"So the distinction between Arab and Afghan Mujahidins, DURING THE CONFLICT, has no place to be." I agree with you...

"It started after the war" The organization was named after the war; it was basically same people.

"During this period, most U.S. officials perceived the volunteers as positivecontributors to the effort to expelSovietforces fromAfghanistan, and U.S.officials madeno apparent effort to stop the recruitment of the non-Afghan volunteers for the war. U.S.officials have repeatedlydenied that the United States directlysupported the volunteers,5although the United States did covertly finance (about $3 billion during 1981-1991) andarm(viaPakistan) the Afghan mujahedinfactions, particularlythe Islamic fundamentalistAfghan factions, fighting Soviet forces. During this period, neither bin Laden, Azzam,nor Abd al-Rahman was known to have openly advocated, undertaken, or planned anydirect attacks against the United States, although theyall were critical of U.S. support forIsrael in the Middle East. In 1988, toward the end of the Soviet occupation, bin Laden and Azzam begancontemplating how, and to what end, to utilize the Islamist volunteer network they hadorganized. U.S. intelligence estimates of the size of that network was about 10,000 -20,000, although not all of these necessarily supported or joined Al Qaeda terroristactivities.6Azzam reportedly wanted this “Al Qaeda” (Arabic for “the base”)organization to becomeanIslamic“rapid reaction force,” available tointervene whereverMuslims were perceived as threatened. Bin Laden differed with Azzam, hoping insteadto dispatch the Al Qaeda activists to their home countries to try to topple secular, pro-Western Arab leaders, such as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Saudi Arabia’sroyal family. Some attribute their differences to the growing influence on bin Laden ofthe Egyptians in his inner circle, such as Abd al-Rahman, who wanted to use Al Qaeda’sresources to install an Islamic state in Egypt. Another close Egyptian confidant was Dr.Ayman al-Zawahiri, operational leader of Al Jihad in Egypt. Like Abd al-Rahman, -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 3 CRS-3Zawahiri had beenimprisoned but ultimatelyacquitted for the October 1981 assassinationof Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and he permanently left Egypt for Afghanistan in1985. There, he used his medical training to tend to wounded fighters in the anti-Sovietwar. In November 1989, Azzam was assassinated, and some allege that bin Laden mighthave been responsible for the killing to resolve this power struggle. Following Azzam’sdeath, bin Laden gained control of the Maktab’s funds and organizational mechanisms.(Abd al-Rahman later came to the United States and was convicted in October 1995 forterrorist plots related to the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in NewYork. Zawahiri stayed with bin Laden and remains bin Laden’s main strategist today.)The Threat UnfoldsThe August 2, 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait apparently turned bin Laden from ade-facto U.S. ally against the Soviet Union into one of its most active adversaries. BinLaden had returned home to Saudi Arabia in 1989, after the completion of the Sovietwithdrawal from Afghanistan that February. While back home, he lobbied Saudi officialsnot to host the 500,000 U.S. combat troops that defended Saudi Arabia from the Iraqiinvasion and ultimatelyexpelled Iraq from Kuwait in “Operation Desert Storm”(January16 - February 28, 1991). He argued instead for the raising of a “mujahedin”army to oustIraq from Kuwait, but his idea was rebuffed as impractical, causing his falling out withSaudi leaders. He relocated to Sudan in 1991, buying property there which he used tohost and train Al Qaeda militants — this time, for use against the United States and itsinterests, as well as for jihad operations in the Balkans, Chechnya, Kashmir, and thePhilippines. He remained there until the Sudanese government, under U.S. and Egyptianpressure, expelled him in May 1996; he then returned to Afghanistan and helped theTaliban gain and maintain control of Afghanistan. (The Taliban captured Kabul inSeptember 1996.) Bin Laden and Zawahiri apparently believed that the only way to bring Islamicregimes to power was to oust from the region the perceived backer of secular regionalregimes, the United States. During the 1990s, bin Laden and Zawahiri transformed AlQaeda into a global threat to U.S. national security, culminating in the September 11,2001 attacks. Bythis time, Al Qaeda had become a coalition of factions of radical Islamicgroups operating throughout the Muslim world, mostly groups opposing theirgovernments. Cells and associates have been located in over 70 countries, according toU.S. officials. Amongthe groups in the Al Qaeda coalition, virtuallyall of which are stillactive today, are : the Islamic Group and Al Jihad (Egypt), the Armed Islamic Group andthe Salafist Group for Call and Combat (Algeria), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan(IMU), the Jemaah Islamiyah (Indonesia), the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (Libyanopposition) and Harakat ul-Mujahedin (Pakistan, Kashmiri). AlQaeda’s pre-September 11 roster of attacks againstthe U

It is accepted fact that the Muj would fight each other during the Soviet invasion. There were in fact proSoviet factions and proAmerican ones. Not all Muj were proAMerican. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia provided their own support. The US never provided support to Bin Laden, BinLAden hated America and Zionist and would kill any CIA guy or broker of the CIA back then. AlZwahiri is known to have made trips during the 90s to Chechnya and to have been released by the Russians. Why would the Russian release a Chechen terrorist and a foreign one? Also lately Putin has praised Whahabism as being a good thing for Chechnya... because Putin does not want a genuine Chechen independence and freedom, thus he let the Whahab importation to occur so as to create the same divisions within Chechnya as were orchestrated during the Afghan war between Muj.

THE KREMLIN'S NEW STRATEGY TO BUILD A PRO-RUSSIAN ISLAMIC CHECHNYA CHECHNYA WEEKLY ^ | March 6, 2006 | Andrei Smirnov THE KREMLIN'S NEW STRATEGY TO BUILD A PRO-RUSSIAN ISLAMIC CHECHNYA By Andrei Smirnov During a press conference held in the Kremlin on January 31, President Vladimir Putin outlined the new Russian policy toward Islam inside the country. "Wahhabism in itself is not a threat, but any distortion of the norms of Islam, distortion of Wahhabism, certainly cannot be regarded other than as a call for terrorism," Putin said (Interfax, January 31). The Kremlin started to modify its Muslim policy right after the massive rebel attack on the Caucasian city of Nalchik last October 13. Three weeks after the attack, Dmitry Kozak, the Russian president's envoy to the Southern Federal District, declared that the authorities had nothing against Wahhabism and the terrorists just use it as their flag (Interfax, November 3, 2005). This was a major turn in the rhetoric. The Russian official propaganda had been instilling in the mind of the average Russian in the street during the six years following the start of the second Chechen war that Wahhabism was an ultimate evil, responsible for everything destructive in the North Caucasus. Just two months before Kozak's comments on Wahhabism, Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the pro-Russian forces in Chechnya, said that Wahhabis "are not only enemies of Islam, but also of the whole mankind, and I cannot see any way to oppose them other than [to] annihilate [them] physically." Sultan Mirzaev, the Supreme Mufti of Chechnya, proclaimed: "Wahhabism is an evil that ought to be eliminated" (see Chechnya Weekly, August 18, 2005). .... http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bourtman200603020823.asp Putin supports Hamas

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4555901/ ......... Six months later, Zawahri was expelled from Sudan and with bin Laden and 400 others went to Afghanistan. Over the next few years, Zawahri's role included traveling to raise money and to cement ties with other militant groups. In December 1996, he went to Chechnya to see about setting up a base but was arrested in Dagestan and sentenced in April 1997 to six months for illegal entry, after which he was released. Bin Laden paid to bail him out. Finally, in August 1998, Zawahri merged his Egyptian Islamic Jihad into bin Laden's al-Qaida, becoming bin Laden's deputy and chief Islamic ideologist.

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=44835&version=1&template_id=57&parent_id=56 Bin Laden aide ‘had KGB link’Published: Sunday, 17 July, 2005, 12:27 PM Doha Time WARSAW: Al Qaeda’s number two was trained by Russia’s secret service and served as a KGB agent before becoming Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, a former KGB secret agent told Poland’s Rzeczpospolita newspaper yesterday. “Ayman al-Zawahiri trained at a Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB) base in Dagestan in 1998,” claimed ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko who fled Russia in 2000. “He was then transferred to Afghanistan where he became Osama bin Laden’s deputy”, Litvinenko told the newspaper.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/21/85933/1210 The CIA on "Did the CIA create Bin Laden?" By John Stuart Blackton | bio Committed conspiracy addicts will not be disabused of their convictions by Peter's arguments, nor by mine, nor by Steve Coll's. For the rest of you, however, I would like to share the US Government's quite thoughtful and careful refutation of the charge that "The CIA Created Bin Laden" The USG's case boils down to this: * U.S. covert aid went to the Afghans, not to the "Afghan Arabs." The "Afghan Arabs" were funded by Arab sources, not by the United States. United States never had "any relationship whatsoever" with Osama bin Laden. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Arab backing for the "Afghan Arabs," and bin Laden's own decisions "created" Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, not the United States. Below is what State and CIA have said on the record about this. As a veteran of the Afghan war era I take their case seriously and I encourage others (conspiracists aside) to consider it carefully. "The United States did not "create" Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda. The United States supported the Afghans fighting for their country's freedom -- as did other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, Egypt, and the UK -- but the United States did not support the "Afghan Arabs," the Arabs and other Muslims who came to fight in Afghanistan for broader goals. CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen notes that the "Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding." He notes: "While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don't make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA. Former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency's Afghan operation in the late 1980s, says, "The CIA did not recruit Arabs," as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight, and the Arabs who did come for jihad were "very disruptive . . . the Afghans thought they were a pain in the ass." Similar sentiments from Afghans who appreciated the money that flowed from the Gulf but did not appreciate the Arabs' holier-than-thou attempts to convert them to their ultra-purist version of Islam. Freelance cameraman Peter Jouvenal recalls: "There was no love lost between the Afghans and the Arabs. One Afghan told me, `Whenever we had a problem with one of them we just shot them. They thought they were kings.'" ... There was simply no point in the CIA and the Afghan Arabs being in contact with each other. ... the Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding. The CIA did not need the Afghan Arabs, and the Afghan Arabs did not need the CIA. So the notion that the Agency funded and trained the Afghan Arabs is, at best, misleading. The 'let's blame everything bad that happens on the CIA' school of thought vastly overestimates the Agency's powers, both for good and ill." [Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: The Free Press, 2001), pp. 64-66.] Al Qaeda's number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, confirmed that the "Afghan Arabs" did not receive any U.S. funding during the war in Afghanistan. In the book that was described as his last will, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, which was serialized in December 2001 in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, al-Zawahiri says the Afghan Arabs were funded with money from Arab sources, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars: "While the United States backed Pakistan and the mujahidin factions with money and equipment, the young Arab mujahidin's relationship with the United States was totally different." "... The financing of the activities of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan came from aid sent to Afghanistan by popular organizations. It was substantial aid." "The Arab mujahidin did not confine themselves to financing their own jihad but also carried Muslim donations to the Afghan mujahidin themselves. Usama Bin Ladin has apprised me of the size of the popular Arab support for the Afghan mujahidin that amounted, according to his sources, to $200 million in the form of military aid alone in 10 years. Imagine how much aid was sent by popular Arab organizations in the non-military fields such as medicine and health, education and vocational training, food, and social assistance ...." "Through the unofficial popular support, the Arab mujahidin established training centers and centers for the call to the

"It is accepted fact that the Muj would fight each other during the Soviet invasion."---violentnuke Not significantly. Anyway, the vast majority of afghan were united to fight the Soviets. Wikipédia: "Mujahedeen (Arabic: مجاهدين, also transliterated as mujāhidīn, mujahedeen, mujahedin, mujahidin, mujaheddin, etc.) is a plural form of mujahid (مجاهد), which literally means "struggler", someone who engages in jihad, or "struggle", but is often translated in the West as "holy warrior". It is the opposite of qaideen, people who remain inactive and do not actively fight." In the late twentieth century, the term "mujahedeen" became popular in the Western media to describe various armed fighters who subscribe to militant Islamic ideologies, although there is not always an explicit "holy" or "warrior" meaning within the word." So folowing this definition, the term "Mujahidin" qualifies a muslim fighter who fight a non-muslim enemy. The mujahidin defines itself religiously. During Algeria war, some anti-french partisans defined themselves as mujahidin. "There were in fact proSoviet factions and proAmerican ones. Not all Muj were proAMerican."---vn Wrong. No pro-american. Just anti-soviet. At this moment the enemy was soviet, and the muj. accepted the american help. "Pakistan and Saudi Arabia provided their own support. " Of course they did. Pakistan wanted a pakistan-friendly Afghanistan, and S. Arabia, in the collusion with the USA, want to secure access to energy sources. By the way, the biggest common point with these two countries is their known alliance with USA. "The US never provided support to Bin Laden, BinLAden hated America and Zionist and would kill any CIA guy or broker of the CIA back then." False. Binladen began its anti-american crusade at the beginning of the 90's. Btw, he is bonded by blood with the regnant saudi dinasty, also he had an obvious interest to act like the energetic strategy of S. Arabia wanted it. And the "anti-soviet crusade was the priority at this moment. "AlZwahiri is known to have made trips during the 90s to Chechnya and to have been released by the Russians. Why would the Russian release a Chechen terrorist and a foreign one?" Why? Because the Russian finds a lot of interest in a anti-american mess at the South of the Caspian Sea. All that could screw up the US/Saudi enregitcal strategy is good to take. "Also lately Putin has praised Whahabism as being a good thing for Chechnya... " Provide some proofs. "because Putin does not want a genuine Chechen independence and freedom, thus he let the Whahab importation to occur so as to create the same divisions within Chechnya as were orchestrated during the Afghan war between Muj." That's total nonsense.

http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-318760.html Did the U.S. "Create" Osama bin Laden? Allegations that the U.S. provided funding for bin Laden proved inaccurate The United States did not "create" Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda. The United States supported the Afghans fighting for their country's freedom -- as did other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, Egypt, and the UK -- but the United States did not support the "Afghan Arabs," the Arabs and other Muslims who came to fight in Afghanistan for broader goals. CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen notes that the "Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding." He notes:

"While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don't make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA. Former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency's Afghan operation in the late 1980s, says, "The CIA did not recruit Arabs," as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight, and the Arabs who did come for jihad were "very disruptive . . . the Afghans thought they were a pain in the ass." Similar sentiments from Afghans who appreciated the money that flowed from the Gulf but did not appreciate the Arabs' holier-than-thou attempts to convert them to their ultra-purist version of Islam. Freelance cameraman Peter Jouvenal recalls: "There was no love lost between the Afghans and the Arabs. One Afghan told me, ‘Whenever we had a problem with one of them we just shot them. They thought they were kings.'" ... There was simply no point in the CIA and the Afghan Arabs being in contact with each other. ... the Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding. The CIA did not need the Afghan Arabs, and the Afghan Arabs did not need the CIA. So the notion that the Agency funded and trained the Afghan Arabs is, at best, misleading. The 'let's blame everything bad that happens on the CIA' school of thought vastly overestimates the Agency's powers, both for good and ill." [Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: The Free Press, 2001), pp. 64-66.]

Al Qaeda's number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, confirmed that the "Afghan Arabs" did not receive any U.S. funding during the war in Afghanistan. In the book that was described as his last will, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, which was serialized in December 2001 in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, al-Zawahiri says the Afghan Arabs were funded with money from Arab sources, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars:

"While the United States backed Pakistan and the mujahidin factions with money and equipment, the young Arab mujahidin's relationship with the United States was totally different." "... The financing of the activities of the Arab mujahidin in Afghanistan came from aid sent to Afghanistan by popular organizations. It was substantial aid." "The Arab mujahidin did not confine themselves to financing their own jihad but also carried Muslim donations to the Afghan mujahidin themselves. Usama Bin Ladin has apprised me of the size of the popular Arab support for the Afghan mujahidin that amounted, according to his sources, to $200 million in the form of military aid alone in 10 years. Imagine how much aid was sent by popular Arab organizations in the non-military fields such as medicine and health, education and vocational training, food, and social assistance ...." "Through the unofficial popular support, the Arab mujahidin established training centers and centers for the call to the faith. They formed fronts that trained and equipped thousands of Arab mujahidin and provided them with living expenses, housing, travel and organization." (Al-Sharq al-Awsat, December 3, 2001, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), GMP20011202000401)

Abdullah Anas, an Algerian who was one of the foremost Afghan Arab organizers and the son-in-law of Abdullah Azzam, has also confirmed that the CIA had no relationship with the Afghan Arabs. Speaking on the French television program Zone Interdit on September 12, 2004, Anas stated:

"If you say there was a relationship in the sense that the CIA used to meet with Arabs, discuss with them, prepare plans with them, and to fight with them -- it never happened."

Milt Bearden served as the CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 19