According to a November 15, 2001, interview with CIA Islamabad (Pakistan) station chief Milton Bearden: “for the first time came complaints from some Afghan fighters to the CIA about a rising force in their jihad: Arab volunteers. Thousands of them were arriving in Afghanistan. …Bearden recalled the thrust of the very early reports arriving from Afghan commanders in the field: ‘They [the Arabs] say we are dumb, and we do not know the Koran, and they are more trouble than they are ever going to be worth.’ ”
– Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, Pages 152-153