allAfrica.com: West Africa: Debate Over al Qaeda's Connection to West Africa's Diamond Trade Takes New Turns (Page 1 of 3)

West Africa: Debate Over al Qaeda's Connection to West Africa's Diamond Trade Takes New Turns

The arrest of a Tanzanian fugitive in Pakistan last week, release of the 9-11 Commission report in Washington and a forthcoming finding by a war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone have rekindled the debate over what role, if any, west African diamonds played in financing the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian accused of masterminding the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, who was arrested by Pakistan security forces along with more than a dozen other al Qaeda suspects, has been identified as a linchpin of an al Qaeda diamond trading operation in Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone. Washington Post correspondent Douglas Farah, in a recently published 225-page book entitled "Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror," provides a detailed description of al Qaeda's activity in West Africa. Corroborative accounts have been published by the London-based nongovernmental organization Global Witness and by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, established by the United Nations to investigate crimes against humanity committed during Sierra Leone's brutal civil war in the 1990s.

According to Farah, American intelligence agencies overlooked the connection between diamond trading and al Qaeda and the central role played in harboring and profiting from the illicit dealing by Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was forced into exile in Nigeria last year under a deal brokered by the U.S. government. Farah's findings have been hotly disputed by the CIA and FBI, and their viewpoint was reflected in the recently release report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9-11 Commission. "We have seen no persuasive evidence that al Qaeda funded itself by trading in African conflict diamonds," the report states (page 171).

But a confidential investigation by the Sierra Leone Special Court further bolsters the view that that the alliance between Taylor and al Qaeda was substantial, according to an article in Wednesday's Boston Globe by Washington correspondent Bryan Bender. "Al Qaeda allegedly paid Taylor for protection and then joined him in the African diamond trade, raising millions of dollars for terrorist activities, according to UN war crimes documents," Bender wrote. Citing the Special Court's investigation and U.S. intelligence official, Bender said a planned raid a few weeks after September 11, 2001 by U.S. Special Forces aimed at capturing Ghailani and an associate in Liberia was called off for unexplained reasons. One explanation raised by Bender's sources was Taylor's reported longstanding relations with the CIA.

Farah, who currently serves as senior fellow at the National Strategy Information Center, discussed with AllAfrica's Eunice Ajambo the 9-11 Commission findings, the interaction between Al Qaeda and West Africa's diamond trade, and his view of the role U.S. intelligence has played. Excerpts:

What is your reaction to the single sentence in the 9-11 Commission report that dismisses African diamonds as a source of al Qaeda funding?

If you look at the footnotes of that particular citation, it's all FBI and CIA reports with the exception of an interview they quote with Allan White from the Special Court in Sierra Leone. I find it disturbing because they had access to the Belgium police report, which I have on my website, which they were given. The Special Court also wrote a special brief to them and the intelligence indicating al Qaeda's presence. The book, the Global Witness Report - none of those are cited as having been used at all in making their determination.

I think the 9-11 Commission was under a great deal of pressure to make hurried judgments. In my limited communication with them, they told me that they could not get to the bottom of the dispute. If you read my book, I have a lot of discussion of why the CIA tried to discredit the story, and the great lengths that they went to do so, despite the fact that they did not succeed, and the fact that more evidence continues to emerge [that] the story is actually correct. But there is a great hostility towards the story from the intelligence community, and all the commission did was take the intelligence community reports and use them as their basis for making their assertions.

I was really disappointed because several people talked to them after their initial staff report came out that contained that sentence. They do not seem to have listened to anybody, and they certainly didn't acknowledge [in their footnotes] that there was any other information out there.

The 9-11 Commission also stated "to date, we have not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9-11 attacks?" How do you respond to that?

The proof of the telephone contacts to Afghanistan on September 10th and the prior communications from the Belgium police who traced the phone call from the satellite phone used by Aziz Nassour and Samih Osailly [two al Qaeda operatives whose activities in west Africa are detailed in Farah's book] is not hearsay evidence. They made numerous calls and it's documented. I have the phone bills for them, and more importantly, the police got them out of the official records. I do not think it's something you can easily dismiss. Neither are the bank records from Artesia Bank that show $20m flowing and being unaccounted for, and all the other indications that other people came up with.

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