al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2016 part 4-1-tb-38-al qaida-tb

C de Waart; CdW Intelligence to Rent [email protected] In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 4-1-TB-38-Al Qaida-TB

The commander in chief decided to wrap up the fight against the world’s most notorious terrorist organization in a two-term bow, declaring in his final national security address that al-Qaeda is “a shadow of its former self.” U.S. officials now admit they are hunting al-Qaida in new Afghan provinces, after nearly a decade of referring to the group as “decimated.”

The military is now hunting al-Qaida leaders in seven different provinces, indicating a high level of growth since the U.S. invasion in 2001, Commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan Army Gen. John Nicholson admitted to reporters.

Al-Qaida operations have increased throughout Afghanistan since the end of U.S. combat missions in 2014

“While the cheapest and degraded people forcibly and tyrannically rule over the Muslim lands, still the Muslim Ummah does not attach their hopes to these robbers, who are enforced upon the Muslim lands by Europe and America,” a Taliban narrator says, as images of Secretary Kerry and President Obama are shown

The security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly, along with America’s position there. The question now is whether the administration of President-elect Donald Trump will decide to pursue the war or will withdraw U.S. support for the government of President Ashraf Ghani, letting it fall to — or make a deal with — the Taliban and other Islamic forces.

In recent months, the Taliban has mounted a coordinated offensive with about 40,000 fighters across eight provinces, a push financed by foreign sources at a cost of $1bn, Afghan officials say.

ISIS pays its fighters a joining fee of around $500, and offer $1000 to Taliban fighters willing to switch over. ISIS, the report says

In Field of Fight, (Ret Gen ) Flynn disposes of the political correctness that has dictated the policy discourse in Washington throughout the Bush and Obama administrations. He forthrightly identifies the enemy that the US is facing as “radical Islam,” and provides a detailed, learned description of its totalitarian ideology and supremacist goals. Noting that no strategy based on denying the truth about the enemy can lead to victory, Flynn explains how his understanding of the enemy’s doctrine and modes of operation enabled him to formulate strategies for winning the ground wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The purpose of a war of ideas is to discredit the cause for which the enemy fights. Without such a war, on the one hand the American people sour on the war because they don’t understand why it is important to win. On the other hand, without a war of ideas directed specifically at the Islamic

1The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. –Winston ChurchillCees de Waart: CdW Intelligence to Rent of 10

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world, Muslims worldwide have continued to be susceptible to recruitment by the likes of ISIS and al-Qaida.

The commander in chief decided to wrap up the fight against the world’s most notorious terrorist organization in a two-term bow, declaring in his final national security address that al-Qaeda is “a shadow of its former self.” On the morning of Obama’s confident address to service members at MacDill Air Force Base, a George Washington University study tallying the affiliation of all terrorism charges brought in the United States from March 2011 to the end of July this year reported that 44 percent of cases had connections to terrorist groups other than ISIS.

That falls largely to al-Qaeda and its family of direct relatives and close friends: al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al-Shabaab, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban, and more jihad outlets in places as diverse as Mali and Uzbekistan. They had people on American soil—in most cases, U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents—planning attacks, fundraising and recruiting.

“Al-Qaeda’s top ranks have been hammered,” he told Marines at Camp Pendleton in 2013. “The core of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the way to defeat.”

If “devastating” means killing Osama bin Laden, which Obama has frequently touted, the head of that snake grew back—and not just in terms of inspiration, like we’ve seen with the lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki that still drive Americans to jihad years after his drone death. Ayman al-Zawahiri may not have the charisma of bin Laden—his addresses are like sitting through the calculus class of jihad—but he’s shown a willingness to evolve and take the long-term sustainable growth route around the more impetuous ISIS.

Zawahiri warned on this year’s anniversary that “the events of Sept. 11 will be repeated a thousand times.” As House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told CBS on 9/11, “what al-Qaeda started on Sept. 11, 2001, continues to metastasize” as “al-Qaeda’s very, very good at seeding people and waiting.”

“They’re very patient,” Nunes said. “They’re spreading… globally, very, very slowly.”

Saudi Arabia is critical because of its unique position in the Afghan conflict: It is on both sidesFifteen years, half a trillion dollars and 150,000 lives since going to war, the US is trying to extricate itself from Afghanistan. Afghans are being left to fight their own fight. A surging Taliban insurgency, meanwhile, is flush with a new inflow of money. With their nation’s future at stake, Afghan leaders have renewed a plea to one power that may hold the key to whether their country can cling to democracy or succumbs to the Taliban. But that power is not the US – it is Saudi Arabia.Saudi Arabia is critical because of its unique position in the Afghan conflict: It is on both sides. A longtime ally of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia has backed Islamabad’s promotion of the Taliban. Over the years, wealthy Saudi sheikhs and rich philanthropists have also stoked the war by privately financing the insurgents. All the while, Saudi Arabia has officially, if coolly, supported the US mission and the Afghan government and even secretly sued for peace in clandestine negotiations on their behalf. The contradictions are hardly accidental. Rather, they balance conflicting needs within the kingdom, pursued through both official policy and private initiative.Share QuoteThe dual tracks allow Saudi officials to plausibly deny official support for the Taliban, even as they have turned a blind eye to private funding of the Taliban and other hard-line Sunni groups. The result is that the Saudis, through private or covert channels, have tacitly supported the Taliban in ways that make the kingdom an indispensable power broker.

In interviews with The New York Times, a former Taliban finance minister described how he travelled to Saudi Arabia for years raising cash while ostensibly on pilgrimage. The Taliban have also


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been allowed to raise millions more by extorting “taxes” by pressing hundreds of thousands of Pashtun guest workers in the kingdom and menacing their families back home, said Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser.

Taliban rejects peace talks, emphasizes alliance with al Qaeda in new videoBY THOMAS JOSCELYN & BILL ROGGIO | December 9, 2016 | [email protected] |

The Taliban rejects “peace talks” with the West and advertises its continuing alliance with al Qaeda in a newly released video entitled, “Bond of Nation with the Mujahideen.”The video was produced by Manba’ al-Jihad Media for Production, which has long been affiliated with the Haqqani Network and was folded into the Taliban’s media arm years ago. The production was disseminated on the Taliban’s websites and social media, including on accounts affiliated with the group’s spokesman.The video is also attributed to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Commission for Cultural Affairs. Until late 2001, the Taliban ruled over its own emirate inside Afghanistan and it has retained that name to this day, as the jihadists hope to resurrect their nation.The propaganda film opens with clips of Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama discussing the prospect of a peace deal with the Taliban.The Taliban responds with an old audio message from Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, who was named the emir of the Taliban in 2015 after the organization was forced to admit that Mullah Omar had passed away two years earlier. Mansour was killed in an American airstrike in May.

Mansour described the “peace and reconciliation process” as “mere claims of the enemy.” The Taliban’s foes have tried to “weaken” the jihad with “money, media and deviant scholars,” and they tried “to eradicate [the] unity of the Mujahideen.” But they failed, according to Mansour. “We should not listen to these propagandas [sic] neither these ‘Peace Talks,’” Mansour said. “And this jihad will continue until the Word of Allah and Shariah is implemented.“Taliban officials often claim that they seek negotiations with the West. But the Taliban has used such talks to extract concessions, without giving up anything of substance. And these negotiations are different from true “peace talks,” which the Taliban’s senior leadership rejects in the video.The production includes a translation of an Islamic text that is intended to underscore the bond between native Afghans and those who migrate for the sake of jihad. The Koranic passage is used to emphasize the Taliban’s relationship with al Qaeda. An image of Taliban figures, Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders, such as Nasir al Wuhayshi (the emir of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula until his death last year), is shown as the following text is scrolls across the screen:

“But those who have believed and emigrated and fought in the cause of Allah and those who gave shelter and aided — it is they who are the believers, truly. For them is forgiveness and noble provision. [Al-Anfal: 74]”

An excerpt from a speech previously recorded by Siraj Haqqani one of the Taliban’s top deputy leaders, is also featured. Haqqani has long been closely allied with al Qaeda. These ties are documented in Osama bin Laden’s files and can be seen in other evidence as well.Haqqani praises the founding of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, saying it was not established for “fame,” or because people wanted to increase their “position,” but to implement


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Allah’s Sharia (Islamic law) “upon this land.”Haqqani says that it is “possible” some disagreements may occur between the mujahideen, but these differences should not be exacerbated “to a level that it affects our overall struggles in this path.” Haqqani claims that Muslims “both inside and outside [of Afghanistan] are following us in our claim that we have made,” meaning the jihadists’ quest to build and then rebuild the Taliban’s emirate. He argues that “Muslims both inside and outside [of Afghanistan] have accepted our methodology without any objections,” which “indicates that our officials and representatives have effectively and efficiently performed their duties.”

A clip from Sheikh Khalid Batarfi a senior official in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is also included. Batarfi is an al Qaeda veteran who was trained and fought in Afghanistan during the 1990s. The Long War Journal assesses that he is likely part of al Qaeda’s global management team. Other AQAP leaders with similar dossiers served dual roles as both regional officials in al Qaeda’s network and as members of the organization’s senior management.

“Muslim brothers! Our beloved Afghan brothers who greatly supported [the] religion of Allah are indeed an excellent example for you,” Batarfi says. “The entire world saw how Amir-ul-Mumineen [“Emir of the Faithful”] Mullah Omar, [the] Taliban and all the Afghan people bravely stood and [are] still standing alongside their Mujahid brothers and Arab and non-Arab migrants.”On top of these jihadi migrants was “our Sheikh and Imam al Mujahid Osama bin Laden (may Allah accept his martyrdom),” Batarfi says, referring to the fact that the Taliban did not break with bin Laden even after the 9/11 hijackings. Batarfi heaps praise on the Taliban and says that Afghanistan’s jihadists will “destroy” the US.

“Groups of Afghan Mujahideen have emerged from the land of Afghans that will destroy the biggest idol and head of kufr of our time, America,” Batarfi says. The “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was sacrificed and even vanished in support of our sacred religion, but they (the Taliban) did not trade off their religion.” Batarfi says that the jihadists can finally “see [the] light of victory,” as governance according to the “rule of Sharia” law is “even stronger in Afghanistan than before.”

In yet another audio clip, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the current emir of the Taliban, explains that the “mujahideen must be very lenient towards the Muslims and very forceful towards the disbelievers.” He advocates for a more forgiving version, even if only slightly, of the jihadists’ strict ideology. Akhundzada believes that Muslims should be given a chance to repent and see the supposed errors of their ways if they do not worship and live as the Taliban does.

Another ideologue, Sheikh Neda Muhammad Nadeem, speaks in this same vein, advocating for a populist version of jihadism. “We all, whether Mujahideen or the general public, must understand that the general public cannot be successful without the help and support of the Mujahideen and similarly [the] Mujahideen cannot be successful without the help and support of the general public,” Nadeem says. Therefore, “Mujahideen must deal [with] the general public with love, good behavior and tolerance.”

The Taliban’s desire to win popular support is consistent with their role as insurgents, as guerrilla fighters often depend on the citizenry’s goodwill to accomplish their goals. This has often forced the Taliban, as well as al Qaeda and other like-minded extremists, to walk a fine line between imposing their draconian laws and alienating the people.

The alleged virtues of Taliban-style sharia rule are advocated throughout the lengthy propaganda film. The video includes scenes of Taliban members handing out candy to children, providing security in rural areas, and gently chastising a shopkeeper who was selling “immoral” CDs and other paraphernalia. In what was likely a staged scene, the store owner quickly agrees to hand over his offending material, which is then burned to chants of “Death to America!”

The “muhajideen want to completely eliminate democracy,” one speaker says. In another clip, leaflets written in Uzbek are distributed.


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Even while marketing itself as a benign force, the Taliban cannot hide its misogyny. One member criticizes Afghans who do not join the jihad, arguing that if the West can bring its women into the war, then young Muslim males have no excuse for failing to fight.The Taliban’s anti-Americanism is on full display. And while the group is often described in local or nationalist terms, some scenes make its global ideas quite clear. The Taliban speaks of the ummah, the worldwide community of Muslims, and the jihadists’ desire to reclaim all lost Muslim lands.The text at the bottom of one scene reads: “Mujahideen are the hope of Muslims for reviving back the honor of the Muslim Ummah!…A hope for taking back the Islamic lands! A hope for not repeating defeats and tragedies of the last century!”

But America stands in their way. The Taliban claims that the US wants to create distance between Muslims and their religion. But the mujahideen will make America pay, the Taliban claims.“Allah will shake the White House [with] your [the Mujahideen’s] religious zeal by the permission of Allah,” the Taliban threatens.

The Taliban also makes an argument that is very similar to the one adopted by al Qaeda in the 1990s. Al Qaeda became infamous for alleging that the US was propping up Muslim dictators who stood in the way of jihadi rule.“While the cheapest and degraded people forcibly and tyrannically rule over the Muslim lands, still the Muslim Ummah does not attach their hopes to these robbers, who are enforced upon the Muslim lands by Europe and America,” a Taliban narrator says, as images of Secretary Kerry and President Obama are shown. “And these foolish [Muslim rulers] lack confidence and trust [among the Muslim Ummah].” This is why, according to the Taliban, “sincere Muslims consider jihad to be the glory of the greatest Islamic history and all of their hopes are attached towards the Mujahideen.”In case there was any doubt about what the Taliban believes, the video makes it clear that the Taliban’s version of Islam is, in their eyes, the only true one. And it is the same version of Islam as al Qaeda’s.One speaker says: “Islam is not the religion of the Taliban alone! Neither of al Qaeda! Rather, Islam is the religion of all the Muslims!”Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of The Long War Journal. Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal.

The UNSC report appears to bear him out, listing four kinds of foreign fighters. The first group of over 7,500 comprises those "who had fled Pakistan owing to the military

operation Zarb-e-Azb and were currently fighting alongside the Afghan Taliban. Those fighters hail from the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Lashkar i Jhangvi, Jaish-i-Mohammed, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, etc." LeT fighters, the report says provide training to new Taliban recruits in Kandahar, while HUM fighters are working with the Haqqani network.

The second group, according to the report, comes from China, Russia and Central Asia. "Those militants are currently fighting with IMU, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the Islamic Jihad Group, Jundallah and Jamaat Ansarullah." Then there are "fighters of Uzbek and Tajik origin" who may be "members of the Katibat Imam Bukhari group who took the oath of allegiance to the new leader of Taliban, Haibatullah Akhundzada."

The third group is about 1,600 fighters, mainly of ISIS persuasion, located in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces. They mainly come from three agencies in Pakistan: Orakzai, Khyber and Bajaur.


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The fourth group is mainly Al-Qaida, but these have lost a lot of relevance in Afghanistan, the report notes. "The members of al-Qaida are not significantly engaged in fighting in Afghanistan but act mainly as embedded trainers and advisers to the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and IMU."

NEW DELHI: Despite impressions to the contrary, the presence of terror group Islamic State (ISIS/Daesh) in Afghanistan has significantly weakened from 2015 to end 2016. This is the observation by the UN Security Council's 1267 monitoring committee, which recently issued its seventh update on the security situation in Afghanistan. The 1267 monitoring committee's findings on ISIS is distinctly different from the Pakistan-Russia narrative which is pushing ISIS as the greatest threat in Afghanistan.

"The position of ISIL in Afghanistan has distinctly weakened since 2015." Quoting Afghan government officials, the report said, "at the high point of its influence in 2015, the group had been able to temporarily control up to nine districts in Nangarhar Province. Currently, however, the most active part of the group has been reduced to influence in, at most, three and a half districts within the province." The growing number of ISIS-Taliban clashes had contributed to their denuded control over territory.

The committee noted the "number of ISIL fighters in eastern Afghanistan had dropped to about 1,600 ... located mainly in the districts of Deh Bala, Kot, Achin and Naziyan in Nangarhar Province. About 200 ISIL fighters were based in Kunar province."

The recently concluded Sixth Ministerial ‘Heart of Asia’ Conference at Amritsar, attended by some 30 countries and international and regional organisations, emerged as a platform for stronger India-Afghanistan relationship, and for the world to understand more the problems and instability being faced by Afghanistan and the region.That the instability is primarily because of Pakistan’s decades-old state policy of exporting terrorism is without doubt. However, statements and deliberations at the Heart of Asia (HoA) conference, as well as other recent developments indicate new geopolitical pulls that the region is likely to face in the near and mid-term.

One highlight of the recent HoA Conference was that for the first time, a Heart of Asia (HoA) Declaration expressed concern at the violence caused in Afghanistan and the region by Pakistani proxies and other terrorist groups. The declaration made categorical reference to concern over the gravity of the security situation in Afghanistan and the region, and high level of violence caused by the Taliban, terrorist groups including ISIL/Daesh and its affiliates, Haqqani Network, Al Qaida, IMU, ETIM, LeT, JeM, TTP, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Jundullah and other foreign terrorist fighters.Pakistan’s de-facto Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz asserted at the HoA conference that blaming Pakistan for terrorism was too “simplistic” and maintained that the instability in Afghanistan is linked to Kashmir.

But the surprise statement came from Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s special envoy to Afghanistan, who stated at the HoA Conference that allegations made against Pakistan by India and Afghanistan are totally baseless, the allegations game should stop and criticising Pakistan is wrong. He also appreciated the speech by Sartaj Aziz, calling it constructive and friendly.

This was a surprise since Russia’s Spetsnaz Special Forces have been active in Pakistan over the years by proxy to block Pakistani support to Chechen insurgents. It is quite possible that Pakistan may have assured Russia of not supporting Islamic fundamentalism in Chechnya, in addition to pursuing a bilateral defence pact.


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Then there has been the recent Russia-Pakistan gas deal, TAPI (Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India pipeline) and CPEC (China–Pakistan Economic Corridor) are coming up and Russia is supplying defence equipment to Pakistan, even as the Barack Obama administration in the US is continuing to pressure Russia from multiple avenues, financial sanctions included.Obviously, China is capitalising on the US-Russia estrangement by drawing Russia closer to herself and her protégé Pakistan.Kabulov’s statement indicates Russian support for ‘good’ terrorists of Pakistan — very much like China. The games of Chinese checkers and Russian roulette appear coalescing despite prospects of cooperation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President-elect Donald Trump over Syria.General John W Nicholson, Commander US Forces and Resolute Mission in Afghanistan, recently reviewed the situation in the region, highlights of which included: US mission ‘Freedom Sentinel’ for Central Asia-South Asia region is focused on Al Qaeda and ISIS, as also advising and assisting ANSF to defeat Al Qaeda and IS Khorasan (ISK). Of 98 US-designated terrorist groups globally, 20 are in Af-Pak who mix and converge.US CT operations during 2016 killed/captured some 50 Al Qaeda/AQIS leaders and 200 cadres.Mullah Mansour, emir of Taliban, was killed in Pakistan.

Top 12 leaders of ISK, including emir Hafiz Saeed Khan, were killed.Resolute Support’s programme to train, advise, assist ANSF is the largest and longest NATO operation in history — 39 nations in ISAF together for 10 years-plus.$800 million is pledged annually to support ANSF through 2020.International donors at Brussels recently expressed intent to commit another $15.2 billion for developing Afghanistan.Afghan Air Force has added MD-530 helicopters, eight ground attack aircraft and 120 Afghan tactical air controllers.Sustainable security strategy during 2016 foiled enemy attempts to capture cities.ANSF holds about 64 per cent of population, Taliban less than 10 per cent and balance is contested.Despite Taliban promise to safeguard civilians, vast majority of civilian casualities due to insurgency — 61-72 per cent; Taliban have intentionally destroyed Afghan’s infrastructure while government seeks to build it.

Afghan police and army will focus on replacing ineffective/corrupt leaders.Future concerns include: risk of Afghan political fracture; malign influence of external actors, particularly Pakistan, Russia, and Iran; convergence of terrorist groups, and; impact of a narcotics trade on insurgency and economy.

US President-elect Donald Trump, in his telephonic conversation with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, has assured that his administration stands ready to support Afghanistan, saying: “If Afghanistan needs more assistance, this administration, after assessing the needs, will focus on providing more security support.”

How the future US-Pakistan relations, which directly affect stability of Afghanistan and the region, will differ from those during the Obama Administration is yet to be seen, but presently the US House of Representatives has cleared $900 million economic aid to Pakistan, which — going by past experience — invariably gets diverted.Significantly, Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of trying to change Russia’s and Iran’s perception about the Taliban, who are fighting against the Afghan government and Western coalition forces.Afghanistan’s official spokesperson Sediq Seddeqi told media on November 5 that Kabul was hopeful that Russia and Iran would continue backing the Afghan government and people of Afghanistan, the way they had been over the past 16 years. He suggested that Pakistan was behind the US view that Russia and Iran support Taliban in the war-torn country.


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Seddeqi pointed to General Nicholson briefing Pentagon on December 2 that “Russia has overtly lent legitimacy to the Taliban”. This needs to be viewed in the backdrop of Kabulov’s aforementioned statement at the HoA Conference.Seddeqi also said: “Shifting to Iran, you have a similar situation — there have been linkages between the Iranians and the Taliban in the past”, adding that Nicholson had also said: “Pakistan, a US ally, was lending support to the Taliban, which had launched deadly attacks in Afghanistan in the past week, and; Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network was holding five Americans hostage.”Sartaj Aziz recently announced that Pakistan was setting up a high-level committee to formulate “a doable and sustainable” policy to highlight the Kashmir issue globally, described by Dawn as “reaching out to Indians who are opposed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘extremist policies’”.This committee is to consist of senior officials from the Ministries of Defence, Interior and Information, the Military Operations Directorate, ISI and IB — and, significantly, none from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Obviously, the unstated aim would be to destabilise India as much as possible through increased terror.In the case of Afghanistan, Kabulov’s statement at the HoA indicates Russia getting sucked into the China-Pakistan nexus. This will have ramifications for the Af-Pak region.Additionally, the US has just announced it will not purchase helicopters from Russia for Afghanistan. What happens to the maintenance, spare parts and assembly of Russian equipment held by the ANSF, including attack helicopters, remains a question mark with the Russian stance changing.Whatever the pulls and pushes in the ongoing Great Game, the Chinese appear to be on a winning streak as of now.*The author is a veteran Special Forces officer of the Indian Army

The pursuit of imperial ambitions at all costs has undermined democratic forces in the Arab world in favour of deadly extremism, writes JOHN ELLISON

The two previous articles have asserted that the British government’s Prevent strategy (aimed mainly at discouraging domestic terrorism motived by Islam and succeeding in alienating many Muslim people) is seriously hampered by its pretence that British and US foreign policy has nothing to do with the proliferation of reactionary Islamism.In the Middle East and elsewhere long-term Western policy, led by the US, has systematically backed pro-Western autocratic Islamic governments who have promoted harsh Islamic law and has also directly supported “medieval” Islamic movements against secular nationalist governments.The war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in early 1991 was a punishment for invading Kuwait — backed by huge funding from Saudi Arabia, it engendered Islamic anger.By allowing bases for half a million US troops within the country’s own borders the Saudi royals were labelled betrayers of Islam and created a fresh stimulant to jihadist groups.The Saudi rulers had simply bent the knee to the US, which they depend on for survival. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden deserted the regime, which had nurtured him, moving first to Sudan and later on to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.The Saudis, assisted by global financial deregulation, spread the messages of Wahhabism from north Africa to Central Asia in order to strengthen their own support base.Mark Curtis in his formidably analytical Secret Affairs (2010), from which much of this article is drawn, wrote: “All the evidence points to Britain’s continued toleration, and tacit support, of the Saudis’ ‘Islamic’ foreign policy,” adding: “It was the same for the US.”During the early 1990s militant jihadists who had been trained in Pakistani and Afghan camps for the long war against Soviet occupation, returned to their various homelands and began to take on their


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own governments.In Algeria it precipitated a civil war that cost a hundred thousand lives. In Bosnia in 1992, Europe for the first time experienced jihadist war when Bosnia-Herzogovina’s declaration of independence gave raise to a conflict between Bosnian Serb forces (allied to Serbia) and Muslim-Croat forces — some 4,000 jihadist volunteers there were funded by al-Qaida, the Saudis and various Islamic “charities.”Curtis says that Britain supplied arms to Muslim and Croat forces and also, at least, “acquiesced in” the movement of volunteers into the country. Some participants in the Bosnian war were flown in from Afghanistan by bin Laden, said to have visited Bosnia several times.Among the volunteers were two Saudi nationals who in September 2001 crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.A former Indian intelligence officer has asserted that around 200 Muslims of Pakistani origin living in Britain were funded by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) — with the complicity of the British and US intelligence agencies — to travel to Pakistan for training and then on to Bosnia into action.Also, al-Qaida one-off attacks were stepped up. In the US in 1993 came a first bomb attack on the World Trade Centre. More such attacks followed in Riyadh (1995), Dahran (1996) and several US embassies in Africa were also targetted (1998).In March 1999 came a large-scale Nato bombing of Serbian forces at war with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which was claiming independence for the province of Kosovo as part of “Greater Albania” in the region. At this stage the KLA — earlier regarded as a terrorist organisation by the US and Britain — became the good guys.This civil war had begun three years earlier and was “helped” by a Saudi donation of £800,000 to build in Bosnia a specialist base from which guerillas would be sent into Kosovo.Many KLA fighters were simultaneously trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and also in Albania, where a staging centre for jihadists was located. The former Indian intelligence officer quoted before reported, according to Curtis, that Pakistani militants who had fought in Bosnia were later diverted to Kosovo.Then in September 2001 came the barbaric al-Qaida suicide attacks on New York and Washington. The pretext was now in place for the US to do what it wished in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet of the 19 attackers all were Arab, 15 were Saudi nationals and the leader, Mohammed Atta, was Egyptian — none were Afghan.Moreover, it was later reported by the Times of India that, prior to the atrocity, the director of Pakistan’s ISI had ordered the wiring of £80,000 to Mohammed Atta.In June 2004 the interim report of the US 9/11 commission was to acknowledge that Pakistan had assisted the Taliban leadership in hosting bin Laden — but there was no Western punishment for Pakistan. Nor was there one for Saudi Arabia, which for the past three decades had supported a range of Islamist groups while remaining a staunch ally of the West. In other words, the US continued to prefer to maintain its alliances with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which had far more responsibility for 9/11 than the Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers who it proceeded to remove from power through intense bombing in alliance with Afghan warlords on the ground.Then came the calamitous invasion and occupation of Iraq in spring 2003. There was no sign of significant resistance from jihadist groups until the occupation began. In August al-Qaida suicide bombings by foreign jihadists began.In The Occupation (2007) Patrick Cockburn refers to two separate studies of foreign fighters, which revealed that they were motivated both by Islamic fundamentalism and by hatred of the US occupation and were intent on returning the Muslim world to the pure Islam of the 7th century — they regarded as infidels both the occupiers and all who did not subscribe to their beliefs.The Arab Spring of 2011, an eruption of protest against various Arab dictatorships was, as Cockburn


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points out in The Age of Jihad, driven by both democratic aspirations and by Islamic militancy. In Libya the Nato bombing campaign in support of rebellion against the unpopular dictatorship of Gadaffi, ended his rule while leaving a vacuum in which rival governments and militias operated and in which Islamic militancy thrived.By 2015 many “infidels,” such as black migrant labourers, were being murdered and refugees were, in desperation, fleeing the country.In Syria the Arab Spring had also become a nightmare as the rebels against President Bashar al-Assad’s minority Shi’ite Alawite rule included Sunni Islamist extremists, who regarded Shi’ite people as heretics to be eliminated.Before long, Cockburn notes, armed opposition to the Syrian government was “almost entirely dominated by Isis and the Nusra Front, the al-Qaida affiliate.” Their violent jihadism has been aided by an increasingly aggressive Turkey and, more covertly, by Israel.More tragedy followed with the spillover of the Syrian civil war into Iraq, where the sectarian and endemically corrupt Shi’ite-controlled government was unable to resist the rise of Isis and control of a large swathe of western Iraq and eastern Syria.The US and Britain, by removing governments seen as a threat to Western interests, have stimulated directly the growth of Islamic extremism, a situation that will continue as long they buttress the Islamic regimes of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia plus Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman.By 2001 the flames of jihadist extremism were high. Western interventions that came since then in Iraq, Libya and Syria have only fuelled the flames. Israel’s territorial expansionism with increased settlements in the occupied West Bank has done nothing to dampen them.It is in this context that the Prevent strategy seeks to reduce the impact those flames have on the domestic front and is understandably condemned as stigmatising, Muslims by spying on them.An effective Prevent strategy would come when Western governments start listening to those among voters who demand a change in current foreign policy.


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al-qaida chief ayman al-zawahiri the coordinator 2016 part 4-1-tb-38-al qaida-tb

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