The mujahideen were a loosely aligned group that fought against the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989. The mujahideen were significantly financed,
armed, and trained by the United States, under the presidencies of Jimmy Carter
and Ronald Reagan. After the Soviet retreat, the mujahideen began to fight one
another in a civil war. The Taliban was formed from religious members of the
mujahideen and grew in numbers until the Taliban effectively ruled Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden was a wealthy, prominent member of the mujahideen.
President Reagan referred to the American-backed mujahideen who were fighting
the Soviet Union as freedom fighters “defending principles of independence
and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability.” Reagan,
so proud of his involvement with the mujahideen, he declared March 21st as “Afghanistan
Day”:
March 10, 1982
By the President of the United States of America
Proclamation 4908 -- Afghanistan Day
In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan without provocation and
with overwhelming force. Since that time, the Soviet Union has sought through
every available means, to assert its control over Afghanistan.
The Afghan people have defied the Soviet Union and have resisted with a vigor
that has few parallels in modern history. The Afghan people have paid a terrible
price in their fight for freedom. Their villages and homes have been destroyed;
they have been murdered by bullets, bombs and chemical weapons. One-fifth of
the Afghan people have been driven into exile. Yet their fight goes on. The international
community, with the United States joining governments around the world, has condemned
the invasion of Afghanistan as a violation of every standard of decency and international
law and has called for a withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Every
country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for the freedom
fighters of Afghanistan are defending principles of independence and freedom
that form the basis of global security and stability.
It is therefore altogether fitting that the European Parliament, the Congress
of the United States and parliaments elsewhere in the world have designated March
21, 1982, as Afghanistan Day, to commemorate the valor of the Afghan people and
to condemn the continuing Soviet invasion of their country. Afghanistan Day will
serve to recall not only these events, but also the principles involved when
a people struggles for the freedom to determine its own future, the right to
be free of foreign interference and the right to practice religion according
to the dictates of conscience.
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America,
do hereby designate March 21, 1982, as Afghanistan Day.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this tenth day of March, in the
year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-two, and of the Independence of
the United States of America the two hundred and sixth.
Ronald Reagan
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 3:54 p.m., March 10, 1982] |
Osama bin Laden’s wealth and connections permitted him to pursue his
interest in supporting the mujahideen. In 1984 he established an organization
named Maktab
al-Khadamat (MAK), which funneled money, arms and Muslim fighters from around
the world into the Afghan war. By 1988, bin Laden had split from the MAK and
established a new group, later dubbed al-Qaeda by the U.S., which included
many of the more militant MAK members.
Osama bin Laden is the prime suspect in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In 1998, bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad)
co-signed a fatwa in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against
Jews and Crusaders, declaring:
| The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians
and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do
it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate
the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Makka) from
their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands
of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. (Read
the whole fatwa here.) |
On August 20, 1998, the United States, under
the administration of President Bill Clinton, attacked the al-Shifa ("Health")
pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, and areas of Afghanistan where Osama
bin Laden's al-Qaeda group was believed to have camps. Under the name Operation
Infinite Reach, the bombing destroyed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory and
killed about twenty people in Afghanistan. The Clinton administration justified
the attack, claiming it had sufficient evidence based on a soil sample taken
from the plant during a clandestine CIA operation, saying the plant was manufacturing
chemical weapons. Later investigation into this matter revealed the facility
probably was not making such weapons, and instead was making medicines for the
Sudanese people. The al-Shifa plant was a principal source of anti-malaria drugs
for the Sudanese, and it's destruction caused a human catastrophe. Werner Daum,
Germany's ambassador to Sudan (1996–2000), estimated that the attack "led
to tens of thousands of deaths" of Sudanese civilians.
(Read the transcript of
Clinton’s address, and news about the bombing)
The facilities we struck today in Afghanistan and Sudan are important
parts of the Bin Laden network of terrorist groups. At 1:30 p.m. (EDT)
simultaneous military strikes were carried out against known terrorist
training facilities in remote regions of Afghanistan and an industrial
facility in Khartoum, Sudan. The targets selected and the timing of the
strikes, 7:30 p.m. in Sudan and 10:00 p.m. in Afghanistan, were part
of our overall effort to minimize collateral damage at the sites.
--General Henry H. Shelton
(Department of Defense News Briefing, Thursday, August
20, 1998) |
Zbigniew
Kazimierz Brzezinski (born March 28, 1928) served as United States National
Security Advisor to President Carter from 1977 to 1981. A major foreign policy
during
Brzezinski’s office includes arming the Afghan mujahideen to counter
Soviet invasion.
Events that took place after the CIA backed mujahideen helped withdraw the
Russians:
• Assassinated the president of Egypt.
• 1983 suicide bomber drove the US army out of Lebanon
• Defending Muslims against the infidels
• The US invasion of Saudi Arabia in 1990
• Planned to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, including plans to
blow up the UN building, the Holland Tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel (An Egyptian
Cleric was jailed, whom was brought into the US with the help of the CIA.)
|
Twenty years before 9/11 the Reagan administration announced their
war on terrorism would be the core of US foreign policy, particularly state-supported
international terrorism, the most virulent form of “the evil scourge
of terrorism,” as Reagan said. A plague spread by “depraved opponents
of civilization itself” in “a return to barbarism in the modern
age,” said
Secretary of State George Shultz.
Support for anti-communist groups including armed insurgencies against communist
governments was a part of Reagan's administration policy, referred to by
his supporters as the "Reagan Doctrine." Following this policy, the administration
funded "freedom fighters" (aka terrorists) such as the mujahideen
in Afghanistan, the Contras in Nicaragua, and Jonas Savimbi's rebel forces
in Angola.
The administration also helped fund central European anti-communist groups
such as the Polish Solidarity movement and took a hard line against the Communist
regime in Cambodia. Covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua lead to the
Iran
Contra Affair, while overt support led to a World Court ruling against the
United States in Nicaragua v. United States.
CIA-backed Contra terrorists murdered upwards of 40,000 civilians in the
US funded aggression against the Sandinista government. Reagan labeled these
thugs
as the
moral equivalent to America's founding fathers. "I'm a Contra too!" (Newsweek,
March 24, 1986, p. 20.)
Ronald Reagan was elected on a platform that promised the overthrow of the "Marxist
Sandinistas of Nicaragua," and within a month of taking office, counter-revolutionary
forces, formed from the remnants of the Somozas' old National Guard were
training in Florida in open violation of the Neutrality Act of 1789.
Soon the "guardias" trained and armed by the United States, with the
new name of counter-revolutionaries or "contras" were crossing
the border from camps in Honduras into Nicaragua, wreaking havoc on the population.
Health clinics and cooperatives were blown up, civilians were tortured and
killed. When Congress forbade official government assistance to them, Reagan
set up the
complex underground support network run from the White House basement, which
was revealed to the world in the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986-7.
You would expect a country like the United States, leader of the free world,
to use their influence and power to sway the United Nations, as well as other
countries, to adopt tough restrictions against acts of terrorism. Surely
the leader of the free world can exercise its influence to create a safer
world for its neighbors? On December 7, 1987, such a resolution (42/159)
was adopted
by the United Nations to "prevent international terrorism which endangers
or takes innocent human lives or jeopardizes fundamental freedoms." There
was only one problem. The United States, given its support of the mujahideen,
the contras, Israel, and others, were by definition, terrorists. When the
Reagan administration denounced state-supported international terrorism,
did they
not intend those same rules to apply to themselves?
UN General Assembly
Resolution A/RES/42/159, adopted on 7 December 1987 explains
terrorism does not apply to people struggling against racist and colonialist
regimes or foreign occupation:
14. Considers that nothing in the present resolution could in any
way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom and independence,
as derived from the Charter of the United Nations, of peoples forcibly
deprived of that right referred to in the Declaration on Principles
of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation
among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations,
particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and
foreign occupation or other forms of colonial domination,
nor, in accordance with the principles of the Charter and in conformity
with the above-mentioned
Declaration, the right of these peoples to struggle to this end and
to seek and receive support;
In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria,
Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas,
Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Bhutan,
Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burma,
Burundi, Byelorussia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic,
Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire,
Cuba, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Democratic Kampuchea, Democratic Yemen, Denmark,
Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia,
Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, German Democratic Republic, Federal
Republic of Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,
Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq,
Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lao People's Democratic
Republic, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi,
Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia,
Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria,
Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines,
Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Samoa,
Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore,
Solomon Islands, Somalia, Spain, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, Suriname,
Swaziland, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey,
Uganda, Ukraine, USSR, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United Republic
of Tanzania, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Zaire,
Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Against: Israel, United States. |
The United States government not only fails to lead by example, but they
deliberately deceived their country. Sadly, the United States is the leading
terrorist state.
Be it our violent assault on Nicaragua that killed tens of thousands; support
of Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of its Kurdish population; the 1985 bombing
in Beirut that killed 80 and wounded 250; the East Timor genocide; the bombing
of the al-Shifa plant in Sudan; the Iran-Contra affair; cutting off food
aid to millions of Afghan civilians; killing Iraqi civilians; torturing prisoners
of war in U.S. secret prisons; the list goes on...
It’s important to remember this when thinking about what we can do
to help combat terrorism. Perhaps the best thing to do is to learn what our
government
is doing.
Learn. Educate. Organize. Protest. Resist. Demonstrate. Remember.
Dissent is Patriotic.
|
