A February 1998 Pentagon report on terrorism
warned that: "It is the American character to believe we
can solve all problems with our ingenuity and hard
work." It then went on to say that no matter what was
done, "there would remain a significant portion of
terrorist planning, preparation and incidents that would
surprise". But the real surprise for many will be how
Madrid's tragedy is directly linked to decades of United
States foreign policy errors in Afghanistan.
"Blowback" is a Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) term for the unintended consequences of foreign
operations. But US policy expert Chalmers Johnson,
author of the much acclaimed Blowback: The Cost and
Consequences of American Empire, told Asia Times
Online that there was more to it. Johnson highlighted
that key to the term is an appreciation that the actions
undertaken had been "kept secret from the American
public", so that when "retaliation came they had no
means to put in context or understand it as a cause and
effect relationship". And while Spanish voters
appreciated the linkage between Spain's support for the
Iraq war and the recent devastation, the bombings of
March 11 are only the surface of a far deeper problem.
Many of the recent media reports on terrorist
action have drawn parallels between assorted Islamic
groups and those who had fought in Afghanistan, tending
to label those affiliated with these Afghan veterans as
al-Qaeda. At present the leading suspect for the train
blasts is such a body, the Moroccan group Salafia
Jihadi.
According to leading Moroccan terrorism
analyst Professor Mohamed Darif, Salafia was effectively
spawned soon after veterans of the Afghan war against
the Soviet Union returned in the 1980s and 90s. The
Salafist movement itself dates to the 19th century,
established as a school of Sunni Islam which sought to
re-establish the ways of the Islamic forefathers
(Salaf), and is best recognized in today's Wahhabi
denomination. But during the Afghan-Soviet conflict a
fateful split in the movement occurred, spawning what
many see as the roots of current concerns, what Darif
refers to as the emergence of Jihad Salafism.
As
reported in American media on March 23, 2002, the issue
is that now America "is wrestling with the unintended
consequences of its successful strategy of stirring
Islamic fervor to fight communism". It was a matter of
US foreign policy that the concept of Jihad was actively
encouraged as a tool in the Cold War's Afghan arena.
What both Madrid and September 11, 2001
represent is blowback.
In January of 1998, the
French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur interviewed former
US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
regarding the origins of the Afghan-Soviet conflict and
the role of the mujahideen in it. During the interview
Brzezinski - who presided over the beginnings of the
conflict - revealed that while history officially
recognized CIA aid to the Afghans as beginning
subsequent to the country's entrance by Soviet forces,
"the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely
otherwise".
Notably, the Soviets entered
Afghanistan on December 24, 1979, to prop up the Marxist
government there, insisting they were doing so to combat
a clandestine US involvement. They were widely
disbelieved. But Brzezinski revealed that "it was 3 July
1979 that President Carter signed the first directive
for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime
in Kabul".
When Brzezinski was asked if he
regretted the action, he replied: "Regret what … the
effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and
you want me to regret it?"
The interviewer then
addressed how Afghanistan proceeded to spawn Islamic
terrorism, the US having provided arms and training to
"future terrorists"; but, Brzezinski dismissed such
reasoning, describing today's al-Qaeda and its alleged
offshoots as "some stirred-up Muslims".
In
perhaps the most revealing exchange, the interviewer
questioned: "Some stirred-up Muslims? But it has been
said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a
world menace today." Brzezinski replied, "Nonsense!"
In contrast, Johnson told Asia Times Online
that: "Richard Armitage, Condolleezza Rice, Colin Powell
and Dick Cheney ran the biggest clandestine operation we
[the US] ever carried out anywhere - recruiting, arming
and training the mujahideen. And we just walked away and
left them to the most devastating civil war, and they
realized that they had been used as cannon fodder in a
skirmish of the Cold War. They wanted retaliation."
Beyond encouraging Islamic fighters from
throughout the world to join the Afghan jihad against
the Soviets, the US sought to indoctrinate those of
school age with the concept of jihad. American media
reported that millions of dollars were spent in
providing Afghan schoolchildren with "textbooks filled
with violent images and militant Islamic teachings",
doing so as "part of covert attempts to spur resistance
to the Soviet occupation".
The Washington Post
described one passage as glorifying those who "will
sacrifice their wealth and life to impose Islamic law on
the government". And as these perspectives were
disseminated to the worldwide Islamic community with the
return of Afghan veterans, the debate in Iraq over
Islamic law becomes easier to appreciate.
Following the return of the
Afghan-Soviet veterans to their respective homelands,
the new so-called Jihad Salafism simply returned with
them. While the name of al-Qaeda has been used
extensively in describing these individuals and the
circles they developed, Morocco's Darif has been quoted
as observing that the reality "is more a doctrine, like
Marxism, than a single coherent organization". Emphasizing the
point, an Associated Press article reported this week
that new al-Qaeda recruits were materializing as a
result of the efforts of "radicals who fought with bin
Laden in Afghanistan". But it then continued, noting the
recruitment is "by remote control", saying that al-Qaeda
amounts to "separate and loose groups bound only by
ideology". According to one expert quoted, "If you
believe in their ideas you are one of them." And that is
the problem, the idea of jihad which US foreign policy
cultivated to combat the Soviet Union is now the idea
which is at the basis of the expanding, ongoing
blowback.
Prior to the Iraq war, British
intelligence warned Prime Minister Tony Blair of a
"heightened" threat if the Iraq invasion occurred.
Australia was informed by its intelligence similarly, as
was the US. But the "war on terror" was nevertheless
cited as the basis for the Iraq invasion. And according
to former Iraq administrator General Jay Garner, the
first priority of the Bush administration was to roll
out plans drafted as early as 2001 for Iraq's
"privatization".
As Vice President Dick Cheney
has foreseen a "war on terror" which will "not end in
our lifetime", it appears the administration's conduct
may indeed assure this. But as John Pilger observed in
2002, "there is no 'war on terror', just the new Great
Game", adding that the 19th century geopolitical
struggle for power and wealth hada merely been vastly
speeded-up, and become more deadly than ever.
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