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Islamic state.4 _{Although Bashir was the new head of state, the real leader was} generally thought to be Turabi.5

Turabi, born into a conservative Sunni Muslim family in Eastern Sudan in 1932, provides an interesting contrast to the other great influence on bin Laden’s life, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam. Both men were great theorists of Islamic revolution, and each fought with words rather than with weapons. Each also belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, and dedicated himself to recreating the Caliphate.

Unlike Azzam, though, Turabi had studied outside the Muslim world, earning a master of laws from the University of London. This exposure to the West gives Turabi’s version of Islamic rule an uncharacteristically modern outlook. He blended Islamic sharia with Western ideas of democratic equality to create what might be termed “Islamic democracy.” Turabi’s embrace of democratic thought is most evident in his support for the rights of women, whom he believes to be fully entitled to work, hold public office, serve in the military, and even attend mosques without being segregated: “Segregation of women is definitely not a part of Islam. This is just conventional, historical Islam. It was totally unknown in the model of Islam or the text of Islam. It is unjustified.”6

But Turabi’s version of democracy is a curious, contradictory mix of totalitarianism and tolerance. On international matters, he says the world order should be pluralistic, diverse and fair to Muslims, yet he calls the UN’s standards of human rights Western-based impositions. Turabi praises Islam as an ethical political order that can free all people from Western imperialism. Of course, this argument has a familiar ring to it. It was used by Marxist-Leninists who believed that world Communism would liberate the working classes. “The international dimension of the Islamic movement is conditioned by the universality of the umma (community of believers) and the artificial irrelevancy of Sudan’s borders,” said Turabi.7

Turabi’s acceptance of state-to-state relations as a temporary political condition highlights the fundamental schism between modern Sunni and Shi’ite doctrines of Islamic revolution. In the Sunni doctrine, as defined by Qutb, the re-establishment of the Caliphate is predicated on the prior success of national Islamic revolutions. Shi’ites, on the other hand, consider the

4. In the wake of the coup, the northern parties joined the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA) to form the National Democratic Alliance.

5. The relationship between Turabi and Bashir began to sour in December 1999, when Bashir declared a state of emergency and dissolved Parliament. At the time, Turabi was speaker. According to a party official, Turabi was asked to explain a “memorandum of understanding” with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which called for joint “peaceful resistance” against Bashir’s regime. Turabi was arrested on Feb. 21, 2001, on charges of organizing a coup. 6. “Islam, Democracy, the State and the West”— World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE) roundtable discussion with Dr. Hasan Turabi, held May 10, 1992, in Tampa, Fla., Middle East

Policy (Vol. 1, No. 3, 1992), pp. 49-61.

nation-state to be un-Islamic by definition, and therefore they actively support

any anti-statist Islamic movement, even against Arab states. Turabi’s great

achievement would be the reconciliation of revolutionary Sunni and Shi’ite Islam under one banner.

The momentous event occurred at the inaugural Islamic Arab People’s Conference in Khartoum in late April 1991. The IAPC, founded to challenge the Saudi-founded Organization of the Islamic Conference, had as its objectives the liberation of the Noble Sanctuary Jerusalem from Zionist occupation, promotion of Arab solidarity, and defending the ideals of peace, equality and humanity as described in the Quran, the Charter of the United

Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By its next meeting in

1993, the IAPC would be renamed the Popular Arab and Islamic Conference (PAIC) to indicate it was not restricted to Muslims.

The timing of the conference is significant, coming as it did a scant two months after Iraq was routed in The Gulf War. The presence of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf during and after the war, and the willing collaboration of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the American-led attack, gave Turabi his unifying cause.

What he did was place ibn Taymiya’s jihad against impious leaders into Qutb’s modern, political context. Turabi said Islamic movements should declare jihad against pro-U.S. Arab governments not because they weren’t

Islamic, but because they were collaborationist. In one stroke, Turabi defended

the integrity of Muslim nation-states while supporting the Shi’ite notion of jihad against impious nation-states.

The conference produced the first international revolutionary Sunni Islamic movement, the Popular International Organization (PIO), and a formal working relationship between Khartoum and Tehran. Iran would provide funds, training and organizational assistance, and Sudan would serve as Iran’s beachhead in Africa, allowing it to export Iranian influence into black Africa and the Maghrib (North Africa).

TU R A B I B A N K S O N B I N LA D E N’S H E L P

On July 5, a financial scandal almost scuttled the new Khartoum-Tehran partnership. The Bank of England shut down the Bank of Credit and Commerce International because its poor accounting practices and tenuous solvency threatened the stability of other banks. Incorporated in Luxembourg, run by Pakistanis, and funded by Saudi and Gulf Arabs, the BCCI provided a host of clandestine “services” to Islamist groups, including Turabi’s.8

8. Abu Dhabi’s ruling family owned 77.4 percent of the bank. In June 1994, 11 of the 12 former BCCI executives accused of fraud were convicted in Abu Dhabi, given prison sentences and ordered to pay compensation.

5. The Exile

According to the December 1992 report by U.S. senators John Kerry and Hank Brown to the Committee on Foreign Relations:

BCCI’s criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI’s bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers. Among BCCI’s principal mechanisms for committing crimes were its use of shell corporations and bank confidentiality and secrecy havens; layering of its corporate structure; its use of front-men and nominees, guarantees and buy-back arrangements; back-to-back financial documentation among BCCI controlled entities, kick-backs and bribes, the intimidation of witnesses, and the retention of well-placed insiders to discourage governmental action.9

Among the Islamist banks associated with BCCI were the Jordan Islamic Bank, the Dubai Islamic Bank, Taqwa Bank of Algeria and the Faysal Islamic Bank in Khartoum, all of which were controlled by the International Muslim Brotherhood. In the United States, those involved with BCCI included Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and former president Jimmy Carter.

It should be noted that the BCCI was not just a bank for Islamists. The CIA used the bank’s “special services” to launder drug and Iran-Contra money, and to finance the mujahedin during the Soviet-Afghan war. From 1981 to 1988, the CIA holding company Argin Corporation laundered $25 million via Shakarchi Trading Company, a Zurich-based currency-trading firm, principally involved in gold bullion trading that was caught up in the BCCI scandal. Funds from Argin and the CIA’s own accounts at BCCI were distributed to the mujahedin via Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), which then used it to buy U.S., Egyptian and Chinese weapons.

With the downfall of BCCI, Turabi asked bin Laden to create a replacement financial network. He agreed and set up a series of bank accounts to funnel money to Islamic movements. For example, Iranians and Gulf Arabs deposited $12 million into an account at the Faysal Islamic Bank, whence the funds were redirected to Algeria to help the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) fight an election.

Bin Laden’s financial dealings also led him to collaborate with his close friend Ayman al-Zawahiri to establish a banking network in the name of the

9. Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Hank Brown, The BCCI Affair—A Report to the Committee on

Foreign Relations, United States Senate, December 1992, 102nd Congress 2nd Session. The

Brotherhood Group.10 _{The group’s task was to obscure the origin of the} Islamists’ funding from Western security authorities. The group’s core financing came from 150 wealthy Gulf Arabs who also had a legitimate business presence in the U.S.

In addition to financial help, bin Laden also helped Turabi in a more constructive way. Among the major infrastructure projects he undertook were a road linking Khartoum to Port Sudan (built by his al-Hijra construction company), an airport near Port Sudan, and Islamist training centers in northern Sudan, the largest two being al-Shambat and al-Mazraah, designed for Tunisians, Algerians, French and Belgians.

This may not have been the first time bin Laden aided Turabi’s National Islamic Front. In 1990, he is said to have arranged for hundreds of mujahedin to travel to Sudan to fight alongside the NIF against non-Muslim guerrillas. According to a retired Sudanese intelligence agent who knew bin Laden, hundreds more came over in the next few years. Many of them became instructors at his training camps.”11

On Sept. 19, 2001, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a bin Laden associate turned government witness, said bin Laden’s businesses dealings included Taba Investments, the Wadi al Aqiq holding company, Laden International import-export company, a bakery, a furniture company, a cattle-breeding operation, the al-Ikhlar Co., which made honey and other sweets, and the Blessed Fruits farming business.12

Though bin Laden was in business to make money, profit was not the major concern, testified al-Fadl in broken English: “He say our agenda is bigger than business. We are not going to make business here, but we need to help the government and the government help our group, and this is our purpose.”13

10. Zawahiri, an upper-class Cairo pediatrician, became a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1981, and on Oct. 6 of that year he helped lead the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat. Zawahiri served three years in prison, and subsequently tried to assassinate current President Hosni Mubarak. He has been sentenced to death in absentia. “Zawahiri, once again, was a key part of the Sadat assassination, and afterwards was protected by London. The world needs to remember Sadat’s widow, Jehan Sadat, recalling in a television interview after 9/11 that Zawahiri, a murderer of her husband, had lived in London for years after that crime, while extradition to Egypt was always refused by the UK. The guess here would be that Zawahiri is a double agent working for MI-6, while Bin Laden is indeed a fanatical, deluded patsy and dupe.” Webster Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA (Progressive Press, 2005). Sadat was likely eliminated because he made peace with Israel at Camp David to help re-elect Carter, in return for Carter’s personal, spoken promise of a Palestinian state. Carter was then brought down by the October Surprise - Iran hostages intrigue. With both parties to the promise out of power, the US-UK-Israel axis was quit of the bargain. Tragically, all Carter could do was to set up his Carter Peace Center and occasionally sermonize on justice for the Palestinians. 11. Frank Smyth and Jason Vest, “One Man’s Private Jihad,” Village Voice, Aug. 19–25, 1998. 12. “Bin Laden Draws on Global Financing,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sept. 19, 2001. 13. Ibid. This citation is from 1992.

5. The Exile

In the simplest terms, this purpose was the eviction of Western forces from the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. In late 1992, though, the Islamists faced a new intrusion.

SO M A L I A

By the fall of 1992, 500,000 Somalis had died from famine and hundreds of thousands more faced starvation. International famine relief efforts were mounted, but anarchy and civil war hampered efforts and threatened the lives of the workers.

In response, U.S. President George Bush authorized the dispatch of U.S. troops to protect the workers, if necessary with military force. On Dec. 3, 1992, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 794 authorizing a U.S.-led multinational force (Operation “Restore Hope”) “to use all necessary means to establish a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations in Somalia as soon as possible.” (In August, the United States in coordination with the Disaster Assistance Response Team at the U.S. Agency for International Development, had begun airlifting emergency supplies from Mombasa, Kenya, under Operation “Provide Relief.”)

The famine was caused by fighting which grew out of Cold War geopolitics. In 1969, a military coup brought Maj.-Gen. Mohammed Siad Barre to power. He aligned himself with the Soviet Union, which expected him to export revolution throughout East Africa. Barre nationalized industry and invaded Ethiopia, but the Soviets backed Ethiopia instead, and the Somalis lost the war badly. Ethiopia then backed Somali dissident groups, which led to civil war and the partition of the country among feuding warlords.

Turabi looked upon East Africa, including the Horn of Africa, as fertile ground to export his Islamic philosophy. Somalia, Kenya, Chad, Tanzania, and Uganda all had Islamic parties, and by the fall of 1992 the Somali Islamic Union party was growing. Consequently, the U.S. and UN presence in Somalia was seen as a threat, not only to Islam but also possibly to Sudan’s Islamic government.

Bin Laden prevailed upon Sheikh Tariq al-Fadli to return from his London exile to lead the assault. Bin Laden had met al-Fadli in 1980 when they fought in the failed Saudi-sponsored Yemeni jihad.

Plans were then quickly drawn up to attack the U.S. forces, which were based in the port of Aden, across the Gulf of Aden from the fighting in the north. Islamists belonging to the Yemen Islamic Jihad organization planted bombs in the Aden Hotel and the Golden Moor Hotel, known to house U.S. servicemen. The attack left three Americans dead and five wounded, but a planned rocket attack on a U.S. transport aircraft at the airport was thwarted. Nevertheless, the operation was judged a success.

According to Robert Gersony, a consultant to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 300,000 to 500,000 Somalis arrived in eastern

Ethiopia from northern Somalia between the onset of hostilities in May 1988 and January 1989. 14

On Jan. 27, 1991, Barre’s Socialist-Islamic Revolutionary Party (SRSP) was overthrown by the rival United Somali Congress.15 _{In October, Gen.} Mohammed Farah Aidid and interim president Ali Mahdi Mohammed began fighting for control of Mogadishu.16 _{Mahdi’s faction supported an Italian-} style democracy, and was supported by Europe; Aidid favored traditional tribal government. When Aidid declared his faction to be the legitimate national government, Mahdi declared war.