I am currently reading Chris Harman's 1994 article "The Prophet and the Proletariat" published in issue 64 of the Socialist Workers Party's theoretical journal, International Socialism.
Discussing radical Islam as a social movement, Harman sketches the position that in the 1980s the CIA and Pakistani intelligence worked with Middle Eastern states to send fighters to Afghanistan to fight to Red Army. Harman argues such fighters are now returning home to find that they were fighting, not for 'Islam' but for the USA. In Saudi Arabia:
".... the opposition now claims the support of “thousands of Afghan fighters”, disgusted by the hypocrisy of a royal family that is increasingly integrated into the world capitalist ruling class. And the royal family is now retaliating, further antagonising some of the very people it encouraged so much in the past, cutting off funds to the Algerian FIS for supporting Iraq in the second Gulf War and deporting a Saudi millionaire who has been financing Islamists in Egypt." (p.21)
Could this be the SWP's very first reference to Osama Bin Laden? Whilst it is not strictly true to say that Bin Laden was deported from Saudi Arabia in 1994, he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and had his assets frozen that year, having left the country in 1991. Or is there another Islamist financing Saudi millionaire who got his marching orders from the Kingdom in 1994?
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