'80s Allies Are Today's Terrorists

Anti-soviet Operations Come Back To Haunt U.s.

August 21, 1998|By Stephen J. Hedges, Washington Bureau.

When U.S. cruise missiles hurtled toward their targets in Afghanistan and Sudan Thursday, they refocused world attention on one longtime center of terrorism and introduced Americans to another base of global terror that is more obscure.

With its action, the U.S. hoped to blunt a sharp terrorist sword that officials said threatened to strike again at American interests abroad. But the missile strikes, they admit, also could lead to renewed attacks in retaliation.

Almost 20 years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency launched what many believe to be one of its most successful covert operations, the arming of Afghanistan's mujahedeen, or holy warriors in their 10-year war against an invading Soviet army.

The CIA-backed conflict left a legacy of seasoned warriors in Islamic countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as well as a stockpile of sophisticated weapons and nearly 20 training camps, some of which have remained in continuous use.

No one has benefited more from this extensive network of arms and men than Osama bin Laden, the man Thursday's cruise missile strikes in Afghanistan and in Khartoum, Sudan, were intended to silence. American and Israeli intelligence officials say they have overwhelming evidence that places bin Laden at the hub of a far-flung network of extremist Islamic terrorists who share an intense hatred of the United States.

A wealthy Saudi businessman who left his nation to help fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, bin Laden has aligned himself closely to Afghanistan's dominant Taliban force and has used the country as a base for terrorist operations since 1996.

From that safe haven his forces and financial network have wreaked varying degrees of havoc, terrorism experts contend, in places as distant and different as New York City, where the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where 19 U.S. airmen died in a 1996 truck bombing.

Afghanistan, though, was a source of trouble long before bin Laden was. In 1979, the Central Intelligence Agency launched a $500 million-a-year campaign to arm and train the impoverished, outgunned mujahedeen guerrillas in their fight to oust Soviet troops.

The majority of the weapons, including shoulder-held stinger anti-aircraft missiles, went to the forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the lead of the Hezb-I-Islami, or Party of Islam. But there were seven mujahedeen factions, including one headed by bin Laden, the millionaire son of a Saudi construction magnate.

"There was a great deal of competition between the factions," says Edward Juchniewicz, a former associate deputy director of operations for the CIA. "Naturally, the Pakistanis and we were looking for the factions that had a formidable force and leadership. I can state categorically that there was no support of any kind from the U.S. to bin Laden."

Nevertheless, the CIA effort left Afghanistan with an elaborate warmaking infrastructure. With its mountainous terrain and radical Islamic leadership, the country became a natural terrorist proving ground in the decade following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Mujahedeen veterans popped up to wage Islamic fights in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Somalia and half a dozen other places.

Just as the Soviets were quitting Afghanistan, Sudan blossomed as a new center of militant Islamic thought and action with the ascension of Hassan al Turabi. He holds no official government title, but is regarded as the brains and inspiration for Sudan's efforts to become a headquarters of militant Islamic groups.

Bin Laden found favor there as well, moving to Sudan in the early 1990s. He ran a construction company, an export-import business and a bank in the North African nation, according to Ken Katzman, a terrorism expert with the Congressional Research Service in Washington.

In the fields north of Khartoum, bin Laden's laborers grew gum arabic and sesame seeds and corn for cooking oil. In other fields north of the city, bin Laden freedom fighters were housed and trained.

"It's all logical," Katzman said. "He's got this construction company, this bank. He's allowed to operate freely in Sudan. His soldiers start showing up everywhere, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia."

Sudan, which shares a border with Kenya--site of one of the two bombing attacks on U.S. embassies two weeks ago--has long been a concern of the U.S. and other Western nations. Six years ago, the State Department listed Sudan as a nation that actively supports terrorism. Iran also played an influential role during the period, with soldiers from the Republican Guard visiting to encourage work in the training camps.

Terrorism experts and intelligence officers saw the presence of both bin Laden and Iranian guards in Sudan as particularly ominous.

"This looked like a very powerful terrorist alliance at that time," Katzman says. "But since bin Laden left Sudan, his relations with Iranians have diminished."

Until Thursday, any Western concerns over Sudan's support of terrorism were voiced largely through diplomatic condemnations and occasional diplomatic and economic fits of pique.

Bin Laden was forced to leave Sudan for Afghanistan in 1996 under pressure from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. His removal, though, seems to have only bolstered his movement. By striking both of his haunts Thursday, U.S. strategists hope to have dealt him a crippling blow.

"The reality is that the U.S. really hit two nerve centers," said David Halevy, an author and terrorism expert.

Afghanistan, Halevy said, is the place that bin Laden now works from, but "Sudan is the base, and has been for years now, for all the training of all kinds of crazy (terrorists)."