‘Bin Laden is Taliban’s banker’ - report
Suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden has bankrolled Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime, it was reported today.
The Saudi-born leader of the al Qaida terror group has given the ultra-fundamentalist Afghan regime around £66 million over the last five years in cash and military assistance, according to US intelligence reports.
And he may be using the Middle East’s lucrative honey trade as a cover for shipments of arms and drugs around the region, it was claimed.
The US Central Intelligence Agency has told President George W Bush that bin Laden ‘‘owns and operates’’ the Taliban regime which controls most of Afghanistan.
His al Qaida military units provide the Taliban with its most committed and effective forces, while the CIA claims it has has uncovered evidence of tens of millions of pounds in back transfers from bin Laden to the regime.
It was also reported that the CIA is struggling to find bin Laden, who has changed locations frequently and sometimes travels under cover in an ambulance.
One official said: ‘‘It’s like chasing one particular rabbit in the entire state of West Virginia.
‘‘The problem is that we get where he was, rather than where he will be.’’
US intelligence has discovered that bin Laden often travels with Taliban leaders and uses decoy caravans to confuse anyone trying to follow him.
He usually has an entourage of fewer than 25 people, no firm headquarters, and often surrounds himself with women and children, increasing the chance that a direct US-led attack on him would kill innocent civilians, handing the suspected terrorist chief a publicity coup.
Using satellite pictures to locate him is difficult. A senior official said: ‘‘One Afghanistan mountain looks like every other Afghanistan mountain.’’
And there are few people in the country who are reliable CIA informers said the official, who added: ‘‘It’s a treacherous country with treacherous people who buy and sell loyalties.’’
Bin Laden secured the Taliban’s help in 1996 by handing over £2 million when he was forced to flee Sudan after US air strikes on the country.
It is claimed bin Laden’s cash does not come from his personal inheritance of £20 million he received when his construction magnate father died in a plane crash in 1968, but from front companies, bogus charities, and an extortion racket.
He and his henchmen are said to receive cash from ‘‘Persian Gulf states’’, who give the money in return for al Qaida staying out of their countries or minimising their activities.
It was also reported that the CIA has discovered that al Qaida may be using the honey trade as a front for its activities.
The network controls honey stores in both the Middle East and Pakistan, and uses the trade to conceal movements of drugs and guns.
The plot first came to light when customs agents in an undisclosed Middle Eastern country seized guns concealed in bulk shipments of honey
Its complexity has amazed investigators, who found some shops in the same chain are controlled by al Qaida, while others are not, in a deliberate attempt to conceal the money trail.
Bin Laden may have started in the honey trade while in Sudan from 1991 to 1996. While there, one of his companies, the International al-Ikhlas Company, made honey at a factory in the country.
Terrorist group Islamic Jihad is also known to have exploited the honey trade for cash.
US officials are now considering whether they should freeze the assets of the companies as part of their financial war on terrorism.
Charities used as a front for al Qaida have already been named and had their assets frozen, while the US has threatened to freeze the accounts of international banks found to be dealing with the terror group.
