US and Islamists: It takes two to tango

US, UK, France and Islamists: It takes two to tango...

Brahma Chellaney

When Libya’s interim government announced the official “ liberation” of the country on October 23, it also declared that a system based on the Islamic sharia, including polygamy, will replace the dictatorship that Col Muammar Qaddafi ran for 42 years.

“We as a Muslim nation have taken Islamic sharia as the source of legislation, therefore any law that contradicts the principles of Islam is legally nullified,” declared interim leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil.

Swapping one evil for another may seem a cruel political comedown after seven months of relentless NATO air strikes in the name of promoting democracy in Libya - an air war that enabled the ragtag rebel militias to triumph but left a vast trail of death and destruction.

The Western powers that militarily effected the regime change in Libya, in fact, have not sought to stop its new rulers from establishing a theocratic system founded on Islamic jurisprudence. For these powers, such a political turn is an unavoidable price to pay to have their own men in power. The Islamist embrace indeed helps protect the credibility of men who otherwise may be seen as foreign puppets in their own society.

This is the same reason why the US, Britain and France have condoned the rulers of the oil sheikhdoms for their longstanding alliance with radical clerics. For example, the US-backed House of Saud not only practices the century-old political tradition of Wahhabi Islam but also exports this fringe form of Islam, with the result that the more liberal Islamic traditions elsewhere are being gradually snuffed out. The plain fact is that the US-led strategy is driven by narrowly defined geopolitical interests. The imperative to have pliant regimes in oil-rich countries trumps other considerations.

With the US support they enjoy, the most-tyrannical regimes – the monarchies – have been able to ride out the Arab Spring, emerging virtually unscathed. Libya has the world’s largest reserves of light sweet crude – the top-notch oil that American and European refineries prefer – and the NATO-scripted regime change there was clearly not about ushering in an era of liberal democracy. Having been born in blood, the new Libya faces uncertain times. The only certain element is that its new rulers will remain beholden to those that helped install them.

More fundamentally, America’s troubling ties with Islamist rulers and groups was cemented in the 1980s when the Reagan administration openly employed Islam as an ideological tool to spur the spirit of jihad against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan . It was at a White Houseceremony attended by some “holy warriors” from the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt in the mid-1980 s that Reagan proclaimed the mujahideen as the “moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.” Two such moral equivalents, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, later became America’s nemesis.

Make no mistake: international terrorism and the modern-day Frankenstein’s monsters are the haunting byproducts of the war against atheism and communism that the US was supposed to have won. Yet the lessons from that war have already been forgotten, including the need to keep the focus on long-term goals and not be carried away by political expediency. The current attempt to strike a Faustian bargain with the Taliban, for example, ignores the very lesson from the creation of this evil force.

It has been argued by exponents of the US policy approach that because a war runs on expediency, with strange bedfellows involved as partners, unsavory allies are unavoidable. Paradoxically, the US practice of propping up malleable but Islamist rulers in the Middle East creates a street-level situation not only laden with strong anti-US sentiment but also support for more authentically Islamist and independent forces. So, if elections are held, it is such autonomous Islamists that often emerge as winners, as the diverse cases of Gaza and Tunisiaattest.

Let’s be clear: The global fight against terrorism can succeed only by ensuring that states do not harbour militants or contribute in any way to the rise of virulent Islamic fundamentalism extolling violence as a sanctified religious tool. Yet today, history is in danger of repeating itself.

The brutal killing of Gaddafi by his NATO-backed captors and the macabre public display of his body for several days were redolent of the manner former Afghan President Najibullah was dragged out of the UN compound in Kabul by the Taliban in 1996 and hung from a traffic barricade. What followed was unending bloodletting. So, it is fair to ask: Will Libya become another jihadist haven?

Brahma Chellaney is the author of ‘Asian Juggernaut’ and ‘Water: Asia’s New Battleground’

By: Peter Chamberlin

By following the trail of militant terrorists US forces and American interests have gained access deep in Central Asia, where oil companies have had little luck gaining a foothold on their own.

To students of American foreign policy in Afghanistan and throughout the world, it is common knowledge that the United States military and Central Intelligence often act in a manner that is contradictory to the words of American leaders. To those who care to look behind the curtain of American duplicity, which casts a veneer of benevolence over our actions, it becomes readily apparent that “Islamic militants” tend to show-up wherever American oil companies have expressed an interest. America’s historical usage of the same militant groups in the past casts suspicion on their reappearance today, all along the pathway of the projected pipelines.

It is much more than mere serendipity that militant actions usually target American adversaries, such as China, Russia and Iran. In addition, “Islamists” seem to also target disobedient American allies, such as Pakistan, who have fallen out-of-line, or otherwise failed to meet American expectations. Given our use of Islamist militants in Afghanistan to attack Russian forces, as well as in Bosnia, to attack Russia’s allies, the Serbians, it takes a very small leap of the imagination to see that the US is logically supporting the very militants our forces are fighting in the field.

The key to understanding American foreign policy is the Hegelian dialectic—the policy of taking certain actions that will cause reactions that are the polar opposite of what you really claim to wanted in the first place:

“The Hegelian Dialectic is, in short, the critical process by which the ruling elite create a problem, anticipating in advance the reaction that the population will have to the given crisis, and thus conditioning the people that a change is needed. When the population is properly conditioned, the desired agenda of the ruling elite is presented as the solution. The solution isn’t intended to solve the problem, but rather to serve as the basis for a new problem or exacerbate the existing one.”

To study the Afghan Islamists is to conduct a forensic dissection of a psyop. From the very beginning, before the Soviets even invaded, the Afghan revolution was manufactured by a coalition of foreign powers led by the CIA. Even the political form of Wahabi “Islam” which was taught to combatants in local madrassas, using American-created “Islamic” textbooks from the University of Nebraska, was really a deviation from true Islam that incorporated behavioral modification techniques. “Suicide bombers” are a CIA mind-control phenomenon.

All the militant Islamists dance to the Wahabi tune, or that of its closest cousin, the equally bankrupt Deobandi movement. Saudi Arabia spreads this false religion wherever oil and gas fields beckon American corporations. Pakistan merges Wahabbism with the Deobandi faith in its Islamists who receive training in the tribal region. The radicalism that arises thereafter from either branch is the desired bi-product that is sought by American military and intelligence planners. The radicalism and the terrorism which it brings, all in the name of Allah, provide excuses for American military trainers to penetrate targeted nations.

In central Asia, Hizb ut-Tahrir radicalizes young minds and prepares the path for the more radical Wahabi imports. Saudi-built mosques in the former Soviet republics that were previously cleansed of all formal religion by the communist overlords provide very fertile ground where young minds can fill their hunger for both knowledge and religion.

Former government translator Sibel Edmonds recently gave testimony in the court case of Turkish Islamic leader Fetullah Gulen, who was seeking a green card, which confirmed US/Saudi sponsorship of radical mosques and Islamists in central Asia. She described American government documents which she had transcribed during her government service

“Now we come full circle to the current operations in Central Asia which are at the core of the gagging of Sibel Edmonds. As outlined in my recent article, “Court Documents Shed Light on CIA Illegal Operations in Central Asia Using Islam & Madrassas,” the CIA has been funding an illegal covert operation to ‘Islamicize’ the Central Asian region in order to wrest control away from Russia and secure the vast energy resources of the region. The US has been using Turkey as a proxy to carry out this operation, for reasons that Sibelexplained:

Given the history, and the distrust of the West, the US realized that it couldn’t get direct control, and therefore would need to use a proxy to gain control quickly and effectively. Turkey was the perfect proxy; a NATO ally and a puppet regime. Turkey shares the same heritage/race as the entire population of Central Asia, the same language (Turkic), the same religion (Sunni Islam), and of course, the strategic location and proximity.

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

This is why I have been saying repeatedly that these illegal covert operations by the Turks and certain US persons dates back to 1996, and involves terrorist activities, narcotics, weapons smuggling and money laundering, converging around the same operations and involving the same actors.

And I want to emphasize that this is “illegal” because most, if not all, of the funding for these operations is not congressionally approved funding, but it comes from illegal activities.

And one last thing, take a look at the people in the State Secrets Privilege Gallery on my website and you will see how these individuals can be traced to the following; Turkey, Central Asia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – and the activities involving these countries.

As part of this operation, Turkish organizations such as the Gulen ‘movement,’ a $25 billion economic powerhouse, reportedly financed by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, has been establishing madrassas and mosques across Central Asia – including Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – for the past decade.

The construction and operation of these madrassas and mosques appear to serve a number of purposes:
1. Indoctrination and radicalization of students
2. Providing a front for CIA and State Department-sanctioned ‘teachers’ to operate with the protection of Diplomatic passports.
3. Laundering money for a variety of purposes.”

Thanks to these successful psyops, terrorist drug-runners from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) find more willing recruits than they can employ to sow terror, crime and drug addiction throughout all of the fertile, though uranium rich, Ferghana Valley, which connects to all of the “Stans.”

“The IMU is best understood as an amalgam of personal vendetta, Islamism, drugs, geopolitics, and terrorism…Only the IMU had a network of contacts on all sides of the Afghan conflict, which enabled it to freely move across Afghanistan and Tajikistan unlike any other known organization.”—The Drugs-Crime-Radical Islamist Nexus.

There is every reason to believe that the IMU itself, is a CIA creation. According to the definitive history on this topic, given by author Steve Coll in Ghost Wars,:

“CIA Director William Casey, in a move exceeding his authority, decided to extend destabilizing propaganda measures inside the borders of the Soviet Union. To this end, the CIA promoted the Muslim religion in Uzbekistan, by CIA commissioning a translation of the Qu’ran into Uzbek by an Uzbek exile living in Germany, and then commissioning Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence to deliver 5,000 copies.”

If the CIA did, in fact, supply the corrupted Islamic jihadi textbooks to the madrassas where IMU foot soldiers were indoctrinated in Uzbekistan, then it follows that whatever arose from them is also a product of the CIA. At this point, it is necessary to quote from official US military doctrine—from US Air Force doctrine paper Irregular Warfare, under “Support to Insurgencies”–

“Various US government organizations are postured to recruit, organize, train, and advise indigenous guerrilla or partisan forces. These operations usually consist of supplying equipment, training, and advisory assistance to non-state actors. They may also involve US direct-action operations supporting specific campaign goals.”

American military and drug-interdiction missions in hot pursuit of IMU terrorists and drug-dealers provide cover for Special Forces operatives, who scout-out local leadership for further development, or termination. The “Irregular Warfare” document deals with leadership becoming targeted by both drone and PSYOP, as well. The Partnership for Peace programs open the door for an influx of thousands of American and NATO trainers, giving them bases for operations for “direct-action” missions, while it transfers tons of surplus military equipment to oil rich customers and sets the stage for joint military war games.

The new anti-terror training center at Batken, Kyrgyzstan will train the “Scorpion” Special Forces units for drug-interdiction and anti-terrorist operations. Batken is the axis point for American operations, the point where dominion over former Soviet states formally transfers out of Russian hands, into greedy American hands. The Russians passed-up the chance to build a military facility at Batken. IMU terror convinced the Kyrgyz government that the center was needed to deal with IMU terror operations, after 800 IMU agents penetrated the Ferghana Valley:

“The incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in the Batken Oblast of Kyrgyzstan in August 1999 exposed fundamental weaknesses in the Kyrgyz armed forces. Coordinated activities by the groups of armed insurgents confirmed that the state security bodies were unable to cope adequately with the tactics of guerrilla war…Despite the official claims made by the MoD, neither Kyrgyz security nor military units conducted successful combat engagements with the insurgents. This lack of success underscored a number of critical Kyrgyz military shortfalls that hampered their ability to effectively find, fix, and engage the hostile groups”

The recent sudden realignment of Taliban and Pakistani interests (represented in the string of Taliban “arrests”) is intended to provide the US and NATO with an excuse to open this new front in their terror war, by shifting the emphasis to protecting the new Northern Distribution Network (NDN) that parallels anticipated pipeline routes to the irresistable underground wealth that waits to be pumped from underneath the fertile Caspian basin soil. This attempted realignment on interior Asia was only made possible because American and Pakistani leaders decided to take advantage of Pakistan’s continued friendly relations with the Taliban, instead of working at cross-purposes with each other.

Now it is possible to plan for an American “exit from Afghanistan,” which will firmly place total control of Afghanistan back into Pakistan’s hands (if only India and Russia can be persuaded to go along). The sad part of the story is that now, when America needs Indian cooperation more than ever, the David Headley case is threatening to blow Indo-American relations asunder. If possible, America is attempting to allow India limited access to Headley, if it can be done without exposing the American hand behind the Mumbai attack. (SEE: Mumbai Mystery: American Designs on Pakistan and India )

The new Afghan paradigm will free American forces for the central Asian expedition, so that American oil companies can get the oil that everybody will want piped to the outside world. India has a vested interest in making all of this happen.

If all the players really wanted to ensure that the oil and gas flowed out of Asia, then they would now support turning back the clock in Afghanistan, to the former arrangements that prevailed before 2001. Friend of Pakistan (and formerly the US) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has led the way by taking the first steps to introduce the new Afghan paradigm—a rapid American pull-out, based on Pakistan reeling-in the Taliban and Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami effectively challenging the Taliban and renegade Uzbeks around Kunduz.

A Pakistani-engineered peace deal between the Karzai government and Hekmatyar, for northern Afghanistan only, is clearly in the cards, but that also depends upon whether or not the Indian/Russian-allied Northern Alliance wants to play the role of spoiler. A return to pre-2001 conditions could turn the clock all the way back to 1996 and the civil war in Afghanistan between Taliban and Northern Alliance. If that happens, then look for India to increase support to resistance (terrorist) groups in Balochistan. If that path is chosen, then we should also expect a surge in Taliban-related violence in Balochistan, as Gen. Musharraf’s MMA militant/mullah alliance is revived, and Taliban are once again imported to take on the BLA and other foreign-supported resistance groups.

Either way, by handing Afghanistan off to Pakistan, in short order, US forces will be freed-up to move northward, to secure territory around the new Northern Distribution Network (NDN) and the clearing of the way for the planned pipelines. Pakistan will be given a free hand to pacify its own territory, including Balochistan, with American air power available if needed. Pakistan will clear Balochistan to the port at Gwadar, if everything works out as anticipated. It will be expected to anchor this end of the supply chain, a position it has gotten used to in its service to America in the past.

But there is a very large credibility hurdle that both Pakistan and America must get past—the ease with which Pakistan has been able to round-up so many of the “Quetta Shura” gives rise to multiple questions about what other lies have been issued from Islamabad.

If Pakistan can effortlessly sweep-up half of the Taliban leadership, after giving American Predator pilots guidance to so many key militant leaders in a very small timeframe, then it proves that they have known where all the militants were all along. It disproves the lie that the link between mullahs and military had been broken, but does it likewise disprove the American contention that its use of Islamists is also a thing of the past? The recent capture of IMU-trained Jundullah terrorist leader Abdolmalek Rigi, and the possible resultant upsetting of US plans to merge IMU terrorists into Jundullah’s ranks (as recently revealed by researcher Wayne Madsen), are strong circumstantial evidence that there is a deep connection still active between the CIA and their militant spawn.

From The color of money in Afghanistan has a chemical signature–

“Holbrooke has apparently not learned from his experience with Jundallah and Karzai’s drug trafficking family. WMR has learned that the Rigi-Holbrooke meeting at the Manas airbase was also to include a pre-arranged meeting between Rigi and captured members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), who have been converted from adherents of Osama Bin Laden’s “Al Qaeda” to pipeline saboteurs, Holbrooke wanted to see an alliance between Jundallah and the reformed IMU guerrillas to plan operations targeting the Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan-China (TUKC) gas pipeline that recently began operations. The United States used Jundallah to attack the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline in Baluchistan and Holbrooke was hoping that Rigi’s experience would benefit the turned IMU terrorists who operate in the Fergana Valley of Tajikistan.”

The American use of Islamic militants as elements of its covert foreign policy is a fact, known to governments and their spy agencies all over the world. The only people who do not suspect that the American government is creating the very militants it claims to be at war against, are the American people and Western audiences. It is common knowledge to everyone in the Middle East region. In fact, nearly every government with its hands in the Afghan/Pakistan chaos uses “Islamists,” warlords and criminal types to advance their agendas in the conflict; it is the only way to be effective.

The greatest part of the multitude of problems that American planners must overcome is the enormous multi-faceted balancing act between armies and militants, between partners in the war coalition, between thresholds and breaking points, between militarizing the citizens of the United States without provoking them into violent revolution. Of these multiple balancing acts, the trickiest task of all for the Obama Administration will involve that of maintaining Russian and Indian assistance in the Afghan fight against militants and opium, without overplaying their hand or revelations about Islamist destabilization operations against their interests being revealed.

It is my hope in writing this, that it will help a little to reveal the awful knowledge that is being covered-up. No amount of oil or gas is worth the price that is being extracted from thousands of innocent human beings to pay for the war crimes that are being committed in this aggression.

If American diplomats can maintain this precarious balancing act long enough, and if they work quickly enough to get some kind of peace/exit agreement in place, American forces might become able to openly move the pipeline plans forward, while they covertly militarize central Asia under the cover of fighting drugs and militancy. The former Soviet republics have very little, if any, independent news sources to let us know what crimes are being committed once the action slips into Krygzstan. Whatever happens next will be far beyond the eyes and ears of the world community....