London the number one safe house for global Islamic terrorism.

This memorandum appeared in the January 21, 2000 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Put Britain on the List of States Sponsoring Terrorism

The following memorandum, dated Jan. 11, 2000, was prepared for delivery to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. It is a request to launch an investigation, pursuant to placing Great Britain on the list of states sponsoring terrorism.

To: Hon. Madeleine Albright, Secretary of StateFrom: The Editors, Executive Intelligence ReviewC.C.:Hon. William Cohen, Secretary of DefenseHon. Janet Reno, Attorney GeneralHon. George Tenet, Director of Central IntelligenceHon. Louis Freeh, Director, Federal Bureau of InvestigationHon. Jesse Helms, Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations CommitteeHon. Joseph Biden, Ranking Democrat, Senate Foreign Relations CommitteeHon. Benjamin Gilman, Chairman, House International Relations CommitteeHon. Sam Gejdenson, Ranking Democrat, House International Relations Committee

This is a formal request for you to initiate a review of the role of the government of Great Britain in supporting international terrorism, to determine whether Britain should be added to the list of nations sanctioned by the United States government for lending support to international terrorist organizations.

This issue has been recently highlighted, as the result of the December 1999 Indian Airlines hijacking, and the response of the British government to the request of one of the freed Kashmiri terrorists, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, to be given safe passage to England. Mr. Sheikh, a British national, was tried and convicted in India, for his role in the kidnapping of four British nationals and an American in 1995. He was sentenced to five years in prison in November 1998. Initially, the British government announced that it would provide Mr. Sheikh with safe passage to Britain, and would not prosecute him or make any effort to extradite him back to India.
However, long before the Sheikh case, Executive Intelligence Review has documented a pattern of British involvement in harboring international terrorists, dating back to 1995. As of this writing, no fewer than a dozen governments—many of them leading allies of the United States—have filed formal diplomatic protests with the British Foreign Office, over specific instances of British official support for terrorist groups, targetting those nations.

Criteria for evaluating whetherBritain should be sanctioned
U.S. Government policy on sanctions against states sponsoring terrorism has been set by a series of Congressional acts, including, but not limited to: the Export Administration Act of 1979 (EAAA), the Anti-Terrorism and Arms Export Amendments Act of 1989 (ATAEAA), the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2780), the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 1996, and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996.

It is our understanding that, while the Congress has given the Secretary of State broad discretion in designating a country as a state sponsor of terrorism, the legislative history of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has specified seven criteria which should guide the Secretary's action.

These criteria are:
Does the state provide terrorists sanctuary from extradition or prosecution?
Does the state provide terrorists with weapons and other means of conducting violence?
Does the state provide logistical support to terrorists?
Does the state permit terrorists to maintain safehouses and headquarters on its territory?
Does the state provide training and other material assistance to terrorists?
Does the state provide financial backing to terrorist organizations?
Does the state provide diplomatic services, including travel documents, that could aid in the commission of terrorist acts?

As of this writing, the State Department currently designates seven countries as state sponsors of terrorism: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Cuba, and North Korea. In the case of Syria, which is presently engaged in peace negotiations with Israel, the primary reason the regime remains on the list is that several designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) are headquartered in Damascus.
In the State Department Authorization Act of October 1991, specific procedures were spelled out for the President to remove a country from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Congress has a 45-day period to pass a joint resolution overriding such a Presidential decision to remove a state from the list, which carries with it a number of significant sanctions.

The case against Great Britain

• The following documentary time line is intended to provide an outline of the evidence that we wish the appropriate officials at the U.S. State Department to review, to make a determination whether Great Britain should be added to the list of states sponsoring terrorism, according to the criteria outlined above.
  
• In July 1998, a former British MI5 officer, David Shayler, revealed that, in February 1996, British security services financed and supported a London-based Islamic terrorist group, in an attempted assassination against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. The action, Shayler charged, in an interview with the British Daily Mail, was sanctioned by then-Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind. The incident described by Shayler did, in fact, occur. Although Qaddafi escaped without injury, the bomb, planted along a road where the Libyan leader was travelling, killed several innocent bystanders. In an Aug. 5, 1998 interview with BBC, Shayler charged, "We paid £100,000 to carry out the murder of a foreign head of state. That is apart from the fact that the money was used to kill innocent people, because the bomb exploded at the wrong time. In fact, this is hideous funding of international terrorism." According to Shayler's BBC interview, MI6 provided the funds to an Arab agent inside Libya, with instructions to carry out the attack.In fact, in 1996, a previously unknown Libyan "Islamist" group appeared in London to claim responsibility for the attempted assassination of Qaddafi.
  
• On June 25, 1996, a bomb blew up the U.S. military barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American soldiers. The next day, Saudi expatriate Mohammed al-Massari, the head of the London-based Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, was interviewed on BBC. He warned the United States to expect more terror attacks, which he described as "intellectually justified." The U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia "is obviously not welcomed by a substantial fraction of the population there," he warned, "and they are ready to go to the execution stand for it." He concluded, "There are so many underground parties—so many splinter groups, many of them made up of people who fought in Afghanistan. . . . I expect more of the same."Despite the fact that al-Massari has repeatedly called for the overthrow of the House of Saud and the creation of an Islamic revolutionary state, he has been given "exceptional leave" to remain in Britain. In April 1996, the British Home Office granted al-Massari a four-year refugee permit to remain on British soil. Al-Massari is allied with the well-known Saudi expatriate Osama bin Laden, who, to this day, maintains a residence in the wealthy London suburb of Wembly. And London is the headquarters of bin Laden's Advise and Reform Commission, run by the London-based Khalid al-Fawwaz. Bin Laden has been given regular access to BBC and a variety of major British newspapers, to spread his calls for jihad against the United States. Thus, in July 1996, bin Laden told the London Independent, "What happened in Khobar [the U.S. Army barracks that was bombed on June 25] is a clear proof of the enormous rage of the Saudi population against them. Resistance against America will spread in many places through Muslim lands."
  
• On Jan. 25, 1997, Tory Member of Parliament Nigel Waterson introduced legislation to ban foreign terrorists from operating on British soil. His "Conspiracy and Incitement Bill," according to his press release, would have for the first time banned British residents from plotting and conducting terrorist operations overseas. Waterson proposed the bill in the aftermath of a scandal over Britain providing safe haven for Saudi terrorist Mohammed al-Massari, who claimed credit for the bombing of U.S. military sites in Saudi Arabia in June 1996.On Feb. 14, 1997, Labour MP George Galloway succeeded in blocking Waterson's bill from getting out of committee. Galloway, in a speech before the committee that was printed in the House of Commons official proceedings, stated, "The Bill will change political asylum in this country in a profound and dangerous way. It will change a state of affairs that has existed since Napoleon's time. . . . We are all in favor of controlling terrorism in Britain. Surely not a single honorable Member has any truck with terrorism here, but we are talking about terrorism in other countries. . . . The legislation is rushed in response to a specific, and, for the government, highly embarrassing refugee case—that of Professor al-Massari, who was a thorn in the side of the government of Saudi Arabia. . . . By definition, a tyranny can be removed only by extraordinary measures. Inevitably, in conditions of extreme repression, the leadership of such movements will gravitate to countries such as ours where freedom and liberty prevail. The bill will criminalize such people, even though they have not broken any law in Britain or caused any harm to the Queen's peace in her realm. They will fall open to prosecution in this country under the Bill because they are inciting, supporting, or organizing events in distant tyrannies, which are clearly offenses under the laws of such tyrants."
  
• On Nov. 17, 1997, the Gamaa al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) carried out a massacre of tourists in Luxor, Egypt, in which 62 people were killed. Since 1992, terrorist attacks by the Islamic Group have claimed at least 92 lives. Yet, the leaders of the organization have been provided with political asylum in Britain, and repeated efforts by the Egyptian government to have them extradited back to Egypt have met with stern rebuffs by Tory and Labour governments alike.On Dec. 14, 1997, British Ambassador to Egypt David Baltherwick was summoned by Egypt's Foreign Minister Amr Moussa and handed an official note, demanding that Britain "stop providing a safe haven to terrorists, and cooperate with Egypt to counter terrorism." In an interview with the London Times the same day, the Foreign Minister "called on Britain to stop the flow of money from Islamic radicals in London to terrorist groups in Egypt, and to ban preachers in British mosques calling for the assassination of foreign leaders." The Times added that Moussa "was outraged by reports that £2.5 million had come from exiles in Britain to the outlawed Gamaa al-Islamiya," and noted that the Egyptian government "has blamed the Luxor massacre on terrorists funded and encouraged from abroad, and identified Britain as the main center for radicals plotting assassinations."To substantiate the charges against Britain, the Egyptian State Information Service posted a "Call to Combat Terrorism" on its official web site. The document read, in part, "Hereunder, is a list of some of the wanted masterminds of terrorism, who are currently enjoying secure and convenient asylum in some world capitals." The "wanted list" consisted of photographs and biographical data on 14 men, linked to the Luxor massacre and other earlier incidents of terrorism. The first seven individuals listed were all, at the time, residing in London. They are:
  Yasser al Sirri: "Sentenced to death in the assassination attempt on the life of former Prime Minister Dr. Atef Sidqi; founded the Media Observatory in London as mouthpiece for the New Vanguards of Conquest."
  Adel Abdel Bari: "At present, heads Egyptian Human Rights Defense Office, affiliated to Media Observatory in London, the mouthpiece for the outlawed Jihad Organization."
  Mustafa Hamzah: "Commander of the military branch of the outlawed `Islamic Group.' "
  Tharwat Shehata: "Sentenced to death in the assassination attempt on Dr. Atef Sidqi, former Prime Minister; associated with, and in charge of financing extremist elements abroad; involved in reactivating the outlawed `Jihad Organization' abroad."
  Osama Khalifa: "Accused no. 1 in the case involving domestic and foreign activities of the outlawed Islamic Group."
  Refa Mousa.
  Mohamed el Islambouli: "One of the principal leaders of the Islamic Group; sentenced to death in the case of the outlawed organization of `Returnees from Afghanistan.' "
  

Groups banned by United Statesare headquartered in London

Shortly before the Luxor massacre, on Oct. 8, 1997, the U.S. State Department, in compliance with the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996, released a list of 30 Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), banned from operating on U.S. soil.

Of the 30 groups named, six maintain headquarters in Britain. They are: the Islamic Group (Egypt), Al-Jihad (Egypt), Hamas (Israel, Palestinian Authority), Armed Islamic Group (Algeria, France), Kurdish Workers Party (Turkey), and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Sri Lanka).

The Islamic Group, and its subsidiary arm, Islamic Jihad, are headquartered in London. In February 1997, the British government formally granted permission to Abel Abdel Majid and Adel Tawfiq al Sirri to establish Islamic Group fundraising and media offices in London, under the names International Bureau for the Defense of the Egyptian People and the Islamic Observatory. Abdel Majid was implicated in the October 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and he subsequently masterminded the escape of two prisoners jailed for the assassination. In 1991, he fled to Britain and immediately was granted political asylum. He has coordinated the Islamic Group's overseas operations ever since. In fact, he was sentenced to death in absentia for the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan in November 1995, in which 15 diplomats were killed.

Abdel Tawfiq al Sirri, the co-director of the movement, has also been granted political asylum in Britain, despite the fact that he was also sentenced to death in absentia for his part in the 1993 attempted assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Atif Sidqi.

In September 1997, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is in jail in the United States for his role in the Feb. 28, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, issued an order, as the spiritual leader of the Islamic Group, calling for an immediate cease-fire. The six members of the ruling council of Islamic Group residing in Egypt endorsed the Sheikh's order, but the remaining six council member, living in London, rejected the order. Two months later, the massacre at Luxor took place.

Similarly, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which was responsible for the assassination of Algerian President Mohamed Boudiaf on June 29, 1992, has its international headquarters in London. Sheikh Abu Qatabda and Abu Musab communicate military orders to GIA terrorists operating in Algeria and France via the London-based party organ, Al Ansar. Sheikh Abu Qatabda was granted political asylum in Britain in 1992, after spending years working in Peshawar, Pakistan with various Afghani mujahideen groups. A third London-based GIA leader, Abou Farres, oversees operations targetted against France. He was granted asylum in Britain in 1992, after he was condemned to death in Algeria for acknowledging responsibility for a bombing at Algiers airport, which killed nine people and wounded 125. Farres was believed responsible, from his base in London, for the July-September 1995 string of blind terrorist acts in France, including bombings of three Paris train and subway stations and an open-air market.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), known as the "Tamil Tigers," have carried out a decade-long terror campaign against the government of Sri Lanka, in which they have killed an estimated 130,000 people. In addition, LTTE was responsible for the suicide-bomber murder of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991, and the similar assassination of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa on May 1, 1993.

Since 1984, the LTTE International Secretariat has been located in London. The official spokesman for the Secretariat is Anton Balsingham, an Oxford University graduate and former British Foreign Office employee. The group's suicide-bomber division, the Black Tigers, which killed Rajiv Gandhi, is run by Pampan Ajith, out of LTTE London headquarters; another elite suicide-bomber cell, the Sky Tigers, which employs light aircraft, is coordinated by Dr. Maheswaran, also based in London.

Most of the marching orders for terrorist operations in the Indian subcontinent are delivered from London, via a string of LTTE publications, including Tamil Nation and Hot Spring, published in London, and Network and Kalathil, published in Surrey. The organization's chief fundraiser and banker, Lawrence Tilagar, is also based in London.

Similarly, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, maintains its publishing operations in London, including its monthly organ, Filisteen al-Muslima. In 1996, this publication issued a fatwa (religious ruling), calling for terrorist attacks against Israel. On Feb. 25 and March 3, shortly after the fatwa was published, Hamas suicide bombers blew up two Jerusalem buses and a Tel Aviv market, killing 55 people. Funding of these terrorists, who are part of the military wing, Izeddin al Kassam, comes from London, where Interpal is the chief money arm of the group.

In the case of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the British government played an even more direct role in supporting the 17-year war against the Turkish government by the Kurdish separatists. An estimated 19,000 people have been killed in Southeast Turkey since the PKK launched its terror war in 1983. In May 1995, after the PKK was expelled from Germany, for seizing control of Turkish diplomatic buildings in 18 European cities, the British government licensed MED-TV in London, through which the PKK broadcasts four hours a day into its enclaves inside Turkey, and all over Europe. In a March 1996 broadcast, PKK leader Apo Ocalan called for the execution of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. And when the PKK held its founding "parliament in exile" in Belgium in 1995, three members of the British House of Lords either attended or sent personal telegrams of endorsement. The three were Lord Hylton, Lord Avebury, and Baroness Gould.

The same Lord Avebury has been an active backer of the Peru Support Group in London, which has served as a major international fundraising front for the Peruvian narco-terrorist group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso). When Adolfo Héctor Olaechea was dispatched by Shining Path to London in July 1992, to establish the "foreign affairs bureau," he received a letter of recognition from Buckingham Palace, which he circulated widely. The letter read in part, "The private secretary is commanded by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth to acknowledge receipt of the letter from Mr. Olaechea, and to say that it has been passed on to the Home Office."

In addition to the six FTOs who have their headquarters in Britain, an additional 16 groups on the State Department's 1997 list either receive funding from groups based in Britain, or receive military training and logistical support from groups operating freely from British soil. Those groups are: the Abu Nidal Organization (Palestinian Authority), Harkat ul-Ansar (India), Mujahideen e Khalq (Iran), Kach (Israel, Palestinian Authority), Kahane Chai (Israel, Palestinian Authority), Abu Sayyaf (Philippines), Hezbollah (Israel, Lebanon), Khmer Rouge (Cambodia), ELN (Colombia), FARC (Colombia), Shining Path (Peru), MRTA (Peru), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Israel, Palestinian Authority), Islamic Jihad-Shaqaqi (Israel, Palestinian Authority), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Israel, Palestinian Authority), PFLP-General Command (Israel, Palestinian Authority).

The `fatwa' against American targets

On Feb. 10, 1998, a group of well-known London-based "Islamists" and Islamic organizations issued a fatwa, calling for terrorist attacks against American targets. It was signed by Saudi terrorist supporter Mohammed Al-Massari and Omar Bakri, head of the Al-Muhajiroon, and was endorsed by 60 organizations that are based in the United Kingdom. It instructed Muslims living in the United States: "You have first to renounce the residency or acquire citizenship, then start military activities if physically capable. You are then at liberty to fight them everywhere in the world or re-enter the realm clandestinely and wreak havoc, obviously facing charges as spy, terrorist, etc."

On Feb. 23, 1998, a second fatwa was issued, entitled "World Islamic Front's Statement Urging Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders." It called for killing Americans because of their "occupation of the holy Arab Peninsula and Jerusalem" and their "oppressing the Muslim nations," and concluded, "in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilian and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy Mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of the lands of Islam, defeated, and unable to threaten any Muslims. We—with God's help—call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans."

The fatwa, which was widely reported in the London-based Arabic daily Al Quds al Arabi, was signed by Sheikh Osama bin Laden, who, despite his current residence in Afghanistan, continues to maintain a lavish mansion in London; Ayman al Zawahiri, head of the Islamic Group behind the November 1997 massacre at Luxor, Egypt; Abu Yasser Rifai Ahmad Taha, another leader of the Islamic Group, residing in London; and Sheikh Mir Hamza, secretary of the Jamiat ul Ulema e, of Pakistan.

The two fatwas were the subject of testimony by an official of the Central Intelligence Agency on Feb. 23, 1998, before the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, chaired by Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.). At Senator Kyl's request, the CIA Counterterrorism Center provided the subcommittee with a declassified memorandum, titled "Fatwas or Religious Rulings by Militant Islamic Groups Against the United States." The memorandum stated that "a coalition of Islamic groups in London, and terrorist financier Osama bin Laden, have issued separate fatwas, or religious rulings, calling for attacks on U.S. persons and interests worldwide, and on those of U.S. allies. . . . Both fatwas call for attacks to continue until U.S. forces retreat from Saudi Arabia and Jerusalem. The fatwa from the groups in london also calls for attacks until sanctions on Iraq are lifted. These fatwas are the first from these groups that explicitly justify attacks on American civilians anywhere in the world. Both groups have hinted in the past that civilians are legitimate targets, but this is the first religious ruling sanctifying such attacks."

Two days before the Aug. 7, 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, the Islamic Jihad issued a declaration, targetting American interests all over the world. The communiqué accused the CIA of cooperating with Egyptian officials to capture three members of the group in Albania, and extradite them to Egypt where they faced prosecution on capital offenses.

Within hours of the two bombings, a number of London-based groups issued endorsements of the bombings. Supporters of Sharia, headed by Abu Hamza Al-Misri, an Egyptian who was convicted of a capital offense in Egypt, but who enjoys political asylum in London, issued one of the most virulent "endorsements." Omar Bakri, the head of Al-Muhajiroon, as well as the Islamic Observation Center, the Islamic Jihad organization's official propaganda and fundraising organization in London, also endorsed the bombings. The Islamic Observation Center was officially licensed by the British government in 1996 to carry out activities in Britain.
Attacks on Yemen

In the third week of December 1998, a London-based terrorist group was planning to launch operations to destabilize the Republic of Yemen. Members of the Ansar Al-Sharia, directed from London by Mustafa Kamel (a.k.a. Abu Hamza Al-Masri, a British citizen and former Afghansi "mujahid," who trains groups of young people for terrorist activities at his Finsbury Mosque in north London, were arrested on Dec. 23, 1998 in Yemen, as they were planning armed terrorist operations. These terrorists were in contact with the Islamic Army of Abeen-Aden (affiliated with the London-based Egyptian Islamic Jihad), which had kidnapped 16 British and Australian tourists a few days earlier.

A rescue operation on Dec. 29 by the Yemeni security forces resulted in the kidnappers killing three British hostages and one Australian; 12 tourists were freed. British press and, later, government officials, accused the Yemeni security forces of "provoking the murders," because they refused to negotiate with the terrorists.
In response, the Yemeni authorities did not mince words. In one day, Yemen kicked out the British Scotland Yard officers who had been invited to observe the investigations, withdrew its application to join the British Commonwealth, and announced that a group of British citizens had been arrested while attempting a massive terror-bombing campaign in Aden.

On Jan. 25, Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh demanded from British Prime Minister Tony Blair that Abu Hamza Al-Masri be handed over for trial in Yemen on charges of carrying out terrorist acts in Yemen and several other Arab states. This was expressed in an official message Saleh sent to Blair, conveyed by the British Ambassador to Yemen, Victor Henderson. The London-based daily Al-Hayat reported that, according to government sources in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, the message from President Saleh stressed that the Yemeni government has the right to demand that the British government hand over Abu Hamza, and evidence and documents which prove its description of Abu Hamza as a "terrorist" and "extremist."
However, British law does not consider it a crime for individuals and groups based in Britain to plan, incite, or conduct terrorist operations outside Her Majesty's domains.

Abu Hamza's case is even more complicated, because he is not only an asylum seeker, but has British citizenship. The Yemeni request came in the context of investigations conducted by the Yemeni security authorities into the group whose members were arrested on Dec. 23, including five British citizens (one of them the son of Abu Hamza) and one French citizen, who were in possession of weapons and explosives and were said to be involved in carrying out "terrorist and destructive plans which undermine Yemen's security and stability."

The Yemeni investigations found that Abu Hamza has relations with this group, in addition to his "firm links to the Islamic Army of Aden," led by Abu Hassan al-Muhdar, who is in custody. Al-Muhdar's group carried out the kidnapping of the tourists in December 1998. The Yemeni government sources added that the message of the Yemeni President to the British Prime Minister expressed Yemen's great regret over the "terrorist activities carried out by Abu Hamza al-Masri" and others from the British territories, acts which it said undermine Yemen's security and stability, as well as similar terrorist acts in several Arab states.
Eight days earlier, Abu Hamza called for killing Yemeni officials if the Yemeni authorities sentenced the kidnappers to death. Replying to a question from the Qatari al-Jazira satellite TV network on Jan. 14, he said: "If Zein al-Abidin al-Muhdar were to be executed, there will be revenge acts and massacres."

Abu Hamza stated in a televised debate on Jan. 18 that he had been contacted by the leader of the group that carried out the kidnapping before the rescue operation, "and asked me for advice." Abu Hamza accordingly issued a communiqué and threatened the Yemeni authorities.

The target of these operations has been the government of the Republic of Yemen itself. Abu Hamza made this clear in the televised debate, in which he said that the ultimate goal is to overthrow the secular regime in Sanaa, and that there are supporters in Yemen who are ready to fight for establishing an Islamic state. Al-Muhdar, during his trial in Yemen, confirmed that the objective of his group is to overthrow every secular government in the region.

Formal diplomatic protests to London

This British harboring of international terrorist groups has not gone unnoticed by the nations that have been the targets of this brutality. To date, the British Foreign Office has received formal diplomatic protests from at least ten victimized countries. These include:

• Egypt: British asylum for the Islamic Group and Islamic Jihad has been a persistent reason for Egyptian complaints to the British government. In April 1996, Egyptian Interior Minister Hasan al-Alfi told the British Arabic weekly Al-Wasat, "All terrorists come from London. They exist in other European countries, but they start from London." On Aug. 29, the government daily Al-Ahram reported that the British chargé d'affaires in Cairo was summoned by the Deputy Foreign Minister, and given a letter for Foreign Minister Malcolm Rifkind, protesting Britain's "double standard policy" and "support for international terrorism." An official of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry was quoted in the paper, saying, "The asylum law in Britain has provided a safe-haven for terrorists."
  Egypt has been particularly incensed that the British have allowed the Islamic Group/Islamic Jihad to use London as their home-base. Continual demands that Britain extradite Islamic Group leaders Adel Abdul Majid and Adel Tawfiq al Sirri back to Cairo, where they have been sentenced to death in absentia for terrorist crimes, have been rejected.
  On Feb. 13, 1997, Egyptian officials told Al-Hayat, that the Egyptian government remains "troubled" and "astonished" by Britain's decision to allow Abdul Majid to establish officially recognized centers in London, especially after the Egyptian Supreme Court released admissions from several members of the group, at the beginning of 1997, that they had received money and marching orders from Abdul Majid, to carry out bombings and assassinations throughout 1996.
  These same officials told the paper that "this only further supports Egypt's belief that London has become the most prominent center for anti-Egypt Islamic extremist groups," and that there will continue to be talks on the highest levels "to know the reasons that made the British government allow the establishment of that [Islamic Group] office."
  Following the Luxor massacre, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak launched a personal international crusade to spotlight the role of the British government in harboring and sponsoring the terrorists who have targetted Egypt.
  
• Israel: On March 3, 1996, after a Hamas bomb exploded in a Jerusalem market, killing a dozen people, and a second bomb exploded in Tel Aviv, Israel's ambassador to London met with Foreign Minister Rifkind to demand that Britain stop protecting the group. In an account of that confrontation, the London Express reported the next day, "Israeli security sources say the fanatics behind the bombings are funded and controlled through secret cells operating here. Only days before the latest terror campaign began, military chiefs in Jerusalem detailed how Islamic groups raised £7 million in donations from British organizations. The ambassador, Moshe Raviv, yesterday shared Israel's latest information about the Hamas operations. A source at the Israeli embassy said last night, `It is not the first time we have pointed out that Islamic terrorists are in Britain.' "
  The British Foreign Office officially responded to the Israeli ambassador: "We have seen no proof to support allegations that funds raised by the Hamas in the U.K. are used directly in support of terrorist acts elsewhere."
  In early September 1997, Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon travelled to Britain, according to the Sunday Telegraph, after investigations determined that the two Hamas suicide bombers who killed 15 people in a Jerusalem market on July 30, arrived in Israel on British passports: "Israeli officials are said to have become increasingly frustrated by what they see as British foot-dragging in curbing the activities of Palestinian hard-liners. The Israeli government has made repeated calls for action to be taken against militants, said to be operating freely in the British capital."
  
• France: In late 1995, the GIA's London headquarters ordered a terror war against France, leading France to loudly protest to the British government, according to the Nov. 6, 1995 London Daily Telegraph, in an article entitled "Britain Harbours Paris Bomber." On Nov. 3, 1995, the French daily Le Figaro wrote, under the headline "The Providential Fog of London," of the GIA's bombing spree: "The trail of Boualem Bensaid, GIA leader in Paris, leads to Great Britain. The British capital has served as logistical and financial base for the terrorists."
  The next day, Le Parisien reported that the author of the GIA terror attack inside France was former Afghan mujahideen leader Abou Farres, who was given a residence visa in London, despite the fact that he was already wanted in connection with the bombing of the Algiers Airport. Farres's London-based organization, according to Le Parisien, recruits Islamic youth from the poor suburbs of Paris, and sends them to Afghanistan, where they are trained as terrorists.
  
• Algeria also filed strong protests to the British Foreign Office over the harboring of the GIA in London.
  
• Peru: The Peruvian government has made repeated requests to the British government, since 1992, demanding the extradition of Adolfo Héctor Olaechea, the London-based head of overseas operations for Shining Path, as well as the shutdown of its fundraising and support operations there. Both requests have been refused to this day. Moreover, in 1992, during the worst of the Shining Path offensive in Peru, Channel 4, of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, a dependency of the British Home Office, coordinated with Olaechea to send two journalists to Peru, where they contacted Shining Path units, and filmed a highly favorable report. The film was broadcast throughout Britain by Channel 4 on July 10, 1992, despite an official protest from the Peruvian government.
  
• Turkey: On Aug. 20, 1996, the Turkish government formally protested to the British government for allowing the Kurdish Workers Party to continue its London-based MED TV broadcasts into Turkey, despite documentation that the broadcasts were being used to convey marching orders to PKK terrorists there.
  
• Germany: The Bonn government issued a diplomatic note to London, too, following a March 1996 MED TV broadcast in which PKK leader Apo Ocalan called for murdering German Chancellor Kohl and Foreign Minister Kinkel. According to the German press, the Interior Ministry stated concerning the London station: "We have requested our colleagues in neighboring countries in Europe to put measures into effect in order to not compromise internal security in our own country."
  Libya: On Feb. 7, 1997, the Libyan Foreign Ministry submitted an official protest to the British government, over Britain's permitting of the Militant Islamic Group to operate on British soil. The letter cited the recent assassination attempt against Colonel Qaddafi by members of the London-headquartered group, and read, in part, "The decision by Britain, which is a permanent member state of the [UN] Security Council, to shelter elements of that terrorist group who are wanted to stand trial in Libya and to enable them to openly announce their destructive intentions against a UN member state, namely Libya, . . . contravenes international charges and treaties."
  
• Nigeria: On Feb. 28, 1997, the British government issued a denial that it had refused to extradite three Nigerians suspected of a series of bombings in the major city of Lagos in January 1997. The three men were leaders of the National Democratic Coalition (Nadeco).
  
• Yemen: In January 1999, the government of Yemen filed formal diplomatic protests with Britain for the harboring of the terrorists who carried out bombings and kidnappings.
  
• Russia: On Nov. 14, 1999, the Russian Foreign Ministry filed a formal protest to Andrew Wood, Britain's Ambassador in Moscow, after two Russian television journalists were brutally beaten as they attempted to film a London conference, where bin Laden's International Islamic Front, Ansar as-Shariah, Al-Muhajiroon, and other Islamist groups called for a jihad against Russia, in retaliation for the Russian military actions in Chechnya.
  One of the victims of the beating, ORT cameraman Alexandr Panov, told Kommersant daily that he was "very surprised at the indifference of the British government. Some of the participants at the `charity' event were people wanted by Interpol, but Scotland Yard, although evidently aware of their residence [in Britain], does not react."
  On Nov. 10, 1999, the Russian government had already filed a formal diplomatic démarche via the Russian Embassy in London, protesting the attacks on the Russian journalists, and also the admissions by Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the head of the "political wing" of the bin Laden organization, Al Muhajiroon, that the group was recruiting Muslims in England to go to Chechnya to fight the Russian Army. Bakri's organization operates freely from offices in the London suburb of Lee Valley, where they occupy two rooms at a local computer center, and maintain their own Internet company. Bakri has admitted that "retired" British military officers are training new recruits in Lee Valley, before they are sent off to camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan, or are smuggled directly into Chechnya.
  

On Nov. 20, 1999, the Daily Telegraph admitted, following the release of the U.S. State Department's updated list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, that "Britain is now an international center for Islamic militancy on a huge scale . . . and the capital is the home to a bewildering variety of radical Islamic fundamentalist movements, many of which make no secret of their commitment to violence and terrorism to achieve their goals."

India: In December 1999, following the conclusion of the Indian Airlines hijacking, the Indian government protested the fact that British officials publicly stated that they would allow one of the freed Kashmiri terrorists, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, to return to London, because there "were no charges filed against him in Britain." The British government, facing growing international pressure, apparently has backed down from this decision.

Bilaat saab, Jee saab. America saab, jee saab.

Afghanistan, Pakistan, the ISI and the BCCI

By Peter Goodgame from his book,
The Globalists and the Islamists: Formenting a clash of civilisation for new world order.

On July 3, 1979, at the insistence of advisors such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter signed a directive authorizing covert aid to the fundamentalist opponents of the ruling communist regime in Afghanistan (1). This move was understood as one that would likely lead to direct Soviet intervention and that is exactly what happened on December 24 of that year when, after being invited by the Afghani government, the Russian military took up positions to protect government assets from rebel attacks.

From the beginning of the Afghan War the CIA partnered with Pakistani Intelligence (ISI) and funded the rebel mujahedin fighters. Today it is generally understood that radical Islam received its biggest boost as a result of the mujahedin's successful jihad against Soviet forces, and when the Soviets retreated from Afghan territory in early 1989 the country was left with tens of thousands of unemployed Islamic mercenaries who then turned their attention to the West.

The history of Afghanistan has always been closely connected with Pakistan, a region formerly colonized by Britain. British involvement in the subcontinent goes back as far as the early years of the seventeenth century when British East India Company merchants were allowed to establish trading posts by the the Emperor Jahangir of the Islamic Mughal Empire. Direct British rule in India is generally seen as beginning in 1757 when BEIC forces led by Robert Clive defeated the army of the Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plessey. In 1803 British control over the subcontinent increased even further when the rulers of the Mughal Empire became pensioners of the BEIC. The Indus River Valley, the center of modern Pakistan, was brought under British control through the successful campaign of 1848-1849 that conquered the Sikh empire, giving the British the Punjab. Since then the regions that are today India and Pakistan were ruled by Britain continuously until the British Empire withdrew and created the two nations in 1947.

When Britain withdrew a number of British officers remained behind to help shepherd (and control) the emerging Pakistani Army. One of these was Major General Walter Joseph Cawthorn who, as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Pakistani Army established Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1948. Cawthorn was an Australian-born British Intelligence (MI-6) agent who had directed operations in the Middle East, Indian, and Southeast Asian bureaus from 1939-1945. He became Sir Cawthorn in 1958 when he was knighted by the British Crown, and later he served in Australia as head of their Secret Intelligence Service (2). Pakistan's ISI was originally a military intelligence agency created to help defend Pakistan in the early wars against India over Kashmir and other border issues, but over the years it has grown to become Pakistan's version of the CIA, and it has continually maintained close ties with British Intelligence.

The power of the ISI increased for its first twenty years until the emergence of Pakistan's first popularly elected civilian leader, the socialist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1971. Bhutto immediately displayed the same nationalistic characteristics as Nasser, Mossadegh and the Shah and his regime fell out of favor with the British government and the West. In 1972 Bhutto withdrew his country from the British Commonwealth of Nations and he pursued closer relations with Russia, China and the Arab states.

In 1977 the inevitable coup took place, and President Bhutto was overthrown by General Zia Ul-Haq, who had been appointed to Chief of the Army Staff by Bhutto in 1976 at the insistence of Gulam Jilani Khan, the longstanding Director General of the ISI. Bhutto comments at great length on his constant struggles with, and betrayal by, the ISI in his book If I Am Assassinated, penned from his Pakistani prison cell. He also relates how Kissinger threatened him for pushing forward on Pakistan's nuclear power program, telling him, "We will make an example of you!" He was. Bhutto was executed in 1978 after being subjected to a sham trial, despite the objections of heads of state from around the globe. (3)

A radical spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood had this to say several years later, "The Brotherhood has taken over in Iran and Pakistan. Bhutto stood for intrusion of the West into Islam. Bhutto was everything that Pakistan was not. That is why we killed him. And we will use his death as a warning to others." (3a)

Britain's relation with the Pakistan underworld becomes clear with a look back at the BCCI scandal. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was the first Third World multinational bank, created in 1972 by Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi. It was initially funded by Sheik Zayed of Abu Dhabi, and from a $2.5 million operation it grew to be worth $23 billion when it was finally shut down in 1991. It was created just in time to take advantage of the river of cash that was flowing into the Middle East through the oil industry.

One of BCCI's early moves to gain international influence was its purchase in 1976 of 85% of the Banque de Commerce et Placements (BCP) of Geneva, Switzerland. After the BCCI took over this bank it installed Alfred Hartmann as manager. Hartmann then became the chief financial officer for BCC Holding and thus one of BCCI's most influential directors. Hartmann was a member of the British banking establishment through his connections with the Rothschild family, being a member of the board of directors of N.M. Rothschild and Sons, London, and president of Rothschild Bank AG of Zurich. (4)

BCCI was initially incorporated in Luxembourg, famous for its lax banking restrictions, and soon branches and holding companies sprouted up around the globe: in the Cayman Islands, the Netherlands Antilles, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Washington DC and just about everywhere else. However, by 1980, when the BCCI finally applied for and received a license from the Bank of England, there were already more branches in the UK than in any other nation. In fact, one of BCCI's primary economics advisors was the former British Prime Minister (1976-79) Lord James Callaghan (5). The BCCI may have been created by a Pakistani, but in the end it was a British-based and British-controlled bank.

Over the years the BCCI became involved in just about every type of illicit transaction that a bank could be involved in including drug money laundering, weapons dealing, bribery, fraud, etc. It was used extensively by the CIA throughout its history, it played a part in the Iran-Contra scandal, it was a bank used by the Medellin Colombian cocaine cartel, and a branch was even set up in Panama for the cash that Manuel Noriega was funneling out of his country. After BCCI was shut down the UK's The Guardian newspaper reported that the terrorist Abu Nidal had maintained BCCI accounts. Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, the Time reporters who covered the scandal write,

"According to The Guardian's sources, the Nidal group had long used a London branch of BCCI to move the money it used to mount attacks on Western targets, and MI5 -- the English equivalent of the CIA -- had known about the accounts. There seemed to be no doubt that the BCCI bankers knew exactly who they were dealing with: One of the bankers at the London branch described how anxious they had been to provide every service to the terrorists in order to keep their multibillion-dollar accounts." (6)

However, the main purpose of the BCCI, and the reason behind its meteoric rise, was its connection to the ISI and the mujahedin fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After Zia replaced Bhutto as Pakistan's president he appointed his friend Fazle Haq to be the governor of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province in 1978. This is the area that borders Afghanistan through which tons of drugs and weapons were smuggled over the Khyber Pass. Fazle Haq was an important friend and backer of BCCI's founder Abedi, and the BCCI was used to launder untold millions of ISI narcotics revenues (7).

Coincidentally, in 1983 the British-based World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) suggested that two national parks be created in Pakistan's northwest, and although rather thin in natural wildlife the preserves proved to be excellent for poppy growing and for staging mujahedin incursions into Afghanistan. (8)

Former Senate investigator Jack Blum said this about the BCCI's connection to the Afghan war during his testimony to the U.S. Congress,

"This bank was a product of the Afghan War and people very close to the mujahideen have said that many Pakistani military officials who were deeply involved in assisting and supporting the Afghan rebel movement were stealing our foreign assistance money and using BCCI to hide the money they stole; to market American weapons that were to be delivered that they stole; and to market and manage funds that came from the selling of heroin that was apparently engineered by one of the mujahideen groups." (9)

When General Zia took over Pakistan all of the pieces were in place to begin the massive drug running, fraud and swindling operation that was the Afghan War. According to Beaty and Gwynne, Zia already had a "close and cooperative relationship" with BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi when he took power (10). The triangle of General Zia's government, the ISI (who had empowered Zia) and the BCCI then proceeded to run the Afghan mujahedin uprising for the CIA, with input from above from British Intelligence. Over the course of the Afghan war up to $5 billion of American taxpayer aid was funneled into the war effort, and through the duration Pakistan's ISI trained about 83,000 Muslim mujahedin fighters.

Britain's role in promoting the Afghan experiment was crucial, although now it is often overlooked. Almost immediately after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Lord Nicholas Bethell, a career British Intelligence agent, formed Radio Free Kabul as a voice for the mujahedin. Bethell had been involved with Russian and Mid-East operations his entire career, and he was a close friend of British spy Kim Philby. Other members of Radio Free Kabul included Winston Churchill III, former Foreign Secretary Baron Chalfont, Lord Morrison of Lambeth the former head of the Foreign Office, and British Intelligence official Ray Whitney. In 1981 Lord Bethell accompanied Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on a tour of the U.S. to drum up support for the resistance, and together they met with over 60 congressmen and senators, eventually leading to the creation of the US-based Committee for a Free Afghanistan which continually lobbied in support of the mujahedin. (11)

Another British creation was Afghan Aid UK, first set up in Peshawar, Pakistan by the wife of British journalist John Fullerton. This group's primary sponsor was Britain's Viscount Cranbourne, who later testified before the U.S. Congress Special Joint Task Force on Afghanistan to lobby for US support. His organization was granted substantial funding by the British government and by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). (11)

Britain lobbied to create a war in Afghanistan, they wanted American taxpayers to pay for it, and they manipulated the financial situation so that they might profit from it. The BCCI was shut down by the Bank of England in 1991 only after the Russian withdrawal, and only then because of the courageous campaigning of a handful of American investigators. Beaty and Gwynne write,

"Though the Bank of England had pulled the trigger on BCCI on July 5, 1991, and had thereby started a global chain reaction that had smashed Agha Hasan Abedi's brainchild into tiny pieces, it had done so only reluctantly and only after waiting an extraordinary amount of time. It had been cowardly rather than heroic; it had moved only when forced to do so by a formidable U.S. alliance between the Federal Reserve Bank and the Manhattan district attorney." (12)

The final U.S. congressional report on the BCCI affair states,

"By agreement, the Bank of England had in effect entered into a plan with BCCI, Abu Dhabi and Price Waterhouse in which they would keep the true state of affairs at BCCI secret in return for cooperation with one another in trying to avoid a catastrophic multibillion-dollar collapse. From April 1990 forward, the Bank of England had now inadvertently become partner to a cover-up of BCCI's criminality." (13)

BCCI was the favored bank for Middle Eastern terrorists and arms and drug runners, South American drug cartels, organized crime lords, and even for intelligence services such as the ISI, Mossad, MI6 and the CIA. In fact then-CIA assistant director Robert Gates once referred to BCCI jokingly as the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals" (14). For at least a decade British authorities allowed it to run amuck out of their living room and after it's fall important records were sealed away and kept from American investigators. When the scandal broke the media backlash focused primarily on BCCI's American links and the CIA, but only because of the British establishment's secrecy and expertise in damage control. It's likely that the whole truth will never be known.

As the war in Afghanistan wound down and the Russian withdrawal became inevitable, the situation became much more complex. American support for the mujahedin dropped off as the CIA tried to resist the establishment of a fanatical Afghani government. New warlords emerged and other avenues of drug smuggling were increasingly utilized, through Iran and through the southern Soviet republics. The dwindling supply of U.S. Government money and arms, coupled with a decreasing supply of drug cash, helped along the BCCI decline.

This brings us to focus on the drug industry and the impact it has had in shaping Afghanistan. Peter Dale Scott, Alfred W. McCoy and Michael C. Ruppert are three authorities in this area. In brief, the conclusion reached by the experiences and research of these men is that drugs (most notably cocaine and heroin) are controlled commodities, just like oil, gold and diamonds, with intricate Western-supported systems of production, distribution and cash flow. Today the global drug industry generates about $600 Billion a year, and the vast majority of this cash is funneled (laundered) into Anglo-American banks and/or Wall Street. These researchers allege that one of the most important tasks of Western intelligence services has been to make sure that the flow of drug cash back into the Anglo-American financial system continues unimpeded. (And yes, the London-based BCCI was, for all intents and purposes, an Anglo-American bank.)

Whatever the case may be, it is worth pointing out that when Britain and the CIA became involved in Afghanistan the production of opium skyrocketed. From an estimated harvest of only 100 tons per year in the early seventies, opium production went up to 300 tons in 1982 and then to 575 tons in 1983. By the late eighties, near the end of the war, Afghani opium poppy production had reached an estimated 1600 tons per year. (15)

The CIA's drug racket was so successful that by 1981 Afghanistan supplied about 60% of America's heroin from contributing an almost negligible amount just two years previously. The crops were grown in Afghanistan, synthesized into heroin in labs on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border, and then smuggled into the US and Europe. General Zia's government was drowning in a sea of heroin as well, despite the international accolades he was receiving for simultaneously reducing the poppy crop on his side of the border, and Pakistan's heroin-addict population grew from about 5,000 in 1981 to over 1.2 million by 1985. (16)

It is also worth noting that the US-led war on the Taliban regime occurred after one of the most successful poppy-eradication programs ever seen. In July of 2000 Mullah Omar placed a ban on poppy growing and by February of 2001 UN drug control officials were able to confirm that poppy production had come to a virtual standstill in Taliban-controlled areas. Was the expected loss of drug-revenue an added incentive for the West to remove the Taliban? Does this explain why Afghan farmers have had little resistance in their quick return to their favorite cash crop after the Taliban's demise? (17)

When the CIA became involved in Afghanistan they were almost entirely dependent on their ISI contacts within Pakistan for intelligence and for guidance in directing the war effort. As the war evolved American support was channeled, at the behest of the ISI, to a group of seven independent Afghani mujahedin warlords who became known as the Peshawar Seven.

Eventually one of the seven, a warlord by the name of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, emerged as the primary recipient of American aid, despite his communist past, his radical view of Islam and his blatant anti-Americanism. Hekmatyar had been an engineering student at Kabul University, and then he had trained at the Kabul Military Academy before being kicked out. Hekmatyar became affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in the early '70s, and by the time of the Afghan war he had emerged as the leader of a group called Hezb-i-Islami, or Party of Islam, even though he had never received a classical Islamic education. Over the years his followers became known for their strict Muslim fanaticism (they were notorious for throwing acid on the faces of women who refused to wear a veil), and Hekmatyar became Afghanistan's biggest opium producer. He possessed thousands of acres of poppy fields and, according to McCoy, he owned at least six heroin laboratories on the Pakistan side of the Khyber Pass. (18)

In March of 1990 the US House Republican Research Committee of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare submitted a 19-page report that criticized the CIA for its dealings with Hekmatyar's "Party of Islam" and for covering up the problems that his group had created. Over time it has emerged that Hekmatyar was an ISI asset who laundered his money through BCCI, and also cooperated with the Russian KGB to ensure his status as the most powerful warlord among many rivals.

Jeffrey Steinberg of EIR sums it up,

"Although American diplomats and intelligence officers posted in Pakistan often warned of Hekmatyar's strong anti-western and pro-Iranian views, speculated about possible Soviet KGB links, and even acknowledged his undisputed status as Afghanistan's "heroin king," his forces received the largest portion of American and other international military support throughout the Afghan War. Intelligence reports back to Washington about the progress of the war were notoriously biased, and filled with disinformation portraying Hekmatyar's mujahideen as the most successful fighters. Often the reports to the Pentagon and the CIA were identical to the reports prepared by British intelligence—complete with the same spelling and typographical errors. More reliable on-the-scene reports indicated that Hekmatyar spent more time and effort fighting rival mujahideen groups than battling the Soviets." (19)

The ISI's spin on the situation comes through in the book Afghanistan: The Bear Trap, in which Brigadier Mohammed Yousaf, the former head of the ISI's Afghan Bureau, (co-written with a former British Army officer), describes Hekmatyar as "scrupulously honest" and the toughest and most vigorous mujahedin leader. Yousaf was the ISI's director of the mujahedin and he argues that the war was drawn out longer than necessary because the United States did not give Hekmatyar and the Islamists enough support, which began to fade in the late '80s while the Soviets still occupied Afghanistan. Yousef resents the fact that the CIA did not give the Islamists an overwhelming victory, even though the Taliban eventually emerged after several years of civil war. (20)

Yousef's point of view can be compared to the 1990 US House Republican Report which is covered in this article by journalist Imran Akbar of The News International, which also details the suspected KGB links maintained by Hekmatyar.

After the Taliban took power Hekmatyar was forced to flee to Iran. In February of this year the Iranian government shut down his operations in Iran and expelled him back to Afghanistan. Hekmatyar has been as outspoken as ever in his anti-American views, offering reward money for the killing of American troops and calling the new US-installed Afghan government illegitimate. In May the CIA reportedly tried to assassinate him with a missile fired from an unmanned Predator drone as he and his entourage journeyed near Kabul. This ISI favorite remains one of the most dangerous players in Afghanistan today. (21)
In his book Yousef also goes to great lengths to make it clear that American personnel were never involved in training any of the Afghan mujahedin,

"Up to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in early 1989, no American or Chinese instructor was ever involved in giving training on any kind of weapon or equipment to the Mujahideen. Even with the heavier and more sophisticated weapons systems... it was always our Pakistani teams who trained the Mujahideen. This was a deliberate, carefully considered policy that we steadfastly refused to change despite mounting pressure from the CIA, and later from the US Defense Department, to allow them to take it over. From the start the Americans wanted to be directly involved with the distribution of the weapons, the operational planning of operations and the training of guerillas. From the start, until the last Soviet soldier quit the country, we successfully resisted." [emphasis added] (22)

Other than being financier and armament supplier, the American CIA was out of the loop. It was Yousef's ISI that ran the Afghan jihad against the Soviets, and it was the ISI that channeled CIA support to the most undesirable Afghan warlords. What becomes clear after reviewing the record of this era is that the ISI's agenda, and that of the Afghan War in general, was set to a far greater degree by the British than it was by the CIA. The British had formulated and promoted the plan for American involvement; they maintained close relations with the ISI that ran the war; they controlled the bank that largely benefited from it; and when the war was over they welcomed into Britain the many mujaheddin veterans who applied for British asylum.

( bloggers note: The Islamic fundamentalists that killed the 270 intellectuals in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 13th December 1971 as a last farewell gesture by the Pakistanis towards their Muslim brethren in the East, were also granted asylum in the UK, including their leader Moinuddin Chaudhuri who until a TV expose was running one of the largest mosques in the UK; invited to 10 Downing street and shook hands with the British PM, John Major but not clear if he was given the MBE. Also met with Prince Charles more recently. Obviously based on these facts above and the bloggers perception, the relationship of 'Pagal bacha' Islamic fundamentalists and the ISI, with the British as 'guiding light' pre-dates the ISI relationship with the 'Pagal bacha' under American encouragement from July 1979.)

Osama bin Laden was one of these veterans and in early 1994 he purchased an estate and lived for a short while in the London suburb of Wembley. During his time in London he established his Advice and Reformation Committee to oversee his economic network, and he solidified his propoganda links to the Western world through his connections with London's Sheikh Omar Bakri and with Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of al-Quds al-Arabi, one of the most influential Arabic-language newspapers in the world. Yossef Bodansky, author of the best-selling biography of bin Laden writes that, "By the time bin Laden left London, he had consolidated a comprehensive system of entities with a solid -though clandestine- source of funding. This London-based data-dissemination system still works efficiently." (Written in 1999). (23)

Islamic Fundamentalism; the fifth column filth of Anglo-America to de-industrialize and de-populate Muslim, and other countries.

Islam Turns Against the West
by Peter Goodgame.
book: The Globalists and the Islamists: Formenting a 'clash of civilization' for a new world order.

As we have related, in his book A Brutal Friendship, Said Aburish defined three phases of Western-Islamic relations. The first was the period during which Britain used Islam to help legitimize the puppet dictators that they had installed over their Arab colonies after World War I. The second phase was a period during which Britain (and America) used militant Islam as a force to help topple governments such as Mossadegh's and Nasser's that were trying to fight Western domination. Aburish writes,

"The struggle between Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots and Western and traditional Arab regimes' supporters continued until the 1967 War. Western support for Islam was provided openly and accepted by the leadership of the Islamic movements without reservation." (1)

Aburish notes that Islam had a good image in the West up to this time. The Islamic movement was noted most for its anti-communist outlook and there was little foresight that conservative Islam might turn against the West. Aburish then begins to describe the third phase,

"The third phase in the development of Islamic movements occurred after the 1967 war. The defeat of Nasser was a defeat for the force he represented, secularism, and with Nasser diminished, the Islamic movements moved to assume the political leadership of the masses of Arab Middle East." (2)

After 1967 the power of the Islamic movements greatly increased. Islamic theology overtook secularism and a more potent form of Arab nationalism emerged. The Six Day War saw the West stand by as Israel defeated her Arab neighbors, capturing the Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. It then became clear to most Muslims that the West favored Israel over the Arabs and resentment towards the West increased. This third phase of Western-Islamic relations began when factions of this predominantly anti-Western Fundamentalist Islamic movement began to exercise their new political influence throughout areas of the Muslim world.
After Nasser died in 1970 and was replaced by Anwar al-Sadat the new Egyptian president tried to appease the threat of militant Islam by releasing all of the imprisoned members of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the fact that the Brotherhood had been involved in at least four separate assassination attempts on Nasser's life over the previous sixteen years. Sadat then joined forces with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and they became sponsors and promoters of the Al Azhar Islamic university as well as Islamic movements such as Al Dawa and I'tisam. These leaders realized that it was best to at least appear to support the rise of the Islamic movements. (3)

On October 6, 1973 Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on the Israeli Army in the Sinai and the Golan Heights. On October 16 OPEC raised the price of oil by a whopping 70%, and then the next day Arab OPEC leaders announced that they would enforce a progressive embargo against Europe and the United States until Israel was forced to withdraw to their pre-1967 borders.

Engdahl's book, A Century of War, relates how US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger was able to convince Germany not to declare neutrality regarding the October war, while Britain "was allowed to clearly state its neutrality." Britain remained neutral throughout the entire episode and was one of the few Western countries not placed under the Arab oil embargo. (4)

The Yom Kippur War ended on October 26, but the effects were such that the Arab regimes came out much better in several respects. Firstly, they had finally been effective militarily against Israel and they had won back some territory. Secondly, their regimes were infused with a great deal of popular support and the voice of the Islamic militants was temporarily quelled. Lastly, the Arab nations suddenly became the benefactors of a huge increase in oil revenues, from $3.01 a barrel in early '73, to $11.65 a barrel in early '74. (5)

Engdahl relates that the rise in oil prices was something that had been planned previously by the Anglo-American Establishment and mentioned at the Bilderberg conference in May, 1973 in Saltsjoebaden, Sweden. Kissinger was the point man in engineering the Arab-Israeli conflict that created the excuse for the oil price hike that helped to rescue Britain's North Sea oil projects that had previously been seen as risky investments. The most catastrophic effect, however, was that the rise in energy prices put a quick halt to Third World industrialization, forcing many countries to borrow a great deal of money over the years to pay for energy, thus setting the stage for the long-term indebtedness of the Third World to Anglo-American banks (6).

After the war the Establishment awarded Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize and later he received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, for his lifelong devoted service to the Crown, in 1995.


The Arab regimes were suddenly greatly enriched as a result of the rise in oil prices, but the threat of the Islamic movements remained. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia feigned support for Islam, but was often forced to crack down on the religious leaders and organizations that seemed to constantly criticize the royal family's overt greed, luxury and corruption. Faisal was assassinated in 1975 by his nephew Prince Faisali bni Musad, in retaliation for Faisal's execution of Musad's Muslim Zealot brother who had attacked a TV station on the grounds that it was a violation of Islam. (7)

In Egypt Sadat's regime came under extreme pressure from the Islamic movements after he signed the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1978. This led to the assassination of Sadat, by members of Islamic Jihad, an offshoot group of the Muslim Brotherhood, on October 6, 1981.

In Syria, in 1982, there was a major conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Syrian government at the city of Hamma that resulted in 20,000 casualties. In the aftermath Syria's President Asad revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood forces were armed with US-made equipment. Aburish comments on how none of these events seemed to change the way in which militant Islam was used,

"Hamma, the assassination of Sadat and Faisal and less portentous acts didn't interrupt Western and Arab client regimes' support for Islamic movements, and Saudi Arabia and Egypt allowed pro-Islamic use of their state propaganda apparatus... And Israel, forever inclined to back divisive movements, surfaced as another supporter of Islam and began to fund the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas." (8)

The most noteworthy success of the Islamic movement during this time was of course the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the installation of the Ayatollah Khomeini as the Islamic dictator. British Intelligence had used their contacts with Iran's mullahs and ayatollahs to help overthrow Mossadegh and install the Shah back in 1953, and these contacts were maintained and used again to overthrow the Shah when his regime fell out of favor.

The Establishment history of Iran's Islamic Revolution is that Khomeini's revolt was spontaneous and populist, and that it overthrew a repressive dictatorship that was hated by the people but supported wholeheartedly by the United States. It is true that the Shah's government was not a democracy and that his secret service, trained by the CIA, was one of the most effective intelligence organizations in the world. But what is not reported is that prior to the British-sponsored massive public relations campaign on behalf of the Ayatollah the government of the Shah was loved by the vast majority of the population.

After taking over from Mossadegh the Shah began to push forward a number of nationalist policies that increased his popularity at home but, in some cases, worried the Anglo-American Establishment. First, he signed petroleum agreements with ENI, the Italian oil company. Then in 1963 he pushed forward on a series of popular reforms that became known as the White Revolution. The Shah evolved into a nationalist whose path paralleled that of Nasser far too much for the Establishment's liking:- He bought land from the upper classes and, along with the crown's own land, sold it back cheaply to tenant farmers, allowing over one a half million people to become land owners and ending the old feudal system.- He allowed women the right to vote, and brought an end to the wearing of the veil, which were "Westernizing" moves unwelcomed by the religious sector.- He pushed forward on a $90 billion nuclear power program. - He moved to shut down the lucrative opium industry that had been created during the days of British Empire control that had been running for a hundred years. (9)

In 1973 The Economist magazine featured Iran on the front cover with the caption: "Iran the Next Japan of the Middle East?" Iran's economy had grown at a rate of 7-8% each year from 1965-1973 and was becoming an example for the developing nations of the world to follow. As far as the Anglo-American Establishment was concerned this could not be allowed to continue. Establishment goals were focused on world de-population and de-industrialization as formulated by policy makers like Lord Bertrand Russell and as advocated by establishment lackeys such as Kissinger, Zibigniew Brzezinski and Robert McNamara (the head of the World Bank), as well as by the British elites who controlled the World Wildlife Fund and other environmental front groups. Iran had to be brought down. (10)

The attack on the Shah's government came through the Muslim Brotherhood and through the mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran, supported and manipulated by British Intelligence. Dr. John Coleman, a former British Intelligence agent and author of a number of books and monographs detailing the Establishment's plan for a socialist world government, states in his report on Iran's Islamic Revolution (11) that the Muslim Brotherhood was created by "the great names of British Middle East intelligence, T.E. Lawrence, E.G. Browne, Arnold Toynbee. St. John Philby and Bertrand Russell," and that their mission was to "keep the Middle East backward so that its natural resource, oil, could continue to be looted..."

Dr. Coleman writes that in 1980 the broadcasts of Radio Free Iran divided the enemies of the Shah into four categories: 1. Iranian politicians bought by the Israeli Shin Bet, 2. The CIA's network of agents, 3. The feudal landowners, 4. The Freemasons and the Muslim Brotherhood (viewed as the same enemy).

In his report Dr. Coleman writes that in Iran, "At one time there was even a joke about the mullahs being stamped 'made in Britain.'" When the Shah introduced his plan for modernization in 1963 the Ayatollah Khomeini emerged as the leader of the religious opposition. Up until his exile from Iran in 1964, Khomeini was based at the religious city of Qom. Dr. Coleman relates that Radio Free Iran claimed that while at Qom Khomeini received a "monthly stipend from the British, and he is in constant contact with his masters, the British."

Khomeini was kicked out of Iran and settled in Iraq. He lived there for a number of years until he was arrested by the Iraqi government and deported in 1978. French President D'Estang was then pressured to offer Khomeini refuge in France to continue his "Islamic studies." While in France he became a Western celebrity and the symbol of the anti-Shah Islamic revolution. Coleman writes, "Once Khomeini was installed at the Chateau Neauphle, he began to receive a constant stream of visitors, many of them from the BBC, the CIA and British intelligence."

At the same time Amnesty International was continuing its intense campaign against the Shah's government, accusing it of torture and other terrible human rights abuses. The international press picked up on this theme and carried it around the world.

The BBC then became the Ayatollah's main promoter. Dr. Coleman writes, "It was the BBC, which prepared and distributed to the mullahs in Iran all of the cassette tapes of Khomeini's speeches, which inflamed the peasants. Then the BBC began to beam accounts of torture by the Shah's SAVAK to all corners of the world... In September and October 1978 the BBC began to beam Khomeini's inflammatory ravings direct to Iran in Farsi. The Washington Post said, 'the BBC is Iran's public enemy number one.'"

The BBC Persian Service came to be nicknamed in Iran the "Ayatollah BBC" for its non-stop coverage of everything that Khomeini wanted to say (12). Soon a large segment of the Iranian public, most of them impressionable young students, became convinced that the Shah truly was evil and that a return to pure shi'ite Islam under the Ayatollah's leadership was the only way to save their country. The Carter Administration, manipulated by British lackey Zbigniew Brzezinski, then collaborated with the British to topple the Shah and install Khomeini.

Dr. Coleman relates that Carter appointed Trilateralist George Ball to head a commission on U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf. Ball's recommendation was that the U.S. should withdraw its support for the Shah's regime. Dr. Coleman quotes from the Shah's own memoirs to confirm the American stance, the reality that is contrary to the mass-marketed Establishment line that the U.S. supported the Shah to the end,

"I did not know it then, perhaps I did not want to know - but it is clear to me now, the Americans wanted me out. What was I to make of the sudden appointment of Ball to the White House as an advisor to Iran? I knew that Ball was no friend of Iran. I understood that Ball was working on a special report on Iran. But no one ever informed me what areas the report was to cover, let alone its conclusions. I read them months later when I was in exile, and my worst fears were confirmed. Ball was among those Americans who wanted to abandon me, and ultimately my country."

After the Shah stepped down in 1979 and fled the country his "firm ally," the United States, even refused to allow him asylum forcing him to move with his family to Egypt. During the subsequent takeover of the American embassy when supporters of the Ayatollah kept Americans hostage for 444 days it became crystal clear to the entire world that the anti-democratic, anti-Israel Islamic movement was also very anti-West. Nonetheless the Anglo-American Establishment continued to support and promote radical Islam.

In 1977 Bhutto of Pakistan, who we will cover shortly, was removed; in 1979 the Shah of Iran was removed; in 1981 Sadat was assassinated, and in 1982 the Muslim Brotherhood revolted in Syria. Before 1977 the Middle East was on the verge of achieving stability and industrial and economic parity with the West through nationalist policies and high oil prices, but by the early '80s the Middle East was in flames. Egypt was reeling and Mubarak was consolidating a shaky hold on power. Iran and Iraq, both armed by the West, were beginning their long war. Israel and Syria were invading Lebanon that was fighting a civil war, and Russia was invading Afghanistan whose rebels were being supported by Pakistan. The de-population and de-industrialization scheme advocated by the British and adopted by the Americans was off to a great start.

Hamas son of Israel.

Making Enemies: How Israel helped to create Hamas
by Brendan O’Neill

In the bloody street struggle between Hamas and Fatah for control of the Palestinian territories—a civil war in all but name—Israel is firmly pinning its hopes on a Fatah victory. It sees its old enemies in Fatah as far preferable to Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and whose members still occasionally blow themselves up on streets and buses inside the Jewish state.

Fatah has been a thorn in Israel’s side for over 40 years. It is the largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization, and its name is a reverse acronym of the Arabic title Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini, which literally translates “Palestinian National Liberation Movement.” But Israel is ready to overlook all that and is making moves toward its old secular, nationalist opponents—“Arafat’s men”—in an attempt to isolate what it sees as the cosmically minded religious extremists of Hamas.

When British Prime Minister Tony Blair publicly supported Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in December and promised to donate £13 million to Fatah, he won the fulsome praise of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who thanked Blair for his “good and interesting ideas” and agreed that it is time for “moderate [Palestinian] elements to be strengthened.” To this end, Olmert hinted that more than $700 million in tax receipts currently being withheld from the Palestinian Authority on the grounds that the money might end up in the coffers of Hamas could be released if a friendlier Fatah-led government were in control. This was seen by many as Israel giving the green light to Fatah to continue facing down Hamas. According to the military wing of Hamas, Fatah has even passed details of Hamas’s “military projects” to Israel so that Israeli forces can more efficiently deal with Hamas militants.

But there is something bitterly ironic in Israel’s support for Fatah against Hamas—and it should be a lesson to governments everywhere that meddle in other states’ affairs. In the past, Israel supported Hamas against Fatah. Indeed, in the 1970s and 80s, Israel played a not insignificant role in encouraging Hamas’s emergence in the belief that such an Islamist group might help rupture support for the mass nationalist movement of Fatah. Twenty years later, Israel has switched sides, hoping that it can encourage Fatah to see off Hamas. It wants “moderate” Palestinians to take on the “extremist” Palestinians it helped create. Like America and Britain before it—both of whom have supported and armed Islamist movements in the Middle East in attempts to undermine secular nationalist parties—Israel is learning the hard way that it is one thing to let radical Islamists off the leash but quite another thing to rein them back in again. If you make monsters, you shouldn’t be surprised if they come back to bite you.

Hamas first emerged in 1987. It was formed from various charities based in the Palestinian territories with links to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement born in Egypt in the 1920s from which many of today’s radical Islamic sects, including al-Qaeda, have sprung. Israel allowed these Islamic charities to gain strength and influence in Palestinian areas, hoping that they would counter the influence of secular Palestinian resistance movements. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas until his death by Israeli air strike in 2004, formed Hamas as the military wing of his group the Islamic Association, which was licensed by Israel 10 years earlier. During that period, when there was open conflict between Israeli forces and Palestinian nationalists, Israeli officials gave the nod to and even indirectly funded the establishment of Islamic societies in the West Bank and Gaza that might weaken the Palestine Liberation Organization. Martha Kessler, a senior analyst for the CIA, has said, “[W]e saw Israel cultivate Islam as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalism.” The very Islamic groups “cultivated” by Israel in the 1970s became Hamas in the 1980s, which went on to become Israel’s biggest nightmare in the 1990s. It remains so today.

After the Six Day War of 1967, Israel began administering the West Bank, Gaza, and the Sinai Peninsula. Where the Arab nationalist forces that had previously controlled these areas were hard on Islamist activists, rightly judging them to be enemies of secular nationalism, Israel was much more lenient, even permissive in its attitude towards the Islamists. One of the first actions taken by Israel after its victory in the 1967 war was to release from prison various Muslim Brotherhood activists, including Ahmed Yassin, future founder of Hamas. Yassin and others had been jailed by the Egyptian authorities after the Muslim Brotherhood tried to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the anti-colonialist and pan-Arabist who considered political Islam a threat and an anachronism and was fairly unforgiving in his treatment of its practitioners. Israel, by contrast, sensing that such radical Islamists might be helpful in undermining Arab nationalists like the Nasser-influenced Fatah in the Palestinian territories released the Islamists from their cells and encouraged them to take root in Palestinian society.

According to Robert Dreyfuss, author of the enlightening and exhaustive book Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, political Islamism grew exponentially as Israel took control of the Palestinian territories:

Starting in 1967, the Israelis began to encourage or allow the Islamists in the Gaza and West Bank areas, among the Palestinian exiled population, to flourish. The statistics are really quite staggering. In Gaza, for instance, between 1967 and 1987, when Hamas was founded, the number of mosques tripled from 200 to 600. And a lot of that come with money flowing from outside Gaza, from wealthy conservative Islamists in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. But, of course, none of this could have happened without the Israelis casting an approving eye upon it.

It is from these Islamist roots that Hamas emerged in 1987. Dreyfuss continues
There’s plenty of evidence that the Israeli intelligence services, especially Shin Bet and the military occupation authorities, encouraged the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and the founding of Hamas [in Palestinian territories].

Indeed, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles Freeman, Shin Bet—the Israeli counter-intelligence and internal security service—knowingly created Hamas: “Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO.”

A former senior CIA official recently told UPI that Israel’s duplicitous support for the Islamist groups that subsequently became Hamas was “a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative.” Dreyfuss agrees, pointing out how useful it was for Israel that an Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories antagonized, in some cases violently, the mass Fatah outfit:
The Hamas organization was a bitter opponent of Palestinian nationalism and clashed repeatedly with the PLO and with Fatah, of course. And there were armed clashes on university campuses in the 1970s and 1980s, where Hamas would attack the PLO, the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], the PDFLP [Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine], and other groups, with clubs and chains. This was before guns became prominent in the Occupied Territories.

In allowing the emergence of radical Islamism, Israel was following in the footsteps of successive British and American governments and their policy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood itself, midwife to Hamas, is a creation of British colonialism. In the 1920s, the British, then the colonial rulers of Egypt, helped set up the Muslim Brotherhood as a means of keeping Egyptian nationalism and anti-colonialism in check. Dreyfuss describes the original Muslim Brotherhood as an “unabashed British intelligence front.” The mosque that served as the first headquarters of the Brotherhood, in Ismailia, Egypt, was built by the (British) Suez Canal Company. In the 1930s and 1950s, with Britain’s knowledge and tacit approval, the Brotherhood both challenged anti-colonial parties within Egypt and spread to other parts of the Near and Middle East, setting up branches in Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, where under the “approving eye” of Israel from the late 1960s to the 1980s, it eventually mutated into Hamas. Following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power in 1954, both the British and Americans viewed the Brotherhood as a useful weapon against secular nationalism and communism. In his book Sleeping With the Devil, former CIA officer Robert Baer describes the “dirty little secret” in Washington in the early 1950s, namely that “the White House looked on the Brothers as a silent ally, a secret weapon against—what else?—communism.”

Al-Qaeda itself, that most radical and obscure of Islamic sects, springs from the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden is heavily influenced by the thinking of Sayyid Qutb, a radical member of the Brotherhood. The Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s second-in-command and currently the public face of al-Qaeda in its occasional grainy videos and crackly audio recordings, was first radicalized by the Muslim Brotherhood before moving on to the more radical Islamic Jihad group in 1979 and subsequently fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Indeed, in both intellectual and physical terms, al-Qaeda has benefited from Western intervention in Middle Eastern affairs. It takes its intellectual inspiration from the Muslim Brotherhood, that group supported by both American and British intelligence in the early and middle 20th century, and it was physically forged in the heat of the Afghan-Soviet War, a conflict largely facilitated by American, British, and Saudi support for the Mujahideen.

In playing the same game as the Brits and Americans—the “devil’s game”—Israel created its own gravediggers. Israel’s encouragement of Hamas’s emergence to counter secular nationalism represented an attack on the idea of popular and secular democracy, so it is not surprising that Hamas retains its somewhat extreme religious leanings and suspicion of traditional politics.

From Egypt to Palestine to Afghanistan, the explicit aim of Western and Israeli support for radical Islamism has been to isolate, weaken, and ultimately destroy popular political movements that very often were based on Western ideas of democracy and progress. Israel is now trying to rein in the consequences of its earlier actions by encouraging Fatah to take on Hamas, which is a recipe for further conflict and division in the Palestinian territories._____________________________________

Brendan O’Neill is deputy editor of spiked in London. (spiked-online.com)

Al-Qaeda, the global Renamo.

Again written in 2004, and published in the Tehran Times. Before publishing they obviously didn't read my other articles about Iran, but were attracted by the fact that it compared OBL's organisation with an African puppet outfit that was trained by the Israelis and others.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=7/11/2006&Cat=14&Num=001


Tehran Times July 11, 2006

Al-Qaeda, the global Renamo By Mostaque Ali-

The Renamo guerrillas and Al-Qaeda had and have only one primary similarity and agenda, and that is death,destruction, and destabilization on behalf of foreignFirst World sponsors, nothing more. Most of their members have been provided with trainingand arms from First World countries.To be brought out of the pocket when convenient, and put back in again when necessary.

Al-Qaeda is in fact another version of the Renamo guerrillas, but a little more global. The basic concept of how it evolved and its core mission aremuch the same.Yes it doesn't sound too exciting, but in reality that is all it is.The Renamo guerrillas were trained by the apartheid security intelligence organization in the eighties to destabilize the neighboring Marxist Mozambican government.They raised hell in Mozambique and massacred innocent civilians left, right, and center. Strangely, as with all destabilization tools, they had no intention of usurping the state but merely destroying as much as they could. They had no clear manifesto for government, as you would expect from most homegrown genuine'revolutionary' insurgency groups. They destroyed railways; blew up highways; assassinated; massacred isolated villages and so forth. Yes, the Renamo guerrillas did not turn around and attack Johannesburg, or have a global reach, but at its core, to put it mildly, that is all Al-Qaeda is. When it achieves its objectives, it too will just as quickly be marginalized, just like Renamo was, or disappear from the scene entirely.

The first primary similarities of Al-Qaeda and theRenamo guerrillas, which separate them from local homegrown ‘revolutionary’ groups, is that both of them had or have no comprehensive action plan for government, beyond vague utterances of this, that, andthe other. By contrast, the PLO, Hezbollah, and the IRA have extensive programs for political government. I am not by any means advocates of the latter three organizations, but merely making a point about revolutionary organizations which are purelyhomegrown, and those that are foreign backed and trained.

The second primary similarity between the Renamo guerrillas and Al-Qaeda is that both of them instituted no social welfare programs for the community that they claimed to represent and fight for. Foreign First World backers find it easier sometimesto train terrorists for the goal of death,destruction, and destabilization than the very expensive and heavier effort of conducting humanitarian programs.

By contrast, without exception, most revolutionaryorganizations had or have extensive social welfare programs - it makes sense that if you are trulyattempting to usurp the government and win over the people, you then should have extensive social welfare programs: informal banking, food distribution, basic health service, and, of course, ideological education. The Renamo guerrillas and Al-Qaeda had and have only one primary similarity and agenda, and that is death,destruction, and destabilization on behalf of foreign First World sponsors, nothing more. Most of their members have been provided with training and arms from First World countries. To be brought out of the pocket when convenient, and put back in again when necessary.