Yr post No 12 talks of ISIS trying to spread their barbarian culture in Bangladesh.Do u have any knowledge about ISIS and their origin, their motives.
Genesis: The real story behind the rise of ISIS
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/310731-isis-rise-support-terror/
Catherine Shakdam is a political analyst, writer and commentator for the Middle East with a special focus on radical movements and Yemen. A regular pundit on RT and other networks her work has appeared in major publications: MintPress, the Foreign Policy Journal, Mehr News and many others.Director of Programs at the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, Catherine is also the co-founder of Veritas Consulting. She is the author of Arabia’s Rising - Under The Banner Of The First Imam
Published time: 25 Jul, 2015 11:51Edited time: 25 Jul, 2015 15:23
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Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) has built an empire, functioning as both a company and a state: selling oil and trafficking precious art while building a formidable army. But how did it become the world’s wealthiest terrorist group?
Trends
Global terrorism,
Islamic State
The fight of a generation, terror has undoubtedly come to define how nations, people and of course religious communities relate to one another. The evil of our modern days, terror has been pinned on Islam; the devolution we were told of an ideology whose creed originates in the deserts of Arabia, as violent and as unforgiving as the history of its people.
From the moment the World Trade Center tumbled to the ground, media, politicians and officials have drummed out their pre-packaged reality, playing on fear, hatred and revenge to fuel the war narrative, pointing angry fingers at Muslims the world over so that "free folks" remain oblivious to the shackles their states slowly weaved around their neck and feet - one civil liberty at a time, one executive order at a time.
For well over a decade Western nations have followed their leaders in wars and in fear, in anger and in disillusion, forever blaming "those Muslim radicals" for seeking to destroy their freedom and democracy. However, as wars followed one another, as fronts opened up in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, terror still advanced, radicalism still claimed more men and more territories to its name.
READ MORE: ISIS could have been prevented – if it hadn’t been deliberately fostered
In perfect synchronicity with terror's progress, Washington and its allies have raised the bar, forever inflating their defense budget, ceaselessly commandeering more resources and more solutions in view of cracking this terror algorithm. And yet, the superpowers have proven seemingly powerless in the face of this scourge.
A decade into this war and terror has not receded; instead it has carved itself an empire at the heart of the Greater Levant, merging territories and communities under its banner. For all its technological prowess and its economic might, the West has failed to curb Islamic State. Instead, it watches from afar as terror militants organize themselves into a state, building an economy and military power to match their hegemonic ambitions.
However, are we really to believe that Western powers, those powers which proved so confident in their own strength that they could challenge Russia and threaten Iran with war over allegations that both stood a distant threat to Western order, now stand clueless before IS? And if Western powers are not looking to decimate the militants in their tracks (as Washington's neocons warned they would do to Iran should it so much as blink the wrong way), how can we not assume that this terror was indeed engineered to serve a covert agenda?
Conspiracy theory? Well not really … US officials have already owned up to creating and funding Al-Qaeda, so admitting to Islamic State is not that big of a stretch. In 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton very publicly admitted to the engineering and funding of Al-Qaeda as a tactical weapon of war in Afghanistan.
Bearing in mind that Al-Qaeda came into being in the late 1980s to rebuke Moscow's ambitions in Eurasia and keep the old geopolitical ley lines in check, some 25 years of expertise on playing war with radicals would likely look like IS does right now - lean, mean, well-trained, well-equipped and well-strategized. If Afghanistan was the training ground, we can safely assume Syria and Iraq are the end product.
Kobani, Turkish border town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, Turkey, June 25, 2015. © Ali Sahin / Reuters
In a report for Mintpress this February,
Sean Nevins wrote, "
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] has created an empire that stretches hundreds of miles through the countries of its namesake. It has accumulated riches that enable it to fund a war, govern a population of around 8 million people, and operate massive amounts of infrastructure in the areas it has conquered."
How does one go about creating an empire if not with allies, and if not that, at least patrons?
Armies and resources to fund expansionist wars do not simply manifest themselves out of thin air, nor can advances be consolidated without strong logistical and political support.
As of 2014, Iraqi officials estimated that Islamic State had as much as £2 billion in its coffers. A year of looting, ransacking precious artifacts and siphoning natural resources most likely raised the financial bar even higher - no such thing as recession in the land of the black flag!
Interestingly, while the US and its allies were willing to rewrite international law to freeze Iran out of the economic and financial loop by way of sanctions and draconian oversight on its foreign trade, IS has been allowed to trade oil through Turkey and Jordan without so much as an eyebrow being raised.
Luay Al Khatteeb, the director of the Iraq Energy Institute explained in an
interview with CNN in 2014 how IS "
crude is transported by tankers to Jordan via Anbar province, to Iran via Kurdistan, to Turkey via Mosul, to Syria's local market and to the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where most of it gets refined locally." To believe that state officials are not complicit in this "trade" flies in the face of logic.
Whether such complicity stems from a desire to profit from a lucrative trade or from a darker agenda, makes very little difference - when it comes to terror, even plausible deniability makes you guilty by association. But then again that would be to assume that states’ officials are oblivious to the plague they are propping up. I'm not sure we have this luxury anymore!
Facts increasingly point to a grand terror machination. From arming to training IS militants, all boxes have been checked. It is now just a case of unleashing the jihadist horde on the world and watching it spread.
READ MORE: Asymmetric terror funding - How ISIS is exploiting Western capitalism
When not even the
New York Times is attempting to deny that weapons are flowing to radicals in Syria under the pretext of democracy building, then you know something has gone awry.
In April 2013, the United States confirmed it had set up a $70-million program in Jordan “
that is training the kingdom’s special forces to identify and secure chemical-weapons sites across Syria should the regime fall and the wrong rebels look like getting their hands on them,” as was reported in
the Economist. That same month, the Obama administration also
promised to double non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition, bringing the total to $250 million.
In September 2014, US President Obama pledged an additional
half a billion dollars to the war on terror in Syria. The problem is, those so-called "moderate" officials never tire talking about aren’t exactly choir boys - they are in fact Islamic State affiliates. Again, this is not a conspiracy; those are the facts, and such facts have been
documented at length.
“
Details leaking out suggest that ISIS and the major military ‘surge’ in Iraq – and less so in neighboring Syria – is being shaped and controlled out of Langley, Virginia, and other CIA and Pentagon outposts as the next stage in spreading chaos in the world’s second-largest oil state, Iraq, as well as weakening the recent Syrian stabilization efforts,” William Engdhal, a prominent analyst wrote in an
op-ed for RT.
Islamic State was not accident; it was engineered, assisted, trained and deployed under the authority of the United States to invade, occupy and exploit the Middle East, while claiming liberation and democracy-building.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group
By
Garikai Chengu
Global Research, August 27, 2016
Global Research 19 September 2014
Region:
Middle East & North Africa
Theme:
Intelligence,
Terrorism,
US NATO War Agenda
Incisive article originally published by GR in September 2014. Terror attacks or mass shootings allegedly perpetrated by the ISIS, the question that should be asked: who are the State sponsors of Al Qaeda and the ISIS? (M.Ch. GR Editor).
Much like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) is made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region.
The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.
The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side, the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side, Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked, “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism. In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”
During the 1970′s the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, and supported the Jamaat-e-Islami terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not least, there is Al Qaeda.
Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization during the 1980′s. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.
America’s relationship with Al Qaeda has always been a love-hate affair. Depending on whether a particular Al Qaeda terrorist group in a given region furthers American interests or not, the U.S. State Department either funds or aggressively targets that terrorist group. Even as American foreign policy makers claim to oppose Muslim extremism, they knowingly foment it as a weapon of foreign policy.
The Islamic State is its latest weapon that, much like Al Qaeda, is certainly backfiring. ISIS recently rose to international prominence after its thugs began beheading American journalists. Now the terrorist group controls an area the size of the United Kingdom.
In order to understand why the Islamic State has grown and flourished so quickly, one has to take a look at the organization’s American-backed roots. The 2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq created the pre-conditions for radical Sunni groups, like ISIS, to take root. America, rather unwisely, destroyed Saddam Hussein’s secular state machinery and replaced it with a predominantly Shiite administration. The U.S. occupation caused vast unemployment in Sunni areas, by rejecting socialism and closing down factories in the naive hope that the magical hand of the free market would create jobs. Under the new U.S.-backed Shiite regime, working class Sunni’s lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unlike the white Afrikaners in South Africa, who were allowed to keep their wealth after regime change, upper class Sunni’s were systematically dispossessed of their assets and lost their political influence. Rather than promoting religious integration and unity, American policy in Iraq exacerbated sectarian divisions and created a fertile breading ground for Sunni discontent, from which Al Qaeda in Iraq took root.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) used to have a different name: Al Qaeda in Iraq. After 2010 the group rebranded and refocused its efforts on Syria.
There are essentially three wars being waged in Syria: one between the government and the rebels, another between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and yet another between America and Russia. It is this third, neo-Cold War battle that made U.S. foreign policy makers decide to take the risk of arming Islamist rebels in Syria, because Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, is a key Russian ally. Rather embarrassingly, many of these Syrian rebels have now turned out to be ISIS thugs, who are openly brandishing American-made M16 Assault rifles.
America’s Middle East policy revolves around oil and Israel. The invasion of Iraq has partially satisfied Washington’s thirst for oil, but ongoing air strikes in Syria and economic sanctions on Iran have everything to do with Israel. The goal is to deprive Israel’s neighboring enemies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas, of crucial Syrian and Iranian support.
ISIS is not merely an instrument of terror used by America to topple the Syrian government; it is also used to put pressure on Iran.
The last time Iran invaded another nation was in 1738. Since independence in 1776, the U.S. has been engaged in over 53 military invasions and expeditions. Despite what the Western media’s war cries would have you believe, Iran is clearly not the threat to regional security, Washington is. An Intelligence Report published in 2012, endorsed by all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, confirms that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Truth is, any Iranian nuclear ambition, real or imagined, is as a result of American hostility towards Iran, and not the other way around.
America is using ISIS in three ways: to attack its enemies in the Middle East, to serve as a pretext for U.S. military intervention abroad, and at home to foment a manufactured domestic threat, used to justify the unprecedented expansion of invasive domestic surveillance.
By rapidly increasing both government secrecy and surveillance, Mr. Obama’s government is increasing its power to watch its citizens, while diminishing its citizens’ power to watch their government. Terrorism is an excuse to justify mass surveillance, in preparation for mass revolt.
The so-called “War on Terror” should be seen for what it really is: a pretext for maintaining a dangerously oversized U.S. military. The two most powerful groups in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the Israel lobby, which directs U.S. Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex, which profits from the former group’s actions. Since George W. Bush declared the “War on Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayer approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters; but, the wars have also raked in billions of dollars for Washington’s military elite.
In fact, more than seventy American companies and individuals have won up to $27 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last three years, according to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity. According to the study, nearly 75 per cent of these private companies had employees or board members, who either served in, or had close ties to, the executive branch of the Republican and Democratic administrations, members of Congress, or the highest levels of the military.
In 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense report stated, “the data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement abroad and an increase in terrorist attacks against the U.S.” Truth is, the only way America can win the “War On Terror” is if it stops giving terrorists the motivation and the resources to attack America. Terrorism is the symptom; American imperialism in the Middle East is the cancer. Put simply, the War on Terror is terrorism; only, it is conducted on a much larger scale by people with jets and missiles.
Garikai Chengu is a research scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on garikai.chengu@gmail.com
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright ©
Garikai Chengu, Global Research, 2016
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881
Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq
Seumas Milne
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq
The sectarian terror group won’t be defeated by the western states that incubated it in the first place
Illustration by Eva Bee
Contact author
@seumasmilne
Wednesday 3 June 2015 20.56 BSTLast modified on Wednesday 15 June 2016 08.10 BST
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The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday
the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.
The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.
That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that
MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.
Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver
Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.
But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.
For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group
Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.
The campaign isn’t going well. Last month, Isis rolled into the Iraqi city of Ramadi, while on the other side of the now nonexistent border its forces conquered the Syrian town of Palmyra. Al-Qaida’s official franchise, the Nusra Front, has also been making gains in
Syria.
Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, and claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war and risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.
A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by
a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.
Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.
pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a
Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.
That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in
Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.
The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners and posting atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.
It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when
US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the Nato-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.
In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an approach perfectly.
What’s clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction and division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.
is what he is. Wasn't he the guy who got caught lying about dossiers?
