Terror network built on outcasts

In the 1980s, Arab countries sent troublemakers off to the Afghan jihad - and unwittingly formed a radical army.

The ranks of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network were formed in part with the help of America's closest allies in the Arab world - Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

For a decade in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other pro-Western Arab governments in the Middle East packed their most dangerous Islamic militants off to the so-called Arab jihad - the fight against Soviet occupation - in Afghanistan.

It became a kind of Arab version of the "Dirty Dozen" - a dumping ground for Islamic militants who might otherwise stir up trouble in their home countries.

Some were killed in Afghanistan. But many others survived and organized into a global terrorist network capable of striking at the very heart of US economic and military power.

"Half the countries in the region, including our friends in Egypt, emptied their jails and sent all their troublemakers to Afghanistan with the hope that they might become martyred in the jihad," says Milt Bearden, former chief of Central Intelligence Agency programs in Afghanistan from 1986 to 1989. "But they didn't become martyred," he adds, "because they didn't fight all that much."

Although the CIA has often been accused in press accounts of having nurtured, trained, and supplied Mr. bin Laden and his associates, those who ran the covert aid programs in Afghanistan say the jihad was largely the creation of Saudi Arabia. "The CIA never had any operational relationship with any Afghan Arab - period," Mr. Bearden says.

Saudi Arabia's Arab jihad operation is an example of how the well-meaning efforts of American allies may in the longer run create complications as the United States tries to navigate through a Central Asian minefield of competing interests and unintended consequences. And it is all happening in a country that until a few weeks ago was barely an American afterthought.

The Arab force arrayed in support of the Taliban and presumably still headed by bin Laden is in part a legacy of the Saudi supported operation, as is the extended network of Al Qaeda associates, who are believed to be operating in some 50 countries around the world.

If the United States is to avoid the pitfalls of the former Soviets and the British in prior failed attempts to influence events in Afghanistan, analysts say, it will be necessary for American leaders to have a complete understanding not only of the various Afghan groups and their tangled agendas, but also of the often-conflicting agendas of US rivals and allies in the region.

"There are no white hats in Afghanistan," says Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington. "The key from now on will be not to get drawn into internal Afghan controversies, which are endless and manipulative."

Analysts say the Saudi royal family had good reason to facilitate the Arab jihad program in the 1980s. In broad terms they saw it as an opportunity to assert leadership in the Islamic community on behalf of Muslims facing oppression by communist invaders. They saw it as a chance to help their close ally Pakistan, while curbing the influence of neighboring Iran.

But they also had an important domestic reason for running the operation - self preservation. The operation arose in early 1980 at a time when the kingdom was facing a double-edged threat from resurgent Islamic fundamentalism in the region.

The rise of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran increased concerns about upheaval within the large population of Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province.

And, even more alarming to the Saudis, in November 1979, some 300 armed Sunni fundamentalists stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine. They called for a spontaneous uprising against the Saudi royal family.

It took the Saudis a month with the help of French and Jordanian commandos to recapture the Grand Mosque.

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