The Muslim faith is not to blame for ISIL

How the global community handles this barbarity is a big question, writes Abdul Bari.
The beheading of British aid worker David Haines on September 13 was the latest monstrosity carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). For British Muslims, it was doubly distressing that this evil act was carried out, apparently, by a British Muslim. The Muslim community here unanimously condemned this barbarism.

From a moral and theological point of view, an entire community or religion should not be blamed for the actions of a crazy few. But all too often, when people see evil emanating from some Muslims, the potential is there to unfairly put the whole community in the dock.

There are now fears that ISIL's extremism is fuelling Islamophobia and a far-right backlash in the UK. While others have denied there is a growth in the actual number of far-right activists, most observers seem to agree that there is a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment across the UK. This is a big worry for Muslims and a huge burden on our social and political leadership. And of course ISIL's rise also re-emphasises the danger of sectarian tensions within the Muslim community. Thankfully, David Haines' brother, Mike Haines, quoted verses from the Quran and made it clear by saying: "The Muslim faith is not to blame for ISIL, nor is it the fault of people of Middle Eastern descent."

Global crisis

ISIL has, in fact, created a global crisis and presented world leaders with a challenge they cannot afford to ignore: They must hold their nerve and the civilised world needs to find creative, political, and more importantly, human ways of solving this problem of nihilism in our midst. For that is what ISIL is, a nihilistic movement that is the enemy of hope and togetherness.

How the global community handles this barbarity is a big question. Certainly Muslims worldwide have unanimously rejected ISIL's publicity-seeking terror antics, endlessly repeating that it is a million miles away from Islam's teachings.

When citizens see only limitless injustice orchestrated by their corrupt and incompetent leaders, sustained by foreign players, the result is a vicious circle of despotism and violence. In an inter-connected global village with instant communication, no country can remain insulated from another.

The easiest option for some trigger-happy leaders would be to bomb ISIL into the stone age. This may temporarily halt or reduce its power, but it will come back again or re-emerge in another name.

Violence in the Middle East will not simply go away without ethical politics in the region. We must not forget how al-Qaeda emerged in the 1990s, due in part to a political vacuum in Afghanistan; the result was the Taliban regime that gave shelter to the terrorist group.

It is now clear that the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a recipe for the influx of al-Qaeda into Iraq that has now morphed into the more vicious ISIL. With swaths of land in Iraq and Syria under its control, it has plunged the Middle East into an even more serious predicament than before - one in which the viciousness of al-Qaeda and the Assad regime is all too easy to forget.

Common sense

Common sense and natural wisdom suggest that a replay of the post-9/11 knee-jerk reactions, and another display of "shock and awe" firepower by the US and its allies, would be the worst step: This will give ISIL the propaganda coup it needs and deepen the crisis for all involved.

US President Barack Obama has at least grasped that reality and said that US forces will not fight another ground war in Iraq. This is a welcome declaration, but there are big holes in the US-led strategy in the current crisis. With the United States' resumption of "the long war" in Iraq and possibly in Syria, a new open-ended "war on terror" (WoT) appears to have started.

By waging this endless war, the US appears to be digging its heels in the Middle East sand. Gone are the days when the world sighed with relief at Obama's declaration in 2010 that the "war on terror" was over. Very few people now believe him.

The Middle East needs some respite from violence. The US can be a catalyst for this if it decides to become a fair player in the region, with a consistent people-friendly policy. By siding with authoritarian regimes depending on military might alone, the US has so far made things worse in this region. It is an irony that western democracies have one rule, a robust democracy, for their own people but different ones for others.

You can kill terrorists through fire power, but slaying the demons of terrorism needs something more - a human dimension in politics, as well as accountability, and allowing local citizens a stake in their public affairs.

Limitless injustice

When citizens see only limitless injustice orchestrated by their corrupt and incompetent leaders, sustained by foreign players, the result is a vicious circle of despotism and violence. In an inter-connected global village with instant communication, no country can remain insulated from another. By ignoring others' peril, we sow the seeds of our own peril at a future stage.

There are positive examples of global cooperation. Powerful and rich countries - governments and private citizens alike - have dug deep to help fellow human beings in developing countries. Britain leads in this area, devoting up to 0.7 percent of its GDP to foreign aid.

Why can't this happen in the political field of weaker countries? Why do the powerful nations often go "fishing in the muddy waters" in other parts of the world? The rise of ISIL could have been thwarted if the US had insisted earlier on a non-sectarian inclusive government in Iraq and if mainstream political opposition to Syria's brutal regime had received timely support. No wonder some cynics and conspiracy theorists can feel free to accuse the US and its allies of giving ISIL a free hand, so that the terror group can then be used as a bogeyman to continue a long war in the Middle East.

The emergence of violent extremism and nihilism in some parts of the Muslim world is primarily due to the failure of politics, exacerbated by the harmful influence of foreign powers. Although al-Qaeda, al-Shabab, Boko Haram and ISIL speak in the language of Islam, they have emerged in an authoritarian, corrupt, and incompetent political system.

We are in the midst of a generational and geopolitical crisis in the Middle East. Until the Arab world can institute minimum democratic accountability and establish basic rights for its people, the region will remain unstable and a breeding ground for violence. As it stands, this will not happen until the US and its close allies stop supporting or propping up brutal regimes.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari is an author and commentator on social and political issues. He was the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, 2006-10.
aljazeera.com

What if ‘Islamic State’ didn't exist?

What if the so-called Islamic State (IS) didn’t exist?

In order to answer this question, one has to liberate the argument from its geopolitical and ideological confines.

Flexible language
Many in the media (Western, Arab, etc) use the reference “Islamist” to brand any movement at all whether it be political, militant or even charity-focused. If it is dominated by men with beards or women with headscarves that make references to the Holy Koran and Islam as the motivator behind their ideas, violent tactics or even good deeds, then the word “Islamist” is the language of choice.

According to this overbearing logic, a Malaysia-based charity can be as ‘Islamist’ as the militant group Boko Haram in Nigeria. When the term “Islamist” was first introduced to the debate on Islam and politics, it carried mostly intellectual connotations. Even some “Islamists” used it in reference to their political thought. Now, it can be moulded to mean many things.

This is not the only convenient term that is being tossed around so deliberately in the discourse pertaining to Islam and politics. Many are already familiar with how the term “terrorism” manifested itself in the myriad of ways that fit any country’s national or foreign policy agenda - from the US’ George W. Bush to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. In fact, some of these leaders accused one another of practising, encouraging or engendering terrorism while positioning themselves as the crusaders against terror. The American version of the “war on terror” gained much attention and bad repute because it was highly destructive. But many other governments launched their own wars to various degrees of violent outcomes.

The flexibility of the usage of language very much stands at the heart of this story, including that of IS. We are told the group is mostly made of foreign jihadists. This could have much truth to it, but this notion cannot be accepted without much contention.

Foreign menace
Why does the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad insist on the “foreign jihadists” claim and did so even when the civil war plaguing his country was still at the stage of infancy, teetering between a popular uprising and an armed insurgency? It is for the same reason that Israel insists on infusing the Iranian threat, and its supposedly “genocidal” intents towards Israel in every discussion about the Hamas-led resistance in Palestine, and Hezbollah’s in Lebanon. Of course, there is a Hamas-Iran connection, although it has been weakened in recent years by regional circumstances. But for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran has to be at the heart of the discourse.

There are ample examples of governments of the Middle East ingraining the “foreign menace” factor when dealing with solely international phenomena, violence or otherwise. The logic behind it is simple: if the Syrian civil war is fuelled by foreign fanatics, then al-Assad can exact his violence against rebelling Syrians in the name of fighting the foreigners/jihadists/terrorists. According to this logic, Bashar becomes a national hero, as opposed to a despotic dictator.

Netanyahu remains the master of political diversion. He vacillates between peace talks and Iran-backed Palestinian “terror” groups in whatever way he finds suitable. The desired outcome is placing Israel as a victim of and a crusader against foreign-inspired terrorism. Just days after Israel carried out what was described by many as a genocide in Gaza - killing over 2,200 and wounded over 11,000 - he once more tried to shift global attention by claiming that the so-called Islamic State was at the Israeli border.

The “foreign hordes on the border” notion is being utilised, although so far ineffectively, by Egypt’s Abdul-Fatah al-Sisi also. Desperate to gain access to this convenient discourse, he has made numerous claims of foreigners being at the border of Libya, Sudan and Sinai. Few have paid attention aside from the unintelligible Egyptian state-controlled media. However, one must not neglect the events that took place in Egypt when he himself overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood’s democratically-elected government of Mohamed Morsi last year.

When US President Barack Obama decided to launch his war on IS, Sisi lined up to enlist his country in a fight against the “Islamists” as he sees them as part and parcel of the war against the supporters of the deposed Muslim Brotherhood. After all, they are both “Islamists.”

US-western motives
For the US and their western allies, the logic behind the war is hardly removed from the war discourse engendered by previous US administrations, most notably that of W. Bush and his father. It is another chapter of the unfinished wars that the US had unleashed in Iraq over the last 25 years. In some way, IS, with its brutal tactics, is the worst possible manifestation of American interventionism.

In the first Iraq war (1990-91), the US-led coalition seemed determined to achieve the clear goal of driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, and to use that as a starting point to achieve complete US dominance over the Middle East. Back then, George Bush had feared that pushing beyond that goal could lead to the kind of consequences that would alter the entire region and empower Iran at the expense of America’s Arab allies. Instead of carrying out regime change in Iraq itself, the US opted to subject Iraq to a decade of economic torment - a suffocating blockade that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. That was the golden age of America’s “containment” policy in the region.

However, US policy in the Middle East, under Bush’s son, W. Bush, was reinvigorated by new elements that somewhat altered the political landscape leading to the second Iraq war in 2003. Firstly, the attacks of September 11, 2001 were dubiously used to mislead the public into another war by linking Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda; and secondly, there was the rise of the neoconservative political ideology that dominated Washington at the time. The neo-cons strongly believed in the regime-change doctrine that has since then proven to be a complete failure.

It was not just a failure, but rather, a calamity. Today’s rise of IS is in fact a mere bullet point in a tragic Iraq timeline which started the moment W. Bush began his “shock and awe campaign.” This was followed by the fall of Baghdad, the dismantling of the country’s institutions (the de-Baathification of Iraq) and the “missions accomplished” speech. Since then, it has been one adversity after another. The US strategy in Iraq was predicated on destroying Iraqi nationalism and replacing it with a dangerous form of sectarianism that used the proverbial “divide and conquer” stratagem. But neither the Shia remained united, nor did the Sunni accept their new lower status, or did the Kurds stay committed to being part of an untied Iraq.

Al-qaeda connection
The US has indeed succeeded in dividing Iraq, maybe not territorially, but certainly in every other way. Moreover, the war brought al-Qaeda to Iraq. The group used the atrocities inflicted by the US war and invasion to recruit fighters from Iraq and throughout the Middle East. And like a bull in a china shop, the US wrecked more havoc on Iraq, playing around with sectarian and tribal cards to lower the intensity of the resistance and to busy Iraqis with fighting each other.

When the US combat troops allegedly departed Iraq, they left behind a country in ruins, millions of refugees on the run, deep sectarian divides, a brutal government, and an army made mostly of loosely united Shia-militias with a blood-soaked past.

Al-Qaeda was supposedly weakened in Iraq by then. In actuality, while al-Qaeda didn’t exist in Iraq prior to the US invasion, at the eve of the US withdrawal, al-Qaeda had branched off into other militant manifestations. They were able to move with greater agility in the region, and when the Syrian uprising was intentionally-armed by regional and international powers, al-Qaeda resurfaced with incredible power, fighting with prowess and unparalleled influence. Despite the misinformation about the roots of IS, IS and al-Qaeda in Iraq are the same. They share the same ideology and had only branched off into various groupings in Syria. Their differences are an internal matter, but their objectives are ultimately identical.

The reason the above point is often ignored, is that such an assertion would be a clear indictment that the Iraq war created IS, and that the irresponsible handling of the Syria conflict empowered the group to actually form a sectarian state that extends from the north-east of Syria to the heart of Iraq.

IS must exist
US-Western and Arab motives in the war against IS might differ, but both sides have keen interest in partaking in the war and an even keener interest in refusing to accept that such violence is not created in a vacuum. The US and its western allies refuse to see the obvious link between IS, al-Qaeda and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Arab leaders insist that their countries are also victims of some “Islamist” terror, produced, not of their own anti-democratic and oppressive policies, but by Chechenia and other foreign fighters who are bringing dark-age violence to otherwise perfectly peaceable and stable political landscapes.

The lie is further cemented by most media when they highlight the horror of IS but refuse to speak of other horrors that preceded and accompanied the existence of the group. They insist on speaking of IS as if a fully independent phenomenon devoid of any contexts, meanings and representations.

For the US-led coalition, IS must exist, although every member of the coalition has their own self-serving reasoning to explain their involvement. And since IS mostly made of “foreign jihadists” from faraway lands, speaking languages that few Arabs and westerners understand, then, somehow, no one is guilty, and the current upheaval in the Middle East is someone else’s fault. Thus, there is no need to speak of Syrian massacres, or Egyptian massacres, or of Iraq wars and its massacres, for the problem is obviously foreign.

If the so-called Islamic State didn’t exist, many in the region would be keen on creating one.

- Ramzy Baroud is a PhD scholar in People's History at the University of Exeter. He is the Managing Editor of Middle East Eye. Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

US Secratery of State John Kerry and other attendees at a meeting in Jeddah on 11 September (AFP)

middleeasteye.net

Fighting the Islamic State

PRESIDENT Obama announced a “strategy” to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State (formerly, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) on Sept 10. The announcement came scarcely two weeks after Obama had explained US reluctance to escalate military action against IS by admitting he did not have a strategy to deal with this challenge. He was roundly criticised by US politicians and pundits for his honest admission.

The announced strategy comprises four components: first, systematic air strikes against IS in Iraq , in coordination with Iraqi and Kurdish forces, and in Syria if IS there threatens Americans; second, increased support (training, intelligence, equipment) to those fighting “these terrorists”; third, improving counterterrorism capabilities: intelligence, counter-narrative, preventing the flow of Western jihadis and mobilising the international community; and four, continuing humanitarian assistance to civilians and threatened religious groups.

In fact, the announced ‘strategy’ looks very similar to what the US has been doing already for the past several weeks against IS. The two new elements are: the apparent US willingness to attack IS in Syria and the aim of building a broad coalition against it, including the major Arab states and Turkey.

It is not wholly evident why IS has emerged as America’s top military target.

It is not wholly evident why IS has emerged as America’s top military target. The head of US Homeland Security confirmed, before Obama’s speech, that there is “no direct threat from ISIS” to the US. There is no evidence of ISIS plans to attack the US or even the desire to do so. It poses a regional threat and may attack US targets there. The presence of ‘foreign fighters’ (3,000 from Europe and 100 from the US) is a possible future threat when they return home. The official said that the major threat to the US homeland still emanates from Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

Thus, superficially, Obama’s new anti-IS priority seems to have been driven purely by domestic considerations: on one hand, the growing criticism of his responses to foreign policy challenges, including IS successes, and, on the other, the higher US public support for action against the group after its brutal beheading of two American journalists.

There is no assurance the Obama “strategy” will be successful, especially without US “boots on the ground”. There may be unintended consequences. Attacking IS may create the very threat it is meant to avoid. It may make Sunni reconciliation within a united Iraq more difficult and enhance Kurdish capabilities to break away from Iraq. Degrading IS would also strengthen the Assad regime in Syria.

Yet, Obama’s ‘strategy’ could become the start of a broader plan to stabilise the region.

The 150-plus US air strikes against IS in Iraq have inevitably brought the US into operational alliance with Iranian military advisers known to be attached with the Iraqi army and Shia militias acting as its auxiliaries. Both the US and Iran have declared that there can be no direct cooperation with the other. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has indeed asserted that IS is an American creation.

But perhaps they protest too much. Iran’s foreign minister declared some months ago that Iran is prepared to cooperate with other parties to end the sectarian conflicts in the region. It is widely known that the US and Iran have held secret talks for several years which enabled them to reach the interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme. They also have had quiet contacts in Baghdad.

In exchange for American and Arab cooperation in degrading IS, which poses a threat to Iran’s allies in both Baghdad and Damascus, and a fair agreement regarding its nuclear programme, Tehran could help to ensure an inclusive government in Iraq, broker a political settlement between Assad and moderate insurgent groups in Syria, dampen the Shia opposition to the Sunni regimes in Bahrain and Yemen, restrain Hezbollah’s threat to Israel and end its support to Hamas.

It is possible that at least some aspects of such a ‘bargain’ have been discussed. Such discussions may have encouraged the Obama administration to launch the strategy against IS.

To be successful, the strategy would also require the support of the major Arab states. Saudi Arabia’s initiative to convene a meeting of 10 Arab states and Turkey in Jeddah is significant. Saudi Arabia and the UAE now consider the Muslim Brotherhood and related extremist groups a threat to their own stability and are determined to suppress them. A US strategy which both degrades IS and other Sunni extremist groups, including the Brotherhood, and secures Iran’s cooperation to contain Shia militias and insurgents across the region, would be doubly attractive. In turn, the contribution of these Arab powers would be essential to wean the Sunni tribes in Iraq away from IS and reach a political settlement in Syria.

As yet, Arab support to Obama’s anti-IS strategy is not universal. Egypt has its hands full with putting down the Brotherhood. Jordan fears the backlash from IS which now operates just across its borders with Iraq and Syria. Turkey is worried about the fate of its 49 diplomats captured by IS and averse to reinforcing Kurdish forces, which include the anti-Turkish PKK. Qatar’s closeness to the Brotherhood and other Sunni extremists has complicated its relationships with the US and its GCC neighbours.

A ‘grand bargain’ involving the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia and their respective allies and proxies would be obviously most difficult to construct and consummate. Proxies and puppets are not always easy to control. There is enormous and accumulated mistrust between the principal parties. And the sheer number and complexity of the local, sub-national and regional issues that need to be addressed is daunting.

Unless a comprehensive strategy is pursued, the fight against IS is likely to prove frustrating. Air strikes with ground support from unreliable local forces; eliminating IS’s financial sources and countering its brutal ideology will not be sufficient to destroy it. The legitimate grievances that attract its recruits will have to be addressed. Ultimately, eliminating extremism in the region will require the rapid generation of jobs and economic development.

stake is the present and future stability of the Middle East — a region in the midst of multiple and violent transitions — and its impact on the world order.

By Munir Akram, www.dawn.com
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN.

The Islamic State : الدولة الإسلامية‎ or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) : الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام‎

Its neither Islamic nor state but a group of  terrorists recruited, funded and trained by imperialists to implement their agenda.

The Islamic State (IS الدولة الإسلامية‎ ad-Dawlah l-ʾIslāmiyyah), previously calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS : الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام‎), and also known by the Arabic acronym Daʿesh (داعش), is an unrecognized state and a Takfir Extremist [falsely claiming to be from Sunni]  insurgent group active in Iraq and Syria in the Middle East. In its self-proclaimed status as a caliphate, it claims religious authority over all Muslims across the world and aims to bring most of the Muslim-inhabited regions of the world under its political control^[75] beginning with territory in the Levant region which includes Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus and part of southern Turkey.

The group has been described by the United Nations and the media as a terrorist group and has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. The United Nations and Amnesty International have accused the group of grave human rights abuses.

The Islamic State, also widely known as ISIL, ISIS and Daʿesh, originated as Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999. This group was the forerunner of Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn—commonly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)—a group formed by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi in 2004 which took part in the Iraqi insurgency against American-led forces and their Iraqi allies following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the 2003–2011 Iraq War, it joined other Sunni insurgent groups to form the Mujahideen Shura Council, which consolidated further into the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI ) shortly afterwards. At its height it enjoyed a significant presence in the Iraqi governorates of Al Anbar, Nineveh,Kirkuk, most of Salah ad Din, parts of Babil, Diyala and Baghdad, and claimed Baqubah as a capital city. However, the violent attempts by the Islamic State of Iraq to govern its territory led to a backlash from Sunni Iraqis and other insurgent groups in around 2008 which helped to propel the Awakening movement and a temporary decline in the group. In April 2013, the group changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

As ISIS, the group grew significantly under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, gaining support in Iraq as a result of alleged economic and political discrimination against Iraqi Sunnis. After entering the Syrian Civil War, ISIS established a large presence in the Syrian governorates of Ar-Raqqah, Idlib, Deir ez-Zor and Aleppo. In June 2014, it had at least 4,000 fighters in its ranks in Iraq. It has claimed responsibility for attacks on government and military targets and for attacks that have killed thousands of civilians. In August 2014, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the number of fighters in the group had increased to 50,000 in Syria and 30,000 in Iraq,^] while the CIA estimated in September 2014 that in both countries it had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters^] ISIS had close links to al-Qaeda until February 2014 when, after an eight-month power struggle, al-Qaeda cut all ties with the group, reportedly for its brutality and "notorious intractability".

The group's original aim was to establish an Islamic state in the Sunni-majority regions of Iraq, and following ISIS's involvement in the Syrian Civil War this expanded to include controlling Sunni-majority areas of Syria. A caliphate was proclaimed on 29 June 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—now known as Amir al-Mu'minin Caliph Ibrahim—was named as its caliph, and the group was renamed the Islamic State. Keep reading >>>>>

Related:

• http://www.carbonated.tv/news/quick-facts-on-who-the-isis-in-iraq-and-syria-are
• http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/09/islamic-state-fears-take-hold-netherlands-201492131426326526.html
• More News >>>>>

Inside the neighbourhood of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

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www.telegraph.co.uk › ... › World News › Middle East

Jul 6, 2014

The Telegraph's Ruth Sherlock visits the neighbourhood where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, one of the world's ...

ISIS- The worlds most dangerous Terrorist Organization ...

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq20lYPPenw

Sep 11, 2014 - Uploaded by MnR Productions "Mariolaur"

MnRTV Live Show discussing about ISIS- The worlds most dangerous Terrorist Organization The ... 1:24:28 http ...

ISIS - Celestial - 2000 (Full Album) - YouTube

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8XN-3YZL5Y

Apr 17, 2013 - Uploaded by Dev Null

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(band) ... Isis was always a good band, but they never, in my eyes, topped ...

ISIS destroying Sunni Shrines in Mosul Iraq (companions of ...

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv3bSiNk1h0

Jun 22, 2014 - Uploaded by Politico Islam

Mosul, IRAQ: Video shows AlQaeda based ISIS militants s... ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul-Qa ...

ISIS militants killed 270 Syrians after storming by - YouTube

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPTtimwSaQg

Jul 18, 2014 - Uploaded by NEWSOFTHEWORLD

The aim of ISIS is to create an Islamic state across Sunni areas of Iraq and in Syria. ... Islamic State of Iraq and ...

US fake terrorist attacks 9-11 to create justification for war

Operation Northwoods techniques on 9-11: US fake terrorist attacks to create war

Hello this is John Robles, I am speaking with Dr. Kevin Barret, he is a Doctor in Arabic and Islamic Studies, the owner and manager of TruthJihad.com and a member of Scientific Professionals Investigating 9-11. This is Part 1 of a longer interview.

Robles: Do you know Len Bracken? He wrote the book "The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror". His conclusion was that it was a Saudi-Israeli-US joint operation, so ...

Barret: Yes, I would agree with that.

Robles: It looks like it was a US, maybe planned, and ...

Barret: Well I would credit the Zionists with a little more of it. I think that people who are kind of committed to Zionism have wormed their way into influential positions in all of these western intelligence agencies and apparatuses. I would imagine that people like Bernard Lewis who was the Dean of British Orientalism and the chief formulator of western Middle East policy.

As far as the responsibility for 9-11; I think it is pretty clear that it was in a sense a sort of US-Israeli-Saudi operation, and personally I would credit the Israelis and their helpers around the world with the prime impetus here.

People like Bernard Lewis, who is an ardent Zionist and is the Dean of Western Oriental Studies, as well as an advisor to the British and US governments on Middle East policy, would seem to me to be a prime suspect.

I think that the concept of 9-11 was probably worked out many decades in advance by people like Lewis whose doctoral dissertation was on the Ismaili Assassins, which was a radical sect that destabilized the Islamic world and allowed the Crusaders to succeed in moving into it during the Middle Ages.

Robles: Can I interrupt you for a second, regarding the roots going way back, do you think this goes back to Operation Northwoods?

Barret: Yes, I think Northwoods style techniques were employed in 9/11. Northwoods was a plan to set off all kinds of bombs in American cities, and sink American ships and blame all these deaths on Castro and launch a war against Cuba, and that follows with the kind of time honored path of these false flags war-trigger operations, which in one sense or another have launched every major US war since the Mexican war. And it is not just the US that does it, other countries have done it as well, going all the way back to Nero, burning Rome and blaming the Christians.

But as far as the more specifics of 9-11, which was a very, very large event that totally changed history, changed the form of government in the US, changed the direction of future foreign policy, I think that that was a product of neo-conservative thought, and two key figures should be the Bernard Lewis side which is the Orientalist who argued that radical destabilizing Muslim groups, like al-Qaeda, should be created in order to continue Zionist and western penetration of the Islamic world and hinder the Islamic Awakening.

This is a barely veiled argument that Lewis makes in, among other places, in an essay that was published in Netanyahu’s volume "Terrorism: How the West Can Win".

The double meaning of that title is quite illuminating, suggesting that terrorism is precisely how the west can win this struggle with the Islamic world, and then Bernard Lewis picks that up and runs with it and puts forward this argument that terrorism is not characteristic of Islamic societies, and the subtext being that the west needs to create artificial extremist terrorist groups, modeled after the medieval Ismaili Assassins, in order to destabilize the Islamic world and keep it open to penetration by Imperialism, especially, Zionism, which is of course the main concern of people like Bernard Lewis.

The neo-conservatives were the other wing of this, would be the people associated with Leo Strauss who founded neo-conservatism. Leo Strauss was also an ardent Zionist and his students at the University of Chicago spent the 1960s sitting around with him in after hours bull sessions, and these were handpicked, almost all Jewish, almost all extremely bright students, that he made his acolytes and sensibly had sexual relations with some of them too, he was quite a dubious character.

These guys would hang around after hours at the University of Chicago plotting a coup d’état in America, that is how could the Zionists take over in a representative democracy in a coup d’état. This turned into a book by a leading neo-conservative military strategist called "Coup D’état: a Practical Handbook" – the author’s name is escaping me briefly; it will come back to me in a moment.

But anyway, since the 60s the neo-cons have been plotting a 9-11 style coup d’état in the US designed to turn the US in a much more hard-line and much more permanent pro-Zionist hard-line imperialist direction in future Mid-East policy.

And so this was all set out. So that is why I think that when we say that it’s a US-Israeli-Saudi operation, it is really being done primarily by people whose first loyalty is to Israel and they are doing it in order to create a 100 years’ war by the west against the Islamic world and to keep the Islamic world destabilized and in chaos.

That is not really in the national interests of the US or even Saudi Arabia. And I think the US and Saudi Arabia have been pawns of these Zionist forces which are very strong in western politics and finance.

Robles: I just thought I would mention, I was doing research for an article I wrote not long ago on 9/11 and I went to the project for a new American century’s website, here from Moscow, and within 6 hours the site went offline. It’s been online since 1997. So, I don’t know if they are trying to cover their tracks or what is going on there.

Barret: Well PNAC shut down after they were exposed. I think they shut down in sort of around 2005 or 2006 officially. They might have had their website still.

Robles: Right, right. Yes, they had a skeleton crew keeping the site up.

Barret: Yes, well they shut down because they were exposed by David Ray Griffin’s book "The New Pearl Harbor", which really popularized that phrase and pointed straight at PNAC as the likely perpetrators of 9-11. And it is interesting that PNAC was actually … when they put out that "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" document calling for a new Pearl Harbor in order to get regime change across the Middle East and to militarize America.

They were actually just rewriting a document that many of the same guys had already written for Benjamin Netanyahu in the mid-1990s. And that was called the Clean Break Document and it argued for really the same things, only it was much more straightforward in pointing out that this was all being done in Israel’s interest. So they repackaged extensively for the American viewpoint in this rebuilding America’s defenses document but, again, all of these guys are Jewish hard-line extreme Zionists whose first loyalty is Israel.

Robles: Originally I had wanted to speak with you about other issues, but this is something that is not going to go away until the people that are responsible are forced to take responsibility for their actions. Regarding everything that’s going on right now, and there is a lot going on in the Muslim world, in the Middle East and in particular Iran, if we could, Libya, Syria.

What do you think now Iran’s nuclear threat, which I would say was never a threat to begin with, is now gone, NATO says now there are 30 other countries that pose a threat, so they have to continue surrounding Russia with their missile batteries. About Iran, if we could a little bit?

Barret: Yes, I think there is a struggle going on in the US policy-making apparatus between the sort of hardline neo-con Zionist faction that did 9-11 and a more realist faction led by people like Brzezinski and those people actually are much more concerned with going after Russia and China.

Robles: Sorry sir, you are saying that Brzezinski, he’s the more "realist faction"?

Barret: Yes, Brzezinski is a relative moderate. Which tells you how crazy American foreign policy is. Brzezinski used to be the ultimate extremist lunatic hawk who was out there arguing to create and fund al-Qaeda, radically anti-Russia, he is from Polish nobility and he never really liked Russia very much.

So, he used to be considered extreme radical hardliner. He has mellowed a bit but I think the problem is that these even more insane people have risen to the highest levels of power and so now he looks relatively moderate by comparison. That is what has happened across the board in American politics.

Nixon was proposing a national minimal income of what would now be $25,000 dollars a year. Nixon would be a radical leftist, civil libertarian communist by today’s standards. That is how terrible things have gotten.

But anyway these "realists" notice that the Zionist strategy of demonizing Islam and putting all of America’s energy into fighting pointless wars in the Middle East to destroy the enemies of Israel, which is what the whole Middle Eastern policy has been since 9-11 is really fruitless from a larger western US geopolitical perspective and people like Brzezinski who are kind of hawkish regarding the grand chessboard and who trying the rule of the world from North America, means that you have to grab the middle of Eurasia where the majority of the world’s population productivity is, the guys like that are noticing that this neo-con policy of demonizing Islam and smashing up the Middle East for no good reason is completely insane.

So, that is the conflict in the American policy-making circles and gradually the sort of relatively realist faction has been taking their power back since the 9-11 coup d’état by the Zionist faction.

The problem is that these realists are not moral or really offended by things like 9-11 or really interested in peace and stability. It is more that they are actually going to use the extra-state power, the extra military money, the surveillance capabilities that 9-11 generated and turn those away from Israel or Middle East where they have been focused until now and fight this rear-guard action to maintain the US-western empire in the face of the rising power of the BRICS axis and these other non-western countries, the collapse of the US dollar which has been underpinning the whole global system.

So, they are desperately trying to prop up this crumbling imperial power and I think they notice that this Middle Eastern stuff is not getting them very far. It is maybe helping Israel by smashing every independent country in the Middle East. That has enough independence to oppose Israel but it as for larger western geopolitical interests it doesn’t do any good.

So, they are now doing this pivot to Asia where they are concerned about the rise of China and all of that, trying to manage that and then they still have this insane policy of being so bellicose with Russia which doesn’t really make much sense. You’d think that geopolitically they would be better off dealing more diplomatically with Russia but they have to surround Russia with nuclear weapons and try to achieve a first strike capacity and they are risking World War III.

I don’t really know what is wrong with these people but if you tell me, I will be grateful.

Robles: I don’t know either. Some people I know say they are not even human, so that is why nobody can understand them.

Barret: I’ve had radio guests who make that argument in all seriousness. David Jacobs is a professor in Pennsylvania who was always considered the leading American scholarly expert on the UFO phenomena from a folkloristic perspective.

All the respectable academicians turned to his work to look at that phenomenon, and I studied him as part of my folklore minor for a PHD. But at the time I was studying him I hadn’t realized that just a few years before that he’d come out with his new book called "The Threat", which argues basically that there is this evil alien invasion of Earth going on and that they are kidnapping people and creating hybrids that will inherit the earth after some kind of massive destructive episode and of course it sounds completely paranoid and insane, especially when you get into the details of "oh these aliens can float people through solid walls and they can erase people’s memories" and all this stuff. It sounds just like the most outlandish paranoid hallucination, but Jacobs is a very well-spoken careful guy who never said anything like this until the mid-90s when he finally came out and said "I think I figured out what is going on".

More and more people are saying that there is some kind of ET aspect to things, but precisely what that is, is still fairly unclear but I do think that sensible people around the world should be supporting the disclosure movement which is pushing for a complete declassification of all UFO related information in all countries of the world and starting with the US, where it seems like there is the biggest and most nefarious cover-up.

I think that is a serious issue and maybe we will find there is really nothing there once we declassify all of this, but my guess is that there actually is something there and that would explain a fair bit of what is going on.

Robles: I’ve come to the conclusion that all the UFO-sightings and all that stuff, because it’s particularly going on in the US, it is all tied up with CIA kidnappings and sex slavery and children being sold, testing of secret aircraft, but I think it is foolish and I think it started incredibly arrogant and imbecilic to believe that we (If you want to call us as a human race "intelligent") are the only intelligence in the universe. If that is the case, it is a very sad, sad fact. But if you followed scientology, it would make sense, wouldn’t it? Some alien cold and calculating force that can come in and take over human bodies.

Barret: There are probably people like this who I deal with, like veterans today, which is a haven for folks from the US military intelligence services who have gotten fed up with the nonsense. It is full of people who really believe this stuff, who claim that they have had classified briefings and stuff that supports this.

I actually was on the phone with a fellow named Leo Wantas who claims to have single-handedly brought down the Soviet Union by some kind of currency scam.

The story goes that he discovered a loophole in the way that the Soviet currency was traded and so he was able to engineer this massive vacuum cleaner operation, suck all the value out of the ruble and supposedly pile up an excessive 10 trillion on dollars which then got embezzled by the Bush crime family. That is the story he tells.

That was the end of part one of an interview with Dr. Kevin Barret, he is a Doctor in Arabic and Islamic Studies, the owner and manager of TruthJihad.com and a member of Scientific Professionals Investigating 9-11.
By John Robles, voiceofrussia.com 

Related see Part-2: House of Saud, Zionists, Al Qaeda and CIA destroyed Middle East – Kevin Barrett: http://takfiritaliban.blogspot.com/2014/09/house-of-saud-zionists-al-qaeda-and-cia.html