001
John Farley
Shame on You,
Chelsea!
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
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The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
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November 28,
2001
A Continuum of
Terror:
From Mujahedeen to al-Qaeda
By Tom Turnipseed
A native of Egypt, Ali Abdelsoud Mohamed rose
to the rank of major in Egypt's special forces before being forced
out of Egypt's military in 1984 because he was considered a religious
extremist. Much later he was identified as a secret member of
the Islamic Jihad movement that assassinated Egypt's President
Sadat in 1981. According to an amazing front page story in the
Wall Street Journal on November 26 headlined The Infiltrator,
"Ali Mohamed Served In the U.S. Army--And bin Laden's Inner
Circle," it is implicit that the FBI and the CIA would have
had to have knowledge of Mohamed's chameleon-like lifestyle.
Mohamed was able to obtain a visa, marry an American woman, become
a U.S. citizen, settle in California and somehow become a U.S.
Army sergeant by 1986. Until 1989, he was a supply sergeant and
lecturer on Mid-east culture at the U.S. Army's special warfare
school at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a place where he had studied
earlier as an Egyptian officer.
Even though the U.S.. Army and the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment to Journal reporters,
Mr. Mohamed's new friends in California took it for granted that
he was working for the CIA in their proxy war against the Soviets
in Afghanistan. The CIA helped recruit, organize and finance
the mujahedeen in an anti-Soviet Jihad throughout the Muslim
world. Ali Zaki, a San Jose obstetrician and close friend of
Mr. Mohamed, told the Journal that "Everyone in the community
knew he was working as a liaison between the CIA and the Afghan
cause." Mr. Mohamed brought Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader
Dr. Ayman Zawahri, who is now thought to be bin Laden's right
hand man, with him to California in the early 1990s on a fund-raising
trip, ostensibly for the Kuwaiti Red Crescent. Mr. Mohamed was
also deeply involved with a group in New York headed by a "fiery
blind imam," Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. They set up the Kitah
Refugee Center in Brooklyn, established to help the mujahedeen
in the anti-Soviet Jihad, but by the 1990s it began turning into
an al-Queda front. The group was implicated in the assassination
of the extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York as well as the
World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
The Wall Street Journal reported that
the F.B.I. questioned Mr. Mohamed in 1993 and he told them Mr.
Bin Laden was running a group called al-Queda "and was building
an army". Many of the mujahedeen liberation fighters who
fought with bin Laden in Afghanistan became al-Queda members
under bin Laden's leadership. It was not until 1998, following
the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, that
Mohamed was arrested. He pled guilty to the East African bombings
and is awaiting sentencing in federal prison. Nabil Sharef, a
former Egyptian intelligence officer, told the Journal, "For
five years he was moving back and forth between the U.S. and
Afghanistan. It's impossible the CIA thought he was going there
as a tourist." Like Dr. Frankenstein's creation, the CIA's
invention of the marvelous mujahedeen to rid Afghanistan of the
Soviets has turned into the "evil-doing" al-Queda that
attacked America.
The latest news from the war in Afghanistan
has a bitterly ironic, but interesting, story on the continuum
of terror from the mujahedeen to al-Queda. Like the Saudi Arabian
leader, bin Laden, the mujahedeen were recruited by the CIA from
across the Arab world to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in
the 1980s. Many of those same Arabs are now Taliban or al-Queda,
and U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has proclaimed they cannot
leave Afghanistan alive. Rumsfeld wants them either killed or
made prisoners, but not allowed to go home to Saudi Arabia or
Egypt or wherever they were recruited from in the Arab world.
There are news reports of the summary
executions by the Northern Alliance of several hundred prisoners
of war including "foreigners" among the Taliban and
more killings of "foreign Arabs" in a controversial
"prison revolt" in the Northern Alliance controlled
city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The U.S.'s Persian Gulf allies, led by
Saudi Arabia, are calling for the repatriation of the "foreign"
fighters. Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz
told reporters, "We hope that all people who are of Arab
or Islamic origin in Afghanistan can return to their country
of origin.... We hope that no one will be subject to injustice."
Given the miserable human rights record
of many elements of the Northern Alliance who now occupy the
Afghan capitol of Kabul, where they raped, murdered and pillaged
as recently as 1996, human rights advocates have an overwhelming
sense of foreboding about the future of the strife-ridden land.
The Northern Alliance seems to have the upper hand in forming
a new government as remnants of the Taliban and al-Queda are
either destroyed or dissolve into the caves and barren countryside.
Meanwhile, back in the laboratories of Washington, D.C., is Dr.
Frankenstein concocting another invention that will extend the
continuum of terror?
Tom Turnipseed
is an attorney, writer and civil rights activist in Columbia,
SC. http://www.turnipseed.net
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