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It is a fateful alliance that will change history far beyond the boarders of this remote central Asian nation. The planning for a series of devastating Al-Qaeda attacks is about to begin. October 1996, Taliban fighters have seized Kabul, Afghanistan’s Capital and hold more than half the country. Earlier the same year, Osama Bin Laden loses his terrorist haven in Sudan and decides to return to Afghanistan where he had spent several years fighting against the Soviet Red Army. Bin Laden’s relationship with the Taliban is uneasy at first. His contacts are with the warlords with whom he had fought in the 1980s. For Bin Laden, the Taliban are something new.

It appears that at some point, according to ***, the Pakistani ISI intelligence agency introduced Osama Bin Laden to the leaders of the
Taliban. And he helped them financially. Some people say to the tune of three million dollars in capturing the city of Jalalabad and then the city of Kabul in September, 1996. He is wealthy and he is a brother in arms, but the Taliban are not sure they want Bin Laden. Bin Laden is a native of Saudi Arabia, and they approached the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turkey, with the question, shall we keep him or do you want him?

The Saudis don’t want him, Osama starts to build a friendship with Mullah Omar. Mulla Omar who was the leader of the Taliban, needed the money that Osama Bin Laden was able to provide. And Osama Bin Laden needed the protection of the Taliban group, and so they developed this really symbiotic relationship. As the battle for Afghanistan sharpens, pitting the Taliban against the forces of what would become the Northern alliance led by the legendary guerilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, / Bin Laden chooses / sides. He provided important element to Taliban’s final offensive against Kabul in two forms, first, a few great noncom type insurgent officers, insurgent fighters, who had come with him from Sudan or from elsewhere in the world, but more importantly, probably he provided an infusion of cash, which allowed the Taliban to buy off some of Masud's less loyal allies, and so in two ways facilitated the entry of the Taliban into Kabul.