From 1981 to 1991 the United States covertly spent about $3 billion arming the Afghan mujahedin, according to the Congressional Research Service, “particularly the Islamic fundamentalist Afghan factions.” The weapons went through Pakistan’s military intelligence service, which trained the rebels and handed out the arms. [1][2]
Saudi Arabia matched and added to that money. Bin Laden, the seventeenth of 57 children of a Saudi construction magnate, became known in that war less as a fighter than as a man with access to his family’s fortune. With the cleric Abdullah Azzam he built a “Bureau of Services” that funneled Arab volunteers into Afghanistan, funded by Gulf donors in a network investigators later called the “Golden Chain.” [2]
Approved reader comments and ratings appear here when JavaScript is on.