Connecting the Dots
Osama bin Laden and Terror Incorporated

by
Robert C. Gaylord
CEO Stratigent, Inc.

Printer Friendly Version PDF file for the full article will follow.

Back in 1994 an unknown Mideast advisor to the Secretary of the Air Force was researching events between the nations of North and South Yemen when he crossed the trail of an individual whose background, wealth, training and ideology caused the analyst to drop what he was doing and write an immediate warning memorandum to the Secretary of the Air Force and the AF Chief of Staff.

I was that analyst and the subject of that memorandum, the wealthy Saudi born son of a successful Yemeni family, was destined to become the blood enemy of the United States. But how that happened and why remains clouded in myth and mystery.

The events of 9/11 focused the attention of the entire world on a small band of extremists known as Al Qaeda, which means “the base”, and on their mysterious leader, Osama bin Laden (or Usama depending on the translation). But what did we know before that day and why couldn't we “connect the dots” on this terrorist mastermind?

What we knew before 9/11

Legend – Phase I

Actually in many ways the United States and allied intelligence communities did “connect the dots” on who this guy was. We knew that he was dangerous and capable of serious terrorist actions. What we didn't quite figure out was what to do about it. That is a policy problem.

The bin Laden family was not always rich, in fact the family was impoverished and living in Yemen until immigrating to Saudi Arabia after WWII. Osama's father, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, started a construction business in Jeddah at the very moment huge oil riches began to rain down on the Saudi Kingdom. The Bin Laden company won contracts for building mosques and palaces in the Kingdom and the bin Laden family developed close relations with the Saudi royal family, going on to become one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia with a fortune estimated in the billions of dollars.

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, in Arabic the word “bin” means “son of”, was born June 28, 1957 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia the 17 th of 52 children. Osama's father married four times, three of his wives were Saudi but the fourth, Osama's mother, was from Syria - thus creating a problem for Osama. Osama's childhood was a life of luxury with tutors and nannies, he and his half brothers (Osama was the only son of his mother) were playmates with children of the most prominent Saudi families including princes. But despite being wealthy and from a prominent family, those who knew Osama say his childhood was rather lonely because he was considered a double outsider, being born of a Yemeni father and Syrian mother in a country where parental lineage is an obsession and correct genealogy is the connection to power. In 1968 life got lonelier when Osama's father Mohammed died in a helicopter crash. Once the dust had settled Osama, at age thirteen had inherited eighty million dollars.

It was at this time that Osama bin Laden, or UBL as he is referred to in intelligence circles, joined the ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect of Islam; not an uncommon decision for young Saudis since Wahhabism is the official religion of Saudi Arabia. Wahhabi's practice an ultra-conservative and deconstructive form of Islam that was the driving ideological force of Saudi Arabia's founder and first king, Abdul Aziz. The foundational concept of Abdul Aziz' strategy of unification was “convert or die”, a strategy that results in lots of “conversion experiences”.

As a young man UBL went on to attend King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah where he met Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a teacher who was later to become a key figure in mobilizing Arab support for the Mujahedin fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Despite his Islamic beliefs, those who knew him in college say he was a free spending party kind of guy often drinking heavily and competing for the affections of dancers and barmaids. Since drinking, dancing and partying in general are not allowed in Saudi Arabia, these accounts are either false or belie his good relations with the Saudi royal family whose princes are known to operate private “clubs” where such things are available. UBL went on to graduate in 1979 with a degree in economics, management or civil engineering – the records vary.

1979 proved a pivotal year for the young UBL whose life would become entwined with the geometry of the three far-flung events; the Egyptian and Israeli peace treaty, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah. By his own words UBL stated that he was “enraged” by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and “went there at once”; however, his immediate expedition to the front lines was just a “story” and part of the legend he creates for himself. Intelligence reports indicate a different reality.

Reliable reporting indicates that UBL spent the first months following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan traveling the Persian Gulf region raising millions to finance a jihad against the Soviets. Donations to UBL's efforts often came from many legitimate sources and met with the hearty approval of the United States. It is important to note that popular opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was widespread and the United States viewed the disturbing events in the Near East and South Asia through the compelling lens of the Cold War. Funding sources for UBL's jihad effort included the Saudi government, religious leaders and business elites including from the Bin Laden Group, which had become a global company with operations on three continents.

UBL actually moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, a hub of jihadist activity located near the infamous jihad staging area known at the Khyber Pass, in 1984, five years after the Soviet invasion. About this time stories began to emerge about an elegant, almost mythical, “good Samaritan” wearing custom English clothes and hand made English shoes covered by the traditional shalwar kameez of the Afghan tribes (a blousy knee-length tunic top). The visitor would arrive unannounced at hospitals personally talking with wounded Afghan and Arab fighters, giving them chocolates and candy and carefully recording their names and addresses. Weeks later the families of these fighters would mysteriously receive a generous check. Other stories from the Afghan frontier told of an enigmatic Saudi who arrived by military cargo plane bringing bulldozers and heavy equipment and who immediately set about designing and building tunnels, storage depots and roads. The myth goes on that this man often drove the bulldozers himself across mountain peaks exposed to strafing from Soviet helicopter gunships. This mythic figure of hospitals and bulldozers turned out to be UBL and the equipment he brought came from The Bin Laden Group.

According to CIA sources in Afghanistan at the time, UBL was only one of many “Samaritan” jihadists who came with lots of money and assistance for the Mujahadin efforts against the Soviets. Their support, reportedly sometimes more than twenty five million dollars per month, added up to an extra two hundred fifty million dollars a year over what the US was providing through CIA sources. The CIA admits the financial support from these “bin Laden” types was crucial to the clandestine US effort in Afghanistan.

The CIA's station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989 stated that UBL spent most of the war as a fundraiser in Peshawar, not a valiant warrior on the battlefield. The CIA believes that UBL actually fought in only one significant battle, the battle of Ali Khel. According to those that were there the battle was won because the Soviets ran out of momentum just before the Mujahadin ran out of supplies. In this now legendary battle UBL began calling himself Abu Abdullah and tried to cast himself as a modern Salah al- Din (we know him as Saladin) the 12 th century Muslim military hero who successfully stopped the Crusaders and recaptured Jerusalem. As many as twenty-five Saudis were killed at the battle of Ali Khel, the CIA and jihad supporters like UBL made sure they became shaheeds – martyrs for the Mujahadin. As the myth of the “lion” of Aki Khel grew the US government took advantage of it by promoting the role of the Saudi shaheeds to encourage funding support from the Saudis, who eventually matched the US dollar for dollar in Afghanistan; in 1987 we put five hundred million dollars into Afghanistan and the Saudis matched it. Overall, the US spent over four billion dollars supporting the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

As UBL, and the CIA, nurtured his image as a heroic figure on the battlefield to enhance surreptitious fundraising for the Mujahadin, UBL's private networking in support of the Mujahadin grew more ominous because it was through these efforts that he met figures such as Hassan al-Turabi, an intellectual Islamist who eventually went on to control the brutal Islamic government of Sudan. UBL also cultivated close relationships with numerous Pakistani generals in the intelligence service and met regularly with the former military ruler of Pakistan, President Zia ul-Haq, who was the CIA's conduit for arms to the Mujahadin. UBL also became close with some of the most anti-Western Afghan resistance leaders including the Egyptian cleric now serving life behind bars in the US for “waging urban terrorism in the US”, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.

Legend - Phase II

When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, UBL returned to Jeddah to take his place in the family business. But as oil prices began to collapse Saudi Arabia faced growing social and economic problems and the Saudi royal family became more repressive and corrupt as it tried to hang onto power. UBL began to criticize the Saudi regime for its abuses and openly supported opposition groups. Reprising his family role as the “outsider” UBL ignored the efforts of his more connected siblings and the royal princes he grew up with as they tried to get UBL tone it down a bit. Even the governor of Riyadh, Prince Salman, whom UBL had worked with during the jihad attempted to restrain him.

For a season UBL focused his attention on personal matters, producing heirs and expanding his business and financial holdings that by 1990 included more that sixty companies worldwide. He took four wives, all chosen for political connections or pedigree and fathered ten children. During this time UBL came under the tutelage of Saudi Arabia's most militant clerics, Sheikhs Safar Hawali and Salman Awdah. The views of these clerics were considered revolutionary by the Saudi regime and UBL to this day promotes their religious findings, or fatwas. By 1991 the royal family had had enough and King Fahd expelled UBL from the country. UBL sought refuge with his friend Hassan al-Turabi of Sudan.

Legend - Phase III - Terror Incorporated

As world events began to focus on Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, UBL's radical Islamic views accelerated. When Saudi Arabia permitted US troops to occupy the kingdom during and after the Gulf War, UBL's hatred for the Saudi royal family and the US grew. In his mind the US in Saudi Arabia was no different than the Soviets in Afghanistan – infidels propping up a corrupt, repressive, un-Islamic government.

During his five year exile in Sudan UBL began dispersing his wealth, now estimated at over two hundred fifty million dollars, in foreign bank accounts and placing it at the disposal of militant Islamic groups around the world. The Saudi government warned UBL that his anti-Saudi activities would not be tolerated, a warning he ignored. In the early nineties the Saudi government secretly dispatched hit teams to Khartoum to “deal” with UBL; they were unsuccessful. By 1994 the House of Saud, with the urging of the US, did something risky and totally out of character, they acted publicly instead of secretly and stripped UBL of his Saudi citizenship, most of his properties and significant assets – enraging the fundamentalist community. None of this proved effective in curtailing UBL's increasingly anti-US and anti-Saudi activities.

The Saudi government, nothing if not pragmatic, having determined that their previous strategy was not working tried a new, more counter-intuitive approach; in November 1996 UBL claims the Saudi royal family invited him to return to Saudi Arabia, restore his assets and citizenship in return for an oath of allegiance to King Fahd. This preposterous offer reveals the regime's total misunderstanding of what motivated UBL and his crusade against the house of Saud. Today Saudi officials will not confirm or deny that such an offer was ever made, but they remain totally at a loss of how to deal with UBL.

Recently declassified documents also reveal that while in Sudan UBL established and financed three terrorist training camps and paid for five hundred “Afghan Arabs” to leave Pakistan, where they were under threat of expulsion, and train in his camps in the Sudan.

Establishing profitable joint ventures with the Sudanese government, UBL created a new entity – the terrorist industrial complex. Mixing terror and profit, a new twist on the age old game of war and profit, UBL eventually paid for thousands of former Mujahadin Arab fighters to train in his military style camps, managers and economists were brought in to run his businesses and those with diplomatic skills were positioned to liaison with more than a dozen UBL supported militant Islamic groups.

Legend - Phase IV

So is UBL the primary source of terrorist evil? No, say the experts, UBL is more visionary godfather than mastermind. But, what UBL created is decidedly more dangerous than what Abu Nidal (brilliant mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking who was recently captured in Baghdad by US forces) and his technically sophisticated, highly organized terrorism structure could ever hope to be. UBL and al-Qaeda is not an organization per se, or a clear network, it is essentially a brotherhood, a source for funding, training, intelligence and leadership. Al-Qaeda easily morphs into whatever is necessary according to the threat and the desire of its leader, and that leader is UBL. The brilliance of al-Qaeda is it's informal, even tribal nature, structure and tactical independence. The ‘base' is difficult to infiltrate because the organization relies on long standing personal relationships in exactly the same way as Arab culture relies on personal relationships and the “trust of the handshake”.

If UBL were gone tomorrow Al Qaeda's vision and leadership would suffer in the near term, but the “terror industrial complex” structure, funding, training and intelligence capability would remain. That is the true danger, UBL created an organization that will survive the loss of its CEO and chairman. Therefore, taking UBL out is only part of what is required, the real challenge will be infiltrating and destroying the network of cells – a task that will likely go on for decades. Make no mistake; UBL's demise would be a devastating blow to Al Qaeda primarily because he is the spiritual visionary of radical Islam's particular jihad against the US and the Saudi Royal family.

Legend - Phase V

Perhaps the greater long-term threat of this jihad is that it intends to point the barrel of its terror weapon not just against the US (in fact we are just a secondary target), but also against moderate Islamic regimes and eventually all who do not follow their form of Wahhabi faith. Wahhabism's draconian “repent or die” form of evangelism is how Saudi Arabia's first king, Abdul Aziz was able to unite a mezzo continent of fiercely independent tribes - he had the military power to kill those who would not repent. This approach creates lots of new converts, but the only way to keep them converts is deny them a broad education and focus their understanding of the Koran on the Wahhabi approved doctrines to the detriment of the intent of the Koran on the whole.

Because of his broader agenda, UBL supports terror groups across the globe, groups we are now becoming very familiar with. Gama'a al-Islamiya, al-Jihad, and Islamic fighters in all the sticky corners of the planet including Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kosovo, Kashmir, Bosnia, Tajikistan, Philippines and Indonesia. And yet during this time we didn't see the network, we saw the man. In 1996 the Clinton administration pressured the Sudanese government to expel UBL. He flew back to Afghanistan with two planeloads of wealth and the ability to create infrastructure. Upon arrival in Afghanistan something ominous happens – Osama meets Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. Until this moment the Taliban were only an irritating student group causing trouble for the Afghan government. But UBL needed a hole to hide and Omar needed money, a match made in heaven.

UBL applied millions to the Taliban efforts and instead of merely being a growing irritation - they became conquerors. Only three months after UBL's arrival in Afghanistan, the capital of Kabul had fallen to the Taliban and Omar had married into UBL's family. (One of Mullah Omar's sons married one of UBL's daughters, a traditional Arab way of perfecting an alliance.)

What Omar and UBL created in Afghanistan was an ideology-centric, culturally intolerant brand of rule that invested its energies building terror training infrastructure and gaining control of tribal alliances and regional rulers through the power of force and money - making Afghanistan the perfect hideout for UBL's strategy of terror – preparing an army of Jihadists organized into a transnational franchise - Terror Incorporated.

The legend of UBL became the foundational energy for a movement that has literally changed the world – the next installment of Connecting the Dots will examine – UBL and Terror Incorporated – Execution of Terror .