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ISIS An Instrument Of US Foreign Policy

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By James O’Neill

The recent rise to prominence of ISIS (also known as ISIL or Daesh) and regularly referred to by Tony Abbott as a “death cult” has shone fresh light on the role played by western governments in using extreme groups in support of their foreign policy ambitions.

This is however, not a new phenomenon.  The British had a divide and rule strategy that pitted factions within countries under colonial occupation against each other to the extent that they were insufficiently strong to oppose the occupying power.

More recently, Afghanistan with its deeply divided tribal factions has been a classic forum for playing out the rivalries between India, Pakistan, Iran, China, the then USSR and the US.  The constant jockeying for relative advantage between the various powers are well described in Fitzgerald and Gould’s Afghanistan’s Untold Story (2009).

For present purposes a particularly significant development was the strategy developed by Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.  In the late 1970s he foresaw an opportunity to foment unrest in Afghanistan to the degree that the Soviet Union would be forced to intervene to protect a friendly government on its southern flank.

Brzezinski sold the program to Carter on the basis that it would give the Soviet Union “its own Vietnam” by enticing it into an occupation of a country that three times in the previous century and a half had roundly defeated British attempts at pacification.  Afghanistan did not earn the sobriquet of ‘graveyard of empires without good cause.

Known as Operation Cyclone the Americans set up training camps in Pakistan, funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia.  CIA funding relied heavily upon proceeds from the illegal drug trade with which it was heavily involved (McCoy The Politics of Heroin rev. ed. 2003) which had the added advantage of being outside the budgetary purview of the US Congress.

Mujihideen were recruited from around the world for training in these camps, and then for infiltration, not only into Afghanistan but also the Soviet Republics with strong Muslim populations to the north of Afghanistan, and the Uighur province in western China with a similarly significant Muslim minority.

The policy, then as now, was to foster discontent among the population of these countries or regions, to carry out acts of terrorism, sabotage, assassinations, and generally foster regime change by replacing their governments with governments more aligned with US interests.

The Mujihideen recruited were the foundation of what we now know as al Qaeda, which is Arabic for “the base” or database of individuals who could be relied upon to carry out terrorist acts in pursuance of the aforementioned foreign policy goals.  A prominent recruit was Osama bin Laden, also known as Colonel Tim Osman on his frequent forays to US military bases in the US.  Bin Laden was a Saudi fundamentalist whose family had close ties to the Bush family.  Members of the bin Laden family were flown out of the US on 12 September 2001 at a time when US air space was otherwise closed to civilian traffic.

The ten-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan ended in 1989.  The American objective had been achieved on several fronts.  The one they claimed credit for was the defeat and subsequent dismemberment of the Soviet Union.  More importantly for subsequent history however was the creation of a substantial body of Islamic militants.  These militants had not only infiltrated the former Soviet republics.  They were a ready-made force available for deployment as and when required.  Deployed they certainly were, for campaigns as diverse as Chechnya, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Sudan, Nigeria and more recently Syria.

One of the better known sub-groups is the Mujihideen el Khalq (MEK) an American armed and financed terrorist group that has been waging a terrorist war on Iran for at least three decades.  The assassination of Iranian scientists has been widely attributed to the MEK.

A refinement of this policy of using Islamic militants to destabilize unfriendly governments, or countries where the US sought control over valuable natural resources or strategic location, evolved further under the Bush-Cheney regime.

In an important article in the New Yorker Magazine in 2007, “The Redirection”, Seymour Hersh argued that:

“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shi’ite, the Bush administration decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East.  In Lebanon, the administration has co-operated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shi’ite organization that is backed by Iran.  The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria.  A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to al Qaeda.”

Hersh’s article left the impression that militant anti-American groups were a by-product of American policy.  It might more accurately be argued that they were an intentional consequence.  In 2007 when Hersh wrote there may have been some scope for uncertainty.  Any lingering doubts have now been dispelled by the release on 18 May 2015 by the American group Judicial Watch of previously classified Defence Intelligence Agency and State Department documents obtained through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

The documents sow that in early 2012 US Intelligence agencies were forecasting the rise of ISIS.  Rather than this being a cause for concern, it is clear that US Intelligence saw ISIS as a strategic asset.  Its primary, but far from sole role, was as a tool for regime change in Syria.

The Defence Intelligence Agency memoranda made a number of salient points.  They include the following:

  • Al Qaeda drives the opposition in Syria.
  • The “west” identifies with the opposition.
  • The establishment of a “Salafist Principality” in Eastern Syria is exactly what the West, the Gulf States, and Turkey want in order to weaken the Assad government.
  • Safe havens are suggested for areas conquered by ISIS insurgents.

A great deal of evidence had emerged prior to the release of these documents that exposed the simplistic description of ISIS as a “death cult” for the furphy that it is.

This evidence included the capture of ISIS weaponry traceable by its serial numbers to a joint CIA-Saudi program.  Other evidence, both direct and inferential, included for example the extraordinarily limited use of US air power to attack ISIS movements and ground positions.  There is a great deal more.  The Jordanian government has admitted the use of camps on its territory for the training of ISIS soldiers.  The Jerusalem Post has published pictures and articles of wounded ISIS fighters being treated at Israeli military hospitals in the Golan Heights.  A variety of European media have confirmed that ISIS is able to transport stolen oil across the Turkish border for sale within Turkey, both known and tolerated by the Turkish authorities.

All of this has been verified from open sources.  The DIA documents are in this regard merely confirmatory.  As is so often the case with inconvenient information the Australian press prefers to keep its readers in the dark.

As to why the ISIS scenario is being played out in the Middle East and elsewhere is a broader geopolitical question.  Many interests are being served.  A far from complete list, but again one missing from Australian mainstream media include the following:

  • It fits the Israeli agenda as set out many years ago in the Yinon Plan, which called for the break up of Iraq and Syria into weak statelets that would be unable to challenge Israeli territorial and other ambitions in the region.
  • Saudi hatred for all things Shi’ite that takes many forms, most recently exhibited in the illegal (under international law) bombing of Yemen. In this endeavour they receive military and political support from the US.  Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, happens to sit on one of the world’s crucial seaways, control of which is a major US strategic imperative.
  • The US desire to provide an alternative pipeline route to Europe of Qatari gas currently blocked by Iraq and Syria. That gas would undermine the economic and political position of both Iran and Russia. (See Pepe Escobar Empire of Chaos, 2015).

Unsurprisingly, these issues do not receive any analysis in the Australian mainstream media.  Far easier to parrot “death cult” and publicize ISIS beheadings (while simultaneously ignoring Saudi beheadings), both of which serve the twin goals of demonizing Islam and diverting attention from the reality of the war being waged by the US and its allies (terrorist and otherwise).

The goal of that war, as acknowledged in US Pentagon position papers, is for “full spectrum dominance” of land, sea, air and space.  Peter Dale Scott (American War Machine, 2010) calls that policy “arguably insane”.  Unfortunately, the insanity and dangerous dishonesty of these policies appear not to trouble Australia’s policy makers.  There is a radical shift underway in the world, of which a re-centering of power from the “west” to Eurasia is the most obvious manifestation.  We ignore that at our peril.

*Barrister at Law

He may be contacted at j.oneill@bigpond.net.au

19 COMMENTS

  3. Hello James/Gumshoe Readers,

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-islamic-state-isis-is-made-in-america-the-pentagon-had-planned-the-fall-of-mosul-and-ramadi-in-2012/5451363

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-warfare-operation-gladio-and-natos-stay-behind-armies/5303061

    http://www.amazon.com/NATOs-Secret-Armies-Operation-Contemporary/dp/0714656070

    http://www.amazon.com.au/The-Phoenix-Program-Forbidden-Bookshelf-ebook/dp/B00KGMIW6Q

    An insightful and informed piece to be sure, and all facts and realities present and accounted for as it were if my reading itself is anything to go by. The first link above takes readers to a recent piece on the Global Research website which echoes much the same narrative you’ve articulated. (Will come back to the other links shortly.)

    Where to begin? Let’s start with the estimable Mr Abbott. To paraphrase Heinrich Himmler (or whoever it was that first said it as there is some contention), every time I hear Tony Abbott use the phrase “death-cult”, I reach for my (hypothetical) Glock 17! And since I never seem to be able put my hands on said trusty ‘piece’ whenever I really need it, I usually end up dry retching instead.

    With that out of the way and on a more ‘sober’ note, along with displaying a total ignorance (or selective recall) of America’s role in fomenting these terror groups, the PM also demonstrates the cringeworthy, chameleonic capacity of most Australian (and Western) politicians and leaders – to say nothing of the hacks and lackeys populating the respective corporate media mastheads and brands – for unquestioningly toeing/parroting the Washington line, whatever that line might be at a given point and whenever so required.

    If anyone tried to explain to Mr Abbott — and again it should be emphasised our Kool-Aid ‘kwaffing’ (sic) political commentators (Andrew Bolt and his ilk anyone?) — the dark history of America’s involvement in supporting and/or training and/or funding and/or recruiting and/or directing not just terrorist groups but engaging in its own direct, prolonged and widespread terrorist activities over several decades – not just years – he would doubtless dismiss such folks as delusional conspiracy theorists.

    But the “facts and realities” speak for themselves. Above there are other links to details regarding books that amply showcase America’s ‘terrorist state’ credentials. The second and third links refer respectively to what became known as Operation Gladio and Daniele Ganser’s book on the subject, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe.

    Operation Gladio is the codename for a clandestine NATO “stay-behind” operation in Italy during the Cold War. Its continued purpose after the war was to maintain and ramp-up armed resistance ostensibly in the event of a Warsaw Pact/USSR invasion and conquest of Western Europe. Stay-behind operations occurred in many NATO and even some neutral countries.

    Ganser’s definitive study shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe after World War II. And terrorism, kidnapping, murder, assassination, bombings, and political subversion and extortion and other nefarious activities were the de rigeuer MO of these groups – the name of the game as it were – all enacted and justified of course in the name of freedom, democracy and liberty.

    These secret soldiers were trained on remote islands in the Mediterranean and in unorthodox warfare centres in England and in the United States by the Green Berets and SAS Special Forces. The network was armed with explosives, machine guns and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and secret arms caches in forests and mountain meadows. In some countries the secret army linked up with right-wing terrorist who in a secret war engaged in political manipulation, harrassement of left wing parties, massacres, coup d’états and torture.

    This program went on for decades, with one of its ‘highlights’ being the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Mori, a former Italian PM, by the “far-left” Red Brigade, an Italian terrorist group of the era and one considered by many people to be under the control and/or operating under the auspices of the NATO, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and other European intelligence agencies.

    The last link refers to Douglas Valentine’s (again) definitive study of Operation Phoenix, called The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam.

    Operation Phoenix is the story of the darkest episodes of the Vietnam War. This was how the CIA secretly initiated a sweeping program of kidnap, torture, terrorism and assassination ostensibly devised to destabilize the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front (NLF) of South Vietnam, commonly known as the “Viet Cong.” The victims of the Phoenix Program were though mostly Vietnamese civilians, male and female, suspected of harboring information about the enemy—though many on the blacklist were targeted by corrupt South Vietnamese security personnel looking to extort money or remove a rival.

    Between 1965 and 1972, more than eighty thousand noncombatants were “neutralized,” as men and women alike were subjected to extended imprisonment without trial, horrific torture, brutal rape, and in many cases execution, all under the watchful eyes of US government agencies. Based on extensive research and in-depth interviews with former participants and observers, Douglas Valentine’s startling exposé blows the lid off of what was possibly the bloodiest and most inhumane covert operation in the CIA’s history.

    This is what Valentine had to say about Phoenix in the introduction of a recent update/revision of this book, which for reasons that might be obvious to many had hitherto not reached a wide audience. The very fact that it was republished under Mark Crispin Miller’s “Forbidden Bookshelf” program speaks volumes.

    “This book questions how Americans, who consider themselves a nation ruled by laws and an ethic of fair play, could create a program like Phoenix. By scrutinizing the program and the people who participated in it, and by employing the program as a symbol of the dark side of the human psyche, the author hopes to articulate the subtle ways in which the Vietnam War changed how Americans think about themselves. This book is about terror and its role in political warfare. It will show how, as successive American governments sink deeper and deeper into the vortex of covert operations — ostensibly to combat terrorism and Communist insurgencies — the American people gradually lose touch with the democratic ideals that once defined their national self-concept. This book asks what happens when Phoenix comes home to roost.”

    A final note observation is apposite herein. The great American journalist, political commentator, cultural critic and satirist HL Mencken once opined the following back in the roaring twenties:

    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, so as to be clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”.

    Methinks the eternally acerbic Mencken was on the money. If we were somehow able to resurrect him for a day or three and let him loose to soak up the zeitgeist, it’s difficult to imagine him having any different view now.

  4. Very good article. ISIS. Such a recognizable, marketable brand name too. Makes “Al Qaeda” sound so yesterday and parochial. They really think we don’t notice don’t they.

        • Dera PB, You will want to read “Truth at Last,” a book by John Ray, the now deceased brother of James Earl Ray. They were both involved in petty crime. But John served a 25-year sentence for bank robbery for which he was merely set-up (didn’t do nuttin’), and James paid the bigger price, for “shooting Martin Luther King.” Yeah, right.

          As John spent so many years trying to get exoneration for James, he learned the tricks in great detail as to how the patsies are fooled. In fact, he said he later realized that he himself had been asked to drive a getaway car in San Francisco, and if MLK had been in SF that day, apparently none other than John Ray was going to be landed with the blame if MLK was assassinated there. “Keep it in the family.”

          The really outrageous part is how the various authorities work for years to denigrate the person, well in advance of his assignment. And they always tell us new lurid little bits afterward. There is a Youtube video in which a neighbor of Martin Bryant says Martin used to sleep with a pig. (I mean sleep with, as in ZZZZ.)

          Well, OK, possibly he did. But the rebuttable presumption should be that this neighbor is full of it.
          Another book about Ray, which was recommended to me on this site by James O’Neill, is Wm Pepper’s “An Act of State.” Pepper sure did his best to get Ray out of prison, and even to get him a kidney transplant (but the courts dragged their feet on that one).

          What incredible tenacity these investigators have.
          They should win a Walkley.
          (I repeat: WALKley). Or at least be a finalist.

          • You know Mary, you can find yourself wondering sometimes if anyone else but yourself sees what you see.

            Pleased to meet you all at Gumshoe.

  5. I was able to get on air on Goulburn Murray ABC Drive this evening with Nicole Travastis, speaking on the “ISIS” and Syria issue.
    It went well, I got all my points out. Not always the case.
    They were discussing in the context of allowing the “Jihadis” to return back to Australia and face our legal system.

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