Why al-Qaeda votes Bush

THE ROVING EYE IRAQ AND AL-QAEDA Part 2: Why al-Qaeda votes Bush By Pepe Escobar

Sheikh Terror are the new underground sensation in ever-swingin' London. Their rap video called "The Dirty Infidels" has been sent by e-mail to the Arab-language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat. The paper says the video - unlikely to end up on MTV - may have been produced in a London studio by young, radical Muslims, but mosque talk in London and northern England has attributed it to ... al-Qaeda. Sheikh Terror rap in favor of the "fight against the infidels", praise Osama bin Laden and ask for British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be "burned", while images switch from September 11 to shots of George W Bush, President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and a Russian soldier executed by a Chechen guerrilla with a Kalashnikov.

Bin Laden may not be cornering the rap market just yet, but this only goes to show how the al-Qaeda brand has taken in the collective consciousness of many. A few months ago, the Rand Corp - a think-tank sympathetic to the US industrial-military complex that boasts Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld as one of its former directors - published an analysis of al-Qaeda by Bruce Hoffman. This was the heart of the system debating whether al-Qaeda was a concept or a virus; an army or an ideology. The author compared al-Qaeda to a bunch of fast, easily adaptable sharks. In essence, al-Qaeda was defined as an indestructible enemy because it's impossible to circumscribe it precisely. By describing the threat as inexorable, the Rand Corp could then justify relentless, inexorable repression.

This is the way in which the Bush administration also sees it. But is pure repression working against an al-Qaeda now configured as a mutant virus - a constellation of autonomous cells constantly morphing into new shapes and tactics?

It's no secret for anyone following Islamist movements that since the early 1980s in Pakistan, bin Laden has been instrumentalized by the real masters of what would become al-Qaeda. These were the key operatives at the Maktab al-Khidamat in Peshawar: Egyptians from the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudis and Kuwaitis such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohamed Atef, Abu Zubaida, Suleyman Abu Graith and Sayf al-Adl. These people were all inspired by the most extreme ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood: Sayyed Qotb. Their ultimate objective was to provoke a fissure between the Muslim world and the West, and then recapture power in Islamic lands. Previous experiments had been a total failure - as in Egypt - or a partial failure - as in Sudan. This until Pakistan-Afghanistan in the early 1980s became the perfect platform, with Osama - flush with money and charisma - incarnating the perfect marriage of medium and message.

These people were all Sunni Muslims. Suicide bombing was never welcomed by Sunni Islam. But it was very much part of the Shi'ite cult of martyrdom. Shi'ites sanction suicide because it represents expiation for the martyrdom of the first Shi'ite imams. Hezbollah in Lebanon used suicide bombing with great success to force the departure of the Israeli occupation force. Suicide bombing then became popular with the Palestinian struggle and all over the Sunni world. But as the years rolled by there was still an infinite abyss to close. Palestinians fighting an occupier who reduced their lives to hell needed no lecture to become suicide bombers. But what about educated Muslims living in comfort - how do they choose to die for a symbol and for a goal that may never materialize?

It's a testimony to the level of Islamic rage against the West that al-Qaeda managed to steer this large-scale conversion. September 11, 2001 - with its small army of aerial suicide bombers - indeed turned history upside down. But then the whole US intelligence matrix simply could not admit that the country had been struck by a small sect - and not by a sinister, global multinational with unlimited reach.

The al-Qaeda myth Alain Chouet, a high-level expert at the French Ministry of Defense, is one among many to sustain that this is how the al-Qaeda myth was born - encouraged by the Bush administration spin machine and fully embraced, for the opposite reasons, by the Arab-Muslim world. But now there's a different situation: as Chouet puts it: "Bin Laden only existed by the interaction between his personality and the al-Qaeda capacity of being a nuisance." With the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan, but now plotting a comeback, and most of al-Qaeda's leaders captured or killed, what happens to bin Laden is now largely irrelevant.

The looming big issue in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the spring offensive planned by the Pentagon to capture bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and the remaining al-Qaeda leadership in the tribal areas of Pakistan, most probably Waziristan, where they are thought to be hiding. Asia Times Online has identified extreme skepticism about the operation, in Europe as well as in South Asia. For the Bush administration, as well as for Musharraf's government, the current status quo is the best option. If bin Laden is killed, he instantly becomes a martyr - and mini-bin Ladens, post-bin Ladens and crypto-bin Ladens will pop up like mushrooms all over Islam. This would also mean the end of the "war on terror", which is the Bushite passport for global intervention. If bin Laden is captured alive, like Saddam Hussein, he has to be judged: a trial would not only enhance his charisma, but reveal the explosive convergence of objectives between successive US administrations, the Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and so-called radical Islam.

Alain Chouet maintains that since September 11, only 30 percent of all attacks and suicide bombings - invariably attributed by the Bush administration to al-Qaeda - "can be really linked to the activity of debris of al-Qaeda". So the bulk of what is defined as "international terrorism" is now in fact linked to "the internal context of the country where the attacks take place, and nothing links them to al-Qaeda". The targets may be international, as in Iraq, but the motivation and the objectives are local: in the case of Iraq, the end of the occupation by any means necessary. The attackers or suicide bombers may be radical Islamists, but they have nothing to do with Islam and don't even relate their actions to Islam.

Many in the European intelligence community now agree: political violence in the Arab-Muslim world has entered a new phase. It has nothing to do with Islam as a whole. It has nothing to do with a common threat. It has nothing to do with a messianic project. But it has everything to do with unresolved, and strictly local, political, economical and social problems. That's the case in Iraq: a nationalist movement fighting foreign occupation, just like Palestinians fighting Ariel Sharon's Israel.

Al-Qaeda may have given the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration the perfect motive for bombing Afghanistan and then invading Iraq. But even seriously disabled, al-Qaeda benefits enormously, although not directly. The fact is that the US military machine now rules over more than 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. Untold numbers are turning to a myriad Islamist radicals groups and sub-groups all over the Muslim world - which they identify as the only force, although incoherent, capable of at least facing and demoralizing bit by bit the American empire.

As for a weakened, disabled al-Qaeda, it is definitely voting Bush next November. Al-Qaeda wants the Iraq occupation to be prolonged, with or without a puppet government: there could not be a better advertisement for rallying Muslims against the arrogance of the West. Al-Qaeda's and the Bush administration's future are interlocked anyway. European intelligence sources confirm that al-Qaeda has no capability of carrying out a major terrorist attack on US soil remotely similar to September 11. This hypothetical attack would certainly generate a strong backlash against the Bushite regime for being unable to prevent it. But al-Qaeda could certainly organize something like a small-scale suicide bombing in New York, Washington or Miami during the presidential campaign, with a few American casualties. This would be like help from above for the Bushites.

It's important to remember successive US administrations since Jimmy Carter made sure that Islamic terrorists had lots of weapons and cash. During the period of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979 - 1989) roughly $6 billion a year in weaponry was provided to the mujahadeen, as well as large amounts of drug money.

Horse manure. First the USA did not provide $6 billion per year plus "large amounts of drug money". Second, the support that was given was going to organized resistance forces in an invaded country for the purpose of expelling the communist invaders; a legitimate foreign policy objective of the USA. And that is exactly for what the vast majority of the aid was used.

Again, [Balkans]the US administration provided more logistical support. In the year 2000, press reports of a KLA infiltration of Macedonia mentioned that among a group of KLA fighters (which the head of NATO referred to as "murderers and thugs") there were 17 US military advisers.

NLA, not KLA. 2001, not 2000. And 0, not 17. And the USA provided zero support to the NLA--our soldiers along with other KFOR elements were patrolling the border, to include exchanging liaison personnel and intell with the Makos to stop the infils; not to mention going after NLA leaders and their funds diplomatically. Reading your post, besides all the factual errors and events taken out of context, it appears your main thrust is that Islamic terrorism is really our own fault. Go home, troll.

"NLA, not KLA. 2001, not 2000. And 0, not 17. And the USA provided zero support to the NLA--our soldiers along with other KFOR elements were patrolling the border, to include exchanging liaison personnel and intell with the Makos to stop the infils; not to mention going after NLA leaders and their funds diplomatically."

The incident I mentioned was specifically an incursion by Kosovo Liberation Army members into Macedonia. At the time the only country in the world to provide military aid to Macedonia was the Ukraine. That aid was stopped when they were threatened by the US.

According to the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia these roughly 400 Islamic thugs were surrounded by Macedonian police just outside of Skopje.

NATO ordered the Macedonian troops to return to barracks and transportation came from Camp Bondsteel to remove the KLA fighter from the area. It was that event that the press at the time referred to 17 US military advisors being included in that group.

As far as US support for Islamic terrorism I suggest you brush up on your history.

While the Carter administration started the project, it didn't really get into full swing until the Reagan administration got together with the Thatcher government and Pakistan's Zia al-Haq, to provide for the training, arming, and indoctrination of Islamic volunteers that came from around the world.

This part of history is fully documented and quite public. At the time there were some who worried that this project might have long term side effects, but they were effectively marginalized.

A couple of days ago the former president of Chechnya was blown to bits in Qatar.

He was acknowledged by the US to have close connections to al-Qaeda and was one of their financiers, yet was able to live openly since 2000 in an upscale neighborhood in Doha.

Just in case you're not familiar with Qatar it is the forward command for US Middle East forces.

Another of those who received aid from the US was Gulbiddin Hekmatyr in Afghanistan, according to Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani reporter who writes for Telegraph and has been reporting from Pakistan for twenty years.

Now Hekmatyr is one of the strongest warlords in Afghanistan, and is killing off US troops whenever he gets the chance. Too bad, or as Zebigniew Brezinski said, ...who cared about a few riled up Muslims, we were trying to destroy the Soviet Union."
Just recently it was information supplied by the US to the German government that allowed the acquittal of one of the memebers of the "Hamburg cell", the group that included Mohammad Atta.
Yes, the US supported Islamic terrorism financially, militarily, and logistically right up until 9-11 when the error of their ways was made clear.

This is not a partisan issue, nor is it a secret from the rest of the world.
Until the US comes to terms with their role in the growth of Islamic terrorism, all the rhetoric is just so much smoke.

Yes, the US supported Islamic terrorism financially, militarily, and logistically right up until 9-11 when the error of their ways was made clear.

Nonsense. You already made claims about the USA, drug money, and $6 billion dollars per year support for Islamic terrorists. I called you on it. Your answer is to change the subject to something about how a Chechen radical living in Qatar for a few years means the USA is in cahoots with terrorists. Putting together unconnected facts, events out of context, and magnifying the importance of the trivial while ignoring all information to the contrary is a staple of conspiracy nuts and anti-American kooks. Not to mention the practice of posting outright lies, such as you have done with your $6 billion business.

And speaking of lies, either you are telling them again or spreading them when it comes to the Aracinovo incident in Macedonia. The NLA guerillas were dug-in within mortar range of the outskirts of Skopje & some critical facilities to include the main north-south highway. International airlines cancelled their flights in and out of Skopje. The Makos tried shelling and an assault, but could not dislodge the rebels. The ARM was already stretched trying to cover the north and the NLA stronghold in Tetovo, so it looked very bad for the government. To defuse the situation, NATO negotiators arranged for a ceasefire which the FYROM government agreed to contingent upon NLA evac of Aracinovo and away to where they could no longer threaten the capital. The NLA would agree to leave only if they had a NATO escort to preclude attack by government forces. The FYROM government said OK. NATO directed KFOR to conduct the evacuation. The closest significant NATO elements were the US Army forces at Bondsteel and Able Sentry who then transported the NLA from Aracinovo. Afterward, the Macedonian citizenry were outraged and rioted, to include chasing Macedonian President Trajkovski out the back of a government building as they broke in the front. Although both the government and the NLA had agreed to the evacuation, in the face of public outcry, Trajkovski back-pedaled and tried to distance himself from the agreement, ergo the misinformation that you gullibly repeated.

As to American advisers, we never figured out for sure where that particular piece of B.S. came from. It may be because the U.S. Army unit ordered to conduct the evacuation sent an element to Aracinovo ahead of the evacuation main body in order to coordinate the process. Then when the main body rolled up with the press, the advance party Americans were already standing there, ergo the rumor that U.S. advisers were with the NLA.

Any way you look at it however, you don't have a clue.

You want evidence of drug money. Here is an excerpt from a report released last fall.

NATIONS HOSPITABLE TO ORGANIZED CRIME AND TERRORISM

A Report Prepared by the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress under an Interagency Agreement with the Director of Central Intelligence Crime and Narcotics Center October 2003

PAKISTAN

Beginning in the 1990s, Pakistan has been a key home base for several Islamic extremist groups, which have enjoyed substantial support among sectors of the population.
Such groups benefit from Pakistan’s tribal social structure, which affords substantial regional autonomy and impedes law enforcement by central authorities.

The groups also reportedly have benefited from the protection of the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence – Pakistani CIA), which earlier had been deeply involved in the sale of drugs to support the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and from the military, which cultivated the groups as a bulwark against India...(end of excerpt)

You can argue with me, but you can't argue with the CIA...or can you?

Please note that the ISI is almost completely a creation of the British and US administrations in the '80's, along with the then Islamic fundamentalist Pakistani dictator Zia al-Haq.

Another key player in this game was Saudi Arabia, which was the conduit for much of the money and supplies forwarded on to the Afghani terrorists. They were also instrumental in setting up recruitment centers around the world, including even the US itself. The same Saudi regime which has been the recipient of billions in US military aid.

I hear the rhetoric about the war on terrorism, I don't see the US attacking the prime facilitators of terrorism, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The decision to use terrorism as a means of destabilizing countries was made in the US in the 70's, and carried out over the next 30 years by the US, Britain, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. All of these players had their own reasons and their own agendas.

Now the world has to deal with the fallout.

People have compared the US adventure in Iraq to the Vietnam war. I believe this is an error. We all knew that when the US left Vietnam, the war would be over. The Vietnamese were not going to visit themselves on Washington.

The new war is different. Islamic fundamentalists were taught how to destabilize societies by the judicious use of local assassination and car bombing, and funding the whole effort with drug money.

It is my belief that it is only a matter of time before the suicide bombers start working in the US. Imagine the impact of regular bombings in New York subways, in office buildings, in shopping malls. These sorts of bombings have been going on around the world for some time.

I have no desire to see that happen, if for no other reason than just personal safety. However, it will be the logical consequence of actions taken by successive US administrations, both Democrat and Republican.

The US started it's war on terrorism on 9-11 2001. The rest of the world started theirs twenty years ago.

Welcome aboard sailor!

Here's some more, this time from the

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
From Foreign Affairs, November/December 1999

More and more, chaos in Afghanistan is seeping through its porous borders. The ongoing civil war has polarized the region, with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia backing the Taliban regime while Iran, Russia, India, and four former Soviet Central Asian republics support the opposition Northern Alliance.

The confrontation is producing enormous economic disruption throughout the area, as the Afghan warlords' dependence on smuggling and drug trafficking grows insatiable...

Meanwhile, Washington's sole response so far has been its single-minded obsession with bringing to justice the Saudi-born terrorist Usama bin Ladin -- hardly a comprehensive policy for dealing with this increasingly volatile part of the world.

For Western nations to presume that they can safely exploit the vast oil and gas riches of Central Asia without first helping bring peace to Afghanistan is unrealistic to the extreme.

A new Great Game is being played in the region. At stake, however, are no longer questions of mere political influence or who gets to build oil and gas pipelines where. These issues will be irrelevant unless the West figures out how to stop the spreading conflagration in Afghanistan -- and fast...(end of excerpt)

The connections are clear and unambiguous. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, drugs, Taliban, al-Qaeda. And a Washington administration that ignores everything except Osama.

More evidence of drugs, mujahadeen, and US support. This is an excerpt.

KLA REBELS TRAIN IN TERRORIST CAMPS

Jerry Seper - The Washington Times, May 4, 1999

Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden -- who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.

The KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO's 41-day bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports. The reports also show that the KLA has enlisted Islamic terrorists -- members of the Mujahideen --as soldiers in its ongoing conflict against Serbia, and that many already have been smuggled into Kosovo to join the fight...(end of excerpt)

As I said, this is not a partisan issue. In this case we have a Democrat president running a large scale bombing campaign at least partly in support of Islamic terrorists.

Or is this all lies too?

One last post to support my argument. This time an excerpt from the story of Macedonia written by the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia James Bissett.

WAR ON TERRORISM SKIPPED THE KLA

Centre for Research on Globalisation, December 29, 2003 - by James Bissett

In March 2001, Lord Robertson, the Secretary-General of NATO, condemned the KLA terror campaign and described them as "murderous thugs." He supported the Macedonian government's refusal to negotiate with the terrorists. Obviously, Lord Robertson was not aware the United States had other ideas about which side to support in Macedonia.

The message was made clear in May 2001, when U.S. diplomat Robert Fenwick, ostensibly the head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in Macedonia, met secretly in Prizren, Kosovo, with the leaders of the Albanian political parties and KLA representatives. Macedonian officials were not invited. It was clear the United States was backing the Albanian terrorist cause.

This was confirmed a month later, when a force of 400 KLA fighters was surrounded in the town of Aracinovo near the capital, Skopje. As Macedonian security forces moved in, they were halted on NATO orders.

U.S. army buses from Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo arrived to remove all the heavily armed terrorists to a safer area of Macedonia. German reporters later revealed that 17 U.S. military advisors were accompanying the KLA terrorists in Aracinovo.

In August 2001, fearing the Macedonian forces might be able to defeat the KLA, U.S. Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice flew to Kiev and ordered the Ukrainian government to stop sending further military equipment to Macedonia. Since Ukraine was the only country supplying Macedonia with military assistance, the Macedonians realized continued resistance against the KLA terrorists, the EU and NATO was futile. Macedonia was forced to concede defeat and obliged to accept all the terrorist demands...(end of excerpt)

Well, there's a pocketful of sources. Their stories are all much the same. At the same time, the sources are diverse enough to suggest they couldn't be in collusion with each other.

I say this one more time. Successive US administrations have supported Islamic terrorists. The evidence is clear and unambiguous.

My apologies for posting another, but I just tripped over this newspaper article from the National Post, a conservative Canadian newspaper.

U.S. SUPPORTED AL-QAEDA CELLS DURING BALKAN WARS
Isabel Vincent - National Post

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has been active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and NATO.

The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO forces launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia three years ago to unseat Mr. Milosevic, they entered the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had already received "substantial" military and financial support from bin Laden's network, analysts say.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on the United States, NATO began to worry about the presence in the Balkans of the Islamist terrorist cells it had supported throughout the 1990s...(end of excerpt)

With that I rest my case.

The decision to use terrorism as a means of destabilizing countries was made in the US in the 70's

Passive voice, of course. Who made that decision? It would take a presidential finding, so it would be documented. What did it say? What countries did the USA use terrorism to destabilize?

Look, you made some unsubstantiated claims up front. You still haven't backed them up and you keep throwing more on the wall, hoping it will stick. Your last was laughable--your proof that the USA was spending "drug money" to support Islamic terrorists was an allegation that the Pakistani version of the CIA was somehow involved in drugs and the USA somehow behind the scenes had helped organize the Pakis in the 1980s so of course we were using drug money to support terrorists!

Or is this all lies too?

Probably just a combo of ignorance and exaggeration. The KLA was a homegrown organization. The Serb-Albanian conflict didn't come from some camp in Afghanistan or Bosnia and it pre-dates you, me, Osama bin-Laden and your mythical 1970s decision by the USA to support terrorists. Since the KLA was comprised of Catholic, Orthodox, and Islamic Albanians and the current ethnic Albanian leader in Kosovo is a converted Catholic; it is pretty difficult for anyone except the most obtuse to make that conflict into an Islamic Jihad--although Serb chauvinists and the ignorant try to do so. There were some mujahadeen who showed up in Kosovo, some may even have been Al Qaeda, but bin Laden's emissary who made it all the way to Kosovo--Claud Kader--was thrown out by the KLA (who would not even accept the weapons he brought)and then arrested by the Albanian government. And of course, as further proof of the Islamist nature of the KLA, there is the secular law passed by the Kosovo parliament and the bars and wineries and pork chops and beer and raki and women doing the nightly xhira with skin tight jeans and make-up. A regular Islamist paradise. However, you do not appear to be the type to let facts get in the way of your conclusions.

(Probably just a combo of ignorance and exaggeration.)

Well, there's not much I can say to that except that presumably the former Canadian ambassador has a reasonable idea of what's going on in Yugoslavia. His description of the events were published in the leading conservative newspaper in Canada. The same paper that employs Isabel Vincent, the author of the last article.

These are not Bush haters nor liberals. In fact, the owner of the newspaper at the time was Conrad Black, the employer of Richard Perle. He also employs David Frum, the Bush speechwriter who coined the "Axis of Evil" phrase.

Conrad Black's pedigree as a very right-wing newspaperman is unimpeachable. And any journalist will tell you he took a real interest in what went into his Canadian flagship paper.

{your mythical 1970s decision by the USA to support terrorists)

It's hardly mythical. Jimmy Carter's national security council advisor Zibigniew Brezsinski outlined the policy in an interview in 1998 which is readily available.

By the way, I agree with you about the Albanian reaction to the al-Qaeda representative. I'm sure they didn't want to have anything to do with them. But it wasn't the Albanian government I was talking about, it was the US government.

It was the US that used the KLA as a stalking horse in their Yugoslav adventure.

I also agree that the KLA wasn't necessarily Muslim. The terrorists are practicing politics, not religion.

However, everywhere you look the story is the same.

Drugs, Pakistan's ISI, al-Qaeda, KLA, Bosnian Muslims, Chechen Rebel Army, Saudi Arabia, and all the strings that tie them together lead directly to Washington.

This is no secret to the rest of the world, which explains why most people in most countries were utterly opposed to the US adventure in Iraq. To them it's just more of the same; death and destruction so the US doesn't have to run out of oil.

Perhaps they're wrong, perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps nuking Mecca would put a stop to all this.

But I doubt it. The so-called Islamic fundamentalist movement has proved itself very resilient. They have also been very successful at destabilizing governments and societies.

Their success wasn't because the victimized societies didn't hit back. They hit back, but to almost no avail. So far, that has pretty much proved true of the US effort.

How successful the US will be in fighting the terrorist camp remains to be seen. What will probably happen is a standoff punctuated by terrorist acts, followed by retaliation, followed by terrorist act, followed by retaliation etc, etc, etc. A world that is a car bomb waiting to explode. All because the US just couldn't pass up an opportunity to cause trouble for someone else. Way to go.

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