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Osama bin Laden, whom
the US accuses of masterminding the attacks on New York and Washington, is not
something new for the US imperialists. The US has known him right from the time
of Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. He entered Afghanistan in 1980 to fund and
organise the training of the Mujahideen forces against the Russian
invaders.
As the resistance
against the Russian occupation was building up among the Afghan people the US
stepped in to corrupt and hijack the movement as the Russian imperialists were
doing the same thing with the national liberation movements of Africa. Osama
became a part of those CIA efforts to channel the movement along fundamentalist
and obscurant lines and as part of the US strategy to thwart Russian advance
towards influence in the Persian Gulf. The US used the name of Muslim religion
to rally Muslim countries and populations behind its designs in the name of
defending freedom of the Afghani people. Osama almost became a cult figure due
to his fiery speeches and the financial power he commanded.
The CIA organised
training camps for the Afghans in Pakistan and used the religious sentiments of
the people to raise an army of the Muslims against the "atheistic government"
(—US president Carter) of the Soviet Union. The US portrayed the Soviet
imperialists as communists and termed the struggle of the Afghan people against
the Russian occupation as a fight between communists and mujahids of
Islam. This strengthened the authority of the clergy and the feudals over
the vast masses of Afghanis. Along with the military training camps the
madrassas in Pakistan were set up to raise the army of God. The
Afghan struggle was not allowed to develop by itself and was influenced by the
US imperialists and its regional cronies
When the Russians
left in desperation in 1989 these very forces fought among themselves for
supremacy and indulged in widespread loot, plunder and killings in the areas
controlled by each other and raped their women folk. They closed all schools
where girls and boys sat together and banned the education of girls above the
age of eight years.
Osama was the chief
vehicle of Saudi monarchy’s designs behind the creation of Wahabi Islamic
preachers and warriors. During the Gulf War he fell out with the Saudi Royal
family and the US and opposed the US military presence in the "holy land of
Mecca and Medina" and its support for the state of Israel. Form then on he has
taken up a posture of a deliverer of the Muslims world over, but with a strong
passion for reverting to a strict Muslim feudal way of life and values. The
people of Afghanistan or Central Asia or that of the Gulf and other Muslim
countries cannot liberate themselves without dismantling imperialism and
feudalism at the same time. One cannot be the alternative of the other if a real
liberation is the objective.
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