Recently, a secret government document has been obtained by the law firm Judicial watch which reveals that the west has sponsored Islamic extremist like Al Qaeda in an attempt to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. While this document may come as a shock to those who have believed the government’s lies concerning the war on terror, the US has aided terrorist for decades.
Like General William Odom who served as the director of the National Security Agency under the Reagan administration said, “Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the logans of today’s war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world. ” The United State’s history of supporting terrorist starts with it’s arming and funding of the Mujahadeen during the war in Afghanistan between the Soviet Union and Islamic rebels who were funded by the US.
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan taking control over large segments of the country. The official narrative is that the United States began sending aid to the Mujahadeen in the 1980’s in an attempt to counter the soviet union’s expansion into the middle east. The rebels that the US funded known as the Mujahadeen would go on to make up the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Robin Cook, a former British Foreign secretary admits that Osama Bin Laden was a result of western security agencies and funded by Saudi Arabia and armed by the US.
However, Zbigniew Brzezinski who served as Carter’s National Security Adviser said in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur that President Carter had already been giving the Mujahadeen secret aid six months prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The CIA had also helped created camps o train militants in guerrilla warfare and bomb-making. The CIA operation funding Islamic guerillas to fight the Soviet Union was called Operation Cyclone. As Donald L. Barlett and James B.
Steele in an article in Times magazine said, “the CIA began one of its longest and most expensive covert operations, supplying billions of dollars in arms to a collection of Afghan guerrillas fighting the Soviets. ” The CIA is responsible for training Islamic jihadists who would go onto to use that training to help further their terrorists agenda. The same people who the CIA trained to help fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan would later become the individuals who created major terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. War between the Islamic extremists funded by the US and the the Soviet Union would continue for years to come.
In 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev who was serving as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, decided that this conflict would not be solved by military intervention and that it needed to be stopped. However, Gorbachev tried to negotiate with the US: Gorbachev would bring Soviet Union soldiers back home if the US quit funding rebels. Since the US as not willing to cooperate, Gorbachev allowed his military commanders to stage an attack on Islamic fighters in the mountainous region of Jaji near the Pakistan border.
The Islamic fighters in Jaji were being trained by none other than Osama Bin Laden. Osama Bin Laden and 50 Arabian jihadists who volunteered to fight alongside him fended off 200 Soviet troops. The battle lasted for several days, but Osama and the Arabian jihadists managed to hold off Russian troops. Osama Bin Laden began to gain a reputation with Jihadist after the battle of Jaji. Osama Bin Laden’s new reputation coupled with the massive amounts of oney funneled to him through the CIA catapulted him to being the world famous terrorist we recognize today.
The US has even funded Al Qaeda as recently as 2010 when the US paid Al Qaeda 5 million dollars for the release of an Afghan diplomat. The US funding of Afghan guerillas is responsible for creating terrorist groups that not only posed a threat to the United States, but would contribute to the destabilization of the middle east. The US has continued it’s foreign policy of funding terrorism ever since. The US trained Syrian rebels at a secret base in Safawi, Jordan. These Syrian rebels would go on to make p the Islamic State of Iraq or Levant, or more commonly known as ISIS.
These Syrian rebels were trained by US instructors and ployed fighting against Bashar Al-Assad’s would later be regime. The recently declassified US Defense Intelligence Agency document states that the US did not see Syrian rebels as a threat, but rather as a strategic asset in fighting against Assad’s regime. The US government understood that these Syrian rebels belonged to groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Muslim Brotherhood, but still refused to acknowledge the threat they pose. The DIA documents states, “the Salafist [sic], the Muslim
Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” These groups are all based in extremist sects of Islam and the US should have never aided them in any way. Not only has the Defense Intelligence Agency revealed that they created ISIS as a tool to help fight Bashar Al- Assad’s regime, but a prominent member of ISIS, Yousaf al Salaf, admitted during an investigation that he had received money from the US. Yousaf al Salaf claimed to have acquired the money to help “recruit young people to fight in Syria. ” The US has a clear history of supporting terrorism.
It’s robable that without US funding and arming of Islamist extremist that terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS may not exist. But it is certain that the US has added fuel to the fire. There is a simple solution to the problem of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS: STOP FUNDING THEM. The US is responsible for funding terrorist groups that have waged war amongst each other and the Syrian government. Syria is suffering from the effects of years of civil war. ISIS has been seen parading around in military grade Humvees brandishing US manufactured firearms.
The US claimed that they would not let terrorist groups et a hold of weapons while arming Syrian rebels in an attempt to get rid of Bashar al-Assad, but it’s clear that the US is either incompetent or was deliberately lying. Now 4 million Syrian people have left their homeland in order to try and escape the violence that US foreign policy is largely responsible for. The US has made it possible for Islamic extremist to become terrorist kingpins. Now these terrorist kingpin’s have made the middle east a war torn wasteland. The US has helped foster a civil war in Syria responsible for the deaths of more than 200,000 people.
The current refugee crisis s the consequence of the United State’s current policy of aiding terrorists, perpetuating war, and intruding into the affairs of other countries. It is important that we do not forget the grave injustices committed at the hands of US empire and that we expose the true cause of the current refugee crisis. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has made the solution to the current refugee crisis clear when he said, “”It’s not about that Europe didn’t accept them or embrace them as refugees, it’s about not dealing with the cause. If you are worried about them, stop supporting terrorists.
That’s what we think regarding the crisis. This is the core of the whole issue of refugees. ” It is also important that we try and decipher the motive behind the crimes committed by the US. The US has largely helped aid the civil war in Syria to help overthrow Bashar al-Assad who refused to sign an agreement that would install the Qatar- Turkey natural gas pipeline. As always, US empire is only concerned with money and power. Countless lives have been lost and ruined as a result of current US foreign policy and we must do everything we can to try and hold the crooks that make up US empire responsible.