The real rogue state: How the US helped unleash radical Islam

The US continues to collude with Saudi Arabia, the principal backer of Wahhabi and Salafist Islam, and the source of much of the carnage in the region.

WrittenBy:Vikram Zutshi
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When Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, along with four aides was released in late November, after 10 months of house arrest, the Indian foreign ministry expressed its ‘outrage’, saying the move was an “attempt by Pakistani system to mainstream proscribed terrorists”.

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“I was detained on the pressure of the US on the Pakistani government,” claimed Saeed, soon after his release, saying, “the US did so on the request of India”, adding he would continue to support Kashmiris in their struggle for liberation from Indian control.

Saeed had been earlier declared a global terrorist by the United Nations for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attack and the US announced a $10 million bounty for his head.

Kashmir is one of the world’s most densely militarised zones, divided into two parts, governed by India and Pakistan respectively. Both are frequently upbraided by NGOs and civil liberty advocates for egregious violations of human rights. Meanwhile the beleaguered residents of the Kashmir Valley have been caught, often literally, in the crossfire.

While Pakistan rails against human rights abuses in Kashmir, India accuses its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of supporting and training mujahideen to fight in Jammu and Kashmir, a claim supported by former President Pervez Musharraf who in 2015 admitted that Pakistan had trained insurgent groups in the 1990s. Musharraf’s admission came after terrorist groups linked to Kashmir tried to assassinate him on two separate occasions.

The relationship between the ISI and the mujahideen, however, started long before they were deployed in Kashmir. As per a 1998 NBC report, Osama bin Laden’s front organisation known as Maktab al-Khidamar (the predecessor to Al Qaeda) – was regularly funneling money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war – with the assistance of the CIA  – using the Pakistani ISI as its primary conduit. This convenient arrangement with the ISI was called Operation Cyclone, and later immortalised in the Tom Hanks film, Charlie Wilson’s War, named after the Democratic Congressman from Texas who spearheaded the campaign. Unsurprisingly, the film did not address the disastrous long-term ramifications of the operation.

In Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Network (OUP), Don Rassler and Vahid Brown assert that direct cash payments by the CIA to Jalaluddin Haqqani — a part of bin Laden’s inner circle in the Eighties — gave the Haqqanis serious leverage over the Mujahideen, and to a large degree was responsible in helping bin Laden develop his base. Congressman Charlie Wilson described Haqqani as ‘goodness personified’.

“For half a century, the United States and many of its allies saw what I call the “Islamic right” as convenient partners in the Cold War,” writes veteran journalist Robert Dreyfuss in Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. “In the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and organisations among Muslim fundamentalists on the far right were often viewed as allies for two reasons, because they were seen a fierce anti-communists and because they opposed secular nationalists such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh,” he adds.

Dreyfuss argues that the US has supported radical Islamic activism over the past six decades, “sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly,” and is thus “partly to blame for the emergence of Islamic terrorism as a world-wide phenomenon.”

Indeed, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted on CNN that the US had been cultivating bin Laden and the other originators of “Al Qaeda” since the 1970s to fight the Soviets. The virulent strain of Islam responsible for brutal massacres around the world, were to some degree jump-started by Ronald Reagan, who valourised the holy war by hosting jihadist leaders in the Oval Office and backing them, both overtly and covertly.

 It is now well-known (but not often blurted out loud) how influential Washington insiders like Assistant Secretary of Defence Richard Perle, organised and armed the Great Global Jihad, which was bankrolled by the Saudis, and implemented by Pakistan. The most hardened militant Sunnis were sought out and recruited through CIA-funded newspaper ads promising various incentives to join the holy war. Scores of new madrasas sprouted across the land, backed by the House of Saud and the CIA, where fiery preachers extolled the virtues of martyrdom and religious war. American universities churned out propaganda literature for children filled with militant Islamic teachings that even today are recommended by the Taliban for use in madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The United States continues to collude with Saudi Arabia, the principal backer of Wahhabi and Salafist Islam in the Middle East, and the source of much of the carnage in the region. After sealing a $350 billion arms deal with the US on May 20, 2017, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia ramped up the vitriol against their common enemy, Iran, referring to its Shia leader Ali Khamenei as a modern day ‘Hitler’ who should not be ‘appeased’ in light of past mistakes with Nazi Germany.

Trump likewise has aligned himself with the Sunni side of the bitter sectarian conflict tearing apart the Middle East, and has threatened to nullify the Iran nuclear deal signed during Obama’s presidency – a move that is bound to please its new best friend Israel.  Saudi Arabia meanwhile has tightened its blockade against Yemen, cutting off vital food supplies and medical aid, threatening to plunge the country into the biggest famine the world has seen in a long time.

In a speech to the UN this year, Donald Trump belittled North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and called the country a ‘rogue state’. Kim Jong-Un, in turn, warned Trump that all the American metros were in the crosshairs of North Korean nukes. The term has been often used to describe countries ruled by authoritarian regimes that severely restrict human rights, sponsor terrorism, seek to proliferate weapons of mass destruction and threaten the global order. Countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Cuba, Yugoslavia and Sudan have previously been shunted into the ignominious category.

In Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, Noam Chomsky argues that the real ‘rogue’ states in the world today are not the developing countries led by swarthy despots as portrayed in the media, but the United States and its allies. He excoriates the United States’ for flouting the authority of United Nations and international legal precedent in justifying its motives and actions, demonstrating how the rule of law has been reduced to farce.

Indeed, when reporter Lesley Stahl, in a televised interview with Madeleine Albright, brought up the half million children who had died as a result of US sanctions against Iraq, saying it was more children than died in Hiroshima, asking if it was worth the price, Albright’s response was, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

Not long afterwards she was appointed Secretary of State.

“From 1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes,” notes William Blum in Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, adding that “in the process, the US caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair”.

Blum, an underground journalist specialising in trenchant critiques of US foreign policy, was virtually unknown outside of radical circles and the college lecture circuit. It all changed the day his book received a ringing endorsement from an unexpected source: Osama bin Laden: “And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book ‘Rogue State,’ which states in its introduction: ‘If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First, I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all’.”

Within 24 hours Rogue State had shot up from 205,763 to 26 on Amazon’s index of the most-ordered books and Blum’s phone started ringing off the hook. All the major news outlets rang for interviews. “I was not turned off by such an endorsement,” he informed a New York radio station. “I’m not repulsed, and I’m not going to pretend I am.” Being quoted by the world’s most wanted terrorist clearly did not bother him.

He patiently reiterated the thesis of his critique – that US interventions abroad created bitter enemies, and Americans should not be surprised if the chickens came home to roost.

Dispatching the Navy Seals to execute an old man long past his prime, holed up in Abbottabad is a much easier task than destroying the Frankenstein that continues to wreak havoc across the world. Framing the conflict in simple binaries and tarring billions of people with the same brush will only exacerbate an already precarious situation, or worse lead to another nuclear winter, this time in the heart of the West.

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