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Today Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric, is serving a life sentence in the United States for plotting to blow up the United Nations, Manhattan's FBI building, the George Washington Bridge and other New York City landmarks, while Dr. al-Zawahiri, a squat, bespectacled zealot with a round head and owlish face, appears in post-9/11 video footage sitting on the right-hand side of Osama bin Laden. Dubbed "the brains behind al-Qaeda," al-Zawahiri became bin Laden's top deputy after the Egyptian physician had matriculated through the ranks of the Muslim Brothers. Muslim Brotherhood veterans have played a prominent role during every phase of bin Laden’s terrorist odyssey. As a college student he was mentored by Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian Brother, who convinced the young Saudi to join the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, a cause embraced by Islamists worldwide, moderates and radicals alike, after the Red Army invaded in 1979. That same year, Islamists Shiite revolutionaries led by the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew America’s longtime partner, the Shah of Iran. These tumultuous events underscored the geopolitical importance of the Saudi connection to unnerved US officials. Henceforth, Saudi Arabia would serve as a Sunni Muslim bulwark against Shiite extremism, while also matching the United States dollar for dollar in support of the Afghan mujahedin guerillas who were fighting against the Soviets.
In 1984, Azzam and bin Laden jointly set up the Service Bureay, based in Peshawar, which played a pivotal role in organizing Islamic militants from 43 countries, including the United States, who flocked to Pakistan’s North-West Frontier territory to join the anti-communist jihad. With contacts spread across North Africa and the Middle East the Muslim Brotherhood was instrumental in recruiting many of these foreign Islamic volunteers. Jane’s Defence Weekly estimates that 14,000 of the so-called “Afghan Arabs” (though none were Afghans and many were not Arabs) trained in guerrilla camps, where paramilitary drills were infused with radical Islamic teachings. Some of these outside agitators fought along side CIA-backed mujahedin units during clashes with the Red Army.
Once again, an off-the-shelf approach to nation-tampering was deemed preferable by US intelligence as the Afghanistan operation grew by leaps and bounds during the 1980’s. It became the largest covert intervention in the CIA’s history, with Washington’s funneling more than $3 billion worth of aid and military equipment to the mujahedin through Pakistan military intelligence, which served as a conduit for American and Saudi largesse. In Ghost Wars, a compelling narrative history of the CIA’s Afghan imbroglio Steve Coll discusses how this cut-out arrangement provided US intelligence with a layer of deniability while its Pakistan proxy pushed aside traditional Afghan mujahedin organizations lacking the requitsite fundamentalist ardor and boosted the four mujahedin groups led by militants aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. The CIA, according to Cole, never pressed Pakistan to back the more moderate, nationalist-oriented mujahedin rebels instead of the radical Islamic Afghan leaders who touted the writings of Sayyid Qutb, which were translated into local Afghan dialects.
A well-known figure among the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Afghan factions, bin Laden also collaborated with top Saudi and Pakistani espionage officers. Although bin Laden had no official contact with the CIA, his efforts to create an Islamic foreign legion were generally looked upon with favor by US intelligence. The more anti-communist forces in the fray the better, they figured. The going assumption was that these bearded extremists could be revved up and covertly deployed when Washington needed “a cheap no-American-casualties way to fight the Soviet Union,” as Baer put it.
Some of Baer’s colleagues at the CIA thought the foreign legion contingent should be formally endorsed and expanded. “The CIA examined ways to increase their participation… but nothing came of it,” then-CIA deputy director Robert Gates said of the Islamic volunteers, who, if nothing else, were useful from a public relations perspective. The burgeoning international brigade was touted as proof that the entire Muslim world stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Afghan mujahedin against the Evil Empire. No one at the CIA reckoned that the foreign legionnaires had their own agenda.
Even before the Red Army withdrew the last of its regiments from Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden was already hatching ambitious plans to wage a worldwide jihad. The Soviet pull out prompted a wholesale scattering of foreign volunteers, who retruned to their respective countries imbued witht eh spirit of Islamic revolution and ready to carry on the struggle. About 1000 militants remained in Afghanistan, many of these men could not go home because they were wanted for crimes against the state. This self-selecting stay-behind network formed the core of al-Qaeda, which became even leaner and meaner when bin Laden transferred his base of operations to the Sudan in 1991.
For the next five years, bin Laden and his inner circle were holed up in Khartoum courtesy of Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi, the Sorbonne-educated head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Sudanese branch. Dubbed the “black pope”, Turabi came to power on the heels of a military coup and immediately announced that Islamic law would be strictly enforced in his country. He was hin Laden’s protector during this crucial period of exile, together they hosted strategic powwow’s with representatives from several Islamic terrorist organizations, including Hamas, a Palestinian offshoot of the Brotherhood. There was considerable debate among jihadists over whether to target the “near enemy” (apostate regimes in the Muslim world or the “far enemy ,” (the Western powers thwarting the implementation of Islamic rule.) More militants parted ways with al-Qaeda when it’s leadership dominated by Egyptian veterans of the Muslim Brotherhood , decided to go after “the head of the snake, “ which is how they described the United States.
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