Osama bin Laden built a shadow air force to support his terrorist activities, using Afghanistan's national airline, a surplus US Air Force jet and clandestine charters.
Long before suicide teams crashed into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11th, sympathetic foreign officials and wealthy supporters gave bin Laden access to planes to help him forge, arm and transport his terrorist network.
Interviews with 50 US diplomatic and security aides, law enforcement agents, former Afghan civil air officials, pilots and aviation executives provide a wealth of new details about how bin Laden cobbled together an unconventional air capability.
Through an operative, he bought and refurbished the Air Force passenger jet in 1992 and had it transported it to the Sudan, where he was then based. He shipped men and materiel on Afghanistan's Ariana Airways after the Taliban took control of the country in 1996. And when international sanctions hobbled the airline last year, he turned to covert charters to keep his terrorist network airborne.
In recent weeks, US bombers pounded a western Afghanistan airfield where four Ariana airliners were believed to be stored. The attack was an attempt to deny bin Laden mobility and prevent his escape from Afghanistan. US officials expressed concern that he might have other aircraft assets concealed in the country. A former Afghan civil air official said Taliban leaders had given bin Laden regular access to a Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter in recent years.
With the Taliban's blessing, bin Laden effectively had hijacked Ariana, the national civilian airline of Afghanistan. For four years, according to former US aides and Afghan officials, Ariana's passenger and charter flights ferried Islamic militants, arms, cash and opium through the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. Members of Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network were given false Ariana identification that gave them free run of airports in the Middle East.
Taliban authorities also opened the country's airstrips to high-ranking Persian Gulf state officials who routinely flew in for lavish hunting parties. Sometimes joined by bin Laden and Taliban leaders, the dignitaries, who included several high-ranking officials from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, left behind money, vehicles and equipment, according to US and Afghan accounts.