Parallel covert operations were deployed in the unvaried stipulations in Algeria, where the army cancelled governing egalitarian elections in 1992 that would enjoy brought the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) to power in a landslide crushing. Tens of thousands of FIS voters were rounded up into internment camps in the Sahara, while the FIS and other Islamist federal parties were banned. Not be deficient in after the coup, hundreds of civilians were being mysteriously massacred finished with an undivulged insurgent systematize, identified finished with the Algerian cabal as a anarchist incentive of the FIS din itself the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). The GIA was formed at bottom of Algerian veterans of bin Laden’s mujahidin forces in Afghanistan who had returned in the at an advanced hour 1980s. 23 To indicate one’s age, the in one piece eradication ringing from the massacres finished with the GIA is an estimated 150,000 civilians. ‘Yussuf-Joseph’, a give a leg up recondite spokesperson in Algeria’s sйcuritй militaire fit 14 years, defected to Britain in 1997 and told the Guardian that civilian massacres in Algeria, blamed on the GIA, were ‘the cultivate of recondite peer at and army eradication squads.
24
Yet in the at an advanced hour 1990s, facts began to become apparent from disagreeing Algerian Government and insight sources that the GIA atrocities were in accomplishment perpetrated finished with the pomp. not Islamic extremists’. GIA terrorism was ‘orchestrated’ finished with ‘Mohammed Mediane, creator of the Algerian recondite service’, and ‘General Smain Lamari’, creator of ‘the surface insight agency’. According to Joseph: ‘The GIA is a uncorrupted issue of Smain’s recondite help. I call to mind that the GIA has been infiltrated and manipulated finished with the Government. I acclimatized to announce all the recondite telexes.
The GIA has been fully turned finished with the Government. In 1992 Smain created a rare systematize, L’Escadron de la Mort (the Squadron of Death). The eradication squads systematize the massacres.
‘The enterprise was race finished with Colonel Souames Mahmoud, alias Habib, creator of the recondite help at the Algerian embassy in Paris.’ Joseph’s evidence has been corroborated finished with numerous defectors from the Algerian recondite services. The FIS aren’t doing the massacres.’
Joseph also confirmed that Algerian insight agents organized ‘at least’ two of the bombs in Paris in summer 1995. 25
Western insight agencies are implicated. Secret British Foreign Office documents revealed in a insurgent whirl in 2000 showed that ‘British insight believed the Algerian Government was intricate in atrocities, contradicting the considering the Government was claiming in public’. The documents referred to the ‘manipulation of the GIA being acclimatized as a comforter to persist not on their own operations’, and that ‘there was no facts to connector 1995 Paris bombings to Algerian militants’. It ranks fourteenth fit unguent reserves, with authorized estimates at 9.2 billion barrels.
26
Algeria has the fifth largest reserves of perceivable gas in the society, and is the damaged largest gas exporter, with 130 trillion proven perceivable gas reserves. Approximately 90 per cent of Algeria’s awkward unguent exports invite the company of to Western Europe, including Britain, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. Algeria’s prime trading partners are Italy, France, the United States, Germany, and Spain.
Currently, the soldier Algerian fork systematize, the al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb mostly – mostly in days known as the Salafist Group fit Preaching and Combat (GSPC) mostly – mostly plays a leading plight in regional insurgent mightiness.
Yet in a series of far-flung analyses fit the Review of African Political Economy, societal anthropologist Dr Jeremy Keenan mostly – mostly Director of Sahara Studies at the University of East Anglia mostly – mostly documents ‘an increasing amount of facts to induce that the described spread of insurgent activities across much of the Sahelian Sahara, has in bring up of fact been an rococo sophistry on the locality of US and Algerian military insight services’. 27
Energy hegemony is a moderate importance. He discusses facts that an al-Qaeda hostage-taking of European tourists in anciently 2003 ‘was initiated and orchestrated finished with elements within the Algerian military establishment’, an enterprise ‘condoned finished with the US’, and that al-Qaeda Mr Big Ammar Saifi (also known as Abderazzak El Para, or ‘the Maghreb’s bin Laden’) ‘was “turned” finished with the Algerian custodianship forces in January 2003′.
Reported al-Qaeda determination in North Africa has focused on oil-rich nations, exclusively the Niger Delta, Nigeria, and Chad. Thus, in July 2003, Keenan reports, under the aegis US supervision Algeria, Chad, Niger and Nigeria ’signed a co-operation dexterity on counter-terrorism that effectively joined the two oil-rich sides of the Sahara together in a complex of custodianship arrangements whose architecture is American’. This has in the the nonce climate evolved into the $500 million Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative, in which Algeria plays a focal plight in US plans fit following regional military deployment. 8
Islamist extremism and the Israeli connection
Curiously, Israel has played a moderate plight in some of these policies, starting with the involvement of Congressman Charlie Wilson, who acclimatized his hypothesis in the House Select Committee on Intelligence, gained with the pay for of then Senator Dick Cheney, to decline up billions of dollars’ value of pay for fit both Israel and the Afghan mujahidin.
The region-wide custodianship conditions coincides with the inauguration of a $6 billion World Bank lob, the Chad-Cameroon unguent hose. 29 Gust Avracotos, the CIA’s Station Chief in Islamabad, commented that Wilson brought ‘the Israelis into the CIA’s Muslim jihad’, split opportunities fit Mossad shrewdness of the ISI and al-Qaeda and securing Israeli arms contracts and insight ties with Pakistan. 30
Closer to assembly, Israel played a barest correspond to business in its oracular relationship to Hamas. US Government and insight sources authenticate that Israel provided control and accidental economic help to Hamas in the at an advanced hour 1970s as a counterbalance to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
many Israeli club officers believed that the kick over the traces of fundamentalism in Gaza could be exploited to assent the power of the PLO’. 31 According to the Israeli military affairs experts Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, at the time of the anything else Intifadah, Fatah ’suspected the Israelis of a figure anything else to give franchise Hamas wax gift and then to unleash it against the PLO, turning the revolution into a laic in conflict. 32
Israeli pay for fit Hamas reportedly continued even after the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, during the stipulations of some of the worst suicide bombings. 33 Even the at an advanced hour Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yassir Arafat said in 2001 that Hamas ‘continued to aid from permits and authorizations, while we enjoy been minutest, even [for permits] to elaborate on a tomato tree. Some collaborationists of Israel are intricate in these [terrorist] attacks.’34
Indeed, there are indications that the Israeli assassination of Hamas Mr Big Abu Hanoud in November 2001 was a ploy to irritate more mad dog bombings. As Israeli military custodianship analyst Alex Fishman famous: ‘Whoever gave a preservationist dim to this position of liquidation knew well-endowed understandably that he was thereby shattering in particular unexplainable one’s lid b catch into a tizzy the gentleman’s dexterity between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Three months earlier, the Israeli Insider reported Ariel Sharon’s intend fit an all-out onslaught on the PA to for all stop its infrastructure, noting that the intend would barely ‘be launched closely following the next high-casualty suicide bombing’ mostly – mostly which was later provoked finished with Israel’s extrajudicial difficult of Hanoud. Under that dexterity, Hamas was to fork out in the into the locality following suicide bombings backwards the Green Line (pre-1967 border), having split on on the coup de grГce a invite the company of closed to the dexterity that it would be advantage not to build up b act up into Israel’s hands finished with convene attacks on its residents centres. This dexterity was, nonetheless, shattered finished with the assassination the date in the coolness of yesterday mostly – mostly and whoever decisive upon the liquidation of Abu knew in to the fore of time that that would be the expenditure. The rationale had been extensively discussed both finished with the military and the federal echelon, in the coolness of it was decisive to persist not on the liquidation.’35
Elements of the Israeli far-right, including chief body officials, recognized that the intend to stop the PA would aid the kick over the traces of Hamas. there won’t be any intercontinental protests’.
In an Israeli Cabinet meet in December 2001, fit exemplification, particular agent declared: ‘Between Hamas and Arafat, I lodge Hamas.’ He added that Arafat is a ‘terrorist in a diplomat’s gratify, while Hamas can be whack unmercifully. 36
Ties with terror
Islamist terrorism cannot be conceded without acknowledging the lot to which its networks are being acclimatized finished with Western military insight services, both to directorate principal get-up-and-go resources and to surface their geopolitical rivals. Even in the the nonce climate, around a decade after 9/11, covert sponsorship of al-Qaeda networks continues. In latest dispatches fit the New Yorker, investigative newswoman Seymour Hersh cites US Government and insight officials’ confirmation that the CIA and the Pentagon enjoy funnelled millions of dollars via Saudi Arabia to al-Qaeda coordinated Sunni extremist groups, across the Middle East and Central Asia. 37 The prepare up is locality of a get-up-and-go to surface Iranian Shi’a cultivate on in the purlieu. The ways, which Hersh says began in 2003, has spilled closed into regions like Iraq and Lebanon, fuelling Sunni-Shi’a member altercation.
In anciently 2008, a US Presidential Finding to Congress corroborated Hersh’s reporting, affirming CIA funding value $400 million to divergent anti-Shi’a extremist and insurgent groups. This was not contested finished with any Democratic members of the House. 38 Now, President Obama has retained Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, as his own. mostly To indicate one’s age, Obama has fact no forewarning that this plan resolution mutate.
Yet Gates was the architect of the covert plan against Iran. The ancient history outlined here throws into reservations our in one piece dexterity of the ‘war on terror’. How can we pugnacity a in conflict against an the competitive that our own governments are covertly financing fit reckless geopolitical interests?
If the ‘war on terror’ is to bluster up, it won’t be won finished with fighting the next barren unguent in conflict.
It resolution be won at assembly finished with holding the noncommittal structures of command to account and prosecuting officials fit aiding and abetting terrorism mostly – mostly whether knowingly or finished with abject forgetfulness. His latest pay for is The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, 2006). Ultimately barely this resolution power in the ’security’ agencies that advance the ‘enemy’ we are imagined to be fighting.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute fit Policy Research and Development.
This is an extended type of the article which appeared in the October 2009 bring up of NI, Islam in Power.
Sources
Le Nouvel Observateur (15-21 January 1998) p. 76; Robert Gates, From the Shadows mostly – mostly The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997) pp. 143-149
Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud mostly – mostly The Secret Relationship between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties (London: Scribner, 2004) p.
Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale: Yale University Press, 2000) p. 100. 91
Rahul Bedi, ‘Why? An by no chance at to course not on the unexplainable,’ Jane’s Defence Weekly (14 September 2001)
Richard Labeviere, Dollars For Terror: The United States and Islam (New York: Algora, 2000)
Cited in ibid.
Judicial Watch Press Release, ‘Clinton State Department Documents Outlined bin Laden Threat to the United States in Summer 1996′ (17 August 2005)
Gerald Posner, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 (New York: Ballantine, 2003) pp. 105-6
Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000) pp. Also renounce out Rohrabacher, Statement in the coolness of Hearing of the House International Relations Committee on ‘Global Terrorism And South Asia,’ (Washington DC: US House of Representatives, 12 July 2000). 166, 179
Dana Rohrabacher, ‘US Policy Toward Afghanistan,’ Statement in the coolness of Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on South Asia (Washington DC: US Senate, 14 April 1999).
George Arney, ‘US ‘planned onslaught on Taleban’,’ BBC News (18 September 2001)
Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, Forbidden Truth: US-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt fit Bin Laden (New York: Nation, 2002); George Arney, ‘US ‘planned onslaught on Taleban’,’ BBC News (18 September 2001).
‘US Companies Eye Trans-Afghan Pipeline’, Forbes (19 January 2005)
Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 911 mostly – mostly Wealth Empire and the Future of America (Berkley: University of California Press, 2007) pp. 163-165
15.
5, no. ‘BP Linked to the Overthrow of Azerbaijan Government,’ Drillbits and Trailings (17 April 2000, vol.
