Who trained Osama bin Laden?
OSAMA BIN Laden, a civil engineer and businessman from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, was one of the first non-Afghan volunteers to join the mujahadeen. He recruited 4,000 volunteers from his own country and developed close relations with the most radical rebel leaders in Afghanistan. He also worked closely with the CIA raising money from private Saudi citizens. “In 1988, with U.S. knowledge,” reports Jane’s Weekly, “Bin Laden created Al-Qaeda (The Base): a conglomerate of quasi independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across at least 26 countries… Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Quaeda, confident that it would not directly impinge on the U.S.” After the USSR’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, bin Laden and other volunteers returned to their own countries. “In their home countries, they built a formidable constituency–popularly known as ‘Afghanis’–combining strong ideological convictions with the guerrilla skills they had acquired in Pakistan and Afghanistan under CIA supervis
