Unraveling the Myth of Al Qaida

Unraveling the Myth of Al Qaida


by Peter Chamberlin

Global Research, January 13, 2008

The myth of "al Qaida" is built on an expansive foundation of many half-truths and hidden facts. It is a CIA creation. It was shaped by the agency to serve as a substitute "enemy" for America, replacing the Soviets whom the Islamist forces had driven from Afghanistan. Unknown American officials, at an indeterminate point in time, made the decision to fabricate the tale of a mythical worldwide network of Islamic terrorists from the exploits of the Afghan Mujahedeen. The CIA already had their own network of Islamic militant "freedom fighters," all that was needed were a few scattered terrorist attacks against US targets and a credible heroic figurehead, to serve as the "great leader."

The really tricky part of creating a mythical terrorist monster out of an incomplete truth is laying-out the facts behind your mythical story without revealing the whole truth about your part in its creation. In order to explain away the billions of dollars worth of weapons and training that went into the operation, they chose a rich jihadi, a Saudi millionaire named Osama bin Laden, who had been a faithful recruiter and business agent of the Mujahedeen. He was painted as the sole financier of the entire enormous operation that was centered in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Bin Laden may not even have known that he was playing a part in a deceitful CIA global drama until after the fact. It is more likely that his history was chosen many years later to serve as the legacy of "al Qaida," than it is that he was a brainwashed tool of the spy agency all along.

The story of bin Laden is the story of the secret CIA/ISI insurgent camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Osama was 22 years old in 1979, when he was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp near Peshawar, Pakistan.

"Bin Laden family was put in charge of raising money for the Islamic brigades. Numerous charities and foundations were created. The operation was coordinated by Saudi intelligence, headed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, in close liaison with the CIA. The money derived from the various charities was used to finance the recruitment of Mujahedeen volunteers. Al Qaeda, the base in Arabic was a data bank of volunteers who had enlisted to fight in the Afghan jihad. That data base was initially held by Osama bin Laden." http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7746

Researcher Kurt Nimmo writes:

"The database of Islamic fighters that was collected by the program was labeled n Arabic, 'Q eidat ilmu'ti'aat', which is the exact translation of the English word database. But the Arabs commonly used the short word 'Al Qaida" which is the Arabic word for 'base.'" http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=3569

In 1989, the US, under George Bush Sr. moved to abandon Afghanistan, making preparations to attack Saddam Hussein long before he had ever moved against Kuwait in 1991. As far as Bush knew, the spy agency had obeyed his orders to abandon the Afghan tribal bloodbath and civil war, but the CIA knew better than the Commander-In-Chief. This fit in well with a deceitful Secretary of Defense, who had also believed that he knew better than his boss, (as evidenced by Cheney ordering his underling Paul Wolfowitz to draw-up an alternative foreign policy, known as the "Defense Planning Guidance"). The covert foreign policy of Reagan and Carter had became even more secret, as control of the camp network was submerged even deeper into the bowels of the secret world of the CIA.

The CIA did not pull out of the jihadi program after the Soviet withdrawal, leaving it solely in the ISI's hands. There is a massive trail of evidence which proves that all the Islamist extremists who were trained under this program, to undermine Kashmir, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Egypt, the US and England, were not all Pakistan's doing. This has always been a CIA program. The attempt to pretend that we were washing our hands of it, was to give "plausible deniability" to the President of the United States, that he had ordered an end to the effort. CIA appeared to comply, as they covertly ignored the position of their old boss and set their own foreign policy. The ensuing Kashmiri conflict, started in 1989 by American and Pakistani trained forces, was an act of war against India. Which part of the Executive Branch was responsible for the new plan? Who this a presidential decision, or was it a rogue agency that decided on its own to turn the Islamists against us, manipulating the Islamists into openly kill 3000 Americans on 9/11? Whose plan were the Islamists and the covert planters of explosives executing on that new day of infamy?

Pakistanis seethed with anger at the US for abandoning them in the mess we had made; they were only doing what America had demanded of them.

"Many in the ISI loathe the United States. They view America as an unreliable and duplicitous ally, being especially resentful of the 1990 sanctions, which came one year after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. Furthermore, the ISI is dominated by Pashtuns, the same tribe that is the Taliban's base of support across the border in Afghanistan. Partly because of its family, clan, and business ties to the Taliban, the ISI, even more than Pakistani society in general, has become increasingly enamored of radical Islam in recent years." [Slate, 10/9/2001]...

On October 12, 1999 the ISI installed the government of Pervez Musharref, in a coup d'etat, removing Nawaz Sharif out of fear that he might give-in to American pressure and stop supporting the Taliban.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a101299pakistancoup

After the withdrawal of the Soviets in 1989, the camps kept churning out highly-skilled terrorists, to foment other armed insurgencies in places like Kashmir (lasting until the war with India in 1999). The CIA/ISI camps were terrorist factories, as they kept turning out successive armies of paramilitary units and skilled terrorists. They trained many of the Bosnian fighters in 1992 and 1995, Chechens in 1994 and 1996, Taliban in 1995 and 1996, and the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998-99. Former honor students of the camps went on to attempt to kill Benazir Bhutto in 1993 (Yousef and KSM), bomb the World Trade Center the first time (Yousef). Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was an agent of chaos, who immediately set about destabilizing the victorious Mujahedeen in Afghanistan by firing rockets at Kabul, igniting the Afghan civil war. Mullah Omar received satellite intel from the CIA, revealing to him the location of a hidden convey of Soviet trucks loaded with weaponry, giving him the upper hand in the civil war.

According to India's Embassy, Pakistan's terrorism network consisted of :

"38 terrorist training centres from where recruits were regularly sent on "jehad" missions to Kashmir and other parts of the world...Facts and figures about Pakistan's role in fostering terrorism in India compiled by Indian security forces are as follows: Number of terrorist camps in Pakistan 37; number of terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 49; number of Pakistan-run terrorist camps in Afghanistan: 22; total number of hardcore terrorists operating in Jammu and Kashmir: 2300; total number of foreign mercenaries operating in Jammu and Kashmir: 900; number of Pakistan terrorists killed by Indian security forces: 291; number of Indian civilians killed by Pakistan terrorists: over 29,000...Harkat-ul-Ansar, Al-Badr, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen, all associated with terrorist financier Osama bin Laden."

http://www.indianembassy.org/press/New_Delhi_Press/September_1999/Pak_Terrorism_Network_Sept_15_1999.htm

In the early years, the camps produced two terrorist superstars, Ramsey Yousef and Ali Mohamed. While Yousef did spread his talents and skills liberally throughout the Muslim world, it was Ali who made the terrorists more skilled and successfully instigated many large terrorist attacks. As an officer in the Egyptian military, he had served in the same unit as the assassins who killed Anwar Sadat. He later moved about freely in the world of Islamist radicals at the al-Farouq mosque and al Qaida recruitment center in Brooklyn, which had produced El-Sayeed Nosair, the killer of Rabbi Meir Kahane, brought the "blind sheikh" together with bin Laden and his Islamic "charities," as well as Osama's spiritual mentor, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam.

As an American Special Forces trainer, Ali acquired specialized skills and combat training programs, which he taught in the camps. Under the name "Abu Mohamed al-Amriki," he offered Zawahiri a CIA bribe of $50 million to attempt to overthrow the Egyptian government in 1998. He did the groundwork for the plot to blow-up two American embassies in Africa and at least one attempt to assassinate Qaddafi. Ali Mohamed is the linchpin in the plot to fabricate the al Qaida super-enemy. It will be the task of future historians to determine whether he was manipulating al Qaida for the CIA or playing the CIA for al Qaida – perhaps both answers are correct.

The CIA/ISI camps, organized by Ali, the trainer, were a source of instruction for nearly every terrorist attack upon the West. Graduate Ramsey Yousef and "the blind Sheikh" were instrumental to the first World Trade Center bombing, while Yousef's uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the brains behind the successful second bombing. Their associate, CIA pawn Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was instrumental in turning the successful Afghan revolution into a civil war and keeping it going. He was also a key player in the Taliban resurgence against the US. The Philippine Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization trained 300 men at these camps. The London 7/7 terrorists and the "shoe bomber" all visited these camps before their attacks. Oklahoma City bombing suspect Terry Nichols allegedly came into contact with some of this group (possibly in the same area as Ramsey Yousef, at a time when both were there) on his visits to the Philippines before the OKC attack. It is rumored on the Internet that Saudi intelligence told the FBI that Saddam Hussein had commissioned Pakistanis to bring down the Murrah Building. The infamous dark-skinned "John Doe No. 2" might have been a Pakistani. He was described as a Middle Eastern type.

After Clinton took over from Bush, he rediscovered the Islamist Network. Parts of the hidden program begin to resurface. According to author Yossef Bodansky (director Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare), in 1993,

"Clinton began a covert operation with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, to send money and arms to Bosnia-Herzegovina...complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo...involvement with the Islamic network's arms pipeline elements of Al Qaida in Albania."

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/Bosnia/bodansky2.html



"Some of these actions were under direct command of Al Qaida "number two" Ayman al-Zawahiri, who oversaw the program to smuggle weapons and mujahedeen though Croatia into Bosnia. This secret program was later duplicated with the Kosovo Liberation Army, and again in nearby Macedonia, as well as in Chechnya."

http://www.amazon.com/Bin-Laden-Man-Declared-America/dp/0761535810

Clinton also is alleged to have used these Al Qaida offshoots against Egypt, after President Mubarak opposed Clinton's use of force against Iraq in February 1998. Some of these Islamists, again led by Zawahiri, had tried to assassinate Mubarak in 1995.

The Islamist foreign policy of the United States did not end with Bill Clinton, or even with the 9/11 attacks. Bush is playing the same card throughout the Muslim world, as we see him apply the "El Salvador option" (adapted from the Islamist program) to every situation claimed to be caused by "elements associated with al Qaida." We are hiring and training gangs of Sunni mercenaries to start wars throughout the Muslim world. Either we hire them openly, like the "Awakening" group in Iraq, semi-secretly, like the PAJEK Kurds hired to hit Iran and the Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon, or back them super-secretively, like elements of the Pakistani Taliban, whom we mislabel as "al Qaida."

Our own spy agency is behind the killing of thousands of American soldiers and civilians all over the world. They are also responsible for continued Afghan opium production, as it has always served as the primary funding source for CIA paramilitary operations there. The poppies funded the original Pakistani camps and their current resurgence. Much of the poppy fields and most of the camps lie within a sixty-mile radius of Peshawar. This is the zone of instability that overlaps the northernmost regions of Pakistan bordering Kashmir, the epicenter of the massive October 2005 earthquake that further devastated the people.

Within this sixty-mile radius lies the infamous Tora Bora "fortress," bin Laden's redoubt, where his forces made their last stand in Afghanistan. It was built on the Kabul River, near the Swat Valley, the site of the original camps and the current Pakistani/Taliban battles, set-off by Musharref's meeting of US demands. Tora Bora is part of the Darunta Camp complex [34°28'00"N 70°22'00"E], the former location of Al-Badr I military base near Jalalabad. According to Internet sources, bin Laden allegedly took possession of this facility directly from the CIA, upon his return from Sudan in 1996. At the time of the US invasion of Afghanistan, American media sources were hyping Tora Bora as a super fortress, equipped as an underground city, even having its own hydroelectric plant. This underground facility would have had to have cost at least a billion dollars to construct. They released this artist's rendition to the public as US bombers were dropping everything they had on it. disputed the fortress story

http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/2002image/netherpopup.gif



The satellite photos below are supposed to be from the Darunta site, matching closely the level of complexity attributed to the facility during the battle, which the media quickly denied as hype, after our troops failing to get bin Laden there, preferring to show instead, a bunch of primitive caves.



http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/
afghanistan/images/ik_darunta_tunnel_overview_an_s.jpg




The following map pinpoints the large helipad used to supply Darunta--

http://maps.google.com/maps?
f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=Darunta+afghanistan&sll=34.116797,70.
217421&sspn=0.004299,0.009334&ie=UTF8&ll=34.490499,70.372066&spn=0.01712,0.037336&t=k&z=15&iwloc=E&om=0



The ongoing offensive in the Swat zone of instability began when Pakistan agreed to US demands to assault the "Red Mosque" Islamic compound in Islamabad. The storming of the compound ignited an uprising in the Northwest Provinces by followers of Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz. The Islamists had become more and more successful at their attempts to spark the building democratic-revolution, emboldening Pakistani lawyers to mount large protests, threatening to sweep Musharref and his US allies away. Musharref has escalated the confrontation with the Islamists by supporting the ISI attempt to blame one of them, Baitullah Mehsud, for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.


One-hundred seventy-five miles south of the Swat Valley war zone, around the town of Wana, Mehsud has stood with al Qaida and the foreign Taliban against local Islamists, headed by Maulvi Nazir, who has been waging war to evict al Qaida foreigners (mostly Uzbeks) and Afghan Taliban from his territory. The al Qaida flocked to the area in 2001 after being driven from the Kandahar area in Afghanistan, which adjoins northwest Baluchistan. Nazir has followed the same pattern that we have seen the people adopt in Iraq, where Sunnis turn against al Qaida because of their brutal attacks to force harsh Sharia law upon them. After Nazir could stand no more, he gathered together 900 of his friends from the "local Taliban," to drive the mostly Uzbeki al Qaida from South Waziristan. The government provided aid to Nazir's fight, but when government forces tried to actively fight alongside the defending Waziri, it felt the combined retaliation of both sides.

Recently, nine of Nazir's representatives to upcoming peace talks with the government were killed in rocket attacks, blamed on Uzbekis who were connected to Mehsud. The attack was probably another part of the ISI disinformation campaign to turn local Islamists against Mehsud's Taliban, designed to trigger more of the anti-Uzbeki attacks. After the attack, Nazir issued a deadline for all of the Mehsud to leave the area. The Waziri are expected to attempt to drive the Mehsud tribesmen northward of Wana, into the Kurram Agency, which has a large Shiite population. This area will have to become the focus of CIA/ISI secret plans to foment religious war against the Shia, supporters of Iran, by driving the Sunnis and Shiites together. Kurram adjoins the area of Tora Bora, on the edge of the large circular zone of instability. Baitullah Mehsud has also been linked to attacks upon Shiites in the Kohat area. Other reports from the area claim that Mehsud is marked for assassination by a government death squad.

http://www.topnews.in/pak-agencies-devise-strategy-kill-baitullah-mehsud-210441

Wana sits squarely on the trail used by Islamic fighters traveling from the Swat region to the heated battlefield in Southeastern Afghanistan, on the northern edge of the Baluch region. This is the border area between the multinational Pashtun and Baluch tribes. The Taliban are primarily a Pashtun movement. It appears that the goal of the US is to use these inter-tribal hostilities to erase the borders of the two countries. In 2005, al-Qaeda and the Taliban took over this area, "transforming Baluchistan from a logistics center to an operational base."
http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369909

The sparsely populated Baluch area is also home to Pakistan's huge reserves of natural gas, the chosen route for the India-Iran gas lines, and several nuclear research and delivery sites.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/facility/pakistan-fac3.gif

Recent attacks by Jundallah terrorists into Iran came from this region.

The recent attempt to blame Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a textbook example of the Pakistani ISI duplicity in the region. Even while government spokesmen finger Mehsud for the hit, other ISI operatives and journalists (Pakistani neocons) are spreading rumors, alleging his involvement with the anti-America/Musharref resistance.

"To neutralise that strategic blunder, the ISI operatives are trying to present Pakistan and Pakistan army as a target of the US aggression. Of course they are the primary targets of the US. But Musharraf definitely is not. To indirectly generate sympathies for Musharraf, the ISI analysis try to explain how Pakistan military is being strategically sabotaged, forgetting the fact that this has nothing to do with the US plans against Musharraf because Musharraf is the key facilitators of all anti-Pakistan plans by the neocons and warlords in Washington. The ISI attempt to parade Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Baitullah Mehsud, and the Maulana of Swat as ISI agents just doesn't hold water...If Al-Qaeda is in fact fighting for the US against Pakistan, what is all this fuss about the 'war on terrorism' on the part of Mush and his cronies in Islamabad?"

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/48555

The author of that commentary may have been more of a prophet than he realized, when he asked if al Qaida was fighting for the United States. Hasn't it been said, that the best place to hide something is to put it in plain sight? Rumors created by ISI liars may be more factual than that which they proffer as truth. By starting a whispering campaign to tell the truth about their intentions they know that it won't be believed, because of its source. Known liars like Bush and Musharref, speaking honestly about their intentions, cover the truth with their dishonest reputations.

In the northern quadrant of this zone is the critical Swat Valley region, the focal point of the ongoing military offensive. In this jihadi stronghold, we find al Qaida Uzbeks again fomenting rebellion. "Radio Mullah," otherwise known as Maulana Fazlullah of Swat, works diligently to broadcast his fundamentalist Wahabbi/Taliban values, backed up by 500 well-armed followers, including Uzbek fighters. He is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Mohammad, founder of the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws). Here hardcore Taliban, al Qaida, TNSM and other organizations await the promised arrival of the American Special Forces, planning to repel them just as they have successfully done with the Pakistani Army. Also within this same circle lies a large percentage of Pakistan's nuclear development and delivery systems.

The escalating drama that is planned for this region, dreamed-up by the sick mind of Dick Cheney and his pals from the dark side over at CIA, is now set to play out in the planned Frontier Corps. The insane notion of training still more paramilitary units to fight the old ones is a continuation of the same tragedy that has played-out in this cursed region for thirty years or more. The plan is to use Special Forces to train new Islamists and to stage attacks that will hopefully ignite an intra-Taliban war, or, even better, an Iraqi-type religious civil war. Either scenario will open a path to American bombers heading through the back door into Iran.