By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times
It’s impossible not to start with the latest tremor in a series of stunning geopolitical earthquakes.
Exactly 20 years after 9/11 and the subsequent onset of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the Taliban will hold a ceremony in Kabul to celebrate their victory in that misguided Forever War.
Four key exponents of Eurasia integration – China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan – as well as Turkey and Qatar, will be officially represented, witnessing the official return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. As blowbacks go, this one is nothing short of intergalactic.
The plot thickens when we have Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid firmly stressing “there is no proof” Osama bin Laden was involved in 9/11. So “there was no justification for war, it was an excuse for war,” he claimed.
Only a few days after 9/11, Osama bin Laden, never publicity-shy, released a statement to Al Jazeera: “I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons (…) I have been living in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders’ rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations.”
On September 28, Osama bin Laden was interviewed by the Urdu newspaper Karachi Ummat. I remember it well, as I was commuting non-stop between Islamabad and Peshawar, and my colleague Saleem Shahzad, in Karachi, called it to my attention.
This is an approximate translation by the CIA-linked Foreign Broadcast Information Service: “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people.
“I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it.
“Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country or ideology could survive. Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year (…) They need an enemy.”
This was the last time Osama bin Laden went public, substantially, about his alleged role in 9/11. Afterward, he vanished, and seemingly forever by early December 2001 in Tora Bora: I was there, and revisited the full context years later.
And yet, like an Islamic James Bond, Osama kept performing the miracle of dying another day, over and over again, starting in – where else – Tora Bora in mid-December, as reported by the Pakistani Observer and then Fox News.
So 9/11 remained a riddle inside an enigma. And what about 9/9, which might have been the prologue to 9/11?
A green light from a blind sheikh
“The commander has been shot.”
The terse email, on 9/9, offered no details. Contacting the Panjshir was impossible – sat-phone reception is spotty. Only the next day it was possible to establish Ahmad Shah Massoud, the legendary Lion of the Panjshir, had been assassinated – by two al-Qaeda jihadis posing as a camera crew.
In our Asia Times interview with Massoud, by August 20, he had told me he was fighting a triad: al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Pakistani ISI. After the interview, he left in a Land Cruiser and then went by helicopter to Kwaja-Bahauddin, where he would finish the details of a counter-offensive against the Taliban.
This was his second-to-last interview before the assassination and arguably the last images – shot by photographer Jason Florio and with my mini-DV camera – of Massoud alive.
One year after the assassination, I was back in the Panjshir for an on-site investigation, relying only on local sources and confirmation on some details from Peshawar. The investigation is featured in the first part of my Asia Times e-book Forever Wars.
The conclusion was that the green light for the fake camera crew to meet Massoud came via a letter sponsored by CIA crypto-asset warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf – as a “gift” to al-Qaeda.
In December 2020, inestimable Canadian diplomat Peter Dale Scott, author among others of the seminal The Road to 9/11 (2007), and Aaron Good, editor at CovertAction magazine, published a remarkable investigation about the killing of Massoud, following a different trail and relying mostly on American sources.
They established that arguably more than Sayyaf, the mastermind of the killing was notorious Egyptian blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, then serving a life sentence in a US federal prison for his involvement in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Among other nuggets, Dale Scott and Good also confirmed what former Pakistani foreign minister Niaz Naik had told Pakistani media already in 2001: the Americans had everything in place to attack Afghanistan way before 9/11.
In Naik’s words: “We asked them [the American delegates], when do you think you will attack Afghanistan? … And they said, before the snow falls in Kabul. That means September, October, something like that.”
As many of us established over the years after 9/11, everything was about the US imposing itself as the undisputed ruler of the New Great Game in Central Asia. Peter Dale Scott now notes, “the two US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 were both grounded in pretexts that were doubtful to begin with and more discredited as years go by.
“Underlying both wars was America’s perceived need to control the fossil fuel economic system that was the underpinning for the US petrodollar.”
Massoud versus Mullah Omar
Mullah Omar did welcome Jihad Inc to Afghanistan in the late 1990s: not only the al-Qaeda Arabs but also Uzbeks, Chechens, Indonesians, Yemenis – some of them I met in Massoud’s riverside prison in the Panjshir in August 2001.
The Taliban at the time did provide them with bases – and some encouraging rhetoric – but deeply ethnocentric as they were, never manifested any interest in global jihad, in the mold of the “Declaration of Jihad” issued by Osama in 1996.
The official Taliban position was that jihad was their guests’ business, and that had nothing to do with the Taliban and Afghanistan. There were virtually no Afghans in Jihad Inc. Very few Afghans speak Arabic. They were not seduced by the spin on martyrdom and a paradise full of virgins: they preferred to be a ghazi – a living victor in a jihad.
Mullah Omar could not possibly send Osama bin Laden packing because of Pashtunwali – the Pashtun code of honor – where the notion of hospitality is sacred. When 9/11 happened, Mullah Omar once again refused American threats as well as Pakistani pleas. He then called a tribal jirga of 300 top mullahs to ratify his position.
Their verdict was quite nuanced: he had to protect his guest, of course, but a guest should not cause him problems. Thus Osama would have to leave, voluntarily.
The Taliban also pursued a parallel track, asking the Americans for evidence of Osama’s culpability. None was provided. The decision to bomb and invade had already been taken.
That would have never been possible with Massoud alive. A classic intellectual warrior, he was a certified Afghan nationalist and pop hero – because of his spectacular military feats in the anti-USSR jihad and his non-stop fight against the Taliban.
When the PDPA socialist government in Afghanistan collapsed three years after the end of the jihad, in 1992, Massoud could easily have become a prime minister or an absolute ruler in the old Turco-Persian style.
But then he made a terrible mistake: afraid of an ethnic conflagration, he let the mujahideen gang based in Peshawar have too much power, and that led to the civil war of 1992-1995 – complete with the merciless bombing of Kabul by virtually every faction – that paved the way for the emergence of the “law and order” Taliban.
So in the end he was a much more effective military commander than politician. An example is what happened in 1996, when the Taliban made their move to conquer Kabul, attacking from eastern Afghanistan.
Massoud was caught completely unprepared, but he still managed to retreat to the Panjshir without a major battle and without losing his troops – quite a feat – while severely smashing the Taliban that went after him.
He established a line of defense in the Shomali plain north of Kabul. That was the frontline I visited a few weeks before 9/11, on the way to Bagram, which was a – virtually empty and degraded – Northern Alliance airbase at the time.
All of the above is a sorry contrast to the role of Masoud Jr, who’s in theory the leader of the “resistance” against Taliban 2.0 in the Panjshir, now completely smashed.
Masoud Jr has zero experience either as a military commander or politician, and although praised in Paris by President Macron or publishing an op-ed in Western mainstream media, made the terrible mistake of being led by CIA asset Amrullah Saleh, who as the former head of the National Directory of Security (NDS), supervised the de facto Afghan death squads.
Masoud Jr could have easily carved a role for himself in a Taliban 2.0 government. But he blew it, refusing serious negotiations with a delegation of 40 Islamic clerics sent to the Panjshir, and demanding at least 30% of posts in the government.
In the end, Saleh fled by helicopter – he may be now in Tashkent – and Masoud Jr as it stands is holed up somewhere in the northern Panjshir.
The 9/11 propaganda machine is about to reach fever pitch this Saturday – now profiting from the narrative twist of the “terrorist” Taliban back in power, something perfect to snuff out the utter humiliation of the Empire of Chaos.
The Deep State is going no holds barred to protect the official narrative – which exhibits more holes than the dark side of the moon.
This is a geopolitical Ouroboros for the ages. 9/11 used to be the foundation myth of the 21st century – but not anymore. It has been displaced by blowback: the imperial debacle allowing for the return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to the exact position it was 20 years ago.
We may now know that the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. We may now know that Osama bin Laden, in an Afghan cave, may not have been the master perpetrator of 9/11. We may now know that the assassination of Massoud was a prelude to 9/11, but in a twisted way: to facilitate a pre-planned invasion of Afghanistan.
And yet, like with the assassination of JFK, we may never know the full contours of the whole riddle inside an enigma. As Fitzgerald immortalized, “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” probing like mad this philosophical and existential Ground Zero, never ceasing from asking the ultimate question: Cui Bono?
Ed Note: Pepe Escobar started a new Twitter Stream: https://twitter.com/RealPepeEscobar
Why? for the obvious reason. Of $2.3trn 20 to 30% goes as pure profit to friends of Washington – the MIC and the subcontractors. 10% of that returns as kickbacks to Washington.
Do you know an easier way of stealing £50 billion than starting a war and taking 2 or 3% “as tax”?
An easier finance victim than the US taxpayer (or nowadays just the Fed printing machine).
Or a better cover for fraud than 9/11?
It is a good 20 year analysis (your post).
Is there a possible venue for discussion that is not legal tender based related to Afghanistan in particular as to why “we” (western world ) was there, in other words why was USSR there before us?
I do not think the answer is floating out there, but a great rhetorical thought to try to answer (because of it’s implications).
There is a good reason why no one will ever write about why Afghanistan was invaded 1st the USSR (not Russia) then the West, because the answer is a very deep reflection of our soul, there will never be a truthful answer.
The answer is there, we are brainwashed, so we will never state it.
You are wrong on at least two important counts. Firstly, the USAmericans were in Afghanistan, supporting the mujahadeen against the socialist PDPA government, before the USSR arrived. And secondly, the Soviets arrived there at the invitation of the PDPA government. They did not invade Afghanistan.
Remarkable article, thank you!
Probably the relationship between Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden has been more complex than you depicted, but overall it’s a good synthesis. Anyway, one could add that Osama was some sort of a problem for Omar for very practical reasons, too: in fact Osama, having money, actually managed to help the Afghan population a lot, especially building or repairing infrastructures. At first the Taliban welcomed this help, but soon they understood the danger behind it. It is true that they also demanded to the Americans proofs about the alleged Osama’s guilt, and never receive one. The Talibans also sent an official message of condolences to the USA after 9/11. Anyway, Omar never had high esteem of Osama. As for Massoud senior, before his strange execution he was not being treated differently from the other warlords of the country (the various Heckmatyar etc.). Finally, about the necessity of the “law and order” Talibans: somehow the various factions during the “civil war” did not have the sensibility to appeal the population, on the contrary a lot of abuses did happen; the have been somehow responsible for the political asset that was consolidating just before the American invasion (which was more or less the same we can see now). An interesting future awaits Afghanistan, if the Talibans will be able to demonstrate their wisdom without too much interferences.
As Osama stated in his speech following the incident, the Taliban did now allow him to plot and plan while in Afghanistan, actually they had removed from him his Satellite telephone and expressly told him not to plot. That is why they demanded proof, because they had a pretty darn good idea he could not have been involved. And as Bin Laden expressly stated, blaming him was just the excuse used to invade, and some of us already had a pretty good idea of that at the time, as it was not hard at all to decipher the inside job nature of 9/11, the immediate attributions with no proof, the lack of any rigorous investigation of any sort, and all the unexplained phenomenon, it was pretty obvious, and the Master Mind Dick Cheney being personally involved in arranging the parallel military exercises in the far NW simulating the attack, well, come on now, that was just obvious from day 2 it was no coincidence.
Even here in California people are in a celebratory mode. People don’t understand they’ve lost a war. They don’t get that it was all a lie. They don’t get that their own country is the biggest terrorist nation on the planet. The gov’t certainly reflects the unwitting populace. Citizens are only concerned that someone is going to get something. Christian charity is arresting the homeless. Former antiwar friends are demanding we go back to Af-stan and kick ass. They want war with China. Not ever seeing what war looks like they’ve no clue. Now BoJo is dick waving in the South China Sea. Reading Hitler’s First One Hundred Days brings home that Biden is taking 200 days to largely attain the same results. I’d rather get nuked in retribution, knowing I somehow deserved it. Guilt by association. Guilt by not doing enough and trust me, I threw more than a few bricks at the Nat’l Guard after Kent State. I am old and glad of it, treading water, waiting for the tsunami of unrestrained angst the US is trying to unleashed in the Pacific waters. “What fools these morons be” – Bugs Bunny
A most intriguing and fascinating read, shedding light on the recent history of Afghanistan in general and the Taliban in particular. At the end, there is the following introspection:
”/…/ probing like mad this philosophical and existential Ground Zero, never ceasing from asking the ultimate question: Cui Bono?”
The immediate answer is self-evident given that the context is the 911 attacks: The horrid crime syndicate of Western finance, especially the parts which focus on militarism. But seeing how things unfold right now 20 years on, ’Cui bono?’ seems to merit a more inspiring answer: The attacks inside Mainland US accompanied by all the spin, lies, and premeditated warmongering eventually sapped the Empire of whatever prestige and authority it still had abroad bar some particularly bought-off and/or conceited parts of the world. Against this backdrop, it makes sense to view the entirely criminal ”War on Terror” as the great enforcer of consolidation of the resistance to Empire in general and the implementation of the tangible alternatives in particular.
OBL:
One only has to make a few minor — semantic — changes to obtain an American neocon’s honest rendition:
”As a neocon, I try my best to avoid not telling a lie. I do have knowledge about these attacks and I do consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act.”
“I do consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act.”
A price worth paying, in fact.
Thanks Pepe. Another substance filled piece of real honest to goodness journalism. The question very appropriately settles on the old Roman querry? Qui bono? Who gains? Who’s good? This is exactly the question taken up by Ron Unz in his latest. Ron’s stuff is usually very good. This one is no exception.
Thank you Pepe for setting straight — for those who don’t already know or suspect — the rationale for Little Bush’s illegal war on Afghanistan and the so-called GWOT. 20 years ago the US was at the zenith of its power and hubris, and as everybody knows, once you’ve reached the top the only way therefrom is down.
20 years ago the US, the sole superpower, the indispensable country, the most powerful — yet not truly sovereign state –, was trying to reshape the world — not in its own image (a hegemon abhors another hegemon or would-be hegemon) but as its servants.
A simpleton’s call of ‘You are either with us or against us’ brought the sycophants on board the ‘USS Freedom’, the US ship of state. US influence has reached very far and very wide — there are only two countries where Coca Cola can’t be got, NK and Cuba IIRC — but USS Freedom has faced some headwinds and has now entered some very rocky waters. Some of the crew are squabbling — the number of daily lashings has increased; the sails are in need of repair; stinky bilgewater is seeping into the cabins; the helm seems to be sluggish; scurvy has reared its head. But all is not hopeless. The ship’s three masts look good, the ship is sailing at a stately 10 knots still; the officers are enjoying good food, drink and cigars, the crew getting by with dry biscuits and a mug of tepid coffee but there’s fish to be caught. Also a much-chewed clay pipe filled to the brim with soggy tobacco to go around. The fiddle player and the piper still put on their show near sunset. The only puzzling thing is the owner’s agent — a jolly good fellow who owns several passports — some nights, likes to store water in the only sea-worthy liferaft. ‘Does he know something we don’t?’ ask some of the crew. ‘Nah, perish the thought’ says the ship’s gossip, a relative of the agent. ‘Everything’s fine. We’re the Exceptionals, remember? The owner loves us. He loves us to death. He’ll never squeeze everything out of us and let us be blown away by the wind. Never you mind. Now here’s some juicy gossip about what the navigator and that young sailmaker have been up to while on watch the other night…’
Excellent to read a first hand experience.
I’m not being critical, for obvious reasons, but its time to start laying in on the line and pointing at the real criminals. Otherwise, they will try this stunt again.
Intersting insights mr P.E.
it was for me forever obvious, (wasnt it for everyone?) that the one-two punch of the assassination and the plane attack was part of a power play for control of Afghanistan(central asia in general).
now the same entity decided to leave the sandpit and provide the natives with lots of toys – short of an airforce.
no, I do not see it as a “US defeat” or “shameful and cowardly retreat”, as I see it as a – for us outsiders – a twist in the plot.
so there…the great game continues, and the puppeteers are still pulling the strings unseen and unnamed…and unencumbered…imo.
gonna read your Forever Wars now, thanx for bringing it to attention.
a scifi novel by the same title happens to be one of my favs.
I also don’t underestimate the cunning empire of evil. Let’s point out that before this turnaround, which apparently proved to be muddled, Biden had a meeting with the G7 and then with Putin. About the cunning Roman-German-Yankee 2.0 empire, I prefer to be cautious. Dealing with snakes will never be simple.
The US created so much havoc based on a lie I can’t believe how many people couldn’t see that (I guess it has something to do with IQ and educational system), but there is a twist to the plot; essentially, within 20 years it dug a hole for itself only to fall and burn-out in the pursuit of an unrealistic zionist-serving project. I guess many in the US are now ‘eating their nails’ from their folly.
Notwithstanding they exposed the limits of the conventional power of their $1+ trillion “defence” assets.
An elite Army Ranger team was in Afghanistan a week before the invasion “preparing the ground for the invasion.” They were exfiltrated when their work was complete.