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Unraveling the Myth of Al Qaida

by Open-Publishing - Monday 14 January 2008
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Attack-Terrorism Secret Services USA

Unraveling the Myth of Al Qaida

by Peter Chamberlin

Global Research, January 13, 2008

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

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

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

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

Researcher Kurt Nimmo writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/...

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

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

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

 http://www.indianembassy.org/press/...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 http://www.amazon.com/Bin-Laden-Man...

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

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

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

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

 http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/200...

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

 http://www.globalsecurity.org/milit...

The following map pinpoints the large helipad used to supply Darunta—
 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&amp...

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

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

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

 http://www.topnews.in/pak-agencies-...

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

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

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

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

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

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

 http://usa.mediamonitors.net/conten...

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

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

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

Global Research Articles by Peter Chamberlin

 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index....

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