Mark Curtis
Middle Eastern Eye
Eight years on from Nato's war in Libya in 2011, as the country enters
a new phase in its conflict, I have taken stock of the number of
countries to which terrorism has spread as a direct product of that war.
The number is at least 14. The legacy of David Cameron's, Nicolas
Sarkozy's and Barack Obama's overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi
has been gruesomely felt by Europeans and Africans.
Yet holding these leaders accountable for their decision to go to war is as distant as ever.
Ungoverned space
The 2011 conflict, in which Nato worked alongside
Islamist forces on the ground to remove Gaddafi, produced an ungoverned
space in Libya and a country awash with weapons, ideal for terrorist
groups to thrive.
But it was Syria that suffered first.
After civil war broke out there in early 2011, at the same time as in Libya, the latter became a facilitation and training hub for
around 3,000 fighters on their way to Syria, many of whom
joined al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic
State-affiliated Katibat al-Battar al-Libi (KBL), which was founded by
militants from Libya.
In Libya itself, a rebranding of existing al-Qaeda-linked groups in the north-eastern area of Derna produced Islamic State's first official branch in the country in mid-2014, incorporating members of the KBL.
During 2015, IS Libya conducted car bombings and beheadings and established territorial control and
governance over parts of Derna and Benghazi in the east and Sabratha in
the west. It also became the sole governing body in the north-central
city of Sirte, with as many as 5,000 fighters occupying the city.
By late 2016, IS in Libya was forced out of these areas, largely due to US air strikes, but withdrew to the desert areas south of Sirte, continuing low-level attacks.
In the last two years, the group has re-emerged as a formidable
insurgent force and is again waging high-profile attacks on state
institutions and conducting regular hit-and-run operations in the
southwestern desert.
Last September, UN Special Representative to Libya Ghassan Salame told the UN Security Council that the IS "presence and operations in Libya are only spreading".
Read more
Aram Mirzaei
The Saker blog
While terrorism is a phenomenon most of us have come in touch with
during our lifetime, much of the coverage is shadowed by terrorism in
the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, where US backed terrorist
groups have wreaked havoc in devastating the wars that have plagued
these countries.
Nonetheless, terrorism is widespread across the region, even in Iran.
Due to Iran’s relatively strong internal stability, terrorist groups
have been unable to catch major headlines in the Islamic Republic as
terrorist groups often conduct hit and run attacks or the occasional
kidnappings of young drafted border guards and soldiers near the
Pakistan/Afghanistan border areas as well as across Iran’s western
borders towards Iraq. Some groups are motivated by separatist goals,
while others are driven by religious extremism. In this first part I
will cover terrorism across Iran’s eastern borders, one that is driven
by the Salafist ideology.
Iran has been familiar with terrorism for many decades through the
Saddam Hussein-backed “People’s Mujahideen”, a strange group of
“Marxist-Islamists” who waged war on their own country in an attempt to
grab power, shortly after the Islamic Revolution. During Saddam’s 8 year
war on Iran they were backed and armed by Iraqi security forces, often
resorting to terrorist attacks, killing many innocent people in the
process. While this group was effectively defeated, it has nonetheless
survived as it was sheltered by the Saddam regime and recently have
found refuge in Albania. I will come back to this group later.
Since the 9/11 attacks when Al-Qaeda became a household name, Takfiri
groups have become increasingly widespread in the Middle East and
central Asia. Many Takfiri groups have found their haven in neighbouring
Pakistan which they use as a home base to launch cross border attacks
on Afghanistan and Iran. Pakistan’s government and security apparatus
are known to support Takfiri groups across the region, at the behest of
WaTakshington, a fact that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf
admitted to.
Pakistan is home to multiple Saudi funded so called Madrasas,
terrorist recruitment centres focused on brainwashing young men into
joining militant groups with similar ideologies such as the Taliban and
Al-Qaeda. For decades, since the days of the Soviet-Afghan war,
Islamabad has used terrorism as a tool for its foreign policy towards
its neighbours. But it is important to understand that Islamabad and
Pakistan’s security services are working for Washington’s interests,
because had they had their own interests at heart, they wouldn’t allow
the Waziristan province to turn into a terrorist controlled region in
the country, endangering the lives of Pakistanis across the country.
These Takfiri groups have committed heinous crimes against Pakistanis as
well, such as the notorious Peshawar school shootings of 2014 where 132
schoolchildren were murdered.
Since 2003, Iran has been plagued by Takfiri terrorism that has
penetrated through Iran’s south-eastern borders into the Sistan and
Baluchistan province. One of the more active groups in the region was
the Jundallah terrorist group, made up of the predominantly Sunni Muslim
Baluchis (a people living in southeastern Iran and southwestern
Pakistan). Jundallah claimed to be fighting for Baluchi rights in Iran
while also espousing the formation of a Sunni Baluchi state. From their
bases in Pakistan, over the course of 8 years, Jundallah conducted
multiple terrorist attacks in Iran, such as the 2007 Zahedan bombings
where 18 members of the IRGC were killed.
Read more
Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Author’s note
The war on Syria started eight years ago in Daraa on the 17th of March 2011.
The following article first published in May 2011 examines the inception of the jihadist terrorist insurgency.
It recounts the events of March 17-18, 2011 in Daraa, a small border town with Jordan.
Media reports have finally acknowledged that the so-called “protest movement” in Syria was instigated by Washington. This was known and documented from the very inception of the Syrian crisis in March 2011.
It was not a protest movement, it was an armed insurgency
integrated by US-Israeli and allied supported “jihadist” death squads?
From Day One, the Islamist “freedom fighters” were supported,
trained and equipped by NATO and Turkey’s High Command. According to
Israeli intelligence sources (Debka, August14, 2011):
NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria,
which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and
helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. … NATO
strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of
anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the
protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)
This initiative, which was also supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, involved a process of organized recruitment
of thousands of jihadist “freedom fighters”, reminiscent of the
enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the
heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:
Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a
campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East
countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (Ibid, emphasis added)
These mercenaries were subsequently integrated into US and allied
sponsored terrorist organizations including Al Nusrah and ISIS.
The Daraa “protest movement” on March 17-18 had all the
appearances of a staged event involving covert support to Islamic
terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence.
Government sources pointed to the role of radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel).
In chorus, the Western media described the events in Daraa as a protest movement against Bashar Al Assad.
In a bitter irony, the deaths of policemen were higher than those of “demonstrators”.
In Daraa, roof top snipers were targeting both police and demonstrators.
Reading between the lines of Israeli and Lebanese news reports
(which acknowledge the police deaths) a clearer picture of what happened
in Daraa on March 17-18 had emerged. The Israel National News Report
(which can not be accused of being biased in favor of Bashar al Assad)
confirmed that:
“Seven police officers and at least four demonstrators in Syria have been killed in continuing violent clashes that erupted in the southern town of Daraa last Thursday. … and the Baath Party Headquarters and courthouse were torched, in renewed violence on Sunday. (Gavriel Queenann, Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests, Israel National News, Arutz Sheva, March 21, 2011, emphasis added)
The Lebanese news report also acknowledged the killings of seven policemen in Daraa.
[They were killed] “during clashes between the security forces and protesters… They got killed trying to drive away protesters during demonstration in Dara’a”
The Lebanese Ya Libnan report quoting Al Jazeera also acknowledged that protesters had “burned the headquarters of the Baath Party and the court house in Dara’a” (emphasis added)
These news reports of the events in Daraa confirmed that from the very outset this was not a “peaceful protest” as claimed by the Western media.
Moreover, from an assessment of the initial casualty figures
(Israel News), there were more policemen than “demonstrators” who were
killed.
This is significant because it suggests that the police force may
have initially been outnumbered by a well organized armed gang of
professional killers.
What was clear from these initial reports is that many of the
demonstrators were not demonstrators but terrorists involved in
premeditated acts of killing and arson.
The title of the Israeli news report summarized what happened: Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protest
The US-NATO-Israel agenda consisted in supporting an Al Qaeda
affiliated insurgency integrated by death squads and professional
snipers. President Bashar al Assad is then to be blamed for killing his
own people.
Does it Sound familiar?
The same “false flag” strategy of killing innocent civilians was used during the Ukraine Maidan protest movement. On
February 20th, 2014, professional snipers were shooting at both
demonstrators and policemen with a view to accusing president Viktor
Yanukovych of “mass murder.”
It was subsequently revealed that these snipers were controlled
by the opponents of president Yanukovych, who are now part of the
coalition government.
The “humanitarian mandate” of the US and its allies is sustained
by diabolical “false flag” attacks which consist in killing civilians
with a view to breaking the legitimacy of governments which refuse to
abide by the diktats of Washington and its allies.
Michel Chossudovsky, March 17, 2019
