- Bin Laden Has A Network
Of Sleepers Across North America
By Ahmed Rashid
The real fear
for the future since the attacks in New York and Washington is that dozens, perhaps
hundreds of operatives loyal to Al'Qaeda are in America and Canada ready to strike again,
awaiting a call from Osama Bin Laden.
Al'Qaeda, or The Base, also
has supporters in almost every European country and active cells in 34 nations.
In every terrorist act by
Al'Qaeda since the early 1990s bin Laden has ensured that the actual suicide bombers were
"sleepers", long-time residents of the countries they attacked, with ordinary
jobs, identity papers and a social and family life. Bin Laden has spent a decade building
up such networks of individuals, some of whom have never traveled to Afghanistan to meet
him.
A Pakistani official said:
"Bombing Afghanistan and bin Laden will just be lopping off the top of the tree, it
will not be taking out all the branches, which are everywhere."
Building up such a network
has required money, weapons and secure sanctuaries and staging areas, which bin Laden has
acquired only because the West has ignored the civil war in Afghanistan for a decade.
Bin Laden set up Al'Qaeda in
Peshawar, Pakistan, in the late 1980s as a welfare organization to pay pensions to the
widows and orphans of Arabs who had died while fighting Soviet troops alongside the Afghan
Mujaheddin.
It expanded as bin Laden set
up businesses, training schools and money laundering rings in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan
and the Middle East.
He also had the resources of
his wealthy family, the largest construction magnates in Saudi Arabia. His personal wealth
was estimated by the CIA at £160 million, although much of that was frozen by America
after Al'Qaeda bombed two US embassies in Africa in 1998.
Since then bin Laden has
raised funds by drugs trafficking from Afghanistan and smuggling consumer goods from Dubai
and other ports in the Arabian Gulf to Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia.
Bin Laden has also ignored
the world banking system in favor of "hundi". For decades, millions of migrant
workers from the Indian subcontinent who work in the Arab states use Pakistani and Indian
money lenders to send earnings home.
Last year Pakistan's State
Bank received about £540 million in remittances from the country's migrant workers. Hundi
delivered an estimated £2 billion. It is an informal system, which uses chits of paper,
telephone calls and word of mouth.
Workers in the Gulf hand
over their earnings to money lenders, who phone their agents scattered in towns and
villages in the home country, who in turn deliver the same sum to the families of the
workers.
Hundi is now operating in
America, Canada and Britain, and bin Laden has tapped into this risk-free system. The US
attacks were likely to have been funded through hundi.
Afghanistan and the Taliban
have provided extraordinary facilities not available anywhere in the shadowy world of
international terrorism. Thousands of Al'Qaeda recruits spend six months of the year
fighting for the Taliban, gaining battle experience and training in the use of weapons and
explosives.
Since 1998, bin Laden has
used fax, telephone and e-mail connections from Pakistan rather than Afghanistan, as
satellite communications in Afghanistan are too closely monitored by the CIA.
Al'Qaeda is an umbrella
organization that now includes dozens of militant groups from around the Muslim world. Bin
Laden provides funds, training facilities in Afghanistan and overall direction, but he
does not necessarily provide daily control. Instead, these groups, such as the 20
Algerians arrested in Europe this summer, have their own agendas, which are not
necessarily communicated to bin Laden, unless there are big operations such as the
American attacks.
By distancing himself from
these sub-groups, bin Laden has confidently been able to deny responsibility for every act
of terrorism he has carried out, even though he has always praised the perpetrators, just
as he has denied involvement in the American attacks but praised the suicide bombers.
Ahmed Rashid is the author
of The Taliban, Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia, published by IB Tauris.