Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 377.

The Afghanistan War

First of all it is necessary to introduce Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network as well as the Taliban Regime and the Northern Alliance.

The terror network al-Qaeda was founded by Osama Bin Laden in the late eighties. Originally al-Qaeda was thought to be a resistance network working against Soviet troops after the USSR had occupied Afghanistan. At this time the terror group was supported by Saudi Arabia and the USA. When the USSR abandoned Afghanistan al-Qaeda's structure and motives changed. Now its asserted aims are terror against tolerant governments in Islamic countries, the killing of Americans and attacks on its allies. Al-Qaeda has more than 20,000 supporters and followers, most of them in Afghanistan. The terror network includes training camps, storehouses and communication buildings. Its financial sources are protection money, blackmailing, donations (mainly by Arabian regimes and oil billionaires) and drug trafficking. Eighty percent of the world's heroin production originates from Afghanistan. Secret services have estimated that Islamic terror organisations control up to $25 billion. Although al-Qaeda's base is in Afghanistan, the network is operating worldwide .The organisation is suspected of having committed attacks against U.S. establishments in Riad, Saudi Arabia, in 1995. Osama Bin Laden accepted responsibility for the attacks on U.S. soldiers in Somalia in October 1993 and for the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, where 224 people were killed and more than 5000 were injured. Al-Qaeda was also linked to the assault against the U.S. American warship "USS Cole" on October 12, 2000, when 17 crew members lost their lives.

All these attacks were characteristic of the al-Qaeda network. They were all committed by suicide assassins, they were coordinated to take place on the same day, their aim was to kill as many Americans as possible, they had been planned over a long period of time and they were all committed without prior warnings. All these points are consistent with the attacks on 9/11. So it was obvious very early that al-Qaeda was responsible for the terror attacks on September 11.