"This ignored the lesson from Afghanistan (where the CIA in the 1980s ran, via Pakistan, the largest covert operation in its history) — that inciting jihad and arming “holy warriors” creates a deadly cocktail, with far-reaching and long-lasting impacts on international security. The Reagan administration openly used Islam as an ideological tool to spur armed resistance to Soviet forces in Afghanistan
In 1985, at a White House ceremony in honour of several Afghan mujahideen — the jihadists out of which al-Qaeda evolved — President Ronald Reagan declared, “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.” Earlier in 1982, Reagan dedicated the space shuttle ‘Columbia’ to the Afghan resistance. He declared, “Just as the Columbia, we think, represents man’s finest aspirations in the field of science and technology, so too does the struggle of the Afghan people represent man’s highest aspirations for freedom. I am dedicating, on behalf of the American people, the March 22 launch of the Columbia to the people of Afghanistan.”
The Afghan war veterans came to haunt the security of many countries. Less known is the fact that the Islamic State’s self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — like Libyan militia leader Abdelhakim Belhadj (whom the CIA abducted and subjected to “extraordinary rendition”) and Chechen terrorist leader Airat Vakhitov — become radicalised while under U.S. detention. As torture chambers, U.S. detention centres have served as pressure cookers for extremism.
Had the U.S. and its allies refrained from arming jihadists to topple Mr. Assad, would the Islamic State have emerged as a lethal, marauding force? And would large swaths of upstream territory along the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers in Syria and Iraq have fallen into this monster’s control? The exigencies of the topple-Assad campaign also prompted the Obama administration to turn a blind eye to the flow of Gulf and Turkish aid to the Islamic State.
In fact, the Obama team, until recently, viewed the Islamic State as a “good” terrorist organisation in Syria but a “bad” one in Iraq, especially when it threatened to overrun the Kurdish regional capital, Erbil. In January, Mr. Obama famously dismissed the Islamic State as a local “JV team” trying to imitate al-Qaeda but without the capacity to be a threat to America. It was only after the public outrage in the U.S. over the video-recorded execution of American journalist James Foley and the flight of Iraqi Christians and Yazidis that the White House re-evaluated the threat posed by the Islamic State"
At long last, someone from Mainstream Media has found the guts to publish what has been common knowledge; the World's best known and worst kept open secret. {If there have been any other articles, I have missed them}. Of note is the statement from 1985 - all the more so since that directly impacted India. Full marks to The Hindu and Mr Brahma Chellaney for this stupendous article.
You can call these guys Jihadists, or Extremists, or Terrorists - or whatever else passes your fancy. You can now label them as an international threat, a threat to world peace, and what-not. You can now pass judgement on them, and plan their extermination and defeat - now that they are threatening you. You can now call yourselves as fighting against terror, now that the terror has come to hit your nations - I am referring to the USA and any other nations that helped these terrorists in the early days.
Who gave these terrorists arms in the first place? How is it that these dangers to world peace are armed with the most sophisticated of weapons? How did they make the contacts and processes needed to procure these ultra-modern equipment such that they now sport? How did these weapons reach these terrorists? How is it that in this modern world, sophisticated weaponry is reaching these unsophisticated people? How did it all start?
When we were warning of what is happening; when we were providing proof of the diversion of the arms to fighting India and instilling terror in India, these very same great Western powers placidly looked away. When blood was flowing in my country, no one cared; while the West continued in its myopic stupidity, supporting dictator after dictator; intervening in nation after nation.
Then, the moment the monster turned around to attack the West, these freedom fighters became terrorists! And what do you do? Of Course, make the 2 nations which were creating them the ringleaders in the anti-terror war; with the one nation that has paid a higher price for the follies of the West - My India - being ignored yet again.
Dont get me wrong - I am thankful The Great West ignored me again. After seeing the price of "help" and "intervention" form the West, {Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc}; I would much rather be ignored than be a friend of such short-sighted and self-centered regimes like the USA etc! I would much rather have an arms-length no intervention relationship with these great helpers.
Why should these Great Western Powers intervene in other nations? In each and every case, a people relatively at peace {albeit under despots} were ripped apart, their peace destroyed, their economy wrecked, their society in tatters, the future of their children completely destroyed, and all because one Western Power thought it would "help" internal dissatisfied elements in these despotic regimes.
This "Help" has created a cesspool of misery, compared to which what these nations had before intervention was decidedly better and preferable. At least they had a life, an economy, a society and a future for their children. The disenfranchised too, had a hope - that their struggle will ensure a future for their children - if not in their current country, then elsewhere. Now, as things stand today, all hope is destroyed for everyone in that part of the world.
All because one Great Western Power {or a few powers} decided to "help" things along by "empowering" the dissatisfied elements, setting in motion a chain of events that has now come back to haunt everyone. A chain of terrifying events that now has control; that has grown into a Frankenstein. So tell me, who is responsible? Only the terrorists from the Middle East?
Would the ISI be such a threat if it werent for the training of the CIA? Would the Pakistani terror factory be so efficient were it not for the free instructions, training and arms received during the Afghan campaign? Would so much blood have flowed if the West had kept its noses out of places where it did not belong? Would the Jihad factory be what it is today without all this?
So tell me - who is the Guilty Party? Who is the real Innocent Party here? I can see only one innocent party - The Sovereign, Secular, Democratic Republic Of India. That is it. If the monster is now attacking Pakistan, and The West, it is only turning back on its creators. But in all this, My India has paid a heavy price.
And, till date 2014, not one Western Leader has appreciated what India has gone through ever since The Afghan Covert Operation began in the Mid-80s. A knife at our throats, drawing blood every single day. Each and every single day; a price paid in blood by our citizens numbering in thousands. But why should they appreciate? It isnt their blood...
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