One could say that on September 11, 2001, the creature
bit the hand of its creator. In what follows we will consider some situations
which reveal the creation acts and the creature’s inclusion in the creator’s perimeter
of interests.
Contents
1 – A basis for oppression and
inequality
2 - Afghanistan– a starting chapter
2.1
– The strengthening of jihadism in Afghanistan
3 – New scenarios for jihadist action
3.1
– The European debut – Bosnia
3.2
– A hatchery of crime – Kosovo
3.3 – Chechnya – Russia’s soft belly?
1 – A basis for oppression and
inequalities
The root causes for the rising destabilization in the Middle East and
Africa are structural and cannot be solved with the unwilling reception of
refugees or, even less, with bombardments. The following two charts emblematically
show the structural problems arising from the great inequalities that divide
the Mediterranean edge[1]. Those are, in themselves,
violent; wherever violence exists, resistance, pacific or otherwise, is also
found which normally attracts further violence, destruction, and suffering.
Even if editorial speeches do not explicitly refer them, at the foundation of
these conflicts are the unequal relationships that characterize capitalism.
PIB=GDP
Primary source:
CNUCED/UNCTAD
For decades now, occidental understanding of experienced problems is
born of, and limited to, the reading of the questions related to the economical
infrastructure, from which the solution of economic development – a disguise
name for predatory extractive behavior – is demanded, without affecting the
ownership of the production means and the distribution of generated wealth, or
avoiding the destruction of ecosystems. In contrast, the stupid neoliberal
litany of job generating investments, low salaries as a basis for
competitiveness, and debt sustained consumption is sung.
An ideological superstructure of twitching, of civilizational clash,
has been theorized by Huntington who updated for the post-colonial world the
superiority complex of the colonialist, exacting on the obedience and
“civilized” habits mimetics by the colonized[2] but little
inclined to understand the feelings and rational inherent to the indigenous
cultures, of the natives kept underdeveloped by René Dumont’s 3 M’s, in what
concerns Africa[3]. That superiority, which
generates rights of leadership and imposition upon the recalcitrant, is often
designated as eurocentrism and is the source of a debt, less talked about than
the financial one, the colonial debt.
The radical contestation that was seen in Europe during the 60s and the
70s of the preceding century was based upon European-rooted philosophies and
was also the political base for anti-colonialism liberation movements. At the
time, European cultures had to confront Buddhist monks in Vietnam immolating
themselves by fire to fight against local dictatorship, a completely
incomprehensible act to Europeans who were incapable of understanding the power
of that serene and pacific protest message. Similarly, the attacks committed by
Muslims, by detonating belts with explosives in order to strike their enemy,
are acts resulting from the lack of hope, racist humiliation, and retribution
for victimized relatives or communal revenge, in the face of an oppressor or
aggressor, rather than the pursuit of benefits in a future life. Again, the
root causes lie on the ground, in poverty, inequality, lack of a future,
communal humiliation, external aggression, and repression. Be there in former
Saigon, New York, or Paris. A policeman may be placed at every door, every
computer’s IP may be watched, as well as borders, and passenger lists
scrutinized, intelligence information exchange increased, and entire countries bombed,
but none of those will change the essence of what is reflected by the charts
above.
With all the historical truth on their
side, Arabs and Muslims generally point to the occidental responsibilities on
the arbitrary and artificial political carving of the extinct ottoman empire,
on the 20s of the preceding century, into kingdoms handed over to families in
collusion with the occidental interests, notably the British ones – the al-Saud
in Arabia, the Hashemite in Jordan and Iraq, the al-Husayn in Yemen, the al-Sabah
in Kuwait, and, additionally, keeping the ruling families in the Gulf area’s several
English protectorates. It is of merit to make an unavoidable reference to the
fact that it was the English who allowed the establishment in Palestinian lands
of the genocidal entity known as Israel, whose protection was quickly taken
over by the Americans, a situation that remains until today.
The gradual uncovering of the immense
energy richness of the zone has been, ever since, underlying variously natured
occidental interventions which have impeded the region’s autonomy and progress,
notwithstanding the popular discourse about Muslim fatalism which would attract
those peoples to the maintenance of poverty or to a morbid cultural attraction
to the use of violence. The beneficiaries of such racist narrative who, in that
context, intend to portray themselves as victims of incomprehension, are easily
detected,
A mix of craving for occidental
prosperity and hatred for the fact that they – and their allies on the reigning
houses or odd dictators – block the access to the same prosperity in order to
ensure the continuity of oil plundering is felt throughout this whole geographic
area. Notably, immigration to Europe, even if restricted, results in
discriminatory logics and ghettos that also encompass several generations
already born in Europe.
It should be stressed as well that a
dangerous segmentation of peoples is also gaining force in Europe with the
increasing differences between a rich center and the peripheries where, through
the mechanisms of debt, nations are urged to reduce peoples’ income, rights,
and well-being by a small oligarchy that unites bankers and their cupidity, the
parochial bureaucrats that swarm in the Berlin-Frankfurt-Brussels line, and
their national metastases. In turn, and in the name of security, xenophobia and
fascism, as well, the acceptance of police and militarized[4]
intervention in public and private places is insinuated,
bringing to mind the Big Brother’s kingdom.
No matter how removed from news reports
you are, and from the odd sayings of the usual chartered commentators, peoples
on both shores of the Mediterranean make their fight from the same trenches.
2 - Afghanistan– a starting chapter
On July of 1973 an afghan dignitary, Daud Khan, overturned the king –
who was his cousin – and put an end to the monarchy with the expected help of
Parcham, a faction of the DPAP - Democratic Party of the Afghan People.
Initially, Daud received some support from the USSR before giving priority to
the relations with Iran which, at the time, was ruled by Pahlevi, who was close
to the USA.
On April 27, 1978, Daud was ousted by the army, which had great sympathy
for the DPAP, assassinated (along with his family), and replaced by Nur Taraki,
DPAP’s secretary-general. The new government made some modernizing reforms that
divided the two DPAP factions – the Parchamis,
mostly non-Pashtuns, and the Khalkis
– causing a reaction from all tribes, where a strong traditionalism prevailed,
as well as from the large land owners, threatened by the agrarian reform, the
end of usury and the nullification of the small farmers’ debt.
Sill in Daud’s time, in 1975, Ali Butho’s Pakistan, to demonstrate
solidarity with Pashtun tribes and create obstacles to the government in Kabul,
supported the Jamiat e-Islami rebellion whose defeated members took refuge in
Pakistan.
Soviets had a traditionally large influence in Afghanistan, a result of
the clash between Russians/Soviets and English, the colonizers of India and the
future Pakistan, who, since the XIX century had created Afghanistan (and
Persia/Iran) as a stop-gap state in order to contain Russian approach to the
“warm seas”. Soviet support to Afghanistan, to build infrastructures, the Kabul,
Herat, and other universities, as well as humanitarian and military-related,
was increased, especially after WW II; the USSR was, thus, beneficiary of
England’s withdrawal resulting from the extinction of their Indies Empire. On
the other hand, the two contenders of the Indo-Pakistani conflict, having
become nuclear powers, caused Afghanistan to be seen as an interesting support
instrument for either of them, also
with Iran’s influence being felt and, on that context and still in Daud Khan’s
time, the soviets strongly supported the reinforcement of the armed forces.
In the middle of 1978 the first rebel groups appear on the mountainous
zones near the Pakistan border (Pashtuns) and in September of 1979 Hafizullah
Amin, of the Khalki faction, takes
power after the assassination of Taraki (the current practice, at the time)
adding to combating the rebels the fight against the Parchamis. During this period the repression of traditional and
religious powers was particularly merciless, including executions, causing
those opposing the regime to flee the country. A rebel uprising in Herat (March
of 1979) caused the death of 100 soviet troops followed by a strong repression,
the generalization of the rebellion (to 24 of the 28 provinces) and desertions in
the army. In what followed, the north-American president Jimmy Carter signed,
on July 3rd, his first directive[5] on the secret support of the opposition to the Kabul regime, about six
months before the arrival of soviet troops. USA’s twitching had already shown
itself, foretelling a future confrontation period between the superpowers, when
Carter refused to ratify the SALT II treaty on nuclear proliferation, on June
of the same 1979 year.
Brejnev, knowing the soviet economy weaknesses, the political risks of
an open intervention abroad, and the declared opposition of the soviet people, did
not want to send troops to Afghanistan. In face of the degradation of the
internal situation, the Afghan government urged the soviet intervention which,
on June 16, 1979, materialized in the sending of tanks to protect Kabul and the
airports; soon after (July 7), unarmed parachutists entered the Bagram base,
taking care not to interfere in the local conflict, moreover because the USSR
disagreed with the sectarian attitudes of Hafizullah Amin who, in September,
had moved from prime-minister to president of the republic.
Amin was becoming an element whose action encouraged rebellion and thus
soviet troops in Afghan uniform, on the night of the 27 to the 28 of December
of 1979, assassinate Amin and replace it with the Parchami Karmal. On the same day 1.800 tanks, 2.000 armored cars
and 80.000 soviet infantry soldiers enter Afghanistan unchaining a protest choir
put on by 34 Islamic countries. The growth period of the various forms of
jihadism was thus openly initiated, with the support of the occident.
2.1 - The strengthening of jihadism in Afghanistan
Carter had inherited some defeats during the years prior to the soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. The Portuguese decolonization had not created any USA
vassal states and, especially in Angola, the South-African intervention was
unsuccessful, the presence of Cuban troops in the country could not be
prevented by the USA. On Ethiopia Mengistu Mariam had put an end to the empire
and was building a USSR-aligned regime. In 1975 the USA, still with Gerald
Ford, had left the Vietnam and the Indochina, fraught by the defeat. Thus, the
soviet invasion of Afghanistan would be the great opportunity to retake the
initiative and cause difficulties to the strategic adversary.
The invasion would allow the support to the rebel Afghan mujahedin to growth and take on a
visibility which, until then, was inconvenient to show. The USA bought all the
soviet equipment in Israel’s possession and supplied it to the mujahedin, possibly taking care to
replace it by armament made in USA; Egypt
reequipped its army and, as did Turkey, sent the old material to the Afghans; the
UK sent the obsolete Blowpipe missiles and the neutral Switzerland sent the
Oerlikon cannons, also outdated. Only China sent modern material, as opposed to
the others that used Afghanistan as a recycling area.
There was a firm intention on the USA side to bend its strategic enemy
at any cost. Operation Cyclone, a CIA program which came to cost as much as US $630M
in 1987, consisted in the utilization of the powerful Pakistani ISI[6] (Inter-Services Intelligence) to channel military and financial means,
and logistics, to the Afghan mujahedin.
ISI supplied military training to 100.000 men for a decade, with USA financing,
including 35.000 fighters[7]
coming from other Islamic countries, among them the famous bin
Laden who in 1986 was in charge of recruitment. bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, armed and
financed by the USA and other contributors, such as the other groups, was
characterized by its fighting eagerness, its militant extremism, and
constituted the aggregating nucleus of the 4.000 Saudis who fought in
Afghanistan. During the last period of the war the USA tried to focus their
support on the moderate Massoud but they could not guarantee that either the
ISI or the other donors would follow them, notably Saudi Arabia; and so, a few
years after the soviet left, power in Afghanistan had fallen into Taliban’s hands.
The soviet had made a huge calculation error by admitting that
eliminating the loathed Amin would make the Afghans happy with Karmal leading
the Afghan army and with the soviet help. They forgot Afghan’s deeply rooted
independence spirit, which the English new well since the XIX century. They
forgot the lesson learned by the USA in Indochina, or by the Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau,
that controlling the cities and leaving the rest of the territory to the
guerrillas – more so with strong occidental support and on Pakistan – would
cause a huge wear and tear to a conventional army, namely in casualties,
budget, and troop morale. And they did not imagine that the disintegration of
the Afghan army would place the whole war effort on the soviet troops that
lacked any reason to be thrilled by that war, in addition when being in the
less than likeable position of occupation forces.
One aspect with very evident sequels today is the fact that the soviets
were seen as communists and atheists, the fulcrum of a holy war in Islam’s name
that reached far beyond Afghanistan. This religious exacerbation – a clash of
civilizations – was paid for by the USA with the distribution of radical
theological texts, as well as by Saudi Arabia which was eager to spread its Wahhabi
righteousness by building mosques and creating madrassas as they would also do,
in the following decade, in the ex-soviet republics with Muslim populations.
The absence of a unified structure amongst the mujahedin, a consequence of the great cultural diversity of Afghan
people, facilitated the appearance of war lords (Dostum, Uzbek, Hekmatyar abd
Massoud, Tadjik, mullah Omar, Pashtun) and preachers of the following of
koranic strictness to avoid divine retribution.
Gorbachov, in the beginning of 1988, aware of the soviet economic model weaknesses,
started to withdraw troops from Afghanistan – in the same way as he kept back
the Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia or the Cuban in Angola – in a process
that ended on February of the following year. The Geneva agreements considered
the USSR and USA pledge of non-interference in Afghanistan’s or Pakistan’s
internal politics. Nevertheless, Najibullah’s Afghan government would fall only
three years after that, in the middle of the usual barbarities.
Another problem born during the war was the poppy cultivation for opium
production, which turned Afghanistan into a big world producer (80% in 2014), a
business dominated by Pakistani in partnership with the mujahedin groups; in 2014 the culture was almost triple of the
observed before the occidental invasion.
In 1988 Brzezinski, Carter’s secretary of state at the time of the
soviet intervention, when questioned whether he regretted his adventurism
regarding the creation of al-Qaeda and the jihadist terrorism of 1978/79 was very
clear: “Why regret? The idea of a secret operation was excellent. It hastened
the Russians into the afghan trap and you want me to regret it? On the day the
soviets crossed the border, as I wrote precisely to president Carter: “We are
before the opportunity of offering USSR their Vietnam War.”[8]
3 - New scenarios for jihadist action
The soviet defeat on the Afghan theater meant an important victory to
the USA and its allies. On the strategic level it was a huge contribution to
the implosion of the USSR in 1991 which would be taken advantage of to refine
the map of political, economic and military influences throughout the world,
with particular emphasis on the fragments of that implosion and their
surroundings. The alliance of the Occident, essentially on-line with the
Pentagon’s strategy, with the Muslim world’s nations closer to them, which in
Afghanistan had already evidenced some facets revealing differentiated
objectives, would continue to present areas of confluence and others where the
agendas would be distinct and, even, in conflict.
After the soviet withdrawal and especially after USSR’s implosion, the
USA detached themselves from Afghanistan, from the after-war rebuilding and the
bloody conflicts between the several mujahedin factions. This lack of
interest resulted in the growing influence of Saudis and Pakistani, which led
the relative stabilization of Afghanistan around the Taliban fundamentalists[9] (literally, students) who
in 1996 formed a government which lasted until the 2001 invasion and was, in
the meantime, recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab
emirates.
During the 80s decade, Komeini’s Iran
had become adverse to both the USA (the Great Satan) and the USSR (communist),
which fought each other on the neighboring Afghanistan, from where hundreds of
thousands of Afghan refugees came, notably Shia Hazaras. Their intervention
capability on the Afghan scene was small because Iran was involved with Iraq in
a bloody war which Saddam Hussein had started. He decided to take advantage of
the political transformation and relative isolation of Iran to reinstate the
old territorial claims to oil rich areas, certain of the USA – who had been
humiliated by Iran on the previous decade – collusion and also of the support
of the majority of the Arab states (except Syria) eager to weaken Iran’s role
as a regional power and, on top of it, non-Arab.
Unable to win the war against Iran, and
indebted after eight years of hostilities, Saddam decided to place a new claim:
the incorporation of Kuwait, the ancient 27th Iraq province, a land
without water but with plenty of oil, an occidental protectorate whose emir had
lent Saddam money to fight Iran. On that context he invaded and occupied Kuwait
forgetting that one should not bite a finger from the owner’s hand; the owner
reacted and the occidental and Arab monarchs (Syria also participated this
time) intervention starts on January 1991, in order to rescue Kuwait and call
Saddam back to order. In the end, Saddam’s sovereignty was restricted to the
Sunni area in the country’s center; he was excluded from acting on either the
Shiite south or the Kurdish north, in addition to seeing his military power
reduced, a situation that, with some nuances,
would last until 2003.
During this conflict Russia stayed afar,
not intervening, while the USA created an excellent reason to establish
military bases on Kuwait, Bahrein, Saudi Arabia, Oman, whose objective would
certainly not be a weakened Iraq but Iran the great Saudi rival in the gulf
area, without forgetting the control of the energy supplies from China, Japan,
and South Korea. This occupation situation, even if friendly, did not please many
Arabs and some would not forgive the Saudi king, as the guardian of Islam
sacred places, the persistence of infidels presence.
On the other hand, the frequent
occidental incursions and bombardments of Iraq and the harsh economic blockade[10]
punished the population in general and did not weaken Saddam
internally; oil, however, continued to gush in exchange for imports of
essential goods, medicines... In Iraq, which until then was laic and free of
conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, a deep antipathy towards the occidentals
started to form, and it would grow after the invasion in 2003, based on the
dramatic and ludicrous lie of the “weapons of mass destruction”. We shall
return to Iraq later on.
3.1 – The European debut – Bosnia
The implosion of the USSR created new opportunities for USA’s strategy
or, in another, more precise, way, for the CIA and the Pentagon, whose
influence and autonomy versus the presidents is being proven as growing. One of
those opportunities, in Europe, was the dismemberment of Yugoslavia with a
focus, considering this text’s objectives, on Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Once the East-West equilibrium in Europe was broken and with the
extinction, in 1991, of both the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact, Yugoslavia emerged
as vulnerable. That same year, on July 25, and following internal conflicts
based on the dominant ethnic groups and regions, Slovenia and Croatia
proclaimed their independence, immediately recognized by Germany and the
Vatican, where reigned the fanatic John Paul II, Reagan’s intimate ally for the
placement of the East European countries in the CEE and NATO economic and
military interests’ influence spheres[11],[12],[13]
or in the opposition to progressists in Latin America. Soon
after, in September, Macedonia proclaims its independence with the presence of
USA soldiers on the Servia border, under the UN flag, although no conflict ever
took place. The main problem appeared in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a real mosaic made
up of Serbs (of orthodox tradition), Croatians (catholic), and others whom, for
want of an ethnical description, started to be known as Muslims, and they all
got involved in a war marked by barbarities. Bosnian Serbs set up a Srpska
Republic and attracted NATO military power in September of 1995, despite the
country not belonging to any of the organization’s member countries, nor did it
constitute a menace to NATO countries, thus rendering inapplicable the famous 5th
article of NATO’s instituting treaty.
Economic and political interests have also shown themselves to be agile
in dividing people using ethnic or religious reasons, as if those were real
distinctions amongst human beings. Placement of the conflict on a religious
fight level on a country with strong laic tradition, such as Yugoslavia,
started in 1992 when foreign Muslim volunteers (the “Mujahedin Battalion”)[14]
arrived in Bosnia to help the local people of Islamic
tradition, since in Afghanistan… they were no longer needed. Along the same
tradition, today, there are Bosnians who move to Levant to reinforce the jihadi
groups such as Daesh and al-Nusra.
According to Aimen Dean, one of al-Qaeda’as founders who became a
British spy, “Bosnia gave to the modern jihadist movement the narrative that a
war between Occident and Islam exists. It is the cradle”[15]. According to the same source, the Battalion expelled the non-Muslims
from Travnik, fought against UN British troops in Guca Gora and exhibited in
its Bosnian curriculum a beheading (which went to trial), sequesters and
prisoners’ executions, inserted on a global context, it should be emphasized,
of crimes perpetrated by all parties to the conflict. Bosnian recruitment
multiplied the Battalion’s number of troops that in 1995 already counted with
1500 men, and the Bosnian leadership turned a blind eye to the atrocities in
order to please the Arab donors. After the Dayton agreements the Battalion’s
members set course to Chechnya, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, looking for
martyrdom.
3.2 – A hatchery of crime – Kosovo
Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 1991, without it
receiving any recognition, until the conflict was exasperated when in 1998/99
the UÇK – Kosovo Liberation Army – accused the Serbs of ethnic cleansing, which
was never proved. After the failure of the Rambouillet negotiations, in
February of 1999, NATO starts, on March 24, to bombard Yugoslavia (then
composed of Serbia and Montenegro) which would last until June 3rd,
with the conflict being closed on the 10th without Serbia, to this
day, recognizing it, which also occurs with many countries such as Russia,
China, India, Brazil, and from the EU (Spain, Slovakia, Romania, and Greece).
Since then Kosovo has been administered by the UN with KFOR being the
protection force for the Serbian minority living on the north of the territory.
After the EU and NATO forced the separation of Serbia, the Kosovar
territory remains with a feeble economic structure, marked by smuggling,
corruption, and organized crime involving ex-UÇK fighters and even officials
from international institutions[16]. Kosovo has been working as a UE protectorate and as the free ground
for the huge North-American Bondsteel[17] base.
Financing by rich Arab countries, with emphasis for Saudi Arabia, always
engaged on expanding its Wahhabi ideology, has been displeasing the government,
shown by declarations, on the arresting of 60 people connected to jihadism or
fighter recruitment, and by closing NGO’s that financed jihadi groups, in
October of 2014. This is mandated by the insertion into NATO’s strategic
military apparatus and the EU periphery.
In proportion to its population size, Kosovo is one of the European
countries with more fighters in Levant (150 in Iraq and Syria). Although mainly
Islamic, Kosovars are not kin practitioners and religious differences were not
greatly evidenced during the Serbian conflict of 1998/99, contrasting with
ethnic and linguistic differences or Serbian hegemony. The number of Kosovars
that were killed in Syria or in Iraq as part of Daesh or al-Nusra is thought to
be between 15 and 40.
3.3 – Chechnya – Russia’s soft belly?
Chechnya is one of Russia’s federation
republics, located at the foot and northern slopes of the Caucasus mountain
chain. Its territory was the center, on the XVIII century, of quarrels between the
Russians and the Ottoman, with the latter aspiring to establish corridors to
access and take care of the Christian populations on the mountain chain’s
southern slopes, in Georgia and in the Armenia. Islamism was the way Chechens
affirm their distance from the Russian occupants, since they appeared in the
region several centuries before.
The oil pipeline that connects Baku to
Novorossisk goes around Chechnya but its strategic importance was reduced with
the construction of the Baku-Supsa (Georgia) connections, in 1999, and the
well-known BTC – Baku-Tbilissi-Ceyhan, in 2006, with the objective of
disconnecting European access to Azeri oil from a mandatory passage through
Russian territory. The same does not occur with the rail road that crosses the
Caucasus and has a true line junction inside the republic.
This scenario had all the ingredients
for geo-strategic conflicts. A Muslim population and power that isn’t make for appetizing
nourishment for jihadism, which were joined by USA’s aptitude to weaken the
already debilitated Russia, digging, not its exterior periphery such as
Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, but already into its own internal periphery. The getting together of these ingredients
continues to supply bloody fruits, even if the objective becomes wider and
transforms into the siege of Russia and China, or the control of the maritime
transport routes by the Pentagon and its European followers. A Chechnya which
is independent, in the USA and NATO orbit, would be an open wedge in the
Russian oil routes between the Caspian and the Black Sea, an intolerable
situation for Russia. And that is why, in 2008, also in the Caucasus, Russia
demonstrated its resolve in Georgia by creating stop-gap republics in South
Ossetia and Abcasia in Georgian soil; George W. Bush understood it and bit his
tongue. As a curiosity, Georgia had supported the Chechen rebels against
Russia.
Chechen separatist activities go back to
the middle XIX century and in the end of WW II Stalin, in 1944, deported the
Chechen and other peoples from the Caucasus, accused of collaboration with the
German, the said deportation ending only after the death of the Georgian.
During the beginning of USSR’s disintegration, conflicts between power
and separatist groups started. In 1991 general Dudaiev proclaimed Chechnya’s
independence and Ieltsin invaded the region in 1994, with high costs to the
Russian troops and the Chechen population, until an agreement was reached in
1996 which recognized the Chechen sovereignty within the Russian Federation.
War returned to Chechnya in 1999 by the hand of the Wahhabi Chamil
Bassaev, following the proclamation of a “Caucasus Emirate” encompassing the
Dagestan, Chechnya, and North Ossetia. The participation of the USA, and of its
private security agencies, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, in supporting the
Chechen jihadists is revealed by Yossef Bodansky, director of the “US
Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare[18].
This return of the war is strongly characterized by the presence of
Wahhabi missionaries paid by the Saudi Arabia and the “emirate” had in the Taliban governed Afghanistan the only
country recognizing it. The other jihadist groups involved in the war against
Russia are the Dagestani Shari’ah Jamaat, the Islambouli Brigades of al-Qa’ida,
and the Armed Forces of the Ichkeria Chechen Republic, the Sword of Islam, and
the Kata’ib al-Khoul[19]. Putin, who was nominated as prime-minister in 2000, gained some
notoriety with the relative pacification of the territory.
Subsequently, on October 23, 2002, 42 Chechen and Arab fighters occupied
a theater in Moscow and, until detained, caused the death of 129/200 of the 850
hostages[20]; they were commanded by Bassaev and the Saudi Ibn al-Khattab, both
connected to al-Qaeda, with the latter having fought in Afghanistan in 1989/94
where we met bin Laden[21]. On September of 2004, a group commanded by Bassaev occupied a school
in North Ossetia, a Russian Federation territory neighboring Chechnya, and made
1.200 hostages; in the aftermath there were 331 dead and over 700 wounded… way
beyond the victims caused by the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015. Al-Khattab
was killed by the Russians in 2002; Bassaev had the same fate in July of 2006, while
the remaining “Afghan Arabs” fled to safety in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Germany, and
lands of USA’s Arab allies.
Several hundred of Bassaev fighters allegedly have been trained on
al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and al-Khattab himself regimented elements in
Ingushetia, Dagestan, Ossetia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, to fight in Chechnya.
In August of 2005 the UN was reporting a substantial number of “Afghan Arabs”
fighting the Russians in Chechnya[22].
After a referendum that took place in 2003 power passed to the hands of
the mufti A. Kadryov, an
ex-separationist who was murdered in 2005 and succeeded by his son Ramzan
Kadryov, considered to be the richest man in the republic and owner of a
militia – the kadryovty – little inclined to respect people’s rights but whose
existence relieves Moscow from having a military presence in Chechnya.
(To be continued)
This and other texts can be found at:
[1] http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.com/2012/02/as-manobras-guerreiras-do-imperio-no.html
(Portuguese version)
http://www.slideshare.net/durgarrai/um-problema-mundial-chamado-nato
(Portuguese version)
[2] We find the position of many Africans,
Asians, and other peoples, bound in their suits and ties, to be ridiculous, but
revealing, intending to play the role of “black skins, white masks” to the
occidental suzerainties and self-proclaimed as anointed by the capital, to
their fellow citizens.
[3] Le marchand, le militaire et le
missionaire (the merchant, the military, and the missionary, N.T.)
[6] ISI
had their own interests to counter the soviets in Afghanistan since they were
great supporters of India with which Pakistan had a twitched litigation in
Cashmere.
[7] A
Concise History of Afghanistan in 25 volumes (vol 1) https://books.google.pt/books?id=-WRlAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA374&dq=35000+mujahedin&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ved=0CF8Q6AEwB2oVChMIjqf8r_6ZyQIVRlkaCh3_Twg5#v=onepage&q=35000%20mujahedin&f=false
Other sources point to 100.000 as the number of
foreign fighters financed and armed by the CIA and the Saudi http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akbar-ganji/u-s-jihadists-relation-pa_b_5553529.html
[8]http://www.editionsdemilune.com/media/presse/NouveauDesordreMondial/PeterDaleScott-Diplomatie-Magazine-N51-WEB.pdf?zenAdminID=d38469229e266df2da988198b0b91a74&utm_source=Infolettre+Mondialisation&utm_campaign=234bfd6c46-13_Novembre11_15_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_24340f1e06-234bfd6c46-82728089
[9] The
Taliban were, by their geographic origins, essentially Pashtun, although they
also included troops from the ex-soviet republics, Arab countries, and other
Muslim regions.
[10]
Approved by the UN (Resolutions 661 from 6/8/1990 and 687 from 3/4/1991) they
promoted a true humanitarian crime, as an inducer of infant mortality and
poverty.
[11] On the front line of that strategy was the
pope Wojtyla (John Paul II) whom, being Polish, had an audience in Poland where
Lech Walesa’s popularity was growing in face of the inaptitude of the regime
led by Gierek, who would end up being replaced; soon after general Jaruzelsky
proclaims an exception regime and will remain in power the dismemberment of the
soviet bloc. In 1980 Wojtyla starts his three trips to Poland and also a
financing of more than USD $50M to support Solidarity and his most reactionary
and church faithful members such as Walesa. Wojtyla would also shine in
Nicaragua in 1983, revealing himself well aligned with Reagan on the combat to
the liberation theology and the country’s anti-oligarchies government. Wojtyla
stood out as a thrilled Reagan’s ally against the “axis of evil”.
[13] This
cooperation was intensified under Reagan’s presidency. The then American
ambassador to the Holy See, James Nicholson, talks about a “strategic alliance”
between Washington and the Vatican against the Soviet Union. According to
information gathered by the reporters Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, who
wrote a book on Vatican’s secret diplomacy, CIA’s director William Casey and
his vice-director Vernon Waters maintained confidential discussions with the
pope since the beginning of 1981. The main topic was “CIA’s financial help and
logistic support to Solidarity” (ibid). Wojtyla locum tenens (lieutenant) on this anti-Soviet crusade and
affirmation of the neoliberal society was the famous Ratzinger, the future pope
Benedict XVI.
[15] Ibid.
[16] http://www.tvi24.iol.pt/internacional/peritos/acusacoes-de-corrupcao-na-missao-europeia-do-kosovo
[17] Bondsteel is the largest North-American base
outside their national territory. It houses 7.000 troops in 300 buildings, has
a perimeter of 14 km and has the objective of covering the Balkans, protecting
the Caspian oil, having already functioned as an alternative to the Guantanamo
concentration camp. Kosovo can be considered as cunning construction to enable
an extensive and strategic presence in the Balkans.
[21] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/19/chechnya-terror-groups-and-ties-al-qaeda/?page=all
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