02-10-2008, 05:49 AM
Argen Press, Argentina
World Criminal Networks Concealed as Foreign Policy in US
Radicalization of Americaâs Right
By Gustavo Herren
Translated Fortunato Brown
February 01, 2008
Argentina - Argen Press - Original Article (Spanish)
The US has unilaterally divided the world into 5 regions (including China and Russia) under the guardianship of 5 permanent military commands. This demonstrates the existence of a plan for global domination beyond the fiction of so-called conspiracy theories.
After the end of 2008, there will be 6 regions, since USAFRICOM has been created especially for Africa (Egypt excepted) (1).
Each command constitutes a control center of military operations, with a communications and coordination structure activated and ready for action as soon as a conflict is present, which according to the US President and the Secretary of Defense demand the massive participation of their combat forces in that region.
The so-called âArea of Responsibilityâ of the South Command (USSOUTHCOM), based in Miami, Florida, covers 31 countries in the Caribbean, part of Central America, and all of South America.
In order to reinforce its presence in its waters (oceans, waterfronts and rivers) and to monitor operations, just as the Fifth Fleet does in the Persian Gulf, the US will reactivate the Fourth Naval Fleet (which during World War II covered the Caribbean area and the South Atlantic, and was deactivated in 1949). Now it will have submarines and ships with nuclear and conventional weapons, such as the nuclear USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier or USS George H.W. Bush (which will go into operation in 2009) and in a few years with USS Gerald Ford, the first aircraft carrier with stealth technology invisible to radar, electromagnetic catapults to launch planes, and possibly non conventional cannons of such type. All these are manufactured by one of the largest multinationals of the military industrial complex, Northrop Grumman, one of the principal motors of the US economy and largest employment provider.
It is estimated that the military establishment provides employment and financial support directly or indirectly to at least 60 million voters in the US.
Washington is worried about the looming internal recession, and on the other hand monitors the Venezuelan self-determination (which it considers to be belligerence), the Latin American integration process, the development of Brazil as a potential regional nuclear power, and the possible reactivity spots such as Cuba and Panama.
In the Middle East, Iran has been surrounded by countries invaded by or collaborating with the US, or which it makes sure will not become hostile, such as Turkmenistan (which has the fifth largest gas reserves of any nation in the world), with relations with Russia, the EU and Iran.
The surprise and the lessons learned in Iraq can show that G.W. Bush may not have enough time to carry out and settle a blitzkrieg against Iran, without leaving it in underway during the next administration.
His government is trying to demonstrate that it is attaining advances and a certain âbalanceâ in Iraq.
It may be probable that in order to maintain the growth of the military industrial activity, he will need to disturb the stability of the Caribbean and Latin American region.
According to the Pentagon, there exists a âglobal instability archâ from the Andean region (including Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia), Central America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
But regions cannot be disconnected according to the geopolitics of the US if it is to achieve the global domination.
It is alert to nations that have a capacity to respond in a political-military manner; therefore its strategic objectives are directed to the control of Eurasia, pointing to Russia and the development of China as a capitalist economic power, and in a second front to aspiring regional powers such as India, Pakistan or Iran.
The countries in the regions can be represented as nodes or apexes linked by several covert criminal operations. A complex invisible type of network, like a dark spiderweb.
For Washington, what occurs in the Middle East, for example, not the independence of the Balkans or the Caucasus, nor Central or South America, nor other far-off regions of the world are unrelated.
The plan for global control by the US implies establishing strategic and tactical connections among regions of the world.
Be they destabilizing and war techniques employed in one region and adapted to other (such as psychological and ideological war operations, social and intelligence wars) or illegal arms trafficking triangulated with and drug trafficking. The connections require economic flux among regions. It uses, for example, the sale of arms or of drugs in one to finance destabilizing groups in another.
Back in the 80s, at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US sent weapons covertly through Pakistan for resistance, while on the border it encouraged the production of drugs, and with the money collected (via CIA-ISI, Pakistanâs Military Intelligence Services) it financed several Islamic insurgent groups.
In 1986, Reaganâs administration (1981-89) was directly involved in the clandestine sale of weapons to Iran, fueling the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1989), while the funds so obtained were channeled on one side via Pakistanâs ISI to finance the Islamic fundamentalists that operated in Afghanistan; on the other side, the funds were used to illegally finance the insurgent right-wing pro-US militants (Contras) in Nicaragua, who fought the Sandinist leftist government of Daniel Ortega (1979-90), which was forbidden by the US Congress through the Boland Amendment, which launched the Iran-contra case (Irangate).
Initially in about 1980, the Contras received support from the Argentinian government and from the US through the CIA.
With a similar mechanism, but without getting directly involved (having learned from Reaganâs lesson), G.H. Bushâs administration (1989-1983) indirectly supported the clandestine remittance of arms to Croatia and Bosnia in order to encourage secession from the Yugoslavian Federation (who faced Serbia the strongest member of the Federation).
The same policy of illegal arm trafficking continued under B. Clintonâs administration (1993-2001). The clandestine remittance was sent through third countries as Turkey, Hungary, Iran, Syria, Ukraine and Argentina. In the latter, the profitable operation is claimed to have been carried out by Carlos Saul Menem administration, in which arms made by the local Military Manufacturing outfit would have been included, under the guise of secret decrees of sales to Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador, as close friendly relations. However, the US does not reward traitors.
In the region of Baluchistan (Pakistan), the US currently applies patterns similar to those employed in the 90s in Bosnia and Kosovo (regions of former Yugoslavia) where the Intelligence Services, the CIA together with Great Britainâs MI6 and Germanyâs BND, financed and supported ânational liberationâ armies. For the training of the Islamic paramilitary of Kosovoâs Liberation Army (KLA), for example, private enterprises of mercenaries were hired. Part of the financing of the KLA came from the sale of drugs from Pakistan.
The US plan for the Middle East is related to that for Central Asia (fine-tuned to the interests of its associates, Great Britain and Israel). The configuration of the New Middle East and Central Asia does not discard the convenience of promoting a progressive displacement of borders according to the ethnicities and religions that predominate in each region (In some Islamic branches the concept of Nation-State, which is a western invention, does not prevail). To that purpose they resort to covert operations that trigger violence in latent sectarian conflicts in the current countries to stimulate ethnic-religious divisions. The final result is a decentralizing process that weakens the institutions of the central governments, leading to what Washington calls âSoft Secessionâ (2), which does not reach the fragmentation (as was promoted in 1990 through the International Monetary Fund in Yugoslavia), but nevertheless facilitates the change in regime in its favor. These strategies can be seen in Iraq and Pakistan (3),
Iraq-US: âWavesâ
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, there were contradictions between the two main branches of Islamism, sunni and shiites, but the population was mixed in a tribal coexistence without any violence, as in other regions, such as Syria.
The occupation by the US triggered an internal war process, which could be controlled only in intensity and that continued until the physical separation of sunni and shiites.
By stimulating violence and sectarian slaughter, the development of the process was accelerated, so the âwavesâ of troops sent by G.W. Bush worked to contain the maximum peaks of sectarian violence, while gaining the time needed to complete the final state of ethnic-religious homogenization by zones, which was expected to reduce the sectarian violence.
Besides, in order to diminish the violence toward America, they exploited the fact that the demographic division had diminished the complexity of the system and permitted them to reach locally some sunni sectors of resistance (rivals of the shiites in the Iraqi government), and to negotiate their non-hostility toward the invaders through convenient mutually beneficial agreements, such as by using economic incentives, bribes, and by attracting unstable elements caused by the âexcesses in the sectarian fightsâ.
For this mission, the US applied in 2007 the new plan of counterinsurgency, in whose design participated anthropologists and other mercenary social scientists (4). As stated by the Pentagon, in zones of the Anbar province (central west of Iraq) and in Baghdad (center) it had managed to keep deactivated a significant part of the sunni resistance, about 70 thousand active insurgents, by means of what it calls the âAwakening Movementâ (al Sahwa).
However, from passive insurgents who supported the active ones, estimated at three million (5) and who do not constitute a unified sunni community, had to be influenced.
The US will be able to employ the militia sunni movement âAwakeningâ which it claims to have created, as a power counterweight to the current Iraqi government which does not control all the territory, composed of kurds in the North and shiites in the South (bordering Iran) and about whose loyalty Washington has some reservations.
In the province of Diyalah (in the East of Iraq), in the southern zone of the Baghdad province and in Ninevah (on the North West of Iraq), the resistance has not, however, ceased. In this latter province, the Pentagon is carrying out savage air attacks and massive arrests of suspects, which will end up with the overtake of its capital, Mosul, (Operation Ghost Phoenix; Operation Phantom Phoenix), in the other two provinces offensives have already been effected.
According to the G.W. Bushâs government spokespeople, the âwaves of troops are payingâ, and have contributed to a significant increase of security and stability in Iraq (6). However, other recognized analysts hold different opinion (7) or are even cautious (8).
Iraq-US-Al Qaeda: Iraqi Resistance
A good form of attack is to be able to manipulate the strengths of our enemy to our benefit without his knowing it.
When referring above to the âexcesses of the sectarian fightâ, we observe the notorious infiltration in Iraq after the occupation by US of Al Qaeda militia, mainly of non-Iraqi origin, of the takfirist line (9).
In the beginning, the resistance against the Anglo-American invaders was formed by a very active block of sunni (some of them former Sadam Hussein collaborators) and another block of shiites of lesser reactivity, due to certain agreements and because they constitute a significant part of the Iraq government.
Then, a third enemy of America appeared, Al Qaeda, who initially combated with links to the mainly sunni resistance. Later on, it began to commit bloody excesses and intimidation against civil Iraqis and against shiites and sunnis in the resistance, which actions exacerbated the internal sectarian war. As Admiral G. Smith, spokesman of the Anglo-American occupation forces declared, âAl Qaeda considers Iraq its own caliphate and the center for the propagation of Taliban ideology to the Arab worldâ.
Thus the open rupture and military confrontation between the Iraqi resistance groups and takfirists of Al Qaeda that began in 2005 in the central-west province of Al Anbar where, for example, Al Qaeda militants slaughtered several sunni imans who supposedly had condemned them publicly for not respecting agreements of not assassinating Iraqi policemen who worked in the zones controlled by the resistance.
The excesses of the savage violence by Al Qaeda against civilians and militants of the Iraqi sunny resistance in Anbar and Baghdad brought an adverse reaction and some of its elements were attracted by Americans (by means of financing, convenient benefits, arm supplies and intimidation: the Awakening movement), and they overturned their fighting, confronting Al Qaeda and diminishing their hostility to the invaders, the Americans, who were the beneficiaries.
In this way the Defense Department strategically deviates the attention toward
Al Qaeda instead of toward the Iraqi resistance; it is the central âexternal enemyâ for the coalition and for Iraqis. (10)
Iraq-US-Al Qaeda: Chetchen terrorism
During the second Chechen war (1999-2006) a process similar to the Al Qaeda excesses in Iraq occurred. When the secessionist Chechen guerrillas that employed terrorist tactics against Russians, mainly of the Islamic branch called wahabist (11), they committed savage excesses against civilian Chechen and other combatants who also fought the Russians. This divided the insurgency and many of its militants began to cooperate with their former enemies, the Russian forces, in order to fight their former allies, the wahabists.
The relation between the Chetchenian combatants and the Islamic jihad was established during the resistance to the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 80s.
In 1985, the government of R. Reagan and his vicepresident G.H.W. Bush (1981-89) approved directive NSDD 166 (12), which officially authorized the progressive military assistance and support to the religious instruction to the mujahedins, but according to the former CIA Director and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates âthe covert assistance by CIA to mujahedins had begun during Jimmy Carterâs government (1977-81) before the soviet invasion (1979).
In the 80âs, the insurgency in Afghanistan against the soviets was implemented from Pakistan. Among others, the religious schools from Madras, the Madrassas, conducted by the Islamic sect wahabi from Saudi Arabia, financed by USAID and CIA provided training, arms and religious training. The Islamic militants (except some higher level members) didnât know that behind the religious motives, the covert objective was to destroy the URSS, and also that they being financed and indirectly supported by the US and by the monarchy and foundations from Saudi Arabia and by other non democratic states in the Gulf. The Pakistani military government supported the paramilitary Islamic operations through its military intelligence service (ISI).
After the collapse of the URSS, the CIA and ISI continued supporting the Islamic militants in Pakistan, who were sent to the Middle East, the South of Asia, the Balkans, Central Asia and the Caucasus to work as catalysts for the fragmentation of the URSS.
Early in the 80âs Osama Bin Laden (a member of a billionaire family) was recruited and trained by the CIA for the jihad in the occupied Afghanistan. But ten years later, the URSS had disappeared as the enemy, and in the Gulf War
(1990-91) when the US built military bases in the âholy landâ o Saudi Arabia and its troops were stationed on the sacred desert of the wahabists, some militant organizations, as Al Qaeda, began to understand that the interest of the US was geostrategic and that of its multinational corporations, above anything else, including the religious aspect, and they turned little by little against the US.
In 1994, the Chechen Shamil Basayev was militarily trained in the CIAâs training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The next year he returned to Chechnya and became one of the principal leaders of the separatist insurgency that tried to obtain independence from the Russian Federation. The links with the line of Taliban-Pakistan, the ISI, Al Qaeda and Bin Laden go back to those days. Contact with Bin Laden was maintained through the commander Al Khattab, a wahabi Saudi mujahedin and important leader in the secessionist guerrilla movement.
In this case, the bloody excesses of the separatist Islamic terrorists against their sufi Islamic peers in their fight against Russia, paradoxically benefited Russia, which managed to break the secessionist movement and re-conquer the territory.
Building the credible terrorist enemy Base
Since its origin in the 18th century, the fundamentalist belief by the power elites in the US of its superior manifest destiny as the worldâs leading Capitalist power moved it, to continue its exceptional status, to large-scale pilferage and the appropriation of primary resources from all over the planet with a temporary exchange value for its economic and social system.
The expected reactions of western countries in the face of exploitation are different from those of Asia. Here, ânon-penetratedâ sectors of
ethnic, religious and nationalist populations exist. Therefore, in order to justify the attack by the US and its associates against the Islamic world, they resorted as a screen to the demographic hypothesis of âclash of civilizationsâ promoted by S. Huntington.
The brutal attack on the World Trade Center (2001) that Washington continues to suspect was perpetrated by the Al Qaeda organization (The Base) and Afghanistanâs Taliban (13) was paradoxically functional for the US, Great Britain and other partners.
In that action appears a credible actor, necessary for the âGlobal War against Terrorismâ promoted by the fundamentalist neocons.
Even if Al Qaeda had committed the 9/11 attacks, it could not make the US collapse (as could have the soviet block), but just the opposite, nor has it the capacity to destroy a whole country, even by using nuclear terrorism.
Just like the other groups classified as terrorists, Al Qaeda does not constitute a world army. The Global War against Terror that the US wants to impose is only a fantasy. There is no situation of âglobal warâ but âarmed conflictsâ that can be either local or international (as the conflict between the US and the Taliban, in Afghanistan), or situations against international crime. A world armed conflict permanent and without end does not exist.
If the most sought after terrorist leader Bin Laden were captured, it would be a hard blow not against terrorism but against the War on Terror.
The US is not interested in stopping the terrorist Islamic fundamentalism, since it is useful for its purposes. On one side because it is not a real threat to its survival as a power, and on the other, because with its excesses and ethnic-religious divisions it serves to dismantle in countries that have Islamic components, genuine social movements that are contrary to US interests.
In the western countries, Washingtonâs propaganda tries to consolidate public opinion in the face of the credible external threat of the Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism so that if the case is present it can justify its military intervention in some countries as humanitarian, democratic and liberating.
Behind the mask of the Global War against Terror, State Terror through the worldwide plans of the US to expand its domination and influence on other countriesâ territories advances.
References:
1) USAFRICOM (United States Africa Command)
2) In Venezuela after the failure of the classic coup, the US applied the concept of the âsoft coupâ. But supporting the âsoft secessionâ of the Zulia region, and in Bolivia the Santa Cruz region are maintained as possibilities.
3) M. Chossudovsky, âThe Destabilization of Pakistanâ, December 30, 2007, Global Research.
4) The Counterinsergency Manual FM 3-24 (US Army Field Manual) or MCWP 3-33-5 (Marine Corps Warfighting Publication) gives an idea about how operations are being conducted.
5) G. Herren, âMathematics of Warâ, 23/7/06, Argenpress.
6) âMeasuring Stability and Security in Iraqâ, Report to Congress. In accordance with the Department of Defense Appropriations.
7) Ivo H. Daalder, âIraq After the Surgeâ, December 28, 2007, Brookins Institution.
8) G. Bruno, âIraq Surgeâs Mixed Messagesâ, January 17, 2008, Council of Foreign Relations.
9) Takfirists, branches of Islam concomitant with the Takfir wal Hijra group (Excommunion of infidels) of extreme fundamentalists (born in the 60âs) who may consider apostates and enemies including other Islamists.
10) J. Garamone, âAl Qaeda Remains Coalitionâs, Iraqâs Biggest Targetâ, Jan. 20, 2008, US Department of Defense.
11) Wahabi, extremist Islamic branch, followers of Muhammad Ibn Abd al Wahhab since late in the 18th century. Currently they concentrate their influence in the Arab Peninsula. They may consider apostates and enemies even other Islamists.
12) NSDD 166: Directive on National Security Decision 166.
13) Condoleezza Rice, â9/11: For the Recordâ, March 22, 2004, Department of State. www.america.gov
World Criminal Networks Concealed as Foreign Policy in US
Radicalization of Americaâs Right
By Gustavo Herren
Translated Fortunato Brown
February 01, 2008
Argentina - Argen Press - Original Article (Spanish)
The US has unilaterally divided the world into 5 regions (including China and Russia) under the guardianship of 5 permanent military commands. This demonstrates the existence of a plan for global domination beyond the fiction of so-called conspiracy theories.
After the end of 2008, there will be 6 regions, since USAFRICOM has been created especially for Africa (Egypt excepted) (1).
Each command constitutes a control center of military operations, with a communications and coordination structure activated and ready for action as soon as a conflict is present, which according to the US President and the Secretary of Defense demand the massive participation of their combat forces in that region.
The so-called âArea of Responsibilityâ of the South Command (USSOUTHCOM), based in Miami, Florida, covers 31 countries in the Caribbean, part of Central America, and all of South America.
In order to reinforce its presence in its waters (oceans, waterfronts and rivers) and to monitor operations, just as the Fifth Fleet does in the Persian Gulf, the US will reactivate the Fourth Naval Fleet (which during World War II covered the Caribbean area and the South Atlantic, and was deactivated in 1949). Now it will have submarines and ships with nuclear and conventional weapons, such as the nuclear USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier or USS George H.W. Bush (which will go into operation in 2009) and in a few years with USS Gerald Ford, the first aircraft carrier with stealth technology invisible to radar, electromagnetic catapults to launch planes, and possibly non conventional cannons of such type. All these are manufactured by one of the largest multinationals of the military industrial complex, Northrop Grumman, one of the principal motors of the US economy and largest employment provider.
It is estimated that the military establishment provides employment and financial support directly or indirectly to at least 60 million voters in the US.
Washington is worried about the looming internal recession, and on the other hand monitors the Venezuelan self-determination (which it considers to be belligerence), the Latin American integration process, the development of Brazil as a potential regional nuclear power, and the possible reactivity spots such as Cuba and Panama.
In the Middle East, Iran has been surrounded by countries invaded by or collaborating with the US, or which it makes sure will not become hostile, such as Turkmenistan (which has the fifth largest gas reserves of any nation in the world), with relations with Russia, the EU and Iran.
The surprise and the lessons learned in Iraq can show that G.W. Bush may not have enough time to carry out and settle a blitzkrieg against Iran, without leaving it in underway during the next administration.
His government is trying to demonstrate that it is attaining advances and a certain âbalanceâ in Iraq.
It may be probable that in order to maintain the growth of the military industrial activity, he will need to disturb the stability of the Caribbean and Latin American region.
According to the Pentagon, there exists a âglobal instability archâ from the Andean region (including Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia), Central America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
But regions cannot be disconnected according to the geopolitics of the US if it is to achieve the global domination.
It is alert to nations that have a capacity to respond in a political-military manner; therefore its strategic objectives are directed to the control of Eurasia, pointing to Russia and the development of China as a capitalist economic power, and in a second front to aspiring regional powers such as India, Pakistan or Iran.
The countries in the regions can be represented as nodes or apexes linked by several covert criminal operations. A complex invisible type of network, like a dark spiderweb.
For Washington, what occurs in the Middle East, for example, not the independence of the Balkans or the Caucasus, nor Central or South America, nor other far-off regions of the world are unrelated.
The plan for global control by the US implies establishing strategic and tactical connections among regions of the world.
Be they destabilizing and war techniques employed in one region and adapted to other (such as psychological and ideological war operations, social and intelligence wars) or illegal arms trafficking triangulated with and drug trafficking. The connections require economic flux among regions. It uses, for example, the sale of arms or of drugs in one to finance destabilizing groups in another.
Back in the 80s, at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US sent weapons covertly through Pakistan for resistance, while on the border it encouraged the production of drugs, and with the money collected (via CIA-ISI, Pakistanâs Military Intelligence Services) it financed several Islamic insurgent groups.
In 1986, Reaganâs administration (1981-89) was directly involved in the clandestine sale of weapons to Iran, fueling the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1989), while the funds so obtained were channeled on one side via Pakistanâs ISI to finance the Islamic fundamentalists that operated in Afghanistan; on the other side, the funds were used to illegally finance the insurgent right-wing pro-US militants (Contras) in Nicaragua, who fought the Sandinist leftist government of Daniel Ortega (1979-90), which was forbidden by the US Congress through the Boland Amendment, which launched the Iran-contra case (Irangate).
Initially in about 1980, the Contras received support from the Argentinian government and from the US through the CIA.
With a similar mechanism, but without getting directly involved (having learned from Reaganâs lesson), G.H. Bushâs administration (1989-1983) indirectly supported the clandestine remittance of arms to Croatia and Bosnia in order to encourage secession from the Yugoslavian Federation (who faced Serbia the strongest member of the Federation).
The same policy of illegal arm trafficking continued under B. Clintonâs administration (1993-2001). The clandestine remittance was sent through third countries as Turkey, Hungary, Iran, Syria, Ukraine and Argentina. In the latter, the profitable operation is claimed to have been carried out by Carlos Saul Menem administration, in which arms made by the local Military Manufacturing outfit would have been included, under the guise of secret decrees of sales to Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador, as close friendly relations. However, the US does not reward traitors.
In the region of Baluchistan (Pakistan), the US currently applies patterns similar to those employed in the 90s in Bosnia and Kosovo (regions of former Yugoslavia) where the Intelligence Services, the CIA together with Great Britainâs MI6 and Germanyâs BND, financed and supported ânational liberationâ armies. For the training of the Islamic paramilitary of Kosovoâs Liberation Army (KLA), for example, private enterprises of mercenaries were hired. Part of the financing of the KLA came from the sale of drugs from Pakistan.
The US plan for the Middle East is related to that for Central Asia (fine-tuned to the interests of its associates, Great Britain and Israel). The configuration of the New Middle East and Central Asia does not discard the convenience of promoting a progressive displacement of borders according to the ethnicities and religions that predominate in each region (In some Islamic branches the concept of Nation-State, which is a western invention, does not prevail). To that purpose they resort to covert operations that trigger violence in latent sectarian conflicts in the current countries to stimulate ethnic-religious divisions. The final result is a decentralizing process that weakens the institutions of the central governments, leading to what Washington calls âSoft Secessionâ (2), which does not reach the fragmentation (as was promoted in 1990 through the International Monetary Fund in Yugoslavia), but nevertheless facilitates the change in regime in its favor. These strategies can be seen in Iraq and Pakistan (3),
Iraq-US: âWavesâ
When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, there were contradictions between the two main branches of Islamism, sunni and shiites, but the population was mixed in a tribal coexistence without any violence, as in other regions, such as Syria.
The occupation by the US triggered an internal war process, which could be controlled only in intensity and that continued until the physical separation of sunni and shiites.
By stimulating violence and sectarian slaughter, the development of the process was accelerated, so the âwavesâ of troops sent by G.W. Bush worked to contain the maximum peaks of sectarian violence, while gaining the time needed to complete the final state of ethnic-religious homogenization by zones, which was expected to reduce the sectarian violence.
Besides, in order to diminish the violence toward America, they exploited the fact that the demographic division had diminished the complexity of the system and permitted them to reach locally some sunni sectors of resistance (rivals of the shiites in the Iraqi government), and to negotiate their non-hostility toward the invaders through convenient mutually beneficial agreements, such as by using economic incentives, bribes, and by attracting unstable elements caused by the âexcesses in the sectarian fightsâ.
For this mission, the US applied in 2007 the new plan of counterinsurgency, in whose design participated anthropologists and other mercenary social scientists (4). As stated by the Pentagon, in zones of the Anbar province (central west of Iraq) and in Baghdad (center) it had managed to keep deactivated a significant part of the sunni resistance, about 70 thousand active insurgents, by means of what it calls the âAwakening Movementâ (al Sahwa).
However, from passive insurgents who supported the active ones, estimated at three million (5) and who do not constitute a unified sunni community, had to be influenced.
The US will be able to employ the militia sunni movement âAwakeningâ which it claims to have created, as a power counterweight to the current Iraqi government which does not control all the territory, composed of kurds in the North and shiites in the South (bordering Iran) and about whose loyalty Washington has some reservations.
In the province of Diyalah (in the East of Iraq), in the southern zone of the Baghdad province and in Ninevah (on the North West of Iraq), the resistance has not, however, ceased. In this latter province, the Pentagon is carrying out savage air attacks and massive arrests of suspects, which will end up with the overtake of its capital, Mosul, (Operation Ghost Phoenix; Operation Phantom Phoenix), in the other two provinces offensives have already been effected.
According to the G.W. Bushâs government spokespeople, the âwaves of troops are payingâ, and have contributed to a significant increase of security and stability in Iraq (6). However, other recognized analysts hold different opinion (7) or are even cautious (8).
Iraq-US-Al Qaeda: Iraqi Resistance
A good form of attack is to be able to manipulate the strengths of our enemy to our benefit without his knowing it.
When referring above to the âexcesses of the sectarian fightâ, we observe the notorious infiltration in Iraq after the occupation by US of Al Qaeda militia, mainly of non-Iraqi origin, of the takfirist line (9).
In the beginning, the resistance against the Anglo-American invaders was formed by a very active block of sunni (some of them former Sadam Hussein collaborators) and another block of shiites of lesser reactivity, due to certain agreements and because they constitute a significant part of the Iraq government.
Then, a third enemy of America appeared, Al Qaeda, who initially combated with links to the mainly sunni resistance. Later on, it began to commit bloody excesses and intimidation against civil Iraqis and against shiites and sunnis in the resistance, which actions exacerbated the internal sectarian war. As Admiral G. Smith, spokesman of the Anglo-American occupation forces declared, âAl Qaeda considers Iraq its own caliphate and the center for the propagation of Taliban ideology to the Arab worldâ.
Thus the open rupture and military confrontation between the Iraqi resistance groups and takfirists of Al Qaeda that began in 2005 in the central-west province of Al Anbar where, for example, Al Qaeda militants slaughtered several sunni imans who supposedly had condemned them publicly for not respecting agreements of not assassinating Iraqi policemen who worked in the zones controlled by the resistance.
The excesses of the savage violence by Al Qaeda against civilians and militants of the Iraqi sunny resistance in Anbar and Baghdad brought an adverse reaction and some of its elements were attracted by Americans (by means of financing, convenient benefits, arm supplies and intimidation: the Awakening movement), and they overturned their fighting, confronting Al Qaeda and diminishing their hostility to the invaders, the Americans, who were the beneficiaries.
In this way the Defense Department strategically deviates the attention toward
Al Qaeda instead of toward the Iraqi resistance; it is the central âexternal enemyâ for the coalition and for Iraqis. (10)
Iraq-US-Al Qaeda: Chetchen terrorism
During the second Chechen war (1999-2006) a process similar to the Al Qaeda excesses in Iraq occurred. When the secessionist Chechen guerrillas that employed terrorist tactics against Russians, mainly of the Islamic branch called wahabist (11), they committed savage excesses against civilian Chechen and other combatants who also fought the Russians. This divided the insurgency and many of its militants began to cooperate with their former enemies, the Russian forces, in order to fight their former allies, the wahabists.
The relation between the Chetchenian combatants and the Islamic jihad was established during the resistance to the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 80s.
In 1985, the government of R. Reagan and his vicepresident G.H.W. Bush (1981-89) approved directive NSDD 166 (12), which officially authorized the progressive military assistance and support to the religious instruction to the mujahedins, but according to the former CIA Director and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates âthe covert assistance by CIA to mujahedins had begun during Jimmy Carterâs government (1977-81) before the soviet invasion (1979).
In the 80âs, the insurgency in Afghanistan against the soviets was implemented from Pakistan. Among others, the religious schools from Madras, the Madrassas, conducted by the Islamic sect wahabi from Saudi Arabia, financed by USAID and CIA provided training, arms and religious training. The Islamic militants (except some higher level members) didnât know that behind the religious motives, the covert objective was to destroy the URSS, and also that they being financed and indirectly supported by the US and by the monarchy and foundations from Saudi Arabia and by other non democratic states in the Gulf. The Pakistani military government supported the paramilitary Islamic operations through its military intelligence service (ISI).
After the collapse of the URSS, the CIA and ISI continued supporting the Islamic militants in Pakistan, who were sent to the Middle East, the South of Asia, the Balkans, Central Asia and the Caucasus to work as catalysts for the fragmentation of the URSS.
Early in the 80âs Osama Bin Laden (a member of a billionaire family) was recruited and trained by the CIA for the jihad in the occupied Afghanistan. But ten years later, the URSS had disappeared as the enemy, and in the Gulf War
(1990-91) when the US built military bases in the âholy landâ o Saudi Arabia and its troops were stationed on the sacred desert of the wahabists, some militant organizations, as Al Qaeda, began to understand that the interest of the US was geostrategic and that of its multinational corporations, above anything else, including the religious aspect, and they turned little by little against the US.
In 1994, the Chechen Shamil Basayev was militarily trained in the CIAâs training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The next year he returned to Chechnya and became one of the principal leaders of the separatist insurgency that tried to obtain independence from the Russian Federation. The links with the line of Taliban-Pakistan, the ISI, Al Qaeda and Bin Laden go back to those days. Contact with Bin Laden was maintained through the commander Al Khattab, a wahabi Saudi mujahedin and important leader in the secessionist guerrilla movement.
In this case, the bloody excesses of the separatist Islamic terrorists against their sufi Islamic peers in their fight against Russia, paradoxically benefited Russia, which managed to break the secessionist movement and re-conquer the territory.
Building the credible terrorist enemy Base
Since its origin in the 18th century, the fundamentalist belief by the power elites in the US of its superior manifest destiny as the worldâs leading Capitalist power moved it, to continue its exceptional status, to large-scale pilferage and the appropriation of primary resources from all over the planet with a temporary exchange value for its economic and social system.
The expected reactions of western countries in the face of exploitation are different from those of Asia. Here, ânon-penetratedâ sectors of
ethnic, religious and nationalist populations exist. Therefore, in order to justify the attack by the US and its associates against the Islamic world, they resorted as a screen to the demographic hypothesis of âclash of civilizationsâ promoted by S. Huntington.
The brutal attack on the World Trade Center (2001) that Washington continues to suspect was perpetrated by the Al Qaeda organization (The Base) and Afghanistanâs Taliban (13) was paradoxically functional for the US, Great Britain and other partners.
In that action appears a credible actor, necessary for the âGlobal War against Terrorismâ promoted by the fundamentalist neocons.
Even if Al Qaeda had committed the 9/11 attacks, it could not make the US collapse (as could have the soviet block), but just the opposite, nor has it the capacity to destroy a whole country, even by using nuclear terrorism.
Just like the other groups classified as terrorists, Al Qaeda does not constitute a world army. The Global War against Terror that the US wants to impose is only a fantasy. There is no situation of âglobal warâ but âarmed conflictsâ that can be either local or international (as the conflict between the US and the Taliban, in Afghanistan), or situations against international crime. A world armed conflict permanent and without end does not exist.
If the most sought after terrorist leader Bin Laden were captured, it would be a hard blow not against terrorism but against the War on Terror.
The US is not interested in stopping the terrorist Islamic fundamentalism, since it is useful for its purposes. On one side because it is not a real threat to its survival as a power, and on the other, because with its excesses and ethnic-religious divisions it serves to dismantle in countries that have Islamic components, genuine social movements that are contrary to US interests.
In the western countries, Washingtonâs propaganda tries to consolidate public opinion in the face of the credible external threat of the Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism so that if the case is present it can justify its military intervention in some countries as humanitarian, democratic and liberating.
Behind the mask of the Global War against Terror, State Terror through the worldwide plans of the US to expand its domination and influence on other countriesâ territories advances.
References:
1) USAFRICOM (United States Africa Command)
2) In Venezuela after the failure of the classic coup, the US applied the concept of the âsoft coupâ. But supporting the âsoft secessionâ of the Zulia region, and in Bolivia the Santa Cruz region are maintained as possibilities.
3) M. Chossudovsky, âThe Destabilization of Pakistanâ, December 30, 2007, Global Research.
4) The Counterinsergency Manual FM 3-24 (US Army Field Manual) or MCWP 3-33-5 (Marine Corps Warfighting Publication) gives an idea about how operations are being conducted.
5) G. Herren, âMathematics of Warâ, 23/7/06, Argenpress.
6) âMeasuring Stability and Security in Iraqâ, Report to Congress. In accordance with the Department of Defense Appropriations.
7) Ivo H. Daalder, âIraq After the Surgeâ, December 28, 2007, Brookins Institution.
8) G. Bruno, âIraq Surgeâs Mixed Messagesâ, January 17, 2008, Council of Foreign Relations.
9) Takfirists, branches of Islam concomitant with the Takfir wal Hijra group (Excommunion of infidels) of extreme fundamentalists (born in the 60âs) who may consider apostates and enemies including other Islamists.
10) J. Garamone, âAl Qaeda Remains Coalitionâs, Iraqâs Biggest Targetâ, Jan. 20, 2008, US Department of Defense.
11) Wahabi, extremist Islamic branch, followers of Muhammad Ibn Abd al Wahhab since late in the 18th century. Currently they concentrate their influence in the Arab Peninsula. They may consider apostates and enemies even other Islamists.
12) NSDD 166: Directive on National Security Decision 166.
13) Condoleezza Rice, â9/11: For the Recordâ, March 22, 2004, Department of State. www.america.gov