The Planet Of Arabs: Breaking The Clichéd Western Narrative On Terror
By C R Sridhar
19 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org
“With the communist bogey exhausted, we are told of an insidious peril in our midst: the fearful prospect of minarets and Sharia law marching across the European landscape, destroying civilization. But for fear to work in a tangible form, we must have the visible impact of terror all around us. That is where we are now.”-Richard Cottrell- British journalist.[i]
There is a chilling sense of déjà vu about the massacre in Paris which claimed 129 lives and left nearly 200 injured.
The terrorists reportedly fired on innocent civilians in a Cambodian restaurant, detonated explosives near the Stade de France where the French President Francois Hollande was watching a soccer match between France and Germany and fired randomly at the Bataclan concert hall, where terrorists held up to 100 hostages. When the police stormed the concert hall the terrorists set off the bombs in their suicide belts and killed the hostages. There were other incidents of senseless killings of passersby on Rue de Charonne, Louvre and Les Halles.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks at the heart of Paris. After the initial confusion and panic among the Parisians, the French Government got into the act of showing the bewildered people that they were in charge. A long drawn worried face of Hollande appeared on French TV assuring the French people that swift and terrible retribution would follow and that France was at war with Islamic terrorism.
While the shootings and bomb detonation of the terrorists at the heart of Paris hogged world media attention, the burning of refugee camps in Calais was played down indicating perhaps the less worthy victim status of refugees mainly from Syria
The media went along scripted lines by claiming that the French principles of pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness was under attack by the planet of the Arabs.
Soon disconcerting facts emerged bearing uncanny resemblance to the Charlie Hebdo killings which took place in Paris in January this year. One of the most troubling facts to emerge was that the French Security police in charge of counter-terrorism had prior knowledge about the goings on of a terrorist who was put under surveillance. But they took no action.
Moreover, the gang of terrorists had sophisticated guns and explosives and conducted the series of attacks with military precision. Also, the attackers left identification papers like passport and other such documents which were found at the scene of carnage.
Add to that another pattern emerges- at least five attacks centered on the 11tharrondissement part of Paris which has young people such as bohemian artists espousing leftist causes. As ironies go, the Islamic militants spared the power elites of Paris and instead mowed down the progressive young who stood against militarism and Islamophobia.
While these questions may never be answered and the sensitive information about the terrorist killings may remain as classified material of the French National Security State, there is an unvarying trend in the terror narrative, especially, in the Western world after 9/11: that the evil of terrorism is external and emanates from the planet of Arabs to destroy the openness and tolerance of western culture.
Any resistance to the dominant narrative of western terror discourse invites a swift reprimand in the form of verbal abuse - terrorist sympathizer or worse- fu*k**g liberal.
The Western terror narrative, describing the nature and causes of terrorism expounded by western media, politicians and terror experts of the military industrial complex, is essentially a propagandist narrative in which six elements are woven together to form an unified discourse of deception.
Firstly, The West stands for decency and is an innocent target and victim of terrorism. It follows from this proposition that the West does not engage in or support terrorism in any way, shape or form.
Secondly, The West only responds to other people’s use of force. The invasion of Iraq by US was justified on the specious plea of Saddam’ regime possessing weapons of mass destruction or harboring Islamic terrorists- both false accusations.
Thirdly, unlike in the West, terrorists do not adhere to civilized norms of conduct.
Fourthly, in those cases when the west supports insurgents who use force this is done in behalf of democracy against repressive regimes such as Libya and Syria. Furthermore, the insurgents supported by the west never kill innocent civilians.
Fifthly, Open societies and vibrant democracies such as in the west are vulnerable to terrorists whose ultimate object is to destroy moderate governments.
And lastly, the malevolent power to undermine democracies radiates from the Planet of Arabs such as Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
As summed up by Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan in their essay ‘Terrorism as Ideology and Cultural industry’, “This is clearly a patriotic model, in which all virtues are ascribed to oneself and one’s friends and clients; all villainy is attached to the enemy.”[ii]
Excised from public memory and shoved down the black hole of manufactured amnesia is the role of US and the NATO axis in creating radicalized Islamic fighters for their geopolitical ends.
The US sponsorship of Jihad arises from ‘protection of strategic geography and defending sea and air access routes linked to defending the vast reservoirs of oil and natural gas in and around the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, which the industrial world had begun exploiting and depended upon.[iii]
Post Second Word War, the rivalry between US and Russia led to the Cold War. During this phase the policy makers and think tanks associated with the US administration perceived Soviet Russia as a main threat to US geopolitical/ oil interests in the Middle East. The policy makers and political strategists decided that the chief enemy of Communism and Third World Progressive Nationalism (Arab Socialism of Nasser) would be best countered by the Religion of Islam.
As John. K.Cooley, the author of the book Unholy Wars, explains- ‘The tacit consensus was that the Muslim religion, fundamentally anti-Communist, if translated into politics, could be harnessed as a mighty force to oppose Moscow in the Cold War, in a world growingly polarized by that war.’[iv]
What started off as flirtation with Islamic extremism became a marriage of convenience during the Soviet Russian occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. The principal strategy of National Security Advisor Zybygniew Bryzenski was to draw Soviet troops into the Afghan trap. As Ahmed Rashid, an expert on Islamic extremism explains-“With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI [Inter Services Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.”[v]
During the Presidency of Reagan -the Washington Post reported in 1992-“The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, ... as well as a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.”
The CIA operated through the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in training the freedom fighters and the Saudi provided the finance. The jihad against the Russian troops in Afghanistan was also financed by a drug trade controlled by the CIA in Afghanistan which supplied 60% of the heroin demand in US market. Thus the drug trade provided the Islamic fighters billions of dollars in their fight against the Russians in Afghanistan.
The Russians were defeated in Afghanistan and withdrew their troops in 1989. But the price that was paid was high. Afghanistan was devastated in the war and lay in ruins. About 4 million people became refugees in Iran, Pakistan, and Central Asia. Another horrific consequence of the alliance of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with US hatched the Taliban movement which imposed repressive rule in Afghanistan.
Even after the Soviet withdrawal, US continued its support for Jihad through ISI for covert operations in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. The covert support was extended to the rebels in Chechnya. The geopolitical objectives were clear. The rebels were instrumental in disrupting the Russian oil pipeline which transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. “The indirect beneficiaries were the Anglo-American oil companies” says Michel Chossudovsky, ‘which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin.’[vi]
The contagion of Islamic extremism spread to Egypt where there was a terrorist attack against foreign tourists which left 58 killed. In Algeria during the 90’s the Islamic militants killed over 1,00,000 persons in the campaign of terror. In Kashmir, the ISI supplied arms to Kashmiri insurgents who wanted independence from India.
Thus, it could be seen that Islamic terrorism was not a spontaneous phenomena but actively sponsored by US foreign policy to stem the Russian influence in Afghanistan. The ultimate objective of US policy was to eradicate the influence of progressive nationalists and to actively promote an anti-Western fundamentalist regime consisting of a gaggle of hereditary monarchs, clerics, mullahs, imams and ayatollahs.
US backing of the Islamic State (ISIS) came in the context the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Thereafter a predominantly Shiite administration came to power. As the Sunnis in Iraq lost power after the fall of Saddam, conflicts grew between Shias and Sunni. From the Sunni discontent, Al Qaeda in Iraq was born.[vii] By 2013 it was called ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and extensively funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar- both allies of US. It is a ragtag gang of Baathist elements, Sunni Arabs and hardened criminals released from Saudi prisons.
US had a new geopolitical and strategic crisis- the Shia alignment of Iraq and Iran with Syria as the ally of Iran. The US foreign policy makers saw the growing power of Iran in the region and thought it imperative to cut the Shia influence in the Middle East.
As Seymour Hersh wrote in an article in the New Yorker, “To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A byproduct of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”[viii]
In 2011 the US-NATO alliance with support from France funded and supplied arms Islamic extremist forces to overthrow Ghadafi in Libya. The regime change resulted in 30,000 killed in the Libyan civil war.
Thereafter the US- NATO combine started to focus on their objective of cutting the Shia influence to size by creating strategies of tension by fomenting trouble for Syria which was ally of Iran. The target this time was Basher Assad.
A willful decision was taken by the Obama Administration to fund and arm extremist Islamic organization like the Salafists, Al Nusra and ISIS for the sole objective of overthrowing Assad. In a bloody civil that followed and still continuing, the Russians entered the fray to bolster the Assad regime by bombing the proxy US-NATO army- ISIS.
France as a partner of the NATO combine has also stoked the flames of radicalized Islam. Tony Cartalucci writing in Global Research says “France, as part of a NATO-led coalition, has been arming, funding, aiding, and otherwise perpetuating Al Qaeda terrorists for years, beginning, on record in Libya with the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and continuing until today with NATO’s arming, harboring, and backing of Al Qaeda terrorists including the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) within and along Syria’s borders.” [ix]
The thumb nail sketch of the dangerous games played by western powers through NATO military coalition destroys the stereotype narrative of western media that incidents of terror which occur on western soil are spontaneous acts of evil of radicalized Islam emanating from the planet of Arabs.
But the use of radicalized Islam- nurtured, financed and armed- by Western powers for their deadly geopolitical games is only part of the big picture but there is an important part missing in the picture, namely, an explanation of the bizarre phenomena of random acts of senseless violence occurring at the heart of metropolitan centers of power of the Western world.
In his excellently researched book ‘NATO’s Secret Armies-Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe’ Danielle Genser, a Swiss historian, points that NATO with the help of intelligence agencies of CIA (US) and MI6 (Britain) created a secret army of anti- communists code named Gladio (sword) which operated in Italy and other European countries whose sole object was to create a climate of fear by terrorist acts with the help of legally elected governments. The main purpose of the terrorist acts was to instill a feeling of revulsion and blame them on communist parties and movements.
With the fall of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the raison d’etre of Gladio NATO which was essentially anti-communist in nature became outdated. The global threat of communism as a script had to be consigned to the dustbin of historical irrelevance and a new threat in the form of the “Green Tide of Islam” posing a threat to the Christian civilization had to be invented.
While it may be tempting to dismiss the theory that legally elected democracies of the western governments are capable of stage managing acts of terrorism to drive their people to support unpopular domestic policies as delusional fantasies of pot smoking conspiracy theorists, we do so at our peril.
If we look at our world it resembles a New World Disorder. Large parts of the Western world including the super power US have become corrupt oligarchies where a Obama or a Hollande are mere figureheads of a fragile barely functioning constitutional government. These governments are- in the words of Sheldon Wolin-“inverted totalitarianisms” in which they have merely the form of democracy while the substance is of fascism.
But real power resides- in the words of Richard Cottrell- in a corporate order composed of big business, financial elites and the ravenous military- industrial complex.[x] This cabal of criminal gangsters or elements of the Deep State play on escalating world tensions driven by global poverty, swelling populations and the finite limit of food, oil and minerals.[xi] Hysterical Islamophobia comes in handy to usher in a National Security State which declares perpetual emergency and endless wars.
The terrible spectacle of random and senseless violence which Paris experienced on the 13th of this month was successful. A state of emergency has been declared with suspension of civil rights for three months and doubling of the military budget. The French people suffering from the awe and shock of the recent terrorist violence have meekly complied. Without conducting any investigation or enquiry France promptly went on a bombing campaign of Syria.
David Cameron- Prime Minister of Britain- a warmonger following the hallowed tradition of another war criminal and hired gun for the Kuwaiti Sheiks-Tony Blair, is all set to go on a quixotic adventure of bombing Syria to the Stone Age without getting any approval from the parliament. Putin of Russia who is recovering from the shock of the Russian plane with 224 passengers being blown off the skies by ISIS is also on a bombing spree of Syria.
Orwellian Big Brother has finally come to roost. If George Orwell, the author of 1984, were to be alive today he would be looking at the sea of bewildered herd cowering behind the barbed wire of the National Security State under the panoptic gaze of Big Brother who ensures their enslavement by endless wars to secure endless peace.
Perhaps, he would have shaken his head and muttered in utter disbelief-“I thought I was writing fiction.”
C R Sridhar is a lawyer from Bangalore,India.He writes for the Economic and Political Weekly and has contributed to the Monthly Review.He's a fan of music,movies and websites with alternative views.His writings are available at sapientpen.blogspot.in
[i] Gladio- Richard Cottrell- author’s Preface-Progressive -2012 edition.
[ii] Western State Terrorism- edited by Alexander George- page 44.
[iii] Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International terrorism- John.K.Cooley- page 14.
[iv] ibid
[v] Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999(Quoted in who is Osama Bin Laden?-Michel Chossudovsky-http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html
[vi] ibid
[vii] http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881
[viii] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection
[ix] http://www.globalresearch.ca/france-armed-terrorists-that-struck-paris/5423440
[x] Gladio- Richard Cottrell-Progressive 2012 edition –page 20.
[xi] ibid